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Authors: David Lubar

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PART TWO

SEEING THE TRUTH

SETTLING IN

I
f my arrival at Edgeview reminded me of a prison movie, the start of my stay reminded me of endless television reruns. My second day was distressingly like my first. I went to classes, got in trouble, and went to more classes. My second week was also pretty much like my first. In other words, I’d settled into a routine, which wasn’t all that easy, since things in the classroom had a way of changing. We actually played a board game in math for a couple of days, until someone stole the dice. Mr. Langhorn tried different stuff in geography, too, but no matter what we did he always yelled. Even in history, we didn’t wear costumes every day. Thank goodness. I was getting sick of the smell of talcum powder. Sometimes, we had a lecture or a test.

Miss Nomad couldn’t seem to stick with one approach for more than a couple of English classes. We did worksheets for two days in a row. Then we memorized stuff for three days. That was awful. I know a preposition when I see one—I sure don’t have to memorize a list of them. Then we sat and read. That was better. Then we sat and wrote, which was okay, too. Despite what I’d said to Miss Nomad, I did kinda like to write. Except when we had to do stuff about ourselves. One day she made us write an essay called, “Why I Like Being Me.” Give me a break.

But, whatever we did in class, I could usually expect to be doing
something else a couple days later. So, the main thing that never changed about classes was that things always changed.

Most of the time, my teachers just ignored me. That was fine. If they didn’t talk to me, I didn’t talk back. I figured that if I stayed as invisible as possible, they just might forget about the first day and vote to send me back to regular school when the time came for my review. I even did all my homework, though once in a while Torchie burned it before I could hand it in. There was just one problem: The teachers didn’t always cooperate with my plan. Sometimes they’d slip up and ask me a stupid question. And I’d say something that would piss them off. But mostly they were learning to leave me alone.

As for my social life, it took almost three weeks—and one foolish moment on my part—before Torchie and the others shared their secret. I knew something was going on—a person would have to be as dumb as dirt not to notice all the winks, whispers, and meaningful glances they exchanged every Friday. They sure weren’t playing checkers. The first Friday night after I arrived, Torchie slipped out of the room around eight. He mumbled something about going to the bathroom. He was gone for hours. If he’d spent all that time in the bathroom, there’d be nothing left of him. Torchie snuck back in around midnight, moving with all the silent grace of a moose on a floor full of marbles. I was half asleep, but I glanced at the glowing hands of his desk clock when I heard him tiptoe in from the hallway.

He repeated the scene a week later. The clumps of snow clinging to the sides of his shoes made it obvious he’d been outside. I didn’t worry about it. I figured they’d tell me sooner or later. And if they didn’t, it was no big deal.

I spent more time thinking about the larger puzzle that was tickling against the back of my mind. I saw a painting once that showed a couple of guys climbing a hill. At first, there was nothing special about it. But if you stepped back and let your eyes relax, the whole scene turned into a picture of a grinning skull. I felt Edgeview was like that. Whatever I saw right now, it wasn’t the whole picture. I needed to step
back and let my eyes drift, but I wasn’t sure how to do that. At the moment, all I could do was keep my eyes open and wait for things to fall into place.

But at least I got along with my roommate and his friends, and they treated me okay. The guys even tried to give me a nickname. Flinch said they should call me Squirt because I really had a knack for pissing off the teachers. Fortunately, the name didn’t stick. As smart as Cheater was, Flinch was brilliant in his own way. He didn’t have a million facts in his head, but he could think up stuff really fast. Flinch saw connections. Smart or not, he got in as much trouble as the rest of us. Not only was he pretty distracted most of the time, and as jumpy as a cat in a roomful of pit bulls, but he also interrupted the teachers a lot. They tended not to appreciate that.

As for Friday nights and the big secret, I don’t know how long—if ever—it would have taken before they told me. But on Wednesday of the third week I was walking down the hall when I heard the unmistakable sound of Cheater yelping in pain. I spun back and saw Bloodbath had just tossed Cheater against the wall.

“Watch where you’re going next time,” Bloodbath said. He grabbed Cheater with one hand and raised the other fist.

Oh boy. I knew this routine. No matter what Cheater did or said, Bloodbath would pound him for a while. I scanned the halls for the one thing that might save Cheater. No luck. There wasn’t a teacher in sight. But Bloodbath didn’t know that.

Trying not to think about how stupid it was to approach Bloodbath, I ran over and pointed back to the door of the nearest classroom. “Langhorn and Davis are coming out,” I said, trying to fill my voice with panic. It wasn’t hard.

Bloodbath flashed a smile at me. Then he punched me on the shoulder—I guess that was his way of saying thanks—and slunk away in the opposite direction.

“Thanks,” Cheater said.

“Anytime.”

I guess Cheater told Lucky what happened because at the end of the third week, on Friday evening, as soon as we’d gone upstairs after dinner, Torchie let me in on their secret. “Friday nights,” he said, looking nervously around our room as if the walls and ceiling were filled with hidden microphones, “we do something special.”

“Oh really?” I asked, trying to sound surprised.

He nodded. “Yeah. There’s no way anyone would know. That’s because we’re real careful. We never tell anybody. But we talked about it and everyone thinks you’re okay. What we do is we sneak off into town. Want to come?”

“Absolutely.” My pulse sped at the possibility of getting outside of Edgeview. Even a few hours would be wonderful. We were allowed into the schoolyard, but that was as far as we could go. It almost seemed as if they were afraid to let us be seen in town. They never let us leave the school unless our folks came for us on the weekend. Mine hadn’t. I was getting ready to climb the walls. “Where do you go?”

Torchie shrugged. “Usually the arcade, sometimes we just hang out.”

“Sounds fine to me.” Maybe I could even get a slice of pizza or some other real food. The very thought was enough to make me drool.

So that evening I learned the story of Lucky’s great escape route.

WHY I LIKE BEING ME

PHILIP GRIEG

WAY OUT

T
orchie whispered the whole story to me in our room. “Lucky was fooling around behind the school last October. You know, bouncing a tennis ball against the back wall. So anyhow, one time the ball got past him. When he was looking for it, he noticed this round place in the ground. He’s always finding stuff. Anyhow, he decided to check it out. He got a stick and started poking around. Guess what he found?”

I shrugged. “Not a clue.”

“There was this manhole cover. He called me over and we got it up. Guess what we found?”

I just shrugged again.

“A pipe,” Torchie said. “This big old tunnel. I guess it was a drain or something. We followed it. I didn’t really want to go, but I wasn’t going to be a chicken if Lucky went. It doesn’t go far, but—get this—it comes out on the other side of the fence, down at the bottom of the hill.”

He paused, I guess to let me fully appreciate the meaning of that. It was the perfect way out. Since the fence was ten feet high in back, nobody ever checked to see if kids were there. They locked the front gate in the evening when the guard left.

“Which door do we use?” I asked.

Torchie shook his head. “Too dangerous. We could get caught. Lucky’s room is in the back. So we go out his window.”

“I thought Lucky had a room on this floor,” I said.

Torchie nodded. “He does.”

“But—”

“We made a ladder,” Torchie said. “Lucky found some broomsticks in a closet. And we borrowed a bunch of rope from Mr. Briggs’s supplies. I tied the knots myself. I was a Cub Scout. I would have been a Boy Scout, too, but I got kicked out because of this fire in my tent. Man, canvas really burns a lot faster than you’d think. But that’s not important.” He stood up and said, “Come on, let’s get ready.”

Torchie showed me how to stuff clothes under my blanket to make it look like I was asleep in bed. That was just in case anyone checked the rooms. It probably wasn’t necessary. Once classes were over, nobody seemed to care all that much what we did, as long as it didn’t involve too much violence or vandalism. The teachers went home in the evening, except whoever had gotten stuck with night duty, which just meant sleeping in that room on the second floor in case there was an emergency.

“One more thing,” Torchie whispered as we cracked open our door. “Remember, don’t ever mention stealing to Lucky. Okay?”

“Sure. No problem.”

I followed Torchie down the hall to meet Lucky. True to his name, he had the room to himself. The rope ladder was already dangling out the window. A long stick tied to the top kept it from falling through. From the sharp chill in the room, it felt like the window had been open for a while. I watched as the others climbed down one at a time. When my turn came, I wasn’t sure I could do it. I got my left leg out the window fine, but it took three tries before I managed to swing the other leg past the ledge.

The ladder swayed like a funhouse floor and I had to dig with my toes to get each rung away from the wall. Halfway down, my hands started to grow numb from the cold. I hurried to reach the ground before I lost my grip. Despite visions of splattering myself into a huge pile of roadkill, I made it without any real slips.

“What if we get caught?” I asked after I’d stepped away from the ladder.

Lucky shrugged. “What can they do? Shoot us?”

I saw his point. We were already at the end of the line as far as getting in trouble.

It’s a good thing I wasn’t afraid of the dark. Torchie had forgotten the flashlight and nobody felt like going back for it. We walked in total blackness through the pipe. It was a darkness so complete it made me feel I no longer existed except as a bundle of thoughts. Even though I wasn’t scared, I didn’t like the experience. It’s weird what visions the mind can create when the eyes can’t see. But I got through it.

The pipe spilled us out on the side of a wooded hill, about fifty yards from the road. We followed the road into town and headed for the arcade.

The thought of video games made me realize I had a problem. “I don’t have any money,” I told them.

“No big deal,” Lucky said. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a handful of quarters.

I hesitated. It felt funny taking money from him.

“Go ahead. Help yourself. I didn’t steal it.” He shook his hand, jangling the coins in his palm.

“I never said you did. It’s just that I don’t know when I can pay you back.” I figured I could ask my folks for some money, but they probably wouldn’t send me any.

“Don’t worry about it,” Lucky said. “It’s my treat. You want it or not?”

“Thanks.” I took the coins from him and put them in my pocket.

The town of Edgeview wasn’t very big. Actually, the main part was across the interstate. The side we could reach was only about seven blocks from the school, but traveling through town felt like walking into a different world—a world of houses, homes, and families.

It didn’t take long to figure out that I was marked. Groups of kids, standing and horsing around in the streets, got quiet when we went past. Some of them crossed the street when we came near. A couple little kids even ran away from us.

“What’s going on?” I asked Torchie.

“Huh?” He looked around as if he didn’t know what I meant. Maybe he was used to seeing kids flee from him.

“They’re scared of us,” Cheater said, grinning. “Can you believe that? They think everyone from Edgeview is dangerous. Do I look like a killer?”

I squinted at him. “Hard to tell in the dark. Take off your glasses and try to look mean.”

He had his hand halfway to his face before he realized I was kidding.

I wondered how the kids from town knew we were from Edgeview.

“It’s a small place,” Cheater said, as if he’d guessed my next question. “So we really stick out. They know we don’t go to the public school. They call us ‘Alters,’ since we go to the Alternative School.”

“Guess what we call them?” Flinch asked.

“I give up. What?”

“Edgies,” Flinch told me. “I came up with that.”

I wasn’t surprised. Flinch had a gift for funny stuff. He was the one who’d started calling Waylon
Hindenburg
.

“You’ll get used to them,” Cheater told me. “Hey, I’m certainly used to people treating me different. When everyone stares at you, after a while it’s like nobody at all is staring.”

“That’s the truth,” Flinch said.

I guess they had a point. But it really felt strange the way the town kids acted. I’d wondered how they’d react to someone who was really dangerous, like Bloodbath. He’d plow through these kids like a bulldozer through a basket of light bulbs.

As we got closer to the small strip mall, I scanned the stores, hoping for a pizzeria or a burger place. No luck. There was a video store at the end nearest us. I guess it closed early, because the lights were off. I realized I hadn’t seen a movie in weeks. Past that store, a laundry pumped the steamy smell of clothes dryers into the air. The drugstore next to it had a sign in front that said NO LOITERING. Beyond the drugstore,
jangling and flashing in that unmistakable way, stood the arcade. It was called MondoVideo. Nice surprise—it was larger than I’d thought it would be. I went inside, expecting nothing more than a few hours of fun.

But it was in the arcade, surrounded by the bright noise of mindless electronic entertainment, that I began to see the whole picture.

TWO EDGIES TALKING ON THE SIDEWALK A BLOCK FROM THE ARCADE

Edgie One:
Oh man, it’s Alters.

Edgie Two:
Let’s get out of here. Those guys will beat up anyone they get their hands on. [he starts to run]

Edgie One:
[running] I hope they don’t follow us.

Edgie Two:
I heard some of them carry knives.

Edgie One:
[panting and looking back] It’s okay. They didn’t follow us.

Edgie Two:
That was close. I hate those guys.

Edgie One:
Don’t worry. I heard the place is getting shut down.