Dull Boy (5 page)

“She’s right,” Leilani says.

“Shh, let him be,” Cherchette murmurs. “He will come around.”

“I, if I—” My voice comes out in a croak. “
If
I said yes. If I wanted to go with you, what would I—what would happen?”

“You need only to contact me,” Cherchette says. I hear her heels as she crosses the room: stiletto spikes cracking the ice. She kneels down and slips a card into my jacket, tilts my chin up with her hands.

“I know you are overwhelmed right now, and will need time to make your decision. I will check on you again very soon.” She smiles almost warmly, her perfect skin refusing to crease. Her eyes glint a dark, arctic blue.

And then she’s closer to me, closer, and her lips brush my cheek, searing my skin with a white-hot frozen heat. “Be good now,” she whispers.

My cheek burns where she kissed me. I sit there in a daze as the ice around me melts, and I don’t snap out of it until blue and red lights flash through the window, until I hear the police officers get out of their cars, until I’m sitting in a puddle and the wreckage around me is dripping, disintegrating, and I realize I have no excuse, no explanation—that “I don’t know” or “it was an accident” isn’t going to cut it this time.

I stand up with my hands up before someone can yell at me to put them there.

 

“We can lift it,” I told her. “Come on, help me!” But she didn’t take a step; her hands fluttered around her mouth, she was totally hysterical. So I grabbed the back bumper, stood near the middle, and tried to brace with my legs. I was used to working out for wrestling, but you wouldn’t look at me and think,
Whoa, amazing strong guy is here!
And I sure as hell didn’t think that about myself.

Mrs. Pearson scrambled to get her son, and then backed away, clutching him to her chest. Still, I couldn’t let go. I was stuck with the license plate almost staring me in the face, muscles tensed and full of blood, thinking, over and over again:
These are not my arms. Who is this person?

How did you do it? How did it feel?

A
re you crazy? Are you CRAZY?! Why do I even ask these questions?”

It’s 11 P.M. We just got back from the police station. My mom’s pacing like a caged tiger, practically tearing her hair out.

I’m sitting on the countertop, drinking some tomato soup that I microwaved. I have a blanket around my shoulders, like I’m the victim instead of the screwup—like somebody pulled my half-drowned body out of a lake.

If only.

“
Why
would you try to thwart a robbery, Avery? Were the nine and the one buttons on your cell not working?
Why wouldn’t you just call the police?!
”

“I don’t
know
,” I say. “My cell died; I couldn’t call. I felt like I should do something.”

I wish I could tell them I saw a woman in danger, and that’s why I risked it—but none of the info is fit to confess. The old woman I tried to save was a
shape-shifter
, for crying out loud. The whole thing was a setup.

What was I supposed to tell the police? I’m not hurt, other than the frostburn on my cheek. Nothing was stolen. The safe was ripped out of the ground—which is the one thing that points to a robbery and saves my ass, since no one thinks I was responsible for that.

“It wasn’t smart, Avery.” My dad kneads his forehead—I think he aged twenty years tonight. “We know that you were trying to be helpful, but you could’ve been hurt.”

“If he wants to be ‘helpful,’ he could load the dishwasher like he’s supposed to,” my mom says. “Breaking into antique stores and racking up thousands of dollars’ worth of damages while almost getting himself killed is not ‘helpful.’”

“I didn’t break in,” I mumble. “The door was already open.”

My mom shakes her head, pours herself another cup of coffee.

Dad sighs. He’s got his checkbook out. Heart-attack time.

“Look: aside from the financial burden, things are going to be fine. The owner’s agreed not to press charges. We’re going to get through this and learn from it. Your mother and I are just grateful that nothing worse happened.”

“But there are going to be some changes around here. Take a look at these.” My mom fans out some brochures on the counter next to me. The covers show clean-cut teens frolicking on a grassy lawn, smiling and holding hands like they’re at Girl Scout camp. On one, a cartoon bird tows a banner that reads: CLEAN AND SOBER JUST IN TIME FOR COLLEGE! On another: FROM DELINQUENT TO DELIGHTFUL!

I spit my soup back into the mug. “You’re not serious.”

“It’s an alternative school,” my dad says. “One of the officers recommended it. They’ve had a lot of success with the troubled youths they’ve placed there: kids who need more supervision, but who don’t really belong in the system.”

“I don’t need to go to a school like that! I’m not ‘troubled’!”

“Avery . . .” My dad flips through his checkbook. “The numbers don’t lie.”

I
flop over on my bed, restless, staring into the dark. My parents are still up and talking downstairs. Occasionally my mom’s voice gets strained. Right now she’s complaining that she’s “tried everything,” that maybe there’s nothing left to do but ship me off somewhere else.

Maybe there isn’t.

I feel like I’m in a vise, being squeezed from two directions, and if I don’t do something about it, I’ll be crushed by the pressure. I slip the card Cherchette gave me out of my pocket.

There’s a phone number printed in silvery ink. All I have to do is call.

I keep taking these big breaths, breathing in and not letting go until it feels like my lungs are going to burst. But it doesn’t help. I’m going crazy in here; I have to get out.

Normally I would wait for my parents to go to bed before I leave, but there’s nothing “normal” about tonight. I met a woman who makes ice move like it’s
alive,
and who confirmed that there are other people with powers in the world. Now that I know that, lying in bed and flipping through the same
Sports Illustrated
swimsuit issue while I wait for my parents to nod off seems more insane than flying. So screw it, I’m going now.

I throw on a black hooded sweatshirt and shove open my window, then slip my legs out and drop down, landing on—and crushing—the same pathetic bush I always crush. I’m lucky my parents aren’t more attentive gardeners, because I’ve been doing this routine since October. As far as I know, they’ve never noticed.

I trek through the yard until I get to the woods behind my house—then go deeper, just to be safe. It’s damp tonight. My cheek feels raw where Cherchette kissed me, like I did a face plant onto concrete. The moisture in the air cuts through to my bones.

When I get to the clearing I use as my taking-off point, I take a long look at the sky. The one place where I can leave all this other crap behind, where no one can touch me, scream at me, blame me, laugh.

I own the sky.

I can barely remember
not
owning it. It’s like my memories of flying are so intense, they block out huge chunks of time when I was normal, plodding along on the ground like everyone else, getting pumped about running a race or something—like
that
was freedom. Wow.

Learning about flying wasn’t like learning about my strength—it’s not like I jumped off the top of my house and didn’t hit the ground one day. I do a lot of idiotic things (uh, juggling the washer and dryer? Bad idea.), but that definitely wasn’t one of them.

Flight was more of a gradual discovery. A restlessness that wouldn’t go away, a sense of untapped potential that gnawed at me until I pushed myself off the ground.

I never had one of those wake-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night, oh-snap-I’m-floating-above-my-bed moments. Flying is something I
do
, not something that just happens. I don’t feel like a balloon; it’s not like I’m floating, aloft but stripped of my sense of gravity, or power.

When I fly, I focus. I’m aware of every muscle, every turn of my torso; the way I shift my shoulders, the way I adapt to the air. It’s like I move through it because the air knows to resist me, and I know to resist it back. Like we have an understanding, and I’m on a different plane of existence—swimming through the air.

I soar, with my head thrust back and my arms stretched out at my sides. I spin sometimes—I show off—even though there’s no one to impress. I deafen myself in the wind, fly until my skin is cold and my heart is beating harder than ever. I suck in the deepest breaths I’ve ever breathed.

There’s nothing more thrilling, more invigorating, than the challenge of keeping your body aloft, with the possibility that, at any second, you’ll lose control and crash to the earth. That freedom and then that finality—they’re linked. And not to be morbid, but it’s like how youth is so treasured because it only lasts so long, or flowers are beautiful because they bloom and then they wilt. It’s like I want it even more because I know it shouldn’t be happening—because I feel like it could be taken away. I mean, even pro athletes only have so many good years—and there’s no precedent for superpowers. What if there’s an expiration date?