Jonah Havensby (11 page)

The headline read:

Red Devil saves 2 during local robbery

There was a picture of Jenna, from the diner, and the old man from the gas station talking to a reporter.

The story went on to recount something that moved extraordinarily fast, with red skin and a long tail that foiled a robbery at gun-point. Jenna Worth, 17, was buying coffee after work when a young man, identified as John Hopper, 26, attempted to hold up the gas station owned by Jensen Nolan, 72. What the paper labeled the Red Devil appeared on the scene and subdued the assailant and then disappeared as fast as he came in upon hearing police sirens. The seventeen year-old Worth appeared to be in shock, but told reporters that it wasn’t a man, it was indeed a devil. “Not
the
devil,” she declared, “but a devil.” She also described him as short. Shorter than her, at any rate. Mister Nolan agreed with her account, to police, but refused to answer what he thought this hero may or may not be.

Jonah was enthralled. It sounded like something out of a comic book. But he worried about Jenna. He recognized her picture immediately. He hoped she wasn’t too frightened by the experience. Maybe he’d go see her again if he could collect enough change and he’d ask her about it.

There were no other really interesting headlines today. He doubted anything could measure up to the first one. So, he opened the “Kat Skratch” game.

A while later, Jonah searched around for a new perch in the mall, preferably one with an electrical outlet nearby. The video game was fun, but it was certainly a battery eater.

He found one on the first floor over near the department store at the far end of the mall. He plugged in and sat down with his legs stretched out across the entire bench. He’d been playing for about twenty minutes when he looked up and saw a boy about his age playing a video game on his phone. The boy had sandy hair that fell into his eyes, which were covered by dark-rimmed glasses. He wore a blue hoodie with a surfing logo on the sleeve and blue jeans.

Jonah had never considered talking to anyone in the mall, mostly because the people here consisted of groups and he wasn’t quite sure how to interrupt or randomly join into their conversations. But this boy was all by himself and clearly getting frustrated by whatever he was doing.

“C’mon!” The boy yelled. “No! Aw, c’mon!”    

Jonah unplugged his tablet and stuffed the cord into his coat pocket. He walked over to the boy and said “Hey,” as a greeting.

“What?’ The boy said without looking up from his game. The word came out bluntly, with a sharp tone of annoyance and maybe a twinge of anger that was clearly directed at Jonah and not misplaced by the boy’s frustration with his game.

“I just wanted to know what you were playing,” Jonah said in a defensive tone.

“Why?” The boy said in the same biting tone.

“Fine,” Jonah said. “Skip it.” The boy clearly didn’t want to be bothered. Jonah started to go back to his own place across the seating area.

With an exaggerated huff, the boy paused his game and said “I’m playing Kat Skratch, okay?”

Jonah turned back and said “Oh my God, I love Kat Skratch! What level are you on?”

Whatever defenses were up around the boy seemed to momentarily melt but then Jonah could see something go back up in the kid’s eyes. “Thirteen,” the boy said, as if it were more of a question, as if he were unsure whether that was okay.

“Oh I hated thirteen!” Jonah said. “What character are you using?”

“Danger Man,” the boy said, again, as if asking if that was right.

Jonah sat down on the bench next to the kid. He’d unlocked Danger Man some time ago. Danger Man was all wrong for thirteen. He was a huge, hulking figure with muscular arms. He could throw things incredible distances and he could jump a long way and come down with a force that would shake the floor and throw down nearby enemies. But that’s not what you needed on thirteen, “Oh, no,” he said. “You can’t use Danger Man for thirteen.”

“What do you mean?” The boy asked, finally turning in his seat to face Jonah. “Who are you using?”

“Hell Kat,” Jonah said with pride. He pointed at the screen on the kid’s phone. “See. You have to get behind the guys on thirteen, they just catch everything you throw at them from the front and throw it back at you.” He was pointing out things on the screen. “If you use Hell Kat, you can bounce off the walls and get behind them and then all you have to do is scratch them three times.”

“I like Danger Man though,” the kid said. “I’m kind of used to what he can do. I think it would be worse if I switched it up.”

“Okay,” Jonah said. “Then try and throw things off the wall.”

The kid considered it and then unpaused his game. Jonah watched over his shoulder.

On the screen, Danger Man picked up a trash can, threw it high at a filing cabinet. It broke the cabinet, but bounced and hit the bad guy behind him. He’d scored a hit.

“Oh, man!” The kid said. He repeated the process with objects in the game, a desk, and a floor light. The bad guy went down and disappeared.

“That’s so much better!” the kid said with a big smile.

“I know, right?” Jonah and smiled back. “Hey, are you online?”

“I think so.” The boy said.

“Does your version of the game have co-op?” Jonah asked.

“I don’t know.” He replied.

“Check your settings.” Jonah said.

The boy went to the game settings and saw the co-op feature. He pushed the Enable button.

“What’s your log-in?” Jonah asked.

“one-Eric-one-M-one,” said the boy.

“Mine is Jonah-twenty-three-H,” Jonah said. “See if it comes up.”

Jonah went to the settings on his game and enabled co-op and then input the boy’s log-in name.

“Oh, cool.” The kid said. “I got your request to join, but it says you’re level fifteen. You can’t join my game until I get there.”

“So see if you can get there.” Jonah said.

“Alright…” The boy said, as if that might be easier said than done.

A half-hour later, Danger man was hurtling through the last half of level fourteen. Jonah had helped where he could. The two boys were hooting and hollering when something went right, and equally frustrated when Danger Man failed and had to restart from a checkpoint.

When he wasn’t helping, Jonah went to a music website that had free streaming music videos and checked some of them out. The boys agreed on some songs, and disagreed on others. The kid requested some videos that Jonah had never heard of. Of course, Jonah had been a little out of touch for almost a month.

A girl came out of a women’s clothing store that was just to their left and bee-lined it right to the boys. Jonah looked up and was stunned. She was a Chinese girl with long black hair the color of pitch-black night. It was up in a ponytail but seemed to flow out behind her. She was wearing a fur-lined tan coat that, for some reason, made Jonah stare at her dark brown eyes. She was wearing a taupe colored sweater that matched her boots. In short, she was the most amazing girl Jonah had ever seen.

“Oh my God, Eric M.!” She said, punctuating each word as if there was a period after each one. “Your mother is so cool!” She dropped her shopping bag on the ground and brought out a distressed denim jacket that had a fur-lining around the collar. “Your mom just gave me fifteen percent off on this,” she said, displaying the jacket. “Fifteen percent! Heather Montrose is going to die when she sees me in this.”

The boy, clearly Eric M., barely looked up from the video game. “We can only hope,” he mumbled.

“Hi,” she said to Jonah. Then went in for a closer look. Up close, she was stunning.

“What’s wrong with your eyes?” She asked.

“I, um. I.” Was all he could mumble before he broke into a ridiculous grin.

“I mean, do you wear contacts or something? Because I think you lost one.” She said.

“No, I… Don’t.” Jonah stammered. “It’s just how my eyes are.”

“Oh.” She said. “Really?” She looked in them for another moment and then caught herself staring. “That’s pretty cool, actually.” She smiled, then dropped the denim jacket and picked up the shopping bag. “See you tomorrow, Eric M. Thank your mother for me.” And then she was off, flipping her phone out of her purse as she went.

“Who was that?” Jonah asked quietly.

“Emma Wong. She goes to my school.” Eric said without much of a thought. He hadn’t much looked up from the game during the entire exchange. “My Mom owns Vineyard over there.” He pointed to the store Emma had just left. “All the girls in my school go there. Sometimes my mom will discount stuff for people she likes. She even asked me to start an e-mail list for her so she could announce when she was getting new stuff in. Like any of those girls talk to me.”

“She just talked to you.” Jonah said.

“Who? Emma?” he said, pausing the game. “No, Emma’s cool. She’s like one of the popular girls who isn’t afraid to talk to anyone. I think everyone in school knows her. It’s just that most of those girls only talk to me if they want a discount.” He pushed his glasses up farther on his nose, as if trying to remind Jonah who he was talking to.

“So, Eric M.?” Jonah asked. Awkwardly changing the subject.

“Eric MacIntyre,” he said. “They all call me Eric M. because there’s two Eric’s in our class”.

“So who’s the other guy?” Jonah asked.

“Usually just Eric,” he said pointedly. “He started out in fifth grade as Eric F., but I guess since more people talk to him, he’s just Eric now.”

“I’m Jonah,” he said.

“I kind of got that from your log-in,” Eric said “I guess we never introduced ourselves. That’s pretty funny.” As an aside, he added “I was going to ask about the contacts thing too. I guess we got wrapped up in the game. That would suck if you went home missing a contact. I bet your parents would be pissed.”

This caught Jonah a little off guard. He didn’t know how to reply, so he said “My dad said my eyes couldn’t decide what color to be when I was little, so they settled on both. There’s a name for it, but I can never remember it.”

“I’ll have to do an internet search on that when I get home,” Eric said, making a mental note. “Hey, you don’t go to our school do you?”

“No,” Jonah said. “Home schooled is what my dad calls it.” Jonah replied. He hadn’t counted on getting into these types of conversations.

“Wow. Really?” Eric said. “I’ve read about that but I’ve never met anyone that actually does it. Sometimes I think that would be better.”

Just then, a rambunctious group of tenth graders was passing by, they both looked up. They were bigger boys than the two of them. There were only four of them, but they were so big, it looked like there should be more.

The leader, a blonde boy with hair that spiked straight up in the front, subtly stopped the group. He was wearing a distressed leather bomber jacket and jeans that had a rip in one of the knees. He looked mean.

The group turned their way. It looked like they might pass right by to the other side of the mall, when the leader purposefully kicked Eric in the side of the shin.

“Ow!” Eric yelled, bringing his leg up on the bench.

“Oh. So sorry, Eric M.” The leader of the pack said in a dumb voice. “Did you hurt your little leg?” The three behind him snickered.

“Shut up, Logan.” Eric said.

“What’d you just say?” Logan shot back, leaning in with fists clenched.

Jonah got up and in between them. “Back off, jerk.” They were almost chest to chest, but Jonah was a good three inches shorter.

Just then a woman with frizzy red hair came out of the Vineyard clothing store marching directly at them. “Is there a problem over here boys?” She said rhetorically. Her hair was up on her head, held in place with a pen. She wore yellow cardigan sweater over a silk top. She was wearing a knee length skirt and her high heels clanked on floor as she marched. Her outfit said that she was pretty fashionable; her hair said she was pretty busy. Her face said she wasn’t at all happy at the moment.

“No,” Logan said. “No problem here.” He turned and looked directly into Jonah’s eye. “Just an honest mistake. Right?”

“I think you should head home now, Mister Oswald,” The woman said to Logan. “I’d hate to think of your mother worrying about you in this weather.” It was a subtle threat that said she wouldn’t hesitate to bring his mother in on this ‘honest mistake’ of his.

“No problem, Missus MacIntyre,” Logan said, and flashed her an innocent grin, backing one step away from Jonah. “Just headed home now.”

“Well, good.” She replied with a tight smile of her own.

“You’re dead,” Logan mumbled to Jonah, and then shouldered him hard as he walked away.

Mrs. MacIntyre crossed her arms and looked at Jonah. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know you.”

“I’m Jonah,” he said, a little afraid of her defensive posture.

“It’s okay, mom,” Eric said. “Jonah’s cool.”

“Oh,” She said, seemingly surprised. “Really?” She added, but tried not to sound surprised. “Do you go to school together?”

“Jonah’s home schooled.” Eric said.

“I just come to the mall to do my homework.” Jonah blurted out. He didn’t know why.

“So you do your school work at home and then go out to do homework?” She asked. “That’s smart. I like that. Makes sense.” Then she added pointedly, “Maybe you two could do your homework together.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Eric mumbled. He’d clearly heard speeches about homework before.

“Well, come on now, Eric. I’m going to lock up and we can get home and have some dinner.” Mrs. MacIntyre said. “It was very nice meeting you Jonah.” She extended her hand.

“Thank you,” Jonah said shaking her hand.

Eric stood up and his mother wrapped an arm around his shoulders.

“Are you going to be here tomorrow?” Eric asked.

“Yeah,” Jonah replied. “You?”

“Yeah, I come every day after school.” Eric said.

“Cool,” said Jonah.

Mrs. MacIntyre and Eric walked back into the store; Eric had clearly gone back to the video game.

Jonah looked at the tablet. It was seven o’clock. He’d never stayed at the mall so long. He tucked the tablet in the back of his jeans and zipped up his coat. It was time to judge which fountain he was going to pilfer. He decided to try the fountain down near the Promenade, on the opposite side of the mall than Vineyard clothing store.