Socket 1 - The Discovery of Socket Greeny (18 page)

“I can’t do this. This thing in my neck has
gone off. It’s killing me. You got to get it out, I can’t take
it.”

I sniffed back tears. There was a long
silence. I thought we lost connection. Maybe she was leaving the
meeting.

“
There’s nothing I can do, Socket,”
she said.
“Go through some breathing—”

“WHAT GOOD ARE YOU?” The pain took control.
“You let them do this to me then tell me to just do some breathing
exercises! What kind of mom does that, huh? What kind of mom leaves
their son like that? WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU?”

The room looked blurry; I couldn’t wipe the
tears fast enough. Snot was dripping.

“
Why don’t you get the moody out of my top
drawer, it’ll take off the emotional edge.”

“I don’t want a goddamn moody! I want this…
this thing out of me. I want all of this to go away. I don’t want
to be one of you people! Let Broak… the rest of those…
freaks
… let them save the world. I want out. I want to be
normal, AND THIS ISN’T NORMAL!”

The words jumbled together in a muddy string
of confusion. I collapsed on the couch, muttering into the cushion.
I thought we had lost connection again. I figured I was alone.
Again.

“
I know this is hard.”
Her voice was
soft, but firm enough to make me listen.
“It takes a strong
person to do it, Socket. You
are
that person. I know you
want to quit, but sometimes life doesn’t ask for your permission to
act. Life demands. And when that demand falls on you, it does so
for a reason.”

I bit on my lip.

“
I can’t say any more than that, Socket,
because quite honestly I don’t know any more. I only know the world
is lucky to have you. I see so much strength in you. I know you
can’t see it, but I can. You have to trust me. Trust what I see in
you. One day, you will see it, too.”

She didn’t sound like she was on a mission
this time. She sounded more like someone helping me with an
impossible task the only way she could. Like a mother.

“
Get some rest. The clamp will be out
soon. I promise.”

Somehow, the pain receded. It still hurt, but
it was washed in sorrow. I fell asleep on the couch. The clamp
thumped in the distance, kept me from dreaming. I went in and out
of sleep, fighting to stay under. I pulled a blanket over me, hid
my head, took my sweat-soaked shirt off. I managed to sleep until a
hand gently touched my shoulder.

“Have you eaten?” Mom asked.

My eyes were puffy. “No.”

“Go take a shower. I’ll make dinner.”

The pots and pans rattled in the kitchen. The
hot water washed down my neck, the heat seeping through, dissolving
the pressure. By the time I dressed, food was on the table. Mom sat
across from me. We didn’t talk much, but we ate together. She
cleaned up. By the end of the night, the clamp’s presence was a
whisper.

* * * * *

Mom stayed home the next day. It was weird,
seeing her play mother. She was probably good at it once upon a
time. It took her a while to find the utensils and food. She made
eggs for breakfast. By mid-morning, she did breathing exercises
with me. She talked me through them, helped me focus. She talked a
lot about the present moment and one breath at a time. The clamp
became tolerable.

I slept through the afternoon. Mom took a
meeting in her bedroom by projection. The house looked orderly.
That night she made dinner. We ate quietly, then cleaned up
together. She washed dishes by hand. I dried and put them away.

“How’d you become one of them?” I asked.

“Your father and I studied genetic
engineering in college. We took jobs with an engineering firm that
turned out to be a recruiting agency for the Paladin Nation.” She
rinsed a plate and handed it to me. “If I knew what I was getting
into…”

I flinched, excepting the clamp to react to
the word
Paladin
, but it lay quiet. We washed some more,
then I chanced a reply. “You wouldn’t do it?”

She mulled that question over. She started
cleaning the sink and left the question alone. She didn’t know the
answer.

“How’d Dad become one of them if he wasn’t in
the breeding program?”

“Your father was a genetic engineer. He
worked on splicing Paladin abilities into adults.”

“He did it on himself?”

She pinched her lips together on the bitter
memory. She nodded, then said, “The method didn’t work, though. The
ability wouldn’t fully awaken and after a while the powers faded.
His program showed great potential but was discontinued until
further notice.”

“And that’s why I’m like this?”

“We think so.”

“So it worked.”

She started wiping the refrigerator. Decided
not to answer that one, too.

After clean up, the clamp reminded me it was
there, again. Maybe it realized, in retrospect, that the
conversation about my dad was really about the Paladins.

Mom sat with me. We breathed in.

Breathed out.

I made it through another night. By morning,
she was gone.
There is an urgent meeting,
her message said.
I’ll call you later.

Life resumed, a little less painfully.

A little less empty.

The sun was setting at the first ever South
Carolina game of tagghet. I wore a dark hoodie because the weather
was cooler than usual. Everyone at that game would remember what
they were wearing. Small details, like what you’re wearing and
where you were, are easy to remember at life-altering events.

The parking lot was mostly full. Must’ve been
more people than the school expected because there was only one
security guard and he was busy with an eighteen-wheeler that was
obviously lost and now plugging up the parking lot.

I found a spot at the top of the visitor’s
bleachers, upper left hand corner, right where Streeter was going
to meet me. We talked the night before through nojakk. We didn’t
say much. I couldn’t tell if he was pissed or sorry.

The benches were firm but slightly molded.
This sport had money. The scoreboards had video screens bigger than
they needed to be. The disposable programs had imbedded videos that
explained the rules of tagghet and how they could get started on
their own tagghet career.
You-know-who
had to be funding
this through various businesses. They seemed to be fond of the
sport. Or maybe it was their way of introducing technological
advancements to the rest of us.

The oval field was empty. The seats were
filling up and the anticipation to see flying discs was in
everyone’s conversation. The little kids started jumping up and
down on their seats when the scoreboard lit up. The first tagger
rode onto the field to cheers from both sides of the field. He
banked left and the person behind him went right. They alternated
until the entire home team was on the field, the grass swooshing in
their wake. Everyone was on their feet.

They formed a circle, riding clockwise, and
slung a red tag back and forth. The lightweight sticks flexed with
each one-handed toss, expertly fired across the rotating circle.
The curved end of the stick had some sort of magnetic impulse that
grabbed the tag. I couldn’t recognize anyone, except for the one
with red braids dangling from under the tear-shaped helmet. Chute
caught a pass on the short hop and tossed it to the far side of the
circle with a sharp backhanded flip.

If I could
reach
out, I could feel her
nervous energy.
Taste
its jagged frequency. Maybe I could
help soothe her nerves, she was always nervous… but I couldn’t
think that way.

* * * * *

The visiting team rode onto their end of the
field and the people around me cheered. That’s when I noticed
Streeter lumbering up the steps. He turned sideways and excused
himself down to the empty space next to me. People were still
standing around us.

He pulled a bag of popcorn from his jacket
and filled his mouth. “Been here long?”

“Not long.”

He stuffed two more handfuls in his mouth,
chewing loudly. We sat there and watched the field, but since
everyone was standing there wasn’t much to see.

“So what’ve you been up to?” I asked.

“Been helping Buxbee with the security
updates. Global virtualmode is back online but authorities aren’t
letting independent portals open until updates are operational.
There must be some shit going on.”

Serious shit.

“The updates are taking longer than I
thought, but we’re almost done.” More popcorn fell on his lap than
went in his mouth. “I’d ask what you’ve been doing,” he said, “but
that didn’t work out so well last time.”

“Right,” I said. “Nothing personal.”

“Why would I take it personal? You wanted to
punch me in the face.”

“I wish I could explain…”

“But you can’t.” He picked at a kernel stuck
between his front teeth. “You know, I’ve been thinking. If you
can’t tell me what’s going on, then it must be a big deal.”

I grunted. Half-laughed.

“And that one of these days, you’ll tell me
everything.”

I’d tell him everything right there, on the
spot. He would never know how much it was killing me to withhold
from him. He was always the first to know my secrets. Streeter and
Chute were the only ones that kept me from feeling all alone in the
world. Sitting next to him with all those secrets, I didn’t want it
that way.
But when Life demands, you answer.

I held out my hand. “You’ll be the first one
I tell.”

He smiled, his lips glistening with butter,
and slapped my hand. Then I reached into the bag and grabbed a
handful. Then we watched us some tagghet.

* * * * *

The teams huddled along the sidelines. They
had their hands in the middle, chanting and jumping. Captains from
each team met at center pitch. The coaches went with them. “Welcome
to the soon-to-be-most-popular sport in the world…
TAGGHET
!”
a voice rang across the field. “Where your Charleston Rapid Foxes
take on the Columbia Bolters. Now, introducing the inaugural season
please welcome, Coach King!”

Coach King was the lacrosse coach, too. He
walked onto the field wearing his purple shorts and socks pulled
up. He held up both hands and our players slapped them as he made
his way to center pitch. He said something like: Great sport, some
of the best talent you’ll ever see, we were going to win the state
championship like we do in every other sport. And if anyone wanted
to learn how to tag, training sessions were available.

“And now!” he shouted. “Your Rapid
Foxes!”

The scoreboard projected an image of each
tagger, live from the field, as he called their names. Some kept
the yellow visor down, others retracted it into the helmet.

“And starting at left lancer, and the only
female tagger to start varsity… Chute!”

Only he said
Shhhoooooooooot
.

It could’ve been my imagination, but it
sounded like she got more cheers than anyone else. She was the only
girl out there. Chute cruised in a small circle near center pitch
mumbling. I couldn’t see her lips, but that’s what she does when
she gets nervous.

“She almost quit, you know,” Streeter
said.

“Quit what?”

“Tagghet. She was so worried after you left
she couldn’t focus. Your mom told us you were all right, you were
just having some medical tests, but after a month, Chute wasn’t
herself. Your mom wasn’t coming home and we weren’t hearing
anything at all. She was a wreck, said she was quitting.”

“Why would she quit?”

“She didn’t feel right having fun while you
were…” He glanced at me. “While you were probably
not
having
fun.”

I watched her floating in a tight circle with
the stick yoked over her shoulders, muttering. I knew she was glad
to see me come back, but we didn’t talk much about the time
in-between.

“How was that going to help, I told her,”
Streeter said. “I mean, you weren’t coming home any sooner if she
sat at home and twisted her hair.” He fished the unpopped kernels
from the bag. “You know what I mean?”

“So you talked her into staying?”

“She loves the game, Socket. It was just
stupid to quit. Besides, she needed something to keep her mind off
of you.”

“She never told me that.”

“Mmmm, imagine that, someone keeping a
secret.”

I could see her taking deep breaths.
Something was delaying the start. I wanted so badly to take away
her discomfort, but all I could do was watch.

Finally, a lookit dangled the tag over center
pitch. A player from each team squared off under it, shook hands.
Not one person was sitting. It got loud. Numbers counted down on
the scoreboard to zero.

The tag dropped.

The centers chopped at it. The Bolters pulled
the tag away and set up an offensive formation on their side of the
field while our team retreated. Chute hovered near their cube. The
Bolters attacked and the Rapid Foxes looked confused, running into
each other. The Bolters threaded a pass between the two defenders.
Two passes later, one of them rode up the dome, caught a pass and
rifled a shot into the scoring cube.

GOAL!

“That was easy,” I said.

Streeter didn’t hear me. I didn’t even hear
me because the kid who scored was related to the lady in front of
us. She curled her fingers and screamed his name like she’d been
stabbed.

“The team is breaking up,” Streeter said.

“They just started, give them a chance.”

“I mean us.” He patted his chest. “You, me
and Chute.
Our
team. We’re falling apart.”

I shook my head and watched the teams
regroup. I didn’t know what he meant.