That’s when I hear a hint of static, far away but moving closer, deeper, louder, and, embedded in the chaotic sound, I can pick out a melody. It’s
the
tune. Notes rising and falling. I hear a voice join in, and it’s strong and clear, and it takes a while before I realize that it’s my own voice. The others are humming, too. There are words now with the song.
Our binding dance. The malignant music unfolding the terror.
I know that I haven’t moved from Raymond’s bedroom, but I also know that I’m somewhere else, somewhere I’ve never been before.
In.
Deep
in
.
But not alone.
In. With them. My others.
Their voices, the swirl of their hair against my arms, legs, and face.
I need them. We need each other.
To do what we were born to do. To move things to our will. To punish. To control.
My hair. It has come undone, the strands twisting with other hair, twisting with our voices, with the music, to create an inescapable net.
We trap the target.
We spin him with confusion and delirium.
We never touch. We never push.
And yet …
And yet …
Two words reach in and yank me back to the surface of somewhere.
Out.
Raymond’s bedroom. I touch my hair, surprised to find it still clipped back and braided, tight against my scalp, under control.
The two words are “Holy crappola!” and Raymond is yelling them over and over. “Holy crappola! Look at this. The ant is going nuts.”
We lean in and watch the bug. It runs left, stops short, then runs right. Then it begins moving in tighter and tighter circles, as if all its instincts have been short-circuited.
“So it’s true,” I say.
“I’m convinced. I’ve seen enough.” Stephanie hugs the stuffed animal to her chest. I know she’s feeling badly about the ant, but there’s also a conflicted look on her face. She’s fighting it, but it’s winning. Like me, like Alix, she’s proud of what we just did. And I know that also like me, she’s wondering what else we can do. And to whom? How far can this thing go?
Alix slams her palm on the table, crushing the ant, putting it out of its misery.
Raymond tunes up his violin. His slack jaw and dim eyes tell me that he’s slipped into deep concentration. He plays the tune that he heard the three of us singing. The nine notes played twelve times, the malignant music, the binding dance.
12
Nine notes
in their binding song. Nine notes repeated twelve times. One hundred and eight in the melody. Three digits—108—that add up to 9, the product of three 3s.
Divide 108 by 3 to get 36; 3 plus 6, another 9. Another 3 to that ordained third power.
I bow to the malicious music.
You are expecting your stasimon, the curtain down between acts, the promise of clarity and comment. And here I am, your guide, going off on wild, arithmetic tangents.
What I want to say is this: I sure know how to pick ’em. Don’t you adore those three lovely, ugly girls? I do.
How quickly they learn. I’m thrilled to see the light come on behind their eyes as they begin to understand their capabilities. The way they got into that ant’s brain, twisted and tweaked it. They taught it a lesson: There is no escape from the terrors of the mind. Brava!
Let me reiterate where we stand at this point in time. And yes, it is only a matter of time.
Alix. Alecto. I hardly have to tempt her. Her fury has been so fine-tuned by others for so long. I ought to send her parents—and her parents’ parents and even her parents’ parents’ parents—fruit baskets for instilling in her so much animosity toward humankind.
And Stephanie, Tisiphone, sheer delight. We can thank so many for shooting down her earnest, peaceful attempts to bring about change. She’s a product of the whole world with its endless greed, materialism, lies, and unabashed self-interest. The warlords and presidents of countries; the lying media and corrupt priests; the insatiable real estate developers and corporate polluters; the autocrats, plutocrats, and bureaucrats; the fascists, communists, and every other
ist
—there’s no end to those who deserve my utmost and sincere thanks for creating Tisiphone. I could give them all hugs.
Which brings me to Megaera—quiet, still-developing Meg—with the potential to have the most fury of all. Abused by both individual and society, cast aside by parent and the system’s so-called parent substitute. Look what the human race is doing to her.
She is my third, the one I have been waiting for.
But she’s got this one blessing—a curse, in my view—that she manages to keep things in perspective. Damn her open heart and mind. Damn her optimism, the way it dilutes her well-deserved anger. I must get those moccasins off her feet, not allow her to walk the proverbial mile in someone else’s shoes.
I must keep her away from that meddlesome goddess of justice disguised in teacher’s clothing. You know who I mean.
Plus there’s her little friend, Raymond. He’s a question mark. Will I have to do something to keep that interfering ray of light from fiddling sunshine notes into her ear?
Three plus one is four, and four is not an acceptable number. Never four. Never two. It’s always three.
SECOND STASIMON,
THE BOOK OF FURIOUS
13
With one less
ant in the world, we leave Raymond’s house. Alix, Stephanie, and I decide to walk the long way home through downtown. We could talk for the next month nonstop and not get everything said and sorted out.
What happened? What exactly did we do to the ant? How did we do it? Can we do it again? Can we do it any time we want? Whom can we do it to?
We need so many answers and I’m not even sure we have the right questions.
I zip my hoodie and shove my hands into the pockets. It’s not raining for once and it feels more like the usual October weather in this part of California, warm in the day but chilly as soon as the sun sets. Alix takes a black knitted watch cap—basic headgear for surfers—out of the back pocket of her baggy, low-slung jeans and pulls it hard over her ears. Stephanie buttons up her cardigan, which is worn thin at the elbows. Between the bells on her belt and the metal beads threaded into her dreadlocks, she makes music as she walks. She’s dominating the conversation.
“Let’s each pick our top candidate, the number one person who deserves a lesson from us. Can we call what we do a lesson?
Lesson
sounds so professional. I’ll start.” Pause. “It was in the news today. There’s this coal company in West Virginia that thinks the Clean Water Act doesn’t apply to it. The boss dumps chemicals into the town water supply. And that gives people cancer and kidney damage. Little kids get open wounds, just from taking baths. I’ll show you the pictures. They’re awful.”
It’s a big joke at school how easy it is to make Stephanie cry. Mention a toxic spill or an endangered species halfway around the world, and boo-hoo-hoo. I overheard the Double Ds in the bathroom say that they think it’s all a big phony act, and that Stephanie only pretends to be oh so sensitive because it’s the only way a geek like her can get any attention. They
would
say something cruel and shallow like that. Stephanie sniffs, and even though I’m not looking at her directly, I know there are tears.
“You really feel for those people, don’t you?” I ask.
She stops so suddenly that we almost collide, and she puts herself right in my face. “How can you
not
care? How can anyone
not
feel?” She starts walking again, picking up the pace. Alix and I take giant steps to keep up with her. “What can someone our age do about it? About anything? Write letters? Hold a fund-raiser bake sale? Make speeches in class that everyone makes fun of? Try to tell the truth in a blog that nobody reads? I can’t even vote. I have no power. There’s nothing I can do.”
“Until now,” Alix says.
Stephanie perks up, remembers. “That’s right. Now I finally have power.”
“
We
have power,” Alix emphasizes.
“Power that we can use to undo the injustices in the world. To make things right and fair.”
“Right for us, too,” Alix points out.
We turn the corner and get hit by a mind-blowing sight. The moon. It’s low on the horizon but full and huge, vibrating white and sharp around the edges. It’s like a cutout moon taking up a whole section of dark construction-paper sky. I stare at it with awe. Stephanie asks Alix whom she would put first on her list to teach a lesson. Alix mumbles a name.
“You want to punish someone named Simon?” I ask.
She turns on me so fast that I stumble backward. She shouts in my face, the Ps popping. “Not punish
him
! Punish anyone who lays a finger on him, anyone who gives him any shit or takes advantage when I’m not around to stand up for him.”
Stephanie unclips her stainless-steel water bottle from the side of her backpack, takes a drink. “Who’s Simon?”
“My brother. He’s nineteen, but he’s like a little brother. He’s … um, retarded.”
A disapproving groan from Stephanie. “Alix, the word
retarded
is a derogatory term. You mean developmentally different.”
“Whatever. I’ll tell you who’s
different
. The rest of the world. Simon’s awesome. Except for how dumb people treat him.”
Stephanie passes her the water bottle, and as I watch Alix throw back her head and guzzle, I realize that even though she’s not afraid to hurl herself into fifteen-foot waves, even though she’s got a scary reputation for not putting up with anything from anyone, when it comes to her brother—and other things that I don’t know about yet—Alix feels helpless and frustrated, too.
With the moon rising, we begin the descent down Laurel Street, a steep hill treasured by the town’s radical skateboarders that brings us into the downtown area. It’s past rush hour, so traffic has slowed a little, but there are still plenty of people on the streets. That’s when I notice something. We’re on everyone’s radar. I’m not used to that. It’s subtle at first. For example, a middle-aged mom type stares at me with a puzzled look, like she can’t place where she knows me from and it’s going to drive her nuts until she figures it out. Then two girls in their twenties stop an intense conversation and drop their eyes when they pass us. A group of loud, obnoxious middle-school skateboarders go mute and step aside respectfully so we can pass through the center of them. All this could be coincidence. It could mean nothing.
But then, get this: a bald guy carrying a briefcase almost trips over the curb, that’s how hard he’s gawking at us. And what about the little girl throwing a fit in front of the Cookie Company because her mom won’t buy her a chocolate chip one? It’s like someone flips the Off switch on her. Suddenly she’s Little Miss Manners, holding her mom’s hand and giving us a look that says
I’ll be good. Promise
. And the cop who stops traffic to let us cross against the red light. And the homeless guy sitting on the corner who usually never says anything to anyone, never even makes eye contact. When we pass he stands up, salutes, and bows from the waist. And then …
Just ahead on the corner, I spot him. Brendon. A curl of his dark hair twists over one eye. He brushes it back with a hand. I’ve become a little fixated on this frequent gesture of his, because when he does it there’s a moment when he’s unguarded and I catch a glimpse of that other Brendon that I want to believe exists. A Brendon who isn’t like all his vile friends. A Brendon who will see something special in me. A Brendon I don’t have to hate. When he brushes aside his hair it’s like a curtain going up, but then it quickly comes back down.
At the same corner I also spot the big wall of Pox standing next to Brendon. On the other side of him, chugging from a giant-sized plastic bottle of soda, is blond, buzz-cut Gnat, who is half Pox’s height and weight but twice as hyper and just as mean.
It’s too late to cross to the opposite side of the street. There’s no way of avoiding them. All that power that had been surging through me? I feel it draining away, and the feeling is so strong and real that I glance to the ground, almost expecting to see a puddle of something on the concrete.
Why did we walk this way? Why do we have to deal with them? Why didn’t I do something with my hair before we left Raymond’s?
Gnat spots us first, lets loose with a big fart as soon as we’re close. “Why do my farts stink?” he asks no one in particular. “So deaf people can enjoy ’em, too.”
The light is red, so we’re forced to stand there as Gnat chokes with hysterical laughter at his own lame joke. Pox then makes a big show of crumpling an empty Cheetos bag and tossing it on the ground. Bait for Stephanie.
Don’t take it,
I plead silently.
Don’t lecture him about the sin of littering.
She mutters disapproval. He puts his hand to his ear, egging her on to scold him aloud so he can make fun of her even more. Radiating silent tension, she picks up the bag and lobs it into the nearby garbage can.
“Two points for the cousin of the monkey,” Pox says.
More Stephanie bait, and this time she takes the whole thing. “Pox, we’re all descended from monkeys. And considering your intelligence, it’s the monkeys who should be insulted by the relationship.”