The Shibboleth (3 page)

Kay knew in that moment that she'd destroyed something wonderful in a fit of rage. But she hardened and resolved to live with it. To
use
it. Just like that. With her knuckles still stinging from the blow—just seconds after—Kay's righteousness solidified in her at that moment, like a hand covered in Krazy Glue strangling a human heart.

I go beyond that, further into her history, when she was a girl and, strangely, she wasn't such a tremendous bitch. The time before the blow that sent Jill reeling, she was different. She was sweet and insecure and confused at her attraction to both men and women, and maybe that point when she struck Jill changed her life forever in a direction she never wanted to go.

There's one last ringing moment, and I enter it. It's bright like an overexposed photograph, fuzzy around the edges, and the light is hazy and she's on the beach, suffused with joy. Just a girl. Waves fall sluggishly on the shore and the sun is bright but not too hot and her father is holding her in his brown arms and tossing her
high
in the air, so high she feels like she's flying but not scared, not scared at all, because her father would
never
drop her. Never ever. She's laughing and giggling and he's throwing her high and that memory is so bright and full of love and pain and joy it's almost impossible to bear. He would be dead in months, her father. But she has this memory.

Something in me twists and suddenly her joy is mine and washing over me, and it feels so good, like cool water on a brutally hot day. Like the morphine drip they had me on in the hospital. I never want it to end, this memory of Warden Kay Anderson's. I want it to go on forever.

I live in it and have no awareness of time, because I could stay here until the world ends. Beyond the end of all things.

“What the hell are you doing?”

It's like being yanked out of a wonderful dream, or splashed with water. It's like being Tased.

Booth stands over me, furious. I glance at the warden, and her eyes are open; she's got the thousand-yard stare. Her hands twitch. Her lips are parted, mouth open, facial muscles slack.

He grabs my arm and yanks me up. My body is loose and uncoordinated, and I'm having a hard time getting it under control. There's part of me, a very important part of me, that still hasn't figured out where I am. And Booth is unimaginably strong, it seems. He sets me on my feet and roughly shoves me toward the door, but I manage to stop the movement and watch him.

He approaches the warden, checks her pulse. Then he rushes out of the room, knocking me to the side of the door with his passage. In a moment, he's back, holding a first-aid kit. He breaks the packet of smelling salts under her nose. She twitches, starts, and then shudders awake. She sits upright, blinks heavily. Glares about the room until her gaze settles on me. She looks as though her mouth has flooded with lemon juice.

“Get off me, Horace,” she says to Booth, pushing him away. “I must've nodded off.”

“I hardly think—”

“You're not paid to think,” she says. “You're not good at it, anyway. But if you must know, I've been sleeping poorly, like everyone else in this damned country. The insomnia epidemic. So. I must've—” She looks at me, eyes narrowing. “I must've nodded off.”

Something is different about her now. She looks … older? Meaner? She's all teeth and tits and gristle.

“You.” She jabs a clawed finger at me. “Saturday privileges revoked until further notice. Computer privileges suspended.” She looks at her desk calendar. “July tenth is the next family visitation day. If you have not spilled everything you know about the incidents on that video by then, you can tell your mother and brother not to bother showing up.”

“Warden,” Booth says. “I don't know if that's—”

She shifts her gaze to him and then runs her tongue over her teeth in an unconscious gesture. “Zip it,” she says, very distinctly. He does.

“You are trouble, Shreve. You have always been trouble.” Kicking her feet, she rolls her chair away from the TV and back to her desk. “Take this cart back to AV.”

She straightens her papers on her desk as I unplug the cart and Booth helps me to move it into the hall. I can feel the pressure of her gaze on my back.

I push the cart into the hall and let the door swing shut behind me.

“What have you done?” Booth asks, his voice empty. It's beyond disappointed. It's almost as if he expected it.

What have I done?

I don't know.

Something horrible.

–flooding my mouth with saliva at the sight of mince pie with ice cream and mounds of peanut brittle—food covers the table while the Christmas tree flashes blue and white and red in circuits and patterns as momma pulls one beautifully wrapped present from beneath the tree and smiling hands it to me saying “only one present on Christmas Eve, honey” and I unwrap it with trembling hands and inside there's the dolly we saw at the five-and-dime, rosy-cheeked and unwinking, and I love her love her love her love love

daddy takes my hand and we go out into the hard-frozen night and look at the nativity, the baby Jesus nestled so snug in his cradle, the dead grass crackling under my feet and a familiar smell in the air and I can feel the rough texture of daddy's hand from planing boards all day at the mill but so gentle and kind and he looks up and I follow his gaze to the heavens and something soft and cold lands on my cheek and I realize it's snowing, fat snowflakes and then the air turns white in a million flakes like a storm of blessings in the mind of God and daddy whispers, “A white Christmas. O, lord, what majesty, a white Christmas,” and holding me up in his arms and his breath on my face like peppermint and tobacco and I can only breathe and cry and wish this feeling could go on forever, forever and ever go on–

We pass through Administration, and the kid sits there next to a desk where a fat woman in a floral-print dress asks him questions in a soft, cloying voice. Her name is Mildred Clovis; she's fifty-three years old and loves the baby Jesus with all her heart. She's never left Arkansas in her whole life. She adores fried chicken and church and the two get kind of mixed up in her mind. She's never eaten a salad and thinks Muslims are devils placed on Earth to torment the living and execute Satan's evil plan to win human souls. She has a penchant for angel figurines. She weighs 215 pounds and stands five foot three. She has sex twice a year with her husband—once on his birthday and once on their anniversary. More would be ungodly. She fantasizes about chocolate when he's on top of her.

Today, she's very, very concerned with a particular boy's welfare; you can just hear it drip from her voice.

“Honey, you ever had the measles? No? TB?”

–oh lord this poor boy, Jesus save him–

He shakes his head but turns to watch Booth and me walk by. No expression touches his face. He just watches, implacably, holding his hands loosely in his lap, looking like a boxer resting in the corner of the ring.

He's older than me, but not by much, and he's got the lean and wary look of the abandoned. I don't even have to peep him to know that he's had a hard life, but I go in to peep him anyway. You can't ever be too sure that Quincrux, or the Witch, isn't staring out of those eyes.

It's like hitting a brick wall. There's no way in because something is already there.

A Rider.

As long as Booth is with me, I'm safe from the general pop.

I get a lot of hard stares walking through the Commons. Kids haven't been sleeping well, and that's made the general pop turn mean. Who knew not getting enough sleep would make kids so damned ornery? Couple of boys caught me at the pisser two days ago and decided to practice drumming. On my face.

All the crap that happened last year pissed off a lot of people. Ox and Fishkill got tickets to the Farm. Sloe-Eyed Norman got hurt beyond repair—he's now got a new tenant upstairs: the Witch. Police and feds came in and turned Casimir upside down.

No one has forgiven me for
not
getting in trouble. The TV called me a hero, and no one forgets that. Everyone here knows I'm not.

You can do anything in juvie, but the minute they think you're getting special treatment? You're meat.

We pass through security into B Wing, where I still live in the cell that Jack and I shared. They replaced the crumpled toilet at the taxpayer's expense but had maintenance unbend the mangle of my stool and bed, pulling the metal back into place. Everything wobbles a little.

Booth nods at the security guard,

–goddamn woman didn't even say thanks when I opened the–

who presses the appropriate button and the door to my cell swings open and we enter.

Booth doesn't dick around, hemming and hawing. “What in the Sam Hill was going on back there?” he asks. “What did you do to her?”

“Who says I did anything?” I used to deny everything on
principle, back when I was dealing the sweet stuff. Now I want to draw him out.

“Don't play titty-baby, Shreve. We both know you're so beyond that.”

Never been a titty-baby. “And you? I wish you'd stop playing ignorant. You see the kid in Admin?”

“Yeah?” Booth's smooth face hitches, his eyes narrowing, lips drawing down into a line. “What about him?”

I sit at my wobbly stool and straighten the few comic books, sketch pads, and novels I have on my desk.

“You didn't notice?”

Booth gives me this dumbfounded look, mouth slightly open.

“Last year? Quincrux? The Witch? Oh, sorry, her name was Isla Moteff. Remember them?”

He shakes his head as if trying to clear it but pulls his hands in tight to his thighs in balled fists. Not a good sign.

“You remember them taking us in the yard? Quincrux took me and you.
He got inside!
You remember?” I'm surprised to find myself yelling, spit flying everywhere. “Remember? Huh? When the Witch took Jack? Remember that? You remember drooling and walking around like a zombie when he was
in you
?”

“I—” Booth is getting pissed. “What does this nonsense have to do with the boy in Admin?”

I look at Booth—really look at him—and consider
making
him understand. I did that once to Jack. I huffed and I puffed and blew down the doors of his mind and went inside and showed him what I needed him to see. Booth is strong. But I am stronger. I don't even need to have the contest to know that I could rip down his defenses and go on some crazy redecorating spree inside his noggin.

But I won't. Not that.

Except he has to look that in the face before he can even begin to understand the Riders.

I start again. “I don't know how to explain it, Booth. But you have to believe me. Quincrux and the Witch are … mind readers. Telepaths, maybe. But worse than that. They're demons. They can possess you.”

“Shreve, you sound insane—”

“It's true. Think about it. Jesus Christ, Booth, a year ago you looked totally different. Look at you. Look!” I point to the dimpled mirror in the bathroom. “You use to give a shit about your appearance. Hell, you were sparkly.”

His eyes crinkle, and he puts his hands on his hips. “No, I wasn't. That's a damn-fool thing to say, boy.”

“Your hair was all slick and your nails were shiny like a woman's and for chrissake you used to tuck in your shirt, at least.”

His hands involuntarily go to his waist, begin shoving his shirttail into his pants, stop.

“We've been through the same thing, you and me,” I say, softer now. I try to make sure there's no sneer on my face, but crap, I can't ever be sure. It's like it lives there. “They got in our heads and possessed us. Made us do what they wanted. But when they do that, it leaves something behind. It's like it can infect you.”

“This is all just crazy talk. No one can possess someone else like a demon—”