The Twelve-Fingered Boy (10 page)

“Help yourselves to the food. Please, if you have any allergies, read the sheet there”—he points to a computer printout—“and make sure that you'll be okay eating this offering.”

We pile our Dixie plates high with the goods, grab plastic cutlery and sweet tea, and take seats near the back of the classroom, where we can keep our backs to the wall and face the door. Back here the light comes in through the big barred windows, and you can see out over the razor wire and into the trees and the neighborhood beyond where cars drive by and kids play in yards and have parents who give a shit about them.

We dig in. Jack's a weird kid, all right—fingers everywhere, thin as a whip, and somber as a mortician. But it looks like he enjoys Mexican food.

We eat and watch the kids wander in and out of the classroom. Some glance at us. Father Glick stands at the front of the class and begins to sermonize. I don't listen. I look right at him as he stands up there and speaks of Jesus, and I don't let a single thing he says enter my perception. I smile and eat and drink. I watch the kids coming in and out of the classroom. Some stop and listen to Father G. Some stop and get food.

When the sermonizing comes to an end, Father G walks back and gives us pamphlets and says, “I hope you'll come to St. Mark's when your stay here is over. We always welcome new members to the church.” I smile and thank him. This guy is the real deal, a believer. He wants the best for his fellow man, and he includes both me and Jack in that number. Part of me wishes I could buy into his wonderful little dream full of martyrs and enchiladas and tortilla chips with queso. But Vig is still gone and Moms is still drunk and Jack still has too many fingers on his hands and there are still monsters in human skin out in the world wanting to eat kids like me. So, Father Glick is a nice guy. But a blind one.

He starts putting aluminum foil back on the dishes and gets a cart and loads all the remains of the food. No more kids come walking in and out of the classroom. Jack and I sit in the spill of light from the window.

The sky is a watery blue, and thin, wispy clouds obscure the autumn sun.

“You think we're in for it, Shreve?” Jack's looking at me straight. Not looking at his hands, not mumbling. Just asking an unvarnished question. “The guys in Commons seemed like they wanted to kill me.”

I sigh. It's a hard truth I have to tell.

“Yeah. We're in for it, one way or another. We're all in for it, eventually.”

The sun comes out from behind the slight clouds, the light grows, and I turn my face up to it and close my eyes.

“Thing is, Jack, it isn't any different in here than it is out there, beyond the fence. They find out you're different, they want to know how different you are.”

I open my eyes. He stares at me, unblinking, quiet and motionless in that way he has. Then he nods.

We sit in the spill of light. Motes hang suspended in the air, swirling lazily, and it's easy to drift off with our stomachs full, looking at the bright sky.

“What do you want with your life, Shreve?”

That's out of left field, as the saying goes.

“I don't know. My brother. To make sure he's okay and isn't totally screwed up by my mom.” I smile, cross my arms behind my head. “I want to see my girlfriend, I guess.”

“What about your dad?”

“What about him?”

“Is he—?”

“Don't know if he's alive or what. He's a nobody. A never-was.”

He's quiet for a while, thinking about it. His parents died. My parents ignored and abandoned me. Never knew I existed, maybe. Hard to say which is worse.

“You've got a girlfriend?”

“I did…” My turn to think about things. “Probably not anymore.”

“What's her name?”

“Coco.”

He nods again, like he's storing away that information.

“So, what do you want, Jack? What do you want out of life?”

He doesn't hesitate. “What I'll never be able to have.”

He looks down at his hands—his damned hands. Always the reminder. “I want to be normal. I want to fit in.”

“Why?”

“I…” He's taken aback by the question. “So I don't hurt anyone.”

“How do they get hurt?” I think I know, but I don't think he does. “What happened to you?”

Jack's still as only he can be. Eventually he opens his mouth. Then he closes it, like a fish out of water.

Finally, he says, “I killed them.”

“Who?”

“My parents.”

“No. How? How could you have done that?”

“I don't know. Just, when I'm scared or… angry… things happen.”

“Like the Hulk.”

He nods and gives a choked laugh, and wipes the tear that's come to his eye. It's a laugh full of self-disgust and hopelessness. My heart breaks to hear it. If I heard that come from Vig … I don't know what I'd do.

Jack keeps going. He's started, and now he can't stop. “I was three. And I remember waking from a horrible dream to find the house burning around me, and flashing lights.” He stops, puts his face in his hands. “I don't even remember what they looked like.

“They said it was a gas leak. A miracle I survived. I had no other family, no one who'd take me in. So they put me in a foster home. That was … years ago. I've slept on every kind of floor, you know. In sleeping bags and closets and on cots. I've gone from family to family. And always, something goes wrong and I'm sent somewhere else. Until now.” He looks around at the classroom, at the windows, the bars dividing the light pouring in from the frigid sky. He stares at me.

“Shreve … I…” He squares his shoulders. “I don't want you as my friend. I can't … It just won't work. Everyone who gets near me ends up hurt. I'm sure Booth or the Warden will move me into another cell—”

“Bullshit.” It comes out of me before I know what I'm saying. “You might not want me as your friend. Fine. But you can't stop me from being yours. You can't pick your family, they say. Well, you can't pick your friends either. Or get rid of me so easy. And I'm alert. I know. Maybe even more than you.”

“What do you know?”

“What happens.”

“What happens?”

“Yeah.”

There's a noise from the front of the room, and at first I think it's more kids looking for enchiladas. But then in walks Reasoner, smiling triumphantly. Ox trails along behind.

“There he is, boys. Fingers and his girlfriend.”

Looks like we're having a party and we were the last to know. The Kung-Fu Master hops into the room, and Fishkill follows after.

They spread out.

“We wanted to finish our little talk from the yard, gents.” The Kung-Fu Master looks at Reasoner and then dusts his hands off on his jumpsuit. “No big deal. We just wanna check out the freak show.”

Jack's standing now, his desk kicked away. The look on his face isn't one I'm likely to forget soon. It's hard and careless. Fierce. He looks like he could kill.

Oh, no.

I remember the way he spoke to Quincrux, both of their dead voices. Quincrux laconic and bored, and Jack puzzled but numb. I think he just stopped caring whether he hurts somebody. Just a word, and that switch was thrown.

Jack takes two steps toward the other boys.

“Hoss, I think you better get your little buddies out of here,” I say to Ox. “Something's gonna happen.”

Ox's brow furrows, drawing down into a big, hairy V. God, he's a freaking animal, he is.

“I told you not to call me that, Shreve.”

Kung-Fu Master and Fishkill move to our sides, and Ox comes in closer, so that most of us are in the middle of the desks. But Ox isn't focused on Jack. He's bristling with anger and looking at me.

“Yeah? You told me not to call you hoss, hoss? That it?”

Fishkill looks at Ox and says, “Stop messing with Shreve, man. I just want to see the weirdo.” Fishkill turns back to Jack. “Come on, man. We don't want to hurt you. We just want to check out the fingers.”

“No.” Jack's voice sounds tight and unafraid. I don't think he's even aware of me anymore. I've got to keep them off him. For their own good.

“Hey, hoss, Fishkill holding your leash now? At least I fed you. I know how to keep barn animals happy.”

It's a thousand pounds, I think, the load of bricks that lands on my face. A thousand pounds of brick and stone, wrapped in meat. I fall backward into the desks, scattering them.

When I stop skidding and hitting chair legs with my body and come to a rest in a tangle of metal desks, when my head stops spinning and the pulsing alien thing now living in the flesh of my cheek calms enough for me to rise up on my elbows, I point my throbbing head in the direction of where I was just standing, next to Jack, before the thousand pounds hit my face.

For a beast of burden, Ox is fast.

He's coming toward me, taking big steps, hands balled into fists. The floor needs more mopping, it seems.

Beyond him, I see Jack surrounded by Fishkill, Reasoner—still grinning his malicious little grin—and the Kung-Fu Master.

“Come on, freak. Give us a look. Show us the hands.”

The air around Jack ripples now. And that tension, the invisible pressure, builds. My ears pop.

Ox kneels in front of me, blocking my view of Jack. He snatches my jumpsuit at the neck and hoists me from the floor.

“This is a mistake, hoss. You're gonna regret it—”

“Shut your mouth. I'm not your dog.”

“No, that'd be an insult to all dogs—”

You'd think it wouldn't hurt so much this time. But pain, it can constantly reinvent itself. And this time Ox just slaps me. It's not a normal slap. It's a slap bred from toffee, chocolate, and pure vitriol. It's a slap that freaking animal was born to give. It lands on the side of my head and knocks my whole body sideways, but the brute holds me in place. I feel like I've just been in a car wreck.

I open my mouth, because that's what I do. I talk; I talk, and words are my thing. But now there's no air to breathe. My mouth's full of blood, and Ox has slammed his massive ham-hock of a fist into my stomach, so all the choice insults I was going to sling at him, spit at him, sting him with—all the vile insults I was going to use to hurt his delicate ego—they'll all have to wait until later. When I can breathe.

I slump to the floor. Blood flows from my nose and pools from my lips. My lungs aren't working.

From where I lie, I see Jack surrounded by the other boys. His body is rigid, held so immobile he looks like a little statue.
The Angry Kid
is what they'd call it, I think, if it were a statue.

“Come on, freak. Show us the hands, or Ox here is gonna have to do you like he did Shreve.”

Everything slows. It feels like I've dived to the bottom of the deep end of a swimming pool and my ears are just about to collapse from the water pressure.

And then Ox steps near, Reasoner raises his hands to grab Jack's bicep, and the air wavers horribly, like it was gelatin or dimpled glass. Now Reasoner's and Fishkill's eyes open wide in surprise, and Ox—the gigantic stupid animal—raises his arms.

Jack shows them his hands.

He throws them out like he's slapping glass.

The air explodes.

An invisible wall slams into me, ripping at my hair and clothes. Desks scatter in front of the shockwave, rocketing outward and away. The last thing I see before passing out are the goons flying backward and Ox toppling toward me.

And Jack. Jack standing at the center of a circle of destruction.

I'm not out long, I don't think. Reasoner groans from the far wall, and Ox is breathing. He's halfway on top of me, his massive trunk across my legs. Kung-Fu and Fishkill are down and indeterminate.

Jack stands over me, wringing his hands. My grandmother used to do that. She wasn't as dangerous as Jack, except when she sneaked smokes by her oxygen tank. Luckily, when she exploded she only took herself and the trailer.

“Shreve, you okay? I'm sorry—”

“Shut up.” I spit a blood loogey onto the floor. I push myself up but don't move. I try again. “Help pull this moron off me.”

“Oh … no. Shreve, I'm so—”

“Shut up.”

I don't really feel like hearing the apologies right now. And hell, he doesn't need to apologize to me anyway. We wouldn't be here if it wasn't for my mouth.

Between the two of us we move the side of beef off my legs, and Jack pulls me up. My head throbs. Blood drips from my nose, trickles down the back of my throat, wells in my mouth. It feels like someone is dribbling a basketball on my face where Ox hit me.

I'm thinking that Ox did more damage to me than Jack's … talent. Special gift. Curse. Whatever.

When I'm standing, I grab Jack's arm and lean into him.

“See? You can't get rid of me that easily.” I cough and spit a huge wad of gore onto Ox's chest. “Let's go. We've got to clear out.”