The Twelve-Fingered Boy (12 page)

We watch.

When he's done, he inhales, gets his chest looking right, puffed up and resembling a peacock. Then he puts his hands on his waist and glares at us. Booth is back.

“Come on, Shreve. Let's get you to the infirmary. Jack, you come too. I don't want to let you two out of my sight.”

On the inside, you expand to fill your limitations. To find the limits of your world. Your place in it.

We're not precisely in prison. We do have freedom to wander the grounds. To use the bathroom in waking hours when we'd like. Wards may only enter their assigned wing, Commons, the cafeteria, the classrooms, the library. Admin is off-limits, unless summoned. Believe me, you don't want to be summoned to the Warden.

All three of us stand in the hallway outside the infirmary, one way leading back to Commons and the entrances to the various wings, and the other way leading to Admin and the exit. All Mrs. Cheeves, the nurse, did was slap an Insta-Freeze cold pack on my face and pump me full of ibuprofen.

Booth glares at us. “As you're so happy to point out often, Shreve, I'm just the Assistant Warden, which means the next eight hours of my time will be spent filling out forms in triplicate and reviewing all the video of the classroom and classroom hallway.”

“There's a camera in the classroom?” I glance at Jack.

Booth smiles a cat-about-to-pounce-smile. “Why, yes, there is. Didn't you know that?”

I might have paled. Just a little, though, and only for a moment. “Wait a sec. So there's cameras in the classrooms? How come you never used them to bust me?”

It's Booth's turn to pale. He opens his mouth, and then he shuts it.

I pat his arm. “Hey, it's okay. I'm out of the business anyway, Assistant Warden.”

His face purples until it resembles … well, half of mine. For a second he looks like he wants to rip me apart with his bare hands.

But then he throws back his shoulders and laughs.

He laughs.

He grabs me and pulls me into him, to his chest, in a big bear hug. I don't quite know what to do. It's inappropriate physical contact, of course, and I might be able to make some kind of trouble for him about it. But I can smell the man. Part cologne, part hair product, a taint of sweat and … well … him.

For a moment I think of the words
parens patriae
engraved over the entrance to the commons. Part of me wants to punch, scratch, kick—
anything
—not to have this contact. This closeness, never looked for. Never asked for.

But that moment's gone, and he has me in his grip.

He's not trying very hard to be the best enemy he can be right now. But there's no indication he's going to let me go anytime soon. So I hug back. What else am I supposed to do? He's not that bad a guy.

When he's done, he holds me out at arm's length, tears streaming from his eyes, and peers at me.

“Shreve, be careful, will you? I don't know what's going on around here, but I know you.” He releases my arms. “I know you. And you're as reckless as the day is long. I don't want to see you get hurt.” Booth laughs again and wipes the tears from his face and points at my mug. “Any more hurt.”

My smile makes it feel like the flesh of my cheek is being drawn tight across a drum. I'm trying not to do it, trying not to smile back at him, because it hurts and because that's not what we do at each other. He's supposed to be my nemesis, for crying out loud. I don't have a center point anymore if I don't have Booth to fight against.

“Get yourselves back to your room. For today, I don't want you roaming around until I get a handle on what's going on.”

I nod. But I have no intention of doing what he says. That feels good, to get to disobey him again. Seems like old times.

Booth jangles off toward Admin, and I wait until he's out of sight. Then I say to Jack, “If you tell anyone about that, I'll kill you.” We've got to run. Now. But we've got to get back to the cell first. “C'mon,” I tell Jack. “We'll get all my money, which isn't too much, but enough. And we'll get my secret weapons.”

On the inside, change always comes with some pain. My face throbs as we walk down the hall back to Commons. The double doors in front of us swing open, and there's Sloe-Eyed Norman pushing his way through. He looks at us with his soft eyes and opens his mouth as if to say something.

A little shiver of alarm runs down my spine, and I put a hand on Jack's arm to stop him.

When the door swings all the way open, he stands there, behind Norman, dressed somberly and neat.

Quincrux.

And beside him, licking her lips, the witch.

“Run!” I wheel, not before catching surprised expressions from the trio, and dash back down the hall.

Suddenly, I feel him. Him. Trying to get in.

I stop. I can't help myself. He's in. I turn around to look.

There's Quincrux looking at me, boring into me. I try and conjure the jawbreaker in my mind's eye, but he's too powerful. I can feel his laughter inside my head, his scorn at my defenses.

But I'm still incarcerado, still in my flesh enough to see that Jack has become the Angry Kid statue. Mr. Furious. Jack Sprat, about to jump the candle.

“Jack!” It's all I can do to scream his name. That's the last bit of me I can muster under the assault from Quincrux. He's a machine, a monster, Godzilla trampling Tokyo. And then—I don't know if it's Quincrux violating my mind, or if it's my mind—I feel an intense need to possess something, to consume something. And I fight, I squirm and writhe using that part of me that is nothing but me—that infinitesimal spark that's not blood, not bone, not flesh, but solely Shreve. Like a tadpole in a palm, I fight, I squirm. Like a cricket caught in gigantic hands, I twist and turn and move to find my way out. Finally I feel one path with less resistance, and I follow it. I see a quick image of myself, clad in orange, stopped midstride in a hallway, looking backward over my shoulder with a curious expression of terror and fierceness and stubbornness. And I realize I'm looking out of his eyes. I'm feeling his feelings and thinking his thoughts. And that terrifies me. Because, on the inside, he's not as loathsome as I would have thought. He's far, far worse.

But then his assault stops and I'm whisked away, out of his mind. I'm back incarcerado in my own body, watching the air dimple.

The witch has her hands balled at her sides. I think she's smiling but I can't be sure, because the air is wavering and now my ears have popped.

“Jack! The witch!” I turn and run. “Remember what she did! She raped you!”

Jack goes supernova.

The shockwave picks me up, and I'm an orange pinwheel with no greater purpose than trying to minimize the damage when I hit the floor.

Tuck the chin, the teachers used to tell us in PE. Tuck the chin and pull the knees in tight.

I hit the tiles rolling and experience the intense sensation of my flesh moving separately from my skeleton. My muscles, my fat, all my soft tissue bounces back against the brutal impact of my knees cracking on the floor, my elbows and hands smashing into the green tiles. I feel like a thawed frozen turkey tossed from a window, rubbery and without volition.

I push myself up on hands skinned raw and stand.

Holy smokes.

Jack's standing over three people, panting.

I race down the hall toward him.

Sure enough, there's Quincrux, the witch, and poor Norman.

They've been blown back through the doors and into Commons, and fifty or sixty faces of boys look at us. Quin-crux lies half on top of Ilsa, and Norman is underneath a table. I run to him. My elbows and knees are sore, my hands bleeding and raw, but I go down and crawl underneath a Commons table. Norman's there, amid a scattering of dominoes, with blood pouring out his mouth and nose.

“Oh no. Oh no.”

Quincrux's leg is twisted at a horrible angle away from his body. His dark suit looks wet, and something pokes at the fabric of the pants. I'm betting a bone.

Ilsa.

Her neck is twisted horribly. If she's not dead now, she will be soon.

Jack stands in the hallway, looking dazed. His hands hang limp at his sides. I push up, back on my feet. The boys in the general pop stare at me like I've sprouted fur and fangs. They step back.

“We've got to run. Quincrux will wake soon. And he'll control us.”

Jack doesn't respond.

“Jack! We've got to run!” I grab his arm and drag him behind me. He's sluggish. He can't be thinking good thoughts right now. Too much blood. Behind us, fire alarms sound.

By the time we're passing the infirmary, Mrs. Cheeves steps into the hallway, surprised to find two wards barreling down the hallway.

“They're hurt! Call an ambulance.” I don't pause to see how she reacts.

Finally Jack's feet move of his own accord.

I take a second to glance at him as we bolt down the hall, and he looks lost and hurt. Tears stream from his eyes, and his hand feels dead in mine as I pull him along.

We reach Admin. The bulls and administrators, men and women, are rushing toward us, so I point back down the hall. “There's been an explosion!” I yell. Some of them pass us, running toward Commons.

Booth appears from an office, popping up over cubicle walls like a well-groomed prairie dog.

“Are you okay? Shreve? Jack?” He grabs my shoulder and turns me toward him. “Are you injured?” God, there's real concern for us on his face.

“No. But something happened back there. They need you.”

Another alarm goes off, and Booth turns from us toward Commons.

“You two stay here.”

And then we're standing in Admin, with just one guard between us and freedom. He's at the front doors, manning the metal detectors. Right now he's half-standing from his seat and looking right at us.

“Jack, you're gonna have to do it again.”

His face crumples.

“No. I can't. I…” The waterworks really flow now, and as I notice it on him, I realize I'm flowing pretty good, too. Norman was a good guy. A real good guy. He didn't deserve that.

“We have to. We have to. So no one else gets hurt.”

“No, I won't.”

“It was the witch. The witch was there. And Quin-crux. They would've ridden us. They would've raped us from the inside out.”

“She might be dead.”

“Yeah. But it wasn't your fault.” I don't know what to do. I take Jack by the shoulders and shake him like trailer trash shaking an infant. “It wasn't your fault!”

He gives me a look, a look like he's buried under an avalanche and will take all winter to dig himself out. He's going away, retreating into his safe place, and I can't really blame him.

I give it the last gasp. “We don't have much time. What if she wakes up? She'll invade all of them, and they'll come after us. And then—”

“I don't care.”

He's broken. He slumps to the floor.

It doesn't take a mind reader to know Jack's out of play. I'd say borderline catatonic. Definitely in shock.

I'm going to have to do this by myself.

I don't know this guard's name. He's not an inside bull. He's an Admin bull, which means he's not used to seeing us wards in orange. He doesn't know how to deal with the likes of me.

I need to believe that. He doesn't know how to deal with the likes of me.

I trot over to him, and he stands up straight.

“Please stay behind the yellow line, son.”

He's long and gawky with a face full of pimples. He reminds me a little of Barney Fife, but without the geniality.

I step over the line. That's what I do. A line-stepper, I am.

“Behind the line, son.”

“You're like three years older than me.”

Huh. That's not the best way to start this exchange.

“Behind the line.” He puts his hand on his belt. His fingers come to rest on his Taser.

God, this is taking too long. They're going to be coming for us—if not Quincrux, then Booth and the rest of the Admin-dwellers.

“Booth needs your help. There's been an explosion.”

“Fat chance.” The bull snorts and draws the Taser from its holster. “He didn't say anything to me. I think I'll stick here.”

I feel pressure building, and this time it's not coming from Jack. I'm starting to understand how Jack feels, because the anger I usually tamp down or deflect with wisecracking or insults is starting to shift inside me. It's anger at a universe that has dealt me a crappy hand all around. I think of my drunk of a mother. Of her neglect of me. Of Vig. I think of the way tectonic plates shift and rub each other over millennia, or glaciers wear away bedrock. There are things, vast things, moving inside me after years of quiet.

If Quincrux and the witch can do it, why can't I?

I look him in the eyes. His name is Marvin Robinson.