Scorpion Shards

1. The Destroyer

A shattering of glass.

A monstrous crash echoing through the glass-domed restaurant—and then a second sound so horrid and final it could have meant the very end of the world. The way thunder must sound to a man struck by lightning. The ear-piercing rattle of breaking glass, combined with the deep wooden crunch that followed, pinned the high and low ends of human hearing, and what remained between were dying dissonant chords like that of a shattered—

—piano?

The restaurant’s maitre d’ could not yet believe his eyes. He stood dumbfounded, trying to figure out what on earth had happened.

The final tinkling of ruined crystal fell from the ornate glass roof of the Garden Court Restaurant—the pride and joy of the Palace Hotel—the most beautiful restau­rant in all of San Francisco. Until today. Today shards of the crystal ceiling were stabbing the plush Victorian furni­ture to death.

And it was a piano—or what was left of it, lying like a shipwreck in the center aisle.

Is God dropping pianos on us today? thought the maitre d’. I should have called in sick.

The restaurant was closed, thank goodness—Sunday brunch did not begin until eight—but workers and early-rising guests had already gathered to gawk.

Of course it must have been the piano from the new Cityview lounge, up on the top floor, but how could it have come crashing down eight floors, through the glass roof?

“Should I notify security?” asked one of the waiters, but somehow the maitre d’ was sure security had already figured out there was a problem.

In like a flash and out in the blink of an eye.

The boy called Dillon Cole was in the street in an instant and vanished into the foggy morning. The streets were not crowded, but there were enough people for Dil­lon to lose himself among unknown faces. He wove through them, brushing past their shoulders, leaving a wake of chaos behind him. The souls he bumped into lost their concentration and sense of direction—a woman stopped short, forgetting where she was going; a man lost his train of thought in the middle of a conversation; a girl, just for a moment, forgot who she was, and why she was even there . . . but then Dillon passed, and their thoughts returned to normal. They would never know that their confusion was caused by Dillon’s mere touch. But Dillon knew. He wondered if believing such a thing was enough to send him to the nuthouse. If that wasn’t enough to have him locked away, certainly the other things would do the job.

Things like that business with the piano. For all the commotion it had caused, it had been an easy enough stunt. It was a simple thing to get into the deserted top-floor lounge on a Sunday morning. Since the grand piano was on wheels, it hadn’t been that hard to ease across the floor, out onto the patio. As he moved the piano, his fury had grown along with the burning, screaming need to fin­ish this act of destruction—a need that ate at his gut like an uncontrollable hunger.

A wrecking-hunger.

Adrenaline coursed through his veins, giving him in­credible strength as he heaved the piano onto the ledge—but all he could feel was that wrecking-hunger, forcing him on like a hot iron drilling down to his very soul. He hoisted the heavy beast of a piano onto the ledge, where it balanced for a moment, floating between possible futures, and then it disappeared, taking the railing with it.

One second. Two seconds. Three seconds.

The impact came as a deafening scream of dying crys­tal as the great glass roof eight floors below was shattered . . . and the wrecking-hunger was instantly quelled. That pressure deep inside was released by some invisible escape valve. Dillon took a deep breath of relief and didn’t spare the time to look at his handiwork. He got out.

Wearing a bellhop uniform he had taken from a stor­age closet, Dillon took the elevator to the lobby and left without anyone giving him a second glance—and why should anyone suspect him? He was fifteen, but could pass for seventeen; he was an attractive, clean-cut, redheaded kid who simply looked like one of the kids the bell captain was training. So no one noticed him as he slipped out into the street, where he quickly took off his bellhop jacket and vanished into the morning.

Now, the hotel was far behind him and, in front of him, the stairwell of a BART station descended into darkness. Fog swirled around it as if it were the mouth of a black cave, but to Dillon it was a wonderfully welcome sight.

Once he was down the stairs and heard the approach­ing train that would carry him away, he knew he was home free. He dropped the bellhop jacket in the trash as he hurried to catch the train. He was not caught. He was never caught.

The train stopped, Dillon found a seat, and it rolled on. Only now, as the hotel fell farther and farther behind, did he relax enough for the worries to fill his head.

Please, he begged. Let no one be hurt. Please let no one be hurt. The restaurant was closed—but what if a waiter had been setting tables? What if a housekeeper had been vacuum­ing the rug? Dillon was always careful—he was always good at predicting exactly how his little disasters would unfold, and so far there had been no major injuries . . . but he was starting to slip—the wrecking-hunger was making him careless. When the hunger to destroy came, it was all-consuming and didn’t allow him second thoughts. But now in the aftermath of his horrible deed, when his spirit seemed to hang like that piano on the edge of its drop, he could clearly see the ramifications of these awful, awful acts.

People could have died! And I won’t know until I see the news. The weight that now burdened his soul was truly unbear­able . . . yet it was more bearable than the hunger, which always came back, making him forget everything else. He would fall slave to it again, and the only way to escape was to destroy something. Anything. Everything. The bigger the better. The louder the better. And when it was done the pressure would be gone. The hunger would be fed, and the relief would be rich and sweet like a fat piece of chocolate melting in his mouth.

But the wrecking-hunger had been getting worse lately. It didn’t come once a week anymore. Now it came almost every day, pushing him, pressing him, demanding to be fed. Even now as he sat on the train, he felt the hunger again. How could it be? So soon! Wasn’t the piano enough? It was the biggest, it was the loudest, it was the worst he’d done yet. What more did he have to do to be free of this terrible hunger?

The woman sitting next to him on the train eyed him with a look of motherly concern—a look Dillon hadn’t seen for the entire year he had been out on his own. She glanced at his shaking hands.

“Are you all right?” asked the woman.

“Sure, fine.”

And then she touched his hand to stop it from shaking.

“No!” said Dillon, but it was too late. She had touched him.

Her face became pale and she shrank away.

“Ex . . . excuse me,” she said in a daze, and she wan­dered off to find a seat far away from Dillon. Then she sat down to begin the task of unscrambling her mind.

“What are you afraid of, Deanna?”

“Everything. Everything, that’s all.”

Deanna Chang’s pale hands gripped the arms of her chair as if the chair were the only thing keeping her from being flung into space. The room around her was painted a hideous yellow, peeling everywhere like flesh, to reveal deep red underneath. The place smelled musty and old.

Faces on fading portraits seemed to lean closer to listen. The walls themselves seemed to be listening. And breath­ing.

“I can’t help you, Deanna, if you won’t be specific.”

The man who sat across from her at the old desk shifted uncomfortably in his chair. I make him nervous, thought Deanna. Why do I even make psychiatrists nervous?

“You can’t help me, okay?” said Deanna. “That’s the point.” He tapped his pencil on the desk. The eraser fell off the end and rolled onto the stained floor.

I hate this place, thought Deanna. I hate this room, I hate this man, and I hate my parents for making me come here to hear the same questions the other shrinks had asked, then give the same answers, and have nothing change. Nothing. Ever.

A woman’s voice wailed outside, and Deanna jumped. She couldn’t tell whether the sound was a shriek, or a laugh.

“I’m afraid,” said Deanna. “I’m afraid of dying.”

“Good. That’s a start.”

Deanna began to rub her pale, slender arms. Behind her and beneath her, the springs within the padding of the chair poked and threatened her through the fabric of the worn upholstery. “At first I was just afraid of walking out­side alone. I thought it would end up being a good thing, because it made my parents move us to a better neighbor­hood—but it didn’t stop when we moved. I started to imagine all the terrible things that could happen to me.” She leaned forward. “That was two years ago. Now I see myself dying every day. I see my body smashed if our house were to collapse. I see a man with a knife hiding in the closet, or the basement, or the attic in the middle of the night. I see a car with no driver leaping the curb to pull me beneath its wheels. ...”

“You think people are out to get you?”

“Not just people. Things. Everything.”

The shrink scribbled with his eraserless pencil. Some­where deep within the building a heater came on, moan­ing a faint, sorrowful moan.

“And you imagine these awful things might happen to you?”

“No!” said Deanna, “I see these things happening to me. They happen, I feel them—I see them—It’s REAL!” Deanna reached up and brushed cool sweat from her forehead. “And then I blink, and it—"

“And it all goes away?”

“Sometimes. Other times the vision doesn’t go away until I scream.”

The shrink in the cheap suit loosened his tie and put his linger beneath his collar. He coughed a bit.

“Stuffy,” he said.

“I’m not safe going out,” said Deanna. “I’m not safe staying in. I’m not safe here—because what if the stupid light fixture above my head right now is slowly coming unscrewed and waiting for the perfect moment to fall and crack my skull?”

The shrink looked up at the fixture, which did, indeed, seem loose. He leaned back, unfastened his collar button and took a deep breath, as if the air were thinning. He was becoming frightened, Deanna noted—just like everyone else did when they were near her. She could feel his fear as strongly as her own.

“I think I might drown,” Deanna said. “Or suffocate. I always feel like I’m suffocating. Have you ever felt like that?”

“On occasion.” His voice sounded empty and distant. He seemed to shrivel slightly in his chair.

Deanna smiled. Feeling his fear somehow made her fear begin to diminish. “I give you the creeps, don’t I?”

“Your mother is very concerned about you.”

“My mother can take a flying leap, if she thinks you can help me.”

“That’s not a healthy attitude.”

“You know what? I think you’re gonna screw me up worse than I was before. Can you guarantee that you won’t? And are you sure this stuff is all inside my head? Are you certain? Are you?” Deanna waited for an answer.

If he said he was sure, she would believe him. If he swore up and down that he could take away the darkness that shrouded her life, she would believe—because she wanted to believe that it was a simple matter of her being crazy. But he didn’t answer her. He couldn’t even look at her. Instead, he glanced down at his watch and breathed a sigh of relief.

“Is my time up?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.”

“Tell me what your sins are, my son.” The priest on the other side of the confessional sighed as he spoke. He must have recognized Dillon’s shaky voice from the many times Dillon had come to confess.

“I’ve done terrible things,” said Dillon, cramped within the claustrophobic booth.

“Such as?”

“Yesterday I broke a gear in the cable house—that’s why the cable cars weren’t running. This morning I shat­tered the glass roof of the Garden Court Restaurant.”

“Dear Lord.” The priest’s voice was an icy whisper. “I can’t give you absolution for this, Dillon.”

Dillon stiffened, suddenly feeling as if the booth had grown smaller, tighter, pressing against him. “Please,” he begged, “no one was hurt—the news said so—please!”

“Dillon, you have to turn yourself in.”

“You don’t understand, Father. I can’t. I can’t because it wouldn’t stop me. I would find a way to escape and wreck something else—something even bigger. It’s not like I want to do this stuff—I have to. I don’t have a choice!”

“Listen to me,” said the priest. “You’re . . . not well. You’re a very sick boy and you have to get help.”

“Don’t you think my parents tried that?” fumed Dil­lon. “That kind of help doesn’t work on me. It only makes it worse!”

“I. . . I’m sorry, I can’t absolve you.”

Dillon was speechless in his terror. To go without for­giveness for the things he was forced to do—that was the worst nightmare of all. He gripped the small cross around his neck, holding it tightly, feeling the silver press into his palm.

“But I’m not guilty!” Dillon insisted. “I have no choice—I’m poisoned! I’m cursed!”

“Then your penance is taking this confession to the po­lice.”

“It’s not their job to absolve me!” screamed Dillon. “It’s your job. You’re supposed to take away my sins, and you can’t judge me! You can’t!”

No answer from the priest.

“Fine. If you won’t absolve me, I’ll find a priest who will.”

Dillon flung the cherrywood door out so hard, it splin­tered when it hit the wall. A woman gasped, but Dillon was past her, and out the door as quickly as his anger could carry him. The wrecking-hunger was already build­ing again, and he didn’t know how much longer he could resist it. He had half a mind to throw bricks through the stained glass window of the church, but it wasn’t God he had a gripe with. Or was it? He didn’t know.

He had told the priest his name a week before in a mo­ment of weakness, and now it could very well be his ruin. Would this priest betray the secrecy of the confessional and point a finger at Dillon?

Dillon didn’t want to find out. He would have to leave tonight and find a new place to wreak his havoc. He had worked his way up from Arizona without getting caught, and there were still lots of places to go. There was a free­dom in feeling completely abandoned by life, Dillon tried to convince himself. It was easy to keep moving when every city was just as lonely. When every face in every crowd was just as uncaring.

But there had to be one more feeding—just one more before he left. It would need to be something grand and devastating something that would put the wrecking-hunger to sleep for a while.

Are you proud of me, Mom and Dad? he thought bitterly. Are you proud of your little boy now? He thanked God that they were dead and hoped they were far enough away from this world not to know the things he had done.

Not far away, Deanna Chang climbed a steep side­walk, trying to forget her appointment with the psychia­trist. She didn’t dare to look at the people she passed—they all eyed her suspiciously, or at least it seemed that they did—she could never tell for sure. It made her want to look down to see if her socks were different colors, or if her blouse was bloody from a nosebleed she didn’t even know about. Now that she was outside, her claustropho­bia switched gears into agoraphobia—the fear of the out­side world. It wasn’t just that her fears were abnormal— they were unnatural, and it made her furious. She had had a warm, loving childhood—she had no trauma in her his­tory—and yet when she had turned twelve, the fears began to build, becoming obsessions that grew into vi­sions, and now, at fifteen, the world around her was laced with razor blades and poison in every look, in every sound, in every moment of every single day. The fear seemed to steal the breath from her lungs. So strong was the fear that it reached out and coiled around anyone close to her; her parents, the kids who had once been her friends—even strangers who got too near. Her fear was as contagious as a laughing fit and as overwhelming as cya­nide fumes.

As she reached the corner, her fear gripped her so tightly that she couldn’t move, and she knew that she was about to have another waking-vision of her own death. That it was only in her mind didn’t make it any less real, because she felt every measure of pain and terror.

Then it happened: Confusion around her, loud noises. She blinked, blinked again, and a third time, as she tried to make the horrific vision go away. But the vision re­mained. The driverless car leapt from the curb, and it swallowed her.

Dillon watched from the top of the hill, his horror almost overwhelming the wrecking-hunger in his gut. His eyes took it in as if it were slow motion.

The truck was hauling six brand-new Cadillacs to a dealership somewhere. A few minutes ago, Dillon had jaywalked across the street. He had searched for the chains that fastened the last car onto the lower deck of the truck and picked the locks with the broken prong of a fork. Another human being could have spent all day try­ing to figure out how to pick those locks—but chains, ropes and locks were easy for Dillon. He was better than Houdini.

He had clearly anticipated the entire pattern of how the event would go, like a genius calculating a mathemati­cal equation. The car would spill out of the transport truck; the bus driver behind it would turn the wheel to the right; the bus would jump a curb; cars would start swerv­ing in a mad frenzy to get out of the way of the runaway car; many fenders would be ruined—some cars would be totaled . . . but not many people would get hurt.

Maximum damage; minimal injury. This was the pat­tern Dillon had envisioned in his unnaturally keen mind. What Dillon did not anticipate was that the driver of the bus was left-handed.

Dillon walked up hill and watched as the truck lurched forward, got halfway up the steep hill, and then the last car on its lower ramp slid out and down the hill. Horns instantly began blaring, tires screeched, the escaping Cadillac headed straight for the bus . . .

. . . And the bus driver instinctively turned his wheel to the left, instead of the right—right into on-coming traffic.

That simple change in the pattern of events altered ev­erything. Dillon now saw a new pattern emerging, and this time there would be blood.

Horrified, he watched as car after car careened off the road into light posts and storefronts. People scattered. Others didn’t have the chance.

Dillon watched the driverless car roll through the inter­section and toward a corner. A man ran out of the way, leaving a solitary girl directly in the path of the car—an Asian girl no older than Dillon, who stood frozen in shock. Dillon tried to shout to her, but it was too late. The driverless Caddy leapt the curb, and the girl disappeared, as if swallowed by the mouth of a whale.

For Dillon Benjamin Cole, it was a moment of hell . . . and yet in that moment something inside him released the choke-hold it had on his gut. The hunger was gone—its dark need satisfied by the nightmare before him. Satis­fied by the bus that crashed deep down the throat of the Crown bookstore; and by the ruptured fire hydrant that had turned a convertible Mercedes into a fountain; and by the sight of the girl disappearing into the grillwork of the Cadillac. Dillon felt every muscle in his body relax. Relief filled every sense—he could smell it, taste it like a fine meal. A powerful feeling of well-being washed over him, leaving him unable to deny how good it made him feel.

And Dillon hated himself for it. Hated himself more than God could possibly hate him.

A hospital was an indifferent place, filled with promises it didn’t keep, and prayers that were refused. At least that’s how Dillon saw it ever since he watched his parents waste away in a hospital over a year ago. The doctors never did figure out what had killed them, but Dillon knew. They had held their son one too many times . . . and they died of broken minds. Insanity, Dillon knew, could kill like any other disease. Dillon had watched his parents’ minds slowly fall apart, until the things they said became gibberish, and the things they did became dan­gerous. In the end, Dillon imagined their minds had become like snow on a television screen. With thoughts as pointless as that, sometimes a body knows to turn itself off and die.

Now, as he stepped into the private hospital room with a bouquet of flowers, Dillon barely recognized the girl in the bed. He had only seen her from a distance—before the Cadillac had taken her down, and then in the after­math of his awful accident, when she was whisked into an ambulance and taken away. How could he expect to rec­ognize a face he had seen so briefly? And yet he had seen that face long enough for it to haunt him for the rest of his life unless he paid this visit.

Her name was Deanna; he had found that much out. She was half-Asian; an only child. The nurse at reception had asked if he was family, he told her he was a cousin. Once inside the room, he told her mother that he was a classmate. He sat beside the mother, chattering lies about a school and teachers he had never heard of, and then the mother got up to make some calls, leaving Dillon alone to keep a vigil for the girl. For Deanna.

Deanna floated deep in the void, hearing nothing but her own heartbeat. She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out. She felt far away, beneath an ocean, for she could not breathe at all. She forced herself up and up, toward the light at the surface, her head pounding, her chest cramping, until finally she broke the surface, into the light of—

—a room. A hospital room. Yes. Yes, of course. The driverless car of doom. How terrified she had been of it. She had seen it before. Only this time it had been real. It was not just there to terrify her—it was there to kill her— and it could have, too—but she wasn’t dead. She wiggled her toes—she wasn’t even paralyzed. She moved her right arm and felt a searing pain shoot through her wrist that made her groan.

“You’re all right,” said someone next to her. The voice of a man. No—a boy. She lazily turned her head to face him, and her eyes began to focus. He was her age—fifteenish, with red hair but eyes that were dark and so frighteningly deep that she couldn’t look away. Soulful, her mother would call those eyes.

“Your wrist is sprained,” he said. “You’ve probably got a concussion too, but still you’re pretty lucky, consid­ering what happened.”

“Who are you?” she asked.

“No one important,” he replied. “My name’s Dillon.” She still could not look away from his eyes, and what she saw there told her all she needed to know. His eyes poured forth his guilt, and she knew that somehow he had done this to her. He had sent the terrible driverless car.

“You bastard,” she groaned, and yet she felt strangely relieved. This time it had been real, not just another vi­sion—and yet she wasn’t dead. In its own way, it was a relief.

Dillon leaned away, unnerved. “I didn’t want to hurt you.” He said anxiously. “I didn’t want to hurt anybody . . . It’s just that . . .” He stopped. How could he hope she could ever understand?

“No, tell me,” she said and grabbed his hand. Dillon gasped and tried to pull his hand back; but even in her weakened state, she held him firmly . . . and he was amazed to discover that his touch didn’t scramble her mind. She did not shrink away from him.

How was this possible? Everyone he touched was af­fected—everyone.

“Your hand is warm,” she said, then looked at him cu­riously. “You’re not afraid! I don’t make you afraid!”

“No,” he said. She smiled, keeping her eyes fixed on his, and in that moment a brilliant light shone through the half-opened blinds—a sudden green flash that resolved into a red glow in the dark sky.

Whatever that light was, it seemed to make the rest of the world go away, leaving the two of them floating in a hospital room that was floating in space.

This, thought Deanna, is the most important moment of my life . . . and she immediately knew why.

“You’re like me!” she whispered. “You’re just like me!”

Dillon nodded, his eyes filling with tears, because he too knew it was true. In this instant, he felt closer to Deanna than he had ever felt to anyone. I almost killed her, he thought. How horrible it would have been if she died, and we had never met. He marveled at how the strange light painted a soft glow around her charcoal hair, and he felt a sudden reverence for her that was beyond words. The only words that he could speak now that would make any sense would be his confession.

“I destroy everything I touch,” said Dillon.

“You don’t destroy me,” answered Deanna.

“I’m a monster,” said Dillon.

“That’s not what I see,” she answered. It was the closest thing to forgiveness Dillon had ever felt. Then Deanna began to cry and began a confession of her own.

“I’m afraid,” she said.

“Of what?”

“Of this place. Of my life. Of everything inside and out. I’m terrified.”

Dillon gripped her hand tightly. “Then I’ll protect you,” he said. “I’ll make sure nothing out there can hurt you.”

Deanna smiled through her tears, because she knew that this boy who had almost destroyed her now meant to protect her with all his heart. He held her hand with a delicate intensity, as if having her hand in his was a mira­cle of the highest order. In this instant, she trusted him more than she had ever trusted anyone.

“No,” she answered. “We’ll protect each other.”

2. ’Stone Gets Cooties

On that same night, the dark sky over Ala­bama was punctuated by a million stars. Still, those stars were not bright enough to shed light on the ground, and since the moon had not yet risen, the ground was left darker than the space between the stars.

Winston Marcus Pell lay in his lightless room, wiggling his fingers, trying to see them. His dark skin could have been painted fluorescent yellow, and still he’d have seen little more than a vague shadow.

A night this black was either a good omen or a bad one—depending on which set of superstitions you chose to believe—and Winston had to keep reminding himself that he didn’t believe in that silly stuff. Educated people like him didn’t have superstitions—that was left to the poor folk still trapped deep in the Black Belt, tilling its cruel dark soil. People who didn’t know any better.

So why, then, was Winston so afraid on nights like to­night?

The wind came and went in great and sudden gusts that rattled the windows and tore off leaves before their time. Those yellow October leaves, orphaned by the wind, would shatter against the side of their big old house, sounding like scampering mice. When the gusts had passed, there was silence as empty as the night was dark. This was wrong, Winston knew. It was terribly wrong.

There are no evil creatures out there, he told himself. Those were stories told by old folks to keep kids from wandering out into the dark—but the silence—it was all wrong!

There are no crickets.

That was it!

The realization made Winston’s neck hairs stand on end and made him want to shrink even smaller beneath his blanket. There were always crickets, chirping all night long out here in the country—even in October. When they moved out from Birmingham, it was weeks before Winston could sleep because of the crickets.

What had shut the crickets up tonight?

Winston cursed himself for being so stupid about it. Damn it all, he was fifteen—no matter how he looked on the outside, he was fifteen inside, and shouldn’t be worried about what crickets chose to do on this night. On this dark night. On this dark creepy night.

Winston knew why he was afraid, although he didn’t want to think about it. He was afraid because, apart from the local superstitions, he knew there were stranger things in heaven and earth than he could shake a stick at.

Like the strange and awful thing that had been hap­pening to him for almost three years now. Of course no one talked about that to his face anymore. No one but lit­tle Thaddy, who was just too dumb to know any better.

Winston clenched his hands into a fist, wishing he had someone to fight. Well, maybe he was afraid of a night without crickets, but if something were out there, he was mad enough to beat the thing silly. He’d paralyze it and leave it helpless on the muddy ground, no matter how big it was.

A gust of wind ripped across the silence, then a thin ghostly wail flew in from the next room followed by the sound of running feet.

Thaddy was in Winston’s room in a terrible fright. He smashed his shin against Winston’s wooden bed frame, and his wail turned into a howl.

“Hush up!” ordered Winston. “I don’t want you wak­ing Mama.”

“There’s a monster outside, ’Stone,” cried Thaddy. “I seen him! He was at my window gonna rip my guts out, I know it.” Thaddy wiped his eyes. “I think it was Taily-bone.”

Thaddy made a move to jump into bed with Winston, but thought better of it. Instead he just grabbed Winston’s blanket off of him and curled up with it on the floor.

“You had best give that back, or you’ll be sleepin’ with no front teeth.” But Thaddy didn’t move.

“It’s out there, ’Stone, I saw it. It was drooling on my window. I swear it was. We gotta get the rifle.”

“We ain’t got a rifle, you idiot!”

Winston slipped out of bed and touched his feet to the floor. In the silence, the floorboards creaked.

“Where are the crickets?” asked Thaddy.

“Hush yo’ ass, or I’m gonna paralyze your lips till morning.”

“No! I’ll be good. I promise. No more talking,” which was like a wind-chime promising to be quiet through a hurricane.

Winston glanced out of his window. In normal moon­light, he could see the yard and beyond, all the way through the neighbor’s field. Tonight, he could barely see the fence—and just beyond the fence, the cotton seemed to roll like beasts in the shadows. Tigers and big fat alliga­tors.

“I can smell it out there,” mumbled Thaddy. “It’s got a dead smell, like somethin’ back from the grave.”

“Quit trying to scare yourself,” said Winston. He didn’t smell it the way Thaddy did, but Winston knew that Thaddy was right—something was out there—he could sense it.

Winston grabbed his baseball bat from beneath the bed and headed toward Thaddy’s room with Thaddy close behind. No reason to wake their mother up until they knew for sure.

“It’s Tailybone, I know it!” whined Thaddy.

“There’s no such thing, that’s just a dumb old story,” Winston said, for himself as much as he did for Thaddy.

Then Thaddy made an observation. It probably wasn’t true, but it bothered Winston just the same. “You’re shorter today, ’Stone, " he said. “Reckon now you’ve got so short you can’t whoop a grave-monster.”

Winston threw Thaddy an evil look and put his forefinger up, just inch away from Thaddy’s mouth as a warning. Even in the dark Thaddy could see the silhouette of the finger about to touch his lips.

“No! No! ’Stone, I’ll shut up. I promise.”

Little Thaddy was ten years old—a full five years younger than Winston—but Winston was two inches shorter. Winston was, in every way, the size and shape of an eight-year-old.

It hadn’t always been that way. He had grown like a weed until the time he was twelve or so. Then, when his friends started sprouting legs and knobby knees, Winston stopped growing up . . .

. . . and started growing down.

The way he figured, he’d have the body of kindergartner again when he was eighteen.

“I wish I could grow backward,” Thaddy had once said, when he outgrew his favorite bike. But as he watched his big brother become his little brother, Thaddy’s thoughts on the subject changed. Thaddy made no such wishes anymore.

The door to Thad’s room was ajar, and Winston pushed it all the way open. Its hinges complained with a high-pitched creak as the door swung open to reveal . . . an open window. If there was a thing out there—it could be in the house now! It could be anywhere!

“Thaddy, was your window open before?”

Thaddy stuttered a bit.

“Think! Was your window open or closed?”

Thaddy couldn’t remember.

A gnarled branch hung just outside the window, coiled as if fixing to reach in and grab something. In the tree, a rag fluttered in the breeze.

“It’s my shirt,” said Thaddy. “I threw it at the thing. Maybe I scared it away, maybe.”

Winston stood at the threshold of the room for the longest time, not daring to go in. He squinted his eyes and looked at the tree. The light was so very dim that he could barely see the tree at all, and the more he looked the more he thought he saw a face in it. A big old twisted face. A goblin with a head the size of a pumpkin leering into the window.

“It’s just the tree,” explained Winston, breathing a si­lent sigh of intense relief. “Your fool head is playing tricks on you again.”

“But what about the smell, ’Stone?”

“Dead possum, maybe—under the window, like last year,” said Winston, but the smell didn’t catch him the way it caught Thaddy.

Thaddy clung to this explanation, and climbed into bed. Winston tucked his brother in, making sure to touch only the blanket.

“Thank you, ’Stone,” said Thaddy. “And I’m sorry about what I said before about you being too small and all. I think it’s great that you’re small.”

“Quit talking about that!”

Winston didn’t want anyone talking about it ever. The very first sign of trouble came about three years ago. Not only had it become apparent that he had stopped grow­ing, but something else just as alarming began to happen. It was the way Winston’s touch could make a person tin­gle. Carpet shocks, his parents called it. Didn’t think much of it. Then they had taken Winston to the doctor for a simple flu shot. The doctor noticed his height was half .an inch shorter than a year before. Didn’t think much of it. Must have been a mistake. A few months later, they knew it was no mistake he was a whole inch shorter. Four doctors later, and they still didn’t know what to make of it—and none of the doctors would acknowledge the strange effect Winston’s touch was beginning to have on people. Vitamin deficiency, they said. Genetic fluke. One doctor named Guthry wanted to call it Guthry’s Syn­drome and tried to send him up to the Mayo Clinic where they’d study him like a rat.

So they stopped seeing doctors.

It was the crazy old sisters down the road who called it “Growing Down.” They called Winston a witch child, and it made his dad furious. Mr. Pell had been a man of science—a pharmacist—but more than that—a scholar. He was an educated man with educated friends; he had moved back from the city to set an example and help the small town he grew up in. Those two old sisters were ev­erything he hated about growing up black, poor and igno­rant in the Deep South.

When Winston’s dad died of a heart attack, the sisters spread word that it was Winston did it, by putting “a stunt” on his daddy’s heart, the way he had put a stunt on their little vegetable garden, where nothing grew larger than the size of a finger. For all Winston knew those toothless old crones were right.

Of course, people didn’t really believe he had killed his father, but the thought was always there—and by then, Winston’s touch could numb people’s arms, making them tingly, like when your foot fell asleep. The family had stopped going to church soon after, because Baptists saw God or the Devil in everything. It wasn’t exactly comfort­able being the center of attention on Sunday. Still, Win­ston often wondered . . . if he could stunt vegetables, numb flesh, and grow backwards, was that science or magic? God or the Devil?

Winston finished tucking Thaddy in nice and tight, just the way he liked it.

“The window, ’Stone. Gotta shut out that rotten pos­sum smell.”

Winston went to the window, and remembered Thaddy’s shirt hanging in the branch, just out of his lim­ited reach. Before closing the window, Winston leaned out into the night to get the shirt. . .

. . . and the monster, sitting in the tree limbs beside the window, hissed like a python.

Winston screamed.

The hideous thing was less than a foot from Winston’s face. It was going to kill him. It was going to rip his guts out like Thaddy said. Why, of all times, did Thaddy have to be right about something now!

It leapt deeper into the tree, and the tree limbs clat­tered like bones as the thing hurried to the ground.

“It’s Tailybone!” screamed Thaddy, half out of his lit­tle fool mind. “It’s Tailybone!” and he screamed for their mother.

Winston pushed himself back into the room and fell to the floor. A light came on downstairs.

“Thaddy, are you all right? What’s going on up there?” Winston headed downstairs with the baseball bat, and Thaddy fell in line close behind, still whimpering about Tailybone.

“Shut up!” Winston commanded his brother. “There ain’t no such thing, there never was and there never will be!”

“Then what was that?”

“I don’t know, but it wasn’t no Tailybone. It was a someone, or a something.” Winston was sure of that now, because the face of the beast had something very human about it. Maybe it was something that escaped from someplace. A carnival. An asylum.

“Maybe it’s an alien, maybe,” said Thad. “It was so UGLY!”

“What was so ugly?” shouted Mama. They passed her room downstairs, on the way out the back door. She was already scrambling out of her bed and into her wheel­chair.

“Don’t worry, Mama, I’ll check it out.”

“Don’t you go out there, Winston, if it’s a prowler, we’ll call the sheriff!”

But nothing she could say would stop him now. At first he had been terrified, but the terror was quickly boiling itself into full-blown fury. He had his fighting fury up, and no one messed with ’Stone Pell when he was in a fighting frenzy.

The kids around town knew that you didn’t fight that little freak ’Stone, unless you wanted to be laid out by the count of five—because now Winston’s touch was more than just numbing. Every punch Winston threw was guar­anteed to paralyze whatever it hit. First your right arm would go senseless, then your left, then your chin, then your gut, and before long you were lying on the ground, your body limp and useless for hours—maybe even till morning. Maybe longer.

It left Winston with no one to fight, and that was a hor­rible thing, because, lately all Winston wanted to do was fight.

Winston and Thad raced through Mama’s stunted gar­den, hopped the fence, and followed the thing out into the pasture at the edge of a field ripe with cotton.

The moon was on the rise now, making the cotton shine like snow. There was enough light to see the shape of the thing, as it lumbered behind the octopus tree, an ancient live oak with a dozen limbs perfect for climbing. The thing tried to get up into the tree, but Winston swung the bat. He missed, but the creature slipped on some Spanish moss, and fell to the ground. Thaddy pushed at it once, and then ran to hide behind the octopus tree.

“Paralyze it, ’Stone,” yelled Thad. “Paralyze it good!”

Winston threw the bat down and cornered it against a hedge thick with sharp thorns. He moved in for hand-to-hand combat.

The beast wasn’t as big as he had thought—but it was certainly bigger than he was. Winston dove on the thing, fists flying. It struggled, and Winston grabbed onto its arms—but the thing pulled away, and they both fell over the fence into the cotton. He couldn’t paralyze it, no mat­ter how hard he tried. All he could do was fight it, and so Winston and the beast rolled in the cotton, fighting one another, until the beast spoke.

“Stop it,” it screamed in a voice that was wet and raspy, but still not evil enough for a nightmare beast. “Or I’m really gonna have to beat you silly!”

The thing threw Winston off, and he landed hard against a fence post with a thud.

By now Thaddy was scratching his arm—the one that had touched the thing.

“Why aren’t you paralyzed yet?” Winston demanded. “What the hell are you?”

“I’m a freak,” it said. “I’m a freak like you.”

Winston took a good look at its face. It was pocked and cratered, like the face of the moon—full of peeling sores and swelling boils, as if it had been bathing in nuclear waste. It was what Winston imagined leprosy might be like—only worse.

That’s when Thaddy made an amazing observation.

“I think it might be a girl,” he said.

A girl? Winston regarded the grotesque face. It was hard enough for Winston to figure what color its skin was, much less its sex. The straight blonde hair gave away that it was white, but the fact that the hair was short and mat­ted didn’t say what sex it was, if any.

“Are you a boy or a girl?” demanded Winston.

“A girl,” it said, disgusted.

By now, Thaddy was scratching his arm like crazy.

“What did you do to him?”

The she-thing smiled. “He shouldn’t have touched me. Guess I gave him cooties.”

Thaddy looked at Winston and the pizza-faced girl in horror, as if to say You mean there really is such a thing as coo­ties? He turned and ran back to the house, screaming for Mama.

“He’ll get a rash on his arm,” said the girl. “Probably come down with a bad fever for a week or so, but then it’ll go away . . . he shouldn’t have touched me.”

“Winston?” called his mother from the porch. “What’s going on out there?”

“Just some girl, Mama,” said Winston. “Thaddy fell in some poison ivy—better tend to him.” This was far easier than trying to explain the truth to her.

When his mother had rolled back into the house, the girl-thing told Winston her name was Tory, short for Vic­toria.

“What’s wrong with you?” Winston asked Tory.

“Acne,” she said. “Ain’t you ever seen acne before?”

Winston looked closely. If this was acne, it was acne gone mad. There was a human being down there, but it was hidden far beneath an oily layer of zits built on zits built on zits. If you spread all those blemishes across ten faces, each face would still be painful to look at.

“You’re damn ugly,” observed Winston.

“Gee, thanks for noticing, Mighty Mouse. It just so happens that I know who you are. I’ve been watching you ever since my aunt and me moved here last month. Are you really a witch midget? A devil-dwarf?”

“Go to hell!” shouted Winston, and he leapt at her. So what if she was a girl? No one called him things like that.

They rolled and fought, and even though Winston wasn’t really winning, it felt good. It felt wonderful to ac­tually have someone to fight who didn’t fall to the ground the second he touched them.

“You possum-rot pus-head,” shouted Winston.

“You pin-headed voodoo troll!” shouted Tory.

“Slime-drippin’ cesspool explosion!”

“Baby-brained diaper butt!”

“Fusion-face!”

“Shrunken head!”

“Elephant girl!”

Tory delivered a punch to the nose that was right on the mark. It hurt pretty bad, and Winston had to stagger off, collapsing by the fence.

“Why can’t I paralyze you?” he asked weakly.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Why don’t you get sick when I touch you?”

They looked at each other like boxers in separate cor­ners.

“Sorry I hit you so hard,” said Tory. “It’s just that the elephant girl thing is a sore spot. It’s what they used to call me when I lived in Florida.”

“Where’d you live, the Everglades?” jabbed Winston. “Are you a swamp thing?”

Tory didn’t answer. Even in the dim light Winston could see her puffy eyes filling with tears.

“Okay,” said Winston. “Truce?”

“Truce,” echoed Tory, rubbing the tears from her eyes before they had a chance to fall. Tears would probably make her face sting, thought Winston.

“You always go looking in people’s windows at night, scarin’ ’em half to death?” he asked, wiping his bloody nose.

“Sun’s bad for my delicate complexion,” said Tory, “so I do all my exploring at night. People don’t see me that way. Suits me just fine.”

“Does your face . . . hurt?”

“All the time.” She leaned a bit closer to him, whisper­ing. “Is it true you’re growing backward?”

“What do you care?” snapped Winston.

“I came looking for you because I heard what people said about you. I wanted you to touch my face . . . para­lyze it so I couldn’t feel it at all, and maybe it would stop hurting.”

Winston shook his head. “But you don’t paralyze like the others. . . . Why?”

Just then their faces were lit by a light in the sky, shin­ing brighter than the crescent moon. The cotton around them glowed green for a moment and then pink. At first Winston took it to be the sheriff’s spotlight, but the color was wrong—and it was too high up.

They stood up to get a better look. It was an uneven ball of light, maybe a fourth the size of the moon. It hurt their eyes to look at it.

Winston backed up to a fence post leaning on it for bal­ance. The light had triggered something inside of him, and he thought he might pass out. All at once, his brain was firing like crazy, and he was filled with an overpower­ing sense of wonder and confusion, as if all his life he had been sleeping and was just waking up. But of all the con­fused feelings and thoughts that rocketed through his head, the most overwhelming feeling of all was the sense that this light in the sky, whatever it was, was meant for him.

“It’s incredible,” said Tory. “I’ve never . . . felt any­thing like it.”

Winston looked over at Tory and could see in her rapid breathing and wonder-filled eyes that she was hit by the same devastating wave of emotion that he felt. She had the same revelation that this odd light in the sky did not just hit their eyes, it ignited their souls.

It made Winston furious!

Whatever that light was, it was for him and him alone. He didn’t want to have to share such a special thing with this hideous girl beside him. It would mean that they didn’t meet tonight by accident—they were drawn to­gether—somehow bound like soulmates. Winston found the thought unbearable.

“I . . . know you, don’t I?” asked Tory. “We’re the same, you and me!” She said it with such excitement, it made Winston cringe.

“We might both be freaks,” growled Winston, “but I ain’t nothin’ like you! We got nothin’ in common, do you hear me?!”

It was then that Winston noticed the noise. It had been growing all around both of them since the light had ap­peared in the sky, and now its volume grew and multi­plied until it buzzed in the brush like an air-raid siren. Winston knew right then that the sound was aimed at the two of them, and no one else in all of Alabama—and he knew that it was a sign he could not deny. The sound was nature itself, screaming out to tell him that this torturously ugly girl was more his sister than anyone born to his fam­ily. More like him than anyone he had known.

“What is it?” asked Tory, holding her ears. Winston tried to squeeze out the sound as well, but couldn’t.

“Crickets,” answered Winston. “Millions of’em.”

3. A Planetoid, The Full Moon And The Scorpion Star

Earlier that same day, and a thousand miles northeast, the south fork of eastern Long Island was set upon by an unseasonably warm fog. It brooded dense and round on the weather maps like a gray cataract—an un­seeing eye surrounded by cold, clear skies. Shrouded in the center of the fog stood Hampton Bays High School, where things had been normal until third period. That’s when the chase began for Lourdes Hidalgo.

It started in the science lab, and the chase spread through the school as Lourdes tried to escape from the teachers who chased her. She had lost them by ducking into a broom closet, and now she descended the south stairwell, hoping that everyone would be thrown off track just long enough for her to burst out into the foggy Octo­ber day and freedom.

As Lourdes lumbered down the worn metal stairs of the old school, the stairs rang out in dull, heavy tolls, like an ancient mission bell. The bolts creaked, and the steel steps themselves seemed like cardboard, ready to give way under her immense weight.

Lourdes, however, had grown used to that. She was used to chairs buckling beneath her when she sat. She was used to the way her hips would brush past both sides of a door frame when she entered a room, as if the entire room was a tight pair of pants she was trying to squeeze her way into. But she would never get used to the cruel teasing.

Now Lourdes was bounding down the metal stairs, two steps at a time, running from teachers, the guidance coun­selor and the principal. Ralphy Sherman had deserved what Lourdes had done to him, and so she fought back her tears, and fought the remorse that was trying to take hold of her.

Ralphy had been whispering lies about Lourdes in sci­ence lab, as if he himself believed they were true. Did you hear that Lourdes was offered ten grand to join the circus? Did you hear that Lurdes donates fat to the Southampton Candle Factory? Did you hear they found some loose change and a VCR remote in Lourdes’s belly button? Lourdes tried to control herself. She bit her tongue and gritted her teeth, but there’s only so much abuse a person can take. She wanted to hurt him as much as he hurt her—as much as they all hurt her, and so she pushed Ralphy up against the wall, held her hand firmly on his chest, and felt his chest begin to crush in­ward. Ralphy tried to scream, but couldn’t. His face turned red, purple, then blue. By then the teacher had taken notice, and came running, so Lourdes stepped away from the limp blue kid, and he fell to the floor. Lourdes ran.

Now, as she lumbered down the stairs she cursed the steps and the way they rang out every time her bursting orthopedic shoes hit them.

It was at the first floor landing that Lourdes encoun­tered Mrs. Conroy, the principal of Hampton Bays High.

“Hold it right there, Lourdes.” She stood ten steps be­neath Lourdes, and her voice was well trained to wield power—power enough to stop the grossly obese girl in her tracks. Lourdes swayed just a bit, and the steps creaked like the hinges of a rusty door. There wasn’t any sympathy from anyone in school this year—not even the principal. It was as if sympathy and understanding were limited to a certain waist size, and if a person grew beyond that limit, they were fair game for all forms of cruelty.

“You are coming to the office,” said Mrs. Conroy, “and we’re calling your parents. What you’ve done is very serious, do you understand?”

“Of course I understand,” said Lourdes. “I’m fat, not stupid.” Her voice was thick and seemed to be wrapped within heavy, wet layers of cotton. When Lourdes spoke, it sounded as if she was shouting from inside the belly of a whale.

“I didn’t kill him, did I?” asked Lourdes.

“No,” said Mrs. Conroy, “but you could have.”

Lourdes was relieved and disappointed at the same time.

“This school has had about enough of you,” growled Conroy.

“Does that mean I’m expelled?”

“We’ll talk about it in my office.”

“Fat chance,” said Lourdes. She took one step at a time as she descended slowly toward her principal.

Boom! The steps rang out as Lourdes planted her swol­len foot on them.

Boom!

In a moment she eclipsed the stairway lights, and Conroy’s face was lost in shadow.

“I’m warning you, Lourdes . . .”

Boom!

As Lourdes approached, Mrs. Conroy seemed smaller and less powerful. Why, she was just a wisp of a woman after all, thought Lourdes.

Boom!

“Lourdes, I won’t let you past me.”

“So try and stop me.”

Boom!

As Lourdes continued her descent toward the frail principal, Conroy unconsciously gripped the rail, already feeling Lourdes’s pull—her gravity, for Lourdes did have a gravity about her. When she was in a room, it was difficult not to find oneself leaning in her direction. If a breeze blew in through the window and scattered papers, they would all stick to Lourdes until she peeled them off. If you threw a paper airplane at her, it would curve around her and come back to you like a boomerang—and if you threw it just right, that airplane would continue to circle in orbit around her until it fell to the ground. Her class­mates called her the Planetoid, and she hated them all.

“If you so much as touch me, Lourdes—"

Boom!

The final step. Lourdes stood right before Conroy, and the principal’s shoulder-length hair was falling forward across her face, reaching toward Lourdes. Her immense belly pinned the principal against the wall, and they looked into each other’s eyes. Fear was in the principal’s eyes now. Fear and disgust.

“It’s not my fault I’m like this,” said Lourdes. With that the principal’s body began to crush inward, from Lourdes’s mere touch, collapsing in upon itself. Barely able to breathe, Conroy snarled out her words.

“You don’t belong here,” she said, and Lourdes knew she wasn’t just talking about school. “Here,” for Lourdes, meant this world. She brushed Conroy away as if swatting a fly, and the woman gasped for breath, as if she had just escaped the crushing force of a black hole.

Principal Conroy clutched the railing to keep from col­lapsing and shouted at Lourdes, but Lourdes didn’t listen. She just continued out of the stairwell and onto the first floor.

The first floor hallway housed mostly English and history classrooms. The nearest exit was to the left, but the school security guard and guidance counselor were stand­ing there, blocking Lourdes’s escape route. At the other end of the hall stood the vice-principal and a whole legion of teachers. They all began to close in.

Either she could run at them, hoping her momentum would take them out like bowling pins, or she could duck into an empty classroom. Since there were too many of them to bowl over, she chose the classroom. Once inside, she would be cornered, but at least she’d have an arsenal of things to throw at them as they tried to come at her. If it had to be her against the whole world, then the whole world would be made to suffer for what it was doing to Lourdes Hidalgo.

She pushed into the classroom, and instantly caught sight of Miss Benson—the new English teacher—and Mi­chael Lipranski in the front of the classroom.

Lourdes was not prepared for what she saw. Her eyes went wide and her jaw dropped open.

Because Michael Lipranski was kissing his English teacher.

The very sight of it distracted Lourdes a moment too long, and she was caught off guard when everyone burst into the room. With so many people trying to wrestle her under control, not even her crushing gravity could save her. In the end, she had to give up. Her only consolation was that Michael Lipranski was also caught, and he would be in as much trouble as she was. Maybe more.

Michael Lipranski was an unlikely make-out king. Sure, he was attractive, but there was something about him that was unnerving, unclean and a bit slimy. He was a bit too thin, his dark hair was a bit too long—and al­ways damp. When he would look at you, you could swear that he was reading your most secret thoughts and think­ing great mischief.

He wasn’t your typical stud—had no great muscles to speak of, and there was always a constellation of bruises over much of his body. Some of these came courtesy of his father, who was known to use his fists, but most were from fights around school. Michael wasn’t much of a fighter, but he had learned to defend himself in a world that turned out to be far more cruel and vicious than he ever thought it could be.

Physically, the only thing truly special about Michael Lipranski was his eyes. He had these impossibly intense turquoise-hazel eyes, layered with rich coronas of color that made them seem as deep, warm and inviting as a Caribbean sea. The girls in school could lose themselves in Michael’s eyes, and often did. It happened last year in Baltimore, and it happened here in the Hamptons. Maybe that’s why all the guys hated him.

And maybe that’s why no teacher wanted him in their classroom. For several years Michael could never figure out why this was so. He was friendly, funny and person­able. He made an effort to do the work. Still, he seemed to be an epicenter for all sorts of disturbances. Since seventh grade, Michael’s classrooms had always been remarkably unruly. He always assumed that this was normal. Kids hit puberty and turned into monsters, right? That’s what ev­eryone said . . . but the way his classmates acted wasn’t exactly normal.

When Michael was in a room a clamminess filled the air that pulled at the edge of everyone’s senses like a smell so faint it was impossible to identify. Whatever it was, it usually attacked girls and guys differently. It made girls’ hearts race and made them suddenly feel like there was something that they desperately wanted. They would begin to sweat, and their eyes would constantly seek out Michael’s—for if they could look into Michael’s eyes, they would begin to feel just a bit better. And if they could move closer to him, they could feel relief. Close enough to smell his breath. Closer still, to taste it.

Of course, guys didn’t generally feel that way. Instead they felt like beating Michael up.

So when the posse chasing Lourdes Hidalgo burst into Miss Benson’s classroom, word got around at the speed-of-light squared that Michael “Lips” Lipranski had taken his smooth moves to new heights. Everyone acted sur­prised, but no one really was.

While Lourdes sat in the principal’s office under tight guard, Michael had a pressing appointment with Mr. Fleiderman, the guidance counselor, who was everyone’s friend—or at least tried to be.

The appointment wasn’t held in Fleiderman’s office, because when it wasn’t too cold, Fleiderman liked to hold his sessions out in the quad—the courtyard in the center of the large school. More relaxed, less threatening, Fleid­erman thought. It had never occurred to him that most kids didn’t want to talk to the guidance counselor in view of the entire school.

When Michael crossed through the wall of steamy fog, it seemed that the rest of the world slipped off the edge of the earth into gray nothingness. It’s how Michael felt in­side too—lost, alone and confused—generally fogged in, but he didn’t plan on letting Fleiderman see that. Let him think I’m calm and in control, thought Michael as he ap­proached the over-eager counselor.

Fleiderman shook Michael’s hand and invited him to sit with him in the moist grass. Michael refused to sit.

“Why not?” asked Fleiderman, pleasantly. “I won’t bite.”

Michael smiled his winning smile. “Standing is better, strategically speaking,” he said. “If you attack me and try to strangle me, I can run. And yes, you might bite, too.”

Fleiderman laughed at the suggestion and decided to stand. “All right, we’ll do it your way.”

They both waited. Michael leaned against a yellowing sycamore tree with his arms folded.

“So talk to me,” Fleiderman finally said.

“So talk to you about what?”

“You know what. Miss Benson.”

“What about her?”

“You tell me.”

Michael shrugged and looked away. “She kissed me. So?”

“Don’t you mean you kissed her?”

Michael smiled slyly. “What makes you so sure?”

Fleiderman grunted slightly. Michael could see irrita­tion building in the mild-mannered man.

“I want to understand where you’re coming from, Mi­chael.”

“Baltimore.”

“No, inside. I want to understand you.”

That made Michael laugh out loud. “Good luck.”

“I know you keep yourself pretty busy with the girls in school. I know you’re . . . shall we say . . . ‘active.’ "

“Active?” said Michael. “Like a volcano?”

“Sexually active.”

“Oh,” said Michael. “That.” He looked away again and paced around to the other side of the sycamore. Fleiderman followed, and Michael noted how the guid­ance counselor’s irritation had already built into frustra­tion.

“I make out a lot,” explained Michael. “I don’t go much past that. Second base, maybe. You know.”

“Am I supposed to believe that?”

“Believe what you want,” said Michael. And then Mi­chael smiled again, “but to tell you the truth, sex scares me.

“Why?” asked Fleiderman. “Afraid you might ex­plode?”

Michael shrugged. “Yeah. Or that the girl might.”

Fleiderman laughed uncomfortably, but Michael didn’t. He became dead serious and noticed that Fleiderman’s hands had involuntarily tightened into fists.

“Let’s get back to Miss Benson,” said Fleiderman. He reached up to wipe steam from his glasses.

“What happened wasn’t all my fault, okay?” said Mi­chael, beginning to say more than he had really wanted to. “She didn’t have to keep me after class to talk about my book report. She didn’t have to come up to me and touch my shoulder like that—and she didn’t have to kiss me back when I kissed her.”

Fleiderman gritted his teeth. Michael could see his anger heading toward meltdown. There was no logical reason for it; Michael wasn’t antagonizing him—Michael was, in fact, being honest and spilling his guts, just like Fleiderman wanted. Still the guidance counselor seethed with anger. “Miss Benson will be dealt with,” Fleiderman said. “But now we’re talking about you and your problem of self-control!”

“How the hell am I supposed to control myself when all the girls in school are after me, and all the guys want to beat the crap out of me?”

Fleiderman’s whole face seemed clenched as he spat his words out. “Oh, I see. Everyone either loves you or hates you. You’re the center of the universe and everyone’s ac­tions revolve around you.”

“Yeah,” said Michael. “That’s it!”

“Delusions!” shouted Fleiderman. He was furious, and Fleiderman never got furious at anything. Staying calm was his job. “It’s all in your head!” he shouted.

“Oh yeah?” Michael took a step closer to Fleiderman. Michael was five-seven, Fleiderman closer to six feet. “What do you feel now, Mr. Fleiderman? Do you feel re­ally pissed off? Do you want to grab me and rip my head off? It’s like you’re turning into a werewolf inside, isn’t it? An animal. Everyone who hangs around me long enough starts acting like an animal out of control. They either want to kill me or kiss me. Actually I’m glad that you’d rather kill me.”

Meltdown! Fleiderman lost it, and he lunged at Mi­chael, grabbing him by the throat. Michael pushed him away, but Fleiderman lunged again, growling—baring his teeth like a mad dog. Fleiderman smashed the boy with the back of his hand, then threw Michael to the ground; Michael tried to scramble away, but Fleiderman was too fast. He was on Michael, pinning him to the ground; he raised his heavy fist, ready to bring it across Michael’s jaw with a blow that would surely break it.

“Stop!” said Michael. “They’re watching!”

Fleiderman’s wild uneven breath gave way to a whine as he looked up to see that the fog had lifted just enough for the school windows to be seen all around them. Faces peered out from classrooms on all sides, as if this was a Roman circus and Michael was fodder for the lion.

“Kill him, Fleiderman,” shouted some kid from the third floor. “Kill the creep!”

Fleiderman could have—it was in his power, and it was certainly in his eyes; instead, the guidance counselor bit his own lip and continued biting it until it bled. Then he fell off of Michael and crouched in a humiliated heap, try­ing to find himself once more.

“My God!” muttered Fleiderman. “What am I doing? What’s wrong with me?”

“It’s not you,” said Michael, refusing to let his own tears out. “It’s me. I turn people crazy. I’m like . . . a full moon, only worse.”

Fleiderman wiped blood from his lips as he crouched low, still unable to look up at Michael.

“You won’t be going to this school anymore,” he told Michael, finally getting to the bottom line.

“I’m being expelled?”

“Transferred.” Which to Michael was the same thing.

Fleiderman began to breathe hard, fighting back words of anger. Michael could tell because his face was turning red, and although Michael felt like kicking Fleiderman in the gut, he didn’t. Instead he dug deep within himself, to find a feeling that was decent, and when he found it, Michael took his hand and gently rested it on Fleiderman’s hunched shoulder.

“It’s all right,” said Michael. “You can say it if it makes you feel better—it doesn’t bother me.”

“I hate you!” screamed Fleiderman. “I hate your guts!”

“Say it again.”

“I hate you . . ."Just saying the words seem to release some of Fleiderman’s steam. He quivered the tiniest bit.

Although those words hurt, they also gave Michael a sense of control. He could bring people down to their knees in love or hate, altering their very nature. He could turn a bright, sunny disposition into a storming fury. He could turn the heart of an ice-queen into hot steam. Such awesome power must be worth something.

Michael patted Fleiderman’s shoulder and turned to leave. As Michael crossed the quad, his thoughts became a bit clearer and what fog was left in his own mind began to lift, along with the fog in the quad. Now that the worst was over, he felt relieved as he went back into school to clear out his locker.

As Michael left the quad, Fleiderman began to feel his fury fading. In a moment, Fleiderman’s humanity came crawling back to him, and he began to condemn himself and obsess over this awful thing he had just done—for no reason he could figure out. He felt ashamed and terrified.

Love and hate being two sides of the same coin, Fleid­erman began to wonder if the unfortunate Miss Benson also felt this way once Michael Lipranski had been removed from her company.

That night, while the rest of the Eastern seaboard was densely padded with storm systems, a patch of clear sky stalled over eastern Long Island, making it a perfect night for the annual star-watch. After sunset, four dozen kids gathered to spend an evening on Montauk Point with their science teacher, peering through his telescope, draw­ing star maps by flashlight, and calculating the speed of the Earth’s rotation.

Both Michael and Lourdes were advised not to come, which was more certain to assure their attendance than giving them a printed invitation. Michael, who had been sporting a fake license for almost a year now, drove up in his father’s van, and no one was quite sure how or when Lourdes got there; at times she was amazingly stealthy for a girl of her size.

Montauk Point was a state park surrounded by cold, rough ocean on three sides, and the bluff beyond the light­house was the farthest east one could get in the state of New York. It was the tip of Long Island and simply as far as you could go. Unless, of course, you chose to take one step further east—off the cliff and into the sea.

It was around eleven that night that Michael Lipranski stood at the tip of the lighthouse bluff, contemplating that final step east that would send him plunging to his death in the cold breakers.

For Michael, the evening hadn’t begun with such thoughts, but it had begun desperately. The star-watch was a great make-out opportunity—and on his last day at this school, Michael felt compelled to take advantage of that.

Upon arrival, Michael had set his charms on Melissa Brickle, who was, by nature, the school’s wallflower. One smile from Michael changed her nature considerably. He took her to the high bluff behind the lighthouse—the most easterly place—and there, to the sound of waves and the pulse of the spinning light arcing over their heads, Michael got down to business.

Michael’s kisses were more frantic than passionate; more compulsive than romantic, but Melissa did not no­tice, for, as Michael knew, no one had ever kissed Melissa Brickle this way before, and her own new and overwhelm­ing feelings blocked out everything else. Michael could feel himself trespassing in the dark places of her mind, releasing those feelings like wild beasts from a cage. A thin ground fog carpeted the grass around them, slipping off the cliff in a slow vapor fall. The mist seemed to be flow­ing from the two of them.

Through it all, Michael’s mind and body were explod­ing with emotions. Frustration, anger, confusion all fought for control—but what he felt more than anything tonight was futility. No matter what he did, no matter how many girls he lured into secret corners—even if he took them all the way and absolutely gave in to all of his urges—he still would not be satisfied. Instead his urges would only increase—they would grow and drive him in­sane. Michael’s grip on Melissa grew stronger as they kissed—so strong that it must have been hurting her, but she didn’t notice. She wouldn’t notice even if Michael re­ally did hurt her.

“Tighter,” she said. “Hold me tighter.”

And as he tightened his grip, Michael came to under­stand that this frenzied necking was a violation of the girl. He had, in some way, entered this girl’s mind—he made her want all the things that he could do to her, and this was a violation as real as any other. Michael was terrified of what he was turning into, and what awful things he might be capable of.

Before it went too far, Michael pushed Melissa away.

“What’s the matter?” she asked. “Did I do something wrong?”

She moved toward him again, then this shy, sweet girl slipped her hand into his jacket, and shirt, shamelessly rubbing his chest.

Michael gently grabbed her hand and placed it back down in her lap. “Better stop,” he said.

“Better not,” she whispered. She tried to snuggle up to him, but Michael stood up.

“Just go!” screamed Michael. “Get out of here!” But she did not move—so he reached down, picked up a clump of dirt and hurled it at her shoes.

Confused and humiliated, Melissa ran off in tears.

Good, thought Michael. Because there were worse things she could feel than humiliation.

Soon the sound of her footfalls faded, and Michael was left alone with his bloated, malignant urges. But those urges could be killed, couldn’t they? The sound of the crashing ocean made him think of that. These soul-sear­ing urges that ate him alive could be destroyed by one sin­gle step east. Right now anything seemed better than having to feel That Way anymore.

And so, before he knew what he was doing, Michael found himself leaning into the wind at the edge of the cliff, daring his balance to fail him, and gravity to pull him down to his end.

“Do you really think anyone cares if you jump?”

The voice came as such a shock, Michael almost did loose his balance. He stumbled backward, away from the cliff, into the grass. His life did not so much flash before his eyes, as slap him in the face.

“If you jump, people might freak, but they’ll forget soon enough,” said a voice that was dense and wet, like liquid rubber. Lourdes Hidalgo lumbered out from be­hind a bush like a buffalo, and Michael wondered how long she had been watching.

In truth, Lourdes had been watching from the moment Michael had brought Melissa to the bluff. Lourdes enjoyed watching the other kids make out—and wasn’t ashamed of it either. She had enough things to feel ashamed of—peeping was low on her shame list.

“I don’t care if everyone forgets me,” said Michael. I’m just sick of feeling This Way, okay?”

“What way?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“How do you know?”

Michael looked down at the bulge in his pants. They were too tight down there, as always, and in this warped little moment, he didn’t care who he told or how dumb it sounded.

“Do you know what it’s like to feel totally crazed all of the time? To wake up That Way, and go to class That Way, and not be able to sleep at night because of the Those Thoughts going through your head, and then when you do sleep, to be invaded by Those Kind of dreams? They say we got hormones, right? Well, I don’t have hormones, I am a hormone—one big mutated hor­mone with a thousand hands and a million eyes. It’s like that hormone has eaten me alive, and there’s nothing left of me. Do you know how that feels?”

Lourdes, to her credit, took the question very seriously. “No,” she said. “But I do know what it’s like to be fat. So fat that I can’t sit down in a movie theater. So fat that I have to ride in elevators alone. So fat that when I take a bath, there’s no room for any water in the tub. If anyone should jump into the sea, it should be me.”

Michael shrugged, feeling embarrassed. “Naah. You’d probably bounce.”

Lourdes considered this. “Or splat like a water bal­loon.”

“Gross!” Michael looked at Lourdes. She was truly hideous to behold, even in this dim light.

Lourdes smiled at him and Michael backed off. Was this a trick? Was she just after him like all the other girls? After all, she could not be immune to his full-moon effect, could she?

“Nice try,” said Michael. “I’m not going to kiss you, so get lost.” He turned toward the edge of the cliff again, contemplating it.

“Kiss you? I don’t want to kiss you, your breath smells like onions.”

This got Michael’s interest. “What do you mean you don’t want to? Don’t you find me irresistible?”

“I can resist you just fine,” said Lourdes. “I mean, you don’t use enough deodorant, your clothes are ugly, your hair is stringy—"

Michael grinned, unable to believe his ears. “Go on! Tell me more!”

“Let’s see. You’ve got a crooked lower tooth, your eye­brows are like caterpillars, you got no butt at all. . . .”

Michael practically jumped for joy. “That’s great,” he said. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve been able to talk to someone without them either wanting to beat the crap out of me, or make out with me? Do you know how long it’s been since I could talk to a girl without feeling you-know-how? This is great!” Michael could have gone on for hours contemplating the deep ramifica­tions of their mutual lack of attraction, but hearing about how unattractive Michael found her didn’t seem to make Lourdes too happy. He looked at her swollen form and wondered how a girl could get this way.

“You know, you’d probably lose weight if you ate less,” offered Michael.

“I’ll tell you a secret,” said Lourdes. Her head rolled forward on her neckless body, and she whispered in her cotton-padded voice; “I haven’t eaten in months.”

“No way!”

“It’s true—not a bite, and still I get fatter. Almost a pound every day.”

“That’s wild!”

Lourdes smiled. “As wild as your man-eating hor­mone, maybe?”

They looked at each other, both beginning to realize that their similarities ran far deeper than they could have imagined—and then, without warning, the sky exploded.

A burst of green, and then a strange pink light lit up the heavens; it shook Michael and Lourdes to the core of their very souls.

“A supernova!” exclaimed Mr. Knapp, the science teacher. “My God! I think it’s a supernova!” He franti­cally cranked his telescope toward the constellation of Scorpius, then flipped through his astronomy book to identify the star.

In a matter of minutes, a star in the tail of the scorpion flared to a fourth the size of the moon. Michael and Lourdes stepped out from behind the lighthouse to see ev­eryone crowding around Knapp, who compared his star chart to the heavens above him.

“Mentarsus-H!” he announced. “It says here that it’s sixteen light years away—that means it blew up before most of you were born!”

Knapp immediately started to explain, “It took all those years for the light of the explosion to reach the earth. Like when you’re in the bleachers at the ball park, you see the player swing, but don’t hear the crack of the bat until a second later. Space is so vast that light takes years to get from star to star. That star blew up over six­teen years ago, but we’re just finding out about it now.”

While everyone else marveled at this grand cosmic dis­play, Michael and Lourdes lingered beyond the fringe of the crowd—touched by the nova with an intensity none of the others felt. It was as if the light illuminated some part of themselves that had always been hidden in shad­ows.

“I have to go!” Michael suddenly exclaimed. “I have to go now!” He was already fumbling in his pockets for the keys to his van.

“I have to go with you,” said Lourdes, her eyes filling with tears she could not explain.

Yes! thought Michael. It had to be the two of them. They were both being drawn away—drawn west. They had to travel west because . . .

. . . Because there were others! Others who were like them.

The truth came to him as if he had known it all along.

Michael could imagine them now—all of them looking up at the supernova at this same instant, in places far away.

“I have room in the van for you,” said Michael.

“I have a credit card,” said Lourdes, “if we need money.”

They hurried toward Michael’s van, as if they could afford no lost time.

Now those people standing around the telescope and all the other people in their lives seemed meaningless and unimportant.

Michael turned the key in the ignition with such force the starter screamed as the engine came to life.

“Where do we go?” asked Lourdes. “How will we know when we get there?”

But both of them knew there were no answers to such questions. In a moment they were gone, driving west, while their former classmates looked heavenward through a round patch of clear sky that was fixed over Montauk like an eye, staring unblinking into infinity.