Miscreated Page 6

  It started dancing again, a beautiful dance that covered the breadth of the horizon, danced and danced until it started to become weak and drooped a little too closely to the fiery cracks.

  “Come back,” Jimi called, afraid for it. “We have to go home now.”

  He let the tired bumblebee rest on his shoulder. Its legs pricked him, burned him a little through his shirt, its metal body conducting the heat all too well.

  Jimi had never questioned his own bravery before, but pushing himself off that branch took more nerve than he had, so he pretended to be someone else. Like his tito who’d once taken on and destroyed an armed robber with nothing but his fists. But once Jimi got moving, it was easy, the heat billowing from the ground held him up so effortlessly that he barely had to do anything.

  The trip home was much shorter, the purple gradually darkening until Jimi was completely blind. Which was why he smacked face first into his window.

  THUD!

  “What’s all the ruckus?”

  Jimi covered his eyes, moaning at the sudden brightness.

  “What happened?” César grabbed him and then withdrew slightly. “Why’re you so sweaty? Are you feverish?”

  Everything was blurry, and wiping the burning tears—sweat?—from his eyes only helped a little. But he’d recognize César in his Hugh Hefner smoking jacket anywhere.

  “It was hot over there. Where the bee took me.” Jimi plucked it from his shoulder and showed it to César who barely glanced at it.

  “The bee took you somewhere? All I saw was you banging your head against the window.”

  “That was on the way back. Before that, the bee was knocking on the window so it could fly me to that tree in that place where the ground is on fire.”

  “Jesus, Jimi, how drunk are you? I can’t even understand what you’re saying.”

  “César?” It was Giselle, that sing-song come hither summons that his dad had never been able to resist.

  “I’d better go check on her. In the meantime, get into bed. I’ll bring back a cool wash cloth and a glass of water.”

  Jimi grabbed César’s lapels. “The bee poisoned me. It said it would be better if I was full of poison.”

  But César wasn’t hearing him, wasn’t listening in the proper language. “Just get in bed like I said. You’re delirious. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  When César left, Jimi stripped off his sweaty clothes and exchanged them for a dry t-shirt and boxers. He set the bee on his night table where he could keep an eye on it. “Your stinger was supposed to fall off,” Jimi told it, “so you can’t sting me anymore.”

  The bee shed its stinger and kicked it off the night table with its tiny feet.

  “That’s better.”

  Jimi’s bed was nice and cool, especially against his lower back, which still burned from the bee sting. He was half asleep when César returned, smoking jacket hanging askew, no wash cloth or water. Didn’t seem to remember he’d promised to bring them.

  He put his hand on Jimi’s forehead. “You feel a lot cooler.”

  “The coolest.”

  “English! That’s a good sign.”

  “I think Dez made the bumblebee sting me. Why would she do that?”

  “You were dreaming. While drunk. The worst kind of dreaming.”

  “I was awake. I am awake.” Jimi yawned. “You think I’m crazy.”

  “I think you need to sleep.”

  “My mind doesn’t work right. My body doesn’t work right. Something weird’s happening to me.”

  César went to the window. “It could have been bad air wafting in, messing with your emotions. Is that your pillow down on the sidewalk?” He closed the window and locked it. “Or something was out there trying to get in. Trying to get you.” He ran his hand over the markings carved into the windowsill. “Most of these charms have faded.”

  “Dez is immune to my charms. She didn’t use to be. She came all the way back from the dead to be with me, because she loves me. The only one who really does.”

  “What?”

  “But I keep trying to get rid of her. Get over her. No wonder she hates me now.”

  “Don’t make everything about Dez.” César came back and sat on the edge of Jimi’s bed. “That’s what got us into this mess in the first place. You have other things in your life. Good friends, a bright future, a family who loves you. A new sister on the way. A new...whatever Alexis is having. Dez is dead—Sister Judith said so. It’s probably just some creature out there wanting to eat you, but a creature would want to eat anyone. You can’t take it personally. Of course your body feels like it isn’t working right. That’s how puberty is.”

  “You always say that.”

  “Because it’s true. It’s a wild time. Wilder for some than others.”

  “Why wilder for me?”

  “You’re special!” César boomed heartily. “Unique! You were born on a Wednesday. It’s always more of a challenge if you’re born on Wednesday.”

  “I was born on Thursday.”

  “César?” Giselle again.

  “Doesn’t she ever sleep?”

  “It’s the pregnancy,” César said. “She’s…needy.”

  Jimi wished his pillow wasn’t outside so he could put it between him and the sleazy look on his dad’s face.

  “I’ll get a stronger charm for the window tomorrow. You need anything? Water? I was supposed to bring you water, wasn’t I? I’ll be back.” César turned off the light and left.

  He didn’t come back, but the thudding did—from César and Giselle’s room.

  At least the thuds were familiar this time. And gentle. Gentle enough to fall asleep to.

  Chapter 7

  The following Friday evening, Jimi stood in Fountain Square at an impromptu meeting with Mr. Toffett, who was hurriedly locking the library doors. A light rain had dampened Jimi’s hair, his clothes, but not his spirits, despite Mr. Toffett’s tirade.

  “No volunteers, Jimi. Never again! The last group of volunteers I got from Portero High were a complete disaster. One ended up at Jhonen’s.” Jhonen Cook State Hospital was the local lunatic depository. “The rest tried to burn down the library!”

  “Transies, Mr. Toffett. That was the problem. Past presidents always pawned off the volunteer work onto transies who would agree to do just about anything to fit in. That’s what I’m trying to change. I don’t want volunteerism to be this uncool transy thing. I want the entire student body under my leadership to get involved in their community.”

  “I appreciate your idealism, but special collections still smells of smoke and gasoline. Three hundred year old books with knife wounds! We’re knee-deep in litigation—”

  “Mr. Toffett.” Jimi took a deep breath, and turned on his “quiet storm” voice. It worked better on women than men, but he wasn’t trying to get laid, so he didn’t need to be at one-hundred percent. Not for Timothy Toffett. Library director. Sunday school teacher. Donator of money to public television.

  “The B Squad doesn’t consist of second-rate kids as the name would suggest; I know that was a tactical error on our part when we were choosing a name for the group. I accept full responsibility for that, but let me assure you that these kids are the best and brightest our school has to offer—our A Squad. They’re only B Squad in the professional world because they obviously lack experience. So when your A Squad is busy, or like yourself, too important to do the grunt work, that’s when you call on us, depend on us the way we depend on the library.”

  Brief pause here to admire the multistory gothic building, the bespectacled gargoyles guarding the entrance.

  “Yours is a sacred profession, Mr. Toffett. A wholesome linchpin of the community, what the B Squad aspires to be. I am idealistic, but developing a solid work ethic, as well as a moral and civic one, shouldn’t be an ideal but a reality. It can be, with your help.”

  Then, The Look. A complicated blend of you’re my only hope and do what I say or die. Poor Mr. Toffett was no match
for it.

  He sighed. “Fine, Jimi. But no transies this time. No nervous nellies period. Some of the books in the collection are…”

  “Murderous?”

  “Unfriendly. Whoever you choose, their parents need to be okay with that.”

  “Absolutely. I’ll send some kids over on Monday. With liability waivers.”

  Mr. Toffett raced down the library steps, hoping to outrun the coming storm. Thunderheads were building, obscuring the setting sun that had tinged the clouds violet-orange. But despite the increasing thunder and lightning, the rain hadn’t turned heavy, at least not yet.

  Fountain Square, a large plaza at the center of town, was as packed as always, despite the coming storm. Each of the plaza’s four sides was dominated by huge buildings: St. Teresa Cathedral to the south, the courthouse to the north, the Pinkerton Hotel to the east, and the library to the west. The fortification of landmarks made Fountain Square feel enclosed and sheltered, a safe haven, which was another reason why so many people gathered here, rain or shine; safety was such an elusive beast.

  “Jimi!”

  It was Dan, one of the transies that Mr. Toffett had been railing against. Transies were transients—people who moved to Portero and didn’t learn the rules of survival quickly enough. After a few months, they usually ended up fleeing town in terror or eaten.

  Take Dan for example. He was nice enough, obsessed with Fallout and Bioshock, liked dogs but not small ones, and had a pen pal/girlfriend from South Korea, but if he lived to the end of the year, Jimi would be very surprised. He was wearing a rainbow colored umbrella hat, red shorts, and the bag that hung around his neck was lime green. He looked like a bag of Skittles.

  The bag of Skittles was hardworking at least; the evidence was all over Fountain Square, which looked as though all that hard work had been perpetrated by a lunatic. Flyers fluttered along the colonnade pillars, people peeled them from the soles of their wet shoes, priests snatched them from the doors of the cathedral.

  Hardworking, but stupid.

  “I’m done,” Dan said, when Jimi joined him beneath the colonnades that lined Fountain Square.

  “Done? Why would you put up all the flyers right here in this one area?”

  “You said tape them up in the square.”

  “When people say ‘the square’ they mean”—Jimi had to search for the word—“downtown. All the bit surrounding Fountain Square.”

  “Ohh. Got it.”

  “I’ll go with you. It’s better not to travel alone anyway, especially”—when you’re dressed like a goddamn idiot wasn’t the most politic way to end that sentence, so Jimi settled for—“when it’s so close to nightfall.”

  “Gimme a break. I been here for almost a month; I know the score.”

  Instead of vigorously disagreeing, Jimi traded his own black bag full of B Squad flyers with Dan’s empty green one.

  “Smiley’s at seven, right? See ya!”

  After Dan ran off, Jimi did him a favor and stuffed the green bag into the nearest trash bin. He scanned the plaza for the rest of his volunteer committee, but they had all scattered, out hustling local businesses for the B Squad, he assumed. Many people had taken shelter from the rain under the colonnades, but many more remained in the open—the St. Andy’s kids in their navy uniforms buying popcorn in front of the hotel, the bridesmaids lining up before St. Teresa for wedding pictures, holding their frothy pink dresses off the wet cathedral steps, the throngs of people meeting at the courthouse far below the four-sided clock tower. So many people, yet Jimi may as well have been alone.

  A frisson of panic twisted his spine.

  Jimi’d once asked César if he had ever left Jimi behind in a mall or an amusement park. César had denied it, but Jimi was sure something must have happened. Fear of abandonment didn’t just blow in like a storm out of nowhere. Fear that made it so hard to let go of Dez. Alexis thought he hadn’t doused the bumblebee because being haunted made a good excuse for his screw-ups, but that wasn’t it. The real reason was that as long as Dez was haunting him, he’d never be alone.

  God that was pathetic. He was so pathetic.

  Jimi considered the sunken amphitheater with the jet of spuming water at its center that had given Fountain Square its name. The bumblebee was in his pocket; he could feel the press of it through his skinny jeans. All he had to do was run over there and drop the bee in the water. Simple. Sane. Smart.

  He’d do it next week.

  As soon as Jimi chickened out, the bee shifted in his pocket. Escaped. Fought gravity and wind and rain. Clumsily dodged an old couple walking hand in hand with trash bags over their heads. So lumbering and slow that Jimi caught it easily.

  “What’s the matter with you? Are you trying to run away? From me?”

  The bee waggled up and down in his palm, little feet prickly and sharp, dancing out a message Jimi translated as:

  They’re looking for you.

  The bee stopped dancing, stopped doing everything, and lay still and cold in Jimi’s hand. He enclosed it in a protective fist, heart thumping as he spied them overhead. Three…men?

  Jimi couldn’t be sure, not with his newly photophobic vision, but their deep red wings at least were screamingly clear, vivid against the rain and clouds. Enormous wings that, fully extended, were longer than the men themselves.

  They circled slowly, tight figure eights that swept the bit of sky high above Fountain Square. Searching, the bee had said, for Jimi.

  Unbidden came the memory of the fake parish hall, the blood swirling hypnotically; like the winged men, the same pattern.

  Jimi backtracked to the colonnade and, once shielded from view, grabbed a passerby.

  “Can I have your umbrella?”

  “Get the hell off me.”

  “Please! I’m being hunted.”

  “By what?” Not in disbelief.

  “Men with wings. They can’t see me under here, but it’s not like I can carry the colonnade all the way home.” Jimi whipped out The Look again, and after only a second’s worth of its power, the passerby said:

  “You can have it if you tell me which way you’re going.”

  “Toward Sixth Street.”

  The passerby handed over the umbrella and took off in the opposite direction.

  Jimi came out of the colonnade, his clothes blending with everyone else’s so that it was harder to pick him out from the crowd, especially with the umbrella to hide beneath. Dan didn’t understand it yet, but black was a Porterene’s best friend.

  Jimi walked up Claudine towards his dad’s house on Sixth. He peeped at the sky. Still up there, right above him. If the bee hadn’t warned him, he would have been tempted to think they were an optical illusion, like the moon that had seemed to follow him when he was a kid. Although…

  The bee could be lying.

  The winged men were impossible to miss, yet no one else had seen them, even though Porterenes were good at spotting things like monsters flying across the sky as bold as you please.

  Dez had used the bee against him once already, and driving him insane would be a great way to pay him back for wanting to be free.

  It hurt his heart to think like that, but nothing else made sense.

  Jimi stopped at the curb, the passing car lights stinging his eyes as he pulled the bee from his pocket.

  “I don’t even want to be free,” Jimi said, “but I won’t let you make a fool outta me either.”

  The bee’s wings fluttered as he spoke, and that was all. Whatever propelled it, gave it life, was exhausted.

  He dropped the bee in the gutter and watched until it disappeared down a storm drain.

  Jimi collapsed the umbrella since it wasn’t raining that bad, and this time when he looked at the sky—

  They dove in a V formation, scarlet wings folded tight to their bodies, hair flaming back from their faces. Straight for him.

  Jimi took off, a long way from a track star but when inspired, able to give a good impression. He zipped across
the intersection against the light and raced past Sixth because no way was he leading them to his family.

  God this was so wrong, being chased down like a rabbit. Jimi ate rabbits. Was that what they wanted? To eat him?

  His fellow Porterenes were not reacting, not to the monsters. Only to Jimi, dodging out of his way or yelling at him when they weren’t quick enough and got elbowed aside because they literally couldn’t see what Jimi’s problem was.

  Jimi jigged sideways into a narrow alley, and the winged men streaked past, close enough to derange the hair on his head with their slipstream. He backtracked down Claudine and looked desperately for green as he ran. That was another reason why Dan’s green bag had been so offensive; only Mortmaine wore green. Any one of them, from the most battle-hardened Elder, to the lowliest initiate, could eat fifty monsters for breakfast and still have room for biscuits. Green was a sign of hope.

  So naturally all Jimi saw was black, and red as the winged men wheeled in the sky and dove for him again.

  A blur of white hanging over the sidewalk in front of the Taquería Ria food truck. No bridge this time. The troll girl was broadening her horizons.

  No one else could see the blur either, even though people were walking right through it, like it was a mirage. Not that Jimi cared if the girl in white was yet another hallucination; she was more preferable than the winged men. At least she didn’t want to eat him, and if she did, she could fight the winged men for the privilege. During the fracas, Jimi would make his escape.

  Jimi sprinted across the street, squinting at the blur, squinting himself cross-eyed, but he finally brought her into focus just before he would have smacked into the display window of the shop opposite the food truck.

  He struck the ground, shoulder first. Held onto the umbrella as he popped to his feet, expecting to see the winged men and the girl in white locked in epic battle. But no.

  There was a decided lack of winged men. A lack of nearly everything.

  Jimi stood in a type of bubble. A low, watery dome separated him from the world. Beyond the bubble wall, the world was frozen. Rain hung suspended, golden from the street lamps, elongated like sewing needles. People were living statues: a woman huddled under an awning; a man juggling an umbrella, a small child, and a bag of groceries; two girls linked arm in arm, rain-styled hair plastered to their faces in curls and swoops.