Dawson Hayes looked around the campfire and immediately recognized the losers. It was almost too easy to spot them.
He could pretend he had some super radar in reading people, but the truth was he knew the losers because … what was that old saying? It takes one to know one. It wasn’t that long ago that he would have been huddled over there with them, wondering why he had been invited, sweating and waiting to see what the price of the invitation was.
He didn’t feel sorry for them. They didn’t have to show up. Nobody threw them in the trunk of a car and brought them here. So anything that happened was sort of their own fault. Their price for wanting to be somebody they weren’t. Admission to the cool club didn’t come without some sacrifice. If they thought otherwise, then they really were hopeless losers.
At least Dawson accepted who he was. Actually he didn’t mind. He liked being different from his classmates and sometimes he played up the part, purposely wearing all black on football Fridays when everyone else wore school colors. Being the geek got him noticed, even garnered an eye roll from Coach Hickman, who before Dawson started wearing black on Fridays hadn’t bothered to remember Dawson’s name.
At the beginning of the school year during roll call for history class Coach would yell out “Dawson Hayes” and look around the entire room, over Dawson’s head and sometimes straight at him. Then Coach Hickman’s eyebrows would dart up with Dawson’s hand like the man would never in a million years have put a cool name like Dawson Hayes together with the pimpled face and the hesitant, skinny arm claiming it. Dawson didn’t mind. He was finally starting to get noticed and it didn’t matter how it came about.
Even now Dawson knew the only reason for his continued invitation to these exclusive retreats in the forest was because Johnny Bosh liked what Dawson brought to the party. Tonight that something was burning a hole in Dawson’s jacket pocket. He tried not to think about it. Tried not to think how earlier he had lifted it—that’s right, lifted, borrowed, not stolen—from his dad’s holster while his dad slept on his one night off. His dad probably wouldn’t care as soon as he heard Dawson was hanging with Johnny B. Okay, that wasn’t true. His dad would be pissed. But wasn’t he always encouraging Dawson to make friends, go do stuff that other kids were doing? In other words, be a normal teenager for a change. He wanted this year to be different.
Just holding the X-26 Taser, with its lightweight, bright yellow casing that fit perfectly in his hand, gave him a sense of confidence. The power the stun gun possessed surged all the way up Dawson’s skinny arm, so that he actually became an extension of the Taser. All he had to do was point and wham, there goes 50,000 volts of electricity. And suddenly Dawson Hayes was somebody. The powerless, suddenly powerful. He could control anyone and everyone.
So what if he wasn’t an athletic superstar like his dad wanted him to be. So what if he’d never be a quarterback like Johnny B or a tough, tobacco-chewing cowboy like Lucas or even a brainiac like Kyle? With this sleek piece of technology in the palm of his hand Dawson felt like he could do anything.
Okay, maybe it wasn’t just the Taser. Maybe the salvia had a little something to do with it. He’d been chewing his wad for about fifteen minutes and he could already feel the effect. That was just one of the highlights for tonight.
Dawson looked for the camera hidden behind some low sweeping pine needles. Though it remained camouflaged he could see the green dot blinking only because he had helped Johnny set it up earlier, making sure the tripod blended in with the branches. No one else knew it was there. Being the geek in residence did have its advantages.
Dawson glanced around at the campground they had stomped out for themselves in a secluded part of the pine forest where they probably shouldn’t have a frickin’ campfire. Johnny B said no one could see this parcel from the road or the lookout tower, though it didn’t matter. Both would be vacant. On one side was an open field, a swell of rolling tall grass separated by a barbed-wire fence. On the other side was the thick beginning of ponderosa pine. About ten yards away the Dismal River snaked by. Dawson could hear the water tonight, just a whisper running over the rocks.