Then we were home and we didn’t know a thing more about how to take down Jack than when we started. Hell, we knew less if anything.
What a waste of a good fire.
10
Niko
Twelve Years Ago
“Give me the matches, Cal. I am not playing here.”
He handed them over, muttering under his breath, but I knew enough to know when he was playing at teasing the big brother. He wasn’t a budding pyromaniac. One fire didn’t an arsonist make. And that one had been an emergency. I couldn’t hold that one against him.
I was sure enough that he wouldn’t burn down Junior’s house, but while I more than still had doubts about Junior’s basement of dead bodies, it was true that people were going missing. It would be safer if Cal weren’t home alone after school while I worked, whether it was light outside or not.
“Why don’t you stay after school today and play a few games of baseball, football—whatever your gym teacher has planned? Then I can come by after work and we can go home together.” The students at Cal’s school had many parents with odd schedules who weren’t home in time for the bus to drop off their children. The principal had decided an after-school sports session was a good idea for those parents who needed two or three hours to come by and get the kids who couldn’t take the bus to be home alone. I’d met Coach VanBuren. He wasn’t especially bright and I didn’t think he’d volunteered for the job, but he did it. He might not be a patient man or a man who loved his job, but being there until the parents could be—that made him a good man.
“I don’t like sports anymore and they won’t let me play,” Cal finished without showing much concern. He hadn’t been a fan of team sports since he knew there were team sports. Except football. He liked football. He loved tackling. I was hoping when his growth spurt came it would be enough that he could play on the team of whichever school we were in at the time. Or I had hoped, but now . . . what was this?
“Since when don’t you like sports, and what do you mean they won’t let you play?” I frowned. Cal was small but he could outrun anyone his age. “Why not?”
“Since this year.” He started to scoop all his papers off the kitchen table and wad them into one big mass. “I got tired of faking it. I like to win. When you play games you’re supposed to win. That’s the whole point. If you’re not trying your hardest to win, then you’re not playing it right.” He began shoving books and wads of what I hoped was doodles but knew, knew was his homework in his backpack. “If you’re following ‘rules’”—he pulled a face at the word—“then you’re not trying your hardest. Games shouldn’t have rules, not if you want to win. They’re . . . um . . .”
“Mutually exclusive?” I provided.
He zipped up the backpack. “Exactly. If I’m going to play a game where I’m supposed to win, then I’m going to win. Coach VanBuren doesn’t understand. He says I have ‘poor impulse control issues,’ ‘the attention span of a frigging gnat,’ and I’m a ‘little psycho asshole.’” The three quotes, I could hear them as if that potbellied, balding, worthless excuse for a human being was standing beside me. I felt a flush of anger, but Cal was indifferent. He was snorting at the man’s idiocy. “For a coach he doesn’t know anything about winning.”
I supposed he didn’t. He’d also been demoted from good man to jackass in my book. “No, he doesn’t. You know what my teachers tell me in the dojos?” I hadn’t thought it was time for that yet, but I’d been wrong.
Stuffing a candy bar in the zippered pocket of his backpack, he slung it on, finally ready for the morning in his worn Batman T-shirt, faded jeans, and scuffed sneakers. “What?” he asked curiously.
“That in there are rules and honor, but outside in the real world, rules and honor only get you . . . mugged or worse.” I’d been about to say killed, but we had enough of that word for the past few days. “You don’t have poor impulse control and you’re not a psycho. You know how to protect yourself, to come out on top, and that’s something your coach doesn’t know himself.” I gave him a nudge for the front door. I could hear his bus wheezing down the street outside. “Come home straight from school, lock the doors, and don’t let anyone in. All right?”
“And jack-off Junior next door?”
“Language.” I’d told myself that battle was lost, but the reaction was knee jerk. I gave him a carefully light swat to the back of his head. “Behave.” As for Junior, that sad miserable lump of a neighbor was making my life a living nightmare and he had genuine monsters to compete with in that area. “I’ll think of something at school today. Now go. Catch your bus.”