The second sound was a very confused “What the fuck?”
***
Nineteen-year-old James Wynn was the first person to reach Jared’s office in the wake of Sherman’s attack. He was a production assistant, which he had quickly learned meant “any freaking job we want you to do,” and had been in the truck with the third-shift director, watching as Sherman Kingsborough slithered into the pitch-black room.
“Who the hell is that?” said the director, a twenty-five-year-old recent graduate of UCLA who had landed the job through the good graces of an uncle at the network. He was pointing at a monitor showing the view from a camera equipped with a night-vision filter.
“Does he have a knife?” James asked the question to no one in particular as he peered closer to the screen.
“Holy shit!” the director screamed. “Get in there!” He grabbed his cell phone and dialed 911. James, who stood five feet seven inches tall and weighed all of 125 pounds, fully clothed and soaking wet, bolted from the control truck without stopping to think about what he might be running into. He was across the lawn, in the front door, and halfway up the flight of stairs when he heard the howl. His blood ran cold, but he still managed to push himself faster. He reached the office door a step ahead of Deirdre and Megan.
James paused for a second, sucked a breath deep into his chest, and pushed the door open. He reached in and flipped the light switch just inside the room.
It took him a minute to process the scene, his comprehension quickly aided by Deirdre’s scream, and then Megan’s. He could hear Mrs. Stone usher her daughter away.
There, in the middle of the office, sitting on the floor were Sherman Kingsborough and Jared Stone, both shielding their eyes from the sudden introduction of light. Just to Sherman’s left, lying in a pool of blood, was Trebuchet, panting his final breaths.
“What the fuck?” Jared said again. He grabbed his temples and rolled onto his side.
James, like Sherman, was speechless.
Trebuchet gave one more whimper and gave up on life. That’s when they heard the sirens.
PART FOUR
House (of Stone) Arrest
Tuesday, October 13
Maxim Andreevich Vasilcinov liked Jackie Stone. He liked her a lot. In fact, she was his only friend.
Max was the plump, pimply only child of a single mother. The photo he used for his Facebook profile was the result of an Internet search for “cute teen boy.” He didn’t have a girlfriend, he had never even held another girl’s hand, and he wasn’t particularly good at sports; nothing about the persona he presented to Jackie Stone was real.
When Max first heard about the social media exchange program, he was crestfallen. Now, he thought, I can be reviled by children on two continents. When he told his mother that he didn’t want to participate, she lifted his chin and stared deep into his eyes. “Solnyshko,” she said, “maybe this is a good thing. Maybe this is a chance to wipe the slate clean, to be the person you wish you could be.”
Hearing that was like clouds parting over Max’s ever so slightly misshapen head. He took the advice to heart.
He bought a special notebook and wrote pages and pages about the new Maxim Vasilcinov. In his fantasy, he had two parents; his father was a bureaucrat with the ministry of education, and his mother stayed at home to take care of him and his younger sister, Sasha. He had many friends at school, and he was a very fast runner. He was learning to play guitar on an old, used electric that his father had purchased from a secondhand shop. His favorite songs to play were by Green Day and Nirvana. And, so far, he had kissed three different girls.
Not one word of it was true.
The deeper Max delved into his imaginary world, the more engrossed he became. He started, on some level, to believe that the fantasy Max was real. The other students at his school didn’t notice that, since the invention of this new Max, the old Max was walking a little taller, with a little more swagger. To them, he would always be “malo mudak,” the little ass. But he didn’t care, or at least he didn’t care as much as he used to.
When the day finally came that he would meet his new Facebook friend, he was ready. Max had memorized his new life, had practiced different phrases; he would be bold and daring and all the things real life had beaten out of him. His teacher, a Polish immigrant named Miss Loskywitz, didn’t say anything when she saw that Max was using a picture other than his own for his profile. She thought he was a nice boy who needed a break.
Max presumed Jackie was a boy when they first met. (Jackie’s profile picture was of Trebuchet.) When he realized Jackie was a girl, his heart sank. Not only was his fiction designed specifically for an American boy, he didn’t know how to even begin to talk to girls.