“A friend from school,” I said.
Every word was an effort. Take the disorientation you feel when you come out of a nap, and multiply it by a hundred. That’s how befuddled I was. Why are the lights out? I thought, and then Someone should get up and turn on the lights and then I should get up and turn on the lights and then But wait, for real, why are the lights turned off?
“I guess the word is out,” she said. “People must be talking. Goddamn small town. One busybody in the emergency room starts blabbing . . .”
She went to the basement door and stood there for several seconds.
“Why are you still here?” I asked. “I thought you had to work this afternoon.”
“Hours cut for the day,” she said. “Got the call when we got back from the hospital.”
“Oh,” I said, and avoided looking at her, afraid of the fear I’d find there, the knowing of what “hours cut” meant.
“We need to talk,” she said. “About you. About what they told me at the hospital.”
“Okay,” I said. “Now?”
“I’ll be right back,” she said without looking at me, and went down the stairs to the basement.
I made myself some coffee. Sleepiness and satiety had me feeling stupid, stuck in a swamp. I sucked down caffeine as fast as I could, but it would not make a dent. Below me, Mom cursed and grunted, opened boxes, moved heavy things.
Was she looking for the scotch?
I couldn’t blame her for needing a drink. I’d smelled the thirst, the alcoholism she’d kept under control for my whole life. And it didn’t take superpowers to figure out that she’d be pretty thirsty right about now.
Sleepy and stuffed, my body was out of commission. My senses were offline. I was alone with my mind. Which maybe wasn’t such a bad thing. Maybe I’d made a mistake, expecting my senses to save me. Expecting hunger to solve my problems.
“Sorry, honey, I need to go,” she said, emerging. “Shift starts in an hour, and I gotta run some errands first. We’ll talk later.”
“What errands?”
“Grocery store, pharmacy,” she said, exaggeratedly nonchalant, a tell for potential lies that I knew very well, since I used it often. That’s how badly she needed relief; that’s how deep the hurt I had caused her ran. “You need anything?”
“Nope. Love you.”
“Love you, Matt.”
I sat in darkness. I thought about my mission, about Maya, about Tariq. What the Maybe-Dream-and-Maybe-Actual Maya said. You’re trying to win someone else’s fight for them.
All this deviousness—befriending him, manipulating him, trying to force a confession out of him—none of that would help my sister. What Maya needed was justice, swift and brutal. She couldn’t wait for the days it would take my powers to build up again.
I called Tariq.
“Matt?” he said, his voice bright and happy.
“Hey.”
“Hey! How are you?”
“I’m okay,” I said. “You heard what happened?”
“Ott’s cousin was at the ER with his girlfriend, whose brother had a bad reaction to some crystal and fell down some stairs and hit his head pretty bad. He saw you there. Said you were passed out.”
Plausible. Ott had a lot of cousins. “What does the rumor mill say was wrong with me?”
“It’s not like that. No rumor mill. He told Ott, Ott told me. Were you—are you—?”
“Meet me at the pine forest in half an hour,” I said. “Where the trees are tallest. I’ll tell you everything.”
“Want me to pick you up?”
“I’ll ride my bike.”
“Christ, Matt, it’s going to be dark soon. Why don’t—”
“Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain. It hurts my innocent ears.”
“Whatever, Jew.”
“Whatever, Muslim.”
We hung up. He had been worried about me.
Fuck him.
I picked up saltshakers, refrigerator magnets, piles of mail. Where before I had seen whole endless chains of events, the long history of every object, now my mortal senses just saw . . . things. And there was something comforting about that.
I got on my bike and barreled out to Route 23 and headed west. On the way, I stopped at a convenience store and bought a half-gallon of gasoline, which I stuffed into my backpack and covered up with old homework assignments.
To hell with waiting for a confession. To hell with tricking him into something. I’d confront him with what I knew. Tell him the truth. Throw his crimes in his face. See whether he had the guts to deny any of it. So what if I couldn’t summon fire from the air? I could burn down his father’s business just as well with everyday tools.
By the time I got there, afternoon had just started to tip into twilight. The trees were tall black shadows towering over me, monsters mocking my helpless body and the deranged mission I had come here on.
You think you can destroy us? We were here when your grandfather first set foot on this side of the ocean; we will be here when your bones join our roots in the earth.
But that was me talking: my mind, my fear. I let my bike drop into a ditch, sat down under a tree to wait. I thought about dousing the tree trunks with the gasoline, so I’d be ready to drop a match the moment I’d said my piece, but I wanted to have the conversation as equals.
If it came to a fight—and it probably would—I was finished. Brutal assaulters don’t like to be confronted, and he was strong and tall, and I was neither of those things. With my senses dulled, I couldn’t see a hit coming, couldn’t dodge a fist if it came at me in slow motion. But what did it matter if he beat me, broke my ribs, put me back in the hospital? I’d have won. I’d have gotten the truth and watched him wither, wilt, fade. Unless he murdered me, I was going to burn down his forest sooner or later.
And if he did murder me, I’d be dead. And he’d go to jail.
That right there sounded like a win-win.
“Matt!” he said, his voice ringing out through the deepening gloom. A dark shape moving through darkness.
“I thought for sure you’d get here before me,” I called out.
“My dad,” he said, stepping into the light. He made a face like there was more to the story and said nothing else. He stopped, looking suddenly embarrassed.
My knees wobbled. My heart beat like a punk-rock drum roll. The moment had come. My destruction of Tariq was at hand. I opened my mouth but couldn’t tell what to do next.
“You’re okay?” he whispered.
“Of course. I—”
He stepped forward uncertainly. “I was so worried.”
And there it was again, so big and heavy I could smell it even with my senses almost completely submerged: the Secret, the thing Tariq lived in fear of me finding out.
So maybe I wouldn’t need to confront him, maybe the confession would come on its own, maybe the universe would deliver it up to me as an act of providence, a reward for finally being strong enough to stand up to him. Finally being ready to drop the charade and confront him.
“There’s something I need to say to you,” I said.
“No,” he said. “No.”
Tariq took one, two, three steps forward. He pressed both hands to my cheeks and pulled my face toward him and, his lips parted, kissed me on the mouth.
RULE #27