Tricks for Free (InCryptid #7)

They moved as one, out of the locker room and across the grass to the glowing rectangle of the football field. The sun was long down, and floodlights lit the bleachers and the green, making it look like a slice of paradise, like something too perfect to be real. There was a cut between the sections of the stands, and the squad ran through it just as the announcer boomed, “Your Trailblazer cheer squad!”

Everyone in the bleachers cheered and shouted and waved their pennants and foam fingers in the air. It wasn’t because they loved cheerleaders so much, Antimony knew. It was because the football teams would be out next, and then the game could finally start. That didn’t slow any of them down. The squad broke into a new formation, the fliers going into an elaborate tumbling pass, the bases hitting their poses and waving their pom-poms high. Antimony hit her mark and froze.

It wasn’t safe for any of them to go to the same school. She and her siblings had all been educated separately, using their education as an opportunity to test out their false identities and learn to blend. She’d never set foot on any of Verity’s high school campuses—she’d had three, overachiever that she was—and had only seen Alex’s school once, after he’d graduated, when an away game had taken her to their football field. Family didn’t come to school. That was the rule. That was how they kept things distinct, and prevented future disaster.

And there, sitting in the front row, dressed in school colors and clutching school pennants and looking for all the world like students who’d decided to come and see what all the fuss was about, were her dead aunts, Mary and Rose. Rose was wearing a letter jacket, which explained the hot dog in her free hand. As a hitchhiking ghost, she could become temporarily alive again if she borrowed someone else’s clothes, and she was always, always hungry. Mary just looked like, well, Mary, white hair blowing in the breeze, one fist thrust into the air.

Finally, her family had come to see her cheer.

Grinning ear to ear, Antimony shook her pom-poms, and chanted, “Do your best to blaze that trail! You know our team never fails!”

The other team’s cheerleaders answered, and the crowds roared, and the football players took the field, and everything was perfect. Everything was finally, absolutely, perfect. Antimony never wanted the night to end.

But of course, it did.





One




“Change is good. Change keeps us growing, and growing keeps us living. But don’t ever change so much that you forget who you used to be.”

–Frances Brown

The Cast Member Recruitment Office of Lowry Entertainment, Inc., Lakeland, Florida

Eight months ago

I SAT VERY STRAIGHT IN my uncomfortable plastic chair, trying to look like I wasn’t freaking out. Judging by the way the other applicants kept glancing at me, I wasn’t doing a very good job.

Let’s see any of them stay this calm after spending four nights sleeping in the snake-filled bushes next to the Florida highway, waiting to be eaten by the next available alligator, wondering if that might be an improvement over waking up in the morning and resuming their walk. I hadn’t eaten in two days. The only reason I didn’t smell like a dumpster fire was the truck stop half a mile outside of town, which had attached showers available for rent. My last five bucks had gone for hot water and industrial soap, and the prayer of getting this job.

There were other jobs. Some of them might be easier to get, especially given my current circumstances, and if I had to resort to them, I would. There’s no shame in flipping burgers or cutting lawns. But I wanted the anonymity of the crowd, the knowledge that my itchy polyester uniform made me part of a faceless mob. If the Covenant was looking for me, they’d be checking the greasy spoons and car washes. Those are the places people on the run are supposed to go to make a quick buck. This was a whole different league, and I was counting on that to protect me. If I could get through the door.

I’d burned most of my fake IDs when I ran away from the carnival. My cousin Artie tracks them for us, making sure the associated credit cards and address information will always ping as valid on government systems. The trouble there was that my cousin Artie tracks them for us. If I used any of those identities, he’d be able to find me, and that would completely undercut the point of running away.

But I still had one to fall back on.

Artie didn’t create “Melody West,” because he’d been too young when I first needed her. She’d been a gift to my parents from Uncle Al, a jink living in Las Vegas who got adopted into the family through the usual complex series of unreasonable events. We don’t have much blood family left in the world, but we make up for it by acquiring honorary family everywhere we go.

As far as most people are concerned, “Melody West” disappeared after she graduated from high school, one more boring mystery for a world that’s always been absolutely full of them. I’ve never liked to let anything useful go to waste. I’d been expanding upon and tinkering with her identity ever since, keeping her on the grid just enough to qualify as a real person. She’d never held a steady job, never anything lucrative enough to attract the attention of the IRS, but she’d never applied for benefits either. She moved around a lot. She was unremarkable, unnoticeable, and she was mine. No one else knew her ID was still active.

Antimony Price couldn’t get a job at Lowryland, because Antimony Price wasn’t here. Melody West, though, just might stand a chance.

“Melody?” The woman who called my name didn’t look up from her clipboard.

I rose. “Here.”

She finally glanced up. Her nostrils flared in barely-smothered dismay at the sight of me. There’s only so much a truck stop bathroom can do for a body.

I’ll give her this much: she covered her reaction quickly. “This way,” she said, stepping back into the hall. People had been vanishing through that door all morning long. None of them had come back. There was another door that led to the outside, to keep those of us still waiting from either getting dispirited when we saw happy applicants, or cocky when we saw disappointed ones. Psychologically speaking, it was probably a good design.

In practice, it made me feel like everyone who left was being fed into a giant meat grinder somewhere behind the scenes. And now it was my turn. I forced myself to keep smiling and followed the nameless woman out of the room, toward what I hoped would be my future.



* * *





Children and parents all over the world speak the name of Michael Lowry with only slightly less reverence than the name Walt Disney. They were rivals once, after all, and while Disney proved to have the edge when it came to modern family entertainment, Lowry held his market share with an iron hand, producing innovative pictures and inexpensive alternatives for the family that couldn’t quite afford the golden spires of Disney’s enchanted kingdoms. Not managing to match Disney’s towering successes didn’t take him out of the game.

Like Disney, Lowry dreamed of amusement parks, immersive environments for the whole family to enjoy. Like Disney, Lowry saw California and Florida as the best locations to realize his dreams, since they were the states with the mildest winters and hence the fewest annual closure dates. They weren’t the only ones to flee to America’s vacation destinations, but they were the first to break ground on their great entertainments, and Florida’s Lowryland opened only two years after Disney World.

Not that anyone would have known Disney World even existed from walking down the hall of the Lowryland recruitment office. Framed black-and-white photos of Lowryland were placed every few feet, each tastefully accentuated with a plaque or framed award certificate or article extolling the superior virtues of Lowry Entertainment, Inc. over all other children’s entertainment companies. I’d been expecting team spirit from the Lowry folks—no point in being on a team if you can’t find something to cheer about—but this was approaching pep rally levels.