XGeneration (Book 4): Pressure Drop Read online

  Scott nodded, even as he tensed. Six thirty that morning? He was almost certain he’d heard Mr. Shine’s station wagon puttering around the Downs while he and Janis were waiting at the bus stop. That would have been around seven.

  “And you knew?” Scott heard himself ask. “I mean, about how to repair the machine?”

  “Well, not specifically.” Mr. Shine pulled a chair from the table and straddled it backward. He was close enough for Scott to smell the Ditto pigment wafting from his moving hands.

  …seven, nine, three, two…

  “Thing is, I know about machinery,” Mr. Shine said. “And lots of these machines is the same in attitude. Take that ol’ mimeograph. Don’t know that I ever seen one before today, but like most machines she like to be handled a certain way. You get to jerking and banging, and she’s gonna jerk and bang right back. Maybe even take a finger off you. And when there’s a problem, that’s the worst time to be handling her that way. You’ve gotta coax her, real sweet-like. Especially when you’re changing out a part, like I just done. And you’ve gotta do it in a way that’ll make the machine think it was her idea to begin with, see? Else she’ll jam up on you—wheels, gears, everything. But you can’t be too gentle neither, ’cause then the machine will think you don’t know what you’re doing. And there’s nothing they hate worse.”

  “And that’s how you fixed her—I mean, the machine?”

  The man’s weird explanation that made strange sense had disarmed some of Scott’s suspicions. He’d stopped counting off the digits of pi, anyway, the numbers wandering off into the back of his thoughts.

  “Well, she ain’t eating paper and smearing pigment no more.” Mr. Shine glanced over his shoulder, then lowered his head. “But not so loud about the me fixing her part, else she’ll get the notion that I done stopped thinking it was her idea. Or worse, that I never thought it was her idea.” He raised his eyebrows to suggest they’d both be in big trouble were that to happen.

  Scott couldn’t help but crack a smile. Everything about the man, down to his country talk and casual gestures, came off as authentic. There had to be an explanation for what Janis had sensed the other morning. Maybe the man did possess a crude sixth sense, but one he wasn’t even aware of.

  Still doesn’t explain the time discrepancy between when he claimed to have come to school with when I heard him in the Downs.

  “Take any breaks this morning?” Scott asked carefully.

  “Breaks?” Mr. Shine chuckled and shook his head. “No-o-o-o, sir. Not till lunchtime, then I’ll get me one. Have to run back home, though. Wouldn’t you know, I left my lunch pail atop the icebox?”

  Scott saw an opening. “Do you live nearby?”

  “Oh, ah, east. East side of town. You know where the old Primitive Baptist Church is?” Scott had a vague sense of it being in the part of Gainesville many referred to as skid row. “Well, I’m right ’crost from there. ”

  The warning bell clanged outside the library.

  “I better get going.” Scott stood on uncertain legs. “Good to see you again.”

  “Oh, say.” Mr. Shine gestured for him to wait a moment. “If you still intent on learning that coin trick I showed you, come find me sometime. Now that you know where I live.”

  More wholesome laughter crackled from his chest as he stood and turned toward the room with the Ditto machine. Scott watched the man’s stooped back. In his mind’s eye, a quarter flashed from tails to heads.

  Nothing is what it seems and no one can be trusted, Mr. Leonard had once told Janis.

  Scott frowned as he made his way from the library.

  Did that include Mr. Shine?

  10

  Lunchtime

  Janis spotted the stationary figure amid the rush of students. She was standing half hidden behind a steel pillar, hands clamping her books at the beltline of a plain skirt. Amy Pavoni had yet to establish eye contact, but Janis could sense that her best-friend-turned-enemy was waiting for her.

  Janis approached carefully. After all, this was the same person who had left those notes in her locker. “Softball is for lesbians,” in the sixth grade. And a year ago, after Janis had blasted her at Dress-up Night, “You’re not a lesbian. You’re a freak.” The same person who had threatened to tell Agent Steel about her powers, who had made her break up with Blake.

  The same person whose aunt abused her, Janis reminded herself.

  The disturbing images rushed through Janis’s thoughts. She had tried to call Amy twice that summer, to see how she was doing. But despite messages left, the calls had gone unreturned.

  Now Amy raised her head. “Hey,” she said quietly.

  Her chocolate-brown hair, which she’d grown longer, framed cheeks whose baby fat had sunk away. Instead of aging her, though, the changes made her appear more vulnerable. Staid brown eyes roamed Janis’s face. Beyond them, Janis sensed a roiling sea of emotion.

  “Hey,” Janis said, coming to a stop in front of her. “How’s it going?”

  “Okay.” Amy darted a look to her left, then shuffled her penny loafers back a half step, as though regretting her decision to seek Janis out. Alicia and Autumn, the model and aspiring actress to whom Amy had attached herself, were nowhere to be seen.

  “Did you want to talk?” Janis offered.

  Amy gave a reluctant nod. “But not here.”

  She turned and began speed-walking toward the cafeteria. Her legs, which had lengthened and thinned in the last months, appeared possessed. Janis hurried to keep up. She was supposed to be meeting Scott for lunch at the food trucks, but this felt more important.

  “The pledge period doesn’t start for another week,” Amy said.

  Janis wasn’t sure what she was talking about until Amy stopped in front of a peeling metal door and gave it a pull. Hinges squawked, and Janis peered past Amy’s shoulder into the gloom of the old Teacher’s Dining Room, where they had been forced to spend lunch periods last fall. The room’s two tables were still pushed together from their final meal as Alpha pledges.

  “C’mon,” Amy said, stepping inside and dragging out two chairs. She wiped off the seats with a paper towel.

  Janis searched the counter and ceiling for roaches before allowing the door to close behind her. A pale glow of daylight pushed through the door’s mesh window, but she still had to feel her way toward the table. She sat in the seat across from Amy, focusing on the whites of her eyes.

  “How did you know?”

  “Know what?” Janis asked.

  “About my aunt. About what happened.”

  “I … I’m not sure. I just sort of pieced it together.”

  “It was your powers, wasn’t it? Those things you can do?”

  Amy’s voice wasn’t accusing—if anything, she sounded absent, as though she’d been cored out—but Janis’s defenses shot up anyway. Part of it came from the Program’s warnings about keeping their abilities secret, especially after Kilmer’s latest talk with them. But part of it also came from Amy’s not-so-ancient threats to use her knowledge of Janis’s abilities against her.

  “I just think my intuition’s stronger than most people’s,” Janis said. “Have you told anyone?”

  “About what you can do?”

  “No, no, about what happened with your…”

  The whites of Amy’s eyes disappeared for a moment. “I tried,” she said. “It’s just, there are so few people…” Her voice trailed off. “My friends wouldn’t know how to act around me anymore.”

  “Forget them. What about your parents?”

  Amy shook her head and lowered her eyes again. “My mom only cares about my modeling. The last time something happened to me … you know, spraining my ankle at Dress-up Night … she was furious about the lost photo shoots. Furious at me.”

  Janis’s skin broke out in a hot wave of guilt. “Your father, then.”

  “He’d probably listen, but I keep worrying about what it would do to him. We’re so close, and it’s his sister.” She sniffled
and pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “He just got her a job at his bank. That’s all he’s been talking about, how she’s finally pulling her life together.”

  “Amy, listen to me.” Janis scooted her chair nearer. “This isn’t about your father. It’s about you.”

  “And she’s been threatening me,” Amy went on. “Not directly, but…”

  Anger flared inside Janis. “Your aunt?”

  Impressions of the woman came to her all at once. Cutting looks; words uttered in a low voice; the woman’s shadow-cast figure looming menacingly then turning bright and harmless when one of Amy’s parents entered the picture. And Janis was picking up something else: a foul smell, like ground meat left out in the sun. Or the rotting dog in Hotel Sinclair. A smell that told Janis the woman wasn’t right in the frontal lobe, that she was capable of far more than threats.

  “But that’s not the worst part,” Amy said.

  “What is?” Janis felt breathless, like she’d been walloped in the chest.

  “She’s going to be staying with us until she can find her own place.”

  “You can’t let her,” Janis insisted. “You have to tell your father. Today. Now.”

  “That’s why I wanted to talk to you,” Amy said. “My parents aren’t home. They left on a trip this morning and won’t be back until Monday. My aunt is supposed to move her stuff in tonight.”

  Janis understood. “If you need a place to stay for the weekend—God, Amy, you’re more than welcome to stay with us.”

  It would be complicated with her training schedule, but Janis could make up excuses for needing to duck out of Amy’s company—sports practice or something. Her parents knew Amy. They could keep her occupied. The important thing was that Amy would be safe.

  But Amy’s head was shaking. “No, I need to confront her. I need this to end.”

  The tainted-meat smell tugged on Janis’s gorge. “Amy, I don’t think that’s a good id—”

  “And I want you there with me.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  Through the gloom, Amy’s watery eyes fixated on hers.

  “Please.”

  “You told her you would?” Scott asked.

  Janis shifted on the seat of her shorts. They were sitting cross-legged amid the sprawling roots of an oak tree near the food trucks, the greasy plates that had held their pizza slices folded and set off to one side.

  “You don’t understand the kind of danger she’s in.”

  “No, I get that part,” Scott said, “but what about training?”

  “I’ll call in sick. Which reminds me, if they ask, could you mention that I was complaining of stomach cramps at lunch?”

  Scott took a swallow of grape soda. She could see that he was uncomfortable with the whole idea. “But how are you going to get to Amy’s house without the Program knowing?”

  “I’ll tell my parents that we’re collaborating on a class project. Later, I’ll call from Amy’s and say that I’m spending the night. By then, what can anyone do? It’s not like Agent Steel’s going to show up with her assault squad and haul me off. Not in front of an outsider.”

  “I don’t know…” Scott said.

  Janis squinted around at the students spread over the sandy lawn, wondering how many of them harbored dark secrets like Amy’s. Would knowing make her responsible for them, too?

  “If your friend Wayne was in trouble, what would you do?”

  Scott appeared to struggle with the question. “Well, yeah, but…”

  “There are no ‘buts.’ I know what you’re thinking. With the Soviets poised to strike, every training session matters. It’s what the Program’s been drilling into us since the end of summer. But—and this is the ‘but’ that does matter—these abilities are ours, Scott. No one else’s. I’m honored to be able to put them in the service of our country. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop being human. Right now, a friend needs me.”

  “Well, what does she expect you to do?”

  Janis had begun to raise her can of orange soda to her lips but stopped when the stench of tainted meat returned. She looked around before remembering the smell was psychic, not physical. The can drifted back to her knee, where a ring of condensation glistened against her skin.

  “I’m not sure even Amy knows,” she said. “Maybe nothing. Maybe just being there will be enough.”

  Scott must have heard her doubt because he dipped his face toward hers. “If you need help, I want you to signal me.” He stared over the metal frames of his glasses. “Do we have a deal?”

  “Yeah,” Janis said. “Deal.”

  Now felt like a good time to explain what had happened in Missouri with Tyler. It dovetailed well with what she’d just said about being human, about helping a friend in need. But the concern that shone from Scott’s eyes was too much. She leaned forward until their lips touched.

  “Thanks for having my back,” she said when they separated.

  He tapped his Champions watch. “I’ll be right here.”

  11

  Hoag household

  3:10 p.m.

  Jesse plodded in from the garage and found his mother at the kitchen sink in her gray scuff slippers and a matching bathrobe, brick-red forearms plunging in and out of a sink full of water.

  “Your father’s got a chore for you,” she said without turning.

  A chore? He’d been planning to go up to his room, pop Iron Maiden’s latest into his stereo, and crash for a couple of hours before dinner and training.

  “What?” he asked.

  She started to point with a dripping scrub brush before cocking her head of pink curlers. “Back corner of the house need’s levelin’. Your father’s already set out the cinder block. Says he wants it all the way under this time.”

  Jesse dropped his books on the kitchen table. “Yeah, all right.”

  “But go on and grab your snack first. It’s on the top shelf of the fridge.”

  Pulling open the refrigerator door, he discovered a platter stacked with a dozen ham and roast beef sandwiches. Cradling the platter to his chest, he reclined beside the kitchen table in his love seat, an article his father had picked up at a Salvation Army after Jesse’s former chair had collapsed.

  Jesse peeled the Saran wrap off the platter and pushed the first sandwich into his mouth. His mom had saturated the bread with Miracle Whip, the way he liked it. Lettuce and giant pieces of celery crunched between his molars.

  “Thanks,” he grunted. “I was starving.”

  “Well, hunger’s a mighty fine sauce,” she said. “Just look at those poor babies in Ethiopia, lord help ’em.” Shaking her head, she went back to work on the plates in the sink.

  As the sandwiches vanished from the platter, Jesse studied his mother. He noted how the back of her graying head sat atop thick shoulders made hard by years of housework. How her hips flared the sides of her robe like a horse’s. How her calves swelled into dense, roughened heels. His own solidity might have come from her, but her shortness—like his father’s—didn’t explain his towering height.

  Ever wonder where you came from? Maybe you should.

  The speaker had sounded so confident, so damned sure of himself.

  Start by asking your parents.

  Jesse finished the final sandwich and sucked the mayonnaise from his fingers. “Gotta question for you.”

  His mother turned her head partway.

  “Are you and dad my natural parents?”

  She yanked the stopper from the drain, splashing water. “Now why would you put somethin’ like that to me?”

  “You’re older than most parents of someone my age.”

  She turned back to the sink as the sudsy water gurgled down the drain. “The lord saw fit to give us a child,” she said, “so that’s what he done: give us a child.” She opened the tap to start rinsing. Jesse understood that the steady roar of water meant that she was done talking.

  He burped, set the platter on the table, and heaved himself to his f
eet.

  At the sunken back corner of the house, Jesse found the cinder block. His father had been hollering about the house shifting, “probably when those sons of bitches”—meaning the Program—“were digging around to build their tunnels.” His father knew as well as Jesse that, if he ever asked them, the Program would reset the house. But his father would never admit to needing help, especially the government kind. So, the cinder blocks became his solution.

  Squatting low, Jesse plunged the fingers of one hand into the damp earth and wormed them to where the underside of the house had slipped from a growing stack of blocks. The house groaned and rose. Thighs trembling, Jesse used his free hand to wedge the new block into the space.

  He stood back. Wiping his hands against his pants, he appraised his work. It looked level enough to him, but his father would find something to shout about when he came home. Jesse glanced at his Champions watch. He’d get an hour’s rest anyway before that happened.

  The steps to the wooden deck whined beneath his boots. At the top, the entire structure leaned. Jesse aimed for the sliding glass door, keeping to the deck’s center, arms held out from his sides. If he managed to topple the deck, his dad would really have something to bawl at him about. Might even start swinging the tire iron again. Jesse doubted the iron would do much harm now, but that’s not even what worried him. With his dad looking for any excuse to pull him from the Champions Program, a destroyed deck could well prove the tipping point.

  Back inside the den, Jesse let out his breath. He was preparing to plod upstairs when he noticed something. The door to his father’s home office—a large closet ringed with rusting file cabinets and invoice-stuffed boxes—was open a crack. A key stood from the bolt lock. His father, who had been in and out of the office that morning, had forgotten to close it back up.

  Jesse listened toward the kitchen. His mother had snapped on the portable television on the counter, and soap opera dialogue accompanied the sounds of dinner preparation. “Now what’d you go and say that for?” she murmured to one of the actors. “You know it’s only gonna set Luke off again.”