Dread Locks (16 page)

I put on my shades before I left the house. Not the cruddy ones Dante had given me—those had broken in the fall from Darwin’s Curve. I had a new pair now—sleek and expensive.

I walked to school that morning, cutting through the woods, rather than following the road. I caught sight of every creature I could on the way. Stone crows plunged from tree limbs. Geckos—dozens of geckos—solidified on the rocks on which they perched. Just like the one Tara had given me. A skunk turned so quickly, it didn’t have the chance to spray. The urge still raged. Each creature turned to stone was a kernel feeding the hunger. Like a single cereal flake in an empty bowl. How many flakes would it take until my stone-turning urge was satisfied? Would this be my life now? Foraging forests for small animals? There was only one thing I could do. I didn’t want to, but I didn’t see any way around it.

I had to find bigger animals.

16

SOMEBODY’S BEEN SITTING IN MY CHAIR

Y
ou can’t imagine what it’s like to see the world through a new sense. It is overpowering, thrilling, and terrifying all at once. I couldn’t catch my breath or slow the beating of my heart. Walls meant nothing, because I could feel life right through them. I felt I could walk through those walls if I wanted to, as if they were made of tissue paper. Turning Nasdaq to stone had made this new sense much stronger.

I flipped my head to let the wind sift through my curls. They were like antennae tuning in to vibrations of everything alive. Before I really knew what I was doing, I found myself wandering up the driveway of a house a few streets away from mine. I don’t even remember having walked there. The people who lived here had left their front gate unlocked. As I stepped through the gate, I sensed a gardener behind a hedge—a bright pattern of life shone through, even though I couldn’t see him. I felt hungry, but I steered clear of him, not wanting to be caught.

The idea of personal property is a myth!

That’s what Tara had said—but that’s not what she meant. Now I understood what she meant. There’s no such thing as
other people’s
property, because right now I felt like everything was mine. And so it felt perfectly natural to turn the knob of the front door and walk in.

I knew exactly where everyone in the house was. I didn’t have to hear them; I sensed them, so staying out of their path was easy. I went into the kitchen. There was a cherry pie cooling on the counter. I dug my hand into it, taking a big juicy scoop. It was like I had no sense of remorse or responsibility. I would never have done something so weirdly selfish before, but suddenly old rules didn’t apply. I pawed the hunk of pie into my mouth like a bear scooping honey. Usually cherry pie is my favorite, but not anymore. Taste was nothing compared to this new sense. I spat the flavorless pie into the sink and wiped my hands on a dish towel.

I went into the family room next. The TV was on. Children’s cartoons. I sensed the child exactly fourteen feet away, in the bathroom—yet a sense of life lingered in a small chair near the TV I sat in it, soaking in those traces of life the way, in an earlier time, I would have enjoyed the aroma of that cherry pie. I was too big for the chair, and the legs beneath me snapped. I left the chair in ruins on the floor. I didn’t care. These things of the world were not important to me anymore.

I moved through the house, focusing on the traces of life I found. Bedrooms were the best, I suppose because that’s where people spend a third of their lives. I never realized how much life we leave behind. The beds had all been neatly made; this was a house of tidy people. I tested the beds. In one, the traces of life seemed hard. Old. Uncomfortable. I moved on. In a second bed, it seemed that whoever had slept there was too soft and mushy on the inside. Then I found a third bedroom, and the vibrations of life I got from that bed were perfect. Just right. I could have stayed there all day, waiting until the person who belonged to this room showed up. And I could stare into his or her eyes, stealing the life from them. Turning them into stone.

Is this what Tara had felt when she came into our house the first time?

I left the room and went down the stairs, knowing the family was down there.

“Daddy,” I heard a child crying. “Somebody’s been sitting in my chair. And now it’s all broked up!”

“What happened to my pie?” I heard the mother call. “Someone’s been at my pie!”

“Hey, who messed up the covers?” I heard someone else call upstairs. “I just made this bed! Who’s been in it?”

They all began to move in my direction, but that was okay. I could have hidden again, but I wanted to be seen. I did have the good sense to slip on my sunglasses, though.

The father noticed me first. Then a little girl, who hurried to him, grasping on to his pant leg. The mother came in from the kitchen, and a kid a year or two older than me stopped on the stairs when he saw me.

“Who are you?” the father asked. “What are you doing here?”

I just smiled at him. At all of them. “Making myself at home,” I told them. “And what a nice home, too.”

My hunger was growing, taking me over. Turning Nasdaq and other small creatures to stone was like taking tiny tastes of a huge feast. My appetite was whetted, and now I had to have more.

“Get out!” the mother said, but didn’t step any closer. “Get out or I’ll call the police.”

They could sense my power. They were afraid.

That’s when my mind began to say things. Scary things.
I
don’t
know
them, I began to tell myself.
If they turn to stone, so what? Why should I care? It’s not like I’ll ever see them again. It’s not like I’ll ever get caught.

I shook my head, trying to chase these terrible thoughts away. How could I think such things? What was wrong with me? Before the voice of hunger began gnawing on my mind again, I left, moving at a speed only a Gorgon could. Running between the seconds. To those people, I probably seemed to vanish before their eyes, leaving them to wonder for the rest of their short mortal lives,
Who was that stranger sitting in my chair? Eating my pie? Sleeping in my bed?
Just some crazy kid with crazy locks, who saw us and ran away. That’s all. They would never know how close they had come to their own stony ends.

I ran through their yard, across the street, and into the woods, finding that no matter how fast I ran, I never lost my breath. I knew the direction I was running in. I could sense direction just as I could sense life, and soon I came out of the woods to see my school up ahead, with the students already arriving. Just a few. Not the crowds that would be there in another half hour. Going to school seemed pointless to me now. School was for regular kids, who would grow, and get jobs, and die someday. But now I wondered, would I ever grow beyond fifteen? Was I stuck at this age for all eternity? That would really be a curse. Or perhaps, in the same way I could stretch and shrink the flow of time, could I change my age by merely thinking about it? I had so many questions, and I knew that the only one who could answer them was Tara. I didn’t want to see her now. I felt so strange within my own skin, I didn’t want to face her until I felt more comfortable, more
myself,
whatever that meant now.

Would she be at school today? Maybe, but I could deal with that. There were plenty of ways to avoid talking to her, if I really wanted to. Perhaps there was no longer a need for me to go to school, but I wanted to go there, anyway. I desperately wanted something normal back in my life, if only for a few hours. The hunger had faded just a bit now. I figured I could control the hunger in a familiar place, around people who I knew. I was sure of it.

I crossed beneath the stone arch of Excelsior Academy, telling myself that the reason I wanted to be there was simply to go to class. Funny how your own mind can trick you into believing things that just aren’t true.

Hiding behind my sunglasses, I made my way right to the library. Even through the dark lenses, the people around me shone in dazzling color compared to the strange grayness of the walls and floors. I could smell them, too. Not their hair gel, or deodorant, or nasty gym smell, but some other smell. The smell of their life. I could hear myself groaning with hunger, so I picked up my pace, practically knocking the door to the library off its hinges as I entered.

“Parker Baer!” the librarian complained. “Control your impulses!”

“Sorry,” I said, then grabbed some teen magazine and headed to the farthest table in the dimmest corner, away from any of the other kids. I forced myself to read articles about things I didn’t really care about. According to my watch, there were still twenty minutes until my first class would begin. My first blissful distraction of the day. Who would have thought I’d ever call algebra blissful?

With no patience for waiting, I concentrated on my watch and the movement of time, until I could see the minute hand moving at the speed the second hand usually moved. Sounds around me became whiny and high-pitched. Perhaps it was this acceleration of time that kept me from noticing Dante sitting down beside me.

“Dude, I’ve been watching you. It’s like you haven’t breathed for a whole minute.”

I turned to him slowly, time resuming its normal pace. “Leave me alone, Danté,” I heard myself say, with a dead flatness to my voice.

He leaned forward, misreading the tone of my voice to mean something else. “I guess you heard, then.”

“Heard what?”

“Ernest.” He spoke in a whisper, like it was too terrible to speak out loud, which it was. “He’s dead.”

I just stared at Dante through my lenses, my jaw dropped open.

“I know, I can’t believe it, either,” said Dante. “But whatever strange disease he had, it killed him. Something to do with the hardening of his bones. It’s like his bones just kept getting thicker, until everything else just got pushed out.” Dante shivered. “Sick.”

“That’s not what happened,” I told him.

“Why, what did you hear?”

“It’s not what I heard; it’s what I know. He petrified. He turned to stone.”

“Hey, man, don’t make jokes, okay? The dude is dead. It’s not funny.”

“And I’ve got news for you,” I added. “There’s going to be a whole lot more. I could even tell you who.”

“Parker, you’re really starting to freak me out,” Dante said, leaning away. “I mean first the freaky hair and now all this freaky talk. That’s freaky squared.”

I understood now how Tara saw people. Like food. That’s what I was beginning to see now. Even Dante. Remember that old cartoon: two guys stuck on a desert island, one guy looks at the other, and instead of seeing his bud, he sees a roast turkey? That’s what it was like looking at Dante. It was probably the most disturbing thing I had ever felt.

I suddenly had an absolute
need
to turn something to stone, as overwhelming as the need to breathe. “I have to find something big,” I said, more to myself than to him. “An elephant, a whale—anything!”

“Just when I thought you couldn’t get any weirder ... what are you gonna tell me next, you’re a zombie that must eat human brains?”

I almost laughed. He had no idea how close he was.

Dante must have seen something unspeakable in my nasty little grin, because he stood up and backed away.

“I’ve had it with you, man. I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but you’re in definite need of some major therapy.”

He turned to leave, but I couldn’t let him go like that. I just couldn’t. If there was anyone I could spill my guts to, it was Dante. He might not believe me, he might call me crazy, but if I showed him how I could turn animals to stone, he’d have no choice but to accept it, and then maybe I’d have someone on my side. Someone besides Tara.

“Danté, wait!” I followed him out into the hall, moving so remarkably fast, everything was a blur. Suddenly I found myself in front of him, right in his path.

Dante just looked at me, stunned. To him, it must have seemed like I just appeared there. “How did you ...”

“Never mind how,” I told him. “There are other things we need to talk about.”

I was about to tell him all about Tara, all about who she was and the cursed gift she had given to me, but instead of talking, I found myself reaching for my glasses and pulling them off my face. I couldn’t stop myself.

It took only an instant for me to catch Danté’s gaze in mind Triggering the change in Dante wasn’t as easy as it had been wit the animals I had come across, but I was still able to do it.

I gasped a breath of deep relief. My curls squirmed, satisfie in a way they hadn’t been when I had petrified animals. An suddenly I realized what I had done.

“Danté! Danté, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” But what did son mean now? His eyes were already starting to glaze. His skin ha begun to pale.

“Your eyes,” he said weakly. “Don’t look at me again, okay Just don’t look at me.” He turned and staggered away. Othe kids were looking at me now, wondering what had happened an why Dante was acting so strangely. Quickly I put on my sun glasses, desperate not to catch anyone else’s gaze, and I bolte from school.