For I Could Lift My Finger and Black Out the Sun (9 page)

Bobby was more than a little skeptical, especially hearing the word
parasite
, but that was okay. I’d expected that. All I needed to do was show him my blood cells, then get a sample of his blood to compare.

First, I fired up the light of my microscope.

“When’d you get that?” he asked.

“This week,” I said breathlessly, “while you were gone.” The light came on and I put my eye to the eyepiece.

“Son of a
bitch
!” I shouted, way too loud. Remembering too late that my mom was home.

“Boys?” came the call from somewhere else in the house.

“Yeah, Mom?” I replied sheepishly.

“Watch the language.”

“Sorry, Mom!” I rolled my eyes at my own stupidity.

“What’s your deal, dude?” Bobby asked.

I paused. This was not going as planned.

“They’re gone,” I said finally.

Bobby didn’t even bother to reply, just smirked in an
of course there are little monsters in your body
kind of way.

“Wait — I’ll just do it again.” I grabbed the red pushpin.

But no matter what I did, I couldn’t get a single drop of blood. My fingertip changed every time I tried. It
sluiced
out of the way. Had I somehow activated the thorns’ self-preservation instinct? “Goddamn it!” I shouted breathily, hoping my mom couldn’t hear me. “Cut it out!” I yelled at my own body.

I stopped, closing my eyes, not knowing what to do.

“You want me to try my finger?” Bobby asked. My eyes popped open.

“Yes! Let’s do that!” I handed him the pin.

But it was useless. Bobby had done so many things trying to hurt himself that his body was even more evasive. Every patch of skin he tried just sluiced around his attempts.

“Wait, let’s do skin — the dead skin has fewer thorns — they try to get out — but some should still be there.”

“They try to get out…” Bobby repeated, with a strange tone to his voice. He wasn’t buying it, not one bit. I noticed his expression out of the corner of my eye. Not ridicule. Not mockery.
Concern
. Maybe even
fear
.

“Johnny…” he started. I paused from scraping my skin onto a slide. “Johnny… are you okay?”

“What? Yeah, sure.” I went back to scraping my arm.

“It’s just… You’re acting kinda weird.”

I looked at him. “And so?”

“Well, Walter was acting kinda weird and…”

“Hold on. No. No, no, no. I am
not
losing my mind, Bobby. This is real. Just let me show you.” I hurriedly placed the slide under the microscope.

Bobby humored me for over an hour and countless slides, my skin and his.

We found nothing.

2

“Spit!” I yelled, bolting up from a dead sleep that night.

I heard a clamor and a thud. From down the hall, my dad yelled, “Jesus, John, it’s the middle of the night! Can you tone it down?” He made a
harumph
and I heard my mom say something muffled. “And watch your language!” Dad added. Their bed creaked as he turned over and I heard swishing noises as he grabbed at the blankets. Then there was silence again.

I didn’t say
shit,
Dad
, I thought. Spit was the answer, I told myself in the middle of the night. There had to be viable cells in my spit, and it would be easy to extract.

My mind wandered. Spit. It should work. If not, maybe other bodily fluids or excretions?
God
, I thought to myself in the dark,
please don’t make me have to test a turd. I’ll do pee if I have to, but please not a turd.

But first, spit. Super easy. Way less disgusting.

As much as I hated to wait, I’d confirm it in the morning.

* * *

Man, I was learning a lot about the human body. Did you know that saliva is 99.5% water? Guess how helpful that was for me? If you guessed
not helpful at all
, you’re right!

Still, in the morning, I tried to see what might turn up in that 0.5% remainder. I ended up testing so many samples that I had to keep swirling my tongue around, trying to drum up some new loogie to lather onto a slide. That’s when I think I dislodged cells from my cheek or tongue, just a few, floating around in the juicy 99.5% water of my spit. And I found those little triangles, the thorns, again.

They were in my mouth, too
. For some reason, this
really
bothered me.
Parasites
. In my skin. In my blood. And now in my mouth. Before I had time to think better of it, I spat on the floor. Of my own room. They were
everywhere
.

I plopped down on my bed. At least I’d have evidence to show Bobby that I wasn’t going nuts, but I wanted very badly to know what the hell was going on.

I figured it wouldn’t be long until I heard from Bobby again, so rather than look even crazier by calling him and ranting, I’d just wait. By 10 am, he was knocking on my door.

* * *

“Get. Out!” Bobby shouted, not believing his own eyes, not pulling himself away from the microscope. “What are those things?”

I shrugged. “Don’t know. But we’ve both got ’em, and based on what I’ve seen, they’re everywhere. All over our bodies. Inside us.”

“What the hell…,” Bobby trailed off, squinting into the eyepiece again for another, harder look. “You’re sure this is
my
spit?”

“You saw me put it in there. I don’t have a secret stash of random spit, so yeah, it’s yours.” I fell back on the bed, still contemplating, but relieved that Bobby might not be thinking I was nuts anymore.

Bobby straightened his back and turned toward me. “Wait. How do you know this isn’t normal? How do you know everyone doesn’t have this stuff?”

I gestured toward the computer and printouts on my desk. “Take a look for yourself. There’s nothing like it in any of those diagrams.”

Bobby picked up the topmost paper, stared at it for a second or two, then dropped it. When artists considered carving the busts of humanity’s great scientists, Bobby was unlikely to be top of the list. He waved away all the mumbo jumbo with a backward flick of his hand. “I don’t know what the hell I’m looking at here.”

“Well, I looked at those a lot, and a bunch of other pictures and descriptions. There’s
nothing
like this stuff in normal cells.
Nothing
.”

Bobby furrowed his brow. “And just how is it that you think these little…
thorns
? Is that what you’re calling them? How are they responsible for what we can do?”

I shrugged again. “That, I have no idea.”

Bobby seemed reassured somehow. “Then you’re not sure.”

“Of course I’m not sure!” I scoffed. “I’m 13 years old! I’m not a cellular scientist!”

Bobby raised his hands. To himself, he said in a low grumble, “Then why the hell am I listening to you?” Bobby spun around, like he was looking for a place to escape.

“What?” I asked, sitting up on my bed, then turning and flipping my feet onto the floor.

He didn’t respond. So I asked again. “What did you say?” I stood and took a step away from the bed.

Bobby whirled on me. “Why the hell am I listening to
you
?” he asked with too much venom.

I flinched, taking a seat again on the bed. “Whoa, what’s the problem?”

Without warning, Bobby flew into a rage. “The problem? I don’t know, John Boy, what
is
the problem?” Oh man. He hadn’t called me
John Boy
since… when? “You know, why can’t you just be
happy
? I would think you’d be
really
happy.”

“What’re you talking about, Bobby?” I have to admit, I was a little scared. This was the old Bobby. The bully.

He leaned down so our noses were almost touching. “You have
powers
, Johnny, and so do I. What does it matter where it comes from, or why, or if there are little doohickeys running around in our bodies?
Powers
. Do you realize what we could do?”

I shook my head slightly, afraid to look away from him.

“
Anything
— we could pretty much do
anything
, Johnny!” He backed up and began pacing around the room. “You wanna get straight A’s without trying? Done. Just
push
the teachers’ mind! You wanna be a celebrity? Get in front of a camera and show the world how a hammer can’t crush your hand! You want to be the coolest kid in school…? Uh,” he gestured impatiently. “Just do
anything
we can do.” Bobby paused, turned, and grabbed me by the shoulders. “Johnny,” he said, his eyes pleading “who
cares
how it happened, or why, because we’re the ones in control now.” He let go of my arms.

The ones in control.

Is that how I felt? Is that what I wanted?

“Bobby…,” I started. He stood waiting for a revelation to happen to me. But it didn’t. “I… I don’t know.” I took a big breath. “I just don’t feel in control of anything.”

He spun, hands held up on both sides of his head, nearly shouting. “Geez, Johnny, get over it! You know, we’re friends, but sometimes I want to give you a good, swift punch like the old days.” Bobby balled one fist and I cringed at the memories. “There you go! Why are you so afraid? You can do the physical stuff almost as good as I can. Why do I always have to twist your arm to get you to do it? Why are you afraid of it? And the stuff with your mind, you’re good at that, too.” He paused to look me in the eye, heaving a sigh. “But even with these abilities, you’re too scared to do
anything
most of the time. Why, Johnny?”

“I… I don’t know. Maybe because it’s not… natural?” It was a question more to myself than Bobby.

“Not natural?” Bobby was incredulous. “Not natural? Why not? It’s just you. It’s just me. We’re still just kids. What’s so unnatural? Just
do it
, John. Just
use
your powers.”

Once more I flopped backward on the bed, arms wide. “Ugh, I don’t know. I mean, I think it’s kinda cool to do this stuff, but I can’t let my parents know, or teachers, or even other friends. Really, only you can know. And I just don’t understand
why
it happened to me.” I folded my arms across my eyes, grimacing. Life seemed to have gotten so complicated. Bobby and I could do these things… We had, as he put it,
powers
. But so did Walter Ivory, and it seemed to have driven him crazy. Suicidally crazy. We had to keep the secret not only that we had powers, that there were little thorns in our cells, but also that we had witnessed Walter’s death. It was a lot of deep doo-doo for a couple of doofus 13-year-olds to keep bottled up.

But then I began to think it didn’t matter. Who cared about all this stuff? All this
thinking
? Bobby was right. I could do amazing things. I should enjoy it.

Wait.

Those seemed like alien thoughts.

I sat up abruptly. “Cut it out, Bobby.” I could see him concentrating on me, trying to push my mind.

Again, I thought that I should just let go and welcome the changes I was experiencing.

I shook my head. Bobby again. He wasn’t letting up. It was pissing me off.

There was a tingling in my head, as I realized I could
feel
the push happening. It was the last straw.

I stood up. “I said
cut it out
!” I shouted, pushing back with my mind. Hard. Bobby staggered against a bookshelf, sending things thumping to the carpet below. He blinked, twice, then shook his head.

Oh my God
, I thought.
Did I break his mind, like we did to Walter Ivory?
Then Bobby looked up at me with a nasty sneer, the perfect incarnation of the old Bobby Graden, school bully. He puffed himself up and stepped toward me, raising one fist.

“That
hurt
, asshole!” He swung, aiming a heavy blow at my right shoulder.

And missed.

Well, not really missed. It was like the hammer trick. My body, keen on self preservation whether I had any input or not.

My shoulder sluiced away as Bobby’s fist went by. His eyes popped, not only from the embarrassment of the punch missing, but from the surprise of seeing what my body did. Even knowing about our powers, he didn’t expect it.

One important thing to remember about a pissed-off young boy is that embarrassment does
not
make things better. Bobby became even angrier. Without a word, he swung again, trying a cross at my right cheek.

I didn’t think. In fact, I would honestly have to say I didn’t
do anything
. But my body reacted, bending my neck unnaturally to slide my head out of the path of his punch.

Bobby had now missed twice. He stepped back, seething.

“Come on, Bobby, cut it o—” Before I could finish, he launched himself at me.

I raised one hand, palm flat toward his approach, a lame attempt to stop his hulking body from crashing into me.

And Bobby hit my hand like he was hitting a wall, then fell gasping to the floor. I was several inches shorter and 30 pounds lighter, and I hadn’t even budged.

I looked at my hand and realized I couldn’t move it. It was like my hand was made of stone. Then I noticed my arm, my shoulder, my midsection, and legs… I couldn’t move anything but my head.

After a moment my arm dropped, like ice melting, and I regained control.

But for that moment… just that moment, I had become something hard and impenetrable. I looked at my fingers in amazement.

Bobby coughed and dragged himself up, holding one hand to his chest where it had rammed into my hand. “Nice trick, jerk. How’d you do it?”

I just shrugged.

That was when the first earthquake hit.