The Orphans (Orphans Trilogy Book 1) (9 page)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Antony Williams flipped
through his small wad of cash as he strode down Crenshaw Boulevard in South Central Los Angeles. Two hundred eleven bucks was the final count. Antony grinned at the irony of his sum. Two-eleven was the police code for robbery, and that’s basically what Antony had just pulled off, selling a couple in-the-box
dvd
players and an old mountain bike for top dollar. Antony’s cousin, Maurice, would be proud. Maurice had only expected Antony to pull in a hundred seventy-five at the most, but Antony had used his wits to successfully drive up the price.

Not only did Antony work for his cousin, he also lived with him. He had moved in right after his father passed away two and a half years earlier. Less than a month after moving in with Maurice, Antony dropped out of Frederick Douglass High School—where he would have been a junior if he had stuck around—and joined his cousin in the family business.

Maurice liked to think of himself as the neighborhood pawnshop. However, unlike like pawnshops, Maurice didn’t buy and sell; he only sold. Most of his merchandise fell into the category of “found goods.” Almost all the time, Maurice was the one who “found” them. On any given morning, Antony would wake up to discover boxes stacked all over the living room, where he was sleeping. As random as it was, Antony never asked questions. He didn’t care about the answers. All he cared about was making his cut.

Antony had made more than his cut that day. He continued down the street until he reached the next intersection. The traffic light was green and the pedestrian signal had yet to even turn to the flashing hand and twenty-second countdown, but Antony stopped at the crosswalk, anyway. He stared at the small corner store on the other side of the crossing and waited for the light to turn red.

After the light had changed, Antony jogged to the point of the intersection kitty-corner to the store and waited again for the light to flash green before continuing up Crenshaw. As he made his way up the block, he glanced back at the corner store, and the sidewalk in front of it one last time. It was in that very spot, fifteen years earlier, that Antony’s mother had taken her last breaths.

Loretta Williams had gone to the corner store to pick up baby food for her one-year-old son. If she had only left the store a couple seconds earlier or stayed inside a couple seconds longer, she would’ve been spared. But unfortunately, she hadn’t done either. Consequently, Loretta was hit by the stray bullets from a drive-by shooting, collateral damage in the senseless and seemingly never-ending gang warfare that had long since overtaken the neighborhood.

All of the witnesses to the shooting refused to talk to the police. Some out of fear. Others out of distrust. Whatever their reasons, the shooter was never caught. Justice was never served. And Antony made sure to never cross the slab of concrete where his mother’s chalk-lined body had laid.

Antony was only a couple blocks away from his cousin’s house when he spotted three goons, former classmates of his who used to pound on him back in their elementary school days, hanging out on the stoop up ahead.

All three goons stopped what they were doing and grinned when they caught sight of Antony.

Antony put his head down and acted like he hadn’t noticed their smirks. Running wasn’t an option. While he was probably faster than all of them, he knew that running only made things worse. All he could do was keep heading toward them, and cross his fingers that they would leave him alone.

Any thoughts of an uneventful passing were erased when Antony got within ten feet of the goons. They lined up on the sidewalk, shoulder to shoulder, blocking Antony’s way.

“If it ain’t our old friend Urkel,” one of the goons said.

That’s what all the kids in elementary school used to call Antony. Not only had he been the most studious of all of his classmates, but he had also had the misfortune of needing glasses at an early age. Antony had those glasses broken so many times by bullies, including the three goons, that eventually he stopped wearing them to school and only wore them at home.

Antony’s dad, Darnell Williams, always told him to just turn the other cheek. He preached nonviolence, encouraging Antony to read the words of Jesus, Henry David Thoreau, and Martin Luther King Jr., as well as many Eastern philosophers. While Antony remembered all of the things he had learned from those books, he had forgotten exactly why he had read them. He had also forgotten his father’s passion; not just for nonviolence, but for education.

“Education is the great equalizer,” Darnell would say, quoting Horace Mann. That would be Antony’s ticket out of the neighborhood and the violence that had claimed Antony’s mother. Without a proper education, Darnell knew that Antony would fall through the cracks that everyone else in the neighborhood seemed to fall through. The cracks that at times seemed as wide as the Grand Canyon. The same ones that he himself had fallen through.

A high school football star with a promising future, Darnell’s career was derailed by a knee injury he suffered his senior year. Having never put even the slightest emphasis on academics, when his knee went, so did all of the acceptance letters and scholarship offers. That had been his mistake. He owned it. But he wouldn’t let his son make the same mistake. He owed it to Loretta, and to Antony, to make sure that Antony didn’t suffer a similar fate. And so, he fought tooth and nail to make sure Antony had the best chance possible.

Darnell pushed to get education reform in the schools. So that parents would have more choices. So that failing schools would be held accountable. So that all children, not just Antony, would have access to a quality education. It seemed to be working, too. Other parents started getting involved and demanding options. Even the administrators began to listen, and Darnell was given the opportunity to speak before the board for the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The night prior to his big meeting with the school district, Darnell went out for a jog. Antony didn’t remember his father coming home that night. He didn’t remember the blank look Darnell had in his eyes, or that he went straight to his room without saying a word. He only slightly remembered finding his father in his bed the next morning, dead from a heart attack, but even that memory was fuzzy.

When Darnell’s voice went silent, so did all of the others. Nothing changed. The status quo remained, and all of the children suffered for it.

Antony stayed silent as the three goons looked him up and down, intent on making him suffer.

“I almost didn’t recognize you, Urkel,” said another of the goons as he jabbed his fingers into Antony’s sternum. “You wearing contacts or something?” When Antony didn’t respond, the goon continued, “Yeah, you gotta be. You must be making good money, too, aren’t you?”

Antony knew where this was going. Next they would ask for—no, demand—any money that he had on him. If he said his pockets were empty, they would find out for themselves. Even if he gave them everything he had, they would still try to beat him down like they had back in grade school.

With his father’s teachings of nonviolence having long escaped his mind, replaced with boxing lessons from his cousin, Antony employed what Maurice liked to call “Protect your neck and my money.” He didn’t say a word or wait for any of the goons to ask him how much he was holding. Instead, Antony spoke with a closed fist. He threw a right cross, cracking the goon closest to him in the jaw and dropping him like a sandbag.

Antony wasted no time tending to the next-closest goon. He struck him in the chest. The blow was so forceful that it knocked the wind out of the would-be perpetrator, who stumbled backwards onto the grass of the nearby yard.

The last goon standing went for his knife, but he picked the wrong pocket and retrieved his cell phone on accident. He tossed the device and went back for his blade.

Antony didn’t give the goon a chance to make good on his error. Using the speed and strength he had inherited from his father, Antony swept the goon’s leg, sending him falling to the ground, his head smacking the sidewalk. Antony kicked the goon’s weapon away and was in the process of appropriating the discarded cell phone—a fifty-dollar bill for him—when he heard the whooping call of a patrolling police siren.

Without hesitation, Antony took off for the nearest alley. He knew the police wouldn’t care that the goons had been the instigators. Facts and evidence were not even second thoughts to many of the boys in blue who combed those streets. On top of that, the legal dropout age had been bumped to eighteen, and they would almost certainly pop Antony for truancy.

The goons attempted to flee as well, but they were slowed by the flashing stars that they were still seeing. Lucky for Antony, the police opted to focus on plucking the low-hanging, and badly bruised, fruit.

Even with the cops seemingly off his tail, Antony still sprinted the rest of the way to his cousin’s dilapidated bungalow-style home.

Once he was safe inside, Antony took a moment to reclaim his breath, and then he retrieved the phone he had lifted and inspected the condition. He was pleasantly surprised to find that he was wrong about it being a fifty-dollar phone. It was even nicer than he had initially thought. There was a chance he could get a hundred bucks for it, assuming it worked. He swiped the screen to wake up the phone. Everything was in order. There was even a browser already open. The goon who owned the phone had been flipping through posts on The Message Bored.

The top link was titled:
looking for love
. Antony read the heading and chuckled. His eyes barely grazed the next post as he went to close the phone’s browser. But before he could cancel the app, he was stopped by a sudden and overwhelming impulse. Antony lifted his thumb and read the subject line:
looking for orphans
.

With all of the Eastern philosophy that he had studied, Antony was familiar with the idea of the universe, or God, pointing you in the right direction. While he had subscribed to the belief in the past, it had been years since he had even thought to acknowledge any of the signs as they presented themselves. Even so, Antony couldn’t overlook the one that was currently in front of him and calling for him to act.

With his head saying “no” and his heart screaming “yes,” Antony clicked on the link to open the post.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Charlie didn’t reveal
much in his responses to the other orphans. He simply told them that if they were interested in hearing more, he would wire them money to pay for their flights to San Francisco so they could talk in person. Looking for answers, or at the very least, a free trip, almost all of the orphans immediately accepted the invitation. Only Naomi, who refused to fly, declined. A flight would require her to show some form of
id
. That would be too much of a gamble. Charlie suggested that she take a train instead. He had ridden trains a couple times with his parents, and they had never been asked for identification. After thinking it over, Naomi tepidly agreed to make the cross-country trek by rail.

In the days that preceded the orphans’ arrivals, Charlie’s nightmares subsided. But it was hardly cause for celebration, as they did not fully cease until he had forgotten nearly every memory of his parents and Walter. All Charlie had left was the note on the back of the science fair picture, which he carried with him, tucked in the pages of his Moleskine.

Charlie wasn’t sure if Terry and his Beasts were keeping tabs on him, but he knew it was of the utmost importance not to do anything that would raise their suspicions or tip them off, just in case they were. So Charlie kept up the guise of business as usual, still attending school and doing everything else that he normally would. He even emailed Terry about the internship, like Terry had told him to, and was in the process of crafting his second counter offer when the other orphans began to arrive.

Charlie had arranged it so that all of the orphans would arrive at about the same time; however, a snowstorm in Colorado had delayed Naomi’s train by an hour. During that time, the others waited in Charlie’s room, mostly silent except for when JP and Eddie would urge Charlie to just tell them what was going on. But Charlie was adamant that they wait until everyone was there. After groans, they would return to their silence until they decided to take another shot at changing Charlie’s mind.

◆
◆
◆

“She’s here,” Charlie said as he spotted the taxi pull up through the small, diamond-shaped window in his bedroom.

JP and Eddie sighed. It was about time.

Charlie left the others in his room and went outside to pay for Naomi’s ride.

“Uh. Hi,” Charlie stammered when Naomi climbed out of the taxi. “Naomi, right? Yeah. You’re obviously Naomi. There’s only one girl.” He hadn’t anticipated her being so attractive. Now that he knew she was, it was all he could think about. Neither Naomi’s exhaustion nor her eye-rolling was enough to throw cold water on the fire building inside Charlie’s chest.

“So … are you gonna pay the guy,” Naomi said, “or are you just gonna stare at me like a creep?”

“Yeah,” Charlie said as he mindlessly nodded his head.

“Yeah, what?” she asked impatiently.

Charlie snapped out of his daze. “I mean, I’m gonna pay him.” Charlie paid the driver and then turned back to Naomi. “Okay, well, I guess you can follow me.” He started up the driveway toward his house. “Everyone else is already here, so we can get finally started.”

“Wait a second,” Naomi said, yet to leave the curb. She hadn’t been sure if she could trust Charlie when he emailed her back, and she still hadn’t decided what to think of him after meeting him. “There aren’t any cops inside, are there?”

Charlie stopped halfway up the driveway. “No. Not that I know of.”

“Then who else is up there?”

“The other orphans.”

Naomi considered her options. After a moment, she nodded to the cabbie, releasing him, and then started up the concrete driveway.

◆
◆
◆

Charlie returned to his bedroom with Naomi to find Antony still sitting respectfully on the bed. Meanwhile, JP had moved to Charlie’s desk and was messing around on the computer, and Eddie was in the middle of rifling through Charlie’s dresser drawers.

“Hey, guys,” Charlie said, getting their attention. “This is Naomi.”

“It’s about time we got a girl,” JP said. “I was starting to think this was gonna be a sausage party.”

“Speaking of sausage,” Eddie said, “you got any snacks? I can’t find anything.”

“That’s because we keep them in the kitchen,” Charlie said.

“What do you do when you get hungry at night?”

“I go downstairs.”

“That seems inconvenient.” Eddie stuffed Charlie’s clothes back inside the dresser but didn’t bother to close the drawer.

“He probably doesn’t want to attract rats,” Naomi said, scowling as she scanned the area. “This room is a dump. I’d rather sleep on the street than in here.” She hesitantly touched the bed before taking a seat on the other corner.

“I don’t have rats,” Charlie said, getting defensive. “And I just moved up here a little while ago, so I’m still getting situated. But that’s not important. Now that everyone’s here, I can tell you why I invited you.”

Everyone immediately went quiet. Eddie forgot about his hunger, and Naomi forgot about her disgust for Charlie’s dilapidated room.

Charlie took a deep breath before breaking the same news to the others that Walter had broke to him. “Your parents didn’t die. They were killed.”

The other orphans stared at Charlie, unsure what to make of his bold and unexpected revelation.

After a moment, Antony spoke up. “What’s going on? Is this some kind of joke?”

“If it is,” Eddie said, “it definitely isn’t a good one.”

“It’s not a joke,” Charlie said. “I’m serious.”

“Seriously messed up in the head,” JP said, and then looked to the rest of the orphans, who nodded in agreement.

“No, I’m not,” Charlie shot back. He told them about everything that he had uncovered about his own parents. He told them about the contract and the contact list. He also retold the rabbi’s story about the soul-stealing Beasts.

“Just think about it,” Charlie continued. “All of us had at least one parent that died of a heart attack, some of us, two. And all of us had our memories of them disappear from our dreams. That’s not normal. I’ve known other people who passed away—three of my grandparents did—and that never happened. I still remember them.”

“I agree that all the stuff that happened is mad weird,” Antony said, “but I don’t see how that proves that our parents were killed, or anything else about your whole crazy story.”

“I saw the spark in one of the Beast’s eyes,” Charlie said. “It was so bright that it even shined through his sunglasses.”

“Dude,” Eddie said, “It was probably just a reflection.”

“He’s got a point,” JP agreed. “That’s pretty thin evidence. Thin enough that you definitely could’ve just said it over email and saved us all a lot of time.”

“No kidding,” Naomi said. “Do you even realize how long that train ride was?”

“You really should have flown,” Eddie said. “They gave me extra cookies, soda, and I even got free Wi-Fi.”

Charlie shook his head. This wasn’t going like he had planned at all. He hadn’t expected so much resistance. He had assumed that they would all be grateful that he had discovered the truth behind their parents’ deaths, and that they would be eager to hear his plan. Instead, they were pushing him to the brink. Charlie was close to snapping when he came up with the perfect way to silence their doubt.

“I have a printed copy of the contract,” Charlie said. “This will prove to you that it’s all real.” He retrieved the contract from the top drawer in his desk, along with a set of matches. He struck a match and held the flame to the paper.

Just like what had happened in the rabbi’s office, the letters on the contract caught fire but the paper did not.

Naomi and Antony watched in utter disbelief. While JP wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, Eddie was and confidently disregarded the display.

“Bravo,” Eddie said as he gave a sarcastic slow clap. “That was a great trick. If I was David Blaine, I’d totally be looking over my shoulder for you.”

“That wasn’t a trick,” Charlie said. He blew the smoke away from the sheet, making sure all of the flames were out, and then offered it to Eddie. “Try to tear it.”

“That’s obviously just part two of the trick,” Eddie said. “I’m not falling for it.”

“I’ll give you a thousand dollars if you can tear it even the tiniest bit.”

“I told you, I’m not falling for it.”

Never one to turn down a chance for easy money, Antony snatched the paper from Charlie. “Hell, I’ll fall for it,” he said. “Same deal?”

“Of course,” Charlie said.

“You’re on. But just so you know, I only take straight cash, homie.” Antony used every muscle in his upper body to tear the sheet of paper, but it was no use.

“Give it here,” JP demanded.

“Good luck,” Antony said as he handed over the sheet.

JP nodded to Charlie. “When I shred this, you better pay up. Except I don’t want one grand, I want ten.”

Unfazed, Charlie countered, “I’ll give you twenty.”

“Rich kids,” JP said and shook his head. He huffed and puffed as he pulled in every direction possible, but he couldn’t tear the sheet either. He gave up in a fit, crumpled the paper, and chucked it across the room. “Eddie’s right. That’s a scam.”

Naomi retrieved the balled-up sheet. It unfolded in her hand on its own. “What the hell is this?”

“I already told you,” Charlie said. “It’s a contract with the Devil. And it was printed on regular old printer paper.”

This time, there were no wisecracks or criticisms. They simply waited for Charlie to explain further. He finally had their attention.

“I’m pretty sure all of the people in the spreadsheet signed it,” Charlie said. “And I’d bet the people who killed your parents and stole their souls are on that list, too.”

The others considered this reality for a moment.

“Let’s say you’re right,” Eddie said. “So what? What do you want us to do?”

Before Charlie could respond, Antony answered for him. “You want us to team up and kill theses Beasts, don’t you?”

Charlie nodded. “Exactly.”

With that, Charlie lost the room all over again.

“That’s insane!” JP erupted. “You are completely insane!”

“I totally agree,” Eddie said. “I don’t even believe in God, but the whole idea of taking on the Devil—that’s just nuts. Plain and simple.”

“I don’t want anything to do with any of this,” Naomi announced. “Thanks for the ticket, Charlie. It was great meeting you guys and seeing the West Coast for the first time, but I prefer the East. There are way less weirdos. I’m out of here.” Naomi started for the stairs.

“Wait! Don’t leave. Please,” Charlie begged. He grabbed Naomi’s arm. “Stay. For your parents.”

Charlie’s words didn’t sway Naomi, they only made her more determined to leave. “You don’t know anything about my parents,” she snapped. “And you definitely don’t know anything about me.” She was about to yank her arm free when the doorbell rang.

Charlie’s eyes went wide. He loosened his grip, dropping hold of Naomi’s arm.

“What’s going on?” Naomi asked. “Who is that?”

The doorbell rang again, this time twice.

“I thought you said we were all here,” JP said.

Everyone
was
there. At least everyone whom Charlie had expected. While he wasn’t 100 percent sure who was at the door, Charlie had already made his best educated guess, and he couldn’t help but assume the worst.