The Rule of Won (20 page)

He went on like that for a while. By the time Ethan finally stopped, Alyssa was shivering. Not from cold. More like she was going to really just let loose and scream at him. She must've thought better of it, though, because she ran out.

He closed the door behind her, then stood alone in the center of his room, inhaling slow and steady. His arms curved in time with his deep breathing, rolling out into the air, then back toward his body.

“What's all that about?” Mason asked.

“He's calming himself down,” Drik offered.

“It's yogic,” Guy said. “Look at his control. Dunne, you should take notes for the fight.”

Right. Notes on how best to lose. Ethan repeated the motion, faster and faster, until his fists were snapping into the air. I could hear little popping noises, like he was punching air molecules. Then he bobbed on the balls of his feet and added some quick kicks, his heel reaching over his head.

“Kung fu?”

“It's some kind of martial art.”

My eyes got wide. “Holy crap,” I said.

Until then, I was thinking I at least had a shot at beating Ethan. He was a little bigger than me, but not much more muscular, and I figured I had rage on my side. Plus, he was so arrogant, he was easy to surprise. I thought if I took him down quickly, it could all be over in a minute.

But as I watched him kick, punch, and twist in the air like a video game character, it dawned on me that imanifestations were the least of my worries. Even without the collected
wishes of the club, odds were damn good that the son of a bitch was going to cream me.

“Holy crap,” I repeated.

Someone handed me a bottle of soda. I poured it over my head, let the cola drip down my face and sting my eyes. Maybe I was hoping it would wake me up from the nightmare, but it didn't.

Finally, Ethan shut the light in his room to go to sleep. Guy flicked the monitor off and said, “You're utterly doomed.”

Mason turned to me. “Still going?”

I shrugged. “If I don't, they'll get me like they got Moore. At least you guys can be there to scrape me off the floor.”

“Oh,
we're
not going,” Drik said.

“What?”

Mason shook her head. “Too dangerous. They all want to kill us.”

“And this is different from my situation how?”

“We will be there in spirit,” Guy offered. “I planted another webcam in the gym. We're going to break into the hospital and watch on my laptop with Moore.”

I stared at them, unbelieving.

“Sorry, dude,” Drik said. “But, hey, if it looks like you're really dying or something, we'll call the cops.”

Guy patted me sympathetically on the shoulder. “Want another soda to pour over your head? There's two left in the fridge.”

I had nothing to say to that. I had nothing left to say. In fact, the next day, the day before the fight, I was real quiet,
developing the kind of darkly fatal attitude that would have made Erica proud—if I'd told her about it.

It got worse around midday. Much worse. I was walking along the hall to my locker when my foot found a sheet of paper on the floor. There was some kind of drawing on it, so I picked it up for a closer look. The art wasn't Alyssa's, but you could still make out that it was me and Ethan. Ethan was holding me up by my neck as blood streamed out of my eyes. Apparently the Cravers were branching out into their own adventures in drawing. Chanting was no longer enough. Or maybe Ethan was hedging his bets, trying to find an artist to replace Alyssa.

I crumpled it up and tossed it out. When I opened my locker, though, a ton more tumbled out: loose-leaf sheets, pages torn from pads, matchbook covers, you name it. Each had a drawing, some with pencil stick figures, some full bodied. The Cravers were also diverse in their choice of medium—pencil, charcoal, watercolor, even oils. There wasn't much variation in their subject, though. All of them showed Ethan triumphant and me lying dead, or near to it.

At least I didn't have to wonder what they'd decided this week's Crave was going to be.

I thought about showing the collection to Dr. Wyatt or the cops, but none were signed, and what would it change? I shoved them back in, closed the locker, and headed to class.

On the way, I heard some steady whispering. As it got louder, I slowed down and stayed near the wall. Edging around the corner, I saw about ten kids in a huddle, kids I didn't even know, all chanting, fast and low:

Ethan will beat Caleb Dunne.
Ethan will beat Caleb Dunne.
Ethan will beat Caleb Dunne.

I didn't interrupt them, I just backed slowly away, found the nearest door, and cut the rest of the day. Funny, I'd been thinking I should stay as long as I could, especially since this might be my last day at Screech Neck High, if I got caught at the fight, but as I sat on the bus watching the scaffolding that surrounded the new gym wing vanish among the buildings and trees, I was just happy to get away.

Sitting in the back where the smell of the exhaust was nice and strong, I closed my eyes and banged the back of my head against the window. I was thinking of calling upon my spork and trying to imanifest myself winning. Why not? Ethan and the book never talked about what would happen if people had opposing imanifestations.

Would whoever wished hardest win, or was it more like a lot of little wishing added up to one great big wish? Or would the world split into two dimensions, one where I was triumphant and sanity was restored to Screech Neck, the other where I lay dead and everyone was forced to wear “1” pins by law?

A little dose of reality snapped me out of that. The bus window I was leaning against doubled as an emergency exit. It must have been broken or at least loose, because when I pushed back harder, it swung open at the bottom, sending a blast of November chill into my hair. You get a nice cold blast of air on the back of your head like that, and really, all you can think of is how cold your head is.

I appreciated the distraction. By the time I got home, I was realizing how totally stupid and insane I was for even thinking about showing up. I was a slacker, right? I could just not go. I could run away to another state and start over as a retail clerk.

Joey, at the dining room table, raised his weathered head as I came in. “Cutting class?”

“No. I just feel kind of sick.”

I must have looked so miserable, he didn't bother to challenge me on it. “Take a hot shower or something. That'll perk you up.”

“Sure.”

“Oh,” he added in that gravelly voice of his. “Package came for you.”

He pushed a small box, wrapped in brown paper, across the table. My name was written on it in pen.

“Buy something on eBay?”

“With what?” I smirked at him as I fumbled with the wrapping.

The paper was held on with two small strips of Scotch tape. I was surprised it had held together this long, because it just came apart in my hands, revealing a worn sleeve. It was pocked with white where the ink had rubbed away, but you could still make out the title,
Mondo Cane
.

“Hey, Joey,” I said. “Can I borrow your VHS player?”

• I see him just collapsing, eyes rolling into the back of his head. I picture Ethan punching him, over and over, bruising, then breaking the skin. I don't picture Caleb Dunne dead, but he's really wishing he was. —Colleen

• I give my power to Ethan. I put my strength in his arms, behind his blows. I imagine myself slamming my clenched fist into Caleb Dunne's face, feeling his nose collapse under my fingers. I see Ethan tower over him, only he's not just Ethan, he's all of us. We are part of it and part of everything. —Mike

• Caleb Dunne is so going to get his ass totally kicked by Ethan, and when he's finished, I'm next in line. —Dylan

• The marines have taught my brother sixteen ways to kill a man with his hands. I picture Ethan using them all on Dunne. —Alex

• According to the book, it's okay to remove obstacles, but we
really shouldn't ever wish ill will on people. So we have to make sure we don't think of Caleb Dunne as a person. He's not really. He's made himself an obstacle, a thing that stands in the way of spreading the truth. So it's perfectly okay that he should lose and suffer for it. —Grace

• I see Caleb Dunne getting whacked, over and over, with Nicole's iPhone, until they both just . . . break. —Sophia

• I've got some kind of freaky blood disease. The doctor thinks it's because I somehow wore down my immune system, but I know the real explanation: Caleb Dunne and his downer thoughts. He's what made me sick, so I'm devoting all my energies, all my imanifesting, to turning that negativity back on him, to give him the blurry vision, to give him the headaches and the crappy parents who want to send me to some detox camp, to give him the pain he wants to give everyone else. —Jane

• I hope at the last minute Caleb Dunne realizes what a fool he's been, that he sees the light, that he comes back to us with his head down and his heart open. —Jacob

• Anyone who tries to destroy us deserves whatever they get. No pity for Caleb Dunne. He tried to hurt my family and now he's going to see just how strong and together we all are. —Olivia

• I would like the new Xbox 360 Elite System, with a premium black finish and three powerful core processors capable of
producing the best in HD entertainment (up to 1080p, like any Xbox 360), 16:9 cinematic aspect ratio, anti-aliasing for smooth textures, full surround sound, HDMI output, and DVD playback with upscaling capabilities right out of the box. I would also like to see Ethan kick Caleb's ass. —Landon

• I don't know if I can make it to the fight, but I'll be there with you in spirit, imanifesting so hard, you'll probably actually see me there! Go, Ethan! Down with Caleb Dunne! —Andrew

• I'm worried about some of you. I'm still thinking there are dark thoughts out there, maybe even some we're not aware of, like people afraid to show up because the cops might come. We'll see who's there and who's not. We'll see. —Jeff

• I picture a warm white glow surrounding all of us with health and power. I picture a golden shield nothing can penetrate, not knives, not bullets, not hate. I picture it growing, swelling out and around us, taking in more and more of the world, welcoming in all the riches, and pushing out all the stalkers and all the Caleb Dunnes. —Kathleen

• I guess I don't see the connection between Caleb Dunne and global warming. Is he really that important? Shouldn't we just ignore him? —Beth

• Everyone's watching this, everyone. I was talking to one of the members in the hall the other day about the fight and the PE
teacher Mr. Canner was listening in. I was terrified he was going to turn us in, but he just winked and showed me the “1” pin he wears under his jacket. We cannot be defeated. —Tom

• It's like everything I've been afraid of is finally coming to a head. It's going to end on Saturday, all of it, I just know it is. It's going to end with this fight, and then I am going to be free. —Lauren

• I see Caleb lying on the ground, pleading, crying, begging me to help him, showing more true emotion than I've ever seen from him, more than I even thought he was capable of. And then I tell him, This is what you wanted and now you've got it—you've got it all. —Vicky

I'd really, truly been hoping
Mondo Cane
would provide some sort of
Rule
-like secret that'd allow me to defeat Ethan and the Crave.

Nope.

Turns out, it was pretty lame. It was this old documentary from the sixties. Most of it was stuff I guess at the time they considered gross and shocking—people eating dog meat and insects and stuff. There were some sick violent rituals, too, like animal sacrifices. There was also this really long sequence of cars being crushed, which didn't seem to have much to do with anything.

And yeah, at long last, there was the Vanuatu. Finally. Vanuatu's an island nation in the South Pacific and the home of what's called a cargo cult, which basically worships cargo. During World War II there was an air base there and the locals, who weren't technologically advanced (and when I say that, I mean they had spears and clothes and agriculture and that was about it), developed a sort of religion around what they saw at
the air base. They came to believe that the giant metal birds and all the stuff they carried was really meant for them, that the white men who'd built the airport had tricked the gods into bringing the cargo to the wrong people.

So, to get the goodies of the gods back, they built fake airports, fake control towers, even fake airplanes, all out of bamboo and wood. Some of them even made fake soldier uniforms for themselves. Then they'd sit around, manning the fake airport, tending the fake planes, hoping a real one would show up and give them stuff.

What any of this had to do with
The Rule of Won
was beyond me. It did provide a last distraction before my rendezvous with destiny—also known as waiting-to-get-the-crap-kicked-out-of-me-by-some-psycho-who'd-studied-martial-arts-all-his-life-and-didn't-think-much-of-cutting-people's-brake-lines.

The whole running-away thing sounded like the only sane choice. Screech Neck had never been great to me, so what was I hanging around for? By Saturday night at ten, with Joey snoring on the couch, I was packed and ready to go.

But then the lock in the door rattled and in walked my mom, carrying so many grocery bags she practically fell into the apartment.

“Some help, Caleb?” she said.

I stumbled up and helped her unpack, feeling like a heel that she even had to ask.

“Long time no see,” I said. I meant it as a joke, but I could tell it made her feel guilty.

“I'm trying to change my schedule, honey, but the new manager's got something to prove, so he's not even listening,” she said with a yawn.