XGeneration 1: You Don't Know Me (33 page)

“Best you hurry, young blood,” Mr. Shine shouted behind him. “She’s fixin’ to jump for good!”

Scott saw what he meant. The quarter was headed straight for a storm drain. He pumped his arms and legs as hard as he could, but in the minute he’d stood talking to Mr. Shine, the sky had turned black with clouds, and now a hard wind pushed against him. The quarter became smaller as it rolled farther and farther away, hopping along the gutter as it went.

Clink. Clink-clink. Clink.

Just before it disappeared into the mouth of the drain, Scott jerked awake. His eyes took in the popcorn ceiling of his bedroom, his pulse swishing inside the channels of his ears. He sat up and checked his watch—8:02 p.m.

Clink. Clink-clink. Clink.

The sound wasn’t coming from a rolling quarter but the window. Scott checked his watch again.
Shoot!
He’d only meant to rest his eyes, not conk out completely. He leaped from his bed as the tapping sounded a third time.
Quick, dummy! Before she leaves!
Snaking his hand behind the blinds, he gave the signal. He listened beyond his door a moment, then opened the blinds and slid open the window. The screen popped out in a shower of rust, and he lowered it outside.

Two sprays of mint breath freshener later, Scott climbed over the sill himself, closing the blinds and the window behind him. Around the corner of the house, in their secret spot behind the juniper bushes, he found Janis. She was sitting with her back to the white brick, legs drawn in. Her combed hair flowed over the shoulder of a shiny purple and green athletic jacket and ran down her side. When she looked up, Scott struggled to breathe.

“Did I remember it right?” Janis asked. “The bug knock?”

The bug knock was a code they’d come up with one summer when they were nine: one tap, two fast taps, and then a fourth tap—meant to sound like a light-seeking insect to anyone who wasn’t listening for it.

“Yeah, um, perfect.” He tried to lower himself beside her without crowding her. The secret spot felt a lot smaller now.

“I wasn’t sure my dad was going to let me out. I’m grounded, but I told him I was just going to pet Tiger and maybe take a jog down the street for exercise. I’ve got half an hour.”

“All right,” Scott said, even though he hadn’t processed most of what she’d just told him. He watched her brush an auburn strand of hair from her eyes, and for a moment, he saw her not as Janis Graystone but as Jean Grey. She raised her eyebrows in question.

“Oh, right, right,” he stammered. “What I wrote…”

What he had written was:

Janis,

I think I can get us inside the shed. If you’re available, come over at 8:00 tonight and we’ll talk. Do you remember the knock?

Your friend,

Scott

He’d struggled over how to close it. That’s what had taken him so many drafts to get right. Just
Scott
had seemed too blunt.
Fondly
or
Yours truly
too personal.
Your friend
won out by process of elimination.

The important thing was that the note had worked. She had come.

“You said the shed was secured by a bolt lock?” He was trying to make himself sound older, more practiced, like how he imagined Scott Summers would talk. But what came out was closer to Judge Wapner of
The People’s Court
.

“He changed it between the first and second time I… well, went in there. But, yeah, it was a bolt lock both times. Bigger the second time. It opens and closes with a key.”

Scott dug into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a cloth wallet. “One of the benefits of being a nerd is that the things we obsess over sometimes end up having a use. I wanted so badly to be a thief—you know, the D&D kind—that I sent away for these.” He unfolded the wallet to reveal a row of slender tension wrenches and metal picks. “I actually got pretty good with them. There’s not a lock I haven’t been able to open, anyway.”

He looked away when he realized the last part sounded like a boast.

Janis didn’t seem to notice. She reached over and drew a pick from its sleeve. “What about the hatch?”

“That’s something else I’ve been pondering. The energy you felt—the electrical field—I’m wondering if it isn’t a magnetic seal. A lot of the higher tech locking systems are magnetic.”

“Is that something that can be picked?”

“No, but if I can get inside, I might be able to… influence it.”

He was preparing to explain what he meant, but she nodded. It was only their second day talking, and already they were discovering their own language again. He watched Janis turn the metal pick, examining each end. She slid it back into the wallet.

“What do you think he’s keeping down there?” he asked.

A dark shadow seemed to pass over Janis’s face, and she shook her head. “He subbed one of my classes today.”

“Mr. Leonard?”

“Yeah, fifth period typing.”

“Did—did he say anything?”

“No, he wouldn’t look out from behind his newspaper.”

Scott followed Janis’s gaze beyond the junipers where the Watsons were out on one of their evening walks. Being able to observe the traffic on the street without being seen had been one of the reasons Scott and Janis chose the meeting spot as kids. They would invent stories about their passing neighbors: their secrets, their past crimes, their current nefarious activities.

When Janis looked up at him, an odd light shone in her eyes. “Scott, are you sure you want to do this?”

“Huh? Yeah. Are you?”

He became certain that she was going to say no. And with a
no
their renewed association, their rediscovered friendship, would end, just like that. He could already feel his heart folding in on itself. Everything would go back to the way it was at the start of the school year.

“I… yes, I need to do this,” she said. “I need to know. I just don’t want to get you in trouble.”

To this point, Scott had not considered the illegality of what they were planning. In its conceptual stage, it seemed as harmless as his old hacks: gaining access, looking around a little, not taking or damaging, leaving everything the way it had been. But to carry this out would be physical breaking and entering and a lot easier to prove in court than hacking.

“Hey, it will be like one of our old adventures.” He forced a laugh.

She studied his face closely. “All right, but if you ever have second thoughts…”

“I won’t. I want to find out what’s down there, too.”

“We’ll have to plan a time when he won’t be there.”

“How about at night, when they’re sleeping?”

“That’s the thing,” she said. “I’m not sure he does sleep at night. During those early experiences, he was always out on his deck. Always watching. He wasn’t out there the last time, but the weather’s colder now. He could have been watching from inside. It felt like he was, anyway.”

“Then we’ll have to do it when he’s not home. Maybe when he’s subbing?”

“But how do we know when that’ll be?”

“We don’t… unless we do.”

The space between Janis’s eyes pinched in.

“I can have Wayne call and say he’s from one of the schools across town, Eastside Elementary, maybe. He could even capture one of their lines to make it look like the call is actually coming from Eastside—in case it’s ever investigated, which I doubt it would be.” Scott felt like a hacker again, his mind planning everything out three to four steps in advance. His mouth was having a hard time keeping up. “Wayne will say he has a teacher out sick, can Mr. Leonard come cover, et cetera, et cetera, the assignment will be waiting for him at the front office.”

“But there won’t be any assignment,” Janis said.

“It doesn’t matter. The time it takes for him to drive there, find out there’s been some mistake, and drive back will take him, what, forty-five minutes? That should give us plenty of time to do what we need to do. We might even still be able to catch the bus to school.”

“What about his wife?” Janis asked.

“Won’t she be sleeping?”

“We don’t know that.”

“Then we’ll need to figure out a way to distract her. Call the house, maybe? Keep her on the phone?”

“What’s to stop her from looking out a back window?”

Scott grinned.

“What?” Janis said.

“You used to do the same thing when we were kids, poke holes in my ideas until I felt like one of those plastic heads you pump Play-Doh through. But that’s good,” he added quickly. “It’s kept me humble these years.”

She smirked with one side of her mouth. “Comes with being a Graystone.”

When Scott realized he was staring at her, he cleared his throat. “All right,” he said, affecting his practiced voice again. “Mr. Leonard’s on his way to Eastside, his wife’s in the house, maybe sleeping, maybe not… I’ll only need a couple of minutes to get inside the shed.”

“I’ll knock on the front door.”

He began to shake his head.

“No, no, not like our old knock-and-runs,” she said. “I’ll have a story. I’ll tell her our cat’s missing and ask if she’s seen her around. Mrs. Leonard will say no, of course, but then I’ll describe Tiger. Her size, hair color, eye color. I’ll keep her there as long as I can.”

“Tiger’s still alive?”

“Of course she is!” Janis slapped his arm. “She’s only seven.”

“But doesn’t that make her like…” Scott pretended to count on his fingers. “…forty-something in human years?”

“Yeah, and how many forty-something-year-olds do you know who are keeling over from old age?”

Scott’s laughter came out louder and dorkier than he would’ve liked, but it was the most honestly he had laughed all year. It wasn’t just her wit, which he realized how much he’d missed. It was her friendship, which he’d missed so much more. He let his laughter taper off and adjusted his glasses.

“Hey do you still have your walkie-talkie?” he asked.

“I think so…” She looked at him sidelong, as though he was going to crack another joke. “Probably in the garage.”

Scott had gotten a set for Christmas when he was eight—one of those cheap plastic numbers—and given one to her. The idea of talking to each other from their bedrooms had excited them both. But the transmission beyond ten feet was dismal—mostly crackles against a background of thick static. The Morse component worked all right, but Janis hadn’t been as enthused about learning the code as Scott, he remembered. After a month, his had ended up in the garage as well.

“See if you can find it,” he said. “I’m serious. You won’t even have to learn the code. The minute you hear Mrs. Leonard at the front door, you’ll send me a beep, then turn off the talkie.”

And just like that, the gravity of what they were planning fell back over them.

The Watsons returned from the end of The Meadows, both in blue jogging suits. They paused before Scott’s house, looking as though they were debating whether or not to return up their street, before power walking toward the main road.

“What about getting back out?” she asked. “Won’t you need another distraction?”

“Not with the lock already picked, no. I’ll just need to clear out quickly.”

Janis nodded solemnly. “When?” she asked.

“It’s your call.”

“How about Monday morning?”

“This Monday?”

“I’m afraid to wait too much longer,” she said. “But Monday won’t be rushing it, either. It will give us a couple days to work out the details and decide whether it’s something we still want to do.”

Scott knew she meant that last part for him. “I’ve already decided,” he said.

She reached for the same place she had just given him a playful slap, his head swimming with her nearness, the promise of her touch. She patted his forearm twice, then held it close to the spot where his bones had once broken and healed, where his arm bent out a little.

“I’m glad we’re talking again,” she said.

The image of Jean Grey swam up in front of him, the dreams he still had for them.

“Yeah,” Scott whispered. “Me too.”

27

Monday, December 3, 1984

6:30 a.m.

Janis stood in the street, hugging her arms, peering up at the glowing square of Scott’s window. It was still dark out and cold. But the shivers that snaked through Janis’s body and rattled her teeth seemed to come from some deep-down apprehension rather than the chill around her. Blowing warm air into the sides of her fists, she tried to remember if she’d had an experience the night before, a bad dream—something to warn her. But she couldn’t.

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” she whispered, watching his light.

The thought of postponing the operation entered her mind again. She had only to explain her nagging feeling. He would understand. But like every other time that weekend that she’d felt her resolve starting to waver, she pictured the shirt that had once belonged to Star’s sister, perforated and stitched together.

Turned her chest cavity to soup.

Then came the association between Star’s sister and her own. What would happen if Mr. Leonard caught Margaret alone? Janis turned and looked at her sister’s car parked in the street in front of the house. No, there could be no going back. Wheels were already in motion, and for better or worse, their fates were bound to this: hers, Margaret’s, and Mr. Leonard’s.

Scott’s too, she realized.

When she turned back to his house, his bedroom window was dark. Seconds later, he appeared at the front door in slacks and a gray T-shirt, his blue backpack slung over his shoulder. He scampered down the lawn, the dark sweep of his hair bouncing, glasses jiggling. The tremulous apprehension returned to Janis.

“Wayne just called.” His brown eyes shone keenly. “Nut took the bait.”

Nut was their codename for Mr. Leonard after recalling how his thin upper lip remained stiff when he lectured, leaving his lower jaw to hinge up and down—like a nutcracker’s.

Janis stood looking at Scott. Was it right to involve him in this?

“Okay,” she whispered.

They moved toward the bus stop, their footfalls quiet and brisk, neither one talking. Janis resisted the compulsion to smell her shower-damp hair. In her periphery, she noticed Scott pushing up his glasses. When they reached the intersection, Scott led them to the back of a bush that grew beside the Pattersons’ garage door, hiding them from the street. They drew out their walkie-talkies, Scott’s from his backpack and Janis’s from the front pocket of her hooded Thirteenth Street Titans sweatshirt. Janis snapped hers on and twisted the volume to three.