True Talents(20)

“They made you light fires?”

He nodded. “Guess they figured if they made me do it, I’d get tired of it. But I didn’t do nothin’ in the first place.”

I didn’t say anything. Obviously, he wanted to keep pretending that he didn’t have a problem. As I finished my homework, Lucky came back. I realized that our room was the place where everyone hung out. Maybe it was because we were at the end of the hall. Maybe it was because Torchie had a lot of magazines.

Lucky had brought his portable stereo. “It’s mine,” he said when he caught me looking at it. “I didn’t steal it. I got it last Christmas.”

“Hey, I didn’t say anything,” I told him.

Cheater came next. Flinch dropped by soon after that. It wasn’t like a party or anything—it was just a bunch of us sitting around, talking or reading or just listening to music. Maybe it was a safety thing. Together, we were less likely to be harmed by Bloodbath. Maybe it was a social thing—we had the common bond of being sent to Edgeview. I really didn’t feel like trying to examine it right then.

“Does Trash ever drop in?” I asked Torchie after the other kids had left.

“Him? No way. We tried hanging out with him. All of us did. Especially me. I really tried hard to make friends with him. But he’s not a lot of fun to have around. He’s always throwing stuff. That kind of makes the rest of us nervous.”

“I can see how it might.”

Torchie shook his head. “He even threw a sneaker at Bloodbath once, in the locker room. Can you believe it? He got the crap kicked out of him for that.”

I didn’t want to hear any more about Bloodbath. “Hey, got anything to read besides magazines?”

Torchie pointed to the closet. “I have a ton of books in there. Help yourself.”

“Thanks.” I opened the closet and dug through his collection. There was a lot of good stuff. He had some Jack London and Jules Verne, but I’d already read most of that. My sister had gotten me started on them, along with H. G. Wells, Robert Heinlein, and Roald Dahl. I’d discovered Dean Koontz and Stephen King on my own. I searched around and finally picked up a battered and slightly charred paperback called Fifty Great Science Fiction Stories.

Maybe it was the book that gave me my first real hint. The stories I read described all kinds of strange and wonderful things. I guess they gave my mind a shove in a direction I hadn’t planned. At one point, I glanced up from the book and looked at the clock on Torchie’s desk. “A whole day,” I said.

“What?” Torchie asked.

“I’ve been here a whole day.”

“Happy anniversary,” Torchie said.

“Thanks.” I thought about my first day. It couldn’t be called a success—I’d gotten nearly every teacher angry with me. I was used to that sort of reaction, but even I was surprised at how quickly I’d gotten into trouble.

Still, I didn’t think it was fair to compare me with kids who set fires or stole or threw stuff or cheated all the time. Fair. Now, there was a fun word. Dad liked to remind me that life wasn’t fair. I’d heard that from him more than once. And then he’d tell me all the things I should be thankful for, and then he’d tell me how easy my life was compared to when he was a kid. And I’d tell myself I couldn’t wait to get away.

Well, here I was. Away. For real. I’d never been away from my parents like this before—not in a place I couldn’t leave. I was on my own. There were teachers all over the school—Edgeview had no shortage of adults—but that didn’t change the fact that I was on my own. None of the adults here had any reason to care about what happened to me. None of the teachers was going to worry about the fate of one more face in the crowd, no matter what they might say about wanting to help. They especially wouldn’t care after the way things had gone today.

As I heard the dinner bell ring, I put down the book of science fiction stories and got to my feet. “Pretty strange,” I said to Torchie.

“Yeah, it’s got some cool stories,” he said.

I didn’t bother to tell him I hadn’t been talking about the book.





PART TWO

SEEING THE TRUTH





SETTLING IN

If my arrival at Edgeview reminded me of a prison movie, the start of my stay reminded me of endless television reruns. My second day was distressingly like my first. I went to classes, got in trouble, and went to more classes. My second week was also pretty much like my first. In other words, I’d settled into a routine, which wasn’t all that easy, since things in the classroom had a way of changing. We actually played a board game in math for a couple of days, until someone stole the dice. Mr. Langhorn tried different stuff in geography, too, but no matter what we did he always yelled. Even in history, we didn’t wear costumes every day. Thank goodness. I was getting sick of the smell of talcum powder. Sometimes, we had a lecture or a test.