George Martin - Aces High

"It's May," Tom said sullenly. "Barbara's the cutest girl in Bayonne, no way she doesn't have a prom date already."

"Tuds, you go to different schools. She's probably got a date to her prom, yeah, but what are the fuckin' odds that she's got one to your prom? Girls love that prom horseshit, dressing up and wearing corsages and dancing. Go for it, Tuds. You got nothing to lose." He grinned. "Unless you count your cherry."

In the week that followed, Tom thought about nothing but that conversation. Time was running out. Junior Achievement was wrapping up, and once it was over he'd never see Barbara again, unless he did something. Joey was right; he had to try. On Tuesday night, his stomach was tied in a knot all during the long bus ride uptown, and he kept rehearsing the conversation in his head. The words wouldn't come out right, no matter how many times he rearranged them, but he was determined that he would get something out, somehow. He was terrified that she would say no to him, and even more terrified that she might say yes. But he had to try. He couldn't just let her go without letting her know how much he liked her.

His biggest worry was how in the world he could possibly get her aside, away from all the other kids. He certainly didn't want to have to ask her in front of everybody. The thought gave him goose bumps. The other girls thought he was hilarious enough as is, the presumption of him asking Barbara Casko to the prom would double them up with laughter. He just hoped she wouldn't tell them, after. He didn't think she would.

The problem was solved for him. It was the last meeting, and the advisers were interviewing the presidents of all the different companies. They gave a bond to the kid picked as president of the year. Barbara had been president of their company for the first half-year, Tom for the second; they found themselves waiting outside in a hallway, just the two of them, alone together, while the other kids were in at the meeting and the advisers were off doing interviews.

"I hope you win," Tom said as they waited.

Barbara smiled at him. She was wearing a pale blue sweater and a pleated skirt that fell to just below her knees, and around her neck was a heart-shaped locket on a slender gold chain. Her blond hair looked so soft that he wanted to touch it, but of course he didn't dare. She was standing quite close to him, and he could smell how clean and fresh it was. "You look really nice," he blurted awkwardly.

He felt like an idiot, but Barbara seemed not to notice. She looked at him with those blue, blue eyes. "Thank you," she said. "I wish they'd hurry." And then she did something that startled him-she reached out and touched him, put her hand on his arm, and said, "Tommy, can I ask you a question?"

"A question," he repeated. "Sure."

"About your senior prom," Barbara said.

He stood like a zombie for a long moment, aware of the chill in the hall, of distant laughter from the classroom, of the advisers' voices coming through the frosted-glass door, of the slight pressure of Barbara's hand, and above all, of the nearness of her, those deep blue eyes looking at him, the locket hanging down between the small round bumps of her breasts, the clean, fresh-washed smell of her. For once, she wasn't smiling. The expression on her face might almost have been nervousness. It only made her prettier. He wanted to hug her and kiss her. He was desperately afraid.

"The prom," he finally managed. Weakly. Absurdly, he was suddenly aware of a huge erection pressing against the inside of his pants. He only hoped it didn't show.

"Do you know Steve Bruder?" she asked.

Tom had known Steve Bruder since second grade. He was the class president, and played forward on the basketball team. Back in grammar school, Stevie and his friends used to humiliate Tom with their fists. Now they were sophisticated seniors, and they just used words.

Barbara didn't wait for his answer. "We've been going out together," she told him. "I thought he was going to ask me to his prom, but he hasn't."

You could go with me! Tom thought wildly, but all he said was, "He hasn't?"

"No," she said. "Do you know, I mean, has he asked somebody else? Is he going to ask me, do you think?"

"I don't know," Tom said dully. "We don't talk much."

"Oh," Barbara said. Her hand fell away, and then the door opened and they called his name.

That night Tom won a $50 savings bond as junior Achievement President of the Year. His mother never understood why he seemed so unhappy:

The junkyard was on the Hook, between the sprawl of an abandoned oil refinery and the cold green waters of New York Bay. The ten-foot-high chain-link fence was sagging, and there was rust on the sign to the right of the gate that warned trespassers to keep out. Tom climbed from his car, opened the padlock and undid the heavy chains, and pulled inside.

The shack where Joey and his father Dom had lived was far gone in decay now. The paint on the rooftop sign had faded to illegibility, but Tom could still make out the faint lettering: DI ANGELIS SCRAP METAL amp; AUTO PARTS. Tom had bought and closed the junkyard ten years ago, when Joey got married. Gina hadn't wanted to live in a junkyard, and besides, Tom had been tired of all the people who prowled around for hours looking for a DeSoto transmission or a bumper for a 1957 Edsel. None of them had ever stumbled on his secrets, but there had been close calls, and more than once he'd been forced to spend the night on some dingy rooftop in Jokertown because the coast wasn't clear at home.

Now, after a decade of benign neglect, the junkyard was a sprawling wasteland of rust and desolation, and no one ever bothered driving all the way out there.

Tom parked his Honda behind the shack, and strode off into the junkyard with his hands shoved into his pockets and his cap pulled down against the cold salt wind off the bay. No one had shoveled the snow here, and there had been no traffic to turn it into filthy brown slush. The hills of scrap and trash looked as though they'd been sprinkled with powdered sugar, and he walked past drifts taller than he was, frozen white waves that would come crashing down when the temperatures rose in the spring.

Deep in the interior, between two looming piles of automobiles turned all to razor-edged rust, was a bare place. Tom kicked away snow with the heel of his shoe until he had uncovered the flat metal plate. He knelt, found the ring, and pulled it up. The metal was icy cold, and he was panting before he managed to shift the lid three feet to the side to open the tunnel underneath. It would be so much easier to use teke, to shift it with his mind. Once he could have done that. Not now. Time plays funny tricks on you. Inside the shell, he had grown stronger and stronger, but on the outside his telekinesis had faded over the years. It was all psychological, Tom knew; the shell had become some kind of crutch, and his mind refused to let him teke without it, that was all. But there were days when it almost felt as though Thomas Tudbury and the Great and Powerful Turtle had become two different people.

He dropped down into darkness, into the tunnel that he and Joey had dug together, night after night, way back inwhat year had that been? '69? '70? Something like that. He found the big plastic flashlight on its hook, but the beam was pale and weak. He'd have to remember to bring some new batteries from the store the next time he came out. Alkaline next time; they lasted a lot longer.

He walked about sixty feet before the tunnel ended, and the blackness of the bunker opened up around him. It was just a big hole in the ground he'd scooped out with his teke, its crude roof covered over with a thin layer of dirt and junk to conceal what lav beneath. The air was thick and stale, and he heard rats scuttling away from the light of his flashlight beam. In the comic book, the Turtle had a secret Turtle Cave deep under the waters of New York Bay, a marvelous place with vaulted ceilings and computer banks and a live-in butler who dusted all the trophies and prepared gourmet meals. The writers at Cosh Comics had done one fuck of a lot better for him than he had ever managed to do for himself.