Jackson Ford - Random Sh*t Flying Through the Air

Matthew had started laughing.

It was the delighted laugh of a child discovering a new toy. He’d spun in fast circles, as if he didn’t know where to look. Hands up to his face, palms plastered against his cheeks. It reminded Amber of a game she used to play with him, when he was very little, before he started to show signs of being different. She’d puff out her cheeks, pretend to squeeze the air out with her hands, and he’d giggle until he was out of breath.

The light hadn’t changed, the ground bathed in bright sun even though the sky was dark with clouds. Inside the destroyed building, a woman was wailing.

As she started to grasp what he’d done, Amber had felt the bottom drop out of her stomach. Matthew could move anything natural – wood, leaves, grass – but only a little. Soil, though? Earth and dirt? That was no problem for him. Sometimes, she’d daydream about what it would be like if he wasn’t the way he was. If he was… good. How they’d buy a little plot of land, create a garden, moving earth from place to place like it was lighter than air.

She had no idea he could do what he did this afternoon. That was something else.

“It’s a connection,” he’d told her breathlessly. “There’s all this stored energy. I could connect right to it, and let it go. Amber –” he hadn’t called her Mom in over a year “– it was amazing!” She’d never seen him so happy. His whole face was one huge, bright smile.

Their pickup truck was toast. On its side, axles dented and smashed, one wheel still spinning. Broken glass, picking up the light like uncut diamonds. They found another vehicle around the side of the building – a second pickup, a much bigger one, battered and ancient but somehow miraculously still upright. They had to smash the window to get in, but at least starting it was no problem. The truck was old, which was good – easier to hotwire. She’d done it in a daze, barely aware of what her hands were doing. Amber hadn’t boosted a car in a long time, but it was amazing how quickly it came back to her.

The road was a ruin, the tarmac folded and cracked like the icing on a cake. Amber had worried they wouldn’t be able to drive, but the pickup had a high wheel-base, and it managed the broken tarmac without an issue.

It took them a good few hours to reach San Bernardino.

Or what was left of it.

They’d been turned back a mile or two from the city, the road blocked by emergency services. Matthew had gaped at the broken buildings on the skyline, at the pall of smoke that was almost blacker than the clouds above them. It had to started to rain – fat, icy drops thudding against the windshield. It was like the end of the world.

“What happened?” Matthew said to the first fire marshal, as soon as Amber rolled down the window. His face was completely innocent, his voice curious. He was good at that.

“Earthquake.” The marshal bellowed over his shoulder at an unseen colleague: “Sixteen! I said sixteen!” He turned back. “Sorry – you can’t get into the city.”

“Did people die?” Matthew said.

The marshal gave him a fleeting look, as if seeing him for the first time. “Go around over there,” he said to Amber, pointing. “That’ll put you on the freeway south, OK?” Then he was gone.

He did that , she had thought, staring at the horizon. Matthew. And no one will ever know .

They’d been directed towards San Jacinto, which the marshals told them was still fine. It took them more than three hours to get there, the new pickup almost out of gas by the time they reached the city limits. For the first part of the drive, Matthew had been almost incoherent with excitement. He was jumping between screens on the iPad, reports and Twitter feeds and pictures. The occasional loud blast of news footage. Matthew kept the volume on high, and several times, it made Amber jump.

The answer to the question he’d asked the marshal came quickly: two hundred dead, maybe more. She expected Matthew to squeal in delight, even laugh – that’s what normally happened when he hurt people. But instead, he went strangely quiet. As if even he was having trouble processing the number.

He’s in the motel room behind her. He roused briefly to eat half of one of the cheeseburgers she’d gotten them from a Burger King near the motel, and had tried to do some more reading on the iPad. When he started talking again, it was almost to himself.

“I shouldn’t have been able to do it,” he’d said. “The fault was way too far underground. It was like it was calling to me though… Hey, do you think there’ll be aftershocks?”

“I’m not sure, honey,” she’d said carefully. It felt someone else was speaking through her, controlling her mouth. “Are those… That’s when there are little smaller quakes, right?”

He’d glanced at her, as if slightly surprised that she’d spoken. Then he’d smiled, just a quick one, his eyes brightening. Amber had felt a hot, guilty rush of pleasure.

“That’s right,” he’d said. “They happen when an earthquake changes the stresses on a fault, and some more sections let go. I was reading about it. I knew about earthquakes of course, and I knew they happened a lot in California, but I never thought I’d be able to actually make them.”

He kept trying to stifle yawns, and failing, and he’d spent longer and longer looking at the same page on the iPad. Soon, he’d fallen asleep, the tablet on the pillow and the burger wrapper trapped under one bare foot.

She’d looked at him, wanting to reach out and stroke his hair, a muscle memory she couldn’t excise. Her delight at how he’d smiled at her hadn’t faded. She tucked it away, deep in her mind. It didn’t matter what he was smiling about – just that he was smiling.

She fumbles with another cigarette, but her hands are shaking too hard to light it. This time, she has to bite her lower lip to stop the shakes, using the pain to make them quiet down.

She hasn’t had to do that for a while. Not since the time one of her marks turned out to be a cop, and she had to make a run for it. He’d chased her for what felt like ten blocks. By the time she finally lost him, she was so terrified that biting her lip was the only way she could calm herself down.

The con usually worked flawlessly: the old Flop trick, with a twist. She could fake a convincing hit really well – she had a knack for picking the right moment, choosing an angle where the hit from the oncoming car would leave her uninjured. Amateurs stopped there, hoping to scare the driver into paying up to avoid court. Not her. Diamond Taylor was smarter than that. Instead of pretending to be hurt, she’d tell the startled driver she was fine – shaken, sure, but all good, sir, don’t you fret. Only, the collision had smashed her iPad. She’d hold it up, distraught. Goddamnit, it’s for work, they’re going to kill me…

Usually, that was all it took for some money to change hands. Sometimes she threw in another wrinkle, refusing to take payment, saying it was all right, it was her fault anyway. At which point, a nearby pedestrian would march over, say he’d seen everything, accuse the driver of negligence, threaten to call the cops, trying to convince her to sue.

Later, she and the pedestrian would split the cash.

A good con involved seeing the angles – adjusting a plan on the fly, always looking for the next mark. Amber’s problem was that her ability to see the angles only went so far. There never seemed to be enough money, and it never seemed to last as long as it should. The big plans she’d had and the larger cons she wanted to run never quite came together.

It wasn’t like she didn’t try . She’d known she’d have to get out of the game sooner or later – you couldn’t work the same cons in the same city for your entire life. She tried to read as many self-help books as she could, getting them from the only library that was near her little shithole apartment in Barelas. She’d read them all: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People . Awaken the Giant Within . As A Man Thinketh (Almost hadn’t picked up that one – what most men think didn’t amount to much – but it was pretty good). And of course, Think and Grow Rich!