Нил Шустерман - Scorpion Shards

“These things that you have to do,” asked Deanna, “are they terrible things?”

Dillon bit his lip. She knew he wouldn’t lie to her. “They might be,” he said.

Deanna nodded, knowing she would have given him the same answer, no matter what he said. “Then I’ll go with you . . . so you don’t have to face those things alone.”

As she said the words, she felt something changing around her like a great river suddenly shifting course. Per­haps this is what Dillon felt when he saw a pattern change, and she wondered how large this shift must have been if she could feel it too.

It was too huge a thing to think about, so she decided not to. She ignored it, pretending it didn’t matter, and after a moment, it all felt okay. In a few minutes they were hitchhiking west on the interstate.

Meanwhile, in a house not too far away, Dwight Astor poured himself a glass of scotch, downed it, and then poured himself another.

I want to forget who I am.

I never want to leave here.

I want to stay in this tight circle of four forever.

Somewhere between dusk and dawn, between here and there, Tory, Winston, Lourdes and Michael lay close, touching each other in some way—hand to hand, toe to toe, head to chest, huddling like a litter of mice. This closed circuit of four felt more joyous, more peaceful than anything any of them had ever felt before. Their hearts beat in unison, their breath came and went in a single tide. It felt wonderful to finally be whole. Almost whole.

The place was as solitary and secluded as a place could be; a corn silo on the edge of town, part of an abandoned farm. The dome of the silo had long since turned to rub­ble, the victim of storms and neglect, leaving a round hole high above them filled with stars, like a portal to another universe. The storm had been washed away when the four of them had come together, and now the air was so tranquil and calm it didn’t even feel cold.

They were silent for a long time as they rested, and when they finally began to talk, the words that came out were things they never dared to speak out loud.

“I shared a room with my sisters until my parents fixed up the attic for me,” said Lourdes, her voice so heavy and thick that her very words seemed to sink to the ground. “They said it was to give me more room, but I knew it was to hide me away. That first night in the attic, I dreamed I was floating down Broadway in the Thanksgiving Day pa­rade, so bloated with helium I could burst. A hundred people held me with strings, and all I could do was hang there bouncing back and forth between the skyscrapers, while thousands of people stared and laughed. When I woke up I could feel myself growing . . . I could feel my body drawing energy right out of the air—maybe even pulling it from other people’s bodies. I had stopped eat­ing, but I still grew. That’s when I knew the problem wasn’t just food.”

Then Lourdes gently squeezed Michael’s hand, which rested so calmly in hers; Michael focused his eyes on the distant stars. “When I was thirteen,” he said, “my friends dared me to talk to this high school girl who I had a crush on. She was three years older, and a head taller than me, but the crush I had on her was out of control, so I just had to talk to her. I went up to her, but before I could open my mouth to say anything, she looked at me and WHAM! I felt there was some sort of weird connection, like I was draining something out of her, right through her eyes—and I knew right then I should have stopped and walked away, but I didn’t, because I liked the way it felt. It was cold out, but suddenly the whole street began to feel hot like it was summer. I asked her out, and she said ‘yes.’ Ever since then no girl has ever said ‘no’ to me, and no guy has wanted to be my friend.”

Winston moved his Nike against Tory’s shoe and shifted his head against the comfortable pillow of Lourdes’s sleeve, making sure not to break the circle.

“My mother used to get these swollen feet ’cause she stood all day long working at the bank,” Winston began. “It was always my job to massage her feet when she got home. We already knew I had stopped growing, but that’s all we knew. Then one day, I’m massaging her feet, and she tells me how good it feels, ’cause she can’t feel the pain no more, so I keep on massaging. And then, when she tries to get up, she can’t. She tries to feel her legs, but she can’t feel nothin’. Doctors said it was some kind of freak virus, but we all know the truth, even if Mama won’t say it. I paralyzed her legs. A few weeks later, we knew for sure that I was growing backward, too.”

Winston wiped a tear from his eye, and Tory began to speak. “There was this blind boy in my neighborhood, with allergy problems so bad a skunk could have walked into the room, and he wouldn’t have smelled it. Once I started breaking out, he was the only boy who liked me. Then one day he brushed his fingertips across my face, because he wanted to see me, you know, the way blind people do. He pulled his hand away and turned white as a ghost, then he ran off to wash his hands over and over again, trying to wash the feel of my face off his fingers. He came down with pneumonia a few days later and was in the hospital for weeks. He was the first one to get sick from touching me. And that’s how I knew it wasn’t just zits.”

No one spoke for a while. They rested their voices and minds, listening to the singular “whoosh” of their breaths, feeling each other’s paralleled heartbeats, and it seemed to make everything okay. They needed no more words to express how they felt.

I want to forget who I am.

I never want to leave here.

I want to stay in this tight circle of four forever.

Their whole felt far greater than the sum of their parts—but they couldn’t stay like this, could they? They would freeze to death. They would starve to death. And they would never solve the mystery of who they were, and why they were dying these miserable deaths.

Yes, they were dying. Although they never dared to say it out loud, they all knew the truth. Tory’s disease would eat away at her until there was nothing left. Michael’s pas­sion would consume him like a fire, Lourdes would become so heavy her bones would no longer be able to hold her, and Winston would wither until he became an infant in search of a womb to return to, but there would be none.

But better not to think about that.

I want to forget who I am. . . .

While the others seemed content to shut their minds down, Tory could not. Mysteries did not sit well with her and she despised riddles of any sort. From the moment they had come together, she, more than the others, had struggled to understand the truth behind their shared vi­sion, and their shared journey, but all she had were half-truths.

She knew they belonged together, but why?

The vision told them that two were missing, but who?

They must have known each other from somewhere, but how?

The vision had been so contorted, confusing and over­whelming that it only left more questions in its wake. Questions—and this collective state of blissful shock.

“The truth is bigger than any of us want to know,” Lourdes had proclaimed.

“The truth is something we’re not supposed to know,” Winston had declared.

“What we don’t know can’t hurt us,” Michael had de­creed.

But those were all just excuses. Cop-outs. Tory could not accept that.

Up above, a crescent moon was coming into view within the circle of stars . . . but something was missing, thought Tory. What was it? Of course! It was the nova on the edge of the horizon. She could not see it, but she knew it was there. The dying star.