BILLY:
Messenger of Powers
by
Michaelbrent Collings
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2010 by Michaelbrent Collings
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form
without the expressed written consent
of the author.
website: www.whoisbillyjones.com
email: L@whoisbillyjones.com
cover image © 2010 used under license from Shutterstock.com
Dedication
To...
My dad, for teaching me how to write...
My mom, for loving what I wrote even before it was any good...
and to Laura, FTAAE.
CHAPTER THE FIRST
In Which Billy goes to a New School, and sees a Winking Frog…
Billy Jones was only fourteen years old the first time he died.
On his first day at Preston Hills High School, thirteen-year-old Billy walked through the gate in the chain link fence that surrounded the school where he would be more or less incarcerated for the next four years. He looked around, trying to get his bearings, trying not to let the fear he felt show on his face. PHHS was larger than Preston Hills Middle School had been. It was two stories, with classrooms that Billy could tell were much larger than the middle school’s rooms. The place was huge, with an air of permanence that made it seem as though it had been there forever, catering to the needs of the Older Kids who walked its halls.
I’m actually in high school, Billy thought. But he didn’t have time to decide whether that was a good thing or a bad one, because at that moment another student bumped into him.
The boy was taller than Billy. Good-looking, too, which Billy instantly noticed because he wasn’t so good looking himself. Billy wasn’t ugly or anything; he knew no one had ever thrown up from just looking at him. But he was also aware that he was extremely small for his age—only a little over five feet—and his thick blonde hair was far too curly for comfort. Add his halo of golden curls to his diminutive stature, and he looked like a doll. A doll that apparently seemed to scream, “Hey, look at these cute curls? Wouldn’t I be fun to punch?” to the school bullies. Not only that, but Billy’s clothing was not exactly trend-setting. His family didn’t have much money, and Billy mostly wore Salvation Army clothes. So for him “lookin’ good” meant he was wearing clothing that had never smelled like mold or cigarettes.
In contrast, the tall boy who had bumped into Billy and was now staring at him stood on the opposite end of the Coolness Spectrum. Unlike Billy’s raggedly curly coif, the other boy had dark brown hair that was perfectly combed and styled. His clothing was the latest fashion, and worn with the casual distaste that Billy knew only the rich can get away with. No backpack, either: the bigger kid had one of those khaki messenger bags that held half the books and cost ten times more than Billy’s used six-dollar book bag. And the picture of perfection was completed by the boy’s eyes: expressive green eyes that could probably grab any girl in the school with the force of a tractor beam.
Now, those green eyes were glaring at Billy. Billy involuntarily took a step back. “Sorry,” he mumbled. He didn’t know why he said that: the big kid had knocked into him, not the other way around.
Still, the boy nodded, as though considering whether to accept Billy’s apology. Then he said, “I’m Cameron. Cameron Black.”
For a moment, Billy felt a surge of hope. This was clearly one of the Popular Kids. And he was introducing himself to Billy! Billy had never managed to break into that prestigious group at Preston Elementary or Preston Hills Middle School. Maybe he’d lucked into making friends with one of them here. His first day! He caught an imaginary glimpse of himself sitting with the Popular Kids. Eating lunch with the Popular Kids. Getting invited to go out to the movies on Friday nights. Wearing all the Right Clothes and doing all the Right Things.
The daydream ended suddenly, as Cameron Black took a step toward Billy, looming over him. “Don’t. Ever. Touch. Me. Again,” said Cameron in a low but intense whisper.
Billy gulped. He nodded. The nod was a little more exaggerated than he meant it to be. In fact, it was more of a convulsive shiver, as though he had suddenly discovered his PB&J sandwich was actually made with boogers and pocket lint.
The shudder made Billy’s shoulder move. Just a little. Just enough for his backpack to slide down a bit. As it did, Billy suddenly knew what was going to happen next, as though he was seeing the future through a crystal ball. But in spite of his foreknowledge of the coming catastrophe, he couldn’t stop it from happening.
The backpack slid downward, hanging on the crook of his arm for one slow-motion moment.
The universe contracted, and suddenly the only things in it now were Billy, Cameron, and the backpack.
The backpack dropped, slowly, from Billy’s loose arm.
It hung for a thousand years in mid-air, suspended between his arm and what lay below it. Billy wanted to scream, wanted to grab the backpack. But even a thousand years wasn’t enough time for him to catch the falling bag. Its downward motion was inevitable, unstoppable, like a lead bar dropped from the top of the Empire State Building.
The backpack fell on Cameron’s foot.
Billy watched it happen with horror. Something told him this new occurrence wasn’t good. It was bad. Very Bad, in fact. He knew that his backpack was empty except for pencils and a few sheets of lined paper in a cheap three-ring binder. It couldn’t weigh much. It was soft. But Cameron was now looking at him as though Billy had actually tried to hit him over the head with something a bit bigger and harder—like a car, or the state of Texas.
“Ow,” whispered Cameron. Billy knew that “ow” usually meant “that hurt,” but the way Cameron said it somehow sounded more like, “prepare to die.”
Cameron grabbed Billy’s shirt. The shirt tore a little, exposing Billy’s thin shoulder. Cameron then pulled Billy to the left, yanking him between a few students who carefully stayed out of Cameron’s way.
Moving precisely, almost carefully, Cameron placed Billy—all five feet nothing of him—in one of the lockers against a nearby wall. It was a close fit: if Billy had been a bigger kid—even a normal sized one, instead of the smaller than average thirteen year-old—he wouldn’t have fit. But he wasn’t a bigger kid. Just Billy. So he did fit. Like a hand in a glove. Or, rather, like a Billy in a locker.
Cameron poked a large finger into Billy’s chest. “I’m closing the door now. Don’t try to get out before first bell rings.” He swung the locker shut, then looked in at Billy through the slats in the locker door.
Billy experienced a crazy moment where he wondered if those slats were there to keep kids stuffed in lockers from suffocating: after all, the books presumably didn’t care if they had a draft of fresh air now and then. Was locker-stuffing so widespread at this school that they had actually designed the lockers specifically for it?
Billy’s mind was ripped away from this horrifying train of thought by Cameron’s voice. “And don’t tell anyone that I did this. If you do, the only thing that will happen is that I’ll make sure that something awful happens to you.”
Like what? Billy thought.
Cameron leaned closer to the locker, and as though he had heard Billy’s thought as clear as conversation, said, “Let your imagination run wild, kid.”
Billy did. It wasn’t a pretty sight. The image his brain coughed up involved a toilet in the student bathrooms, a blindfold, a rabid great white shark, and several baseball bats with nails sticking out of them.
Cameron moved away.
Billy waited. He thought about calling out and opened his mouth. Then he thought about angry sharks and pointy sticks and shut it again.
A minute later the first bell rang. Billy was officially going to be late on his first day at school. He pushed on the locker door to see if it would just spring open from the inside. It didn’t, of course.
He began knocking on the inside of the locker, hoping some other late student would hear his tapping and let him out.
No one did.
He tapped harder.
Then gave a little shout.
Then he gave a bigger shout.
“Help!”
He banged on the door of the locker.
“HELP!”
He pushed with all his might on the inside of the door, bracing his feet against the back of the locker so that he could use his full body weight. This turned out to be bad timing on his part, because the door suddenly opened, and Billy lost his balance, falling to the sidewalk in front of the lockers.
The first thing he saw was his backpack, still laying where it had fallen about a dozen feet away.
Well, thought Billy, at least it didn’t get stolen. Apparently the school didn’t admit thieves. Just good-looking psychopaths who were proud members of the We Hate Billy club.
The second thing Billy saw was a foot.
It was right in front of him. The foot was wearing a clean white sneaker. Above the sneaker was an ankle-high sock. Above that was a bare ankle, which—as he knew ankles tended to do—gradually turned into a leg as Billy’s gaze continued to rise.
Billy was only thirteen—his fourteenth birthday was still two months off—and he was, as his father put it, “young for his age.” He knew that was code for saying he looked more like a sixth-grader than someone starting high school. And perhaps as a result of that, he hadn’t really “discovered” girls yet the way that some of his classmates had. He didn’t really get some of the jokes he overheard them telling, or the way they talked about them in the halls before class.
In spite of his admitted lack of knowledge, however, Billy did know what a girl’s leg looked like. And this was definitely a girl’s leg. A nice one, too.
Billy’s gaze continued to rise up the leg, to the shirt, to the neck.
By the time he reached the girl’s head, Billy felt dizzy. He wasn’t sure if that was because of a lack of oxygen in the locker, or the fact that he was still on the ground craning his neck to see up, or because the girl was simply the prettiest girl he had ever seen.
The next moment, however, Billy was pretty sure that his dizziness was caused by the last reason, because his heart suddenly attempted to take a three-foot step to the left, not minding that there was a ribcage in its way. At the same time, Billy felt his stomach try to jump out through his face, and he was pretty sure that his toes turned inside-out.
In that fraction of a second, Billy knew he had “discovered” girls. Or at least, one girl. She was taller than Billy. No surprise there, everyone was taller than Billy. But instead of making her seem imposing, her height just made her seem lithe and graceful. Her brown hair hung to her shoulders in thick waves that shimmered in the sunlight. And her eyes were stunning: blue and beautiful, with an electric spark of intelligence and joy behind them that made it seem as though she were on the verge of laughing at a joke that no one else could hear. Billy noticed that the girl had a band-aid on one knee, and somehow this small blemish on the overall perfection of her image didn’t make her any less attractive. Rather, it had the opposite effect, as though reminding Billy that she was indeed human, and so perhaps—just perhaps—there was a chance that someday they might….
Might what? thought Billy, and blushed brightly at the possibilities that lay behind the unfinished thought.
“I’m Blythe Forrest,” said the girl.
Why does everyone in this school tell you their name first thing? thought Billy. Are they all crazy?
Still, being crazy—if Blythe was indeed crazy—didn’t make her any less pretty.
Blythe’s beautiful face wrinkled with obvious impatience. Somehow, this made her even cuter.
“Well?” she demanded.
Billy hopped dexterously to his feet, sending a suave look at the girl as he said, “I’m Billy. Billy Jones.” He made it sound cool. He looked cool. He was cool.
At any rate, that was what Billy wished had happened. In reality, he managed to lay there like a trout about to have its head cut off, and the only word he got out was “ahxgl” or something like it.
Blythe frowned. “Are you in the special class or something? What’s your name?”
“Billy Jones,” he finally managed. He tried to smile, but then remembered that his stomach was still trying to get out through his head, and clamped his mouth shut before he could blurt something stupid like “Did you know squirrels make cheese?” or “My moonbeam has peanuts,” or worst of all, “You’re the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen.”
“Billy Jones?” she asked. Billy nodded, rather proud of himself for managing to maintain that level of muscle control. He felt like he had to go to the bathroom.
“Billy Jones,” she said again. When she said it, she had a look on her face that Billy didn’t like, as though she was trying out a dirt-flavored jawbreaker. A moment later she said, “Interesting. Your shirt’s ripped.”
Then she turned without another word, disappearing around a nearby corner like a strange, beautiful dream. One that smelled like strawberries.
The final bell rang. Billy was late.
He hurried to his bag and swept it off the ground, not bothering to dust it off. Then he pulled his schedule from his pocket, uncrumpling it as best he could while running at the same time. He didn’t even know where he was running to at first, but figured that moving toward the school’s center would probably be a good idea.
He managed to read the schedule as it bobbed up and down in his hands. History. Building B, Room Six.
Billy ran to his first class, trying to remember the layout of the school from the packet he and his parents had received three weeks before. Where is Building B? he thought as he rushed through the halls. The school, which ten minutes ago had seemed merely huge, now felt positively planetary in size. He half-expected to see small moons whipping through the halls, held there by the gravitational pull of the high school.
Then he remembered: Building B was the name of the second floor of the school. Of course, he thought. After all, saying “Second Floor” wouldn’t make much sense, would it? Wouldn’t want anyone knowing how to get anywhere, would we? Where would the fun be in that?
His internally voiced sarcasm, unfortunately, did not make time go any slower. So it was no surprise to him that when he finally found room six, out of breath from running up the stairs and then frantically dashing down the hallway that—thankfully—had a clearly visible sign saying “Rooms 1 thru 10,” all the other students were already seated.
They looked at him, all of them moving at once like their heads were connected by some kind of control center.
Billy shifted uncomfortably. He again felt like he had to go to the bathroom. Only this time it wasn’t because he was in the presence of the beautiful Blythe Forrest. It was because what felt like six hundred eyes were now staring at him, and each set of eyes was in a face that now held a smirking look that seemed to say “Ah-ha! Now I know who the Class Doofus is going to be!”
“Yes, may I help you?” said a voice. The sound cracked like a BB gun through the room. Billy turned to face the voice and was greeted by a new pair of eyes, dark brown and piercing, which looked at him with a mixture of impatience and annoyance. It was clearly the teacher.
She looked to be in her late sixties, but was still obviously strong and mentally agile. Her brown eyes glittered with not-quite-hidden knowledge. Her face was creased with age, and a permanent frown line pulled the edges of her thin lips downward. She was not particularly tall, but when she took a step toward Billy, he had the sense of being in the presence of a giant. He stepped back involuntarily.
“Well?” she demanded.
“Uh…,” he managed. This was clearly not going to be a day where he could manage any sparkling conversation. Single-syllable grunts were apparently the only thing he could do on command.
“‘Uh’ is not an appropriate answer to my question,” she responded, and this time her tone of voice brought to mind something with a higher caliber than a BB gun. A nuclear-tipped bazooka, maybe.
The class tittered. Billy blushed. He could feel his cheeks and the edges of his ears heating up as blood rushed to them.
The teacher silenced them with a glance. Billy suspected she could do this to serial killers and SEALs, let alone to nervous ninth-graders.
“I was late,” he managed.
“Clearly,” she replied. She held out her hand. Billy looked at it like it was an alien appendage. What was he supposed to do with it?
“Your schedule,” the teacher prompted. Billy handed it over, noting how she seemed to frown at the fact that it had been crumpled into a pocket, rather than professionally laminated and framed. She read it quickly, looking at it over the top of the reading glasses perched at the end of her nose. “Well, William Jones,” she said after a moment, “at least you’re in the right place, if not at the right time.”
The class nervously chuckled again, and this time the teacher did not bother to use her Death-Stare to silence them. She just handed Billy his schedule, then pointed to an empty desk in the second row.
Billy moved toward it, and as he did his foot caught on something. He tripped, stumbling forward in a desperate attempt to keep from falling on his face.
The students’ chuckles now turned to full-volume guffaws. Billy struggled to right himself, his arms flapping faster than hummingbird wings. He wished he was dead. Better yet, he wished he had been dead for a few hundred years, cremated, and the ashes buried under a small mountain on a frozen island in the middle of the Arctic Sea.
At least the day can’t get any worse, he thought fleetingly. But he knew, even as he thought it, that this absolutely the wrong thing to think. Experience had taught Billy that no matter how bad things were, they could always be worse.
“Harold Crane!” shouted the teacher. Her voice had moved up in intensity from bazooka to intercontinental ballistic missile. The class silenced instantly. Billy held himself motionless, still in a half-crouch, petrified by the teacher’s words. No one else in the class moved, either.
The teacher walked to a nearby student. The kid was a bit smaller than Cameron had been, but Billy could see that Harold Crane was clearly cut from the same kind of stock: thick chest, strong arms. His hair was dyed red at the tips, long bangs hanging artfully down over his eyes, which now had an innocent look pasted across them. He might as well have had “Born To Bully” tattooed across his forehead.
The teacher looked down. Billy and the rest of the class followed her gaze, and those close enough could see what she was looking at: Harold’s sneaker pushed out in the middle of the aisle. That was what Billy had tripped on.
Harold’s look of innocence faltered. He shrugged. “It was an accident,” he said.
“Very well,” said the teacher. “Be advised that if there are any more ‘accidents,’ they may result in ‘accidental’ visits to the Principal’s office.” Her gaze shifted to take in the whole class at once. “That goes for all of you.”
She turned to walk back to her desk. As soon as her back was turned, Harold turned around and locked eyes with Billy. He made a quick slicing movement across his throat, then pointed at Billy before turning back to face the teacher as she swiveled toward them again.
Billy sighed as he dropped into the seat behind his desk, his book bag dumping unceremoniously to the floor with a dull thud. What was it about his existence that made people like Cameron and now Harold so angry? Had he offended them in a past life or something?
The teacher’s voice—still commanding full attention, but softer now that she was not actively perturbed—reverberated through the room.
“I am Mrs. Russet,” she said. Her tone of voice clearly communicated that they should pay attention. Billy suspected that the President of the United States would sit up a little straighter if he were visiting Mrs. Russet’s classroom. “This is ninth-grade history, and I wish to make a few things very clear before we begin. First: I am the teacher that all the other teachers are afraid of. I grade hard, and I have been working here long enough not to care if that bothers some of the younger teachers here. Most of you will get average grades. This is nothing to be ashamed of. Average is not bad. A few of you will get better grades, and a few of you will receive excellent grades. These will be earned. You will have to work in this class, and work hard.”
The whole class groaned collectively. Mrs. Russet silenced them again with what Billy was already starting to think of as The Look.
“There will be reading assignments every day. I will not grade these assignments, but there will be pop tests on them. The tests will go over not just the reading of the previous night, but may cover anything and everything learned to that point in the class.”
Billy’s nearest neighbor, a small, fair-skinned girl, looked like she might either pass out or throw up at this announcement. Nor was she the only one; Billy could see that most of the class looked visibly disturbed by the pressure Mrs. Russet was already bringing to bear.
“That is the bad news,” she said. “There is, however, also some good news. The good news is that I will make myself available at any time—before school, after school, or weekends—to help anyone who feels they need extra assistance. I will not provide extra assistance for those in the class with excellent grades. They need no help. But anyone else can come to me at any time and make an appointment for private teaching at a mutually convenient time.”
Billy knew that he was likely to be one of the people who needed extra help. History had always been a tough subject for him. He was pretty sure that someone had discovered America at one point. He was also pretty sure that that person had been neither a giant squid nor a space-alien. Beyond that, however, the details always got sketchy. So he was at least a little heartened to find out that help would be available if—when—he needed it.
The momentary lightness was crushed, however, when Mrs. Russet reached into her desk and pulled out a sheaf of papers. She began handing them out.
The first student who received one gasped. So did the second and third students. Harold Crane—the red-tipped bully—was the first one to actually say something when he got his paper. “Pop quiz?” he asked. “It’s the first day of school!”
“Thank you for that astute observation,” answered Mrs. Russet dryly.
“How can there be a quiz on the first day of school?” Harold demanded.
“You all received orientation packets, did you not?” responded Mrs. Russet. She looked around the room for a moment, as though making sure no one disagreed with her statement, then resumed handing out the papers.
“You’re going to test us on the orientation packets? How can you test us on the orientation packets?” Harold’s cheeks reddened to the color of his hair-tips. Billy thought the kid looked like he might implode at any moment, leaving behind nothing but a charred desk and some tiny whiffs of red-dyed hair.
“The orientation packets were addressed to each of you, not to your parents. You should have read them, and you should be prepared to show that you understood what they said,” said Mrs. Russet.
“That’s not fair!” shouted Harold. A few of the other students muttered their agreement, and even Billy found himself nodding.
“Not fair, Mr. Crane? Why not?” The teacher broadened her gaze to take in the whole class. “I, too, received orientation materials. They included the names and pictures of each of you. Which I memorized. Along with as much of your background information as was available. Which is why I know what your previous grade average was, Ms. Conway.” Mrs. Russet stared at a girl in the third row, then shifted her gaze to a mullet-haired kid behind Billy. “And it’s how I know that you held the fifty-yard dash record at your old school, Mr. Carrey.” She moved her eyes to Billy for a moment, as though she was going to single him out, too, but then seemed to think better of it. She looked at a large boy in the back of the class. “And it’s how I know that you are the third of four children, Mr. Canter.”
She looked around at the class, which was now silent. “Why did I do this? Because I received the information, and I did not want to waste it. You should have all done the same with your orientation information.”
Mrs. Russet resumed handing out the papers. “And as for what is ‘fair,’ Mr. Crane…” she stopped a moment. “There is a ‘fair’ that comes to the county every summer. Other than that, ‘fair’ is not something that most of us will encounter very often in life. I will be fair in that I will only test each of you on information I know you have received. But your notion of whether that is or is not ‘fair’ is not something that will concern me.”
She finished handing out the papers. Harold looked like he was thinking of something to say, but before he could, Mrs. Russet held up a hand. “The tests have been passed out. Testing has begun. Anyone speaking before all tests have been completed will receive a zero.”
She sat down at her desk, folded her hands, and began methodically scanning up and down the room, watching the students with the precision of a spy satellite.
Billy fumbled in his bag for a pencil. Then he wrote his name at the top right of the page, and read the first question.
“1. Where is the Principal’s office located? Please describe how to get there from the main Student Entrance.”
Billy blinked. The words were familiar, he knew they were English, but he wasn’t able to process them. Between his encounter with Cameron, his time in the locker, meeting Blythe, and the whirlwind introduction into history class, he had blown a fuse somewhere. He knew he had to focus. Billy had never been an “A” student, but he always tried his hardest. He would try his hardest here, too. But to do that, he had to calm down.
He closed his eyes for a moment. He took a breath, held it, then let it out slowly. It was what his mom—a checker at a nearby grocery store who he knew had to face at least six hundred crises per day—always told him to do when in danger of panicking.
It worked. Billy felt his heart rate slow down from Hyper-Speed to the level of You’ll Have a Heart Attack Any Second Now. Another breath, and he relaxed further.
He concentrated on “seeing” the insides of his eyelids. At first, all he could see was pink. Then strobing flashes started to go off. He concentrated on them, and imagined they were space ships, carrying passengers into distant places. He imagined hopping onto one of them. It carried him into space, where nothing could hurt him, where he was alone and safe, where—
“Mr. Jones!”
Billy jerked, his eyes flying open as his name was called. Mrs. Russet was still at her seat, her gaze drilling into him once again. This time, her look was even more intense than it had been when Billy entered the class.
Billy waited, horrified. Did she think he’d been asleep? Cheating somehow? What?!
Mrs. Russet blinked a few times, as though she herself was uncertain why she’d called his name so loudly. Then her stare returned to its previous level. “Please stay after class, Mr. Jones,” she said.
“But, I’ll be late,” he managed to squawk. His throat felt drier than the surface of the moon, which at least was an improvement over constantly feeling like he had to use the bathroom.
“I doubt you’ll have to worry about that, but if it happens I’ll write you a note,” Mrs. Russet said.
Billy nodded, feeling the class’s eyes on him once again. Mrs. Russet looked around at the class, apparently noting their attention as well. “The test is still in progress,” she reminded them. Everyone looked back at their papers.
Billy looked down as well. He began writing, but knew when the papers were turned in that he’d failed his first test in ninth grade. And failed it miserably. His concern for what Mrs. Russet wanted to talk to him about consumed him, making it impossible for him to concentrate. He had tried his relaxation exercise again a few times, but each time he opened his eyes to find Mrs. Russet staring at him once again.
The test took the majority of the class period. After the tests were all collected, Mrs. Russet handed each student a World History book, copying down which student had which copy of each, and informing them that the books were to be brought to each and every class, no exceptions, even on scheduled test days. She gave them their first night’s reading assignment as the class end bell blared electronically over the school intercom system.
The students all shuffled out, schedules clutched in one hand, new books in the other. Several of them cast final looks in Billy’s direction as they left, ranging from concerned to amused. Harold Crane managed to pantomime cutting Billy’s throat one more time on his way out without Mrs. Russet seeing him.
Billy barely noticed. He was still dry-mouthed and terrified about the impending doom of a private conference with Mrs. Russet.
At last, all the students were gone. Mrs. Russet moved to the classroom door with a hand-written sign that Billy managed to read: “Please wait outside until door opens.” She used some transparent tape to attach it to the outside of the door, then swung it closed.
As the door shut, Billy could sense that he was entering into dangerous territory. What could a teacher want with him? He’d managed to make it through the first nine years of kindergarten, elementary, and middle schooling without even being really noticed by any of the teachers, let alone being singled out in this way. He didn’t know what was going to happen here, just that it wouldn’t—couldn’t—be anything good.
Mrs. Russet turned slowly to face him. A long moment passed, in which neither said anything. The teacher just looked at him intensely, and Billy did his best not to meet her gaze.
Mrs. Russet finally went and sat down at her desk. “Come here please, Mr. Jones,” she said.
Billy dutifully did so, slinging up his book bag to his shoulder. Hopefully that would remind her he had to get to another class and whatever torture she had in mind for him would be brief.
As he approached her, Mrs. Russet did something strange: she reached into her desk and brought out a ceramic frog. It was a funny little figurine, the kind of thing Billy thought a person might find in a baby’s room, or maybe at a garage sale, hunched between the roller skates that hadn’t been worn in a decade and the broken video recorder. The frog was clearly eating something: insectile wings and the end of a thorax were hanging out of the large mouth.
Billy had barely a moment to register this before Mrs. Russet brought the frog to her lips. For a moment, Billy thought the teacher was actually going to kiss the frog, no doubt hoping that the kiss would transform the amphibian into a middle-aged male teacher with a bad comb-over who would whisk her romantically away to a magical library where they could read forever and would be able to torture students every Wednesday night at scheduled times.
She did not, however, actually kiss the ceramic frog.
What she did do was even more bizarre.
She turned the frog sideways, and whispered into its ear. Or where its ears would be if frogs had ears. Billy couldn’t remember whether they did or not, and right now he didn’t think that piece of information was nearly as important as the fact that his history teacher had clearly fallen clean off her rocker.
Billy couldn’t hear what Mrs. Russet said to the frog, not clearly at any rate, but he felt something odd come over him. It was as though someone had stuck a hose filled with liquid nitrogen down his throat and then turned it on full blast. Coolness flowed from his heart outward, to his hands, his feet, and his head.
For a moment, Billy swayed on his feet. He blinked, and in that moment, he thought the ceramic frog moved. It seemed to grin around the wings and body of the bug it was chewing on. Then one of its great eyes closed and reopened in what Billy thought was a wink.
Billy’s eyes bugged in amazement, and he involuntarily blinked rapidly a few times. When he re-focused his eyes, the frog was not moving at all. In fact, he saw no sign that Mrs. Russet had ever held a frog. In its place, she was holding a manila file folder marked “Jones, William W.” on the side.
It’s not the students who introduce themselves who are crazy, thought Billy. It’s me.
For a moment, he wondered if he was really here. Maybe there had never been a bigger kid named Cameron Black, maybe the lovely Blythe Forrest had never existed. Maybe he was hooked up to a feeding tube in a mental hospital somewhere. But then he realized that would mean that he had never been shoved in the locker, had never fallen on his face in front of Blythe, had never tripped in front of the whole history class. That would be too good to be true.
So I’m really here, he thought. Too bad.
“What does the ‘W’ stand for?” asked Mrs. Russet suddenly.
“Uh, Walker,” said Billy.
“Hmmm…,” replied the teacher. She continued reading his file. Billy fidgeted. He snuck a glance at the clock, sure that the entire passing period must have passed, and that second bell would ring any second.
To his amazement, barely thirty seconds had passed from the end of class.
“Mr. Jones,” said Mrs. Russet. Billy snapped his eyes back to her, not wanting to chance offending this force of nature.
“Yes, Ma’am?” he managed.
“Please hold out your hand.”
Billy blinked again, unsure what this meant, but held out his hand nonetheless, palm downward. Mrs. Russet looked at his knuckles for a moment, no doubt marking the best spot to hit him with a ruler.
But she didn’t hit him with a ruler. Instead, she put out her own hand, and held it above his for a moment. Then she extended her index finger, and touched it ever so lightly to the top of his hand. They remained that way for a moment, Billy completely unsure what was going on.
Mrs. Russet looked from his hand to his eyes, gripping Billy with a gaze stronger than an earthquake. “I have something very important to tell you,” she said, her dry fingertip still resting atop his hand.
Billy waited. He nodded. It seemed like the appropriate thing to do. “Okay,” he said.
Mrs. Russet licked her thin lips. She took a deep breath, then said, slowly and gravely, “Rainbow bears enjoy Ding-Dongs at Christmas.”
Billy blinked again. His eye muscles were getting a workout today. “What?”
Mrs. Russet nodded as though he was contributing to her bizarre statement. Then she said, “Fleas do the limbo while wearing chopsticks.”
Billy did his newfound blinking trick again. He also re-revised his previous theory about the school’s insanity level. It wasn’t the kids here who were crazy. And it wasn’t him, either.
It was everybody.
Mrs. Russet withdrew her finger suddenly, and folded her hands on the desktop. She glanced at the clock. “I don’t think you’ll need a note, you should have plenty of time to get to your next class.”
Billy just stood there, rooted to the spot by the sheer insane pressure of what had just happened.
“Don’t forget to do your reading assignment,” Mrs. Russet continued. After a long moment, during which Billy continued to pretend he was practicing for the Olympics in the Most Widest Eyes And Openest Mouth competition, she frowned. “If you don’t hurry, you will be late. And I will not write a note for a student who is late merely because he is not intelligent enough to move his feet and legs in a rudimentary walking fashion.”
Billy’s body turned toward the door. His head came last, as though it wanted to keep looking at the crazy teacher as long as possible. At last, though, both his body and his head were moving in a semi-coordinated manner toward the door.
He pushed the door open, surprised to see how few students there were in the halls. It seemed like a million years had passed, but apparently it had really only been a minute or so. More students were coming out of the classrooms now, but no one seemed overly hurried, and Billy sighed in relief as he realized he probably would not be late to his second class.
The feeling of relief disappeared, however, when he cast a quick glance back into Mrs. Russet’s room.
Once again, the teacher was holding the ceramic frog.
Once again, she seemed to be whispering to it.
And once again, Billy thought it winked at him.
Billy turned and walked quickly away, not knowing what else to do.
He did know, however, that this was the strangest day he could ever remember having, and that nothing could possibly top it.
Looking back, however, Billy would later think that he had only been half right about that.
CHAPTER THE SECOND
In Which Billy begins a Very Strange fourteenth birthday, and first Fights back…
Billy’s birthday fell on a day that was more than two months into the school year. It was in late October. This meant that he was one of the youngest kids in his class. If he’d been born one month later, he wouldn’t have started school until the following year, making him one of the oldest kids in his grade. But as it was, his relative youth made his already-small frame even smaller when compared to his classmates’ comparatively robust physiques.
Most of the time this didn’t bother Billy too much. But it did mean that he could fit in a locker. And Cameron Black was only too happy to remind Billy of this fact at every opportunity.
Since that strange first day of school, things had proceeded fairly normally for Billy. He was getting mostly average grades, which his parents were satisfied with, if not overly excited about. But he was definitely getting above-average levels of attention from what Billy was coming to think of as the Torture Brigade. It had, of course, Harold Crane in it, as well as Sarah Brookham, a girl he’d accidentally spilled his milk on one day, and a few other people whom Billy had annoyed by having the audacity to live on the same planet they did.
And it went without saying that the founding member of the Torture Brigade was Cameron Black. He was in four of Billy’s six classes, and seemed to figure in every minute of Billy’s life. The locker-stuffing didn’t occur every single day, but Billy could be sure that every single day would bring some new agony at Cameron’s hands. It ranged in severity. Some days, Cameron settled for throwing dirty looks at Billy in the halls. Others, there would be a foot waiting to trip him at just the most embarrassing moment possible. And on others, Billy would be grabbed by the Torture Brigade and stuffed into an empty locker. Cameron said the same thing every time the locker-stuffing happened: don’t move until the bell, and don’t tell anyone I did it.
On the morning of Billy’s birthday, he woke up the same as he did every other morning: wondering what the Torture Brigade was going to do to him today. This time, however, he had the added bonus of waking up to the sight of fire.
For a moment, Billy’s sleep-fogged brain was not able to figure out the significance of the flame, and he almost went screaming out of the room looking for a fire extinguisher before he realized what the fire was: a candle. It was stuck in a blueberry muffin, which was being held only a few inches in front of his face by his mother as she sang “Happy Birthday” to him.
Billy sat up in bed and grinned wearily at his mom as she finished the song. His mother was a bit overweight, and had probably never been a beauty queen. But her face was kind, and usually had a smile for Billy, like it did now.
Billy looked around. “Dad?” he asked.
His mom’s smile faltered for just a moment. “He had to go in early today, honey. A bunch of the other guys called in sick.”
Billy smiled sadly, not wanting to add to the obvious distress her mother felt at his development. Neither of his parents made much money, because they weren’t very educated: Billy knew that they hadn’t even finished high school, though both of them had eventually taken high school equivalency tests that essentially allowed them to say they had graduated. His father had gone on to take some night school classes at a nearby community college while working day shifts as a janitor in an office building, and when Billy was ten his father had finally gotten a two-year degree. His father had then continued his nocturnal education, this time taking classes to become a certified paramedic, and only a few months before had managed to land a job with the Los Angeles Fire Department. This was great news, because it meant that for the first time in Billy’s life his family was making enough money to cover expenses. But it was also terrible news because now his father was on call whenever he wasn’t working overtime, trying to dig the family out of a huge load of debt that had accumulated over the years.
Not that it mattered, Billy supposed. Even when he was home, his father was so busy and overworked that he rarely said anything or participated much in the family’s doings. It was almost like Billy was living with a stranger instead of a dad: someone courteous and helpful in a pinch, but not often there, and certainly not his first pick to talk over one’s troubles with, be they a lack of stylish clothing, girls, or anything else. In spite of all this, though, Billy still wished things could be different when his father missed a birthday or had to cancel on a family outing. Which was most of the time.
Billy blew out the candle.
“What did you wish for?” asked Billy’s mother, then waved her hands in mock terror. “No, don’t tell me, don’t tell me!” she yelled. “It won’t come true if you do!”
Billy smiled and forced a laugh. He wasn’t about to tell her what he’d wished for: either a set of huge arms that he could use to beat Cameron Black to a pulp, or failing that, just for a day that Cameron and the Torture Brigade were all sick at the same time, allowing him to get from class to class for a full eight hours without feeling like he was exploring a nuclear waste site in his underwear.
After the muffin was done, Billy’s mother fed him a big breakfast. Billy ate most of it before his mother screamed, “Oh, it’s seven-thirty! We’ll both be late!” He and his mother got in their car—a beat-up fifteen-year-old rust bucket that usually worked—and she dropped him off at the main student entrance on the way to her job as a checker at the local grocery store.
Billy went to his locker and got his books for his first and second classes. He kept an eye out for the Torture Brigade, but strangely, none of them were around.
First period went fine. Mrs. Russet was as hard a teacher as she had claimed to be that first day, but had never brought out any ceramic toads again, and had never mentioned the strange interview of Billy’s first day.
Second period, too, was fine. This was unusual, since it was one of the classes that Cameron shared with Billy, and Billy could always count on at the very least a few wads of paper being thrown at his face during class.
But nothing happened.
Nothing out of the ordinary happened in Billy’s third class, either. Or his fourth. Or rather, nothing happened that hurt or scared or embarrassed him in any way, which actually was out of the ordinary for Billy. But he didn’t mind this kind of unusual lack of activity a bit.
Billy began to smile a little. Maybe birthday wishes could come true after all.
He smiled even more when he saw what was on the menu for the school cafeteria at lunch: hot dogs and French fries. Billy’s favorite cafeteria dish. His family qualified for free lunches from the school, since they didn’t make very much money. Usually this meant that Billy was eating something that everyone called “Salisbury steak” but that he was pretty sure was actually cardboard and paste shaped into a patty and drenched in some kind of sauce that was made out of old tree bark. But hot dogs and French fries were good stuff.
Billy grabbed a lunch tray and got in line. As usual, he was alone in the cafeteria. Not that there were no other students in the room with him. Just he wasn’t standing “with” any of them. He was on friendly terms with a few kids in the school, but none of them were actual “friends” of the type he could sit with during lunch. Especially since the Torture Brigade had let it be known early on that any friends of Billy’s would risk their wrath. In spite of this separation from the other students, however, Billy generally found a way to enjoy his lunch: sitting at the end of one of the long cafeteria tables, he could pretend he was actually with whatever kids were sitting at that table, instead of just sitting near them.
Suddenly, he heard a chilling whisper in his ear. “I heard today’s your birthday, Billy-willy.”
Billy’s blood immediately stopped circulating in his body. He knew Cameron’s voice better than he knew his own. He started to turn, but stopped when Cameron whispered, “Don’t even think about it, shrimp.”
Billy felt a sharp pain in his right calf. He blanched. The pain came again. Cameron was kicking the backs of his legs with horrendous power. Right there in front of everyone!
Billy saw a teacher standing only a few feet away. Mrs. Russet was on monitor duty today, but she had her back turned. Billy thought about yelling for her, but knew from experience that Cameron would put on an innocent face and the teacher wouldn’t see anything happening, so would ignore Billy’s complaints.
Cameron started singing in Billy’s ear, punctuating each word with another snap-kick to the backs of Billy’s calves. “Happy [slam] Birth-day [slam] to [slam] you [slam]. Happy [slam] Birth-day [slam] to [slam] you….”
The kicks grew harder and harder, and Billy grit his teeth, praying for Mrs. Russet to turn around and catch Cameron in the act. But she didn’t, and the pain in Billy’s legs grew worse and worse, until finally he did the only thing he could think to do.
He dropped his lunch tray.
His hot dog and fries scattered across the floor, causing more than a few nearby students to scream and jump away as though the food were battery acid.
Mrs. Russet turned at the clatter. She frowned over Billy’s shoulder.
Billy’s heart leapt. She was clearly frowning at Cameron! Finally, someone had actually seen the Torture Brigade’s leader at work.
In the next moment, his heart sank back down to its previous level, and then continued on a downward spiral, coming to rest on his big toe.
Cameron wasn’t standing behind Billy.
In fact, the bigger boy wasn’t anywhere to be seen.
The student now standing behind Billy was one of the seniors at PHHS: one of the Older Kids who ruled the school and didn’t even notice Billy’s existence.
Billy turned around and jumped: Mrs. Russet was standing right there.
“For goodness sake, Mr. Jones, I volunteered for lunch duty until one o’clock. Are you going to make me late?” With that, Billy realized that Mrs. Russet hadn’t been looking at Cameron. She’d been looking at the large clock on the wall behind Billy.
Billy mumbled, “No, Ma’am,” then stooped to clean up his mess.
Mrs. Russet waved him away. “No, no. Just go get another tray. The custodian will clean all this up.”
Billy turned to leave, then halted when he heard Mrs. Russet say, “But don’t you stand in line all the way through again. Just get a tray, cut in front to get your lunch, and go through to the cashier.” Billy turned, shocked at this unexpected display of friendliness. To his even greater surprise, Mrs. Russet was smiling. Or, well, actually, not smiling. Billy was pretty sure the muscles in her face wouldn’t be able to smile if you offered her a million dollars for a grin. But she wasn’t frowning, either, which was the closest thing to a smile he’d ever seen Mrs. Russet do.
His suspicions that she was actually being nice were confirmed by her next words. “Happy birthday, Mr. Jones.”
Billy smiled in amazement before turning away to get his tray. By the time he was back at the front of the line again, Mrs. Russet was gone and the spill had been cleaned up. There was no sign that anything had ever happened here.
Billy frowned. That reminded him. Where was Cameron? Billy had been positive that Cameron was the one whispering to him. But where was the bigger boy?
Billy showed his lunch pass to the cashier, who nodded him through, and continued into the cafeteria, craning his neck to see if he could find Cameron’s face among the swarming throng of students.
The bigger boy was nowhere to be seen.
Billy sat in silence, positioning himself near the door to the cafeteria so that he could see the students coming in and out. Cameron was not among them. Billy started to doubt that any of it had ever happened. But when he raised his pants legs and looked at his calves, he could already see a row of deep purple bruises. The kicking at least had really occurred.
Finally, it was time for Billy to go to his locker and collect his books for his fifth-period class. He dumped out his uneaten lunch—he had completely lost his interest in food because of his curiosity as to where Cameron could have gone—then walked into the hall and up the stairs to the second floor hall where his locker was located. At the locker, he spun the combination lock to the first number.
Before he could spin the dial to its next location, he heard a sound that again made his blood turn to dust in his veins.
“Happy Birth-day to you…”
Billy swung around as fast as he could. This time, he saw what he had expected to see the first time: Cameron Black, grinning evilly from ear to ear. And not just him, either. The entire Torture Brigade was there in full force. Harold Crane stood behind Cameron, his thick arms crossed across his broad chest, his hair now died booger-green. Sarah Brookham was there as well, dirty blonde hair straggling across her face as her mouth worked up and down, chewing gum at world-record-setting pace.
Cameron shoved Billy up against his locker. “Try and get me in trouble, will you?” He pushed into Billy, leaning his whole body weight on the smaller boy. “Try and get old Russet to see me, huh?”
Billy gasped. It was getting hard to breathe. Cameron gave Billy a quick shake, causing Billy’s head to snap back and hit his locker. Billy cried out quietly, his eyes crossing for a moment.
“Leave him alone!”
Cameron turned his head, not letting go of Billy, and Billy sagged as he saw the worst thing he could imagine seeing in this situation: Blythe Forrest.
Blythe was in three of Billy’s classes, but since their first strange encounter she had never spoken to Billy. And now here she was, apparently taking an interest in him for the first time, and doing so because he needed rescuing. Billy would rather have been beaten up every single day and twice a day on Sundays than have Blythe coming to his rescue. Blissful fantasies that involved him asking her to come over to his place to watch a movie and ended in her declaring her undying love to him all shattered before his eyes. Girls didn’t declare undying love to the little kid they had to rescue. It just wasn’t done.
“Stay out of this, Forrest,” snarled Cameron, turning his attention to Billy.
“Why should I, Black?” responded Blythe, striding fearlessly toward them.
Billy, watching this interplay, found Blythe even prettier now that she was standing up to Cameron. Of course, she was still rescuing him, so her increased beauty just made Billy more depressed about his overall predicament.
Cameron turned around to face Blythe again. Harold Crane and Sarah Brookham both moved as if to stop Blythe, but Cameron stopped them with a glance. “Don’t,” he said to his cronies.
Blythe glanced at the two other Torture Brigaders, disgust written large across her lovely face. “Yes, don’t,” she agreed. “You wouldn’t like what would happen to you.” She turned her gaze to Cameron. “Would they, Cam?”
Cameron growled, and Billy could feel the big boy tense. He was sure that Cameron was about to spring at Blythe.
Billy had one fleeting moment of thought, and it consisted of only two words: “Not her!” Suddenly terrified for Blythe’s safety, Billy shoved Cameron, hard.
Coming from someone Billy’s size, the shove wasn’t much. In fact, Billy was so bad at shoving he actually missed. He was aiming to push Cameron in the chest, but his grip slipped, and he lurched forward, off-balance. His arms windmilled, and there was a sickening crunch as Billy’s out-of-control elbow planted itself firmly in the middle of Cameron’s nose.
Blood erupted from the other boy’s face. Cameron cupped his hand below his nose, trying in vain to keep the red liquid from soaking his designer shirt.
“You made me bleed,” he said. Oddly, he didn’t sound angry. More…surprised than anything.
Billy looked at Blythe. She, too, looked shocked, her gaze riveted on Cameron’s ruined face.
“MR. BLACK!”
It was Mrs. Russet. She was hurrying down the hallway like a freight train hauling anvils down a steep hill, an unstoppable force.
Billy sighed in relief. Cameron couldn’t pretend nothing had happened this time. He was snuffling like a walrus with a head cold, blood soaking his shirt in a widening red cone.
Mrs. Russet looked at Harold and Sarah. “Leave,” she barked. The two junior members of the Torture Brigade showed rare intelligence as they high-tailed it as fast as they could.
Mrs. Russet looked at Billy, then at Cameron. She swiveled at last to Blythe. “What happened?” she demanded.
Blythe appeared barely able to speak. “He…,” she pointed to Billy. “He… hit Cameron.”
Mrs. Russet made a noise deep in her throat, something between a cough and a guffaw. “That’s not possible,” she said. She looked at Billy and Cameron again. “Is that true?” she demanded of Cameron.
“Well,” managed the bigger boy. “I don’t think he meant to. It was just a lucky accident for him.”
“Lucky? Lucky?” The word seemed to enrage Mrs. Russet even more. “Get out of here, Black!” Cameron turned to go. “You, too, Ms. Forrest.” Blythe hesitated a moment, but Mrs. Russet’s furiously flashing eyes convinced her to go.
“And you,” she said angrily, grabbing Billy by the shoulder, “you come with me.”
She yanked him down the hall with her.
Billy couldn’t believe it. How was this possible? He was being punished? Not only was Cameron not in trouble—again—but Billy was in trouble?
“But I didn’t—” he began.
Mrs. Russet’s mutterings cut him off. “Not possible,” she said under her breath, casting a glance at Billy. “You didn’t even Glimmer.”
Billy tried again. “But he started it.”
Mrs. Russet stopped in front of a room marked “Janitorial” and seemed to focus on Billy for the first time. “I don’t doubt that for a second, Mr. Jones.”
“But then,” Billy said in a very small, very confused voice, “Why are you mad at me?”