Agony. It was all David knew for an eternity. Pain knifed through his eye, it twisted and scraped inside his skull so relentlessly that it felt like Hilary was still over him, rattling her ivory shank in his eye socket. David swung in the dark to knock her away, but it never changed anything.
Pain permeated his dreams too, making it impossible to know for sure when he was awake and when he wasn’t. He could sense that people were trying to help him. He heard words of consolation, but they were unintelligible through the throbbing haze.
In time, pain didn’t consume him anymore. He slept more restfully. He’d only awaken for moments before fading to sleep again.
“You had a fever from an infection,” Lucy said softly, holding his hand, “You’re doing well now, David.” She returned to reading a book aloud. It was rhythmic and soothing. There was talk of picnics and sunshine. Her voice faded away.
He came to later. Lucy’s voice came from a different direction.
“Oh, my God,” she said. “You’re not going to believe this, but I was really jealous of Dorothy. All those gifts she gave you? I actually tried to draw a picture of you one night. You should have seen it, it was horrible. Wow, I hope you’re not listening to any of this.”
He was, sort of, but he drifted away again.
“If your jaw hurts, it’s ’cause I had to knock you out, you were thrashing and yelling so bad,” Gonzalo said, chuckling.
“You almost took that Nerd’s head off when he was operating on you. Jeezus, it was crazy.”
David tried to laugh, but he fell asleep instead.
She took my eye. That’s all David could think.
He was conscious again. He reached up and dared to feel his right eye for the first time. His fingers grazed the crusty gauze.
She took my eye, David thought again. We were a couple. My mom made her dinner twice a week. I loved her once. And she took my eye out!
He gnashed his teeth together. He was angry now. No matter how many times he thought it, it never seemed acceptable. She could have killed him if she wanted to, but no, she wanted to shame him. Scar him. Make him look weak.
Sam made her. Sam wanted all of those things, and he scared Hilary into doing it. He made her feel like she had no choice.
But she did have a choice.
David had asked her to join the Loners, leave the Pretty Ones behind. He would have protected her. She wouldn’t do it.
She wouldn’t let go of the power. David knew then that Hilary never loved him.
No one would ever mutilate someone they loved.
The rage within David felt good. It dampened the fire in his eye. He turned revenge scenarios over in his head, lying on his side, staring at his room with his one good eye. Dull light seeped through the curtain.
His room had been rearranged. A first-aid kit, bottles of water, rags, and a pile of books sat on the floor, next to his bed. A pillow lay scrunched into the corner. That was where Lucy sat when she read to him and kept him company.
She’d talked about episodes from her childhood, things about her family, random thoughts about life. One time, he remembered her singing softly to him. Some kind of folk song or something. He couldn’t remember the chorus, but her voice had been so sweet and lulling.
David’s mind traveled to the night of the Geek show. It seemed like a dream.
Lucy entered in the half-light, stepping quietly around the room so she wouldn’t disturb him.
“I’m awake,” David said.
Lucy sat down on the bed beside David.
“I need to change your bandage.”
“Okay.”
She peeled the tape away from his face. With a damp cotton ball she gently dabbed below his eye to clean the area. David kept his good eye to the ground. He felt ashamed. How could she look at it? It had to be vile.
“It looks a lot better,” she said.
David stayed silent as Lucy unwrapped a new bandage, then used a pair of scissors to cut it into a much smaller shape.
“Thank you for treating me so well,” David said.
He looked up at her. Lucy was right there, her eyes big and loving. He missed her, even though she’d been right next to him day after day. He felt like precious moments had been stolen from them. He took her hand and held it tight. Her eyes glistened with wetness. Tears threatened to tumble out from his eyes as well. It hurt.
“I wasn’t going to lose you,” Lucy said. “I swore I wouldn’t.” David was overcome by her devotion. He was lucky to have her.
“How long have I been out?”
“Almost three weeks.”
David reeled at the thought.
“Where’s Will?”
Lucy stayed quiet.
“Just tell me he’s okay.”
“He’s okay. He just… decided to leave.”
“I don’t understand. Where did he go?”
“Nobody knows,” Lucy said. “He left not long after the attack, and nobody’s seen him since.”
“Nobody’s seen Will for three weeks? Where did you look?”
“There’ve been a few search parties for him, but he didn’t turn up. It’s been hard to persuade the gang to go after him.”
“Why?”
“Will left his post the night you were attacked. That’s how Hilary got in. Ritchie saw Will at the Geek show.” He knew what it meant. Will saw them.
“It’s my fault,” Lucy said. “You asked me if there was anything between me and Will, and it was just so complicated, I didn’t know how to put it.”
“Well, how would you put it now?”
“I may have… I did… I gave him the wrong signals, when I should have been clear. I hurt his feelings. This is all my fault.”
David hung his head. He punched his fist into the bed. Lucy jumped.
“I’m not mad at you, believe me. This is not your fault,” David said.
This was all David’s fault.
“I tried to stop him from leaving, but he wouldn’t listen,” Lucy said. “He said the Loners would never forgive him. He thought they might even try to kill him.”
“They wouldn’t.”
“Everybody was upset, David. You were in bad shape. You screamed for days straight. I just don’t think Will could take it anymore. But we’ll find him. I know we will.” Lucy finished the bandage she was cutting and lifted it to place it over David’s eye. He stopped her.
“I want to see it.”
Lucy gave David an unsure glance. “David-”
“I want to see it.”
Lucy got up, walked out of the room. She returned with a small mirror and handed it to him. He took a deep breath and then held it up to his face. His dead eye stared back at him.
It was crusted with yellow and red, and the globe itself was deflated and opaque. It looked like a steamed onion.
David lowered the mirror. He was disgusted. He felt weak.
He felt violated. He knew that’s what Sam wanted, but he couldn’t stop himself. Lucy sat down next to him again with a pleading look.
“You’re no different, David. Everybody’s waiting for you.
Everybody believes in you.”
How could he possibly think his enemies would take the night off just because he decided to?
“David,” Lucy said, trying to get his attention.
David turned to Lucy. She gazed at him, and he recognized the same affection she had in her eyes at the Geek show. He was still the same to her.
“You’re so beautiful,” he blurted out. She blushed and looked down.
He wanted her even more now than he did the night of the Geek show.
“David,” Lucy said. “There’s something else. It’s Gonzalo.
He’s graduating tomorrow.”
David laughed.
“What else are you going to tell me? Somebody stole all our food?”
Lucy didn’t laugh. David’s face dropped.
“That didn’t happen, did it?”
Lucy shook her head, then said, “You should be happy for him. He’s been a good friend. He got everybody through a tough time while you were hurt.”
Lucy took David’s hand.
“I’ll be right next to you. I’ll do whatever you need me to do.
We’re going to be okay.”
Lucy squeezed David’s hand.
“I have something for you,” she said.
Lucy reached over to the first-aid kit and plucked up a twelve-pack box of chalk. David gave it an odd look.
“Open it.”
He opened it and pulled out a white leather eye patch. He smiled.
“You made this? From your pocketbook?”
She nodded.
“Well, let’s see it on,” she said.
Lucy placed the small bandage over his eye and taped it down. She took the eye patch from David’s hand and gently placed it over the bandage. She ran her finger along the white shoelace straps, guiding them through his hair. As she tied it, her dress stretched across her curves, and her warm body pressed against his.
Lucy leaned back to have a look at David.
“There,” she said, biting her lip, seemingly impressed with her handiwork. She giggled. “Ooh-la-la.” David laughed, and afterward he felt exhausted, like it took everything out of him.
“I’m tired,” he said.
“You should lie down.”
He nodded and lay back. Lucy lay down with him. She wrapped her arms around his body and cradled David. He thought about kissing her, but he didn’t do anything. It felt too good to be held by her, and to let someone protect him for once.
David strode fiercely down the hall. It was reckless considering he’d barely mastered his equilibrium, but so far he was doing a decent job of walking a straight line. The Loners struggled to keep pace. He wouldn’t slow down for them. He couldn’t.
“You know I’m getting out, not you, right?” Gonzalo said.
“Yeah, you sure you don’t want to stick around? It’d be a big help. Even if you’re dead, I could probably still scare people off with your corpse,” David said, forcing a smile. Gonzalo gave him an approving clap him on the back. It nearly sent him into the wall.
Appearance was everything today. It felt too soon for David’s first public appearance since the attack. He was still plagued by episodes of unbearable, plunging pain in his eye.
He’d slugged back two cups of juice to try to numb it. But that didn’t help his insecurity. He felt like a gimp. He’d been mutilated and was about to put himself on display for everyone to ogle and gossip about. What could he do? It was Gonzalo’s graduation day.
Graduation was the most important event in a McKinley student’s life. You’d made it through. You’d earned your freedom. And it was an important reminder to everyone else that there was still hope, and that life on the inside wasn’t real life, a point that he was finding harder and harder to remember.
If David had skipped Gonzalo’s graduation, not only would he miss saying good-bye to his most trusted right-hand man, but his absence would have been an admission of defeat to Varsity and the rest of the school.
He prayed they didn’t meet with any trouble today. He wasn’t even sure he could land a punch, working off one eye.
He couldn’t afford a fight, but he needed to convince everyone, including the Loners, that he could.
Thunderous conversation echoed out from the foyer. The closer he got, the more it sounded like the whole school was there. He could see students packed into every inch of space.
They’d come to see the return of David.
“How are you doing?” Lucy said, sidling up to him. Worry creased her brow.
“I feel like a million bucks,” he said. It was curt and insin-cere, enough to say bad question, bad time without hurting her feelings.
He just kept pushing forward to the foyer like an express train. He marched into the area, bumping a few kids out of the way as he did. He didn’t stop until he was a good ten yards in. All talk in the room stopped.
He planted himself there like a colossal Roman statue forty feet tall and made of bronze. The Loners flanked him, creating a ring, looking out at the McKinley population. David peered out at the kids staring back at him. What they didn’t know was that David was focusing only on their mouths as they whispered. He couldn’t bear to meet their eyes yet.
The stitching on his eye patch prickled his face. He ached to adjust it, but he knew everyone had their eyes on it. The slightest acknowledgment that it irritated him would have
been Varsity’s first small victory.
David scanned the crowd for Hilary. He had intended for hers to be the first eyes he met. He found the Pretty Ones, but there was no sign of her. Varsity was close at hand, and at the front was Sam. Sam was grinning at David and talking out the corner of his mouth to Diaz and Dixon. David felt a magnetic pull toward Sam. He had an overwhelming urge to kill him right there. If David did kill Sam, where would it end?
It could start an all-out war. How many Loners would die? If David were to strike back, it would have to be definitive. He’d have to wipe Varsity out completely so they wouldn’t be able to retaliate. He would have to win it all in one move.
What did that mean? He had to kill them all?
It seemed like an insane thing to consider. But what if they went after Lucy next? What if they found Will before he could?
What if they went for his other eye?
“You need me to murder Sam for you real quick before I go?” Gonzalo said, leaning in.
David couldn’t hold on to his steely expression. He broke into a grin.
“Would you mind?”
“Sure, I could do some kind of suplex or an elbow drop superquick. He’ll be dead, then I’ll bounce. Cool?” David’s grin gave way to an honest laugh. He turned to his friend and appreciatively took him in. Gonzalo had a bitter-sweet look on his face. Two months ago, David didn’t know if Gonzalo felt any emotions at all. He’d been a deadpan giant then. Now he was a close friend, and he was clearly worried.
Gonzalo knew the situation. He knew the pressure that was now on David. He also knew that this room was a time bomb.
David thought that Gonzalo probably wished he could stay to fight just as much as he couldn’t wait to run out the front door.
David gave Gonzalo a heartfelt squeeze on the shoulder, as if to give him permission to go. Gonzalo walked to the front doors beside the graduation booth. They were covered with the scratched-in signatures of past graduates. He grabbed the car key that was hanging on a string off a door hinge.
Gonzalo found a clean spot among the three hundred or so names on the doors and scratched his name: GONZALO. He turned to the booth, stepped inside, and placed his thumb on the scanner. A moment later, the screen in the booth flashed: PROCEED TO EXIT FOR PROCESSING.
Gonzalo walked to the door and waited for it to open, but nothing happened. The door should have opened for him.
Gonzalo looked puzzled. The crowd whispered about it. Gonzalo walked back to the booth, scanned his thumb again, and still the door didn’t open.
A sob echoed from the cluster of Loners. It was Sasha. She’d been a wreck all morning, crying and barely able to stand.
Belinda had to hold her up now. The graduation booth not working was just too much now. Gonzalo looked at Sasha as he tried the scanner again.
“It’s okay, Sash. Don’t worry, girl.”
She nodded, tears pouring out of her eyes.
David heard a dull clunk. All heads turned to see the doors to the outside swing open. David could see that beyond the door, the coffin-sized containment cell was not there, and the double doors looked out to a large white room. He felt an impulse to run for that room. That was the way to freedom, and it was wide open.
A soldier in a black haz-mat suit and riot gear stepped forward. Thirty more, identical to the first, charged through the doors in a tight formation. Dread seized David. They hadn’t seen anyone from the outside for eighteen months, not since the booth had been installed. This felt wrong. David grabbed Lucy on instinct and pulled her away from the doors. Gonzalo ran back with the Loners. Sasha screamed like mad.
“Get back!” David shouted to the Loners. They retreated to the edge of the foyer in a tight formation around David. Every other gang did the same, finding cover behind the prominent pillars of the room.
The students peered out at the soldiers. It was a quiet face-off.
The soldiers held clear bulletproof shields in front of them, with slots in the middle to stick their assault rifles through.
They assembled in a line, spreading out to form a wall of shields. Between that front line of soldiers and the door, another team of soldiers broke into two lines that faced each
other, with their shields out to form a wide hallway that led to the exit.
“There’s been a malfunction in the automated exit process,” one soldier hollered. “If this is your release day, line the hell up! We will be scanning for infection! If you try to leave without being scanned, we are prepared to use maximum force!” As if that wasn’t clear enough, another soldier shouted,
“We’ll lay you rats down! Just try something!” Everything about the soldiers’ entrance and their attitude was jittery. They were on edge, and it made David feel queasy.
Gonzalo looked to David, just as unsure.
“What do you think, D?” he said.
“I think you should get the hell out of here before they change their mind.”
Gonzalo nodded. He leaned down to Sasha to give her one last kiss, and she jumped on him like he was a jungle gym. She grabbed his face and pressed it against hers.
“I love you so much, baby,” Sasha said. “I gonna miss you like fucking crazy.”
Tears wet Gonzalo’s eyes, and he bit down hard on his lip to fight them back.
“I’m gonna see you soon, Sash. Real soon, okay?” She let go of him and turned away. Belinda and Lucy opened their arms to her. Gonzalo strode toward the soldiers. Graduates from different gangs stepped forward and formed a line down the center of the foyer behind him.
A cube the size of a walk-in closet, made of thick slabs of clear plastic and mounted on a black metal base with all-ter-rain tires, rolled in from the outside and continued down the hallway of soldiers. Its motor buzzed like an electric pencil sharpener.
“What the hell is that?” David said.
The cube came to a halt five feet in front of Gonzalo.
“It’s a fat guy in a little box,” Lucy whispered without missing a beat.
A man sat inside the cube, behind a small steering wheel and a set of computerized panels. He was some kind of scien-tist, or maybe that was overstating it, but he had on a clean white lab coat. His flabby bulk barely fit into the cube. And he was terrified. This clearly wasn’t in his job description. He shook as he looked around the room. His eyes were so wide it looked like toothpicks held them open.
“Uh… f-f-first student. Step, uh, come forward.” Gonzalo approached the box. The fat man shrank back in his seat.
“Place your hand in the glove,” the fat man said.
Gonzalo slid his hand into a long, rigid, rubberlike glove that extended into his box from the outside, like an incuba-tor. The glove sealed tightly around his wrist. Gonzalo waited.
The fat man stared at the screen on his equipment and patted the sweat from his round, hastily shaven cheeks.
Finally, the fat man said, “Name?”
“Gonzalo Mendez.”
“Take your hand out of the glove.”
Gonzalo did as the man asked. There was a slight hum of whirring parts, and then the hand-hole spit out the glove lining that had fit over Gonzalo’s hand. It landed with a nasty splat on the ground.
Gonzalo waited for the fat man to say something. The guy seemed to be busy with follow-up procedures on the panel.
“Come on, man,” Gonzalo finally said.
The fat man looked up, rattled.
“Oh, uh, you’re free. You’re processing section is F. Proceed to the exit.”
Boos echoed out from the crowd at the fat man’s performance.
“YOU SUCK!” someone shouted.
Someone else threw an oily clump of rags from far back in the room. It smacked onto the side of the cube. The fat man jumped in his seat, making the cube rock from side to side on its wheelbase. The man’s heart rate must have tripled. Some kids laughed. The soldiers choked up on their rifles. The rag slid down the plastic, leaving a trail of goo behind it.
“See you on the other side, McKinley,” Gonzalo said.
Gonzalo walked into the hall of shields. His face transformed when he looked through the doors to the white room.
Clean, cool light washed over Gonzalo’s face. He breathed in deep. His smile was reverent. It was like nothing David had ever seen from Gonzalo. The rest of his life was waiting for him. He stepped through the door.
And then Gonzalo was gone.
David felt exposed and vulnerable again. He felt the focus of the room shift back on him. He’d been maimed by a girl he used to date; he was half blind; his brother was missing; and he’d just lost the strongest fighter in his gang.
Five more students were set to graduate. Dickie Bellman was next in the graduation line. That wasn’t right.
Dickie was at least a year too young to be phasing out of infection. Everyone who had graduated so far would have been a senior. Dickie would only have been a junior at this point. A panic fluttered in David.
“What’s Dickie doing?” Lucy whispered.
The Freak behind Dickie was trying to pull him out of the line by his shirt, but he clearly didn’t want to cause a commotion that would involve the soldiers. Dickie pushed the Freak off and hustled up to the cube. Without prompting, he stuck his hand into the glove. As Dickie waited for a response from the fat man, whispered conversation spread through the crowd. People were making the same observation David and Lucy already had.
The fat man’s eyes flicked over his control panel, then looked up, frightened.
“You are not eligible for release,” the fat man said.
“Sir, I hate to be argumentative, but you have to be mistaken,” Dickie said.
Dickie gestured emphatically, causing the black glove to snap back and forth inside the cube. The fat man yelped, petrified, and pressed as much of his body he could manage against the back wall of the cube, as though he was trapped in a car with a cobra.
“Pardon me, would you mind fucking running the test again?” Dickie said. His voice slid up and down in pitch as he spoke.
“No! Get out of here!”
The hallway of soldiers turned their guns on Dickie, while the others kept their aim on the crowd. Dickie didn’t seem to notice any of it. He was focused on the fat man.
David wished Dickie would just walk away.
“I’m just trying to talk to you like a human being, sir, I don’t need to be yelled at. If you simply called the Pentagon, they would tell you I’ve already negotiated this-”
“I said, go!” the fat man yelled.
“Get back, kid!” the commanding soldier barked. It seemed to snap Dickie into a larger awareness. He turned to see the whole school staring at him. Dickie looked back at them all with disgust. He focused on the fat man again.
“I’ll have you fired,” he said, and pulled his hand from the glove.
Dickie turned and walked away from the cube. The glove mechanism whirred and spit Dickie’s glove lining out after him. The splat of the lining on the floor made Dickie’s face flinch.
“Next,” the fat man announced.
A Freak who was next in line strutted up to the cube and stuck his hand inside. The hole sealed around his wrist.
Dickie spun around and dashed back toward the man in the box. A soldier fired a single shot. He missed Dickie and shot the Freak in the hip.
The Freak howled. Dickie had no intention of stopping. He sprinted past the fat man and into the hallway of shields. The soldiers opened fire. Blood shot up over the shield line like a blender with the top off. What used to be Dickie fell to the ground, a mangled lump.
The Freak still wailed, yanking and yanking at the glove that held him, fastened to the cube.
“Let go’a me! Let me loose!” the Freak yelled.
With every yank, the cube shook, and the fat man screamed.
The front line of soldiers fired on the Freak, executing him.
All the Freaks went wild. Bobby led them in a mad rush on the cube. The Freaks barreled into it. The cube tipped over and crashed to the ground. Simultaneously, a surge of kids ran for the door.
The soldiers’ roaring guns spit bullets into the heads, chests, and legs of the charging students. Blood sprayed in the air. Bodies flopped to the ground. Screams filled the room. The kids were screaming in pain and rage, the soldiers were screaming orders at each other, and the man in the cube screamed louder than anyone, his wheels spinning uselessly in the air.
“GET ME OUT OF HERE! PLEEEASE! GET ME OUT!” A few soldiers desperately tried to lift the cube back onto its wheels. They abandoned their effort and resorted to dragging the whole thing toward the metal door while the other soldiers’ guns coughed fire into the riot. Three kids took one soldier down to the ground. They clawed furiously at the back of his suit like dogs trying to dig under a fence. They tore rips into his suit, and within seconds his clear face mask flooded with blood and lung. Another Freak ran straight past the discombobulated crowd of soldiers and out the front doors.
David heard adults scream beyond the exit.
The Loners were scattered by the chaos. David pushed Lucy toward the hall.
“Go! I’ll be right there!” David said.
Lucy nodded, and David did one last scan of the foyer for any Loners who could have fallen behind. He didn’t see any.
He turned right to run for the hall and smacked hard into someone on his blind side. He spiraled off the anonymous body and landed on the floor.
David scrambled to get up, machine guns blaring in his ears.
He kept getting knocked back down; he couldn’t see anything on his right. When he finally got his bearings, he caught sight of a face staring at him through the mob. It belonged to Sam, who watched in fascination as David was helplessly smacked around.
The twins dragged him away from crowd by his ankles.
If David wanted to make an impression, the job was done.