“It happened more than once,” Solomon said.
The smell of the river was strong. Seagulls squawked in the air overhead. Connor was crying. We sat on the rocks at the river’s edge and shivered. Looking across to Athens, to the abandoned quarry’s loading dock and the empty silo that used to hold— I didn’t know what it held. The lights of the Rip Van Winkle Bridge were just coming on.
“This is real? This really happened?” Connor asked me, but I could see in his eyes that he already knew, already believed.
“Yeah,” I said. “I saw it. I blocked it out for a long time, but I remember it now. I remember everything.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Connor asked Solomon, and I gasped, because of course I’d wanted to ask the same question, but I’d had too much sense.
“This isn’t on Solomon,” I said. “He was a kid.”
“I know!” Connor said. “I’m not an idiot. I just mean— I wish I could have . . .”
He didn’t finish the sentence. He wanted to think he could have done something about it, protected his brother, helped him, stopped the bad man from hurting him, even if the bad man was his father.
“It’s okay, Ash,” Solomon said. Then he turned to Connor. “Honestly, for the longest time, I didn’t remember any of this. I had blocked it out, too. I was ashamed. I felt like it was my fault, at least a little bit. Ash and I used to joke about having crushes on your dad. For a long time I thought I’d said or done something to make him think I—I wanted it.”
“Don’t say that,” I snapped.
“Don’t tell him what to say!” Connor snapped back.
A bell clanged, out on a buoy. Seagulls screaked by overhead in the ultramarine sky. The world was very beautiful, and very ugly.
I could see things differently, ever since I’d returned from (the other side) that weird dream under the giant bridge. Like the Truth was closer now. Just out of reach.
“It had been happening for about a year,” Solomon said. “The night Ash saw us—that was the last time. He got spooked, I think. He wasn’t sure what you had seen—what you’d remember. Whether you’d say anything. And then I ran away. . . .”
“Oh, Solomon,” I whispered, and my hand went to my mouth. It was stained and stinking from photo chemicals. It felt like a whole other reality, the darkroom and the photos I’d developed.
But I’d done it. Somehow. Channeled the feeling; fed it, stoked it, pushed it out through my fingertips. And I’d captured images of each member of the team taking part in his Induction Ceremony. Graffiti, arson, all of it. They were blurry, sometimes, or awkwardly cropped, but real, and convincing. When I switched on the full, bright fluorescent overhead light, the pictures hadn’t gone away. Solomon saw only portraits, but I saw. I knew.
And the photos were good, too. Some of them were great, even. They captured something real and vital and complex about each player.
Maybe—somehow—someday—when all of this is over—I could go back to Cass. I could have a future in this.
“You really didn’t remember anything?” Connor asked me, and then hastened to add, “Not that it was on you either.”
“Those days, in the hospital and afterward . . . ,” I said. “They’re still fuzzy. I remember being scared. And confused. I knew something awful had happened, but I didn’t know what. I had these nightmares, so vivid I couldn’t tell them apart from reality. Monsters running through the streets. Bloody broken glass.”
“Me too,” Solomon said.
“Did your mom know?” Connor asked, looking at his feet, at the rocks, at anything but his brother.
Solomon shook his head. “I never told her. I was scared of what he might do. To both of us.”
“She burned his car—”
“Easy, Ash,” Solomon said, and chuckled. “I know my mom. If she had any idea what really happened, she’d be in jail for murder right now. I don’t know what he did to her, but he deserved whatever she did in response. And worse.”
“I wish she had killed him,” Connor said, and slid off his rock and buried his head in the crook of his elbow, the way you do when you sneeze, but he screamed instead. I rubbed one shoulder. Solomon rubbed the other.
I grabbed Solomon’s hand.
“I’m going to be sick,” Connor said, doubling over, pressing his forehead into his knees in a very Solomon kind of gesture. I felt bad, to have split his world down the middle like that. What would it do to me, to know my father was a monster?
But I’d rather know, than not know.
“No wonder you wanted nothing to do with me,” Connor groaned.
“You look like him,” Solomon whispered, but the wind was strong and I wondered if maybe Connor didn’t hear him. I hoped he hadn’t, because I had, and that four-word explanation had gutted me.
Solomon looked out across the river. His eyes widened. I turned, and gasped at what I saw. Flying through the air, two animals: as big and long as trains, glinting in the sunset.
“A water dragon and a fire dragon,” Solomon whispered. “Dragons wander—they never nest or build a home. And when two meet, they have a dance they do. A different one for every two elements. It’s a super-rare sight.”
Connor looked, but then looked down at his feet again. The way you do, when someone describes something that must be a figment of their imagination. Or their madness.
But I could see them. Serpentine creatures, Eastern-style dragons instead of the winged long-neck lizards of Western folklore. They coiled and looped together in an intricate, gorgeous dance. So complex I worried they’d get knotted together. The weird world Solomon lived in was so much better than this one. I almost envied him, that he got to live there all the time.
My meds were working, mostly, but I wasn’t cured. I’d live, but I would never be cured. Not of this.
Solomon said, “I just . . . I had to get as far as possible from everything that reminded me of him.”
“I can’t believe I never knew,” Connor said. And then he opened his mouth and said, “I’m—” But then he stopped, because what could you say? I’m sorry was insufficient, almost insulting. He shut his mouth.
“Words are bullshit,” Solomon said understandingly.
Impulsively, with the urgency of a frightened child, Connor leaped forward and hugged his brother.
I wanted to join in, but I checked myself. There was so much pain between them, so many obstacles, so many walls they’d built up around the little boys they’d been. The brothers who loved each other. They needed to get there together.
A barge moved past us on the river, its deck crowded with crates. I shut my eyes, breathed in and out, memorized every sense impression. The raw, wet muck smell of the river. The cold wind. The sniffling of the boys beside me. It was one of those moments I’d want to be able to remember, years and years later. The little instants that turn us into who we are.
“You had something you wanted to talk about,” I said, twenty minutes later, when we picked ourselves up and brushed off our behinds and headed for the car.
“It’s nothing,” Connor said, wiping one eye. “Stupid bullshit, compared to this.”
“Is it about Sheffield?”
“Yeah.”
“Tell us,” Solomon said. “Even if we can’t punish Police Commissioner Bahrr for what he did, we can still stop the Shield if we know what he’s got planned.”
Connor and I made quick, furtive eye contact, but both of us promptly decided to leave it alone.
“I told him all about the Induction Ceremonies,” I said.
“There’s gonna be one last one,” Connor said. “The final prank, to close it all out. Sheffield’s own.”
“I thought you still had to go,” I said.
“I’ve been stringing him along, putting it off over and over. So much so that he’s mad at me now. Sheffield’s prank is the biggest and it’s got to be during the Halloween dance, which is why he can’t wait on me anymore. He’s going to burn down the old Greenport School.”
“What?” I said. “Why?”
“Because that’s where all the weirdos hang out,” Solomon said. “Right? That’s who he’s been targeting with all this. The people who are different.”
Connor nodded. I hadn’t connected those dots. But Solomon had.
Jewel was religious; didn’t smoke, didn’t drink. Didn’t curse. So she made the people who did do these things extra uncomfortable.
Judy was Jewish. That was reason enough for lots of people to hate her.
The nerds and geeks, the suck-ups, targeted in the parking lot minefield.
Solomon, the crazy kid.
It tracked.
“Except that if it burns, so do the woods,” I said. “And so does half of Hudson.”
“He doesn’t care about that,” Connor said. “And he won’t even be getting his hands dirty. He’s got everybody on the team taking on a little piece of it. He says it’s to divide the guilt up, but really it’s because then everyone’s implicated.”
I thought for a moment.
The team. They could stop this. But I’d have to convince them to. The photos I’d developed, using my gift—once I confronted the players with them, I might be able to scare them into doing the right thing.
The sun was hidden behind the clouds, and the sky was getting darker and darker even though sunset was a long way away. On the radio, Ms. Jackson had said the weather was strange, and now out of nowhere we were looking at a thunder and lightning storm, and maybe even snow, if the temperature kept dropping.
I had a lot of driving ahead of me. A whole bunch of football players to visit, and confront.
But before any of that, I had to talk to my mother and father. I didn’t know if they’d know what to do about Mr. Barrett—or if they’d even believe me when I told them—but I had to try.
Movies make a lot about the hero setting off alone to vanquish the monster. But those are movies. In real life, I needed all the help I could get.