Mom, did you hear what I said?” Early morning wasn’t the best time to try to get his mother’s attention. “Mom! You gotta do it!”
“We’ll talk about it later. I’m kinda busy right now.” Delia reached into the refrigerator and snatched a Phat Burger bag off the top shelf. She was about to bustle past him. Instead she grabbed his arm, zeroing in on a fall-off-the-beam injury. “Where’d you get this big old ugly bruise?”
“Forget the bruise. You gotta check on Damien. I can’t reach him. His phone’s disconnected.”
“Seems like you’re getting in enough trouble all by yourself without Damien,” she said, frowning at his bruised arm. “Breakfast!” she sang out, opening the bag in her hand.
The General grimaced at the cold Hot Apple Tart Delia dropped in front of him. “When I said room and board”—he picked up the box and gave it a shake—“I didn’t think you’d give me a real board.”
“You wanted fruit?” She jabbed the word “Apple” on the box with a finger. “You got fruit.” She took the box out of his hands and tossed it to Socko. “Nuke this for your great-grandfather. And here’s one for yourself.” She tossed him a second box.
Socko put both in the microwave and hit the 1-minute button. “Mom?”
“I don’t have time for this, Socko! I gotta get to work. They’re disconnected because Louise didn’t pay the bill. End of story.”
The General put a hand on his belly. “Tonight there’d better be real food, because my pipes—”
“I get the message!”
Beep. Socko took the pie boxes out of the oven and dropped one on the table.
The General unfolded the cardboard flaps and winked back the steam. He snapped the flaps shut again. “Delia Marie, this is unacceptable. I repeat. Real food tonight, or I call my lawyer.”
“Mom, about Damien?”
Delia rested her knuckles on her wide hips. “Hello? I’m kinda in a rush right now! You two may have time to complain, but I don’t have time to listen!”
The General cleared his throat loudly and spat in the garbage can beside his chair.
Delia had just slung her purse over her shoulder but she stopped. “Was that a comment?”
“Darn straight it was a comment!”
“Well, it was gross! I won’t allow it in my house!”
“Your house? It’s not your house ‘til I’m six feet under, which is probably what you’re hoping for, feeding me all this heart-stopping—”
Socko stuffed his box of hot apple breakfast in the pocket of his cargo shorts and opened the front door.
Delia and the General turned. “Where do you think you’re going, private?” the General demanded.
“Somewhere else.”
“It’s barely light out, baby,” said Delia.
“At least it’s quiet.” Socko stepped outside and closed the door. His house was beginning to sound like Damien’s apartment.
Still holding onto the knob, he took a slow breath.
It was barely light out.
Lying in bed last night, he’d admitted to himself he’d probably freaked about nothing. The black car was probably just a car on a road, like the General said. Still … he had learned to trust the tingle on the back of his neck. It had saved him too many times. But even if the car was bad news he wouldn’t see it now. He’d learned in the old neighborhood that if there was a safe time it was early morning. Although they might cruise all night, bad guys—like vampires—disappeared with the first rays of light.
He took a few steps away from the house and listened, just in case. But there were no sounds outside, and none from inside either. Delia and the General had probably moved to the scorching-glare stage.
The silence was creepy. While he didn’t miss the sounds of fighting coming through the floor in the old place, he did miss the everyday noise of people doing stuff, like Junebug practicing in the hall when she’d heard American Idol was coming to town. Turned out it wasn’t true, but everyone on the fourth floor learned the words to her audition number before she got the bad news.
Maybe today he’d find someone here. Moon Ridge Estates was a big place. Some part of the subdivision had to be populated.
Socko was about to set out on foot when he saw his skateboard lying in the dirt in front of the house. He couldn’t believe he’d ditched it, and that it was still right where he’d left it. Even though it was a piece of crap, at the old place it would have gone missing within ten minutes.
He remembered the ripstick. It was not a piece of crap, yet it had lain abandoned and untouched too. Maybe he’d read the house wrong. Maybe it wasn’t empty. But it sure looked empty. And if it was, he’d have himself a ripstick. If it wasn’t? His mom would say, “Then you’ll have a new friend!”
As he kicked down the street he stared at the board under his foot. The grip tape was peeling and the scars and dings on the deck were glaring. But the ripstick was mint. If the kid who went with that ripstick was around, he wasn’t sure he wanted to meet him.
When he got to the house he peered through a window. Empty.
No kid, but no ripstick anymore either. With one foot on his skateboard, he looked left, then right, scanning the street. He wondered which way the kid had gone, and why he’d been there in the first place.
He thought about going back to the house. His mom had left for work by now, and the General would bust him if he didn’t get his “patoot” home pretty soon. But today Socko didn’t feel like playing his great-grandfather’s games.
Instead, he decided to follow each of the streets off the circle. Maybe he’d find a different phase of Moon Ridge, one where people lived.
Harvest Moon. He stared down the street, which still seemed to be waiting for Phase 1. The road was there. Sidewalks and curbs were in place. On each lot pipes stuck up out of the ground like periscopes, but the lots were vacant.
Socko was about to give the road a pass when, at the back of the first yard-to-be, he spotted giant sections of pipe lying on their sides. He thought about tucking his board under his arm for the trek to the tubes, but left it at the curb. There weren’t even houses on this street, so who was going to steal his cruddy board?
He stepped over the curb and into a dirt yard. Here and there a weed grew out of the parched ground. “Nature’s Phase 2,” he muttered. Even if the developer never planted a thing, weeds, like the ones that muscled up through the cracked sidewalks around the Kludge, were planting themselves.
Watching the toes of his shoes sink as he walked forward, he spotted a tiny black hole in the ground. Ants wandered in and out of it, probably looking for food.
Socko felt the heat from the apple tart box in his pocket. He fished it out and opened the flaps, then broke off a corner of the pastry and dropped it a few inches from the hole.
Antennae tapping, a dozen ants approached the chunk of crust cautiously. Deciding it was food, they mobbed the crust and began to drag it toward the hole.
Socko lay down on his stomach and propped his chin on his hands.
The sugary chunk jammed the hole. Ant frenzy! The ants shoved it back out, turned it, then tried again, breaking off a few crumbs. When the ant gang and their prize finally went subterranean, Socko dropped a piece of apple.
Damien would think he was nuts watching a bunch of ants—Damien always said he was allergic to nature. But Damien wasn’t here, so Socko monitored the activity closely, every now and then dropping another chunk of pie. He’d seen leafcutter ants on TV, carrying the giant green sails of cut leaves, but this was real, and real was better.
He only realized how long he’d been there when the backs of his legs sent him a message, hey, we’re burning back here! He ignored the message for a few more minutes. In some weird way the ants felt like company.
Before getting back to his feet, he slid the rest of the tart out of the box and set it a few inches from the hole. The half apple tart, sitting like a colossus in the dust, would assure him a place in ant legend.
He would have liked to see how they stuffed the giant pie down the midget hole, but the sun’s heat felt like a weight on his back. He turned his head on his arms. From the ground the tubes looked ant’s-eye-view big.
When he stood up, the ants became ants again, the tubes less gigantic, but they did look shady.
He sat inside a concrete tube, legs crossed. Slumped into its curve, he felt the cool through his T-shirt. He’d never seen concrete so clean and white.
One time he and Damien had found a nearly empty can of spray paint in the dumpster. They had sprayed Socko and Damien rule! on the concrete wall of the stairwell. When Delia confronted them, Socko claimed someone else had tagged it. “Who, besides the two of you, thinks you and Damien rule?” she had demanded. Socko was grounded for a week.
But Delia would never sit in this tube. No one but Socko ever would. He could write whatever he wanted. He pulled the pencil out of a pocket, then remembered—his best friend was the one who could draw. Socko’s tag, whatever it was, would have to be simple.
Circle … The pencil scraped across the concrete. Circle. Circle. He began adding lines. How many? Six? Yeah, they always have six. Plus two antennae.
He leaned back and looked at his symbol. It was—an ant. Compared to a hairy tarantula? Pretty lame. But then he remembered the ants bench-pressing several times their own weight.
THE MIGHTY ANT, he wrote. Jagged lightning bolts zigged away from the stick-figure ant. The lead wore down to a nub before he finished the third lightning bolt, but the idea came across. This was no ordinary ant.
This ant was indestructible.
Radioactive.
Glow-in-the-dark.
Telekinetic.
Kick-ass.
Out of the corner of his eye, Socko caught a flash of movement. The dark car! But it wasn’t cruising this time—it was speeding. He heard a grinding sound, then saw his skateboard porpoising through the air; the car had somehow caught and tossed it as it drove by.
He waited a full minute before sidling over to assess the damage. The board lay wheels up, the front edge of the deck cracked. Socko kicked it over. Stood on it. It still rolled. He pushed it back and forth under his foot.
Should he break for home? Although the prickling sensation at the back of his neck was warning him big-time, he decided to hang tough and go right on making his survey.
As he sped down Harvest Moon, the neck-prickle stung like a thousand needles.
Mighty Ant, he thought, Mighty Ant. He heard words in the hum of the wheels. Indestructable. Radioactive. Glow-in-the-dark. Telekinetic. Kick-ass.
He looked over his shoulder. The dark car was behind him somewhere, prowling.
It’s just a car on a road, he reminded himself. Just a car on a road.
When he hit the cul-de-sac at the end of Harvest Moon, he sped back, flew the short distance on Full Moon that would take him to the next spoke on the wheel, and hung another left.
Again, no houses.
Again, a cul-de-sac. He made a fast 180. His wheels screamed on Full Moon. Mighty ant. Just a car. Mighty ant. Just a car. He careened onto Blue Moon Drive.
Suddenly houses as finished as his own lined both sides of the street.
There were still no cars in the driveways, no lawns, no scattered toys, but no cul-de-sac either. This road came to a different conclusion.