Jack_ Secret Vengeance - F. Paul Wilson [72]
Nothing magical about that.
“You plannin’ any more larkin’ on that boy?”
Jack shook his head. “Don’t think I can top this one.”
“I don’t reckon you can neither—except maybe findin’ whose piney blood is on his hands. Your talent good for that?”
Jack didn’t want to get into what he and Weezy had witnessed last night.
“I’ve got no talent, Levi. I’m just a regular kid.”
Levi stepped back toward the door, shaking his head. “No you ain’t. You ain’t regular ay-tall. But if that’s the way you wanna play it, fine. But while I’m looking for a hurt piney, I’m gonna figger out what your talent is. And when I do, you’re gonna tell me how you did that lock.”
No, Jack thought. I’m never telling anyone.
3
“Guess what?” Eddie said as he plopped down next to Jack in the caf.
Two thick ham and cheese sandwiches, four big chocolate chip cookies, and two containers of milk filled his tray. His headphones hung around his neck.
Jack was still psyched from the locker-area show this morning. How could he not be? Every class had been abuzz with talk of the incident—either about Toliver’s over-the-top reaction or speculating on how the Mystery Marauder had gotten past that unopenable lock. Jack had been sorely tempted to tell them—or rather, presenting it as a theory of how it might have been done—but that would have been terminally risky, and in Eddie-speak, stupidacious.
Even the teachers got into the act. They’d heard about the roadkill in the hallway and kept asking what it was all about.
Jack swallowed a bite of his own sandwich and said, “You’re donating your Walkman to charity.”
Erik Burns, sitting across from them, laughed. “The headphones’ll have to be surgically removed!”
Eddie made a face. “Yuh, right. Guess again.”
“How about a hint?”
“Okay. Guess who left school before first period and hasn’t been seen since?”
“Toliver?”
“Give this man a prize.”
Jack took another bite and thought about how fitting it was that the guy who’d made Weezy afraid to show her face around school was now afraid to show his. Almost poetic.
“What goes around, comes around,” he muttered.
Eddie looked at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.”
Matt Follette, sitting next to Erik, said, “Did you see him this morning—crawling away from his locker and then running like he’d seen a ghost? I mean, I know it was gross, but it wasn’t that bad.”
“He’s had a rough week,” Jack said, concentrating on his sandwich instead of looking at Eddie. “Maybe it all got to him. He’ll be back tomorrow, acting like king of the hill again.”
Eddie shook his head as he took a Godzilla bite of his sandwich and spoke around it. “I don’t know. I think the Locker Magician knocked his crown off.”
“‘Locker Magician’?” Jack laughed. “Is that what they’re calling … him.”
Oh, man—he’d almost said “me.”
“That’s what I’m calling him.” He shook his head. “I don’t know…”
“Don’t know what?”
“I got a bad feeling about this. I mean, him running off and not coming back.”
Jack felt a tingle of unease.
“Bad feeling how?”
“I don’t know … like something bad’s going to happen.”
Jack didn’t like the sound of that one bit, but he shook it off. Eddie was hardly a psychic. Anything but.
But Toliver had been acting unhinged last night. Jack hoped he wouldn’t do anything rash like run away.
Eddie’s words followed Jack the rest of the day.
4
“Well,” Jack said as he and Weezy walked up Quakerton Road, “how’d it go today?”
All around them, trick-or-treating Darth Vaders, Princess Leias, and Ewoks traveled door to door among the more traditional ghosts and witches. Jack had been dying to pull Weezy aside all day but never had the chance, and it wasn’t something they could talk about on the bus. Now, with Eddie a few paces ahead, lost in his headphones, he finally had the chance.
She shrugged. “Pretty good.”
Not exactly a rave review.
“No mention of ‘Easy Weezy’?”
She shook her head. “No. How could there be? All everyone was talking about was Carson-Carson-Carson.”
“Not even