The Shadow Mask Read online

  “So I hear we’re old friends,” she said. “I knew I had seen you somewhere before. You still like frogs?”

  “I can take them or leave them,” I said. Pieter and two of his buddies were following us down the hall. One of them made smooching sounds with his lips. “Check out lover boy,” he said in a high-pitched voice. I whipped around to confront him and noticed that the speaker was the squirrelly little kid who had stolen my fifty cents.

  “You got something caught in your teeth?” I said in my toughest voice.

  “No, do you?” he retorted weakly.

  “You got my fifty-cent piece?” I said, and took a step toward him.

  “Yeah, I got it,” he said, bracing for a showdown as Pieter put his hand on his shoulder, providing backup. “Come and get it.”

  “Don’t pay attention to them,” Diana said, pulling me away. “You’ll only make it worse.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” I said, to laughter behind me. “I’ll bet you’ll be glad to go back to Borneo. No one harassing you in the halls there.”

  Diana laughed, and I noticed she had that opera laugh just like her mom. “There are no halls there,” she said. “Just orangutans and jungle. I kind of like the orangutans but other than that, it gets pretty boring. I miss the city.”

  “Your friends?”

  “Not so much. I don’t have all that many friends — I-I mean I have some friends, but I’m always going back and forth, so it’s tough. But I miss all the other city stuff the most. The subways, the streets, the hot-dog carts — New York. And my dad — he lives in Manhattan with his new wife. Your parents live here?”

  “They did. They died.”

  She stopped walking and looked at me, and her face got very soft and concerned. I can’t stand it when people give me that look. It makes me feel so pitiful.

  “I’m so sorry, Leo. My mom said you were living with your uncle, but she didn’t tell — I should have realized….”

  “It’s okay,” I told her. I didn’t really want to talk about it, especially with any chance that Pieter and his idiot friends were following us. I didn’t know much about surviving in a tough school, but I knew you don’t ever want to show weakness to guys like that.

  True to his word, Dmitri was waiting for me outside of class just as the lunch bell rang. He grabbed my arm and hurried me to his locker, which was at the very end of the corridor near the cafeteria.

  “This is the best place for business,” he said. “I catch the kids on the way in and on the way out. Your uncle, the boss, has taught me it’s all about location.”

  He opened up his locker and gave me a tour.

  “Top shelf, cans of soda,” he said. “Three dollars.”

  “Three dollars? That’s a very high price.”

  “They don’t sell them in the cafeteria,” he said. “People want a soft drink, they have to pay my price — for a 300 percent profit.”

  I could hear my uncle Crane’s influence.

  “Next shelf, candy. Red Vines are popular with the girls. Sixth graders want anything weird like skeleton pops or gummy bacon. Charge them as much as you can. They’re stupid.”

  “What’s in back of the panel?” I asked him.

  “Stink bombs. Whoopee cushions. Fart spray. You know, all the prank stuff. You stick to the little stuff, I’ll handle anything big, like tests or homework answers.”

  With that, Dmitri took a folder of papers from behind the panel, tucked it into his backpack, and headed down the hall.

  “Hey, where you going?” I called after him.

  “Business meeting in stall three of the boys bathroom,” he said. “Be right back. You mind the store.”

  With Dmitri gone, I closed the locker and slouched up against the wall. Lots of kids streamed by on their way into the cafeteria. No one stopped, and I was beginning to think this business was all in Dmitri’s imagination. Then a sixth-grade girl in a green parka with a furry hood came up to me.

  “You with Dmitri?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “One red licorice,” she whispered, and took two dollars out of her pocket and slipped it into my hand. I opened the locker and handed her a package of red licorice, which she slipped under her parka. The whole deal took less than ten seconds. I folded the money up and tucked it deep in my pocket. I liked the feel of having cash and found myself thinking that with a little more business, I could accumulate a money wad like Dmitri’s.

  I started making contact with each kid as they passed, sending a message with my eyes that I was open for business.

  “Cream soda,” a boy said to me, pausing by the locker. It was the kid who had made off with my half-dollar. I thought to continue our showdown from earlier, but this was business, not personal, and he was a paying customer. I handed him the can of soda, and he handed me his money, which I was glad to see included the fifty-cent piece he had stolen from me. It was a nice circle.

  “Three stink bombs,” one of Pieter’s friends said, pulling up to the locker and striking a cool pose.

  “Jelly beans, and none of those purple ones,” said another kid.

  Within ten minutes, I had sold out of all the soft drinks and red licorice and had what I estimated was twenty-five dollars in my pocket.

  “Hey, I’m Anton,” a tall guy in a hooded New York Rangers sweatshirt said, stopping by the locker. “Give me a root beer.”

  “Sorry, man, I’m sold out,” I told him.

  “Maybe you didn’t hear me,” Anton said, standing up to his full height. “I want a root beer.”

  “I heard you, buddy,” I said. “Did you hear me? I’m sold out. Now keep it moving.”

  But he just moved in close, getting right up in my face and speaking in what any normal person could call an angry tone. His face was so near to mine that I could smell the cafeteria ravioli on his breath.

  “Dmitri always saves me one,” he said. “We have an understanding.”

  I felt a rush of anger well up in me. I hate to be shoved around. Probably it comes from always being shorter than most guys my age, but whenever I feel like I’m being bullied, I just want to scream and yell. So before I could even think about it, I took my hand and pushed Anton back, not to be aggressive because he was much bigger than me, but just to get him out of my face. As soon as I touched his sweatshirt, the hall started to spin, the locker faded from my sight, and I heard something wooden smacking against concrete.

  “One minute left on the clock, and the Rangers are down by one,” I heard the disembodied voice of an announcer say. “Looks like the Blackhawks are going to take this one.” Then I heard Anton’s voice, screaming, “You suck, Rangers. I want my flippin’ money back.” Then silence. Just as quickly as they had come, the voices in my head disappeared.

  “Don’t touch me, punk,” Anton was saying, prying my hand off his sweatshirt. I looked around and realized where I was and what had happened. It took me a moment to understand that it was a sound-bending trance, because it was so short, but there was no other explanation for what I had heard.

  “Listen, Anton, I’m sorry you had a bad time at the Rangers game,” I said to him. “But a real fan wouldn’t tell his team they sucked. You better learn some loyalty.”

  Anton looked at me suspiciously.

  “How’d you know I said that?”

  “I have my ways,” I said.

  “What are you, some kind of mind reader?” he asked.

  “Maybe I am.”

  One of his other big hockey-playing friends had come over to see what was going on. He was wearing a Rangers hoodie, too, and had a scar next to his eye that looked like it was from a recent injury.

  “Hey, Moe, this guy says he can read minds,” Anton said to him.

  “Okay, read my mind,” Moe said. “And don’t tell me I’m thinking about what a little punk you are, because you don’t need to read my mind to know that.”

  “I have to touch something of yours,” I said. “You know, to pick up your psychic vibrations. A
nd I charge two dollars a reading.”

  “I’ll pay you after you read my mind,” he said, tossing his backpack at me with such force I nearly fell down. I felt around the bag, touching various objects, but no sounds came into my head.

  “I’m waiting, big shot,” Moe said. “What’s in my mind?”

  I clutched the bag tighter and frantically ran my hands over it. I couldn’t channel a thing. Trevor and I had thought that my power worked best when I was feeling something intense, but the intimidation I was feeling from this guy produced nothing. I thought to fake it and tell him he had gotten that scar from a hockey game, but that was pretty weak.

  “He’s lying,” Anton said. “What a freak.”

  “A liar and a punk, how pathetic can you get?” Moe said. He grabbed me suddenly by my shirt and pushed. I wasn’t ready for it and went slamming into the lockers. They laughed, and at the sound of ringing metal, a crowd quickly gathered.

  I clenched my jaw and felt a surge of anger that actually made my shoulders tremble. That seemed to do it, because immediately, my hands locked on the backpack, and for a brief flash, my power activated.

  “Hey, Alicia, it’s uh … uh … me. It’s Moe, from Math class. I got your number from Courtney. Uh, do you maybe, uh …? Agh, never mind.”

  Beep. The call ended, and I was back, smirking at Moe.

  “Moe, you’re thinking about Alicia,” I said, pressing my fingers on a spot above my right eye. “Next time you call her, don’t just leave a wimpy message. Be bold, Moe, and she will say yes.”

  “Alicia?” Anton said to Moe. “The cross-country girl? I thought you said you didn’t —”

  “Butt out, Anton,” Moe said, his face turning red. “So, kid, give me my bag back.”

  I rubbed my thumb and index together — the international signal for pay me.

  “You got it, kid,” Moe said, and put two bucks in my hand. “What’s your name anyway?”

  “You can call me Leon. Leon, the gifted child,” I said to a rapidly growing crowd. “And for just two dollars, I will tell your fortune.” Suddenly, I felt great, powerful — the same way I’d felt after outrunning Pieter and his friends yesterday. Maybe the same way that Marie Rathbone felt when she was conducting her séances.

  By the time Dmitri returned from his business deal in the bathroom, I had a small crowd of kids gathered around me wanting their fortunes read. Surprisingly, I was able to sound bend most of the time. The crowd was exhilarating, and I used their energy to power my trances. When that didn’t work, I would just think about Crane and Dickerson and a silent rage would seem to trigger my power. And when my power didn’t activate at all, I’d tell the person what they wanted to hear. It’s amazing what you can figure out just by watching someone — like the girl wearing the purple tights. She’d been in my Spanish class and had spent the whole class drawing pictures of horses.

  “You’ve always wanted a horse of your own,” I said, and watched the sad look form on her face, and let her expression guide my reading. “As a little girl, you always wanted a pony. You asked for one every year. You never got one, but someday soon, you’ll be riding your very own horse. That’ll be two dollars, please.”

  Dmitri watched me carefully. When lunch was over and we headed back to class, he wanted to know more about how I was able to read minds, but I told him it was just a trick and distracted him by counting the wad of money I had earned. Thirty-seven dollars. His all-time record for a day was forty, so he was extremely impressed. As we walked up the stairs, he talked a mile a minute about our partnership and the bright future we had together. I don’t know whether he was thinking about the conversation in Jeremy’s record shop — I still wasn’t even sure if he had heard anything. But whatever he thought of my powers, it was totally overshadowed by his greedy little money scheme.

  During seventh period, I got a summons to go to Mr. Dickerson’s office.

  “Go right in, Leo,” Ms. Confalone said when I arrived at her desk. “And beware, he’s in a foul mood.”

  Mr. Dickerson was jammed behind his little desk, looking especially puffy and red in the face. He didn’t ask me to sit down, nor did he look up from his file.

  “I’ve just had a conversation with your uncle,” he began. “Apparently, I was mistaken.”

  “Oh?” I said, and pressed my finger above my right eye.

  “I thought he wanted this school to teach you some discipline, but it appears I’m a bit mistaken.” I noticed that Mr. Dickerson’s large hairy hands were trembling. “So, uh, you don’t need to come to detention today, Leo. And I’ll forget about your absence this morning. How does that sound? Good?”

  “What did Crane say to you?” I couldn’t help but ask.

  “We just chatted,” Dickerson said, “and he mentioned that you have an errand to do for him after school. So I told him that family comes first. And you’ll be sure to mention to him that I said that. And tell him, you know, that there’s really no need to talk to his associates on the school board. Really, no need. Make sure you mention that, okay, Leo? You may return to class now. That’s all.”

  Good old Uncle Crane, I thought. I recognized his work. He wanted me at the storage locker, looking for clues about the mask. And no way was he going to let a flabby hard-nosed bureaucrat like Dickerson get in the way. But that was fine with me. Just fine.

  I felt light on my feet as I headed back to class, almost breaking into a happy dance. I had a wad of money in my pocket, an influential uncle telling off the vice principal for me, and a bunch of new kind-of friends who thought I was cool.

  Trevor, who loves science, is always telling me amazing stories about how animals survive by adapting to their environment. Take camels. They’ve developed the ability to close their nostrils to stop desert sand from blowing into them. Or polar bears. They’ve developed white coats to camouflage them in the snow so their enemies won’t find them. Or my favorite, the blind cave tetras. They’re this weird fish that live in such deep, dark underwater caves that they actually no longer have any eyes at all. Trevor says the ability to adapt is the key to survival.

  As I headed back to class after my second day at Satellite North Middle School, I thought, Yes, Leo Lomax. You are a survivor. Those blind cave tetras have nothing on you.

  Look for the man with the glass eye,” Dmitri said as we stepped out of school.

  “I think he’s already spotted us,” I said.

  There was a man across the street in a black suit with black sneakers and a top hat, leaning against a leafless tree. Everything about his body language said that he was staring off at the sky and thinking of something far away, except there also was an unmoving brown eye staring at me. That was the glass eye.

  We crossed the street, and when we were a few feet from him, the man bowed and extended his hand.

  “Pleased to meet you, Leo,” he said. “I ask you not to be afraid of my injury. My name is Kyu-ho Hu. I am a courier for Crane’s Mysteries, and as such, I am at your service.” He had an accent and spoke slowly and carefully, but deliberately.

  “Nice to meet you, too,” I said, somewhat surprised by how nice it was to meet him.

  “This way to my car, Leo,” he said with a stately sweep of the hand. “Hello, Dmitri,” he also grumbled, almost out of the side of his mouth. “Take Leo’s backpack.”

  Dmitri did as he was told. I was starting to see some of the benefits of getting on Crane’s good side — first Dickerson groveling to me, and now this nice man with a glass eye treating me like royalty.

  His car was a beat-up looking blue cargo van from circa 1985 covered with dents and a bumper hanging by a screw. TWIN DRAGON COURIERS was painted on the side in white letters.

  “Please sit up front, Leo,” Kyu-ho said, while Dmitri had to jam into the back, which was filled with stacks of cardboard boxes. I swear some of those boxes were moving. The backseats had been torn out for more cargo room, so Dmitri had to wedge himself into a tiny sliver between three irregularly shaped bo
xes, his hands pinned to his chest, and his legs in wildly different directions.

  “I apologize in advance for any traffic,” Kyu-ho said as he backed up and immediately slammed into something metallic. The van scraped against the metal, doing what sounded like considerable damage. Finally, we were clear of it. In his side-view mirror, I saw a rusted yellow pole sticking up from the sidewalk.

  “That pole came out of nowhere,” I said.

  Kyu-ho laughed nervously. “Yes, I believe it did.”

  As he plunged into traffic, cutting off a huge truck whose driver leaned on the horn, I looked in my rearview to say, “So long, suckers,” to Satellite North. I never wanted to go back there. I wondered how they’d remember me, this shadowy kid named Leo who appeared out of nowhere for a few days, worked for Dmitri’s shady operation, dueled and bested Dickerson, told people’s fortunes, and disappeared just as suddenly as he’d come. If all went well, I could go back to my old school soon, with Trevor. But just thinking of Trevor made me uneasy. He wouldn’t have approved of anything I’d done today.

  “Does my driving make you nervous, Leo?” Kyu-ho asked, motioning with his good right eye to my hands, which were grasping the seat belt with white knuckles. I wanted to tell him that it did when he didn’t keep his eye on the road.

  “No, Kyu-ho. I just have some things on my mind. So tell me, how do you even drive with only one eye? I thought you needed two to see how far away things are.”

  “Simple, Leo. I fill in what I cannot see with what I have seen before. And since I see that you are uneasy, I will save my story of how I lost my eye for a time when you have found more peace.”

  We drove the rest of the way in silence, over the Verrazano Bridge, into Staten Island, and to an abandoned-looking mini-mall, with all the stores long boarded-up, except for the public storage facility.

  Dmitri and Kyu-ho followed me into the building, Kyu-ho dragging a hand dolly for all the heavy gear he assumed I’d gather. I asked them to wait in the lobby for me and went to the fourth floor to locker 429. The hallway was unbelievably clean, strange because I knew that behind all those metal sliding doors were the messy and cluttered belongings from people who had moved on from their old lives.