Scarecrow

The gym was a room nobody used.

It was off the corridor behind field two, past the showers. A long low room with a rubber floor and mats stacked against one wall and three heavy canvas bags hanging from chains in the ceiling, gray with old dust. There was a rope in the corner that went up into the dark. There was a mirror along the far wall, cracked across one end. It smelled of rubber and old sweat and nothing else.

Okafor had shown it to us in the first week and said it’s here if you want it, and nobody had wanted it, because by the end of every day nobody in the cave wanted anything except bed.

I went there at four o’clock in the morning on the first day of the new month, because Risa Friese had told me to.

It had started three days before. At the fern. At lunch.

I’d been sitting against the wall with my tray, not eating, looking at the list at the back of notebook fifteen. At the newest line.

To learn: speed. I don’t know how to learn speed. Ask Okafor. Ask Risa, she sees sparks before they jump.

I hadn’t asked Okafor. Okafor would say run more laps. I’d been running laps for four months. I wasn’t any faster at what mattered. I was faster at running.

I hadn’t asked Risa either. I didn’t know how.

So I’d just sat there, looking at the line.

And Risa, sitting against the metal stand with her tray on her knees, had leaned over without asking and read it upside down. Everybody in the cave seemed to be able to read upside down now except Liam.

She read it twice.

”Gym,” she said. ”Four. Tomorrow’s no good, I’ve got Siggy’s drill. The day after’s no good either. Thursday.” She went back to her tray. ”Wear something you don’t mind bleeding on.”

”Bleeding?”

”Your own,” said Risa. ”Probably.”

She was already there when I came in. Of course she was.

She was standing in the middle of the rubber floor in gray training clothes with her dark hair pulled back tight and her sleeves pushed up past the elbow. Barefoot. In the dim light from the one lamp she’d turned on, she looked smaller than she did on the field. Thinner. Her wrists were like a bird’s.

”Shoes off,” she said.

I took my shoes off.

”You asked about speed,” said Risa. ”In your notebook. You don’t need speed.”

”I was too slow for the arm. In the Town.”

”I know. Everybody knows. Liam told the whole mess. Twice.” She walked in a slow circle round me on the rubber, bare feet making no sound at all. ”You weren’t too slow. You were looking at the wrong thing.”

I turned to keep her in front of me.

”Don’t,” she said. ”Stand still. Let me walk.”

I stood still. She walked. Round behind me. I felt the hair on my neck go up.

”When the arm came out of the bell tower,” said Risa, from behind me, ”what did you look at?”

”The arm.”

”Where?”

”All of it. The steel. The joints. The spring in the wrist.”

”When it was falling,” said Risa. She came round in front of me again. ”You looked at it when it was already falling. You saw it start. You went into it. All the way down. To the spring in the wrist.” She stopped in front of me. ”And by then it was halfway to her head.”

”I can’t look faster than I look.”

”No,” said Risa. ”But you can look earlier.”

And she hit me.

I didn’t see it coming.

That’s not true. I saw it. I saw her fist come round from the side, small and hard and fast, and I saw it the way I always saw things, and I started to go into it, and by the time I’d got as far as the bones in her knuckles it had stopped, very lightly, against the side of my jaw. Not hard. A tap. The way you’d knock on a door.

She took it away.

”Again,” she said.

She hit me again. Same place. Same tap. I saw it. Same too late.

”Again.”

Twelve times. Fourteen. I didn’t count, which was the first time in months I hadn’t. Every time, I saw her fist. Every time, I was too late. Every time, a light little tap against my jaw, like a knock, like a question.

”You’re watching my hand,” said Risa.

”It’s what’s hitting me.”

”Yes. And by the time my hand’s moving, it’s too late. The hand’s the end. The hand’s the thing that happens after.” She stepped back. ”Where does a punch start?”

I thought about Father’s anatomy book. The pages on the arm, with his notes in the margins. Here. Here. Here. Don’t guess.

”The shoulder,” I said.

”Before that.”

”The back. The big muscles. Here.” I touched my own side.

”Before that.”

I looked at her.

And then I understood.

”The nerve,” I said.

Risa smiled. The sharp one.

”The spark,” she said. ”Before anything moves. Before the shoulder, before the back, before anything. Up here.” She tapped her temple. ”And then down. Down the neck. Down the arm. Along the wire. Every time anybody moves, anywhere, anything, there’s a spark first. A little one. Faster than anything.” She held up one hand, fingers spread. ”I’ve felt them all my life. In the mess. On the field. In my sleep. Hundreds of people, all sparking. I don’t wait for people to move. I feel the spark, and I know what they’re going to do, before they do.”

”That’s how you beat Sigmund.”

”That’s how I beat everyone.” She lowered her hand. ”You can see what everything’s made of, Lucas. All the way down. You told me so. You can see nerves. You’ve been reading about them every night for four months. You watched the sparks run up and down a fern leaf in a cup.” She looked at me. ”So stop watching my fist. Watch the spark.”

It took forty minutes.

Forty minutes of standing on a rubber floor in the dark, barefoot, getting tapped on the jaw.

It’s harder than it sounds. Looking at a person isn’t like looking at a steel ball. A person’s moving all the time. Inside. Everywhere. The heart going. The blood. The lungs. A thousand little sparks running all over, all the time, in the fingers, the face, the feet. It’s like the mud. Like fog. Everything at once.

”Not all of it,” said Risa. ”Don’t try to see all of it. You’ll drown. Just the arm. Just the wire. From the neck to the hand. Pick one thing.”

Pick one thing.

I picked her right arm.

Just the arm. Just the long nerve running from her neck down past her shoulder, round the elbow, into the hand. A thin bright thread, in the dark of her. I watched it. Nothing else.

She hit me with her left.

”Ha,” said Risa.

I picked both arms.

She kicked me in the shin. Lightly.

”Ha,” said Risa.

I stopped picking. I stood there, with my bare feet on the rubber, and breathed, and thought about the red jungle. About breathing for five people. How I hadn’t watched each breath. I’d just held all five, loosely, and let them go in and out.

I let my eyes go loose.

Not all the way down. Not into everything. Just a little way in, all over her. The wires. All of them. Faint and bright. Like looking at a field at dusk, not at any one stalk of wheat, just at the whole of it, so you’d see the wind move across it the moment it came.

And I saw it.

A little bright flicker. At the top of her neck. Running down, fast, toward her left shoulder.

I moved my head.

Her fist went past my ear and hit nothing.

Risa stood there for a moment, with her arm out, looking at the empty air where my jaw had been.

Then she looked at me.

”Again,” she said. And there was something in her voice that hadn’t been there before.

She hit me again. I saw the spark. Left shoulder. I moved.

Again. Right. I moved.

Again. A kick. Low. The spark went down instead of across, down her back, into her hip, and I saw it go, and I stepped back, and her bare foot went past my shin.

Again. Again. Again.

I didn’t move fast. I’ve never moved fast. I’m not built for it. But I didn’t need to. I was moving first. Before her. A tenth of a second before. Because I could see the spark start, and she couldn’t hide it, and she couldn’t stop it, and once it had started, I knew where it was going.

I wasn’t too slow.

I was early.

Risa stopped.

She was breathing hard. So was I. The lamp hummed. The heavy bags hung on their chains, not moving. In the cracked mirror on the far wall, I could see two people standing on a rubber floor in the half dark, barefoot, staring at each other.

”Nobody’s ever done that,” said Risa. Very quietly. ”Not Siggy. Not Father’s trainers. Not anybody. Nobody’s ever got out of the way of me.” She was looking at me as if she’d never seen me before. ”You saw it.”

”You told me where to look.”

”I’ve told everybody where to look,” said Risa. ”For years. They can’t see it.” She pushed a strand of hair off her face. It had come loose. ”Your heart’s at a hundred and ten.”

”So’s yours.”

She went very still.

”How do you know that?”

I didn’t answer straight away. Because I hadn’t meant to look. I’d been looking at her wires, at all of them, loosely, the way she’d taught me. And the heart has wires too. And hers was right there, in the middle of all the others, going fast and bright.

”You taught me how,” I said.

Risa looked at me for a long moment.

Then she turned round and walked to the wall, and picked up a towel, and put it over her face.

”Same time Saturday,” she said, through the towel.

On Saturday, I brought the chemistry.

That was the arrangement. She hadn’t said it, and I hadn’t said it, but we both knew it. She’d taught me something. So I owed her something. And there was only one thing Risa had ever asked me.

What does it do?

I’d told her, in the week of the bag. The bones of it. The oxygen and the nitrogen, torn apart in the heat, coming back together wrong. The clean sharp smell. The rain feeding the fields. She’d listened to every word. She’d asked a hundred questions.

But she’d never done anything with it.

”Show me,” I said.

We were sitting on the rubber floor of the gym with our backs against the stacked mats, at a quarter past four, both of us breathing hard after an hour of her hitting me and me getting out of the way. I’d only been tapped twice. She’d been furious about it, in a pleased sort of way.

”Show you what?”

”A spark. A small one. Here.” I held up my hand, palm flat, between us. ”Over my hand. Not on it.”

She looked at me as if I’d asked her to set fire to the mess.

”In front of you?”

”In front of me.”

”I don’t—” She stopped. ”I don’t do it. In front of people. Not on purpose. Not since I was nine. Siggy does it in front of people. Father doesn’t let me.” She looked at my hand. ”You know what Father calls it.”

”The stain.”

”In our house,” said Risa, ”you don’t show the stain.”

”We’re not in your house.”

She looked at me for a long moment.

Then she held up one finger. And between the tip of it and the palm of my hand, in the air, about the width of a thumb, a spark jumped.

Small. Blue-white. So bright I saw it afterward on the inside of my eyelids. With a sound like a twig snapping. And the smell came up at once, sharp and clean and strange, the smell of a storm coming over a ridge.

Risa pulled her hand back like she’d touched a stove.

”There,” she said. ”Happy?”

I wasn’t looking at her. I was looking at the air over my hand.

It was beautiful.

It was over almost before it started. A thousandth of a second. Less. But I’d been watching for it, and I saw it, the way I’d learned to see her wires. All the way down.

The air, torn open. Every little pair of oxygen, every pair of nitrogen, in a line between her finger and my palm, ripped apart in the heat and flung loose. And then, in the instant after, coming back. Snapping back together. Most of them right. Twos with twos. But some of them wrong. Threes of oxygen. Nitrogen and oxygen clasped together in new small shapes that hadn’t been there a moment before.

I’d told her about it. I’d read about it. Father had stood on the porch and watched it go over the ridge.

I’d never seen it happen.

”Again,” I said.

”What?”

”Again. Please. I want to look.” I held my hand up. ”And this time, slower, if you can. Smaller. As small as you can make it.”

Risa stared at me.

Then, very slowly, she held up her finger again. And frowned. And bit her lip, the way Genny bit hers when she was working out a sum.

The spark that jumped was tiny. A pinprick. Faint blue. It made a sound like a fingernail on paper.

”Smaller,” I said.

”I’ve never made one smaller. Nobody’s ever wanted one smaller.”

”I do.”

She made it smaller.

We did it for an hour. Her making sparks. Me watching. Me telling her what I saw.

There. That one made more of the sharp kind. The ozone. Do it hotter.

That one made the other kind. The nitrogen kind. The feeding kind. Do it again, exactly like that.

Wait. That one was different. What did you do?

”I don’t know,” said Risa. ”I just—I thought about it differently.”

”How?”

She frowned. ”Like it was a—” She stopped. ”I don’t know. Like I was trying to give it something. Instead of hit it.”

”Do that again.”

She did it again. And I watched. And it was the same: more of the nitrogen bonding with the oxygen, in the narrow path of the spark. More of the feeding kind. Not just by chance. Because she’d made it that way.

I sat back against the mats.

”Risa,” I said.

”What?”

”You can choose,” I said. ”What your lightning makes. Not just where it goes. Not just how big. What it does to the air. You did it. Just now. Four times. You made it make more of the kind that feeds things.”

Risa looked at her hand.

At her finger, which had been, as far as anyone in her family had ever let her think, a thing for hurting people with. A stain. A thing you didn’t show in their house.

She didn’t say anything for a very long time.

At five o’clock, before the laps, we went to the fern.

She carried the little cup of water herself. A tin cup from the mess, half full, that she’d been holding while she sparked over it, again and again, small and careful and giving, for twenty minutes, until the water tasted very faintly sharp, and I’d looked into it and seen the little new shapes in it, floating, the feeding kind, enough of them now to matter.

She knelt by the clay pot in the corridor, where the lamp swung on its chain. The fern had ten fronds now. The tenth was still curled tight at the bottom of the stem, pale green, no bigger than my fingernail.

Risa looked at the cup in her hands. Then at the fern.

”You’re sure,” she said.

”I’m sure. It’s what Father used to wait for. Every storm. There’s the nitrogen.” I looked at her. ”It’s just rain. From you.”

Risa poured the water into the pot.

Slowly. Carefully. Round the stem, the way I’d taught Toby to water the fern on the mornings I couldn’t. It soaked into the soil. Down. In.

Nothing happened.

Of course nothing happened. Plants don’t change in a minute. Not unless I change them, and I don’t. It would be days. A week, maybe. If it did anything at all.

But Risa knelt there, by the pot, for a long time after the water was gone. Not moving. Looking at the curled-up frond at the bottom of the stem.

”Siggy can’t do this,” she said finally. Very quietly. ”Siggy can make a spark that knocks a man across a room. He’s been practicing since he was seven. He’s better at it than me. Much better. Father’s never once asked him to show anyone, but if he did, it’d be Siggy.” She was still looking at the fern. ”But Siggy’s never made one smaller. Siggy’s never made one give anything.”

She stood up.

”Don’t tell him,” she said.

”I won’t.”

”Don’t tell anyone.” She turned round and looked at me. ”This is training. That’s all this is. You learn to see the spark. I learn what’s in it. It’s training.” Her light gray eyes were very steady. ”Isn’t it.”

”It’s training,” I said.

”Good,” said Risa Friese. ”Same time Tuesday.”

And she walked off down the corridor toward the laps, very fast, without looking back. And her heart, if I’d looked, which I didn’t, would have been going faster than it needed to for a girl walking down a corridor.

So would mine.

I didn’t look at that either.

On Tuesday, she hit me once in an hour.

On Thursday, she didn’t hit me at all.

On the following Saturday, I went to the fern at five, the way I always did, and the tenth frond had uncurled.

Not halfway. Not a little. All the way. Wide and flat and green, a deeper green than any of the others. Darker. Glossy, almost, in the swinging light of the lamp. The biggest frond on the plant. As if it had been waiting for something, and had finally been given it.

Risa was sitting against the metal stand when I came round the corner. She’d got there first.

She was looking at the frond. She didn’t look up.

”It’s just training,” she said.

”I know.”

She was smiling. Not the sharp one. The other one. All the way up into her eyes.

I wrote it down that night. At the back of notebook fifteen. On the list.

To learn: speed.

And beside it, in small letters, a tick.

And under it:

Don’t look faster. Look earlier. Watch the spark, not the hand. — R.F.

And under that, a line I crossed out as soon as I’d written it. Then wrote again. Then left.

She made the fern grow. From lightning. Nobody’s ever let her give anything before.