Billy: Messenger of Powers Read online

  BILLY

  Messenger of Powers

  by

  Michaelbrent Collings

  Copyright © 2010 by Michaelbrent Collings

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form

  without the expressed written consent

  of the author.

  website: www.michaelbrentcollings.com

  email: [email protected]

  cover image © 2010 used under license from Shutterstock.com

  Dedication

  To...

  My dad, for teaching me how to write...

  My mom, for loving what I wrote even before it was any good...

  and to Laura, FTAAE.

  CHAPTER THE FIRST

  In Which Billy goes to a New School, and sees a Winking Frog…

  Billy Jones was only fourteen years old the first time he died.

  On his first day at Preston Hills High School, thirteen-year-old Billy walked through the gate in the chain link fence that surrounded the school where he would be more or less incarcerated for the next four years. He looked around, trying to get his bearings, trying not to let the fear he felt show on his face. PHHS was larger than Preston Hills Middle School had been. It was two stories, with classrooms that Billy could tell were much larger than the middle school’s rooms. The place was huge, with an air of permanence that made it seem as though it had been there forever, catering to the needs of the Older Kids who walked its halls.

  I’m actually in high school, Billy thought. But he didn’t have time to decide whether that was a good thing or a bad one, because at that moment another student bumped into him.

  The boy was taller than Billy. Good-looking, too, which Billy instantly noticed because he wasn’t so good looking himself. Billy wasn’t ugly or anything; he knew no one had ever thrown up from just looking at him. But he was also aware that he was extremely small for his age—only a little over five feet—and his thick blonde hair was far too curly for comfort. Add his halo of golden curls to his diminutive stature, and he looked like a doll. A doll that apparently seemed to scream, “Hey, look at these cute curls? Wouldn’t I be fun to punch?” to the school bullies. Not only that, but Billy’s clothing was not exactly trend-setting. His family didn’t have much money, and Billy mostly wore Salvation Army clothes. So for him “lookin’ good” meant he was wearing clothing that had never smelled like mold or cigarettes.

  In contrast, the tall boy who had bumped into Billy and was now staring at him stood on the opposite end of the Coolness Spectrum. Unlike Billy’s raggedly curly coif, the other boy had dark brown hair that was perfectly combed and styled. His clothing was the latest fashion, and worn with the casual distaste that Billy knew only the rich can get away with. No backpack, either: the bigger kid had one of those khaki messenger bags that held half the books and cost ten times more than Billy’s used six-dollar book bag. And the picture of perfection was completed by the boy’s eyes: expressive green eyes that could probably grab any girl in the school with the force of a tractor beam.

  Now, those green eyes were glaring at Billy. Billy involuntarily took a step back. “Sorry,” he mumbled. He didn’t know why he said that: the big kid had knocked into him, not the other way around.

  Still, the boy nodded, as though considering whether to accept Billy’s apology. Then he said, “I’m Cameron. Cameron Black.”

  For a moment, Billy felt a surge of hope. This was clearly one of the Popular Kids. And he was introducing himself to Billy! Billy had never managed to break into that prestigious group at Preston Elementary or Preston Hills Middle School. Maybe he’d lucked into making friends with one of them here. His first day! He caught an imaginary glimpse of himself sitting with the Popular Kids. Eating lunch with the Popular Kids. Getting invited to go out to the movies on Friday nights. Wearing all the Right Clothes and doing all the Right Things.

  The daydream ended suddenly, as Cameron Black took a step toward Billy, looming over him. “Don’t. Ever. Touch. Me. Again,” said Cameron in a low but intense whisper.

  Billy gulped. He nodded. The nod was a little more exaggerated than he meant it to be. In fact, it was more of a convulsive shiver, as though he had suddenly discovered his PB&J sandwich was actually made with boogers and pocket lint.

  The shudder made Billy’s shoulder move. Just a little. Just enough for his backpack to slide down a bit. As it did, Billy suddenly knew what was going to happen next, as though he was seeing the future through a crystal ball. But in spite of his foreknowledge of the coming catastrophe, he couldn’t stop it from happening.

  The backpack slid downward, hanging on the crook of his arm for one slow-motion moment.

  The universe contracted, and suddenly the only things in it now were Billy, Cameron, and the backpack.

  The backpack dropped, slowly, from Billy’s loose arm.

  It hung for a thousand years in mid-air, suspended between his arm and what lay below it. Billy wanted to scream, wanted to grab the backpack. But even a thousand years wasn’t enough time for him to catch the falling bag. Its downward motion was inevitable, unstoppable, like a lead bar dropped from the top of the Empire State Building.

  The backpack fell on Cameron’s foot.

  Billy watched it happen with horror. Something told him this new occurrence wasn’t good. It was bad. Very Bad, in fact. He knew that his backpack was empty except for pencils and a few sheets of lined paper in a cheap three-ring binder. It couldn’t weigh much. It was soft. But Cameron was now looking at him as though Billy had actually tried to hit him over the head with something a bit bigger and harder—like a car, or the state of Texas.

  “Ow,” whispered Cameron. Billy knew that “ow” usually meant “that hurt,” but the way Cameron said it somehow sounded more like, “prepare to die.”

  Cameron grabbed Billy’s shirt. The shirt tore a little, exposing Billy’s thin shoulder. Cameron then pulled Billy to the left, yanking him between a few students who carefully stayed out of Cameron’s way.

  Moving precisely, almost carefully, Cameron placed Billy—all five feet nothing of him—in one of the lockers against a nearby wall. It was a close fit: if Billy had been a bigger kid—even a normal sized one, instead of the smaller than average thirteen year-old—he wouldn’t have fit. But he wasn’t a bigger kid. Just Billy. So he did fit. Like a hand in a glove. Or, rather, like a Billy in a locker.

  Cameron poked a large finger into Billy’s chest. “I’m closing the door now. Don’t try to get out before first bell rings.” He swung the locker shut, then looked in at Billy through the slats in the locker door.

  Billy experienced a crazy moment where he wondered if those slats were there to keep kids stuffed in lockers from suffocating: after all, the books presumably didn’t care if they had a draft of fresh air now and then. Was locker-stuffing so widespread at this school that they had actually designed the lockers specifically for it?

  Billy’s mind was ripped away from this horrifying train of thought by Cameron’s voice. “And don’t tell anyone that I did this. If you do, the only thing that will happen is that I’ll make sure that something awful happens to you.”

  Like what? Billy thought.

  Cameron leaned closer to the locker, and as though he had heard Billy’s thought as clear as conversation, said, “Let your imagination run wild, kid.”

  Billy did. It wasn’t a pretty sight. The image his brain coughed up involved a toilet in the student bathrooms, a blindfold, a rabid great white shark, and several baseball bats with nails sticking out of them.

  Cameron moved away.

  Billy waited. He thought about calling out and opened his mouth. Then he thoug
ht about angry sharks and pointy sticks and shut it again.

  A minute later the first bell rang. Billy was officially going to be late on his first day at school. He pushed on the locker door to see if it would just spring open from the inside. It didn’t, of course.

  He began knocking on the inside of the locker, hoping some other late student would hear his tapping and let him out.

  No one did.

  He tapped harder.

  Then gave a little shout.

  Then he gave a bigger shout.

  “Help!”

  He banged on the door of the locker.

  “HELP!”

  He pushed with all his might on the inside of the door, bracing his feet against the back of the locker so that he could use his full body weight. This turned out to be bad timing on his part, because the door suddenly opened, and Billy lost his balance, falling to the sidewalk in front of the lockers.

  The first thing he saw was his backpack, still laying where it had fallen about a dozen feet away.

  Well, thought Billy, at least it didn’t get stolen. Apparently the school didn’t admit thieves. Just good-looking psychopaths who were proud members of the We Hate Billy club.

  The second thing Billy saw was a foot.

  It was right in front of him. The foot was wearing a clean white sneaker. Above the sneaker was an ankle-high sock. Above that was a bare ankle, which—as he knew ankles tended to do—gradually turned into a leg as Billy’s gaze continued to rise.

  Billy was only thirteen—his fourteenth birthday was still two months off—and he was, as his father put it, “young for his age.” He knew that was code for saying he looked more like a sixth-grader than someone starting high school. And perhaps as a result of that, he hadn’t really “discovered” girls yet the way that some of his classmates had. He didn’t really get some of the jokes he overheard them telling, or the way they talked about them in the halls before class.

  In spite of his admitted lack of knowledge, however, Billy did know what a girl’s leg looked like. And this was definitely a girl’s leg. A nice one, too.

  Billy’s gaze continued to rise up the leg, to the shirt, to the neck.

  By the time he reached the girl’s head, Billy felt dizzy. He wasn’t sure if that was because of a lack of oxygen in the locker, or the fact that he was still on the ground craning his neck to see up, or because the girl was simply the prettiest girl he had ever seen.

  The next moment, however, Billy was pretty sure that his dizziness was caused by the last reason, because his heart suddenly attempted to take a three-foot step to the left, not minding that there was a ribcage in its way. At the same time, Billy felt his stomach try to jump out through his face, and he was pretty sure that his toes turned inside-out.

  In that fraction of a second, Billy knew he had “discovered” girls. Or at least, one girl. She was taller than Billy. No surprise there, everyone was taller than Billy. But instead of making her seem imposing, her height just made her seem lithe and graceful. Her brown hair hung to her shoulders in thick waves that shimmered in the sunlight. And her eyes were stunning: blue and beautiful, with an electric spark of intelligence and joy behind them that made it seem as though she were on the verge of laughing at a joke that no one else could hear. Billy noticed that the girl had a band-aid on one knee, and somehow this small blemish on the overall perfection of her image didn’t make her any less attractive. Rather, it had the opposite effect, as though reminding Billy that she was indeed human, and so perhaps—just perhaps—there was a chance that someday they might….

  Might what? thought Billy, and blushed brightly at the possibilities that lay behind the unfinished thought.

  “I’m Blythe Forrest,” said the girl.

  Why does everyone in this school tell you their name first thing? thought Billy. Are they all crazy?

  Still, being crazy—if Blythe was indeed crazy—didn’t make her any less pretty.

  Blythe’s beautiful face wrinkled with obvious impatience. Somehow, this made her even cuter.

  “Well?” she demanded.

  Billy hopped dexterously to his feet, sending a suave look at the girl as he said, “I’m Billy. Billy Jones.” He made it sound cool. He looked cool. He was cool.

  At any rate, that was what Billy wished had happened. In reality, he managed to lay there like a trout about to have its head cut off, and the only word he got out was “ahxgl” or something like it.

  Blythe frowned. “Are you in the special class or something? What’s your name?”

  “Billy Jones,” he finally managed. He tried to smile, but then remembered that his stomach was still trying to get out through his head, and clamped his mouth shut before he could blurt something stupid like “Did you know squirrels make cheese?” or “My moonbeam has peanuts,” or worst of all, “You’re the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen.”

  “Billy Jones?” she asked. Billy nodded, rather proud of himself for managing to maintain that level of muscle control. He felt like he had to go to the bathroom.

  “Billy Jones,” she said again. When she said it, she had a look on her face that Billy didn’t like, as though she was trying out a dirt-flavored jawbreaker. A moment later she said, “Interesting. Your shirt’s ripped.”

  Then she turned without another word, disappearing around a nearby corner like a strange, beautiful dream. One that smelled like strawberries.

  The final bell rang. Billy was late.

  He hurried to his bag and swept it off the ground, not bothering to dust it off. Then he pulled his schedule from his pocket, uncrumpling it as best he could while running at the same time. He didn’t even know where he was running to at first, but figured that moving toward the school’s center would probably be a good idea.

  He managed to read the schedule as it bobbed up and down in his hands. History. Building B, Room Six.

  Billy ran to his first class, trying to remember the layout of the school from the packet he and his parents had received three weeks before. Where is Building B? he thought as he rushed through the halls. The school, which ten minutes ago had seemed merely huge, now felt positively planetary in size. He half-expected to see small moons whipping through the halls, held there by the gravitational pull of the high school.

  Then he remembered: Building B was the name of the second floor of the school. Of course, he thought. After all, saying “Second Floor” wouldn’t make much sense, would it? Wouldn’t want anyone knowing how to get anywhere, would we? Where would the fun be in that?

  His internally voiced sarcasm, unfortunately, did not make time go any slower. So it was no surprise to him that when he finally found room six, out of breath from running up the stairs and then frantically dashing down the hallway that—thankfully—had a clearly visible sign saying “Rooms 1 thru 10,” all the other students were already seated.

  They looked at him, all of them moving at once like their heads were connected by some kind of control center.

  Billy shifted uncomfortably. He again felt like he had to go to the bathroom. Only this time it wasn’t because he was in the presence of the beautiful Blythe Forrest. It was because what felt like six hundred eyes were now staring at him, and each set of eyes was in a face that now held a smirking look that seemed to say “Ah-ha! Now I know who the Class Doofus is going to be!”

  “Yes, may I help you?” said a voice. The sound cracked like a BB gun through the room. Billy turned to face the voice and was greeted by a new pair of eyes, dark brown and piercing, which looked at him with a mixture of impatience and annoyance. It was clearly the teacher.

  She looked to be in her late sixties, but was still obviously strong and mentally agile. Her brown eyes glittered with not-quite-hidden knowledge. Her face was creased with age, and a permanent frown line pulled the edges of her thin lips downward. She was not particularly tall, but when she took a step toward Billy, he had the sense of being in the presence of a giant. He stepped back involuntarily.

  “Well?” she demand
ed.

  “Uh…,” he managed. This was clearly not going to be a day where he could manage any sparkling conversation. Single-syllable grunts were apparently the only thing he could do on command.

  “‘Uh’ is not an appropriate answer to my question,” she responded, and this time her tone of voice brought to mind something with a higher caliber than a BB gun. A nuclear-tipped bazooka, maybe.

  The class tittered. Billy blushed. He could feel his cheeks and the edges of his ears heating up as blood rushed to them.

  The teacher silenced them with a glance. Billy suspected she could do this to serial killers and SEALs, let alone to nervous ninth-graders.

  “I was late,” he managed.

  “Clearly,” she replied. She held out her hand. Billy looked at it like it was an alien appendage. What was he supposed to do with it?

  “Your schedule,” the teacher prompted. Billy handed it over, noting how she seemed to frown at the fact that it had been crumpled into a pocket, rather than professionally laminated and framed. She read it quickly, looking at it over the top of the reading glasses perched at the end of her nose. “Well, William Jones,” she said after a moment, “at least you’re in the right place, if not at the right time.”

  The class nervously chuckled again, and this time the teacher did not bother to use her Death-Stare to silence them. She just handed Billy his schedule, then pointed to an empty desk in the second row.

  Billy moved toward it, and as he did his foot caught on something. He tripped, stumbling forward in a desperate attempt to keep from falling on his face.

  The students’ chuckles now turned to full-volume guffaws. Billy struggled to right himself, his arms flapping faster than hummingbird wings. He wished he was dead. Better yet, he wished he had been dead for a few hundred years, cremated, and the ashes buried under a small mountain on a frozen island in the middle of the Arctic Sea.