Sean arranged the trap alone. What could he tell anyone? Besides, when it worked, any allies could turn traitor and tell what they knew. Shoot, I would, in their place.
All the local kids, at one time or another, came to these buildings. Bums slept here. It was only a matter of time before there was an accident.
The really dangerous part for him was releasing the gas in the void below the factory floor. He had to put the camouflaging covering on one opening before climbing down to crack the valves on the tanks. If his Sían persona had made an undetected mistake in her calculations, he would die.
When they left the property, the former owners had put unused cylinders of flammable gas in the bottom of the void. Canton law required such things to be properly and safely stored or disposed of. As the former owners had skipped the country, they thought they had little to fear.
Too much gas, and not enough air, meant no explosion. But Brad Dixon and his pack of jackals would be just as dead. Too little gas, and no explosion, and he would still have a problem. He could not simply leave them there, alive: someone might find and rescue them.
The void (a good word, picked up while Sían) had several circular openings, as if someone had buried the tank of a fuel truck. With a block-and-tackle he had rigged using old rope and pulleys, he removed one of the heavy covers (the other was long gone). One opening he covered with sacking and rotten bits of wood. After re-arranging his rope and pulleys, he entered the void, cracked several valves, and climbed out. More camouflage, then he scattered the components of his tackle.
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Three days earlier, he’d looked up Bobby Dixon and a few other old classmates. Their reactions were normal, which meant Brad and his gang hadn’t said anything.
He’d brought Helen a frog. She gave him a beetle. Its mechanical-looking exoskeleton held his attention until she nudged him and mock-pouted.
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Everything was ready. Now for Brad Dixon.
This was another danger. They were older, faster, and stronger than he was (although Sían had done well on the track team last year). Maybe they would be even more vicious, especially when they found out he was a boy again.
What could he say to make them follow him?
They were right where he’d hoped to find them. He decided to wing it. “Hi, Brad. Miss me?”
Brad’s leer unnerved him. “Well, well, well. Back for some more? You liked it that much?”
Sean ran, thanking God for the track team and the hours spent mentally rehearsing for this day. Fear kept him a good lead, just far enough to keep Brad from seeing details, just close to enough to keep him interested.
He slithered through the crack in the wall, knowing his pursuers would use the door.
Inside, he had arranged the various rusting barrels, decomposing crates, broken pallets, and fallen debris to guide the gang to the concealed openings. Now for the bait.
He let out a girlish scream and fell to the floor, holding one ankle. When Brad and his followers burst in, he cried out and made a show of crawling away.
Had Brad Dixon possessed an ounce of subtlety, Sean’s carefully-set trap would have failed utterly.
All four ran right onto it. They crossed the covered opening. That fast, they disappeared.
No shouting, just coughing and gagging. He took the igniter from hiding and set it.
He did not run wildly. Anyone who chanced to look onto the property would have seen no more than a local boy trotting away from an exploration.
Nor did he halt to watch what happened. If it worked, it worked.
The explosion was not as loud as he had expected.
Tension flowed from him like water from a bucket. He laughed, his eyes glinting like gemstones in winter.
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Someone did see him leaving the site. The school doctor, on a walk, spotted him and crouched out of immediate sight. When he heard the explosion, he headed home to report. Now he understood why Leader X was interested in Sean Treil.
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The accidental deaths of four boys in an abandoned building made the local news. Investigators found enough evidence to bring charges against the former property owners. Authorities now paid attention to existing laws about abandoned properties. Owners now had to guard and secure the buildings and grounds.
It was the talk of the school. Bobby was well-liked, Brad was a bully, and that was at least part of the awkwardness Bobby’s classmates felt around him. There were also the social conventions of not insulting the dead and not taking pleasure in the misfortunes of others.
“I’m sort of glad he’s dead,” Helen said. Misinterpreting Sean’s stunned expression, she continued, “I mean, he’s not going to be around to beat people up and make trouble. But he’s dead, and I don’t feel bad about it.”
“Are you okay?” Did he do anything to you? Her pleasure surprised him: it didn’t seem part of her character.
“I guess.”
He searched her face for clues. “He was a jerk. Did he do anything to you?”
“No. Not really. I’d catch him looking at me. He had this strange look on his face. Made me nervous.” She saw something in his. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, uh, he beat me up for winning that game. Said something about me wrecking Bobby’s life.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
I couldn’t. “We were busy moving.” That was a poor excuse.
“We could have done something to get back at him. Between us, we could have figured out a really great revenge.”
Better than killing him? “I felt stupid. I mean, I got beat up again. Bookended my year.” He hated lying to her. There were already too many secrets between them.
“That’s okay.” She stroked his hair. “I get it. I’d be embarrassed, too.”
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Helen didn’t ask about his year away, and he didn’t bring up the subject.
Just as well. St. Louis Academy kept the students segregated by sex. He could lie and invent some male classmates, but at some point he would make a mistake. There would be no covering that mistake with her. She was the smartest kid in class.
If only he knew whether or not he could share his secret with her. He could tell her some stories that would send her rolling with laughter. She could advise him what to do next year.
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He signed for gymnastics this year. Besides track at St. Louis Academy, Sían had also been good at gymnastics. He had to keep in practice for next year. It didn’t help his social standing with the other boys, but he didn’t much care. After a few incidents, they remembered that they could never win a battle of wits with him.
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“You sure about that?” his father asked, aiming the light up at the bottom of the car.
“Pretty sure.” He touched the places where he saw welds and small distortions from an unmentioned accident. “They did a pretty good job disguising them.”
“Ah, hell. Do you know why those are a bad thing?”
“They weaken the frame?”
“Yep. Once metal gets bent, it never quite goes back to its original shape. We could drive this car for years and never have a problem, or it could fold up during a minor fender-bender tomorrow.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m not going to foist that thing on another person. Thing is, we just finished paying for it. We can’t keep it, and we can’t get a new one.”
“We can’t reinforce the welds and the bent spots?” If I wasn’t a freak, they could have bought a new car.
“Not with what we have. The effort we would have to put in, it’d be easier to get a new car.”
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St. Louis Academy had made Sean/Sían aware of social classes and distinctions. Most of the wealthy students were there because the school’s academic reputation and strict discipline appealed to upper-middle-class and wealthy parents worried about the effects of that wealth on their children’s characters. While most of the teachers tried to treat all the students equally, a few allowed wealth and connections to influence them.
The Academy’s equalizing efforts were widespread, so it took real effort for the rich kids to get together for any length of time (even the ones who boarded). They compensated by ensuring that they had expensive haircuts, looking down on anyone they did not know, and spending too much money on their school supplies.
Sían had figured the girls out early in the last school year. Sean found that many of those same observations applied at his school to both sexes. The rich kids were here so that their parents could boast of not having lost the ‘common touch.’
Watch and learn. Why hate people when you can use them? Especially those to whom you are invisible.
So Sean knew he wasn’t poor. Both parents worked, but keeping his dual nature a secret ate up the money.
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He and Helen had resumed their friendship as if he’d only been gone a few days. No questions, even oblique ones, about where he’d been or what he’d done. As before, as always, she tried to let him into her circle.
Now that the old buildings were locked up and guarded, they spent more time rambling in the woods and foothills. When they weren’t outside, or with other children, they were at the library or museums.
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Three months into the school year, he and Helen were in Mr. Paredes’s shop, browsing the selection of junk food. “Mom says they had real candy in her day,” she said. “Real sugar. Real chocolate. I wonder what that tasted like?”
The rich kids had the real stuff. He was certain he could trick some off of them. Just a matter of finding the right words or leverage.
Two men, masked and carrying shotguns, pushed into the shop. One grabbed Paredes by the shirt and held the shotgun under his chin. “Empty the register, old man.”
The two children hunkered down, hands clamped over each other’s mouths.
Who robbed for money anymore? Sean wondered. The only cash he’d ever seen was what his father paid various people, such as the unlicensed doctors who treated him. Finance was almost all electronic these days.
Paredes pulled out the few bills as the other gunman emptied the coolers and yanked small packets off a rack.
“Is this all you got?” The first gunman shoved the shopkeeper against the register.
“Please, almost nobody uses cash money anymore.”
“People have been coming in here all day. Where is it?”
“That’s all there is!”
BLAM!
Sean pulled Helen’s face to his chest a second too late. She shouldn’t see this is that what it looks like to die why did they do it oh my God.
Tainting the purity of his emotions came self-preservation: I can’t be found here. I can’t be in the news. Someone might notice me and connect me to Sían.
Then: I have to get Helen out of here.
The robbers fled.
She didn’t resist as he pulled her out the back door and away from the shop.
Several blocks away, she turned a wide, shocked gaze to him. “They-they shot him.”
He looked around, saw a low, decorative wall. “Come here.”
“Shot him. Just like that.” She buried her face in his shoulder. “Why, Sean?”
Some people are just mean.
He never hurt anyone. He was nice to me.
She started to cry.
Helen never cried. Except at silly movies.
What should I do? What should I say? Should I say anything at all? What did you do with a crying girl?
Unsure what to do, he put his arms around her and let her cry.
The cold anger pricked at him.
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The robbers raced away, shedding their masks and shoving their weapons into the sacks. There wasn’t enough money to do shit, but they had condoms and beer, and a couple of hot women waiting for them.
They knocked on the hotel room door. Two women, identically dressed in bodysuits adorned with yellow stars on the breast, greeted them.
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The shock of Mr. Paredes’s murder had barely set in when police responded to a disturbance call at a hotel. Two dead men, one stabbed, the other shot, amid a litter of empty beer cans and bottles, used condoms, and other trash. Detectives drew the logical, and wrong, conclusion of a tryst gone bad.
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Helen spent more time with Sean. The reason spoiled his pleasure in her company. Nobody knew they’d seen the murder. She needed to be with him. He understood the haunted look in her eyes and why she choked back tears at odd moments.
This wasn’t right. Her eyes should sparkle with mischief and the joy of life. Sappy girl-movies should make her cry, not the memory of brains splattered on a wall.
He couldn’t make the memories go away. He would make happy ones to crowd them out.
Autumn had begun, and there was enough of the season to paint the hills with every hue of yellow, red, gold, and green. He took her out to hunt the few frogs and lizards not yet hibernating or whatever they did when it was cold (and then they went to the library to find out). Long explorations in the woods. Visits to her apartment, where she pretended to help him with homework. Museum. Library.
Somehow, he never hit a wrong step. Gradually, the life returned to her eyes, then the mischief. He suffered through old movies for her.
One thing he could not return were her friends. Apparently, she could have either them, or him. Not both.
He could not decide how he felt about that.
As for how he felt about the murder: after the initial reaction, he found that only the senselessness of the act bothered him. It was unnecessary.
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Through the year, he also kept one step ahead of the bullies. They could not beat him with words or wit, so they used their fists. Fortunately for him, and for Helen, the bullies tended to seek them out at school or on the routes to and from. Not a lot of planning went into the bullying, and they easily turned the tables on their would-be tormenters or avoided them. The most persistent was a thug named Hellmann, who never seemed to learn.
He even took a delayed revenge on the boys who had beaten him on the day he met Helen. With her help, he arranged a series of pranks and tricks that left them looking very foolish to their classmates (and without a clue as to the culprits).
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“You’d better be careful,” his father said. He was organizing his tools in their tiny garage.
“About what?”
“That girl. You’re growing up. So is she. Eventually, she’ll want --- other things from you.”
Other things?
“Right now, it’s all right. I think.”
His father had no idea how to say what he wanted to say. This had to be about puberty. “Father, I know I’ll grow up. I hope the --- changes --- will stop.”
“So do I. Maybe then we can be a family.”
Sean waited.
“If it doesn’t, then you have a problem I can’t help you with. She’s not bothered that you went away, is she?”
“She never asks about it.”
“That will change. She’ll want to know, and you can’t put her off forever. What do you think will happen when she finds out?”
“I don’t know.” If only he could control the changes.
His father set down the tools he’d been fiddling with. “You might have to give her up. Now, before it goes any further. Before she starts to want more than friendship from you.”
Give her up? He couldn’t do that.
Father’s right: I should. It isn’t fair to her. It won’t be good for me.
I can’t.
“I know, Sean. I do. But you can’t afford to have a girlfriend, or a boyfriend.”
I can’t take this. Change the subject. “Why don’t you teach me at home?”
This was an easier topic. “This isn’t Ameris, where you can sit and threaten to hold your breath until you pass out to get what you want. There has to be a compelling religious, medical or cultural reason for parents to home-school. I think you understand why we haven’t applied.”
“You’re ashamed of me. Don’t deny it.”
“You scare us. And we don’t want the attention.”
“I don’t want it, either.”
After his child left the garage, Howard Treil put his head in his arms. I want to love him --- her --- it. Such a clever child, so talented with machines, more than he could or ever would be. So smart. Too smart. I should be able to brag about my child, and I can’t.
Siobhan loathed the child. After that first year, she’d become convinced that a supernatural being had gotten the child on her. She would thrash in her sleep and moan about hellfire and a bird-headed demon, but deny it when awake.
They’d been happy about her pregnancy, especially after the accident. Her car had skidded off the road in an ice storm. Motorists had found her wandering around, disoriented, bruised, but not badly hurt. No problems or complications with the baby.
A little girl. Who became a boy. Then a girl.
He wanted his child to have a friend. Helen dimmed the strangeness in the child’s eyes.
I don’t care what sex wins out. I want a child I can talk about. Preferably the girl with good grades. Female mechanical engineers weren’t unusual. And their child was on record as female.
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His father was right. Helen would ask, and he didn’t ever want to lie to her again. His secret life was barrier enough.
Give her up.
I can’t.
Selfish, and he knew it.
They would grow up.
She already looked at him the way the woman in that movie looked at the man. But they were kids. Surely that didn’t mean anything.
This thing that happened to him could not happen forever. One of these years, he wouldn’t change. He’d be one or the other.
What if it didn’t stop?
He couldn’t think that far ahead.
He did what many people faced with difficult, painful decisions do: he put it off.
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The year ended with no further adventures. Sean changed to Sían, and the Treils packed up and moved.
A month after that, police arrested some purported Irish Travelers for fraud and theft by deception. They claimed a cousin, Siobhan McTeague-Treil, had invited them to visit. As for the charges: those were mistakes. They were innocent.
Author's Chapter Notes:
In which the budding Lord of Galactor commits his first murder, and witnesses a second.