“Okay,” Brooklyn said, “that was weird.”
I sat stunned for a long time before Glitch’s grip on my arm registered. “Ouch, Glitch,” I said, slapping at his hand.
“Oh, sorry.” He let go but took hold of me again as I stood and started after Jared.
I turned on him with a glare. “Glitch, I need to talk to him.”
“I doubt he’s in the mood for small talk.”
“Let go.”
“Just give him time, Lor. Call it a guy thing.”
I stood there scowling at him a solid minute before giving in. With a jerk of my arm, I freed myself and sat back down. The fact that he was probably right didn’t make it any easier to swallow. “Who does Cameron Lusk think he is?” I asked, incredulous and more than a little baffled. “Why would he do that?”
Glitch drew in a deep breath and held it before offering his version of an explanation. “You have to consider the source,” he said, grabbing the ketchup bottle. “Lusk is different.”
“That’s for sure,” Brooklyn said.
I watched as Glitch busied himself with a sudden urge to smother his fries in ketchup and realized he was holding something back. I felt a disturbance, like an undercurrent just below his too-calm exterior. “What do you mean?”
“He’s just different,” he said, shrugging one shoulder. “You know. Not quite like the other kids on the playground.”
Brooklyn knitted her brows. “You’re going to have to give us more than that, Glitch. We’ve already seen the fruit. We need the juice.”
He paused his assault and looked up, his mouth a thin line. “I don’t know,” he said, trying to dismiss our inquiry. “He probably has anger issues. Not unlike the average juvenile delinquent, if you ask me.”
Brooklyn sat back in her chair and crossed her arms. “That’s the best juice you got?”
“It’s pretty much the only juice I got. On Lusk anyway.”
“Oh, no, you don’t.” She wagged an index finger at him. “Didn’t something happen between you two once?”
Glitch stilled.
She was right. The spring break of our second-grade year, he’d gone on a camping trip in the mountains with his Boy Scout troop. Something happened on that trip. Something bad. And I’d known that Cameron was involved, but no one would ever tell me more, including Glitch.
Brooklyn hadn’t moved to Riley’s Switch yet and didn’t know him then. But he changed, withdrew. He stopped coming to school and almost had to repeat the second grade, but his parents got him through summer school despite his total shutdown.
I remembered it so vividly because he’d stopped talking to me. We used to play at the park a lot or he would come hang with me at my grandparents’ store. When he stopped talking to me, I was too hurt and too lame to realize he’d obviously experienced something very traumatic. My grandparents had to point it out. They convinced me to just be his friend, explained that he would come back to me when he was ready.
When third grade started, he slowly became himself again. He started joking and horsing around. And when Brooklyn moved to Riley’s Switch and joined our group, he seemed to bounce back like nothing had ever happened. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder if it was all just a cover. The light in his eyes had never shone quite so bright as before that spring break.
Could this have something to do with what happened to him? Now that I thought about it, he and Cameron had been friends in the second grade. But not afterwards. They hadn’t spoken two words in eight years.
I studied him as he studied his fries. In the softest voice I’ve ever heard him use, he said simply, “He’s strong.”
“Strong?” I asked, almost as softly. I scooted closer. “Strong like how?”
Tension creased his face. “Just strong.”
Brooklyn seemed to sense his distress as well. She moved closer too. “You know you can tell us anything, right?”
I’d told her the story. She knew that Glitch had gone away one person and come back an entirely different animal. We were only seven, but in those few weeks, he seemed to grow older, become hardened, almost jaded. And lost. It took a long time for him to find his way back, and as badly as I didn’t want him to regress, at the same time, I wanted to know more. Cameron’s name seemed to be cropping up a lot in the last few days, and I wanted to know why.
Glitch rubbed his mouth. He did that when he didn’t want to admit something. After a long moment of contemplation, he said, “He’s not just strong, he’s, like, really strong.”
“You totally need a thesaurus,” Brooklyn said, giving up on the empathetic approach.
He sighed. “I don’t know how else to put it.”
“Exactly why you need a thesaurus.”
“Do you mean in an unnatural way?” I asked, a little more understanding. After all, I’d been there. I’d seen what he went through, what that camping trip had done to him. And I’d wondered a thousand times what happened. I’d even touched him. Nonchalantly, so he wouldn’t know, but I’d touched his hand to try to get a vision. Unfortunately, my visions seemed to pick for themselves where and when to show up.
His cheeks reddened. “It’s going to sound stupid.”
That piqued my interest even more. “You know that’s not true.”
“Yeah, it is, because when I say strong, I don’t mean a normal strong. I mean strong in a supernatural way.” When Brooklyn’s lips pursed, he tightened his jaw. “Told you it would sound stupid.”