Page 58 of The Bad Weather Friend

After surveying the parking lot and determining that neither thugs nor potential victims like himself were currently going to and fro, Benny said, “So, Spike, if I don’t give you a hug, if I’m just not in a hugging mood at the moment, I’ll still have a ninety-three percent chance of surviving, right?”

“A hundred percent,” Spike assured him. “But I’ll be sad.” His smile faltered. “Very sad.”

Harper stepped forward and hugged Spike. “I don’t want you to be sad. Benny, there’s no reason for any of us to be sad. This has been a great evening, and it’s only going to get better.”

After they completed a group hug and stepped apart, Spike said, “I’m so invigorated. Let’s go put Mr. F. Upton Theron through the wringer and see what we can squeeze out of him.”

ON THE WAY TO SEE F. UPTON THERON, BENNY REMEMBERS A BRIARBUSH MOMENT

As the boys hiked back to Felthammer House through the high forest, clouds crept out of the northwest, robbing the sky of stars and stealing the light of the moon.

Because Mengistu Gidada didn’t want to be alone in his room during the rest of that night, he followed Jurgen and Benny through the window by which they had departed hours earlier. Jurgen locked the pane and drew down the shade. Benny turned the lamplight low. According to the bedside clocks, it was 2:05 a.m. Having raced into the night in a spirit of high adventure, they now collapsed into their chairs in a spiritless concession to the truth of their dire circumstances.

Prescott Galsbury was stone-cold dead. The surviving ISA agents had departed the school grounds with the decapitated corpse of their comrade. Mrs. Baneberry-Smith had taken sanctuary in her laboratory or in the headmaster’s house, an insane entomologist stuffed full of dark knowledge from the far end of the galaxy, determined to reshape civilization and install herself as the ultimate power in the nation, perhaps in all the world, while at the same time indulging in pointless cruelties like cross-species engineering just because she could.

“Briarbush might have been only a casually evil boarding school at one time,” Mengistu said. “However, it is now also an institution of unprecedented horror and a fascist project to transform the sons of prominent families into ... into ...”

When Mengistu seemed unable to speak the unspeakable, Jurgen said, “Sock puppets. I’ve known this place changes boys in some way. When they come here, most are conceited, but some aremeek, in both cases because of how their parents screwed them up. The conceited become more certain of their superiority but also less obnoxious in the way they express their pride, more politic. The meek become very sure of themselves. Those who were colorful become less colorful. Those who were colorless become just a little colorful. The loud speak more softly. The soft-spoken speak with more force. Week by week, with the exception of Mengistu and me, every boy here becomes more like every other boy at Briarbush. Sometimes I get the feeling none of them have souls anymore. And now we know they’ve been robbed of their free will. A human hive.”

“Jurgen and I do not wish to be changed. We certainly do not want to be made into sock puppets.”

“When we’re with the other guys,” Jurgen said, “we try to act like them, so they won’t suspect we’re different.”

Mengistu raised a fist above his head, a gesture of resistance. “If Jurgen or I should see the other changing for real, we will make a break for it. We have a plan.”

“What plan?” Benny asked.

“Details of the plan will be revealed on a need-to-know basis. At this time, you have no need to know, Benjamin. But if Jurgen and I see you changing, we will break out and take you with us.”

Benny said, “Whatever’s being done to the others—why isn’t it working on you guys?”

Jurgen shrugged. “We don’t have a clue.”

“We live each day,” Mengistu said, “fearing that a change will start in us simultaneously and, being in the same condition, neither of us will notice the change in the other. Life at Briarbush Academy is not conducive to sound sleep, good digestion, or the avoidance of frequent constipation.”

“My father,” Jurgen said, “being who he is, could press the attorney general to investigate Briarbush on any number of grounds. But if I raised the subject, I’d only be announcing to the staff here that whatever’s changing the others isn’t changing me.”

Benny assumed his stepfather was the villain in this matter. Although his mother had never been all that mothering, he refused to believe that she would have knowingly sent him away to have his soul removed. “Why would our parents want this to be done to us?”

In the dialed-down light of his reading lamp, Jurgen’s pale face seemed to pale further. “When Mengistu and I figured that out, we made a pact never to talk about it again.”

“Speaking of it,” Mengistu said, “only causes pain, and pain leads to sadness, and sadness leads to depression, until depression cannot be sustained, whereupon it becomes anger, whereafter anger escalates into rage, and one begins to consider murdering one’s parents, which is neither moral nor rational, or for that matter easily accomplished without serious risk of incarceration. In time, you will no doubt arrive at the same answer that we did, Benjamin, and it will soon enough become a scar on your heart.”

A bleak and somber silence settled on the room. If they had been weary enough to fall asleep in their chairs, the silence would have been brief and tolerable. After the shocking events of the night, however, sleep might elude them all the way till dawn. For something to do that might result in a resumption of conversation and an end to the silence, Benny searched his jacket pockets and retrieved the four candy bars he’d purchased to ensure his survival in a confrontation with Bugboy. He offered the candy to his friends. Mengistu took the Almond Joy, and Jurgen took the Reese’s cup.

Peeling open the Hershey’s bar, Benny said, “There’s still the Clark Bar.”

“Yes,” said Jurgen.

“Inevitably,” said Mengistu.

With the subject of treacherous parents now behind them for the time being, they fell into conversation again until, at some point between three o’clock and three thirty, they did indeed fall asleep in their chairs.

In the morning, at breakfast, a rumor circulated among the students in the dining rooms of both dormitories that later was confirmed by a formal announcement. During the night, Dr. Lionel Baneberry-Smith, the headmaster, had apparently gone sleepwalking and had fallen down the stairs, breaking his neck. The school flag was lowered to half-mast, and classes were canceled for the day.

F. UPTON THERON

Word had come to F. Upton Theron that something curious might have happened at the home of Handy Duroc. And of course he had heard about Oliver Lambert capering in the nude with a stick of fried zucchini in front of two hundred guests, a performance the attorney could not explain even to his own satisfaction, but which seemed to have nothing to do with either inebriation or sudden dementia. Upton and thousands of others who shared his beliefs were waging a secret war against those retrograde individuals who were—or were likely to become—a serious negative influence on society. In all modesty, Upton and crusaders like him called themselves “the Better Kind.” From time to time, developments suggested some reactionary organization unknown to the Better Kind was resisting their efforts. If an outfit was operating on behalf of Benjamin Catspaw, an especially sinister and dangerous young man, they seemed to be working up the chain of command, in which case their next stop would be Upton’s doorstep.

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