We Are the Ants(32)

“Are you Henry Denton?”

The officer stood in the doorway of Coach Raskin’s office. Her name tag identified her as Sandoval. She was stiff-backed with serious eyes and a crooked nose. I should have been grateful to see her, but this made it real. She’d file an official report, and everyone would know I’d been assaulted. Now I had no chance that this would quietly disappear.

Principal DeShields straightened her cream-colored jacket and shook Sandoval’s hand. Her dour frown met Sandoval’s humorless eyes, and it looked like a competition to see who could take my situation more seriously. “I’m Margaret DeShields, principal of Calypso High School.” Then she fell silent, like she’d planned a whole speech but had forgotten it.

“I need to speak to the victim,” Sandoval said. I wasn’t Space Boy or Henry Denton; I was The Victim. Coach Raskin’s office was cramped, and I had to gulp for breath to get enough air into my lungs. Sandoval must have read my mind because she said, “Alone.”

Everyone cleared out, but Principal DeShields hovered outside the doorway, probably mentally strategizing damage control.

Officer Sandoval produced a reporter’s notepad and pen from her pocket and turned the full weight of her somber gaze upon me. It was the kind of look I knew could extract the truth the way a dentist tears free a rotten molar. Only, Sandoval wouldn’t use Novocain. “Walk me through what happened.”

I recounted the attack, sticking to the facts and avoiding conjecture. Even though I was sure I knew the identities of the three aliens who attacked me, I couldn’t prove it. Officer Sandoval listened closely but didn’t write anything down. I didn’t tell her about Jesse speaking to me.

“They were wearing masks?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you hear their voices? Could you identify them if you heard them again?”

Marcus McCoy had called me Space Boy so many times that I knew by heart the way his faint Southern accent stretched out the a and clipped the y, but doubt lingered. Maybe I’d imagined it—his voice, the smell of summer. I didn’t want to believe Marcus was capable of attacking me. “No. Nothing.”

Sandoval frowned and scribbled in her notebook. “Do you know why anyone would have targeted you?”

I could have given her a hundred reasons:

I was Space Boy.

Marcus was still pissed I’d refused to hook up with him again.

Adrian wanted revenge for our fight in the locker room.

I was Space Boy.

I was weak.

Fuck it, f*ck this place, f*ck them all.

“It’s Halloween,” I said. “And I was an easy target.”

Officer Sandoval pursed her lips—she definitely wasn’t buying that line of bullshit. However, I’d endured enough shame for one day. I was sure Principal DeShields, Coach Rankin, or anyone else she asked could tell her what she wanted to know. I was done talking.

The sharp rattle of a slamming door outside the office caused Officer Sandoval to glance over her shoulder, but I knew who it was before the shouting began.

My mom had come to take me home.

? ? ?

The sluggers abducted me from the bath. I’d spent two hours under running water, scrubbing with washcloths and loofas until my skin was red and raw. My mom kept trying to invade the bathroom under the guise of offering me different methods of removing the paint—the oddest of which was a stick of butter—and I had to lock the door to get any privacy.

Diego sent me a handful of text messages, at first asking where I was, then begging me to let him know I was all right. I felt terrible about not returning his texts, but I couldn’t bear any more pity. Especially not from him.

I also figured out what the One More Thing was while Mom drove me home from school. A photo of me sprawled on the shower floor—bound and green, wearing only a gray alien mask—had spread virally through SnowFlake, each new person who shared it heaping on derision. I tried to trace it back to the original poster but eventually gave up—Space Boy had become an international phenomenon. I was Raumjunge in Germany, Gar?on Cosmique in France, in Japan, Chico Cósmico in Spain, and Ruimtejongen in the Netherlands. At least Marcus had blurred out my junk before exposing me to the world.

“I’m not pressing the goddamn button!” I shouted. My voice didn’t echo in the exam room. The darkness devoured it in a way that reminded me of the auditorium where I’d watched Jesse rehearse The Snow Queen freshman year. He only had a small part, but he spoke his lines as if he were the lead. His strong tenor reached even the back row where Audrey and I sat, she doing her homework, and I unable to take my eyes off the boy flapping his wings, willing us to believe he was a crow.

The rotating projection of the earth disappeared, but the button remained, as either a taunt or a promise. I didn’t know which, and I didn’t care. Fuck it.

“Why me?” Though the sluggers had left me alone in the room, I knew they were watching. They were always watching. “If you can save Earth, then do it! Why do you need me?”

Even if they had answered, I doubt I would have comprehended them any more than a rat would understand the reasons a scientist dropped him in a maze and forced him to navigate it for the cheese at the end.

I was startled by a slugger who appeared from the darkness and approached me at a crawl. I’d never noticed before, but it had tiny legs that grew from it like a centipede’s. They were absorbed back into its body when it halted.