Shuttered Sky

9. Curved Space

Newport Harbor High School sat on prime real estate, and for years local developers had fought and lost many battles to relocate the school and build high-end tract homes in its place.

Even though the Colorado River Backwash was three hundred miles away, and had no connection to Newport Beach, security at the school still had to be beefed up. This was primarily because of all the in-depth news reports that tracked down the roots of Michael Lipranski—as if the source of Michael’s transformations of nature could somehow be found in the classrooms of Newport Harbor High. For months there had been waves of curiosity- seekers making pilgrimages to the school and other points of new-divinity interest, hoping perhaps to absorb some residue of the Shards’ passing. But it was Dillon whom most people were interested in, not Michael, so the tide of visitors to Michael’s stomping grounds soon ebbed, leaving only the occasional zealot wandering onto the school grounds.

And then there was the man by the fence.

At 4:30 on a Thursday afternoon, Drew Camden did a few warm-down laps with the rest of the track team, setting the pace. He had noticed the man just on the other side of the north fence about ten minutes before. He walked a rankled Chihuahua back and forth, weav­ing through the eucalyptus breakwind. It was by no means an odd occurrence—this was a dog-happy neighborhood, and the residents had no reservations about letting their dogs crap in the eucalyptus grove by the school. This man, however was different. Perhaps it was the way he tugged on the yapping dog with little care or sensitivity. Or perhaps it was the way he made brief eye contact with Drew each time he came around for another lap. His gaze made Drew pick up the pace.

“Hey, Drew, it’s a warm down,” one of his teammates reminded him. “Ease up!” but Drew didn’t slow down until the track curved away from the north fence.

There were several explanations for the man with the dog, and none of them were pleasant, but as team captain, he felt a responsibility to dispatch him. So when they reached the stands and the coach sent them off to the showers, Drew chose to take another lap alone.

Back in September, the Orange County Register had printed a nice-sized article on Drew, featuring a picture of him breaking through a finish line. When he had met the reporter for the interview, he was naive enough to think it was going to be an article highlighting his stand-out track performance. But the reporter was not from the sports desk. That should have been Drew’s first clue. The article turned out to be a feature entitled ' ‘Out’ in Front,” and was a coming-out man­ifesto, likening Drew to Greg Louganis, as a local emblem of gay ath­letic pride. People were either appalled, or impressed. Some people would stare at him, their equilibrium thrown off by Drew’s complete lack of effeminate affectations. Some of his friendships were lost, while others grew stronger, and now the fact that he was captain of the track team—which hadn’t meant much to anyone before— was a political statement. Hell, if he went to take a piss now it was a political state­ment. But worse than any of that were the advances from strangers. Some were boys his own age, some were men much older—teens and trolls who idolized him for what they thought he represented. Honesty . . . bravery—which was ridiculous to Drew, because it wasn’t about being brave at all. In the wake of the Backwash, and Michael’s death, he simply found himself uninterested in maintaining his old facade.

And now there was this man with his yapping Chihuahua.

At about the time Drew began to smell the dog crap, the man called out to him from the other side of the fence. “Hey! You’re Drew Camden, aren’t you?”

Drew found himself particularly disgusted by this man’s approach, and was actually looking forward to telling him where he could go. Drew slowed his pace to a walk, and stopped a few feet away from the fence. “You could be arrested for what you’re doing,” Drew said to him.

“Walking my dog?”

“Soliciting a minor.”

For a moment the man appeared flustered. The dog just barked.

“That is why you’re here isn’t it? Or are you just here to look?”

The man adjusted the Angels cap he wore, and glanced down at his dog, giving a sharp tug on the leash which did not quiet the animal. Then he recovered his composure. “I’m sorry if it looks that way. Actually I just wanted to talk to you. I’m an old friend of the Lipranskis’—I understand you knew Michael.”

A breeze tore a flurry of eucalyptus leaves from the trees. Drew could feel his sweat chilling on his shirt, which clung uncomfortably to his back. He took a good look at the man, trying to see how much sincerity he could parse from the man’s face. Neither Michael nor his father had ever mentioned any old family friends—but then they never spoke much about their lives before moving to California.

“So, you’re a friend from when they lived in Vermont?” Drew asked.

“No—Long Island. I didn’t know they lived in Vermont.”

Drew grinned. “They didn’t.”

The man chuckled, acknowledging the test, and the fact that he had passed it. “The name’s Martin,” he said. “Martin Briscoe.”

Drew took a step closer, then realized the fence negated any need for a handshake. The dog growled at Drew, then growled at Briscoe, then went back into its yapping fit.

“So if you wanted to talk to me, Mr. Briscoe, why didn’t you just call?”

“Didn’t know where to find you—but the people I’m staying with gave me this,” He held up a copy of Drew’s fifteen minutes of fame, the newspaper already turning yellow at the edges. “I figured the best place to look would be the Newport Harbor track.”

“Why was it so important to find me?”

Briscoe didn’t answer. Instead he studied Drew for a moment— and in that moment, Drew thought he recognized something in his face. A sensation that bordered on deja vu.

“You were close to Michael, weren’t you? Like brothers, I mean. I always felt Michael needed a brother. He was always such a loner.”

“Not the Michael I knew.”

“I always felt that Michael was profoundly special. I just never realized how special. I wish I could have been there to see him part the skies.”

“So you believe all those stories?” said Drew.

“Why shouldn’t I believe them? They’re true aren’t they?”

Drew chose to neither confirm nor deny the things that Michael and the rest of the Shards were capable of. The less he spoke of Mi­chael, the less painful the memory of his last moments with him, and the more distant that image of Michael and Tory looking back at him from the dying dam. Even with all of their power, they had been powerless to save themselves.

The wind blew again, drawing gooseflesh beneath Drew’s sweaty shirt, and he longed for the relaxing release of a shower. Again a vague sense of this man’s familiarity set him on edge. Perhaps he had been in one of the pictures in Michael’s house. Regardless, it dragged him back to the reality that he was talking to a man he did not know through a chain link fence. Whether or not Briscoe found that awk­ward, Drew and the dog certainly did.

“Is there something I can do for you, Mr. Briscoe?”

“Jimmy moved,” Martin answered. “I showed up at his door, and the place was empty.”

“Jimmy?”

“Michael’s father. No one seems to know where he went.”

Drew had never heard anyone call James Lipranski “Jimmy.” But then, two years in Newport Beach was just a small fraction of the man’s life. “He’s renting a townhouse in Costa Mesa,” Drew told him. “215 Placentia. You need directions?”

“Thanks, but I think I can find it.”

“I’m sure he’ll be glad to see you. No one came to the funeral from back east. Not even Michael’s mother.”

“I doubt Jimmy even called her.” Briscoe lifted his baseball cap to reveal a thinning head of hair on a scaly scalp, that was irritated and red. Briscoe dug his nails in and scratched vigorously, dislodging flakes, and making the