me sick to my stomach.
Wotan turned and grinned at Timon, Gaspar, and me. “Human!” he said. “Come try some of this. I caught her myself not two hours ago, and she’s very tender.”
“Go to hell,” I said.
He laughed, stuck his fork into a big chunk of something purplish, and jammed it in his mouth.
In addition to my sick disgust, I felt guilty. I’d known-sort of-what Wotan was and what he did away from the poker table. But I hadn’t tried to stop him.
I told myself not to be stupid. Stopping him wasn’t my responsibility, and I probably couldn’t have pulled it off anyway. Hell, people got killed all the time, and it was nobody I knew chopped up and spread out on a tray.
None of that helped very much. But my opponents were watching me, and I had a table image to maintain. So I took a breath, walked to the buffet, and loaded up a plate with green beans, carrots, and a roll. I even ate a little, and managed to keep it down.
Then it was midnight. Time to shuffle up and deal.
At first everything went pretty well. I was the chip leader, so I started pushing the others around. It’s funny. You always resent the bullying when somebody else is doing it to you. But when you’re the one with the big stack, you know it’s just good strategy, and feel like only a wuss would take it personally.
Really, my biggest problem was keeping my cool. Remembering I was playing against five opponents, and not just the two I didn’t like.
In other words, Gimble and Wotan. I probably should have hated the Pharaoh too and maybe even more, considering that he was the one who’d actually tried to hurt me. But it was the others who made me tense up every time I looked at them. Go figure.
The clock struck one. I threw away eight-four off-suit. And my dad said, “I want you to do whatever will make you happy. But are you sure you will be if you never contribute to society? If all you ever do is take from people who don’t play games as well as you do?”
Startled, I looked around. Dad wasn’t there. My heart thumping, I assumed-it was hard to be sure of any damn thing anymore-he was still in his grave.
Wotan gave me a leer. His supper had stained his white teeth pink. “Getting jumpy?” he asked. “I know it must be hard on your nerves spending time with monsters.”
I made myself smile back at him. “I’m starting to think you rode the short bus to creature school. I’m one of you, Shaggy. I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t.”
“We’ll see,” he replied.
We kept playing, and I wondered what had happened to me. Whatever it was, it didn’t happen again for several minutes. Long enough for me to hope that maybe it had just been my nerves. Then the shadowy room got darker.
Because it wasn’t a candlelit ballroom anymore. A cold wind blew, and in front of me, a black slab of mountainside blocked out the different black of the night sky. Something snapped and popped: Taliban shooting from the rocks. I couldn’t see them, only the muzzle flashes winking like fireflies. The sergeant had said they couldn’t see us, either, and wouldn’t hit us. Still, my mouth was dry. I pictured the silver bird with its long, straight wings, charged it with a shiver of mojo even though it made my insides ache, and threw it at the mountainside. I willed the illusion to shatter.
It didn’t. The wind kept whistling, the rocks kept, I don’t know, rocking, and the snipers kept plinking away. The Thunderbird hadn’t done shit.
Fortunately, the flashback let go of me on its own a couple seconds later. But I had a nasty feeling more were on the way.
I realized the other players were all looking at me and waiting for me to act. I checked my cards, found ace- queen, and reraised Gimble. He thought for a moment, then mucked.
I made it through a couple more hands. Then Dad was back, skinny as a pencil, the forked rubber hose in his nose chaining him to the oxygen tank. “I didn’t want to worry you,” he said. “I didn’t want you to feel like you needed to take care of me, or ask for special treatment.”
“Jesus Christ!” I said. “Did you think I liked it over there?” I spun around toward Victoria, and she flinched from whatever she saw in my face. “Why didn’t
Except that I didn’t really say any of it out loud. But I had the urge to, just like when I lived through this shit the first time. That’s how real the hallucination felt.
I threw the Thunderbird again, giving it everything I had without caring about the spike of pain inside my chest.
The illusion didn’t even flicker. It was like throwing a punch that didn’t connect.
When I came back from Dad’s house, Leticia was looking at me with a worried expression on her perfect face. I felt her concern for me-real or fake-as strongly as I felt her sex appeal, like she was Mother Teresa and Jenna Jameson in one package. It made me want to trust her, and I clamped down on the impulse.
“Don’t you feel well?” she asked. “You’re white as snow.”
“I’m fine,” I said.
“Maybe we could take our break early,” she said.
That was actually a good idea. It would give me a chance to talk to Timon. Maybe he could fix whatever was wrong with me.
But Wotan boomed, “Hell, no! He plays by the rules or he loses.” He looked at the Pharaoh. “Right?”
The mummy sighed, and blue smoke swirled from his cracked, flaking lips. “I hate to be… harsh with a novice player. But yes, you are within your rights to insist on that.”
“I’m not a beginner,” I said, “and I already said I’m all right. Whose deal is it?”
Wotan sneered. “Yours.”
Hoping my hands wouldn’t shake, I gathered up the cards.
I figured the one thing I had going for me was that, so far at least, the flashbacks only lasted a few seconds. If I could tough them out and focus on the game in between, maybe I’d be all right. But I couldn’t keep playing aggressively. I’d be doing well if I just avoided serious mistakes.
The flashbacks kept coming. These were some of the highlights:
Vic and I returned the rented jet skis at the end of the afternoon, with the sun sinking toward the blue waters of the gulf. I liked the way she looked in her wet bikini. She caught me looking, laughed, and then, right there on the dock in front of dozens of tourists, and even though she usually wasn’t much for PDA’s, she grabbed me and kissed me again and again, for no reason except that she felt as great as I did and loved me as much as I did her.
I walked across the stage, and the principal handed me my diploma. As I flipped the tassel on my mortarboard from one side to the other, I looked out at the crowd and saw Dad grinning. I grinned back, proud that I’d made him proud.
When I came back from patrol and got online, I had a bunch of video messages from Vic waiting for me, just like always. I saw her smile, and Afghanistan let go of me for a while.
I was on my way back from the bathroom when I heard somebody crying. I sneaked to where I could peek out into the living room. Even though we were the only two people left in the house, I was somehow surprised to see it was Dad crying. It was the first time I realized he was as broken up about my mom dying as I was. But he was trying to keep it together for my sake.
Anger twisted Vic’s pretty face into ugliness, and her wide blue eyes looked crazy. She yelled at me because both Visas were maxed out.
Dad tossed me the keys to the T-bird, then laughed at the surprised expression on my face. “I can tell you really like this girl,” he said. “So you should pick her up in something that will make an impression.”
The prisoners were supposed to be al-Qaeda. But I still had a bad feeling about handing them over to the interrogators. Maybe it was because the spooks wouldn’t even come right out and say they were CIA, even though we all knew it. I argued until the lieutenant ordered me to shut up. He looked ashamed as he did it.
I was all ready to get shot down as I walked across the food court toward Victoria and her friends. I wasn’t one of the hardcore kids. I wasn’t in a gang or anything like that. But I did get into trouble. I definitely didn’t make the honor roll, or take SAT prep classes I didn’t even need. So why would a girl like her want to talk to me?
When one of the other girls noticed me, their faces were no friendlier than I expected. But, her blond hair shining even under the dull fluorescent lights, Victoria gave me a smile that was warm and shy at the same
