Chapter 4: Who Was That Masked Man?

The remainder of my weekend passed without much excitement. On Sunday, I read a little Beowulf in advance, partly because I wanted to be prepared but mostly because I simply enjoyed the story. Also, I hammered out a handful of exercises on limits for my calculus class, but other than that my homework load had been pretty light. I had my suspicions that things would be changing shortly, particularly because exams were rapidly approaching.

When Monday rolled around, I awoke to the sound of falling rain. For someone from Boston, rain was quite common, but Tucson is in a fairly arid state, and the precipitation was unexpected. Typically, Arizona only sees about an inch of rain in the month of December, which is one of the reasons why I expected to be able to drive my Yamaha to school every day. Fortunately, my CR-V serves as a backup in cases such as these.

When I went downstairs to the kitchen to find myself something to eat, I found my parents and Ange sitting together in the breakfast nook. Even though my dad had only just recently retired and had more money than he could possibly count, he still rose habitually between the ungodly hours of four and five o'clock. Personally, I thought this was insane, but I guess some habits are hard to break after twenty-five years.

"Good morning, son," Dad wished me. He was reading a copy of the Arizona Daily Star, part of my parents' daily ritual of coffee, newspaper, and jog. Even though it was raining outside, it wasn't raining too heavily — Mom and Dad would have gone jogging even if it meant going through a snowstorm. All they would have done is put on gloves and a winter hat.

"Did you drive out and pick that up this morning?" I asked, pointing to the newspaper as I sat down and fixed myself a bowl of cereal. My father shook his head. He must have gotten a subscription in the past couple of days. "Anything of interest going on in the world today?"

"Four more hostages have been taken in Iraq," he said, "and Christian peacemakers who were protesting the war at that. I swear, the whole world has gone upside down."

"Where are they from?"

"One American, one Briton, and two are from Canada."

"Canada?" I asked, incredulous. While the Canadian Forces had been among the first on the ground in Afghanistan following 9/11, the government of my country of origin had been almost as adamant as France in its refusal to assist President Bush in the coalition for Operation Iraqi Freedom. I had taken a little grief from my classmates at Quincy back in Boston, but I couldn't blame them — even though I disagreed with Paul Martin's decision to abstain from helping, I was an outlet for my classmates' frustration. "Now, that makes the kind of sense that's not."

"And since when have terrorists listened to sense?" Mom asked rhetorically. "Congress and the administration are hoping to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq, particularly after Iraq holds its elections. If they want our boys to leave and come back home, they ought to be helping the elections along instead of trying to undermine them. This recent string of kidnappings is only going to make things worse."

"And since when have terrorists believed in free elections?" I countered. "Or free speech and women's rights? Islamic extremists refuse to acknowledge the validity of anything that isn't Islamic extremism."

"It's just an unfortunate state of affairs," Ange contributed. "Hopefully, those peacemakers will get released... but I wouldn't count on it." We all nodded our heads in agreement, and I returned to my cereal.

After my dad finished his cup of coffee, he refolded his newspaper and put it on the table. "Alright, time for our jog," he said to Mom, and the two of them stood up to leave. Dad walked to the garage door, with Mom trailing shortly behind, who then turned around just as they left to say, "Don't forget to wear a coat of some kind. It's raining out, and you don't want to catch a cold."

This coming from a woman who was going out into the weather wearing running shorts and a wick-away tank top — at times, I swear the mothering instinct makes even less sense than the terrorists do.

I pulled into the Foothills' parking lot shortly after seven-thirty and made sure I parked well out of the way of everyone else, not because I wanted to avoid getting dinged, but rather because I didn't want to get towed. At Quincy, students paid for numbered spots in the parking lot, and seeing that the lot at Foothills was also numbered, I figured it was better to be safe than walking back home.

The rain had tapered off somewhat since I left home, but it was still enough that it would have bothered me. I shook my head ruefully; while the weather wasn't enough to cause me to catch a cold, as my mother had suggested, it was enough to cause an annoying dampness. Some of my classmates at Quincy took great pleasure in pointing out that as a swimmer I really shouldn't care about getting wet from the rain. Personally, if I was going to get wet I'd rather it be all over and have a spare change of clothes with me.

I sighed in my SUV, but then remembered that I had left a robe of sorts behind the passenger's seat just for occasions like these. It wasn't quite a raincoat, nor was it a bathrobe, but rather it was a knee-length black cloak which tied off with a sash at the waist. Every time I put it on, I conjured the mental image of the Emperor from Return of the Jedi, and chuckled. "You shall pay the price for your lack of vision," I quoted in my best Ian McDiarmid imitation to no one in particular. What can I say, sometimes I crack myself up.

I got out of my Honda and put the cloak on, tying it off at the waist and raising its hood, and then grabbed my backpack. I slung it over my right shoulder and walked towards the building. Thankfully, the cloak kept the rain off of my face and head, something which irritates me to no end, for no particular reason. Within a minute or so, I was inside the school.

As I was walking towards the N-wing of the school, I noticed a bit of a commotion in the school's common area. A guy, roughly six feet tall with black hair and wearing a Foothills' Falcons jacket, was hassling a diminutive bookish-looking student who couldn't have been more than fifteen years old.

"Where ya going, geek?" the jock drawled loudly. The younger guy ignored him, looking at the floor, and tried to walk around the letterman, but the athlete moved to block his way.

"Hey, I'm talking to you, fag boy," he sneered, and then knocked the kid's books out of his hands.

"Come on," the younger one pleaded as he took to a knee to pick up his things, "just... just lemme alone, please?"

"Oh, so you're telling me what to do now!" The bully kicked one of the kid's textbooks out of reach, at which the youth protested mildly. "You don't tell a Falcons ball player what to do," the jock said menacingly, "he tells you what to do."

The situation was going to escalate out of hand quickly if I didn't do something about it, but making myself Enemy Number One of an entire football team wasn't on the top of my list of high school priorities. I looked around to see if there was something I could do to avert the beating that was about to take place without drawing attention to myself, and then a light bulb went off in my head.

Bingo, I thought to myself. That's just perfect!

A few feet away from me was one of those custodian's carts with a sizeable rectangular trash bin attached to it, essentially making it a garbage can on wheels. With no one taking notice of me, I walked over to it as the jock pulled the freshman to his feet and gave him a two-handed push.

"Yeah, I think it's about time someone kicked your ass, newbie, and show you who's in charge of this school," the jock threatened. The poor kid looked like he was going to pass out in fear, and was slowly backing away. Unfortunately, he soon had a pillar against his back and no visible means of flight. Pissed off at the situation, I aimed the cart as best as I could, gave it a hearty shove, and then walked away as inconspicuously as possible, while the jock was winding up to punch the younger student.

"You're gonna get it n... oof!"

As I was walking away, I saw the cart hit the jock squarely in the back of the legs with enough force that it vaulted him backwards into the trash bin part of it. Snickering to myself, I gave a small nod to the obviously relieved freshman, who quickly picked up his things and scampered off. As the letterman struggled to get out of the bin, I went into the boys' room, put my cloak in backpack, and washed my hands, entirely unnoticed.

"Man, you are never going to believe what happened this morning!"

I walked into my calculus class, catching one of the students talking in excited terms to the other students, gathered around him. Male with brown hair, and gesticulating wildly, he began spinning a tale of which I was pretty certain was this morning's happenings in the common area.

"What happened, Tony?" one of the girls asked.

"Well, you know how those football jerks have been picking on everyone in this class, simply because we're smarter than them?" Everyone nodded. "And how they think they run this school, and are untouchable simply because they can score field goals and touchdowns? Well," he said, pausing for effect, "this morning, Bryce Dickinson got stuffed... into a trashcan!"

"No way!"

Tony nodded. "I heard it from my sister's best friend's other friend's boyfriend that he was picking on one of the freshman members of the chess club, when out of nowhere, WHAM! This guy, he must have been six-foot-six, picks him up, turns him upside down, and shoves him headfirst into the custodian's push-cart."

Everyone gasped. Here we go, I thought to myself while rolling my eyes discreetly, the wonders of the high school rumour mill. It was like playing broken telephone with a bunch of mentally disconnected, hormonally charged, and perpetually misinformed thirteen-year olds.

"Well, that's not what I heard," one of the girls said, one of the few African-Americans in the calculus class. "I heard Bryce and this guy got into a fistfight, and after trading a few punches, Bryce got knocked around something serious, stumbled in a daze, and then fell into the trashcan." A few laughed at the depiction.

"A friend of a friend told me that this guy actually ran at him with the trash cart, like he was running down the aisles of the supermarket, and knocked him over, and then launched the cart against one of the common area's stone pillars," Drew from French class said. "Hey, Jay," he said, as I made my way to my desk, "what do you think about all this?"

I shrugged. "I'd prefer to reserve judgement."

"You mean to say you don't have any ideas at all as to what happened?"

"None whatsoever," I lied.

And thus it began. There were hundreds of variations about what happened this morning, and by third period physics I was certain I had heard them all, each sounding more incredible than the last. When necessary, I fibbed, successfully feigned ignorance, and told falsehoods, and no one was the wiser. Apparently, no one had actually seen what had happened; Bryce had his back turned to me when I shoved the rolling trashcan towards him, and the chess-playing freshman he was about to beat up had his view blocked. However, stories were circulating of a masked avenger of the student body's oppressed, of a Jedi Knight, and of a ghost. The black cloak featured heavily in all versions, though, and I was glad I had removed it after having washed my hands.

Of course, no one believed anyone, and true to the nature of high school teenagers, they decided to concoct even more ridiculous stories. Personally, I found the whole thing entirely laughable, particularly because the more these stories spun out of hand, the less likely it was that I'd be discovered. That suited me just fine.

Presently, Sketchy and I were continuing to work on the problems Mr. Wolfgang assigned at the beginning of the period. As I punched figures into my graphic calculator, getting results on the rates of acceleration and deceleration of bodies in freefall, I idly fingered my closing pin necklace and considered if there wasn't a mental bridge between skydiving, understanding the physics of skydiving, and doing the math for the physics of bodies in freefall.

Sketchy must have noticed it, because he asked me. "Hey, what's that around your neck? You're always playing with it, and I've meant to ask you since Friday."

"Just a good luck charm."

"You know, I never figured you for the superstitious type," he said. "I never really understood that mumbo-jumbo about not stepping on cracks, crossing the paths of black cats, and going under ladders."

I snickered. "This coming from the guy with the theory on my 'spidey-sense' when it comes to girls checking me out. That's rich."

"Hey, that was based on empirical observation," Sketchy protested, "and the jury's still out. And you know it's true, too."

I opened my mouth to respond, but nothing came out. I had stopped stone cold short.

"Aha! I knew it!" he shouted.

"Mr. Fitterer, please keep it down — this is a class, not the volleyball court," Mr. Wolfgang scowled. Sketchy muttered an apology, and then turned back to face me.

"So, what happened? Tell me about it!"

I shrugged, and just mentioned that I wasn't entirely discounting his theory, although I would continue to have serious doubts. "It just doesn't make sense," I said. "I mean, forget your notepad from Friday — it's probably just a string of... a string of..."

Again, I stopped cold. The tickling sensation had come out of nowhere, and although it was only slight, I still felt it. The feeling was precisely the same as on last Friday's, and if my encounter with Tina was any true indicator of some extrasensory perception relating to being ogled by members of the opposite sex, my observer was trying to be discrete.

"Coincidences?" Sketchy offered.

"Yea," I replied, absentmindedly. "Something along those lines."

My economics class ended up being... well, interesting. Notwithstanding the genuine interest I had in the effects of the demonopolisation of markets and the subsequent drop in prices this caused, the excitement came as a result of Bryce Dickinson's presence in the classroom. People looked in his directions and snickered when he wasn't looking, yet tried their best to look contrite when he glared at them. I could see this morning's events had taken quite a toll on his self-esteem; who knows, maybe he was going through freshman-beat-up withdrawal.