Any sufficiently advanced technology
is indistinguishable from magic.
― Arthur C. Clarke’s third law
“I learned a new magic trick at work.” Rich’s dad let go of the leather steering wheel and stretched his pale right hand toward his son, who sat in the passenger’s seat, clutching his school backpack. “Take my hand, Richy.”
“Dad,” Rich complained. He’d asked his dad not to call him kid names anymore. He gazed out the window at his school, Elko Junior High. The boys and girls scattered around the front of the school, most making their way inside, some staring at his dad’s strange prototype car. It was blue-silver, and despite the military’s intent for it to blend in, it stood out. It was in sports car mode, lowered near the ground, though still a hatchback. It could rise up on the wheels to switch to crossover or sport utility modes. It drew stares like something from fifty years in the future. The other kids all had normal parents with normal cars. Rich considered ignoring his dad’s attempt to show him another failed magic trick. Instead, he turned from gazing out the car window and looked back at his father.
Rich could talk to his dad. He didn’t get nervous and recite numbers to him.
Rich’s father smiled but the smile didn’t reach his blue eyes, which looked damp under his glasses. He looked down and smoothed his Lord of the Rings tie. Great. Rich had made his dad cry by ignoring his outstretched hand.
Rich let go of his backpack and gripped his dad’s hand as if they’d just met and were shaking hands. His dad’s breath released audibly.
“It’s April Fool’s Day. Put your index finger on my watch,” his dad suggested.
Rich rolled his eyes but complied with his father’s request. A magic trick was better than another useless lecture on how to talk to kids at school, better than urging him to practice verbal communication.
Rich reached his index finger forward and touched it to the watch band under his father’s wrist. The band had a rough texture, not metal or plastic. Didn’t his dad usually wear a dark metal watch? He had never seen this particular watch before.
“Ready to be amazed?”
Rich’s green eyes gazed dubiously at his father. He hadn’t been amazed by one of his father’s magic tricks since he was nine. His dad leaned toward him and covered the watch with his left hand.
An electric shock nipped his palm. Not strong, but like putting your tongue on a nine-volt battery. His hand twitched but his dad gripped his hand harder, not letting him pull away.
“That tingling you feel is magic,” his dad explained with a smile that faded into a nervous look behind his glasses. He glanced out the windshield as if someone might be watching and might discover the secret to his magic trick. Rich didn’t think it was much of a trick.
“Isn’t a shocking handshake a gag, not a magic trick?” Rich questioned his dad. He glanced back out the window at the other kids. Only about half as many remained outside the junior high.
“Shock?” His dad raised his eyebrow. He didn’t have wrinkles yet, except when he raised his eyebrows. He seemed confused by the mention of a shock, but then he seemed to comprehend. “No, the shock isn’t the trick, it’s—.”
The school speakers emitted a tone, cutting his dad off and giving the students a five-minute warning to get to homeroom. Rich tried to pull away again, his hand tingling as if asleep.
His father’s grip tightened further. The tingling continued.
“Just a second more,” his father urged, still hiding the watch with his left hand.
“I don’t want to be late for class,” Rich lied. He didn’t want to go to school. Seventh grade was hell, and not just because the eighth graders made it extra painful. He didn’t have a single class with Ally, and she hadn’t talked to him in months. All he had to look forward to was everyone mocking him.
“Magic takes time.” His father seemed unperturbed by the idea of his son being late. The tingling stopped. “And alakazam!” His father removed his hand.
His dad’s bare wrist remained. Where had the watch gone?
“Holy Heck!” Rich’s jaw dropped to the backpack on his lap. His mind tried to comprehend how his dad had made the watch disappear while Rich had his own finger on it and could clearly see his dad’s other hand and all five fingers.
“Pretty good, right?” His dad smiled. Rich hoped his dad wouldn’t get out of the car to do his famous celebration dance. He didn’t. However, his dad’s hands trembled, and Rich could faintly see his glasses shaking. Maybe he was coming down with a fever or something. Except his hand hadn’t felt warm.
“Don’t tell anyone,” his dad said quickly, then slid his fingers nervously through his wavy blond hair before adding, “because I want to perfect it first.”
“Looked perfected to me.”
“And I don’t want anyone to know what to look for, you know, before I show them the trick.”
“Yeah, all right, Dad.” For the first time in years, Rich eyed his dad with the awe of a child.
“Alexa, open Richy’s door.”
“Dad!” He’d called him Richy again.
The prototype’s door auto-opened upwards, and the smell of fresh-cut grass from the schoolyard filled the car. Rich stepped out and swung his backpack over his right shoulder. He couldn’t quite move his left shoulder well, so the one strap over his right shoulder would have to do.
“Oh, and Richy—er Rich—I’m bringing my intern, Mason, home for dinner tonight, so treat him better than last time. And Mrs. Hyfford is coming, too.”
Rich closed his eyes and shook his head. Mason came to dinner once a week, so that didn’t bother him. But why was his shrink coming? That would be a terrible experience. Rich turned and started jogging toward the school doors. He never glanced back at his dad. His father had amazed him. He couldn’t stop thinking about the disappearing watch, but he was going to be late.
“I love you a million, Rich,” his dad shouted out the car window.
Rich gave an exaggerated head nod but did not turn around.
Phearson stretched his long body out in the conference room. His boss ate a pistachio nut as they watched the wall. Every wall in the small room was a screen. On the right wall, the Techroscopic Inc. logo bounced around like a screensaver. On the left wall, the Saris & Sagan logo bounced similarly. The wall in front of them had a large image of the front seat of Mark’s car, showing Mark and his son, Rich.
“Pause video,” Phearson’s enigmatic boss ordered the room with a gruff voice.
“Video paused,” the room’s feminine voice answered. His boss picked up another pistachio nut and cracked open the shell. He looked at the green nut and ate it. He moved his hand toward his round chest as if to brush off the dust from the shells but then glanced down at the dark uniform he was wearing.
“Zoom in on the hands,” Phearson instructed the room.
“Zooming,” the feminine voice responded.
They spent a minute fiddling with the video, trying to see what happened to the watch, but Mark had covered it too well.
“Mark doesn’t know about the hidden camera in his car?” Phearson asked as he scratched his beaked nose.
“He checked the entire car for surveillance equipment and didn’t find anything,” the boss answered.
“How did he miss the camera?” Phearson fiddled with his cufflinks, two fencing swords crossing in an X.
“There wasn’t a camera when he checked. We had his own tech embedded in the corners of the rearview mirror.” He cracked open another pistachio nut and examined it. It wasn’t perfectly green, so he tossed it at the garbage can and missed. “We had only started suspecting he was on to our ulterior motives last week. We had his little creations build the camera for us. Took them four days.”
“Four days? So long?”
“We didn’t have his latest little guys in there. We’ve only been watching him for three days.”
“Are you certain removing Mark is a good idea? He is the founder. The brains behind our operation.” Phearson picked up a paper clip and fiddled with it.
“Don’t tell me how to run this operation,” the boss raised his voice. He calmed down a little before continuing. “I gave the order to prevent what happened today at all costs.”
“You’re a technophobe that nobody at Saris & Sagan agrees with.”
The boss’s face hardened and flushed red. He brushed the five shiny stars on his uniform. “My orders are the orders.”
“I’m a civilian,” Phearson reminded him. Phearson was the only person on the planet who the general allowed to talk to him this way.
“A recruited civilian,” the boss answered as he chewed a perfectly green pistachio nut.
“But,” Phearson started.
“No buts!” his boss shouted. “Do you have a problem with the extra zeros in your bank account?”
“No need to bring the bank account into this. I like Mark, that’s all.” He bent one end of the paper clip so it stuck out at a right angle, imagining it to be a tiny pickaxe.
“I thought high-functioning sociopaths didn’t like.”
“I like eating,” Phearson countered.
“Well, do you like breathing? Because if you do, then you better push your like for Mark aside and get your job done.”
“Have I ever failed to do my job?”
“Once!” the general reminded him of the incident at the airport.
Phearson focused on his boss’s carotid artery, watching the way it moved slightly as he chewed another pistachio nut. Despite his thick neck, Phearson could puncture the carotid with the paper clip and watch his boss bleed out. Of course, cameras hid everywhere. Little small ones that he couldn’t see. He slid the paper clip into his suit pocket.
He had a job to do.
Rich jumped up when the school speakers emitted a tone indicating school had ended. It was Friday, which meant the weekend. Rich headed to his locker. As he walked down the halls, he hoped to see Ally, but her locker was down a different hall. The noise of kids laughing and shouting through the halls contrasted with the silence of those who wore earbuds or stared at their phones.
“Hi, Rich.” Michael Whitehorse, who went by Mike, was the only kid other than Ally who acknowledged Rich. His dad was a half-Navajo who fell for a Mexican girl in college. Michael had joked with their sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Welsch, that he was a Navatino—Navajo and Latino mixed.
“Seven,” Rich responded with the number of times Mike had said hi to him today.
Mike’s locker was next to Rich’s. Rich touched the combination padlock and received a shock of static electricity. The school did have carpet and it had felt charged with static today. Rich hid his combination so Mike couldn’t see it as he unlocked his locker. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Mike, he just didn’t trust anyone. His dad always said nobody outside of the family could be trusted. Nobody.
Rich’s locker held a miniature Millennium Falcon built from Legos on the top shelf. His books were stacked alphabetically on the middle shelf—a custom shelf he’d built from Legos.
Mike smiled at Rich. Why was Mike so nice? Rich almost trusted Mike. He could say “Hi” to someone he trusted, right? Then Mike’s locker opened.
Inside Mike’s locker hung a decades-old movie poster of a young woman, unclothed, with black stars covering less than a bikini would. Mike lived behind an abandoned video rental store. A “For Rent” sign had hung in that building since before Rich was born. Rich had walked by it hundreds of times. The DVD stands were still visible in the windows, filled with encased DVDs, entombed inside as if preserved for all time. Mike once mentioned to Rich that he had found a secret way inside and could watch anything he wanted for free—as long as the movie was made before either of them was born. The racy poster had come from a back room in that store. Rich couldn’t help but notice it every day. He was told to avoid such things at church on Sundays, but how could he avoid something presented to him before school, after school, and between classes? How could Mike be nice, yet like pictures that Rich had been taught were immoral?
No, he couldn’t trust Mike. Not yet.
Watching a movie that wasn’t streamed seemed foreign to Rich. Some people still had massive collections of movies on discs, but he’d never seen a disc in his home. He could just ask Alexa to play any movie he wanted on the digital wall in his guest room.
“See ya,” Mike exclaimed, slamming his locker shut and walking off.
Rich put his English textbook in his locker and reached in to grab his tablet, a prototype from his dad’s work retrofitted with the latest version of Android. The tablet consisted of two seven-inch screens folded together and had the words TabBook—not a genuine brand—etched into the custom 3d printed case. It had two stickers: the Techroscopic Inc. logo and the Saris & Sagan logo. Rich could open it like a book or all the way flat to use both screens as one for 14 inches of 8k pixel real estate, or he could fold it to a ninety-degree angle and use one screen for the image and the other as a digital keyboard. Rich had digital copies of all his textbooks on it, but the school, in its infinite wisdom, refused to let him take his tablet to class, forcing him to carry heavy books and use a pencil to write most of his notes.
Rich had grabbed his tablet from his locker every day for the entire school year without issue, but this time, a static shock sparked at his fingers as he grabbed the tablet. Hadn’t the static in his body just been grounded by contact with his padlock? And the TabBook was supposed to be resistant to static. Strange.
He straightened his Lego Millennium Falcon, closed his locker, and started walking toward the front doors.
“Richy!” he heard a familiar girl’s voice call his name from a distance. Ally was the only person in the world that could call him that without complaint. He grinned at the sound of her voice. However, her tone seemed excited and urgent. “Richy, help!”
Rich turned around, and his eyes found Ally at the other end of the hall. How was it possible they had zero classes together, with a schedule so different that their paths hadn’t crossed this entire second half of the school year?
“Ally?” Rich whispered under his breath, seeing his only friend—once friend—sprinting toward him.
“Danny needs your help.” Ally slowed to a stand, huffing between each word she spoke. She came in close, blocking his vision of anyone but her. Her blonde hair had a hint of brown, darkening as she aged. Had he ever noticed that before? She wore a tight shirt and her protruding chest proved she was well into puberty. Rich wondered, not for the first time, if puberty was why she had stopped hanging out with him.
“Why?” Rich whispered the question. He didn’t have to speak numbers with Ally.
“Kage,” Ally answered. She didn’t need to explain. Everyone knew Kage. He was supposed to be in ninth grade but was held back. He was tall and fat, his size allowing him to bully everyone in school—seventh and eighth graders alike. Nobody liked him. None of the kids understood why the principal hadn’t expelled him yet.
However, knowing what Ally was asking didn’t mean Rich would comply.
Rich shook his head, no.
“But Rich?” Ally begged.
“I don’t fight,” he whispered again.
“You’ve been taking two martial arts classes for years to treat your . . .” she trailed off, glancing at the other kids in the hall, many of whom were now staring at them. They already knew Rich was different, but she’d almost let slip his mental diagnosis. When Shrink Carrol—she hated it when Rich called her that—discovered his mixed martial arts class helped normalize his speaking, she had him join a second class, Taekwondo. His original class was mixed martial arts, focusing on Judo first and Karate second, so now he was learning three distinct styles. Ally, of all people, should remember that his martial arts classes taught him not to fight.
Rich shook his head more firmly this time and stepped back.
“Please. Danny is so small.”
Rich looked at the kids behind Ally, all staring at him.
“How’s Numbers going to help?” Tara, Ally’s raven-haired friend, asked.
Rich looked at Tara. “Three point one four one five nine,” he started reciting Pi. He could recite it to over a hundred decimal points. He could think normally while reciting numbers. He understood that Ally wanted him to stop Kage from bloodying up Danny. He also understood that a bunch of kids were staring at him.
“What is he even saying?” Tara shook her head.
“He’s reciting Pi,” Ally explained.
“What’s Pi?”
“A mathematical constant representing the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter,” Ally answered. “Try paying attention in math class sometime.”
Rich grinned. He loved how smart Ally was.
“Rich.” Ally’s hands touched his face, one palm on each cheek. She put her face close to his so her creamy skin and ocean-blue eyes were all he could see.
Rich stopped reciting Pi. Ally had come back. It had been months, and she’d finally come back to him.
“Hi, Ally.”
“Hi, Richy.” Ally smiled at him, showing her braces with blue rubber bands that matched her eyes. “Will you come with me?”
“Of course,” he answered. He’d go anywhere with Ally. All she had to do was ask.
Ally grabbed his hand and led him through the other school kids, who parted like two magnets repelling each other. She led him past the cafeteria, then through the doors at the back of the school. Rich lifted his eyes from Ally’s feet to look across the grass field to the fence at the back. A lot of kids used it as a shortcut to go home. With his hand in Ally’s, the world felt right again. He didn’t feel love or a crush at the moment, though he did love her. He just felt that with her, everything was fine. Safe. He trusted her. She was his friend. His only friend. No one else had ever been allowed in his house. His dad didn’t trust other kids. But Ally’s mom knew Rich’s parents before his dad started working on secret government contracts.
“You haven’t come over for a long time,” Rich noted to Ally as she pulled him into a jog across the grass field. Why wasn’t she wearing the plastic ring he had given her?
Ally glanced at Rich, slowing and blinking in confusion for a second.
“Just, come on, Rich. Please?” She increased her speed.
Rich nodded and they continued through the opening in the fence toward the back of the restaurants a block away.
They entered the fight zone. If there was ever a fight after school, it happened behind the restaurants. A couple dozen kids stood by the dumpsters, and a few more stood near the back of the restaurants, gathering into a fight audience. The fragrant delicious smells of the restaurants were already fighting with the off-putting dumpster scents.
“Hi, Rich,” Michael Whitehorse nodded.
“Eight,” Rich responded.
Kage stood on the hot asphalt in the center of the crowd.
Two of Kage’s goons, Big Bobby and Kayzee, held a third kid’s arms, dragging him toward Kage. They threw the boy—Danny—at Kage’s feet.
“Danny!” Kage made a fist in his right hand and pounded it against his left palm, doing his best to frighten the little seventh-grade boy.
Rich didn’t want to watch this. He let go of Ally’s hand and stepped back. He felt all the faces looking at Danny—too many faces.
“One, two, three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen, seventeen,” Rich began counting using prime numbers. Most mathematicians didn’t think the number one was a prime, but his dad said mathematicians made up rules like that on a whim, and his dad disagreed with them vehemently, so when not in math class, Rich always started with one. “Nineteen, twenty-three, twenty-nine.”
Ally grabbed Rich’s arm, but he ignored her and kept reciting prime numbers, so she let go. She stepped into the center of the crowd, putting herself between Danny and Kage. She put her palm toward Kage, the universal sign to stop. Rich’s eyes barely registered her actions.
Kage stopped for a second. Rich couldn’t get his thoughts together. He could hear Ally yelling but couldn’t process what she was saying.
Danny tried to back up, but Kayzee shoved him forward. He stumbled, colliding with Ally’s back. Danny, a head shorter than Ally, grabbed around her waist to keep from falling. A bunch of kids laughed.
Kage grabbed Ally’s outstretched hand and growled, “Stay out of it.” He yanked Ally’s arm and threw her toward the crowd of kids by the dumpsters.
Rich’s mind cleared.
Rich sprinted forward as Kage approached Danny, who shook in fear and tried to back away. Kayzee moved behind Danny to push him again. Kage threw his fist forward.
Rich caught Kage’s fist, altered its direction to the right, and used its momentum to throw Kage past Danny and into Kayzee. Kage fell on top of Kayzee, who shouted out in pain. Kage rolled to one knee, then looked at his elbow. A circular scrape started out pink, then blood oozed out of all the tiny pores at once, and a second later, a drop of blood fell from the point of his elbow and hit the pavement with a quarter-sized splat.
“Don’t touch her!” Rich stated forcefully.
“He didn’t speak in numbers?” By the dumpsters, one kid’s mouth dropped open.
“I thought he could only say numbers?” added a carrot-top girl shrugging by the Chinese restaurant walls.
The crowds started murmuring around Rich.
“Shut up, Numbers!” Kage shouted. He clenched his teeth as he took in an angry breath, then released it with a threat, “I’m going to make you bleed!”
Kage charged Rich. He didn’t run directly at him, but instead, ran just to the side and raised his arm to clothesline him. Rich ducked, grabbed Kage’s arm, and threw it behind him, twisting Kage’s overweight body as he lumbered forward. Kage lost his balance and hit the asphalt again in an uncontrolled spinning roll that left him spread out on his back.
Kage lifted his knees and used them to help twist his obese body onto his stomach. He stood, his face now as red as his stubble-cut hair.
Kayzee grabbed Rich from behind. He wrapped his arms around Rich’s and held him in place.
“Now, you’re going to get it,” Kage rushed forward, fist low.
Rich flexed his stomach as hard as he could.
Kage’s fist hit Rich in the stomach so hard it knocked both Rich and Kayzee back. The punch hurt, but not nearly as much as it would have hurt had he not been flexing.
Kage side-swinged his right fist at Rich’s head. Rich ducked and twisted. His sudden movement pulled Kayzee forward, placing his head where Rich’s had been. Kage’s fist hit Kayzee in the joint of his jaw, just below his ear. The bully’s minion let go of Rich and collapsed without even crying out. Kage had blacked him out with that punch.
Using his palm, not his fist, Rich punched Kage in the sternum as hard as he could. Kage didn’t move. Instead, Rich moved backward. Rich had learned to spar at both his weekly martial arts classes, and while he’d learned a lot, you can’t learn size. Kage’s towering frame gave him a significant advantage. He needed to stay out of Kage’s reach.
Kage wised up, however, and no longer charged Rich. He didn’t dare move close, making it difficult for Rich to use Judo. The failed palm punch proved Kage was too big for Rich’s basic Karate strikes to be effective. Kage stood almost a foot taller, making Taekwondo ineffective as well. Rich’s high kicks, a more recently acquired skill than Judo or Karate, would probably only reach Kage’s shoulders.
Kage repeatedly extended his arms, trying to grab Rich, who easily dodged. Kage didn’t overextend himself, though, so Rich couldn’t use the bully’s momentum against him. How long could he keep this up? He decided to let Kage think he had hold of him.
Kage grabbed with his right hand, and Rich gave him his left arm and moved forward, even before the bully tugged him close. Rich twisted his forearm and slapped at Kage’s wrist with his other hand, pulling his own wrist through Kage’s thumb, freeing it. He ducked under Kage’s swinging left arm, then punched Kage just below his left eye. Kage swung his left elbow back. Rich tried to block it, but it moved through his arm and connected with his forehead, causing Rich to stagger back. Pain immediately throbbed throughout his skull from the impact. Had he ever received as hard of a blow while sparring in his martial arts classes?
As Rich stepped back, he found Kage rushing him. He dodged, but Kage snagged the bottom of his T-shirt. Kage punched him in the back of the head. As Rich twisted away, the bottom five inches of his T-shirt ripped all the way around, and a long piece of cloth came off in Kage’s hand. Rich used the spin, turning it into a kick. His foot hit Kage’s shoulder and knocked the bully to the side but didn’t do much damage.
The noise of the kids’ shouts echoed in Rich’s throbbing head.
“Numbers! Numbers!” the other kids chanted. It bothered him that Ally joined the chant. She never called him Numbers.
They used to mock him with that nickname. Now, they cheered him on with it. Nobody had ever cheered for him before. Sure, his parents had, but they didn’t count. His peers had never cheered for him like this, and it gave him courage.
Suddenly, Rich didn’t care about Kage’s size. He kept after Kage and followed the high shoulder kick with a lower kick to the back of the bully’s knee. He could have kicked the side of the knee—and considered it for a fleeting second—but Kage didn’t need to be crippled in eighth grade with a cheap shot, even if he was a bully. Still, the kick brought Kage to his knees. Rich grabbed around the bully’s neck, putting him in a headlock, hoping to get him to tap out. That, however, was a mistake. Kage hadn’t taken a martial arts class. Did he not even know that he could tap out? If not, Rich’s move meant this fight had gone from a school beatdown to a true life-or-death situation.
Despite Rich hanging from his neck, Kage stood to his feet and threw himself backward. With Kage’s body about to come down on him, Rich let go, hoping to move out of the way, but Kage grabbed his lower leg. Rich’s back hit the asphalt. The back of his head hit it next. Then Kage’s entire weight fell on Rich’s chest, squishing the air from his lungs. His head spun. He tried to breathe but couldn’t. The hot asphalt felt uncomfortable underneath him. Panic took him. He couldn’t move, not even after Kage rolled off him. Kage’s first fist hit Rich in the face. Rich was lucky. The punch was a crawling, slow punch that hit him high on the side of his head, allowing his neck to turn, removing what little power the punch had. Rich still couldn’t breathe, but he covered his head with his arms as Kage climbed on top of him, hitting him a second time harder. The next punches would not be lacking in power. A second later, he felt those hard punches hitting his arms.
Finally, Rich’s breath came back, and he sucked in the much-needed air even as he protected his head from Kage’s fists. He could taste blood near his right molars, so at least one punch had connected on that side.
The other kids stopped chanting, or perhaps he couldn’t hear them anymore.
Rich had practiced this position in his mixed martial arts class many times. An entire kata—set of martial arts moves—had been dedicated to this position. Palm to nose. Face rake. Slap with other hand. Thrust hips up. Raise knee to groin and twist. He just needed to time the kata perfectly.
Rich took the next punch on his upper arm, protecting his ear.
Now.
Rich shot his left palm up and connected with Kage’s nose. With the same hand, he raked down Kage’s face. He swung his right hand, palm open, and the slap twisted Kage’s face to the side. He thrust up with his hips just enough to raise his knee into Kage’s groin and tilt him to the side. The overweight bully toppled, freeing Rich to twist the other way.
He could have kept rolling to escape, but he didn’t.
Rich jumped on top of Kage, taking the same position Kage had trapped him in a moment before. Kage’s eyes looked up in a mix of anger and fear. Kage wrapped his arms around his head to protect himself as Rich punched and punched again. Kage struggled to protect his overgrown head from Rich’s smaller fists. Had anybody ever fought back against Kage like this?
Rich’s right fist slipped through, connecting with Kage’s left cheek high, near his eye. He might have hurt his own knuckles more than he hurt Kage’s face.
Rich heard a loud noise, but it wasn’t the kids chanting his belittling nickname. He glanced up to see them scattering, most sprinting away. It took long seconds for Rich to register the siren blaring.
Two big hands lifted Rich off Kage. He didn’t fight the large adult hands but instead went slack as if the hands were those of his sensei, ending his sparring match. Those hands turned him around, and he found himself looking into his uncle’s eyes. His mom’s younger brother had joined the police force just last year. His name was Randall, but he always told Rich he could call him Uncle R.
“Rich,” his uncle said his name, trying to put his face close to Rich’s to block everyone else out. “What’s happening? Why are you fighting? Today of all days. Between what happened and now this, you might put your mother into premature labor!” Uncle R shook his head.
His uncle had tears in his eyes. Those tears hit Rich. Fighting was wrong. He shouldn’t have done it, but it hadn’t been his fault.
Looking around his uncle’s face, Rich noticed that neither Danny nor Ally had fled. Ally had her hands up near her mouth in a surprised pose. She no longer wore the plastic ring he’d given her from the quarter machine. His look turned into a glare. She’d made him fight. It was her fault. “Three point one four one five nine,” Rich began reciting Pi at Ally.
“Rich?” Ally questioned.
Ally was the one person outside his immediate family he had always trusted. Until now.
“Two, six, five, three,” he continued reciting Pi’s decimals at Ally.
He’d never spoken numbers to Ally before, at least not while looking at her directly. But she’d brought him to this fight.
Ally blinked at him, then turned to Rich’s uncle. “Richy was defending Danny,” she tried to explain.
“I’m not here for the fight,” his uncle responded, glancing at Ally. “That’s not important now.” He turned back to Rich. His uncle moved his face close to his, trying to block everything else from his vision. Shrink Carrol had taught them that, but Rich wasn’t having it. He continued reciting Pi.
“Rich, you need to come with me. Something’s happened. You need to come home with me now.”
“Is his mom having the baby?” Ally asked on Rich’s behalf while he kept reciting Pi.
“No,” he answered. “Rich, it’s your dad, he . . .” his uncle didn’t finish.