Dread Locks #1: The U.S. Army and Economic Development, 1787-1860 (Dark Fusion, Band 1) - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Neal Shusterman is an award-winning author and screenwriter.  He lives in Southern California with his four children.

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IF LOOKS cOuLD KILL…

“So…you’re not going out with her again?”

“No,” was all he said, and offered no explanation. But now I was curious. I remembered what she had done to my friends Dante and Freddy, picking them apart and putting them back together with her words.

“Why?” I asked. “What did she say to you?”

“She didn’t say anything. It was the way she looked at me.”

I shrugged. “So? She looks at everyone like that.”

But Ernest shook his head. “No…not the way she looked at me.” He glanced down at his tray for a moment, then back up at me. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

I looked down, too, because I didn’t want to meet those cold eyes. Instead I caught sight of his hand on the table. Just like the tone of his voice, and the look of his eyes, there was something strange about his hand, too. Not just his hand, but his skin in general. The awful flickering fluorescent lights in the cafeteria did have a tendency to paint everyone in morgue-tones, but even so, Ernest’s skin didn’t look right. Not so much pale, as gray. Like dolphin skin. Maybe he’s sick, I thought. Maybe it has nothing to do with Tata.

OTHER SPEAK BOOKS

nEAL SHuSTERmAn

darkfusion                                                            BOOK1

DREAD LOCKS

speak

An Imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

For Eric and Jan,
may your midnight buffet plate always be full

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Dread Locks would not have been possible without the support and contributions of quite a few people:

Eric Elfman, whose crucial creative input helped to mold many key chapters; Jean Feiwel, for giving me the first shot with this story; Tonya Martin, for her insightful early editorial work; Easton Royce, for knowing when it’s time for a pseudonym to go away; Andrea Brown, for believing in the Dark Fusion series and bringing it to my market; my assistant, Janine Black, for her tireless efforts running interference and keeping me on task; my kids, who have become so good at critiquing stories, it’s scary.

And finally, Stephanie Owens Lurie, who has shepherded me from the very beginning of my career. I couldn’t hope for a better editor or friend.

I’ve been thinking about it a lot. It seems all I can do these days is think, playing the events over and over again in my mind until I’m numb. I see all the ways it could have turned out differently. How the nightmare could have been avoided, and the deaths—all the deaths—would never have happened.

You have to understand I never intended to be a part of Tara’s cruelty. I just couldn’t help myself. I couldn’t resist, and if you knew her, you wouldn’t be able to resist either. I have to believe that it wasn’t just my weakness, but a power dark and devious, as irresistible as gravity. I have to believe that, or I’ll lose my mind. I can’t lose that, you see—it’s the only thing I have left…

Table of Contents

1

MY LIFE as a STaTue

There was never anything wrong with my life. Perhaps that was the problem. That was the flaw—the crack into which Tara slid like rainwater into a sidewalk fracture, freezing and thawing again and again, widening the crack with each frost. The crack in my life was the fact that I had everything I wanted, or could ever want—and when you have it all, boredom grows like a fungus, coating everything you own and everything you feel.

“You’re just a spoiled brat,” my older brother, Garrett, would tell me. Him, with his Rolex watch and his designer clothes. Him, with a Lexus in the driveway for his sixteenth birthday. The sad thing is, he was right. By the time I was fourteen, I had a DVD collection that would rival the neighborhood video store. I had three bikes: mountain, racing, and trick And I knew that whether I wanted one or not, there would be a Lexus in the driveway for me one day, too.

No, there was nothing wrong with my life. But then again, everything was wrong.

On my fifteenth birthday, I came to realize that the expression spoiled rotten meant exactly that. We kids were the apples of our parents’ eyes, and I, for one, was rotting from the inside out.

I was looking forward to my birthday—I mean, who doesn’t. That was when I cared what I would get. That was when I cared, period. I came running down the stairs that morning, like it was Christmas. My parents were already up. In my family, presents never waited; they were there upon waking. Our family has a problem with what they call delayed gratification. We want what we want when we want it, and we always want it now. So birthday presents never waited until afternoon, or even until after breakfast.

The gift was hard to miss. It was this huge box almost four feet tall and wrapped with a giant red ribbon, sitting smack in the middle of the living room.

“Mine, mine, mine!” yelled my little sister, Katrina. Everything was hers, hers, hers. She was eight, but got attention by acting like she was four.

“Katrina, it’s Parker’s birthday, not yours,” Mom said patiently.

“It’s bigger than my present was,” Katrina complained, “and don’t tell me that size doesn’t matter, because you got mad at Dad that time your anniversary diamond was too small.”

Dad chuckled uncomfortably. Mom sighed.

“Maybe you’ll get something as big for your next birthday,” Dad offered.

“Christmas,” demanded Katrina. “Christmas is sooner.”

Garrett, whose bed hair looked like something out of a bad science-fiction movie, threw up his hands like my birthday was an imposition on his life. “Can we just get on with this already?”

I looked at the box on the table, trying to take it slow, relishing the mystery. I had no idea what it was. I had dropped hints that I wanted a motocross bike, but this box wasn’t the right shape.

“Go on, open it,” said Dad.

I tugged the end of the huge ribbon like a rip cord, and the bow pulled open. As it did, the sides of the box, which weren’t actually attached, fell away to reveal a metallic shape inside. It took a moment to realize what it was.

It was me.

“Well, what do you think?” asked Mom.

What did I think? I wasn’t quite thinking yet—I was still trying to take it in. It was a three-foot bronze sculpture of me holding a basketball, ready to shoot. The thing looked like the top of a giant trophy—like the MVP trophy I had gotten on my basketball team the year before, but with my face.

“It’s something, isn’t it!” Dad said proudly.

“I don’t play basketball anymore,” I reminded them.

Dad threw me an irritated glare. “You did when we commissioned the artist to sculpt it.”

“This year we thought we’d get you something that would last,” Mom said. “Something you could pass on to your children.”

I had no idea why my future children would want a sculpture of me shooting hoops. What do you say to a present like that?

“Cool,” I...