UnSouled Page 17

Page 17

 

  “As you said, you’re paid in full,” Proctor says. “Nothing more is needed at this time. It was a pleasure to have Camp Red Heron here, and I hope to see you next summer. ” Although both of them know that’s the last thing he wants.

  As Proctor leaves, his legs a little wobbly, he realizes something. The picture of his daughter that seemed to have vanished during their conversation has now appeared in his shirt pocket. As he gazes at it, tears come to his eyes. Rather than feeling anger, he feels gratitude. Gratitude that he was not so much of a fool as to bring harm to her or to her brother.

  15 • Starkey

  “Don’t move,” Bam says. “If this stuff gets in your eyes, it burns like you can’t believe. ”

  It’s after dark at the campsite now. Starkey sits in a lawn chair, his head leaning back. One kid holds a bucket of water; another kid is ready with towels. Bam, wearing rubber gloves, smears a sharp-smelling solution into Starkey’s hair, massaging it into his scalp, all beneath the collective spotlight of four other kids holding flashlights.

  “Can you believe it? The guy actually tried to blackmail us,” Starkey tells Bam, closing his eyes.

  “I wish I could have seen his face when you turned it around on him. ”

  “It was classic—and it proves that our backup plan works. ”

  “Jeevan deserves a medal,” says one of the flashlights.

  “But Whitney took the picture,” says the kid with the water bucket.

  “But Jeevan thought of it. ”

  “Hey,” says Starkey. “I didn’t ask either of you. ”

  Actually, it was Starkey who decided to put Jeevan in charge of intelligence. He’s a smart kid with computer know-how who’s good at thinking ahead. It’s true that it was Jeevan’s idea to gather information on the people they deal with—but what to do with that information is entirely up to Starkey. In this case blackmail for blackmail was the right move, and the man caved, just as Starkey had known he would. Even the hint of harm to his precious children was too much for the man. Incredible. It never ceases to amaze Starkey how far society will go to protect the children it loves and to discard the ones it doesn’t.

  “So where do we go now?” asks the kid with the towel. Starkey opens one eye, because the other one is already starting to sting. “It’s not for you to worry about. You’ll know when we get there. ”

  As leader of the Stork Club, Starkey had learned the art of information control. Unlike Connor—who held nothing back when he ran the Graveyard—Starkey metes out information in bite-sized rations and only when absolutely necessary.

  Since their plane crashed in the Salton Sea almost three weeks ago, things have not been easy for the Stork Club. Not at first anyway. Those first days, they hid out in the bare mountains above the Salton Sea, finding shallow caves and crevices to huddle in, so they couldn’t be seen by reconnaissance aircraft. Starkey knew a ground search would be mounted, which meant they had to get far away, but they could travel only at night and on foot.

  He had not thought of how to provide food or shelter or first aid for the kids who were injured in the crash, and they resorted to ransacking roadside convenience stores, which kept giving away their position to the authorities.

  It was a trial by fire for Starkey, but he came through the flames, and thanks to him they remained alive and uncaptured. He kept those kids safe in his fist, in spite of his shattered hand. His hand is now the kind of war wound that legends are made of and has brought him even greater respect, because if he was tough enough to break his own hand in order to save them, he’s tough enough to do anything.

  In Palm Springs, they came across a hotel that had shut down but had not yet been demolished, and their fortune began to change. The place was isolated enough that they could hole up there and take the time to come up with a survival plan more effective than stripping 7-Elevens to the bone.

  Starkey began to send kids out in small teams, choosing kids who didn’t have an innately suspicious look about them. They stole clothes from unattended laundry rooms and groceries right from supermarket loading docks.

  They stayed there for almost a week, until some local kids spotted them. “I’m a stork, too,” one of the kids said. “We won’t tell on you; we swear. ”

  But Starkey has never trusted kids who come from loving families. He has a particular dislike of storks whose adoptive parents love them like their own flesh and blood. Starkey knows the basic statistics of unwinding. He knows that 99 percent of all storked kids are in warm loving homes, where unwinding would never be an issue. But when you’re in that remaining 1 percent, and you’re surrounded by other throwaway kids, those loving homes seem too distant to matter.

  Then Jeevan came up with a stroke of genius. He tapped into the bank account of the Stork Clubs’ parents—because quite a few of the kids either knew, or could figure out, their adoptive parents’ passwords. The operation went down all at once, with a few computer clicks—and by the time anyone knew what was going on, the Stork Club had amassed more than seventeen thousand dollars in an offshore account. Accessing it was as simple as linking a counterfeit ATM card.

  “Somebody somewhere is investigating this,” Jeevan told Starkey. “In the end it won’t lead them to us, though. It will lead them to Raymond Harwood. ”

  “Who’s Raymond Harwood?” Starkey had asked.

  “A kid who used to pick on me in middle school. ”

  That had made Starkey laugh. “Jeevan, have I ever told you that you’re a criminal genius?”

  He hadn’t seemed too comfortable with the thought. “Well, I’ve been told I’m a genius . . . . ”

  Starkey often wonders why Jeevan’s parents would choose to unwind a kid so bright—but it’s an unspoken rule that you just don’t ask.

  The money gave the storks a little bit of freedom, because money buys legitimacy. All they needed was a simple subterfuge—an illusion that no one would question—and if there’s one thing that Starkey knows as an amateur magician, it’s the art of illusion. Misdirection. Every magician knows that an audience will always follow the hand that moves and will always believe what is presented to the eye until there’s a reason not to.

  Camp Red Heron was Starkey’s own brainstorm. All it took to make the illusion real was an order of 130 camp T-shirts, staff shirts, and a few matching hats as icing on the cake. As Camp Red Heron, they were able to travel on trains and even charter buses, because the illusion ran on the power of assumption. People saw a camp on a field trip, and it became part of their reality without a second thought. Ironically, the more boisterous, the more visible they were, the more powerfully the illusion held. Even if people were watching a news report about the band of fugitive Unwinds, Camp Red Heron could march right past them, loud and obnoxious, and no one—not even law enforcement—would bat an eye. Who knew that hiding in plain sight could be so gratifying?

  The first order of business was getting out of Southern California to a place where the authorities would not be searching for them. Having had enough desert for a lifetime, Starkey deemed that they take the Amtrak north to greener, lusher pastures. At their first campsite, near Monterey, they had no trouble whatsoever. Then they continued north, reserving their space at Redwood Bluff. All had gone well until today—but even so, today’s crisis was easily managed.

  Bam finishes rinsing the bleaching solution out of Starkey’s hair, and the towel boy hurries to dry it.

  “So, if the campground manager squeals, will you really hurt one of his kids?” Bam asks.

  Starkey is annoyed that she’s asked such a question in front of the flashlights, the towel, and the water bucket.

  “He won’t squeal,” Starkey says, tousling his hair.

  “But if he does?”

  He turns to the towel kid. He’s one of the younger groupies who’s always trying to win Starkey’s favor. “What do I always say?”

  The kid takes on a terrified pop-quiz look. “Uh .
. . smoke and mirrors?”

  “Exactly! It’s all smoke and mirrors. ”

  That’s the only answer he gives Bam—and even the answer is a foggy deflection, a nonanswer that avoids the question. Would he hurt them? Although Starkey would rather not think about it, he knows he’ll do whatever is necessary to protect his storks. Even if it means making an example of someone.

  “Speaking of mirrors, have a look,” Bam says, and hands him a mirror that she tore off the side of someone’s car.

  It’s hard to get a full view of himself—he keeps having to shift the mirror to catch the entire visual effect. “I like it,” he says.

  “You look good as a platinum blond,” she tells him. “Very surfer dude. ”

  “Yeah, but surfer dude doesn’t exactly inspire trust from adults,” Starkey points out. “Cut it. Make it short and neat. I want to look like an Eagle Scout. ”

  “You’ll never be an Eagle Scout, Starkey,” she says with a grin, and some of the other kids laugh. It actually hurts, although he won’t show it. He first got interested in magic when he was younger because of its value as a Boy Scout merit badge. Funny how things change.

  “Just do it, Bambi,” he says. Which makes her scowl, as he intended. The other kids know not to laugh at her actual given name, lest they face her formidable wrath.

  When Bam is done, Starkey could pass for the boy next door when he smiles, or a Hitler Youth when he doesn’t. His scalp still stings from the bleaching solution, but it’s not a bad feeling. “You know, I’m not the only one who needs to change identities,” he tells Bam, after the other kids have left.

  She laughs. “Nobody’s touching my hair. ”

  Bam has hair just short enough to be low maintenance. Her clothes are mannish, but only because she detests prissiness. Once and only once she made a pass at Starkey, but it was quickly deflected. Another girl might have folded and turned painfully awkward around him, but Bam took it in stride and carried on. Even if Starkey had been attracted to her, he knows acting on it would have been a bad idea. He’s not foolish enough to think that a relationship here in the relative wild will last, and adding that kind of complication to his relationship with his second in command would be foolhardy. As for other girls, the fact that he can have any girl he wants is a perk of his position he knows he must apply with careful discretion. He gives the same eye contact, the same lingering smile to every girl—and even to the boys that he can tell have an interest. It’s all part of his subtle control. Keep them all thinking they’re special. That they can be more than just a face in the crowd. These little touches carry big weight. The illusion of hope, combined with a healthy fear of him, keeps all his storks in line.

  “I don’t mean changing your identity, Bam,” Starkey says. “I mean our identity. This guy did figure out who we are. To be safe, we can’t be Camp Red Heron anymore. ”

  “We could be a school—that way it won’t just get us through the rest of the summer, but will work once the school year starts too. ”