The Rule of Won Read online

  THE RULE OF WON

  STEFAN PETRUCHA

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Stefan Petrucha

  Imprint

  Dedicated fondly to all of us who, despite the

  evidence, still expect the world to be exactly like

  what we picture in our heads . . .

  “Some of my cousins who had the great advantage of University education used to tease me with arguments to prove that nothing has any existence except what we think of it. The whole creation is but a dream; all phenomena are imaginary. You create your own universe as you go along. The stronger your imagination, the more variegated your universe. When you leave off dreaming, the universe ceases to exist. These amusing mental acrobatics are all right to play with. They are perfectly harmless and perfectly useless. I warn my younger readers only to treat them as a game.”

  —Winston Churchill

  PROLOGUE

  “Garish.”

  It was a word Alyssa Skinson had liked ever since she’d first heard it. It was what some old woman called the flowers at Alyssa’s mother’s funeral.

  “Garish”—something that wanted to be lovely but was trying way too hard.

  Like Alyssa, right now. Tightly wrapped in the old pink and green leggings Mom had knitted for her when she was nine, her legs pointed out over the roof edge. They were straight and lean and brightly colored. Her old yellow dress shoes sparkled on her feet like flames, making the leggings look like two burning birthday candles.

  So . . . why not make a wish?

  She looked around.

  At her old house (silly to say because it was newer than this place) the night sky always held secret patches of color: blues, purples, greens. She’d even seen a moon-bow once, a night rainbow, so dim it didn’t reflect in the pool. Here, though, the Screech Neck haze made everything gray. Even the stars looked sickly.

  Why not wish for color?

  She scrunched her face, forming an image in her head. When nothing happened, she tried harder. She tried so hard, she pressed her legs against the swollen gutters, making a stream of brown rainwater roll along her calves, darkening the leggings. Thick drops gathered on the heels of her yellow shoes and tumbled to the dry grass below.

  “What’re you doing?”

  A shadow stood inside the dormer, gray as the town of Screech Neck, the ceiling light behind it as sickly as this poor little city’s stars. She tried to ignore the shadow, but it leaned out of the darkness and became flesh and blood, pointy nose and square shoulders, curly hair and hazel eyes that looked like Mom’s.

  “What do you think you’re doing out there, Alyssa?” Ethan asked.

  She wanted to answer, but talking to her older brother was hard lately. He’d changed. He didn’t even put on his sneakers the same way. He used to slip his feet in and out with the laces still tied. Now he carefully untied and tied them, like he was afraid of ruining them.

  “You’ll catch pneumonia.”

  He used to work an hour a day training at his martial arts, showing off his high kicks and fast punches. Now that they couldn’t afford classes, he hadn’t even unpacked his trophies.

  “Dad’ll have a fit.”

  He wasn’t as smart as he used to be either. He used to read two or three books at a time, not just the same one over and over and over. It was like the move here had dulled him the same way it had dulled the sky.

  “I’m looking for the aurora borealis,” she said.

  “Ha. It’s like a million miles north. You have to be in Alaska. Or England.”

  “Stars are farther, and you can see them.”

  “The angle’s wrong.”

  “If I keep wishing, it could happen.”

  That, he didn’t challenge. He didn’t dare, because of that book. Instead, he quietly poked his head farther out and they both stared at the sky awhile.

  Was it really since the move that he’d changed? Or since he’d read The Rule of Won?

  “It really can’t happen, you know,” Alyssa finally said, annoyed to have to contradict her own game. “You believe that book too much. It’s just words.”

  He smiled like he knew it all. “They’re the only words that can explain what you do.”

  “It’s just a game. It’s not like I’ve done anything impossible, like make something fly,” she said with a sigh.

  “I bet you could. I bet you could make something fly. You could probably even get Dad his old job back if you didn’t like home schooling so much.”

  Her face turned red. “That’s not fair! I could not!” she cried. “And besides, I miss the academy, too, Ethan, but I think Dad’s happier now.”

  “At half the salary? Losing our house? Look where we wound up. You think he likes Screech Neck? Do you think anyone does?”

  “After Mom died, he thought it was more important for him to be around us. It was a good decision. And I couldn’t change any of it even if I wanted to.”

  He pursed his lips. “You got the electricity to come on.”

  That again.

  When they had first moved into this small “fixer-upper,” they had had candles for light and bags of ice in coolers for the milk, eggs, and butter. The power company had said it’d be weeks before they could get someone out to fix the line. Technically they weren’t even allowed to be living there, but Dad thought it’d be like camping. It wasn’t. When the sun set, each room stacked with unpacked boxes, it was more like being buried in a cardboard tomb.

  So, just to make herself feel better, Alyssa drew a picture of her new home the way she wanted it to be, all neat and brightly lit. A few hours after she finished, the lights flickered on and the refrigerator hummed. It seemed the house had come to life just because she’d wanted it to.

  Which is what Ethan thought had happened.

  She kind of liked the idea when she thought he was playing, but that was before she realized how serious he was, how so much of what he believed was right out of that book.

  “You’re so stupid, Ethan. The power company just fixed it early.”

  He ignored the insult. “What about Sam, your lost stuffed bear? You drew a picture of that, too, didn’t you?”

  Her eyes narrowed. She’d hidden that picture. “You went through my things.”

  “Well?”

  “I talked to Aunt Sarah about it on the phone after I drew the picture. It made her look for it again in Mom’s stuff, and she found it and sent it to me.”

  “Liar. You didn’t call her.”

  “I did. I swear!”

  Ignoring her vow, Ethan pulled himself inside, turning back into a shadow.

  “You’ll still draw the pictures I ask for?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Yes.”

  He grunted and vanished, probably to his room to work on his notes for the big after-school meeting tomorrow with all the other people who read The Rule of Won over and over and over.

  She didn’t mind helping him, even if it was stupid. Maybe if she helped him, he’d go back to being a little more like the way he was. Not so angry. Not so… garish.

  Alyssa sat there a while, in her wet leg warmers, trying as hard as she could to see some color in the gray. But her legs were cold, the
re was grit in the fabric, and the memory of her brother’s voice buzzed like a bee in her head.

  The spell broken, she sighed and went inside.

  1

  As a proud self-avowed slacker, I’ve actually been accused of being un-American, but the fact is I just don’t want anything badly enough to have to work for it. Stuff? Nope, got some. Riches? Thanks but no thanks. Power? Not unless I can fly. Love? Well, you never really own love, do you?

  To my mind this attitude, despite popular belief, is not an indication of laziness but evidence of a higher state of being. I feel I’ve achieved a near-perfect state. Here I am, Caleb Dunne, scruffy hair, brown eyes, lousy dresser, just sixteen—at peace with practically everything.

  It turns out, though, there’s a problem with this way of being. When you don’t want anything yourself, all sorts of people pop out of the woodwork to want things for you. Spiritually speaking, this can be a pain. In my case, ever since an ugly incident last January, the following flies were in my buttermilk and would not shoo:

  Mom wanted me to get a job.

  Grandpa Joey wanted me to get a good swift kick in the ass.

  My math teacher, Mr. Eldridge, wanted me to start thinking seriously about college.

  Mrs. Ditellano, my creative writing teacher, wanted me to “float” along the river of my “deep self” to discover my “true purpose.” That might be kind of pleasant if it didn’t sound so much like drowning.

  Even Dr. Wyatt, principal of Screech Neck High, was in on it. He wasn’t so interested in me finding my true purpose in life, though, and instead wanted me…

  “off the streets”

  “away from decent folk”

  before I did some

  “real damage.”

  (I think that’s sort of like a poem, which may be like floating, but I’m not sure. I’ll have to ask Mrs. D.)

  Last but in no way least, of course, was my go-getting girlfriend, the slight, hyperenergetic Vicky Bainbridge, who wanted me to have “grounding.” Vicky B is the opposite of a slacker, always working on something: selling handmade cards in elementary school, volunteering at an ad agency in middle school, now running for public office (student body president) in high school. The yin to my yang, she completed me the way others might complete a midterm algebra exam (more on that later).

  The morning Vicky spelled out her expectations for me, we stood in a poorly lit hallway of Screech Neck High School, just before classes began. She had a “Vote Vicky” button pinned on the chest of a tight green shirt. Beneath the bold words was a color photo of her pretty, perky face. Both the real Vicky and her button smiled with equal enthusiasm.

  Only one of them spoke.

  “The Rule of Won, Caleb. It’ll change your life if you work at it. And, let’s face it, you need grounding—badly,” Vicky said. “So you’ll go?”

  It wasn’t a question really, more a demand. She rapped her long nails, painted with tiger stripes, against the tile wall, waiting for me to say yes.

  I, of course, wanted to say no, especially since she’d used the “w” word, “work.” I wanted to explain how, historically, mankind’s work ethic is pretty new, and IMHO, has yet to prove itself. I prefer the ancient Greeks, who thought it better to laze around philosophizing while some other poor slobs built the temples and farmed the crops. They believed the more leisure time you had to contemplate life, the better a person you became. And I was out to be the best person I could possibly be.

  But here she was with her big grin, her straw-blond hair, and her shapely green shirt, insisting otherwise.

  It wasn’t always this way. Once, for better or worse, I was left to my own devices. That is, before that fateful day last January.

  It was a snowy afternoon during winter break, and with Mom working overtime at the mall, as usual, and GP Joey taking up the couch in our small apartment, as usual, things at home were painfully boring. So I was out braving the cold, doing what I do best, wandering aimlessly, when I reached the grounds of Screech Neck High.

  SNH, built in 1935 and looking every bit its age, is shaped like a broken T. About a decade ago, it was a total T, but the wing containing the gym and a couple of classrooms collapsed during a major storm. Just last year they finally, finally found the money to fix it.

  Having jack else to do, I slipped through the chain-link fence surrounding the construction area to check it out. Frozen dirt crunched underfoot as I climbed a small hill for a good view. I was thinking it was pretty cool. The big sheets of plastic covering the tall windows flapped in the cold wind, letting out little wisps of that new gym smell.

  But then the wacky Fates decided to mess with me. With an ungodly loud creak, like the rusty hinges on a giant-size door opening, the roof and the whole side wall collapsed, bringing down scaffolding and bricks and cinder blocks and wood and letting loose a major cloud of crap that billowed and rushed toward me. Before I could even think of moving, I was covered in junk and coughing concrete dust.

  I was still coughing when I heard the sirens. The crash had tripped some alarm, and the police were on their way. There was yours truly, trespassing, covered in dust. I felt like a kid about to be caught with his hand in the cookie jar, only I didn’t even get a cookie.

  Knowing Screech Neck’s finest wouldn’t believe some sixteen-year-old slacker punk even if I swore I hadn’t touched a thing, I booked, leaving a lovely trail of concrete dust footprints on the sidewalk. That much would have been fine since the prints vanished after a block and I could run pretty quickly.

  The kicker was that my fellow classmate, super-nerd and wannabe ace reporter All-den Moore, was also out and about that day, doing whatever it is wannabe ace reporters do on snowy afternoons. His name’s just plain Alden, but I make the the first syllable long—All-den. Kind of a holdover from elementary school when everyone used to make fun of him. Anyway, after the collapse, he saw me running, covered in dust. Mind like a steel trap, he put two and two together and got five.

  Did he tell? Of course.

  I was in the shower scraping wet gunk off my skin when the cops came to the door. GP Joey, the world’s only honest auto mechanic (part of the reason his business was failing) handed over my dust-caked clothes and explained how it wasn’t my fault I was turning out badly, since my deadbeat dad ran off when I was three, and with him and Mom working all the time, there was no one around to give me proper supervision.

  Lucky for me, they still couldn’t quite press charges. What with there being no actual vandalism, there was no actual evidence of vandalism.

  Unlucky for me, Principal Wyatt didn’t care about evidence. Unlike the courts, his rule of thumb was—if he feels like it’s true, it’s true. He felt like I was guilty and suspended me for the rest of the school year. I think the worst part was the look on my mother’s face when she found out.

  As a final capper to the worst winter I’d had since I found out there was no Santa Claus (No jolly guy who just brings you stuff? Say it ain’t so, Ma!), it turned out the construction company didn’t have the proper insurance, so SNH not only remained a broken T, but everyone, from the students to the teachers to the custodial staff, blamed me.

  I suppose I should’ve just been grateful Vicky stuck by me when I returned that September. Even if we hadn’t been alone once since then. Even if, as she explained that morning, there were . . . conditions.

  “Caleb, no one talks to you anymore. You’ve got to pull yourself out of this,” Vicky said. “The meeting will help. I promise. They’ll accept you.”

  Silence hung in the air like a smelly old sock on a doorknob. “I haven’t even read the book,” I said lamely.

  “It’s an Open Crave.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “A what?”

  I could tell she was trying to be patient. “The Rule of Won is about fulfilling desires, so they call the meetings ‘Craves.’ Open Craves are for people just starting out.”

  “Like Open Graves are for people just finishing up?”

  I t
hought that was worth a chuckle. She didn’t.

  “This isn’t middle school anymore. I’m trying to make something of myself. I don’t want to have to leave you behind.”

  “Vicky, you’ve been trying to make something of yourself since you were two. And really, you’re running for student council, not Congress. It’s no big deal.”

  Her eyes narrowed with anger. “No. It’s what I make of it. Promise you’ll go.”

  “I don’t know, Vick…”

  She pulled her trump card. “My parents don’t even want me talking to you. They’re convinced you’re a no-account vandal who needs to be in jail.”

  I felt defeated, but I pretended I still had my pride. “They’re wrong, but so what? So what if I don’t care about college? So what if I don’t want to bust my ass getting some corporate lackey job so I can make a lot of money? I mean, what’s the big deal?”

  “The big deal, Caleb, is that sometimes you have to move forward just to avoid going backward. Wyatt’s looking for an excuse to get rid of you. So’s most of the school. So are my parents. Maybe… so am I.”

  I sighed. “Fine. I’ll go.”

  She smiled, like her button. I didn’t, like me, and we split to enjoy our day, me with a sinking feeling in my gut, hoping this Crave thing wouldn’t entail homework.

  Truth be told, slacker though I was, there was something I did want for myself: to turn back the clock to last year when I had a decent average without having to study, a girlfriend who didn’t mind my lack of ambition—and no arrest record.

  But it didn’t look like that was going to happen any time soon.

  First period was creative writing, but I was in no hurry to get there. I try not to be in a hurry to get anywhere. I ambled nice and slow, but people kept staring at me, since I was apparently guilty until proven innocent. One girl even hissed. After that, I picked up my pace.

  I was a little relieved to see Erica Black, the only other person in the school who spoke to me, sitting on the floor near the classroom door. She was willing to talk to me, I think, because she had transferred in this year and didn’t know my sordid past. Frankly, she made me nervous. She’s a little dark and intense, which explained why no one bothered to mention to her that I was the maniac who blew up the school.