Mr. Fahrenheit by T. Michael Martin Page A

certain that they were the ones destined to rescue the world. It reminded Benji of this period in elementary school when he’d been obsessed with self-improvement experiments: trying to teach himself piano or speed-reading or baseball grips or computer chess, all in the vague (and vaguely embarrassing) hope that he’d one day discover he was a prodigy at something. There was a central flaw to the self-improvement projects, though: He never felt like he had a “self” to be improved. He suspected sometimes that he’d been out sick the day everyone received their manual for how to be a person.
    He thought again about the moment he’d pulled the trigger. Why had he done it?
    Because I felt like I was meant to , said something warm opening in his chest.
    And maybe he was. As a little kid, he had always assumed something miraculous would happen to him. He’d get superpowers, maybe, or a letter from Hogwarts, or he’d spend summer break getting really buff and come in on the first day of school wearing only swimming trunks, and maybe he’d flex a couple of times in front of the class and borrow the teacher’s hairbrush to comb his mustache. Something subtle like that.
    His assumption of magic was the reason he’d walked into the House all those years ago. In his mind, he built the summer between elementary school and middle school into an enchanted slice of time. If he could just do something amazing, something cool , he could make the memory of his former unamazing, uncool self vanish. When Shaun Spinney told him that if he spent two minutes in the House, Benji could join Spinney’s middle school frat ( Good Lord , Benji thought, how did I even believe that existed? ), he jumped at the chance. Andsomething had happened in the House that had changed his and his friends’ lives, of course. It just hadn’t been what he’d planned, and it was something he’d spent a long time trying to forget.
    Whatever was going to happen now with the saucer, Benji felt (or at least hoped) he had some central role to play. Things like magic and Ellie gave him joy, but he’d never really known what his purpose in life was supposed to be.
    So, saucers aside, that was why the old movies were awesome: Everyone had a role and a quest, and you knew that if they just lived up to each moment, things would turn out basically okay. In more ways than one, everything was black and white.

5
    T wo loud knocks on his door awoke Benji. He startled, and blinked gummily. His room was still dark.
    â€œBenjamin, it’s that time,” Papaw said softly, and opened the door. Light from the hallway crashed in.
    Benji blocked the light with a hand and squinted. The red blinking display of his alarm clock read 4:49 . “Time for what, sir?”
    Even in his semiblindness, Benji sensed his grandfather’s reaction: It was like the literal air in the room sharpened, turning brittle on the edges. Papaw grew quiet, but Benji was fluent in Papaw’s silences: Somehow, Benji had just disappointed him. This was not a rare phenomenon, but Benji normally at least knew what he’d done.
    So he was surprised when Papaw spoke with a smile pasted onto his soft voice. “Stay up too late, did’ja? Rockin’ around the clock, weren’t ya?” In fact, Benji did feel like he’d been asleep for seven entire seconds. He’d wrenched himself from the internet around three thirty, then lain in bed and dreamed. Mostly with his eyes open.
    â€œHey, let’s get our rears in gears, Benjamin.” Papaw walked to the bed, already wearing his work shoes, polished bright and sharp as gavels on the floorboards. His hand came out, hovered a moment, and then awkwardly patted Benji’s foot through the quilt. “That carnival ain’t gonna open its own self.”
    The Homecoming Week Carnival. Of course.
    After Papaw left, Benji toppled back onto his pillow, his pulse slamming