Loss by Jackie Morse Kessler

information. Pestilence for Dummies , maybe. Something. Anything. He couldn’t do this alone.
    From behind him, a maliciously gleeful voice said, “Hey, look! It’s Birdy! How you doing, Birdy?”
    Billy stiffened. His heartbeat slammed into overdrive as Kurt brayed laughter.
    Another voice said, “Missed you in PE.” That was Joe, leaning down now so that Billy could smell the mint gum of his breath. “Hear you got you a new look.”
    Go away, Billy wanted to shout, but his mouth had locked around his bite of sandwich. His head suddenly ached where Joe had slammed it into the locker door yesterday, or maybe it was the spot that Death had touched, hidden beneath his white patch. His stomach cramped in anticipation of pain yet to come. He screamed silently, the words muted by peanut butter and fear: Leave me alone!
    “I want to see.” A hand snaked out and grabbed Billy’s hood, then yanked it back, exposing his stained hair. “You were right,” Joe said to Kurt, sounding pleased. “It does look like a bird took a shit on his head.”
    “Looks stupid,” said Kurt.
    “So does his face.”
    “You don’t want stupid hair, do you?” Kurt clamped one hand on Billy’s shoulder.
    Billy flinched, and hated himself for doing so.
    “See that? He wants us to help him.”
    Joe got right in his face. Billy swallowed tightly and counted the blackheads on Joe’s nose. “You want our help?”
    Hoping that the cafeteria monitor would step in, knowing that would never happen, Billy clenched his jaw and said nothing.
    “Say it,” Joe commanded.
    “You have to say the words, Billy,” the Ice Cream Man insisted. “Say that you agree to wear the Crown.”
    No.
    He didn’t realize he’d said the word aloud until Joe’s eyes widened.
    “Listen to him,” sneered Kurt, giving Billy’s shoulder a squeeze, “thinking he’s too good for our help.”
    “Know what I think?” said Joe, his eyes gleaming. “I think he needs more white in it.” He grabbed the milk carton and poured the contents over Billy’s head.
    Cold liquid pooled over Billy’s hair, streaming down his face and ears and chin, christening him in rivulets of white. Shock and horror gave way to outrage, and then embarrassment as Kurt and Joe and too many others to count laughed at him.
    And then fury, white hot and blinding.
    He reached out his hand, and his fingers closed around the familiar width of the Bow. Power surged through him, and he smiled coldly. The part of his mind that would have questioned how the weapon could have just appeared in his hand simply shut down. Pestilence had summoned his Bow, and so the Bow appeared.
    Billy stood as time thickened around him, trapping everyone in the cafeteria like fossils in amber. He stepped away from the table, turning slowly to face Joe and Kurt. The two boys stood frozen, one still holding the upturned carton of milk, the other nearly doubled over with laughter. As Billy looked at them, he felt the damp weight of his hair, smelled the sweetness of milk mingling with the oil and sweat of his skin.
    He judged them and found them guilty.
    Billy pulled back the bowstring he could neither see nor feel, an arrow of disease nocked and ready. Distance warped as he took aim at Joe, who stood now more than twenty feet away, and he let fly. In the same breath he drew, aimed, and released another arrow at Kurt. He didn’t bother to see if his arrows would strike true; of course they would. Pestilence didn’t miss. Instead, he turned to consider the living backdrop of students and the occasional adult scattered throughout the room, and his gaze locked on the cafeteria monitor. She sat, her face mostly hidden by a book, a food-laden fork halfway to her open mouth. A third arrow flew, and this time Billy watched as it buried itself deep into her flesh, then evaporated.
    The arrow’s disappearance made Billy blink—and time kicked into gear. The laughter in the cafeteria continued once more, but he ignored it as he