by Holly Hook
* * * * *
Janelle had no way of contacting Gary now.
None.
And even if she did, it was far too dangerous to try. What would have happened if that woman had kidnapped her or something? It would have killed her father, and maybe worse. The only good thing that had happened in the past few days was that she’d gotten the truck home before her father came back to find out. He’d complained about the gas looking a little low afterwards, but chalked it up to the Marathon he’d filled up at.
Still, Janelle felt awful about stealing his truck like that. It made her sick every time she thought about it. Maybe she deserved what she’d gotten.
And now she had school to worry about, too.
Students brushed past Janelle as she sat in Accelerated Geography on the first day of school, and she paid attention to every bare arm she came across. She hadn’t seen Gary here, and no one else with a gray spiral on their arm. About eight million students were wearing tank tops today, and the most interesting thing she’d seen had been a snake tattoo.
The bell rang through the halls, and a chubby, balding man strode into the class. He cleared his throat to silence the chatter as he wrote his name on the board: Mr. Hank Deville. “So…how was your summer?”
A sea of groans rose up. Not that Janelle could blame them. She felt like groaning herself, but held back.
“My house flooded and we’re still mucking it out,” the girl next to her said.
A guy with dreadlocks waved his hands in the air. “My new car’s got a huge crack across the windshield now.”
Mr. Deville bowed his head until the class quieted. “Sorry to hear about all this. Hopefully your school year will go a lot smoother than the last week. Now I’m going to—you there in the front?”
Janelle had stuck her hand in the air without even thinking about it. Her cheeks heated as twenty-eight other sets of eyes landed on her. It was bad enough being the new person in class.
At last, a question popped out of her lips. “Yeah. I moved to Florida right when the hurricane was happening, and I was wondering if they can skip over some houses the way tornadoes do. Because my house didn’t take any damage at all while everyone else on my street did. Since you teach Geography, I was thinking you might know.” Desperation had wormed its way under her skin in the past few days. She was willing to seek answers from anyone at this point.
Mr. Deville’s gaze stayed on Janelle for several seconds before he answered. “Hurricanes usually do their damage over a wide area, unlike a tornado, so it’s more evened out. So I find that a little unusual. What’s your name?”
“Janelle.”
“Welcome to Florida. Now, if we’ll—”
A girl in the back spoke. “Why do they give hurricanes names?”
Mr. Deville straightened up, showing no signs of impatience. “Well, around sixty years ago, the World Weather Assembly decided they needed a better way to keep track of storms. So they invented a list of names that changes every single year.” He eyed the entire class. “Any one of you could end up sharing your name with one sometime in your lives. And did you know that they originally wanted to use only women’s names on hurricanes?" He smiled at the girl who had asked. "The plan fell through when one of the Assembly members threw a fit over it and demanded that both men and women’s names be used.”
Janelle liked Mr. Deville--he seemed like one of those nice, laid-back types--but he hadn’t told her anything she hadn’t read online twelve thousand times. If she didn’t get any new info by the end of the week, she’d have to give up on this search and wait for the Bahamas trip, provided she'd even find anything out there. That, and pray that scary woman didn’t come back.
She hoped for a break and some time to think in Chemistry, but unfortunately the teacher, Mrs. Vanderson, cracked out an experiment ten minutes into class. She pulled a large plastic jug filled with water from the storage closet.
“Now, I’m going to give you a small assignment to start off your year,” she said with a heavy twang. “We’ll do a simple experiment so you can practice the steps and methods you’ll be using for the real stuff. I went down to the beach this morning and collected some ocean water. And what you’re going to do is turn salt water into fresh water. Each table has a bowl and a plastic cup, along with a roll of plastic wrap.”
Janelle wasn’t sure if she’d even be able to concentrate on that. Her birthmark itched. It had been doing that more and more since she’d moved here. She tugged her sleeve down, making sure it wasn't visible to any of her classmates.
“Work on the first day?” her pimply lab partner asked. He ripped out a piece of notebook paper and put his name, Donovan, on it. “That sucks.”
“This doesn’t look like that bad of an assignment,” Janelle said, still lost in her own thoughts. Gary’s birthmark popped up in her mind again. And that little mole on his nose…why couldn’t she stop thinking about him? He was long gone.
He had helped her escape.
Risked facing his scary guardian to do it, too. She owed him one.
She unrolled some plastic wrap and stretched it out over and over to distract her thoughts. Mrs. Vanderson appeared at her table and poured the ocean water into the bowl. A funny tingle swept through Janelle at the salty smell of it. The same thing had happened when she’d caught a whiff of the salt water on Gary. Great. Now she was thinking about him again.
“Let’s get this done,” Donovan said, lifting the bowl off the table. “Uh…ah…” He let out a huge sneeze.
The bowl tilted to the side. Donovan tried to steady it, but it wobbled right off his hand and towards her. Water splashed against her shirt and onto her lap.
Her birthmark tingled and burned. A roar filled her head as Janelle wrapped her arms around herself and gritted her teeth. The roar became a scream and a burst of wind whipped against her clothes and whistled through the room. Students cried out around her. Glass shattered and papers flew. Blinds rattled and books slid across tables, crashing to the floor. Janelle was tilting, swaying, spinning…she could no longer feel her arms or legs. A seizure. This must be a seizure. She was going to die…
The roaring and tilting stopped.
Janelle opened her eyes. The world snapped back into place as water dripped off her lap and onto the floor.
Papers fluttered down while everyone turned in their chairs to look around the room. Mrs. Vanderson stood against a file cabinet, not that Janelle could blame her. And Donovan’s face had turned red—really red. He looked down at his own lap and muttered an apology. But Janelle had no time to feel sorry for him. A panic rose inside her like floodwater, threatening to pour out of her at any second.
This had happened as soon as that ocean water had hit her.
“Where did that come from?” the teacher asked, gripping the cabinet as if expecting another blast. “Did someone open the window?”
“No. That was weird,” a girl said near the front of the room, rubbing a red mark on her arm and wincing. “The windows are all shut.”
“Well, is everyone all right?” Wide-eyed, Mrs. Vanderson walked to the front of the room and stumbled over a fallen chair. “What happened in here? A localized tornado?”
Janelle looked around the room, the flood of terror rising through her chest and making her heart pound as if it were trying to escape. She hadn’t had a seizure, that was for sure. Seizures didn’t destroy everything around them.
A case of beakers had tipped on a nearby counter and shattered. The floor was a mess: papers, water, and bowls everywhere. The blinds hung in a tangled mess on the other side of the room. At the next table, a girl held her hip as tears formed in her eyes.
Janelle's stomach threatened to heave. The panic rose up her throat, and she couldn't swallow it back down. Now wasn't the time to break down in front of all these strangers.
This had come from her.
“Uh…Mrs. Vanderson? Can I go to the office? I don’t feel well and I kind of need to dry off.” She had to leave. Now. Even if she got busted for skipping the rest of class.
The teacher studied Janelle’s clothes. “Go ahead. At least go dry yourself off. I think we’ll just be doing some reading today, anyway.” She picked up the fallen chair, muttering something.
Janelle made her way for the door. Nervous chatter surrounded her. No one stared in her direction, but that didn't stop a prickling sensation from crawling up her back, like someone had a camera trained on her. Out. She had to get out.
The hall was empty. Good. She hugged herself and leaned against the lockers. It hurt to swallow over the lump that had formed in her throat.
Gary’s guardian had also made a mysterious wind kick up, only on purpose.
Ice flowed through Janelle’s veins. No. She wasn’t like that woman. Gary's guardian could roar words and who knew what else.
A strangled cry escaped her throat. Janelle ran into a bathroom, glad that no one could see, and unrolled a handful of paper towels to soak the water off her shirt. Another little tingle shot through her body as she pressed the wet clothes against her skin, but this one faded a second later.
Something clicked.
Tap water had never done this. Neither had lake water. Nothing anything like this had happened before she’d moved here.
Did she have some kind of allergy to ocean water? She’d never been exposed to it before.
Janelle stared at her reflection. Blond strands stood up everywhere from the windstorm and her eyes stared back, huge. The girl in the mirror wasn't the calm, collected one who had watched her house in Flint disappear behind her for the last time. It might have been the light, but even the blue of her eyes seemed to have deepened to an ominous gray. She was something different, something new.
But what, exactly?
She wanted to run home. Beg, scream, and cry until her dad moved them back to Michigan.
And do you think he will? He knows you’re not normal. A cruel little voice mocked her over and over again.
"Shut up," she muttered. After splashing cold water on her face, Janelle grabbed the edges of the basin with trembling hands and stared down at the water swirling into the drain. It sparkled like the vortex that Gary had appeared out of. Like the ocean her father had told her to avoid until they cleaned up the beaches.
She let go and made her way to the office. With a gentle nudge, she opened the door. It stayed on its hinges, letting her breathe a sigh of relief. Nobody else needed to see her freak powers.
Mr. Deville leaned against an empty workstation, chatting with a man that was probably the principal. He turned to face her as she walked in.
“I don’t feel the greatest. Is there anywhere I can lie down for a while?” Janelle kept her gaze fixed on the nearest desk. It was best not to look all freaked out in front of these people.
“Um…there’s a sick room right over there.” Mr. Deville pointed to the back of the office. “If you feel like you’ve got to go home by one-thirty or so, let someone know. Who sent you?”
“Mrs. Vanderson,” Janelle said in the lowest voice she could. The way things were going, she’d start roaring her sentences next.
The sick room had a long examining table and an ugly plastic plant in the corner. The paper crinkled as she sat on the table. She kicked her feet, watching them go back and forth. She had to think. There was no way her dad would move back to Flint. Nobody who wanted to have a job and pay their bills did. Maybe she could talk him into moving inland, as far from the ocean as they could get. Her father could still go to his job, and she'd never have to worry about having this weird reaction again. They'd both win if he decided to listen to her. Or would he just go hide in his study again, like he had that entire week?
Phones rang outside the door and Mr. Deville talked about coaching football—normal stuff—as she focused on her breathing. The words blurred into the background until the door to the office squeaked open.
Mr. Deville went silent as if the President had walked into the room.
“Excuse me,” said Gary’s guardian. “I’m looking for a student. I’m not sure what her last name is now, but I know she must be going to a school around here. Her name is Janelle.”
Chapter Five