Shadow Hills

by Anastasia Hopcus

  “He what?” Zach turned to look at me. “In front of you?”

  I nodded. “Yes. He grabbed hold of the table outside the SAC, and sparks went flying.”

  “What a jackass.” Zach returned his attention to the road. “Why’d he do it? What happened?”

  “He might have been kind of mad,” I admitted. “I’d just told him I would rather go to the dance alone than go with him.”

  Zach let out a short burst of laughter. “I’d like to have seen that.” He contemplated this idea for a moment, his lips curved up in a little smile. Then his expression became serious again. “I guess it’s a family thing. We have too much electricity in our bodies or something.”

  “Too much electricity in your bodies? Is that the scientific term for it?”

  Zach stayed focused on the road.

  “Look,” I continued, “I know it’s not only your family; it’s all the townies. I know about the epidemic. I know that only the settlers from Derbyshire, England, survived it. And you and your family—and several other families—are descended from those same survivors. What I haven’t figured out yet is exactly how your ancestors survived the epidemic. But my best guess is it was because they had some kind of gene mutation.” Of course, I’d only come up with that theory after seeing all the charts in the secret archives room, but Zach didn’t need to know that.

  “Phe …” Zach let out a groan. “Where do you get this stuff?”

  “Once I figured out about the epidemic and the gene mutation, it all started falling into place. How you townies are so smart and can read a book in two minutes flat. How you guys have this crazy electric energy thing happening. Oh, and there’s the fact that you have better hearing than a beagle.” Zach opened his mouth, but I kept barreling forward. I wasn’t going to let him start arguing his point before I’d made mine. “I started thinking—could it be the result of a gene mutation? And what if, over the course of the last two hundred fifty years, marrying other people with the same mutation, these traits got stronger and stronger, until now you townies have developed these superpowers? Like mind reading and walking through people’s dreams.”

  “I don’t have superpowers!” Zach exclaimed. “You’re being ridiculous.”

  “I’m being ridiculous?” My voice rose involuntarily. “What about Corinne with her not-so-veiled threats, trying to make me stay away from you? What sister cares that much who her brother dates?” The moment the word passed my lips I wished I could take it back. Can you say “getting ahead of yourself”? Sharing a class and a car ride did not count as dating. I willed my cheeks not to catch fire. I couldn’t let myself be thrown off by some stupid slipup. “What the hell is going on in this town? And don’t lie to me—I’m not going to stop looking because you give me some lame excuse.”

  “I wish you would stop, Phe. I think I can trust you, but what if I’m just letting my feelings get in the way? It seems like all logic leaves my head when you’re around. It’s not smart. For me or you.”

  “I’m okay with that.” I leaned closer to Zach. I watched his Adam’s apple move beneath his skin as he swallowed.

  “Well, I’m not okay with it,” he said, not making eye contact with me. “The people in Shadow Hills aren’t easily intimidated, and they’ve been hiding this stuff for hundreds of years. There are people here who believe we’re one nosy person away from being made into government lab rats.” Zach shook his head. “I don’t know how far some of them would go to protect themselves and their families. We have to be closed off; it’s the only way to make sure we stay safe.”

  “Do you really think I would call the FBI down on you?” I crossed my arms over my chest, waiting for an answer.

  “You never can know with people.”

  “Maybe not, but you can trust me. You were right about that.” Zach’s eyes met mine; the emotions behind them were so intense I had to look away.

  “How can I trust you when you obviously don’t trust me? When you think I’m some kind of mutated freak?” Zach demanded. “You wouldn’t even believe me if I told you the truth—hell, you probably think I’m not human.”

  “How can you say that?” I stared at him. “Do you think I would get in the car with someone I thought was dangerous? Do you really think I would be asking you all this if I thought you were some subhuman serial killer? God, how stupid do you think I am?”

  “I don’t think you’re stupid.” The muscles of Zach’s jaw were working under his skin. He let off the accelerator, and the car slowed. “I think you’re … I don’t know what I think. You’re different from anyone I’ve ever met before. You seem incapable of being fake, of being anything other than what you are. You’re so free, so authentically … you.”

  I wondered how he could see me so clearly when I felt like I was struggling every day to hold on to some scrap of my own identity.

  “It’s like you’re not afraid of anything.” His voice was low, almost a whisper.

  “Trust me, that isn’t true.” Sometimes I was surprised at how well my shell hid me. I felt sure everyone could see right through it to my soft squishy insides. “I’m just not afraid of you. I don’t believe you could ever hurt me.”

  “I wish you were right about that.” Zach gritted his teeth even harder. “But it’s not really me that I’m worried about. I don’t have to hurt you for you to be in danger. I put you in danger the moment I tell you about us. It’s not just my secret. I give away everyone—hundreds of people—if I tell you. And if they find out you know—if you told anyone else …” The threat hung there unspoken.

  My need to know what was going on—my need to know Zach—overshadowed all of his warnings. Besides, I couldn’t actually imagine anyone here locking me up or killing me. These people were highly developed intellectuals, not cavemen.

  “So does this mean you’re going to tell me?”

  “I don’t know. Part of me wants nothing more than to walk away from this, to not have to deal with these complications—all the what-ifs—even if that means never speaking to you again.”

  My stomach clenched. The idea of never speaking to Zach again panicked me. It was irrational, but I couldn’t help it. Every second I spent around him made me want to be with him more.

  “But there’s another part of me, a bigger part than I would like to admit, that can’t stop thinking about you.” He raked a hand through his hair, but kept his eyes on the road, avoiding my gaze. “I’ve imagined what it would be like to tell you. To be reckless for once in my meticulously planned life.” Zach turned right at the next road and then pulled onto a narrow dirt lane. “And as much as I hate it, that part of me seems to be winning.”

  He stopped in front of a closed gate and turned off the engine.

  “Last chance, Phe—you say the word, and I’ll drive you back to school and we can both pretend this day never even happened.”

  That was the last thing in the world I wanted.

  “Tell me,” I said simply.

  With a curt nod Zach got out of the car. I followed him, and we walked over to the low stone wall that came out from the gate.

  “Where are we going?” I asked. “What is this place?”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged. “The turnoff to somebody’s property. I don’t want to talk about this in Corinne’s car. It’s another reminder of how I’m not supposed to be doing this.” He paused, then went on, “Listen, I’m serious when I say this is very secret. I’d be in deep shit if anyone knew I told you.”

  “With the Council, you mean?”

  His eyebrows shot up. “And you think I have the ability to read minds?”

  “Well, do you?”

  He sighed. “I wouldn’t call it that, but, yeah, sort of.”

  No wonder he knew me so well; he probably had more insight into my psyche than I did. And he’s still here. He hadn’t decided I was shallow or dumb or emotionally screwed up beyond repair. He liked me—enough that he was breaking rules he’d followed his entire life. Another thought occurr
ed to me. How many times had I imagined what it would be like to kiss Zach? To feel his strong arms around me, his fingers entwined in my hair? God, this was mortifying. Shit! I’m doing it again!

  “So what would you call it instead of mind reading?” I asked casually, hoping I could somehow cover up all the feelings building like a tornado inside of me.

  “I don’t call it anything. In fact, I try to do it as little as possible; it’s not always good to know how people really feel about you.”

  I couldn’t see anyone thinking something bad about Zach—except maybe Trent.

  “But I guess if I had to give it a name,” Zach went on, “I’d call it patchworking.”

  “Patchworking?” I raised an eyebrow.

  “It’s like I get thrown this jumbled mess, and I have to piece it together. I can’t direct it or control it; sometimes I can’t even make sense of it. I’ll get flashes of images but never the whole picture,” Zach explained. “Often, I’ll just see a flicker of a color or a symbol that stands for a certain feeling. At most I’ll get a visual of a memory, but completely out of context. It’s not an audio thing at all—I can’t hear what you’re thinking.”

  I relaxed a little.

  “Besides, I can only do it when I make physical contact with someone,” Zach added.

  So that’s why Trent wouldn’t let go of my hand the other day; he was listening in on—or watching, whatever—my thoughts.

  “What about the dream thing?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never had that happen before. Really,” he added at my look of skepticism. “I couldn’t believe it when I saw you in the cemetery that day. That’s why I followed you. I thought you just resembled the girl in my dream. But there you were; you were the girl.”

  I remembered the expression on his face that afternoon. He had looked as amazed as I’d felt. “Okay, I’ll buy that. But what about the rest of it?”

  “Well, you’re on the right track with the gene-mutation thing. But you don’t quite have it. First off, our ancestors didn’t come from all over Derbyshire, though that’s what the Council wants outsiders to believe. They were from the village of Eyam.”

  Eyam … I thought back to the chart I had seen in the library.

  “And they had this mutation known as Delta 32,” Zach continued. “That’s why the Council isn’t too specific with our history. The descendants of Eyam are kind of a big deal in the scientific community, and the last thing we need is a bunch of lab coats coming in, wanting to test our DNA.”

  “But if they already know about the mutation, why would they care if you have it, too?”

  “We don’t have Delta 32.” Zach ran a hand over his face. “I guess I need to give you some background. You know about the bubonic plague, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, it hit Eyam in 1665, and, knowing how badly it spread, they quarantined themselves.”

  “But wouldn’t that be like a death sentence for everyone in the town?” I couldn’t imagine doing that. I didn’t like being near someone with a cold.

  “It would have been, but if people fled, they risked spreading it to the whole area. So they cut themselves off, burying their own dead and living on food that other villages left for them at the edge of town. And even though the plague went on for a year, at the end of it, almost half of the villagers were still alive.”

  “The mutation protected them,” I filled in.

  “It seems so, based on the DNA tests they’ve done of descendants still living in Eyam. The mutation was probably a reaction to some earlier pathogen, and when the plague hit, the people with Delta 32 were immune.”

  “Is that why they survived the epidemic in Shadow Hills, too?”

  “Most likely, but somewhere along the line, the mutation must have changed, because none of the townies have Delta 32 now. Our mutation is different; it carries some very strange side effects.”

  “Magical side effects?” I teased.

  “Not magical, just extremely abnormal.” Zach grinned.

  “So how does it all work? What makes you like you are?”

  “If I knew all the answers, we wouldn’t need the genetic research wing of the hospital.” I could almost see Zach switch into scientific mode. It reminded me of the way my dad got all authoritative when conversation turned to anything legal. “Apparently we have more myelin than other people, and that allows information to travel between parts of our brain more quickly. We also have more acetylcholine, which is a neurotransmitter that aids in memory.”

  “So your brain processes everything at the speed of light and you never forget anything,” I translated.

  “Pretty much. And it also gives us an advantage, hearing-wise.”

  “Wow, life really isn’t fair.”

  He shrugged. “There are some trade-offs that aren’t so good. BVs do have a stronger electromagnetic field than most people.”

  “No shit.” I smirked. “I can’t see how you don’t attract more attention going around shocking people all the time.”

  “We don’t shock people all the time,” Zach said. “It rarely happens, in fact, and when it does, it’s usually nothing more than the amount of static charge you would get pulling a blanket out of a dryer.”

  I stared at him incredulously. “So why does it hurt me more than the time my hair dryer short-circuited on me? Am I insanely sensitive?”

  “I don’t really think that’s it. Your energy is totally unlike other people’s—it’s one of the things that’s so different about you. It’s very strong, but not in an electrical way. Your—I don’t know what to call it—life force? Aura? Any word I can think of sounds stupid and New Age-y.” Zach scrunched his eyebrows together.

  “It’s okay, I’m kind of used to it. My mom’s a recovering hippie.”

  “Okay then, I’m going with life force, because it’s very pushy. Force seems appropriate.”

  “How is my energy pushy?” I almost laughed, but Zach’s serious expression stopped me.

  “Most people’s energy is tightly contracted inside them; it only really shows up when provoked, and ours always bests it. But yours is widespread, a shield that’s constantly surrounding you, three feet on every side. And it’s as strong as ours. Maybe even stronger. When you shake hands with us, it’s like … well, I guess the best analogy is when you try to put two magnets of the same pole together.”

  “They pop apart.” I didn’t like the idea of my energy pushing Zach away. Especially when I felt just the opposite, like I was being pulled to him.

  “Not exactly.” Zach exhaled. “Let’s see if this explains it any better. Imagine you are a car battery, and I’m a car battery. When we touch, it’s like the jumper cable connecting us and we both get … charged.” Somehow it all sounded much more sensual than it should have.

  “Your energy is impossible to ignore,” he went on. “It’s exhilarating for one of us to stand in your … space, or whatever. Corinne’s noticed it, too, and I have no doubt Trent thrives on the push and pull he gets off of you.” Zach’s expression went dark.

  I thought of the way I always felt sitting next to Zach in photography. “Do you feel like you’ve had too much caffeine when we’re near?”

  “Caffeine, alcohol, it’s probably like some drugs, too, but I wouldn’t know,” Zach said. “I have this storm raging in me, yet I’m incredibly centered at the same time. That probably sounds crazy.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” I assured him. “I feel it, too.”

  He looked down at me, and it was as if everything had paused except for us. The birds that had been twittering at the coming nightfall were silent, and the air seemed to be completely still. I wanted to kiss him so badly, to pull him as close to me as possible. But I was terrified. I had never felt this strongly about anyone, not even Paul. What if I somehow ruined everything? What if our energies really couldn’t coexist?

  “So, uh … what other things does your energy effect? I mean, what does it do besides shock the crap out of me?”
The words came tumbling out of me, breaking the moment, leaving me both relieved and disappointed.

  “Umm …” Zach blinked several times like he had awoken to sunlight streaming onto his face. “Well, it transmits our emotions. That’s why when we get upset it can disrupt car alarms, TVs, radios.” He scratched the back of his neck, breaking eye contact with me. “Or, you know, sometimes it starts small fires,” he finished in a rush.

  “Like Drew Barrymore in that old Stephen King movie?”

  “No.” He looked at me as though I was being absurd. “We can’t do it by staring at something. We have to touch it.”

  “Oh, well, that’s reassuring,” I commented sarcastically.

  “Most of us learn to control it as we get older, but sometimes when we get frustrated, we …”

  “Melt pricing guns?” I offered.

  He gave me a glinting look from under his eyelashes, and a rueful smile curved his lips. “Yeah, melt pricing guns. But that only happens when certain very pushy girls start following you around asking a lot of questions and trying to bait you into inviting somebody to a dance.”

  I laughed. “You deserved it for eavesdropping on Adriana and me.”

  “And you made me pay for it, too.”

  I put a hand on my hip in a challenging pose. “As if it would have been that awful to take out an attractive, confident girl.”

  “Confident?” Zach gave me a look. “That girl is a man-eater. A designer-clad piranha.”

  “Hey.” I frowned at him. “You’re talking about my closest friend at Devenish.”

  “I’m not saying I don’t like Adriana; I actually find her pretty amusing. And I can see how she would be the yin to your yang or whatever.” He laughed. “But romantically? She’s not my type.”

  Did that slight emphasis on “she” mean that I was his type?

  He shifted and glanced back toward the car, and I knew that he was ready to end this conversation. I hesitated. I didn’t want to ask him my last question; I knew it would be painful for him. But I couldn’t stop here. I had to know the rest of it.