by Ryan La Sala
“If anything,” Elliot was saying, “it shows he’s trying to figure things out himself using hints, which somebody is clearly leaving for him, Ursula. What did you tell him on the path? You wanted him to find those photos, didn’t you?”
“Is that an accusation?” The level of drama in her voice told Kane, and probably Elliot, that she was definitely guilty.
“Chill out, you two,” said a new voice. An icy soprano Kane didn’t know. “Even if we missed a few photos by mistake—right, Urs?—Kane has no real idea who we are or what we do. I spent all of bio watching him write in that journal, and he didn’t even look at me until the end. He’s not going to remember anything on his own. He can’t.”
“She’s right,” said Elliot. “Adeline knows better than anyone about this sort of thing. We’ll have to go on without him.”
Kane seized on the name. Adeline, the girl who had tried to give him his homework in bio. Adeline Bishop. “Popular” didn’t do her justice. It was more like Reigning Sociopath of Amity Regional High. What someone like her was doing in a boiler room, Kane didn’t get. He pictured the scene he was spying on: Ursula Abernathy, alleged lesbian jock; Elliot Levi, jawline-blessed Adonis; Adeline Bishop, the gold-plated queen bee, all having a secret meeting in the basement of the high school. It was an after-school special on break.
“But what about the reveries?” said Ursula. “It’s Kane’s job to unravel them. And what about those things he said chased him? They sounded like they escaped from a reverie. I didn’t even know things could escape from reveries.”
“Maybe it’s the next reverie,” Adeline said. “Sometimes the stronger reveries formed partially at first, in bits and pieces. Kane called them visions. Maybe the next reverie will form near Harrow Creek?”
Elliot sighed. “No, the next reverie is going to be here at the school. I’m sure of it.”
“Because of the lobsters that started glowing in the bio lab?”
“They’re not lobsters, Adeline. They’re isopods. Completely different thing.”
Kane could not see Adeline, but the eye roll was clear in her voice. “Elliot. Focus. The glowing is what’s important, not the taxonomy.”
“But isopods are—”
“Who cares?” cut in Ursula. “What’s important is that Kane is the one who usually unravels the reveries, and he’s basically powerless right now.”
“Good,” said Elliot and Adeline at the same time. Elliot picked it up: “We can’t risk involving Kane, not as he is now. Not even if he regained his powers. Remember what happened to Maxine?”
Kane’s stomach twisted. They knew about Maxine. They knew what happened. If there was any doubt he was involved with Maxine’s death, it had just been obliterated by the horrible connection this conversation was creating.
“We can’t manage another cover-up,” said Elliot. “We’re barely getting through this one.”
“But Urs is right, Elliot. We’re not the Others without Kane. We need him so we can do it right. I know I said I could probably handle erasing the reveries when they form, but it’s not the same.”
“If they form,” said Ursula, hopefully.
“When they form,” Adeline snapped. “And they will form. You know that. We need Kane’s powers, but we can’t involve Kane until we figure out a way to fix him.”
Fix him.
“He’s not broken,” Ursula said. “He’s just lost.”
“Whatever,” Adeline said. “Right now, he’s deadweight.”
“He’s our leader.”
“Then why did he abandon us, Ursula?”
Tension silenced the boiler room, letting the din wash back over the secret meeting.
“Kane hid a lot from us, didn’t he?” asked Ursula.
“Seems like it,” said Adeline. “But we can’t dwell on the past. That Kane is gone. We need to move forward with whoever he is now, and he’s got no idea about any of this. We’ve got to recruit him like he recruited each of us to the Others. Gently. Or else he might break apart all over again.”
“We may not have time for gentle, Adeline,” said Elliot. “The visions of the next reverie are getting more frequent. If you’re sensing what I’m sensing, the reverie might even form today. We have to be there when it happens so you can do your thing to the reverie’s hero.”
Ursula sounded panicky. “Is that going to work, Adeline? Is it safe?”
Adeline sounded far away. “I guess we’ll see.”
Elliot just kept going. “Based on the visions, we’ve narrowed possible heroes down to someone on the senior football team or JV soccer team. Both have practice today, so we should spread out. And someone is going to have to stay on the outside to prevent Kane from getting in and to protect him in case there is something worse hunting him.”
“Who?”
“You.”
“Me?” Ursula’s voice jumped an octave.
“Yes, you,” said Elliot. “I can set up an illusion around the reverie to prevent most people from entering, but we need you on the outside to stop Kane.”
“Why me?”
“Because you’re the one who led Kane back to us, Urs. He’s your fault. Plus he trusts you. It should be easy to keep tabs on him for the rest of the day, right? Just text us if he does anything else weird. Oh, and Adeline, can you get to him in the meantime and erase his memory of the photo?”
“I have Latin homework.”
“Adeline.”
“Fine. Urs, I’ll come with you to meet him before lunch. Make sure he doesn’t get away.”
“Good. We’ve got a good plan, then?” Elliot asked.
The girls grumbled in agreement, and the meeting ended. Kane ducked low as the Others left the boiler room, his hands over his mouth. The Others. He was sure he had never heard that name before, yet it was more than familiar. It felt like his own, like something he had once worn with pride.
He sank farther into the corner, hands holding back small, hiccupping sobs as tears pushed down his cheeks. He could run from the Others, but he couldn’t run from himself. His body was betraying him. His life was betraying him. Now, more than ever, he wished he could withdraw, but with his own mind compromised, there was nowhere left to run.
• Seven •
BEWARE OF DOG II
Kane did run to the nurse after all. It seemed like the only safe place to go. The Others knew where he lived and had searched his room. The Others knew his class schedule, where he was supposed to be and when. Kane thought of leaving school and going someplace in town—maybe Roost, or St. Agnes—but every idea seemed too predictable. Too like him. The Others knew all about him, and therefore anything familiar was off limits.
The nurse’s office was not familiar. The nurse led Kane into a back room with a small cot wrapped in paper, where he sat and watched the doorknob. Eventually he felt brave enough to take out his journal, and for the next several hours he wrote down everything that came into his head. Every theory. Every whim. It didn’t matter how strange or unreal. He just needed it on paper and out of his head.
A knock came at the door, waking him up sometime later. He didn’t realize he’d fallen asleep. Politely, the nurse let him know the school day had ended and asked if he needed to use a phone to call his dad.
“I’m good. I want to walk home,” he said as he collected his things.
The school was eerily empty in the rich golden light of the afternoon. There was the sound of lockers slamming and laughter, but they were distant sounds that seemed to emanate from another world. Kane blinked away his sleepiness. Unsure of where to go, he pulled into the library and slumped into his favorite spot by the back shelves. There he scanned the lists he’d made in his journal before passing out. The first was labeled THE OTHERS:
URSULA ABERNATHY—BAD LIAR, SPORTY. HATES BIRDS.
ADELINE BISHOP—A LITTLE MEAN BUT ALW
AYS RIGHT
ELLIOT LEVI—STRAIGHT YET MAGICAL THIEF
DEAN FLORES—HOT RECLUSE?
The second list was labeled QUESTIONS:
AM I OTHER? DO I UNRAVEL?
WHAT DID THE OTHERS DO TO MAXINE OSMAN?
WHAT IS A REVERIE? VISION? ARE THESE MAGIC??
WHAT IS REAL??
GLOWING ISOPODS (NOT LOBSTERS)
Then, at the bottom of the page, Kane had scrawled one word over and over.
DEADWEIGHT.
Kane shoved the journal in his bag and made for the high school’s front exit, but something stopped him going home and giving up. He was uncertain about so much—about this world, about these people, about what it meant to be deadweight—but he did know one thing: he was alive.
Since his grandmother’s funeral, he realized that when people tell stories about the dead, they create life in reverse. What’s remembered about a person becomes what was real about them after they’re gone. But Kane wasn’t dead yet, and his story was still his to tell. Whatever he’d been through, whatever mysterious calamity he had survived, it was up to him to figure out what happened next.
He texted Sophia: Tell Mom and Dad I’m staying after at school for something.
He switched directions, his boots echoing in the empty halls until he burst through the doors leading to the back of the school. The fields were where they’d always been, unchanged and unremarkable. The soccer team stood in a line and took shots on their goalie while the field hockey girls sat in a circle, stretching. Tiny figures paced in circles on the track that surround the football field; the football team ran sprints, tapping the white lines as they pivoted. Distant shouts reached his ears, and whistles cut the golden air. Coach O’Brien bellowed something. There was no folk music.
The normalcy of it all stung. What had he expected?
Kane trudged to the edge of the field. He’d slept through his chance to catch the Others doing whatever they were going to do. His determination didn’t matter; this story had gone on without him. But then, through his pity party, he heard someone yell his name.
None of the kids in the parking lot were looking at him. To his left were the field hockey girls, but he didn’t know anyone on the team.
False. He’d just forgotten.
As Ursula stood, her stray curls caught the afternoon light and burned a halo around her head. As she loped over, Kane registered an anger in her body that melted by the time she reached him, replaced by her usual easiness. Between them towered a ten-foot fence but it didn’t matter. He’d been caught.
“Hi!” Ursula’s grin was wide, like from the carnival photos. Kane scoured her face for a sign of insincerity, and he found it: a small dimple of worry embedded between her eyebrows, the same telling dimple from their conversation on the path.
“Hi.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Fine.” He heard how curt he sounded, so he added, “Sorry I didn’t show for lunch. I was out for most of the day resting.”
“But you’re okay now?”
“Just tired.” He began walking along the path that led to the stadium entrance. Ursula followed. It made him edgy, but the fence was ten feet tall. Ten whole feet. And it was metal.
Ursula asked, “So… Why not just go home?”
Kane forced himself to keep walking. “Had to chat with some teachers. And I need to talk to Coach O’Brien.”
Kane watched Ursula for her reaction, but her eyes were trained on the stadium. Haltingly, she said, “You can’t. He’s busy with football practice.”
“That’s okay. It’s quick.”
“Oh, well…you can just talk to him tomorrow, can’t you? And besides, they’re doing a scrimmage. He’s busy.”
“He’s expecting me. At the practice.”
She raised an eyebrow. Kane wondered where he was going with this very obvious lie. He desperately tried to recall how people did football. He’d seen a few movies, and sometimes the start of the Super Bowl after the most important part ended, which was the national anthem.
“Yeah, he invited me to…bring him his coin.”
“His coin?”
“For the coin part.”
“Do you mean the coin toss?”
“Yes.”
Kane picked up his pace. Ursula followed. They were behind the football bleachers now. The stadium had locker rooms, and Kane could use the back entrance to get through the fence.
“Oh, you know what? I have a coin in my equipment bag. I’ll bring him one! Why don’t you head home, okay? I’ll talk to O’Brien for you. Isn’t that what friends are for?”
Kane was out of excuses and out of patience. His hands were shaking. Actually shaking. Ursula disgusted him with her desperation. He disgusted himself with his desperation to believe her. His eyes burned, a preview to tears. The fence didn’t turn the corner, and he readied his escape.
“Kane, you’re looking kind of pale. Why don’t I just drive you home?”
“Stay away from my house.”
Fear opened on Ursula’s face. “What?”
“Don’t play dumb,” Kane spat. “I heard you talking in the boiler room with Elliot and Adeline.”
Ursula went white.
“You were following me that night on the path, weren’t you?”
“Kane, listen—”
“What’s a reverie, Ursula? Why are the lobsters glowing?”
“Kane—”
“What happened to Maxine Osman?”
The dimple between Ursula’s eyebrows spread into a series of disbelieving lines. Her head shook in slow horror.
“Did you guys kill her?”
“Kane, stop, you don’t understand. You’re confused, and if you’d just calm down—”
“I’m not confused, and don’t tell me to calm down.” His voice smoldered. “I thought you were my friend!”
She looked hurt, as though she actually cared. “I am! I was going to tell you, but not like this!”
His withering glare was his only response before he pivoted toward the locker rooms.
“Kane!” she called. “Just wait a second, okay? We can find a place to go. I’ll explain it. I’ll explain everything. Just give me a chance.”
“I gave you your chance,” he called back, done listening. He was going to find out for himself what Ursula was hiding. Like a cresting wave, the betrayal swept him into a jog.
“Kane!” Ursula screamed. “You can’t go in there!”
He ignored her.
“STOP!”
It wasn’t a plea. It was a command. Kane had to look back. Ursula’s hands were bunched in the chain links, her face dark with sudden contempt. And then, in one swift motion, Ursula tore the fence apart like a curtain of beads.
Now Kane was sprinting. He rounded the corner at a dangerous speed, sliding on a patch of mud. In a whirl he was on the ground, hands full of muck. He threw a glance back. Ursula rocketed around the corner, closing the distance between them.
His mind screamed for him to get up. To do anything but watch as she bore down on him. And instead of terror, he felt a sensation at once familiar and foreign. An inward reaching, a crystallization of panic, anger, and determination. His body moved against his retreating mind, throwing him onto his feet, toward Ursula. His palm shot out to stop her.
“Leave me alone!”
A needle of pain sliced through Kane’s temples as a dazzling blaze engulfed his fingertips. With a sound like the air itself ripping apart, pure iridescence rocketed from his hand. It struck Ursula directly, surging over her like a thick jet of water, dragging her off her feet and into a brutal backward tumble.
A breathless beat passed. Ursula lay in a small crater, smoke curling off her stilled body, probably dead, and Kane’s hand still crackled with the otherworldly light. The flames were f
aceted like gemstones but had the fluidity of fog, and they held every color imaginable in their dancing depths.
Kane waved his hand frantically, desperate to get the fire off his skin. He dug his knuckles into the soupy mud, but still the light boiled over his flesh.
“Help!” Kane screamed, though the fire did not burn him. Instead, an electric vibration pulsed through the bones of his hand, in time with the pastel flames, as though Kane clutched not fire but sound.
Then Ursula sat up. “Kane,” she growled with pained restraint. Her uniform was burnt through in places. Bits of rock fell from her hair as she stood and glared at Kane with eyes that now glowed a neon pink.
She stalked toward him.
“We’re friends, Kane, remember? If you’d just listen to me I can help you.”
“Stay away!”
This time when the plume erupted from Kane’s hand it did not sweep Ursula over. Instead it came within a foot of her and collided with… Kane didn’t know what. The beam hit an invisible barrier and burst apart, swarming past Ursula in a million harmless embers.
She was only steps away now. She looked pissed.
And just like that, the fire winked from Kane’s palm. He ran for his life. The locker rooms were his only option and by some maniacal grace the door was propped open. He lunged for it as Ursula lunged for him.
“Don’t!”
But Kane was at the door, swinging himself inside and throwing his whole body into closing it behind him.
Inches away, Ursula screamed, “I’ll find you!”
The door slammed shut. The lock clicked into place with a gratifying THUNK!
And Kane was safe.
• Eight •
SPOILT BLOOD
Kane gulped in breath after breath. Every inhale clung in his throat like syrup. He kept his eyes on the door. Ursula had torn through a metal fence. Could a door hold her?
Somehow it did and Kane was safe. For now.
He finally let himself cry.
To some, the sudden onset of magic might be shocking, but to Kane it was owed. Ever since he was little, and ever since he knew he was different, he had woven the hope for magic into every one of the world’s disappointments. Every sneer, every snuck glance, every birthday spent alone with Sophia as his only guest. Each felt like a debt.