“This time…Lucas is the genie.” He slapped me on the back and tucked his laptop back in his schoolbag.
“That’s crazy, Ro,” I almost stuttered.
“It’s completely insane!” he shouted. “But I can’t wait to see what’s next, my friend.”
His theories were definitely interesting but I wasn’t sure if he had answered the riddle of my powers yet. It was comforting though to have a friend like Roland that had my back in this crazy journey. Even if he was obsessed with everything from Bigfoot to the X-Files.
Just then, the first bell rang through the hallway, alerting everyone of the beginning of school. Taylor and Morgan shot me a smile and hurried on their way together. Taylor had this annoying habit of walking Morgan to all her classes. I guess being a super handsome, athletic juggernaut wasn’t enough. He had to be a complete gentlemen as well. Roland waited for me to gather my things from my locker but I waved him on.
“Go ahead, Ro, I’ll be right behind you.”
“Affirmative,” he said, and walked away. I opened my locker as fast as I could and tucked a slightly chewed pen into my backpack and closed the door. Before the rattling hum of the locker’s sheet metal could come to a halt, I was no longer alone.
Felicity stood inches from my face and cursed, “It’s all your fault, Lucas!”
Completely annoyed, I stood my ground. “Felicity, I don’t have time for this. We’re going to be late for first hour.”
“I don’t care!” She stomped her feet in a fit. “I can’t sleep anymore. My nights are filled with the most horrible nightmares. Sometimes I feel like I’m losing my mind, and it’s all your fault!”
“My fault?”
“Yes. Ever since we returned from that other dimension my life has been miserable.” She quickly wiped away a small tear from her eye. “It’s your fault.”
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” I held strong.
“What?”
“I saved your life,” I whispered, with a crooked grin. I expected her to explode with anger. I prepared myself for her to hit me and accuse me of the worst things. But she did none of that. Instead, she took a small step backwards and hid her eyes from mine. They fell behind her mass of curly blonde bangs, seemingly studying her lifeless ring around her finger before she spoke.
“I know,” she wilted. “I never told you thank you.”
“Umm, yeah, I guess.”
Silently, she turned from me and headed down the hallway. The second warning bell rang loudly and I realized I was most likely going to be late for first period. With a shaky voice, I asked Felicity one final question.
“Are you dreaming about serpents with…umm…claws?”
Felicity froze in place and seemed to be shaking. She looked over her shoulder with terror in her eyes. Tears were welling up and her face fell pale. Slowly, she nodded yes, then ran away upset.
I sighed, “That’s what I was afraid of.”
LEVEL 11
WE’RE THE KIDS
To say the last few days had been weird was an understatement. Surprisingly, most of my fellow classmates had moved on from the rumors about me and Felicity, and our time away. Yeah, they didn’t know the real truth, but still, they all seemed to go about their lives again. The only red flag was that there seemed to be fewer of them around in the last couple of days. I had noticed a few students absent yesterday but thought nothing of it, but now, staring at three empty seats in my third period class, I started to feel uncomfortable.
“Yesterday Ricky was absent, now today, Maggie and Glen are gone too,” Morgan stated, with a curious frown. “Tay told me there were at least five kids absent in his first period class, and two more in his Algebra class.”
“Weird,” I mumbled. This was more than weird. This had something to do with my return, I could feel it in my bones. Maybe this had something to do with Ms. Strickland, too. Morgan seemed to be thinking the same thing.
With a light nod, she whispered, “I’m scared.”
I leaned over to her to ease her fears but when I did, the floor appeared to change underneath us. The white tiles seemed to glow translucent as if covered in glistening water. The lines of the floor slithered in place like a dozen rolling serpents. With a hard swallow, I rubbed my eyes to make sure I wasn’t dreaming again.
“Lucas? Are you all right?” Morgan asked, quietly.
“Do you see that?”
“See what?”
“The floor!” I coughed, through clenched teeth. She looked below us and everything was normal. I wiped at my betraying eyes one more time and found my cheeks flushed with confusion. Was I going crazy?
“Lucas, the floor looks…like…the floor. Completely normal.”
With a hint of desperation, I mumbled, “Great, I’m losing my mind…again.”
More classes went by, more strange hallucinations taunted me. Every time I noticed another missing student, something seemed to play with my sanity. The crawling floors, the see-through walls, the growling air-conditioning vents. By the end of the day I was so flustered that I had forgotten to show up at my after-school detention punishment. When I walked up to Taylor on the football field during his latest practice, he began to laugh.
“You lost, Luc? What are you doing here?”
“Huh, I always come and watch you practice.”
He scooped up a ball in his big hands and threw it across the field like it was the easiest thing to do. “I know, but don’t you have detention?”
“Oh, crap…I forgot,” I pouted. Taylor laughed again and smacked me on the back.
“You’ll end up with another week of detention if you skip out on today,” he reminded me.
“There aren’t enough days left in the semester to give me anymore detention. I’m booked up until the summer,” I said, kidding. Taylor smiled down at me but he could tell I was troubled by something.
“Isn’t Olivia going to be there?”
“I guess.”
“You guess?” Taylor signaled his teammates that he needed a break. “What’s going on, Luc?”
Sticking my hands in my pockets, I sulked, “I’m not sure, T. Ever since I’ve been back things have been a little off with Olivia and I. I think maybe everything that happened before was too much for her.”
“Well, saving the world, and her little sister, does take a lot out of you.”
“It’s more than that. I think my time away changed her mind. I was only gone a few hours, but for her, I was gone weeks. That’s more than enough time to change her mind about me…about us. You know, being a couple.” My hands pulled from my pockets and found themselves at the sides of my face, caressing my temples as a throbbing headache appeared from nowhere.
“Nope. I don’t believe that,” he declared, as fact.
“You don’t?”
“Luc, you didn’t see the way Olivia was while you and Sophia were gone.”
Fumbling over my words, “What do you mean?”
“After you disappeared, she was the only one of us that truly believed you’d be back.” His voice faded away. I was shocked to hear that my best friends would give up on me so easily. He winced at my fresh batch of worry. “I tried to stay positive, Lucas, I did…but…I’m sorry. Ro even tried to keep us all believing you’d return but Mo and I lost hope.”
“T, it’s cool. I understand. You have nothing to be sorry about. That day was no ones fault but General Love’s.” Taylor froze at the very mention of our former nemesis’ name. The General, the despicable demon that wanted the true power of Ripley and was willing to tear a hole in the planet to get it. I was so relieved he was gone for good. “But I’m gonna have to give the Saint twins some grief about giving up on me so easily.” I let a small laugh escape. Taylor eased his stance and shrugged.
“Sounds fair,” he smiled.
With our conversation taking a lighter turn, I leaned into him, and asked, “You and Mo are doing well? Happy?”
“Completely. I’ve never felt as happy as I a
m with anyone else.” He took a moment to search my face. “Why would you ask that?”
My head spun around the surrounding practice field and quickly counted dozens of the school’s most popular girls watching us talk. Well, watching Taylor stand topless, and talking with me. To say he was popular in our school, our town, was a vast understatement. His looks alone made him the biggest target for young wanting hearts. The fact that he was kind and chivalrous was just the icing on the cake. He could have any girlfriend he wanted. As a small group of his stalkers waved his way with squeals and hair flips, I gently sighed, “Umm, no reason.”
“She’s my world, Luc,” he said, and snagged a quick drink from a squeeze bottle. “I plan on asking her to the Homecoming Dance?”
“Really?”
“You bet.” With a sigh that echoed from the female crowd, he placed a white T-Shirt across his chest and back. “You know, Lucas, you should ask Olivia to the dance.”
“What?” I panicked. My feet automatically stumbled over themselves, placing one of my heels in a hidden hole in the grass. I fell backwards, clutching at the open air as I fell onto my backside. With a hot wave of embarrassment, I looked up at Taylor, and groaned, “I can’t dance.”
A huge laugh roared from his mouth. “Apparently you can’t walk either!”
“Agreed,” I mumbled. He reached down with one hand and pulled me up without much effort.
“Come on, graceful, I’ll give you a ride home today.”
Back on my feet again I punched him lightly in his arm and waited for him to show me the way to his truck. Just as he turned to walk to the parking lot my eyes spied movement from the grass. In the exact same spot where I tripped there was something out of place. A few blades of grass pulled apart as a thin scaly body rolled within the hidden terrain.
I whispered, “Not again.” I ignored it and ran to catch up with Taylor. He pushed forward unaware of my latest sighting. All my haunting illusions were pointing toward something on the horizon. Something bad. Felicity was having the same dreams about monsters as I was. Maybe we weren’t the only two having trouble sleeping.
“Hey, T,” I called out, as we reached the side of his truck. “You mind if we make a quick stop first?”
With a crooked but bright smile, he asked, “Where?”
LEVEL 12
OVERPROTECTED
Mountain Sky Middle School
“So, Luc, tell me why we’re here again?” Taylor asked, turning down the 90’s pop music that was blaring from his trucks speakers.
“I need to talk to Sophia,” I said, quietly nodding to the beat of the music. My eyes searched the front sign of the school as we pulled into the parking lot. In bold maroon and gray print were the words, Home of the Eagles. As I mouthed the words to myself, my arm began to tingle, softly. My hand ran over my markings instinctively. In my head I asked Ripley if everything was all right.
Do I need to be worried?
~ No. ~
Then what’s going on with you? My arm feels like it’s being tickled from the inside out and it’s getting worse.
~ Sophia’s close. ~
You can sense her?
~ Of course. We share the same power. ~
That meant she must have at least one Jynshee Ring on her. She promised me she wouldn’t mess with them. Slightly angered, I jumped from the truck’s passenger side door and asked, Where is she?
~ Close. ~
Suddenly, Sophia’s big excited eyes locked onto me from behind a few bobbing heads of her classmates. She pushed through them and ran up to us. Her long brown hair flipped from side to side as it dangled from the back of her head in a tight ponytail. She was clutching her school books and covered in nervous goose bumps.
“Lucas!”
“Hey, Soph.”
“What are you doing here?” she asked, loud enough for everyone around her to hear. Thankfully, Taylor’s celebrity was shielding most of the wandering eyes. Most of the seventh graders lost their minds at the sight of Big Country on their campus.
“Tay and I thought you may need a ride home,” I said, sounding like an excuse. Because it was.
“Well, I usually catch a ride with Olivia and her band…you know, after she’s done with detention. Wait a sec, why aren’t you in detention, Lucas?” She tilted her head sideways just like her big sister did when she was curious.
Ignoring her question, I asked, “Where is it, Soph?”
“Where’s what?”
“Don’t play stupid, you know what I’m talking about. Where’s the ring?” I scolded, like a big brother. She shrunk in front of me and her head fell forward with her chin almost touching her chest. It made the ring visible instantly as it was snugly wrapped around her hair, holding the ponytail in place. Its golden reflection called to me and Ripley.
“Lucas, I can explain…” she tried to say.
“Get in the truck,” I demanded.
“But…”
I gently, but firmly nudged her into the cab of the truck and Taylor quickly snuck into the driver’s seat. The crowd of students sighed as he left them. He started the engine and drove us out of the parking lot.
“You promised me you wouldn’t mess with those until you were older. You promised your sister, too. She’s going to be so mad.” I tried to calm down.
“I know, I know, but I have it under control,” she tried to convince me. Taylor drove, quietly humming along to the song playing through the speakers.
“No you don’t!”
“Yes, I do,” she argued, politely.
“No, you don’t,” I snapped back. “And the reason I know that is because I don’t even have this confusing power under control. This could be very dangerous, Soph.”
“Lucas, I’m fine. This ring is not dangerous.” She eagerly tapped the ring with her fingers. “Trust me,” she pleaded.
“How could you possibly know that?” I asked, bewildered.
“Because it’s the exact opposite of dangerous,” she winked.
“Huh?”
With a flick of her hand she revealed a small plastic lighter. It was colored green and slightly see-through. The combustable liquid swished back and forth within its tiny walls. Without missing a beat, she flicked a small flame to life.
“Soph, what are you doing?” Taylor asked, worried. I seconded his emotion with bulging eyes.
“Watch this!” she smirked. Before I could reach out and snatch up the lighter she had jammed the new flame into her chin.
I freaked out. “Are you out of your mind?” My arm lit up with purple and gold strings of light and I swiftly snatched the fire from her face. She began to giggle in delight. Before I could say another word, she slid her head back to show Taylor and I that she wasn’t harmed at all.
With an I-told-you-so smile, she chirped, “See.”
“What’s going on, Luc?” Taylor asked, on the verge of panic, trying to keep his eyes on the road.
Sophia answered for me. “My ring is the complete opposite of dangerous, guys.”
“It’s a shield,” I said, calmly realizing its secret. She nodded in agreement and placed a cool hand upon my forearm. The lines along my skin changed color as if Ripley was backing her theory up. The silvery hue lit the entire cab of the vehicle with magic. Sophia’s ring pulsed in the same radiant glow.
“Yup. While wearing this ring, I discovered I am invulnerable, unbreakable.” She slowly leaned into me so only I could hear her next words. “Like a superhero.”
“Superhero,” I mimicked, under my breath. Sometimes, I felt the same way. Her rings were made of the same force that Ripley came from. Ripley would never let me be hurt in any way. Maybe her rings would do the same? Maybe her rings were even stronger than my fleshy gauntlet?
“Are you still mad at me?” she asked, shyly.
Snatching a quick look at her young face, I smiled. “No.” She leaned back in her seat and began tapping along with the rhythm of the music. The truth was, this was all my doing. I passed the pow
er onto her. I entrusted a twelve-year old with unlimited magic that nobody fully understood. If anything happened to her, it would be completely my fault.
After a few songs I turned to her and asked, “Soph, have you seen anything…umm…strange lately?”
“Strange? Stranger than my new unbreakable skin? No.” Her eyes rolled in her head.
“No hallucinations, or weird dreams?”
“Hallucinations? Nope.”
With desperation in my voice, “Great.”
“But I have had a recurring bad dream.” Sophia fell silent and still. She looked as if she had been hit in the stomach. As she shrank in her seat a little, I found her eyes with mine.
“Monsters?” I asked, in barely a whisper. Her big brown eyes grew even bigger and she nodded, slowly. I didn’t have to say another word as it was obvious she was having very familiar nightmares. With both her hands she made two opened claws and wiggled her fingers like spider legs. Finding her gesture cute but disturbing, I decided to end the conversation right there.
Moments later we were pulling into her driveway and she readied herself to exit the truck. I reached out and stopped her.
“Soph, I just want you to understand that this power we have is still unknown. I’m learning something new everyday. You may be unbreakable today and tomorrow it may be gone. You need to be more cautious, more careful.”
“Okay,” she said, as her smile faded away.
“You and I have shared in some impossible things, and right now, we’re connected,” I said, holding up my tattooed arm. “I hope it stays that way, but it may not.”
“I hope we stay connected, too. You’re the nicest boy I know, Lucas.” She slowly tucked a few loose strands of hair behind her ear before she continued. “My sister is so lucky.”
Her words rattled me. If only she realized her big sister was growing less connected with me by the day. “I guess.”
Lucas Ryan Versus: The Return Page 7