I turn and face the wall and feel him behind me. His hands touch my shoulders and my heart sings. The chain loops around my neck and his fingers brush my skin as he fumbles with the clasp. I close my eyes, lost in the sparks firing inside of me.
"There,” he whispers. His breath is warm and close. He lets go and steps back, and I look down at the locket. It's whole again, perfect, unbroken. “I’m sorry to put on such a show. Like I said, I haven’t quite mastered the power of the Nexus yet.”
"Thanks," I say. A shadowed smile crosses his face and we stand there, surrounded in a strange, awkward silence. I want to ask more questions. What is the Nexus, really? What else can it do? Why does he have it? What does this all mean for him — for us?
I start with something simple. “Are you going back to your dad’s?”
“No,” he says. “Why would you think that?”
“You said you were leaving.”
“Yeah, I did.” He bites his lip, sits down on my bed, and pats the spot next to him. “But I’m not going to my dad’s. That’s what I wanted to talk you about.” He rubs his hands along his jeans and clears his throat.
“Okay?” I drop down beside him.
He clears his throat. “There’s more. It’s about the-the-the—”
“Alien thing?”
“Yeah.” He stands up and walks to my dresser, rubbing his palms along the edges. “It’s weird to be talking about this with you. It’s been this secret all my life, and I’ve wanted to tell you so bad. But now that you know, I’m afraid it’ll freak you out.”
“Too late,” I whisper. My fingers reach for my locket. It’s warm against my skin. “That…that thing you used to fix this.”
“Yeah,” he says. “I’m sorry. As I said I struggle with controlling it. The Persiedian in me is highly allergic to it.”
“Allergic to it? Isn’t this Nexus thing something from your planet?”
“No, not really. There’s a planet not too far from Perseida called Nexia. Long before I was born, before my father was born, Perseidians invaded Nexia and tried to turn it into another world like Perseida, but the Nexians rebelled and created the Nexus to take over Perseida. It’s powerful—it can control a planet—the weather, the land, the oceans.” He taps his fingers against the dresser and looks away. “Many, many, many years ago they used it to take over Perseida. My dad’s planet, my planet, my people…It’s horrible, Sage. Although I’ve never been there or seen it, it’s horrible. I’ve grown up hearing the stories. Of what they’ve done to my cousins, my aunts and uncles, my grandparents..” Adam’s eyes grow haunted and I wait. I wait for him to say more. To tell me those stories. But instead he looks down at his palm, his eyes focused on something I cannot see.
“I’m sorry, Adam. About your relatives. I am so sorry.” I rest my hand on his shoulder to show my sympathy. Because I am sorry. So sorry. Everything he’s telling me is so unreal and I’m swimming in rivers of confusion and doubt, but Adam’s pain is very real. And I’m so sorry for him.
He lifts his eyes to mine as a question dawns in my mind.
“Adam,” I ask. “If they used the Nexus to take over your planet, why don’t you just use it to take it back? They don’t have it anymore—doesn’t that give you the power?”
“You’d think,” Adam looks down at his palm again. “But it’s not that easy. The Nexus is poisonous to Perseidian blood. They can’t use it—the power would kill them.”
“But you used it?”
“I’m not completely Perseidian. I’m part human. And although human’s can’t see the Nexus, it’s not poisonous to them.”
“Wow! That’s just…insane.” I release a short laugh and play with the chain around my neck.
“Yeah.” His lips curl, slowly growing into a grin. I grin with him and break into giggles, and a bubble of air rises through me popping the tension between us. We’re us again.
And then we’re not.
Ribbons of uneasiness coil in my stomach. We’re talking about this, and I’m not sure I want to talk about this. I’m not sure I want to talk at all. I notice the clock on the dresser. Less than ten minutes until school starts.
“I don’t want to be late. Maybe I better go,” I say rising from the bed.
“No, wait.” He paces again and shakes his hands and runs fingers through his hair.
I stop. He’s inches from me and I taste his heat. Warm and sweet and electrifying. He exhales and his breath caresses my skin, sending shivers through me.
“Like I said, there’s a war on Perseida. We have the Nexus—we have their power. ” He pushes against the dresser with his palms, his eyes on his fingers, on the floor, on anything but me.
“But you said they can’t use it?”
“No, they can’t. Not Perseidians.”
“But humans. This is all so—”
The space between us increases, and I don’t know if it’s him or me. He stares at his hands and rubs his palms together. I stare at him. Silence ticks between us like the changing numbers on my clock.
“Crazy,” he says.
“A little. But I was going to say overwhelming.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I wish you would’ve told me sooner. Given me a chance to believe you.”
“Would you have?” he asks. “Would you really have believed me?”
“I’m believing you now, aren’t I?”
“Are you? Because you’re not asking a lot of questions. You’d think if you really believed all of this, you’d be asking a lot more questions. Wouldn’t you?”
I roll my lips together and look away from him. There’s a scratch in the dark panel above my bed. Adam and Lucas had left it there three summers ago. I had the chicken pox and my mom, who was between boyfriends, had quarantined me to my room. After three days of being banned from seeing me, they had climbed through my window, leaving the scratch. They brought games and snacks, and we had talked for hours, sharing whispered giggles and secret stares. My mom found us. With a waving finger and a red face, she ordered Adam and Lucas out of the house and me into my bed. She was harsh and motherly and nothing like the woman she is now. And I curled up beneath my sheets in my yellow and pink striped pajamas with a face caked in calamine lotion and a huge smile. It had been one of the best days of my life.
Normal. A normal mom. Normal friends.
And now here I am, losing the last normal thing in my life.
“I’m really trying, Adam. I swear,” I whisper. “It’s not that I don’t have questions, because I do. But it’s just too much and I need time. I mean, everything I thought was true—it isn’t anymore. And I’m just really confused. And it’s hard to think when you’re here.”
“Sage, I wish I had the time to give you. To make this all right, but I don’t.” His face doesn’t leave mine. I feel his fingers take mine. They tremble or maybe it’s me. “I need to go to Nevada, and I’d like you to come with me.”
“What?” I breathe deeply, the air burning my dry throat. “Nevada? Why?”
He takes my hands and guides me to the bed until we’re sitting, our knees nearly touching. “The Nexus can be operated by a human and only seen by a Perseidian.”
“Yeah?”
“And I’m part human and part Perseidian. Which means I can both see it and operate it. I have trouble controlling it completely sometimes…like when I came here. But that’s just the poison messing with me. And I’m getting better at it—I really am. But I’m still the one who can control it. The only one.” He shifts his weight on the bed and I’m sinking closer to him, my skin warm and humming. “Don’t you see, I was created to go back to Perseida. To save Perseida.”
I shake my head, not quite understanding. His eyes are sinking into me, imploring me to understand. But I don’t.
“I don’t—”
“I’m supposed to leave Earth. This summer. I’m supposed to leave, and I won’t be coming back.” His words steal my breath. And I’m spinning backwards. To the policeman at
the door, my mom crying, the news reports with the pictures of fire and burning plane wreckage.
“Leave…forever? Leave me?” I ask in a small voice.
“Leave Earth. And yes, by the time we get to Perseida. By the time we restore order and save our people. I won’t be able to come back. This has always been the plan, Sage. For my entire life, this has been my destiny.”
My stomach drops leaving a painful hollow inside of me. “I would never see you again.” My voice is so quiet, I’m afraid only I hear it, but Adam sighs next to me and the bed shifts again. He rubs his thumb along the outside of my hand, but the heat has cooled, and all I feel is an aching emptiness.
“That’s why I need to go to Nevada,” he says. “Because I don’t want this destiny. I haven’t wanted it in a long time—if even ever. But I can’t just abandon it—I can’t do that to my father, to my family. So I’ve been looking for a way and I think I’ve found it. There’s another like me. A brother. Part Perseidian, part human. Someone else who can go instead.”
“Really? Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“And it’s what you want? To stay here? With me?” I ask timidly.
His eyes are deeper than Lake Superior itself and I’m sinking into them. “Yes, of course.”
My heart quivers. I breath too fast. This is all becoming too much. He leans in and his lips close, warm and pink and…I leap to my feet and whirl to face him. “Adam, I’m late. I’ve got to get to school.”
“I said I’d drive you.”
“I think I’d rather walk. Please. I need the air.” I’m rushing around my room, a mental checklist in my head. Backpack. Shoes. Bathroom stop. Oh god, I need air. I need space. I need to breathe. “I can’t think about anything when you’re so close.”
Anything except kissing you. But I’m not telling him that.
“Wait,” He’s holding my hand pulling me back to him. “I want you to go with me…to Nevada. Help me with this. Will you? It will give me time to show you that we’re no different.” I pull my hand from his grasp.
“I’ve got to go.”
“Think about it and let me know soon,” he calls after me. “We’d have to leave today, right after you’re done with school.”
I pull on my socks and slide into my sneakers.
“I can still drive you.”
“No thanks,” I sling my backpack over my shoulder. “Just please, let me process all this.”
“Please think about coming.”
“I will,” I say, but I don’t look back.
Chapter Fifteen
Before Lucas started dating Brianna, we ate lunch together every day. Just the two of us. We’d sit across from each other on the narrow brown benches and talk about our classes, our parents, or Adam. The dwindling members of the math club sat at the other end.
The week before Homecoming, I was crossing the lunchroom to our table when I heard Brianna call Lucas’s name. She was waving in our direction while standing on the bench of the table she usually sits at, the one that overfills with football players and cheerleaders. Lucas glanced from me to her to me again. I nodded, he smiled, and we haven’t eaten lunch together since. For the first day or two, I sat alone in our usual spot, avoiding the pitying gazes from the short, pimply boys sporting buzz cuts at the other end.
On the third day, I wandered the halls, discovering the empty set of locker bays in a far corner on the second floor. The lockers are empty, green peeling paint, missing locks and doors. They’re down the hallway of unused classrooms built before the paper mill closed and Star Harbor was twice the size it is now. Only hormonal couples drift down this way looking for places to make out. They’re usually too engrossed in each other to notice me sitting against the wall in the gap between lockers 209 and 210. There I spend the hour writing letters to Adam or doodling in the margins of my notebook.
Today, I am minutes away from the lunch bell and inches away from the second floor stairs when I hear my name called from behind me. I stop, afraid to turn, afraid to see the owner of the voice.
Because I’d know that high-pitch sugary whine anywhere.
Brianna stands in a circle of friends, her hands splayed across her hips, her long hair tossed behind her shoulders. She’s wearing pastel pink sweats that stop below her knee and probably have big letters across her butt.
She smiles, syrupy and sweet, and steps closer to me, her friends moving with her as if they are linked together. I hold my breath, waiting for the laughter in her eyes, the judgment on her face, the rude comment on her lips.
I wait for the real Brianna.
But this Brianna curls her lips higher into a you’re-my-new-best-friend smile and tosses her hair. “Join us for lunch?”
“Uh-”. Words escape me. How do I answer that?
“Yes, come join us.” One of Brianna’s nameless clones grabs my arm sweeping me into them.
They’re wasps buzzing around their queen, and I’m trapped in the swarm. They carry me with them to the cafeteria, through the lunch line, to the center table where Brianna holds court.
I’m pressed into the bench between two girls who smell like coconuts and hairspray. Brianna sits across from us, tossing her hair back, picking at her food, scanning the table as if she’s secretly keeping tabs on who’s there or not.
The girl next to Brianna starts talking about a party tonight. Brianna shakes her head again, her hair whipping across her shoulders like she’s in some sort of shampoo commercial. I roll my eyes and stare down at my bagged lunch. Everyone else at the table nibbles off cafeteria trays. Pulling out a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a baggie of sliced carrots seems weird.
Not that I could eat right now. My stomach feels heavy and lumpy as I scan the table. Several seats down, I find Lucas watching me. He gives me a surprised smile, and I can see the question in his eyes. What am I doing here? I shake my head. I have no idea.
Brianna and the girl next to her are fawning over an overly made up redhead’s shoes. A french fry whizzes by my head hitting the redhead in the arm.
“Hey.” She presses her hands on her hips and glares to the end of the table where a group of boys are snorting. Get me out of here. My eyes circle the cafeteria for an escape, for a way back to my locker bay and the peace of my invisible world.
And then I hear his name.
They’re asking Brianna about him. About her Adam. Has she heard from him yet?
“No,” Brianna shakes her head. “He hasn’t called me all week. But you know considering who he is, I bet he’s very busy.” She turns and looks across the table at me. “Have you heard from him, Sage?”
“Um,” I’m swimming in the shock and the noise.
“Of course not,” Brianna’s waves her hand and giggles, turning back to her friends. “I’m sure he’ll be calling me first. Sage and Adam are good friends, you know. Isn’t that adorable?”
“Awwww,” says the girl sitting next to her and my stomach clenches. Here it comes—what Brianna is really up to. But Brianna squeals and leaps from her seat, running towards a crowd of boys entering the lunch room.
“She’s crazy…and persistent. But she always seems to get what she wants,” says the girl to my left. She smiles, small but friendly, shakes her pink and black hair, and winks a colorless eye. Her name is Sabrina, and she had been my friend for three glorious days in ninth grade. But Brianna took her, like she takes everyone from me.
I glance to the end of the table where Lucas laughs with one of the football players. She took Lucas and now she wants Adam.
I stand up to climb over the bench and accidentally elbow Sabrina. “Sorry,” I mumble. “I just remembered I was supposed to be somewhere.” I move fast, nearly tripping up the three steps leading out of the cafeteria and down the hallway.
I think of the way Brianna’s eyes lit up when she said Adam’s name and Sabrina’s words. She has a way of getting everything she wants. I think of Adam in my room this morning, of the softness in his eyes. I think o
f our kiss last summer.
I pull my phone from my pocket. Adam hasn’t called Brianna. He hasn’t called her just like he said. A low flame leaps to life in me. She’s not getting Adam. Not her. Not Perseida. Not some destiny that will take him away from me forever.
I need him.
I reach my regular lunch spot and sink to the floor in relief. Relief to escape from Brianna and her crazy group of friends. Relief to escape from the mixed emotions that claw through me every time I encounter Lucas. Relief to have a moment of quiet—to just think. My morning classes had passed in a blur, and I couldn’t tell you a thing any of my teachers said. My mind reels with all Adam had told me.
You’d think if you really believed all of this, you’d be asking a lot more questions. Wouldn’t you?
His words float through my brain.
Do I believe him? Do I believe any of this? It all seems so surreal.
Yet, I’d seen it. The lights at the lake. Adam in the lake. The way he fixed my locket. The spaceship, the pyramids, the conviction in Adam’s eyes.
This was Adam. My Adam. Not Brianna’s Adam. Not some strange alien, Adam. My Adam. My best friend in the entire world. Ever since he rescued me that day from the lake, he’s been keeping my head above water. He’s everything.
Everything.
Yes, I believed him.
I pulled out my notebook and started writing out questions. Real questions. Not about kissing Brianna or kissing me, but about him. About Perseida. About the Nexus. The words flowed through my pencil as I filled up line after line of what I wanted to ask him. Needed to ask him. Not just because I wanted answers, but because I wanted him to know that I believed him.
When I run out of questions, I turn on my phone, my hands shaking and sweating so much that I nearly drop it.
I need to go to Nevada, and I’d like you to come with me.
With trembling fingers I key out a message to Adam.
I have a few questions first, but I’ll go.
Chapter Sixteen
One Starry Knight: A Scifi Alien Love Story (The Starry Knight Saga Book 1) Page 9