I nibble my lower lip. “I don’t get it.”
“Me, neither.”
“No, I mean, if you really saw what I saw, then why didn’t you react? That man came right at us and you just sat there.”
“I’ve trained myself not to react.”
“Trained?”
“It’s not safe to be crazy.”
I think about my grandmother. When speaking with my parents, we never got around to how she died.
“A few months before we moved to Thornsdale,” Luka says, “I overheard a conversation between my parents. About that pregnancy screening. I had no idea mine came back abnormal or that my mom had terminated a previous pregnancy. Supposedly, my parents took a big risk when they went against the doctor’s orders. My dad had to pay a lot of money to cover things up. Make sure the records were erased from the system.”
“Wait a minute. You mean women are required to proceed with treatment if the screenings come back with an abnormality? I always thought the decision was ultimately in the hands of the parents.”
“Almost everyone chooses to abort. Mothers rarely decide to have the child.”
Abort. Child. Luka is using language the world at large would not approve of. “But your mom did.”
He nods. “At first, they assumed the test was wrong. I was a healthy baby. A healthy toddler. My dad considered suing. But then I started to see things nobody else could see and my parents reconsidered. Maybe the screening wasn’t so wrong after all.”
The blood inside my veins turns hot. “So what? Because you aren’t perfect your parents regret their decision? They think people like us shouldn’t be allowed to live?”
He stops, curls his fingers around my wrist, and turns me to face him. Moonlight reflects off his face. “If my parents regret any decision, it’s listening to the doctors the first time.”
“I—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply—”
“It’s okay.” He lets go of my wrist and we stand in the thick of an awkward silence. I wish more than anything I knew how to fill it.
Luka puts his hands in his back pockets. “Have you ever asked your mom about her pregnancy screening?”
“I’ve never thought to.” But if my screening came back abnormal, I can’t imagine my mom going against the doctor’s advice. My parents are pretty by-the-book.
Luka glances over my shoulder, toward one of the manicured lawns within Forest Grove, then jerks his head for us to keep walking. “After I overheard that conversation, I knew it didn’t matter if the things I saw were real or not. I had to find a way to hide it. It took a while before I could tell the difference between what everyone could see and what only I could see. Sometimes it’s obvious—like at the pep rally and in class. Sometimes it isn’t so clear. You have to look for tells.”
“Tells?”
“Little things that tell you what you’re seeing isn’t …” The furrow in his brow deepens. “Human.”
“Like eyes that are all white?”
Luka gives me a slow, singular nod. “Once I was able to differentiate, I trained myself to ignore things.”
The memory of what happened in Mr. Lotsam’s class makes my shoulders deflate. I’m pretty sure I’ll never be strong enough to ignore something like that.
“The summer before sophomore year, I told Dr. Roth the hallucinations were gone. My parents were relieved. Dr. Roth had his doubts, but his doubts didn’t matter. I wasn’t showing any signs of abnormality, so he had no choice but to dismiss me.”
We walk a few more steps. “Do you trust him—Dr. Roth?”
“Sometimes I felt more like a science experiment than one of his clients, but I think he sincerely wanted to help. And thanks to my very existence, my father’s passionate about keeping the government away from patient files. The staff at the facility knows this. Dr. Roth would lose his job in a heartbeat if he shared your case with anyone.”
Maybe this should make me feel better, but honestly, all this talk about pregnancy screenings and governmental control and mental abnormalities sits like a dead weight on my chest. And really, how secure can the place be if a seventeen-year-old boy can break in?
Crickets chirp. The temperature is perfect. The night is beautiful, with stars and stars and stars freckling the black sky. Never in a million years would I envision me taking a midnight stroll with Luka Williams. But despite the perfection of the scene and the perfection of this boy, I can’t shake the feeling that the world is about to come crashing down.
“This is going to sound crazy.” He shakes his head. “Or maybe not, considering. But the reason I came to the facility yesterday is because of a dream I had last night.”
I stop.
So does he. “You were in it. We were on the beach. And you told me you were going to the—”
“Edward Brooks Facility.”
His eyebrows draw closer together.
“I had the same dream.” I let out my breath. Run my hands back through my hair. “How is any of this possible?”
Clouds sweep in front of the moon and night darkens his face. I don’t know why, but I have the distinct feeling that Luka is holding something back. Like he’s not telling me the whole truth and nothing but the truth. He looks around again, as if he suspects we’re being followed, then continues walking.
I follow after him. “What do you think it is—the things we see?”
“I have a couple theories.”
“Like?”
“Do you believe in God?”
I dip my chin. “Do you?”
He shoots me a sideways smile. “I asked you first.”
I twist my mouth to the side, forcing myself to consider the question. I don’t want to be flippant, even if science and the government would scoff. Do I believe in God? I know how my dad would answer—ever the logical-minded atheist, a man who believes miracles are never truly miracles. Then there’s my mom’s sister, Vanessa, who despite everything, believes in spirits and reincarnation. There’s those people on street corners, declaring the end times. And then there’s the flash of light in that gym auditorium and a myriad of other unexplainable things I’ve seen since as far back as my earliest memories. “Honestly?”
“Always.”
“I don’t know.”
We keep walking. I wait for him to elaborate, but we’re getting closer to our houses. His isn’t more than thirty yards away.
“Why—do you think God has something to do with this?” I ask.
“When I was a little kid, we went to church.”
My eyebrows shoot up my forehead. I’ve never met anybody who’s gone to a real church. Leela’s the first person I’ve met that admits to having a religious background, and even they don’t go. It seems so … taboo. “Really?”
“My grandparents didn’t approve. They thought my dad was putting us in unnecessary danger, but my parents were actually pretty devout for a while there. Sometimes, the pastor would talk about a spiritual realm.”
“A spiritual realm? You mean like angels and demons and stuff?”
“I know it sounds weird, but it’s better than my other theory.”
“Which is?”
Luka looks at me, an entire sky worth of stars reflected in the depth of his eyes. “The doctors are right. We’re both crazy.”
Chapter Seventeen
Angels
The next morning, I spend a good fifteen minutes staring at my dream journal, contemplating last night, unsure if I should record the events. Did it really happen—me and Luka and the Edward Brooks Facility? Or was it a really long, vivid, drawn-out hallucination? I decide to leave the pages blank and deflect Mom’s questions about the strange brightness in my eyes.
I can’t decide if the truth—that I snuck out of the house in the middle of the night and broke into a private facility with the boy next door—would freak her out or not. Most mothers, yes. Absolutely. Mine? For all I know, she could be relieved that I’m making friends. If that’s what Luka is.
On the drive
to school, I’m lost in a whirlwind of questions. If last night was indeed real, then how am I supposed to act in front of Luka today? Will he want to sit next to me in class? Will he want to talk about our shared dream again? Will he tell me more about this angel-demon theory of his?
As soon as I step inside the school building, Pete takes off toward his locker and Leela gives me a half-frantic, half-excited wave from the drinking fountain, races over and pulls me off to the side, away from the throng of students. “What happened yesterday? You just got up and left class and then Luka asked to go the nurse and didn’t return until halfway through Ceramics.”
As much as I want to confide in Leela, as much as I’m dying to tell her about Luka following me yesterday morning and then me following him last night and this bizarre connection we share, I can’t. There is too much I still don’t understand myself. So even though I’m a terrible actress, I do my best impersonation of dumb. “He left class too?”
“Yes! Right after you bolted. The whole class stared after you and then Luka raised his hand and told the teacher he wasn’t feeling very well and would like to go to the nurse. Usually that never works on Mr. Lotsam. He doesn’t let anybody out of class unless they’re bleeding from the head or have a severed limb. But Luka’s never asked to visit the nurse before and he looked so pale that Mr. Lotsam let him leave and then he spent the rest of the period trying to reign everybody in.”
The bell rings—our five minute warning. With our shoulders together, we walk out of the locker bay. Leela, with her thumbs looped beneath the straps of her backpack and me with a note from my mom clutched in my hand. Given how yesterday morning started, she one hundred percent believed me when I told her I left school in the middle of first period because I was about to be sick. “He came back to Ceramics, though?”
“Yeah, but he seemed distracted. At lunch too. Rumors are buzzing. First he asks you to be his partner in history class—which you totally owe me a story about, by the way. And then you both disappear yesterday morning.” Leela opens the door leading into the stairwell. I slip through and the two of us walk up the stairs while others pass us by. “People are saying he never went to the nurse. Jennalee’s brother is a senior and was driving in late after a dentist appointment and he said he saw Luka peeling out of the parking lot in his car.”
I keep my face as blank as possible. “That’s weird.”
“So what happened to you?”
I hold up my mother’s note. “I really was sick. My mom didn’t even want me to go to school in the first place.”
Leela plucks it from my hand and scans the short paragraph, her expression sagging with each successive word. “You didn’t see Luka?”
I press my lips together and shake my head, a twinge of guilt stabbing my stomach. I hate lying to anyone, but especially Leela, my good friend—the girl who welcomed me into Thornsdale with opened arms.
Her posture droops. “Rumors are always more interesting than the truth, aren’t they?”
If she only knew.
I’m quite positive the truth couldn’t get more outrageous. Me and Luka at the Edward Brooks Facility at two in the morning? Me and Luka seeing things nobody else can see? Visiting each other in a dream? I’m still not sure how that worked. Still not entirely sure that in my desperation to not be crazy, I didn’t make the whole thing up.
Mr. Lotsam’s classroom comes into view and my insides squeeze tight with a strange mixture of misery and anticipation. I don’t want to record last night in my dream journal, but I can’t fight the sinking sensation that I will be. That last night was truly a deranged figment of my imagination. I’ve never been more uncertain, or hopeful.
When I step into the classroom, Luka is already there. Summer sits on the table in front of him, her feet on the chair to his left, successfully gathering his attention as she laughs and talks. The seat to his right is taken by Jared. Disappointment crashes through me. Not that I’d be brave enough to sit by him if that were an option. Still, a small piece of me hoped he might save me a seat. I find myself staring at Summer’s cleavage. The view is no accident. She has flirting down to an art form and Jared is practically drooling. My shoulders droop to match Leela’s as I follow her toward two open chairs, unsure if I want Luka to look at me in light of the perfect, creature in front of him.
He doesn’t.
Not when the bell rings and not through the entire first period, even though I can do nothing but look at him. Summer catches me at one point and gives me a disgusted look that seems to say in your dreams, honey. By the time the bell rings, my heart hurts, I have no idea what we discussed in Current Events, and I’m convinced Summer’s right. Only in my dreams do Luka and I have anything in common.
It’s hard—as I walk with Leela to Ceramics—not to despair. I don’t have any proof that last night was real. This morning, my hoodie was in the same place I left it after dinner. Nothing was out of place, not even the unlaced running shoes I supposedly slipped on to follow Luka in the dead of night. The one person who could provide the proof I want doesn’t even acknowledge me. He looks completely unfazed and well-rested. Surely he can’t be that good of an actor.
“Hey, you okay?” Leela finally asks, as we shuffle inside the dusty basement classroom.
“Still feeling a little off, I guess.” I’m suddenly very grateful I didn’t tell Leela anything. What a freak I am, believing a boy like Luka Williams would go through the trouble of sneaking out at night, breaking into a facility, all to read my file.
I hang my bag over the back of a chair. The teacher calls us over to the pottery wheel for a demonstration and I join the rest of the class. Someone moves to stand slightly behind me, a smidge to the left—unusually close. I glance over my shoulder and all my muscles tense. Because it’s Luka. He’s not looking at me. He doesn’t even seem to notice me. But he’s there, so close that if I were to lean back on my heels our bodies would touch. My scalp tingles at his nearness. I hold my breath and cross my arms and pin my eyes on the spinning wheel, even though the teacher’s instructions are a muffle of indecipherable sound. My heart thumps in my ears, my throat, my wrists. It’s like I have a hundred hearts placed throughout my body.
All of a sudden, the heat of Luka’s closeness combusts into something infinitely hotter. So much so that for a fraction of a second, I think the kiln has exploded. I jerk my head around, toward the corner of the room, and see something—a ball of brightness. Luminous and terrifying and beautiful. I am about to stumble back, but Luka’s fingers wrap around my forearm and hold me in place.
I’m frozen. I can’t even look over my shoulder to see Luka’s face. So I stand there, panic swelling, as the rest of the class stares with glazed, bored eyes at the teacher and the pottery wheel, unaware of this very not-normal thing hovering in the corner of the classroom. But Luka sees it. He must, otherwise why is he holding my arm, anchoring me in place? My knees shake. As much as I want to, I can’t look away from the light. It’s so bright that it’s impossible to look away.
The ball of light moves out of the corner, toward me. I am terrified, like yesterday. Only instead of feeling threatened, I am enraptured. In awe. It takes everything in me not to fall to my knees.
Luka’s grip tightens and he shifts his body so he stands in front of me, like a shield, only I don’t feel in need of protecting. Not from this. The light hovers in front of both of us, its warmth like the sun. My heart crashes against my sternum. I’m positive it will burst straight through the bone. But as quickly as the light appeared, it vanishes. And I’m left blinking and dazed.
My chest rises and falls as I look one way, then the other. Leela covers her mouth with a yawn. Jennalee picks at her nail mindlessly. A few students look genuinely interested in the hypnotic way our teacher’s hands mold the spinning clay on the wheel. Luka lets go of my arm, but the heat of his touch remains. A million questions spin in my mind. They chase each other in circles, like a frantic dog after its tail. Our teacher finishes his demonstratio
n and the class disperses. Without acknowledging me or the bizarre thing that happened, Luka claims one of the pottery wheels.
Dumbstruck, I follow Leela to our table. She talks as I poke at the hunk of clay in front of me and sneak covert glances at Luka. He is a master at the wheel. Just as good, if not better than the teacher. About halfway through class, Leela waves her hand in front of my face.
“Earth to Tess?”
My eyelids flutter.
She glances at Luka, then at the hunk of clay I have decimated in front of me. I don’t even know what I’m trying to make. “You should probably be a little more subtle,” she mumbles from the corner of her mouth.
“Huh?”
“About the staring.” Leela’s almost finished with her project—a ceramic lantern with lopsided walls. “I know Summer can seem nice at times, but she’s really possessive when it comes to him. With all those rumors flying around about yesterday … let’s just say you don’t want to get on her bad side.”
I bite the inside of my cheek and will Luka to look at me. Come on, give me something. Please. I’m freaking out over here.
Nothing.
His eyes stay glued to the clay in front of him.
I scoot back from the table. “I think I’ll go get a drink.”
“Did you hear anything I said?” Leela calls after me.
“Yeah. Promise. I just need a drink.”
I slip out of the classroom, slightly terrified the bright thing will reappear while I’m all alone. Its warmth remains like an invisible residue coating my skin, but the hallway is empty. Nothing but quiet and chlorine. I shuffle toward the restrooms and take a long drink from the fountain. The cool water does nothing to soothe my frantic thoughts. I take another drink and the sound of a closing door jars the quiet. I stand straight and whirl around. Jumpy.
Luka walks toward me, closing the gap between us with long, sure strides. I let out my breath and wipe away the wetness from my bottom lip. He stops in front of me, a divot creasing the space between his dark eyebrows. “Are you okay?”
The Gifting Page 10