Overtaken

by Mark H. Kruger

  Jackson was already seated in the back, right corner of biology class, fully locked into a beat-up Vonnegut paperback.

  Amazingly, he was still alive and functioning. I contained my relief as I calmly strode down the aisle. Jackson looked up just as I arrived at his desk.

  “Good weekend?” I rhetorically asked in an urgent, we-need-to-talk tone.

  “Later,” he responded firmly, shutting me down. His watchful eyes darted around the room as everyone else streamed in and grabbed their respective seats.

  I nodded, disappointed but knowing Jackson was right. Talking there was not an option. It was downright stupid. Still, I lingered at his side a moment longer, wanting more than anything to take the empty chair next to him, but our alphabetical seating chart unfortunately relegated me directly opposite him in the front, left corner. As seemed to be the theme of late, I couldn’t be pushed any farther away from him.

  My gaze kept drifting toward Jackson as Mr. Bluni droned on about Watson and Crick’s discovery of DNA and a research paper he was writing for one of those geeky science journals. My mind wandered back to Dana’s party. All I could think about was whether Jackson knew what happened. As the lights were turned off in exchange for an overhead projector and a welcome audio-visual distraction, I found myself struggling to focus. I clicked the point of my pen in and out and honed in on the outrageously loud tock of the classroom clock’s second hand. Then I stared into the humming fan on the back of the projector. What was going on? It was like someone had slipped me a triple espresso. Maybe the weekend stuck indoors was finally catching up with me.

  I could hear my toe tapping against the floor with a fervor all its own. I stared down at it as if a threatening look would silence my own extremity and was startled to see the carpeting right through my foot.

  Oh, no.

  I forced a few hard blinks to sharpen my vision, but the top half of my foot was still horribly as clear as day. Shitshitshitsh—

  I held it up a little, along the side of my backpack, which I’d propped in front of my seat. The bag’s logo stared right back at me from where I was pretty sure my toes were. I wiggled them inside my shoe. They were awake and intact, but it had no effect on their transparency.

  Instinctively, I tucked my legs back under my chair, curling one around the other as if the compression would make them less detectable. Scrunching inward in my seat, I tried to wish it away, but my fear and panic were rising. When I lifted my leg back up for a second glance, I could see my invisibility was rising as well. To my shin.

  I knew it wasn’t safe to stay a sitting duck in the classroom. Thanks to the projector, it was still dark enough that no one besides me would notice, but in just the flip of a switch, the classroom lights could be back on and my transparent foot—and now lower leg, I upgraded as I stole another glance—would be exposed.

  I had one real avenue of escape: the bathroom.

  However, the last thing I needed at that moment was to draw attention to myself. Plus the embarrassment of a seemingly dire bathroom emergency in front of the whole class might upgrade me to fully invisible in one torturous anvil drop. Did I have a choice, though?

  I raised my hand to half-mast, committing to embarrassment-door number one. Mr. Bluni was caught up in some discussion about the human genome project I had long since stopped tracking and seemed oblivious to my request. I looked down again. I was up to my knees in trouble. My hand reached higher. Have mercy.

  Fortunately, Mr. Bluni finally caught sight of my hand. Instead of humiliating me, he discreetly gestured that I was free to go. I bolted for the door, almost stumbling face-first onto the floor as my feet got trapped on the projector’s bundle of wires.

  Jackson could tell by my panicked expression that something was very wrong, and it wasn’t that I had to pee. I heard a few boys chuckle behind me, but no exclamations about my missing feet, so that was good enough for me to exit unscathed.

  Hustling to the bathroom, I desperately hoped no one would be lurking in the hallway. My anxious gaze flew back over each shoulder, checking for spectators in any direction. All clear. Until I nearly collided with an angular, beanpole boy who had a shock of reddish-brown hair that stood up like a rooster’s comb. He was just standing there, as if oddly frozen in space, looking as startled as I was by the sudden head-on.

  “Sorry,” he muttered, with a befuddled, deer-in-the-headlights expression.

  I thought I recognized him from one of my classes, but I had no time for pleasantries. I grunted and zoomed by him before he had a chance to notice I was vanishing from the ground up.

  I finally made it inside the bathroom, darting for the handicapped stall, the only one that wouldn’t give my transparent legs away. Collapsing against the wall, it held me up, but not upright. I slowly slid down the wall, my butt hitting the floor and my head falling between my knees. I could finally breathe. And with more oxygen to my brain came a flood of questions.

  Why was this happening? How was this happening? There hadn’t been a pulse since Dana’s party, which was two days ago. Under normal circumstances, there was no way my power should’ve lasted this long.

  My powers had never lasted this long.

  So what was different? The pulse had been huge, enough to startle Oliver’s mom straight off the road. That was different. Was that pulse extra powerful? Did that, in turn, make me extra powerful? I had to talk to Oliver and Jackson. Were their powers still active too? My breathing transitioned from ragged to deep, and slowly my calves started to reappear. The process gave me more trouble than it had in the past (with the exception of my near freak-out after the accident), but once the process began to reverse, I breathed a sigh of relief.

  I looked one hundred percent but felt about fifty when the class bell rang. I rushed back to the classroom to collect my stuff. Jackson had already split, which upset me. Wasn’t he the least bit concerned about my abrupt exit? My hurt feelings would have to wait because Mr. Bluni looked ready to check in on me, so I darted off toward the cafeteria before he could follow through.

  • • •

  My mission was simple: Track down Oliver or Jackson. I pushed my way through the pizza line, much to the chagrin of those already waiting, and found Oliver near the front of the line.

  “Dr. Ashley not feeding you?” Oliver joked at my determination to join him.

  “We need to talk.” The line wasn’t nearly private enough, so I tried to pull Oliver along with me.

  “And I need to eat.” He dug his heels in until the server behind the counter handed him a fresh pepperoni pizza. It was the same kid I’d nearly mowed down in the hallway only minutes earlier.

  “Hey, Topher,” said Oliver, überfriendly. “You know Nica.”

  “Hey,” he responded with an affirmative nod. “Think we have Spanish together.”

  “Yeah, hi.”

  Topher Hansen was the quiet, unassuming type. Super polite, a low flier on the radar, never got in anyone’s way. He kept to himself so much that he seemed like the kid who wasn’t there. And yet there he appeared in my life twice in the span of fifteen minutes.

  “Can I get you anything, Nica?” Topher asked, staring at me with the same odd expression he’d had when I’d run into him in the hallway. He gave me an uneasy, paranoid feeling. Was he watching me?

  “I’ll just have some of his,” I replied, pushing Oliver along, wanting to get away.

  “No one remembers anything from Dana’s party,” I announced to Oliver moments after I dragged him over to an empty table at the back of the cafeteria. “Even the host.”

  Oliver almost gagged on a slice of piping-hot pepperoni pizza as he tried to speak. His first attempt was barely distinguishable as English. He swallowed a bit and tried again.

  “Wait, what?”

  “After the pulse, I mean,” I whispered. “Jackson changing color and blasting a kid across the room
. Shit, did you forget about it, too?”

  “No,” Oliver replied, “of course not. What exactly did Dana say?”

  “That she blacked out.”

  “You think she’s lying?”

  “I don’t have a clue what she’s doing,” I retorted. “For all I know, maybe she’s telling the truth.”

  A tsunami of guilt hit me. Had I been so eager to suspect Dana that I had discounted Occam’s razor’s much-preferred explanation? The simplest explanation is usually the best one.

  “Even so,” Oliver added. “It’s super creepy.” Though not creepy enough to curb his voracious appetite. He snatched up his final quarter of pizza.

  All I could do was nod in agreement. It was even impressive, in a supervillain sort of way. How had Bar Tech done it? How had they gotten into the minds of so many students and just wiped them out?

  “It’s a good thing, right?” Oliver’s observation sent a chill up my spine. “At least our secret’s safe.”

  “Maybe. Not to whoever covered it up,” I pointed out.

  Just then my phone buzzed. So did Oliver’s.

  “Jackson wants us to meet him,” I announced, reading the brief message.

  Oliver nodded. He’d gotten an identical text from Jackson. “What’s in the library?”

  • • •

  Oliver and I hoofed it upstairs to the library. Trying to arrange secret meetings aside, I hated how awkward I was feeling around Jackson. Then again, I was barely used to having to compete for his attention. I’d been one of a whopping two people who would even speak to him at school. With Dana’s return, I had no idea where that left me—or us. As I learned, though, the denizens of Barrington High could have quite short memories.

  Oliver and I entered the library and headed toward the back. It was deathly quiet. Everyone was having lunch, even the faculty. Finally, something was actually going as planned.

  Jackson looked upset. “What’s going on, Nica?”

  I took a deep breath. There was a lot to explain. A few deep breaths from my core—and my hand slowly started to disappear from the end of my fingertips up through my palm.

  “Our powers have never lasted this long. Can you . . . ?” I looked to Oliver, but he had already loped the entire length of the library and back in barely the blink of eye.

  “Actually . . . yeah,” Oliver replied, stunned that he still had the ability and hadn’t even known it.

  We both looked to Jackson. He appeared to still be a few pages behind.

  “When was there a pulse?” Jackson challenged with a puzzled expression.

  Then it was mine and Oliver’s turn to stare. Did Jackson not remember the party either? Was this Bar Tech’s doing as well? Or did his supercharged display have something to do with his absent memory?

  “Almost two days ago,” I confirmed.

  “The night of Dana’s party.” Jackson was truly stunned.

  I nodded and detailed the events of the night just as I had done with Oliver outside his mother’s crashed car. The story was just as crazy this time around, except that Jackson had lived it—and didn’t remember a thing. He looked worried, weak even. It was a sliver of the vulnerable Jackson Winters that had caught my gaze the first time I’d seen him.

  If there was a silver lining to be found, it was that Jackson wasn’t the only one who didn’t remember the events at the now-infamous after-party. I rattled off the kids, including Dana, who had clearly witnessed his display of power—and who now had zero recollection of the event.

  Jackson stood there, silent, thoughtful, looking back and forth between Oliver and me. Trying to absorb the troubling information that he’d been so exposed—so vulnerable.

  “What about you?” I asked Jackson. “Are you still . . . ?”

  His eyes narrowed, a bit dazed by my question. The notion that his power hadn’t dissipated after twenty-four hours was news to him. He held his hand out hesitantly. It took him a second before anything happened.

  I knew the feeling; it was like getting back on a bike after a few years or picking up a neglected instrument. The muscle memory was there. It just needed a little wake-up call. The lights above our heads began to flicker. And pop! One of the low-energy lightbulbs exploded into a shower of glass shards.

  Despite his absent memory, Jackson’s powers were very much intact.

  “What do you think is happening to us?” I asked.

  Jackson combed the mane of hair off his face with his right hand, thinking carefully before conjecturing.

  “Any number of things. Those last pulses were intense and happened so close together. Maybe they tripped an internal switch and triggered a reaction in our bodies?”

  “Or maybe it was something in the atmosphere,” Oliver chimed in, offering an alternate theory.

  “Or it could be because—” Jackson abruptly stopped himself from finishing his thought. His blue eyes shifted down to the floor. Whatever it was seemed to have spooked him.

  “Could be what?” I stared intensely, demanding Jackson come clean.

  “That we’ve changed,” Jackson calmly replied, looking up, “permanently.”

  “Shit,” Oliver muttered, his eyes widening with comprehension that Jackson had hit upon a scary truth.

  My mouth dropped open. Could it be the three of us would never be normal again? It wasn’t that the thought of being permanently altered had never crossed my mind. It had many times. It was facing down the stark reality that threw me for a loop. This was the new me.

  “What do we do now?” Feeling confused and scared seemed like an extravagant luxury that we couldn’t afford when what we needed was a plan of action.

  “Jackson?” a sweet voice called out, breaking our circle of secrecy. “You back there?”

  I recognized the voice immediately and grabbed three books off the closest shelf and shoved them into Jackson’s hands before Dana rounded the corner.

  “This a secret club, or can anyone join?” Her smile sparkled. Not a trace of adolescent angst permeated her beautiful facade. Any club would be thrilled to have Dana as a member.

  “No big secret,” I blurted out nervously. “We just get together to discuss books.” Lame, I know. I realized how crazy I sounded only after the words flew out of my mouth. But it was too late to come up with a more plausible explanation.

  “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich?” Dana asked with a raised eyebrow as she snatched one of the books out of Jackson’s hand. “Pretty heady stuff for a book group.”

  “You know what they say,” interjected Oliver brightly. “Past is prologue.”

  “Actually, I think it was Shakespeare,” Dana replied knowingly. “The Tempest.” She studied our faces, still not buying it. “Are you guys really worried about Nazism infiltrating Barrington?”

  “It’s more a cautionary tale,” I said, hoping to put an end to her persistent questioning. “Never know when and how evil will rear its ugly head.”

  Thankfully, just then the class bell rang. Lunch had ended, as did my brief encounter with Jackson and Oliver. No doubt we had more to discuss when Dana was not around.

  “Walk me to Spanish?” Dana asked Jackson. There was an inflection in her tone of voice that made it sound less like a request and more like an order.

  “Lead the way,” Jackson answered, looking at me, uneasy at being put on the spot.

  We exchanged a few polite nods and waves as Dana and Jackson left the library. I shoved the books about Nazi Germany back onto the shelves where they belonged.

  “This all feels different,” I admitted to Oliver. “Deeper than before.”

  Oliver looked at me and nodded solemnly. “For me too.”

  Even though I had no definitive proof that what was happening to my body was a permanent change, I could feel it in my bones. My ability wasn’t receding the way it had before. In some
ways it felt stronger, more powerful. I had to prepare myself for it being part of me forever. Which only meant that Oliver, Jackson, and I were in even more danger than before.

  It was undeniable. We might not be running for lives at that moment, but our Bar Tech nightmares weren’t going away either. They were certain to get worse. I knew it; I could feel it in my gut. It was just a matter of time before Cochran showed his hand.

  Something was building, but I didn’t even know where to start. How do you fight the intangible?

  I counted off the minutes until I got out of school. After enduring an excruciatingly long day of feeling as though I’d been strapped inside a straitjacket, I fidgeted in my seat, unable to find a comfortable position and sit still. I hated feeling so paranoid and worried about disappearing in front of people. Obsessively checking my limbs every other minute to make sure I still had two of each, along with the rest of my body, was exhausting.

  During my last class, I received a terse text from Jackson to meet him in the parking lot. He’d been so standoffish all day that I was relieved to hear from him, brief as it was. I was eager to continue our conversation from the library without the risk of Dana Fox or anyone else interrupting us.

  As soon as the final bell rang, I grabbed my bag and dashed out of the classroom. I tore down the staircase from the second floor and was racing through the main lobby toward the exit sign when I heard someone shouting my name.

  I almost ignored it. But my ingrained good-girl impulse forced me to slam on the brakes. My biology teacher, Mr. Bluni, strode right toward me. I was confused. He and I had barely ever exchanged more than a few words outside class before. What could he possibly want with me?

  “Hey, Mr. Bluni. Everything okay?” My eyes were on the doors, looking for Jackson. I didn’t want to miss him in case he was looking for me inside.

  “You tell me, Nica.” Bluni’s laser-eyed gaze was unsettling. “You seemed distracted in class today.”

  “I did?” Caught off guard, I felt every joint in my body stiffen. What else might Mr. Bluni have noticed about me? Denying the charge was too risky. And I didn’t want to seem defensive. “Sorry. I promise I’ll be more focused tomorrow.” I smiled sheepishly, copping to it so I could quickly get on my way.