Hopefully Cal was still waiting for me in the parking lot. But I’d disappeared as soon as school had ended, and it had taken me at least twenty minutes to clean up. He probably thought I’d taken off for more training with Dana. Which meant I was doomed to walk home.
“Where are you headed in such a hurry?” Jenkins finally asked, his tone just a bit strained. He stared at my sneakers as if they could answer his question, before looking up into my eyes. “Going for a run, it looks like…?”
Where I was going was none of his business. “I’ve got some stuff to take care of. Is that a problem? I mean, school’s over and all.”
“Calvin is looking for you!” Jenkins blurted out. “He says it’s incredibly urgent. You mustn’t waste time!”
“What?”
Jenkins nodded adamantly. “It’s imperative that you find him now!”
Calvin? Urgent? That didn’t sound good.
“Where is he?” I asked.
Jenkins looked absolutely miserable. “I’m not entirely sure, but he left in a huge hurry, and I think it would be best if you were expedient in finding him.”
I turned and started to run toward the parking lot.
“Not that expedient,” Jenkins called out as I left. “Don’t run in the school!”
“I’m just walking fast,” I hollered back, even though I didn’t slow down.
—
When I got to the parking lot, Cal’s car was nowhere in sight, as I’d expected.
“Crap,” I said, and pulled my cell phone out of the front pocket of my backpack. I swung my bag over my shoulders again and began to jog as I dialed Cal’s number.
It went straight to voice mail.
“Crap. Crap!” I picked up my pace. Coconut Key Academy wasn’t too far from our neighborhood, but I didn’t want to waste a moment.
I tried his phone again. Voice mail.
It wasn’t like Cal to shut his phone off. With a growing sense of urgency, I began running.
I picked up my pace. My backpack bumped irritatingly against my back with every step I took, but I chose to ignore it. I needed to get to Calvin’s house fast.
In a few minutes, I’d made it onto Peachtree Lane, which meant I was close to Cal’s. I tried his number again.
“Quit blowing up my phone!” Cal exclaimed after the first ring.
I stopped running. “Cal? Oh my God, are you all right?”
“Girl, I’m trying to download a movie on my phone right now, and you’re messing up the connection!”
My breathing was ragged as I choked back impending tears. Dammit. These days I always felt as though I was about to cry.
But he was okay! He was okay!
“Sky, what’s going on?” Cal said. “Where did you go after school? I looked for you, but you were ninja-stealth after band ended.”
“Calvin!” I couldn’t help it. I lost it again and burst into tears. “I love you!”
There was a pause. “Sky, you’re freaking me out.”
“I just… You’re my best friend, and if something happened to you, I don’t know how I could live with myself!”
“I’m fine,” Cal said. “What made you think I wasn’t?”
“Jenkins,” I said, walking as I talked. “He told me that you needed to talk to me, and that it was urgent. He made it sound like you were in danger.”
Cal made a scoffing sound. “Man, Jenkins? I haven’t talked to him about anything.” He laughed a little bit. “I mean, yeah, I asked him if he’d seen you, but… Dude, the way you sounded, I thought there was some serious emergency. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “These, um, allergies are getting to me.”
“Pollen’s really bad this year.” Like a good friend, Calvin politely cosigned my BS. “Come on over. We’ll watch a movie.”
“Okay,” I replied quietly. “I’m almost there anyway.”
“Hey,” Cal added, “have you heard anything from Milo or Dana?”
“Nothing yet,” I said.
“After you get here, if they haven’t appeared—if you’re up for it—we can see if your homing skills are working today.”
“Okay,” I agreed.
I sniffled back the last of my stupid tears as I pushed the cell phone back into the pocket of my backpack. Embarrassed, I glanced around to see if anyone had witnessed my little outburst. A few cars drove by. An elderly lady watered some plants. A little old man walked toward me with his dachshund. The dog’s bedazzled collar shone in the sunlight.
I smiled politely as I walked past them, hoping that I didn’t look as if I’d been crying. I worked to slow my heartbeat by breathing deeply…
And just as I turned onto Cal’s street, I caught a giant whiff of that sewage smell.
“Oh,” I said, the odor hitting me like a right hook to the nose. I covered my mouth as my stomach churned, looking around wildly. But I was alone.
Except, all of a sudden, I did see someone. He was at least twenty feet away, and he’d been hidden behind the bushes in Mr. McMahon’s yard. But as I watched, he pushed himself to his feet and began stumbling toward me.
He was bald, with a head that seemed almost to shine in the afternoon sunlight, the pale crown contrasting with the weathered tan of his face, as if, until recently, it had been covered with thick hair. He was also wearing clothes that were filthy and stained with what looked like…blood?
“Oh my God,” I managed. And just as quickly, the sewage smell vanished.
But the man didn’t. He was still trudging in my direction. “Hey!” I called out as the man continued to stagger down the road. He lifted his head at the sound of my voice.
And, even with the newly shaved head and the ragged clothes, even from so far away, I knew exactly who he was.
I stopped in my tracks and held out my hands in a gesture that I hoped was nonthreatening. “Don’t run! Please, don’t go anywhere! It’s going to be okay!” I tried to keep my voice steady. “Everything is going to be okay, Edmund.”
I’ve heard people talk about experiences that seemed like a whirlwind because they happened so fast, and I never really knew what they meant until that moment when Edmund Rodriguez looked up at me with those blurry eyes and that bloodstained face. Because I didn’t get the chance to spit out one more word before five cop cars rounded the corner with sirens blaring and loudspeakers booming.
“Down on the ground! Don’t move! On the ground! NOW!”
I hit the ground fast, my hands sprawled out on either side of me. The street looked curious so close to my cheek, and I spit out bits of sand that had gotten stuck to my mouth when I’d landed.
But someone scooped me up in their arms as effortlessly as if I were made of feathers and carried me to the side of the street. I looked up and saw a cop in full uniform staring down at me. “You’re okay, miss,” he said.
I wanted to tell him that I knew that already—that I was much more worried about Edmund—but once again there was no time for words.
Because Edmund wasn’t listening to the cops. He was still lingering, as if in a trance, in the middle of the street with his hands raised slightly, while the cops continued to holler through their crackling speakers.
“Down on the ground! NOW!”
And then the policeman who’d carried me to the sidewalk set me down abruptly. He joined the other nine officers, who all drew their weapons and pointed them directly at Edmund.
“You’ve got to listen to them, Edmund,” I whispered. And there’s no way he could have heard me, because the cacophony from the cars’ sirens and the numbing feedback from the speakers was so overwhelming. But he did raise his hands a little bit higher before bending down and landing on one knee, and then the other.
The policemen rushed him all at once, taking him down to the ground where he landed on his fa
ce with a thunk.
And I hit the sidewalk too, my face again against the concrete, and it was the weirdest thing—as if my bones had turned to mush or as if my muscles had completely ceased to work. I couldn’t have pushed myself up off the ground if my life depended on it. And yet I wasn’t afraid. I was watching Edmund, who was looking back at me, his eyes hollow and empty. It was like his soul had completely died.
And I knew this was my chance to ask him about the old lady in the white van, to ask him who’d killed his daughter, and I also knew that I wouldn’t have a chance to ask him more than one question before the police took him away.
But when I opened my mouth, it was like back in the car when I’d said “Diner,” or after the accident in the school parking lot, when I’d rattled off that list of Garrett’s injuries. And the words I spoke were “Where’s Sasha?”
As I heard what I said, as a part of me thought No, what a waste of this chance to get answers, I was hit by the briefest flash of a vision—of Sasha clutching the very teddy bear that was missing from her bedroom. Unlike my other recent visions, her face wasn’t bloody, and she wasn’t terrified. Instead, she was sleeping, exhausted, her eyelashes long and dark against the softness of her tear-streaked cheeks.
As my vision cleared, Edmund let out an exhausted breath, his body like a lax piece of plastic as the cops molded his hands behind his back and clipped cuffs onto his wrists.
Still, I waited with almost unbearable excitement, certain that he was going to tell me something important, something vital, something that would prove that I wasn’t crazy or naive or even just guilty of wishful thinking, and that Sasha was unquestioningly still alive and out there, somewhere. Somehow…
Frowning, he spit a piece of gravel out of his mouth before he spoke.
And said, “Sasha who?”
Chapter Twenty-One
I don’t remember walking to Calvin’s house.
I remember that the police left as quickly as they had arrived, taking Edmund away with them.
You would think that at least one of them would have checked to see if I was okay, considering the fact that they were bringing Edmund into custody under the assumption (albeit false) that he had kidnapped and murdered a girl.
But they all pulled youies in the middle of the road and raced away, sirens blaring, leaving me alone and disoriented on the sidewalk.
Next thing I knew, I was letting myself into Calvin’s house and walking toward the sound of video games coming from the family room in the back.
It wasn’t until I was standing there, swaying slightly as I stared into the shocked faces of not just Cal, but Dana and Milo too, that I realized Dana’s motorcycle was parked out in the driveway.
“Skylar, what happened?” I heard Dana ask.
I dropped my backpack onto the floor with a thud as she and Milo both rocketed out of their seats, practically throwing themselves at me. And I must’ve still been both freaked out and overwhelmed, because my backpack launched itself up off the floor and orbited me in a quick, tight circle, as if protecting me from impending attack.
Dana and Milo both stopped short.
“Are you all right?” Milo asked, as Dana said, “Breathe, Sky. Just breathe.”
“And maybe you should sit down,” Calvin added. “Or go into the bathroom, pronto, if you smelled the smell again. Are you going to—”
I cut him off as I sank down right there, onto the tile, grabbing my backpack from the air and hugging it close as it struggled to get free. “Edmund came back. The police arrested him.”
“Ah, shit!” Dana sat down on the floor next to me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “There was nothing that I could do. I saw him, and I was trying to talk to him, but he was…acting really weird and… Someone must’ve seen him and called the police because there were all these cop cars, and…” Maybe Calvin was right, and I was going to throw up. I swallowed hard. “It happened so quickly.”
Dana followed her own instructions and breathed deeply, in and out several times, as if willing herself to be calm, even as my backpack stopped fighting me and became fully inanimate again. “Okay. This isn’t the end of the world. We can still—maybe—get to him. Ask him questions. We’re just going to have to get creative. More creative.”
But I shook my head. “Even if we do manage to visit him in jail to ask him questions, he’s not going to be able to answer them.” I told them what had happened—my vision, my oddly worded question, and Edmund’s disappointing answer. “He doesn’t even know who Sasha is.”
I could feel Milo’s eyes as he watched me will myself not to cry. “You’re bleeding,” he said.
I looked down, afraid for one horrifying second that I’d leaked through Kim Riley’s gym shorts, but he was looking at my knee. It was a mess—I hadn’t skinned it that badly since I fell off my bike back in sixth grade.
It didn’t hurt—until I noticed it. “Ow,” I said, but then added, “I’m fine. It’s okay.” I looked at Dana, who was quietly grim. “I’m so sorry.”
“You did your best,” she said gruffly.
But I wasn’t sure of that.
Dana looked impatient as she ran her hand through her hair. “What did he look like?” she asked me. “Edmund. Was he in bad shape?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It was really bad. His clothes were torn and filthy—bloodstained. And he was bald—his head was shaved.”
Milo looked at Dana, who nodded.
“Exactly like Lacey’s dad,” she said. “The shaved head. All of it.”
“Really?” Calvin said. “Well, damn. That’s eerie.”
“The worst part,” I said, “was the look in his eyes. It was like someone had wiped Edmund out—like he was a body walking around, but there was nothing inside. I don’t know. It’s hard to explain.”
Dana was quiet as she nodded.
“I’m making sense?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“That’s exactly what happened with her—Lacey’s—dad,” Milo said.
“So did he ever remember…anything?”
Dana looked horribly sad. “Yeah,” she said. “Eventually he did. Remember his daughter, that is. Beyond that, no memory whatsoever, starting the night she was taken, the night he went missing. It’s like those few weeks just got wiped clean.”
“Doesn’t that happen when people experience really traumatic events?” I asked. “I’ve heard of that before.”
Dana scoffed. “Please, Bubble Gum. You really want to chalk it up to PTSD?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I knew from the shrink that Mom had sent me to after the accident that PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder, could happen when a person had been through a horrible event. It was a coping mechanism, and it sometimes involved memory loss. I didn’t have it—at least not that particular symptom. I remembered the accident a little too clearly. “What else do you think it could be?”
“The drugs they gave him,” Dana said. “Or some kind of memory wipe.”
Calvin was skeptical. “Like in Men in Black?” he asked. Will Smith was one of his favorite old movie stars.
“Like, I’m going to trespass into your mind and erect a bunch of blocks so that you can’t access certain memories,” Dana told him. “They’re still back there, but you can’t reach ’em, so it’s as effective as a wipe.”
“Come on,” Milo told me, holding out a hand to help me up. “Let me help you clean that out.”
Without thinking, I reached for him, even as Calvin asked, “You can do that?”
…never let you get hurt again, I promise you that.
“Whoa!” I said, because Milo was suddenly there, deep inside my head. His hand was warm and solid too, and as he pulled me to my feet, he was looking directly into my eyes, and I suddenly felt much, much better.
It was impossible not to smile
at his ridiculously bold statement as he pulled me into the wheelchair-accessible bathroom that was right off the playroom, even as I heard Dana answering Calvin. “No, but I’ve heard rumors about Greater-Thans who can. I’ve been trying to learn how to do it.”
“Oh, really,” I said out loud to Milo. “And how are you going to pull that off?”
Milo smiled too and hit me with, I know. It’s an ambitious goal. But I grew up watching Star Wars, and that whole “Try not. Do or do not” thing resonated.
“The word try is not in your vocabulary, huh?” I said, even as Dana spoke over me, saying, “With relentless training.”
She and Calvin had joined us in the huge bathroom, and she was answering my question because of course she thought I’d been talking to her.
Milo and I both turned to look at her at the same moment, and I realized that I was standing there, grinning foolishly up at him as I held his hand.
I let go of him, fast, suddenly feeling a whole lot worse again as Dana narrowed her eyes at me. “Okay. What the hell.”
“Milo was just being nice,” I started, because the last thing I wanted to admit was that I had a crush on Dana’s boyfriend.
But then Milo spoke up from where he was now rummaging in the linen closet, getting out a towel and a washcloth. “I didn’t tell her.”
I looked at him in surprise. “You didn’t…?”
“Tell her,” he said again. He set the towel on the sink counter as I realized Dana’s WTF hadn’t been about my holding her boyfriend’s hand, but rather her astute awareness that Milo and I had been having a partially telepathic conversation.
“Why didn’t you tell her?” I asked as Milo turned on the sink faucet and washed his hands before soaking the washcloth.
“Tell me what?” Dana exclaimed.
“Milo and Skylar can read each other’s minds when they touch each other,” Calvin interjected.
Dana took a deep breath and laughed it out. “Are you serious?”
“I’m serious,” Milo and I said at the same time. But then he looked from me to the toilet and added, “Close that and sit.”
“Or it’s the Ouija board trick,” Cal added. I glared at him as I sat, reaching up to take the washcloth from Milo. I could clean out my own skinned knee. I wasn’t a five-year-old.
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