Elemental

by Debbie Kump

  Tottering back up the beach, my legs shook as a flood of adrenaline rushed through my veins. I can see why Sully’s so into this sport, I watched him zoom down the beach, ready to catch another wave.

  “Y’know something. You were right. That was pretty cool,” I told Micah and handed him the board.

  But Micah didn’t reply. Instead, he stared at me. His jaw grazed the sand.

  Was I really that good?

  Micah blinked twice before exclaiming, “Jordan, you’re smokin’.”

  Wow. That sounded like a huge compliment, especially coming from Micah. “Thanks,” I replied. Strangely I couldn’t seem to keep from beaming, despite the pain in all my extremities. “Hey, d’you hear that?” I called to Sully as his head broke the surface. “Micah says I’m smoking.”

  Sully climbed out of the water and jogged over with his board. “That’s great!” he exclaimed. But when he neared, a baffled look clouded his face. “Oh, my God, Jordan. He’s right.”

  “Oh, please. You didn’t even see me, did you?”

  “No, seriously, Jordan,” Sully said, his voice uncharacteristically grave. “You’re like steaming.”

  “Really,” Micah chimed in. “Look.”

  I glanced down at my arms, realizing I didn’t deserve his compliment. Micah meant every word. Literally.

  Because right then, in the plain of day, steam actually rose off my body. I immediately turned the heat from my core down to nothing and let all evidence drift away with the breeze.

  “Weird. Guess I just worked up a sweat or something,” I said, trying to blow it off. In my mind, I knew I was dead. How could I be such an idiot?

  “Or something,” Micah replied, his eyebrows twisted in a quizzical way.

  I never should’ve gone in the water. The steam was a huge warning sign—in bright neon lights and all.

  “At least you didn’t fall on your arm. You’re fine.” Sully said, shooting Micah a fierce look to drop the issue. “Besides, you only live once. Right, Jordan?”

  “Yeah. Something like that,” I muttered. I felt the color drain from my cheeks.

  Sully shot me a sympathetic look. Then he wrapped his arms around his chest and shivered, though it seemed deliberate this time. “Why don’t we head back? I think I’m done for today.”

  “Sure. Whatever,” Micah said and nodded. He picked up his board and headed back to the car.

  Sully waited until Micah stepped out of earshot before he threw one arm over my shoulder and asked in a low voice, “You doin’ okay?”

  “Yeah,” I sniffled. “Never better.”

  He gave me a quick squeeze, then bolted ahead to unlock the doors. When I reached the car, Sully tossed me a towel. While I dried off, I glanced up at the sky. Dark storm clouds rolled in from the south, circling overhead, practically pinpointing my current location.

  And though I might’ve helped Sully forget about Karli, I never should’ve agreed to come to the beach. Now Hydros knew my exact location.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “Remember, keep both hands on the wheel,” Mr. Mendoza, my Driver’s Ed teacher, reminded me. Again.

  “Right.” I replied, trying to hide the frustration in my voice.

  “Adjust your rearview mirror,” he added.

  “Check.”

  “And the side-view mirrors.”

  “Okay.”

  “Is your seat a comfortable distance from the pedals?”

  “Yep.”

  “Your seat belt’s fastened?”

  “It is.”

  “And your mind’s clear from all distractions?”

  “Uh-huh.” As clear as it can get with my life at stake. I couldn’t believe I was stupid enough to risk a dip in the ocean. Who cared that I proved Micah wrong or showed off for Sully? None of that mattered while I tried to act like things were normal, sitting behind the wheel.

  Not that I didn’t want to take off right after we got back from the beach with a soaked Ace bandage. But Celia sat me down and told me how proud her late husband would’ve been to know I was safe living with them. Then she read the newspaper headlines aloud to remind me of all the horrors that might befall me on the streets. I peeked out the window while she read. The sky looked less threatening, so I figured I still had time to devise a plan before The Three arrived.

  “Now, then, are you ready to begin?” Mr. Mendoza asked calmly, breaking my thoughts.

  I wanted to scream that I’d been ready for the last five minutes. Instead, I settled with a, “Sure,” followed by a dramatic rolling of my ebony eyes. Mr. Mendoza gave the same litany every time. What a tedious job he had, repeating those directions all afternoon. Why didn’t he just record his voice on a CD and press Play instead?

  “Okay, Jordan, you may place the key in the ignition,” he said as if I prepared to complete an extremely complicated task that required great dexterity and skill, like performing open-heart surgery. I’d seen Celia and Sully drive tons of times. How hard could it be?

  I rolled my eyes again and turned the key, giving it a little gas to resuscitate the idle engine. Gradually, the old Chevy Malibu chugged to life and I shifted from Park into Drive.

  Pulling out of the parking lot, I braked to a full stop at every stop sign, hoping he wouldn’t harp on my rolling stops like he did last week.

  A light drizzle coated the windshield and Mr. Mendoza advised me to turn on the wipers. “Roads are slippery in these types of conditions,” he said. “So you should use extreme caution as you would in any adverse weather.”

  “Of course,” I replied.

  Isa Estes, Karli McDonald, and a sophomore named Stef Hirsch giggled from the backseat, knowing Mr. Mendoza’s propensity for extremism. Why worry about a little rain?

  I pulled up to the last stop sign in the school parking lot when Karli pointed at Micah and Sully hanging out by Sully’s car. Wondering where they were headed and why Karli cared since she made it plainly obvious that she liked Justin, I turned for a quick glance and forgot to stop on the white line.

  Right when another car zipped in front of us.

  Mr. Mendoza slammed his foot on the teacher brake by his passenger’s seat, lurching us forward into our seat belts. Then we spent the next five minutes parked in this exact spot, listening to him lecture me about the utmost importance of remaining completely focused on my task every time I got behind the wheel. Driving needed total concentration. No distractions.

  “Can you agree to that, Jordan?”

  I loathed his patronizing tone. Especially when it elicited a bunch of stifled giggles from the backseat.

  I gritted my teeth, agreeing to devote one hundred and ten percent of my energy into driving the Malibu safely from this moment forward. Satisfied, Mr. Mendoza instructed me to cautiously proceed out of the parking lot and take a right up the street.

  No more mistakes. Okay, Jordan? I told myself and flipped on my right turn signal. I couldn’t let Celia down again, not after everything she’d done for me. She’d already mentioned on more than one occasion the expense of behind-the-wheel training and I should feel lucky my guidance counselor could squeeze me into the popular class. I offered to drop out and save her the cash but she refused, insisting I needed to learn to drive safely at some point in my life and there was no time like the present.

  So here I sat, essentially wasting her hard-earned money. Why bother preparing for the future that might not even exist?

  Taking the turn slowly, I headed uphill, careful to keep my hands in their proper positions at all times.

  “You’re doing great so far,” Mr. Mendoza encouraged me when I anticipated the red light and coasted to a stop. When the light turned green, I scanned the intersection for pedestrians before continuing. I manipulated the car smoothly in and out of the hairpin turns up the hillside, making Mr. Mendoza’s face light up into a genuine smile. I grinned back, satisfied with my improvement. Maybe I’d make Celia proud after all.

  And then I saw something that sent a chill d
own my spine.

  Up ahead, a flash of lightning illuminated the sky. And on the top of the hill, I spotted a figure, silhouetted against the gray storm clouds, her spindly arms raised to the sky. Her long blond hair caught the wind and lashed her face.

  I gasped, immediately recognizing that pose, those arms, that hair. I didn’t even have to see her face to know they belonged to Skye.

  Panic gripped my throat, squeezing the breath from my lungs in a horrific scream. The noise startled Mr. Mendoza so badly he jumped out of his seat and hit his head against the roof of the car. Slamming my foot on the gas pedal, I whipped the car around, pulling a U-ey in the middle of the street. Zooming off in the other direction, our tires squealed when I fishtailed on the slippery roads. The entire time, Isa, Karli, and Stef screamed madly, begging Mr. Mendoza to make me stop.

  Jostled around and frozen in shock, Mr. Mendoza couldn’t get a solid foothold on his teacher backup brake. I peeled around one corner after another and the girls in the backseat shrieked. I pressed my foot harder against the accelerator to weave in and out of traffic, narrowly missing other cars. Behind us, the sounds of skidding tires and crunching metal filled the air. Two more cars swerved out of our way as we flew across the intersection beneath a red light.

  Finally gathering his wits, Mr. Mendoza placed one hand firmly on the steering wheel and veered us onto the shoulder while applying full pressure to his brake. Screeching to a halt, the car slid into the side of the hill and smashed its bumper.

  I glanced over my shoulder with wild eyes, frightened we hadn’t made it very far from the hill where I saw Skye. Wondering if I could escape the rest of the way on foot, I peeked over my shoulder again.

  Only this time she had disappeared. The hillside stood empty.

  Mr. Mendoza breathed heavily, clutching his chest like he staved off a heart attack. He looked frazzled times ten, his toupee disheveled and askew. Then he launched into a tirade of the ginormous number of mistakes I just made. How I ran a red light. Sped. And caused not just one accident but three. His face boiled like steam inside a pressurized cooker. He threatened to report me to the police for negligence, vehicular misconduct, and destruction of school property. I didn’t know if those were actual crimes or if he just made stuff up in his agitated state, but he sounded pretty convincing.

  Not that it mattered much. Between Celia and The Three, I was as good as dead.

  Trying to maintain composure, Mr. Mendoza ordered me out of the car so we could switch places.

  Slipping into the passenger’s seat, I buckled my seat belt and glanced through the rain-streaked window at the barren hillside. Had I imagined the whole thing?

  Still, I swear I saw her. At least I thought I did.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It didn’t surprise me when Mr. Mendoza dumped me off in front of the school by myself. After the car rolled away—forty-five minutes before the scheduled end of my class—I plopped down on the curb, letting the intensifying rain soak my hoodie and jeans until I transformed into a human puddle. The chilling dampness soon penetrated deep into my core and reminded me of another time I felt this wet and cold.

  Bora Bora, February 17, 465 A.D.

  The rain came fast and hard. It was one of those unexpected showers that suddenly drenched the valley. Only a few hundred feet from the mouth of our cave, Skye and I ran, hoping to make it to shelter before the rains completely soaked us.

  Yet we weren’t that lucky.

  Pushing the hair from my eyes, I squinted into the downpour, trying to keep up with Skye as she dashed down the overgrown path. My waterlogged sarong clung to my legs with every stride. My arms grew tired from carrying the heavy basket of fish we’d caught by the reef. I didn’t know how Skye could keep her pace.

  Finally reaching our protected hideout, we ducked under the hanging liana vines that obscured our entrance and dumped our catch of fish upon the ground.

  Skye’s long blond hair lay plastered flat across her face as she wrung out a corner of her soaked sarong. Pouting grumpily, she mopped the strands from her face, like a drowned cat desperately trying to groom itself. It probably didn’t help that I took one look at her and broke into hysterics.

  “What?” she declared. Her testy voice sounded ready to snap.

  “You,” I said, still chuckling. “You look so funny.”

  “Like you’re any better,” she snipped. A rush of wind zipped through the entrance of the cave, swirling the dried leaves from the floor into a dust devil that encircled me.

  “Come on.” I smiled, shrugging off Skye’s sudden mood change. “Let’s get these cleaned. I’m starving.”

  I certainly didn’t intend to escalate Skye’s anger. Especially now that I’d found someone like me. I stumbled upon her soon after I survived another near miss with Gaia. Not that it seemed too hard—on an island full of deeply tanned Polynesians, a towhead like Skye clearly stood out, born without the normal dark pigmentation to handle the intense sun exposure of the tropics.

  I suspected another reason. Watching her tend the taro crops and pound the tapa cloth, I noticed the wind mimicking her mood. When she appeared happy, a serene breeze carried off the sea. But when she grew mad, the wind howled and knocked over everything in her path.

  Skye might anger easily, but lucky for me, she calmed down quickly, too.

  The wind gradually died as Skye’s frown faded. Satisfied I’d appeased her for the moment, I stacked the kindling into a pyramid by the mouth of the cave and ignited it with a short, painful snap of my fingers. Normally, I avoided using my powers and contending with the pain that ensued, but today I felt too ravenous to care. When the kindling caught flame, Skye and I set to work, drying our clothes by the firelight while we scraped off the filets with a couple of sharp rocks.

  Whistling a sad tune, Skye hunched over her fish, her wet hair hanging like a veil that shrouded her face. I peeked at her for a moment, wondering if she enjoyed her life with me or if she’d rather be back with her punitive aunt. Skye’s mother had died in childbirth, leaving her father with more mouths to feed than he could manage. So he gave the infant to his childless sister to raise. All those years, Skye’s aunt treated her as an outcast, making her labor long hours each day while insulting her…and often driving her to anger.

  So when I realized Skye’s identity, I offered to have her come and live with me, like sisters. Though she accepted, I wondered if now she regretted her hasty decision. We moved to the other side of the island, far away from her tyrannical aunt. Here we gathered our own fruit, caught our own fish, and traded with the locals for taro and other essentials.

  I questioned if I had been too selfish in asking her to come. Did I really hope to save her from Gaia? Or to save myself by forming an alliance? Or did Skye simply remind me of the sister I lost long ago?

  So far, Skye hadn’t really complained. But I couldn’t tell if she was truly happy.

  Studying her while we worked, I suddenly heard hushed voices over the falling rain outside. “Shhh,” I whispered to Skye, motioning for her to drop her rock and follow me to the dark recesses of the cave.

  The rain suddenly lessened. Soggy footsteps sloshed through the mud to pause at our entrance. A figure peered around the corner, spotting our abandoned piles of filets and tools by the blazing fire. Even with her feisty russet hair drooping against her wet cheeks, I recognized the face immediately. My stomach knotted. I inched toward Skye and hugged her protectively.

  “Who is it?” Skye whispered, her voice trembling with fear. She’d never seen me so frightened before.

  I couldn’t answer. Gaia had found me again. And worse, I led her to Skye. Then again, maybe the two of us could destroy her and end this hunt.

  At the mouth of the cave, Gaia motioned for her willowy companion with long, dark brown hair and startlingly blue eyes to approach, declaring, “They’re here, Hydros.”

  Uh, oh.

  Apparently, Gaia had discovered another Elemental, too. The last one, to be pr
ecise.

  Hydros. The name sat like poison on my tongue. In the past, I’d struggled to escape Gaia alone, but now the challenge had doubled. I quickly understand Hydros’s potential, finding it decidedly convenient the rain stopped upon her arrival. I wondered what else she could accomplish.

  Well, at least I had Skye to help. Two versus two. That seemed fair, right? Only a slight problem remained. Skye didn’t believe she had powers…and I barely knew how to use my own.

  “Remember how I started the fire?” I murmured in Skye’s ear.

  She nodded her head slowly. Silently.

  “And remember when I told you that you can control the wind? That you’re also an Elemental like me?”

  She shot me a skeptical glance.

  “Well, you are. And so are these two.” I swallowed hard, adding, “And they’re looking for us.”

  “Us?” Skye trembled. “Why?”

  I opened my mouth to speak but the words garbled inside my head. How could I explain to her what I didn’t entirely understand myself? Why could I produce fire, yet feel extreme pain? Why must I endure the agony of dying each time I exited this world? With so many questions unanswered, how could Skye ever believe in something I knew so little about? My face filled with trepidation and Skye shrunk beside me.

  “Don’t let them find me. Don’t let them hurt me,” she said in a soft voice. Panic filled her smoky gray eyes and she shivered with fear.

  “Never,” I promised, soothing her long blond hair flat against her back. “You’re safe with me.”

  But deep down, I knew I shouldn’t have hid here with her. Concentrating our auras made us an easy target. That must explain how they tracked us down so readily. The instant we entered the ocean, we notified Hydros of our presence, like a beacon attached to our souls. Maybe Skye would’ve been better off with her aunt. I started to think we didn’t stand a chance.