Harbinger

by Sara Etienne

  Art Uncle took back control. “Faye . . . It’s Faye, right?”

  Right. The traditional you-aren’t-important-enough-for-me-to-know-your-name maneuver.

  “You can see that Faye here has a good sense of color. She sets her mood wonderfully.” Smiling, Art Uncle held up the painting so people could see it better. I wished Kel were here. There weren’t many things I was good at, but this was one of them. I wanted him to see what I could do.

  “And this line here”—Art Uncle pointed to the slope of the cliffs near the beach—“really balances the composition.”

  Then still smiling, he picked up the cup of water and doused the painting. “But these techniques are wasted if you’re too good for the basics. Though I suppose, why bother with realism when you live in a fantasy world?”

  The black sky dribbled down the paper, turning the whole painting into an ugly brown. It’d felt so real a second ago—Dr. Mordoch, whatever I was looking for, the third figure—but everything was blurring together now. Within seconds, the beach, the people, the memories were completely swallowed up.

  14

  I WAS GRATEFUL for one thing. That Kel hadn’t witnessed my humiliation. But when I saw he wasn’t waiting for us at the lunch table, anxiety buzzed in my stomach, making me feel sick.

  Just then it occurred to me that his absence might have something to do with whatever was going on with us all at night. I thought about the flash of memory I’d had when I’d seen the flying bird carved into the column. Hands digging through the mud, covered in blood. I shuddered.

  When I sat down at the table, I almost jumped up again. Something sharp and pointy poked at me from my already uncomfortable chair. I forced myself to relax, so I wouldn’t draw any attention. While the Takers moved around, rationing out the food, patrolling the room, I eased whatever it was out from under my leg.

  It was smooth and metallic. My throat felt too tight to swallow. A knife? But I couldn’t feel a blade. My eyes flicked down to it in the weak cafeteria light. Silver gleaming in the shadows.

  Then my eyes made sense of it and I almost laughed with relief. It was my Japanese brush pen. Superfine nylon bristles. Refillable ink. A little shorter than most, so I could carry it in my pocket. Mine.

  I made a show of spooning tomato soup into my mouth while my mind spun with questions. I’d brought the pen with me to Holbrook, but it’d been taken away from me, along with my sketchbook and clothes and everything else I owned.

  What is it doing on my seat? Is this some kind of test? Are they watching to see what I’ll do?

  A scrap of paper was folded and tucked under the metal clip of the cap. Hands under the table, I slowly teased the paper out from under the clip. There was just one word written on it.

  Thanks.

  My pulse throbbed in my throat. I didn’t know how it’d gotten there, but I knew it was from Kel. It had to be. His handwriting was just like him, dark letters slanting toward the edge of the paper with a kind of contained energy. But why “Thanks”?

  I slid the pen down into my boot and bit off my smile. Suddenly it felt easier to swallow the salty soup, easier to sit through the silence. Easier to be here. Five minutes ago I’d just been another degenerate in a uniform. But feeling the cool metal of the pen tucked down in my boot, I remembered who I was. Despite my ruined painting. Despite the cryptic pictures. Despite Dr. Mordoch’s sanctioned bullying. I was still here.

  And, somewhere, so was Kel.

  Lunch felt like it went on forever, and of course our table was the last one excused from the cafeteria, making it clear that we were still on Dr. Mordoch’s blacklist. It also conveniently made us as conspicuous as possible as we went to our mandatory Free Time. We were officially the “example.”

  A Taker led us to the corral I’d seen on my way to Solitary that first morning. The five other Families who were also scheduled for Free Time were already inside. Some of the kids were like tigers in a zoo, pacing around and around the dusty yard. Others stood in twos and threes, whispering to each other, heads close together. Of course, this place wasn’t for barnyard therapy. No. We were the animals Dr. Mordoch kept in this holding pen.

  Freddy stood at the gate, sneering down at us.

  “No shouting. No fighting. No running. And no touching. I don’t think I need to remind any of you what happens if you break the rules. Zz-zzzz-z-zzz!” Freddy jolted his body like he was being electrocuted. He roared with laughter at his own performance, then doubled over when it turned into a coughing fit.

  He hacked and spit for a bit. Then, still wheezing a little, he unlocked the gate. “Have fun!”

  Thirty-five heads swiveled to stare at us as we filed inside. Evidently, no one had forgotten about yesterday’s lunch. But I didn’t care. Kel was at the other end of the corral, his hoodie, sunglasses, and gloves standing out against the sea of jumpsuits. I took a deep breath.

  “Yum-my,” Nami whispered over my shoulder. “That’s what I call a tall drink of water.”

  I studied her face, trying to tell if she was making fun of me.

  “Come on.” She grinned and elbowed me. “You can see those arms even under all those layers. He’s not fooling anyone. And all that hair hiding those killer eyes. Melty. Yep, I do love me a rebel without a clue.”

  Watching him, sitting by himself in the corner of the yard, I tried to look at him through Nami’s eyes. I had absolutely no experience with girl talk, but I knew enough to see that she was right. I combed the snarls out of my hair with my fingers and looked down at my jumpsuit, painfully aware that there was nothing I could do to make it less hideous.

  “The way he’s been looking at you, I don’t think he’ll notice your outfit.” Nami gave me a little push in Kel’s direction. Eddies of flies churned around my feet as I made my way across the fenced-in yard to him. Kel glanced up and smiled his slow smile at me.

  “Pull up a chair.” He patted the ground next to him and I sat down.

  I wanted to ask him about the pen, but doubt nibbled at my mind. What if it’s not from him? What if he’s got no idea what you’re talking about? At least say something!

  “You missed art.” Thank you, master of the obvious.

  “Yeah? Well, I decided to take a vacation day. And I can tell you, Nami’s right. This resort does not deserve five stars. Did you know there’s not even room service?” Kel’s voice rose in fake outrage and he grinned at me. My stomach flipped over and wagged its tail.

  Kel shifted a little closer and took off his sunglasses. I was shocked by how tired he looked. In Solitary, he’d said something about getting sick, and by the look of things, he still was. The circles under his eyes were darker and sunken in. Red patches streaked his cheeks and across his nose, like he’d been sunburned. Kel hadn’t been playing hooky. Not that you’d be able to at Holbrook. Something was genuinely wrong with him.

  “Are you okay?” I reached out to touch him. A shadow fell over us and I froze, my arm outstretched awkwardly, inches from Kel’s arm. A Taker hovered behind us, daring me to complete my gesture.

  I dropped my hand in my lap and the Taker backed off, continuing his patrol of the fence. Here Kel and I were, finally face-to-face, but there might as well still have been a wall.

  “I took a lovely stroll around the grounds this morning—” I couldn’t tell if Kel was still kidding or if he was being serious. The green in his eyes glinted at me. “Did you get my present?”

  My face went red and I smiled, relieved. “But ‘thanks’ for what?”

  Kel shrugged, and winced with the jarring movement.

  “Are you okay? Kel, you look sick.”

  “Way to stomp on a guy’s ego.” He played it off, but I could tell that he wasn’t okay.

  What’s wrong with him? When I opened my mouth to keep pushing, he cut me off.

  “Look. I needed a few extra hours’ sleep is all.” Kel’s voice had an edge to it now that ended my questions. “I felt better, so I took a look around the place.”


  “How’d you get my pen?” I tried to keep my voice level. Then I regretted asking. If he had some sort of deal with Dr. Mordoch, I didn’t want to know about it. So I changed my question before he could answer. “How’d you get out of your room?”

  “How’d any of us get out of our rooms?” Damion stood looking down at the two of us. Nami sank down next to me and Zach next to Kel. Seeing the look of hero worship still in Zach’s eyes, I guessed no one had ever cared before if Zach got into trouble, let alone kept him out of it.

  Maya hesitated for a second before she sat down, like she was trying to decide whether or not to join us. But it was just for show; she wasn’t welcome anywhere else.

  Damion squatted down, facing Kel and me, and winced. I was glad to see that even mighty Damion was sore from yesterday’s sit-in. He eased himself the rest of the way down, finishing off the circle.

  He looked around to make sure we were alone, then gave us that appraising look he had. “We’ve been discussing this whole bloody-hands thing, and it seems like there are two possibilities. Either someone is trying to frame us for something. Or—”

  “Or something creepy is going on,” Nami finished his thought. She tilted her head, smiling sideways at Damion. Clearly they’d already disagreed about this point. “I vote for creepy.”

  “I vote creepy too.” Nervous energy played across Zach’s face, coming out in a rushed string of words. “I mean, who would go through all that trouble to sneak in and pull us out of bed and cover our hands with . . . with whatever that crap is. Not to mention, highly unlikely that someone could pull it off without waking us up. I mean, the drugs are strong, but . . .”

  “Maybe Dr. Mordoch has something to do with it. Maybe she’s double-dosing us or something.” Damion’s black eyes looked sharply at Kel. “Maybe one of us is in on it.”

  “’Cause we’re all just dying to get into your bedroom, right?” A smile floated on Nami’s lips.

  Damion stammered, “No, I-I-I just meant—”

  “I know what you meant, and I also vote that we stop that here and now. Whatever’s going on, creepy or not, it’s happening to all of us.” Nami wiggled her stained fingers, reminding us of the thing that tied us together.

  “All for one and one for all?” Kel raised an eyebrow.

  “Right. ’Cause if something goes down, we’re all screwed. Okay?” Nami looked around the group at us.

  No one nodded, but no one disagreed either. It was a start.

  Maya, who’d been unusually quiet up till now, looked at me and asked, “So anyone got an idea what is going on?”

  I shook my head to let her know I didn’t know anything new.

  “Vampires?” Nami guessed.

  “Be serious,” Damion snapped, trying to regain control of the conversation.

  “I am being serious. Think about it. I mean, it’s the middle of the night—”

  “Ghosts? No, ninjas!” Zach jumped in, his eyes lighting up.

  Damion tried to keep the discussion from slipping away. “Don’t be stupid . . .”

  But it was too late. The conversation descended into banter and it was bizarre, sitting there in the middle of it all. I’d watched this same scene a hundred times in the hallways of my high school. And I’d have given anything for someone, just one person, to let me join in. Now I had five someones. Sure, we’d been thrown together and shunned, but it still felt real. I couldn’t risk losing this makeshift Family. The symbols from this morning came back to me. I had to figure out what was going on before someone got in trouble.

  Or gets hurt.

  Kel shifted and his leg brushed against mine with a soft shush of our uniforms touching. It happened so fast that it could’ve been an accident, but it wasn’t. He picked up our conversation again, whispering in my ear, “I found something this morning. Something besides your pen.”

  I nodded. Go on.

  “You know that pattern you were looking at yesterday? The one on the column?”

  My breath caught in my throat. Had everyone seen that? I nodded again.

  “I saw another one, during my ‘tour’ of the facilities this morning. It’s in the sitting room, part of the pattern around the chandelier. You’d seemed kinda fascinated by it.”

  There was a question implied in Kel’s tone, but he didn’t push it. I kept my face neutral and turned the questions back on him. “Why were you sneaking around the Compass Rose, anyway?”

  “I thought I might be able to find some of my stuff that Dr. Mordoch confiscated.”

  “Where’s she keeping it?”

  “It’s all in her office. Luckily, it was the first place I looked. I figured she’s the kind of person who wants to keep her weapons close to her.” Kel reached into his sweatshirt pocket and pulled out a guitar pick. It was mottled brown like a tortoiseshell, and Kel rubbed it gently with his thumb. “It was my mom’s. She used to play in a band. I mean, they weren’t on a big label or anything, but I have a couple of tapes people made of her shows. You know that song I was singing the other day in Solitary? That was her favorite.”

  Kel flipped the pick back and forth between his fingers. “She was good. Really good. She quit after she married my dad, but she taught me my first chords. And when she got sick, she gave me this.”

  He stared at the ground, blinking hard. “I never got to tell you thanks.”

  “Thanks?” I thought about the single word on Kel’s note.

  “For talking to me the other day.”

  Solitary came back to me in a rush. Our whispers drifting back and forth through the wall. How calm I’d felt talking to him.

  “I wish—” Kel stopped himself and a crease marked his forehead. I could hear the same feeling in his voice. The same longing to reach through this wall between us. “You know, if we were anywhere else. Anywhere but here, I’d—”

  His eyes flicked up and speared mine. Splaying my thoughts wide open. Every buried yearning sizzled to the surface. And as I burned, the world froze around me. The fence, the chatter, the Takers dropped away, and all that was left was an island of us.

  Never before, even during my most intense visions, had I felt so alive. Never before had every single muscle and cell and thought sung with power. The words of Kel’s song came back to me again.

  I would teach my feet to fly. Straight up into the hot sky.

  15

  THAT NIGHT, Maya and I stayed up talking. Our voices bounced quietly from bed to bed. The volley of words helping us stay awake.

  Despite Zach’s totally plausible theory of alien abduction, by the end of Free Time our group had come up with a plan. We just wouldn’t go to sleep, thus putting an end to this weirdness.

  Then there’d been a whole futile discussion about how to deal with the drugs. It didn’t surprise me that most of us had tried the hide-it-under-the-tongue maneuver, with equal amounts of failure. Of course, Nami had taken it a step further, throwing up the pill right after lights-out. But evidently a Taker, patrolling the halls, overheard her and Nurse came in with a double dose. Only Zach admitted that he’d willingly let himself be drugged, mumbling something to us about needing to feel calm.

  Since we didn’t have a solution for the drugs, we weren’t sure staying up would work. But we hoped at least one of us would make it through the night.

  That was the plan, at least. But I had one of my own.

  “So,” Maya’s voice whispered through the dark. “What’d Kel have to say that was so important?”

  “What?” I kept my voice steady. How much did she hear about Kel’s Holbrook “tour”?

  “Come on. I saw you guys during Free Time. Everyone saw you. Whispering to each other and making moony eyes.”

  I let out my breath. I wasn’t sure why I didn’t want her to know about Kel’s discovery.

  No. I did know why. It was the same reason that I didn’t want to talk about the drawings on the floor. Or ask Kel about his gloves and sweatshirt. These new friendships were tenuous and fragile. If my Family k
new about everything, the music up on the rooftop, the crazy water hallucinations, the symbols I’d drawn on the floor . . . would they still trust me? I couldn’t go back to being an outcast.

  And there was another reason. One I didn’t want to admit to myself. There was this new feeling at the center of my chest. A secret thrill when I thought about Kel. I didn’t want to do anything, say anything, that would make that go away.

  “Fine. Don’t answer me. But don’t pretend you’re so innocent.”

  Maya kept up the soft chatter, moving on to analyzing Damion and Nami’s flirtation. I tried to make the appropriate responses as I thought back to what Kel had said about his foray to the Compass Rose. He hadn’t said how he’d gotten in or how he’d found his stuff—or my stuff, for that matter. But he had found what they’d taken from him. He’d gotten in and discovered the symbol. And so could I.

  Then Maya’s words stopped and I glanced over to see if she was asleep. But instead, she was staring up at the ceiling. She must have felt my eyes on her, because she started talking again in this quiet, tentative voice, so different from her usual aggressive tones.

  “I’m scared. I mean, I know it’s not really vampires or anything, but . . . Faye, something awful is going on, isn’t it? I’m remembering these little bits of things, but it’s not like a dream. It’s . . . it’s like how I remember the first time my stepdad cornered me. Everything comes back in these ugly flashes. His hand on my arm. The streetlamp making thin strips of light on the carpet. My cat hissing and fluffing himself up as big as he could get. And then nothing. It’s like that.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Not about the hell she’d gone through. Or about what was going on now. I grasped at the same pitiful words that hadn’t even worked the first night. “I’m sorry.”

  “No. That’s what my stepdad’s gonna be.” Her voice had its edge back. “But thanks.”

  I didn’t want to, but I had to ask. “Maya, what kind of things are you remembering?”

  “Like I said, nothing solid . . . more like déjà vu.” She propped herself up on her elbow so she could look at me. Moonlight filtered in through the window, and I could just make out her face. “Like today, when I was painting that tree, there was this strong smell. Spruce and salt. And there was this sudden rush. Like there was more there than I was seeing.”