Edgewood Series: Books 1 - 3

by Karen McQuestion

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Mallory got up and sat right next to me on the bed. Having her so close made my heart race, but the move, I quickly figured out, wasn’t for intimacy, but comfort. That and also because she wanted to keep our conversation confidential. She leaned against my headboard, her legs extended, and began. For the next hour, it all spilled out. Her hands fluttered like birds while she spoke, and her voice rose and fell with the storytelling. If I hadn’t known what she was saying was true, I’d have thought it was something from a graphic novel, it was that farfetched.

  “I met Nadia and Jameson through my homeschooling group,” she said. “The group has these socials once a month. The three of us are the only ones at the high school level around here, and all of us were in the accelerated college-level program, so we had that in common too.”

  Here we go again, I thought. All of you are smart, while me? Not so much. But maybe she didn’t mean it that way. It was entirely possible I was being overly sensitive.

  “Nadia’s parents never let her leave the house unless a family member is with her. And I mean never ever. I thought my parents were strict, but they’re nothing in comparison. Her mother is so overprotective it’s ridiculous. She doesn’t even let Nadia have her own phone, so we always have to call the house and ask for Nadia. They screen her calls, believe it or not. Luckily they let Jameson and I get through, but we still have to go through some small talk before they hand the phone over to Nadia.”

  “Why are they that way?” I asked.

  “Because Nadia was attacked on a city bus three years ago. She doesn’t like to talk about it, so don’t ask,” she added, as if I would. “Anyway, the three of us started calling each other, first to talk about schoolwork and then just to hang out.”

  They started going out at night, Mallory said, when all of them discovered, at around the same time, that all of them had trouble sleeping. They were restless; it was like they were compelled to go outside, like their houses were suddenly confining. So they met up outside and walked. For Nadia, it was sweet freedom after being caged by her mother’s worry.

  The first time they went out, it was going to be a onetime thing, or so they thought. But when they didn’t get caught, there was no reason to stop. “At night, it’s like the world is ours,” Mallory said, getting a faraway look. “Everything has a different feel at night. It was like we stumbled onto some secret place.” Coincidentally, they all wanted to go out on the same nights. All three got that restless urge at the same time.

  “And we were drawn to go to certain places,” she said. “We didn’t think much of it. We sort of just went with it.”

  “And the diner?” I asked.

  She nodded. “One day we got hungry and decided to risk it. We told the waitress, Rosie, that we were college students and she seemed cool with it. Now we go all the time. No one else is ever there at that time of night, except sometimes that old guy, Gordy, but he wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  “And how long did you do this walking around before you saw the lights?”

  “About two months, I think?” Mallory said. “We were on the other end of town when we saw them in the sky, and by the time we got to the field, they were there on the ground in a perfect Fibonacci spiral. We walked through it and were just awed. I mean, none of us had ever seen anything like it. I’m not sure anyone else has either. We were so dumbstruck we didn’t even think to collect samples, something Jameson still hasn’t gotten over.” She wrinkled her nose. “When we went back to the field during the day, it had been bulldozed. The whole surface had been scraped and carted away, by someone, we don’t know who. It took a long while for the grass to grow back, but it did.”

  “So who did it?”

  “We never found out. The property around the old train station is owned by the city. I made some calls to the city office using a disposable cell phone, but no one would tell us anything. Every person I talked to said they didn’t know what I was talking about. They sure were curious about me though. The receptionist put us through to the mayor, and he wanted to know who I was and why I was asking. He demanded to know, in fact. I finally hung up on him.”

  Then, she said, it got even weirder. They saw signs posted around town offering rewards for anyone who could supply information about a meteor event, and they listed the date that the lights had appeared in the sky. “Of course it wasn’t a meteor event, but they had to call it something.”

  I snapped my fingers and pointed. “I remember those signs. They were on the bulletin board at the supermarket, right?” My friend Justin had made jokes about making up a story to collect the money.

  She nodded. “And the post office and a lot of other places too. But the odd thing is that the media didn’t cover the event, and no one else seemed to have seen the lights either.” Nadia was paranoid right from the start, Mallory said. She was the one who told them they shouldn’t talk about it, or use their real phones, or look online for information. “I thought she was being a little extreme,” Mallory said, shifting her position so her legs were tucked under her. “But we soon found out she was right about everything. I used the computers at the library to do searches and signed in with the name ‘Marsina Follys,’ which is, as I’m sure you already figured out, an anagram of my actual name, Mallory Nassif.”

  I tried to look as smart as she thought I was. “Of course.”

  “My searches came up with nothing. I just couldn’t believe it. I was at the computer for an hour putting in every search term I could think of, but there was no record of it ever happening. If I hadn’t had Nadia and Jameson with me I would have thought I’d been hallucinating. A week later, Jameson was at the library studying, and two men in suits came in, looking very official. He noticed them right away. He overheard them say they were from the FBI and they wanted to speak to whoever is in charge of Internet use at the library. The head librarian—you know Mrs. Wick? She came out and was all flustered. They wanted to see the signup sheet and wanted to know what the protocol was for using the computers. They inspected the sheet and compared them to something they had, and then one of them says they need to have the contact information for Marsina Follys. Jameson said the hair on the back of his neck stood up when he heard this. Mrs. Wick looked up Marsina Follys on the library computer behind the counter, and of course there’s no record of anyone by that name in the system. One of the men actually pushed her aside to see for himself, and then they reamed her out for not checking IDs. Jameson said she looked ready to pass out, poor thing.”

  “And that’s why you think it’s dangerous.”

  “Oh, it gets better.” Mallory was enjoying telling this story. It was as if she’d been dying to share it with someone for ages and finally could. She began counting down on her fingers. “So far we have a strange astronomical event no one seems to know about. Then the field is cleared of evidence and signs go up looking for witnesses. And then the FBI,” and here she put finger quotes around the word, “is looking for whoever was searching for information about this whole thing. At this point, our minds are blown by the implications here. Jameson starts reading everything he can about astronomy, and Nadia researches FBI procedure to see if the library incident was done by the books. We thought we were onto something, but little did we know it was just the beginning. A few days after Mrs. Wick was visited by the suits, the three of us went out night walking again. We stopped for something to eat at the diner, and when Jameson went to reach for a salt shaker, it skidded across the table right to him.” She laughed. “You should have seen the look on his face. It wasn’t long after that when Nadia discovered she can tell if people are telling the truth or not and gets a sense of who they are and what they’re all about. If she touches them and looks in their eyes, she can see their past, or at least bits of it. She says it’s as clear as watching a movie, but it comes all at once, not in regular time.”

  “And you found out you can do mind control,” I said, filling in the rest.

  “Yes.” She smiled r
ight at me, and I found it impossible not to look at her big, dark eyes.

  I felt myself leaning toward her in fact, wanting to—wait! I straightened up. “Are you doing it right now?”

  “No!” She reached over and slapped me playfully on the arm. “I wouldn’t do that to you, at least not without asking you first, like if you want a demonstration.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think I want a demonstration, at least not on me,” I said, feeling a flush of embarrassment. I thought about the hypnosis guy on the Discovery Channel who made people do ridiculous things, like profess their love to complete strangers or dance to imaginary music. I was capable of humiliating myself on my own. I didn’t need any help, thanks.

  “How fascinating that you can heal people,” she said. “Imagine what you could do with that.”

  “I don’t think that’s what it was,” I said. “I’m still figuring it out, but there has to be another answer.”

  As if not hearing me, she continued the discussion, going in a different direction entirely. I’ve noticed that girls do this a lot. My dad will be talking about something in the news and my mom will interrupt him to ask if the car is due for an oil change. At least Mallory stayed on the subject somewhat. “We’ve done some brainstorming to try to determine who’s behind the library visit. If it’s not the government, it might be some corporation trying to develop the power from the stones.”

  The government or an evil corporation, both major movie clichés. “Maybe the light particles were sent by aliens,” I joked.

  “That had occurred to us,” she said. “We really can’t rule anything out at this point. But more likely, it’s a natural phenomenon that hasn’t occurred before. Or at least it hasn’t been reported. Scientists are always discovering new things. That’s the joy of science. As our body of evidence grows, the truths of science change along with it. It’s more fluid than most people think.”

  “So why don’t you go to the authorities with this information?” I asked. “Or tell your parents?”

  “Don’t even think of telling anyone,” she said. “I mean it. We’ve got good reasons not to go public with this.”

  “But doesn’t it make sense to inform—”

  I was interrupted by noises downstairs: the sound of the front door opening and closing, and the usual sounds of Frank and Carly arriving. Carly calling out, “Hello, anybody here?” followed by her yelling at Frank to take off his shoes and put his backpack in the front hall closet.

  I groaned. “Oh no.”

  “What is it?”

  “My sister is dropping off my nephew. He’s staying with us for the weekend.”

  “Oh, that’s nice,” she said, in a way that indicated she’d never met Frank Shrapnel. “How old is he?”

  “He’s ten,” I said. “It’s just—” But it was too late to explain because now Frank was clomping up the stairs. His timing had always been bad, but today was the absolute worst.

  “Frank, come back here!” Carly called after him, and then just when I didn’t think it could get any worse, I heard her footsteps clattering behind his.

  The door flew open revealing Frank, his shaggy hair all askew, his eyes bright with excitement, “Hey, Russ, guess what?” And then he saw Mallory and he transitioned from overeager-Frank to shy-Frank. “Hi,” he said.

  She waved back “Hello there.”

  Carly’s face popped through the doorframe. “I tried to stop him, Russ! Really I did. Oh, hello…” She spotted Mallory perched on my bed, and you could read the shock on her face. Nobody expects much from old Russ, that’s for sure. An instant later, a smug smile formed on her lips, like she totally had something on me. “What have we here?” she asked. I could have killed her for acting like this was a big deal.

  “Mallory, this is my sister Carly and my nephew Frank,” I said, gesturing.

  Mallory got up and crossed the room to where Carly stood, and politely extended her hand. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Mallory Nassif, a friend of Russ’s,” she said. “I brought his homework over for him.”

  Carly shook her hand and looked over at me. “You were home sick today?”

  “You would have known that if you’d read Mom’s note on the kitchen table.”

  “Sorry,” she said, not sounding sorry at all. She ran her fingers through her hair and checked out the room, as if maybe there was more to see. Carly was nearly grown when I was born, but you couldn’t tell that by looking at her. She was thirty but appeared much younger, and since she kept up with the kind of music, games, movies, and clothes that were current, she felt like we were peers, but we weren’t, and even though I knew she wanted us to be friends, it was never going to happen.

  It wasn’t always like that. When I was little, she used to take me to the park and out for ice cream. She read books to me and we played hide-and-seek. I loved Carly then. But one day, when I was four, she just took off and we didn’t see or hear from her for over a year. My mother told me that every day for weeks I’d sit on our front stoop waiting for her to return. My memories are fuzzy, but I remember looking down the street wishing she’d come back to me. By the time she did, more than twelve months later and pregnant with Frank, I didn’t trust her anymore.

  So much about Carly was unstable. After barely graduating from high school, she’d had one loser job after another. Cell phones were another matter. She was always losing them or changing her phone number. Men came and went in her life. The identity of Frank’s father was this big mystery. Carly never named him. My guess was that Frank was the product of a drunken one-night stand and she didn’t catch the guy’s name.

  Carly had a busy social life and men loved her. I’m not sure why. One after another, it was like they had lined up, waiting for their turn. Her pattern was that she’d begin dating a guy, and we’d hear her talk about him nonstop. She’d say that this one was different; he was more caring, more enlightened, more responsible, blah, blah, blah. She’d start bringing him around and we’d be subjected to him at Thanksgiving and family birthdays. Just when I got used to a guy, she’d dump him. Any number of them would have married her, but she wasn’t going for it. My mom thought she was searching for something and not finding it. My dad said he was glad she was supporting herself and not living with us. I was beyond caring. “So you brought Russ his homework and then the two of you were just hanging out here, in Russ’s bedroom, talking?” She grinned and I wanted to tell her off, but I knew enough to ignore her. She loved to tease me and thought it was big fun. Not so fun on my end.

  “We were just wrapping things up,” Mallory said. “Russ, if you’re feeling better tomorrow night give me a call and we can go out for wings.”

  “Sounds good,” I said, following her out the door to the stairs. I pushed past Frank and Carly, who still lingered in the doorway like they had nothing better to do than intrude on my personal life.

  When Mallory and I got to the front door, she stopped and turned to me, whispering, “Seriously, don’t breathe a word of any of this. There’s more. I’ll tell you tomorrow.” I got a warm little shiver from the feel of her lips so close to my ear.

  “Tell me now,” I whispered back.

  She laughed. “No way, I need more time to get it all out.”

  “Are we really going out for wings?” I asked.

  She pulled back and shrugged. “Might as well. We have to eat, right? I’ll pick you up at six?”

  “Six is fine,” I said, holding the door open for her. I watched her walk down the driveway to a silver car parked across the street. She stopped to fish car keys out of her purse and beeped the door open. When she pulled away from the curb, she glanced back and gave me a wave, which I returned. A bunch of sophomores at my school already had their driver’s licenses, but I was young for my grade and wouldn’t turn sixteen until June. Watching her speed down the street, I couldn’t wait for my turn at the wheel. I was tired of walking and having my mom drive me everywhere.

  I guess I shouldn’t have been shocked to turn
and see Carly standing right behind me, but I was. Frank had already commandeered the PS3 up in my room; I could hear the sounds of a game above me. You always knew when Frank was over: the kid couldn’t keep quiet for anything. But my sister was another matter. She was a sneaky thing—quiet as a cat. Probably from years of practice as a teenager sneaking out of the house late at night and taking the family car without permission. I waited for her to make some snarky comment, but all she did was put her hand on my forehead. “Oh yeah,” she said, her face scrunched in concern. “I can see why you stayed home today. You’ve definitely got it.”

  “Got what?”

  “The looove disease.” Carly’s face lit up and she thrust a fist in the air, pleased with herself.

  “Okay, enough already.” For once though, I wasn’t all that annoyed with her.

  “And she drives too!” Carly punched me lightly on the arm. “An older woman, Russ! You dog, you!” She could barely contain her excitement.

  “She’s just a friend.” I tried to hold back a smile without much luck.

  “A friend? Just a friend, and she whispers in your ear like that?”

  “A good friend.”

  “Just a good friend?”

  I grinned. “A very good friend.”

  “That’s how it starts,” she said, twirling around with her arms stretched high. “Next thing you know, you’ll have moved to the next level and then—watch out! Fireworks! Trust me on this. I know these things.”

  “Yes, because you’re the expert when it comes to relationships.” I meant it as a joke, but it came out wrong. As soon as the words were out of my mouth I knew it was the wrong thing to say. Her face fell, like a balloon deflating, and she stopped dancing. She’d been happy and we were getting along for once, and just like that, the mood shifted. I’d ruined the moment.