He shook his head. “You’re staring.”
I smiled. “It’s hard not to.”
“I feel the same way.”
“What are you doing here?” I shifted my weight, tilting my head to one side. The space between us vibrated with energy and crazy attraction, each of us wondering if the other would make the first move.
“I wanted to see if you were okay.”
It was the same lame excuse I’d given him when I’d shown up outside his bedroom door at dawn long after we’d broken up. What I’d really wanted then, even if I couldn’t admit it to myself, was to make sure he was still a possibility.
Nothing had been rational about my decision to go to his house that night, hours before I was supposed to disappear to safety with my family. And yet…nothing ever felt as right as when John and I were together.
I broke the rules.
I dropped his hand and stepped forward, resting both my arms on his shoulders. John laid his hands flat on my lower back, bringing me closer.
He lowered his head, and when we kissed, it was the first time it had ever felt desperate. I held his face, my hands threading through his silky dark hair, one of my legs standing between his.
He broke away, quickly whipping his shirt off before deepening the kiss.
My hands ran over his smooth back. “I missed you so much.” I pushed him away so I could take off my clothes while he watched.
“You have no idea.” He reached behind me, unhooking my bra expertly with two fingers. He kissed me hard but very gently lowered me to the bed.
I trusted John and let myself go, lying back, knowing how reckless we were being but too addicted to stop.
An hour later, I lay listening to the hypnotic crash of waves, loud inside the walls of the thin bungalow. “This feels like a dream,” I said to myself, to the room in general.
John rolled over, sleepy-eyed. I should have let him rest for longer. He extended one arm to me. I lay back down, resting my head on his shoulder. A cool, California breeze came through the screens of the open windows. I pulled the sheet more firmly around me and pressed against him for warmth.
I found myself beginning to search for his thoughts. I wanted to know how happy he was, if he felt like I did.
“I thought you weren’t doing that? No sixth sense,” he said.
I raised my head and looked into his unfathomable eyes, my hair brushing his chest. How could he always tell lately? “It’s only been now and again.” I worried what his response would be and changed the subject. “We haven’t talked about why you came or how you found me.”
“Are you mad?” He smiled. “You didn’t seem like it.” John gently pushed my head back down to his shoulder.
“I just can’t believe you’re actually here.”
“You know it was bullshit what you were saying about staying here.” John let his hand glide up and down my bare back. “Isn’t an advantage of you being here to find out what happened between a human being and a…?” He said this lightly, but we both knew it wasn’t a joke.
“If you met her, you would get it.”
“No, I wouldn’t. It’s not okay that she won’t tell you anything.”
He was beginning to make me feel defensive.
“She seems to live on this higher plane. The past doesn’t matter to her. She’s let it go.” And maybe I was too afraid to discover the truth of why my parents didn’t work out. I also had empathy for Elizabeth. She was someone else who had been shattered by Novak.
“That’s the equivalent of someone pretending something never happened. It doesn’t work.” He was referring to how I’d behaved when we’d broken up.
“I do know people who can do that. I grew up surrounded by them.”
John rolled onto his back, breaking physical contact.
“We are efficient and cold,” I reminded him, belatedly aware that I had unconsciously grouped myself with my family.
“You’re not. Even when you try to be. You ended up amazing in spite of the family you had.”
I’d survived because of my sister. “I’m not,” I said automatically. But I smiled despite myself. Then, I ventured, “John? I don’t think I’m cut out for college. I think I’ve been pretending all along, telling myself I can have things that I just can’t.”
“You haven’t even tried.” He abruptly sat up in the bed. I had to crane my neck to look at him, so I rose too. I grabbed my shirt from the floor, upset that the mood in the room had changed from dreamlike to harsh reality.
“I am a complete freak of nature. I do not fit in anywhere.” In a way, it felt freeing to say it.
“Then I am too.”
“No, you’re not. I won’t let you be,” I said quickly.
John reached for his clothes. I watched as he turned and stood, swiftly putting on his jeans. It was something endearing about him—for having such a perfect body, he was surprisingly modest.
“My entire life, I’ve had people telling me what to do. I’ve gone along with it like a trained monkey.” There was an edge to his voice I’d never heard.
“Are you talking about tennis?” I asked, surprised.
There was silence for a second. “Right when I was at my lowest point, you came along. Then later you tell me it’s some kind of fate. I believe that. And that these things I can do are part of me that have always been there.”
“What are you doing? What aren’t you saying? Alex has told me more than you have.”
John paused as if he was about to come forth. Then he reconsidered. “Nothing is going on,” he said.
“No,” I said simply.
“What do you mean, ‘no’?”
“Being like me isn’t who you’re meant to be.”
“How would you know, Julia?”
“So what you’re saying is you’re destined for something else? Something different than your brother and your family? Maybe something that feels great for a while but then gets you kidnapped? Disappeared?” I heard the sarcasm and hardness in my voice.
I thought that would have made him more angry, but he was serious when he asked, “If I can actually help people, why am I supposed to walk away from that?”
John didn’t wait for my answer. He turned and walked barefoot into the small bathroom behind him, putting his shoulder against the warped door to close it.
The argument reminded me of why we’d had to separate for the summer. He would wear me down because I knew exactly how he felt. It was miserable. For a second, I pictured John trying to understand what seemed to be happening to him. Like the rest of us, at first he would feel like he was flying. Until he messed up.
I didn’t know enough to help him or teach him with his particular talent. Angus and I had figured out some of our abilities, but there wasn’t ever a good place to practice, or just let ourselves be. When I thought about John living in relative safety at the beach, I knew it would feel like a cage for him. He was just breaking free of his sheltered home life. Besides Angus was a fugitive and I was part of an FBI investigation. We were still trying to figure out how to live without the protection of the group.
I finished getting dressed and saw John’s phone begin to vibrate on the side table. Alex’s face lit the screen. It was two a.m. John needed to leave if he hadn’t been caught already.
Pulling my hair back, I knew the dreaded good-bye was next. I’d promise to see him in less than a month and remind him to keep his head down—that next time I saw him, he’d be safe from Novak if what Angus said was true. I no longer believed that was our only threat. John was using, and he seemed addicted. I didn’t know whether my presence was going to help or hurt him.
When I closed my eyes, I could feel a change coming. I realized that while living this calm life here at the beach, I’d let our problems fade in my head. They no longer played on my nerves, terrifying me every waki
ng second. I’d grown lax.
The bathroom door burst open. John held out a black hoodie, larger than anything I’d wear. “Why is the toilet seat up? Whose is this?”
From the look on my face, John knew it wasn’t mine.
I’d omitted Angus from every story, but I wasn’t going to outright lie. But maybe at the end of the day, they were the same thing.
John gave me the dirtiest look. It was like he already knew.
“I thought about it, but it seemed crazy. It’s Angus’s, right?” John threw the sweatshirt to the floor, not wanting to touch it.
“I couldn’t tell you I’d found him. You know that.”
John was looking at me like he didn’t know me. Then, he asked, “How long?”
I didn’t know if I should come clean. It was true, the less John knew the better, but at this point, that was a bullshit excuse.
“Five weeks,” I said.
“So about the time you said you wanted to separate for the entire summer?” The unerring focus of his eyes made me feel like I was in a spotlight.
I stayed where I was, leaving plenty of space between us, knowing perfectly well how horrible everything would sound. “He was the one who gave me the details about when my family would finally be gone. His father told him. That was around the time you started showing signs…I had to make a plan.”
“He’s been with you ever since we said good-bye?”
“We drove out here together.” I heard myself digging my own grave.
“You traveled together? That’s why I barely heard from you? And that’s why you’re having second thoughts?”
“I’m having second thoughts about trying to live like a normal person. Not about you. Not for one second.”
“But here you are. You’re cheating on me.” John gestured around the room. “Sharing a room and a bed with him.”
I could feel him looking at everything differently and said, “I know you know I would never, ever cheat on you. We shared hotel rooms. That’s it. Here he sleeps on the floor.” I knew it sounded like a lie. God, it was even a lie because of that one night. “He’s my last connection. My only family I have in this entire world.”
“You will always be cheating on me when he’s around. He’ll always win over me. Of course he would try to put me at a disadvantage, telling you I need to get rid of these abilities, I’m sure. I won’t be able to compete with him, and you’ll get bored. That’s really what this summer has been about.”
“I heard someone say my name.” Angus’s voice drawled behind me from the doorway. The second he’d heard distress in my voice from afar, he’d made sure to show. He wanted this fight with John.
I didn’t bother looking at Angus. I watched John’s eyes snap to Angus, pure hatred on his face.
Angus sauntered closer, planting himself between John and me as if I needed help. “I think you need to leave,” Angus said, possessively.
“Angus!” I said. “Go away.”
“I’m leaving,” John said and started toward me. His shoes were still by the side of the bed. Angus blocked him.
I knew what John was going to do the second before he shoved Angus hard out of the way.
“No!” I yelled, just as Angus grabbed the back of John’s shirt.
John spun and punched Angus. Angus hit the rickety floor hard and took John down with him. He landed a fist in John’s face so quickly, John had no way to see it coming.
“Angus! Stop.” Angus knew I meant it, and he knew how badly he could hurt John. I felt him relent. But he got in one more shove to John’s chest before standing up and backing away, acting grandly like he was only honoring my request. What I couldn’t believe was that John had managed to hurt Angus. I could see by the way Angus kept an eye on John like a wary animal that Angus couldn’t believe it either. He turned and spat on the bungalow floor.
What John had on Angus was more grace. He looked at me, swiped his shoes off the floor and walked out.
I shoved Angus, and he smirked, knowing he was going to catch so much shit from me later. He knew he’d won.
I ran, trying to keep up with John’s long strides down the narrow strip of dry sand, shrunken from the incoming tide.
“John! Listen to me.” I grabbed his shoulder. “We’re the only Puris left.”
“He uses that. And you let him.”
“Don’t leave.”
John shook his head like I was unbelievable and began walking again.
“John! You know me. You know how I feel.”
“We’re done. We’re too different.”
“I thought that didn’t matter to you.”
“I’m talking about integrity.”
Dammit. “He’s not my boyfriend. He’s my family,” I shouted back. “You were the one who said have faith in us.”
“No. I said to have faith in yourself.”
He wasn’t going to listen. Not right now. I watched him begin the long ascent up the stairs. It reminded me that there was something important I had to know.
“Wait. How did you find me? How did you find this place?”
“I could see it,” John said over his shoulder.
Late AUGUST
JOHN
Alex was waiting for me in our hotel room in LA, and I made it back just before my mom knocked on our door. He took one look at my face and handled everything for me. Packed my stuff, looked under the hotel bed, chatted nonstop to my mom to keep her attention off of me.
I still have no idea how I got back to LA. I don’t remember a single thing about that drive…
AUGUST
Chapter Twenty-Two
I felt like I was in shock, unable to move, unable to process what had just happened. I remained in the same spot until morning, wide awake, perched on the side of the bed lying in wait for Angus. He never showed, but there were other unexpected visitors.
It began with a commotion on the beach, which was out of place in the early morning. Laughing, talking too loud, and giggling. Then, my name being called in a singsong, “Julia! Julia!”
Venturing outside of the bungalow and onto my deck, I looked down below onto a group of eight—six girls and two boys. They couldn’t have been more than thirteen years old. They were being herded by Tana, the older woman with the braids who’d greeted me and Angus on our first morning. She was trying to shoo them out of the cove but was only driving them farther down the beach. They ran and laughed, a small, rowdy mob.
A girl with long blond hair wearing a royal-blue fleece drew up short when she saw me. Even from my distance I could see her holding a phone with my picture on it. She pointed and sprung up on her toes, excited. “There!” she shouted.
The others stopped and gazed up at me. They didn’t do much more than jump up and down, stare, or start to giggle. One boy’s phone came out to take my picture, capturing me wild-haired with eyes red from crying.
Farther down the beach, Emmanuel and Elizabeth, on a morning walk together, stopped to see what was going on. After a pause, Emmanuel began to swiftly approach the kids, Elizabeth just behind him. Typically it was only one or two people who wandered down onto the private beach, usually to walk a dog, and they were summarily redirected.
I skipped down the stairs two at a time. Already, more residents and guests were coming outside to see what the fuss was. Since I was the cause, I wanted to quickly quell the disruption before Emmanuel had to handle it. I did not want to be considered a nuisance to host.
Where had that recent photo come from?
When I came to stand in front of the group on the beach, they collectively backed up, as if they were surprised I was just a person like them, not a mirage on a movie screen.
Now that I faced them, I wasn’t sure what to do.
Emboldened, one girl called, “Can we get a picture with you?” One of the others yelled out, “We love
you!” And they all laughed.
I addressed the blond girl. “Can I see your phone?” She hesitated only slightly before handing it over. I flipped through an online photo series of me. In one, I was on my cell phone, hand on a hip, looking out at the horizon. I was wearing cutoffs and a concert T-shirt, tangled hair down my back, not unlike Elizabeth’s. Another was a close-up of my face. From my warm, flirty smile and the downward cast of my eyes, it was clear I’d been talking to John. The photos had all been taken from inside Carrie’s house, looking out into her front yard. Accompanying the photos was a brief column about where the Jaynes heiress was hiding. It divulged my exact location, naming the town and beach, and included quotes from locals about the suspicious, secretive community.
It was more than I could take at the moment.
I closed my eyes and pictured a ribbon wrapping around the motley crew, corralling them. Instantly, the group went from being dispersed and practically dancing to being drawn together into a tight, trapped pack by a compulsion they didn’t understand. The teeming energy had instantly dried up and an abrupt silence overtook them. And then I pictured a great wave crashing onto the beach, reaching as far as the cliffs.
When I opened my eyes, I saw how scared I’d made them.
I mentally released them. The group hurried down the beach to the stairs to get out and as far away from the shore as possible.
Elizabeth and Emmanuel had drawn close, no doubt having experienced some of what the kids had. Their eyes were on me, observing me closely. Elizabeth whispered something in Emmanuel’s ear.
Novak had the ability to change the energy of a room—I’d seen firsthand how Puris and outsiders hung on his every word. Me included. He made you feel what he wanted you to feel—it was like he could control the hive mind. Under pressure to do something, anything, to get rid of those kids, I’d just demonstrated the same ability.
When I saw the guarded looks on Elizabeth and Emmanuel’s faces, I understood I had overreached. My newfound pride disappeared. There was a pure quality to Angus’s levitation but something too powerful and ugly about mass manipulation.
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