04 Silence (16 page)

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FADE

Book 1 of the FADE Series™

By Kailin Gow

ONE

M
y name is Celestra Caine. I am seventeen years old, which makes me a senior at Richmond High. I never thought this would happen to me, but it has… I’m one of those people you see every day, go to school with, remember seeing at the supermarket or the
mall
,
and then one day you don’t hear about them any longer. They’re gone, and eventua
lly
, you forget them.

Not that I’m easy to forget, as much as I might occasiona
lly
wish that I were.
I’m tall, about five-seven, and I’m willowy.
Built for running, my mom always says. Then there’s my hair. It’s a bright blonde that always attracts attention, from men and women. The women always want to know what I’ve done with it, and some of them won’t believe that it’s simply my natural hair color. The men… like I said, sometimes I wish I didn’t attract quite so much attention. Sometimes I think it might be better if I blended in a little more.

It’s not
all
bad, though. My boyfriend, Grayson, loves my hair. He loves touching it, and I love it when he’s that close to me. I love it when he gives me that look he has that says, not just that he loves me, but that he always
wi
ll.
That I’m the only girl for him. It’s worth standing out a little for a look like that from a guy like Grayson.

I first met him running track- he’s the captain of the school team, so it’s probably appropriate that I’m at practice with him on the day it starts. Then again, I’m at practice with him most days, so maybe it was always going to work out like that.

We finish up, and Grayson invites me back to his place for dinner, but I can’t. I have to be home, so I
tell
him that
I
’ll
see him tomorrow and get going.

It doesn’t take me long to make my way home, since it’s not that far from the school. The house is nice enough, in a neighborhood where there’s no trouble, and there are plenty of families around. Dad’s car is in the drive, so I guess he must have gotten back early from his work as a biochemical engineer.

Mom
will
be there too by now. She teaches kindergarten, and she’s always home before me.

Even as I walk through the front door, I can picture her in the kitchen, working away at dinner, maybe
yelling
at my brother, Bailey, not to spend too much time online before he’s done his homework. It’s just how things are in our house.

Except today, something is different. I know that from the moment I set foot through the door.

I can’t put my finger on it for a second or two, but then I realize what it is. The house is quiet.

“Mom? Dad?
Hello
?” I
call
it out, moving through into the living room, then the kitchen. There’s no sign of either of them. They aren’t there when I check the rest of the rooms on the ground floor, either, which is weird. By 6 pm, at least one of them is
always
there.

Still,
maybe it’s nothing. Maybe the sinking feeling I have in the pit of my stomach is just an overactive imagination playing tricks on me. For
all
that I
still
can’t help feeling that there’s something wrong, it’s not like the place has been trashed, or anything. It’s not like anything has obviously been stolen, or is out of place. The opposite, if anything. The whole ground floor is neat, tidy.

Maybe Mom and Dad have just gone next door for a moment. I latch onto that thought, heading upstairs. Bailey
will
know. He might not pay much attention to things that don’t involve computers, but Mom and Dad
will
at least have told him where they were going.

“Bailey?” I knock on the door to his room, but there’s no answer.
Telling
myself that he probably has headphones on while he’s playing one of those online games of his, I invoke big sister’s prerogative and open the door anyway.

Bailey isn’t there either. And his room’s neat.

Too neat. Bailey is, like little brothers everywhere, I guess, a one boy disaster zone. This looks like one of those occasions when Mom has fina
lly
gotten tired of
telling
him to clean his room and done it for him, which means that Bailey can’t have been back since.

In fact, the whole house has that feel. Like someone has scrubbed it from top to bottom, and no one has been in it to mess it up yet. That probably doesn’t sound like a big deal, but for me, it’s enough.

Enough to send me hurrying around the house, looking for clues as to what might be happening. Because there’s
something
happening. I’m certain of it.

I go to search every room again, even
t
hough it doesn’t make sense. After
all,
Mom and Dad and Bailey aren’t about to leap out from behind the sofa, are they? Thereify"s
still
no sign of them. More than that, beyond the car in the drive, there’s
still
no sign that any of them has even been home.

I check my messages. Maybe there’s an
explanation there. There’s nothing. There’s nothing when I check my emails, either. Not even the usual stuff I’d get most days, which only makes me bite my lip harder with the worry of it. I don’t like this. I
really
don’t like this.

Should I
call
the cops? That thought springs into my head from nowhere. What would I
tell
them, though? That something doesn’t feel right in my house, and that it looks like a team of cleaners has been through the place? They’d laugh at me, or worse, accuse me of wasting their time.

I haven’t
called
my parents yet, so I try that next. I get out my
cell
phone and
call
the number for my father. It doesn’t even ring. Instead, I just get this message, saying “Error, number not recognized.”

The same thing happens when I
call
my
mother, and when I try to connect to the number for the
cell
phone Bailey has ‘for emergencies’. I’ve sometimes wondered what kind of emergencies a ten year old can have. I guess now I know. I’m breathing faster now, and I know I’m starting to panic. This kind of thing just doesn’t happen in D.C. Not that I know what “This kind of thing” is yet.

I punch in another obvious number. That of my Aunt Chrissie. She’s my mother’s sister, and my parents always say that if anything serious happens, and they aren’t around, I should ring her. I’m not sure what good it’s meant to do, ringing a woman we hardly ever see to come and ride in to save the day, but right now, I’m
willing
to try anything.

“Error. Number not-”

“Stupid thing!” I throw my phone and it bounces off the sofa, coming to rest on the carpet. I stand there seething with anger at it for a minute, my head spinning as I try to make some sense of
all
this.

There has to be a logical explanation for
all
of it, right?

People don’t just… disappear.

Only, I can’t think of an explanation that works. Unless I’m
willing
to believe that my parents and brother have
all
chosen to
call
in on one of the neighbors together right at the moment when a freak fault has developed in my phone, and what are the chances of that?

This is rea
lly
starting to weird me out. So much so that I can barely breathe with it, while my stomach is tight with the apprehension running through it. Nothing good is happening. I’m certain of that now. I just wish I were as certain about what to do next. I need to calm down. To think.

Grayson. I latch onto thoughts of him like a life preserver. He’s always been my rock; always been there for me. Whenever I panic about not getting good enough grades to make the track scholarship to Georgetown, he’s the one who talks me through it and helps me study. When I’m down about my track times or just annoyed with my little brother, he’s the one who picks me up.

Even though this feels so much more
serious than that, I snatch up my phone and speed dial his number. For once, I don’t get that stupid message, either. Now
all
I need is for Grayson to pick up.

Come on, Grayson, pick up.

He answers on the fifth ring, though given how fast my pulse is currently racing, it feels far longer.

“
Hello
?” he asks. “Celestra?”

I’m so happy to hear his voice in that moment that I can’t think of anything to say. There’s too much of it, and it
all
sounds so crazy. There’s the house, and the emptiness, and the stuff with my phone. For a couple of seconds,
all
I can do is stand there, listening to him on the other end of the phone like some kind of weird stalker.

“Celes, is that you? Are you
all
right?”

His use of that pet version of my name snaps me out of it. This is Grayson. I can
tell
him anything, even the strange stuff.
He
’ll
find a way to make
all
this make sense, or at least a way to make me feel better about it. I open my mouth to explain. To simply say his name.

Before I can get the words out, my
cell
phone dies. Just dies, without an explanation.

There’s no power, even though I’m sure I charged it up this morning. It won’t turn on, it won’t light up, and it certainly won’t let me say anything to the one person who might be able to help me. I stand there, just staring at it dumbly, for a second after a second.

The main house phone starts to ring in the kitchen. It’s an old thing my dad liked the look of and had rewired, even though we
all
have individual
cell
phones. The ring is harsh, cutting through the silence of the house in a way that only emphasizes it.

Has Grayson
called
me back on the house number, guessing what has happened to my phone? That must be it. I rush through to the kitchen, knowing that I have to talk to someone about this, or I’m going to burst. I snatch up the handset, cutting off that sharp ringing.

“
Hello
?”

“Celestra Caine?”

A
man’s
voice.
It’s not Grayson. It’s not anyone I know. And yet, whoever he is, he obviously knows me. Coming here and now, I know the
call
has to have something to do with whatever is going on.

“Who is this?” I ask.

“Celestra Caine, you are about to fade.”

******

FADE (Book 1: FADE Series)

August 2011

From Bestselling Author Kailin Gow comes
DESIRE

A Dystopian world where everyone’s future is planned out for them at age 18…whether it is what a person desires or not. Kama is about to turn 18 and she thinks her Life’s Plan
will
turn out like her boyfriend’s and friend’s – as they desired. But when she glimpse a young man who can communicate with her with his thoughts and knows her name…a young man with burning blue eyes and raven hair, who is dressed like no other in her world, she is left to question her Life’s Plan and her destiny.

Now Available