Edgewood Series: Books 1 - 3 (7 page)

“Oh there’s a point all right.”

I looked back down at the table to see the jelly packet, moving on its own, sliding in circles in front of Jameson, seemingly directed by the subtle movements on his pointer finger. He wagged his finger back and forth and around and round, and the jelly packet, half a foot away, followed along. “Jump, little jelly, jump,” Jameson said gleefully, and it did just that, leaping up and down off the tabletop like a bouncy ball. He reached out and snatched it in midair.

I felt my mouth drop open. “How are you doing that?”

“It’s not kinetic
or
potential energy,” he said, still directing the jelly. “It’s a completely new kind. I call it Jameson energy.”

Mallory nudged me like,
See I told you this was big
, and an expression of pure delight crossed her face. Nadia, too, looked charmed as she gave him a silent clap, clap, clap of applause. I hoped I didn’t look as dumfounded as I felt.

Jameson handed me the jelly packet and numbly I took it. There was nothing extraordinary about it, no strings, nothing attached, no heat emanating from it. It was like all the others, a minute plastic container covered with a peel-off top decorated with a bunch of purple grapes. The only difference between this one and the other jelly packets was its ability to do gymnastics. “Being exposed to the lights one night, a year ago, gave you the ability to move objects without touching them?” I said.

Jameson grinned, showing all his teeth. “I told you he’d get it, Mallory. Such a smart boy.” He took off his glasses and polished them with the front of his shirt.

“Okay, enough with the sarcasm,” Mallory said. The waitress came to top up the coffee and Mallory waved her away. “Just the check please.”

“How is this possible?” I set the jelly packet down. Part of me couldn’t even fathom what I’d seen. It was a trick, it had to be. Magicians and illusionists had been pulling off stunts more mind-blowing than this for centuries. If someone could saw a girl in half or make an elephant disappear, making a small object move couldn’t be that difficult.

Mallory leaned toward me and said softly, “After being exposed to the energy fragments each of us discovered we’d picked up an ability, and all of us have something different.” She put a reassuring hand on my arm. “I know it can be kind of freaky if you aren’t expecting it.”

“So what’s your superpower?” I asked.

“Me? I guess you’d call it mind control.”

“Mind control? Like ‘these aren’t the droids you’re looking for’?” I said, quoting Obi-Wan from
Star Wars
.

“Something like that. I’m still figuring it out.
We’re
all still figuring it out.” Mallory looked at the others and they nodded. “None of us knew the lights had affected us until odd stuff started happening. I didn’t know I could do mind control. At first it just seemed like everyone was agreeing with me about everything, and I was so confused. Now I can actually feel it coursing through my body and I can kind of control it.”

“Why would you want to control it?” I asked. How awesome would it be to have everyone agree with you all the time?

Mallory shook her head. “When I first realized I could do it, I did it all the time. I mean, it was really cool to get my way with everything, but it took a weird turn. Now I’m careful. When I exert control over people, it seems to pull energy from them. It makes them tired, and they get headaches and muscle and joint pain. It made my mother so sick, she was in bed for two days.”

I wasn’t sure if I believed what I was hearing, but if she was acting, her performance was perfect. I didn’t want to believe that this pretty girl was lying to me, but it all seemed too incredible. “Can you show me how it works?”

“I will, I promise,” she said. “But not tonight.”

“And your power?” I said, looking at Nadia. “What did you get?’

“I can read people. I can see their thoughts, tell if they’re lying, see what they’ve done in the past. When I look in their eyes, I know them. I can see the essence of their soul.” Nadia looked down at her hands as she spoke, so all I saw was the top of her hoodie.

“Interesting,” I said. And it was interesting. Interesting that two out of three of the powers were things no one else could actually see, while Jameson’s was basically a parlor trick. I wasn’t a genius, but I wasn’t a fool either. And I wasn’t about to be the butt of a practical joke. Mrs. Becker didn’t raise a fool (unless you counted my sister, Carly, but that was a different story).

“And you brought back a dead person,” Nadia said. “So it’s pretty easy to figure out what your superpower is.”

“Oh, no,” I said. “That wasn’t me. I mean, I was there, but I didn’t bring her back from the dead.”

“Did she have a pulse?” Jameson asked.

“Not that I could find. But,” and here I held a hand up for emphasis, “that doesn’t mean she was dead. Her pulse was probably too faint for me to detect. I was pretty rattled. A trained professional probably could have found a pulse.”

“So you’re saying she wasn’t completely dead, just a little bit dead.”

“No, I—” The way Jameson twisted my words was starting to get me mad. “She wasn’t dead at all, so I couldn’t have brought her back to life.”

“But you did bring her back to life,” Nadia said.

“Whatever.” I didn’t want to argue about it, but I knew I was right. I’m a fairly observant guy when it comes to new things going on in my own life. I noticed right away when I started getting armpit hair. I sure wouldn’t miss suddenly getting a superpower.

The waitress brought the bill, and everyone scrambled out of the booth. I followed, still trying to process what I’d just been told. At the register, Mallory paid for everyone. Nadia and Jameson didn’t even look in their pockets or try to pay.

“Thanks for the food,” I said as we left the diner, the door slamming shut behind us. “It’s been great.”

Mallory said. “Thanks for the food? It’s been great? That’s all you have to say after we told you this huge secret involving superpowers?”

“You don’t even have any questions?” This from Nadia, who trailed behind us. She hadn’t pulled her hood down the entire time we were in the diner, and now she was completely hidden behind it.

“Only a million of them.” It was true, I could have talked about it all night, but it was later than the time I normally got home, and that made me worried. I’d never been caught being out at night before, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t this time. Just my luck I’d get in the house at the same moment my mom was getting up to go to the bathroom. Why someone couldn’t go a whole night without peeing was beyond me, but I often heard the downstairs toilet flushing at night, and I always knew it was her. She blamed it on menopause. Actually, she blamed a lot of things on menopause. “I have to get home,” I said, shoving my hands in my pockets. “We can talk later, right?”

Mallory nodded. “I’ll explain it all to you after school. Just remember that what we’ve told you is strictly confidential. Only the four of us know this.”

“Wait. So you’ve known about this for a year, and none of you have told
anyone
else?” We’d been crossing the parking lot, but now I stopped to face them. “Why not?”

Nadia’s head was down. Her voice floated out from under her hood. “In comic books they never tell.”

“Well, yeah…” It was true, but this wasn’t a comic book, and I wasn’t Peter Parker. Telling someone in authority seemed like a good way to go.

“The main reason we decided not to tell anyone is that we think it might be dangerous at this point,” Mallory said. “You need to trust me on this. Don’t tell anyone, or Google anything about this, or text anyone. That can all be traced. We have to do this old school and talk face-to-face. Someone else knows about this, and they’re trying to find us. We’re still trying to figure out who knows and what they want. When we do, we might go public. For now, we’re keeping it to ourselves.”

“How do you know that someone knows and is trying to find you?”

“Mr. Specter knew, for one,” she said, ticking off on her fingers. “And the fact that it’s not in the news or online. There are other things too. Someone is hunting for us. I’ll tell you more next time.” She looked up at the night sky. It was a clear night and above us the stars shone brightly. “Just be careful, Russ. I think if we stick together we can figure this thing out.”

“What do you mean someone is hunting for us?”

“Maybe hunting is the wrong word. Trying to get us to come forward is more like it. I’ll tell you more tomorrow.”

“For now, just keep your mouth shut, if that’s possible,” Jameson said, pointing a finger at me. “Try not to screw things up.”

“I can keep a secret,” I said, matching his rude tone.

“I hope so,” Jameson said, pushing his glasses up with one long, pointed finger. “Mallory vouched for you. If it were up to me, you wouldn’t be here.”

“Yeah, I got that,” I said. The guy clearly had a serious problem with me and I wasn’t sure why, but I wasn’t going to take his abuse even if he was a friend of Mallory’s.

We said good night and parted ways. I started to head for home, but somewhere along the way, a thought nagged at me that I needed to go back to the abandoned train station and check out the field where I’d seen the lights. Mallory’s group said they’d gone back a few days after their sighting and the fragments were gone, all gone. I had no idea how that could be. It would take one person forever to pick up the individual pieces. Even a crew of people couldn’t possibly get them all. There were thousands, maybe tens of thousands of fragments. There had to be some proof left behind. If I recovered a piece I would definitely one-up that smug bastard Jameson, who thought he was better than me. Okay, maybe he was smarter. So what? That didn’t mean I had nothing to contribute. What had he said?
I’d give my right arm to be able to study a chunk of that stuff.
I didn’t want his right arm, or any part of him at all, but I’d love to see the look on his face if I had a piece of something he wanted.

I made my way toward the field as quickly as possible. When I was nearly to the train station, I saw the lights off in the distance. Not the kind of lights I’d seen falling from the sky earlier in the week. These were man-made lights, accompanied by the buzzing of some kind of electrical equipment. I walked up a small hill and darted behind the boarded-up train station building before peeking around the corner.

The field had been marked off like a crime scene. Each corner was staked and connected by yellow tape. Bright lights on tripods illuminated the space where the light spiral had been just a few nights ago. Two armed guards stood on either side of the field, each of them carrying a gun in a shoulder holster. Their guns weren’t as long as rifles, but they were bigger than handguns. From this distance it was hard to identify them exactly. I didn’t recognize their uniforms either. Not the police or any military that I was aware of. What could this be all about? They were guarding rocks?

Inside the taped area, at least a dozen men walked slowly while waving a device like a metal detector over the ground. They wore white jumpsuits that zipped up the front. Their hands sported oversized white gloves like Mickey Mouse. No one spoke, but the device made an odd, high-pitched EMF noise I found maddening. Back and forth the men walked in slow, careful steps, their gaze on the ground. They were looking for the pieces of stone that had fallen from the sky, I was sure of it. The event had happened two nights ago. Maybe they’d picked up most of it already and now were checking to make sure they got it all?

As I watched, one of the devices went off, making an annoying beeping noise like an old-fashioned alarm clock. The worker turned off the alarm, tucked the device under his arm, and bent at the waist to pick something up. I couldn’t see what it was, but he was able to hold it in the palm of his hand, so it wasn’t big. He walked over to a man who stood just outside the perimeter.

I hadn’t noticed that man before. He was dressed differently from the others—no white suit for him, so clearly he wasn’t one of the workers. I only saw his back, but he was trim and tall, and dressed in dark clothing. He had the authoritative stance of someone in charge. He was overseeing this operation, was my take on it. The worker showed the boss whatever it was he’d picked up, and when he got a nod of approval, plunked it into what looked like a cylindrical container the size of a garbage can. The two exchanged a few words, and the next thing I knew, the worker was headed my way, the detector tucked under his arm.

Oh man, he was coming right at me. This couldn’t be good. If I was spotted I was so screwed. If I started running now, I thought it would attract attention. I froze and shrank back against the building. Involuntarily, I raised my hand to my mouth, willing myself silent. On my side of the building it was fairly dark. Maybe I would be okay.

And then I had another thought. What if the boss man had noticed me lurking and sent him to grab me? What had Mallory said about getting found out? That it would be dangerous. That was the word she used. Dangerous, as in life-threatening. I didn’t even want to know what those armed guards would do to a trespasser.

I heard the worker rustling through the tall grass, getting closer and closer. My heart pounded so loudly I was afraid it would give me away. But no one else could hear that, could they?

In the distance I still heard the buzzing and the movement of the other men, but it was the one walking toward me I worried about. Closer, closer, closer. He cleared his throat in a threatening way. Just when I thought I should make a run for it, the worker stopped walking. I was in the back of the building and he was around the adjacent side, so close I was willing to bet I could reach my arm around the corner and touch him. Near enough he could jump out and grab me.

But neither of those things happened, because the next thing I heard was the sound of a zipper and the unmistakable sound (and smell) of pee hitting the side of the building. The guy wasn’t coming to find me; he just needed to take a whiz. I looked up at the starry sky and thanked God. What a relief. I exhaled silently and gave my heart permission to slow down.