Fear My Mortality (17 page)

A section of metal frame zipped past my curled up body, hurtling beyond my vision. I sought the place where Michael had been, the center of the explosion close by, a giant burning hole that glowed in the middle of the white-hot carcass of his car. I wanted to see movement, to see him stand up as though nothing had happened. Part of me believed he would.

My whole body hurt from the fall. I was still lying half on the concrete driveway, not present enough to roll away from the flames. Even when I thought about moving, I couldn’t make my arms and legs work, kind of like they didn’t belong to me anymore. As if they’d become somebody else’s.

As if they weren’t there.

The sickening suspicion made the world turn. My eyes ran toward my arms, reassuring myself. My hands, too, and each of my fingers. Maybe, if I concentrated really hard, I could feel them, even if they were full of tremors. I watched them twitch, forcing myself to at least try to control the shaking, although I knew it wouldn’t do any good. I didn’t have time to check my legs before pounding vibrations broke my concentration, drawing my eyes up and beyond to the figure coming toward me—not Michael, but our attacker. I stared up the barrel of a gun.

She nudged me onto my back with the tip of her boot. She spoke, but it was a buzz in my ringing ears and all I did was frown up at her, feeling like she was too far away to hurt me. She said something else through the warbled voice modulator and the gun moved closer to my face. The weapon shook.

“ … misery.”

I didn’t understand, could barely hear her, but I figured it didn’t matter what she was saying. She was going to kill me—that much was clear.

Something moved at the edge of my vision—another person. I froze, hoping with all my heart that it was Michael, but it was another disguised figure. He ran into my field of vision, grabbing the girl with the gun and snatching it away from her. His words rasped through the buzz in my head.

“You idiot! What are you doing? They need her alive!” It was a guy. I could tell that much from the set of his shoulders, even though his voice may as well have been the beat of a moth’s wings.

The girl yanked away from him. The way her mouth moved told me she was shouting, but her words were a mere whisper to me, barely recognizable through the metal mouthpiece. “She has to die! That’s the only way any of this will stop. Don’t you see? It’s going to be war.”

“It already is!” He grabbed her shoulders and she winced in response. “You can’t back out now. You know what they do to deserters. Tiny, dirty cells for you and your family to rot in.”

She screamed. “Josh died because of her!”

“No.” He took her shoulders. “Josh died because of
us
!”

The girl’s shoulders slumped over, her legs looked like they’d buckle.

The boy said, “Josh would hate us for this.”

She clutched her chest as if she thought her heart was going to crack. Her voice must have lowered because I couldn’t hear her anymore. “ … don’t want this.” Then her face darkened and she grabbed the gun and said, “She’s not going to make it through the next five minutes. Look at her legs!” She ran a hand over her eyes, the gun passed across her forehead, leaving a shadow trailing her face.

“What did you think was going to happen? I never should’ve let you out of my sight.”

She stared back at him, then at the sky, biting her lip. She shrugged back at the shell of the car. “We can tell them it was because of Michael. He recognized me and there wasn’t any other way to keep him down. You know what they say about him. He should have joined us when he had the chance. His kind are everything we’re fighting for—”

“Shut up! She can hear you.”

“No, she can’t. She’s barely alive.”

They both stared at me—hard—and I did my best to look glazed and not focus on either of them. She’d said something about Michael recognizing her, but it wouldn’t matter because Michael was gone. No.
Dead
. I blinked against the burn behind my eyes. The realization that I didn’t want him to be dead shook me.

“Well, what are we going to do?”

He shoved his face up into hers. “I don’t know! You’re the one who blew off her legs. You think of something.”

Her tense figure blurred. All I heard was
blew off her legs
. I tried not to react, not to show that I’d heard them when all I wanted to do was scream my lungs out. Air built in my chest, waiting to be released. They had to be lying. It had to be a sick joke. Surely I could feel my toes, perfect and functional like they should be.

Worry raced across the girl’s face and that’s when she screamed. It was a high-pitched, winded sound like air being forced out of a balloon.

The guy tried to grab her, but not in time to save her from the two arms that crushed her chest. In the next moment, she soared high up into the air, only to crash down onto someone’s bent knee.

She dropped to the grass, floppy like a rag doll. In contrast to the crumple of brown she made on the lawn, standing behind her Michael glowed red from the fire. He reminded me of a piece of coal—burned badly, but somehow shiny and new.

I was too dead to care that he was hardly wearing a stitch.

The guy stood staring, tense shoulders squared, knees bent. He looked ready to tackle Michael at any moment.

Michael motioned to the lump on the grass. “You’d better help her. She’s going to need a serious recovery dome, real fast.”

The guy poised, fixated on Michael. His fists got tighter and Michael’s stance became menacing in response.

Michael shook his head slightly. “Don’t try it. Not if you know what I can do.”

I couldn’t see the guy’s face anymore, but his shoulders sagged and he seemed to make a decision. He hauled the girl up by her armpits and dragged her down the driveway, across the road, and that’s when they disappeared from view.

Michael’s torso and then his face came into view as he dropped into a kneeling position beside me. He ran a hand over his eyes. “Oh no, Ava. Your legs.”

I tried to speak, but Michael hushed me. He said, “I’m sorry I disappeared for a minute there. But I had to go back … for these.” He opened his palms to reveal the two black vials I’d left behind. “I know you’re afraid of what could happen, but I don’t know what else to do.”

He worked quickly, filling a syringe and ramming it into my thigh.

“Listen to me. Don’t think about your legs. You’re going to be okay.” He jabbed a needle into my other leg and sat back on his heels—head in his hands—waiting. “You’ll be okay,” he said again, but his voice trailed off like he didn’t really believe it.

I was ice cold. When he put his hand on my forehead, our skin sizzled. His fingers brushed my cheek, smoothing away my tears, turning them into steam so that little curls of white rose up around my nose and the side of my face. Stabs of energy traveled up to my eyelids and across to my temples, stemming from his fingertips, bleeding into me.

The nectar must have started working because tears ran down my cheeks and moisture came back into my mouth. I wanted to speak. “You’re hot,” I said.

A quizzical look passed over his face, and he got one of those pretend sexy-boy crinkles in his forehead. “Yeah. I get that all the time.”

I rolled my eyes. “Sure you do.”

He leaned closer, intent. “At least you’re speaking again.”

“Seems so.” I looked up at the sky, wondering why it was so white. Maybe a cloud had gone over the sun. Perhaps it was about to rain. Then I said, “It’s okay.”

“What is?”

“About my legs. I wasn’t going to dance again anyway. Ms. White didn’t want me there anymore.”

“Who’s Ms. White?”

“She’s my dance teacher. She said I had to leave. So I guess that’s just as well.” Thinking about Ms. White made the sky even stranger. I wondered if she could become her name. The sun had shifted from the edge of my vision to the middle, but it was no longer golden. Big and round, it was a luminescent circle as though it had become the moon in the daylight sky. A white cloud sailed across it, delicate wisps forming into legs, pincers, and a deadly tail. The scorpion-shaped cloud stretched and shimmered across the sky as something white-hot built inside my torso. It spread to my arms, down to my fingertips, a cold heat like the burn of ice.

Michael seemed to be trying to get my attention. “Stuff Ms. White. You can do what you want.”

“Don’t say that.” My voice choked. “My legs are gone.”

“Ava?” He squinted as if he was looking into the sun.

“Yeah?”

“What are you doing?”

“Just lying here.” I remembered the first time Michael ever spoke to me. I’d slipped on the wet bleachers at school during a rain storm, tripped backward, and would have fallen all the way to the bottom, probably would have broken my neck, except that he was right behind me. He told me to watch out. I didn’t remember if I said “thanks,” I was so embarrassed. Now I’d give anything to be able to trip again. Even clumsy legs were better than none.

“No, Ava, I really mean it. You’re hurting my eyes.” His voice jolted through my thoughts. He half turned away from me, reaching back to touch my arm, snapping his hand away with a curse. “Your skin’s like ice. And it’s glowing. You’re glowing. All of you.” His words were full of growing panic. He tried to look at me, but winced, his hand going over his eyes.

“Dad used to tell me that I danced like a moonbeam fallen to earth. He said that watching me was like watching moonlight. Shifting. Flying. Floating.” I dropped the words into the hollow around me, where the shape of my torso made a shallow crevice in the grass—an indent without legs. I didn’t know how, but I realized that if I were really moonlight, then I couldn’t break. Light couldn’t be wrecked like I could. It was like water. It flowed.

If I became light, my legs wouldn’t be gone.

They had never been gone from me. They were with me all along.

Icy white light burst around me, shining from my arms and my torso, covering the ground and sky and everywhere in between.

“Ava! Too bright!” Michael curled himself up into a ball, covering his eyes with his arm. His other hand reached out as though he wanted me to stop.

I held out my own, allowing our fingertips to touch.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I guess I might dance again, after all.”

Bright light flooded over Michael, glowing over the whole front lawn as he hunched over, one arm flung across his face. His bare back glowed, muscles pulled taut as he curled up tight.

“I think you need clothes.” I blushed, averted my eyes, and the air around us turned pink.

“Yeah, well, I was kind of in a hurry to get back here.” He kept his eyes shielded. “Whatever you’re doing, turn it off. Shut it down. I don’t know, just make it stop. You’re gonna make my head explode.” He curled into a tighter ball. “And while you’re at it, tell me you’re okay.”

“I can’t turn it off. It’s the nectar. How much did you give me anyway?” I patted my thigh. “But I’m okay.”

“You’re not dead?”

“No. Um. I don’t think so.”

“Because this is pretty much how I’d imagine an angel. White light, brightest star in the sky, that kind of thing. Look, I can’t see a thing. My stuff’s back in the house. How do you expect me to find pants with my eyes closed?”

He had a point. I’d have to walk away from him, but first I needed to check that my new legs were real. “Can you do something for me?”

“Will it make you stop shining?”

“Um. Probably not. Can you tell me if my legs are really there?”

“Ava, if I could look at you, I already would have.”

“Here.” I sat next to him with my legs stretched out in front of me. I pried one of his hands away from his face, forcing him to press his eyes against his knee. I rested his hand on my calf. I didn’t feel any kind of buzz this time, there was barely anything, except a lovely kind of warmth from his skin.

“Tell me if that’s real.”

His fingers slid down my skin from my knee to my ankle, danced across the top of my foot, and stopped at my toes. The pad of his thumb brushed the ball of my foot and made me shiver. “Feels real to me.”