Fluorescence: The Complete Tetralogy (35 page)

“You should probably go before Mom finds out,” Alice added, tickling the back of my neck with her nails. “I wish you could stay.”

“Don’t worry about that, Alice. Just get some sleep,” I said, tugging the blanket up so it would cover her bare shoulder.
I brushed her hair to the side and kissed her forehead. “I’ll be here.”

Chapter 18

F
irst awake. First into the kitchen in the morning. I flipped the switch on the electric kettle and removed a few mugs from the cupboard, careful not to clink them together.

Sam came wandering in shortly after, her fluffy teal slippers scuffing against the linoleum.

“Hey. Good morning, Sam.” I opened up the refrigerator and took out a carton of eggs. I slid a loaf of bread off the counter and reached for a mixing bowl.

“Any special requests before I start anything?” I asked and gestured toward the cupboard behind her. “Can you grab me the cooking oil out of there, please?”

She shuffled through the cupboard and passed the jug of canola oil to me.

“No,” she replied with a shrug. “Not really. Mind if I hang out and watch?”

“No. Though, actually, I’ll need you to go knock on Jane’s door in a bit and see if she’s up. I’ll wake Alice in a little while if she doesn’t come up here on her own. That girl hibernates like a bear.” A wonderfully cuddly soft teddy bear. I grinned to myself as I cracked an egg on the side of the bowl. From the corner of my eye, I saw Sam anxiously twisting the hem of her shirt around her fingers. I dropped the eggshell into the trash and reached for another egg from the carton.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I wasn’t really
trying
to pry,” she replied in a hushed tone, “but I sort of heard you guys arguing last night. You and Jane.”

“Oh? Well, please don’t tell Alice, okay? It was nothing and—”

“I won’t.” She shook her head. “Besides, she’s right. I mean… you’re right.” She leaned against the counter. “Only
you can protect Allie now. None of us can. Not if those freaks
up there keep jerking you guys away from us. We’re kinda helpless, but I’m glad she’s not alone.”

“Thanks, Sam. Thanks for understanding, too.” I tugged
open a drawer, pulled out a fork and started whisking the eggs.

“Just… don’t hurt her, okay?” Sam added.

I paused and turned to look her in the eye.

“She loves you a lot,” she continued. “I don’t want her to get a broken heart. I may not be there to comfort her.”

“She won’t. Trust me, Sam.” I went back to stirring the eggs. They melded into a bright yellow-orange color. “I’ve never been so sure about anything in my entire life. I’ll do everything I can to make sure she doesn’t get hurt by anyone or anything—including myself.”

“Thanks, Brian.” Sam came over and pressed her fingers gently against my forearm. “You
are
a good guy. I get what she sees in you.”

I chuckled lightly and smirked. “I sort of recall you having
some kind of thing for me, too, when I first started going to your school.”

Sam’s eyes widened and her cheeks flushed pink. “Um… back then? Well, that was a while ago. Like, ages ago. I… don’t really…”

“It’s alright, Sam. I’m just being stupid. Trying to lighten
the mood, that’s all. Apparently I suck at that.”

She cracked a smile and I kind of felt like an ass for embarrassing her.

I pulled a stick of butter from the fridge.

“Grab me the large frying pan from out of the cupboard below the counter, please. And then would you mind going to see if Jane’s up yet?”

Sam rummaged around for the pan, making more noise than an elephant in a china shop. Pans banged and clanged against each other, making me grimace. If Jane and Alice hadn’t been awake before…

Finally, Sam stretched out an arm and offered the pan to me. I heard Jane’s bedroom door creak open and took that as my cue to go wake Alice.

. . .

I shoveled the last piece of French toast into my mouth, the room so quiet I could hear myself chewing. Silverware clinking. Tea being sipped.

Last night had shaken all of us.

I wanted to have a word with the Saviors, but it wasn’t like we could pick and choose when to talk to them. They only brought us up there when
they
had something to say. We hadn’t seen them for months. Not since the baby had been taken away.

They just worked their sick magic on us and forced us to do their dirty work. I was tired of it. Tired of how they were treating Alice, especially. The excursions left her burned out and depressed. How many more would there be?

“I think we should stop,” I said, breaking the silence.

Alice looked up at me from her plate. Sam shoveled another forkful of scrambled eggs into her mouth. Jane took a sip of her tea and focused on me.

“Stop what?” Alice asked, laying her fork down on the napkin beside her plate. She’d eaten most of her food—more than she’d eaten in a while.

“Whatever it is they want us to do—the Saviors. I think we should stop. Then they’ll have no choice but to talk to us again. Right?”

Alice shrugged.

“You don’t want to upset them,” said Jane. “We don’t know what they’re capable of.”

“I’d like to think they aren’t violent,” I said. “We don’t know for sure yet, but it’s worth a shot to tell them no. We don’t want to be their guinea pigs anymore. They’ve gotta
have more than enough people by now. We must have touched a
few hundred. I say next time we get sent somewhere, let’s not start anyone, and we’ll see if that doesn’t provoke them into making some kind of move. If they’re as docile as I’m hoping they are, maybe it will do us some good to stand up to them.”

I looked at Alice for a response, but she stared down at her empty plate.

“Alice?”

“Whatever it takes to get them to leave us alone,” she muttered. “I don’t care either way. I just want to get this over with. Maybe if we help them, they’ll eventually stop bothering us and we can get back to our normal lives.”

“What about the baby? Is that going to be our
normal life
in a few years? If we have to raise that child, that’s eighteen years at least—not that our kid wouldn’t be worth living for, but no matter what we do, we’re going to be plagued by this for the rest of our lives.”

“I get what you’re saying, Brian.” Alice looked up. “But I don’t want to start trouble.”

“They’re the ones who started trouble,” I growled. “First with your mom and who knows how many others by now. And then with us
. Having the audacity to force us into having a child.
Now we have to steal things to get by because they don’t even give us any warning before they whisk us away to these random places. As far as I’m concerned, the Saviors have crossed the line, and I’m not going to deal with it anymore.”

“Maybe Brian’s right,” Sam said, putting down her fork and looking over at Alice. “Maybe if you stop doing what they want you to do, they won’t want you anymore.”

“Maybe.” Alice heaved a sigh. “But what if they choose others instead—maybe kids even younger than us—and the cycle continues? I don’t want to be responsible for that.”

“You already are, Alice,” I said. “You’ve been starting people you don’t even know. Who knows the consequences of widespread infection? We don’t even know what this fluorescence is going to do to
us
in the long run, let alone hundreds of people and their descendants.”

“Guys.” Jane lifted her hand. “Please. Do whatever you
have to to get home in one piece, okay? I can’t lose my daughter.
And I don’t want to lose you either, Brian. We need to be cautious of the decisions we make from this point on. Even so, we obviously don’t have the technological capabilities to compete with what the Saviors have, and there’s a possibility you could get hurt if you disobey.”

“I told you before, Jane, that I’ll protect Alice at any cost, and I meant it.”

. . .

Sam went home after lunch.

“Any plans for the rest of the day?” Jane asked, sliding our plates into the dishwasher rack. She washed her hands in the sink and dried them on a kitchen towel.

“Not really.” I shrugged.

“Alright. I’ll be in the living room if you need me.” She left the kitchen.

I’d wanted to focus on my comic during Christmas break,
but the stress from recent events had given me major artist’s
block. Drawing usually helped me focus and kept me centered.
Usually
. It had been several weeks, but I hadn’t been able to finish my most recent panels from Staggered Hart.

“Be right back,” I said to Alice, and excused myself to dart downstairs and grab the leather journal she’d given me last Christmas. This year, she and Jane had teamed up to buy me a set of inking pens—a graphic novelist’s best friend. Learning how to feather and cross-hatch properly with the inks would take time, but I had to start at some point.

I jogged back upstairs and took a seat at the kitchen table. Alice sat beside me and rested her head on my shoulder as I riffled back and forth between unfinished sketches and full penciled panels.

If it hadn’t been for Alice, I would never have pushed myself to improve throughout the year. Since we’d become friends, she’s been my muse. I’d finished the first comic in
the series because she’d convinced me to believe in my dream
of becoming a graphic novelist. Before her, I’d only had a messy book of half-sketches and an incoherent storyline.

Now, I had
something
. Something great. Something tangible.

“Are you going to ink and color these once you learn
how? And then maybe… try to get it published?” Alice stared
at me, admiration shimmering in her eyes.

“Maybe. But I’m probably not good enough. I’ve got a long way to go. I should probably be learning other, more valuable life skills, but I just can’t stop drawing. It’s who I am.”

Stress and fatigue had left me weak—susceptible to the
debilitating disease that is self-doubt—an artist’s worst enemy.
An art killer. But how do you make good art when you’ve
got alien DNA pumping through your veins, changing the way
you live?

“Don’t you want to do more with your life, Brian? Really go places?”

“Yeah, but I don’t know anything. I’m an artist. I just draw shit.”

“You don’t draw shit.” Alice stopped, realizing what she’d said, and then let out a nervous chuckle. I laughed, too. “What I meant to say was, your art is amazing. I saw that even before we had started dating, and you’ve improved so much since then. You’ve completed your first comic. You’re talented and I know you’ve got potential. You
just have to keep your chin up. Keep trying and keep pushing
forward no matter what.”

“Even if aliens keep screwing with my life?”

“Yes. Even if aliens keep screwing with
our
life, Brian.”

Chapter 19

N
ew Year’s Eve replayed in my mind each night as I tried to sleep, clear as day—nearly touchable—like a vivid dream. Keeping me awake. Impossible. Unbelievable. But real. I almost didn’t believe it had happened, but four other people could vouch for my sanity.

We returned to school Monday, more fatigued and less
motivated than we had been before the holiday break. Classes
seemed longer and teachers’ monologues drier than before. Plus, the ongoing threat of being abruptly sucked from this safe familiarity and thrown into a loud, foreign city was a total buzz kill.

I tucked my drawing pad into the crease of my English book and pretended to read along with the teacher and take notes. In reality, I was plotting the next installment of my graphic novel.

Marcus Velour—AKA the Hart—had decided to remain within the grey area between crime fighting and crime. He helped those in need, stopped assaults on innocents, and intercepted robberies, but all the while pocketing a few rewards for himself here and there. He justified the thievery by calling it “payment” for all of the good he’d done in the city. A sort of Robin Hood vigilante.

There were moments I had while creating art when I’d see myself bleeding through the lines as I drew—my own experience breathing life into Marcus. The curse of being an artist is that your art is often a reflection of yourself.

Jane had made us anonymously mail everything we’d taken on New Year’s Eve back to the store. It took a weight off my shoulders, though I could have used the new coat and the store wouldn’t have missed it. But it made Jane and Alice feel better.

Hell, my own mother wouldn’t have even noticed the new jacket. Always in her own little world—the one without me in it. Still, as much as I hated what she’d done to me, I couldn’t help but think of her once in a while. Mostly while
having dinner with Alice and her mother. Dinner as a family
—something I hadn’t had in years.

After the holiday, I’d tried to check in on my mother at the mental institution, but hit nothing but road blocks. I called several people, including social services, but everyone shut me out.

By law, they weren’t able to disclose her health information to me. Ever since the guardianship transfer had gone through, she was not legally allowed to contact me either. Child services had deemed her unfit to care for me, and therefore she’d been slapped with a restraining order on top of being put away for rehab.

It sucked, but she’d earned it.

Half of me wanted to know she was getting better—that she would recover and move on with her life without me. That someday, she would drag herself out of the mud and find a true purpose in life.

The other half of me didn’t give a shit.

. . .

A bicyclist buzzed past us on the sidewalk as we walked
home from school. I reached out and pulled Alice toward me and
out of the way of the next bike zooming up from behind.
College kids
. In too much of a hurry to use the bike lane like they were supposed to.