Forgotten (Reject High: A Young Adult Science Fiction Series Book 3) (7 page)

On my way back I heard what sounded like arguing among Sasha, Esteban, and Rhapsody. The girls were going back and forth. Esteban interjected once in a while. He sounded irritated but calm.

The rubber soles of my suit squeaked with water as I stepped across the hardwood floors. Sneaking in wouldn’t work. “What’s the problem?” I asked them.

Esteban made the cut-off sign with his hand. “Trust me, dude. Stay out of this one.”

Rhapsody yelled her answer without breaking her stare-off with Sasha. “Since you asked, I was just sharing with Esteban that he didn’t have to listen to Sasha and teleport us inside, that we were…”

“And I was saying,” Sasha shouted back, “we’re not here on a romantic getaway. We need to stay out of public, keep a low profile, and regroup. No time for playing in the ocean!”

“We took a five minute break!” I’d never seen Rhapsody’s face turn this shade of red before. She rattled off a few phrases in Spanish before ending with, “It was not a big deal.”

“It
was
a big deal! Anyone could have seen you.”

Rhapsody stepped in close to Sasha. The two of them were face-to-face. “Why don’t we talk about what’s really on your mind? Get it out in the open.” She spoke in a low tone. “It’s not the fact we were in the ocean, was it? You’re mad that Jason is with me and not with you.”

I hadn’t really thought about it. Sasha always had a frosty attitude with Rhapsody. Before we faced King she told me why. Rhapsody had always like me. She confessed it, too.

Sasha paused, bit her lip and blinked to keep from tearing up. In her typical fashion, Rhapsody did not back down from confronting her or play to Sasha’s emotions. I thought she should have. It wasn’t Sasha’s fault that my feelings weren’t as strong as her feelings for me. I was becoming convinced that she wasn’t totally to blame for what happened with Selby, either.

“Towels are in the hall closet,” she said after a long silence. “Make yourselves at home.”

Sasha turned and walked away, passing through the dining room, kitchen and around to the great room. A few seconds later she shut a door behind her. No one had to tell me. This was my problem to fix.

I wandered back into the great room and toward the rear of the sprawling house. The white bedroom doors were evenly spaced out on the same hallway. Two of the three were open. Inside them were queen-sized beds with plush designer comforters and matching throw pillows. The fresh scent of vanilla filled the air, probably from air fresheners or candles.

I ventured to the one that was closed and turned the knob. Locked. Esteban could teleport me inside, but I was tired of puking. So I rapped my knuckles against the door.

“Hey,” I said, identifying myself. If she ignored me, at least I made an attempt.

The bedsprings rolled and shifted. The dull clomp of rubber soles against the slick hardwoods alerted me that she was coming. I braced myself for the worst relationship fight I’d ever had. Sasha cracked the door, red-eyed with makeup smeared.

“What?” She glared at me.

I brushed past her shoulder and rushed to the room. Sasha closed the door and locked it behind us, although the other two people in the house could get into the room without a problem.

“I…”

She slapped me across the face. “That’s because everyone else knew our relationship was over before I did!”

I rubbed my stinging left cheek. Goshenite. I didn’t know she could hit that hard.

Sasha wound up and slapped me again on the other side, catching me off-guard. “And that one is for treating me like a leper because I’m not a virgin.”

The slapping must be over because I felt my powers surging again. “I didn’t treat…”

“Didn’t you?
Morganite is like a drug, Jason. You don’t have control over…”

“Stop interrupting me!” I couldn’t finish a thought without her correcting me. I unzipped my suit down to the middle of my chest and hooked my thumb under my necklace. “Morganite, see? Don’t feel drugged up over here.”

Her eyes widened. “Who gave that to you? How long have you been wearing it?”

C’mon. Who else
? “All day long. Who do you think gave it to me?”

Sasha paced back and forth, from bedpost to bedpost. “There has to be a reason they put morganite on your necklace. They want you to indulge in your deepest desires? Why?”

I clenched my fists. “Stick to the subject. You slept with Selby because you wanted to.”

Her lips trembled. I thought she was on the verge of crying again. “No. You see with it what you want to see. Morganite takes away your ability to say no.”

Was she saying what I thought she was saying? “You were…”

“I thought he was —” Her voice choked up. “You. That’s what it made me think it was okay, just for a moment. I thought he was you, and it’s what I wanted, and for the first time in forever I was happy. Really happy.”

When she said “happy” twice, the way she said the word, I thought of the pigtailed girl in the pictures, the one with a gap-toothed smile. The one her parents loved and adored. I still didn’t understand all of what she was saying. Sasha touched her hand to my stinging cheek.

“Girls are objects to Selby – things to touch and abuse. It’s all I ever was to him. Just a pretty notch on his belt with a dash of public humiliation. What was I to you? That?”

“More,” I blurted out. “Not that. More.”

Blinking rapidly, she gently fingered the prisms on my necklace. “I don’t believe you.”

I kissed her on the lips. Sasha inhaled and returned my kisses. After a minute she pulled away and wagged her finger. “Take off the necklace first. Make sure you mean it.”

I did her one better. Pinching the morganite between my fingers, I squeezed, crushing it to dust. It was the first time I’d been able to destroy a prism. In a snap, it was like a cover had been pulled off of my vision. Something changed, but nothing I could put a bead on.

I exhaled and thought back to the last thing I’d done. I remembered walking into the room. Before that, flying in from the cemetery and seeing Ray. Prior to that, I got bits and pieces of the past few hours. Nothing was in focus, but I’m ADHD and I have rage blackouts. Memory loss isn’t out of the ordinary for me.

Sasha held her hand to her mouth and glanced at me with guilt. I licked the stickiness on my lips and tasted strawberry. We had kissed and I didn’t recall a thing about it. I tried to think about it, but nothing came forward. In my right glove were smudges of pink dust. Checking my reflection in the mirror, I noticed the morganite was missing. I had destroyed it.

There must have been a good reason for that.

She slipped out of the room, leaving me to figure it out alone.

Not too long after, we ordered take out from a Chinese restaurant nearby that delivered. I circled what I wanted on the menu and left the room. When the food arrived, Sasha went into another room, forged the credit card receipt with Joyce’s name, and handed it to the guy who’d brought it to us. She placed the paper bag wrapped in plastic on top of the dining room table, saying, “Dig in,” and disappeared back into the master bedroom.

“What’s with her?” Esteban asked us.

Rhapsody shrugged and looked at me. I hope she assumed all I’d done was formally break up with her.

Esteban took a box of white rice, dumplings, honey chicken, and a hot container of Dim Sum soup and teleported out of the room. Rhapsody took the shrimp and cashews, lo mein, and General Tso’s chicken. I got the Mongolian beef, brown rice, and chicken with broccoli.

“Ready?” she asked me. “I think that sci-fi show you like is on rerun.”

I’d rather have been alone. Telling her that would have created more drama. “Yeah.”

We ate dinner in the living room with the television on and the shades cracked open. Peach-colored light from the setting sun shone through the window and projected shade-shaped shadows onto the wall. It would’ve been really romantic if we weren’t hiding out.

“Wanna watch the sunset?” she asked me, still chewing. “We can hook up, and I might let you round second base before I slap your hand away.”

I laughed. “Thanks. We shouldn’t. Going outside, I mean.”

After the show ended I cleaned up the empty boxes and put them into the trash. Esteban stayed out of sight. So did Sasha. I thought to seek her out, to try and explain why I kissed her again. Morganite sounded like a lame excuse, but it was all I had.

“Cap?” Rhapsody called me from the couch.

She sounded alarmed. I didn’t rush over from the kitchen. Panicking with powers always made things worse. Besides, whatever she saw, it was outside in the waning sunlight.

She didn’t move. One our enemies could be using a scarlet emerald to freeze her movement. If that were the case, the further away I stayed, the better. Approaching from the far wall, I stalked closer to the window. Seeing nothing, I got close enough to tap her hip. Squinting through the shades, I saw what Rhapsody had been fixating on fifty yards away.

Standing in the sand and facing our exact direction was a man in a purple bodysuit.

CHAPTER SEVEN

i hug a zombie

From such a far distance, we couldn’t tell much about the guy staring at us. He had his hood down, but the fading sunlight behind him masked his features beyond a white complexion. King’s skin was tanned – could it have changed somehow? Taller than I am, maybe, heavier build, definitely, but that wasn’t saying much.

“You’re not thinking of going out there.” From the corner of my eye, I spotted Rhapsody studying my face for a reaction. “You’re thinking of going out there?”

“Yeah,” I admitted. “Ghost me through the wall. He won’t see me coming.”

Her voice rose in pitch. “Are you insane? They’re after your blood – that’s the reason they took Debra in the first place, to get you. Say you’re captured. Then what?”

“There’s gotta be something else.” I shook my head. “They want me? Okay, fine. But since they found us, why not bust in here, guns blazing, and take me? I’m right here.”

Silence.

“So you’d rather be sitting ducks here until Statue Man out there changes his mind?”

She bit her lip and finally said, “You make a good point. I’m still not doing it.”

I had to rein in my emotions, or else I’d rage, break something or somebody. “We’ve lost…so much. I’m not waiting for someone to come get me, or you. I’ll fight him.”

I’d forgotten that Sasha set the alarm. I unlocked the front door, twisted the knob, and pulled it open. Blaring whistles assaulted my ears.

Sasha sprinted from the back of the house and almost slipped running into the living room. Esteban teleported in a few seconds later. She keyed the code too fast for me to remember it. “What are you doing?” Sasha screamed. “Why don’t you put a big neon sign with an arrow pointing ‘up here’?”

I tried telling her the truth. “I forgot about the alarm, okay! There’s a guy out there.” The white house phone on the coffee table rang in the middle of my explanation.

“Great,” she said, clearing her throat.

The three of us waited, listening to Sasha explain our way out of this one. “Six-four-seventy-four” she said in a voice that sounded suspiciously like her mother’s. She could copy voices, too? Sasha eyed me. “Sorry, one of the kids kicked off the alarm by accident…thank you.”

“Wait a second,” Esteban chimed in. “You can clone voices, too? How awesome is that?”

After hanging up, she laid into me again. “For real? Not only did you set off the alarm but you went outside for whatever reason and tracked sand in on my floor?”

She pointed at a trail of golden sand running from the front door, through the living room, and into the kitchen. Not footprints, but scattered grains in no particular pattern.

Someone had sneaked inside the house.

I pointed to Esteban with three fingers. Check the three bedrooms. He understood and popped out of our sight in a puff of green mist. Rhapsody was our best weapon, besides me. I mouthed, “bathroom and great room” to Sasha and Rhapsody, who made herself and Sasha vanish. I’d check the kitchen alone and try not to destroy the Anderson’s home in the process.

Stepping carefully on the carpet, I skulked close to the wall. The swivel of the refrigerator door opening shocked me.
What, he’s stopping for a snack?
If I timed it right, I could round the corner and catch him with a punch. I counted backwards.
Three. Two.
Thinking he might read my mind and anticipate me striking on one, I spun my hips and unloaded a punch.

My right fist landed squarely in Selby’s chest, sending him flying across the room into the range unit. The impact knocked the wind out of him and put a dent in the silver oven. He was just fast enough to roll away from it to some degree. Otherwise, with that level of force, I might have punched right through his body.

The sound of the collision brought Sasha, Rhapsody, and Esteban running. By then I had restrained Selby from behind in a chokehold, allowing him enough air to breathe. At the sight of Selby, Sasha’s face straightened and her limbs shook. I’d never seen her so upset.

“Tell me where my stepmother is,” I said, meaning every word of my threat, “or I’ll break your neck like King did to her.”

“In five minutes,” he said, gasping, “they’ll kill her…if I don’t return.
Alone.”

Esteban sucked his teeth. “I call BS. He’d say anything to save his own neck.”

Selby choked as I shifted my arm tighter around his neck. “Long as he does,” he said, talking about me. “Doesn’t matter what any of you think.”

Esteban crossed his arms. “We gotta start taking these guys out. Beginning with him.” The Collective would agree with him. Hughes would say that one life didn’t matter in the big picture, that I should kill their errand boy and send a message to our enemies. Good thing neither of them was in charge. Cold-blooded murder wasn’t my style.

“No chance,” Rhapsody said, siding with me. “Not now. Not ever. There’s another way.”

Esteban argued back, “If we don’t kill them, they will kill us without hesitation.”

Sasha broke from her daze and grabbed a knife from the wooden block beside the refrigerator. Both Esteban and Rhapsody raised their hands to stop her, but I warned them with my eyes. We should trust Sasha enough to know she wouldn’t kill him and Debra.

She almost snarled at him while circling the butcher knife in front of his mouth. “Know how you like knives? A part of me wants to cut off every body part of yours that ever touched mine. The other parts want to laugh at you while I do it. Kind of like the way you laughed at me.”

Selby yanked against my hold. Suddenly his body started vibrating so fast that the resulting sound waves felt like an earthquake. Remembering the goshenite on my necklace, I dampened his powers. Without them, he couldn’t escape from me or Sasha.

“Do it.” He dared her, eyeing the shiny blade. “Let me watch you do it.”

His words made the hair on my neck stand at attention. This wasn’t the chubby dumb kid who was too slow to stick on the football team. He had become something else.

Sasha grabbed Selby’s chin and used one of my scarlet emeralds to freeze him in place. Still, I didn’t let him go. “You took everything from me!” she screamed close to his face.

Sasha then handed the knife off to “Angry Sasha,” the clone who represented her brain’s instincts. In a flash, Angry Sasha cocked her arm back, and as the tip of the blade nicked Selby’s ribs it vanished in a pop of green mist. It took a minute to soak in what had just happened. Without Esteban’s lightning quick reaction, Sasha might’ve killed Selby.

Rhapsody took a breath. “How did you track us?”

Sasha unfroze his mouth. He gasped. Apparently, he didn’t think Sasha was going to hurt him, either. “Wasn’t looking. I remembered this place. She brought me here once.”

The fact he had been in the house, even to visit, made me want to burn it down. Hughes was right. They didn’t have to track us or come for me. They had Debra. I’d go to them. “Not even close to being done here,” Angry Sasha told him before dissolving.

“Why are you here?” Rhapsody asked. “You’ve got Jason’s blood. What else is there?”

He glanced at the wall clock. “The provenance aquamarine. By midnight on Monday, or he’ll kill Debra. Speaking of which, you’re gonna have to let me go. Now. Unless you want another of your mothers to get hurt because of you.”

The ultimatum gave us a little more than seventy-two hours to pull this off. I brushed off his comment. “How do we know you’ll return to King when you’re supposed to?”

Selby grinned. His teeth were bloody – maybe I cracked a few more of his ribs. “You ask a lot of questions, Freak. And Esteban’s right. You should’ve killed me.”

From the time Selby sped out of our sight until hours later, I couldn’t stop thinking about

Sasha and what he had done to her. I didn’t know the details. Nor did I want to. True, morganite makes you act on your heart’s deepest desires. What the Collective didn’t tell us was that it made you see things you wanted to see, also. I thought back to some of the things I had done and it rattled me that I could only remember some of them.

The clock in the great room said it was five minutes until midnight. Esteban had gone to sleep about an hour ago in the bedroom to the left of the master. Rhapsody turned in not much later in the bedroom to the right. She invited me to join her. I politely declined. We had never slept in the same room before and after my argument with Sasha and the confrontation with Selby, it seemed wrong to do it here, in Sasha’s house.

We’d hung up our bodysuits in the main bathroom on the reinforced shower rod.

Without the chemicals to clean them, the best we could do was spray them with Febreeze and air them out. Hopefully, they’d smell of summer rain flowers and not body sweat.

After we each showered, Sasha pointed us to a closet of plain white clothes her parents kept for surprise guests. Instead of underwear, we put on brand new bathing suits. Ours had bright floral patterns that belonged in the nineties, while the girls wore fluorescent bikinis. Our regular clothes went into the washer unit and we could put them back on in the morning.

Tired, but unable to sleep, I walked circles around the house. I didn’t want to watch television and I wasn’t hungry. On one of my trips I saw Sasha key the alarm and step onto the front patio. Curious, I followed her. The landscape was dark, except for some policemen patrolling the beach for illegal activity. The roar of the surf coming in and slapping against the shore was relaxing to see. I counted in my head, anticipating when the breaks would come. When a cold gust of wind blew, I tensed up, thinking it was Selby. Thankfully, it was just air.

Sasha had untied her hair and let it hang down past her shoulders. The times we’d slept in the same bed she’d bound it together with pins and put a scarf on it. From the looks of it, she never intended to sleep. She cradled herself in her arms and shuddered. The temperature had dropped into the sixties – much too cold for just a bikini and a t-shirt.

I moved closer to her to block some of the breeze blowing across the front of the patio. When it rushed past again, I shook also. Neither one of us was any good out here. I stretched my arm across her shoulders, expecting her to reject it. Instead, she nuzzled into my chest. The bikini strings hanging down from her neck tickled my arm.

“You can grab me a comforter. I’m too lazy to move right now.”

“You’re fine,” I said, reassuring her. “I don’t mind.”

“There’s a girl inside my house who might mind you hanging out with me at two a.m.”