Lost (31 page)

And then there was nothing. No me. No them. No him. The past and the present crashed into one, deleting all of our futures.

“Don’t do this, honey,” Mom said. “We can make this life work.”

I opened my eyes in the pool, clutching my mother.

 
My life. My old life!

“You don’t have to do this,” she said. “We’ll make it work. I swear.” I was having trouble forming coherent thoughts, let alone speaking actual words.

The first thing I was able to say was, “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“You’re right. I should stop. It won’t work.” She nodded and slipped out of my arms. I grabbed her shoulders and pulled her up again. “The life we have is enough. You made the right choice. I’m sorry. I plead temporary insanity.”

She inhaled loudly, like she could suddenly breathe again now that we weren’t in danger of me ending the world.

“Then let’s go home,” she said.

I smiled, and for the quickest moment, I thought I saw a shadow against the white bricks of my home. Fireworks exploded above us and stole my attention. After they fizzled out, I brought my eyes back to the bricks and saw nothing.
 

I transported us out of the water and back to Sophia’s house.

She was there in Emma’s old room, waiting for us. I laid Mom on the bed and ran to her.

“Thank you,” I said, clutching her in a tight hug.

In my ear, she whispered, “Let’s wait to tell your mother about this. We’ll discuss your punishment later.”

She swatted my butt. I didn’t pout. Whatever she would do, spank me, ground me, I would deserve it.

I smiled and stretched out on the bed next to Mom, dripping and exhausted from the last few days that never happened.

“While you two were out taking a swim, you got a call, Lydia. You’re needed at the office in an hour.”

“
Yippie
,” Mom said with no enthusiasm at all.

She lay on her back with her eyes fixed on the ceiling, muscles still lax from Kamon’s drugs. It was quiet except for her breaths for a while. Slowly, she kicked her legs,
then
wiggled her arms, coming back to life.

“Thanks for disobeying me, angel. They would’ve opened the portal or I would’ve drowned if you hadn’t been there.”

“Don’t thank me,” I whispered.

“No. You’re my little hero.”

“Baby!” Dad yelled, bursting through the doors. “I have been going out of my mind. Why did you run off like that?”

He kneeled on my side of the bed. I crawled into his arms, appreciating this dad, the stronger dad, more than I had before.

“She ran off to save my life,” Mom said.

“I distinctly remember asking you not to talk to me,” he spat.

His words sliced through me, and I ignored the pain. Their relationship couldn’t be salvaged, and from what I’d just lived through, I’d say we were all better off with them not speaking.

I cringed. I still had the memories from the life that didn’t happen, the countless times I’d seen them make out and
more
. I still wasn’t over it.

“Hero,” Mom said to me. “We need to discuss something.” I turned around in Dad’s arms to face her. “I’m disappointed in you. The fighting. The fire. You nearly gave me a heart attack. Do not ever do that again. You could’ve killed someone tonight. Just because they are copies, doesn’t make it okay. They are people, and I never want you to know what taking a life feels like. Do you understand me?”

I nodded silently, remembering how it felt to be a monster. Leah’s pain had nothing on what it actually felt like to know I’d killed so many people.

Sophia handed me a vial of my kryptonite, and I tossed it back without complaining. I’d used my powers to fight Kamon and three copies and had won and ended the world. I was too strong for my own good.

But that was over now. So was the threat of July 4
^th
. I prayed that I would get to keep Mom for many days and nights to come.

“So, how about we talk about my classes for Trenton tomorrow, Mom?”

She smiled and slowly stood to her feet. “I’d like that. Have fun tonight.”

“Where?” I asked.

“Wherever the guy who doesn’t want me to talk to him wanted to bring you tonight.”

I screamed and dad clutched me like we’d won the lottery. Really, I’d won more than the lottery. Redemption felt sweet. The relief of escaping that world was almost too amazing, like I didn’t fully deserve it after being so stupid.

Sophia put an arm around her waist, helping her stand. Neither of them looked me in the eye as Mom staggered, clearly not in good shape. And she had to return to her life as the famous woman in an hour.

But that was better than her life as a psycho,
knife-wielding
, prison warden.

I hugged Mom goodbye, and Sophia took Dad and me to our perspective homes. From now on, it would have to be okay that we didn’t live together.

I called Nate several times, only to get his voicemail. I hoped he was still on his way. I wanted to explain the misunderstanding in person and also tell him the truth about my parents.

In the shower, I seriously considered asking Mom and Sophia if mental powers could be removed so that I could finally be normal and never kill the human race again.

As I pulled on a patriotic outfit, denim jeans and a red tank top, I heard a sudden commotion in the hall.

“Nathan, calm down,” Paul said. “We’re here. Just relax.”

“You relax! If some dude answered
Em’s
phone and yelled at you, you’d be pissed too!”

I ran into the hall and jumped in his arms. It seemed to diffuse him completely. With a little less anger and a little more hurt, he said, “Where is he?”

“We need to talk,” I said.

He groaned. “Don’t break up with me. Give me a chance, Chris. Is it the job? Devin let me take off to come see you. I can do that more. Are you mad-” I kissed him so he would stop being
ridiculous.
I would never leave him for another guy, except for his body double in the portal world. “The job isn’t more important than you. Nothing is. Whoever this guy is, Chris, there’s no way he loves you more than I do. It’s not possible.”

I chuckled. It was very possible, just a different kind of love than he thought.

“I missed you,” I whispered against his lips. I took a deep breath so I could say everything at once. “Devin and Kamon opened a portal to the past, and I used it to change something my mother did. It was awful. I ruined the whole world. You had a girlfriend named Shannon, but we still fell in love. I love you. I want to be with you forever.
In any time.
In any life.”

He chuckled. “Chris, be serious.”

“I
am
serious. January 24
^th
.” He narrowed his eyes. “That’s your real birthday.”

“That’s … the day of my first shift. How did you…
”

“You told me!”

The weirdest expression formed on his face, hints of shock and confusion with a splash of anger.

“So … Devin. He’s not who I think he is?” I shook my head and pecked his lips. He seemed crushed, like I’d crumbled his idol.

Emma squealed and pulled me out of Nathan’s arms.

“I have so much to tell you,” she said. “So much to show you. So much! I can’t even breathe!”

“What is there to tell?” I asked. She hiked her eyebrows twice, suggesting something racy, and yanked her head to Paul. She mouthed,
Oh my God
, and I squealed. “Details. Please!” Paul cleared his throat. “Okay. Later. When
you know who
is not around. What is there to show?”

She lifted her leg to show me the butterfly now inked into her foot and its flight pattern whirling around her ankle.

“Ouch!” I said.

“It wasn’t so bad. Paul got my initials, but my parents would kill me.”

“Wow, Paul,” I said. “Let me see.”

He yanked his collar down to show me the
E. A.
inside of swirling lines on his chest. It was huge and a bit dramatic but romantic, I guessed.

“Christine, if you don’t mind, I’d sort of like to talk about … the guy you’re seeing.”

I laughed and motioned them to follow me to the sofa in my room.

“Tonight, we’re going to Chicago,” I said, mostly because I didn’t want to disappoint Dad and not show up now that my friends were here. “There’s a 4
^th
of July barbecue this band is throwing. I know someone in it.” Nate went deadly still and looked at the floor. “He’s my father. His name is Christopher. He’s not dead.”

Their jaws dropped, and I nodded, trying to help them through the shock. Nate spoke first. “You mean to tell me I threatened to kill your father on the phone?” I winced and mouthed an apology. “Oh my God.”

Paul laughed and ruffled Nate’s hair. “I was sitting right there, Chris. He lost his shit. He was crying. Cursing. You should’ve seen it.”

I walked over to Nate and sat in his lap. I kissed his cheek for putting him through that. “There’s more,” I said. “I haven’t gotten to the biggest part of the announcement. My mother is alive too. You guys already know her. She’s famous.”

A silence that only Lydia Shaw could create fell over the room. Slowly, Nate’s eyes widened and his jaw dropped even lower.

“Not possible,” he said.

“Very possible. It’s why Sophia saved me and why Lydia, my mother, has to approve my every move.”

While they stared at me like an alien, I told them my family’s story – from my parents’ first date to our lives on the other side of the portal.

I swore them to secrecy and endured Paul calling me Mini Your Honor until Emma brought us to Chicago.

We landed in a thick of trees, close enough to hear the music and smell the food, and walked through the park towards the crowd gathered by the tables.

When I saw my dad, my face curled into a smile. I ran to him and tapped his shoulder.

He grabbed me and attacked me with kisses, and I ignored the part of me that wished Mom could be here with us.

My friends caught up to us and I introduced them, starting with Paul, then Em, saving Nate for last.

“So this is the guy who’s going to kill me, right?” Dad said. I elbowed him in the side. Nate bowed his head and apologized to the sand underneath us. “Nice to meet you, Nathan.”

“You too, Christopher.”

Dad gasped. “Where are your manners? It’s Mr. Gavin, to you.”

I elbowed Dad again.

“Sorry, Mr. Gavin.”

He introduced me to Ken and Meg and their kids who called him Uncle
Gav
. He hogged me from my friends until we ran out of things to do. We’d eaten, lost the three-legged race, and lit sparklers and ran around with them.

Finally he said, “Okay, go play with your pup – I mean – your boyfriend.”

I kissed his cheek and met Nate by the food table. He looked like a third wheel with Paul and Em kissing under the stars.

I wrapped my arms around him, looking up at the multicolored sky.

The hairs on my arms rose, alerting me that I was being watched. I shrugged it off as Mom, refusing to let anything taint my night. I’d fought too hard to come back to this life to worry about anything.

“Let’s do the race,” Nate said. “Couple against couple.”

“You’re going down!” Paul said.

I smiled and hopped on his back, refusing to look at the hairs on my arms that were still standing on end.

Nathan

I plopped a stack of job applications on my bed. Chris rolled on top of them. She’d made no secret of her objection to me finding a new job. Maybe because the one I had quit a week ago turned out to be a cover for a world domination plot. I was still upset with myself for ignoring the signs – that Devin smelled like garbage and blamed it on poor hygiene, and how angry he smelled if someone mentioned Lydia Shaw.

I cringed and tried not to show it on my face. I still couldn’t believe that I, Nathan Thomas Nobody Reece, was dating
her
daughter. Even though it finally explained why Sophia fawned over her and why the famous woman cared to keep her hidden, I still hadn’t wrapped my head around it.

“You’re supposed to be getting dressed to go bowling, not filling out applications,” she said.

“I
am
dressed.” She pointed to my bare chest. “I will put that leash on when it’s time to leave. Shirts are for humans. They’re bad for my kind. Actually … shirts are bad for everyone. They are dangerous. Let me save you from yours.”

I jumped on her and playfully tugged at her shirt. I tickled her, and she screamed in my ear. I loved tickling her, but not for the reason she thought. I wasn’t a goofball. I was a slave to anything that made her scent burst into the air. Laughing, sweet kisses, and anything sweet kisses led to. The freshly baked spice that floated up from her skin and clung to everything she touched was my favorite thing about life.
About her.
It was only a bonus that she was beautiful, and hot, and everything else that made her Christine Cecilia Gavin.

My fingers scurried up her back and she kicked her legs and flailed her thin arms, trying to escape. Without her powers, since she was always mildly sedated by the potion now, she was a doll in my arms. A precious one, like if I didn’t like to play with her so much, she’d be in a box at the top of a shelf so she wouldn’t get hurt.

If
I
were
lame and played with dolls, that is. Now … action figures, those were cool.

My phone rang on my dresser. I’d given my number out so many times in the past few days for jobs, that I had no choice but to peel myself away from her to answer it. I rolled my eyes at the screen.

“What?” I said.

“Hello to you too, sunshine,” Paul said. “I haven’t seen you for hours, and this is how you greet me?”

I walked to the door because I heard his real voice. He was standing in the kitchen doorway on the other side of the pool.

“Your hat looks stupid,” I said.

“Hater.”

He turned around to the door and adjusted it dramatically, looking too proud of that monstrosity on his head. I would never understand why he couldn’t just wear normal clothes.

“Why are you bothering me? We have an hour until we leave.”

He smacked his lips. “Don’t act like you were busy, Sparky. I doubt today was
special
enough for you. I’m sure you two were just in there knitting.”

I flipped him off. He saw me and laughed.

I looked over my shoulder to make sure Chris hadn’t seen. I tried my best to have manners around her, even before I knew she was modern-world royalty. Her back was to me and she was curled up in the fetal position, shading a horse she’d been working on all day.

His voice turned serious, a rare moment for Paul. “
Dev
called.” I let out a quiet sigh. “He said he’s been calling you all week and you haven’t answered.”

“I don’t have anything to say to him.”

That caught Christine’s attention. I heard her shift in bed and her heart thud harder in her chest, and very slightly, a guilty scent misted into the air.

“He made a mistake, man. The same one your girlfriend,
my
friend, made. They both had something to change and they went for it.”

“Don’t compare them. They’re nothing alike. Chris wasn’t trying to hurt anyone.”

“He said Kamon murdered those people on his own. They planned to kill animals like the fish in Florida. Kamon had other plans. Nate, you know Dev. He’s not
like
that. He said his father died in the fire that killed Dreco, but he wasn’t with them. He was there working, trying to support his family.
Dev
just wanted to get his dad back, man. I’d do that for
my
dad.”

I hadn’t adjusted well to being the only person in the house without parents. Chris was my family, but now she had her own. They stopped by whenever they wanted to, just to kiss her or sing her a song. I’d thought Lydia, who let me call her by her first name, and
Mr. Gavin
were going overboard, maybe to make sure she was happy and not trying to use her powers to change the world again.

“He just wants us to come by to get our money,” Paul said. “Em wants to go shopping, we both want to pay Chris, and you worked harder than anyone on that trip, Nate. You deserve your money. Going to this meeting is the only way to get it.”

I smelled her behind me before she hugged me and rested her head on my back.
Dev
had promised me over
twenty-thousand
dollars to go through with the trip, hiking up the price after I’d left my injured girlfriend. I needed every one of those dollars, but I didn’t want to see him again. I’d trusted him, looked up to him, believed who he told me he was over the word of my own girlfriend.
My psychic girlfriend.

“When is it?” I asked.

“Now. Em and I are going.
Dev
just called again, begging us to make sure you’re there. He wants to talk to you, man. Maybe apologize. You don’t have to hear him out, but at least get your cash. I know you have big plans for it.”

I did. I had a huge plan.
A two-carat, perfect cut, color, and clarity kind of plan.
The surprise engagement that would kick off our special night couldn’t happen without that money, and it was more important now than ever with her parents in the picture, setting the bar for true love astronomically high – give you a soul, high. The dinner and candles and roses I had planned before wouldn’t be enough for her, not
her
. I needed something bigger.
And shiny.

All of my job applications were for retail stores and libraries. I’d never make enough to propose to her, or make her parents believe I was good enough to do that in the first place.

“Okay. I’m coming,” I said.

I hung up and turned around to Chris. I was having a hard time looking into her eyes.

“Sounds like bowling is cancelled,” she said.

Nothing tore me up more than how Christine smelled when she was sad. Her mood could sink so easily. I was always on duty to cheer her up when someone hurt her feelings or to clean up my own messes when
I
did.

“No. I have to go get my money. That’s it. I’ll grab it and go. Even if Paul and Em aren’t done, I’ll…” I sighed and paused. I’d have to sit there and wait until they finished. I didn’t have the power to bring myself home, not in time to make it to the bowling alley before it closed.

“It’s okay. We’ll just go another time,” she said.

I didn’t know why Christine bothered lying to me. It wasn’t okay. She smelled sad, delicious, but sad. It was how the New Orleans house had smelled when Sophia brought me there. Like someone wonderful but depressed had walked around it.

I’d sniffed around until that scent led me to the third floor. I remember pressing my hands against her door, completely entranced. I heard her sleeping in there. She sounded adorable. I hadn’t even seen her face, and I was hooked.

I wished she’d come out of her room then, instead of hours later when she saw me shifting and naked in the living room.

“How much of the potion have you had today?” I asked.

“Sophia gave me one dose with my breakfast.”

“If you went with me, could you get us home?”

She held her hands out in front of her, watching for tremors, it seemed. “Yeah. Pretty sure I could.”

I fished around in my drawer for a shirt, and she pulled on her sandals. “I’ll run in, get the money, and come out to you. Then bowling, here we come, okay?” I lifted her chin to kiss her.
She smelled fine
,
I just wanted to kiss
.

“If we go bowling by ourselves, it will be our first real date alone,” she said. “Outside of the house.”

I smiled. Her heart always thudded faster when I did that. “If you don’t include the fun night we had in Kamon’s prison or our hospital date.”

“Except those,” she said.

She jumped up on my back, and I carried her into the house where Em and Paul were waiting.

“Hey, that’s
my
shirt,” Em said.

Chris poked out her tongue at her.

“Let’s get this over with,” I said. Paul and Em shifted their eyes to the girl on my back. “She’s going to wait for me and bring us home. I’m not staying long. We have plans.” I’d decided that I didn’t want Em and Paul to come bowling anymore. I wanted to go on our first real date. I would have money, so Chris could leave the credit card with her fake name on it at home
and
the crap load of cash her dad had dropped off – his idea of child support.

Support her to do what? Buy a jet? I was hoping Mr. Gavin would be poor, or at least middle class. No such luck. He had music money, stock money,
enough
money to make me even more uncomfortable.

All the more reason to get my money from Devin.

Em whispered a spell and snapped. We landed in the open field I once believed to be the future home of the shelter we were building. I led Chris behind a tree.

“Stay here. I’ll be right back.” She nodded and pulled out her phone. “What are you doing?”

“Playing a game so I won’t be bored.”

I chuckled. “It will literally be two minutes, babe.”

She kept it out, ignoring me.

Em and Paul were halfway to the crowd when I left Chris. When I moved far enough from her scent, a wave of smells bombarded me.

Devin’s garbage, Shane’s must, and the natural smells of the forest and the animals that lived here.

I took another breath and shuddered. It smelled like blood.
Fresh blood, still warm.
And fear.
And wilting flowers.

Devin stood in the middle of the crowd, thrusting his torch into the air triumphantly.

“This is our time. Our day! No longer will we sit back and watch our kind fall,” he yelled. Emma looked back at me, fear in her eyes. I coughed as another whiff of wilting flowers hit my nose. It was a smell I knew too well and had tried to forget.

 
“My brothers. My sisters. My friends,” Devin continued.
Em’s
heart was exploding in her chest. Paul turned and grabbed her. “I have failed you. I trusted our enemy and ruined our chance. I shoulder the blame for this. Tonight, I will compensate for our loss.”

Faintly, Paul said, “Dude, we should go.”

But the closer I walked to the crowd, the stronger the wilted flowers became.

“Nathan, my friend,” Devin said. “So nice of you to join us.” He smiled. What happened to his cool, surfer voice? It was formal now and menacing. “Most of you know Nathan Reece, don’t you?” The crowd answered with grunts and cheers, some raising the torches in their hands.

Something was off. The world smelled wrong and scary and … like my mother.

“If you know Nathan, you know he is a wonderful worker. I am going to miss him dearly. We became great friends. Many nights, he confided in Shane and I. Once about the terrible humans he calls parents.”

The crowd surrounding Devin made a space for me. Paul touched my shoulder,
then
wrapped his arms around them as I shook.

In the middle of that circle that smelled of blood and fear, lay my parents.

“Nathan,” Mom said. “Help.”

Shane put his foot over her mouth. His bulky boot pressed into my mother’s lips.

I’d shifted a million times. I could slip in and out of my fur faster than I could change my clothes. This time, I begged my skin to stay, my legs to hold me up, my back to stay upright. But my bones protested, grinding and twisting until I was no longer myself.

“Nathan has lost his words temporarily,” Devin mused. The crowd chuckled. “However, I can speak for him. On those long nights on the road, Nathan told us all about John and Theresa Reece. How they bought him. How they wronged him. What kind of boss would I be if I didn’t avenge this?” He paused to laugh. “John and Theresa Reece, for the kidnapping of one of our children, for treating him like nothing, for making his life hell, I sentence you to death.”

I didn’t want to run, but I couldn’t help it. My instincts moved me, forced my paws to race away from Devin and the crowd. Past Paul, past Em
, looking
for Christine. I needed to get her out of here. The other side of me, the boy with legs and hands, would die if she were hurt. And he couldn’t bear to think about what was happening in that circle. He rejoiced in the fact that my animal ears could hear what they wanted to and tune out what they didn’t.

My ears found her heartbeat and tuned out the screams. My nose found her scent and ignored the blood. She’d moved from where the other me had left her.