Overtaken (28 page)

“You guys need to get out of here,” proclaimed Maya.

I shook my head and took a step toward her instead of away. So did Topher and Chase and Oliver and Jackson.

“No. This is our fight, too,” I replied, reaching for her hand.

She was shocked when her fingers passed right through mine. But we all tucked in as close as possible, forming a protective circle of friends around Maya as she stared down the avalanche and began to unleash her psychic energy in waves.

Just like at the dance, it started with a rumble, long and low, then a crack, then an explosion that shook the snow from the trees. Each of these shocks passed right through us as we stood in awe at the center of the storm.

Maya gritted her teeth and pulsed over and over, each one larger than the last, until she fell to her knees, howling like a demon was trying to rip itself from her body. As she convulsed, the snow began to melt away, and the mud it left behind began to boil. We all took a horrified step back as a circle of heat and immense power spread from her in a concentric circle, tossing boulders and tearing up trees by their roots. She seemed to the enveloped by the earth itself as her power tore the forest apart.

In that second, I realized I'd taken my eye off the avalanche. I'd been so focused on Maya that I'd forgotten to look up. When I did, there was no time, no time, no time. I screamed as the fury of untold tons of rock, snow, and ice plowed into us, enveloping my fractured world in darkness.

I inhaled deeply, the fresh pine and frozen air enveloping my senses. Light filtered down in glowing pockets among the centuries-old evergreens. Snow and a baked forest floor crackled beneath my feet with each leisurely step. The woods were alive with birdcalls and racing squirrels, the hustle and bustle of fauna's daily life, but I was taking it slowly. A true stroll without purpose or destination, besides meditation and decompression.

My mother had been waking me up for five a.m. yoga since she'd arrived three days earlier, along with an entourage of Internet journalists and cable news reporters whom she'd alerted about Bar Tech and Richard Cochran in the wake of my “visit” to Antarctica. Lydia had pulled every string she could with
National Geographic
to get airlifted out of McMurdo Station and on the first flight north to Denver. I was so happy to have her there that I'd indulged her habit with a smile.

“I had everyone at McMurdo doing it,” she'd bragged. “They were grumpy at first, but they all agreed: Sun salutations at dawn is the only way to start your day.”

I didn't have the heart to tell her that I'd rather be underneath my flannel sheets and down comforters. I did, however, appreciate some company in my afternoon commune with all things Mother Earth. Tall and stoic as ever, Jackson followed along, about half a step behind me. If I was honest with myself, his presence, along with the endless pine grove, was what I'd missed the most. I could just make him out in my peripheral vision, but I could feel our connection with every step. When the pulse had first hit and he and I had discovered our powers, the woods had become our safe haven from Bar Tech's relentless eyes. I hadn't thought about it in so long because the delicious memory had turned so painful, but it was where we'd shared our first kiss. Well, our first real kiss. There had been the tentative one in his Mustang, ruined by Dana's ghost and my insecurities. But the one that had led to more? That had happened here, the same cold air filling our lungs as our blood had turned to fire.

Even now I could feel the warmth radiating off of his body. It was slight—dampened and contained by layers of polar fleece and Gore-Tex and waffled cotton—but his return to my side had heightened my senses for every ounce of familiarity and pleasure I'd been deprived of since Dana's reappearance. I bristled even at the thought of her, once again a ghost for Jackson and now a harrowing specter of mine as well.

Ever an emotional lightning rod for me, Dana was a reminder of all of the psychological rubble that still needed to be cleared in the wake of the past month's events. I knew how right it felt to have Jackson back at my side, but neither of us had even begun to unpack the meaning of it. And then there was Chase.

I hated to admit it, but I think Chase had been the first to read the writing on the walls. He had kept his distance in the days after the avalanche, texting to let me know he was okay, but nothing more. Oliver had been splitting his time between the two of us, so most of what I knew was through my recently restored best friend. Chase was struggling with his father's secrets and betrayal. Luckily, he had a brand-new brother to shoulder some of that weight. I knew firsthand that the sudden loss of a parent was a gut punch, but I had also seen the look in his eyes when Jackson had exposed himself on the mountain as a double agent working, not for, but against Bar Tech. Jackson's heroic moment had been a restorative one for me.

For Chase, however, it might as well have been the nail in the coffin of our relationship. I hated knowing I'd hurt him. Chase had pushed for it, fought for me, shown he wasn't the invulnerable jackass that he wore right along with his letterman jacket. After I'd lost my friends and my dad, he had been my only lifeline. At the same time, though, I think he and I had both known that my heart had never fully strayed from Jackson. Even after we'd been captured by Bar Tech Security and banished to their darkest dungeon, Chase had called me out on my lingering feelings.

That surprise was still working me over. Not only had Jackson strung Dana along since she'd been unable to satisfy him with a credible explanation for her reappearance, but he had also been my very own mystery texter. It made me rethink every encounter Jackson and I had over the past month, not to mention my interactions with the shadowy informant.

Jackson had known exactly how to attract my attention and exactly how to earn my trust. Breathing against my neck in the dark theater. Sneaking into my bedroom in the middle of the night. I'd even finally been able to connect the dots as to how my informant had gotten past our house's formidable Bar Tech Security system. It may have been a real stumper for a house burglar, but not for the guy who had harnessed the power of electricity.

All along, I'd thought Jackson had chosen Dana, but really he had chosen me. Jackson once told me to trust him. I'd thought I had been discarded, abandoned, but in fact Jackson had been my guardian in the shadow. He'd helped me every step of the way, staying close when I thought I had lost him, watching over me when I thought I was invisible, confident above all that I would be the one to help him take down Dana and Bar Tech when the time came. Jackson believed in me. It was proof of everything I had ever wanted to hear from him, and he had communicated it all without a word.

But did he trust me? That was the bad taste that lingered as my mind tore every last detail to shreds and pieced the tiny pixels back together. I couldn't stop asking the question. Why had it been so important that I remain in the dark? I was reluctant to break the easy silence, a rarity in my life, but I had the guy right here.

One last calming breath.
In through your nose, out through your mouth
, I could hear Lydia correcting me. God, I'd missed her so much.

“Why did you keep it a secret?” I asked, my voice initially abrasive to my own ears. It hung in the air, the final mystery in my days of reflection and retrospection. There was no accusation in my voice. I just needed to know. “Why didn't you just tell me?”

I wanted to look at him, and slowed my pace, falling into stride. It was too much to stop, but I glanced over as he mulled his answer.

“I can see how it might be hard for you to understand,” Jackson started. He wasn't defensive, but I could tell he wanted to explain. “I just had no idea what was going to happen. I hoped that Dana wouldn't get to you, but I couldn't know if she would. I also didn't know if I'd be able to go on resisting her. It felt safest to compartmentalize everything, keeping my secret and feeding you what information I could. It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do.”

Thinking about the situation from his point of view didn't erase how he had made me feel. I had felt so alone, so lost, so separate from everyone that mattered to me, and so hurt. But those were all facts, out to bleed honestly in the open. Jackson had suffered, just as alone as I had been, but had required an all-important mask, a lie of how happy he was just to keep up appearances.

“I'm sorry,” I apologized. It wasn't my fault, but at least I finally had someone who knew how I had felt. “Part of me just can't believe it's over.”

“I'm not so sure that it is,” Jackson replied, always the pessimist. He was probably right. “This is who we are now. Who knows what's going to happen, but what's important is that we continue to live our lives. I'm not going to wait around for Bar Tech's—or whoever's—next move.” He stopped in his tracks, swinging around to face me.

His blue-green eyes were a shock to my system. I had missed their unwavering stare and the way they still made my whole body unsteady. He took my hands, and my quivering knees silently thanked him.

“You know what? I was wrong,” he continued. “It wasn't keeping secrets straight that was so hard. It was pretending not to care about you, pretending like you weren't the person that I thought about every morning when I woke up and every night when I couldn't sleep.”

I pulled him against me, and he kissed me like we'd never left the woods, like Dana had never come back to Barrington. But somehow it was better, more passionate. Maybe because Jackson and I had weathered so much pain and survived.

The reunion lasted until I couldn't feel my toes and fingers. I'd had enough cold for multiple lifetimes. The woods would always be our place, but I had to go home eventually.

•  •  •

Thankfully, home had been restored as well. In ways I could never have imagined. In those first dark days after my father's disappearance, his house had become a husk, a bed to sleep in, without him. Fortunately, Maya had saved me just when I needed saving the most, when I was at my lowest and needed a friend. I never imagined that the frenetic, somewhat overbearing cheerleader who'd introduced me around my first day at Barrington High School would come through and have my back when I thought I had no one else. Maya had held out her hand and I'd taken it.

All of which made me take a long, hard look at myself. Why was I always underestimating my friends and my nearest and dearest? Trust in others was not something that came easy for me. It terrified me to know how much I needed Oliver and Maya and Topher and Jackson. Where would I be without them?

And how would I have made it this far without my parents? They were constantly surprising me.

When I walked inside and found Lydia and Marcus together in the same room—an elusive simultaneous appearance—it filled me with so much joy that I could hardly believe it. They were making dinner together, maybe the one part of their relationship that had always been an easy collaboration. I guess they'd done a pretty good job with me, too.

My dad wasn't sure exactly what had happened after he'd left the house in a hurry that day, but his foggy memory had cleared not long after Dana's defeat at Whiteface. He'd barely made it through town that day when two Bar Tech Security cars had stopped him and taken him into custody. They must have drugged my father, because the next thing he knew, he'd woken up two days later in one of Bar Tech's secure black-ops facilities somewhere in the mountains of Western Pennsylvania. He was kept prisoner in the bunkerlike compound until all hell broke loose back in Barrington. Luckily, a sympathetic guard, with two children of his own to protect, realized that the shit was about to hit the fan when Cochran disappeared, and he released my father.

Dad checked into a random motel somewhere outside Pittsburgh under a false name and then booked a flight back to Barrington.

Lydia, however, had beaten him to the punch when she'd arrived in Barrington with the media brigade, eager to dig up the details of Cochran's shady dealings. It was decidedly not a sitcom-family homecoming, but the three of us had hugged like it was.

Dad had been bowled over by the details of what had gone on in Barrington in his absence. He remembered Dana coming to the door under the guise of selling raffle tickets for the Booster Club. He and I had both been surprised to find an actual receipt in the kitchen junk drawer. Dana Fox: a vision of school spirit until the very end.

“You okay with me going back to being the parent around here?” Dad asked the next morning while making a mile-high stack of blueberry pancakes for my breakfast, like he used to do when I was a little kid.

“Relieved, in fact, to hand over the reins. Besides, you keep the place a lot cleaner than I do,” I replied, so happy to be sitting across the kitchen table from him again. I watched him smile with pleasure as I smothered my pancakes with fresh Vermont maple syrup and devoured them in huge bites. “Not to mention make the best blueberry pancakes ever.”

His eyes were moist as he tried to fight back his emotions. “I'm sorry I wasn't there when you needed me. I'm sorry I forgot you. That I nearly lost you.”

I hugged him, so relieved to have him remember he was my father. “Does this mean you'll let me take my road test?” Okay, maybe it wasn't the best time, but I was a town hero. At least secretly. How could he say no?

“Can you parallel park yet?”

“I'm . . . working on it.”

“Go ahead and schedule it. We'll practice next week. By the way, that's the reason I failed my driving test the first time. My parallel parking sucked.”

“You failed something? That's a first.”

And just like that, my father and I were laughing again.

Next week. Just the very concept gave me pause. What else would next week bring? What was Barrington going to be like free of its Bar Tech Security and the curfew? It wasn't like Bar Tech was gone forever. Richard Cochran was out there somewhere, licking his wounds but planning, reformulating. Control of Bar Tech had been taken over by the Department of Defense until they could conduct a thorough investigation of every department and all their research. No doubt the company would rise again, if under a new face and a new name. Reinvention is the backbone of American business after all. The official story as reported, of course, told it a little differently.