Overtaken (5 page)

“They were inside. I couldn't hear anything,” I lamented, visibly upset at my inability to find out anything of substance.

“I'll see what I can find out tomorrow,” Dad promised sympathetically. He knew Jackson weighed heavily on my mind.

I stared out the window, worrying about Jackson, as we sped back home before Bar Tech ever became aware of us.

The ordinary chatter in the quad was exactly the small talk one would expect after a weekend: whispers of hookups, the flaunting of new outfits and electronics, and kids bitching about homework and their weird families like badges of honor. But this was the kind of catching up to be expected at a normal school in a normal town with normal kids, not surreal Barrington, where Jackson Winters had just publicly given his best Dr. Manhattan impression. Maybe it was worse in my mind, but an electric-blue-tinged snowboarding star conducting serious voltage through his body? Granted, I was biased, but how could the student body be talking about anything else? And where was Bar Tech Security?

The last day and a half of intensifying cabin fever had stoked my paranoia beyond reason. Dad had insisted I stay home behind locked doors after Dana's party had run so completely and thoroughly amok. He was aided by Bar Tech Security's own request (which really amounted to an order) for Barrington's citizens to stay indoors while the town's electrical grid was repaired. They blamed the downed cell and online services on a freak weather microburst. The company's latest tall tale would usually have resulted in an instantaneous explanation via Google, but the downed Internet gave me an excuse to crack open a book. Marcus Ashley's
Encyclopaedia Britannica
did not disappoint. The
M
volume was happy to be of service, its satiny pages delivering me a succinct summary of the localized weather oddity—an upside-down tornado of sorts. I had to give it to them. A microburst was a creative cover for Barrington's latest pulse, albeit still leaving the flash of green light, mass irritability, and resulting superpowers thoroughly unexplained.

My only contact with the outside world was a surprise package from my mother. The small box included a bunch of photos of Lydia outside and around the base, a social butterfly even among cloistered researchers. She'd also included a small jar of snow—long since melted, but impressively clear—and a few strange crafts she'd traded other residents for. Most of it was ostensibly junk, but it just made me miss her more.

I tried phoning her several times, but each attempt was met with the same infuriating “all circuits busy” recording and to try again later. I threw the phone across the room. Screw later. I was going crazy and needed to talk to my mother pronto. I needed a lifeline to some kind of normalcy outside the craziness that was my life. And at that moment my mother filled the bill. This so-called idyllic all-American, small-town existence my mother desperately wanted for me was proving to be way more treacherous and hazardous to my health (and that of my friends) than the stealth anacondas in the darkest Amazonian jungle.

Despite a brief text exchange Oliver was mostly unreachable, keeping vigil at his mother's hospital bedside. Considering she'd been bruised, battered, and tossed around during the accident itself, Mrs. Monsalves was in remarkably good condition (no broken bones, no internal injuries). So much so that she was discharged from the hospital by late Sunday afternoon.

Risky as I knew it was, I wished I could reach out to Maya. My anxiety level was reaching a feverish pitch, and I had to know she was safe. But I knew I couldn't. That was how people got caught.

Whatever Bar Tech was really doing with free rein of the deserted streets, I had no idea. The interminable isolation was maddening. My dad tried to find out more about what happened at Dana's without much success. Instead, he did his best to keep me from pulling my hair out:
X-Files
marathon! Father-daughter cook-off! All just momentary distractions from my biggest concern: Jackson.

What exactly happened to him after the party? I tried calling and texting him but couldn't reach him. Had his massive explosion of power altered and changed him? What if it were Jackson and not the pulse that had shorted out the entire town? As I stared out of my bedroom window at all the well-kept houses in our well-ordered town, each paranoid scenario I concocted in my head grew darker and more ominous. I had visions of Jackson being waterboarded in some abandoned warehouse or locked up behind Bar Tech bars or alone in the woods, burning up, unable to harness the electricity coursing through him. Or my worst nightmare of all: Jackson recovering from the pulse in Dana's loving arms. Did Dana now know everything about Jackson's power? And maybe Oliver's and mine as well? Our deepest secret had cemented our friendship. Had Dana's sudden reappearance weakened or destroyed it? Developing our powers together had taken our friendship to a whole new level. Or so I had thought.

At least now that I was finally at school, the horrid anticipation could come to an end. Was Bar Tech waiting to pounce on me as soon as I set foot on school grounds? Would they spirit me away to some deep, dark, secret location? I trod carefully as I scanned the quad for Jackson and Oliver. I just needed my friends to be alive and safe.

As if on cue, a hand on my shoulder sent a shudder up my spine. I turned, ready to wrap Jackson in the most platonic hug I could muster. But instead of looking up into his blue eyes, I looked straight ahead into Dana's emerald-green ones. She followed through on the hug before my body language could rescind the offer.

“It's so good to be back.” Dana beamed at me, her smile wrongfully suggesting we were the closest of friends reuniting after a long separation.

“Yeah, I'm sure.” I wriggled out of her embrace, my discomfort as obvious as Dana's ease.

“I'm ready to start over. Take on whatever's thrown my way. Tabula rasa. The possibilities seem endless.” Dana oozed sincerity even though the sentiments were Hallmark at best.

“Uh-huh. So much . . . potential.”

“Speaking of clean slates . . .” Dana's glossed lips curled as her voice took on a throaty, conspiratorial tone. “I saw Chase over the weekend.”

“At the hospital?” I leaned back on my heel, immediately suspicious of how she'd dodged the town's house arrest.

“Yesterday afternoon,” Dana volunteered.

“How is he?” While I'd heard that Chase was recovering, I hadn't heard he was well enough for visitors. My father hadn't said anything about that.

“Much better. He's been through a lot,” Dana lamented with a sympathetic sigh. “I feel so bad. I had no idea . . .”

“He's not the only one who's been through a lot,” I replied pointedly but cryptically, wondering what she was driving at.

“I heard how messed up things had gotten between Maya and him. Can't say I'm surprised. I always knew she was erratic. High-strung. He's lucky he wasn't more seriously injured.”

“Sounds like he remembers what happened.” I stepped closer to Dana, worried about what details Chase had shared with her.

“Bits and pieces,” Dana recounted cryptically.

“Must be hard, not remembering everything,” I said, laying on the compassion, hoping Dana would feel the need to divulge more.

“It is,” Dana confided with a look of hesitation and uncertainty, which seemed unusual for her.

“What do you mean?” I was curious at what could possibly unbalance the indomitable Dana Fox.

“It's a little embarrassing.” Her eyes bounced from me down to her rustic-chic Frye boots. “It's about my party.”

“What about it?” Was the Chase discussion merely a pretext to knock me off guard? What did Dana know? I took a deep breath, trying to temper my pounding heart.

“I don't remember what happened,” Dana continued. “I remember everyone being there. I was having so much fun . . . and then nothing but a blank. A memory gap.”

I studied Dana's perfect face, searching for the truth. Had she actually forgotten what happened to Jackson? Or was she just playing me, hoping to trip me up? Did she somehow know that I'd returned to her house? I had to step carefully. One tiny slip of the tongue and my cover could be blown.

I mulled the possibilities. Perhaps Dana was just another unwitting victim of Bar Tech's machinations. Maybe they were behind her memory blackout and her brainwashing conveniently dovetailed with a night of teenage self-indulgence. The alternative, however, was much more troublesome. What if Dana's memory loss was all an act? A convenient solution, which painted her innocence in a seemingly foolproof lie? As sweet and as friendly as Dana presented on the surface, I didn't quite believe her sincerity. She seemed just a tiny bit eager to get me to like her. For all Dana's natural confidence and popularity, there was just something about her that felt forced and phony. Inauthentic. I couldn't quite put my finger on what was off about Dana Fox, but I knew I wasn't ready to trust her. She really was tabula rasa—a clean slate. And I was determined not to let her read me either.

“Wish I could help,” I said with an empathetic smile and my best poker face. “But I wasn't the last to leave. You should ask Jackson.”

“I will,” replied Dana with a warm, friendly smile, not betraying any hint of anything being amiss with my suggestion. “But first I need to work out my stupid schedule. See you later.”

I stood in the middle of the quad and watched Dana strut off, smiling and greeting her old friends, eager to reclaim her rightful place in the Barrington universe. In the meantime, I was left with no real answers, only more questions.

“Lucky for Dana your eyes don't shoot lasers,” Oliver quipped as he strolled up and parked beside me seconds later, “or she'd be one crispy critter.”

Oliver and I stood side by side and surveyed everyone's faces as they strode by. I was struck by how disturbingly normal everyone appeared. No anxiety, no fear, just smiles and laughter. It was as if it were all for show.

“By the way,” I said, looking at Oliver, “what are you doing here?”

“Mom's much better, so I decided to risk being rounded up by the Bar Tech storm troopers,” he said, eyes on alert as he scanned the campus quad for impending danger.

“All quiet on the western front,” I confirmed, letting him know that our favorite goon squad was nowhere in sight.

“For now,” Oliver said as he gave me a wary sidelong glance. “Three days ago it seems like the world was coming to an end. Today it's sunshine and lollipops. A guy could get whiplash. What the hell's going on?”

“Beats me.” I shook my head and shrugged, truly mystified. “But there's one person who might have a clue.”

Jackson was already seated in the back, right corner of biology class, fully locked into a beat-up Vonnegut paperback.

Amazingly, he was still alive and functioning. I contained my relief as I calmly strode down the aisle. Jackson looked up just as I arrived at his desk.

“Good weekend?” I rhetorically asked in an urgent, we-need-to-talk tone.

“Later,” he responded firmly, shutting me down. His watchful eyes darted around the room as everyone else streamed in and grabbed their respective seats.

I nodded, disappointed but knowing Jackson was right. Talking there was not an option. It was downright stupid. Still, I lingered at his side a moment longer, wanting more than anything to take the empty chair next to him, but our alphabetical seating chart unfortunately relegated me directly opposite him in the front, left corner. As seemed to be the theme of late, I couldn't be pushed any farther away from him.

My gaze kept drifting toward Jackson as Mr. Bluni droned on about Watson and Crick's discovery of DNA and a research paper he was writing for one of those geeky science journals. My mind wandered back to Dana's party. All I could think about was whether Jackson knew what happened. As the lights were turned off in exchange for an overhead projector and a welcome audio-visual distraction, I found myself struggling to focus. I clicked the point of my pen in and out and honed in on the outrageously loud tock of the classroom clock's second hand. Then I stared into the humming fan on the back of the projector. What was going on? It was like someone had slipped me a triple espresso. Maybe the weekend stuck indoors was finally catching up with me.

I could hear my toe tapping against the floor with a fervor all its own. I stared down at it as if a threatening look would silence my own extremity and was startled to see the carpeting right through my foot.

Oh, no.

I forced a few hard blinks to sharpen my vision, but the top half of my foot was still horribly as clear as day. Shitshitshitsh—

I held it up a little, along the side of my backpack, which I'd propped in front of my seat. The bag's logo stared right back at me from where I was pretty sure my toes were. I wiggled them inside my shoe. They were awake and intact, but it had no effect on their transparency.

Instinctively, I tucked my legs back under my chair, curling one around the other as if the compression would make them less detectable. Scrunching inward in my seat, I tried to wish it away, but my fear and panic were rising. When I lifted my leg back up for a second glance, I could see my invisibility was rising as well. To my shin.

I knew it wasn't safe to stay a sitting duck in the classroom. Thanks to the projector, it was still dark enough that no one besides me would notice, but in just the flip of a switch, the classroom lights could be back on and my transparent foot—and now lower leg, I upgraded as I stole another glance—would be exposed.

I had one real avenue of escape: the bathroom.

However, the last thing I needed at that moment was to draw attention to myself. Plus the embarrassment of a seemingly dire bathroom emergency in front of the whole class might upgrade me to fully invisible in one torturous anvil drop. Did I have a choice, though?

I raised my hand to half-mast, committing to embarrassment-door number one. Mr. Bluni was caught up in some discussion about the human genome project I had long since stopped tracking and seemed oblivious to my request. I looked down again. I was up to my knees in trouble. My hand reached higher. Have mercy.

Fortunately, Mr. Bluni finally caught sight of my hand. Instead of humiliating me, he discreetly gestured that I was free to go. I bolted for the door, almost stumbling face-first onto the floor as my feet got trapped on the projector's bundle of wires.

Jackson could tell by my panicked expression that something was very wrong, and it wasn't that I had to pee. I heard a few boys chuckle behind me, but no exclamations about my missing feet, so that was good enough for me to exit unscathed.

Hustling to the bathroom, I desperately hoped no one would be lurking in the hallway. My anxious gaze flew back over each shoulder, checking for spectators in any direction. All clear. Until I nearly collided with an angular, beanpole boy who had a shock of reddish-brown hair that stood up like a rooster's comb. He was just standing there, as if oddly frozen in space, looking as startled as I was by the sudden head-on.

“Sorry,” he muttered, with a befuddled, deer-in-the-headlights expression.

I thought I recognized him from one of my classes, but I had no time for pleasantries. I grunted and zoomed by him before he had a chance to notice I was vanishing from the ground up.

I finally made it inside the bathroom, darting for the handicapped stall, the only one that wouldn't give my transparent legs away. Collapsing against the wall, it held me up, but not upright. I slowly slid down the wall, my butt hitting the floor and my head falling between my knees. I could finally breathe. And with more oxygen to my brain came a flood of questions.

Why was this happening? How was this happening? There hadn't been a pulse since Dana's party, which was two days ago. Under normal circumstances, there was no way my power should've lasted this long.

My powers had never lasted this long.

So what was different? The pulse had been huge, enough to startle Oliver's mom straight off the road. That was different. Was that pulse extra powerful? Did that, in turn, make me extra powerful? I had to talk to Oliver and Jackson. Were their powers still active too? My breathing transitioned from ragged to deep, and slowly my calves started to reappear. The process gave me more trouble than it had in the past (with the exception of my near freak-out after the accident), but once the process began to reverse, I breathed a sigh of relief.

I looked one hundred percent but felt about fifty when the class bell rang. I rushed back to the classroom to collect my stuff. Jackson had already split, which upset me. Wasn't he the least bit concerned about my abrupt exit? My hurt feelings would have to wait because Mr. Bluni looked ready to check in on me, so I darted off toward the cafeteria before he could follow through.

•  •  •

My mission was simple: Track down Oliver or Jackson. I pushed my way through the pizza line, much to the chagrin of those already waiting, and found Oliver near the front of the line.

“Dr. Ashley not feeding you?” Oliver joked at my determination to join him.

“We need to talk.” The line wasn't nearly private enough, so I tried to pull Oliver along with me.

“And I need to eat.” He dug his heels in until the server behind the counter handed him a fresh pepperoni pizza. It was the same kid I'd nearly mowed down in the hallway only minutes earlier.

“Hey, Topher,” said Oliver, überfriendly. “You know Nica.”

“Hey,” he responded with an affirmative nod. “Think we have Spanish together.”

“Yeah, hi.”

Topher Hansen was the quiet, unassuming type. Super polite, a low flier on the radar, never got in anyone's way. He kept to himself so much that he seemed like the kid who wasn't there. And yet there he appeared in my life twice in the span of fifteen minutes.

“Can I get you anything, Nica?” Topher asked, staring at me with the same odd expression he'd had when I'd run into him in the hallway. He gave me an uneasy, paranoid feeling. Was he watching me?

“I'll just have some of his,” I replied, pushing Oliver along, wanting to get away.

“No one remembers anything from Dana's party,” I announced to Oliver moments after I dragged him over to an empty table at the back of the cafeteria. “Even the host.”

Oliver almost gagged on a slice of piping-hot pepperoni pizza as he tried to speak. His first attempt was barely distinguishable as English. He swallowed a bit and tried again.

“Wait, what?”

“After the pulse, I mean,” I whispered. “Jackson changing color and blasting a kid across the room. Shit, did you forget about it, too?”

“No,” Oliver replied, “of course not. What exactly did Dana say?”

“That she blacked out.”

“You think she's lying?”

“I don't have a clue what she's doing,” I retorted. “For all I know, maybe she's telling the truth.”

A tsunami of guilt hit me. Had I been so eager to suspect Dana that I had discounted Occam's razor's much-preferred explanation? The simplest explanation is usually the best one.

“Even so,” Oliver added. “It's super creepy.” Though not creepy enough to curb his voracious appetite. He snatched up his final quarter of pizza.

All I could do was nod in agreement. It was even impressive, in a supervillain sort of way. How had Bar Tech done it? How had they gotten into the minds of so many students and just wiped them out?

“It's a good thing, right?” Oliver's observation sent a chill up my spine. “At least our secret's safe.”

“Maybe. Not to whoever covered it up,” I pointed out.

Just then my phone buzzed. So did Oliver's.

“Jackson wants us to meet him,” I announced, reading the brief message.

Oliver nodded. He'd gotten an identical text from Jackson. “What's in the library?”

•  •  •

Oliver and I hoofed it upstairs to the library. Trying to arrange secret meetings aside, I hated how awkward I was feeling around Jackson. Then again, I was barely used to having to compete for his attention. I'd been one of a whopping two people who would even speak to him at school. With Dana's return, I had no idea where that left me—or us. As I learned, though, the denizens of Barrington High could have quite short memories.

Oliver and I entered the library and headed toward the back. It was deathly quiet. Everyone was having lunch, even the faculty. Finally, something was actually going as planned.

Jackson looked upset. “What's going on, Nica?”

I took a deep breath. There was a lot to explain. A few deep breaths from my core—and my hand slowly started to disappear from the end of my fingertips up through my palm.

“Our powers have never lasted this long. Can you . . . ?” I looked to Oliver, but he had already loped the entire length of the library and back in barely the blink of eye.

“Actually . . . yeah,” Oliver replied, stunned that he still had the ability and hadn't even known it.

We both looked to Jackson. He appeared to still be a few pages behind.

“When was there a pulse?” Jackson challenged with a puzzled expression.

Then it was mine and Oliver's turn to stare. Did Jackson not remember the party either? Was this Bar Tech's doing as well? Or did his supercharged display have something to do with his absent memory?

“Almost two days ago,” I confirmed.

“The night of Dana's party.” Jackson was truly stunned.

I nodded and detailed the events of the night just as I had done with Oliver outside his mother's crashed car. The story was just as crazy this time around, except that Jackson had lived it—and didn't remember a thing. He looked worried, weak even. It was a sliver of the vulnerable Jackson Winters that had caught my gaze the first time I'd seen him.

If there was a silver lining to be found, it was that Jackson wasn't the only one who didn't remember the events at the now-infamous after-party. I rattled off the kids, including Dana, who had clearly witnessed his display of power—and who now had zero recollection of the event.

Jackson stood there, silent, thoughtful, looking back and forth between Oliver and me. Trying to absorb the troubling information that he'd been so exposed—so vulnerable.

“What about you?” I asked Jackson. “Are you still . . . ?”

His eyes narrowed, a bit dazed by my question. The notion that his power hadn't dissipated after twenty-four hours was news to him. He held his hand out hesitantly. It took him a second before anything happened.

I knew the feeling; it was like getting back on a bike after a few years or picking up a neglected instrument. The muscle memory was there. It just needed a little wake-up call. The lights above our heads began to flicker. And
pop
! One of the low-energy lightbulbs exploded into a shower of glass shards.

Despite his absent memory, Jackson's powers were very much intact.

“What do you think is happening to us?” I asked.

Jackson combed the mane of hair off his face with his right hand, thinking carefully before conjecturing.

“Any number of things. Those last pulses were intense and happened so close together. Maybe they tripped an internal switch and triggered a reaction in our bodies?”

“Or maybe it was something in the atmosphere,” Oliver chimed in, offering an alternate theory.

“Or it could be because—” Jackson abruptly stopped himself from finishing his thought. His blue eyes shifted down to the floor. Whatever it was seemed to have spooked him.

“Could be what?” I stared intensely, demanding Jackson come clean.