Time Spent (16 page)

Simon stared at his hands, which had been
holding Heather moments before, before she melted through them and
pooled like a second layer of tile on the floor beneath him. The
hands were rough, black, their backs covered with matted fur. He
began to shake with fury, and looked up at the object of his
anger.

Simon lunged forward, reaching out with the
invisible hand, once again gripping Brandon's chest and throwing
him against the wall.

"This is all your fault!" he growled.

______________________

Heather moved into the hall, convinced the
office she was looking for must be just on the other side of the
pool room, but a quick scan told her there was no office door, just
more mazelike halls. She stopped, frustrated, trying to decide if
she should keep going or turn back.

A skittering noise came from behind. Two
spidery black things came into the hall. One of them fired a beam
of energy at Heather, and it lanced into her shoulder. Heather's
entire body reacted, energy spreading out from the point of impact
to replace her skin, muscle and bone. Soon, she stood transformed
into a white-hot glowing force.

The black metal spiders stopped. Heather
reached down with both hands and grasped them. She squeezed, and
her energy hands melted right through them, reducing them to slag.
She opened her hands, and melted fragments dropped to the floor.
Her body reverted to its normal form.

"Where did those things come from?" she
asked no one in particular.

Suddenly she heard a barking sound. It
reverberated off the walls, seeming to come from nearby.

Heather jumped. "What was that?"

There was a shimmer in the air from below
her. To her astonishment, a dog appeared there, a frazzled looking
German shepherd!

Heather looked down, startled. "Whoa! Where
did you come from?"

Just as it had appeared from nowhere, the
dog faded from view. Heather cocked her head, looking at the area
where the dog had appeared. She felt convinced it was still there
somehow. She knelt next to the place where it had stood and reached
out her hand, her fingers touching the air where his nose was.

Her transformation was immediate. Heather's
body melted away, becoming a ghostlike shape. In front of her stood
the dog, or a strange shade of a dog.

"Well, hello there," she said.

The German shepherd lolled his tongue out
and licked her face.

"I'm trying to find the lab this scientist
sent me to, but I think it was a trick," she said.

The dog growled in response, seeming to
recognize the person about whom she was speaking.

"You know him, huh?" she asked.

He yipped.

"I left Simon with him," Heather said. "I'm
worried he might have done something to Simon. I need to find him."
Her head filled with a strange buzzing sensation. When it hit her,
Heather stood bolt upright. "Oh! Wow. What's that?" The buzzing
concentrated in a certain area of her head, forcing her to turn
until she was facing the wall to their right. The buzz centered
there, and a sensation that what she was looking for was in that
direction suffused her being. "I think...I think he's this way."
She ran through the wall.

______________________

Wind howled around the rooftop, forcing
Heather to squint her eyes nearly closed. Something was happening.
Sparks began to leap from one of them to the next.

"What's going on?" Heather shrieked. A
massive spark burst from Simon's shoulder to hers, knocking them
apart.

Lines of energy arced between them now, and
then arced into the air above the rooftop. And where they came
together, the sky darkened. A shimmering hole began to form in the
air. A sound rose, like the sound of cracks opening in ice, only a
million times louder.

______________________

"Hello. I'm Sarah." The woman extended a
hand. "McDonnell," she added.

At the sound of her mother's voice, Heather
sat straight up on the couch and peered around the corner. She
hoped against hope that her mother hadn't shown up half drunk. She
couldn't stand to be embarrassed like that in front of her friend
Katie and her mom.

Katie's mom shook Sarah's hand. "Hi, nice to
meet you. Come on in."

"Thank you." Heather's mother stepped into
the hallway. She looked sober enough, Heather supposed. No
stumbling or slurred words. She was actually presentable, for a
change, with her straight, light brown hair pulled back into a
ponytail.

"Hey mom," Heather said.

"Hey, baby," Sarah replied. "Ready to
go?"

"Hi, Mrs. McDonnell," said Katie. Heather's
friend was a pretty girl with blonde curls.

"Katie." Heather knew that her mom hated it
when people called her "Mrs.", but she didn't bother to correct
Katie.

"We're just watching New Reflection on TV,"
Katie said. The sound of the hot new boy band could be heard in the
background.

Sarah nodded. "Of course."

Katie's mother chuckled. "They're really
excited about the concert. It's all they talk about."

"I know. Heather, let's go, honey."

"Can we watch the end of this?" Heather
asked.

"No, let's go, come on."

Heather sighed and stood.

Katie ran to her mother. "Mom, can I go over
to Heather's house tonight?"

"No, I told you we have plans."

"What plans?"

"We have that reunion to go to."

"I don't want to go to THAT."

Katie's mother looked uncomfortable.
"Katie..."

"NO...mom...I don't want to GO to that."

"Katie!"

"NO, mom, I don't WANT to, I don't WANT to
GO!"

Sarah put her arm on Heather's shoulder and
moved her toward the door. "Well, it was nice meeting you," she
said.

Heather walked out the door and her mother
closed it behind them. They could hear Katie screaming at her
mother inside.

"Wow," Sarah said. Heather opened her car
door and got inside. Sarah got in on the driver's side. "Please
don't ever become like that."

"Like we've never screamed at each other,"
Heather said.

Her mother had placed the keys in the
ignition, and paused at that. Then she turned the keys and started
the car.

"I'm going to meetings again," her mother
said. "Just so you know."

"Okay," Heather said.
That'll last a
week, if I'm lucky,
she thought.

"I mean it this time," Sarah said.

Heather nodded, but said nothing.

"I mean it."

Heather put her earbuds in and turned on her
iPod. The tones of New Reflection's latest hit filled her head.

______________________

Heather's body passed effortlessly through
walls and corridors and she was soon out the other side of the base
and heading into the city. The buzzing sensation pulled her
westward, across town. She tried to remember what might be in that
direction; it seemed to be toward the arts district. The museum?
The zoo?

Why would Simon have left the base? What
happened?

Heather stopped short as a sudden explosion
rocked the street. Car alarms sounded, and a column of smoke rose
from the opposite side of the building in front of her. She ran
forward, passing through the building. People inside were
panicking, hitting the floor and covering their heads with their
hands. Heather's feet went through them as she ran. She emerged on
the street and saw the opposite building had been torn apart by
something. It looked like a bomb had gone off in one of the shops
on the bottom floor. Glass had been shattered, wood torn away, and
stone blackened. Upper floors sagged down at the corner. There were
screams on the wind.

"What happened here?" Heather asked, though
she spoke to no one in particular and no one could hear her in any
event.

"WHERE IS SHE?" a female voice screamed.

Heather turned to see a girl in the middle
of the street, a short girl with curly blonde hair. She did a
double take.
Katie??

Katie rubbed her hands against the hips of
her dirty blue jeans. "It's not FAIR. She said she would BE
HERE."

"Katie?" Heather called, approaching
her.

Katie didn't react to her at all.
She
can't see me,
Heather realized. She looked down at her hands,
pale as mist. She shook them and concentrated, and her natural form
returned, spreading out from her hands.

The buzzing in her head immediately
stopped.

"Katie?"

The blonde girl spun around. "HEATHER? What
are YOU doing here?"

"I was going to ask you the same thing? What
happened?" She indicated the destroyed building.

Katie grasped her blonde curls, looking
ready to tear them out. "The red lady SAID she would BE here. SHE
PROMISED!"

"What lady?"

Katie threw her hands down and looked up at
the sky. "UGHH. The one on the BUS."

Heather's brow furrowed. "The...you mean the
school bus? The one that crashed? But you weren't on that
bus..."

Two patrol cars screamed around the corner
and came to a stop in front of them.

"Oh jeez," Heather said. "Look, stay back,
I'll handle th-"

Katie let out a howl of rage. Her body
twitched this way and that, and it appeared that her front half
tore free of the back, each half becoming a perfect duplicate of
the girl she had been. Before Heather could blink, the duplicate in
front charged forward, her body beginning to glow.

The duplicate Katie struck the grill of the
first patrol car and her body exploded, throwing Heather to the
ground. The front of the car was obliterated, and the remains of
both cars were hurled backwards onto the opposite sidewalk.

"WHERE IS SHE?" Katie screamed.

______________________

Through the opening in the sky, Heather saw
nothing at all. Then she realized, to her horror, that the nothing
was spreading. Soon, all around her had vanished, and all around
her...was nothing.

Heather felt a strange sensation, as if she
was melting, dissolving away into the air. She looked at her hands,
and they seemed to ripple and twist in front of her eyes.

Heather's vision swam. Her feet melted into
the rooftop. Her skin seeped into her clothes. Her hair whispered
away into the wind. Her mind saw only the nothing all around her,
and she knew she was losing herself.

Soon she would be nothing at all.

______________________

Over the next two weeks, as the
much-anticipated concert approached, Sarah observed a sea change in
Heather and her surroundings. First, the tickets earned a place of
honor, ensconced in the frame of Heather's mirror. A photo of one
of the members of New Reflection soon joined it.
"What's this
one's name?"
Sarah had asked.
"Justin? Jordan?" "MOM, don't
be dumb! That's JENNER!"
Another photo soon joined it, then
another, then another; eventually they ringed her own reflection,
as if giving their approval to whatever Heather saw there.

The first poster graced her wall shortly
thereafter, and after that it was as if the floodgates had opened.
Posters spread in all directions, covering every inch of wall. New
Reflection shirts packed Heather's closet. New Reflection dolls
guarded Heather from her nightstand and vanity while she slept. The
band members' names crawled across every book Heather owned, every
notepad, every sheet of paper, sometimes joined with "+ HEATHER" in
large flowing letters.

Her room wasn't the only thing to change.
Heather wanted to curl her hair like Katie's, spend more time with
Katie, dress like Katie. She talked on the phone all night with
Katie about all the shows she watched, just like Katie. Heather
even began, gradually, to talk like Katie.

Sarah attended her meetings. Every night she
passed the bar on the way home, and tried not to stop and order a
scotch.

______________________

Police now converged from all directions.
Helicopters swarmed the sky above. Sirens filled the air, and a
growing wind howled toward the center of town. Katie kept creating
duplicates of herself, then plunging those duplicates into patrol
cars, S.W.A.T. vans, everything around them. The duplicates
exploded with deadly force every time. Heather had been unable to
convince Katie to stop. Katie crept closer to the center of town,
dragging the carnage, and Heather, along with her.

"Katie, stop!" she called. "I need to find
Simon, he was back the other way!"

Katie didn't even look back. "I can't STOP.
She said she would BE HERE. She said we would get EVERYTHING we
ever WANTED."

Heather looked back, but there were police
vehicles and barricades up back there now, and besides, the buzzing
that gave her a sense of where to find Simon had gone, vanished
when she let go of the dog's ghostly form. She had no idea where
the dog was now, if he had followed her at all she was unable to
locate him.

A piercing wail suddenly filled the air.
Heather clapped her hands over her ears. The wail was accompanied
by a wind that chilled her to the bone despite her metal form.

"That's IT!" Katie said. "That's the SIGNAL,
come ON!"

A look forward gave her an idea of Katie's
destination: one building near the center of town stood a bit
higher than the others. A dark cloud had formed over it, and the
wind seemed to be howling around it, forming a strange, localized
cyclone. The helicopters couldn't get anywhere near it.

Heather's body had turned to metal when the
first bullet struck her, but when she spotted the construction
vehicle, she reached out to touch it. Her body transformed
immediately, her arms lengthening and thickening, growing massive
clawlike scoops. The vehicle had used these to dig and move earth,
but Heather swept them in front of Katie's path, knocking patrol
cars out of the way. If she couldn't stop Katie, she could at least
try to minimize the destruction.