“Stop looking so disgusted and start the damn thing,” Naretha griped, hovering beside the car. “Be gentle but not too gentle—”
“You’re not helping,” Avner sighed as he brought his finger to the metal keyhole. He could feel the battery buried within the same way he sensed electrical sockets and anything that held a charge. Screwing his eyes closed, he tried to gauge how strong the voltage was—how many amps of power he would need to exert to trigger the battery. Naretha released an agitated breath at his side just as the current shot from his fingertips, snaking through to the battery in the briefest instant.
As the engine spurred to life in a fit of coughs and wheezes, Avner scrambled from the car, certain it would explode. Jamad’s hands sprang up, prepared to freeze any unwanted combustion, but then the noise lulled to a purr, like an angry cat awoken from a deep slumber.
“Huh.” Naretha eyed the car rumbling before them, impressed. “I didn’t even think this old thing would work—nor did I think your electricity would start it.”
Avner’s eyes widened. “Were you hoping it would explode and kill me?”
“Hoping isn’t really the right word…”
“He heard it,” Zeela said, staring intently at the store and the man within. “He’s coming.”
“Get in the car now!” the Wacko ordered, sliding over the hood to the passenger’s side.
Avner glided back into the driver’s seat as Zeela and Jamad squeezed into the rear. There weren’t any seats in the back, leaving a muddy floor for the two to plop onto as the car’s doors slammed closed and the store’s door flew open. The man ran at the car as fast as he could with his oversized gut, yelling, cursing, and waving his cell phone, as if any of these actions might purge them from the vehicle.
Naretha grabbed the gear stick and shifted the car into reverse. “Drive!”
“I don’t know how!” Avner admitted, eyes darting between the steering wheel and the rapidly-approaching man. “I never even got my learner’s permit!”
“Hit the gas and turn the wheel!” she shouted, leaning toward the driver’s side as she attempted to aid him while still cuffed. She managed to spin the wheel to the left so, when he finally pressed his foot to the gas pedal, the car swerved in a backward arc, nearly colliding with the screaming employee.
After slamming the brakes, Avner pivoted to see the man raise his fist to punch the back window. Jamad yelped, but before the man could swing, Naretha clumsily shifted the car into drive and cut the wheel to the right. Without hesitation, Avner hit the gas, thrusting them forward.
“Why don’t you know how to drive?” the woman demanded, flopping back in her seat as she glared at him. The old car jolted in confusion when he tried using both feet to operate the pedals, and even with both hands on the wheel, he veered in unpredictable directions on the linear road.
“I was too young to get my permit when they took me to Periculand!” Avner exclaimed, inelegantly twisting the steering wheel. Though the vehicle threatened to deviate from the road and into the grass, the Wacko only rolled her eyes, void of concern and full of annoyance.
“Do any of you know how to drive?”
“I’m blind, so no,” Zeela answered flatly.
“I, um, failed the written test…four times,” Jamad confessed. “I drove a tractor once, though.”
“My God—you country kids,” Naretha groaned, closing her eyes, likely to combat nausea. “Uncuff me, someone.”
“We’re not uncuffing you,” Avner said, his voice rising to a higher pitch at the end when he nearly drove them into a ditch. Luckily, her eyes were still shut, so she didn’t see. “We don’t trust you.”
“What do you expect me to do?” Her eyes flew open, too harsh for such a pale pink. “Take you to the Wackos’ evil lair? Oh, that’s right—we’re already going there. We all have the same objective right now, and I’m the only one who can get us there, considering none of you little twits are competent enough to drive a motor vehicle.”
“I drove a tractor,” Jamad repeated.
The sudden flare of sirens drowned out Naretha’s ensuing grumble. Her head whipped back while Avner peered through the mirror, which reflected an approaching police car. Panicked thoughts flashed through his mind—of them being linked with the Wackos and going to jail—but Naretha’s aggressive punches tore him from his hysteria.
“Drive faster!”
Zeela and Jamad toppled over in the back when he slammed his foot on the gas.
“We’re not going to be able to outrun the cops! I don’t even know how to drive!”
“Uncuff me!”
“No!” Avner barked, but Jamad had already pulled the key from his pocket and shimmied through the gap between the front seats to grab Naretha’s wrists. “J, no—”
“She’s right, Av,” he said apologetically. “She knows how to drive, and she knows how to get to—”
“Two more cop cars coming,” Zeela announced, her sunglasses now abandoned as she focused the full force of her powers on the road behind them.
“Shit, I didn’t even think that little town would have a police force,” the Wacko muttered.
“It doesn’t. Those are state troopers. That guy must have called and reported us,” Zeela assumed grudgingly.
“We’ll lose too much time if we switch spots,” Naretha said to Avner, who barely managed to keep the car on the road as they zoomed at its maximum speed. “Keep driving as fast as you can and follow the road.”
“What do you think I’ve been trying to do?” he complained, but Naretha ignored him as she unbuckled and climbed into the back. “Where are you going?”
Again, she disregarded him, instead directing her attention to his friends. “Hold on to the seat belts—now.”
Though attempting to keep his eyes on the road ahead, Avner did see Zeela and Jamad exchange wary looks as the Wacko crawled toward the rear of the car. Neither hesitated to grab a seat belt, though, when she kicked the trunk door open.
At the speed they cruised, the rusty old door flew off the hinges completely, slamming into the road and partially obstructing the police cars’ path. Avner watched in near paralysis as the cars swerved behind them to avoid the heavy, metal door. They would definitely go to prison now—if not for that stunt then for the fact that Naretha now had one hand secured around an overhanging handle and the other aimed out the gaping hole, as if she intended to assault the officers.
“What the hell are you doing back there?” Avner shouted, glancing anxiously over his shoulder. Wind whipped through the opening, muffling his voice and blowing the dirt from his hair.
“Destroying our enemy!”
He fought to keep the vehicle driving smoothly, despite her jarring words. Two of the three cars had made it past the wreckage and were catching up fast. “You can’t kill cops!”
“I’ll tell them you advised against it if we find ourselves in prison,” she assured him before conjuring a stream of thick salt crystals that spurted from her free hand and blasted the closest police car. Naretha wasn’t near enough to inflict any damage beyond scratching the glass and denting the metal, but a few of the crystals popped holes in the tires, and they gradually deflated, rolling the vehicle to a bumpy stop.
“Are they dead?” Avner blurted out in dismay.
“Yeah, that slow deceleration killed them.” Naretha let out a sarcastic laugh and tightened her grip on the overhead handle. “If you slow down, I’ll kill the ones in the next car.”
He clenched his jaw and kept his foot steady on the gas.
“Beverly’s up ahead,” Zeela said as she peered out the front windshield over Avner’s shoulder.
“Dammit, I wanted to avoid Beverly.” The Wacko squinted at the houses and buildings on either side of the road ahead. At that moment, the first car they’d seen thus far whizzed by in the opposite direction, and Avner swore as he turned the wheel too hard, almost spinning them off the road. As he resumed a straighter path, he distinctly heard Jamad retching fro
m behind.
Zeela was unperturbed by the movement, her gaze steady on her hometown. “The only way to avoid Beverly is to go into a small development, where we’ll get caught by the cops, or to run ourselves into the Muskingum River and hope this thing floats. Neither seems promising.”
“We can’t ride this piece of junk all the way to Cleveland,” Naretha said, as if thinking aloud. “The cops have probably seen the license plate by now. We’ll be lucky if we make it past Beverly before we’re caught by another police force…”
Jamad’s head rose high enough that Avner could see him through the mirror, his dark skin abnormally pale and features screwed in nausea. “We’re going to Cleveland?”
Naretha groaned as she ran her free hand through her short, greasy hair. “We need to ditch this car and find a new one.”
“How do you propose we do that when we’ve got cops chasing us?” Avner questioned, referring to the one persistent police car still on their tail.
The woman looked to Jamad, whose brow furrowed at her smirk. “You might be better with long range than me.”
Avner watched his friend swallow and consider; he then watched him sit up with a new wave of confidence and aim his arctic blue eyes at the approaching vehicle. Just as Naretha had done with her salt crystals, Jamad produced a gust of frozen mist, which shot from his fingertips and solidified as it struck metal. The wheels stopped turning and the police vehicle came to a sudden halt as it consolidated into a block of ice.
“J!” Avner scolded in astonishment as the frozen car faded into the distance.
“That’ll buy us some time,” Naretha reckoned, seemingly unimpressed by the teenager’s display of power. “Now to get rid of this car and any evidence that we were in it.”
“I have an ice Affinity, not a fire Affinity,” Jamad stated blandly, though his eyes were still bright and sparkling like fresh snow.
“Maybe we should have brought your sister along, Av,” Zeela joked, but he was past the point of humor—and past the point of caring to rebuke her assumptions that Adara had a fire Affinity. His mind ran frantically around the direness of their situation—the possibility that his girlfriend might be injured or imprisoned or killed.
“You want to burn this car and then what? Run to Cleveland?” he demanded, glaring at Naretha through the mirror. Her focus was trained on the river ahead, popping into view beyond the buildings and trees.
“No, we drown this car, run into town, and hide,” she answered simply. “They don’t know what we look like, and they’ll be too preoccupied with recovering this car as evidence to search for us right away.”
“Run this car into the river?” The rate of Avner’s already racing heart escalated. He’d never properly learned how to swim; the few pool parties he’d attended had abruptly ended after he dipped his feet in the water and his friends complained of a mysterious shocking sensation. Submerging in a river didn’t appeal to him, especially not while they were trapped inside a car. “How?”
“Unbuckle,” Naretha ordered. “Kick off your door—”
“I’m driving!”
The Wacko’s patience hit its peak, and instead of arguing, she pushed Jamad aside and slipped her arm through the space between Avner’s seat and the door. Before he could comprehend what was happening, she yanked on the old door handle, but the pressure from the rushing air was too strong to allow the door to open.
“Shit, we’re going too fast,” she muttered so quietly that Avner could barely hear. “You’re gonna have to jump out the back, like the rest of us.”
“I can’t keep my foot on the gas pedal if I’m climbing into the back!”
“I know, I know. I’m thinking we’ll probably leave you to drown.”
“You’re kidding,” Zeela snarled, her white eyes like slivered almonds.
“Someone has to be the sacrifice.”
“Then it’ll be you.”
“I am the only one who knows how to get to Headquarters—”
“Screw this,” Jamad interrupted as he shoved Naretha in the same way she’d shoved him. Without explanation, he leaned over Avner’s shoulder and projected a spurt of frozen mist from his hand, encasing his friend’s foot and freezing it to the pedal as a chunk of ice.
“Dude!” Avner exclaimed, accidentally jerking the wheel. “What the—”
“I only froze your shoe, man,” Jamad assured him with a clap on the shoulder. “Take your foot out; the ice should be heavy enough to hold down the pedal.”
“You can’t seriously agree with the Wacko. We can’t drive this thing into the river!”
“It’s the only option,” Zeela admitted remorsefully, gazing ahead at the bridge looming above the river. Civilization congested the landscape now with residential and commercial buildings crowding either side of the road. Cars slowed as they neared the bridge, but since Avner’s shoe was iced to the pedal, there was no stopping the station wagon as it zoomed at an unsafe speed down the street.
“Once we cross these train tracks, you’ll need to veer off to the left through that parking lot,” Naretha said, pointing toward the upcoming auto parts store. “Then drive through that other parking lot across the street, and from there it’ll be a straight shot to the river, as long as we don’t hit any trees…”
“This plan is becoming progressively more horrible,” Avner said as he pulled his foot free from his shoe. As Jamad promised, the pedal remained flat to the floor, keeping the car moving at its full potential. “And I liked these shoes, J. You owe me.”
“If we make it out of here alive, I’ll buy you a new—”
“Now!” Naretha exclaimed as the car practically jumped over the train tracks. Ramming Avner’s arm, she swerved their vehicle into the parking lot across the street, nearly taking out another car driving in the opposite direction. Zeela clung to the passenger’s seat while Jamad gagged again, but the Wacko was unaffected by the recklessness.
As they plowed through this parking lot and the next across the street, fumbling over curbs and dodging parked cars, Naretha finally aimed the vehicle at a wide gap in the line of trees that separated the second parking lot from the river.
“Move to the back!”
Avner started to scramble from his seat, but the car struck a slight bump in the terrain that acted like a ramp, propelling the station wagon into the air and slamming all four passengers into the ceiling.
Screams, grunts, thuds, and moans filled the air as the car plunged on, ignorant to the people struggling to right themselves within. The earth was rougher than the pavement, jerking them around as Avner, dazed and bleeding, crawled toward the back to join the others. A screech surprised him as the left side of the car grazed the trunk of a tree, the metal tearing across the bark, and he found himself wedged between the two front seats when the station wagon descended into the water.
The actions that ensued were too rapid for Avner to process. Naretha was already rolling out the back as the car slammed into the water while Zeela and Jamad yanked frantically on Avner’s arms. At the abrupt deceleration of the vehicle, his girlfriend’s head banged against the ceiling, and her eyes rolled back, either in severe disorientation or complete unconsciousness. As her body slumped against the door, Jamad finally hauled Avner into the back, but it was too late; the car had fully submerged beneath the surface, and water surged in through the massive gap, drenching the three of them as the dying vehicle sunk deep into the murky gray river.
Avner scrambled to grab any part of his girlfriend, but the violent influx thwarted him. Within seconds, she became lost in the flood, and as everything blurred beneath the dark veil of water, he did, too. All he knew was that even if he possessed the ability to swim to the surface, he wouldn’t let himself without Zeela.
4
Visitors
“I never thought I’d say this, guys, but…I’m not hungry.” Seth sighed, dejectedly staring at his full plate of food. The entire school was packed in the cafeteria, which, despite its colorful tables an
d chairs, embodied gloom. Typically, the noise and chatter of students was overwhelming; tonight, however, tones remained hushed.
Thoughts still assaulted Eliana, though. Hastings wove through everyone’s minds, and the constant reminder of his absence provoked queasiness rather than hunger. Like Seth, she’d barely touched the meatloaf on her plate, and even Kiki on her left had eaten more.
“Try to look at the bright side,” Tray advised as he shoveled meat into his mouth. “Everything might be awful, but at least Adara isn’t here.”
“Adara not being here is the reason I’m not hungry. She should be right here.” Seth motioned to the seat between him and Eliana, in which Kiki currently sat. After a blink of her multi-colored eyes, she shot him an affronted glare that didn’t penetrate his awareness.
“If she were here, she’d probably be sitting next to Ackerly,” Lavisa commented as she nodded to the empty chair on his left. The green-haired boy munched on broccoli like a rabbit, but he paused when she spoke his name.
“Adara’s probably…fine,” he said weakly. “We’ll go visit her after dinner.”
“I wouldn’t worry about Adara,” Kiki drawled, leaning back and twirling her curly blonde hair around her finger. “I saw her future; she won’t be in prison forever.”
“What did you see?” Seth questioned.
Kiki’s gaze dodged his as she uncomfortably said, “I…saw her surrounded by fire. Maybe she’ll burn her way out of jail.”
“I have no doubt about that,” Tray grumbled through aggressive bites. “She’ll definitely make a dramatic exit.”
“Can we talk about the fact that Kiki can see the future, or are we gonna avoid the subject forever?” Hartman prompted, orange eyes darting around the table. Everyone waited awkwardly for Kiki to respond, and Eliana could feel irritation building defensive walls around the blonde girl’s mind.
“No, we’re not going to talk about it,” she finally snapped, standing to tower over the table in her black heels. “I’m beginning to remember why I stopped hanging out with you losers.”
Nerve Page 5
