“Dang, I had no idea you were even adopted. Never thought to ask,” Avner mused as he drummed his fingers on the scratched wood. “Guess I shouldn’t be surprised by the interracial family, though. My foster family was black.”
“Really?” Jamad sat forward in his chair. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” Avner challenged with a knowing smirk.
Resuming his slouch, Jamad waved in surrender. “Touché, my friend. I guess it never mattered to me what color skin they had or where they were from. Elias took me in when no one else wanted me, and when Colette showed up, she immediately treated me like her own. They love me, so they’re my parents.”
“Same. I’ve missed my foster family these past few years… Adara always hated them, but I think that was only because they made her eat healthy and do her homework. Plus, she hates everyone.”
“Your sister’s the little brat with the red hair, right?” Naretha clarified.
Avner shrugged one shoulder and winced. “One could describe her as such.”
“How else would you describe her?” Zeela questioned, cocking her head to the side.
“I mean…her hair’s not really red,” Avner said uncomfortably, earning a chuckle from Jamad, “although it probably will be once she harnesses her Affinity.”
“Her fire Affinity,” Zeela coughed, and Avner shot her a playful glare. He still wasn’t convinced his sister’s Affinity was fire, but if it was, it would certainly be more intense and deadly in her hands than anyone else’s.
“If we ever make it back to Periculand, I’ll train with her,” Jamad assured him. “I have a feeling I could quench a fire pretty easily.”
“You cocky teenagers will be the death of us all,” Naretha sighed as she picked dirt from her fingernails. “You still have a long way to go with your Affinities.”
“And you’re an expert?” Jamad countered sassily.
“No, but… All I’m saying is each of you could improve if you chose to work with us.”
Even with her eye patches, Zeela’s disgust was evident in the dropping of her jaw. “Are you suggesting we join a terrorist group?”
“It’s not—” Naretha began but stopped when the Solbergs emerged from the kitchen with plates of steaming pasta in their hands. After placing one in front of each Affinity, they assumed their respective seats with beaming smiles.
“Eat, eat, please!” Elias insisted, but not before Jamad shoved his first forkful into his mouth.
“Still the only dish you can make right, huh, Dad?”
“His cooking is improving.” Colette gave her husband an encouraging pat on the shoulder. “But not much.”
Elias’s laugh came straight from his belly. “It’s not so bad,” he said, mostly to Naretha, as she was the only one who hadn’t picked up her fork. After the scrutiny from the man, she reluctantly took a bite.
“We did not think we would see you again, Jamad,” Colette said as she fiddled with the hem of her sleeves. “Why did they allow you to leave?”
The blue-haired boy choked on his pasta, but Avner quickly flashed a charming smile. “Can you tell us the story of how you two met? I’m intrigued—was it in Europe?”
Colette’s mouth drooped, taken aback, but Elias eagerly clapped his hands before diving into the tale. “You must know that Jamad and I enjoy mountain climbing, correct?”
Zeela nodded while Avner gaped. “I, um—no, I didn’t know,” he admitted with a confused look in his friend’s direction. Jamad refused to tear his focus away from the pasta.
“I have always loved adventure,” Elias explained with a genuine smile at his son. “Jamad and I traveled the world when he was young. We were visiting the Great Wall in China, and she was visiting the Great Wall in China…” He gestured animatedly toward his wife. “Jamad and I ventured off the Wall and climbed one side of Mount Tai, and when we looked across the mountain range to the other side of the Great Wall, we saw her standing at the peak, so beautiful…”
“Oh, that’s a bunch of bull, Dad.” Jamad laughed before swallowing his food. “We were at the Great Wall, but we first saw Mom when Dad was trying to get a picture of the mountain and then backed into her and nearly broke her foot.”
“Romantic,” Naretha commented as she munched loudly on her pasta. Avner couldn’t decide if her tone was sarcastic.
Elias smirked, his blue eyes sliding to his wife. “She was very gracious—did not yell at me.”
“I wanted to,” Colette teased, lightly punching his arm. “He was very kind, though. He gave me his phone number, and we planned to meet again. After the accident, I rushed to see them—”
“What accident?” Avner inquired as Zeela’s fork scraped the bottom of her plate. Even blind, she’d eaten all of her pasta, and now, without anything to do, her demeanor shifted into intense awkwardness.
“She means incident, I think,” Elias said, brushing a blond curl from his forehead. “It was not an accident, but it was unfortunate—”
“What was?”
“Gunnbjørn Fjeld. Jamad has surely told you the story of our time there.” As he inclined his head toward his son, the boy sunk low in his seat and trained his vision on the food before him. “Have not you told Avner of the day you saved us from the ice?”
Avner’s eyebrows creased as he pivoted toward his guilty friend. “I thought Jamad acquired his Affinity when he slipped on ice?”
“You told him that?” Zeela blurted out. “That’s an awful lie. I’m surprised he bought it.”
“You know about this…this field—”
“It’s a mountain.” Jamad released a breath and dropped his fork carelessly onto the table. “Greenland’s highest mountain. Very remote, very hard to climb, very cold. Dad and I were traveling the world the summer before fifth grade. We’d climbed plenty of mountains—plenty of icy mountains, too—but a storm hit when we were on Gunnbjørn. We would have died if my body hadn’t adapted—if my Affinity hadn’t given me the ability to fend off the ice and snow.”
“Well, that’s one of the more intense Affinity stories I’ve heard,” Naretha put in as she twirled her fork in the spaghetti. “And I’ve heard quite a few intense stories. What made you think slipping on ice would sound cooler than that?”
“It’s not really a day I like to recall,” Jamad snapped, his usual coolness cracking. “And…I don’t like when people look at me with pity. I’d rather have them laugh about how I’m an idiot than act like I have some tortured past.”
“Most Affinities do,” Naretha reminded him before slurping the noodles. Avner continued studying his friend with a sense of distance he’d never experienced between them.
“You all have powers, yes?” Colette prompted, quenching his dismal thoughts. “We know Zeela is not really blind.”
“I am now”—she tapped her eye patches—“but usually I’m not. I’ve been told my hair is a different color than it was when I left Beverly.”
“Yes, it is white now. It was gray when you left, and Jamad’s hair was much darker blue. How strange…” Colette’s words trailed off as she looked from Jamad to Zeela to Avner. “And you? What is your superpower?”
“Electricity,” Avner replied absently. “Not sure how I got it. Probably stuck my finger in an outlet when I was young or something.”
“And you?” Colette asked Naretha.
The Wacko flicked a finger over her plate and watched as tiny salt crystals showered over the pasta. “Salt.”
Elias’s head bobbed back. “Salt? I did not know that was a superpower.”
“It is, and I could probably kill you with—”
“Sorry,” Jamad apologized before the woman could finish her threat. “She’s a little, well… Uh, thanks for dinner. Real good, Dad—”
“Will you sleep here?” Colette interrupted anxiously. “We were not expecting you. I am scared we are not prepared.”
“Don’t fuss, Mom. We can all sleep in my room for the night. We don�
��t plan to stay long.”
“I wasn’t under the impression that we were staying at all…”
Jamad either didn’t hear Naretha or ignored her, too intent on observing the silent conversation between his parents.
“You will not be able to sleep in your old room, Jamad,” Elias admitted, “but we can arrange something in the living room.”
“I…won’t be upset if you got rid of all my stuff,” Jamad said, but Avner detected the lie. “I expected you to, honestly. You had no idea when I’d come back—or if I’d come back.”
“We kept your stuff.” Colette tucked an already-tucked lock of brown hair behind her ear. “It’s in the garage, in boxes. You cannot sleep in your room because…it is not your room any longer.”
“Did you turn it into an office, or…”
With a deep breath, his mother stood and motioned toward the door to her right. “You will have to see it to believe it.”
Tense and confused, Jamad rose from his seat and walked around the table. Naretha was intrigued enough to follow, so Avner stood as well, trailing her until Colette opened the door to the dark room.
When his eyes adjusted to the lack of light, he saw the walls were the same shade of pastel pink as Naretha’s hair, adorned with flower designs and cheesy quotes about babies. The reason for all this lay sleeping in a small bed across the room: a toddler with dirty blonde hair and a face that resembled both of Jamad’s parents but nothing of Jamad. It was the Solbergs’ baby—their biological baby.
“She is your sister, J,” Colette cooed, stroking a hand along her adoptive son’s arm. “She is named Jade, to remind us of you. She’s almost three years old now, born not long after you left.”
“Didn’t wait long to replace me, huh.” His hollow words were not a question, but they baffled Colette like a complex algorithm.
“R-replace?”
“I was kidnapped by the government, so you had to have another kid to replace me—I get it. You thought that, if you gave her a similar name and put her in the same room, she could replace me. Well, you were wrong, because she’s better than I ever was. She’s really yours. She’s not some baby you found in an alley or were forced to adopt because you were in love with his father.”
“Jamad!” Colette gasped in outrage, but he shook his head, backing out of his old bedroom as if it harbored a disease.
Avner and Naretha parted for him, eyeing each other with the same uncertainty. Jamad didn’t seem to notice them, though; he met no one’s eyes as he stalked through the dining room and said, “I need some cold air,” before exiting the house entirely.
Frantically, Colette grabbed a coat before following him into the night, leaving the three Affinities alone with the Regg man at the table. Avner’s plate was still half full, but when he and Naretha sat back down, he had no motivation to finish.
“Should we…”
“Nei, nei,” Elias dismissed as he eyed the front door with disinterest. “This is common. Jamad is the queen of drama.”
“King, you mean,” Naretha corrected, but the man shook his head.
“No, I mean queen. I know English well. I often exaggerate my accent, so Colette doesn’t feel as insecure about hers. Jamad is a drama queen.”
“I’ve never considered Jamad dramatic,” Avner said. “He’s always been very…collected at school.”
“J’s been trying to impress you since we met you in Fraco’s van three years ago,” Zeela droned. “I didn’t tell you that, though. He’s sensitive about his sensitive side, ironically.”
“You didn’t…really have another kid to replace Jamad, did you?” Avner asked Elias warily.
“No. Colette was pregnant with Jade two months before Jamad was taken. We planned to tell him, but then he left… We had been trying for years. We always thought Jamad would enjoy a sibling.” With a shake of his head, his longing expression faded into one of seriousness. “Now, you all didn’t really come here for a social visit, did you?”
Zeela pressed her lips together as Avner scratched his greasy head, leaving Naretha to answer with a rather blunt, “How do you say, ‘I’m a Wacko and these three broke me out of prison, so we could travel to Wacko Headquarters together,’ in Norwegian?”
Elias blinked, and then he blinked again. When he sat up in his chair, his back straight and blue eyes wide, he stuttered, “Th-the terrorists? You are part of the terrorists?”
Zeela kicked Naretha under the table. “What happened to stealth?”
“After assessing this situation, I’ve decided a scare tactic will work better.”
“She’s…well, she’s telling the truth,” Avner admitted, at which Zeela dropped her jaw. “She is a Wacko—a terrorist—but we aren’t with her. Well, technically, we are…”
“Children,” Naretha groaned, throwing her head back before turning to a gaping Elias. “I’m a ‘terrorist,’ but they’re not. The only reason I’m with them is because they need me in order to save their friend, who was captured by the other Wackos. They’re all noble and good or whatever. Your son is a perfect angel.”
“I-I don’t know what to think,” Elias stammered as he staggered out of his seat. “This is a lot…”
“You’d better not go shout this information to the world,” Naretha warned. “My threat to kill you with my pathetic salt superpower still stands.”
“I have no plans to tell anyone of this. It would only be detrimental to my son. I don’t approve of his choice to work with a terrorist, but…you say this is to help his friend?”
“She’s practically his girlfriend,” Zeela affirmed, causing Naretha’s smug expression to fade. “She’s been our best friend since our first year at Periculand, and the leader of our town refused to save her from the Wackos, so we decided we would. You can see how that’s something Jamad would want to do.”
“Yes,” his father agreed, stroking his chin. “I imagine he would do the same for you, me, or anyone he cared for. He has always been reckless.”
“And dramatic, apparently,” Avner muttered.
“We need a way to get to the Wackos’ hideout, so we can save our friend,” Zeela told Elias. “I know it sounds insane, but…will you help us?”
6
Alien
“Okay, so, zombies, aliens, or Wackos?” Seth asked without preamble as he led his friends up the Residence Tower’s spiral staircase. From the end of the line a whole floor beneath, Eliana could barely see him climbing the steps backward, and the clamor from below overpowered his question.
As usual, enthusiastic chatter filled the lounge, but instead of discussing the recent presidential election, the Regg ambassadors were the topic of interest. Most thoughts about the shift in power leaned toward apprehension, but some students, like Nero, anticipated that this new dynamic might benefit them. Right now, Nero’s ascension seemed the only way Eliana’s life could worsen.
“Aliens!” Hartman’s voice startled her back to the primaries’ conversation. One second, he bounced on the stair before her, and the next, he’d teleported to the step below Seth, bringing the other Stark twin to a stop. “Aliens are awesome.”
Tray’s scowl was as black as his funeral attire—and his mood. “Aliens aren’t real. Even if they were, they hold no relevance at a time like this.”
As the line started moving again, Ackerly said, “Are you, um, asking which group we would want to invade Periculand?”
“No, of course not,” Seth scoffed. “We’re playing Kiss, Marry, or Kill.”
“Right, because that’s the most important matter in our lives,” Tray grumbled as he passed the second floor.
Hartman scratched his chin in contemplation. “You have to admit it’s a hard decision. Aliens are obviously top of the list, but zombies and Wackos are equally as bad.”
Ahead of Eliana, Lavisa snorted. “If zombies existed, they would clearly be worse than a group of terrorists.”
“A group of terrorists with superpowers, though? They’re just as deadly as zombi
es.”
“You’re telling me you’d want to kiss a dead and decaying human that wants to eat your brain?”
Ackerly’s green eyebrows furrowed as he attempted to work out the logic of this conversation. “Wait…how can you kill zombies if they’re already dead?”
“This is all just theoretical—”
“How can one kiss or marry a collective group of beings at once?” Tray demanded over his brother’s explanation.
Seth sighed as they reached the third floor. “Fine, there’s only one zombie, one alien, and one Wacko.”
“Male or female?” Hartman questioned. “And what do they look like? The alien’s hot, right? She’s not a creature alien, is she? She’s, like, a humanoid being with blue hair and a nice bod, right?”
“You mean, like her?” Lavisa inclined her head toward Eliana as she joined the rest of the group on the third floor.
“Maybe she is an alien,” Hartman suggested, wiggling his eyebrows at her. Eliana couldn’t manage a reaction to his joke. How could they all remain so blithe when Hastings was dead? It had only been a day and they were already acting like he’d never existed. Perhaps to them, he hadn’t, but for her, he had been a part of her life every day over the past two months. What was Periculand without him?
“My door is back,” she observed absently, surprising the others with her random comment. She avoided their concerned gazes by focusing on that new metal door with the number 305 printed in black.
“Great, just as soon as Stromer isn’t here to annoy us all.” Though Eliana had concluded that Tray was nearly heartless, she was grateful he didn’t pity her like everyone else.
“I’m gonna miss having conversations with Adara from across the hall.” Seth glanced between his door and the one that was now only Eliana’s. After a moment of recollection, he shrugged off the memories and asked, “Is anyone gonna answer my Kiss, Marry, or Kill question?”
“It’s not relevant,” Tray snapped before Hartman could open his mouth. “What we should discuss is the fact that two of the government’s pawns have overthrown our town and aren’t going to let us see Adara.”
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