by Emily Henry
“Molly,” he mumbled.
Molly? I didn’t know any Molly.
I shook my head. “Franny.”
Levi pushed past me and took the first step toward the front door.
“Levi!” I hissed, grabbing his elbow.
“Molly,” he said roughly, and took the next step in a slow, belabored way, like he was moving through maple syrup.
“Save ’em . . .” he grumbled. “Nottalottatime.”
My skin went cold. The hair follicles prickled on my thighs and arms.
“You’re dreaming,” I said. “It’s a dream, Levi . . .”
“Mol-ly,” Levi mumbled. “It’s Mol-ly. Save ’em. I told youhaveto save ’em.”
Goose bumps crept over the backs of my arms. “Levi, come on!” I tugged on his elbow. He shoved me backward so hard I sprawled out at the base of the steps, a metallic taste flooding my mouth. A yelp tore out of me, loud enough that some of the birds startled.
My pulse sped, my chest tightened, and a cold sweat sprung up on my neck. A hum picked up under my skin, and the lights in the windows began to flicker. A radio burst to life inside the house, the classical music blaring out through the woods, like a call to arms. The rest of the birds exploded like a mushroom cloud from the roof, squawking angrily.
Shit. Now we really had to go.
I grabbed the first stick I could find on the ground and hurled it at Levi’s back. “Wake up!”
He whirled around to face me, mouth open and eyes wide and blinking.
“Franny?”
“Thank God!” I gasped. “You’re awake.”
The flashing stopped, the music stopped, and in the newfound silence, another sound had picked up behind the house.
Footsteps trudging through fallen leaves, breaking up the silence like a sledgehammer against concrete. The quick gait of someone climbing up from the bottom of the valley that curved around the back of the house, coming to see what the commotion was.
Wayne Hastings was going to find us here, at his front door.
Worse, he was going to think we’d been in his house, flashing his lights, messing with his stereo.
“We have to hide,” I said, barely louder than a breath. I clambered to my feet and snatched Levi’s hand, nearly pulling him off balance as I darted for the cover of the bush snarled in wild grape and Virginia creeper. We dropped into a crouch behind it, and the bear trap of anxiety around my heart loosened: Wayne Hastings was cresting the ridge, ambling toward his house, but we were out of sight. We were safe. Probably.
And then I saw them, running through the dark, right into the clearing where Wayne was headed.
“What’s going on?” Levi whispered.
I officially had no idea.
Arthur, Nick, and Sofía were sprinting through the woods, still dressed in pajamas, just as a massive silhouette was moving toward the clearing from the other side, a gun propped against his shoulder.
They stopped short in the shadows when they spotted him, tried to hide behind a thicket of honeysuckle, but it was too late.
Wayne Hastings’s rattling voice lashed through the night like a whip.
“What are you doing on my property?”
I’d never heard his voice before. A knot twisted through my throat at the sound of it, and a buzz rose in my skull, as if trying to block it out.
“Whoever’s there,” he growled, “you’re trespassing.” He took a step toward them, and the buzz spread through my bloodstream like a million angry wasps. “And I have the right to protect my property.”
He dropped his rifle into position, the buzz swelling until I was no longer sure it was inside me, that the electric hum was just within my skull.
The gun faltered, jerked toward the house as the music exploded out of it again, the yellow-gold wash of the windows flaring, intensifying to blinding white so fast the world seemed to disappear before my eyes.
So fast it was like a star had crashed in front of us, cracked like an egg, its runny light gushing out over everything.
The trees, the man, the gun, the house, the others’ faces—everything washed out for a millisecond, all sound lost beneath the orchestral blare.
And then the bulbs on the porch sparked, popped, shattered. Every light in the house flashed in a brief and brilliant explosion, and silence and darkness surged up like jaws to swallow us.
“We have to go!” I grabbed for Levi’s hand and took off in a random direction, pulling him along with me through the disorienting dark.
I heard the others more than saw them, barreling through the woods in the same dizzy fervor as Levi and I. My vision adjusted in time to spot the creek ahead, and I snapped out a warning to them as Levi and I leapt across.
Legs pumping, throat burning, I sprinted up the far side.
The man was yelling after us, but his words unraveled beneath the thunkthunkthunk of my heart. I released my grip on Levi as he overtook me. Sofía ran past next, followed by Nick. Arthur came even with me next and slapped a hand on my back as he passed, spurring me on.
There was no time—or oxygen—to ask what they’d been doing in the woods; we just ran.
At the top of the hill, we burst from the woods onto the moon-blanched gravel that lined the train tracks.
Loose rock slid out from under our feet as we threw ourselves up the bank. I lost my footing and fell onto all fours, pitching myself back up on the rails themselves. At the bottom of the bank on the far side of the tracks, Sofía and Levi were disappearing into the trees, but Art, Nick, and I wouldn’t have time to get down there before the man and his gun caught up.
His shouts were still ricocheting off the trees behind us.
I glanced up the tracks, searching for a better escape route, but the rails stretched out unobstructed for at least two miles. I spun the other way, deeper into Wayne’s property.
A couple of yards ahead, the tracks divided, each disappearing into a stone tunnel eaten up by moss and ivy.
“Come on,” I whispered, running for the mouth of the nearest one. It was overgrown, foliage hanging low across the entrance so we had to duck to keep from tangling in it as we slipped inside.
The stone walls shut out the moonlight and the shouts, even some of the heat, and when I turned away from the entrance, I could barely see anything.
Nick and Arthur followed, Arthur’s Vans shuffling over the worn-soft wood of the tracks and Nick’s high-tops faintly scraping along behind them. The overgrowth of grass sprouting up through the tunnel deadened the sounds of our movements, but behind us, the crackle of new steps on loose rock sent a shock of adrenaline through me.
I flattened myself to the tunnel wall, holding my breath. Nick and Arthur pressed in close too, like knotting ourselves together would be some kind of defense against a shotgun pellet.
Out in the shadowy blue beyond the tunnel’s mouth, the behemoth silhouette stepped onto the tracks and made a slow, counterclockwise turn, scanning for any sign of us.
I willed my heart to stop beating before its deafening pumping could give us away.
Go back, I willed him. You’re not going to shoot us for walking on your grass.
“Real tired of this,” the man let out. He had the voice of a smoker verging on sword-swallower, a scraped-raw tone.
My stomach flipped. My blood felt like it was bubbling, boiling, and my limbs were taut and trembly.
The man stepped closer and my pulse spiked.
He stopped suddenly and looked down at the tracks under his feet.
Beside me, Arthur gasped; Nick approximated a swear.
It wasn’t just me shaking. Tremors were racing through the tracks, shivering under our feet.
Outside, the man staggered back, studying the rattling rails.
My spine tingled as the trembling grew and grew, as if any second the world was g
oing to break apart under us.
I lurched against the wall at the sudden shriek of metal. Out on the tracks, the man jumped back from the rails and gaped at them.
The shriek and snap sounded again, and this time, I caught a moonlit glimpse of the switch where the tracks merged.
Two more metallic shrieks came in quick succession as the switch flipped back and forth.
Train warning bells began to blare. Arthur’s arms flung out, pressing Nick and me flat to the wall, but he jerked back, releasing me, as a visible spark of light leapt from my skin to his.
He might’ve said something; I couldn’t hear.
The spastic screech of the rusty train switch screamed on one side of us, and the crossing bells raged from the other.
Outside, the man turned an anxious circle, then hurried off, running for the cover of the woods with his head ducked.
As soon as the man was out of sight, Nick bolted from the tunnel, but I didn’t move.
There was no train coming.
This time, I knew. This time, I felt it: I was doing this.
Me or the thing inside of me.
Art hadn’t moved either.
He stared at me through the dark. “Back at the house,” he whispered. “Those lights . . .”
I was watching the understanding dawn across his face.
“Arthur . . .” I began, gut twisting.
What could I say?
It’s going to be okay?
I’m going to figure it out?
I’m exchanging e-mails with an Internet stranger who says he can help me?
So whatever you do, just don’t waste your energy worrying about me?
“I knew it,” Arthur whispered.
“You . . . you knew?”
All at once, the life went out of the rails. The buzzing under my skin ceased, like a switch had been flipped. He already knew, and now I didn’t have to say it aloud. Didn’t have to acknowledge that something was inside of me, filling me with unstable energy and thoughts that weren’t mine and—
“I knew our alien must’ve given us something!” Arthur cried. “I knew something must have happened to us that night. I wonder—I wonder what else we can do.” A slow, glow-in-the-dark smile spread across his mouth. “Franny—Franny, this is amazing! How did we do it? We have to try it again.”
Everything inside me collapsed, condensed into something tiny and impossibly heavy.
He didn’t understand.
He thought this was the superhero origin story he’d been waiting for. He thought everything was going to be okay, better than okay.
I was a black hole, the force ripping all of them into a place where light and sound couldn’t reach them.
My throat ached. “Arthur, there’s something I have to tell you.”
Sofía stepped into the mouth of the tunnel, Levi and Nick close behind her. “It wasn’t us who did that,” she said, quickly, like she was ripping a Band-Aid off on my behalf. “It was Franny. Only Franny.”
FIFTEEN
THEY STARED.
Scared? Mistrustful? Angry?
Nick stepped back, looking queasy. Levi peered at me sidelong, like he was searching for hidden tentacles, and Arthur’s brow hunkered low, his mouth wrinkling.
I was the problem he was trying to solve.
“How do you know?” he asked Sofía, like I wasn’t even there.
She sighed. “Because I saw her do it. Every time she uses . . . the energy, I see it happen. In my head.”
My gaze snapped toward her. “You see what, exactly?”
Sofía folded her arms, and her eyes glinted like emeralds. “Whatever you see. Actually, sometimes even when you’re not using the power, I see what you’re seeing. I can’t control it much yet. Just . . . one minute, I’m asleep, or at home or practice, and the next—I’m not. I’m watching whatever you’re seeing play out around me. I saw you pick up that bullet right after the accident, and I saw you talking to Remy the other night at the tracks, and I saw you in the Jenkins House earlier, and then the cave.”
How was that possible?
My mind felt like a dandelion blown apart, every thought traveling out in a different direction. I latched on to one: She saw me talking to Remy?
She knew, not just that I’d been shocking myself on doors and sending power surges through the wiring in abandoned houses, but possibly—probably—what Remy had told me, and what Black Mailbox Bill had said.
“And you saw me in the woods tonight?” I asked, voice tight.
She looked quickly away from me and nodded at Levi. “I saw what you saw, actually,” she told him. “It’s sort of . . . been happening with all of you, and Remy. It’s like—I’m tapping into your channels, watching your lives like they’re TV shows. I guess that’s what that thing did to me.”
“But . . . but you said you heard her leave . . .” Nick said, disbelieving. “You said it woke you up, and then you saw Levi sleepwalking from the window . . .”
Sofía sighed. “I lied.”
“Why didn’t you say something sooner?” I demanded.
She studied me with pursed lips, silently communicating something along the lines of I could ask you the same thing.
“I wasn’t sure,” she said. “I thought I was imagining it. Like vivid daydreams. And I figured if you were experiencing something like that, you would tell us. You would tell me.”
Guilt sank like an anchor in my stomach. It was our non-fight from last year all over again. Sofía inviting me in; me having to shut her out; her unable to understand, with her beautiful house and her beautiful family and their beautiful closets full of shoes.
“Then I saw you going into the cave earlier,” she went on. “You know, in my head, and when I found you there, it seemed like proof. But you still didn’t say anything.”
I had no idea what to say. I could’ve dealt with her anger, but she just looked hurt. The whole point of keeping things from people was to avoid that look. My body felt too small, shrinking in tight around my heart.
Sofía turned to focus on Arthur. “And then tonight, I knew Levi was outside that creepy little house, even though I’d never seen it before.”
For three complete seconds no one spoke. I looked to Sofía, expecting to find her staring daggers at me. But she wouldn’t look at me.
I wanted to tell her this time was different. The last time I’d pulled back on our friendship was to protect myself, but this was to protect them.
But from what? If the alien was in me, then how had Sofía gotten powers too?
“So . . .” Levi began. “Fran is electrokinetic . . . and Sofía can hack our eyes . . .”
Sofía shrugged. “A bit reductive, but essentially.”
“Awesome,” Arthur murmured, eyes saucer wide.
“Is it, though?” Nick deadpanned.
“Of course it is,” Arthur said. “We have to figure out what the rest of us can do!”
“I already know what my ability is.” Nick’s eyes fixed in the distance as he scratched his head. We all stared at him until he blinked clear of his daze. “The piano!” he said.
“The piano hallway?” Sofía said flatly.
“Yeah . . . like . . . what?” Levi said. “Your superpower is being able to dream about pianos?” He added quickly, “No offense, dude. You’re great at other stuff.”
“No, smartass.” Nick smacked the back of Levi’s head. “The piano’s just some kind of cover. Probably Arthur’s little gray hid something in it, or some shit, and now he wants me to retrieve it. Probably he left a little code in my brain or something!”
“Can we not say he when we’re talking about this alleged alien?” Sofía requested.
“Yeah, because saying alleged alien three times in a sentence won’t get old,” Nick fired back.
“We don’t kno
w if there is an alien,” Sofía said, “let alone its gender, or whether it even has one.”
“Great point, Sofía,” Levi chimed. “We should give the alien a name.”
“Not . . . what I was saying,” Sofía said.
Arthur tapped his chin. “E.T.? Like the movie.”
“There are any number of alien films we could pull from,” Levi said. “Let’s not go straight for the most obvious.”
“Are y’all kidding?” Nick drawled. “Call it Alf, call it Leonard Freakin’ Nimoy—this thing is dangerous either way!”
“Do you think sleepwalking is my superpower?” Levi’s mouth stuttered between hopeful optimism and a frown. “That’s anticlimactic.”
“Oh yeah?” Nick said. “I’m pretty sure Alf gave me missile codes to activate a piano bomb, wanna trade?”
Tuning everything out like always, Arthur bent to touch the track switch and looked up, eyes lit with excitement. “Still warm. Can you do it again, Franny?”
I shook my head. “I don’t—”
“Try,” he implored.
Instinctively, I looked to Sofía for support. Her lips were pursed tight, but her eyes were still avoiding me.
It’s for the best, a little voice said. If you’d told her, it would have been too much. If she really understood what was happening to me, she’d be sitting in the sheriff’s office right now, spilling everything.
“Just try,” Arthur said, impatient.
“You can do it, Fran!” Levi cheered.
The birds tattooed on Nick’s fingers seemed to fly across his stubbly jaw as he rubbed it. “Probably should at least try.”
I sighed and crouched in front of the switch. I wasn’t sure what to do, so for a few seconds, I just stared. When that did nothing, I imagined it snapping sideways, pushed by an invisible force, by me.
I tried to summon that charged feeling into the air.
I pictured light crackling off my skin and energy building in my veins until it thrummed and trembled, down through my feet, into the metal rails as it had back in the tunnel.
I could feel all four sets of eyes homed in on me, all four bodies inclining expectantly.
Move, I thought. Move.
