I took a breath. “I know it sounds crazy, but I was trying to teleport back here and you grabbed me. You, uh—well, I think you kind of hitched a ride.”
He looked around my room like he was trying to make himself believe it. “Teleport.”
“It started happening two weeks ago,” I said.
He tilted his head back. He stared at my ceiling like it would provide some sort of answer to what was happening. It apparently didn’t.
“You teleport,” he said.
At least this time it didn’t sound like he thought I was certifiable. That was progress, right?
“I teleport. That’s how I got in your window. I swear I wasn’t trying to get in your window, it’s just sometimes I go off target. It’s annoying, actually, and—”
He held up one hand. I stopped talking.
“You teleport.”
I nodded. “Yes.” The broken record thing was understandable, but it was getting annoying, cute boy or not. I had bigger problems. Creepy suit brain-melty problems. Him repeating the obvious wasn’t helpful. Please don’t freak out, I thought.
The thing happened again. Like a breath of air passing between us, cold against the back of my neck and making all the hairs on my arm stand up.
What was that?
Malik shook his head and looked at me again. He seemed calmer. That was good. “I’m trying to be cool here. It’s…” He didn’t seem to have a word for it.
“Yeah,” I said.
He laughed. It started low, but it got loud, fast. He had a great laugh, which I already knew, but this was the first time I’d been right beside him while he did it. Some of the terror of the last little while seemed to drain out of my chest, and I started to laugh with him. Creepy suit guys chasing me down, leaping through windows… In the face of the laughter of Malik King, it wasn’t so bad.
Except it really should be bad. Maybe I was just hysterical? Whatever. Laughing felt good.
He looked around again and seemed to take stock. “This is your room, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re really tidy.”
“Hey, your room was tidy.” I thought about it. “Is tidy bad?”
He shook his head. Then he yawned. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m wrecked.”
“Yeah. It’s like that at first. That’s why I passed out in the hallway at school.”
He looked at me, surprised. “You mean after…your locker?”
“Yeah, I teleported into my locker.”
He frowned. “Why?”
“I didn’t do it on purpose. I was trying to get back to the school from the museum.”
“The museum?”
“That was the first…” I shook my head. “You know what? It doesn’t matter. Yes, I teleported into my locker. But it was an accident.”
I heard a sound downstairs. The front door. Holy crap, I’d cut that close. I held up one hand, and Malik nodded. I went to my door, cracking it open.
“That you, Mom?” I called.
“Yes, we’re home. Did you forget to turn the light on for us?”
“Sorry!” I said. I mean, I hadn’t forgotten, exactly, what with all the abduction. “Did you guys have a good night?”
“Yes.” They were coming up the stairs. I waved wildly behind me and then, realizing I didn’t look like a kid who’d been asleep a few seconds ago, I stripped off my shirt, kicked off my shoes, and shucked my jeans and socks. I probably broke a record, but I was standing in my boxers by the time my folks were visible from my doorway.
“Gonna go back to bed,” I said and signed to my father.
Good night, he signed back.
“Good night, sweetheart,” my mother said.
They both looked really happy. Definitely a good Date Night. My father put his hand on my mother’s back as they passed my door. I closed it and exhaled, resting my head against the wood for a second.
When I turned around, I didn’t see Malik anywhere.
“Malik?” I whispered.
His head popped up from the far side of my bed. I couldn’t help it, I snickered.
He scowled at me, then stood up. His boxers had sort of ridden down, and I forced my gaze back up to his face. No part of Malik was not hot. He blinked a couple of times, then sat down on my bed, quickly.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
He looked at me. “How do I get home?”
I looked anxiously back at my door. My parents would take a little while to get ready for bed. “Um, I can try to teleport us back in a bit.”
“Right. Teleport.” He shook his head, then lay back across my bed, looking up at the ceiling. After a second of standing there feeling really dumb and really exposed in my boxers, I did the same. Our feet hung off the edge. I waited for him to say something. I wondered if maybe I should explain from the beginning. At least that would pass some time while we waited for my folks to be well and truly asleep. But when I turned to him to start, his eyes were closed and he was fast asleep.
I nudged his shoulder. Nothing.
Seriously the cutest boy in the school. It was almost enough to make me rethink caring about sports.
I nudged him again, and again nothing. He was out cold. I remembered how I’d crashed after my first trips to and from the museum, and faced facts.
The cute boy in my bed wasn’t going to wake up short of dynamite.
Instead, I managed to pull him up onto the bed and flipped my half of the blanket over him. He didn’t wake up for that, so I officially gave up and lay down beside him. It was warm enough that I’d be fine if I got under the sheet. I turned off the light and wished I could pass out just as easily.
The whole insane night replayed in my head. It made for a pretty awful list of plusses and minuses.
There were other people like me. Teleporters. On the surface, that was a plus.
But the other teleporters didn’t seem like nice people, and they were after me. And had “institutions.” That was a minus.
They knew enough about where I was to ambush me in my own house—big minus—and seemed to be able to sort of pull me with them whether or not I wanted to go—giant minus. Also? They could melt brains, and they wore suits. When had guys in suits ever turned out to be a good thing? Never. Never is when. Biggest minus ever.
I had no idea what to do. Yet another minus.
Malik King was sleeping in my bed, right beside me, and I had no idea what we’d do in the morning, what with how my parents lived here and stuff. Huge, red-alert level minus.
I looked at him again. Even in the dark I could see the outline of his face. Good jawline.
Okay, so maybe there was a little bit of a plus to this.
I groaned and tried to force my brain to slow down so I could sleep. Just before I finally drifted off, I thought of one more thing: I might not have any idea what to do, but I was pretty sure Malik believed me. Seeing was believing. Or, well, teleporting was.
I wasn’t on my own.
That might be the biggest plus yet.
Twenty-Two
“Uh, Cole?”
The thing about having a slow and gentle alarm clock was you got used to ignoring it. It helped that it also played the sound of a beach and slowly added seagulls, too, but it had a snooze button, which I think I’d already hammered twice on reflex until…
“Cole?”
I went from groggy and sleepy to wide awake in about half a second. I opened my eyes, and sure enough, I wasn’t alone in my room. Malik King was awake and still in my bed, though he’d kicked most of the blanket off. My clock was doing the seagull thing again. What time was it?
“Shit,” I said.
“Yeah.” Malik rubbed his face. “Shit.” He looked at me. “So…” He swallowed. “I’m…We…You…”
I exhaled. “We need to get you home.”
His eyebrow rose. “This happened. This…” He waved one hand. He’d sat up on his elbow, which did really nice things to his arm, and I tried not to stare. “You can teleport.�
��
Oh, great. Back to that. “Yep.”
He shook his head. “See, when you just say it like that, it sounds…”
I nodded. “I know. Trust me.”
Malik swallowed. “Okay. So…” He glanced at my clock. “I’ve got maybe half an hour before I need to get ready for work.”
“Okay.” I sat up and swung my legs around and realized my number one priority was now keeping my back to Malik because it was morning, and I was a guy and…Well. Yeah. Current plan? Keeping my back to Malik until I could, y’know, calm down. I went to my closet, grabbed some jeans, and made myself far less comfortable but also way less likely to die of complete embarrassment. I wondered if he was having the same problem.
Okay, thinking about that was not going to help.
I tugged on a T-shirt, grabbed socks, and tracked down my shoes from where I’d kicked them aside last night. “Okay. Next stop, your room.”
Malik was just staring at me. He’d gotten out of my bed and was standing there, looking both super hot in just a pair of boxers but also really uncomfortable because, probably, just a pair of boxers.
“How…?” he asked.
“I think you just need to be touching me.”
His eyebrow rose. He even smiled, just a little bit.
I felt my face burning.
“Touching you.”
Was he teasing me? It felt like he was teasing me.
“That’s how it worked last time,” I said. My voice sort of wobbled.
Malik nodded. The awkwardness rose a few hundred levels. It really didn’t help that he was in his boxers.
“Okay,” I said. “Ready for a ride?” The moment the words were out, I wanted to take them back, but Malik grinned, shrugging.
“I just grab on to you?” he said.
I nodded. “I use the door,” I said. “So hold on to me and wait for me to move, and walk with me, and you’ll come with me.” I tried to sound confident, even though I was anything but. I mean, I’d brought someone with me on a teleport exactly once. By accident. Last night.
We stood in front of my door, Malik a half step behind me. He reached out and put his hand on my shoulder, and it made me warm all over. He held on a bit tighter than maybe he needed to, but then again, he’d had a death grip on me last night, too, so maybe that mattered.
Also, was his hand shaking? Or was that me?
I opened my door as slowly as I could. Silence from my parents’ room. Thank the gods for Date Night. Saturdays we generally slept in. I fended for myself for breakfast, usually.
I closed my eyes and tried to remember everything I could from my brief visit to Malik’s room, but I couldn’t remember a whole lot more than the carpet and the sight of Malik staring at me and the sound of his father’s voice.
I could feel the tug. The doorway was definitely ready to send me somewhere. I had a brief moment of panic that I’d end up somewhere with the creepy-ass guys in suits, then resolutely forced that idea from my mind. No. Malik’s room. Malik’s room. Malik’s room. No trips anywhere else. Of course, the moment I thought about anywhere else, the sheer volume of every other possible place I could end up started to crowd into my head. It was like trying not to think about a pink elephant.
We stepped forward together, and I tried to force the rest of the world out of my head except for Malik’s room.
Poof.
And something else.
* * *
I had maybe half a second to feel some triumph over hitting my target before I collapsed onto Malik’s bedroom floor, landing hard on my knees. Malik fell with me, knocking me sprawling. I barely felt his weight on top of me. I was too distracted by the light strobing behind my eyelids.
Everywhere and everything seemed to be colliding in my head.
“Cole?” His voice sounded far away, like it was echoing down a giant series of hallways, each hallway connected to another dozen hallways.
I was everywhere, all at once. I was at school and I was at home and I was at the museum and I was in my locker and I was—
“Cole!” Malik’s face swam into view. His dark brown eyes caught me first, then the rest of him came back into focus. The pulses of twisting, pulling and yanking fell away. I was with Malik. In his bedroom. He’d gotten off me and was crouching in front of me. When had I sat up?
“There,” I said. “See?” I blinked the last few flashes of light from my eyes. “No problem.”
“Malik?” The voice came from the other side of Malik’s bedroom door. It was a woman. His mother?
Malik pointed, and it took me a second to realize he was giving me a direction. I struggled to my feet, rubbery, and looked where he was pointing.
I exhaled. “Really?”
His glare said this wasn’t open to argument, so I yanked open the door and hid in Malik’s closet.
I barely got in before he reached past me, snatched a pair of jeans, and then closed the door on my back. I heard his bedroom door open, and I froze, barely even breathing.
“You’re going to be late.” A very familiar tone of reproach mixed with love. Mom voice. Definitely his mother.
“Sorry. I overslept.”
“Do you need a ride?”
“Oh, my God, yes please. You’re the best.”
“I know this.” A pause. “Are you all right?”
“I didn’t sleep well.”
“Well, don’t forget to eat. You’ve got ten minutes. You, me, and the car.”
“Thanks.”
I waited, unsure if I should come back out of the closet—sigh—or not. Malik opened the doors, and I turned around.
“That was incredible. Are you okay? You seemed sort of out of it.”
“I…” Whatever had happened, it had scared the crap out of me, but I felt more or less okay now. How many times had I had the crap scared out of me lately? I should be out of crap. Or whatever. “Yeah. Not used to bringing passengers.”
He reached past me for a shirt. “I can’t believe I have to go to work. How can I go to work? I just freaking teleported.”
He pulled his work shirt over his head and then stopped, staring at me. Malik worked at the grocery store. How did I not know that?
“What?” he said.
“I don’t know,” I said, but it mustn’t have sounded convincing.
“Dude,” he said. “What?”
“It’s just…You’re kind of taking this well.”
He shrugged. “It was cool. I’m not gonna freak out. And I don’t want to be late for work.”
“Wasn’t so cool when I got stuck in my locker.”
He did the one eyebrow thing again. “You seem to be getting the hang of it, though, right?”
“It’s been a rough couple of weeks.”
His mother called from downstairs. His name, drawn out into roughly three extra syllables.
Malik winced. “I gotta go. Are you…” He waved his hand at his room. “Are you gonna be okay? Like…to get home?”
I nodded. “Once you go, I’ll use your door. To get to my door.”
He grinned. “See? That? That’s cool.”
I wondered if he also remembered I’d been snatched by creepy freaks. But still, he had a contagious smile, and he flashed it at me one more time before he closed his closet door on my face again.
I stood in the dark for a few seconds. I heard him leave his room, and then I counted to thirty. I snuck out of the closet—sigh, again—and went to his door. All bravado and “it’s cool!” aside, I wasn’t too keen on a repeat performance of whatever the hell had happened on the way here.
Which had been what, exactly? Everywhere. It had been everywhere. I’d been trying so hard to think about Malik’s bedroom that I’d been thinking about everywhere else, too.
I took a deep breath and reached for the door handle. I pictured my own bedroom in my head, and the sense connection was there almost immediately. In fact, it was crazy strong and really eager to get going. I could feel the tug, but more than that, it
was specific. Like, it felt like my room.
And beyond that…There was something beyond that…
I closed my eyes, and for just a second, that overwhelming feeling of too-much-too-fast-flashing-lights returned. I pulled back, and it stopped. The more I did this, the worse it got.
Or maybe…maybe it was getting better?
“Just go home,” I said. Finding that sense of my own bedroom was just as easy as it had been a few seconds ago, and I opened the door and went home.
Poof.
* * *
My mother was yawning in the hallway, still in her robe, and she smiled when she saw me step out of my room. I’d intended to land on the other side of the door, inside my bedroom, but other than that, it had felt just about effortless.
“Hey, kiddo,” she said. “You’re up and about early. Big plans for the day?”
I thought about that. Last night I’d been kidnapped, had something done to my brain, barely gotten out with said brain intact, had an accidental sleepover with Malik-freaking-King, and I had final exams starting Monday. My bullet journal had way, way more unfilled squares than ever before, and I hadn’t even added any since yesterday, what with all the kidnapping and stuff. At the very least, I’d need to stop and come up with some sort of plan because my life was completely out of control.
“I’ve got a lot on my plate,” I said.
My mother smiled. “Well, you know what you can handle. But if you need help, you just ask us.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
She turned, heading for the stairs. She was probably going to go turn on the coffee. She and my dad did the coffee-in-bed thing on Saturdays.
“Hey, Mom?” I said.
She paused, turning to look up at me.
“If you could go anywhere…” I said. “Where would you go?”
“Can I take you and your dad with me?”
Good question. I knew I could handle one person. Could I handle two? “Sure. I mean, I think so. Let’s say yes.”
“Well. In that case? I’d take you both to England.” She’d been born there, but she’d moved to Canada when she was ten. She tilted her head. Uh-oh. Mom radar detected. “Why do you ask?”
Exit Plans for Teenage Freaks Page 16
