Struck

by Jennifer Bosworth

“Let’s say this Spark actually exists,” I said. “What does it have to do with saving Los Angeles? It’s a little late for that, isn’t it?”

  “The Puente Hills Quake was a warning,” Quentin said. “You’ve heard of the seven seals from the Book of Revelation?”

  I’d heard more about the Book of Revelation lately than I cared to. It seemed to be the only book in the Bible that Rance Ridley Prophet was interested in.

  “Well, they’re not actual, physical seals,” Quentin said. “They’re signs. Portents. White horse, red horse, black horse, pale horse, and pale rider. These stand for war and famine and death and all the other badness that’s going on in the world. And in this city.”

  “What’s the fifth?” Parker asked.

  Quentin and the others shared a guarded look. “That would be the, um … vision of martyrs.”

  “What do martyrs have to do with the end of the world?”

  Mr. Kale cleared his throat. “That’s not something we talk about with those outside our circle. If you choose to join us, we can tell you more.”

  “What about the sixth seal or sign or whatever,” Parker asked, obviously fascinated. “Can you tell us about that one?”

  Quentin spoke again. “In the Bible it says when the sixth seal is opened, the sun will turn black, and the stars will fall from the sky, and there’ll be a mighty wind, and every mountain and island will be moved, which is another way of saying there’s gonna be a catastrophic storm followed by an even worse earthquake.”

  I suppressed a shudder, thinking of what I’d felt when that breeze pushed its way into the room. That a storm was coming. Another storm.

  “But there already was a storm,” I reminded them. “And an earthquake. Doesn’t that mean the sixth seal is already open? And, look, we’re still here. The world hasn’t ended.”

  Mr. Kale fixed me with a hard gaze. “When the sixth seal is truly opened, it won’t merely affect Los Angeles. The entire world will feel it.”

  “And the seventh?” Parker asked, sounding like he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

  “The seventh is the end, the destruction of the earth and the annihilation of all who inhabit it.”

  “To stop that from happening, we’ll need every person we can find who has the Spark,” Katrina said. “And we’ll need you, Mia. Show them the card you drew.”

  My fingers felt numb as I pulled the card out of my back pocket and laid it down on the desk.

  “The Tower,” Mr. Kale said.

  Schiz and Quentin stared at me, eyes wide.

  “She drew it twice in a row,” Katrina said.

  “What does that mean?” Parker asked.

  “It doesn’t mean anything,” I said, though chills were running up and down my spine. “It’s a stupid tarot card. It’s a game. And what do tarot cards have to do with Bible revelations anyway? One has nothing to do with the other.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Mia.” Katrina picked up the card on my desk and inserted it back into her deck. “Everything is connected. Absolutely everything. There are no straight lines, only circles that go round and round and always end up back where they began. And we’re all points on that circle. Even you, Mia.” She shuffled. The soft cards whispered. “Let me tell you a story,” she said.

  I glanced at the clock. Was Mom okay?

  Katrina continued shuffling.

  “This deck belonged to my ancestor, the founder of the Circle of Seekers and the most powerful seer of her time. She traveled across the ocean with her Romany tribe, and the moment she set foot on American soil, she fell to her knees, struck by a vision.”

  Shuffle.

  “She began a reading, using every card in this same deck. The reading went on for a full day and night as she laid out the cards in a circle around her. At the end of the reading, she told her people she had seen the end, the destruction of the world and of humankind, and that it would begin here, in the New World.”

  Shuffle.

  “She said there would be signs to warn us, that one of the last signs would be an earthquake that would lay low the towers of a great City of Angels … all but one. And a false prophet would rise to power on a tide of destruction.”

  Shuffle.

  “But there would be a way to prevent the ultimate end of this world. My ancestor formed the Circle of Seekers to gather people with the Spark when the time came, and to build an army to fight the false prophet. But when she finally traveled to the City of Angels she had seen in her vision, she knew the end would not come for over a hundred years, because the towers that would fall had not even been built. But she knew where they would be built, and she went there.”

  Shuffle.

  “When she came to the area where the towers would rise and fall, she felt the charge in the earth. The power. She was once again struck by a vision of the end.”

  Katrina stopped shuffling.

  I stopped breathing. Even my heart seemed to pause between beats.

  “Before she died,” Katrina said, “she told her children what she’d seen.”

  “What was it?” I asked, hating the breathless sound of my own voice.

  “A girl standing atop the last tower, surrounded by a raging storm and lightning made of blood.”

  I remembered the dream I had after I touched Jeremy’s hand, the red lightning, and the chills living on my spine raced over the rest of me.

  “The arrival of this girl would be the final portent before the end. She said we would know her because her skin would be marked, and she would always draw the Tower card.”

  Katrina tilted her head and considered me, eyeing my gloves. My turtleneck. “Or the Tower would choose her.”

  I stood frozen as Katrina set the deck of cards down on a nearby desk. She cut the deck and moved the bottom half to the top.

  “Choose,” she said.

  I shook my head. “Parker, we’re leaving. Come on.”

  I didn’t wait to see if he followed. I bolted for the door, but Parker caught up to me before I could turn the knob.

  “Mia, wait.” He grabbed my arm. “What if it’s true?”

  I shook him off. “You know how long people have been saying the world is about to end? Since the beginning. I’m sick of hearing about the end of the world.”

  “But—”

  “Parker.” I took hold of his shoulders and spoke gently but firmly, like Mom did when she had a point she wanted to get across for the last time. “They’re a cult. They’re no different from the Followers.”

  “We are nothing like the Followers,” Mr. Kale growled.

  “I wasn’t talking to you,” I growled back. We sounded like a couple of guard dogs.

  His expression hardened, and I felt a sort of tingling in my head, like I’d stood up too fast.

  Watch your tone, Miss Price. I’m still your teacher.

  The voice that spoke inside my mind did not belong to me.

  Kale’s eyes narrowed on mine.

  I know who you are. I know what you are. And I know about the lightning.

  I felt my eyes getting bigger. I shook my head, like I could shake Mr. Kale loose.

  “No,” I muttered, covering my ears. “No, no, no. This isn’t happening.”

  It is happening. It’s all connected, Mia. It’s energy, and it’s everywhere. You can’t escape it.

  “Mia?” Parker’s brows drew together. “What’s wrong?”

  Is it really so hard to believe? There have always been people who could do inexplicable things. Psychics and healers. Mind readers. People who can move objects or start fires with their thoughts. People who have visions of the past or the future. These people had the Spark, and so do you.

  “No …”

  What can you do, Mia? Isn’t it time you found out? Or do you already know?

  Mr. Kale’s eyes were oil-dark and blazing. Mesmerizing. I tore my gaze from his, grabbed Parker’s arm, and hauled him out the door, slamming it behind us. The buzzing in my head ceased, and Mr. Kale’s voice
died with it, but I kept on running, dragging Parker with me, until we reached the stairs. Then he finally dug in his heels and stopped us.

  I expected Parker to demand we go back, hear the rest, but the look on my face must have convinced him to let it go.

  “You’re white as a sheet,” he said, brows drawing together in worry. “You’re not gonna pass out again, are you? Do you need to sit down?”

  I shook my head, keeping my eyes on Mr. Kale’s classroom door, praying it wouldn’t open.

  “Can we please go home? Please, Parker?” I was begging. I didn’t care. I wanted to get as far away from room 317 as possible.

  Parker, too, glanced down the hallway at Mr. Kale’s door. Then he sighed and nodded. “Let’s go home.”

  8

  “WHAT’S HE STILL doing here?” Parker asked as we turned the corner onto our street. He pointed at Militiaman Brent, standing on the sidewalk in front of our house. His posture was very bodyguard, legs wide, arms crossed high on his chest.

  When I saw him, my stomach lurched. Had something happened? Had someone tried to break in?

  I parked at the curb and killed the engine. Militiaman Brent didn’t turn around. Didn’t move a muscle. He was like one of those soldiers on guard at the Queen of England’s house.

  Parker eyed Militiaman Brent warily. “I’ll go check on Mom.” He skirted around the man, unlocked the door, and slipped inside. I grabbed the small box containing our rations off the backseat.

  “Hi, Mili—hi, Brent,” I said, approaching.

  He nodded. “Mia.”

  “Have you been here since this morning?”

  “Left at noon to go home and make a sandwich, but I came right back after that.”

  “You know, when I asked you to keep an eye on the house, I didn’t mean to enlist you as a permanent guard. If you have other things you need to do—”

  “Saw the kid with the glasses, the one’s been watching your house.”

  Words went solid in my throat. I had to cough them out. “Are you sure it was him?”

  “Boy about your age, here not fifteen minutes ago. When he saw me he got real nervous and walked away. He had glasses on, but not dark ones like you told me he wore. More like the ones the yuppies wear.”

  “Square with black frames?” I asked, my mouth going dry.

  “Yep, those’re the ones.”

  “And dark hair? Really, really good-looking?”

  Brent puffed out his chest and drew back his head so far that it became part of his neck. “He had dark hair, yeah.”

  I swallowed hard. It was Jeremy. It had to be.

  “You know the kid?” Brent asked.

  “I think so. I have a class with him.”

  Brent’s eyes got small. “This guy have a crush on you?”

  Heat sizzled up my neck. “No,” I said quickly.

  The corners of Militiaman Brent’s mouth tugged down. “Sounds like you got yourself a stalker.” He reached into his pocket, took out a small canister, and handed it to me.

  I read the words on the label. “Pepper spray?”

  He nodded. “All you gotta do is point and press the button. But make sure you don’t point it at your own face on accident. And try not to breathe any of it in, or you’ll feel like you took a shot of napalm.”

  “Well … thanks.”

  “You see that stalker of yours, don’t hesitate. Just spray.”

  Militiaman Brent’s words followed me up the walk and into the house. Jeremy, a stalker? No way. A guy like Jeremy didn’t need to stalk.

  When I opened the front door, I heard a strangled cry and immediately fumbled the can of pepper spray. So much for the point and shoot.

  I ran for Mom’s room.

  Mom was on her bed, knees pulled into her chest and surrounded with her arms, her whole body shuddering. She broke into bouts of terrified screams that quickly left her throat hoarse, so she could only produce strained wheezes. The scar tissue on her cheeks and chin stood out in stark relief, bunched and waxy.

  Parker hovered over her, unsure what to do. Whether to keep his distance or touch her to try to bring her out of the flashback. Back to this reality. The one where she was safe in her own home, not buried alive, waiting to die.

  I sprang into action. I couldn’t say I’d gotten used to these episodes over the past month, but they no longer left me paralyzed.

  “Get the Thorazine from her medicine cabinet,” I told Parker. He rushed to Mom’s bathroom. I heard him riffling through bottles of pills. Heard things clatter as they fell into the sink below the cabinet.

  I bent to Mom’s ear and spoke softly to her. “Mom, it’s Mia. Can you hear me? I’m right here with you, in your bedroom. You’re safe. You can come back. I promise this is a safe place. Nothing bad will happen to you here.”

  If she heard me, she gave no sign. Still, I kept whispering my words of comfort. But all I could think was “This shouldn’t be happening. This shouldn’t be happening.” I was no pharmacist, but the amount of Thorazine and Xanax I had Mom on should have ended these episodes.

  The TV was on, and Prophet’s face filled the screen. The opaque globes of his eyes seemed to bore right into mine as he spoke.

  “I do not relish being the bearer of these bad tidings,” Prophet said, his crooner’s voice more somber than usual. “I wish with my whole heart that it had not come to this. But know, my Followers, that you need fear no evil, for we will walk together through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and we will emerge into the light on the other side. If you have surrendered your soul to God and pledged yourself to His service, then you will be protected from the coming devastation. While the world falls down around you, while the storm rages, you will be safe in the eye. On April 17, three days from now, the storm will arrive, but you will be saved.”

  All at once, Mom’s wheezing cries ceased, and her rigid body unclenched. She sat up, blinking at the TV, back-handing tears from her face. She didn’t even seem to realize I was there. Her eyes were for Prophet only. It was his words that had brought her out of the flashback, not mine.

  Parker appeared in the bathroom doorway, his hands full of pill bottles. “Is she—”

  “I’m fine now,” Mom said. Her voice was the clearest I’d heard it since the quake. She sounded … not like her old self, but at least like someone who was present. Who was not mumbling through a dream.

  She looked at me, squinting, as though my face refused to come into focus.

  “Mia.” She said my name like she was trying it out, seeing if it fit. “Parker.”

  She touched one of the scars on her face, and then nodded, as though accepting something. “I need to be alone.”

  She looked at the door, a clear cue for Parker and me to leave. But neither of us moved. Mom hadn’t been this lucid in weeks, and I was afraid if I so much as blinked I’d miss the moment.

  “Please,” she said, her tone sharpening. “Leave me alone so I can think.”

  Parker looked like he’d been slapped. The anger I’d felt toward Mom that morning, the crazy-making frustration that had been building inside me for a month, surged to the surface.

  “We’re trying to help you.” I didn’t quite shout the words, but close enough.

  Mom’s eyes held mine, unblinking. “You can’t help me,” she said, her voice regaining some of its usual slow dreaminess. “I’m lost. Lost in the dark. In the Valley of the Shadow.”

  She looked at the TV. At Prophet.

  “He says a storm is coming to finish what was started. The storm that will be the end of all things. He says it is God’s will and God’s plan.”

  The tiniest of smiles lifted one corner of Mom’s mouth.

  “He can protect us.”

  I punched the power button on the TV, and the screen went dark. “He’s nothing but a televangelist, Mom. See how powerless he is? I push a button and he disappears.”

  She flung herself at me, arms flailing, and I was sure she was going to hit me.

&nb
sp; But she didn’t hit me. She pushed me. Pushed me to the side, out of her way, and turned the TV back on. Once again Prophet’s face filled the screen.

  She breathed deeply and smiled into his empty eyes. “Go away,” she said to Parker and me without taking her eyes from Prophet’s.

  “What happened?” I asked Parker when we were in the kitchen, where Mom couldn’t overhear us.

  He shook his head. “I went to check on her. She seemed calm enough. She was sitting there on the bed, watching The Hour of Light. Then Prophet started talking about how a storm was coming, and when it arrived it would bring another earthquake. Mom heard that, and she freaked.”

  Quentin’s words played through my mind. There’s gonna be a catastrophic storm followed by an even worse earthquake.

  Everyone was singing the same tune these days.

  My jaw began to ache, and I realized I was clenching my teeth. Of course it had been Prophet who set Mom off. That was his MO, wasn’t it? Scare people into submission. And he’d picked the perfect way to do it. Everyone wondered whether lightning striking the Puente Hills Fault had caused the quake. And whether it was even more likely to happen again when this new storm arrived, with the ground in the Waste cracked open in rifts that went down for miles, exposing the fault line.

  And a false prophet would rise to power on a tide of destruction.

  “Mia,” Parker said, his eyebrows angled with worry, “we have a problem.”

  “Last I checked we had more than one.”

  “Well, add this to the list.” He shook the half-dozen pill bottles in his hands. I expected a sound like maracas, but there was no sound at all.

  They were empty.

  I grabbed one of the bottles out of Parker’s hand and held it up in front of my face. “Where did they go?”

  “Maybe Mom’s been taking too many.”

  I started to shake my head, and then stopped. Usually I oversaw Mom taking her meds to make sure she got the right dosage. But I left the pills in her medicine cabinet, and she spent plenty of time alone in her bedroom. She could have taken more pills at any time.

  I remembered how she’d snapped at me that morning when I asked her if she was sure she’d taken her meds. I wanted to march into her bedroom and confront her, but not right now. Not after the way she’d screamed at Parker and me to leave her alone.