Struck

by Jennifer Bosworth

  “And you’ve seen me a lot,” I said quietly. I thought of the visions Jeremy had shared with me; visions of me and the Tower and a storm that appeared out of nowhere. I felt my stomach twist in ways I didn’t like.

  The Nightmare Boy. That was what I called Jeremy when I thought I’d dreamed him. The nickname was still apt. Turned out he had been the one dreaming me.

  “Lately you’re all I see,” Jeremy said. “You in a hundred different scenarios, but always—”

  “I always end up at the Tower,” I finished for him. “That’s what you were going to say, wasn’t it? I always end up at the Tower with that storm.”

  Jeremy was silent for a long time. Finally he said, “Yes.” I didn’t know why, but I sensed there was more he wasn’t telling me.

  “So I guess that possibility is looking more like an inevitability,” I said.

  “Maybe. The details are constantly changing. The only absolutes have been the Tower and the storm. Those things … they never change.”

  “How long have you been like this?” I asked quietly.

  His pause was so long I almost asked again, thinking he hadn’t heard me. “Since I was a kid,” he said. “The visions started when I was six. They were always terrible. Always about people dying or being hurt. For a long time, I thought I was dreaming awake, or that I was losing my mind. But then when I was eight I … I saw my mother in a vision.” He covered his eyes. “She was in a hospital. I hardly recognized her. She was wasting away, and her hair was gone. Two months later, she was diagnosed with stomach cancer. The tumors grew fast. If the doctors had caught it sooner …” He lowered his hand and swallowed hard. “The visions aren’t random. I always see what I see for a reason. I was supposed to help my mom, get her to a doctor sooner. But I didn’t understand.”

  I imagined what it would’ve been like if my mom had died in the quake, and how much worse it would be to know I could have prevented it. I don’t think I could have ever forgiven myself. Obviously, Jeremy hadn’t either.

  “You were a kid,” I said. “You couldn’t have understood what was happening.”

  He looked at me with his eyes full of sadness and pain and so much anger. I was beginning to understand where his intensity came from. But as he gazed at me, his eyes softened. “You know, the first time I had a vision, it was of you.” He smiled a little. “Those were the only visions I ever looked forward to, even though …” The smile faded. “The things I saw weren’t good.”

  I didn’t ask what he’d seen of my life. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

  “So that’s why you’ve been following me?” I asked. “And why you came to my room that night? Because you keep having visions of me and you’re supposed to … what, change the outcome?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Does it ever work?”

  “Sometimes.” His voice was heavy. I guessed sometimes didn’t mean often. But I thought of how I’d been a hair away from plummeting to my death in the Waste. Had what Jeremy shown me changed the outcome? Had I hesitated, even slightly, instead of stepping right into the chasm?

  Yes, I realized. I had remembered at the last second.

  Jeremy had saved my life.

  But my life wouldn’t have needed saving if I hadn’t been in the Waste in the first place. If I had done what Jeremy told me.

  He really was trying to save my life.

  I looked at Jeremy lying on the floor of my bedroom, and the burning in my chest descended to my stomach, and lower, smoldering like coals at their hottest. All of a sudden, inviting Jeremy up to my room seemed like a terrible idea. I wanted him too much. My desire for him was like a thing separate from me, a wild animal with a mind of its own, attacking the bars of the cage I kept it in, looking for a weak spot.

  I scrambled under my blankets, though I usually slept on top of them, not needing the added warmth. Being under the blankets made the heat inside me grow, but they were the only thing keeping me from Jeremy, a too easily penetrable, padded wall.

  “Good night, Mia,” Jeremy said.

  “Good night, Jeremy,” I managed, without adding, I want you, I want you, I want you.

  I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep. I didn’t know the difference when pretend became real until I opened my eyes in the morning and found Jeremy’s makeshift bed empty except for a handwritten note on the pillow.

  PART 3

  Some say the world will end in fire,

  Some say in ice.

  From what I’ve tasted of desire

  I hold with those who favor fire.

  —Robert Frost,

  “Fire and Ice”

  APRIL 16

  One day until the storm …

  27

  Mia,

  So you do sleep, after all. I’m sorry I left without saying goodbye. I didn’t want to wake you. I have to take care of a few things today, but after that I need to see you. Can you meet me after school? It’s important.

  Jeremy

  HE’D SCRIBBLED AN address at the bottom of the page.

  I made sure to pocket his note before I went downstairs for breakfast.

  I was so distracted by thoughts of Jeremy and his “need” to see me, I forgot about the fight I’d had with Mom in the garage until I walked into the kitchen and found her sitting at the table, staring at a slightly burned piece of sad-looking toast with only one bite out of it.

  I studied her for a moment, waiting for her to notice me. She wasn’t as put-together as she had been yesterday morning. She was still wearing her bathrobe, and her hair was sleep-matted.

  As I watched, a clear drop of liquid ran down Mom’s nose and dropped onto her toast. She was crying.

  “Mom?” I said.

  Her head jerked up, and she swiped quickly at her cheeks. But she couldn’t erase her swollen red eyes. “Mia.” Her voice was thick. “I thought you were gone. Parker left already.”

  I blinked in surprise. “Did he take the bus?”

  “He said he was riding with a friend from school. He didn’t say who.” She shook her head, and spoke to her toast. “I didn’t even think to ask. I’m a terrible mother, aren’t I?”

  A friend from school … I didn’t like the sound of that, but worrying about Parker could wait.

  I pulled out a chair and sat down next to Mom. “Why are you crying?”

  She said nothing, but her hands began to worry, fingers tangling and untangling. On impulse, I reached across and grasped her hands in both of mine. She looked up, surprised, and her eyes held mine. I looked into them, really looked, in a way maybe I never had before, and I saw such immeasurable sadness there, the same thing I saw in Jeremy’s tortured gaze. It was like staring into the chasm I’d nearly fallen into in the Waste. It went down and down, and the bottom was nowhere in sight. I realized something then. This sadness … it wasn’t simply about Mom’s trauma during the quake, or about losing a man she cared about. It had been building for years. This was about the dead father I barely remembered, the husband Mom would never forget, never stop grieving. This was about the years of struggle she’d gone through after he was taken from her. About nearly losing me to lightning so many times. About leaving behind everything she knew in Lake Havasu City, starting over in a city where she knew no one.

  Why had I not realized before how unhappy Mom was? How unhappy she had been for a long time?

  Because she’d hidden it from me, and from Parker. That was why. Because she hadn’t wanted to burden us with her problems. I got that. I had attempted to do the same for her.

  “Mom, I’m sorry about what I said to you yesterday.” My throat constricted. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  Tears began streaming from her eyes. She squeezed my hands, unable to speak, so she just nodded, and I went on.

  “Things will get better, I promise. I’m going to make them better, okay? We’ll figure it out.” They were the same words I’d said so many times, but they were no longer hollow. No longer meaningless. I intended to keep my p
romise, and I wanted Mom to believe me this time.

  She kept nodding. “Okay … okay.”

  I stood and pulled her to her feet, and I threw myself into her arms and let her hold me and rock me the way she had when I was years younger, another version of myself entirely. Both of us early editions of ourselves. Who were we now? I wondered. Who would we become now that the world we knew was gone?

  I had no answers, but I was determined to do what I told Mom I would. I was going to make things better. I didn’t know how, but that was what I intended to do.

  “You need to go now,” Mom said, close to my ear. Her voice was little more than a hint of sound. “Goodbye, Mia.”

  I was reluctant to release her, but I did. I had to get to school. I was going to do things right from now on, start acting like I had a future, instead of wandering through life waiting for the next bolt of lightning to fry a hole in my world.

  I had a future, and I was determined that it would have nothing to do with either the Tower or the storm. According to Jeremy, my future was not set in stone.

  It wasn’t until I was in the car, on my way to school, that I thought about how Mom had said, “Goodbye, Mia,” and how her voice had seemed to contain a note of finality, as though it were the last goodbye.

  But then I rolled down my car window to get some air, and the wind rushing through set my skin to prickling, like a thousand tiny needles piercing me all at once. I nearly drove off the side of the road in my hurry to roll the window back up. I slammed to a halt at a stop sign just in time and then I sat there, breathing in short, ragged gasps, rubbing my skin to calm the latent prickling.

  I forgot about my feeling that something new was wrong with Mom.

  I had checked the weather that morning, as I always did, and nothing had changed. Every weather site predicted sun and more sun.

  But my skin told me the storm was closer than ever.

  28

  A FEW MINUTES after the last bell of the day rang at Skyline, I found myself lingering in Mr. Kale’s classroom. Well, not so much found myself lingering, as I forced myself to linger. The Seekers and I had unfinished business, but I intended to finish it once and for all.

  Mr. Kale stood alone at the west-facing bank of windows, his back to me. The ocean beyond the glass glittered with reflected sunlight, the view only somewhat obscured by the smoke rising from Tentville.

  I let the spring-loaded door slam behind me to announce my entrance, but Mr. Kale didn’t so much as flinch. He turned slowly around.

  “Alone today?” I made a show of scanning the room, as though his masked minions might be hiding under the desks.

  Mr. Kale strolled through the center aisle toward me, taking his time. I noticed his hands were not bandaged, and there was no trace of the blackened skin I’d left him with during our last encounter. He lifted his hands to study his open palms, as though trying to recall what had happened to them. “Rapid healing,” he said in that grating voice of his. “It’s one of the advantages we enjoy.”

  “Seekers?”

  “People with the Spark,” he said, looking up. “People like you and me. It’s the energy stored inside us. It changes the way our bodies function. I’m sure you’ve noticed differences.”

  I shrugged. “I’ve never been a particularly fast healer.” I’d had plenty of experience to draw from, considering my countless strikes. Then again, I had survived what should have killed me many times over. Maybe there was some validity to what he claimed.

  “I suppose we’re each unique in our abilities.” Mr. Kale’s mouth twisted down, and I knew he was thinking of what his hands had looked like twenty-four hours earlier, like meat left too long on the grill.

  “I didn’t come here to talk about this stuff,” I told him.

  “Then why did you come?”

  “You don’t know already? Can’t you just read my mind?”

  “If you like, I can do that.”

  “I would not like,” I said. “Call me old-fashioned, but talking suits me fine.”

  “Then talk.”

  So I talked. I told him about Katrina, and how she’d lied to me, manipulated me into going to the Rove. As I spoke, Mr. Kale’s expression darkened.

  “That girl,” he said when I had finished. He shook his head and sighed. Even his sigh sounded rough-edged, more like a growl. “Her behavior reflects badly on the Seekers. I don’t mean to make excuses for her, but ever since her mother died, she’s been impossible to control.”

  I blinked at him with my mouth hanging open, no less stunned than I would have been if he’d slapped me. “When did her mom die?”

  “Shortly after the earthquake.”

  “I–I had no idea.”

  “Katrina doesn’t talk about it. She’s thrown herself into her work to take her mind off it.”

  I steeled myself against the sympathy welling up in me. I didn’t want to pity Katrina. I wanted to hate her. “I’m sorry for her loss, I really am, but that doesn’t excuse what she did to me.”

  Mr. Kale nodded. “No, it doesn’t, and if I’d known what she was up to, I would have put a stop to it. Katrina is intensely loyal to the Seekers. She’s like her mother that way. The Seekers and our cause come before anything else, and she’ll do whatever it takes to ensure our victory over the false prophet, even if it means risking another person’s safety. Or her own.” He ended on a bitter note.

  I asked softly, “Katrina’s mom … she was your sister?”

  “My twin. Her name was Irene.”

  I winced. “Did she die in the earthquake?”

  He shook his head. “We needed a Seeker to infiltrate the Church of Light, learn about Prophet and his intentions. Irene assigned herself the task of ingratiating herself into Prophet’s … well, his private life. To find out his plan, if he had one.”

  “His private life? You mean …?” I let the question hang.

  “Yes. His bed.”

  “Oh.” I shifted uncomfortably. “Sounds like you were barking up the wrong tree. Haven’t you ever watched The Hour of Light? Prophet spends half his time talking about how all the ‘fornicators’ are going to burn in hell.”

  “What men practice and what they preach are two vastly different things, Miss Price. Few men in positions of such power as Prophet are able to control their appetites for long. There is an irrevocable link between sex and power, and my sister meant to exploit it, and to discover the extent of Prophet’s abilities. His Followers say he can perform miracles, healing the sick, casting out demons, and, of course, they say God speaks to him. Not only speaks, but that God exercises His will through Prophet.”

  “You think Prophet has the Spark?” I guessed.

  He nodded. “Irene confirmed it before she died. Before Prophet killed her.”

  His words made me feel cold all over, not an easy thing to accomplish. “How do you know he killed her?”

  “My sister was like me, only much stronger. She could communicate without speech, even over great distances.” He was quiet a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was unsteady. It sounded like rocks tumbling down a hillside. “When Prophet killed her, I felt it. Felt the knife slide into her. The blood run out of her. She had only enough time to tell me there was no doubt. Rance Ridley was the one. The false prophet.”

  “I’m sorry,” was all I could think to say.

  “It was an honorable death. She died for a cause she believed in, which is more than most people can say.”

  I remembered what Quentin said about the fifth seal, the vision of martyrs. “Was she one of the martyrs? Did someone, you know, foresee her death?”

  “Yes,” Mr. Kale said, his jaw flexing. “But she kept that a secret from me. She knew I would have tried to stop her from going to Prophet, but I would have failed. She was our leader, and I didn’t have the power to challenge her. She went willingly to her death, and the role of hierophant passed to me.”

  I remembered what Katrina told me in the ladies’ lounge after her unwelcome h
aircut, something about the old leader having died recently, and Mr. Kale being new to the position. And she’d been talking about her own mother’s death like it was the death of an acquaintance. She was obviously much better at compartmentalizing her feelings than I was.

  “What’s a ‘hierophant’?” I asked. I’d never heard the word before.

  “It is what we call the leader of our circle. In ancient Greece, a hierophant was a priest, one who interpreted sacred mysteries.”

  “Katrina said you were more like a general.”

  “I suppose I’m a bit of both.”

  I sighed. “Poor Katrina,” I said before I could stop myself.

  Mr. Kale gave me a sideways look, one black eyebrow raised. “Katrina is proud of her mother’s sacrifice. If called on, she would give her life to the cause.”

  “Not everyone has to die a martyr.” I glared at the teacher, heat flaring inside my chest. I was suddenly furious, and not sure why.

  “No,” Mr. Kale said. “There are many ways to die. But a coward’s death … that, I think, would be the worst.”

  Why did I feel like he was directing these comments at me? It wasn’t my death we were discussing. Still, the fire living in my heart was getting hotter as I got angrier.

  Mr. Kale’s gaze on me was level. He let his arms fall to his sides and took a step toward me. “Katrina still believes you are the one spoken of in our founder’s prophecy, the marked girl who will always draw the Tower. The girl who will be the deciding factor in whether the sixth seal shatters and begins the apocalypse.”

  “What do you think?” I asked him.

  “I think that girl, whoever she is, is no coward. So, no, I do not think you’re the one prophesied.” He took another step toward me, his gaze homed on mine, as though he could read my thoughts scrolling across my eyes like closed captioning for the hearing impaired. I felt a slight pressure in my mind, like someone was leaning on it, and a staticky, humming vibration.

  “Even if you aren’t the Tower girl, you would be such an asset to us, Mia.” Another step. Mr. Kale had long legs. He was now a single stride away from me, and the buzzing in my head was like a fly trapped in a jar. And Mr. Kale’s voice had taken on a soothing, hypnotic quality. I couldn’t help wanting to listen. I barely noticed when he stopped speaking out loud.