Which was to say: not her personality, but her physicality. I shifted my perception just a little bit, pressing my will into the phone until it gave me a clear picture of the Leah I’d just been talking to, and that’s when I saw it: the little mole, just above her lip. Perfect.
I pulled, and away it came, easily as pulling the wrapper off a candy.
“Hey! That’s mine!”
I jumped. I thought about putting the phone back, but it was too late.
“Sorry, I—”
“Wanted to steal my phone?” she said, snatching it out of my hand. “Was that it?”
But as I looked at her face, my response got stuck somewhere in my throat. “Uh,” I managed, trying and failing not to stare at the spot above her lip. My neck tensed up as I looked at it.
“What else did you steal?” she demanded.
The old guy was squinting at us from across the store—and Brandy was rushing over, striding between display tables and even knocking some stuff over in her haste to get to us.
“He wasn’t stealing anything!” Brandy hesitated, then looked at me. “You weren’t, right?”
“Of course not!” I said, because stealing someone’s mole does not count. “I just … wanted to know the time, and there were no clocks, and …”
Leah pointed to the wall above the register. There was a clock hanging there, twice as big as my head, the second hand ticking away.
“Oh,” I said. “Duh.”
“Are you guys buying anything?” said Leah. “Because if not, I think you should probably leave.”
“Actually, yeah,” said Brandy, and held up the book she’d been reading.
As Leah rang her up in stoic silence, I went and grabbed Theo from the back.
“Saw you talking to the bookstore chick,” he said. “Get her number? She’s hot.”
“She’s also a complete jerkwad,” I replied. “Let’s get out of here. It’s burger o’clock.”
Theo and I hung back as Leah bagged Brandy’s book, and then we all filed out the door. Only once we were gone did Brandy ask me what had really happened in there with Leah.
“Nothing,” I said. “Sheesh.”
I mean, no wonder Aunt Holly and Grandma didn’t like her. You did one tiny little thing that she wasn’t into, and she became insta-bitch.
Brandy dropped it after that, but as we walked to the diner and ate dinner and hung out and then went home, I kept coming back to the scene in the bookstore. It worried me.
Not because Leah had caught me with her phone and I was probably on her shit list until the end of time. I couldn’t care less about that. I was worried because, even after I’d stolen it away, that mole was still there, above the left corner of her lip.
BEFORE
I don’t remember learning how to reach any more than I remember learning how to walk. It was just always something I could do. What I do remember is the exact moment I learned why we had the rule about not telling anyone outside the family about what we could do.
It was a snowy Friday afternoon about ten years ago, and Theo Valdez had come over to my apartment after school. Theo was terrified of snow because, a couple years back, his dad had gotten into a car accident during a blizzard and landed in the hospital for almost a week. So when the doorman let us up, the first thing he did was tromp straight to the living room in search of the phone. “I have to call Daddy,” he said, frantic.
(We were in second grade. I still called my dad “Daddy,” too.)
I followed, dodging the wet spots Theo’s boots had left behind, and caught up with him just as he finished dialing. Seconds passed. Then more seconds. Theo’s face fell. Finally he said, “He’s not at the office. I’m gonna call his cell phone.”
His dad didn’t pick up the second time, either, so Theo left a message and hung up. He was breathing hard, probably holding back tears, shaking his head and looking at me like I needed to fix this somehow. He had two older brothers; he was used to other people fixing things for him.
So I dashed over to the couch, fished the TV remote out from between the cushions, and handed it to Theo. “Hold this.”
Despite his obvious confusion, he did what I said. Held the remote in both hands, like a waiter holding a tray. Stared at it. Then at me. “Just hold it? Should I turn the TV on?”
“No, reach into it,” I said eagerly. “There’s calm in there. My mom always gets calm when she’s changing channels. I don’t even think she likes to watch anything. She just likes seeing what’s on every channel. It’s weird. But it makes her calm. Try it.”
I’d been stealing Mom’s calm for a couple months by then. Shortly after the snowstorm incident, Dad found out what I was doing and made me stop—which, incidentally, led to Mom not needing her anxiety meds anymore.
(That was my first lesson in why we had the No Stealing From Family rule.)
Theo misunderstood me. He turned the TV on and started changing channels as fast as he could. Soon he was gritting his teeth, like he couldn’t make it go fast enough. He was the opposite of calm.
“No, no, no,” I said, stepping between him and the screen, blocking the signal. “I mean the remote, not the TV. Reach. Till you find the calm. Then take it out and keep some for yourself.”
He sort of squinted at me. “You sound like a loony.”
A loony. The word hit me harder than it should—not because it was an insult, but because I suddenly understood, with a clarity I’d never felt before, how different we were from each other. He couldn’t reach. I could.
Fortunately, my seven-year-old brain managed to come up with a retort that both deflected his sudden suspicion of me and distracted him from his missing father:
“I know you are, but what am I?”
Theo grinned, instantly ready to play. “A moron!”
“I know you are, but what am I?”
“A douche-nozzle!”
(Like I said: two older brothers.)
“I know you are, but what am I?”
“A fart-monster!”
(Like I said: second grade.)
This went on and on for a while, until it devolved into a very intense game of Why Are You Hitting Yourself?—during which Theo’s dad called back and confirmed that he was not, in fact, dead.
But when I went into the kitchen a little while later to get sodas for us, I came back to find Theo pulling the remote apart, like maybe he could understand what I’d meant if he only took the batteries out and looked inside.
“Whatcha doing?” I asked, even though I was pretty sure I already knew.
He shoved the batteries back in and clicked the little compartment closed. “Nothing. Let’s play video games.”
The weird thing was, my magic was totally intact. After the Leah incident, I tried stealing other physical stuff—a freckle off the back of Theo’s arm, a patch of sunburn off Brandy’s back—and it worked. All of it. So I figured the mole had just been one of those fluke things. Maybe I hadn’t been concentrating. Maybe I’d been off my game or something. Either way, it wasn’t a big deal, right? It was just a mole.
Despite Brandy being the one to drag us into the expensive Three Peaks boutique scene, it was Theo who actually went back for a second visit. Now that he didn’t have a girlfriend to tether him to our little trio, he wanted some Alone-in-the-Woods Man Time. His words. So he went into one of those stores, got himself some hardcore hiking boots and a compass, and started disappearing into the woods behind Grandma’s house every morning after breakfast. He came back every night in time to hit the diner, with stories about wading through creeks and climbing boulders and other stuff that I had zero interest in ever doing.
I was totally fine with this. I liked Theo plenty, but I liked having Brandy to myself even better.
“One of these days, Theo’s gonna come back with a bear pelt over his shoulders,” said Brandy, as we lounged on the sand up by the lake. We’d stopped renting canoes and stuff—it’d always been Theo who was the most enthusiastic about that—but
it was still a good place to chill out and drink and whatever.
“Or a lion,” I said. “He’ll be wearing its head as a hat or something.”
“Do they even have lions here?” asked Brandy. “Or, like, anywhere on this continent?”
“I think only in zoos,” I replied. “Unless you mean mountain lions.”
“Theo could definitely slay a mountain lion,” said Brandy, grinning up at the sky. “He’s ever so manly.”
She had this way of saying manly where it was obviously not a compliment.
“I wonder how you’d even catch a mountain lion,” I said, unscrewing the cap on the Sprite bottle.
“Me personally?” said Brandy. “Feminine wiles. Obviously.”
“Har-har,” I said, even though, yeah, my heart maybe sped up a little at the phrase. Brandy could use her wiles on me whenever she wanted.
“I know,” she said. “But Theo? Theo would never have to resort to such tawdry things. I’m sure he has a variety of nefarious mountain lion skills up his manly, manly sleeve.”
“I wonder what these various nefarious skills entail,” I said.
Her expression suddenly went dead serious. “Various Nefarious. Good band name. Great band name, actually.”
“It’s all yours,” I said proudly. “Ooh, hey. Album title: Squeaky Sneaky.”
Brandy nodded solemnly. “Lead single …”
“‘Previous Devious’?” I suggested.
“You,” she said, poking me in the arm with her index finger, “are very good at this. You should be in my fake band, too. Can you play anything?”
“I play a mean air guitar,” I replied.
“Excellent, excellent. So, so far we’ve got you on air guitar, Lauren on imaginary drums, and me on silent vocals. We’ll be the new Beatles in no time flat.” She made a grabby-hand in my direction. “Vodka, please.”
I began to pass it to her, but stopped myself just in time. “Actually, we don’t have Theo today. And I’ve already been drinking. Which means you’re the DD—unless you want to take the blame for wrecking Theo’s car.”
Brandy made a face. “Fine. But you’re DD tomorrow.”
“Deal,” I replied, and did another shot.
Truth was, I could easily reach into Brandy, steal her sobriety for myself, and be totally fine to drive. It was a neat trick that I’d used many times, and it wouldn’t even affect her, since when you steal sobriety from a sober person, all that’s left underneath is more sobriety. But it would be pretty hard to explain, at least without revealing a few more things about myself than I wanted to.
So I kept drinking, and Brandy kept watching me wistfully, and we both kept coming up with names for her fake band that I, apparently, was now part of. And when we got back to town and found Theo already waiting for us at the diner, the first thing Brandy did was tell him today’s list of band names. All fourteen of them.
“Aspen came up with half of those,” she added, sliding into the booth beside me. “The best one was mine, though.”
“Which one was the best?” said Theo, looking completely disinterested. Seriously, how had Brandy ever dated a guy who wasn’t even interested when she talked?
“Frenemesis. Obviously.” Brandy smiled proudly. “You know, like frenemies. Except more so.”
I added the bits I’d come up with: “Album title: You’re Awesome and I Hate You. Lead single: ‘Those Spiders in Your Pillow Are Totally Not From Me.’”
“Aspen’s gonna be my air guitarist,” she said.
“Uh-huh,” said Theo, raising an eyebrow at me. For a second I was sure I saw jealousy on his face, but no, it was just a regular Theo look. I’d taken care of any potential for jealousy on the morning after the breakup. I’d basically fast-forwarded to the part where they were totally over each other and fine with just being friends.
“So how was your hike?” asked Brandy, after we’d put in our usual orders. “Meet any mountain lions?”
I cracked right up. So did Brandy. She leaned into me and there was this great moment where I was hyper-aware of this joke that only she and I shared. Only Brandy and me, out of all the people in the entire world.
“Uh, no,” said Theo, who obviously didn’t get it. “I did meet a girl, though.”
That shut me up.
“A girl!” Brandy leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Pretty?”
“I guess,” said Theo, who suddenly seemed to find the table very interesting. He traced one finger along a line in the wood, following it with his eyes. “Kinda pretty, yeah. Into hiking. And she showed me this cool waterfall. Her name’s Natalie.”
“Niiiiice,” said Brandy. “You, my friend, should totally hit that.”
Yup. The fast-forwarding was working out very, very well.
“Gonna see this Natalie again?” I said.
Theo shrugged. “Maybe.”
Brandy shot me an exasperated look. “Only maybe?”
“Well,” said Theo, “she kinda invited me to a party … ?”
“Only kinda?” said Brandy, her patience clearly wearing thin. This had always been a Brandy-and-Theo issue, even back when they’d just started dating and everything between them was sunshine and puppies and unicorns that farted rainbows or whatever. Brandy was a talker. Theo was the exact opposite, and it bugged the hell out of her.
Just one of many reasons I’d done them a favor by breaking them up.
Theo shrugged. “It was one of those ‘if you’re free, this is going on’ things. She said I could bring you guys, too.”
“Dude, that’s not a ‘kinda’ invitation,” I said. “That’s an actual invitation.”
Beside me, Brandy nodded. “Details. Now.”
“Fourth of July,” he said. “After the fireworks. Guess they have fireworks here?”
“They have fireworks everywhere,” I said, because Theo was one of those kids who’d never lived anywhere but Brooklyn, and didn’t completely believe in the existence of places that weren’t part of New York City.
“Huh,” he said. “Anyway, here’s the address.”
He pulled a crumpled piece of notebook paper from his pocket and spread it on the table. I peered at the address. Cherry Street. I knew where that was.
“So we’re going to this, right?” said Brandy.
I thought for a second. On the one hand, I’d never really been into the idea of mingling with the locals up here. On the other hand, I still remembered how devastated Theo had been after the breakup—before I’d stolen his negative feelings away, at least. He deserved to have a cute new girl to flirt with.
“Apparently the girl whose house it is? She does this every year.” Theo let himself grin for the first time since mentioning the mysterious Natalie. “And her parents are never home.”
Just like that, we had plans for the Fourth of July.
Three Peaks was so named for the most obvious reason in the world: It was a valley town, hemmed in by land that sloped gently upward, except for three points that weren’t very gentle at all. There was the Slope to the north, where even in summer you could see the purposeful lines of ski trails striping through the trees. To the southwest was the Hill, a weird lump of land that looked like it had once wanted to grow up and be a real mountain, but had forgotten to eat its vegetables along the way. Then there was the Cliff. The same Cliff that I’d helped repair only a few nights ago. The same Cliff that the Quick family had been repairing for … well, I didn’t know how long. According to Grandma, if we ever stopped performing the triad ritual, the wall of rock would crumble, sending an avalanche down the incline, through our house and through the May Day field and straight into town, crushing everything in its path.
To be honest, when I’d first learned about the ritual’s purpose, back when I was a little kid, I was skeptical. After all, the Cliff wasn’t really that high, and there were more than enough trees to stop the falling rocks before they reached the town. But Grandma had insisted that it was true, and Dad agreed with her, so who was I to ar
gue? It wasn’t like I was an expert on nature. The closest we came to nature in Brooklyn was Prospect Park.
If I ever needed absolute proof that nobody in Three Peaks knew what my family did for them, or how dangerous the Cliff actually was, it was this: Every Fourth of July, at the foot of the Cliff, the town’s fire department shot fireworks into the air—and the rest of the town gathered on the Cliff’s edge to watch.
That night, Brandy, Theo, and I spread out a blanket and observed said sparkly lights from a point not too close to the edge, but not too far away, either, all of us going “Ooh” along with the kids and parents and grandparents around us.
At one point, Brandy said, “Look at how the fireworks are lighting up the treetops. I feel like we’re in Harry Potter or something.”
Theo’s reply was, “My roof is still better.”
“Shut up, it is not,” I said. Brandy gave me a smile. The kind of smile that lingered. The kind of smile that shone brighter than fireworks, even though I was the only one who could see it.
When the show was over and everyone started packing up their stuff, Theo said, “Come on. Let’s beat the traffic.”
We raced away from the crowd, toward the lot where everyone had left their cars—and Theo started down the mountain, driving faster than I’d ever seen him drive. Although, to be fair, I’d never seen him drive toward a potential hookup before. I guess that changed things.
Eventually, we reached a street clogged with parked cars, and Theo slid in behind a bright red thing. And then, before I could even unbuckle my seat belt, he was out the door and bolting toward the house.
I raced after him, up the street and across a fancy lawn—the rural kind of fancy, which included symmetrical flowering bushes framing the porch. Every light in the house was on, and I could already hear the faint sounds of people laughing and screeching and generally having a good time.
Brandy sprinted after me, and we caught up with Theo just in time to see him giving the door a surly look.
“Um, try knocking?” said Brandy.
He threw a glare at her. “Already did. But nobody’s—”
That was when the door flew open, revealing a petite redheaded girl on the other side. She stopped short, like she hadn’t been expecting to see us. “Oh! Theo!” she said.
Rocks Fall Everyone Dies Page 5
