Run to You Part Five: Fifth Touch

by Clara Kensie

  Instead of going back to the art room as he always did, this time he sat at one of the tables, sketching with colored pencils.

  I approached the spot on the wall where I had painted the eyes yesterday. I lifted the fog and tentatively touched the spot.

  A slight jolt—shame-guilt-despair-tarnished-blood-tainted-blood—but it was a remnant of my own fog-laden thoughts from yesterday. It was stupid to let those painted eyes affect me so much.

  Over the next few days I repainted the portion of the mural that I’d ruined by painting the eyes over it, then completed the strawberry and grapes. It took a lot longer than it used to; I had a harder time keeping the fog balanced because I was afraid to sink too deeply into it. I battled visions, and I was much slower now, but I was still able to paint.

  A week later, Mr. Vargas told me to invite all of my friends to the cafeteria after school so they could watch as I put the finishing touches on the mural. He brought in a sheet cake, big enough to feed at least twenty people.

  Four. That’s how many people came. Tristan, Dennis, Deirdre and Ember.

  Four wasn’t much, but it was enough.

  Dennis and Deirdre wouldn’t stop exclaiming over how wonderful the mural was, or how proud they were of me. I didn’t try to stop their compliments. My mural was good. Bright and whimsical. The colors and shapes were perfectly balanced. My cheeks hurt from smiling.

  “Stand in front of it,” Deirdre said, pulling a camera from her purse. I posed and preened as she snapped a dozen pictures.

  The only thing missing was my brother and sister. Their absence was like a hole in my heart.

  Tristan picked me up and whirled me around, not caring that I was all paint-y and would ruin his clothes. “Now you need to sign it,” he said.

  I dipped a thin brush into silver paint and scrawled Tessa, very small, in the bottom right corner.

  “You forgot your last name,” Mr. Vargas said.

  “No,” I said, “I didn’t forget.”

  I hadn’t signed my last name on purpose. The Lab Brats wouldn’t want the name Carson forever painted on the cafeteria wall.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  A week later, Mr. Vargas asked if I wanted to paint another mural, this one in the field house. I told him not today; I loved painting, but there was something else I needed to do. Tristan and Aaron, though working ceaselessly to find Jillian and Logan, had made no headway in weeks. It was time to do something about it. So after school, instead of painting a mural, instead of going back to the Connellys’ house, I went to visit Brinda Lakhani.

  I brushed my hand on her sticker-covered door. She peeked out and I wiggled my fingers at her, then she flung open the door, gave me a hug and even kissed my cheek. Her father waved me in. Smiling, in silence, the three of us drank our invisible tea.

  When I thought Brinda was ready, I placed Jillian’s ballet shoe and Logan’s sheet music on the table. I had nothing else to show her. I just had to hope that she would see something new.

  We continued drinking our tea. Brinda’s gaze flitted to the shoe and paper occasionally, but never landed on them. Finally, her olive-brown eyes turned unfocused, and Mr. Lakhani held up her bucket of crayons. She reached inside, shuffled around and pulled out a brown crayon.

  On a plain sheet of paper, she drew a large triangle. Next, she took a gold crayon and drew a small circle in the middle of the triangle.

  Then, she slid the paper to me, her eyes clear.

  That was it. No more predictions. This one drawing would have to be enough.

  To thank her, I gave her a rainbow sticker, which she promptly stuck to the window frame. After gathering everything—the drawing, Jillian’s ballet shoe and Logan’s sheet music—into my bag, I waved goodbye to Brinda and her father and went back downstairs. A gold circle in a brown triangle wasn’t much to go on, but at least Tristan and I had another drawing to find a match for.

  On the way out, I passed the Lab. From the entrance, I could see the Technokinetics office.

  Hmm. Maybe Aaron would like to see the drawing too.

  Aaron jumped when I knocked on the door frame, but his fingers didn’t slow as they flew between two keyboards, and his eyes didn’t stop as they scanned six monitors stacked on his desk, all of them flashing random faces so quickly that my brain couldn’t decipher them. How was he keeping up with it all? He had Jillian and Logan’s photos taped to the side of one monitor, and they reflected in his overly large glasses.

  “I have a new clue.” I showed him Brinda’s drawing, which he glanced at for a millisecond before returning to the monitors.

  I leaned against his desk, studying the drawing. “The brown triangle could be a mountain. And the gold circle might be a ring. What do you think?”

  No response.

  “Try looking at places in the mountains,” I said. “Maybe they’ll drive by a jewelry store. Or a gold mine.”

  His fingers blurred over the keyboards, but still he said nothing.

  “You’re having no luck scanning traffic cams and surveillance videos,” I said. “I know this drawing is a long shot, but at least it’s a new direction.”

  He didn’t respond, just continued to scan the monitors. For a length of a heartbeat, his gaze rested on Jillian’s photo and his fingers slowed, then he resumed his usual breakneck pace.

  “I’m sure Jillian will be grateful for your help,” I said.

  His face turned red. “Brown triangle. Gold circle. I’ll look.”

  “You’ll call me when you find them?”

  But he had sunk into his search again, and his answer was only a grunt. So I left, not sure he’d remember that I had been there.

  * * *

  A few mornings later, a series of rapid, high-pitched beeps woke me from my dream of silver knives and Nightmare Eyes. I jolted awake, heart in my throat, instincts telling me to run; Dennis Connelly had found us again.

  No. I was safe. No more running. Dennis Connelly was a friend, and my parents were the villains. The Nightmare Eyes weren’t real. Marmalade was curled up next to me, Mac was lying on my floor, and Tristan was across the hall.

  I was safe.

  My heart rate revved up again when I recognized the beeping as the ringtone I’d assigned to Aaron Jacobs. Bolting upright, I grabbed my phone from the nightstand and scrambled to answer it. “Aaron! Do you have a lead?”

  Marmalade mewed next to me as my door pushed open, and Tristan rushed in, on alert.

  “I found her,” Aaron said. “Them. I found them.”

  Joy, elation, euphoria shot into every cell of my body, lighting me up, making me weightless, and I flew out of bed. “Where are they?”

  “In Colorado. A mountain town called Ringgold.”

  “That’s Brinda’s drawing,” I exclaimed. Oh beautiful, glorious Brinda.

  Ringgold, Colorado, I flashed to Tristan, who whirled around and ran to his room to dress.

  “You did it, Aaron. You did it.” Holding the phone to my ear with my shoulder, I shed my pajama pants and pulled on a pair of jeans. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

  “I—I concentrated on places in the mountains, like you told me to,” Aaron said. “Yesterday I thought I s-saw them on a security cam at a used car lot in Colorado. They bought a blue 2006 Camry. From there I followed them on traffic cams until they stopped for the night at a motel.” With each word, his voice became bolder, more confident.

  “Why didn’t you call me yesterday?”

  “I wasn’t sure it was them. But now I have visual confirmation. It’s them. Her hair is red now. L-light red.”

  “What’s the name of the motel?” I said. We’d have to get out there right away. I was shaking, so excited, that I almost dropped the phone.

  “They left it already,” he said, “But I
picked up their trail again. I’m driving a few cars behind them, driving up the mountain.”

  “Wait.” This time I did drop my phone, then scrambled to hold it to my ear again. “You’re already in Colorado? You went out there without me?”

  “I flew out last night while they were at the motel. D-don’t be mad. I just...I...I want...”

  My legs folded like they were made of paper and I sank to the bed. “You want to bring Jillian back here yourself,” I said. “You want to be her hero.”

  For a long time, the only sound coming through my phone was the hum of the engine of Aaron’s car. Then: “Yeah.”

  I could understand that. Tristan would probably do the same thing to be my hero. “I’m not mad,” I half lied. “But Aaron, Jillian and Logan won’t trust anyone but me, so I’m flying out there. Don’t let them notice you until I get there. I’ll tell Jillian, first thing, that you were the one who found her, okay? I’ll tell her how smart and nice and awesome you are.”

  “O-okay,” he said.

  “Once we land, I’ll call you and you’ll tell us exactly where you are. We’ll catch up to you, and then we’ll bring them home.”

  “All right.”

  “Aaron,” I said. “Don’t let them out of your sight.”

  “I won’t.”

  I disconnected, then darted to Tristan’s room. He was sitting at his computer, looking at a map of Ringgold. “Can we get that charter plane again? That’ll be fastest,” I said.

  He slowly swiveled in his chair to face me. “Tessa, you can’t go. You can’t leave Lilybrook.”

  “What do you mean? Aaron’s already in Colorado. He’s driving right behind them. We have to go get them.”

  “You can’t leave Lilybrook,” he said, scraping his hand through his hair. “My mother’s dream, remember?”

  “But Jillian and Logan have already been found,” I said. “They’re on a road on a mountain. There won’t be a silver room.”

  “We don’t know that.” His expression was stone.

  “Is this because Aaron found them and you didn’t?” I cried.

  The stone crumbled, just a little, then recomposed itself. “No. This is because I need to keep you safe.”

  Anger swept through my body, setting my nerves ablaze. I wanted to throw my phone at him, but it was the only way I had to get ahold of Aaron. “I just want my brother and sister,” I snapped. “I don’t care who finds them.”

  “It’s okay. I figured out what to do.” He rose and walked over to me, slowly, the way a patient parent would approach a child throwing a tantrum. “I’ll call Aaron back and tell him there’s been a change of plans. Once Jillian and Logan stop somewhere, Aaron will set his phone to video chat and show it to them. Then you will video chat with them so they know you’re alive and safe, and you can tell them it’s okay to come back here with Aaron.”

  Usually my blood burned with shame, but this time it boiled with outrage. “That’s ridiculous, Tristan! I need to get out there. Right now.”

  “No. Not when I can’t depend on my premonitions to keep you safe. It’s too risky.”

  “I’m not risking anything,” I said.

  “You’re risking your life.” He opened his arms for me. “Just stay here. By the end of the day today, they will be here with you, and we won’t have to worry about my mother’s dream anymore.”

  I pushed his arms away, then stomped back to the guest room, slamming my door on him when he tried to follow me in.

  I sat on my bed with Marmalade, phone in my hands, and waited for Aaron to call.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  I left my room only to brush my teeth and do my hair, so when I did video chat with Jillian and Logan, they would believe me that I was safe and happy.

  Well, that I was safe. I was not happy. Especially not with my overprotective boyfriend who had more faith in his mother’s defunct dream than he had in me.

  I waited some more.

  Hours later, a phone rang, but it wasn’t mine. It was only the Connellys’ landline.

  After a minute, someone knocked on my door. “Tessa? It’s Dennis. That was John Kellan on the phone,” he said. “Honey, something’s happened. We have to get to the APR.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  In the APR’s boardroom, Kellan leaned on the glossy table and glowered at me as I shivered in a chair across from him. Tristan sat next to me, as close as he could get. Dennis paced the room, stroking his chin, looking more and more devastated as he listened in on Kellan’s thoughts. Various investigators, guards and Lab employees crowded into the room, rumbling with shock and distress.

  The Nightmare Eyes had returned, burning into me from above, and on the table, a letter opener glittered and glimmered, sparkled and glowed.

  “Please,” I begged. “What happened? Are Jillian and Logan okay? Is Aaron okay?”

  “Tessa, honey, there was an accident,” Dennis said.

  “That was no accident,” Kellan snapped. He placed a laptop on the table and connected it to a projector aimed at a big screen on the wall. “The people driving in the car behind Aaron recorded the whole thing on their cell phone,” he said. “The idiots posted it on YouTube.”

  As the video buffered, more employees squeezed into the room. Nathan, lip curled, pushed his way to the front of the crowd while Kellan shouted instructions. “I need as many healers as we can get to fly to Colorado. And bring me someone from the Techno department. I need them to wipe this video from the internet.”

  Everyone hushed as the video started. Shaky and blurry, it showed the sun rising in the distance over gold mountains. The cameraman was a passenger in a car that drove on an ill-paved road, about halfway up a mountain. Ahead of them was a gray sedan.

  “That’s Aaron’s rental car,” Kellan said. “Up ahead of him, in the blue Camry,” he said, pointing to a blue car further up the road, “are the targets. Jillian and Logan Carson.”

  The camera was focused on the rising sun, but I was focused on the blue car as it jostled and bumped its way up the mountain road. The image was too small and too blurry to see the occupants inside. The camera lazily shifted to the side window, to record the mountain’s steep cliffs. Then, offscreen, the driver exclaimed, “Hey. Hey! That car’s going off the road!”

  The view rotated back to the windshield, just in time to capture Aaron’s gray sedan swerving off the road and crashing through the guardrail. It hovered in place, dozens of feet in the air.

  “Do you see that?” the cameraman shouted. “It’s floating! How’s it doing that?”

  A blurry Aaron, eyes bulging behind his overly large glasses, pounded at the window. “Look!” the cameraman shouted. “The guy’s trying to get out!”

  Then the sedan, with Aaron in it, simply...

  Dropped.

  “Oh my God! Oh my God!” The driver screeched to a stop. Still holding the camera, the passenger ran out to the side of the road. He recorded the sedan as it hit the mountainside, then tumbled, tumbled, tumbled, crumpling and breaking, glass spraying, one door flying off beyond the camera’s range, before finally coming to a stop against a boulder.

  Then it exploded in a ball of fire.

  Yelling and cursing with dismay, the cameraman turned the view to the side of the road. “911! Call 911!”

  The camera’s view pivoted, landing on Jillian and Logan, who also stood on the side of the road, their blue car parked at an angle to the side. Jillian, her hair dyed a light red and cut to her shoulders, sobbed into her hands. Logan, his arm around Jillian, watched calmly. “You did the right thing,” he said, his voice muffled but icy. “I’ve always said we should fight instead of run. This time we did. And we won. If he sends anyone else after us, we’ll kill them too. We have no other choice.”

 
He turned to the guy holding the camera and snatched it from him. “You hear that, Dennis Connelly?” His brown eyes wild and enraged, he snarled directly into the camera lens. “You didn’t think we’d notice that guy tailing us? Keep sending your people after us, Connelly, and we’ll keep killing them. Or how about next time you come after us yourself? I cannot wait to kill you.” He shoved the camera back to its owner. “Go ahead and post that video online,” he said. “Let him see it. Let everyone see it.”

  The cameraman continued to record Logan as he led a weeping Jillian to their car and placed her inside. Then, tires screeching, they sped off up the mountain, passing a metal sign that read Caution: Dangerous Curves Ahead.

  The sign reflected the sun, and it flashed silver. Brilliant, blinding silver.

  * * *

  The video ended, and in the silence the fog whooshed in, but only I could see it.

  Well, the Nightmare Eyes did too.

  With a trembling hand, Tristan took me under his arm. “Aaron’s dead?” he asked, his voice trembling too.

  “He’s alive,” Kellan said, and the crowd slumped with relief. “But barely. He was thrown out of the car, but was still hit by the explosion. He was airlifted to the nearest hospital. Broken bones, lacerations, cerebral contusions, burns over sixty percent of his body.”

  Broken bones. Lacerations. Burns. My brother and sister had done that to Aaron. They’d used their psychokinesis to push his car over the cliff. They’d tried to kill him.

  All Aaron wanted was to be Jillian’s hero.

  The fog thickened, darkened, making me dizzy and woozy. I put my head to my knees. “Tristan, I’m going to—”

  He was already placing a garbage can under me, and I vomited into it.

  Tristan and Dennis moved in, flanking me on either side, as I sniffled and wiped my mouth. The crowd, Nathan included, had watched as I’d heaved and retched into the garbage can. Their expressions were not compassionate. My siblings had tried to kill the son of the APR’s executive director.

  Dennis rubbed his chin. “What’s your next step, Kellan? I think you should call off the investigation for a few weeks. Let the kids calm down.”