Night Sky

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Again with the powers, and again with that uneasy feeling in my stomach. Still, I laughed as we followed her. “I really don’t know what you’re talking about—”

  With lightning speed, she tossed her apple high into the air, then grabbed a heavy box of soup that was in a display right by the door, next to the ancient, broken Redbox machine, and flung it at Cal’s head. I reached out instinctively, grabbing the box in midair, right before it hit him in the face. I mean, right before. I could feel the tiny hairs on my arms tickling Calvin’s forehead. It was weird, because I was pretty sure I hadn’t been standing that close to him before she’d grabbed for the soup.

  “What the Hay-ell—” Cal started.

  “Nuff said,” the girl interrupted him matter-of-factly. She caught her apple before it hit the floor and took another large bite. “Don’t worry, Scoot. Skylar’s learning. You’re not gonna die. At least not today.”

  “Are you okay?” I asked Cal even as I found myself thinking about the alarm clock and the cat poster, as the girl’s crisp voice again echoed in my head. A-bil-i-ties…

  Cal, meanwhile, had narrowed his eyes at the girl now walking out the Sav’A’Buck door before looking up at me. “I’m fine,” he replied. “Except my cray-cray limit has maxed out.”

  I set the soup down on the floor before following the girl into the parking lot. I had to know more. “Hey! Wait!”

  Calvin kept pace with me. “Really?” he was muttering. “We really want more of this?”

  The girl had stopped next to a huge motorcycle—the only vehicle left in the lot besides Cal’s car—but now she turned to face us. She was still munching away on her apple.

  “I don’t get you,” I said. “So I caught the soup box. I can catch. I’ve always been able to catch. Big deal.”

  “It is a big deal,” the girl said as she stuffed the bags into the small back trunk of her motorcycle, then tossed the apple core across the parking lot. She kicked away the stand and climbed onto the bike. It made her look even more petite, but no less of a badass. “It’s a really big deal, Bubble Gum. If you’re not careful, they’ll come for you next.”

  And now it was the memory of that shadowy figure I thought I’d seen in Sasha’s room that made me shiver.

  Meanwhile, those distant sirens were getting louder.

  “Gotta go,” she said.

  “Wait!” I yelled as the girl started the bike’s engine. I could barely hear my voice over the roar. “Please!”

  Motorcycle Girl revved the engine before leaning forward and glaring at me with eyes so intense that, again, I couldn’t look away. “Listen to me. I’ll be in touch. But right now, get into your car, both of you, and drive away. You need to get the hell out of here. Now.”

  With that, the girl sped off on her motorcycle, leaving a cloud of dust and a whole crapload of unanswered questions behind.

  At the same time, a different question was answered.

  I looked down at Cal. He looked up at me and nodded. It was definitely Motorcycle Girl that we’d nearly hit and killed yesterday. Coincidence, or had she been following us?

  Neither one of us said a word as we got into Cal’s car. We “got the hell out of there” before the police arrived, because I’d had that little talk with Detective Hughes, and Motorcycle Girl was right. It hadn’t gone well.

  “I can’t believe you couldn’t smell that fish,” I said, finally breaking our silence as we headed back home.

  Calvin looked at me, his hands tight on the steering wheel. “Yeah. That’s what you can’t believe. A crazy lady with a gun, pulling out her own teeth, and Destiny addicts sense your powers sometimes when they joker,” he said in a very decent imitation of the motorcycle girl, “whatever the eff that means. Blondie knows both your name and Sasha’s—and you’re all about my clogged sinuses.”

  I reached for my bag, which I’d left on the floor of his car, and dug for my phone with its Internet access. Maybe we could answer some of these questions with a little help from Google. “Destiny addicts.” I nodded as I powered up my phone. “And joker. And what else did she say? G and T. Let’s see if we can find out what the eff at least some of this means.”

  —

  What had Calvin said? That his cray-cray limit had maxed out?

  Well, mine was now pinned. Plus that feeling of uneasiness had moved into my belly. Permanently.

  We sat in Cal’s car, pulled off to the side of the road and safely back in our neighborhood in Coconut Key, as we both used our phones and the intermittent Internet to attempt to understand what the blond-haired motorcycle girl had told us.

  A-bil-i-ties.

  “Destiny,” Calvin read, the screen of his phone almost touching his nose, “is the street name for an illegal drug, quote, a chemical compound called oxy-clepta-di-estraphen that has not yet been approved for use by the corporate drug administration. Lobbyists claim it’s safe, although expensive. Says here it was developed to treat people with terminal diseases. Cancer patients with a month to live. One article says clinical trials have proven that it completely eradicates all traces of cancer in patients who’ve used it.”

  He looked over at me and there was something wistful in his eyes. “It makes users stronger, smarter, faster, literally younger. One doctor claims he gave the drug to a fully paralyzed patient, someone who needed a respirator to breathe after breaking her neck, and after a single dose, the woman was out of bed, breathing—and walking—on her own steam.”

  That was amazing. And now I knew what that look in Cal’s eyes was about.

  “What’s the catch?” I asked.

  “She died a day later,” he said. “Patient number two—a man in a similar condition—lived a little longer, but he jokered and killed the doctor before he died too.”

  And there was that word again. “Jokered?” I asked.

  “Urban Dictionary defines it as to succumb to illegal-drug-induced insanity, complete with super strength, inability to feel pain or compassion, and enhanced mental powers, à la a comic-book super-villain,” he told me.

  “So the drug’ll heal you,” I deduced, “right before it drives you insane and then kills you.”

  “Details, schmeetails,” Calvin said. “Destiny is also instantly addictive. On first use. You shoot up once, and you need to take it for the rest of your life. Or you die. It’s also ridonkulously expensive. About five thousand dollars a dose.”

  I laughed. “Seriously?”

  “According to the Internet,” Calvin pointed out. “Which means all of it might be an urban legend.” He smiled sadly. “Before I found the 5K-a-dose thing combined with the and-the-next-day-she-died thing, I was thinking, Huh, I might want to try this. You know, see if it could heal me.”

  “And be an addict for the rest of your life?” I asked, aghast.

  He shrugged. “I take blood thinners because my heart was damaged. I have to take them for the rest of my life.”

  “That’s different.”

  “Not really,” he pointed out. “Or at least that’s what I was thinking before I found that definition for jokering. Basically, when you take Destiny, the drug changes your brain waves. It allows you access to more brainpower—it’s called neural integration, and yeah, my eyes started glazing over too. In a nutshell, it sounds like Destiny eventually turns users into super-villains with—you’re gonna love this—superpowers like telepathy, prescience—that’s foreseeing the future—and telekinesis, which is moving shit around with your mind, right?

  “According to the scientifically acclaimed website—and yes, that was sarcasm—Destiny Addicts R Us dot com, without proper training, the average person can’t handle taking Destiny and suddenly having those kinds of enhanced mental powers, so their brains break and they go bonkers. Thus they joker. All of them. Always. Like Little Miss Sunshine at the Sav’A’Buck. All Destiny users eventually noisily self-destruc
t. The lucky ones just quietly drop dead without killing everyone else in the room.”

  We stared at each other.

  But then Cal barked with laughter. “Telepathy?” he said. “Come on. That’s nuts-balls. It’s bad enough that Destiny is addictive and that it eventually kills you, no need to make up this comic-book crap to scare people away from trying it.”

  “If taking Destiny means you die, why would anyone take it?” It was really just a rhetorical question, but Cal answered me.

  “Because people are stupid,” he said. “And desperate. And selfish. And greedy. From what I just read, the drug’s mostly abused by the uber-rich. And they don’t take it because they’ve got cancer. No, they take it because they want to look younger, and the nipping and tucking’s no longer working. That, and the fact that the very, very bad people who make and sell Destiny don’t include a warning label on their product.”

  “God,” I said.

  “Rumor has it there’s a plan in place to try to manufacture the drug more efficiently, to make it less expensive,” Calvin told me. “Currently, there’re two versions. The pure kind, sold in high-end nightclubs or passed along to patients in doctors’ offices, and something called Street D, which is cut with things like antifreeze and sold to the addicts and the desperate. Chance of jokering from Street D is eighty percent higher.”

  I exhaled loud and long, but Calvin wasn’t finished.

  “Another side effect of the drug,” he added, “even before the user jokers from his unbearable telekinesis or dies, or both, is this kinda intense feeling of superiority, which I guess makes sense. I mean, if you’re sixty but you suddenly look and feel twenty? Wouldn’t you feel superior? Cancer’s gone, boom, here I am, world, stronger and smarter. Yeah.

  “But there’s also, allegedly, a lack of empathy that occurs with the use of Destiny. You stop being able to relate to anyone, even your own family. So even before you joker, you start exhibiting sociopathic, crazy-pants, psycho-killer behavior. But then when you joker, double boom, you do things like parboil and eat your grandkids without blinking, simply because you were hungry and wanted a snack.”

  “Oh, thanks,” I said. “I needed that image.”

  “You’re welcome.” Cal looked at me. “So what’d you find?”

  Predictably, Google had given me nothing from the letters G and T, but I too had used Urban Dictionary to find that it wasn’t GT or even G period T period, but rather G dash T. “G-T is short for something—someone—called a Greater-Than,” I told him. “I don’t know how real this is. Some websites are convinced G-Ts are urban legends, kinda like Sasquatch. Some sites think G-Ts are gods from above, and others say they’re dangerous”—I read from my phone’s screen—“sociopathic megalomaniacs…” I looked up at Cal. “A lot like a jokering Destiny addict, I think. The word super-villain was used a lot in what I read.”

  “So…a G-T or Greater-Than is, what?” Cal asked. “Another name for a Destiny addict?”

  “Nope,” I told him, popping my P. “Apparently, some people—mostly female people—have these…well, let me read this to you: innate mental powers. G-Ts are born with access to more of their brains, and those powers can include”—I glanced up at him—“telepathy, prescience, and telekinesis.”

  “Innate means natural, right?”

  “It means, baby, they’re born that way, yeah,” I told him, even as Motorcycle Girl’s voice echoed in my head. A-bil-i-ties. “Apparently, having these weird superpowers can turn Greater-Thans kind of crazy too. Mean crazy. The words feelings of superiority came up a lot in my searches too. Along with lack of empathy and compassion, yada, yada.”

  “More comic-book bullshit,” Calvin decided, and I wished I shared his skepticism and total disbelief. “SuperGirl from the Sav’A’Buck was just jerking our chain.”

  I nodded and didn’t tell him how spooked all of this made me feel. He’d call me Old Mary One-Eye again, and I didn’t want to get mad at him and… No, I refused to think about any of this anymore tonight.

  “What’s not bullshit,” I told him, “is the twenty missed calls from my mother.” She’d started calling when we were back in the Sav’A’Buck, when I’d left my bag on the floor of Cal’s car. I pointed to the lit-up numerals of the clock on his dashboard. “It’s after eleven. I’m late.”

  I was so dead.

  Correction: I was so not dead.

  “You know, I think we should keep what happened tonight between us,” I offered as Calvin started his car. We weren’t too far from my house, thank goodness. Still, when I walked through that door, I was gonna get hammered by the wrath of Mom.

  “I think that’s a good idea.” Calvin tightened his jaw as he turned onto my street. He laughed once, and his expression softened. “Hey, what do you call a knight in shining armor if the knight happens to be a girl?”

  I knew he was talking about Motorcycle Girl. A Greater-Than? I kept that thought to myself. She’d scared me more than Little Miss Sunshine had.

  Well, maybe not quite that much. Still, a shiver ran through me as Calvin turned into my driveway.

  “Lights off!” I hissed, and Calvin quickly switched off his headlights.

  “I seriously doubt your mom will be able to tell the difference between my car and my parents’ car, especially in the dark,” Calvin replied.

  “I’m pretty sure she’s got her own personal night-vision goggles,” I said. “In a lovely shade of peach or maybe salmon.”

  Cal laughed, but more because he knew he was supposed to, and we sat there in the darkness of my driveway for a few moments before I turned to ask, “Are you going to be okay driving home alone?”

  He made a dismissive pssht sound. “I’m good,” he replied, but I didn’t believe him for a second. He was still freaked out. How could he not be?

  Still, I knew he wasn’t going to cave. “Fine,” I said. “Text me when you get home, or else it’s on,” I said as I stepped out of his car.

  “I’m still racing you, so think of something good to bet, because I’m going to win it,” Calvin replied, reminding me of the challenge he’d given me back in the Sav’A’Buck, pre-jokering Destiny addict.

  “Oh, I will,” I said, and leaned back in to give him a high five. We both felt better pretending everything was normal.

  But when he rolled down the driver’s side window as I walked up the steps to my house, I couldn’t keep up the game. “I’m serious,” I called out, quietly enough so that my mom wouldn’t hear from inside. “Be careful.”

  Calvin nodded. “Yes, ma’am.” And he backed out of the driveway, switching his headlights on again only after turning his car onto the street.

  —

  I was digging my key out of my purse when Mom flung the door open. “Skylar!” she gasped. “Thank God you’re okay!”

  This would have been the appropriate response for any mother to have—if she knew her daughter had just been held at gunpoint.

  Unfortunately, this was how Mom acted all the time.

  “Of course I’m okay,” I replied casually, setting my purse down on the coffee table as I began my litany of FUVUs—frequently used vague untruths. “I’m so sorry I’m late. I don’t know what happened. Cal and I were talking and I looked up and it was after eleven.” I began to untie my pink high-top sneakers, hopping up and down a little to keep my balance as I worked on loosening the left shoelace.

  My mom threw her arms around me, kissing the back of my neck feverishly, as if I’d just returned home from war.

  Which was closer to the truth, I guess, than I preferred to admit.

  The reality was that my heart hadn’t completely slowed since we’d left the Sav’A’Buck. And yet somehow I was managing to go through all the motions I normally did after a night out.

  Maybe I was still in shock.

  But then my phone beeped, and I pulled back to read Calvi
n’s text: Home safe. Heads up…Momzilla alert. She called my mom, looking for you, while we were out. Sry :/

  Great, now Calvin was gonna be in trouble too, because his mother hadn’t known that my mother didn’t want me driving around in his car. Except she probably did now.

  “Mom,” I said sharply. “You called Calvin’s mom?”

  There was nothing she could say but yes, so she attempted to distract. “Do you have any idea how scared I was?”

  I set my phone down on the arm of the couch. “Mom. Why in the world would you be so scared? I’m not that late.”

  “Because!” Mom’s face looked contorted and pained, like she might actually start crying. Her usually perfect blond bob was even tousled as if she’d been running her hands through it. I realized that she was seriously upset. “Because what if…”

  “What if…” I prompted her.

  “What if…something happened to you? And I wasn’t there? What if you got into a…another accident…or a…”

  I sighed, trying to be calm despite my frustration at having this conversation again. What if you get into another accident? “Aren’t you tired of talking about this? Because I am.”

  “No!” Mom was getting shrill. “I’m not going to stop talking about it until you stop scaring the crap out of me!”

  Now I knew she was hyper-upset. Mom never even fake swore. Her manners were almost priest-like.

  “Don’t you get it?” she continued. “I’m trying to keep you safe! It’s my job!”

  “But I’m seventeen! I’m not five.” I threw my hands up in the air. “So I get home at eleven instead of ten thirty. Big deal! I’m fine. Look! Take a good look!” I spun around, my eyes wide. “Alive! One piece. Congratulations! Job well done!”

  Mom shook her head. “You’re not seventeen until next Friday,” she said, focusing on the least important thing I’d said.

  “Uuuuggh!” I groaned. “Are you not getting my point at all? I’m not a baby anymore.”