by Tonya Kuper
Mom hadn’t told me whom we were meeting and Reid didn’t give any indication that he knew, either. I wasn’t going to ask my mother because I’d find out soon enough, and I really didn’t feel like conversing with the person who was making me the sacrificial lamb, so to speak.
Bad, Josie. Bad. I got it, I did. I rationally accepted all the reasons why she was doing this, but, damn it, it…hurt. In between the hurt, I was hit with flashes of terror, because more than dying, I feared failing at the task.
We drove south of the city limits and parked in front of a tiny coffee shop, close to the hotel where the award ceremony and vice president’s campaign speech would be hosted. We went inside to order drinks, and I was surprised when I didn’t see Reid.
Mom paid, and we went out the way we’d come. Instead of climbing back into the car, though, I followed my mother, who hobbled down the sidewalk.
“Mom?”
“Yes?”
“What are—”
“Well, hey!” Mr. McIntosh, my physics teacher, said as he rounded the corner. “Funny bumping into you. You DVRing the new Big Bang Theory tonight, Josie?”
Crap. This was not the time to run into people I knew. My head swung to Mom. What was I supposed to do?
Mom extended her hand to Mr. Mac. “Nice to see you. Thanks for meeting us.”
Wait. What?
He shook her hand, smiling. “Meg. Of course.”
Mom turned to me. “Mr. McIntosh started at Oceanside the year we moved here…to help protect you at school.”
My stomach churned. My sweet drink didn’t seem to fit this epic realization. My parents had agreed to send me to that specific public high school because of their stellar physics program—but now I knew it was due to Mr. Mac’s astounding résumé. I wasn’t discounting my teacher’s amazing gift for education, but he’d been placed there. For me.
All the pieces snapped into place:
Tae kwon do
Homeschooling
The constant moving
It was all in preparation for an Oculi life. My parents had taken steps to prepare us…just in case. I hadn’t thought my life could get any more jacked, but I was wrong.
Reid moseyed up on the sidewalk behind Mr. Mac. He gave a short salute to my mom and extended a hand to our physics teacher. “Sir. Would you like to lead us?”
Mr. McIntosh ambled down the sidewalk beside my mother, and Reid fell in next to me as we followed a few steps behind them. “You don’t look so good,” Reid said to me.
“Gee, thanks. This is what ‘my life is screwed’ looks like.”
“You’re doing fine.”
I glanced down at my bandaged hand from my time in the chasm. A sarcastic laugh punched out of me. “Yeah, I’m doing fine.”
He didn’t respond, so I peeked at his face. His light blue gaze was steady, waiting. “Really. It may seem like an impossible situation, but in order to succeed, you have to believe you can do it.”
He was now offering the kind of advice printed on fortune cookies? “You gonna tell me what my lucky numbers are next?”
“I’m serious. It’s mind over matter.” His brows arched playfully. “On many levels.”
A giggle burst out of me, and I was surprised when Reid laughed along.
Mr. Mac and my mom slowed in front of us. “Now,” Mr. McIntosh said, clasping his hands just like he did before the start of an intense lecture. “On Sunday, you two will want to drive separately and park down one of these side streets. Josie, your mother and I will be seated in the audience. But you will have to go to the back staging area.” He pointed across the street to the side entrance of the hotel. “You’ll be ushered to the security check in the back. Reid, I’ve worked out your position as the school journalist. I already submitted your fingerprints and all the necessary documentation. Obviously, do not appear as if you two are together.”
Mr. Mac continued walking. It was always weird seeing teachers outside of school, but he wasn’t just a teacher—he was an Oculus. This made me wonder who else in my life, or random people I passed on the sidewalk, were Oculi.
This was how paranoia started, I was sure.
We turned the corner away from the busy street, as if we were on some after-dinner stroll around the neighborhood. Though my physics teacher didn’t turn around, he continued talking loudly enough for Reid and me to hear. “Josie, you’ll want to treat your week at school like any other. However, from here forward, you are not to travel without an Oculi accompaniment.”
“Okay. But what about Hannah?”
Mom halted in front of me, causing me to bump into her back. “She checks out—I’ve done a full history check on her, her father, and her lack of extended family. But you can’t tell her.”
My mother had done background checks on my best friend’s family? Hannah literally didn’t have any family. It was just her and her dad. Oh. Was that why she was a safe Planck to hang out with? My parents had allowed me to spend time with her because she was, in fact, benign and posed no threat. Even my best friend was preapproved. Everything had been orchestrated for me, and I never saw it. I thought I might hurl my coffee drink.
I hadn’t thought it was possible to be more upset with my mother, but I was wrong. I couldn’t even look at her. I handed my coffee to Reid. “You can have this.”
Reid seemed a bit perplexed, but he accepted the insulated cup and dutifully took a sip.
Staring at a big crack in the sidewalk, I nodded. “Give me more credit than that, Mom. Please. Of course I wouldn’t tell her. I meant that I had some things scheduled with her this week.” I wasn’t stupid.
“I…” A long sigh hissed from my mom. “That’s not what I—”
Reid cleared his throat. “Josie will stick to her regularly scheduled week, and I will be with her.” He was trying to diffuse the tension. “If she has individual plans with Hannah, Santos or I will provide security.” He eyed me. “You won’t even know we’re around.”
Right. Like he was easy to ignore. Instead, I mumbled, “Thanks.”
“Now that Josie knows who she can trust at school and where we need to go on Sunday, are we free to go?” Reid asked.
“Oh, yeah, sure,” Mr. Mac said in a quite chipper tone, seemingly oblivious to the weirdness between my mom and me.
My mom leaned on her cane while the other hand held her drink, her critical eyes softening for a brief moment. She gave us a curt nod.
As soon as her head bowed, Reid’s hand touched my elbow and softly guided me back the way we came. When we rounded the corner, I finally dared to glance at him.
“What?” he asked without looking at me.
“Thanks.” This time I meant it sincerely.
He didn’t respond. When we passed a trashcan, he chucked my drink, led me to his bike, and took me home.
It wouldn’t have meant much to some—him kind of saving me from a frustrating situation with my mom—but it meant everything to me.
14.
Josie
R
eid, Santos, and I were scheduled to practice using my shield—whatever that meant—before school, since I had plans with Hannah later. That morning, Santos followed from my house to the warehouse, where I found Reid pacing impatiently.
“Time to practice,” he said.
“Defenses up.” That was one of the first things we’d learned in tae kwon do—the importance of defending oneself. I wouldn’t let him, or anyone else, see how scared I was.
“You were right,” Santos said. “She is tough.” Maybe it shouldn’t have, but it gave me some kind of satisfaction to know that Reid had called me tough. And I think he knew that, because Reid walked away, saying nothing. I turned toward Santos, who shrugged. “He gets grumpy if he doesn’t get enough sleep.”
I smiled.
Santos waved me on to follow him. He was easy to be around, always making jokes and smiling. I liked that about him. So did Hannah, who’d already texted me about Santos this morning. I told her we’d t
alk later. It pained me to think it, but with everything going on, my bestie’s love life—that wasn’t even a blip on my radar.
Santos glanced over his shoulder as he continued to the middle of the warehouse floor. “Now, you’re an Anomaly, which is rare. But during this exercise, try not to Retract. You’re going to be like me, a Pusher, for this lesson.”
Huh. The ability to Push but not Retract…interesting. And, I imagined, a skill that was more difficult to control. If I made a mistake, I could “erase” it. If Santos screwed up, he’d have to continue to Push to correct it. That would be much harder.
I was mid-step, and deep in thought, when cinderblock walls magically appeared stacked on both sides of me, about twenty feet long and at least fifteen feet tall. Walls I hadn’t Pushed. I whirled around and found another wall, boxing me in. My stomach dropped and I turned to run, but Reid and Santos took the place of the final wall, making a dead end.
“What are you doing?” My voice was steady despite the fear turning my blood to sludge.
“Training,” Reid said, his face expressionless.
A basket of tennis balls snapped into existence next to Santos. He pocketed several balls and held three in his hands.
Reid stepped over to the basket and copied Santos, shoving balls into his pockets, palming as many more as possible. “Pushers and Anomalies have their own defensive mechanisms,” he said. “‘Defenses up’ means many things. We need to always be aware of our environment.” Santos glanced at Reid, raising an eyebrow, but Reid didn’t bite. “Gather as much information as possible, especially when first engaging Oculi you don’t know. That may require thinking outside the box. You need them to show you if they’re a Pusher, a Retractor, or an Anomaly. And the most important part of being on the defensive is actually Pushing your shield.”
A shield. I focused my thoughts.
Heat, pain, nausea. The sickening feeling was passing faster, though.
I Pushed a round metal shield into my right hand, one I’d seen in my history textbook when studying the Vikings. The shield appeared and instantly weighed my arm down to the cement floor. I hadn’t thought that through. I dropped the heavy shield and Pushed Captain America’s shield, which was much more manageable, not to mention the coolest piece of memorabilia I’d ever touched.
Santos bent over, dropped his tennis balls, and grabbed his belly, laughing. Reid turned away from me, his shoulders silently heaving.
“What?” I shrugged. “The first one was too heavy. And how badass is this?” I struck a Captain America pose. Total selfie material.
Both shields vanished and I felt naked. How was I supposed to protect myself?
Reid eased back around, still grinning, and said, “Not that kind of shield. Ours is, uh, not usually seen by the human eye. Only if the light catches it just right.”
“So you mean it’s basically invisible?” That contradicted the notion of observing something into reality.
His stance was wide, his arms crossed, and his face stoic. Intense. “Yeah. Not seen by the human eye. Do you know anything about magnetic fields? They are electric currents that can be measured, observed, if you will.”
“Yes, I know about magnetic fields, but that just sounds crazy.”
Reid’s eyes opened wider. “Like the rest of this isn’t crazy?” Then he beaned me with tennis balls. Like full-on dodgeball style.
I jumped, ducked, swerved, arched my back. I did everything I could to avoid the balls, but I was getting walloped. “Ow.”
“And no Retracting allowed, Miss Oculi Genius.” This from Santos. The jerk.
I glanced at Reid, but white blurred my vision. Four or five balls flew toward me. Reflexively, I Pushed. My go-to concrete wall popped up, barricading me from the haze of tennis balls. In a flash, it was gone. Damn it, Reid! I cowered from the balls that were inches from pelting me, but they never made contact.
“What’s with you and the barricades?” Reid asked.
A good question.
“You know,” Santos said, “I’d heard you like to put up walls with people, but I didn’t expect you to do it quite so literally.”
His infectious chuckle made me smile.
Reid was all business. “Try again,” he instructed. “No walls. No Marvel comic merchandise.”
He and Santos Pushed more balls into their hands. A basketful of them appeared between them.
“Ready?”
Uh, no.
They let loose, and I focused, or tried to. My thoughts flip-flopped from Pushing to Retracting the little neon suckers. But I couldn’t concentrate. A hazy, flickering light of sorts was there for a moment, and then faded into the space around me. I braced for the impact of a ball to my face.
The pain never came. The ball was gone.
Reid let the balls in his hands bounce to the floor, and he stepped to the side. He’d stopped the ball before it collided with my nose. Maybe he does care about the status of my face.
Then Santos stepped up. And a tennis ball machine appeared beside him.
I didn’t know why Reid wasn’t participating in my beat-down anymore. Something didn’t seem right, and my stomach agreed. I didn’t know how to create an invisible shield, and until a few seconds ago, I wouldn’t have guessed it was even a possibility.
I was powerless.
Reid
“J
osie,” I said, trying to grab her attention away from Santos and his machine. “You have to Push energy out from your body. It doesn’t have to be far. Just enough that whatever is thrown at you won’t actually harm you.”
Her eyes widened as she caught the word harm. She was one smart cookie, but I didn’t dare tell her that. Pretty sure she’d kick my ass for calling her a cookie.
Santos cleared his throat, and I nodded. He unleashed a fury of balls at her. I Retracted most of them, and from the way she jumped and twisted, she avoided the others.
This wasn’t working.
I Retracted all the balls to give her a chance to gather her thoughts as I walked the length of the training area behind Santos. “Instead of envisioning what you want to Push, think about extending your skin beyond your body. That’s what helped me at first. It’s going to feel weird.”
I’d trained dozens of Oculi, and it’d never bothered me. But this? This wasn’t just torture for Josie—it was for me, too. I wouldn’t let anything devastating happen, but I also couldn’t purposefully throw danger at her. That’s why Santos had to do it this time.
Josie stopped trying to avoid the balls and stood up. Santos paused momentarily. She stilled, and her eyes met mine for an instant. She was Pushing a shield. I couldn’t see it, but I could tell from her face. Her eyes concentrated on one spot and her jaw clamped down.
The ball chucking resumed, but the balls hit an invisible wall about two inches in front of Josie’s body and fell to the floor, bouncing away.
Santos flicked the ball machine lever up to decapitation-by-tennis-balls mode. Balls hummed through the air at a dangerous speed. Josie’s face twisted in surprise, and I knew her concentration had broken. Two balls pelted her in the leg, then a ten-by-ten brick wall appeared. Again.
I Retracted the wall. Josie hesitantly peeked at us from around her forearms.
“You can’t use something as obvious as this wall for your defense. You’ll reveal yourself to Plancks, thus getting yourself killed.”
She ran her hands over her face and let out a quiet growl. She was frustrated and probably scared shitless.
I wanted to assure her everything would be all right, but I didn’t know that and I couldn’t promise it. I stepped into her personal space, wanting to touch her, but I knew I shouldn’t. “You have people after you. You need to be able to protect yourself—against anything. Anyone. And they will use whatever means necessary to harm you…including your family.”
I could almost see her resolve harden.
“Be ready,” I said. “Push your shield.”
After I walked back to Sant
os, he zipped a few more balls at Josie, and they fell to the floor before reaching her body. In the next blink, the balls were gone and replaced with a bucket of hatchets. Santos gripped a sharpened tool in his right hand, another on deck in his left.
Josie faced us head-on, pointing, frozen. “Are you serious?”
“I didn’t say it was going to be easy…” Santos hurled the first hatchet at Josie.
My stomach knotted. The hatchet turned, end over end, slicing through the air as it approached her torso. I was ready to Retract it. The hatchet hit her invisible barrier and clanked to the floor. Ten inches away from her body. Yes.
Santos flung another hatchet at her, and it also fell. He now held four hatchets in his left hand and one in his right.
Rapid-fire round. Initiation by fire.
My heart drummed in my ears, and I focused on the space in front of Josie. I had to be just as prepared as she was, in case her shield failed and I needed to Retract it at the last second.
One. She didn’t flinch. Two. She didn’t blink. Three and four were almost simultaneous. I wasn’t sure she was breathing. They all fell in a heap to the floor.
Beyond impressive. No one did that on the first day. “Nice work.” I clapped.
Her gaze darted to me at the same moment the last hatchet left Santos’s hand. Shit. If she didn’t see it coming, she wouldn’t have time to Push a shield if it wasn’t already up and holding.
I saw, thought, and Retracted the last hatchet three inches from her beautiful face and simultaneously Pushed my own shield around her. I almost pissed my pants.
It didn’t take any effort on my part to Retract the hatchet, but it could’ve scarred her for life, in a couple different ways.
