Pulse

by Patrick Carman

  “Wow,” Faith whispered in Dylan’s ear.

  “Yeah. Wow.”

  Faith wondered where in all those white buildings her friend Liz might be. The State was so huge, miles and miles across and full of the tallest skyscrapers she’d ever seen. Even from a hundred miles away, from the height she was at, Faith could see that the Western State was an entire world unto itself.

  “I’m going to take you home now if that’s okay,” Dylan said.

  Faith didn’t speak. She wouldn’t have known what to say. The night had already been so far beyond where her imagination could take her that flying home and listening to Dylan’s voice began to feel okay. It felt good to lie on his back as he went, and she began to relax. He told her that she should never try this on her own, not yet. And that she had to be careful not to move things with her mind unless the two of them were together. It was dangerous and especially unpredictable for someone who was as untrained as she was.

  As they arrived in the darkness outside of Faith’s house, she wished it wouldn’t end. Standing on level ground turned out to be more of a letdown than a comfort.

  “You like the flying,” Dylan said, turning to face her. “I thought you might.”

  “It’s all right, I guess.” Faith laughed.

  “I promise I’ll tell you more really soon. It’s going to take a little bit of time, so you’ll need to be patient. And I’m not the one to tell you everything, but someone else will. Promise me you won’t try to move anything unless we’re together. Please?”

  Faith nodded, though she was dying to get into her house and start throwing pillows around her room with her mind.

  “How long have you been watching me?” Faith asked.

  Dylan wouldn’t answer her question.

  “I can train you, but only on the roof, where we were. Meet me there tomorrow, just after dark?”

  “You’re not going to pick me up?”

  “Afraid not. We really need to keep this to the roof as much as possible. Deal?”

  Faith nodded, Dylan smiled, and then he was gone.

  As Dylan hovered above her in the darkness, he worried about what he’d done. It was sooner than they’d discussed, and he hadn’t asked for permission. He wasn’t sure how he was going to explain to Faith that he’d been watching her every night for months. And there were much more serious things he worried about, too. He knew a catastrophe could invade the States at any time. And he knew he was about to put Faith Daniels in serious danger.

  Dylan would have liked to go home and rest, but he knew that wasn’t an option. He would let Faith have an hour or so on her own before returning to her window, and there he would spend the rest of the night.

  He’d trained her to move things with her mind. She was clumsy, but it was a start. What Faith didn’t know was that she’d only discovered half of the abilities she would need. There was something even rarer and more important still hidden inside her.

  If he could help her find it, there was a chance she’d live through the coming fury.

  Chapter 14

  Let’s Not Tie Our Shoes

  “But we just got here,” Faith said. “They can’t be serious.”

  She was sitting in a classroom, exhausted and confused from her night on the roof of the Nordstrom building with Dylan, when she heard the announcement on the PA system.

  “Once again,” Mr. Reichert repeated as Faith looked around the room at all the stunned students. Her gaze fell on Wade Quinn, and she turned away quickly. “Old Park Hill will remain open for two more weeks, at which time you will be reassigned. Officials from the Western State will be contacting parents and guardians to make arrangements. Thank you, I hope you all make the most of your last days at Old Park Hill.”

  Faith knew what this really meant. Every time a school closed, the numbers got smaller. She was convinced the State used the closings in order to encourage parents to leave the outside behind. Half of the students in the room, more than likely, wouldn’t make it to the next school. She missed Liz more than ever and wondered, for the first time, whether she should simply give up. If it wasn’t for the bizarre events of the night before with Dylan Gilmore, she would have decided then and there to put a stop to her endless waiting.

  “I’ve enjoyed our time together,” Mr. Reichert continued, though he sounded tired and unsure, as if he, too, had run out of reasons to stay. “Let’s do our best to have a nice final run, business as usual.”

  So that’s it then, Faith thought. Old Park Hill will be closed by a week from Friday. Perfect.

  Faith glanced around the room once more, searching for Hawk but finding Dylan Gilmore staring at her from the back row. He shrugged, gave her a little smile, and went back to whatever lesson he wasn’t really listening to.

  “I say we have a party,” Wade Quinn said. Faith rolled her eyes, but everyone else in the class including the teacher seemed to think it was a good idea. “Come on, you guys!” Wade continued, lathering up the crowd. “A real end-of-the-world bash. What do you say, teach?”

  Miss Newhouse looked around the room like it wasn’t really her call. “I’m only here to observe. As long as your work is getting done, I don’t have a problem with a going-away party. It’ll be mine, too. You were my last assignment.”

  “Wait, you’re not even from this school?” Faith asked. It hadn’t occurred to her that the school might be run by teachers from somewhere else.

  Miss Newhouse laughed softly and shook her head. “No one is from here, Faith. Everyone at this school has been moved just as many times as you have.”

  Like on cue, a commercial break appeared on everyone’s Tablet, interrupting whatever individual lecture they were all ignoring. This one focused on the newly released entertainment options for everyone living inside the States. Five new movies were premiering on all State Tablets throughout the week, featuring the biggest-name actors, and a new Tablet series was starting on Friday. This was one of the toughest things about living outside. All the newest, best content was excluded from Faith’s Tablet because she wasn’t on the closed State network. More and more of the really good stuff wasn’t making it out at all; and even if it did, there was a long wait.

  “Outside the States?” the commercial asked. “Catch a sneak peek at what you’re missing, tonight at 8:00 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. This you’re not going to want to miss!”

  Harsh, Faith thought. It was how the State eventually wore people down. They never forced anyone to leave; they just lured the holdouts in with an endless stream of cool stuff you couldn’t get if you didn’t join. At the end of every commercial message, they flashed a message for about ten seconds: Ready to call the State home? Just let us know; we’ll be right over to pick you up. A button on the screen said HOME. Faith had been in classrooms where people had pushed that button on their Tablet, only to find that their parents were the ones who had to make that decision, not them.

  “It’s been a pleasure serving you,” Miss Newhouse said when the commercial was over, but it was obvious she’d had enough. She hadn’t really taught a class in years, and the commercials had done their work on her, too.

  “Why’d you stay out here so long?” Faith was surprised to hear Dylan’s voice from the back of the class. She’d never heard him speak in class before. Faith couldn’t help remembering what it had felt like to wrap her arms around his back as they flew through the night sky.

  Miss Newhouse straightened her blouse and tried to put on a good face.

  “Because I’m a teacher. I wanted to teach.”

  There was a long silence as everyone stared into their Tablets, and then Dylan said something no one expected, least of all Miss Newhouse.

  “So teach us something.”

  Miss Newhouse looked like she didn’t quite know how to process the request. Teach? You mean, like a subject? her face seemed to ask.

  “Tell us something we don’t know,” Dylan prodded, leaning forward on his elbows, waiting for an answer.

  “I
thought we were planning a party,” Wade said.

  A few of the students chimed in support of the party-planning route, but Miss Newhouse didn’t say anything. She started nodding her head up and down slowly, like she’d come to some important conclusion, then she looked out at the class, and the confusion in her expression was gone.

  “You don’t need me,” she said.

  “Already knew that,” Wade joked, getting a few scattered laughs. But it was more sad than funny. Miss Newhouse pressed the screen on her Tablet, and everyone understood that she was about to abandon them. Wade sat up straighter in his chair, looking at Miss Newhouse like she was about to make a decision that would change not only her life, but also his.

  “Should have done this a long time ago,” she said, moving toward the door. “Because you’re right, Mr. Quinn. You don’t need me. You don’t need anybody. All you need is your Tablet.”

  A few seconds later Miss Newhouse was gone, and everyone expected Wade to take control of the group. He sat there in silence. Everyone did. And then he looked up, smiling, as if a great adventure was about to begin.

  “Looks like our party just got started,” he began as he walked to the front of the room. He nudged Faith on the shoulder with his hip as he passed by, trying to be flirty, but the only thing Faith felt was disgust. It was at that moment that her own resolve began to crumble. Even if her parents were still out here, she was getting to the point where she couldn’t go on with business as usual any longer. She decided then and there, as Wade called out instructions about music and drinks, that when Old Park Hill closed and the students who remained were reassigned to a new school, she wouldn’t be attending. Inside or outside the State, school just didn’t make sense anymore.

  Faith couldn’t stand listening to Wade take over the class, so she stared at the floor instead, hoping it would just be over soon. Her shoe was untied, and though she’d been told not to, she couldn’t help thinking about the laces. The edge of one side lifted off the floor slightly, and when it did, she heard a cough from the back of the room. When she turned, she saw Dylan staring at her, shaking his head slowly, as if she’d done a very dangerous thing.

  Clara Quinn was a perceptive girl. Nothing at Old Park Hill got past her. She felt things other people didn’t feel and knew things other people didn’t know. And as the school got smaller, she was spending more time in the proximity of Faith Daniels. She was, in fact, in the same room when her brother boldly took over the class. She was there when Miss Newhouse left the room. She understood the gravity of that decision as much as Wade did, even if no one else had a clue.

  She’d long been crushing on Dylan Gilmore. He had a certain kind of energy she liked. She could imagine the two of them doing all sorts of crazy things. It was a preoccupation. But he was so quiet and brooding, getting him to talk was like pulling teeth. She was extremely beautiful and highly athletic, a goddess among mortals. And she knew this, which didn’t contribute to a winning personality. And so she couldn’t bring herself to court Dylan Gilmore. She only watched him from afar and thought of him in her quieter moments alone. It was for this reason that she’d experienced a series of two unexpected events that felt connected, though she knew they couldn’t be. She’d watched as Dylan coughed, looked up, and shook his head slowly, like he was warning someone to stop doing whatever it was he or she was up to. Simultaneously—and this was the strange part—she’d felt something.

  A pulse.

  Soft but real.

  Someone had moved something. She knew this because she had been told to be ever aware, ever searching for a pulse that was not her brother’s or her own. It was a feeling she could sense better than her brother, although he, too, could feel it if he had half a mind to pay attention, which he had not been doing very much of late.

  Clara looked around the room, wondering, Did Wade do that? Was it someone else? Or am I so bored I imagined it?

  She couldn’t definitively know the truth, but looking back at Dylan once more, she was troubled by the fact that he had seemed to respond to it as well. Either that or the timing had simply been coincidental. It wasn’t until after class while she was walking with her brother that she got her answer.

  “Did you move something in there?”

  Luckily for Faith Daniels, Wade had been crazy enough to pull up songs on his Tablet with his mind instead of his finger. He’d only done it that way for a few seconds, but, yeah, he’d probably sent out the pulse Clara felt.

  “Do you remember when you did it?”

  She sometimes let Wade’s pulse fall away into the background because she felt it so much. The one she’d felt was stronger, like something fresh and wild.

  “Nope, don’t recall. And you should stop being so paranoid. We’re leaving soon—I mean really leaving; know what I mean? Stay focused on the games; it’s important.”

  “Important to whom?” Clara asked. “And what do I need to focus on? I can’t lose.”

  “Yeah, but you could win too big. Remember, we gotta control ourselves. That’s the hard part.”

  Clara nodded. She understood completely. Hanging around with a bunch of untalented normals was sucking her will to live. It was demeaning to constantly lower her standard of ability.

  She kept thinking of how Dylan had coughed and nodded, how he seemed to be paying more attention to Faith Daniels all the time. The thought of Dylan choosing Faith over her was unthinkable. It was beyond sickening.

  It was a lucky thing Wade had been reckless in class. And even luckier that he couldn’t really remember when or exactly how he’d moved something with his mind.

  Faith had Wade to thank for being alive. Because if Clara Quinn had known what Faith could do, Faith would not have lived to see the party Wade was planning to throw.

  Chapter 15

  Like a Pebble Hitting a Pond

  Hawk waited until the sun was almost down before heading to the abandoned building on the campus to do some recon. He’d been curious for over two weeks about the night Wade and Faith were together, but he’d been putting off any sort of investigation until things cooled off a little bit with Wade. Then he’d heard that the school was about to close for good, and he knew time was running out. If he didn’t get in there soon, he never would. And it was important that he discover everything he could about that night.

  “What were you up to in here, Wade Quinn?” Hawk asked out loud. He’d made quick work of the security system and found himself walking down a darkened corridor with streaks of pale light on either side. Another fifteen minutes and it would be completely dark in the empty wing of the school.

  Hawk wasn’t just smart, he was intuitive. He would have made a fine detective, because he had an objective eye that could log everything he was seeing, parsing it out for hidden meaning. There was less light as he turned the corner and found the hallway where Wade had been riding his go-cart for fun. He examined the cart itself, which had some significant damage. One of the wheels was off, and the welded metal frame was on its side propped up against a wall. The stretchy cord that had been used to launch the cart snaked around the floor like a long-abandoned whip.

  Hawk’s Tablet was equipped with a variety of lighting options, and he chose one that illuminated the space, but not too brightly. The hallway glowed like it were being lit by seven or eight candles all bunched together in his hand.

  Hawk spun one of the remaining attached wheels, which was at eye level because the cart was partly overturned, and started walking. Some of the lockers had violent marks on them; and examining them more closely, he determined that this had not been caused by the cart. There were dents that looked like they’d been made by shoulders and heads. The damage looked more like it had been caused by human bodies crashing into the lockers at high velocity. As he scanned the floor, Hawk found more items: two shotgun shells; metal buckshot pellets scattered around the floor; and, most curiously, dried blood. The blood was just a smear in the dark; and since the lockers were red, it was easy to see how it
could be missed in a haphazard cleanup effort.

  “Whatever happened in here, it was some kind of fight,” Hawk said.

  “You better believe it, little man.”

  Hawk whirled around and saw, to his great misery, that Wade Quinn was leaning heavily against a locker at the far end of the hall. His voice echoed menacingly down the long, empty space. Hawk turned and started running back toward the upturned cart, hoping to find an escape route. At the end of the hallway he turned left, and as he did, he thought he felt a soft wind over his head in the near darkness. He came up short when he saw Wade standing in front of him a few feet away.

  “How’d you do that?” Hawk asked.

  “I’m fast; what can I say,” Wade joked. “Either that or you’re really slow.”

  Hawk ran back in the direction he’d come from; and when he came to the cart, he grabbed it by the top edge and flipped it back down behind him, hoping it might slow Wade as he took chase. There was a door to a classroom to Hawk’s right; and as he passed by, the door opened, and he was sucked inside against his will. It felt like he’d been made as light as a feather, swept up on an unseen wind.

  I’m starting to think someone slipped me a Wire Code, Hawk thought.

  The door he came through slowly closed behind him without a sound, and he crawled across the floor until he came to the teacher’s desk. Before he knew how he’d gotten there, Hawk huddled under the middle of the desk where the teacher’s feet were supposed to go. He leaned back and peeked over the edge of the desk, watching as Wade’s shadow moved past the glass in the center of the door.

  “Maybe you’re quicker than I gave you credit for.” Wade laughed, the sound of his voice leaking in under the door. “But I’ll find you. And when I do, we’re going to have another talk, you and me.”

  There was a long line of windows on the far wall that revealed the darkened courtyard of the school. Hawk thought about opening one of them and crawling out. But it was a long way from the desk to the windows, and he was afraid to get up. He heard a noise behind him, close enough to take his breath away, and he was sure he’d come out from under the desk to find Wade Quinn standing there. How he would have gotten there, Hawk didn’t know. But he was starting to think anything was possible in the unpredictable world of Old Park Hill. He took in a big, silent breath, then turned to look for what had made the noise. He spied a door to what must have been a storage room behind the teacher’s desk. The door was partway open, and through the crack, only darkness lay beyond. He wondered if Wade had somehow entered the room without being seen, then opened the door and hidden inside. He could imagine himself in there, the darkness, the much bigger guy, the door closing behind him.