“You’re sure you want to train with me? You know you’ll probably end up hurt, right?”
She laughs, and then spits a mouthful of water at me. “Oh, it’s on,” I say, visualizing the surface of the pool and forcing a blast of air over it. Water rushes towards her face. She dives beneath the surface to keep from being splashed, and when she comes up she rides the crest of a huge wave that nearly empties the pool, bringing her towards me. Before I can react she moves away, but the wave keeps coming, knocking me over and sending me crashing into the back of the house. I hear her laughing. The water recedes to the pool, and I stand and try pushing her backwards into it. She deflects my telekinesis, and all at once I’m upended and sailing through the air upside down where I flail helplessly.
“What the hell are you guys doing out here?” Sam asks. He’s standing at the sliding glass door.
“Um. Six was talking smack, so I decided to put her in her place. Can’t you tell?”
I remain upside down, hovering four feet over the pool’s center. I can feel Six’s grip around my right ankle, and the sensation is the same as if she were literally holding me up with one hand.
“Oh, totally. Got her right where you want her,” Sam replies.
“I was about to make my move, you know. Biding my time.”
“So what do you think, Sam?” Six asks. “Should I let him have it?”
A smile breaks across Sam’s face. “Take it away.”
“Hey!” I say just before she lets go and I fall headfirst into the water. When I resurface, Six and Sam are laughing hysterically.
“That was only round one,” I say, climbing out. I peel off my shirt and slap it to the concrete. “You caught me off guard. Just wait.”
“What happened to being tough and rugged?” Sam asks. “Isn’t that what you said when you buzzed your head?”
“Strategy,” I say. “I’m just giving Six a false sense of security, then when she gets comfortable I’m going to pull the rug out from under her.”
“Ha! Yeah, right,” Sam says, then adds, “God, I wish I had Legacies.”
Six stands between us in her solid black one-piece bathing suit. She’s still laughing, and water runs down her arms and legs as she leans slightly forward and twists her hair to ring it out. The scar on her leg is still discolored, but it isn’t nearly as purple as it was the week before. She whips her hair back over her head. Sam and I are both mesmerized.
“So, training this afternoon then?” Six asks. “Or do you still feel like I might get hurt?”
I puff my cheeks and release the air slowly. “Maybe I’ll take it easy on you. I mean, that scar on your leg still looks kinda nasty. But, yeah, we’re on.”
“Sam, is that a yes for you, too?”
“You guys want me to train? Seriously?”
“Of course. You’re one of us now,” Six says.
He nods, rubbing his hands together. “I’m in,” he says, grinning like a kid on Christmas morning. “But if you just want me for target practice, I’m going home.”
We start at two o’clock, but by the look of the gloomy sky I don’t anticipate training for very long. Sam bounces on the balls of his feet, wearing gym shorts and an oversized tee. He’s all knees and elbows, but if heart and determination could be counted, I think he’d be nearly the size of the Mogadorian I’d seen aboard the ship.
To start, Six shows us what she’s learned of combat techniques, which is far more than I know. Her body moves fluidly and with the precision of a machine when she throws a kick or punch, or when she does a back flip to evade an attack. She shows us how to counterassault and the merits of skill and coordination, and drills the same maneuvers until they come instinctively. Sam eats it up, even when Six pounds him backwards and he flips head over heels or has the wind knocked out of him. She does the same to me, and even though I try laughing it off like I’m playing around, I work my hardest and she still kicks the crap out of me. I can’t fathom how she learned all this on her own. After my mouth is filled with grass and dirt for the second time, I realize just how much she can teach me.
The rain begins a half hour later. A light drizzle at first, but soon the skies open, sending us indoors for cover. Sam paces through the house throwing kicks and punches at phantom enemies. I sit in the chair, my fist around my blue pendant, and stare out the front window for a very long time, simply watching it all happen while remembering that the last two storms I saw both raged because Six told them to.
When I turn back I see that she’s sound asleep in the corner of the living room, curled around Bernie Kosar, holding him in her arms like a pillow. It’s how she always sleeps, wrapping herself into a ball on her side, her features losing their sharp edges.
The white bottoms of her feet are aimed right at me, and I use telekinesis to lightly tickle the bottom of her right foot. She twitches it as though shooing a pesky fly. I tickle her again. She twitches her foot a little harder. I wait a few seconds and then, as softly as I can, I tickle the length of her foot, from her heel up to her big toe. Six pulls her foot back and kicks her leg straight out, the telekinetic force of which sends me flying into the nearest wall, leaving a hole revealing the interior wires and studs. Sam charges into the room and jumps into the perfect fighting position.
“What happened? Who’s here?” he yells.
I stand, rubbing my elbow, which took the brunt of the hit.
“Jerk,” Six says, sitting up.
Sam looks from me to her.
“You guys are ridiculous,” he says, retreating back to the kitchen. “Your flirting just scared the hell out of me.”
“Scared the hell out of me, too,” I say, ignoring the flirting comment; but he’s already gone and doesn’t hear it. Am I flirting? Would Sarah think that was flirting?
Six yawns, raising her arms to the ceiling. “Still raining?”
“Totally, but look on the bright side; the weather saved you from any further bruises.”
She shakes her head. “The tough-guy routine is pretty tired, Johnny. And don’t forget what I can do with the weather.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I say. I try to change the subject. I hate myself for flirting with another girl. “Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you: who’s the face in the clouds? Every time you whip up a storm I see this crazy, ominous face.”
She scratches the bottom of her right foot. “I’m not sure, but ever since I’ve been able to mess with the weather, it’s always the same face that appears. I assume it’s Loric.”
“Yeah, probably. And here I thought it might be a crazy ex-boyfriend you’ve yet to get over.”
“Because obviously I have a weakness for ninety-year-old men. You know me so well, John.”
I shrug. Both of us smile.
That night I cook dinner on a rusty but serviceable grill left on the back patio. Or try to cook, I guess. Since I took home economics with Sarah in Paradise, I’m the only one who knows how to make anything remotely resembling a meal. Tonight: chicken breasts, potatoes, and a frozen pepperoni pizza.
We’re sitting on the living-room carpet in a triangle. Under the blanket Six has draped over her head and body, she wears a black tank top, and her pendant hangs in full view. The sight of it returns my mind to the vision I had. I long for a normal dinner around a table and a normal night’s sleep where I’m not tortured by my Loric past. Was that what it was like on Lorien before we left?
“Do you think about your parents a lot?” I ask Six. “Back on Lorien, I mean?”
“Not that much anymore. I can’t even tell you what they look like, really. I remember how it felt being near them, though, if that makes any sense. I think about that feeling quite a bit, I guess. What about you?”
I pick at a burned slice of pizza. I resolve never to cook frozen pizza on the grill again. “I see them a lot in my dreams. Which is really great, but at the same time it tears me up inside. Reminds me that they’re dead.”
The blanket slides off the top of Six’s head an
d rests on her shoulders. “What about you, Sam? Do you miss your parents right now?”
Sam opens his mouth and closes it. I can tell he’s considering telling Six that he thinks his dad was taken by aliens, abducted when he went out for milk and bread. Finally he says, “I miss them both, my mom and dad, but I know that I’m better off here with you guys. Considering what I know about everything, I don’t think I could be at home.”
“You know too much,” I say. I feel guilty he’s eating my terrible meal on the floor of an abandoned house instead of feasting on his mother’s food at a dining-room table.
“Sam, I’m sorry you got caught up in this with us,” Six says. “But it’s nice that you’re here.”
He blushes. “I don’t know what it is, but I feel a weird connection to the whole situation. Can I ask you something? How far away is Mogadore from Earth?”
I think back to when Henri blew on the seven glass orbs, how they came to life. Soon we were looking at a floating replica of our solar system. “It’s a lot closer than Lorien is, why?”
Sam stands. “How long would it take to get there?”
“A few months maybe,” Six says. “Depends on what type of ship you’re flying and what type of energy it uses.”
Walking in circles, Sam says, “I think the U.S. government has to have a ship built somewhere that can handle that distance. I’m sure it’s a prototype and top secret and hidden under a mountain that’s hidden under another mountain, but I was just thinking about what would happen if we couldn’t find your ship and needed to take the fight to them-go to Mogadore. We have to have a Plan B, right?”
“Sure. What’s Plan A again?” I ask, biting my tongue. I can’t fathom fighting the whole planet of Mogadore on their own turf.
“Getting my Chest,” Six says. She pulls the blanket back over her head.
“And then what?”
“Training?”
“And then what?” I ask.
“We go find the others, I guess.”
“It just sounds like a bunch of running and not much of anything else. I think Henri or Katarina would have us doing something more productive somehow. Like studying how to kill certain enemies. Do you know what a piken is?”
“Those are those huge beasts that destroyed the school,” Six says.
“What about a kraul?”
“Those are the smaller animal things that attacked us in the gymnasium,” she answers. “Why?”
“In the dream that I had in North Carolina, when you and Sam heard me speaking Mogadorian, those two names were mentioned, but I’d never heard of them before. Henri and I simply called them ‘the beasts.’” I pause. “I had another dream earlier.”
“Maybe you aren’t having dreams,” she says. “Maybe you’re having visions again.”
I nod. “It’s hard to tell the difference at this point. I mean, these dreams felt the same as the visions I had of Lorien, but I wasn’t on Lorien during these two,” I say. “Henri once said that when I have visions it’s because they hold some sort of personal significance to me. And that’s always been true-the past visions were always of things that had already happened. But I think what I witnessed in my dream this morning . . . I don’t know. It’s like I was seeing it as it was actually happening.”
“Wicked,” Sam says. “You’re like a TV.”
Six crumples her paper towel and tosses it up in the air above her head. Without thinking I set it on fire, and it wilts into nothing before landing on the carpet. Then Six says, “It’s not impossible, John. Some of the Loric have been known to do it. That’s what Katarina said, anyway.”
“But the thing is, I think I was on Mogadore, which, by the way, is just as disgusting as I imagined it would be. The air was so thick it made my eyes water. Everything was desolate and gray. But, how did I get there? And how could this one huge dude on Mogadore seem to sense when I was there?”
“How huge?” Sam asks.
“Huge, like more than double the size of the soldiers I saw, twenty feet tall, maybe more, far more intelligent and powerful. I can tell just by looking at him. He was definitely a leader of some sort. I’ve seen him twice now. The first time I was overhearing information relayed to him by some little peon, and it was all about us and what had happened at the school. This second time I saw him as he was preparing to board a ship; but before he was on it, one of the others ran up and handed him something. I didn’t know what it was at first, but just before the ship’s door closed, he turned towards me to make sure I could see exactly what it was.”
“What was it?” Sam asks.
I shake my head, ball up my paper towel, and burn it on the palm of my hand. I look out the back door at the setting sun, a blaze of orange and hot pink like the Florida sunsets Henri and I watched from our elevated porch. I wish he was still here to help make sense of all this now.
“John? What was it? What did he have?” Six asks.
I lift my hand and grab my pendant.
“This. These. He had pendants. Three of them. The Mogadorians must have taken them after each kill. And this massive leader guy, or whoever he is, he put them around his neck like Olympic medals, and then he stood there just long enough so I could see. Each one was glowing bright blue, and when I woke up, mine was too.”
“So are you saying it’s a premonition, like you just saw your fate? Or could you have just had a weird dream because of how stressed out you are?” Sam asks.
I shake my head. “I think Six is right and these are all visions. And I think they’re all happening right now. But the thing that scares me the most is that when that guy got on that ship, there’s a good chance he was headed this way. And, if Six is right about how fast a ship can travel, it won’t be very long until he’s here.”
Chapter Eleven
THE THINGS I REMEMBER ABOUT COMING TO SANTA Teresa are mostly just snippets of a long journey I thought would never end. I remember an empty stomach and sore feet and being impossibly tired most of the time. I remember Adelina begging for change, for food; remember the seasickness and the vomiting it caused. I remember disgusted looks from passersby. I remember every time we changed names. And I remember the Chest, as cumbersome as it was, that Adelina refused to part ways with no matter how dire our situation became. On the day we finally knocked at the door Sister Lucia answered, I remember it being on the ground tucked snug between Adelina’s feet. I know she stowed it away in the shadows of some obscure corner of the orphanage. My days of searching have turned up nothing, but I still keep looking.
On Sunday, one week after Ella arrived, we sit together in the back pew during Mass. It’s her first, and it holds her attention about as well as it holds mine: not at all. Aside from class, she’s pretty much been by my side since the morning I helped her make her bed. We walk to and from school together, eat breakfast and dinner together, say our nightly prayers together. I’ve grown very attached to her, and by the way she follows me around, I can tell she’s grown attached to me as well.
Father Marco has droned on for a good forty-five minutes, and finally I close my eyes, thinking of the cave and debating whether I should bring Ella along with me today. There are several problems with it. First, there’s zero light inside, and there’s no way Ella will be able to see through the dark in the way that I can. Second, the snow has yet to melt, and I’m not sure she’d be able to make the trek through it. But most of all, I worry that bringing her would be putting her in harm’s way. The Mogadorians could arrive at any moment, and Ella would be defenseless. But even with these obstacles and concerns, I’m eager to take her along anyway. I want to show her my paintings.
On Tuesday, minutes before we were to depart for school, I had found Ella hunched over on her bed. Still chewing on a breakfast biscuit, I looked over her shoulder to see her furiously shading a perfect drawing of our sleeping quarters. The details, the technical accuracy of each crack in the wall, her ability to capture the faintest of squares of sunrays that dropped through the windows in the m
orning, was astounding. It was as if I was looking at a black-and-white photograph.
“Ella!” I had blurted.
She had flipped the paper over, trapping it against her schoolbook with her tiny smudged hands. She knew it was me but didn’t turn around.
“Where did you learn how to do that?” I’d whispered. “How did you learn to draw so well?”
“My father,” she whispered back, keeping the drawing turned over. “He was an artist. So was my mother.”
I’d sat down on her bed. “And here I thought I was a pretty good painter.”
“My father was an incredible painter,” she’d said plainly. Before I could ask her more questions, we had been interrupted and then ushered out of the room by Sister Carmela. That night I’d found Ella’s drawing under my pillow. It’s the best present I’ve ever received.
Sitting in Mass, I think that maybe she can help me with my cave paintings. Surely I can find a flashlight or lantern somewhere here to take with us. And then my thoughts are interrupted by a fit of giggles beside me.
I open my eyes and look over. Ella’s found a red-and-black furry caterpillar that’s in the process of crawling up her arm. I bring my finger to my lips in a sign of silence. It stops her for a brief moment, but then the caterpillar climbs higher and she begins giggling again. Her face turns red while trying not to laugh, but the fact that she’s trying to stifle it only makes it that much harder. And then she can’t help herself and a string of laughs escape. Every head snaps around to see what’s happening, and Father Marco stops his sermon in midsentence. I snatch the caterpillar from Ella’s arm and sit upright, staring back at those staring at us. Ella stops laughing. Slowly the heads turn back around and Father Marco, clearly flustered at having lost his spot, resumes his sermon.
I sit with my hand around the caterpillar. It tries wriggling free. After a minute I open my fist, and the sudden movement causes the furry little thing to curl into a ball. Ella raises her eyebrows and cups her hands together, and I place the caterpillar in them. She sits there smiling down at it.
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