She tried to duck, but she wasn’t fast enough. Another blast of Jay’s lightening blew her clear off her feet, backward into the hard metal of a car door. The burning seared through her, and her heart seemed frozen in her chest. Somehow she kept Jay in her sights, and watched lightning collide with the water in the funnel. The electrified vortex swallowed him.
His scream pierced her ears and he went rigid, and then tumbled to the ground. Then, she felt a burst of pain in her chest and everything went dark.
Awareness faded in and out, like a slow camera shutter.
“She killed Jay! She electrocuted him, I saw it! You have to believe me….”
“… miracle. Besides this one here and one with a broken arm, only a few minor bumps and bruises….”
“… bunch of boulders rolling toward the hill? Must be some mistake….”
Hailey opened her eyes. Or maybe she was dreaming? It was impossible to know.
“Hailey,” Kristin whispered beside her, and she painfully turned her gaze to her friend. “I heard you talking to the rocks. I saw you throw lightning. What did you do? What did you do?” Kristin stumbled backward, her eyes wide and terrified.
Hailey tried to open her mouth to explain, tried to raise her hand to reach for Kristin, but she couldn’t move. Her consciousness slipped away again.
The next time she opened her eyes, she fought for several seconds to bring her surroundings into focus. The room was dim. It smelled too clean. She must be in the hospital. She tried to turn her head and blinked hard when dizziness washed over her and nausea squeezed her stomach.
When she opened her eyes again, Kathy loomed over her. Why was her therapist here? Where was Mom? Hailey struggled to cry out, but only a weak croak escaped her throat. Kathy looked across Hailey at something she couldn’t see. Kathy nodded, and darkness fell like a heavy curtain.
MARSHALL
Robin Parrish
Episode Eighteen
“I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU never told us.”
Marshall shook his head with a frown. How could Piper have never mentioned that she was an orphan? She’d always kind of avoided the topic of her parents, and she never invited Marshall and Linus to her house or anything. But Marshall always assumed it was because she was a girl and they were boys, making the notion a little awkward.
Truth be told, he’d had no inkling that her parents were dead. He wasn’t sure whether to be mad at her for keeping it a secret, or himself for not piecing it together on his own.
“Are we really having this conversation now?” she replied. Marshall could hear her squirming down on the ground. They’d been stuck to the goal post at the north end of the Silverwood High football field for almost two hours now, unable to break free from the duct tape that held them tight. “We’re in a not-small amount of trouble here.”
The sun had just passed beyond the horizon, bringing darkness to the field. School had been deserted before they even found themselves in this predicament, and without a home game tonight, the big stadium lights wouldn’t be coming on.
Linus chimed in. “You’re a superhero and stuff, man. Can’t you do something?”
“You know I can’t,” Marshall said.
“Then we do need to have this conversation now. Because I calculate a fifty-nine point four percent chance that we’ll die of dehydration before someone finds us.”
“We’re not going to die, genius,” said Piper, to the sound of more struggling and squirming. “I keep a tiny pocket knife in my—well, it’s in my shirt. Almost…got it….”
“You carry a pocket knife?” asked Linus.
“Comes in handy.”
“Wow. We’re learning all sorts of new things about you today,” said Marshall, grumpy. “Is there anything else? Are you secretly an ice dancer?”
“Used to be,” she replied. “They kicked me out for refusing to wear the outfits.”
Linus laughed. Marshall was too frustrated to find her funny.
“Was that before or after your parents died?” he asked. He immediately regretted being so blunt. But he’d been friends with Piper since the fifth grade. He didn’t care if they were welded to the bottom of the Titanic right now. How could she never have told him something this big?
Piper was silent, though he could still hear her grunting, fighting against the duct tape.
“Sorry,” he said to break the silence. “It’s just…you know everything about me and my family. And Linus’ too. How could we not know something this big about you?”
“When I was four,” said Piper, ”my mom and dad hired a teenager to babysit me so they could go out and celebrate their anniversary. The babysitter shoved me in the coat closet and left me in the dark for about two hours while she talked on the phone with her boyfriend. I cried the whole time.
“She only let me out because a policeman knocked on the front door. She was still holding the phone when she opened the closet door and told me my parents had been in a car accident. She said a drunk driver was going way too fast, and they had both died at the scene. She put me in the cop’s arms and left.”
A silence as thick as syrup filled the space between the three of them.
“I don’t know what to say,” Marshall said.
“I’m sorry,” added Linus, his voice barely audible. “That’s…that’s awful.”
“It gets better,” said Piper. “One day when I was ten, I had a big fight with my foster parents—my second pair of foster parents—and they decided that that was the best possible time to tell me that my dad was the drunk driver. He caused the accident.”
“Piper…” said Marshall.
“I refused to believe it when they told me, and the fight escalated. And that’s how I wound up with my current foster parents.”
Silence fell over them again. Piper’s story seemed to have ended, but Marshall didn’t know where to go from here.
“And do you fight with them?” Linus asked after a few moments. “The foster parents you have now?”
“Nah,” replied Piper. “My IQ is higher than both of theirs combined, so they’re pretty hands-off. They seem to think I’m going through a goth phase.”
Marshall cracked a smile at this, and Linus laughed.
“I’m sorry,” said Marshall. “No wonder you don’t talk about it.”
“It’s not my favoritest topic ever,” she said lightly. “I got it!” she said, followed by, ”Ah—ow!”
All Marshall could see of Piper from his position was a hint of her blue hair; the goal post’s horizontal bar blocked most of his view of Piper. But he and Linus faced each other from opposite poles.
“What?” he called out. “What’s happening?”
“I had it!” she said, and Marshall could hear her trying not let her voice betray the pain she felt. “I dropped it. The knife. It sliced my hand.”
“You bleeding?” asked Marshall, his throat tightening.
“Yeah,” she replied, a hint of worry in her voice. “Kind of a lot.”
All five of his senses came alert with a jolt of adrenaline, and there was a buzzing sensation in his head. For the first time, he pushed against the duct tape binding him against the goal post. The tape was tight—crazy tight.
This whole thing was just unspeakably stupid. It wasn’t that he craved revenge on Dennis the way he had when Dennis broke his wrist. That had been an awfully potent sensation, but in the end it left him feeling...icky. He’d decided then that revenge was not his thing and never would be.
But he couldn’t believe how poorly Dennis had thought this out. Marshall didn’t think the three of them would die here, as Linus suggested, but they would certainly wind up starving and weak, and maybe even in the hospital if no one found them until Monday. And now Piper was bleeding.
An overwhelming fear seared his insides at the thought that anyone could be this dumb. This careless. That an idiotic, brainless bully would endanger his life and worse, the lives of his friends. Somewhere amid this boiling pot of emotions, the fe
ar turned to scorching anger.
Inside his head, he screamed.
The gold-colored, electronic scoreboard popped on, its LED digits rapidly counting up from zero to nine, over and over.
The giant stadium lights, suspended atop six poles that circled the field, blinked. Then they hummed to life, shining brightly.
A handful of small loudspeakers hanging halfway up those same poles crackled and shrieked at ear-piercing levels.
A tiny shed beyond the far end of the field started shaking. Inside was where the school stored its riding lawnmower and another piece of equipment of similar shape and size, which held huge jugs of white spray paint used to paint the yard lines. Both of them had been turned on and were driving forward, trying to push through the closed door.
Near the goal post was a sky blue machine resting on a tripod, with two thick disks on top. Normally, a football would be fed between the cream-colored disks to send the ball soaring downfield. The football team used this contraption to practice catching passes. The disks started spinning furiously, so fast it seemed it might strip its gears or burst into flames.
Behind the bleachers the engine in the team’s bus roared. The old bus had once boasted gleaming silver paint with gold trimmings, but nowadays rust had replaced a good portion of the paint. Without warning the bus began to move, driving forward, parallel to the bleachers.
Their phones, which Dennis had left on the bleachers behind the goal post, lit up and beeped frantically.
All of these things happened at once. The chaos lasted about five seconds, and then everything stopped, going dark, filling the football field with an eerie silence. Marshall looked at Linus and vice versa. They would have included Piper if they’d been able to see her.
Marshall was wearily scanning the area when Linus became the first to find his voice. “What just happened?” he shouted.
“Probably Dennis and his buddies messing with us,” said Piper.
“I don’t think so,” Marshall said.
Linus’ head was darting back and forth as he looked in all directions to see if it might happen again. He spoke again, just as loudly. “But you guys saw that, right? Everything just switched on for a second. I mean…Holy fish-flakes!”
Marshall froze, and turned to look quizzically at his best friend. Fish-flakes?
“Even I don’t know what to do with that,” said Piper from below their feet.
Linus blushed. “I’ve been kind of…making up things to say instead of using actual swear words.”
Marshall couldn’t help it. He grinned. “You’re kidding.”
“Well I had to!” said Linus. “My mom said that if I say the real words I’ll go to Hell!”
“Your mom is a piece of work,” said Piper. “But then so am I. Fish-flakes, honestly... Man, this hurts. The bleeding still hasn’t stopped.”
Her hand. He’d been thinking about her hand right before everything turned on and off. About her being hurt, and the three of them stuck here for who-knows-how-long. Was Linus right? Did they really stand a chance of dying here? The thought of his friends in pain, not to mention never seeing his parents again, made his heart drop into his stomach.
They had to get out of here. Right now!
His mind raced, thinking of anything they could use to cut the duct tape. Cut it, or unwind it, or melt it…
He glanced over at the machine with the two spinning disks. A ”passing and snapping machine,” he thought it was called. Those disks had spun awfully fast a few minutes ago, and it had felt so odd when they—
Wait a minute.
Felt?
In a flash of clarity, he knew. He knew exactly how everything had turned on, what caused it, why it stopped, and he knew how they were getting out of this mess. He closed his eyes and thought of Piper’s injury, Linus’ fear, and his own feelings toward Dennis Carver. When the anger built, he looked at the school bus, which had rolled to a stop just a dozen meters from where it had been parked.
The bus roared again and this time it kept going, albeit slowly, making a careful turn to the right. When it lined up so the goal post was straight ahead, it drove into the football passing machine, pushing it forward. The bus slowed to a stop just as the machine came into contact with the goal post.
“What’s—?” said Piper.
When it touched the post on the opposite side from Piper, the machine spun to life, its big rubber disks turning faster and faster. A terrible screeching sound hurt their ears, and it wasn’t long until a tiny puff of black smoke began spreading into the air from the spots where the disks rubbed furiously against the duct tape.
“Piper, pull away!” Marshall shouted over the din.
He could tell she was complying from the sound of her grunting.
Faster still the disks spun, and the screech turned into a powerful, high-pitched whine.
“It’s working!” shouted Piper. “I think the tape is melting!”
With a great cry of freedom, Piper pulled clear of the goal post and fell to the ground.
The football machine slowed to a stop, and everything fell silent.
Marshall focused on wrapping the gauze from the field’s first aid kit around Piper’s wrist, refusing to look up at her penetrating eyes. They sat next to one another on the bleachers where their phones had been left. Parked on the other side of the goal post and just below the two upper poles was the old rusty bus. But she never saw his work, staring only at him.
“You did all that. Didn’t you?”
His stomach did a backflip. “Did what?”
“Are you kidding?” Piper almost shouted. “Every machine in this stadium just went all Carrie, and you’re pretending you don’t know what I’m asking?”
Linus paced back and forth on the ground in front of them. He glanced at Marshall, his eyes the size of melons.
“I…yeah,” replied Marshall, sighing. “I think so.”
“How?”
Marshall tried to think of a way to explain it, and found himself lacking the words. “I just…got mad.”
Linus ended his march and massaged his temples. “Okay, I can’t be the only one needing a recap. So, not only can you build or fix pretty much any kind of machine, you can control machines, too?”
“Looks that way,” said Marshall, turning to gaze into the distance.
Linus’ eyes were gigantic again, and his mouth fell open as well. “Dude…that is awesome!”
Marshall tried not to grin as a fresh jolt of adrenaline surged through him. It was pretty awesome. But how was it possible? And what about the others—the ones like him, from his dream? He really needed to find them. Were they experiencing stuff just as crazy as he was?
“Awesome, yes,” echoed Piper, but her expression was one of consternation. “Also, crazy dangerous.”
Linus wasn’t about to give in on this one. “Well, he just has to learn to control it. We need help figuring it out. And…I, uh…I think we have to tell our parents. About what Dennis did.”
Marshall turned his head, looking him in the eye. “You know we can’t. Dennis knew it, too. If any of our parents or our teachers find out about this, they’ll want to know why he did it. And one way or another it’ll lead back to me taking apart the engine from Dennis’ car. They can’t know that, they’d freak. They’d send me to all kinds of doctors and stuff.”
“Why don’t we go to Dennis’ parents, then? Tell them what their son has been up to,” suggested Linus. Then he stopped and thought. “Do you think he has parents?”
“Well, not very good ones,” said Marshall.
“I think he was raised by pumas,” added Piper.
Marshall stood and swallowed a yawn. It was getting late.
“We better get home,” Linus said, reining in his enthusiasm. “My mom is probably trying to call me. And I’m sure your parents are doing the same, wondering why you’re suddenly staying over—”
“You should go,” Marshall nodded. “Both of you. I don’t want to go home yet.”
Piper rose to her feet as well. “What do you want to do, then?”
“I want to get angry again.”
Dennis Carver was dead asleep when his alarm clock blared out a painfully loud beeping, every light in his home began blinking on and off, and every machine in the house switched on.
He jumped from his bed, nearly hyperventilating. He covered both his ears with his hands, and ran through the house in nothing but his boxers. In the kitchen, he tried to turn off the blender, the microwave, the dishwasher. In the den, he pressed the on/off button on the television, and pulled on the chains that turned off the lamps. Nothing worked.
Five minutes later, he emerged from the house just to get away from the insane whirlwind happening inside. On the front porch, he came to a sudden stop. As if in reply, the manic activity inside the house came to a dead stop.
“Hi, Dennis.”
Dennis turned. Standing in the center of his front lawn was Marshall, flanked by Piper and Linus. The three of them stood perfectly still, watching him.
“Nice undies, Butch,” remarked Piper, her voice back to its normal, even, unemotional tones.
Dennis hadn’t put any clothes on before exiting the house, and looked pretty silly out in the cool night air in his red silk boxers. Piper produced her phone and snapped a quick photo of him.
“Parents out of town, huh?” Marshall went on. “Thoughtful of them to leave you here alone. No family. No buddies. Nobody.”
“Marvin?” he said, his mind having trouble catching up to what his eyes were sending. “How did you—?”
The 'Naturals: Awakening (Episodes 17-20 -- Season 1) (Young Adult Serial) Page 2
