The prospect excited Kopano. The Americans had just finished building a school with the support of the UN that eventually all Human Garde from participating countries would be required to attend. It was only a matter of time before he would leave to begin his training with the other Garde.
That was what worried his mother.
“They will steal my child away to America and turn him into one of the aliens,” she moaned.
“I want to go, Mom,” Kopano said. “I’m not turning into an alien.”
His parents ignored him, Udo dismissing his wife’s concerns with a wave of his hand. He paced back and forth across their living room, a man possessed of a great idea.
“We have nothing to worry about,” Udo said. “Kopano isn’t going anywhere.”
“You dumb man! You know how people in Lagos talk. Everyone already knows what he is . . .”
“Yes, they talk, that’s true. But I know how to make it so that nobody important listens. The good people of Lagos will respect our family’s privacy,” Udo concluded. Kopano knew this meant his father would generously bribe as many people as necessary, although he wasn’t sure where the old man would scrounge up the money. “And if this principal doesn’t want our son in his school?” Udo stomped his foot. “Then we will give the man what he wants.”
Kopano sighed, deciding not to argue. The Academy wasn’t open yet, anyway. Let his parents have their way for now; eventually Earth Garde would come for him, no matter how many palms his father greased.
The next day, Udo made good on his promise. Instead of school, Kopano found himself sitting shotgun in his dad’s old Hyundai, stuck in Lagos’s bumper-to-bumper morning traffic. Already, the sun was hot overhead. The car’s air conditioner needed fixing.
“Okay, I have come along,” Kopano said with a sigh. “Now tell me what crazy scheme you have planned.”
“It is not a scheme!” Udo yelled, pounding the horn as another driver cut him off. “You have a reputation now, Kopano. We would be stupid not to take advantage of that.”
“What do I have to do?”
“Nothing! That is the beauty of reputations.” Udo glanced in his son’s direction. “Yes. That is good. Make that mean face just like that.”
Kopano turned to look out the window. His gaze drifted to a roadside stall where a thin man with shifty eyes sold what he claimed were authentic alien artifacts. To Kopano, they looked like broken hunks of common electronics—toasters, TV parts, melted cellular phones—the kind of crap one would find in a dump. He shook his head again.
They drove across the bridge to Victoria Island, the slumped and crowded buildings of Kopano’s neighborhood replaced by glittering skyscrapers, many of which were still under construction. A few of the wealthier kids Kopano went to school with lived on the island. Kopano also knew that this was where many of the foreign corporations set up—the banks and oil companies and real estate developers. A banner overhung the street reading WELCOME TO AFRICA’S BIG APPLE. Kopano rolled his eyes.
His father parked them in front of a fat hexagonal building. The windows were tinted gold, their glow reflecting onto the sidewalk and street. Udo told Kopano to wait, hopped out of the car and sauntered by the security guards at the door. He returned with a backpack slung over his shoulder, which he tossed into the backseat.
“What’s in there?” Kopano asked, once they were driving again.
“None of our business,” his father answered. “We are only deliverymen.”
Kopano made to reach for the bag, but his father shouted and slapped his hand, accidentally swerving into the opposite lane. Kopano laughed. If he really wanted, he could wrestle the bag away from his father using telekinesis. But, he decided then, maybe it was better he didn’t know. This work Udo had involved him in wasn’t exactly battling Mogadorians for the fate of the world, but at least there was some excitement, a cloak-and-dagger feeling, like he was a spy. Kopano didn’t want to ruin it by finding out they were ferrying bank contracts or something equally boring.
They drove halfway across the city, far away from Victoria Island, into an area where the roads were cluttered with potholes and the ramshackle buildings looked like they were jostling each other for room. Scrawny street vendors peered hungrily into their car. Kopano sat up a little straighter.
Udo parked them in front of a block where the buildings had collapsed in on each other, like a house of cards after a strong wind. The area was blocked off by police tape. A sign advertising the property developers who promised to revitalize the neighborhood was covered in graffiti.
Kopano spotted a group of men picking through the debris. Most of them looked like vagrants, sweaty from work, not much older than him. Supervising them was a chubby man in a hard hat who stood out all the more because of his wrinkled white suit.
Kopano turned to his father. “What now?”
Udo rolled down Kopano’s window. “Give him the bag.” He stopped Kopano from getting out of the car. “Use your powers!”
Kopano frowned. “Are you serious?”
“Just this one time,” his father insisted. “Then they will know we’re for real.”
With shaky control—he was still mastering his telekinesis—Kopano lifted the bag from the backseat, floated it out the window and into the waiting hands of the man in the white suit. His whole crew had stopped to watch. Kopano got a kick out of how their mouths hung open in awe.
Days, and then weeks, went on like that. There were always more mysterious errands to run, an increasing volume of men in expensive suits and glittering sunglasses nodding their approval at Kopano’s telekinetic deliveries. It got so that Kopano was going to school only a couple of days each week, and then only at the insistence of his mother. He didn’t show off anymore, so busy was he catching up on schoolwork. His teachers didn’t make a fuss over his absences; they assumed it had to do with his training as a Human Garde, and Kopano suspected that Udo had played a role in that. He heard whispers about special treatment from his classmates, but no one had the guts to say anything to Kopano’s face.
His father was, once again, an important man. All thanks to Kopano.
“Safest courier in Lagos!” he heard his father brag on the phone. “No one else will have their deliveries protected by a genuine superpowered Garde!”
They worked the banks, the oil companies, the developers. They delivered to hotels and hovels, to the slums and to resorts. Sometimes, they took duffel bags from policemen and delivered them to embassy employees. Kopano visited parts of Lagos he’d never seen before. He never looked in the bags, never asked what they were transporting. The family once again had a TV in their apartment. The rent was paid. Soon, his brothers would be transferred to better private schools. It was not America, it was not the Garde, but Kopano told himself he was doing good, at least for his family. He practiced a steely look on his deliveries but had a hard time keeping the grin off his face.
It was months before someone decided to test him.
Udo was navigating them to their drop-off, their sleek, newly purchased gray Lexus badly out of place in one of Lagos’s more hardscrabble neighborhoods. Kopano had long ago gotten used to the slums. He didn’t quite feel comfortable there but had begun to feel like their car was a bubble of protection.
Kopano noticed how suspiciously devoid of life this block was. He opened his mouth to say something. That was when a pickup truck accelerated out from the alley and slammed into the back of their car.
They were spun around. His father shouted. Kopano’s ears rang.
When they came to a stop wedged against a street sign, Kopano saw them. Five men in bright red balaclavas. There were two in the truck and three on foot. They were all fit and Kopano thought they looked young but couldn’t quite tell because of the masks.
“Bastards!” Udo shouted. “My car!”
The men descended on them. His father tried to drive away, but the Lexus sputtered. One of the men smashed through the driver-side window with a tire iron and
began to punch Udo in the face. Another smashed through the back and grabbed the duffel bag they were transporting. Kopano watched all this in shocked disbelief.
Kopano’s door was ripped open and two of the men dragged him into the street. One of them laughed; Kopano thought he sounded like a hyena. That was when he came to his senses.
He thrust his hands out and sent his two attackers flying with a burst of telekinesis. Their bodies looked like rag dolls as they hit a nearby wall.
The man punching his father stopped doing that and flung his tire iron at Kopano. The metal bar struck Kopano in the back of the head, caused him to stumble. He touched his scalp and found no blood. He was surprised by how little it hurt.
Kopano picked up the tire iron with his telekinesis and whipped it back at the man. He ducked out of the way and the tire iron crashed through the window of a vacant building across the street.
Another man jumped onto Kopano’s back. Kopano ducked his shoulders low as if he were play-wrestling with his brothers, and threw the man off. He got back to his feet fast, but Kopano was ready, his fist cocked back.
Kopano was stout and had been in a few fights before, but he didn’t expect the punch to knock the man fully off his feet. He didn’t expect to hear the crunch of the man’s jaw breaking. He looked down at his fist. It was as hard as a brick.
“Stop this!” Kopano shouted. “I will only keep hurting you if you force me to!”
One of the men he’d tossed into the wall rushed forward with a butterfly knife and stabbed Kopano in the stomach.
“Kopano!” yelled his father, spitting blood.
Kopano looked down. Where there should have been a wound, there was only a hole in his shirt. The knife’s blade was folded up like it was made from paper.
His skin. It looked normal, but it was as durable as titanium.
Kopano backhanded the knife-fighter away from him, eyes wide with sudden fury. “You would have killed me! For what? For what?”
“Kopano!” his father shouted again, as Kopano loomed over his would-be murderer. “The bag! He’s getting away with the bag!”
Kopano whipped around, spotted the man who’d taken the duffel bag sprinting down the street, laboring under the weight. The runner was already nearly a hundred yards away. Kopano squinted, tried to bring his telekinesis to bear. He’d never used his Legacy at this distance. He thrust out his hand, a telekinetic shove—and flattened the windshield of the car nearest the runner. The thief glanced over his shoulder, then hooked down an alley. Gone.
“I . . . I missed,” Kopano said. The other thieves had used his distraction to scurry off, except for the two Kopano had knocked out.
“You let him get away!” his father barked. He came around the car, kicked one of their fallen assailants and tore off his mask. Neither of them recognized the guy. He was nobody. “Come on! We have to get out of here.”
On the ride home, Kopano rubbed his knuckles and forearms. His skin didn’t feel different. His sense of touch was unchanged. Yet, he knew, there was a new hardness lurking within him. He wondered if his new Legacy was a result of the jobs he’d been doing with his father.
“I do not think we should do this anymore,” he said quietly.
“What!” his father bellowed. “Do you not understand what just happened, boy? We lost a delivery! The next job is the least of our worries. We will need to make amends and quickly.”
Kopano didn’t know what that meant. He shook his head and stared out the broken window, hot air rushing into the car. “This is not what I wanted,” he said.
His father snorted, ignoring him. They rode home in silence.
That night, when he tried to sleep, Kopano could hear his father’s pleading voice through the walls. Udo had been on the phone almost nonstop since they returned home, talking to whatever mysterious big man was in charge of the package they’d lost. He spoke in a meek voice that Kopano wouldn’t have thought his father capable of. Kopano tossed and turned, Udo’s wheedling apologies the worst kind of lullaby.
Kopano must have drifted off, because he did not hear the door to his room open, nor notice the shadow that padded across the floor. His eyes snapped open only when a cool hand pressed over his mouth.
“Kopano,” a voice said. “It is time to go.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
TAYLOR COOK
TURNER COUNTY, SOUTH DAKOTA
TAYLOR DISCOVERED THAT SHE WAS ONE OF THEM on the Wednesday morning when she reached for her buzzing alarm clock and accidentally sent the thing flying across her bedroom. The clock smashed against the wall, made a squawking sound like a dying goose and was silent. Taylor was 99 percent sure she hadn’t laid a finger on it.
“Okay, get a grip,” she told herself. “You were still half dreaming. It was an accident. You’re freaking out over nothing.”
Taylor held her hand out toward the broken alarm clock, gasping when it levitated and floated back to her.
“Dad!” she shouted.
Brian didn’t hear her. He was already out of the house. Taylor threw open her bedroom window and gazed out over their small farm. The barn doors were open, her dad probably in there feeding the hogs.
A dented pickup truck made its way up their dirt driveway. That would be Silas. He got out of his truck, hair slicked back as usual, a pack of cigarettes rolled up in the sleeve of his flannel shirt, like a dingy version of some old movie star. Over the last few months, ever since she spoke up to him during the invasion, he’d started looking at Taylor in a new way, a creepy way. He always made a point of telling her how much she’d grown. He saw her watching and waved.
Taylor shut her window. Took a step back.
“This isn’t happening,” she told herself.
It’d been almost a year since the world got crazy. Things had been normal here, though, just like Taylor had hoped. She’d even gotten comfortable with the idea of aliens and superpowers in the world. But now . . .
“I . . . I can’t be one of them.”
But she was. Taylor realized she hadn’t used her hands to shut her window just then. She’d used her mind. She went back to the glass, peering out, praying that Silas hadn’t noticed anything. Taylor watched him saunter into the barn like nothing had happened and breathed a sigh of relief.
“Okay. Okay.” She looked down at her hands. They were shaking. “Nothing has to change.”
Taylor decided then and there that she would act like nothing happened. She got ready for school. Wiping steam off the bathroom mirror after her shower, Taylor studied her reflection. Blue eyes, wavy blond hair, a small nose and rounded cheeks. She didn’t look any different than yesterday. Granted, every day she looked more and more like her mother, a fact that annoyed Taylor. But there was no physical manifestation of her telekinesis.
Telekinesis. A year ago that word was strictly in the vocabulary of comic book readers and science fiction fans. Now it was everywhere. The telltale sign of a Garde developing their powers. There were PSAs on TV about what to do if you spotted someone using telekinesis. Taylor never thought she’d be one of them.
She would hide. There were fewer than ten thousand people in all of Turner County. Those government people she saw on TV would never come to South Dakota looking for one of their so-called Human Garde. Her dad had said no one would bother with their little town.
“Going to school!” she yelled into the barn as she half jogged down the driveway to where the bus waited. Usually, she’d never leave without giving her dad a hug and a kiss, but Silas was there, lingering in the barn’s doorway waiting to take the tractor out, and even though Taylor knew he was just eyeballing her in his usual pervy way, she felt extra exposed that morning and couldn’t bring herself to get too close.
Taylor zoned out in her history class, daydreaming about the fiery images she’d seen of the invasion, imagining herself there, clumsily floating around a broken alarm clock while pale aliens shot at her with lasers. She got scolded, her classmates giggling after the teacher calle
d her name five times. At lunch, her friends told her that she seemed distracted and Taylor brushed them off, making an excuse about not sleeping well. When the kid in front of her grabbed the last peach iced tea from the drink cooler, Taylor nearly used her telekinesis to snatch the bottle out from under his fingers, then immediately felt ashamed. Whenever she needed to reach for something, she could feel the telekinesis urging her to use it. Ignoring the ability was like not scratching an itch. It frightened her how much the telekinesis already felt like a part of her, an instinct she had to fight against.
“It’ll get easier,” she promised herself in the bathroom mirror as she washed her hands. Then she floated a paper towel to herself from the dispenser, screamed in frustration and stomped her feet.
Sooner or later, she would screw up and someone would see her. Unless she learned how to bury this power deep inside her, make like it never existed. But already that felt like keeping an arm tied behind her back.
On the bus ride home from school, Taylor stared mutely out the window while Claire rambled on about some boy. She watched Turner County glide by and then imagined the bus carrying her onwards, all the way to California and that bizarre Academy for Human Garde. If they caught her, that’s where she’d end up.
She had promised herself that she would never leave Turner County.
Inevitably, this led Taylor to remembering the last time she’d seen her mom. She was nine years old and they were at the bus station in Ashburn. Her mom wore jeans that Taylor thought were too tight, a tied-off plaid shirt and a red bandanna in her hair. All the rest of her clothes were stuffed into the backpack she carried on her shoulder.
“You’re coming back, right? This isn’t forever,” Taylor had said to her mom.
“Oh, honey,” Taylor’s mom said, and touched her gently on the cheek. “You can come visit me whenever you want. Minneapolis is only a couple of hours away.”
Young Taylor glanced over her shoulder to where her father sat in their truck, watching them, a baseball cap pulled low to hide his eyes. She looked back to her mom.
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