Awaken

by Katie Kacvinsky

  Justin stared at me before he spoke as if he thought I might add something. I asked the one question that would erase any doubt.

  “What are your parents’ names?”

  “Thomas and Elaine Sabel.”

  I tried to hide the shock on my face as I recognized the names of his parents. They had come up in more than one occasion in my household, referred to by my father as radicals. It was Justin’s parents that, numerous times, tried to destroy everything my father built.

  “You don’t share the same last name?” I asked, and could hear my voice strained.

  “No, they changed my last name when I was young. For my protection.”

  I nodded and kept my eyes on the table. “I should probably get home,” I said. Before he could respond, I grabbed his coat and scooted out of the booth. He stood up and left money on the table and waved to Irene before we left.

  I was quiet on the ride home, still trying to absorb everything I had learned. When we pulled up to my house, the rain was pelting the windshield. I found the door handle and opened it.

  “I’ll be around for a few days, so I’ll be in touch,” Justin told me. I nodded and got out of the car, feeling lightheaded from the intensity of our conversation. Justin drove off and I turned back to watch the taillights of his car disappear down the road and out of sight. I took my heels off in the driveway and stretched my feet on the cold, wet cement. I was beginning to piece together why Justin singled me out but I still didn’t understand what he wanted and why he waited two and a half years to find me.

  Chapter Nine

  The next night, my mom and I sat in the living room in front of our digital fireplace and watched a game show on TV. It’s an interactive show, where anyone watching can guess the trivia questions and submit their answers online. People play it all over the world and anyone with a webcam has the chance to appear on the show. Tonight my mom and I weren’t playing; we just watched other contestants.

  I threw some buttery popcorn in my mouth and curled up on the couch with Baley at my feet. My dad was out of town and it felt easier to breathe in his absence. I heard a slow rumble in Baley’s throat. Mom and I exchanged surprised glances when we heard a car pull up outside.

  I sat up and stared out the window, shocked.

  “You didn’t tell me he was coming over,” Mom said.

  I gave her a bewildered look. “I didn’t know. Apparently he doesn’t even call anymore.”

  My mom and I both stood up when the doorbell rang.

  “That boy gets stranger every day. What was he even doing at the benefit last night? It cost one thousand dollars to get in.”

  I walked over to the front door and opened it. Justin strode in quickly and carried an impatient energy into the room.

  My mom invited him to watch Money Talks with us, but he shook his head and told her he was just stopping by. His anxious eyes met mine.

  “You want to come with me?” he asked. I looked at my mom for permission and she nodded slowly but her eyes were careful, as if to remind me of what my father would think.

  “Let’s go,” I said, and grabbed a hooded sweatshirt out of the hall closet.

  “When would you like her home?” he asked my mom. She studied the two of us standing next to each other while she thought this over.

  “Maddie, I’ll let you be the judge of that. But if you’re going to be too late, call and let me know.”

  I followed Justin outside to his car and he opened the passenger door for me, as usual. I hopped in and fastened my seat belt.

  He slid into his seat and started the car. I turned up the stereo, and the loud bass made the seats vibrate. I nodded my head to the music and drummed my hands on my knees. Independence was like a drug and it was making me high.

  I looked over at Justin and he was watching me, almost comically. I turned the music down.

  “Are we going to a club?” I asked. He shook his head. “More homemade chocolate cake?”

  “Not exactly,” he said.

  “How long are you in town for?” I asked.

  He pulled out of the driveway and was playing with a car dial. “It’s not really set. My schedule’s unpredictable these days.”

  He glanced at me. “You looked really nice last night, by the way. I forgot to tell you that.”

  I felt my face heat up at the compliment. My mind quickly began to analyze what “really nice” meant. Cute? Extremely cute? Hot? Attractive, but only in a friend sort of way? I frowned at the last thought.

  “I’m bad with those kinds of things,” he added.

  I looked over at him with disbelief because I couldn’t fathom anything he was bad at. “What things?”

  “You know, compliments.” He took his eyes off the road for a second to look back at me. “Girls like compliments, don’t they?”

  I felt my blush deepen and had a sudden urge to pull my hood over my face and hide behind it. “I think everyone does if it’s sincere. Not just girls.”

  “Yeah,” Justin said, and scratched the back of his head. “Well I’m pretty clueless in that department.”

  I stared ahead and wondered where this conversation was going. Was Justin trying to open up about his dating life? He completely baffled me.

  We turned onto a highway ramp headed for the coast and I asked him where we were going.

  “Do you want to see what I do?” he asked. His eyes were dark and held a daring edge.

  I wanted nothing more. “I might be mildly interested.”

  “You know you can trust me, right?” I groaned as the question escaped his lips.

  “Justin, yes, we’ve had this discussion. I trust you.”

  He turned back to watch the road and nodded, satisfied with this.

  “That’s all I need to know.”

  “What are we doing, exactly?”

  “We’re intercepting.” He explained that one way to fight DS was to stop the government from sending students to detention centers.

  “It’s ridiculous,” he said. “They’re arresting people just for trying to drop out of DS, or for forming too many face-to-face study groups and sports teams. The government sends them away to get straightened out before they become a threat. They’re usually fighting DS one way or another, so, if we intercept them, they’re happy to join our side. It’s how we recruit most of our supporters.”

  “Why don’t you just contact them after they’re released from detention centers? It’d be a lot less dangerous.”

  Justin looked at me like I was crazy. “Because they crack. That’s what detention centers do. They hold you until they break you. We don’t know much about what goes on inside of them. People come out pretty screwed up.”

  We exited off the highway toward a town called Toledo, only a few miles from the coast. Justin slowed down as we turned onto a residential road. I glanced down the street at a modest-looking neighborhood. Two-story homes were spaced equally apart and windows were lit up inside with the shades closed. He pulled the car over to the curb and turned the engine off. Silence filled the darkness between us. His smooth voice cut through the air and enveloped me.

  “When I train people I never tell them what to expect. I let them experience it all firsthand. I think it’s pointless to try and tell you what’s ahead because nothing ever happens the way you think it will.”

  I stared back at him. “Train me for what?”

  He ignored my question and handed me something. I took the narrow cylinder in my hand and studied it. Justin flipped open the console between us and punched in a code.

  “I need you to agree to something. Tonight, you need to do exactly what I say, when I say it. And you need to stay right by my side. Those are my two rules.”

  I nodded.

  He looked down at the console and after a few seconds pushed another series of buttons.

  “Let’s do this,” he said. His eyes met mine for a brief instant until he was gone.

  Every street and house light around us disappeared as if someon
e had stretched a canvas between my eyes and the rest of the world. Blackness reached out and swallowed me inside.

  Chapter Ten

  I tried to scream but I felt a hand clasp my lips together. Justin’s calm, low voice was close to my ear.

  “Everything’s fine. Get out of the car and stay by my side,” he ordered. He opened his car door and I followed his lead. I stumbled blindly against the curb and fell into Justin’s arms just as he came around the side of the car.

  “Turn that on, Maddie,” he said as he steadied me. I fumbled with the cylinder, trying to figure out what he meant. Justin shined his flashlight on mine to show me the switch. Light shot out of it and I gave a sigh of relief.

  “Oh” was all I said. I’d never used a flashlight before. If the power went out at our house, which only happened once that I remembered, a generator in the basement kicked in and illuminated track lighting along the ceiling of every room.

  “Now we walk. Let me do the talking.”

  Our flashlights cast a beam several yards in front of us. If I hadn’t seen the row of homes stretched out on both sides of the street earlier, I would have never known they were there. I was acutely aware of sound since my vision was so impaired. A breeze whipped through the trees and dogs barked in the distance. I heard a front door open and a man called out to us. He held a flashlight as well and aimed it at the ground in front of him. He followed its path through the yard.

  “Hey, do you know what’s going on?” he yelled after us. Justin and I turned and waited for him. He hurried down the lawn and pointed his flashlight up and down the street.

  “Looks like the power’s out on the whole block,” Justin said. I glanced at the man, middle-aged and wearing sweatpants and a bathrobe.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said. “My fuse box didn’t even work.” He took his phone out of his pocket. As he was dialing, other people came out of their homes. I noticed a few had flashlights, and one woman carried an old-fashioned camping lantern. Little balls of light flowed toward us as if the sky were falling in around us. Behind the streams of light were curious faces.

  “Do you know what happened?” an older woman asked as she and her husband approached us.

  The man in the bathrobe shook his head. “I’m calling the electric company right now,” he said.

  “Well,” she said, chuckling, “it’s nice to finally meet the neighbors. I’ve lived here fifteen years and I’ve never seen people out like this.” She pulled her knitted shawl tighter around her shoulders. I watched the interaction with fascination. I hardly ever saw my neighbors. We knew their names, of course, the ones on either side of our house. We knew their occupations. We knew if they had pets, or kids, the common things. But we didn’t know what they were like.

  More families timidly approached, adults and kids, all asking what was happening.

  “I think it’s just a power outage. Probably an underground line blew a fuse. It’s pretty common,” Justin said, trying to keep people calm. He grabbed my arm and slowly led me away from the group while neighbors continued to introduce themselves and joke that it took something like this to finally force them outside. I glanced back at them over my shoulder and grinned at the sea of faces, huddled together and whispering as if they discovered something rare in the ray of their beams. As we walked down the street, we passed other groups of people. One porch had lanterns lit around the edges and people sat on the stairs, talking and laughing as if they were routinely out enjoying the night together. Justin tightened his grip on my arm and we picked up our pace. He checked his phone before he slipped it into his pocket.

  “So, you’re a runner, right?” he asked me.

  I nodded and when we turned the corner, he let go of me.

  “It’s time to prove it,” he said. He broke out into a sprint and I raced behind him, across the street and through an open yard. We came out onto another sidewalk, this one as dark as the last. I chased after him, down the wide open street and passed blocks of empty space, lit only by a cluster of flashlight beams shooting through the air like trails of comets. The crisp night air brushed my skin and filled my lungs. Running outside was different than running on a machine, where my steps just follow each other. Now my feet were pushing off something hard and solid, and it kicked up my speed. We turned and ran through an alley between two high office buildings. Justin halted to a stop so suddenly I almost ran into him. He aimed his flashlight at a Dumpster parked along the edge of the building. Hiding behind it was a young man, maybe fifteen. He squatted low to the ground. Justin shined the light on his face, white as a ghost.

  “Let’s go,” he said, and the young man stood up without question. Justin grabbed his wrist and used something in his hand to deactivate a tracker bracelet the boy wore. He threw the bracelet in the Dumpster and turned to me.

  “Turn that off,” he said, nodding to my flashlight, and the three of us ran through the alley, our feet echoing around us and splashing through dirty puddles. My eyes had adjusted well enough to the darkness to see my way. I could hear sirens approaching in the distance. The boy was panting now and starting to slow down.

  “We’re almost there,” Justin said over his shoulder to encourage him. The moon and the stars cast a soft light and guided us down the street and past hovering shadows of homes. We ran to the edge of another neighborhood where the freeway was blocked off by a metal fence, and Justin and the boy cleared it with one leap. I jumped up and managed to get one leg over the top. Justin grabbed my waist and pulled me over the rest of the way.

  He set me down and we picked our way through a thick barrier of plastic bushes, and I gashed my leg against something sharp sticking out of the ground. I could feel warm blood slowly trickle down my leg but the adrenaline shut out any sense of pain. We jumped out onto the shoulder of the highway and headlights sped toward us. I stared with shock as a vehicle pulled up next to us. It was Justin’s car and it was completely empty.

  “Get in,” he demanded. The young boy dove into the back seat and I dashed into the passenger side. Justin slammed his door shut just as two policemen sprinted out of the bushes we had run through just seconds before. They shot at the car, bullets ricocheting off the windows. I screamed and ducked down in my seat, squeezing my eyes shut and covering my face in my hands. I felt the car accelerate and heard Justin laugh next to me. I glanced up at him through the slit between my fingers.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked, my breath coming out in sharp gasps. Justin barely looked winded.

  “Sorry, but it’s the same thing every time, they just shoot those stupid guns at my car.” He laughed again and I tried to find the humor in the situation. I slowly pulled my hands off my face and the boy in the back seat sat up as Justin shifted gears and the car sped down the highway. I pulled sticky strands of hair out of my face and felt drips of sweat rolling down my neck and chest.

  Justin pressed another code into the keyboard. I understood what he was doing now. He somehow had the ability to shut down the electrical power grid in the neighborhood. Turning it off provided a diversion so the boy had a chance to escape.

  “My car’s bulletproof,” he said. “All cars are these days—bulletproof, fireproof, but cops still shoot their guns because that’s all they know how to do. I just think it’s funny.”

  I looked back at the young boy and noticed flashing lights behind us.

  Justin checked the rearview mirror but he looked more amused than concerned. The car accelerated and I sucked in a sharp breath when a sign came into view that said FREEWAY ENDING.

  “Um.” I pointed to the sign. Justin looked at me and grinned.

  “This is when things start to get fun,” he told me, as if the last half hour had been dull. “You don’t get claustrophobic, do you?” he asked.

  “I don’t think so,” I answered. I had no idea what he was talking about.

  “How do you feel about water?”

  “Water?”

  Just as I said this, the highways c
onverged into a two-lane road and signs warned that the beach was straight ahead. I clung to the grab handle above the window and braced myself when I realized we weren’t slowing down. The car flew off the pavement and fell with a heavy thump on the sand and we all lurched forward in our seats. Thrashing ocean waves crashed straight ahead. The water looked gray in the headlights and the waves spiraled and churned like they were threatening to crush us.

  Justin reached under the steering wheel and punched something with his hand. The car reacted by vibrating. In a few seconds, the wheels stopped tumbling over the sand and we started to glide. I screamed as our car hit the water, but we didn’t sink—we skidded and rolled over the surface of the curling waves. The waves broke over the car with such a loud crash I swore the windshield was going to snap in half. I could hear the boy cheering in the back seat and Justin had a huge smile on his face, his dimples standing out. I squeezed my eyes shut. Maybe I lacked the necessary testosterone levels to be enjoying this.

  The car rolled and dipped like we were on a roller-coaster ride as the waves threatened to flip us. I screamed again as we were tipped violently from one side to the next, like a ship caught in a storm, but we somehow managed to stay above the waves.

  “How are we doing this?” I yelled.

  “Hold on,” he said. Justin kept his foot on the accelerator. I turned to see two pairs of headlights behind us. I watched with shock as the police cruisers skated onto the beach after us. I looked out the front window and the car was settling on smooth water, past the breaking waves. We were heading out to sea. The boy in the back seat spoke up.

  “I’ve heard cars can do this,” he said. “But I’ve only seen it in the movies.”

  Justin nodded. “I prefer driving on the ocean over the road any day. No stoplights.” I tightened my lips together and glanced back at the cop cars, which looked farther behind now but were still chasing us.

  I turned and blinked out the front window like I was trapped inside a dream. We were well beyond the beach now and the tide was calm. We slid along the surface of the ocean as smoothly as if the car was gliding on ice. The light from the moon and the stars made the water glisten a metallic yellow all around us. I couldn’t see the coastline anymore and wondered how well engineered these cars were for water travel. I hadn’t told Justin I couldn’t swim.