by Aella Black
More likely, they were ashamed they were serving imprisoned children. They should be.
I picked up a juice box, then scanned the cafeteria for a seat. My least favorite part of starting a new school year, and here it could be downright dangerous. Choosing the wrong place to sit wasn’t an option.
Rocky had claimed a table to herself. I got the feeling she preferred to be left alone, and I was happy to let her. Looking around, I couldn’t avoid the other kids’ stares as they watched my every move. It unnerved me, and I clutched the tray close to my body.
My eyes landed on the petite girl I’d spotted in the hallway earlier. When our gazes met, she offered me a small smile. Decision made.
Walking briskly in her direction, I plopped my tray down in front of hers. “Hi,” I said.
Her eyes widened and she clutched her fork, tilting it upward. “Hi.”
I held out a hand. “My name is Phoebe. What’s yours?”
She gripped my hand in her small, frail one. I didn’t know why I was shaking her hand, of all things. Twelve-year-olds didn’t shake hands. “I’m Birdie.”
First Rocky, then Birdie. Did everyone here have strange names?
I took a cautious bite of the lasagna. It wasn’t bad, just dry. And I couldn’t complain because at least I didn’t have to pay or prepare food for myself.
“I can’t believe you were dead,” Birdie said, her voice laced with wonder.
My next bite of lasagna froze in midair. I set it back down. “How did you know that?”
She pointed at the TV behind me. “It was on the news. We saw your face up there a few times. And now you’re here.” She grinned. “That’s the coolest superpower ever.”
I glanced around. Kids were huddled together, whispering. Not even attempting to hide the fact they were staring at me.
So much for flying under the radar. And I’d been so successful at it in school.
Another realization hit, making that single bite of lasagna toss perilously in my stomach. If it was on the news that I’d died, then no one would have any reason to look for me.
I was so screwed.
Ridiculous as it was, my mind went to Xander. They’d probably announced my death at an assembly, and I wondered what he thought when he heard. Or if he thought anything at all.
No, no one would miss me, least of all Xander. His life would go on as planned, and I doubted I’d ever cross his mind again.
“How long ago was I on the news?” I asked Birdie.
Her brunette pigtails swished as she tilted her head. “Two days ago, I think?”
Two days.
Where had I been and what had they been doing to me while I was out? My fingers went to the bruise on my arm. Maybe I didn’t want to know…
My situation was becoming more dire by the minute. Not only would no one come looking for me, but now everyone here knew my “superpower.” I didn’t know how comfortable I felt with a bunch of inmates thinking I couldn’t die. What if that was a fluke?
A clang sounded as a tray was placed next to mine. “Hey, Little Bird. Getting to know the new girl, huh?” I looked up at a boy around my age with droopy lids, watery eyes, and shaggy hair. He sat his lanky body in the seat next to me and held out a hand. “I’m Cal,” the guy said.
“Phoebe,” I replied automatically. It appeared he was friends with Birdie, so I decided he must be okay.
Trays collected around us as others joined our table. My gaze slid from Cal to the others. Birdie high-fived a girl who might have been a year or two younger than me. She had red hair and freckles. Two other boys sat down, one next to Cal, one beside me.
“Give her space, y’all,” the biggest boy of the bunch drawled. “She just got here.” He reached over Cal and offered me his hand. “Name’s Tex.”
His hand was warm, and I took an instant liking to him. He seemed easygoing and even-tempered, both good qualities in a person—especially one in a prison. And especially one as big as he was.
“This is Cathy,” Birdie said, pointing to the redheaded girl next to her. Cathy grinned.
“You mean Chatty Cathy.” That was the sullen-looking boy who sat next to me.
“Be nice, man,” Tex said.
Cathy only laughed. “I can’t help it! If you could send telepathic messages, you’d be talking all the time too.”
Telepathic messages? Now that was cool. “How does that work?” I asked.
“Like this!”
I was glad I hadn’t been eating or I’d have choked. “What—?”
“You get used to it,” Cal said, shoveling a large forkful of corn into his mouth.
“Welcome to Leavenworth, Phoenix!”
I wasn’t sure what surprised me more, hearing someone else’s voice in my head or that someone calling me by a name that wasn’t mine. “Uh, thanks?”
“Cut it out, Cathy,” the guy next to me said. “You’re so annoying.”
“This here is Woody,” Tex said, flicking a kernel of corn in the boy’s direction. “But sometimes we call him ‘Moody.’”
A few people at the table snickered, but Woody frowned. He had long dark hair and deep brown eyes. If he weren’t wearing a jumper like the rest of us, I could picture him in skinny jeans. He would have fit the “emo” stereotype at my school perfectly.
I took another bite. Tex leaned forward, his cheerful blue eyes on mine. “So, I hear you can come back from the dead?”
Swallowing, I said, “Yeah, I guess.” I took a sip from my juice box. “What can you do?”
Tex blew air through his lips. “Nothin’ special. Fact is, my ability is the stupidest thing ever.”
“Show her, Tex!” Birdie said eagerly.
He grinned at her. “Whatever you say, Sparrow.” He reached his long arm across the table and touched her gray jumper. In the blink of an eye, it turned pink.
I stared, confused. Tex touched it again, and the jumper was blue. When he withdrew his hand, the blue faded back to gray. He shrugged. “I can only change the color of things.”
“If you got really good, you could learn camouflage!” Cathy said.
“Maybe,” Tex said, but his tone indicated he was anything but confident.
“Sorry, dude, not everybody can be as cool as me,” Cal said, a dopey grin on his face.
“What can you do?” I asked, genuinely curious.
He stretched his arms above his head in a clear pride-shrouded-in-modesty pose. “It’s not what I can do, it’s what I can’t.” I raised my brows. “Can’t get drunk,” he said, dropping his arms.
“Really? And, uh, how did you figure that out?”
“My buddies and I used to go to the beach and drink all the time. While they’d get their buzz on, I never felt any different. Downed a whole bottle of vodka once and didn’t even get dizzy. Guess that qualifies me as a ‘supernatural,’” he said with exaggerated air quotes. “Rather not be here though…”
“Who does?” Woody stabbed his lasagna.
“What about you?” I asked him gently. I’d rather not be on the receiving end of that fork.
He glared at his plate. “I manipulate wood,” he replied, then stuffed a huge bite in his mouth.
I nodded. “Okay. Woody, wood. Makes sense.”
“And I can talk to birds,” Birdie chirped.
I nearly dropped my fork. “What?”
“Yup! I understand what they’re saying, and sometimes I can mimic their sounds to talk back to them.” She proceeded to whistle.
I looked around the table. “Wow. I-I had no idea there were so many others with abilities.”
“Neither did we ‘til we came here,” Tex said.
“So,” I paused, “Birdie can talk to birds. Woody can manipulate wood. I’m sensing a pattern here.”
Cathy laughed. “Yeah, most of us go by nicknames. It’s kind of a way we can let go of our past lives.”
“Cause we’re never going back to them,” Woody said. This time, no one disagreed with him.
A
sobering silence filled the table. Thankfully, Birdie spoke up. “And you’re Phoenix,” she announced.
“Phoenix?”
“You know, like the mythical bird that rises up from the ashes. It fits,” Birdie said with a shrug.
Phoenix.
I guess I could live with that. “Works for me.”
“It’s official then,” Tex said. He raised his carton of milk. “To Phoenix, the girl who cannot die!”
“You’re so lame,” Woody said.
But the others lifted their drinks and I did too. We tapped our cartons and boxes together, then took large gulps. It was a strange group but friendly enough.
“Hey, you don’t happen to be from Phoenix, do you?” Cal asked. “That would be awesome.”
I looked at him, confused. “No, I’m from here. Aren’t you?”
“Beach bum, remember? I’m from SoCal.”
“Dallas,” Tex said proudly.
“Cincinnati” Cathy chimed in.
“Nashville,” Birdie added.
“Portland,” Woody said.
Cal laughed. “Woody from Oregon. That’s classic. How did I not know that?”
“Probably ‘cause alcohol may not affect you, but the drugs definitely did.”
What a grump.
Though I noticed Cal didn’t disagree with him this time, either.
“Hey, don’t look now, but Wolf’s got his beady eyes on us,” Tex hissed.
And because any time someone says “don’t look now,” everyone looks, they all did. I followed their gazes to a circular table in the center of the cafeteria. It wasn’t difficult to spot the one they called “Wolf.”
Tall, with corded arm muscles and a haphazard haircut, Wolf was, in fact, watching us with what were unquestionably beady eyes. Even more disturbing, he twirled a butter knife between his larger-than-normal fingers. A predator eyeing his prey.
His gaze zeroed in on me, and I looked away quickly. Belatedly, I realized that was exactly the kind of thing prey would do.
“Stay away from Wolf,” Tex said unnecessarily. “He’s probably the most dangerous one here. Worse, he surrounds himself with kids who won’t hesitate to hurt somebody. Take Zapper, for example.”
Birdie visibly shuddered. “I hate it when he shocks me.”
Cal nodded his head at that table. “The dude with the blonde hair. He can shoot bolts of electricity.”
As if he knew we were talking about him, Zapper rubbed his fingers together, a smirk forming on his face.
“Don’t worry,” Cathy said. “He’s sadistic, but he can’t actually electrocute anyone.”
Small mercies, I supposed.
I eyed the others at Wolf’s table. “Who else should I look out for?”
“The girl is Ghost.” I spotted a short girl with black hair and a vacant look on her face. Tex continued. “She can allow things to pass through her. Like, if I were to try to stab her with a fork, it might not hurt her. She can’t move through walls, though. Yet.”
“I think she can,” Cathy said in a low voice. “But she’s not doing it because she’d need more security.”
“And the brown-haired guy who desperately needs a haircut?” I asked.
“Dizzy. He can induce vertigo at will.”
Whoa...
“The little guy is Slick,” Texas said. “He can make any surface frictionless.”
“And boy is he slick,” Cal said. “That dude can knock you on your a—”
“As long as you stick with us, you’ll be fine,” Tex cut in, giving Cal a look.
It was one I recognized from the Fletchers’ house. Any time Mr. Fletcher started to curse, Lana interrupted and then later winked at me, saying, “Little ears.”
I looked away from the table of terrors, who seemed to be enjoying the attention. Too much.
I’ve been around kids like them before. They liked to intimidate. But those were your run-of-the-mill schoolyard bullies. These kids had abilities. Scary ones. And if all five of them—whom I already thought of as the Wolf Pack—decided to gang up on someone, it would be bad news.
I resumed eating, but a tingle on the back of my neck caused me to glance over at Wolf again. Big mistake. He was still watching me, his top lip curled upward.
It occurred to me that no one said what Wolf could do. Was he a werewolf? Did such a thing even exist? My instinct said no, but then again, I never considered that normal people could have abnormal abilities.
Whatever his power, one thing was crystal clear: the last thing I ever wanted was to be caught alone with him.
I startled when he winked at me, and then I quickly turned back to my plate of food.
“Don’t worry,” Woody murmured. You could have knocked me over with a feather. I turned to face him, but he was staring daggers at the center table. “We’ve got your back.”
And to my amazement, I believed him.
8
After lunch, I was told to return to my cell and rest for half an hour until the next rec period. Having this much time on my hands was going to take some getting used to.
Birdie walked with me down the hall, chattering on about how she first realized she could talk to birds. It was a cute story, one I never would have believed if we weren’t imprisoned here.
“I swore it was telling me to look out for the tabby cat, but I didn’t see a tabby cat so I thought it was all in my head.” Her pigtails swung back and forth as she spoke. “But then I took two steps forward and there was a tabby cat hiding in the bushes. It didn’t want to hurt me, obviously, but the robin had warned me about it. That was really nice of the robin, don’t you think?”
I nodded in agreement. “Who knew birds looked out for each other?” I mused.
“They do! Crows are incredibly smart. Did you know when they meet someone who’s mean to them, they spread the word so all the other crows know not to cross that person?” I shook my head, amazed. “They’ve got a whole network. And they like shiny plastic,” she continued. “That’s why I always tried to pick up any litter I saw in my neighborhood.” Her voice had grown a little softer, indicating this was a sensitive subject.
Of course it was.
My insides twisted at the thought of sweet Birdie roaming around her neighborhood, a child with a home and a family. Now she was here, having been ripped away from her normal life—well, mostly normal.
She detached herself from my side. “Here’s my cell. See you at The Quad!” Evidently, Birdie wasn’t bothered by much for long. Another good quality to have in a place like this.
I paused, eyeing the guards who were ushering kids into their cells. Some looked incredibly bored. Others almost looked like they were enjoying themselves. The one who’d been walking behind me pushed between my shoulder blades. “Keep moving.”
My cell’s doors were open wide. I ducked inside. Rocky was already there, lying on her mattress, scowling at the ceiling. The door closed with a loud clang and was immediately locked.
Swallowing, I made my way to my bed and lay down.
This was it. This was my life now. I might make some friends—and possibly some enemies—but every day would be the same.
Eat.
Rest.
Playtime.
Sleep.
I felt like a toddler again. And just like a toddler, I wanted to throw a tantrum.
Shouldn’t we be getting an education while we’re here?
I scoffed at myself. Typical Phoebe, worrying about school at a time like this. I really was a stupid rule follower.
After my dad took off, I didn’t miss a day of classes. Not one. And for what? No one was there to answer the phone if I didn’t show up to first period. No one cared whether my grades were good enough to get into college. And clearly no one cared if I rotted in this jail cell until graduation.
Before I could delve any deeper into this pathetic pity party, I decided to take my life in my hands. Turning over on my side, I asked Rocky, “Do your parents know you’re here?”
&
nbsp; “Yup.”
That wasn’t the answer I expected to hear. Actually, I hadn’t expected her to answer at all. I pushed my luck a little further. “Do they ever visit?”
“Nope.”
“Don’t you miss them?”
Rocky slowly turned her gaze to me and pinned me with a scathing look. “My parents were the ones who turned me in,” she deadpanned.
No. Freaking. Way.
Who would do that to their own child?
It explained a lot, though, and Rocky had every right to be angry. I only wished her anger wasn’t directed at me. Not that it helped at all, but I did get the feeling it wasn’t me, per se. I imagined betrayal at that level meant anyone in her line of fire would likely become collateral damage.
“Sorry,” I said, rolling back over to face the ceiling. I didn’t know if I was sorry because her parents sucked so badly or because I’d asked in the first place. But I guessed it didn’t matter.
We suffered the rest of our cell time in silence. When the clock ticked one thirty, guards came around to unlock the doors. Once again, Rocky got up and left without a backward glance.
Why couldn’t I have been cellmates with Birdie? Heck, even Chatty Cathy would be better than this. Easing myself off the bed, I joined the throng of kids headed to the rec area.
The Quad was a large space filled with lots of kids doing lots of different activities. Some had already started a basketball game. Others had begun to set up board games. Still others read books on lumpy chairs covered in peeling faux leather. I didn’t care how uncomfortable those chairs looked, I needed to find out where the books came from.
I hadn’t had the luxury of time to read since I started working. Well, not unless you counted school books. Which I didn’t. I missed exploring other worlds, and maybe this was my one chance to escape this place—even if it were only in my head.
A large TV displayed the news, and a surprisingly large number of teens circled it, silently watching. I guessed when you’re stuck inside a prison for who knows how long, you’d want to keep up-to-date on what was happening outside.
