“And one!” Coach yelled after blowing his whistle.
Jill was the best ball-handler Lexi had ever played against. She could go behind her back, between her legs, stutter-step with ease, and it drove Lexi mad.
Halfway through practice, Coach proclaimed, “All right, Jill’s our new point guard, so when you get a defensive rebound, make a quick outlet pass to her and let’s get up the court.” He clapped his hands in excitement. “Those girls from Slaughterton aren’t gonna know what hit ‘em.”
Lexi was fed up with Jill and the admiration being laid upon her. When Coach put his starters on the floor, Lexi was teamed up with Jill and she refused to talk or even look at Jill. With gritted teeth, Lexi out jumped Jordyn for a rebound. Sasha tried to take it away, but Lexi was on a mission. She pulled the basketball away from Sasha and started dribbling. If coach wanted the team to run, she would show him running.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jill clap her hands, indicating she was ready for a pass. Clap all you want, you’re not getting this ball, Lexi thought as she dribbled toward mid-court.
Even when she heard Coach yell, “Outlet, Lexi, outlet.” Lexi did not pass the ball. Instead, she was determined to show everyone who the best basketball player was on this team. Only one player on the team had ever made a game-winning shot, and if it wasn’t for Lexi, there would not have been any more practice because their season would have been over.
Just past half-court, Elle ran toward Lexi in a feeble attempt to stop Lexi’s progression. Elle was Lexi’s best friend, but on the basketball court, Lexi had no friends on the opposing team.
Lexi did her patented cross-over dribble and left Elle stumbling behind her. Glancing back for a split-second, Lexi made sure neither Sasha nor Anastasia were sneaking up behind her. When she turned her head back a second later, a short, blond streak swiped the ball from Lexi’s blindside.
Jill dribbled into the lane, faked a pass to the left, and then made a picture-perfect lay-up. Lexi stood with her arms crossed and a look of absolute disgust on her face. The more Coach laid praise upon Jill, the more Lexi disliked her.
“She’s a ball hog,” Elle said.
“Tell me about it. I hate her.” The two girls started walking back when Lexi added, “Sorry about faking you out back there.”
“Don’t worry about it. Next time, I’m just going to trip you.”
The two girls giggled.
Chapter Six
Saving Serve
“In taking revenge, a man is but even with
his enemy, but in passing it over he is superior.”
-Francis Bacon
“You just don’t understand. She’s like a little, blonde dung beetle.”
Lexi’s grandmother took a plate out of the hot dish water, rinsed it off, and handed it to her granddaughter. As Lexi dried the dishes, she placed them in the cabinet a bit rougher than her grandmother liked. “Easy, child,” her grandmother ordered. “I know I don’t have the best china, but it’s the best I’ve got.”
Lexi set the next plate in the cabinet a little more gently, but still aggressively. Her grandmother frowned.
“Jill just makes me so mad.” Lexi’s arms moved around in dramatic fashion, so much so, that her grandmother kept reaching for the plate that waved through the air.
“I understand, sweetheart. You’ve been talking about this new girl ever since you got home. So she’s pretty and athletic and new, but you shouldn’t be jealous of anyone, Lexi. Envy is the green-eyed monster. It will eat at you like a cancer, if you let it.”
“And that is why you need to hypnotize me not to think about her.”
She gave her granddaughter “the look.” Whenever Lexi’s grandmother wanted to say, “Are you serious?” without saying a word, she turned her head, cocked an eyebrow, and glanced over the top of her glasses with “the look.”
“Don’t give me the look,” Lexi said with a light-hearted giggle.
“Well, don’t ask such silly things of me, Lexi. You know I won’t do it. Besides, you are just a little threatened, that’s all. You said yourself, this Jill is a ball hog. The more she shows her true the colors, the less people will want to be around her. Right now, she’s the new fad, the new hair style, the new flavor, however you want to put it, and people naturally gravitate toward the newer things in life, but a month from now, she’ll just be Jill. You’ll see.”
The dishes were done and, thankfully, none of them broke. Lexi’s grandmother placed her hands on Lexi’s cheeks and pulled her granddaughter down, kissing her on the forehead.
Lexi still appeared unhappy, which was peculiar because she normally loved receiving words of wisdom and affection from her grandmother. “I have a question,” Lexi started as the two of them walked out of the kitchen and into the living room.
“What’s that, dear?”
“What if things don’t change?”
Lexi’s grandmother smiled sweetly. “You are a good and kind person, Lexi. People naturally gravitate towards the good things in life.”
She gave her grandmother a hug. “You know. You could use hypnosis to help me ignore Jill. I mean, you use it to help people quit smoking, lose weight, and other stuff, why not this?”
Lexi’s grandmother shook her head. “Hypnosis has its place in the world, but this one, Lexi, you are going to have to deal with head-on. If there comes a time you truly need hypnosis to deal with a problem, it will present itself, but right now you are just being silly.”
“But grandma, all I want you to do is help me pretend she doesn’t exist.”
Lexi’s grandmother scoffed and shook her head.
When Lexi again attempted to object, her grandmother cut her off and said, “We’ll have no more of this talk, child.”
With her arms crossed, Lexi pouted, “But Grandma!” Her whining was interrupted by the ringing of the phone. She paused momentarily, but her grandmother walked away.
From the other room, her grandmother asked, “Aren’t you going to get it? You know it is for you.”
Despite her sour mood, Lexi hustled to get the cordless phone. It afforded more privacy.
“Hello,” Lexi answered curtly.
“Hey, it’s me.”
Without smiling or laughing, Lexi answered, “I don’t know who this is.”
“It’s me, Tyler.”
“Tyler who?” she asked in the same curt tone
“Tyler, the boy who…” He paused, realizing her joke. “You know who this is.”
Lexi finally giggled.
The two talked for twenty minutes, and Lexi tried to force herself not to mention Jill, but she could not help it. She told Tyler just how frustrated she was by the new girl, and as always, Tyler managed to say a comforting word…in his own special way. Since Tyler loved to play the drums, he told Lexi, “Jill is that new drum. At first, it is so neat and unused, but after a while it just becomes another drum, old and worn out. But you, Lexi, you are the song, and nobody goes to the concert to hear the drums.”
Lexi smiled. She was not sure Tyler meant to sound poetic, but either way he made her feel better. “Thank you,” she said.
Chapter Seven
Join Us, Or Die!
“Dreaming or awake, we perceive only
events that have meaning to us”
-Jane Roberts
Sweat ran down her face and burned her eyes. It was already difficult to see through the dense vegetation. “This way,” a voice commanded. Lexi turned and followed. Over the uneven terrain, the two of them ran. In the distance, she could hear the sound of rockets exploding and gunfire disrupting what would have been an otherwise quiet night. It was warm.
When her companion stopped to get their bearings in the moonless night, Lexi exhaled and tried to catch her breath. She was scared, but did not know why and sweating because they had been running. Something was chasing them. An explosion erupted from behind them, she nearly fell to the ground, the blast startled her. For a split-second, she paused a
nd looked to the sky as it flashed red and yellow.
“We can’t stop,” her companion said. “We must push on, Lexi, and keep quiet.”
With the speed and grace of a gazelle, her trench-coat companion was off and running. Lexi could not tell who it was, but she knew she must trust this individual. She tried to keep up, but the other was so much faster. With a raspy, exhausted voice, Lexi whispered at her lowest possible decibel, “Wait up.”
“I told you not to talk!”
The sound of the exploding missiles and gunfire was replaced with whistles, otherworldly yells, and although she was certain she was wrong, Lexi heard the sound of a million angry bugs. A moment later the cricket sound combined with a high-pitched, migraine-inducing hiss. She heard an odd voice say, “They’re over there.”
Looking over her shoulder, Lexi saw several giant creatures now in pursuit. Dozens of beady red eyes glowed in the darkness, growing closer every second. She ran as fast as her legs would carry her, but the creatures were gaining. They were too fast. Her heart felt as if it would break free of her chest it was pounding so hard.
“No, please no,” she pleaded as she sprinted for her life. She ran, but she could not keep up with her companion. “Wait! Don’t leave me!” she screamed.
As Lexi continued running, she tripped over a tree trunk, and the next thing she knew she was falling—falling—falling. There was blackness everywhere. She was falling so fast she couldn’t breathe. Her mouth tried to open and release a scream, but the force of the wind denied such an attempt. At the last second, she raised her hands to her face when she saw the ground.
There was a splash of ice cold water against her face. The impact pushed her down as the swift-moving current grabbed at her feet like octopus tentacles. She would kick and swim, but mere inches from the surface, she would get pulled under again. She could not hold her breath much longer. Her hands flailed and her feet kicked, but she was going further under.
Her hand caught a downed tree limb and her fingers latched on for dear life. Lexi pulled herself to the surface, gasping as she erupted from the cold water. She made her way out of the edge of the river, her body soaked and her muscles throbbing.
It was still dark and she had no way of determining her location. She was lost. Her body was halfway submerged in a pool of water. She pulled herself fully onto the bank and struggled to her feet.
She attempted to locate any identifiable landmarks, but saw none. After a few steps, she saw someone lying downstream. Lexi cautiously approached the motionless figure. She assumed it was her companion. As she kneeled down, she recognized the face.
“Grandmother!”
“Lexi, I knew you would come.” Her grandmother coughed a violent cough that caused her entire body to twitch. “Don’t let them take me.”
“What are they, Grandma? Where are they taking us? Why are they doing this?”
“Don’t let them take me, Lexi.”
“I won’t, Grandma.”
There was a hand on Lexi’s shoulder. When she turned her head, she saw a dark figure standing behind her. She knew it was her companion, but she could not make out his face. Tears filled her eyes. “We have to help her.”
“I’m sorry. She’s gone.”
Lexi looked down. Her grandmother’s head drooped back as the last of her life slipped away.
“NO!” Lexi screamed. She cradled her grandmother’s head close to her chest and sobbed. “No.”
The cold, damp air came alive with the sound of angry bugs. They approached quickly.
Her companion slunk back into the cover of the dense foliage. “More will suffer if you don’t stop them, Lexi.
“Stop who?” she yelled as her companion disappeared. “Stop who?”
“They are coming for you.”
All around her, she saw dozens of beady, red eyes. The clicking and chattering and buzzing of bugs was everywhere. The odd hissing voice said, “She will join us or she will die.”
Lexi woke with aching muscles, a pounding headache, and dry, sore throat that felt like sandpaper. None of that mattered. “It was just a dream,” she said with a relieved breath. When she stood up, her legs burned as if she had just run a marathon.
She debated whether or not to tell her grandmother about the dreams from the past two nights. She’s going to tell me it’s just stress. It doesn’t feel like stress.
Chapter Eight
Conservation
“The magnificence of mountains, the serenity of nature –
nothing is safe from the idiot marks of man’s passing.”
-Loudon Wainwright
At breakfast, Lexi told her grandmother bits and pieces of her peculiar dreams and how real they felt. She mentioned how her body ached after dreaming about running. She stopped short of telling her about the weird, insect creatures or the battle that raged on just outside her bedroom window or that she saw her grandmother die. She did not want to sound crazy.
“I’m not surprised,” her grandmother replied as she dried the dishes. “You’ve always been in tune with your subconscious. Others have déjà vu, but you have premonitions. Remember when you were six and you knew I would win the school raffle? You said, ‘None of these tickets will win, Grandma, but if you buy one more, that one, that will be the ticket that wins.’ And you were right.”
Lexi nodded. Her grandmother loved to tell that story. She thought she might be having nightmares because of all the scary movies she watched, but maybe it was something more.
“So, do you think I could predict a war or the end of the world or something bigger than the school raffle?”
“It’s possible, but I hope you don’t foresee the end of days.”
“Why not?”
Lexi’s grandmother smiled. “If you could predict the end of the world, would you really want to be burdened with that information? Besides, dreaming of an impending war is most likely your subconscious playing out the championship game. Instead of a battle on the court, you’re mind is placing it on a larger scale. I think you’re just stressing too much. We can discuss it further when you get home.”
“Are you gonna hypnotize me?” Lexi asked with a smile. She loved being hypnotized almost as much as she loved watching someone get hypnotized. When she was little, if she promised to be quiet, her grandmother would let her sit in the corner. Lexi found it fascinating. She watched her grandmother help people remember long-lost memories, lose weight, quit smoking, cure phobias, even help pregnant women relax during childbirth.
Her grandmother shook her head. “You never give up, do you?”
“You know I’m not a quitter.”
Her grandmother did not say she would hypnotize Lexi, but she did not say she wouldn’t either. With a little motivation, perhaps she could get her grandmother to block out all thoughts of Jill.
A honk interrupted their conversation. “Elle and her mom are here. I’ve got to go,” Lexi said. She kissed her grandmother and sprinted out the door.
Elle and her mother were picking Lexi up for school because today was the Soil Conservation Poster Competition. The winners got to go with Assistant Principal Stevens to eat pizza for lunch and then catch a matinee of their choosing. Lexi and Elle had spent well over two weeks working on their poster, and they knew beyond a doubt they would win the contest.
Their presentation dealt with erosion prevention, management of salts in the soil, and soil pH control. They had added pictures of the Aral Sea to represent the salt flats as well as current farming techniques for limiting erosion. Lexi’s favorite part was the plants they tried to grow in the various containers: one had a lot of sodium representing a high salt content, another had sulfur representing the effects of pesticides, while a third had ammonia added to represent effects of acid rain.
Lexi barely got outside when Elle’s mother honked her car horn again. Elle’s mother was just as impatient as her daughter.
“Hurry up, jack rabbit,” Elle yelled as she stuck her head out of the car window. E
lle started in her typical, hyperactive, auctioneer-speed speech. “I’m so excited. In fact, I’m more than excited. What’s more than excited?”
Lexi did not get a chance to answer.
“Whatever that is, that’s what I am. I just know that our Soil Conservation poster is going to win first place, and then when Assistant Principal Stevens is weeping tears of joy because we have the most awesome-est poster in the history of awesome-est posters, I will ask him to write us both letters of recommendation to Yale.”
“Elle,” Lexi said with a smile.
“And then you and I can live in the dorms together, and I’ll major in fashion design and you can major in basketball—”
“First off,” Lexi said, cutting off Elle, “I doubt Yale has a fashion design degree, and second—”
“Fine, we’ll go to Harvard. Forget Yale. Yale’s stupid. Nobody goes to Yale anymore,” Elle said without a second thought. “I never liked Yale anyway. I’m glad we never went to Yale…”
Lexi rolled her eyes and could not help but smile as she listened to Elle’s persistent jabbering. By the time they reached school, the flow of Elle’s ever-changing conversation went from Ivy League schools to a quick history of her mother’s Mini Cooper to the latest work of Gossip Girl fan fiction. In a matter of eight minutes, Elle had thrown out such crazy Elle facts as: “Harvard is the oldest college in the world. It was founded in like 600 B.C.” and “President Obama never missed an episode of Gossip Girl. In fact, I heard he canceled a meeting with that Russian guy once, just so he could watch it. And, by the way, Consumer Reports gave the Mini Cooper a F minus, minus.”
Elle did not like the Mini Cooper simply because it was the car her parents were going to give her when she turned sixteen. She wanted a next generation Lexus sport coupe. She was getting a Mini Cooper. Elle’s mother blurted out, “Consumer Reports never said that, Elle. It is not the worst car ever. It wins all kinds of awards. Like two years ago, it won The NASCAR or some award like that.”