She closed her eyes, shaking her head. He hated the fact that he had made her like this.
“So when we heard the police coming, I ran.”
“And who was with you, Spencer?” she asked him sternly.
“Rebecca and Donna.” He thought about what Donna had turned into again.
“If they say you were there and you ran, the police will definitely be coming.” She started shaking her head again, pacing the room faster.
“They won’t!” he told her.
They won’t …
* * *
Rebecca
Rebecca’s parents were away again. Her mom was an archeologist, and her father was a marine biologist. They were constantly leaving to find things, and then they’d write books together about it.
Rebecca was so scared; she didn’t know what to do. Instinctively, she went and got another thyroid medicine inject and hooked it to her key chain. She was allergic to the pill form so instead she had to have it ready in case the power plant exploded all over again.
Her backpack and her cell phone were left back at the car accident she recalled. More and more tears violently streamed from her eyes as she clutched her face. The police are going to find my stuff, and then come find me! Oh God, why did I run, why did I listen to Spencer? Because he was her friend, and because she liked him … She grabbed the phone, and started to dial nine-one-one. If she just told them she was scared then … There was a knock on the door. Rebecca stood still, hanging up the phone. They’re here already! Did the man … did he die? Am I going to be arrested?
She walked to her door, trembling. Tears in her eyes. She opened it. “I—” She paused.
It wasn’t the police, it was Paul. He stood there innocently, pushing his falling glasses back onto his nose. “Um, hi,” he started nervously. Clearly he felt uncomfortable by the tears in her eyes and her body still trembled as if the police were taking her away. She stood there, not able to say a word, not able to move.
“Are you ok?” he asked her.
Then she broke down. She stepped out and hugged him, crying frantically now. He was the first person to ask if she was ok. Spencer hadn’t even … Spencer was burned; I shouldn’t even think that way. Yet a part of her felt mad at him … and here was Paul.
* * *
Paul
One minute ago, Paul Cohen was nervously waiting at Rebecca’s door. Going to her home had made him so excited and terrified, it had actually pulled his mind away from reality. Not enough that he didn’t bring his computer tablet with him, but still …
The next minute she was hugging him. Embracing him as she sobbed uncontrollably. Nervously he put his arms around her. I must be dreaming, he thought to himself; he had had a crush on Rebecca since he was in middle school.
“Rebecca, what’s wrong?”
She pulled away from him slowly. Tears were rolling continuously down her face. Even now, she looked so beautiful and delicate. His glasses started to slide down his nose again. He pushed them up instinctively. She looked up at him, her bright green eyes were so clear. With her red curly hair, she looked like a fairy from a painting. He nervously looked to the floor. He had never even hugged Rebecca before. Now he was close enough to smell her perfume; she smelled like roses.
“I, um, I need you to help me call the police,” she said in a low, scared voice.
“The police?” he questioned. He hadn’t expected those words to come out of Rebecca’s mouth.
“Yeah.” She started walking toward the phone as he followed. “Spencer, Donna, and I were coming home from school and a car—” She stopped, unable to finish. More tears ran down her eyes as she looked away from him.
He quickly pulled out a handkerchief and wiped away her tears. Any guy watching would have made fun of him for it, but his grandfather always told him to carry one just in case. She looked up at him; their eyes locked for a second.
“You’re not going to believe me when I tell you this, it’s not even logical.”
She seemed calmer now.
Knowing what he knew lately, “logical” had taken on a whole new universe of possibilities. “Logic is like science, always expanding,” he told her, then felt completely dumb after the words left his mouth.
She nodded slowly as if telling herself what he had just said. “A car swerved onto the wrong side of the road.” Her voice was low as if she was whispering. “Where Donna was standing, but the car didn’t hit her.”
He took a deep breath. It was happening again. She was finding out. “What did she do?” he asked her, his heartbeat quickening; he had always known Rebecca would be smart enough to figure it out … and now she was.
* * *
Rebecca
Rebecca looked at Paul mystified and afraid. What did he just say? “What did she do?” How did he guess that she did something, instead of the car just hitting her? How could he know? She looked into his light brown eyes. They looked sincere; nervous, but sincere.
She took a deep breath, feeling overwhelmed again. She’d tell him, then go to the police. “Her body turned into a ghost.” She could barely get the words out. “A ghost made of electricity. The car went right through her, and she was still standing there afterwards, and the driver was hurt.” More tears started coming down her eyes again. She couldn’t control them.
“Then what happened?” he asked her gently.
He doesn’t think I’m crazy. He believes me …
“I gave the driver my injectate. You know, that’s what we are suppose to do when someone is exposed to electric energy right? Then Spencer was yelling that Donna was dying, so he carried her through the woods to the lake.” Her head throbbed, and her memory felt blurred, as if every single thing that had happened had happened all at once, yet it took the length of the day instead of the mere twenty minutes when it all went down. “Then the police were coming, and Spencer said they’d arrest us. So he ran, and then I ran too.”
“Did they see you, the police?” He looked like his mind was racing also.
“No, but my backpack … all my stuff is there, and Donna was there too,” she said with dread. “I have to call them now before it gets any worse.” She started toward her phone, ready to get it over with.
“No.” Paul stopped her.
She looked at him oddly. Has every guy in this town lost his mind? Why did he also not want her to call the police? He looked so certain, so …
“You have to trust me, Rebecca, please,” he told her. “If there is any chance that the police aren’t on to you, then you need to stay quiet. If not … ” He paused, his hand clutching hers. “ … you could be killed, or taken.”
Rebecca looked into his eyes and trembled. Something about the energy in his voice made her believe him.
“Who would? Why?”
How could there be more to this frightening day?
“There are more people like,” he pushed his glasses up, “Donna, but what they can do is much worse, dangerous.” He touched her cheek gently, sending a shiver down her spine, and then pulled away after a moment. “They’ve killed people who have tried to go public before. If they know you know, you won’t be able to escape.”
His words were like touching ice that was so cold it burned you. She felt so weak all of a sudden. Yet she trusted him? Why? The boy she had only casually known before this day, someone who would show her computer tricks she hadn’t thought of first, she now trusted with everything. She believed words that any other day would sound so ridiculous.
Rebecca could just feel in her gut that he was telling the truth. Which meant that today was only the bizarre, scary beginning of something very dangerous … and real.
* * *
Donna
When Donna opened her eyes it was night. She sat up and found herself in the old box tree fort she and Ryan had secretly built when they were children. She pinched herself, hard. Feeling the pain, she pulled her hand away.
She wasn’t still in her nightmare. This was real. Which meant i
t hadn’t been a nightmare at all. She left the tiny hole of the fort. Then in the pure darkness of the starless night, she walked across a supporting branch until she got to another tree. Then she felt for the rope ladder, which she and Ryan had knotted together. Afraid, she started her way down it.
Only then did she remember she was absolutely naked except for her shoes as her body touched the roughness of the tree. She felt ants on her arms. At least the shoes Ryan had given her were still on her feet, thank goodness.
She moved down the next tree’s ladder. This one looped around the tree and was very wobbly. As she got closer to the bottom, she felt her leg go through one of the ropes. Then she was falling. The next second she was on the dirt, she’d landed on her feet, as if she’d fallen off the uneven bars. Her gymnastic instincts had saved her. Donna ran through the woods. They seemed so scary and foreign. She’d run through them day and night a million times before this, but tonight it seemed like something was going to jump out and kill her at any time.
When she got to the edge of the woods, she stopped. Her house was still a fourth of a mile away. Thank goodness they lived on a farm and that Mr. Applegate hadn’t sold the three fourths of it he’d bought to help her dad out. As a result, she had no neighbors. Only a road in the distance in front of their home, and that road lay silent. The night was pitch black with not one star in the sky. She took off running again, staring at her house the entire time. It kept looking so far away until she finally arrived.
Smoky was barking wildly as she came to the back door. She used the hidden key trapped under the outside light to get inside. Her house was dark. Nobody was home. Her dad was probably out still doing more jobs that he’d missed doing this morning. The morning that now seemed a week or two behind her.
Shaking again now, she ignored Smoky and went right upstairs to the bathroom and went to turn the lights on. As her hand grazed the switch, she felt heat rush through it just like it had before.
Donna paused with her hand on the switch as if hypnotized. Her hand felt tingly, like it was asleep with millions of tiny particles jumping around in it. Then she looked at herself in the dark reflection of the mirror and saw the most startling thing she’d ever seen. Electricity was coming through the switch into her hand. Then her hand began slightly glowing.
She pulled her hand away, but it still glowed, transparently like the rest of her body. She looked at herself in shock. She wasn’t glowing orange-ish gold like a light bulb; she was glowing bluish white like lightning.
Her body felt there, but not there. More alive than ever, yet it felt asleep also. She touched the faucet, but her hand went right through it. She panicked. Was she dead? Had she been dead this whole time? She looked at her shower curtain. As she touched it she heard little pops. Electricity was spilling onto it. She pushed it away, then looking down at the bathtub, she saw a tiny little puddle of water left over.
Her dad must have fixed the water pipes this morning. She touched it instinctively, like it was pulling her to it like a magnet. Then as if by a miracle her hand glowed less, becoming more whole. She turned on the shower, now that she was able to touch it, and her hand became even more solid. She still heard tiny pops like something was being electrocuted as the ice cold water poured on her. She felt the heat in her body, her aliveness yet sleepiness, all go away. It was as if the water was going into her entire flesh. Being absorbed by her heart, organs, and skin.
She opened her mouth, feeling its dryness and hotness, letting water pour in. Feeling like her gums, teeth, tonsils, nose, even her hair was absorbing it all. As if all of a sudden the water was rebuilding her body and soul. After a few minutes, she felt it slide down her throat and she was drinking it.
When she finally got out of the shower, she went to her room, leaving her soaking running shoes behind. Too afraid to look in the mirror and see herself transparent again, she threw on one of her old fat T-shirts and some baggie shorts. She didn’t put on a bra though. She didn’t want anything too close to her body for some reason.
Then she turned on all the lights with her hands still partially wet. She felt no heat or anything out of the ordinary. She had barely been home a minute when she heard her dad pull up. She sat down on the couch confused, still not sure what had happened, starting this afternoon until now. She wondered what she would tell him, when she didn’t even know what to tell herself. Was she going crazy? Was she hallucinating? Had someone slipped her a drug like they had many years ago in New York? Was this all a dream? It felt like it. If so, she’d wish she’d wake up.
She loved her dad, but they never really talked. She didn’t tell him a lot of things, never wanting to add on to his load: her mom, her brother, his old life gone, money problems … So how could she tell him this? Tell him she thought she was dead when she was upstairs moments ago. That she had turned into some kind of electric ghost …
Her dad still hadn’t come in, and she heard him talking to someone. She walked toward the door. Her dog was now going crazy, knowing someone was outside. She glanced through the kitchen window and almost fainted at the sight of seeing Mr. Kooser, the sheriff, talking to her father.
“Donna!” her dad called to her. “Come out here!”
Her heart now pumping, she quickly grabbed one of her dad’s big coats to hide the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra and went out. The night was still pitch black. What time it was, she had no idea. The sheriff, with his long beard and cowboy boots, glanced at her. She walked over to her dad, who put his arm around her as if she was a small child again.
“The sheriff says your books were found all over the road, right where a driver was found passed out in his car,” her dad stated.
She shivered a little, trying to think. She was still unsure of what had happened.
“He was on sleeping medication, and all he can remember is falling asleep, then waking up in an ambulance,” the sheriff started. He was staring straight at her, not like she’d committed a crime, but like she knew something. “He was found with a needle thyroid inject stabbed into his chest. Someone tried to help him it seems,” the sheriff finished.
“Thyroid inject, why would someone go and use that?” her dad asked.
She looked back and forth from the sheriff to her father, Rebecca’s face coming right to her memories. Rebecca carried an inject in case the power plant were to explode again, like it had years ago, before she’d been born.
“The hospital said the man had experienced bolts of electricity through his body. He’s a smoker, so we think maybe the lighter in his vehicle was defective and sent a shockwave through the entire car,” the sheriff went on. He had gone to school with her father, but they barely spoke, only waved to each other briefly while in town.
“Shoot, I’ve never heard of such a thing,” her father commented.
“Something very similar, to a worse extent, happened three years ago. Now,” the sheriff looked right at her again, “if you were involved, or tried to help this man, you need to let me know. Running away from an accident, even if you were just trying to help, is a serious offense that can land you in court and you’d be better off—”
“Wait,” a voice from behind the three of them called out. It was Spencer. He wore a long sleeve shirt that looked like it held stuffing under it.
“Sheriff, Donna wasn’t involved with whatever you’re talking about,” Spencer told them. He had been standing behind them, listening this whole time.
“Mr. Klingalsmer,” the sheriff barked at him, pronouncing his last name wrong. “I was going to stop by your house next. Your books were found as well.”
“Yeah, well,” Spencer looked a bit more nervous now. “We were on our way home from class when Randy Applegate and all the jocks came speeding down the road, almost hitting us. We jumped out of the way, and all our stuff went flying.”
Donna took a deep breath, remembering that that had happened.
“Then as we started to pick up our stuff, Lynn Eris’s car came speeding down the road n
ext and did the same thing. I, um, was so mad, because of the fact that they all had raced straight through the road, ready to run us over for all they cared, that I ran off.”
Donna knew most of that was true except for the end. He hadn’t run off until … Until I was in the lake. He and Rebecca left me! she remembered. The headache and blurriness of it all made her feel dizzy again.
“Donna went after me. She stopped me from confronting them and doing something stupid.”
The sheriff looked at Spencer with a stern look. “And what dumb thing would you have done, boy?” he barked. “Those boys are twice your size!”
“I don’t know; they’ve been hitting on my mom a lot. I probably wanted to try and punch one of them in the face,” Spencer told him. His face was now to the floor like he was ashamed.
The sheriff rolled his eyes. “Try that and you’d be in the hospital! You best thank your girlfriend that she stopped you, boy!” Donna kept her eyes to the ground, knowing everything Spencer was now saying was a lie, not even caring that the sheriff had just assumed they were a couple.
“Come on, Jim, let me make you some coffee,” her dad offered. He had a relieved look on his face, clearly happy his daughter hadn’t had anything to do with the man in the car.
Though she had; she saw it all now, as if it happened in the blink of an eye. His car coming toward her, her body getting hot, feeling like she had in the bathroom when she turned into that thing. The car going through her body, filling it with heat as if it was absorbing into her. Then falling to the ground. Spencer picking her up and carrying her through the woods, dropping her into the lake. Then she remembered her body, feeling as if the water from the lake was rebuilding her as she looked up at the dark sky. Hearing Spencer run away, and then watching Rebecca run too …
She looked at her friend; they were alone outside now. “Spencer, I—”
“Listen,” he interrupted her. “You were my friend, but whatever you are, you have to stick with the story I just told.”
She looked at his arms, confused and hurt by his words. Was that bandage tape poking through his jacket? “What are you saying?” Her words coming out raw and helpless.