As I let him pull me along, something in the wreckage caught my attention, and I hesitated.
“Hold on a sec.” I pulled my hand from his, reaching for the picture that was jumbled in with all the rest. A photograph.
I bent down, brushing aside broken glass to pluck it free. Beneath the first photograph was another. And beneath those, another and another.
I recognized all the images despite never having seen anything like them in real life. Fireflies. Picture after picture of fireflies.
There were faraway images of swarms and incredibly detailed close-ups. Others were artistic—shots taken in the night sky, making the fireflies look like stars against the black canvas of night—and others still that were clinical feeling and stark, in which you could make out each and every detail of the insects, right down to their delicate antennae and bulging round eyes. It was as if my dad had been studying the insects.
At the bottom of the haphazard pile was an image I’d seen before. I’d hadn’t made the connection between it and the nocturnal luminaries, with their delicate, vein-laced and swirl-tipped wings.
My fingers traced the image as I tried to recall the first time I’d seen it: the beetle-like version that depicted what a firefly looked like at rest . . . and burnished in gold.
Just like it had been in the center of Agent Truman’s badge. It hadn’t been a golden beetle at all. It had been a firefly.
My thoughts were interrupted when a single drop of blood fell onto the photo from above me. It landed right in the center of the picture and splattered outward, blooming like a flower. A feeling of icy alarm settled over me as I turned to glance over my shoulder.
I’d half expected to find my father there, with his bloodied hands outstretched to me.
But it wasn’t my father. It was Tyler, standing above me and studying the same images I was.
“Your nose.” I let the picture flutter to the floor. “Tyler, you’re bleeding.”
He frowned at me before using the back of his hand to check for himself. “You’ve got to be—” He shook his head, perplexed. “I haven’t had a bloody nose since I was a kid.”
But I was already on my feet and running toward the bathroom, kicking litter out of my way. When I came back, I handed him a wad of toilet paper. “I think you’re supposed to lean your head back. And pinch your nose. I think you’re supposed to pinch it.”
He did as I said, and without taking the paper away, he dropped his gaze and grinned at me. “So you’re saying I’m not gonna miraculously heal the way you did? I thought maybe some of your superpowers might rub off on me.”
I rolled my eyes, wondering how he could possibly make jokes during a situation like this. It would be hard to leave him when the time came. “They’re not superpowers.” I smirked back at him. He sounded ridiculous with all that toilet paper bunched up and plugging his nose. I grinned. “And I’m pretty sure they don’t work that way.” I nudged him with my shoulder as I shoved past him back into my dad’s room. “I just want to grab a few things and then we need to get out of here before anyone catches us. I was hoping my dad would be here. I have so many questions, and I think he might have some of the answers I need.” It felt so strange to admit that out loud, that my dad had been right after all. I looked around at the room. At the ripped papers and broken glass. Even the computer monitor had been smashed. I couldn’t bear to think that he might’ve been harmed because of me. “I just hope he’s okay.”
“Me too.” Tyler’s voice came out muffled by the toilet paper.
I began collecting what I could find, anything that looked even remotely useful, although most of it looked like junk. I gathered the firefly images and a map with a bunch of colorful dots and lines my dad had drawn, along with the one missing-person flyer I couldn’t ignore: the one of me.
While I was searching, I found the ball from the first baseball team I’d ever been on, back when I was in the first grade—when the boys and girls still played together. Our parents had signed Austin and me up for the same team, and my dad had volunteered to be our coach.
This was the very same ball Austin had hurled through my bedroom window after I’d accused him of throwing like a girl. His parents had grounded him for a whole week for breaking my window—one day for every year he’d been alive on this earth.
And for an entire week I’d regretted taunting him, because for seven painfully long days I’d had to come home from school and play all by myself. I’d lost my best friend because I’d made fun of the way he threw.
My dad, though, had saved that ball. He said it was one of his favorite mementos. I used to think he meant because it was from our first game—his as our coach and mine as a player. But now that I thought of it, I wonder if it was more than that. I wonder if it was because of the lesson I’d learned, about how to treat those I cared about.
My dad had always been big on the power of words and respect.
“The tongue pierces deeper than the spear,” he’d told me when I’d complained about Austin’s punishment. And even though I knew he was trying to teach me some sort of lesson, all I could remember thinking was that it was too bad if what my dad had said was really true, because how cool would it be if our tongues really were spears? First graders thought of things like that, I guess.
“We better get moving,” I told Tyler, putting the ball back. He had his own collection of things, and I appraised his findings with a dubious eye. His nose had stopped bleeding, and his toilet paper compress was gone.
“What do you think?” he asked, holding up a fanny pack by its strap. “You think your dad would mind if I kept this?”
I made a face at him. How long had my dad been holding on to that relic? “Are you kidding? You’re not seriously planning to wear that thing, are you?”
“You never know when you’ll need both hands free.” He strapped it around his waist and started filling it with the things he’d gathered: some newspaper and magazine clippings, a USB thumb drive that had been lying beneath the papers on the floor, and a CD with a handwritten 2009–2014 scrawled across it.
“This isn’t a looting mission.”
He looked meaningfully at all the junk in my hands. “Are you sure about that? Here, I bet you can fit all your stuff in this thing.” He held the pouch open for me.
“I’m not letting my stuff touch that thing. My hands work just fine. You know your nerd status just shot up like a million points, don’t you?” I didn’t tell him the real reason I wasn’t sharing space in his fanny pack, that I wasn’t planning to go with him.
He shrugged like it was no big deal, but I loved that he didn’t care that he was making a fool of himself with that ridiculous pouch.
His eyes shot skyward as his body went entirely rigid. “Shh!” The crooked grin melted from his face. “Did you hear that?” His head cocked slightly, and he strained—we both strained—to find whatever it was he thought he’d heard.
“No,” I whispered, slightly thrown by the sudden shift in his demeanor. “I don’t . . .” But I’d spoken too soon. It was there, and now, just barely and so faraway, I could hear it too. My throat ached, and I nodded this time. “We’re too late.”
The whomp-whomp-whomp sound of the approaching helicopter pounded within my chest and beat through my veins. I felt more human in that instant than I had in my entire life. More mortal. More defenseless and exposed, even within the suddenly-too-cramped walls of my father’s trailer.
“I have to go,” I said. I bundled the missing-person flyer and the map and the prints of the fireflies into a roll and stuffed them into my back pocket, right next to the envelope Simon had given me.
I made my way to the front of the trailer, where it was gloomier now that the sun had set. I didn’t turn on any lights along the way. Tyler was right on my heels, following me closely, and he’d noticed my slip. “You said ‘I.’ You said ‘I have to go,’ Kyra, and I don’t care what you think, but you’re not leaving me behind.”
Reaching the fr
ont door, I pulled back the musty-smelling curtain that drooped limply over the glass and realized how useless the windows in my dad’s crappy trailer were. They were textured. The surface of the glass was bumpy, meant for privacy rather than for visibility. He might as well have covered them with newspaper or tinfoil. All I could make out was the darkness beyond.
“I don’t have time to argue,” I shot back. “But you can’t go with me. Stay here and tell them this was all some sort of mix-up. That you didn’t know anything about me and what I am.” I dropped the curtain, ignoring the dust that puffed up when I did.
Tyler grabbed my arm and forced me to face him. “Kyra, stop being so stubborn.” When I opened my mouth to argue, he cut me off. “No. I mean it. You’re being stupid again, and this time not the good kind. You’re out of your mind if you think I’m not going with you.”
Bright lights filtered in through the impractical privacy windows and filled the darkened trailer, casting blurred beams along the wood-paneled walls. Others came from above, accompanied by the louder, and much closer, whomp-whomp noises of the helicopter, which was right on top of us now. They came from the window over the sink and the opaque skylight that was obscured by layers of fir needles and caked-on dirt.
I reached for Tyler’s hand, deciding that now wasn’t the time to argue over whether I would let him stay with me or not, because I didn’t think either of us was getting out of this mess anyway.
Red and blue lights washed over Tyler’s skin as his lips tightened. “Come on.” He hauled me back toward my dad’s trashed office. He ripped the curtain rod off the wall, where it had hung above the window, and pressed his face to the rough-surfaced glass. “I don’t see any lights out there. If we hurry, we might be able to slip out back before they catch us.”
“And then what? What will we do? Where are we gonna go?” I hated that I was saying this, but it needed to be said. “Tyler, please. Just stay here. You’ll be safer that way.”
He ignored me. Flat-out acted like he hadn’t even heard me.
“Here,” he ordered, tugging the crank on the window, because that was the kind of window it was. It didn’t move, not even an inch, as if it were glued in place. “Shit,” he cursed, growing more agitated by the second. The helicopter sounded like it was right on top of us now, making it almost impossible to hear ourselves.
No longer uncertain, Tyler reached for the broken computer monitor. Without skipping a beat, he hurled it through the window. The noise of shattering glass was swallowed by the helicopter that was right overhead. I kept looking behind us, checking the hallway, and the door beyond, waiting to be swarmed by the agents outside. My entire body was shaking, and I thought I was going to hyperventilate as I wheezed for each breath.
Tyler, though, was single-minded. Shielding his eyes, he used a heavy book to break out the remaining shards and then pulled off his hoodie, spreading it over the bottom edge of the opening.
“Come on,” he told me, cupping his hands together beneath the windowsill and motioning for me to step into them so he could hoist me over the edge.
Without the window’s glass in place, the sounds from outside echoed all around us. Not only could we hear the helicopter, with its constantly rotating blades, but we could make out voices shouting and car doors slamming. They were coming.
Behind us, the sound of the trailer’s front door crashing made me jump, and without waiting, or looking back, I went for it, lunging toward Tyler. I dropped my foot into his hands and let him throw me through the broken window. I didn’t have my balance, though, and when I landed on the other side, I fell on my hands and knees in the pool of broken glass. My heart was trying to pound its way out of my chest, and I barely had time to glance at my hands to see if I’d been hurt when Tyler was coming through the window right behind me, landing more gracefully than I had.
Somewhat shakily, I stood upright, relieved that we’d made it.
Until I heard Agent Truman, and my skin prickled. “We’ve got you surrounded. There’s no point trying to run.”
Even if he hadn’t said we were surrounded, I saw his gun. And he aimed it the same way the agent from the bookstore had. At Tyler.
I sagged, letting his frigid words settle over me. Letting the weight of their meaning—like an iceberg—crush me.
This was it. There was no more hope of leaving Tyler behind, because now all I could do was turn myself in and hope Simon was wrong.
“Kyra!” Tyler had to shout to be heard above the helicopter overhead.
When I turned to him, in the darkness behind the trailer, I was confused about why he’d said my name in the first place, because he wasn’t even looking at me. His eyes never strayed from Agent Truman.
I felt him slip something into my hand. Agent Truman continued to stare Tyler down, unaware of what had just passed between us.
And then, buried in the constant whomp-whomp of the helicopter’s blades, I thought I heard Tyler say, “You know what to do.”
I wasn’t sure I did at first, but then I squeezed my fingers around the laces of the ball Tyler had placed there, and I remembered that night at the ball field, when I’d tossed the ball at Tyler . . . when I’d nearly ripped a hole through the backstop.
Without a word, Tyler’s eyes slipped to mine. I don’t know how he conveyed it, or even if he did, but I swear he told me You can do this with that look.
And I believed him.
Agent Truman’s expression narrowed suspiciously as he surveyed us, and his gun moved to me. “Don’t do anything stupid,” he commanded. “I won’t shoot you,” he added, making a disgusted sound like a grunt. “But I will kill him.” The light from the helicopter landed on us, falling in a wide, spectral circle that encompassed all three of us, and Agent Truman moved the gun then, aiming it directly at Tyler’s head while a ruthless expression distorted his face, and I had no doubt that he meant what he said.
I didn’t think then; I only reacted. Like when I was on the mound. Like when the stands were filled with people cheering but I couldn’t hear a single one of them because all that mattered was me and the person holding the bat.
I focused on the gun.
The gun and the ball in my hand and the beating of my heart.
I breathed, and then I moved.
And I was fast. Man, was I fast.
Agent Truman couldn’t have dodged the ball even if I’d have given him fair warning. The ball was out of my hand like a shot. And any control I thought I was lacking had all been in my head.
I was precise. Crazy, uncanny, laser-like precise.
The ball, when it hit Agent Truman’s gun, and the fingers he had wrapped around its grip, exploded. It came apart—the laces, the leather—exposing the layer of worm-like yarns underneath the leather skin.
Agent Truman’s face went ashen as his knuckles exploded as well. Even above the helicopter, I was sure I hadn’t imagined hearing that sound.
And then he crumpled to his knees, and before anyone else could stop us or before he could pick up his gun with his other hand, Tyler and I ran. . . .
Disappearing beneath the canopy of trees into the jet-black forest behind us.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I WAS STILL SHAKEN, BUT I KEPT RUNNING, WITH Tyler right behind me. My legs and my lungs were burning even though it didn’t seem like we’d gone all that far. But the woods kept getting deeper and denser and darker.
The helicopter overhead made it impossible for us to stop to catch our breath. It zigged and zagged, its light never pinpointing our location, but it was up there all the same. Which let us know they hadn’t given up on us.
We stayed as close as we could to the thicker patches of trees and brush, trying to keep low and out of sight. The leaves above us were thrashed by the blades, and pieces of projectile branches and dirt whorled around us wheneve
r the helicopter came too close. Most likely they were tracking us on foot, too, and we had no idea how much of a head start we had on them.
“Here.” Tyler pulled me down beneath a layer of thick brush. “Let’s see if we lost them.”
I dropped in front of him. “How did you know I could do that?” I asked, panting. “Back there, with the ball?”
“You kidding? I saw you throw that night. I figured that was one of your new superpowers.”
“I don’t have powers,” I countered.
He shrugged dubiously. “Did you see the way you threw that ball—you have powers.” I couldn’t deny his accusation entirely. Simon might not have mentioned anything like that, but it would be one giant coincidence if my new ability to throw stupid-fast wasn’t somehow linked to everything else that made me . . . well, less than normal.
Reaching up, Tyler plucked a twig from my hair. “How you doin’?” he asked. “You okay?”
Nodding, I found my heart beating for a different reason now. “You?”
A lazy grin tugged at his lips. “Hell, no. But you’re still not ditching me.”
“It’s not funny.”
His hand dropped to my side, his fingers interlacing with mine. “I know it’s not. And I’m serious. You’re the most amazing thing that’s ever happened to me. I just don’t want you getting any crazy ideas about losing me out here.”
My heart faltered. Losing him was the last thing I wanted.
When the spotlight from the helicopter came too close again, it jerked us back to reality. We jumped up, breaking free from the bushes like startled animals, and darted across the overgrown forest floor. Branches whipped and pulled at us, snagging and ripping our clothes and skin.
“This way.” I clung to Tyler and towed him along, toward a stand of trees ahead of us. The glowing halo of the spotlight bobbed behind us, moving drunkenly in our wake.