Sophomore Freak (Reject High: A Young Adult Science Fiction Series Book 2) (13 page)

Psychotic. He’d said it casually, like if I asked what color King’s hair color was. That didn’t explain what he wanted with it, but maybe Hughes didn’t know himself. “How am I supposed to find the blue and gold ones?”

He stifled a belch in his throat and poured me a bit more. “Very carefully.”

I drank the whiskey without thinking.
Are my lips numb?
“Howww?”

“You reach down inside yourself, past your fears, and do it. You’re more capable than you know.”

Suddenly my eyelids felt impossible to keep open. I put my hands down on the floor to steady the spinning in my head. The alcohol churned in my stomach, and I hoped it stayed there. “You owe me. . .fifty bucksss. . .
Brad.”

I saw three of Hughes in front of me, and they all smiled. “You just drank it. Good night.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

off to the mountains

The next thing I remembered was waking up across from Sasha’s bunk. She wasn’t in it. Rhapsody was gone, too. Selby’s bunk hadn’t been slept in at all. 

Last night Hughes and I had drunk a lot of expensive whiskey. I’d never had a hangover, so what was I supposed to feel? A headache? Throwing up? The inside of my mouth was like cotton, but that was normal for me when my powers were active.

My thoughts were all over the place, but that wasn’t unusual, either. I needed my Adderall. Courtney was right. The prisms sped up everything our bodies did, including flushing out alcohol. I didn’t have a hangover.

I washed up, put on my bodysuit over my clothes, and unzipped it down to the middle of my chest. Letting the arms hang, I walked through the hallways, the giant round room, and into the dining room. Everyone had eaten, except for me. Sasha was still at the table, stabbing her fork in her eggs.

“Hey,” she said when I arrived. “Go eat. Hughes is cleaning up now.”

I ducked my head into the kitchen. “You owe me fifty bucks,
Brad.”

In the midst of washing dishes, Hughes turned off the faucet and let out a rolling laugh. “You drank it last night,
Captain.
”

Sasha spit out some of her orange juice. “You
drank
alcohol with Hughes?”

I got a paper plate and plastic utensils from the table. “I’m starving.”

“That’s
not
an answer,” Sasha said as I served myself. “My mother’s an alcoholic, Jason. Could you be a little more considerate?”

Popping two sausage links into my mouth, I mumbled an insincere “sorry.” Though I stuffed myself, it didn’t take long for me to eat. Courtney said that when I finished I should meet them in the “control room.”
I guess that’s the big round room.

That’s where I found everyone – our three guardians, Sasha, and Rhapsody. Once we were all present, Selby zoomed in from wherever he had been.

Hughes used a remote control to unfold a glass screen from the ceiling. The mechanism was huge, like a see-through movie screen. It descended and set up at the center of the control room.

The seven of us crowded into a semicircle around it. The screen powered on and displayed a three-dimensional map of North America with three colored blinking lights on it – one red, one green, and one white. All were far apart. 

“What are the Christmas lights about?” Selby asked them.

My heart and brain raced. I couldn’t think or speak. They knew where I’d hidden the crystals.

Camuto pointed to each colored dot. The green was in Montana, the red in Colorado and the white in Mexico. “These are the locations of the source crystals we know about, besides the pink.”

Selby turned and shouted in my face. “Seriously,
Freak?
I thought you hid them. Man,
y
ou suck at this!”

“I move them around all of the time!” I yelled back. “It’s not my fault.”

Courtney laid a hand on my arm. “We’re familiar with their radioactive signatures. There’s no way you could have hidden them from us without help.”

I watched Sasha’s expression change. She was
thinking.

“Whatever,” I said.

“Does that mean somebody else knows where they are?” Rhapsody asked.

“Yes,” Camuto said it like we should have known that already. “We don’t have a lot of time left to explain fine details. It’ll only get worse if we wait any longer.”

Great
. “Do we have any kind of advantage here?” I asked.

Courtney, Camuto, and Hughes all looked at me. “You can lift and move them by yourself,” Camuto said. “It will take him much longer.”

“Do you have any white ice here?” Sasha asked. “Even red ice would help. Running into problems would be a lot less of an issue if we could take their powers away or. . .mind control our enemies.”

Her hesitation in saying “mind control” let me know she thought about what she had done to Officer Spivey.

“Not an option,” Hughes said. “We don’t keep any isotopes in house.”

“Why not?” Selby wondered aloud. “What if someone attacked
you?”

“Go and get the green one first,” Courtney said, brushing off his question. She pointed to the glowing emerald dot. “Montana is closest. Mexico is last. We have weak leads on the locations of the blue and gold. Those will take the longest to find.”

Rhapsody fanned her hands. “Wait, why are we going to Mexico
last?
They’re using white ice in weapons. Won’t King or whoever want that one before the others?”

“Yeah, psychopath with weapons,” Selby said. “I vote no.”

Sasha pointed at the map. “They have a point. We should shift strategy.”

Hands on hips, Courtney said, “You need the
green and red
prisms for fighting back. We’ve been at this for a long time, guys. Give me a little credit here on this one.”

“If we get the white first, there
is
no fight,” Sasha argued. “And truth? The ‘we’re-really-old-and-experienced’ argument is a little ridiculous.”

“Enough,” I shouted, clapping my hands. “Green one first, okay?”

“Who died and made you intelligent?” Selby asked me.

I wanted to say “your momma,” but she had been murdered. “I’m the captain.”

Selby threw up his hands. “Fine,
Captain.
I’m in the wind at midnight.”

Together we moved over to Camuto’s desk. On top of it sat Courtney’s shiny briefcase, the one from Rhapsody’s house. After a fingerprint scan, she opened it and plucked three small squares and four watches from the gray felt inside.

“Replace your cell phone SIM cards,” she said, handing new chips to Sasha, Rhapsody, and Selby. “Jason, I already changed yours while it was charging overnight on Hughes’ desk. The police can’t track you with these. Neither can King. At the height of the storm, they will still explode, so you will have to ditch them.”

Debra would be glad I was finally off of her wireless plan. “Thanks,” I said while they went to work on their phones. “What are
those?”
I pointed to the watches.

“Miniature Geiger counters,” Camuto said as Courtney gave me one. “They’re tuned to the high proton energy radiation of the source crystals. When you get close, it’ll start clicking. The faster the click, the closer the proximity to a provenance crystal.”

“Alright,” Selby said. He reassembled his phone and strapped the watch to his wrist. “What are we waiting for here, an invitation?”

Rhapsody waved her hand. “Question. Can I make a quick call?”

Hughes nodded. “You’ll have to make it fast. Your signal will work now that you’re on our system.”

Camuto had lied, but I didn’t care at this point. Maybe she had to clear it with the others, or someone had to be present when we called.

Rhapsody crossed over to the other side of the room, I guessed, to call Ruby. I did the same and picked up my phone from Hughes’ desk to phone Debra. The phone rang once and my stepmother picked up.

“Hello?” she asked. She sounded agitated. “Hello? Who is this?”

I faced Sasha and Selby, who were standing around and waiting for us. At that second it occurred to me – neither of them had anyone to call. “It’s me, Debra. . .”

She interrupted me before I could identify myself. “Who are you looking for, Ma’am?”

Ma’am? I doubted that I sounded like a woman, but I played along. “I’m going away for a while, you know, to save the world or something like that. How are you?”

“Fine. I understand. But you’ve still got the wrong number, I’m sure.”

“I’ll be back when I can. Give my brother a hug for me. I love. . .”

“I’m sorry, but nobody by that name lives here,” she said before hanging up.

I didn’t quite understand what happened, but I tried to absorb it. Debra was talking in code.
She’s in trouble. I wish I could find out how much right now.

Rhapsody finished her call and looked every bit as confused as I was. “Ready?”

“Yeah,” I said, hoping my family was alright. “Did you call Ruby?”

Rhapsody exhaled frustration as we walked back over to the group. “I think so.” She talked so quickly I could barely understand what she was saying.

Hughes interrupted us. “Jason with Rhapsody, Michael with Sasha. Stay invisible in the air. Both of you – keep your speed transonic or lower. Any faster and you could kill the girls or lose them in transit.”

Wait, Selby can move as fast as I can jump?

“I can handle
that,”
Selby said, eyeing Sasha like he could see through her bodysuit.

His speed was the only thing keeping me from throwing him through the ceiling. “Knock it off, Leslie. We’re out.”

“Good luck,” Courtney said as we left the control room. “Dial star on your phones to check in.”

The four of us boarded the elevator. Sasha pressed her face into my shoulder and closed her eyes.

“What’s her deal?” Selby pointed his thumb at her.

“Claustrophobia,” I reminded him. He, of all people, shouldn’t have forgotten.

I pressed the unmarked button and we eventually reached the surface level. The entryway opened up to the field of weeds. Silent, we walked out in a line. Sasha started breathing normally again. The eleven o’clock sun was at full strength overhead with no clouds to shield it.

“We’re going northeast to the green source first,” I said, tracking our direction by the sun and turning in a half circle. “I’ll guide you in. I’m pretty sure that’s
this
way.”

Sasha pointed me a few degrees to my left and tapped her wrist. “You were close. There’s a compass on this watch they gave us.”

Rhapsody sidled next to me. “Alright. Saddle up and let’s get it.”

“Uh uh,” Sasha said, wagging her finger. “I don’t care which crystal we go after first or what Camuto said. I’m going with
my boyfriend.
You go with Selby.”

Selby stepped in. “Nah. He can carry her, Sasha, no problem – he’s super-strong. You’re built better for wind resistance anyway.”

Rhapsody turned pale at his comment. “Screw yourself, Selby, and you know what? When you do, I bet it’ll last longer than your sex tape did.”

Selby’s face flushed bright red. He picked up Sasha around the waist and left a cloud of weeds and dirt behind them.

Rhapsody and I donned our masks and jumped. I stayed on a high arc and she turned us invisible. We were going so fast that she didn’t move much in my arms. She might have been afraid I’d drop her, but I’d never let that happen.

About half past twelve we touched down in a dusty Montana valley. I’d buried the green provenance crystal in the side of a mountain. The peaks were high and rocky brown. Our masks fed us a steady supply of oxygen, so we kept them on our faces. The altitude made it difficult to breathe. In the distance we heard a wolverine howling. The first time I was here, the echo of their hungry growling had creeped me out. Rhapsody shivered, so it had the same effect on her.

Above us was the hole. I’d piled rocks in front of it. Our watches were rapidly clicking now, like the second hand of an enormous clock.

“Where do you think Selby and Sasha are?” I asked slightly worried.

“Maybe he couldn’t run over the mountains at a high speed?” Rhapsody asked through her mask. “It’s not like there’s a bike trail around here.”

That was part of the reason I’d chosen to hide it here. “I’ll go get it. Can you call them?”

Rhapsody unmasked. “Yeah. I’ll hit up Selby,” she said.

Hopping up to an area of rock large enough to support my weight, I wound up and sent a punch into the rock pile. I tossed the largest stone away and looked inside. A bright emerald glow greeted me. I sighed and dug ahead. “It’s still here,” I called down to Rhapsody.

“Good,” she shouted up to me. “Hurry. I don’t have a good feeling right now.”

I unearthed the source crystal. Shaped like an oversized letter-T, it had grown a full set of prisms since the last time I’d moved it. I put it across my shoulders and jumped back down to where Rhapsody stood. “What’s wrong?” I asked her.

“Selby’s not answering,” she said. “Neither is Sasha.”