“Dana,” I said helplessly. If she were anyone else, I might’ve moved in to hug her reassuringly, but…I’d tried homing in on Lacey, but since I’d never met her, I’d failed. Apparently I could only find someone using my G-T homing skills if I’d met them first. And even then, it didn’t always work.
“But you
can
find Sasha,” Dana continued. “Even though her family’s in hiding—
you
can find her. And since Sasha’s the one who actually saw Lacey—”
“We only
think
she saw Lacey,” I countered. Unfortunately, Sasha still didn’t remember anything about her abduction. Even after we’d brought her home, she’d continued to draw a complete blank about
all
of it—how she’d been kidnapped, where she’d been held, even how we’d rescued her. The one time we’d met with her and tried to gently question her, she’d gotten terribly upset and her mother had insisted that we leave.
But Dana and I had had this argument before. Dana wanted to find Sasha and question her again and, if all else failed, try to get me to use my limited telepathy to unlock her memories—and the various awful secrets that were trapped in the little girl’s mind.
“It’s been months,” Dana pointed out. “Maybe she remembers now. Maybe it would be good for her to talk about it with someone who understands—with
you
. And if not, at least you can try to—”
“Read her mind, the way I can read Milo’s?” I finished for her, because we’d already discussed this ad nauseam, too. Forget the fact that the only person on this entire planet whose mind I could read was Milo. I couldn’t read Dana’s mind, couldn’t read Calvin’s, couldn’t read my mother’s or the clerk’s at the CoffeeBoy…
“You have a connection with Sasha,” Dana argued. “You told me that she smelled that evil sewage smell up in her bedroom, while you were babysitting that time? I’ve been thinking about it, and I’m pretty sure the reason she could smell it was because she was touching you. That
has
to be it.”
I shook my head in frustration and disbelief.
“You
have
a connection,” Dana repeated. “I’ve been searching for months, Sky, and I’ve got nothing, and I’m out of ideas. And you’re right—I’m taking risks that I shouldn’t. Talking to addicts…” She shook her head, exhaling hard. “You’re right. It’s too dangerous. Sasha—and you—are my only real hope.”
“Dana,” I started again. I didn’t want the responsibility of being Dana’s only hope.
She cut me off. “Please.” I’d only heard her use the p-word a handful of times in the months since we’d first met. It didn’t come easy for her. But then she kind of messed it up by adding, “You owe me. After what you did today…?”
“Yeah.” I got in her face. “Because
you
would’ve let that little girl get taken, right? You would’ve just stood there and let it happen.” We both knew damn well that Dana would’ve done nothing of the sort. “I was careful. I covered my hair; I disguised my voice; I knew Cal had muddied up his license plate.” We smeared dirt and mud on Cal’s car’s identifying plates every time we went to Harrisburg, along with loading our water guns. “We dropped disinformation,” I added. “With a fake name.”
“Hoshitski?” Dana asked, heavy on the
Are you effing kidding me
? “Yeah, that’s awesome. That’ll work to fool everyone. Especially Garrett freaking Hathaway, who is now blackmailing you into helping him to…what? Find some stupid girl he wants to sleep with?”
“I’m pretty sure Jilly is a G-T.” I quickly recounted the story of the hovering TV remote.
“Better and better,” Dana said darkly. “But apparently blackmail works with you, so I’m doing it, too. You want me to help you with your little Garrett McDouche problem? Fine. I’ll help. But you have to help me find Sasha in return.”
“I’m not sure that’s technically blackmail,” I started.
“Whatever,” she said and took the flashlight off the sink, leading the way back out of the room. “Garrett can make it part of
his
blackmail. I’ll get him to do it.”
I laughed as I raced to follow her. “You wouldn’t.”
“Just watch me.”
————
Dana was serious. She made a deal with Garrett right in front of me. She’d help me to help him find Jilly—but only if he pressured me into helping her locate Sasha. Which he immediately did.
“In return, I’ll stay quiet about everything I’ve seen,” Garrett promised.
“Nice,” I told Dana, aware that Milo was shaking his head as he leaned against the far theater wall.
The really stupid thing was that Garrett didn’t need to use blackmail to get us to help a fellow Greater-Than. Cal and I both had been willing and ready to help find Jilly from the moment Garrett had uttered the words
remote
and
hovering
and
in mid-freaking-air
.
And likewise, I was fully onboard with helping Dana find Lacey. I just wasn’t convinced that re-traumatizing little Sasha was going to help. But that was a conversation we’d have again later.
Here and now, Dana was upholding the other part of our agreement by giving Garrett a crash course in both Greater-Thans and Destiny addicts, on a “For Dummies” level. It was laden with f-bomb droppage, maybe in an attempt to connect on Garrett’s level, or maybe because she was still pissed.
Just imagine the f-word inserted at every opportunity for an adjective, and in some other extra-creative places, too.
“Greater-Thans like me and Sky and presumably Jilly”—Dana was lecturing—“can naturally access more of our brains, due to an unusual enzyme in our blood. With practice, we can hone our individual talents and turn them into superpowers.”
“Like flying,” Garrett supplied from his seat on the bare floor. Someone had removed the rows of chairs from the theater, probably back when the mall first closed, and short metal spikes dotted the slanted concrete. He sat upright, cross-legged and alert, like the most attentive (and largest) kindergartener in the world.
“Yeah, I don’t know any G-Ts who can fly.” Dana dismissed that. “Although some of us can make people appear to fly.” She demonstrated by picking up Calvin, chair and all, and gently whirling him across the room.
“
Heh-heh-heh
,” Garrett said, springing to his feet. “Do me! Do me!”
“No one’s
doing
you,” Dana said with disgust.
“A warning next time, please,” Cal said, motoring back to where he’d been. There was only one spot in theater six where we could sometimes get Internet access on his phone, and he was clearly using it to search for something.
“The biggest problem with being a Greater-Than,” I told Garrett as he sat back down, “is that somewhere, somehow, some evil genius discovered that if they took that enzyme that’s in our blood—it’s actually in the blood of most girls, there’s just significantly more of it in a Greater-Than—”
“With that enzyme and a bunch of other ingredients, they created a drug called oxy-clepta-di-estraphen,” Dana continued, “nicknamed Destiny, which has the power to cure the most deadly forms of cancer, and return lost youth to the elderly.”
“Sweet!” Garrett said.
“Including all of the ancient and gnarly twenty-five-year-olds who want to look eighteen again,” I pointed out.
“Stupid people misuse just about every drug out there,” Garrett argued.
“The catch here is that Destiny is instantly addictive,” Cal interjected bluntly. “It’s a death sentence. One injection, and you need more or you
will
die.”
“It’s also crazy expensive,” I said. “A single dose might last anywhere from a week or two—three weeks if you’re lucky—and it costs close to five thousand dollars.”
“Whoa. That’s harsh.”
“It’s more if you want the good stuff,” Dana said. “And then, there’s jokering.”
“That doesn’t sound good,” Garrett said.
“Destiny users often develop some of the same superpowers that Greater-Thans have,” I told him. “But it happens too fast, just
bam
, and it’s too much for them. D-users lose their ability to empathize and become morally corrupt.”
“They turn into crazy-ass super-villains who think they’re above the law,” Calvin translated for Garrett. “Sometimes it happens slowly, like with Rochelle getting hotter but meaner? And sometimes it happens suddenly—that’s called
jokering
.”
“A Destiny user can joker anytime,” Dana explained grimly. “And when they do, they usually wreak a lot of havoc—kill their entire families, blow up buildings, take out a school bus filled with children…”
Garrett did the simple math. “So, if Rochelle’s a Destiny addict…”
“We don’t know that,” Dana told him. “We won’t know for sure. Not until we go and see her.”
“But we think she is,” Cal said. “I mean, honestly? While you guys were in the girls’ room, Garrett was starting to tell us this story about how he heard Rochelle getting really nasty with Jilly once, calling her all kinds of names.”
“She didn’t know I was there, and the name-calling was off the hook,” Garrett agreed. “We’re talking c-word—but that wasn’t the worst of it. They were in the kitchen, and Ro just starts screaming, and I heard this crashing sound, and Ro’s going,
I swear, I will lock you in again, you little c-word
, and I come running, and Jilly’s on the floor with all these groceries and broken bottles and shit, and I’m like,
Are you okay?
And Rochelle’s all,
Ha-ha-ha-ha, silly Jilly!
She tripped, and I’m looking at Jilly, and she’s already cleaning up the mess, and she’s like,
Yes. Yes, I tripped. I’m so clumsy.
“And I know she’s lying, and I back off. But I ask her about it later, like,
Lock you in where?
And Jilly insists everything’s okay, that it’s no big deal. She tells me that
lock-in
is what Ro calls it when Jilly’s grounded.” He laughed ruefully. “I mean, if that house had a basement, that’s the first place I’d look for her. But it doesn’t so…”
“It’s got goddamn closets, doesn’t it?” Milo spoke up for the first time in what seemed like forever. He’d been leaning against the wall, but now he’d straightened up.
We must’ve all turned to look at him—Milo rarely swore, and I wasn’t the only one surprised by the vehemence in his usually soft voice.
He cleared his throat. “Sorry,” he said. “I just… Houses have closets. That’s all.”
“Starting tomorrow morning, first thing, we’ll stake out Rochelle’s house,” Dana decided. “And when she’s out, and we know for sure that she’ll be gone for a while, we’ll go inside and look for Jilly.”
“Thank you,” Garrett said, and it was weird because he both looked and sounded like he meant it. But then he asked, “Do you think she’s already dead? Do you think if Ro’s a Destiny addict that she’s already killed Jilly?”
Dana didn’t pull her punch. “It’s possible, yeah.”
Garrett nodded, looking from her to me and back. “So, do, um, Greater-Thans ever joker?”
“No,” Dana told him, but Garrett didn’t look convinced.
Milo spoke up again from where he’d gone back to leaning against the wall. “If you dig around the Internet for info about G-Ts,” he said in his soft, southern twang, “you’ll find a bunch of frightened normies who claim that girls who are Greater-Thans lose their empathy and even their humanity. But that’s just not true.”
He looked directly at me and smiled, but it still felt a little forced. Garrett’s story about Jilly had bothered him deeply. Still, he knew that I was perpetually worried about what he called
the crap you read on the Internet
. Crap or not, I’d made him promise—no,
vow
—to stop me if I ever showed signs of losing my ability to empathize with other people.
“Speaking of digging around the Internet,” Calvin said. “The police posted news on their website that a John Doe was picked up from the parking lot of the Sav’A’Buck in Harrisburg. He’s been taken to Saving Grace Hospital, where he’s regained consciousness but claims amnesia.” He looked up, his dark brown eyes somber. “He says he doesn’t know who he is or why he was lying in the parking lot.”
Dana scoffed. “Amnesia my ass,” she said.
“The police are keeping him in protective custody,” Cal reported.
“Protective,” I echoed. “Instead of arresting him…? Didn’t anyone from the Sav’A’Buck see him firing that gun or trying to kidnap that girl?”
“If anyone saw it,” Cal told me, “they’re not admitting it. According to the police post, there were reports of shots being fired in that area, but no one from the grocery store—customers or clerks—actually saw what happened.”
“Well, hallelujah for that at least,” Dana said. I must’ve made a sound of dismay, because she added, “If they didn’t see him, then they didn’t see you either, Bubble Gum, and that’s a good thing.”
“I was kind of imagining him going to jail for, oh, I don’t know, eight to ten years?” I said. “If nobody saw anything, the police will have to release him eventually, won’t they?”
“So you
are
worried that he’ll be able to ID you and find you,” Dana countered.
“No,” I said, but then admitted “yes,” before quickly changing it to “maybe.” I looked over at Milo. My uncertainty was usually his cue to come over, take my hand, and send me a silent but heartfelt
No one’s getting near you as long as I’m around
. But he stayed leaning against the wall, and the only message he sent me was from the worry in his eyes.
“I’m putting a text alert on this story,” Calvin announced. “If there’s an update, like if they decide to release him, I’ll know right away.”
“Good,” Dana said, then aimed her words at Milo. “Make sure she gets home safely.” The
she
in question was me.
“I don’t need to be babysat,” I said quickly.
But Milo had already pushed himself up off the wall. “Nobody said anything about babysitting,” he said, but he was heading for Garrett instead of me. “It can’t hurt to err on the side of caution.”
As I watched, Milo put his hand on Garrett’s shoulder and gestured toward the theater doors. Garrett stumbled, his expensive athletic shoes catching on one of the little metal bumps that dotted the slanted floor. Milo caught Garrett’s arm to keep him from falling as he moved with him toward the door. His mouth was close to Garrett’s ear, and even though I couldn’t hear what he was telling the football star, I suspected it was Milo’s personal version of the riot act. In other words, he was letting Garrett know exactly what would happen should he accidentally let slip Dana’s and my secret.