Forgotten (Reject High: A Young Adult Science Fiction Series Book 3) (15 page)

Sounded like he had more scars than the one on his arm. “Anybody else?”

He swallowed. “A few drug runners. A couple sitting in a car. And our dad was lucky. He survived, but he couldn’t work. To him, he might as well have died. My brothers ran the streets and slept wherever. I wanted to run, too. But I was the one Mom hung on to.”

I wanted to scrub my mind’s eye with bleach, blind it somehow from replaying the sight of bodies strewn across the grass and crushed by raining headstones. “How do you forget, you know, seeing something like that?” I asked him.

Esteban waited a beat before answering. “When I figure it out, I’ll let you know.”

The girls returned to the table, Sasha in front. Red-eyed with a pink flush on her face, Rhapsody stood to her side. The little bit of makeup she’d been able to put on was gone. “Stop it, Cap,” she said in a shaky voice. “I know I’m sexy, but at least try not to stare.”

I smiled. At least she hadn’t lost her sense of humor. “Let’s go.”

The four of us left the restaurant and hit the parking lot. We waited for the car speeding over the horizon to motor past us before we crossed the street and stood on the other side. Behind the metal barricade was a steep drop onto a kudzu-covered plateau. For someone who could fly faster than the speed of sound, I shouldn’t be afraid of heights at all. The refreshing aroma of salt water wafted in from the ocean. I inhaled it. There, I announced my grand plan.

“We’re going to charter a private plane to Chicago.”

Esteban objected. “We’re going to do exactly what the Collective told us
not
to do.”

“We have to.” I checked my Geiger counter watch. “We miss the deadline and Debra will die.”

“Let’s call Camuto,” he argued back.

“Call her and ask permission? Maybe I should ask my mom to write me a note?” Selby was insane, but he'd brought up a good point. They'd given me aquamarines for a reason.

Rhapsody laid her head on my shoulder. I could almost hear her thoughts.
You don’t trust them. I don’t blame you.

Sasha waited until a tractor trailer roared past to make her point. “At this point, flying actually makes sense. Cross country will only take us a few hours or so with a stop to refuel. We’d have to ditch our crystals, though, to avoid King’s detection. With them, King knows exactly where we are.”

Removing my necklace meant another missed goodbye with my mother. “We’ll split up. You three go on the plane and meet me at the Chicago station. I’ll fly it alone.”

Rhapsody squeezed my arm. “And get shot out of the sky? No way. I’ll go with you.”

Sasha’s lips parted. She wanted to say something but decided not to.

“If you get sick in the air, Jason, both of you will die.” What Esteban said was not lost on me, but so much of what we’d done over the past four months should have gotten us killed. I shook his hand and he pulled me in for a hug. We could see one another in a matter of hours or never again. He talked too much for me sometimes, but overall, I liked the kid.

Rhapsody gave me and Sasha some space to say goodbye. She wrapped me in a tight hug and whispered “be safe” in my ear.

“Got your meds?” she asked. “I have extras, if not.”

I tapped the side of my knapsack. “I’ve got plenty. Rhapsody hooked me up.”

Sasha paused. “Stop and take breaks. Call or text when you can.”

I agreed. “Are you okay? Have you ever booked a private plane?”

She flashed her hand, like it was nothing. “Wesley has a private plane and I haven’t seen him in two years. I’ll make a call. We’ll meet you in Chicago.”

We backed away from them. Sasha and Esteban left first. He teleported them out in a puff of green emerald smoke. A flurry of cars sped past us in both directions. When it stopped, we pulled our masks over our faces. “I’m not going to drop you.”

“You said that like you were convincing yourself and not telling me.”

I might have been a little bit. “I’ll speed up gradually. If I’m going too fast, pinch me or drop our cover. At that speed, it’s the only way I’ll know something’s wrong.”

Her body movements were hesitant. “Alright.”

I lifted Rhapsody into my arms and said a quick prayer in my mind to God for help. I needed to go supersonic and not drop her. She secured her shaky left hand under my arm and around my back and tucked her right arm beneath my armpit. Looking to the sky, I took off, waiting until she made us invisible to hit the sound barrier.

Flying at high speeds was peaceful, like flying in a quiet airplane without in-flight service and wi-fi. We couldn’t hear each other or anything else. I flew high enough to miss skyscrapers and mountain ranges but low and in zig-zags so that a radar wouldn’t suspect we were an enemy weapon. Rhapsody squeezed the side of my chest with her fingers every once in a while. It was our signal she was okay. If she stopped or did it more than once then I’d land.

After we’d been airborne for a while, she tweaked my arm twice. I gradually decreased our speed until the land below us became visible. High, snow-capped mountains, forests, flatlands, and plains. We were somewhere in the Midwest, not as far as Illinois. I saw moving cattle and wildlife – those were black and brown dots that looked like insects from this height. I figured we’d coast a bit longer until we found civilization, but Rhapsody pinched me again. We landed in the middle of nowhere, a prairie with nothing going for it except it was close to a water source.

As soon as our feet hit the ground Rhapsody hurried off behind a pile of rocks where I couldn’t see her. After a minute or so passed she went to the river, unmasked, and splashed water on her face. I joined her at the edge and did the same thing. The liquid coolness soothed my face, which burned from being inside of a mask for so long. I dipped my gloves into the water and splashed my forehead, trying to get it cool with little success. “Where are we?”

“Colorado,” she answered mid-splash. She pointed to the mountain range in the distance – those must be the Rockies. “You wouldn’t know with your super-lungs and all, but it’s hard to breathe with the elevation out here.”

A growl came from behind the rock formation, close enough to alarm us. “We’d better get back in the air. I think we’re about halfway there.”

“Wait.” She held my arm and looked intently into my eyes. “Are you feeling all right?”

I shook the moisture off of my forehead. “Hot. The suit’s cooling system must be off.” Rhapsody unzipped her suit and wiggled out of it down to her waist. She was sweating underneath the suit. However, I only saw small spots of wetness on her shirt at her chest and armpits. Inside my suit, I felt like a tightly-wrapped sweaty hot dog.

She held the back of her hand against my forehead, then my cheeks. Her face dropped and she cursed. “Cooling system is fine. You’re burning up. We’re so screwed right now.”

The extra strain on my system came from Mom. She shouldn’t be using her powers right now. Was she?

I didn’t see anything around here that could shelter us. I rummaged through my backpack for a cell phone and found it. Dialing *5 for Camuto, I discovered the signal wasn’t strong enough for roaming cell service. “We have to get out of the wilderness for it to work. I still have energy to work with. Let’s go a little further.”

Usually Rhapsody felt like nothing in my arms. This time I was aware of her body weight. I made sure not to grunt or make any other signs of effort. She’d have a complex about it or veto my suggestion. I leapt into the air and we covered a couple dozen miles before I got dizzy and we plummeted down in a forest. I took the brunt of the fall, letting Rhapsody land on me rather than crash onto the rock and mud surface, like I did.

She rolled over beside me. We lay still for a few minutes. For her it must have been to gather her bearings. In my case, the weakness and dizziness had taken over and I couldn’t have done much else.

Things got increasingly hazy and wavy, purplish in color. Turning my head made my migraine worse, so I stayed still and prayed for rain to cool my sizzling tongue. The sun continued to blaze hot in the cloudless sky. I heard the approach of footsteps. Rhapsody had left me and I hadn’t been aware. How out of it was I?

“Don’t swallow,” she warned me. “I don’t know if it’s drinkable.”

With that, she poured cold water over my face. I stuck out my tongue and let it puddle at the back of my throat. After swishing it around in my mouth until it got warm, I swallowed it. “More,” I said. “Drinkable.”

“How do you know, Mr. Science?”

“Just drank it,” I said, trying not to laugh. “Can’t dehydrate, either.”

She laughed. “Says the guy who’s invincible.”

“Don’t feel invincible.”

Rhapsody returned with more water. She held it in the box that had held our money. From the ground, it looked like a black blob. While she was gone, I had curled into the fetal position for comfort. Then, I found that laying on my side with my elbow for leverage didn’t help my condition, but it didn’t hurt it, either. The pancakes, sausage, and coffee bubbled in my stomach. I hope it didn’t come back up. I liked it the first time. When I had finished a few gulps of water, I handed the box back to Rhapsody. She played it safe and only rinsed her mouth out with it.

“Did I ever tell you how much I hate camping?”

Everything hurt when I laughed. I maneuvered my head into the shadow of one of the sweet-smelling pine trees in front of us. “No.”

“I hate the bugs, the smell of outdoors…so soak it up. We’re not doing this again.”

I unzipped my body armor and breathed, letting the mountain air dry the moisture on my chest. The sharpness of my prism necklace pricked against my neck. I almost passed out from the combination of the migraine raging between my temples and my unbalanced vision. I closed my eyes. “Can we talk about my mom without getting into a fight?”

“Depends,” she said. “You’ll mumble a lot with your foot still in your mouth.”

I remembered our fight and my place in it. “I’m sorry. For real.”

“Apology accepted. Go.”

“She died four years ago today.” Rhapsody’s hand clenched around mine. “She fell into a coma and was on a ventilator. Ray had her unplugged. He wouldn’t let me say goodbye.”

“And you want to say goodbye this time?” she asked.

I told her the truth. “Don’t want to say goodbye. At all.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

we might not have tomorrow

I couldn’t explain it. I knew hanging onto Mom was killing me. I had to let her go. If I didn’t, I’d die. So would Debra and anyone King decided to kill over the next thousand or so years. It would be a “ripping off the Band-Aid” situation if this particular Band-Aid didn’t turn my mother’s corpse to ash and rip out my heart along with it.

We had to get back on that train.

I didn’t think Rhapsody could understand my need for a goodbye, so I didn’t talk about it with her. She’d seen George in his last moments. It was a difference between us that I had tried pointing out but it hadn’t come out quite right. My dizziness and the migraine hadn’t toned down. I couldn’t fly safely in bright sunlight with wind whistling at my ears. Maybe if we waited a few hours until sundown, I’d feel good enough to get us out of here.

Rhapsody checked the time. “They’ll be in Chicago in fifteen hours. We’ll have to catch up with the train there or on the way to Harrisburg if you want to see her again.”

Eyes closed, I sighed and scratched my head. Talking in short bursts seemed to keep my breakfast grounded. “Think I should take it off?”

She patted my thigh. “When you brought her to the beach house, it was the happiest I’ve ever seen you. No judgment either way, babe.”

“You wouldn’t do it?”

Rhapsody picked up a pine cone and played with it between her fingers. This entire forest smelled like an industrial-sized air freshener. She sniffed it before tossing it away. “No.”

Her answer confused me. She was a daddy’s girl, through and through. I’d only seen George two or three times, but his world revolved around his daughter. Why wouldn’t she want to see her father again, wrap her arms around him, tell him that we finally got together?

Wasn’t that why we tried reviving him with green emeralds two months ago to begin with? I lay on the ground and used my knapsack to prop up my head. We had nothing else to do and I was curious. “Why?” I asked her.

She grabbed two rocks and rolled them around in her palm. “The time we went to Pápa’s hospital room, when you gave him the crystals. That wasn’t the last time I saw him.”

I'd guessed as much. Seeing him then had torn her up pretty bad.

“He fell back into a coma. His brain function stopped. He had a Do Not Resuscitate order. Ruby wasn’t around. I’m a minor, so I couldn’t fight it. They unplugged him. That was it.”

I didn’t say a word. For a long time neither did she. Birds chirped. Insects buzzed and zipped past. The river’s flow babbled in the distance. That was the way Mom went, I assumed, and at the moment, I was not sure I would’ve wanted to be around for that. I put the thought out of my mind, because admitting it meant saying Ray had been right not to let me go to her.

Rhapsody held the corners of her eyes to keep from crying. “On the drive or the bus ride over to North I psyched myself up to see him with a good memory. Don’t laugh.”

Not laughing was a promise I could make, since it hurt. “Deal.”

“I wanted this jewelry-making set for my sixth birthday.” Her face lit up as she reminisced. “Only girly thing I ever wanted.”

That was easy to see. She wore skirts, never full dresses, and sneakers or boots, not high heels. I think she put on perfume simply because I liked the way it smells.

“Ruby kept telling me, ‘I’ll help you with it’.” She mocked her mother’s voice by whining with an accent. “Five minutes, she pricked herself with the needle and quit. Pápa manned up and made necklaces with me all afternoon. He was cremated wearing the first one we made.”

That explained the intricate design and dedication she showed in making jewelry. I remembered seeing her kit on the floor of her plainly-decorated bedroom months ago.

“When I saw him that last time, watched him die…that’s what I remembered first.”

Her description made me imagine Mom’s last moments.
Alone.
Ray hadn’t been there. He'd tried confining me in the house. When he’d caught me sneaking out, he’d wrestled me to the ground and pinned me. I'd cried and cried. My hate for him had started there.

All the talking used up my energy quickly. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them next I heard the sound of a faint pop in the air above us. The trees rustled with a mighty wind. Rhapsody, who had been squatting near me and stroking my hot face, stood.

Something was coming our way.

“What’s happening?” I heard myself say to her.

Darkness. I passed out again.

This time, when I woke up, I couldn’t see the rest of my body. Rhapsody had turned us invisible. It was the only defense against the enemies who had found us. Camuto was right – our energy signature gave us away. I had always gambled on being faster and stronger than King and his men. Courtney said that our definition of “safe” hinged on whether or not we were more powerful than the people after us. In this case, we weren’t safe, at all.

Rhapsody was close to me. I sensed her body heat and heard the small but present sound of her breathing. I froze, for any movement could give away my position to whoever or whatever it was. The river continued swishing along its path. The birds, for the moment, had fled the area. I don’t know how invulnerable I’d be but lying down wouldn’t help matters.

The second I resolved to stand, we heard the coarse turning of pebbles. Not an animal with an erratic sense of direction, a person with two feet. The steady
click click click
sounded like one of our Geiger counters. As he came closer, that’s exactly what it turned out to be. One of King’s men had copied or stolen the Collective’s technology and was using it against us.

We were toast. The closer he got, the faster the clicking. He’d find us, use goshenite on us, and then do whatever he wanted to do. After getting these powers, I'd imagined going down in a blaze of glory, not waking up from a nap because of a migraine and a fever and getting picked off.

“Jason? Rhapsody? Where are you?”

It sounded like Mom. I wanted to call out to her, but the possibility she was being mimicked by a shape shifter silenced my voice in my throat. My mother would say something, do something to let us know it was okay to reveal ourselves. I wanted her to prove herself genuine, down deep, in my soul, or my “spirit,” as she would say. One thing. Something only she and I would know, something an enemy would never think to pick up.

“Boogie?”

That wasn’t it. She’d said that nickname in mixed company already. On the train the Collective heard it. Esteban and Sasha heard it, too. Sad to say, but if they had been forced to reveal a personal piece of information to trick me, that would be it. I remained still. Rhapsody sustained our invisibility. Her thinking must be aligned with mine. Good thing it was.

She started singing the words of an old tune, “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You.” Rapper Lauryn Hill sang a cover of it in 1998, the year I was born. Mom liked that version, but stuck to singing the original version. Ray shot video of her singing it to me the afternoon I was born. I used to watch the tape after she died when I couldn’t get to sleep.

“It’s Mom,” I croaked to Rhapsody. “Mom, over here!”

My mother ran over in the direction on my voice. She hadn’t been too far off – a couple of yards to our right. White soot covered her face and body suit. She reached out her hand to help me up. When I pulled on her to stand, it felt as if I’d yanked on muscles within my own body. I stumbled and almost fell until Rhapsody helped steady me.

“You okay?” Rhapsody asked me.

“Yeah,” I said, eyeing her. She got the hint. Mom and I needed some time alone. She trekked off toward the river, far enough that she could hear noise but not what we said.

Mom touched my face. “We don’t have much time.”

I hated living my life based on a clock. Time should base itself on me for once, and what I needed it to do was stand still so I could spend more moments with her.

“We never do.” I said.

“Before I had you and held you in my arms, Ray and I always imagined you’d do great things. But saving the world,
literally?
I never pictured that. Maybe I should have.”

I held her hand at my right cheek and kissed it. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Not a thing. The Collective did this. They buried the aquamarine under the plant.
They
killed you.”

“I should’ve taken the aquamarine off when I saw it hurt you.” She bit her bottom lip. “I just thought…we could somehow make this work and be together. It wasn’t in God’s will.”

Her mention of God and Him not wanting us to be together pissed me off. I fought back tears and practically yelled at her. “What kind of God lets you waste away and die? Then, He lets you come back only to rip you away again?”

“Jason, it’s not that easy.”

I cursed and swung my fists at the air. “Yes it is! Why couldn’t He fix it so you could stay now? You and Debra dragged me to church every Sunday to get me to believe in
this?”

Now, we were both sniffling. “I don’t have all the answers,” she said. “I do know that all of this, my…each thing you’ve been through, what’s happening right now and everything you’ve learned – it’s for a reason,” she said. “I’m not sure all of what that is for you.”

That frustrated me even more. How good of a reason could it be if I didn’t know what it was? “Who does know?”

She kept silent for a minute. Wiping her own tears, she waited until the light bulb came on for me. I’d have to discover my own purpose. In time.
Alone
.

“So, that’s it? How am I supposed to do this by myself?”

“The world is depending on you to figure it out.” She swallowed hard and looked in Rhapsody’s direction. “You’re not by yourself, Boogie. But you’ll have to do it without me.”

Mom hugged me and squeezed hard. We cried in one another’s arms. She tried backing away, but I wouldn’t let her. It was the last time I’d ever hug my mother.

“I can’t do it,” I said over her shoulder. A heavy weight settled in my chest. I repeated it. “I can’t do it.”

Her head nodded. She knew what had to be done. “Rhapsody?” she called out.

Rhapsody returned from the river. Mom and I separated and the two of them hugged, to Rhapsody’s surprise. I hadn’t told her that Mom was on her team.

“I need you,” she said, shedding tears. “I need you to do something for me.”

Rhapsody dabbed at her eyes with her gloves. “I’ll take good care of him,” she said. “Always. I promise.”

Mom held Rhapsody’s hand and reached for mine. Together, we went on a walk heading east. “Can you sing, Rhapsody?” Mom asked her.

“No, but I can play the radio.”

I wish I could have recorded the sound of Mom’s laughter, so that when I got older, I wouldn’t forget it. “YouTube the Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons song, “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You.” She slowed her pace a bit. “When Jason was a baby and couldn’t sleep, I’d sing it to him. That Lauryn Hill did a good job, but there’s nothing like the original.”

“Frankie Valli,” she repeated. “Got it.”

Mom joined Rhapsody's hands with mine. “Keep him in church. Every Sunday, without fail. He’ll fight you like a rabid dog.”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m Catholic, though, so he’ll have to deal.”

I kept quiet, letting the tears fall. Every once in a while Rhapsody saw me. She wouldn’t judge me. Not for this. I embraced my mother one final time.

“You do something for me, too,” she said into my ear. “Move forward. Don’t look back.”

Taking the words to heart, I promised her I wouldn’t. I’d go on and never return here. I stared into her sweet brown eyes and kissed her on the cheeks. “Goodbye, Mom,” I said.

“So long,” she corrected me. “Not goodbye. We’ll see each other again.”

Rhapsody and I walked away from her.
Will we see one another again?
I wondered if God was for real, if Heaven was for real. Then I thought about my “God-given” purpose – the reason I was on this planet in the first place. To save it from destruction? I’d already done it once. How many times would I have to do it before I died? Would I have to do it always?

My heart jumped. I felt a yank and an incredible pain, like my body had been ripped open. I caught my breath and felt immediate relief, despite my broken heart. The migraine disappeared. My sight was steady and clear. I gestured to Rhapsody. She pulled her mask over her face like I had, and we took off for rendezvous with the Collective in Chicago.