Joshua Dread (9 page)

Suddenly it all added up. The glimpse of her in the hallway this morning. The ripped sleeve.
She
was the one who’d beaten up Joey and Brick. But how? The only people who could create that kind of destruction were people like my parents or Captain Justice. People with superpowers. Did that mean that Sophie was …

Gyfted?

Curiosity flared across my thoughts. Was it really possible? And if so, what kind of power did she have?

I spent all of seventh period wondering whether I should talk to her about it. If there
was
another Gyfted kid at school, I wanted to know. On the other hand, after seeing the way she’d beaten the school’s biggest bullies to a pulp, I wasn’t sure it was the best idea to confront her with personal questions.

As it turned out, I didn’t have to decide. Because when class let out, Sophie wanted to talk to
me
.

“Hey, Joshua. Wait up.”

As soon as she joined me in the crowded hallway, I had a feeling about what was coming next. Sophie was going to confess that she had a Gyft. And ask me not to tell anyone about how she went around beating up bullies and causing some serious damage to school property.

But that wasn’t what she said. Instead, Sophie took a step toward me until I was looking right into her blue-gray eyes.

“I know about your Gyft,” she said.

The ground dropped out from underneath me, pulling the sounds of the hallway with it. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go. I was supposed to know about
her
Gyft. Not the other way around.

“How—how did you find out?”

“I saw you reading
The Handbook for Gyfted Children
during class.” She hesitated. “I … I have the same book.”

I clenched my teeth. At the end of the hallway, I noticed Joey and Brick walking toward us. Joey had a sling around one arm. Brick had a fairly noticeable bump on his forehead. When the two of them saw Sophie, they became pale as ghosts. Joey turned and hobbled in the other direction, and Brick followed closely behind.

“Maybe we should go someplace more private,” Sophie said.

We walked in silence through the exits and out past the line of waiting buses until we reached a hill that overlooked the football field.

“How long have you known that you’re Gyfted?” Sophie asked.

I hesitated. It felt strange to be having this conversation with a classmate, but there wasn’t any point denying it now. “Couple of weeks. What about you?”

“About a year. Girls tend to develop their Gyfts a little earlier than guys.”

“And you’re able to control it?”

“Kind of. At the beginning, I was clueless.” Sophie gazed out across the football field. “The first time it happened, I was at soccer practice. I accidentally kicked the ball at my coach’s minivan.”

“So that’s your power? Bad aim?”

I had to fight back the urge to laugh, but Sophie never even cracked a smile.

“When the ball slammed into it, the minivan flipped over,” she said. “Then a few weeks later, during my piano lesson, I hit the keys a little too hard and the entire piano collapsed.”

My eyes widened. It seemed impossible that someone as little as Sophie could leave behind such a trail of devastation.

“Superhuman strength,” she said. “That’s my Gyft.”

Compared with superhuman strength, my power suddenly seemed a lot less impressive. I thought of all the things she was capable of—knocking over cars, beating up the school’s biggest bullies. I couldn’t do anything nearly that cool. I was just an oversized electrical socket.

“It’s not as great as it sounds,” Sophie said. “There’s a side effect.”

“What do you mean?”

By the way Sophie’s eyes dropped to the ground, I could tell she didn’t want to say any more about it. My memory flipped back to this morning. Joey lying on the hallway floor, mumbling.
Never seen anything like it
, he’d said.
Didn’t look human
.

“What about you?” Sophie asked. “What’s your Gyft?”

“Spontaneous combustion,” I admitted. “Basically, I make stuff blow up.”

I told her about the explosions, the burn marks, the weeks of practice.

“Have you met any other kids like us?” I asked her. “Kids with—superpowers?”

She shook her head. “Not many. Most Gyfted kids are too scared to talk about it. But I’ve met a few through friends of my dad. He, uh, grew up Gyfted too.”

“Your dad?”

Sophie sighed, digging her heel into a patch of grass. “So, what have you heard about him?”

As the new kid, Sophie’s a mystery around school. But when Joshua discovers the secret she’s been hiding, he’s not sure whether they’re destined to be friends … or enemies
.

“Nothing.”

The look she gave me told me she could see right through my lie.

“All right. Maybe I’ve heard a few things,” I said.

“Like what?”

I didn’t really want to, but I told her everything I’d heard. The truckloads of empty boxes and countless TVs, the machine guns, the torture devices …

I’d expected her to deny it all, or laugh at how crazy gossip could get. Instead, she shrugged. “Yep, that sounds about right.”

“Whoa. So you mean—all that stuff is true?”

Sophie nodded. “Pretty much. Except the part about torture devices. I don’t think he has any of those.”

“You don’t
think
?”

It seemed like the kind of thing you would know for sure. Either you had torture devices or you
didn’t
. But there was plenty going on in my own house that I wasn’t aware of. I hadn’t known about my parents’ whole flooding-the-entire-world-and-blackmailing-the-government thing until the day they’d done it.

“My dad has trouble keeping his identity a secret,” Sophie said. “It’s part of the reason we have to move around all the time. He just enjoys the fame too much. It’s always the same. People start to find out little things about him here and there. Then more of the truth comes
out. And then, just like that—we pick up and move to a new town, a new school, a new fake name.”

I nearly said
I know how it feels
, but I held my tongue.

“With my dad, the truth always comes out sooner or later,” Sophie said. “And he just expects me to keep silent about it everywhere we go. Sometimes I get so sick of lying to everyone, you know?”

“So if your name isn’t Sophie Smith,” I said, “then who
are
you?”

“Promise not to tell anyone else?”

I nodded. “I’m pretty good at keeping secrets,” I said.
I’ve done it for my parents all my life
.

Sophie glanced once more across the vacant hillside around us. “My dad is Captain Justice.”

T
ake it from me, it’s not easy to find out that your project partner is the daughter of your parents’ archenemy. I stared at Sophie, my mind spinning back over the past two weeks. That was how Captain Justice had gotten there so quickly when my parents had tried to flood the earth. Because he now lived in the same zip code.

“Is everything okay?” Sophie’s voice cut through the silence. “You look a little freaked out.”

Maybe that’s because your dad tried to crush my dad underneath Mr. Chow’s Chinese Buffet!
I thought.

But all I said was “I’ve got to go.”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” I took a step backward. “I just remembered I need to be … somewhere else.”

I spun around before she could say anything, and jogged quickly down the hill. Sophie called after me, but I didn’t look back.

When I got home, my parents were still in their lab. I dropped my backpack in the living room and headed into the kitchen for a snack. Micus heaved a clump of soil at me, but I was still so caught up thinking about what Sophie had just told me that I didn’t care.

How was I supposed to go to school with Captain Justice’s daughter? How was I supposed to sit next to her in seventh period?

Of all the places to live, her dad had chosen Sheepsdale. The coincidence was too big to ignore. What if Captain Justice had tracked the Dread Duo here? What if he was closing in on my parents?

In the kitchen, I tried to use my Gyft on a Pop-Tart, but my mind refused to focus. The Pop-Tart remained frozen in my hands until I gave up and dropped it into the toaster.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one in the house with a lot weighing on my mind. As soon as my mom entered the kitchen, I could see the exhaustion on her face. Dark
rings circled her eyes. One collar of her lab coat was stained with some kind of blue liquid.

“How’re things going?” she asked, shuffling through a drawer.

“Okay. I guess.”

“And how was your day at”—she paused, pushing one drawer closed and opening another—“your day at—uh …”

“School?” I suggested.

“Exactly. School. How was your day at school?”

“Not great. A couple of guys threw me into the girls’ bathroom—”

“That’s marvelous, sweetheart!” she said in the too-loud voice of someone whose mind was a hundred miles away. “You haven’t seen a pair of pliers around here, have you?”

“No,” I said, without making any effort to hide the annoyance in my voice. “So what are you working on?”

Mom hesitated. “Oh … the usual. Tinkering. Experimenting. Theorizing.”

She was hiding something from me. That much was obvious. But what?

“Ah, there you are, Emily,” Dad said, walking in. “Did you find those pliers?”

“Not yet, honey.”

“Hmm. Maybe they’re in the garage. I’ll go ch—” Dad noticed me. “Oh, didn’t see you there, buddy.”

“I’ve been standing here the entire time,” I said.

“Right. Of course.” Dad ran a hand through his tousled hair. It looked like he hadn’t shaved in a week.

“What’s going on with you guys?” I asked.

Dad stared blankly into space. “What do you mean?”

“You’ve been spending all your time in your lab. When you
do
come out, you don’t pay any attention to what’s going on. Nobody’s cooked or cleaned or gone shopping in days.”

Mom started to speak, but then shook her head. Dad’s eyes fell to the ground.

“What?” I said. “What’s going on?”

My parents exchanged a long look. When Dad turned back to me, he said, “Maybe it’s better if you come up to the lab with us. We have something to show you.”

They led me up the stairs with heavy footsteps and slouched shoulders. Dad cast a weary-eyed glance back at me, then pushed open the lab door.

My last visit to the lab had been six months before, and that hadn’t gone so well. One of my mom’s zombies had mistaken me for its afternoon snack, and I’d barely made it out alive. Ever since, I’d avoided the lab entirely.

Fortunately, Mom had moved the zombies down to the basement a few months back. There were a few suspicious-looking houseplants growing under a sun-lamp in one corner, but they didn’t seem to have the
same grudge against me that Micus did. At least, not yet.

The lab always seemed to be in a state of well-organized chaos. To my left was a bookshelf, stacked with instruction manuals, textbooks on particle physics and biology, sealed glass jars containing toxic chemicals, VexaCorp catalogs. A pair of my dad’s old goggles acted as a bookend. A steel table stretched across the center of the room. Its surface was scattered with glass test tubes half full of green and blue liquid. Against the wall to my right was a chalkboard, covered with obscure markings and dense equations.

I followed my parents past all this toward a glass case that was perched on top of a drafting table at the far end of the room.

“You might want to stand back,” Dad said as he peered through the glass.

I wasn’t sure what I had to worry about. The case was about the size of a shoe box and looked empty. But I didn’t want to take any chances. I’d spent enough time around my parents to know that just because you couldn’t see something didn’t mean it couldn’t hurt you.

I stepped away from the case. “Is this far enough?”

Dad looked back at me. “Probably.”

Just to be safe, I took another step backward.