Overtaken (3 page)

“Oliver!” I shouted. “Can I get a ride?”

“You up to date on your shots? Car's a little messy.”

“I can handle it.”

I opened the door and was greeted by a sluice of files and folders that spilled out and piled at my feet. Oliver's mom turned around, and I realized in that moment that we'd never actually met. She was older than I expected—wiry haired and a little spastic—like if Doc Brown were a cat lady. And clearly not the most organized secretary Bar Tech had ever had, although now she managed Cattle Baron, the local steak restaurant.

“Sorry. Just put that stuff to the side. Wherever. Floor's fine. Sorry. Work, you know, and just, well, you eat in the car when you can between meetings and they tell you to drive here and drive there and it gets messy and you want to clean, but there's so little time. So. Little. Time.”

I smiled as I stooped to pick up the papers before they got too messy. The neurosis that bubbled underneath her words hadn't wormed its way fully into Oliver's personality, but he displayed hints of it, and it was charming to see where it came from.

“It's okay! Plenty of space,” I said, pushing some of the papers and books to the side, creating a clear patch to squeeze myself into. Somehow, everything I moved made its way back into my lap as Mrs. Monsalves finished rearranging the mess into a slightly different mess. Oliver turned around and offered a silent, mouthed apology. I shook my head and laughed. It was fine. Compared to my own family drama, other people's families were a comfort, even when they were strange.

“I'm Nica, by the way. It's so nice to finally meet you, Mrs. Monsalves.” I couldn't really extend a hand to shake, so I tried to lean forward with as much glowing good-girl earnestness as I could.

“Oh, Nica! You're the mystery best friend I've heard so much about!”

“Mom . . . ,” said Oliver, trying to shut down the quirk machine, probably before something really embarrassing leaked out.

“Guess so.”

“I've always told Oliver he can have friends over whenever he wants, but he prefers to be in his room with those video games.”

“Oh, we see plenty of each other,” I assured her, hoping as I spoke that I wouldn't be squeezed for details of how our adventures had drawn us closer than most high school friends.

Oliver turned around in his seat. “So your dad's having a busy night at the hospital after all.”

“Seems as though Chase's memory is returning.” The urgency in my tone registered with Oliver. Chase's recovered memory would undoubtedly implicate Maya.

“Some guys have all the luck,” snarked Oliver. “I can't believe that douche is my half brother.”

It wasn't immediately clear to me that I'd set Oliver up to drop an offhand comment that was actually a grenade primed to explode. It wasn't until I saw Mrs. Monsalves's fingers clench the wheel that I realized a mistake had been made.

“Oliver.”

“I don't think I'll ever be okay knowing Chase and I share DNA.”

Mrs. Monsalves tried to play dumb. “What are you talking about?” A nervous laugh slipped through her teeth. “I thought I told you—no drinking.” Oliver rolled his eyes at his mother's attempts to suppress the secret of his lineage.

“It's fine. Nica already knows.” Oliver announced it like it was no big deal.

“Knows what?” Oliver's mother shot him a withering look.

“The whole thing, Mom. It's fine. Trust me.”

“I don't even know this girl.” Mrs. Monsalves's eyes darted up and fired at me from the rearview mirror. No putting that secret back in the bag.

“You don't have to. I do. She's my friend, and I'm telling you: It's fine.”

The only thing worse than fighting with your parents was being trapped in a car with someone else fighting with their parents about you. I pushed back in my seat, wishing, praying, that my powers would come back so I could vanish—and then maybe fling open the door and dive out for good measure. Their voices started to rise:

“No, it's not fine. I told you that in confidence, Oliver!”

“And I had to talk to someone about it! Sorry I don't deal with my problems by pushing everyone out of my life the way you do.”

I cringed and looked out the window, trying to get my mind far, far away from the morass I was in. That's when I saw it from the backseat, pulsing in the sky. By now my brain interpreted any light in the sky as an appearance of the pulse that changed us all, but this light was different. I honestly had no idea what it was at first. It was barely visible, no brighter than a far-off star, but it got exponentially bigger each time it pulsed, like a balloon slowly being inflated. I opened my mouth to say something, and in that instant, the light took over the sky with an immense, silent flash. It was so incredibly bright and violent that I would've thought it was a megaton nuclear bomb detonating if the flash weren't so . . . intensely green.

The same glowing, sickly, skin-crawling green pulse that unlocked our powers in the past had suddenly infiltrated the entire sky. It was a clear night, and for a split second the rest of the evening's stars sparked from diamonds to emeralds.

And then we were upside down.

I don't know if Oliver's mom hit something or if the flash was so violent that she wrenched the wheel in shock, but my hair dropped toward the ceiling, and for a second I felt weightless. My seat belt slammed into my sternum like a body pillow made of concrete and all the air in my lungs escaped to join the rest of the debris crisscrossing my vision. The car was rotating upside down in midair.

My life wasn't flashing before my eyes. Instead, just a surge of overwhelming panic. There I hung, suspended between the sky and the ground and life and death, and I couldn't even conjure a comforting moment. I tried desperately to make eye contact with Oliver or his mom in the rearview mirror. Just eyes. A glance. Something before this all came to an end. But there was nothing. All I felt was the burning in my neck, something that felt like gravel in my chest, and my heart pounding in my ears.

An ancient oak tree trunk stopped our journey cold. With the deafening crack of a thunderclap—
WHAM
—the windshield exploded into a thousand raindrop-sized shards, and the deadly torrent of glass washed over Oliver, his mother, myself and—

I came to upside down. What felt like miles and miles away.

“Nica?” Oliver sounded like he was shouting down a train tunnel.

I tried opening my mouth. It worked. Vocal cords? Intact. I scratched out a hoarse “Oliver.” My body continued to reboot: hearing, check; vision, check; pain, check. Like a thousand checks on that last one. My body was screaming that I was wounded, but—cut? Broken? Bruised? I couldn't tell. I glanced around to get a look at myself but could barely make anything out in the dark.

“Nica?” Oliver called my name again. My mind raced and pinpointed that it was coming from outside the car, to my left.

“Here,” I replied. “Here.”

His face suddenly appeared in front of me, sideways and upside down. Confusion registered in his eyes even though he was staring right at me. “Nica?”

I started to get angry. Our game of Marco Polo was getting old. I needed to get out of the car and probably go straight to the hospital.

“I'm right here!” My voice was as ripped as my clothes felt like they were, and I could tell I was frightening him. I took a breath and calmed myself down. “Sorry. I'm here.” His shaky, wide eyes told me the truth before he even dared vocalize it.

“No, you aren't.”

Holy shit. There was no way. I held my arms out directly between Oliver's face and myself, trying to block him out with my hand, my forearm, anything. But I could still see him, staring right where I should be, where physics and common sense promised I would be, but wasn't there. There was no escaping it: The pulse had struck again scarcely more than twenty-four hours after the last one. And I had vanished.

I reached for the seat belt and—
ka-click
—let myself free. Gravity left me sprawled on the ground. I tested my legs. They weren't broken, but I wasn't getting to my feet anytime soon. Desperate to leave the cramped, broken confines of the wreck, I crawled forward, past a wide-eyed Oliver, and propped myself up against the side of the car. I watched his eyes follow the sound of my body scraping against the ground. When I settled, so did they, though about two feet to the side of my head. I tried to regain my composure, but my thoughts were scattered, panicked. I focused on the gentle shower of papers falling from the sky. Mrs. Monsalves's papers. Wait.

“Where's your mom?” I asked, searching Oliver's eyes for an answer. If the papers were falling, that meant they were propelled from the car, which means—

“In her seat,” Oliver confirmed with a hint of fear in his voice. “She hit her head. She's breathing, but we need to get her to the hospital. There's a lot of blood.”

Despite the grotesque image, I let out a small sigh of relief. At least she hadn't been tossed into the woods with her work.

“Is there a phone? Where's my phone?” I rifled around my pockets in a panic. I couldn't find it anywhere.

Oliver held out a shattered piece of plastic and circuitry.

“Shit.” I recognized my case, reached for it, and turned it invisible as soon as my fingers touched it. As soon as it vanished, Oliver let go, surprised. The case reappeared moments later as it clattered onto the pavement—useless. “What about yours?” I desperately hoped that his phone was in better condition than mine.

“No idea.”

“You check the woods?” I asked, trying to rein in my escalating worry.

Oliver shook his head, blinked away for a second, and reappeared moments later not six inches from where he had been.

“Oliver?” It was my turn to be shocked.

“Can't find it,” he confessed. Then, suddenly having another thought, Oliver gestured and held up his hand. “Hold on. Maybe on the other side of the roa—” Before he even finished his sentence, he pinballed around the edges of the road and then right back to me, this time reappearing almost on top of me. Unnerving to say the least.

“I don't think I'll ever get used to that,” I said, still shaky and unsure of my balance, as I tried to stand on my feet.

“Oliver . . . ? Where are you?” Mrs. Monsalves muttered, dazed and confused as she regained consciousness.

“Right here,” he replied, clasping his mother's hand to reassure her. “You're okay. I'm going to get help.”

“NO,” she exclaimed, frightened and disoriented as the full extent of the crash gradually became apparent to her. “Don't leave me.” She clung to Oliver's arm tightly and whimpered.

As Oliver did his best to soothe his mother's fear, I looked down to where my body should've been but most definitely wasn't and realized I had to fight back my distress and focus, pain be damned. I couldn't very well barge into Dana's house in my invisible state. I took slow, deliberate steps away from the car and closed my eyes to try to calm my electric nerves. I put a hand to my chest and—ow, ow, ow—applied pressure, just to try to center myself. I am here. I exist. I gulped air instead of sipping it. The accident had left me so shaken I could barely count breaths, never mind individual seconds. Each desperate infusion of oxygen that didn't result in my reappearance prompted the next to come shallower, faster. Panic wasn't sinking in—I was beginning to sink in it.

Focus, dammit.

I pictured my dad standing in front of me, a gentle hand on my arm. I tried to read his thoughts and imagine what he would say as I took one breath after the other, catching myself and beginning to emerge from my spiral. There ya go. You got it. Then I allowed my mom into the picture as well. Lydia and Marcus, together again, rooting for me to find steady footing in each breath. I closed my eyes and drilled down even deeper, letting my parents guide me to check in with my lungs, my core, my heart, and my soul. Panic gave way to peace, and when I opened my eyes, I was back. Whole. Standing in the middle of a cold, dark stretch of road.

“Stay here. I'll go,” I told Oliver. It was more of a command than a suggestion. No way would his mom calm down if he split and left me in charge. “I'll go back to Dana's and call an ambulance.”

“Stay safe,” he replied with an urgent tone, knowing it was the best plan despite his post-pulse speed and agility.

“Caution's my middle name,” I quipped, doing everything in my power to keep focused.

As I took off down the road to get help, I heard Oliver gently assure his mother: “Everything will be okay, Mom. Nica's going to get help.”

•  •  •

I ran all the way back to Dana's, almost forgetting my cuts and bruises and aching body. It took me about eight minutes—maybe less—to get there. I'd never run so fast in my life. When I arrived, breathless, legs aching and freezing cold, the front door was hanging open. Dana's house was as eerily silent as the road that I had just crashed on. No one was on the front lawn, no one was on the steps, and no one was on the porch. Kids had been streaming to their cars as we left just minutes earlier, but when I returned, it was as if everyone had mysteriously vanished.

I crept toward the quiet house and sensed something was very wrong. First there was that smell—a familiar post-pulse ozoney burnt aroma, which hung in the air. The closer I got to the open front door, the sharper and more unpleasant the smell became.

I hesitated at the door and called out, “Hello?”

No response. Only stillness and an unnerving silence.

Nevertheless, I needed to get to a phone. I took a step inside. As soon as my feet hit the hall floor—
ZZZZAP
—a surge of energy shot up through my legs with such force that it ricocheted around my head like tiny explosions. My hair came alive and stood on end. Every strand pulsated with electricity. Holy shit. I was afraid to move. Or touch anything. I didn't know what the hell was happening. It felt as if I'd suddenly grabbed on to one of those Van de Graaff generators that shoot electricity through your body at a children's science museum.

“Dana?” I could barely get her name out

No one answered. Just silence and . . . sparks. Everywhere. Some spat from the alarm system near the front door; others sizzled orange and white from a lamp in the corner of the dining room. As I focused and listened, I could hear the electricity echoing the whole way into the far end of the house.

What the hell happened here?

Even if some weird electric pulse had short-circuited most of the house, what was causing those sounds? But first things first: I had to find a phone and call an ambulance. I knew landlines weren't supposed to be connected to a house's main power. They supposedly worked no matter what was thrown their way. I clung to that hope as I booked it straight for the kitchen and pulled Dana's family's landline off the hook. A dial tone. Thank God. I quickly called 911, giving them the most precise location for the accident. Before I had even finished the call, I noticed something moving that stopped me dead in my tracks.

My eye caught a curious blue light pulsing on the wall. The size of a fingernail, maybe smaller, it looked like a strange firefly trapped between the paint and the wall itself. When I stooped to inspect it, I noticed it wasn't pulsing on the wall—it was pulsing in the wall. What's more, it wasn't alone. In my panic, I hadn't spotted the dozens of small pulses crawling through the wall—like ants at a picnic—all drawn toward something I couldn't see.

I tiptoed behind them as they pulsed, jittered, and flickered to their ultimate destination: Dana's living room.

There I discovered Jackson lying on his back, inert and unconscious. I was terrified. Had the pulse knocked him off his feet? Surrounding him were the only people who might have the answers—Dana's spellbound parents along with a few straggling partygoers, including the queen bee herself—all stunned into a frightened silence. Some clutched half-empty beer cans. Others just stared vacant and senseless, watching slack-jawed as the parade of bolts and sparks shot out from the floor and walls and rippled straight through Jackson's skin.

Horrified by what was happening before my eyes, I realized that Jackson's body seemed to be sucking electricity directly from the house itself. Streams of power flowed to him from every angle, filling him with a horrifyingly beautiful blue glow until his heart beat bright white in his chest . . .

 . . . and then he began to float. Levitating up in the air like a weightless feather.

My heart pounded in my chest from dread that soon everyone would discover the truth about the pulse and Jackson and Oliver and me. My body immediately swung into self-preservation mode. Before I could even think about what to do next, I had vanished. Completely. It was instinctive—defensive.

Barely a second after I disappeared, I heard a gasp followed by a stifled sob. Someone in the room was crying. I was surprised to see that tears flowed from the wide eyes of none other than Kyle Meldrum, one of Jackson's more macho football teammates.

“Jesus Christ,” was all Kyle muttered as he rose to his feet. He was mesmerized by the unbelievable sight of Jackson pulsating like a human generator.

I should've known better than to let Kyle take more than a step closer to Jackson, but my own alarm and awe had momentarily turned me into a rigid statue. A tortoise could've run interference quicker between Kyle and his target. By the time I snapped back and realized what was about to happen, Kyle was already reaching for Jackson.

“Somebody do something,” he begged. And then he made contact, his fingers touching Jackson.

The air crackled and split as electricity blasted from Jackson's body into Kyle. I hung back, terrified that Kyle's body and brain were about to be fried. And there was nothing I could do to stop what was happening. Invisibility could hide me but not protect me from Jackson's power. I had to stay out of the way or risk getting zapped, too.

Just when I feared that Kyle might ignite into flames—
WHAM!
A final discharge of power fired from Jackson's body. The explosion dropped Jackson to the floor and shot Kyle off his feet, slamming him spine-first into a wall a good twenty feet away with a loud
WHOOMP
. Kyle collapsed into a crumpled heap. The unearthly silence was suddenly pierced by Kyle's scream.