Supernormal (4 page)

Liz ignored them, cutting neat bites out of her quesadilla with her plastic utensils.

Cam started in on the burrito, trying to focus on the beans and avocado and sour cream, and not the image that cut through his mind of the
hands slamming down on the table,
the sharp, angry voice
“say it to my
face
,”
or the way his head was swarming, the—

Blood
.

The copper scent of it drifted up, cut through the smell of jalapenos and grease and filled his head until he could taste it.  Cam glanced up, tried to swallow, but it caught in his throat. 

Chairs tipped over, sneakers screeching against the floor as the crowd ran, panicked, fighting to get out.

The restaurant was buzzing with the sounds of people and conversation.  They were crowded around tables, laughing, talking.  Waiting in line to place orders.  A bulky guy two tables over shoved an entire taco in his mouth.  Everything was normal, and that…wasn’t right…

Cam took a breath and gave himself a moment to focus.  There was so much here, so many would-be’s or may-be’s, all of them hinging on a hundred other might-be’s.  It took him a moment to work his way back. To the—

Blood
.  Thick and slick on the floor. 

What else?

Sneakers.  Sneakers running, the rubber soles squeaking along the tile
. 
People shoving through the doors.

Cam set his food down and focused on that sound, the rubber screaming on the slick tiles, used it to pull back on the image. 
People, running to the door.  Bottlenecking, pushing, shoving, panicked. Cell phones.  Screams.  “Somebody
help
him
!”  Blood on the tiles.

Stop
.  Stop—too much.  Focus.  He pulled back, and forced himself to focus.

On a pale, blond, angular boy, with a large group three tables over.  At the moment all of his blood seemed to be rushing into his face.  He shoved himself up, the shriek of his chair lost in the buzz of conversation—which dipped, awkwardly, when the boy snapped, “What’s your
problem
?  Are you stupid or something?”

A girl next to him tugged on his arm.  “He didn’t mean anything by it, Troy.  It was just a joke.”

“Yeah, right.”  The boy slammed a fist down on the table, and conversation in the crowded restaurant dropped away in earnest.  “Say that again.  Say it to my
face
.”

“Fucking Troy,” Tyler muttered.  “Not again.”  Danny started to stand.  A beefy man with a grease-splattered apron began to push his way out from behind the counter.

Cam closed his eyes.  His vision was fuzzy, movements, bodies shifting back and forth with possible futures.  Things got like that sometimes, when they weren’t certain.  But Cam got pieces.  The other one, the one doing the attacking, was…looked…

Blonde hair.  Scars. Sunglasses.  Blood.  Blood on her mouth.  Blood dripping down her chin
.

Cam jerked to his feet and scoured the restaurant.  It was so crowded, and for one second everyone in the
world
had blonde hair.  There was too much he couldn’t see, and people kept moving, snapping into place, into their futures, into
that
future.  The beefy man was talking to the angry blond boy now, and any moment there would be
shoving
and one of the other boys at the table would try to get between them, and go
crashing into—

Cam leapt onto his chair, then on the table.  Something squished underfoot.  “Jesus, Cam, what the hell?” Danny sputtered, half laughing.

There.  In the back.  Hunched at the very last table like an animal backed into a corner.  Shaggy blonde hair.  Curved scar hooking under her chin.  Dark sunglasses.  Body so tense it was a wonder she didn’t shatter, and she was arrowed into the blond boy, who was jabbing an angry finger at a smaller, thinner boy on the other side of the table.  Cam noticed her hands, slowly clawing their way into fists.

Cam thought he called out.  He wasn’t sure.  It was getting loud now, sound rushing back in as people started standing, edging their way to the door or heading over to the table to get in on it, and shouts of “Christ, Troy, why do you gotta be such an asshole?” and “You want I should call the Chief?”

But Cam must’ve made some kind of noise, because her head snapped over, and she went still—so totally and completely still, Cam didn’t think it was humanly possible.

He stared down those black sunglasses.  She was slight, boney, but the violence in his vision prickled icy fear along his skin.  “Don’t do it.”  She wouldn’t be able to hear across the noise and space and people, he knew. 
Don’t. 
But he shook his head and tried to will the words into her head. 
Don’t do it.

She stared at him, and for one second she seemed so alone.  Alone and desperate.  He thought, Oh, god, she’s going to
,
and braced himself—to run, jump off the table and tackle her, and in that second the future began to fade.  He told himself he wasn’t going to do anything, but he knew better, he’d chosen to get involved now, even as his sight went blank—

The girl wrenched away from the table, knifed her way through the crowd, and raced out of the restaurant.

He couldn’t have been more than five seconds after her.  Fear made him fast, but not fast enough, and by the time he stumbled out the door, she was gone.

Ch. 4

Fuck.  Fuck fuck
fuck
—
how the hell—how—god
dammit
—Ashley yanked open a drawer.  Blindly threw clothes into a suitcase.

She heard springs screech, and the screen door swat closed as Brody’s footsteps passed through the kitchen to the hall.  The clatter of keys as Brody tossed them on the long hall table. 

“Ashley?”

Ashley ignored him.  She yanked the next drawer open—and the next.  That toss mostly missed the suitcase, but the fuck if she cared.  She just had to get the hell out of here, she didn’t need to make it pretty.  Dresser empty, she headed to the closet.  Ripped the door off.  Ashley stared at the mangled wood in her hand, and then let it crash to the floor.

Brody’s footsteps creaked along the old wooden floors, and the next second he was standing in the doorway.  He did that on purpose.  Let her hear him on
purpose
so she wouldn’t spook like a goddamn
animal.
  His eyes flicked at the suitcase on the bed, then over to Ashley.

“I’m going back,” Ashley said, grabbing a fistful of clothes.  Jerked them so hard the closet rod snapped in half.  Her clothes tumbled to the floor, hangers and all.  “
Fuck
.”  She dropped to her knees and started scraping up the pile of clothes—then stopped, her fingers fisting in a faded canvas jacket.  “Danny?”

“Tyler.”

There were days when Brody’s voice got on Ashley’s nerves.  All calm, in control, like he didn’t actually have to ask what happened ‘cause he already knew.  Today, Ashley
hated
it. 

The jacket was still in her hands.  She hurled it in her suitcase so hard the case toppled backwards off the bed. 

Fuck it, fuck it,
fuck it
.
  The rage of it ripped through her. She made herself turn back for more clothes.  “I’m going back.  I’m done.  This isn’t working.  So I’m going back.”

“How?” Brody asked mildly.  Which was a perfectly valid question, if Ashley let herself stop and consider it.

“I’ll leave,” she said, jamming more clothes into the suitcase.  “I’ll just walk out of town.  They’re tracking me—they’ll come and find me and take me back.”

“Ash.”  When she didn’t stop, Brody took her arm and stopped her.  Since Brody was just about the only one still able to do that, Ashley stopped. “Tell me what happened.”

“You
know
—”

“I know what Tyler told me.  And now you’re going to tell me what happened.”

The anger snuffed out, leaving her cold.  “I was in Paco’s.  Get used to people, acclimate myself, you know, like the doc says.  And I—”  Ashley paused.  This was what she hated.  ‘Cause he
knew
, or he’d at least guessed, and Brody’s guesses were scarily accurate.  “There was this…guy. He was picking on this kid.  Shouting, and he sounded…”  Brody didn’t say anything.  He sat there, and waited for her to say it.  “
Like Jase
.”

“The Troy kid,” Brody said.

Ashley nodded.  She’d seen him around before, she knew he looked, a little—but it was his voice.  His voice was so much like Jase’s, and for a second she’d been back in the facility, Jase jabbing an angry finger in her face,
What’s your damage, Garrett?
Ashley shook her head, fighting against the acid, coppery taste rising in the back of her throat.  “I was going to do it.  I was.  I wanted to.”

“Did you?”

“
No
.”  She hurled the word at him.

Brody the bastard had to drag every last bit out of her.  “Why not?”

Ashley squeezed her eyes shut.  She could still see the boy’s face.  It was stuck there, behind her eyes, like an image frozen onscreen.  “This other boy.  He saw me.  He—
knew
what I was going to do.”  She would never forget, never, the way he looked at her.  She would have nightmares about it.  “It was that obvious.”

“Don’t do this.”

“Fuck you, Brody.”

“You’re getting better.  It might not seem like it, but I promise you, you’re getting better.  You will learn how to control this.  I get that you’re scared—”

“‘
Scared
?’”

“—but this,” he nodded to her suitcase, “is not a decision you make when you’re upset.”  He grabbed her wrist.  “You go back, that’s it.  It’s over.  They will kill you.”

“I don’t care!”  She hated the cracks in her voice.  Ashley sat down on the bed, air leaving her lungs in a harsh rush.  “I don’t care,” she said again, calmer.  “I can’t hurt anyone again.”

“I won’t let that happen.”

She twisted a T-shirt over and over in her fingers, and didn’t look at him.  “You weren’t there today.  You can’t be there all the time.  You let me go…wherever.  You should lock me up and seal the door and put bars on the fucking windows—”  Brody took the shirt out of her hands when it began to tear at the seams.  “It has to end.  I have to—I’m not working.  I’m not getting better.  I
won’t
.  I won’t go back there, I won’t let them take me back there and pull me apart again.  I won’t prove Proom right.”

Brody gave her a long look.  There was an edge of something in it, something hard and bitter.  “I won’t let that happen.”

“You know—”  They both knew exactly what would happen if she went back, in working order.  She’d be strapped to a gurney and given over to the doctors so they could dissect her down to atoms and figure out what worked and what didn’t and then,
then
, Proom would get the green light to round together another group of kids and start all over again.

She wouldn’t let that happen.  She would die instead.

“I’m just so tired,” she said, and the ache in her chest pulled at the words.

“I know,” he said.

“It would be better, if I went.”

“No,” he told her.  “It wouldn’t.”

Ashley didn’t say anything else.  Not when Brody picked up his suitcase and took it away.  Not when she heard Brody tuck it away in the hall closet.  She sat on her bed until the sky went dark outside her window.

“Rice or noodles?”

“Noodles,” Cam said.  It was evening.  The sun was setting through the windows, and he was in Meg’s kitchen, with its whitewashed walls and red potholders.  Meg was at the counter, chopping vegetables for stir-fry.  Danny and the others had invited him out, but Cam wanted to come back.  He’d wanted home, and this moment.

“Do you know a girl?” Cam asked carefully.  “My age.  Blonde.  Scars.”  He touched his jaw.  “Here.”

Meg nodded as she sliced peppers.  “Ashley Garrett.  She’s Brody’s girl.  She’s got—problems.”

“Really,” he said mildly.

Meg turned back to the skillet.  “Stuck in the foster system, jumped around a bit, or so I gather from a couple things she’s said.  All I know, and I don’t know all, is she got in some fights, got in some trouble.  Sent here as sort of a last chance.  I guess whoever decides that sort of thing figured Brody was the best person to straighten her out.”

“That seems to be working out.”

“It is.”  Meg’s voice held a reprimand.  “When Ashley first came here, it was rough.  As I said, I don’t know details—Ashley won’t talk about it, and Brody’s not the type to go blabbing behind anyone’s back—but I know enough.  Scarred up like that?  You don’t get that from picking a few schoolyard fights.”  Meg shook her head.  “That girl had a nasty time of it, before.  Worse than you, and I don’t say that lightly.”

Meg tipped the onions and garlic into the skillet, the hot oil hissing.  She added soy sauce and ginger before turning to Cam.  “Now.  Tell me what you’re not telling me.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“Honey, that big-eyed look might’ve worked with your dumb-as-a-rock daddy, but we’re with Aunt Margaret now.  You saw something.”

No.  Yes.  He didn’t talk about it.  Or, not conversationally.  Mostly to policemen, but that had been on the job. 

“Yes,” Cam said in a quiet voice.

“Something bad?”

He paused.  Not to remember.  He didn’t have to remember; the thing was right there, behind his eyes, and he was still shaky from it.  It was to brace himself.  “Yes.”

Meg gave the skillet a thoughtful shake.  “I’d have heard if anybody got hurt.”

“She ran out.  Before it happened.”

“How bad?”

He didn’t answer.

Meg tipped broad noodles into boiling water. “This mean you want to cancel pizza at Brody’s next week?”

“We’re having pizza at Brody’s?”

“Sugar, I’m at Brody’s every other day, seems like, but I thought you’d want some quiet when you first got here.  I planned to start in again on Tuesday, and I’ll have you know I’ve never had a problem with Ashley.  But if you’re uncomfortable, I’m not going to put you in that position.”

“No.  I’ll go.”

She tossed Cam a look over her shoulder, arched eyebrow and all.  “Spiderman?”

“
Yes
,” he fired back, feeling his throat close and his face go hot.

And Meg sighed and turned the heat down on the skillet and came over to look him straight in the eye.  “I am not your mama.  And you know I didn’t mean it that way.”  She gave him a peck on the cheek.  “You want to be a superhero, well, that makes me unbearably freaking proud.  Hell, I’ll even sew you a silly little costume, if you want.  All right?”

Cam nodded.

“All right.”  Meg strained the noodles, then tipped them into the skillet with the sauce and the vegetables.  “Go set the table.  This’ll be ready in a minute.”