Swarm (29 page)

“
Self
-schooled.” He drew himself up. “By the time I was eight, I was teaching my parents algebra. Math wasn't their thing. Self-reliance was. No electricity. No internet. No dependence on strangers or authorities.”

“No people,” she said softly. No crowds.

Swarm shrugged, and the air rippled, like an avalanche threatening. “There were people. We went to town every Saturday. It was only forty miles.”

Kelsie felt an old wound inside her swell. Her dad had taken her to the country once, a half-assed picnic in an old beater he'd won in a poker game. It had been beautiful at first, the national park full of campers and hikers.

But then a wall of rain had moved in, and the two of them had taken shelter while the weekend crowds scattered. For a long hour it had seemed that she and Dad were the only ones on the mountain. Like the rest of the world had emptied out around them.

She'd never been so scared in her life. She hadn't left the city since.

“Do you know what school is like,” Quinton asked his phone screen, “when you're twelve and you've never even
seen
one before?”

“I bet that was hard,” Kelsie said, though her first day of school had been a relief. Finally she could spend all day wrapped in a crowd, without having to hunt one out. She'd learned to enjoy the quiet attentiveness of a history class, the
random spikes of victory from the gym, the wash of relief when the bell rang for the end of the day. It was like being part of something alive.

But she also knew about the other side of school. Where mobs were formed and victims selected. She looked at Swarm's too-tight blazer and his white socks.

She tried to keep her voice soft. “You were bullied.”

“I was
taught a lesson
.”

The different parts of him, the crowd inside his head, all came together for those last words, and the force of it almost sent her stumbling backward.

“They held me against the lockers to throw basketballs at me. They made speeches before each throw, like a sacred rite. And I kept smiling the whole time, because I'd never felt the crowd's focus before. The time they broke my nose, I laughed with them.”

Kelsie nodded, remembering being punch-drunk at age eleven when Sally Jeffers' pigtails had been tied to the back of her chair in homeroom. Everyone had laughed, including Sally. Trying to appease the bullies. Laughing at her own humiliation, because it was better than crying.

The memory made Kelsie sick. “I'm sorry that happened to you.”

“I'm not. I was too busy learning about the truth of crowds.”

“That isn't how they are,” she said. “I mean, that's not how they
have
to be. They do other things. They
dance
 . . .”

Suddenly that word, which Kelsie had uttered a dozen times a day since she was fourteen, seemed pitiful. What was dancing compared to all the horrors that groups of people could commit?

“But if you're worried about young Quinton, his story has a happy ending.” Swarm finally stopped talking to his phone. He looked straight at her. “I
won
.”

“I bet.” Kelsie knew the temptation to become part of the darkness.

“Andrew Forster was his name,” Swarm said. “New kid at school, tall and strong and good-looking. Showed up in the middle of eighth grade, and right away he told them to stop hurting me.”

“A good guy,” Kelsie said.

“A morally pretentious
asshole
,” Swarm corrected. “I hated the bullies, but at least they knew who I was. Andrew Forster didn't give a shit. For him it was about being a hero.”

“He was
helping
you.”

“True. Because in that moment when they hesitated and wondered if they should stop, I found my way in.” Swarm stared straight at Kelsie, and she could feel the full-bore gaze of the crowd inside him. “And from then on, Andrew Forster was the one against the lockers.”

“Oh my God.” Another shiver ran through Kelsie.

The more Swarm spoke, the more her teeth rattled. The cold sank through her skin. She wrapped her arms around herself, trying to rub some warmth back into her body.

“Do you know what it's like,” Swarm asked, “when you finally find yourself part of something? On the
right
side for a change? After never feeling that before?”

Kelsie nodded slowly. Not the same way Swarm knew. But she remembered finding the Zeroes.

“After that,” Swarm said, “I walked into that locker room like a conductor following his orchestra onstage. I made those idiots into something beautiful.”

“That's not . . . ,” Kelsie said softly. “What you did to Davey—what you forced those people to do—that was brutal and ugly. Not beautiful.”

“You're very sweet.” Swarm smiled. “But deep down you want to be what I am. You want to level up.”

“I don't want that!” Kelsie's throat was dry.

“But it's so beautiful, what we have. The power to make every crowd what it longs to be—a
mob
.”

Kelsie wanted to argue, but she could tell just standing here that Swarm's power was bigger than hers, more complete, more
leveled up
. Maybe he really was the end result of her power, what all her training with Nate and the others was leading her to. The other Zeroes had named her Mob, as if they already knew the danger.

Swarm must have seen the fear on her face.

“The temptation is already in you,” he said. “You'll join me because I can teach you. And then we can take your friends together.”

Kelsie almost laughed. “You're crazy! You seriously think you can make me do that? You don't know me at all!”

“I know your destiny,” Swarm said casually.

Swarm's power spiked and spun in dizzying patterns. Kelsie tried to close herself against it, but she felt it again—that inner cry that had been under her skin the whole time, unnoticed and unanswered.

“You'll find me when you're ready.” He made to walk away, as if the conversation were already over. “Just like Ren and Davey did.”

“They
ran
from you!”

“They courted me,” Swarm said. “They left a trail of bread crumbs. The wedding was their come-hither glance. The mall, their surrender.”

“They tried to sacrifice me and my friends to escape you!”

“Because they wanted
everyone
to join me,” Swarm continued. “Ren and Davey wanted to be on the winning team. You will too.”

“You're sick,” she said.

Swarm grinned his crooked grin, angling his phone toward her. “Maybe
you're
sick. And I'm what you'll become when you choose to get better.”

Kelsie stepped forward and pulled the phone from his hand. His palm was slack and damp.

He looked at her in astonishment. “That's my journal. Don't—”

She threw the phone as far as she could. It bounced off a distant wall and clattered down a dark alley.

Swarm crumpled, like she'd ripped out his spine.

“If you're so leveled up,” she told him, “go find your stupid phone!”

Then she turned and fled toward the Dish.

“WE MET LAST SUMMER,” FLICKER
said.

Thibault's mother turned to take in her son. Her gaze lingered on him for a long, hopeful moment before drifting back to Flicker. Every time she saw him, her awareness seemed to last a little longer.

“I mean, we got
together
last summer,” Flicker clarified, wanting to tell the truth. “We'd met before. We just hadn't realized that we
liked
each other.”

“So it snuck up on you.” There was a smile in Ms. Durant's voice, a smile Flicker wanted to see. She switched her viewpoint to Thibault's father across the breakfast table, but the man's gaze was still buried in the newspaper. He wasn't actually reading, though. His eyes were fixed on one phrase in a headline—
POLICE SEEK ANSWERS
.

So maybe he was listening, processing.

“Yeah, Flicker snuck up on me,” Thibault said, putting down his tea and laughing. “She was stalking me, in fact.”

“
Stalking
you?” Flicker cried. Sure, she'd tracked Anon down to his secret hotel lair, but only in case he needed help with Scam. That wasn't
stalking
, exactly. “You wish.”

“He was always so handsome,” Ms. Durant said. Her voice was wistful, as if she'd forgotten Thibault was sitting right here.

Flicker took his hand, trying to guide his mother's awareness back to him, but her eyes were fixed on a tiny snag in the white tablecloth. Then the kettle began to hiss, and Ms. Durant was up again, busying herself with cups and saucers.

God, this was hard work.

“See?” Thibault said softly. “There's always something to distract her.”

On cue, Auguste came in from the living room, demanding tea. The youngest brother, Emile, was out there too, playing with Christmas toys. With six people, plus his grandmother napping upstairs, Thibault's power had the full Curve to work with.

Maybe this meeting should have waited until the boys were back in school.

But there wasn't time for that. Sonia had posted Ren's revenge dump yesterday afternoon. Swarm could show up any day.

She looked through Auguste's eyes. He stood by the fridge, staring at the food. When he closed the door, his gaze went to
Flicker, like any kid's would to a stranger at the breakfast table. But he left the kitchen without a word, not giving his older brother a glance.

Thibault's father was still reading his paper, but he finally looked up when Ms. Durant settled a tea tray before Flicker. He stared at the four cups.

Flicker's heart lifted a little. But then Ms. Durant only poured tea into three of them.

“Has Auguste drunk all the milk, Mom?” Thibault prompted, and was rewarded with a full cup of his own, and then a splash of milk.

But Ms. Durant never looked at her son, and her husband's eyes were scanning the newspaper now, reading the words. Flicker felt a flash of annoyance and, not for the first time, wished that she could control where other people's eyes looked instead of just peeking through them. If
she
could remember Thibault sitting right here, why couldn't his own parents?

Maybe it was time for some hardball.

“Ms. Durant?” Flicker said. “Emile mentioned you've been feeling unwell.”

A little gasp. “Well, I think we're always a little tired the day after Christmas.”

“And maybe it's strange, having Thibault here?” Flicker nodded toward him.

“Strange?” his mother asked. The single word hung over
the table, and her eyes met Thibault's for the first time.

He looked so afraid, Flicker wanted to hug him. “Because you can't remember when he went away. When he left home.”

“He's so young to be on his own” came the woman's reply. “He's only . . .”

“Sixteen,” Flicker provided.

“Oh.” Ms. Durant's view blurred a little. Tears of confusion. “I should know that.”

Whatever memories his mother had of Thibault, they were from before his power had fully formed, before the grandmother had moved in and pushed the Curve up. Back when he was, what, twelve?

But her gaze stayed on her son, and Flicker suddenly saw the boy in his features. The little kid wondering why his parents had abandoned him in a hospital.

A flash of anger went through her, but she bit down on the words that came with it.

“Maman,”
Thibault said gently. “It's okay that you don't remember. It's not your fault I left. It's mine.”

“You . . . ran away?” Her voice was fragile.

“I had to.”

Flicker heard the rustle of newspaper and jumped into the father's eyes. They shifted from his son to his wife uncertainly.

“Then why come back?” challenged a voice—Auguste, from the doorway.

Flicker heard Emile there too, and went into his eyes. They jumped around the table, wary of the unfamiliar sight of his brother and his parents talking.

“Yes,” Mr. Durant said. “After you broke your mother's heart, why not stay away?”

Flicker felt Thibault's hand flinch in hers. He'd been knocked speechless.

“He didn't
want
to leave,” she said. “He has . . . a condition. It makes you forget about him, sometimes. You have no idea how hard—”

“He left us,” his father said, and the newspaper snapped taut.

Shit. Flicker thought she'd been steeled for anything—disbelief, guilt, doubted sanity—but
blame
? Sharp and bitter words rose in her throat, but Emile spoke first.

“When he's here, you just ignore him! And when I ask you where he is, you pretend like you can't hear me!” His voice broke into sobs. “Why are you all so
mean to him
?”