When Lightning Strikes (Lightning Series Book 1) (17 page)

She could leave right now.
What am I waiting for?

Julie leaned over the bridge, staring into the water. She didn’t want to leave her family. Even if they were lying to her. There had to be a good reason.

The water swirled underneath the concrete support, showing that the current underneath was swifter than the glassy surface belied. A white crane landed in a patch of marsh grass below.

She had to be imagining all of this.

She glanced down at her shoe, her hair whipping across her face again in the uninterrupted sea breeze. It was untied, and she squatted down to tie it, facing the town. Her hair kept catching in her mouth as it glided over her face. She picked at it, looking back towards the island. Her hand stilled on her shoe.

There were two men and a woman sitting at the café on the water’s edge, about a hundred yards from where she stopped on the bridge. All three watched her intently. One of them looked like he was ready to jump out of his seat at any moment.

Julie stood back up and leaned over the railing again like she was watching the water below. Now that she was paying attention to them, she saw that the man who’d been standing was lounging in his chair again. She deliberately looked back at them. Their heads turned quickly toward each other. They were trying not to let her know they were staring at her.

She looked down at the water, her hair shielding her gaze. All three stared at her again. She stood up, pretending to stretch, and noticed that they all quickly looked away again.

What the hell?

Was she a prisoner here? Every time she started to wonder if she was crazy, stuff like this happened. She laughed at herself, since no one would hear out here on the waterway.

Why would they care about her? She don’t even know them. They were strangers.

Julie got back on her moped and decided to ride it further down the bridge to see what happened. Her heartbeat quickened. She couldn’t believe she was pushing this.

She took a deep breath. She did not want to lose a memory. She parked 20 feet from where she first stopped, letting her hair whip across her face as she looked back. Her eyes strained to see what the three people were doing.

All three were standing now to get a better look. Their angle at the restaurant wasn’t great. Hands shaking, she deliberately fixed her hair back and looked back at the town. They looked away from her quickly, the woman pretending to fuss with a bag.

She was tempted to make a run for it, to see what would happened. If she got across the bridge on this slow thing, someone would easily catch up to her, if they were even worried about what she was doing. Maybe that’s why it was okay to have one—it was too slow to escape on. If she did run away, she didn’t know where she’d go. She couldn’t make it to Atlanta. She didn’t even know where she was.

Julie sighed and looked down at her shaking hands on the bridge railing. She didn’t have the guts to do it.

Someone else may have the courage to run, but going out on her own seemed like a bad idea. She shivered. The memory of the night in the dark alley went through her mind. She didn’t want to be alone. She had not thought about the attack in so long now. Maybe it was a side effect of this memory thing.

She looked back at the water, wind pushing her hair over her face again. The three people still stood there, stupidly waiting while the woman checked her bag. She glanced up again, and they glanced away.

They weren’t even good at hiding what they were doing. This was ridiculous.

Julie got on her moped and turned it back toward the town, gripping the handles until her knuckles were white. She noticed through her pink visor that the three people were sitting back down at the table again, looking like they were enjoying a normal coffee together. None of them looked up as she buzzed past, and her grip on the handlebars loosened.

Was she being paranoid, or were they guarding people from leaving the island?

After another fifteen minutes, she saw a group of small buildings, very similar to the school she went to. There was no sign, but this had to be Jamie’s school. She pulled further down the street, wheeling her moped in behind the school.

She glanced around. No one was watching. When she was safely inside the shrubs surrounding the back of the school, she pulled a pen out of her bag, using her mouth to hold the cap, and balanced her notebook on the steering bar to jot down a note about the bridge guards. It was another weird thing to think about later.

The back of the school was quiet. The thick shrubs that shielded her from the road also blocked out noises from the street and the wind that flowed through the island from the sea. It wasn’t eerie though.

After putting her stuff away, she stared at the school. It was the same four stone buildings like hers. Panels of windows lined each wall, and the central garden was full of flowers and benches.

Just like her school. Nothing weird.

Julie walked around the deserted grounds, peering in most of the windows. Dark wood panels lined the hallways. Each classroom had a few wooden desks. There was a gym and another sort of large workshop space. She sat down on one of the benches after walking around the school for a while and pulled out a granola bar as a snack. She blinked back tears of frustration. Disappointment made the granola bar seem tasteless.

Nothing. It was just a few desks and dry erase boards. There wasn’t even a spooky feeling. She thought there must have been something here. She sat there for a few minutes after eating, trying to think if there was anything else to look for.

She still didn’t know much. Something was messing with her head. Her family knew. People were randomly rude to Andromeda. There were two schools. The kids started out at the school she was at, and some moved to the other school. Then they stopped hanging out with their friends from her school. Anger and other emotions made her forget. So if she could stay calm, she could remember. Also, the tingly feeling she got from dancing helped too, if she could do it when she wasn’t dancing.

So she didn’t know enough to guess anything. Hell, she wasn’t even sure where she was, and she was too afraid to ask. Was she dealing with a government conspiracy or the witness protection program? Was she crazy, and everyone was trying to hide it from her? Something was going on. It gave her heart that no one was likely to be reading her mind or controlling it. Using her emotions to trigger some kind of memory loss was bad enough.

What didn’t she know? What had she forgotten? She had no idea.

Julie stood up and kicked the stone bench. Stuffing the granola wrapper back in her book bag, she went back to her moped and wheeled it out to the street again. No one noticed.

Why would they care when there wasn’t a thing there to be found?

Jamie sometimes talked about a rocky cove on this side of the island. While she was over here, she would go see it. She lived on the flat side of the island, all sandy beach with no rocks marring the beach’s long expanse. If nothing else, she had her book with her and could read for a little before going home.

On her way to the beach, she thought about Muriel and Kara. She missed them. A lot.

She didn’t have many friends. Just Kara. The three boys in her class were too interested in doing things for them to be real friends. Muriel almost felt like a grandmother, although she would never say that to Muriel, since she wasn’t old enough. It was the general feeling she got from being around her every day, like she was there for more reasons than to teach her dancing. She wasn’t sure why she felt that way—Muriel didn’t treat her much differently than Kara. Maybe she was lonely, and Muriel was another warm, friendly face in the sea of cold and haughty faces on the island.

There was a worn path to the beach at the end of the road. She pulled her moped off onto the sandy curve and headed down the path. The sound of the waves crashing against rocks made it through the thick trees obscuring the ocean from her view.

The path through the woods led out onto a ledge, and she found the trail down to the beach. The cliff was high up, and a group of people was further down the beach to the right. It was fairly large, twenty to thirty people—all teenagers. Several girls lay out in tiny bikinis, obviously enjoying the sun and attention from the boys playing some game with a ball. She didn’t recognize any of them, so it was the kids who went to the other school.

Should she leave? She looked around. The beach curved sharply to the left there, and a small stream flowed into the ocean. There was no one over there. She put her chin up. She wouldn’t let them scare her off. They wouldn’t even notice her if she walked the other way. Once she crossed the stream, no one would see her.

Julie headed down the rocky path and went to the left as she reached the bottom. If anyone in the group of kids saw her, they ignored her. Which was fine by her, if they were all like that boy she met in the coffeehouse with Jamie.

She kicked at small rocks along the beach as she went, occasionally looking over into the water, as the wind whipped around her. She was nearer the stream now. In a little while she would go around the corner and be out of view of the other kids.

A flash of red caught her eye in the water, but a moment later it was gone as a wave swept over. She looked down to kick at another rock. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the red again.

She stopped, using her hand to shield her eyes from the sun. The red flashed again in the bright blue waves, and she walked toward it. Whatever it was seemed to be bobbing along on the waves.

It was fabric—part of a bathing suit.

Julie cried out, waving her arms at the other end of the beach. The kids down there either couldn’t hear her over the wind or ignored her. She dropped her bag in the sand, kicked off her shoes, and raced into the water fully clothed.

She dove in as soon as the water was at her knees, aiming for the bobbing red suit. The cold hit her hard, which was why no one was swimming in it. The red fabric bobbed about ten feet ahead of her, and she could see short black hair.

It was a person. How long had they been out here? Was she too late?

She swam faster against the waves. She was strong from dancing but had never learned to be a fast swimmer. Swimming was more of a recreation for her. Her parents had insisted she learn and made sure she knew CPR.

Julie finally got to the person—boy?—and grabbed his shoulders. A shiver went down her spine when she touched his skin. She leaned into him as if her body were on strings. She wanted to lie next to him, brush his hair back from his eyes, and sigh. What color were his eyes? She shook off the thoughts. It must have been the excitement or dread of the moment.

She flopped his head back so his face was exposed and almost let go when she saw who it was.

Rory.

Her head dipped beneath the waves for a moment as she stopped paddling out of shock. A welt on the side of his head started bleeding as soon as his head cleared the water. A trail of pink floated out into the ocean. Julie took a deep breath, coughing on seawater, and got a better grip on him. Her heart pounded. He felt cold, but she thought he might still be alive.

Holding his upper body, she kicked back, letting his head rest against her chest as she tried to do a one–armed backstroke. It was easier going back; with no rip tide, the waves pushed her back in.

She got to a point where she could stand and dragged him out of the water by wedging her arms through his armpits. He was so heavy. She shivered violently, even though she didn’t feel cold. She didn’t feel anything right now.

Was he still alive? He was warmer now. He had to be alive. His skin seemed to tingle with heat as she touched him. She shuddered as she felt warmer from the small contact.

Laying him on his side, Julie patted his back to try to get water out. Water trickled out of his mouth. What if he was dead? The thought made her want to curl into a ball and cry.

When it looked like all the water was out, she laid him on his back and put her ear to his chest. There was no sound, and he wasn’t moving. She put her lips to his, ignoring the curious warm tingling that spread throughout her.

Julie pushed a breath into him. He started to sputter, and she sat back as he leaned over and heaved up more seawater. She patted him on the back to try to help. After a minute, he stopped and tried to sit up.

“Rory? It is Rory, right? Are you okay?” Her wet hair spilled around them, shading them from view.

Instead of answering, he grasped her hand, staring intently at her. A lock of his wet hair fell over one of his eyes.

They weren’t just gray, but gray like a storm coming over the ocean. How had she not noticed this before? They were beautiful, with flecks of blue around his pupils. She could get lost in that storm with him if he asked her.

A shiver crawled up her spine, and she had to fight an urge to push him back down on the sand and kiss him. Had she felt this way right before she lost her memory?

But she didn’t feel foggy at all. She knew she would always remember this moment.

He let go of her hand, and she shook her head in confusion. What was wrong with her? He almost died.

Plus he’s a complete jerk.

Why would she want to kiss him?

“Rory?” someone screamed from down the beach. Julie looked up to see all the others racing to where she sat with him.

“Rory? Are you okay?”

His wide eyes moved from hers to see the others.

“Rory?”

“What happened, man?”

“Are you okay?”

Julie stood up and backed away as his friends surrounded him. She wrapped her arms around her body, shivering even though it wasn’t cold. She kept her eyes on Rory.

She must have imagined everything that happened when she touched him. Or was it the excitement of pulling him out of the water.

Rory didn’t speak to anyone but sent the occasional glance her way. The group moved away from her, taking him with them to get him a towel and warmed up. No one said a word to her.

Julie stood there in disbelief, staring at them all walk away for a few minutes. Rory didn’t even thank her for pulling him out of the water before he died. She felt like screaming at them.