Dangerous Destiny: A Night Sky novella (15 page)

“Because!” Mom’s face looked contorted and pained, like she might actually start crying. Her usually perfect blond bob was even tousled as if she’d been running her hands through it. I realized that she was seriously upset. “Because what if…”

“What if…” I prompted her.

“What if…something happened to you? And I wasn’t there? What if you got into a…another accident…or a…”

I sighed, trying to be calm despite my frustration at having
this
conversation again.
What
if
you
get
into
another
accident?
“Aren’t you tired of talking about this? Because I am.”

“No!” Mom was getting shrill. “I’m not going to stop talking about it until you stop scaring the crap out of me!”

Now I
knew
she was hyper-upset. Mom never even fake swore. Her manners were almost priest-like.

“Don’t you get it?” she continued. “I’m trying to keep you safe! It’s my
job
!”

“But I’m seventeen! I’m not
five
.” I threw my hands up in the air. “So I get home at eleven instead of ten thirty. Big deal! I’m
fine
. Look! Take a good look!” I spun around, my eyes wide. “Alive! One piece. Con
grat
ulations! Job well done!”

Mom shook her head. “You’re not seventeen until next Friday,” she said, focusing on the least important thing I’d said.

“Uuuuggh!” I groaned. “Are you not getting my point at all? I’m not a baby anymore.”

“I understand. I do,” Mom said, her voice suddenly calm.

For a moment I thought that maybe I had broken through and we were going to discuss this like sane adults.

“You’re upset,” she continued, “because you just want to have a normal life. And that’s what I want for you too. But you’re not going to have that normal life if something absolutely horrific happens and you’re raped and murdered or…”

I had spoken too soon. She was still bat-crap crazy.

“…mugged or
kidnapped
…”

Lalalalala
, I sang to myself, blocking out my mother’s insanity. If I kept listening, I was sure I’d have to break something, just to bring my blood pressure down. The possibility of steam escaping from my nose and ears was increasing by the second.

“…and then you stopped answering your phone while you were in that bad part of town…”

I looked up. “Wait. What did you just say?”

Mom paused. “I said…”

She’d said I was
in
that
bad
part
of
town
. I didn’t want to say it aloud, but we both knew what she’d said. How did she know where I’d been?

I looked at her, and then I looked at my phone.

Mom followed my gaze. She looked nervous.

“What do you have on here?” I asked, and lunged for the couch.

Mom tried to beat me to it, but I was faster. I grabbed my cell phone and shut it off.

From across the room, Mom’s cell phone made a little beep.

I turned my phone back on. Mom’s cell beeped again.

“Are you
tracking
me?” I exclaimed disbelievingly.

Her guilt was written all over her face.

“I can’t believe you’re spying on me!” My face got even hotter. I began to walk toward the stairs to my room, because I could not deal with this.

“Wait!” Mom called. “Sky, I’m sorry. I’m just…I’m doing it for your own good!”

“My own good?” I spun around, even more enraged. “How can you say you know what’s good for me? It’s your fault that we’re here in this third-world land of the living dead. I hate it here,” I continued, knowing that I was hurting her feelings but too angry to care. “I loved Connecticut, but you had to go and get a new job—”

“I loved Connecticut too,” she said, but then took a deep breath. “You know that jobs are hard to come by in this economy, considering—”

She was an art investment advisor, which meant she spent about ten hours a week telling rich people how they should spend their next ten million bucks.

I cut her off. “And you couldn’t find anything in Connecticut?”

Her mouth was tight. “No, I couldn’t.”

That was BS, and we both knew it, and I was furious because once again she was treating me like a baby and withholding information from me. There was a reason she’d yanked me out of school and hustled me down to Florida. God, she hadn’t even told me about the move until the trucks pulled up to the house. I’d had to say good-bye to my friends via email. “You
ruined
my
life
! I hope you
know
that
!”

I raced to my room and slammed my door shut. The rage boiling inside of me was too much.

“Aaaaagggh!” I roared as I dove onto my bed, then rolled and took my hairbrush off my bedside table and hurled it across the room.

It hit the opposite wall with an oddly unsatisfying
thunk
.

But then something really weird happened.

The brush didn’t fall to the carpeting.

At least for a moment, it hovered there in the air before shooting back across the room and repositioning itself on my bedside table.

Uh

Bill

Uh

Tees.

Abilities
.

“Oh, shit,” I whispered. I grabbed my phone and texted Cal:
U still up?

I rocked a little as I sat there on the edge of my bed, but made myself stop. Crazy people rocked like that. And I wasn’t crazy. I wasn’t crazy. I wasn’t…

My phone beeped, but it wasn’t Cal texting me.
Calvin has lost phone privileges for the time being
, it said. It was signed,
Stephanie
. Calvin’s mom.

“Shit!” I took a deep breath to try to calm myself. I wasn’t crazy. And I wasn’t any more a Greater-Than than I was Bigfoot.

I picked up the hairbrush again and tossed it across the room. This time, after it hit the wall, it fell down to the carpeting. Down was a direction I was much more familiar with.

So why did I feel disappointed? This was a good thing, right?

“Sky?” Mom called from out in the hallway, and my face heated up. She was really going to continue this conversation tonight? After all the sneaky crap she’d pulled?

The hairbrush lifted off the ground and spun several times, like a cylinder in a car, before crashing against the ceiling. I watched, eyes wide, as it slid across the smooth surface with the fast precision of an object on ice.

Then it dropped into the air again and did a loopy figure eight before landing once more on my bedside table.

Whoa.

Whoa!

“I’m going to bed. Good night,” Mom called, her voice weary.

Suddenly, I
wanted
her to piss me off.

Because I had a serious theory, and I needed her to help me prove it.

But I listened to her door shut and knew that she was spent.

Instead, I closed my eyes and thought about the argument that my mom and I had just had about the GPS system tracking me via my cell phone—about the way that Mom had belittled me, treating me like a child. I felt my face get hot as I became angry all over again.

I opened one eye just a slit. The hairbrush was still resting comfortably on the bedside table.

I closed my eyes again and moved on to more global issues. Things that really got under my skin…
bad
drivers, cat ladies, mullets, world wars, racism, hate crimes, poverty, euthanasia in overcrowded dog kennels, corrupt politicians, liars, and cheaters…

I opened my eyes. The brush was still on the bedside table, like a lead weight.

Keeping my eyes focused on the brush, I continued with my silent rant, willing myself into a state of fury…
bullies, homophobes, sociopaths, terrorism
… I focused…
cops
who
don’t believe you, kidnappers, conspiracies, the monster who took Sasha, because that poor little girl might never see her mom and dad again—and I swear I will find those bastards and bring them to justice, and you better believe it!

The hairbrush went vertical, and then it launched toward me, landing in the palm of my open hand with a smack.

Hunted.

Kidnapped.

Bled.

Skylar’s story continues
in Night Sky.

October 2014

Buy it now at:
Amazon

Q&A for Dangerous Destiny (a Night Sky prequel) with Suzanne and Melanie Brockmann

What
is
it
like
to
collaborate
with
your
mother/daughter?

Mel:
Working with my mom was and is a fantastic experience! Her first published book was released when I was still just a little girl, so I watched Mom pave a career path for herself that is admirable. These days, she makes it onto the
New
York
Times
list more often than not! And I know that the reason for her success is due to her ability to structure awesome stories with amazing, relatable, sympathetic, and three-dimensional characters.

That being said, I knew that I, too, could write—and that I
wanted
to write! But, as great as I was at coming up with a compelling first scene, I never taught myself how to organize my thoughts. Over the years (beginning when I was that little girl who watched Mom publish her first novel) I’ve written approximately two trillion Chapter One’s. And they were all great! But I never knew how to get to Chapter Two. And completing a book?
That
seemed impossible.

But Mom (aka
NY Times
bestselling author Suzanne Brockmann) stepped in and taught me a thing or two about outlining. The lesson she gave me turned out to be invaluable. I learned that just because the reader doesn’t know what will happen at the end of a book doesn’t mean that
I
shouldn’t know! In fact, if I have a “blueprint” that highlights exactly what happens at the beginning, middle, and end of the story, I’m much more able to write that awesome Chapter One…and Chapter Two…and so on!

When Mom and I began the process, we discovered that our writing styles were similar in many ways—and that we were both capable of adapting so that our “voices” melded together. This made it easy for us to, for instance, take a snippet of a scene that Mom had written and another snippet that I had provided, and seamlessly create a complete scene that sounded authentic and believable.

Also, the best part of the collaboration? It’s FUN! Mom and I spend a lot of time together during the brainstorming process. We put our heads together when we first created Milo, Skylar, Dana, and Calvin, and to say that I’m happy with the result is an understatement. I can’t wait to keep working together to create more amazing stories!

Suz:
I agree with Mel—it’s been fun in ways that I entirely didn’t expect! Not only has it been wonderful to work with my incredibly creative daughter, but it’s also been amazing to get to relive the once-in-a-lifetime experience of having a “first book.”
Night
Sky
is my fifty-somethingth published book, but it’s Melanie’s first. So I get to experience all of the excitement that comes with a first published novel, and it’s even more fun than I remembered!

How does the NIGHT SKY series relate to Suz’s adult series, including BORN TO DARKNESS?

Suz:
The two series are set in the very same darkly futuristic paranormal world. But while
Born
to
Darkness
is set in urban Boston,
Night
Sky
takes place in the south, mostly in suburban Florida. (This is a world where the divide between rich and poor people has grown dramatically, and we wanted to show what that would look like in the familiarity of a suburban setting.)

The biggest difference between the two series is that the cast of characters in
Night
Sky
are all teenagers. Our protagonist, Skylar, slowly comes to realize that she’s special, that she’s something called a “Greater-Than,” with access to a tremendous collection of fledgling superpowers. (She’s got to train to hone and control them.)

In contrast, the adult series takes place at a research center in Boston, where the main characters are doctors and specialists who study the science (actually, it’s still considered to be a “fringe” science—not accepted by the mainstream) behind Greater-Thans and their powers.

But down in Florida, in
Night
Sky
, Skylar starts out completely unaware that she’s living in a world where some people (mostly girls and women) are capable of these amazing things like telepathy, telekinesis, and prescience.