Mine (13 page)

He added his other hand to the first, then twisted the knob. For a second, it resisted, and then there was a pop and the latch was free.

He rushed into a small living room. The décor was classic student—cheap couch, outdated coffee table, beanbag chair, and a bookcase made from boards and cinder blocks. The only things that looked new were the TV hanging on the wall and the Xbox console beneath it.

Back bedroom
.

Joel headed down a dingy hall. As he approached the only closed door, he could hear muffled voices on the other side.

Hurry!

He shoved the door open.

There were four people inside, three guys and a girl. Two of the guys were standing next to a queen-sized bed, one holding a video camera and the other recording on a cell phone. The third was on the mattress with the girl. He had his shirt off and was unzipping his pants. The girl was completely undressed.

She was also unconscious.

For half a second, no one seemed to notice Joel’s arrival, then the guy on the bed looked over and said, “What the hell are you doing in here? Get out!”

His friends turned, their cameras swinging with them until they were pointed at Joel. From their delayed reactions, he could tell all three were drunk.

“Get away from her!” Joel growled.

The closest camera guy moved toward him. “This is a private party, asshole.”

He reached out, intending to shove Joel toward the door, but his palm never made it that far. With a quick grab, twist, and pull, Joel dislocated the guy’s shoulder and pushed him out of the way.

His fellow cameraman rushed at Joel in an attempt to tackle him. Though he was slightly larger, avoiding his outstretched arms was child’s play.

Taking advantage of the guy’s momentum, Joel shoved him in the back as he passed and sent him flying into a dresser. The guy roared as he unsteadily whipped back around, face bloody, but Joel was ready with a right hook to the creep’s jaw. The guy spun back into the dresser, dropped to a knee, and collapsed, eyes closed.

The shirtless one on the bed scuttled off the mattress and backpedaled into the corner. “Hey, man, I don’t want any trouble.”

Joel tilted his head toward the girl without looking at her. “Her clothes, where are they?”

Shirtless stammered for a moment before pointing at the floor a few feet away.

“Dress her. Carefully.”

As the guy did this, Joel glanced at the other two. The big one was still unconscious, and the guy with the dislocated shoulder probably wished he was, too.

Once Shirtless had finished dressing the girl, Joel checked her to make sure she wasn’t in need of immediate medical attention. He then pointed at the camera that had been tossed on the bed. “Give that to me.”

Shirtless picked it up and lobbed it to Joel.

“Don’t move.” Joel popped out the memory card and shoved it in his pocket. He then threw the camera into the wall, where it broke with a loud crunch.

The smartphone that had also been recording was on the floor where Dislocated Shoulder had dropped it. Joel stomped on it several times to make sure it was completely destroyed before he put it in his pocket. He then walked around the side of the bed.

Shirtless pressed his back against the wall as if he could squeeze through it. “Come on, man. Just leave me alone.”

Joel looked at the girl and then at the son of a bitch who’d almost raped her. “Up.”

“Please. I swear, she…she wanted to be here. She—”

Joel grabbed Shirtless by the arm and yanked him to his feet.

“Buddy, please. I didn’t do anything. Just—”

Joel slammed his fist into the guy’s nose. Now all the wounds Joel had experienced when he’d woken were accounted for.

Groaning, Shirtless slipped down the wall and huddled on the floor.

“If you ever try this again…” Joel said.

“It was just a joke,” Shirtless sputtered. “We weren’t—”

“Stop.”

Shirtless peered up at him through his fingers. “We…we won’t.”

Joel carried the girl into the living room and laid her on the couch so he could adjust his hood. He realized it wouldn’t be enough to hide his face from the attention he was about to receive, so he found a towel in the kitchen and tied it around the lower half of his face, bank robber-style.

With the girl in his arms again, he exited the apartment and descended the stairs to the crowded second floor. When the partygoers on the landing noticed he was holding someone, they backed away a few feet and stared. Within seconds, a ripple of concern rushed through the corridor.

“What’s going on?” a guy with long sideburns and a starter mustache asked. “Is she all right?”

“What’s with the mask?” the blonde girl with him asked.

In a loud voice, Joel said, “Does anyone know this girl?”

Those nearest now took a good look at her. Though most shook their heads, a brown-haired girl with freckles said, “That’s Sandra. Sandra, um, Wilson, I think.”

Another murmur moved down the hall as the name was shared from person to person.

Someone near the middle of the pack yelled, “Sandra?” This was followed by the same voice urgently saying, “Let us through!”

Two girls and a guy pushed their way to the front of the crowd. When they saw Sandra, they rushed over.

“What happened?” the boy asked.

“What did you do to her?” one of the girls said.

“
I
didn’t do anything.”

“Then what the hell happened?” the second girl asked.

“Take her,” Joel said, and transferred the girl to the boy’s arms. “If you’re really her friends, you’ll get her to a doctor right away. I think she may have been drugged. I don’t know.”

He could feel the crowd tense as someone shouted, “You drugged her?”

Teeth clenched, Joel said, “I found her.”

“Where?”

Joel looked at Sandra’s friends. “You’re wasting time. Get her out of here.”

The boy looked at him, unsure, but the first girl said, “He’s right. Let’s go.”

The three headed down the stairs.

Joel turned to follow them, but someone grabbed his arm and twisted him back around. Another guy reached for the towel covering his face, but Joel grabbed his wrist and squeezed hard enough to show he could break it.

The student who’d spun him around said, “If you had something to do with this—”

“I told you. I found her.”

“Where?”

An image. Shirtless saying, “It was just a joke.”

It had
not
been a joke. And Joel was sure, despite the promise he’d extracted, it would not be the last time the a-hole and his friends tried something like this. Unless someone stopped them.

“Apartment three-nineteen,” he said.

“Three-nineteen? That’s—”

“That prick!” a woman yelled.

Several members of the crowd surged up the stairs, and in the ensuing chaos, Joel made his way out of the building.

T
HIRTY-ONE

O
VER THE FOLLOWING
days, the three students who had been in apartment 319 were arrested and subsequently expelled from the university after a cache of illicit videos were discovered on their computers. Rumors soon spread that the videos were homemade sex tapes of the trio with unsuspecting women, something that was confirmed when charges were filed a week later.

There were other arrests, too. Several people who had confronted the perpetrators were facing assault charges, as the three suspects had been badly beaten when the police arrived. It wouldn’t be long, however, before news sources reported that these latter charges had been dropped due to lack of evidence.

T
HIRTY-TWO

J
OEL SAW SANDRA
Wilson several times over the remainder of that school year. Once he even bumped into her at the bookstore and said, “Excuse me.”

She smiled, said, “No problem,” and went about her business.

Outwardly, at least, she seemed unaffected by the events in apartment 319. It probably helped that hers had not been one of the videos the police discovered. Joel had snapped the memory card into small pieces and ripped the phone apart as soon as he returned to his apartment. For good measure, he had thrown the pieces out in separate trash bins around town.

T
HIRTY-THREE

Leah

T
HE COLORS AND
shapes of Leah’s initial enhanced dreams never returned. Now each time she had one, it involved the real world and bad situations that needed correcting.

And, of course, Joel.

That was fine—more than fine. Every moment she was able to spend with Joel was a gift. Knowing he was out there experiencing much of the same things she was made her feel less alone. The missions she led him on were dangerous, yes, but he was never outmatched and he never failed.

The only annoyance was that she couldn’t tell him she was his guide. She tried. God, yes, she tried, but the force that connected them turned her mute at each attempt.

She told herself it was for the best, that if he knew she was the voice in his head, she might become a distraction and keep him from completing his task. She mostly believed it.

But
she
didn’t have to remain in the dark about
him
, and she set about learning as much as she could about his life.

This was no easy task. The dreams contained little excess time in which she could poke around looking for clues. An online search would have been easier, except she couldn’t for the life of her remember his last name. This didn’t keep her from trying, of course. And failing.

She did, however, figure out he’d somehow left high school early and was attending Stanford University, which explained why the weather in her dreams seldom matched that of her hometown. She envied him his college life and the educational challenges it presented. Of course, she only had herself to blame for not being in the same position.

Enough was enough.

On May 2, near the end of her junior year and almost three months after she’d reestablished contact with Joel, she took the SATs. Originally, her plan had been to achieve a score consistent with her school performance. Not anymore.

She might not be able to graduate early, but she could do everything in her power from this point forward to up her standing. Though she knew it was a long shot, her goal was to be accepted at Stanford. Joel would be a senior when she started, but that wouldn’t matter. She’d find him and together they could figure out what was affecting them.

She finished each section of the test long before any of the other students. During the instructions at the beginning, they had been encouraged to use any extra time to go back over their answers, but Leah didn’t need to do that. She knew all her responses were correct and the essay she’d written was excellent.

So when the results arrived that summer and she learned she’d received a perfect score, it was no surprise. Rather, it was no surprise to her. Her parents, on the other hand, were both stunned and excited.

“I am
so
proud of you.” Her father beamed. “This is incredible.”

“I knew you were smart, sweetheart, but wow,” her mother said.

The administration at Verde High School was also surprised, though their reaction was not quite the same as her parents’. On the first day of her senior year, she was called into the counseling office and taken into a room where her counselor, the senior counselor, the vice principal in charge of academics, and the principal all waited. Moments after she sat down, her father was also ushered in.

“Dad? What are you doing here?”

“Good question.” He looked at the others. “What’s this all about?”

“We just have a few…things that we need to clear up,” Leah’s counselor, Ms. Mead, said.

“What things?”

Obviously uncomfortable, Ms. Mead glanced at the senior counselor, Mr. Harvey.

He cleared his throat, then smiled and opened the folder in front of him. “First, we’d like to congratulate you, Ms. Bautista, on your perfect SAT score. That’s an incredible accomplishment.”

“Thank you,” Leah said cautiously.

“We’ve been told that out of the students who took the test on the same day as you, only one other person in the entire country had a perfect score, and for the whole year there have only been five.”

“Is that true?” Leah’s father asked.

“It is,” Principal Munson said. She smiled. “Leah here is actually the first student from Verde High to receive a perfect score.”

“Ever?”

“Ever.”

Leah’s father grinned at his daughter. The reactions of the others were more reserved, however, and when he noticed this, his smile dimmed. “Is there something wrong? You’re not going to tell us there’s been a mistake, are you?”

“No
mistake
,” Mr. Harvey said.

Leah’s dad frowned. “Then what’s the problem?”

For a moment, it seemed as if no one was going to answer, then Vice Principal Iger leaned forward. “Don’t misunderstand us. We are very excited. We just need to make sure the score is, well, legitimate.”

Leah’s dad narrowed his eyes. “Legitimate? Why wouldn’t it—”

Leah put a hand on his arm. “Dad, they want to know if I cheated.”

“What? Why would they think that?” he asked her. He looked back at the others. “Why would you think she cheated?”

The principal held up her palm in an attempt to calm him. “We’re not saying that she did. But there are enough factors that we need to look into it.”

“What
factors
?”

“Well, her performance in school, for one,” Iger said.

“What are you talking about? Leah gets great grades.”

“
Good
grades,” Iger corrected him, adding, “Grades better than the majority of our other students, to be sure. But not grades that we would generally expect would lead to a perfect SAT score.”

“So what?”

“We’ve had some excellent students here over the years,” Harvey said. “Many who maintained well over a four-point-oh average, and none of them ever achieved a perfect score.”