Night Sky (17 page)

“You mean 20/20.”

“No, I mean 20/2.”

“Whoa.”

Dana laughed a little bit. “I also have an eidetic memory.”

“Isn't that like a photographic memory?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said, and threw the driftwood away. “It's exactly like a photographic memory. FYI, many G-Ts have some kinda enhanced memory.”

“I'm pretty sure I don't,” I said.

“Then why is it that you have an absolutely perfect grade point average?” Dana countered. “How does that happen? Do you spend every waking hour studying?”

I scoffed. “Um, no.” I looked at Dana. “How do you know I have a perfect GPA?”

“Bubble Gum, I know more about you than you think. Answer me this: how many tattoos do I have?” Dana tipped her collar to make sure that her red bomber jacket was completely covering her.

The number nine popped into my head. I looked at her. “I don't know.”

“Yeah, you do,” Dana said.

I looked away.

“Name them,” Dana said, her voice challenging.

I sighed heavily. “The tribal design on your upper arm,” I said, sticking out one finger as I began to count. “The initials on the inside of your right wrist.” I stuck out another finger. “The angel wings on your shoulder blades, the bar code on the back of your neck, the heart behind your right ear, the quote that runs across your upper back, the second set of initials below the angel wings, the rosary beads surrounding your left wrist, and the word
think
underneath your collarbone.” I took a breath.

Nine. That I could see, anyway.

Dana grinned. “Point and match.”

“Yeah, but what good is having an eidetic memory?” I asked her. “I mean, I get how it helps with a history test—
if
I've read the chapters…”

Dana walked down to the edge of the sand, where the water lapped back and forth. She glared at it, as if challenging it to surge and ruin her boots. “It helps a lot when you're trying to piece things together. It's also easier to keep track of people when you literally cannot forget a face.”

My thoughts skipped back to yesterday afternoon in Harrisburg, and one small face in particular. “Did you guys ever track down that boy? Jeremy?”

Dana frowned. “We found him, but his dad wouldn't let him talk to us for very long.”

“What did he say?”

“Same thing he said to you,” Dana replied. “An old lady with red eyes came in a van and gave Edmund
medicine
and then took him away. I asked the kid what the van looked like, and he said it was a white one without windows in the back.”

“Just like in my dream,” I breathed.

Dana turned toward me so swiftly and with such intensity in her eyes that I took an involuntary step backward. “Did you just say like in your
dream
?”

I stared back at her. “Um. Yes?”

“Explain,” she demanded.

“Okay. I know it sounds crazy,” I started, “but I've been having these dreams about Sasha—”

“It's not crazy,” Dana said. “You need to stop thinking of your abilities as
crazy
. And you need to stop looking so worried while you're at it. Being a Greater-Than makes you insanely special. Don't you get that?”

I suspected that I looked worried because I
was
worried. And I did totally get that being a G-T made me insanely special. But despite Dana's hasty reassurances on Saturday night, I was still worried that being a G-T would also make me insane.

Would it happen gradually? I wondered. My compassion and humanity slowly eroding until I was heartless and cruel? Or would it happen suddenly? I'd wake up one morning, just
boom
—with bulgy, crazed eyes and tangled hair, start dressing like Dana in leather, and call people things like “Bubble Gum” and “Scooter.”

But I knew with a certainty that I couldn't quite explain that Dana was neither heartless nor cruel. She was rough and tough, and she had no patience for BS, but she wasn't anything like the monstrous descriptions of G-Ts that I'd found on the Internet.

“Dreams are a sign of prescience,” she told me, “which is an absolutely
amazing
skill set. Combined with your smell-sensitivity and telekinesis? Seriously, Sunshine, you need to tell me these things—”

“How could I tell you,” I countered hotly, “when I can't call you? Also, I thought they were just, you know, dreams. Bad dreams. Nightmares. FYI, I have bouts of gas, and I crave chocolate at certain times of the month. Are either of those things Greater-Than
skill
sets
? How about my playing the clarinet and sight-reading music—”

She cut me off. “The dreams and music, yes; the farting and chocolate, no.”

“Burping,” I corrected her. “I burp. Not…”

She smiled at that, but it was far too swift. “Well, that's a relief, since we've got some significant car time together in our future. And you're right. How could you know?” She exhaled hard. “You'll have to excuse my impatience. Please, just tell me about your dreams.”

I looked out at the ocean. “There's this one dream that I keep having—it started the night Sasha disappeared. And it's different from what happened when I was in her room with Calvin. Which was also kind of like a dream, but not really since my eyes were open and I was awake—”

“Oh, my God,” Dana interrupted me again. “You have
visions
too?”

I stared back at her. “Maybe…?” I said.

“Right, how do you know?” She allowed me that. “Okay, here's how it works. Some of us, like me, are mildly prescient—very mildly. Like back in Harrisburg when that boy was there and I knew he had information. For me, it's just something that happens. Ironically, I can't predict
when
it's going to happen, and I can't
make
it happen. It just…does. Sometimes I just
know
things.”

She nodded, her conviction absolute. “I
know
. But it's never anything big or particularly helpful like,
buy
a
lottery
ticket
with
these
five
numbers
. Because for me, it doesn't have anything to do with something that's about to happen. Like, I don't
know
where or when lightning is going to strike. But—maybe—if we're looking for the tree that the lightning
did
strike, past tense, I can kinda charge through the woods and
know
where to find it. Are you following?”

I nodded.

“But a true prescient,” Dana said, “can foretell the future. And I probably shouldn't say
the
future, but rather
a
future. Because if you know what's coming, you can work to change it, instead of just lying down and waiting to die. Lotta people who are prescient get scared by the idea that they can't change their fate, but it's totally flexible, so don't panic.”

“Not panicking,” I said, pointing to myself.

“Good,” she said. “Most prescients see the future via their dreams, because the power is strongest when you sleep. It gets a little tricky, though, because the unconscious mind can add filler. Which can make the prescient messages kinda cryptic and challenging to decipher. But some powerful prescients also have waking dreams or visions. Although it just occurred to me that it's entirely possible you're not prescient, but psychic, which is also very cool. Prescient means your dreams and visions are about things that haven't happened yet. Psychic means you see events that have already occurred, or maybe even as they're occurring.”

I nodded. “I think I might be psychic,” I said, “because in my dreams, Sasha is alive.”

“Start with the sleeping dreams,” Dana said. “What happens in those?”

I told her about the highway—about how I had seen Sasha standing out in the rain and fog. I described the field and then the beeping sounds of the hospital heart monitor and the white-and-blue dress that Sasha always wore.

Dana nodded. “That's really good, Sky. Good detail. And I think you're right—that you're psychic, not prescient. When it happens again, make sure you write it all down, so we can all work together to figure out what it means. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

“Now tell me about the other thing. The vision.”

I explained to Dana how I'd seen the creature that I now thought of as the old lady in Sasha's room, on the night Sasha disappeared. I told her about the feeling I'd had when I spotted her—how it was almost like watching a low-res video online. I also told her how much it had scared me. And I reminded her about the sewage smell.

Dana looked grim. She nodded. “You have no idea how helpful this is going to be.”

“So…you believe me,” I said, and I have to admit, my tone was a tad challenging.

She smiled. “I do. About stuff like this? I'll always be the dead last person to doubt you.”

I had to admit it: Having someone like Dana around felt good. Her lack of skepticism was refreshing. Nothing seemed to surprise her.

Or almost nothing, anyway.

“But you still don't believe what I said about Calvin and me?” I pushed.

She smiled again. “You
are
a pit bull, aren't you?” She sighed. “And no,” she told me. “I believe you about that too. You were right. We have to trust each other—about everything.”

But we didn't particularly have to like each other—she didn't say it, but I knew she was thinking it. Except as I stood there, looking back at her, I found myself…liking her. And wishing that she liked me too.

I focused on the conversation we were having out loud. “So do you think this old lady is the same one Jeremy saw with Edmund and the white van?” I asked, and shuddered a little at the memory of that pale skin and those scary eyes.

“What do you think?” Dana asked.

“I think it's not a coincidence,” I said without hesitation. “Whoever she is, she's evil. And I think if we can find her…”

Dana finished for me. “We can stop her from stealing and killing the next little girl.”

I watched waves crash onto the shore and swallowed. “Dana?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think there's a chance that…maybe I
am
prescient, and…Sasha's still alive?”

Dana looked out at the water. Her eyes were glazed and unfocused. She looked profoundly sad.

Then she looked back at me, and it was as if she had snapped herself out of a trance. “No,” she said. And her voice was solid with conviction. “The sooner you stop thinking that, the better off you'll be.”

Today's lesson focused on telekinesis.

I sat with Dana on the sand. The wind had picked up, and I tucked my hair behind my ears.

“I was pretty little when I first started to move things,” Dana told me, “It was…ugly. At first.” She smiled. “Whenever I got angry or really upset, things would jump around the room.” She laughed. “It used to scare the hell out of my dad.”

“I'll bet,” I said, thinking of my own experience with the hairbrush. I smiled as I imagined it chasing my mom around the house.

“This one time?” Dana told me, still laughing. “I blew out the dining-room window. Just
boom
! It was totally an accident. I had no idea I could do that. I was super pissed about something stupid—I don't even remember what anymore.

“When I was a little older, I realized that if I could channel those intense emotions, I could use them to move things intentionally. But it took serious practice,” she continued. “And repetition. I learned to use specific mantras, and… Here's how it works: if you think about a stressful event, and go through the event in detail, your body will react as if it's literally reliving it. Especially if you have an eidetic memory and can focus on the details with as much precision as possible. Scientists have done studies. Your heart rate actually increases, and you even sweat and become breathless. It also increases the presence of adrenaline which, by the way, is your new best friend.”

Adrenaline. Best friend. Got it. I nodded. But… “Rewind a sec to those windows breaking,” I said, because something about Dana's recollection had struck a nerve. I swallowed hard.
Windows
breaking. No explanation.
I'd been there, done that. Or rather, I'd been there while someone else had done that.

“Dana,” I said. “You think there are other Greater-Thans around us right now? I mean, not here at the beach. But, just walking around, maybe at school or, you know, out there, in real life?”

Dana nodded. “Of course, Princess. There are plenty of us out there—although most girls don't realize their own powers. Some recognize that they're different and try to repress it. And keep in mind that there are varying degrees of G-T abilities. Some G-Ts can lift a pencil for a second. Big woop, right? They're on one end of the spectrum. On the other are the ones who can blow out windows when they get pissed off.”

I nodded. “Last year I met a girl at school, and I'm pretty sure she was on the blow-out-the-windows end of the spectrum. Her name was April.”

“Was?” Dana asked. As usual, she didn't miss a detail.

“She kind of…self-destructed.” I told Dana briefly about that spring day in the quad when Cal's former friend April brought a pair of handguns into school and starting waving them around. She'd cornered me, and kept saying really weird and creepy things like, “You're one of us.”

I'd been certain she was going to kill me and Calvin. But Cal, quiet hero that he was, managed to knock her down with his wheelchair, allowing me to kick her guns away and pin her in place until the police arrived. It had been a seriously crazy day. And that was putting it mildly.

“Just as April went down,” I continued, explaining, “all of the cafeteria windows exploded.” I swallowed. “It was never explained.”

The police had insisted that no shots had been fired, but everyone in school was convinced they were lying, on account of all that broken glass. But if April was a Greater-Than, she definitely could've done it with a blast of her powers.

“I'm assuming the police took this girl away,” Dana said grimly.

I nodded. “They shot her with some kind of tranquilizer gun.” Right before April had lost consciousness, she'd begged me to kill her.

“Did she ever stand trial?” Dana asked.

“Not that I know of.” I tried to remember the rumors that had flown around the school in the weeks following April's meltdown. “She didn't actually hurt anyone. It turned out her guns weren't even loaded. Calvin was pretty sure she just wanted…” It was so awful, I couldn't even say it.

Dana said it for me. “She was committing suicide-by-SWAT-team. She waves weapons around, everyone scatters, police make the scene, she won't drop the gun, so bang, she's dead. Or in this case, bang, she's tranked and delivered to some mental hospital, where they recognize she's a G-T and sell her to the nearest Destiny farm where she's tortured and bled dry. End result's the same. Another girl is dead.” She laughed harshly. “A bullet to the head would've been more merciful.”

Did April somehow know what was going to happen to her?
Kill
me, Skylar! Kill me now! Please!

I had more questions, but I wasn't sure how to ask. So I started delicately. “April was… Well, she seemed, um… Well, you said it was just a myth, but…”

“Whatever you're dancing around, Cupcake, just say it.”

So I did. “Do you think that being a Greater-Than drove her crazy?”

Dana laughed. “Probably,” she said. “There are times it drives me freaking crazy.”

“I'm serious,” I said.

“I am too,” she countered. “Look, who knows why this girl tried to end herself? Whatever stresses she was under, did her G-T powers make things worse? Probably. You want a life lesson from her sad story? Learn to control your powers so they don't control you. And you start by giving yourself access to your adrenaline.”

“My new best friend,” I repeated her earlier words.

“Yup. And like I said, reliving a stressful event can actually produce adrenaline, almost as much as your body makes, living it in real time. Lucky you, we just pinpointed an event that was probably pretty effing stressful. Girl brings guns to school. Windows explode.
That'll
get your blood pumping.”

I nodded. My heart was actually beating faster just remembering how scared I'd been.

“But you don't need to use that scenario. It can be anything you want.” Dana held up another piece of driftwood. “If I wanted to move this telekinetically, first I'd focus on it and then relive a stressful, adrenaline-inducing scene from my past—but I've found out through trial and error that it doesn't have to be bad stress. Think about times when you've ridden on a roller coaster. You were probably smiling and screaming, but your body was producing adrenaline the same way that it would if you were really heated about something.”

I nodded. “That makes sense.”

“But it's harder to access those happier feelings,” Dana told me. “It's easier, when you're starting, to let yourself get good and mad.” She put the piece of driftwood on her lap. “Now. Once you've got that craptastic experience in your mind, which—again—means you've tricked your body into producing adrenaline, then you refocus your attention on the object you're hoping to move.”

“Where does the whole mantra thing come into play?”

“Usually, while I'm trying to move something, I'll repeat two or three words. Like I'll pick the object, and then I'll pick the route I intend for the object to take. And I'll look at both and say
here, there; here, there
over and over again.” She smiled at the expression on my face. “I know it's a lot to think about, but after a while, once you've practiced enough, it becomes second nature.”

“Exactly how long do you think I'll have to practice before it becomes second nature?”

Dana shrugged. She placed the piece of wood on the ground and studied it intently for just a moment. The wood lifted off the sand and sailed into the air, landing several feet in front of us in the ocean. “I don't know. I'm sure it's different for everyone. It took me a few years to really hone it.”

“A few
years
?” I watched the piece of driftwood as it dipped and bobbed.

“Who knows? Maybe it'll take you less time. I wasn't working on it twenty-four seven. It was more of a fun hobby than anything else, and I was also really young…a lot younger than you are now.”

I sighed. “I hope it doesn't take that long.”

“Let's try practicing,” Dana said. “You up for it?”

Before I could answer, Dana had stood up. She wiped the sand off her leather pants and turned to look back at a trash barrel, where she used her telekinesis to extract a discarded water bottle. As I watched, she moved it all the way across the beach and into the ocean. She dunked it into the water, then—still not touching it—she unscrewed the cap and held it under the waves, filling it before she screwed the top back on. The bottle then sailed back toward me and settled gently in front of me in the sand.

“Focus on the bottle,” Dana commanded. “And think about a moment in your life when your adrenaline spiked. Really think about details. What was the temperature? What did you smell? How did you feel that day? Was there music playing? People talking…?”

I don't know why, but for whatever reason the first images that popped into my head weren't about April. Instead, they were memories of that night seven months ago—the night of the accident. I thought about that narrow, winding New England road. I thought about the trees, and how the moonlight had filtered through the budding spring branches. I thought about the music that had been playing, an old hip-hop song with a driving beat. I'd never liked that song, but Nicole had played it ad nauseum.

I thought about Nicole's tears and anger, about how I'd shouted for her to slow down, about how quickly the road curved into an unexpected bend. And the squealing sound of tires on the asphalt as Nicole attempted to steer us away from the median.

But the more she'd tried to turn, the more the car spun out of control. And then the car had slid sideways, and Nicole looked at me with an expression of utter helplessness before she'd finally sucked in a thin burst of air. Then…impact.

Here on the beach, Dana was saying something to me, but her voice sounded hollow, like she was speaking at the other end of a tunnel.

“…going, Sky,” I heard.

But I was on that road in Connecticut in that wreck of a car, next to my best friend who was now bleeding. God, there was so much blood. And I was fishing for a cell phone, but I couldn't find it…It was so dark.

She was gasping, gurgling, struggling to breathe, and I heard someone screaming and screaming and
screaming
, but suddenly it wasn't Nicole in the car; it was Sasha. She was covered in blood, and the terror in her eyes as she screamed was horrible to see.

“…keep going. Open your eyes…”

Heart pounding, I opened them, and I saw the water bottle in front of me, hovering slightly above the surface of the sand. But then, it zoomed up into the air, disappearing from sight.

Sasha's screams still echoed in the corners of my mind. But the beach was quiet, except for the lull of the waves and my labored breathing.

Then, with a
thunk
, the soda bottle fell from the sky and landed at my feet.

“Nice,” Dana said.

And that's when I burst into tears.

—

It's important to take a moment here to note that I hardly ever cry.

I mean, seriously. It rarely happens.

The last time I'd let my emotions loose was after Nicole was nearly killed in the accident—and even then I'd made sure I was safely behind my closed bedroom door, where I was spared the embarrassment of anyone witnessing the event.

Last time I cried in public…? That was probably second grade, when Malcolm Murkoff lied to me in art class and told me I'd have to get my head shaved, because the paint that I'd accidentally gotten in my hair was radioactive.

But now I was on the beach bawling my eyes out in front of Ms. Bionic, of all people.
She
probably hadn't let out a wail from the moment her mother birthed her.

Fan-friggin-tastic.

But, try as I might, once the tears started, they didn't want to stop.

Nicole. I'd been thinking about Nicole, but then…I'd
seen
Sasha
. Sasha, with blood on her face… She'd looked so scared.

But it was more than just a look. It was as though I'd actually
ingested
her fear…as if the same feelings she was experiencing had traveled into my psyche. I knew how she'd felt—
literally
.

It was a very specific sensation, that kind of conviction. It was more than a feeling—it was an absolute certainty.

I'd heard her voice in my core, and it had whispered breathily,
I'm going to die
.

“I'm… I'm… Oh my God.” Gulping in snotty breaths of air, I collapsed onto the sand, pulling my knees in to my chest, sobs racketing through me. “I'm sorry,” I managed, burying my face in my hands.

My eyes were closed, but I could feel Dana as she took a step in my direction and then, slowly, sat down beside me. I shook my head, digging the palms of my hands against my eyes as if manually redirecting the tears back where they came from.

“Hey,” Dana said softly. I could feel her hand as she placed it gingerly on my shoulder. “Hey.”

“I'm so—orry,” I hiccupped again miserably.

“Sky, you don't have to apologize.” Dana's hand on my shoulder was as much a comfort as it was a surprise. She wasn't exactly the hugging type.

But I couldn't stop crying, and Dana didn't do a thing other than rub her hand gently up and down my back.

Finally, after what felt like hours or even days, I had nothing left. My sobs quieted, and I pulled my head up. Strands of hair fell into my eyes, and I slowly pushed them away. Staring out at the ocean, I tried to take some deep breaths. My nose was so frigging clogged that I had to open my mouth.

Dana probably thought I was such a loser.

“What did you see?” she asked when she was finally sure my little nervous breakdown had come to a close.