Night Sky (25 page)

Finding
, I asked him a tad anxiously.
You
mean, stealing?

“By all means,” Nicholas said, heavy on the sarcasm. “Please. Step right this way, sir and ma'am.” He led the way toward a separate structure that was half garage, half Quonset hut, turning on the light inside and opening the metal door so that Calvin could roll right in.

Milo held onto my still-sweaty hand as we followed.
No, I mean finding
. And it was weird, because instead of him telling me with words, I saw a very clear, very sharp picture in my head of Dana and me—and Calvin too—at the Sav'A'Buck. And I saw Dana take the gun that the jokering woman had brandished, and tuck it deftly into the back of her pants.

And I knew, from seeing that, that the money Milo had used to pay for our fake IDs had come from Dana selling that gun. I also knew…
Catching
Sasha's killer really matters to her
.

It
does
, Milo agreed.

A camera flashed, and I flinched, looking around and realizing that this hut was part computer lab, part photography studio, and it was my turn to step in front of a green screen and get my picture taken.

For my fake ID.

I let go of Milo's hand and moved into position.

“On three,” Nicholas told me, but the camera flashed right after he said
one
.

“Hey,” I said. “That's gonna suck.”

Nicholas was in a rolling chair, and he zoomed across the room to the computer station. “The pictures have to suck,” he said. “If they're too good, they'll get looked at, and you don't want that.”

And sure enough, up on his computer screen was a picture of me, mid-blink. I was smiling, but my eyes were almost entirely closed.

“Wow,” Calvin said. “You look stoned.”

“And yours is so much better,” I countered as Calvin's face appeared next to mine on the screen.

Milo took one look at it and cracked up. It was the first time I'd heard him laugh out loud with genuine amusement. I smiled. I liked the sound. It was deep and warm—a lot like the way it felt when I was inside of his head.

“What?” Cal said.

Milo caught his breath. “You look…”

“Constipated,” I finished for him.

“That's my sexy face,” Calvin protested.

“It looks like you're due for a stool softener,” Nicholas said bluntly. “It'll definitely do.”

Milo and I lost it. Cal scowled, but then he laughed too.

“This is gonna take a while,” Nicholas said. “Three hours at least. You wanna come back to pick 'em up?”

“No,” Milo said. “I'm gonna stick around while you work. Just let me get my friends on their way home.”

He was already herding us toward the door, but I took his hand again.
I
don't want to leave you here alone!

“I'll be fine,” he said aloud as he closed the hut's door behind Calvin.
That
friend
of
a
friend
told
me
that
Nicholas
is
brilliant
but
kinda
irresponsible. It's best to wait while he does the work. Eighteen hundred dollars is a lot to gamble.
“You need to get home.”

“We can wait with you,” I said, but I was thinking,
God, three hours from now it'll be after midnight, and if something goes wrong and my mother finds out, I'll be grounded for life.

I felt Milo smile.
We
definitely
don't want that.
Gently, he disengaged himself from my hand so that he could open the car door for me.

Calvin was already getting in the driver's side, and I knew that he was more than ready to leave.

“How will you get home?” I asked Milo.

“Actually,” he said as I got into the car and opened the window. He bent down to talk to me. “Dana and I are camping not too far from here.”

And I was glad, then, that he'd let go of my hand. Dana. I'd completely stopped thinking about Dana—his girlfriend. I felt simultaneously jealous and terrible. What was
Dana
going to think about my ability to read Milo's mind? If Milo were
my
boyfriend and some other girl could see and feel his thoughts? I would not be happy.

“Still,” I managed to say. “You don't really know this guy.”

“Yeah, but like you said, we don't want you grounded,” he pointed out.

“But she didn't say that,” Calvin started, but then looked from me to Milo and back again. “I still think you guys are pulling the Ouija board trick.”

“Cal,” I said calmly. “You know me pretty well. Do I seem like the type to play a practical joke on you?”

Calvin squinted his eyes suspiciously. Then he relaxed. “Yeah. You're right. But I'm still having a tough time buying it. In fact,
all
this shit is hard to swallow. Up until the past couple of weeks, I was a firm believer in basic laws of physics. Like, gravity? Call me crazy, but it was a principle that I'd sort of accepted.”

There was sympathy in Milo's eyes. “I had a tough time wrapping my brain around all of it at first too,” he admitted quietly.

“Oh yeah? And how long did it take you to finally feel like your life wasn't some long, drawn-out, very strange dream?”

Milo paused to think. But then he grinned. “Calvin, I don't think I've woken up yet.” He glanced at me. “It gets stranger every day.” He straightened up then, backing away from the car. But then he bent down again to add, “Go straight back to Coconut Key. Don't stop for anything. Get home safe.”

I nodded as Calvin pulled away.

Milo stood in the dim light outside Nicholas's crummy house and garage, and I watched him until he faded and blended in with the darkness of the night.

And all I could think was, was this it? Was it happening? Was I turning into more of a compassionless sociopath with every breath I took?

I know Dana said it was a myth—that being a Greater-Than didn't mean I would automatically lose my empathy and my humanity and my ability to be a good person.

But a good person wouldn't have spent the past ten minutes clinging to her friend's boyfriend's hand.

Or fantasizing about him kissing her like that.

Or—worst of all—wishing, at least a little, that she was prescient, which would mean that kiss she'd imagined in such glorious Technicolor was yet to come.

Friendship with Dana be damned.

I was back on the highway again. This time, the rain had let up, but the fog hadn't, so it was really difficult to see even a few feet in front of me.

I had a pretty massive
holy
crap
moment when I realized that I was dreaming again. And that thought was immediately followed by the idea that if only I could get my hand on my phone, I'd be able to take notes for Dana. But since my phone with those notes would inevitably be left in my dream world, there was really no reason to try to record anything. Once I woke up, none of this would be tangible.

Kudos to me for trying, though.

I tried to concentrate and at least make
mental
notes about what I was seeing. The trees on either side of the interstate were blowing in a fairly strong breeze. Oh, yeah, and I was back in that mystery car, wearing that mystery dress. I looked down at my lap and studied the pattern of the fabric. It wasn't exactly high fashion. In fact, the cheap-looking blue-and-white diamonds looked a lot like the design on a hospital gown. I reached around and felt the back. Sure enough, the material was tied in the back twice—once between my shoulder blades, and another right above my butt.

Okay, so it didn't just look like a hospital gown. It
was
a hospital gown. But why?

And then, talk about
holy
crap
moments.
Milo
, of all people, tapped on my windshield. I screamed a little, or I think I did. It definitely startled me. But Milo's smile calmed me as I unlocked the door.

He didn't make a move to get into the car, though. I motioned for him to walk around and jump into the passenger side, but he motioned just as adamantly, insisting that I get out.

I paused. In the very first dream that I'd had, I'd gotten out of my dream car to try to chase Sasha down the highway—and, in the blink of an eye, had found myself alone in the middle of a field with the creepy she-thing.

Milo was insistent, so I reached to open the door.

But then I hesitated, double-checking, just to be absolutely
certain
that it was Milo out there.

And, yeah, nobody else in the world had dimples like that. Even in that crazy fog, I could tell that much.

I stepped out of the car.

And I instantly realized my mistake. My butt had to be hanging out of the hospital gown!

But when I reached around to close the opening, my hands grazed denim. Jean shorts. I hadn't been wearing them in the car, had I?

Milo shrugged like he didn't know.

So
I
guess
in
dreams
you
don't have to touch me to get inside my head
, I said without opening my mouth.

Guess
not
, Milo answered, his lips pursed as he watched me intently.

And then something
really
crazy happened.

Milo took a step toward me, put his hands on my hips…

And he kissed me.

I'm not talking peck on the cheek, either.

I'm talking full-on, passionate, head tilted to the side, hair blowing in the wind, tongue-touching, heart-pounding, I-want-your-body kiss. And I did something really crazy.

I kissed him back.

Pinch
me, because I think I'm dreaming
, I told him as I melted against him, as his arms tightened around me.

Very
funny
, he said, and when he pulled back slightly to look down at me, his eyes smiled. But it was a smile that was laced with heat, which totally took my breath away, because I knew he was going to kiss me again.

Except, the heart-rate monitor sound was back, and even through the fog, I could see her over Milo's shoulder.

Sasha.

She was running toward us down the long, straight road, waving her arms over her head as if trying to get our attention.

At first I thought she was wearing a mask, because her face was the color of a fire engine, the whites of her eyes startlingly bright against the shiny contours of her forehead. But, as she got closer to us, I realized that the girl was horribly, gruesomely covered, head to toe, in blood.

Milo grabbed my shoulders and tried to bury my face in his chest, as if instinctively attempting to shield me from the awful image. But it was engraved forever in my mind, and even though I knew I was asleep, I also knew that when I woke up, this terrible, bloody picture of Sasha would still be there. Because it was the same image I'd seen in my vision when I was with Dana down on the beach.

But when I looked again at the girl's face, she wasn't Sasha anymore. Suddenly, she had turned into Nicole, my best friend from Connecticut, but then, just as suddenly, both Nicole and Sasha were lying on the highway, bloody and desperate and needing my help.

Sasha! Nicole!
I called out, but when I tried to speak, no sound came out.

Milo heard me, though. Without opening his mouth, he pressed his hands against my face, and I felt him respond.
They
can't hear us, Sky. They're not really here. They're somewhere else.

Frantically, I screamed and screamed, calling their names, even while knowing that there was nothing I could do to help them. I pulled myself away from Milo's protective embrace, and my world faded to black.

—

When I woke up, my mother was humming an old Celine Dion song and rustling with clothes on my floor as she sifted through them, trying to find the dirty laundry.

Somehow, despite the fact that I'd simultaneously had the best dream and the worst nightmare of my entire life, I managed to sit up slowly in bed, while not shouting,
Oh
my
God, what are you doing in here?

Mom turned to look at me. “Good morning, sweetheart,” she said pleasantly. Today she was wearing gray linen pants and a sleeveless turtleneck sweater. Her hair was poufy and side-parted, with a thick headband. It reminded me of pictures I'd seen of 1950s housewives.

“Morning,” I croaked as I attempted to wipe a glob of sweat from my hairline. I was completely soaked with fear-induced perspiration. I hoped my mom couldn't tell.

“Sorry I got in so late last night,” Mom replied. “The parent-teacher prom committee ran over, and a few of us ended up stopping at CoffeeBoy afterward.” With two fingers, she picked up a wrinkled sweater that probably hadn't seen sunlight in months and added it to the dirty laundry basket.

Somehow this whole conversation was almost as surreal as my recent dream. It seemed almost…disrespectful to chat about prom committees, of all things, after what I'd just witnessed.

Still, Mom hadn't been in my head. I played along. “It's okay. I went to bed pretty early.” All of the relentless lying to my mother was starting to leave a bad taste in my mouth, despite the fact that it was necessary. And to be fair, it wasn't as if she were being completely honest, either. Prom committee, my ass. Unless, of course, Jenkins happened to be working on the school dance, which was kind of scary to consider.

“I'm glad you did that,” she replied, her voice singsong as ever. “You need the sleep. It's been a rough couple of weeks.”

“You can say that again,” I mumbled. My heart was still banging against my chest, but somehow I managed to sound calm. And Mom still hadn't seemed to notice the fact that I was perspiring like I'd just spent an hour in a sauna.

Mom picked up the overflowing laundry basket. “I just wanted to put a little bug in your ear about that cooking class,” she started.

I covered my face with my hands. This woman was seriously exhausting.

“Skylar, hear me out,” Mom continued. “It's a six-week thing—two times a week. You get to be around other kids your age, the instructor's nice, you bake cookies, you mingle…”

I kept my hands over my face while I shook my head slowly. The last thing I felt like doing these days was
mingling
with anyone.

“Please, Skylar? It would mean a lot to me.”

I dropped my hands and stared disbelievingly at Mom. “Well, it would mean a lot to
me
if you'd let me do something I actually liked—like track. And, just to clarify one more time, I
did
say track. I know when we talked about it the other night, you heard
Russian
roulette
club
.”

Mom laughed a little, but I glared her smile away.

“Seriously, Mom, the last time I checked, most people really don't die at track meets. You know, the whole running in a straight line thing? Not too risky.” But even as I said the words, I knew a very sad truth. That even if my mother was suddenly possessed by the Friendly Ghost of Permissive Parenting, I
couldn't
go out for track. As soon as I ran my first race, I'd reveal myself to be a Greater-Than. I might as well walk around carrying a sign saying
Come
and
get
me, very bad people who killed Sasha and Lacey.

But Mom took the matter out of my hands. “I'm sorry, but my answer's still no,” she said quietly.

“Forget it,” I muttered.

Mom gazed at me with sad, deer-in-headlight eyes.

“Um, could you leave my room now?” I asked impatiently.

Mom flinched as if I'd slapped her in the face. “Sorry, sweetheart. Yes, I'll leave you alone.” And with that, she quietly closed the door behind her.

Great. Just fantastic. As angry as she made me, it was even worse when Mom did things like apologize and act super sad.

“Ugh,” I said, and threw off the covers. Enough wallowing in self-pity. I had more important things to worry about.

Like using my psychic-powered dreams to find Sasha's killer and keep the bastards from hurting any other girls—myself included.

As I organized my backpack and got ready for school, I thought about the details of this most recent dream. The trees, in particular, stuck out. They hadn't looked like typical Florida palms or banyans. But they didn't look much like the lush forests of Connecticut, either.

It occurred to me that, even though Sasha had been kidnapped in Coconut Key, the likelihood she was still in town—or even in Florida—was pretty iffy. I made a mental note to talk to Dana or Milo about that next time I saw them.

Milo.

Oh, yeah.
That
whole thing.

I mean, it was kind of hard to not focus on that part of the dream. I could still remember every detail. Milo had smelled like vanilla again, and he'd tasted minty, without even a trace of cigarette smoke.

Guilt hit me solidly in the chest as I thought about how vivid that kiss had been. It was, without a doubt, the most romantic kiss of my entire life. Which was not to say there were a lot of kisses to compare it to in the
Skylar's Romantic Moments
subfile of my important memories. But there
were
a few that rated, the big kiss with Tom Diaz, sophomore year, holding first place. Until now, that is, when a kiss
—
from a dream, no less
—
knocked it down to a very solid second.

And I sighed as I realized what that probably said about me—that out of the two most romantic kisses of my life, one had been with a guy visiting from California—a guy I knew was going home the next day. And the other had been, yes, in a dream, with the boyfriend of a girl whom I not only wanted to be friends with, but who could soundly kick my ass if I pissed her off.

I grabbed a towel and headed to the bathroom to shower.

Of course, Milo and I hadn't really kissed. And we weren't going to.

Like he'd even want to. I remembered how quick he'd been, last night, to tell Nicholas the forger that I wasn't his girlfriend.

Except, God, if he could read my mind every time we touched, I was going to have to be extra careful about what I was thinking. It would be unbelievably embarrassing if he brushed against me while I was fantasizing some fairy tale where he played Prince Charming to my naked Cinderella.

I sighed as I turned on the shower. It would be nice if
some
part of my life could be easy or simple. For a long moment, I closed my eyes and wished everything could go back to the way it had been before Sasha was kidnapped.

Mom rapped on the closed bathroom door. “Sky, I forgot to tell you. The toilet in there is clogged, so don't flush it! I have to call the plumber.”

Yuck. “Okay, Ma.” I raised my voice to be heard over the sound of the running water. “What happened?”

“Don't know,” Mom called back through the closed door. “It was fine last night. But it's backed up this morning. So no flushing, please.”

“Got it.” I loved how Mom had to repeat everything she asked of me at least twice, as if she didn't have faith I'd catch on the first time.

I felt her presence as she lingered in the hallway for a moment, and then I saw the shadow of her feet underneath the crack in the door as she walked away. I couldn't believe I was saying this, but I really hoped Mom had another date with Jenkins sooner rather than later, so she could continue to stay out of my hair.

I showered quickly and dressed just as fast. I could hear Mom moving stuff around downstairs in the kitchen. I really had to pee, so before I grabbed my backpack, I ran back to the bathroom and used the toilet.

Without thinking, I flushed the damn thing.

Of course, the toilet made a pathetic, watery noise, without that ending
clunk-cluh-clunk
of the water going all the way down. I hopped up and looked in.

“No,” I said quietly as the water in the bowl began to rise.

“No!” I repeated, louder this time, as it got higher and higher.

“Skylar?” I heard Mom call from downstairs.

So I tried something kind of whacked.