Reject High (Reject High: A Young Adult Science Fiction Series Book 1) (22 page)

I was ashamed but too proud to show it. Right now, she probably didn’t see a big difference between me and her ex. Now,
I
needed to explain to her why I was the five thousandth viewer of the most embarrassing thing to ever happen to her,

“You
promised
me
.”
Broken, Sasha’s voice cracked with emotion. She’d said I couldn’t resist looking, but I didn’t know why she’d actually expected me not to see it.

“I had to see what was between you two. I didn’t watch the whole thing. It’s not like I liked it.”

“I
tried
to tell you,” she explained, gritting her teeth. “Why couldn’t you just trust me?”

“I don’t trust anybody.”

“It’s hard for
anyone
to trust,” she shot back. “But, I trusted
you.”

“Sorry.” I meant it.

She moved closer to me and knelt down, with the black pouch in her right hand. “I like you, Jason, but we can’t keep doing this. Believe me or don’t. You can’t go back and forth.”

“Then answer my questions.”

She stood up. I did the same. Aunt Dee would want to know why both of us were upstairs, at the same time, unsupervised. “You get three.”

I led her by the hand out of the room onto the hardwood floors in the hallway, where she slapped the back of my head. My powers were off, so it stung. “What the. . .?”

“You deserved it. Two more questions.”

“That doesn’t count,” I argued. “Why’d you kiss him?”

She turned around, irritated. “To distract him. It’s all I could come up with on short notice. I can flash him next time, if that’s what you want.”

“Nope,” I waved my hand. “I’m good.”

“If you could tell I was faking, so could he, and I wasn’t going to let him hurt you. I’ll always remember him. Not in the way you think. Last question?”

We paused at the staircase.
She forgives me?
“You trust me after all of that?”

She cradled my cheeks with her palms and thought for a minute. “None of us can afford not to.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I hate deadlines

A half-hour later, after Aunt Dee asked us a slew of embarrassing questions, like, “Are you two practicing safe sex?” and “You’re so pretty, Sasha – why are you interested in Jason?” Debra arrived with Zachary, Rhapsody and Peters, who looked terrible.

“Hey Deidra Lee,” said Debra. She held Zachary in his car seat and a grocery bag with a loaf of bread hanging out of it. “This is Jason and Sasha’s friend Rhapsody, and their teacher, Mr. Peters.”

Aunt Dee stared at Peters and his messy clothes. “Pleasure,” she said, her mouth twisted.

“Oh,” he said, looking down at himself. “Caught me in the middle of yard work.”

That still didn’t explain why he was here in the first place.

Debra headed to the kitchen. “Let’s put together some sandwiches for these hungry folks, Deidra.”

They vanished into the kitchen, arguing all of the way. I opened the pouch and handed two green ice prisms to Rhapsody and three to Peters. He earned it by helping us, and I didn’t want our only supporter to die.

He popped out the old stones from his bracelet and replaced them. His skin healed and flushed a healthy shade of pink. He’d told us the truth about his condition after all. “That’s better,” he said.

Debra poked her head into the dining room. “I turned on the news in here,” she said. “Let us know if it’s too loud.”

It helped to have an adult on the inside. “You have to get the source out of the wall. Tonight,” he said.

Nobody seemed to disagree that the mission was necessary. We just didn’t know how to get it done.

We turned to Peters, who sat at the round dining room table with us. Pushing aside a pile of bills, he folded his hands. “It’s inside of a retaining wall. Breaking the wall means being buried under ten feet of dirt.”

Buried alive? A shudder ran down my spine.

“You don’t know the source’s depth, width, or length. Sure, you can fly. . .”

“Jump.”
I corrected him.

“You need to be able to breathe to do it. We also don’t know whether or not it
can
be removed. The demolition is a good chance to test it. Once the building is destroyed, Welker will find it and can easily take it out.”

Selby had wanted Rhapsody to mesh herself into the wall and check it for us, but that was a level of her powers she hasn’t mastered. She looked me off before I could even bring it up.

“So, we’re stuck?” Sasha wanted to split and try her scientific brain at hatching a plan, but we couldn’t talk about that here. Besides, I don’t think Debra wanted to tell her sister-in-law that her nephew was basically dating a mutant.

“I don’t get why he’s doing this,” I vented. “He’s a principal, and we’re. . .”

“Ja-son!” Debra called me, splitting my name into two syllables, which meant
trouble
. I rushed into the next room. My friends and Peters followed.

We watched ongoing news team coverage of the construction site where I had hulked out. Calling the damage an “unprecedented act of vandalism,” the police department was “conducting a forensic investigation of the scene.” It was only a matter of time before they found my fingerprints on something and charged me with some ridiculous crime.

Peters pulled Rhapsody and I aside. “Jump her to the site,” he said to me. He directed his attention to Rhapsody. “Erase, steal, lie, destroy – whatever you have to do to keep him out of jail. He’s the most powerful of the three of you, and he can’t be captured.”

“Even if they put me in jail, I can break out,” I said with confidence. “Or, I can jump away somewhere.”

Peters put his hand on my shoulder. “Trust me, it’s nowhere near that simple.”

“We’re on it.” Rhapsody was up to the challenge. “I’ll meet you outside, Jason.”

I whispered in Debra’s ear. “I gotta go.”

“Be safe, Cap,” she said, kissing me on the cheek before handing me a turkey sandwich.

I wolfed it down after giving the pouch to Peters and getting a quick kiss from Sasha.

The crime scene had been sectioned off pretty well by the time we got there.

Behind the same dirt mound as before, I told Rhapsody everything I knew. “My fingerprints are under all three mixers, near the middle. I don’t know where the tires landed.”

“Rubber doesn’t keep prints,” she said. “I’ll take care of the rest.”

She disappeared. I watched the yellow and black tape move when she ducked under it.

Other than that, I couldn’t tell much about where she was or what she did. Whatever it was, I hoped it worked. My anger had gotten the better of me. I could be going to jail. Was there a jail that could hold me, anyway? What did Peters mean by, “it’s not that simple?”

Debra always worried about that, and we’d discussed it. Something inside of my brain hated being restrained. I couldn’t be quiet during tests, and I’d failed a few classes because of that. My questions were far too important for a raised hand. If I had to go to the bathroom, and didn’t have a pass left, did my teachers want me peeing on the floor?

I wished I could hear what the detectives milling around the area were saying. The ear is made of bones, isn’t it? My bones are unbreakable, but they couldn’t be trained for long distance hearing. Neither could my muscles, which was why Selby can outrun me.

Sasha and Peters needed to trash the talk of me
flying.
There was nothing below my body keeping it afloat and propelling myself from the ground only gave so much lift. I was not flying – not at all.

Suddenly, the air around me kicked up in tempera-ture. It was hot outside, but this was
boiling.
I tried to stand up but couldn’t. My head hit an invisible ceiling. Another force field, but this one fit like a plastic sandwich bag. Any strength I could harness was wasted without the room to cock my arms or legs. I knelt down to jump, but then, the ceiling shrank before I shot up.

From the trees beside us came Asia, the snotty girl from Sasha’s lunch table. “Yeah, I thought about that. I’d say you’ve got about a minute of air left.”

She molded my invisible jail with outstretched hands. Around her neck hung a necklace similar to Selby’s. “Where are the green crystals?” she asked.

She opened the bubble. I called her a foul name and punched the opening hard enough to stun her. I pressed down my anger inside and released it, like a spring toy.

Up I rocketed, high over the crime scene, where I passed out.    

I woke up to indescribable cold, and a weight pressing on my chest. What felt like bugs and worms crawled past my mouth and in and out of my ears. I tried wiggling my limbs, but couldn’t due to the pressure. I could not open my eyes. Curling my fingers, I discovered my worst fears were true. What I touched was packed dirt.

Someone had buried me alive.

I screamed inside of my head. One of the others – probably Welker, since he could read minds – must’ve snooped into mine while I was unable to protect myself.

When my mom died, I remembered staring into the hole where they dropped her casket. The dark pit led straight to Hell. No one could convince me otherwise. For weeks, whenever the pastor said “Hell” during Sunday service, I streaked out of the sanctuary and cried until my eyes dried out. No one, not Debra or Susan, knew this about me. I made it a point not to share it, thinking it might come true one day if I did.

The others wanted me to see what they had in store for me. Only Selby could have dug a grave and placed soil back on top of me fast enough so that I wouldn’t die before waking up.
If I get out of this, and Sasha still defends him, I’ll never forgive her.
Without my green ice, it was a done deal. No one would ever find me.