The Candidates (22 page)

“This is it.” Cam said. “You take a look, see if anything tips you off.”

I picked my way past the trash to the two bedrooms in back. One was fairly neat, with a stack of papers on the dresser. Jack’s room. I tiptoed hesitantly inside, feeling horrible. What was I doing? Had I become a sort of Watcher? Could it possibly be right to spy on Jack? I reminded myself that this was for his own good. We had to find him and the stolen books before Mr. Judan, or Jack, did something drastic.

I gingerly opened the dresser drawers and found a few clothes and books, but nothing remarkable. By the mirror I saw a picture tucked under some papers. I pushed the pile aside and pulled out the photograph.

It was me, looking away from the camera. I was wearing an old ball cap and my usual summer outfit of T-shirt and shorts.

“Holy crap,” I breathed.

Cam saw what I was looking at and sighed. “He started following you a couple of weeks before school started. That’s one of the reasons I warned you to keep away from him. I was always nervous about inviting him to Delcroix, but Mr. Judan couldn’t be budged. I think he hoped he could be the one to train Jack.”

I clutched the photo tightly. He must have started following me after I crashed Sunglasses Guy’s car, after he’d felt me use my power. The picture raised more questions than answers. What exactly did I mean to Jack? I knew when I pushed him away, after we’d kissed, that he’d been hurt. But how deeply?

Could I be the reason he stole the books?

And then I knew where Jack had gone. He hadn’t come here, to this horrible house.

He’d gone to find me.

My grip on the picture tightened until it folded down the center. I dropped it and began rubbing my hands together nervously.

Reluctantly, I turned to Cam. “I think I may have an idea where to look.”

WE DROVE
straight to my house. I had no idea why the Delcroix guys wouldn’t have looked there yet, but I could have sworn that’s where Jack would be hiding. As soon as we pulled up, I jumped out of the car and ran up the path, hoping to get to the door before Cam did. Maybe some part of me even hoped to have a second alone with Jack before he was caught.

He was sitting at the table with Grandma, drinking soda from a glass. He didn’t look surprised when Cam and I burst through the door.

“Goodness, what’s the hurry, Danny?” Grandma scolded. She straightened in her chair when she saw Cam behind me. “Oh my, did they let everyone out of school early today? Who’s that with you?”

Even in his haste, Cam nodded politely. “I’m Cameron, the student recruiter. I came by with Mr. Judan this summer.”

Grandma shot me a quick look. “Oh, Cameron, of course! How nice to see you again.” She pushed back her chair. “Can I get you something? A soda or some juice?”

Cam gave her one of his melting smiles. “No, thanks,” he said. “But that’s very kind of you to offer.”

“Grandma, we need to talk to Jack alone.” I looked around, but unfortunately, there weren’t a lot of places to do that. “We’ll all go outside, if you don’t mind.”

A worried frown knitted her forehead. “Is everything okay?”

“Sure,” Jack interjected. He slouched in his chair like he didn’t have a care in the world. “I imagine they have a few questions for me.”

Damn it, Jack
, I wanted to scream at him.
Take this seriously!
He wasn’t looking at me, just tracing a finger along the side of his glass. Water pooled under his touch and then slid down to the table.

“Well, tell me if I can do anything,” Grandma said.

Cam had said I couldn’t tell Grandma about Delcroix, for her own good. He’d said that the knowledge was dangerous. My throat went dry as I thought about Grandma being threatened because of me—because of something I was, or something I knew. For some reason this made it easier to be pissed at Jack. He didn’t have a grandma to worry about. The only one Jack worried about was Jack.

“We will.” I practically hauled Jack out of the chair and pushed both guys toward the back door. From the back, Jack looked much smaller than Cam. They were so different: Cam’s broad shoulders bristling with repressed energy, Jack’s thin body in an affected slouch. I followed them out to the backyard, trying not to look at the cans that lay on either side of the stump, where they had fallen only a week before.

“So, what’s this all about?” Jack asked. He shoved his hands deep in his pockets and leaned against the house. “Are we planning for the big school dance? Did you want to invite me to be on the decorating committee?”

“Where are the books, Landry?” Cam demanded.

“My, oh my,” Jack said mildly. “You’re awfully agitated, Cameron. What books?”

“The books,” Cam spat out. “You know what I mean.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

I glared at him. “This is serious, Jack. Tell us where the books are, or you’re going to be in huge trouble.”

Jack looked at me with mock horror. “Trouble? Me? Now that would be something new. Besides, I don’t have the books anymore. And since when is it ‘us,’ anyway? Did you join the Delcroix party while I wasn’t looking? Or should I say, while I was turning those bastards around in circles, spending hours creating false trails just to get a few minutes alone with Grandma?”

“Please, Jack,” I implored. “We don’t have much time. Please tell us the truth. Don’t let them be right about you. You could still change their minds. You could show them who you really are.”

He flipped his hair back from his forehead and laughed. It was a hard, ugly sound that made me cringe. “Their minds were made up when I was four, just like everyone else in this town. Besides, I won’t be around long enough to care. I’m through with Delcroix, Danny. I just came over to say goodbye to Grandma, and talk to you.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” Cam said flatly. “Even as we speak, every Watcher in the state is converging on Danville. You might have fooled them for a little while, but they’ll be back. You might as well give up.”

I cringed. It sounded so cruel when Cam said it that way. I looked at the driveway, wondering when they would appear.

“I’ve been hiding all my life,” Jack scoffed. “Your Watchers aren’t as good as you think they are.” He turned to me, and through the teasing and the lounging and the air of false confidence, I could see the fear in his eyes, and it made me want to cry. “I thought I’d give you a chance to come with me. We make a pretty good team. I thought maybe once you figured out the truth about him and all the others up there at that so-called school, you would realize that.”

“I can’t go with you, Jack,” I said. “You know that.”

“Why? Because of Grandma? We’ll keep in touch, send her some letters. She’ll be fine.” His voice took on a note of urgency. “You can’t let them run your life. They’ll never let you go anywhere, do anything ever again without being watched.”

“We don’t watch people in the program,” Cam cut in.

“Sure you don’t,” Jack said. “And we’re supposed to believe that because you’ve been so honest until now?”

“You can believe what you want,” Cam said. “It doesn’t really matter, Jack. Dancia wants to use her powers for good. You know that. She doesn’t want to be like you.”

“And I suppose she does want to be like you?” Jack snarled, his lean body snapping to life. Jack threw a punch at Cam so fast I barely knew what happened. Caught by surprise, Cam’s head snapped back as Jack’s fist connected with his jaw. He stumbled a few feet.

“You don’t want to do this,” Cam warned. “I can make things much worse for you.”

An invisible force slammed Cam’s head from one side to the other. He grunted, and blood appeared in the corner of his mouth.

“Jack, stop!” I yelled. My voice seemed to echo across the backyard. I looked at the house, half expecting to see Grandma appear at the kitchen window. But there was no sign of her, and for once I was grateful for her lousy hearing.

I tried to push my way between Jack and Cam, but a wall of air stopped me from getting closer. When Jack had used the wall on me before, it had been barely visible, only a faint ripple of light outlining its edges. This wall had a yellowish cast, and it swayed like a curtain when Cam caught Jack under the jaw with a punch.

“I’m not going to let you people follow me, do you understand?” The whites of Jack’s eyes gleamed, and at that moment he looked exactly like the man in the hospital.

I looked frantically around the yard but saw nothing I could use to join the fight. Jack was using his power on Cam, who didn’t have any way to fight back other than with brute strength. Still, Cam managed to land a few punches, one that left Jack’s nose bloody.

“You’re a child, Jack,” Cam taunted. “Don’t you see? You don’t have the experience or the training to use your power this way. You’ll run out of juice in a few minutes, and then it will be just the two of us.” He landed a hard punch on the side of Jack’s face, and Jack stumbled backward, the wall dissolving as his eyes fluttered open and closed.

Jack stopped and swayed for a moment, then shook his head and glared at Cam. The wall disappeared. “Fine. You want an even fight?”

He took a step forward and swung a fist that caught Cam in the gut and left him gasping for air. But Cam returned it with an uppercut that sent Jack staggering back several feet.

As it had so many times before, rational thought seemed to fade, and all I knew was that I had to help. The power rushed through me, leaving me full and tingling with energy that I wasn’t sure how to use. I looked around frantically.

The only things I saw were the cans I hadn’t cleaned up from the week before, so I sent them careening along the ground toward the two guys. They had to move quickly to avoid being tripped or whacked in the ankles. The distraction forced them to stop trying to kill each other long enough for me to yell, “Cut it out, Jack! If you don’t have the books, they won’t do anything to you.”

They froze, as if they had forgotten I was there.

Jack looked at me, panting, his eyes full of pain. “You don’t understand. The books were just an excuse. They’ve been planning this for years.”

Cam shook his head and wiped a smear of blood from his mouth. “You had a chance at Delcroix. But you blew it.”

“Cam, can I talk to Jack for a minute?” I said.

“About what?” he asked suspiciously.

“I just need to talk to him. Please?”

Cam stared at me, his jaw set. “For a minute, that’s it.”

Jack grabbed my hand and pulled me aside. “Come away with me, Danny,” he pleaded, his voice low so that Cam couldn’t hear. “I’ll tell you about what I read. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. We’re powerful enough together to take care of ourselves.”

A little part of my heart died at his admission. “Jack, what were you thinking? Didn’t you know they’d come after you?”

“I couldn’t stand watching them lie to you. You needed to know the truth.”

“Oh, Jack.” My chin began to tremble. I reached out and touched his arm. “I do know the truth. You’ve been both right and wrong. Please, let them teach you, let them train you. They want to help people. That’s what this is all about.”

“You call this helping?” He gestured toward Cam, raising his voice. “Were those Watchers helping when they let my dad beat up my mom? If everyone was so worried about me, why didn’t they help me before now?”

I stopped and looked at Cam.

He straightened defensively. “Watchers don’t get involved that way. If we got involved, people would find out what we do, and we can’t have that. The program relies on secrecy.”

I didn’t particularly like that answer, but for now it had to suffice.

Jack’s mouth tightened. He looked between me and Cam. “This is really about him, isn’t it? You think Prince Charming is going to ride away with you on his white horse. Well that’s not how it really works.” He threw off my hand. “He’s no better than I am.”

“I know that.” I also knew that beneath the anger and defensiveness, Jack cared about me, cared with an intensity I didn’t fully understand. But I didn’t care back, not the way he wanted—or needed.

“I need to stay at Delcroix, Jack,” I said. “I need to know what my powers can really do, and I don’t want to learn by accident, when I hurt someone, or a lot of someones. We can do incredible things, Jack. Don’t you want to learn about it?”

“We could learn from each other,” he said, a note of desperation in his voice.

“No. I don’t want to hide anymore. Don’t you see? I’m finally coming clean. Running away isn’t for me anymore. I’ve been fighting my nature all my life, and I’m sick of it.” A shiver ran through me as I spoke, and I realized the truth of my words. “I want to be able to use the power when people need me and I’m not scared to take the responsibility. You’re the one who taught me that, Jack. All those years, I had myself convinced I had no control over it, just because I didn’t want to admit that I had made those choices. You showed me the truth.” I took his hand again, held it between mine. “You are a good person, Jack. I know you are, regardless of what anyone else might say.”

Jack turned to the house, his jaw set and trembling. “I can’t let them watch me,” he said, pleading with me. “You understand, don’t you?”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, and then let it out slowly. I did understand.

I turned to Cam. “Can’t we let him go? He said he doesn’t have the books.”

Cam’s eyes widened. “Let him go? Are you crazy? I know for a fact that he took the books! I felt it in the library!”

“He’s not a bad person,” I pleaded, avoiding the issue. “There’s good in him, I know it. You can’t bring him back to Delcroix. Who knows what they’ll do to him there?”

“They’ll watch him,” Cam said defensively. “It isn’t like they’ll torture him or something.”

“Do you really believe that?” I asked softly.

I had my answer in the way he avoided my gaze.

“Cam, I know what they told you about him, but can’t you feel the good in Jack? You’re his recruiter. You know he’s not as bad as they seem to think.”

It was a calculated risk. Cam could have felt precisely the opposite. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again, his jaw clenched. The air around us grew heavy as Cam considered my plea.

Then something incredible happened—even as I watched, the hard lines of his shoulders softened, drooped. As though he had reached an internal conclusion that he didn’t want to make.

Jack looked from me to Cam, assessing, calculating.

“Please, Cam,” I said. “For me.”

“He’s dangerous,” Cam insisted, though his voice was less sure than it had been a moment ago. “How can you let a person like this go free?”

“Because what they want to do to him isn’t right,” I said. “Jack’s a human being. You can’t pretend otherwise and treat him in the same way the program has for all these years. And it will only get worse now. You know that.”

Cam didn’t respond.

That was when we heard the roar of a car headed our way. Jack’s body tensed, and Cam sighed. “They’re here. I figured it wouldn’t be long.”

I ran to the edge of the yard and peered over the fence. A car hurtled toward us from a few blocks away.

“I’ve got to do something,” I said, turning toward Cam and pleading with my eyes for him to understand.

He hesitated. As I watched the car approach, one of the windows rolled down, and something appeared. Something that caught a glint of sunlight. Something metallic.

“Oh my God, that’s a gun,” I gasped.

Cam and Jack ran to my side. The three of us stood there leaning over the fence to watch the approaching car.

I poked Cam in the ribs. Hard.

“Cam.
Gun
. You said they were just going to watch him,” I whispered, more urgently this time. It was one thing to believe the Watchers were capable of killing Jack. It was another to see the proof of it, pointed our way.

Cam didn’t move, his eyes pinned on the car.

Jack stood frozen, his gaze darting frantically between me and the car. His mouth fell open, and the whistle of his breath—fast, like a trapped animal—was faintly audible.