The Dark Side of Nowhere

  The winds of change are definitely not a warm summer breeze. They’re more like tornadoes. You never know when they’re coming, and they tend to turn everything upside down. I’d been dragged by a powerful change all summer, but the moment that ship exploded, I knew that the tornado had died—and although a new one was swirling in to take its place, I had a feeling I’d be able to ride this one, rather than letting it ride me.

  Down in the ditch, Wesley and I were covered in Billington dust—the same red-brown dirt that clogged the treads of my sneakers and got swept to the corners of my room for my entire life. Now it coated me like a second skin, but I no longer found it a nuisance. In fact I took a deep breath, getting a full dose of its earthy aroma, before I had to cough it all back out.

  As I helped Wesley out of the ditch, I turned to look behind us. Through the mangled foliage and settling dust, I could see smoldering ruins of the ship and of Old Town. From here it seemed that not a building of the compound remained.

  In the fields around us, others who had hit the ground when the ship blew up were just getting to their feet. I only saw the Transitionals and wondered if the few remaining adults had been able to put enough distance between themselves and the blast. They were not graced with the same powerful stride we had all developed. Even with Wesley on my back, I had outrun them.

  The Transitionals were like a school of fish now, scattered by the passage of something far mightier. Only now were they beginning to drift back together as they regained their bearings, and in spite of everything, when they saw me, they began to move in my direction, as if I were the core of what bound them together. If they thought I could give them answers and direction, they were wrong. This was a task I could no longer perform. I had to be one of them to lead them, but I was firmly on the outside of the group now. No matter how the coming days unraveled, I knew I could never truly be one of them again.

  Perhaps that’s why Billy decided to kill me.

  “Billy, no!” Wesley shouted, but he was still too weak to stand up and stop him.

  Billy rammed into me from behind, sending me sprawling on the ground. When I looked up, I was staring at the business end of his glowing index finger. As the others saw what was about to happen, they hurried, but none were close enough to stop it.

  “I could waste you with a single finger,” he said, flooded by the power of the thought. In his own mind, he was justified—he would be ridding the ranks of a dangerous traitor. But this was different from last night—he wasn’t firing at a shape in the dark; we were point-blank, looking into each other’s eyes. I could tell by the look on his face the moment he had crossed the line and decided to really do it.

  But I think that when he realized he had crossed that line, the last remnants of his conscience stumbled on it. The enormity of the act struck him with such astonishment that he hesitated—and in that moment of hesitation, something else struck him as well.

  A rock.

  It flew in from nowhere and smashed his nose like a meteor impacting on the moon.

  “Strike!” said a voice far behind me. It was Paula! Never had I been so glad to hear her voice.

  Billy’s whole body flinched wildly from the blow, his glowing arm suddenly firing in all directions. I jumped up, grabbed his pinky and twisted it, forcing his weapon to power down, then tore the glove from his hand. He fell to his knees, completely forgetting his role as executioner, and gripped his gushing nose, wailing in pain.

  In the commotion more weapons had powered up around us—Roxanne had arrived, and the second she saw the source of Billy’s pain, trained her glove on Paula. In turn, Ferrari aimed his at Roxanne, to stop her from firing. In an instant, it escalated out of control—a dozen terrified Transitionals, not even knowing where they were aiming, or why, brandished their weapons in a sort of random standoff. We were all about to be part of a massacre.

  “Power down!” someone shouted. The voice was loud. It commanded authority.

  It was Wesley.

  Still reeling from his blow to the head, he stood on shaky legs and proclaimed to the jittery crowd, “What are you, a bunch of idiots? Power down, and take those damned things off!”

  One by one the gloves turned off and were shoved into pockets with great relief. Wesley turned to me, shaking his head. “That was so stupid!” he said. “I’ve never even been that stupid.”

  Paula came up to me, offered a quick smile, then knelt down to help Roxanne attend to Billy, whose wailing had subsided into whimpering. Roxanne eyed Paula coldly but, to her credit, didn’t push her away.

  “You know, Billy,” said Paula. “I liked you more when you were ugly on the outside.” But she said it with such compassion, it gave him pause for thought. He looked at her from above his bloody nose, then at me. I think in some strange way, he was just the tiniest bit grateful that Paula had broken his nose before he could kill me. He’d probably hate us till the end of time, but at least he wouldn’t have to go to sleep that night a killer.

  More Transitionals came drifting in from farther away, but not a single one of the adults. Someone suggested that we go back and try to find them, but we knew it would be foolhardy and futile. Old Town was engulfed in flames, the entire compound quickly burning to the ground.

  “Maybe we’d better bail, before people start showing up and asking questions,” suggested Wesley.

  It was right about then that my stomachache came back. It had never completely left, but with everything going on, I had forced myself not to deal with it. This time the dull ache exploded into searing pain that I could not ignore. It caught me by surprise and I doubled over, feeling myself go weak at the knees.

  “Jason, what’s wrong?” said Paula.

  “Someone shot him!” I heard one of the others say.

  But there was no hole. No damage. This was something else. I stumbled away, gasping for air. My mind was so fouled with pain, I couldn’t think what the problem might be.

  “We have to get you to a doctor,” said Paula, “both you and Billy.”

  “What doctor?” asked Ferrari.

  It was a question with too many ramifications. Doc Fuller hadn’t made it out of Old Town, and our parents had scattered themselves around the globe. We were suddenly very much alone in the world.

  I collapsed to the ground as the pain multiplied, spreading throughout my body. An indescribably agony. It felt like . . . It felt like . . .

  It feels like appendicitis.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out but a bloodcurdling scream. And then another, and another. Helpless, I could see the others over me in panic, but I couldn’t hear them through my own screams. Even Billy had stood up and was looking down at me in disbelief. If he had suggested putting me out of my misery, I would have been the first to agree. I instinctively knew that, whatever this battle was, I could not possibly win. I was dying—and nothing could stop it.

  So I locked my eyes on Paula’s, determined to keep her face with me as I was dragged kicking and screaming into the darkness.

  And then I died.

  –17–

  STAR BORN

  There was no funeral.

  There were no mournful friends.

  There was nothing but water. I was drowning in a glass of water.

  “Swallow, Jason. Swallow. . . . Good.”

  The water tasted cool and sweet on my parched lips. I opened my eyes and saw nothing but a round opening before me, pouring more water down my throat. I coughed and gagged.

  “Is he awake?”

  “He’s starting to come around.”

  The voices were familiar. I took another gulp of water. This time my throat muscles did what they were supposed to do.

  I tried to put my thoughts in order, but it was like bobbing for apples. I couldn’t get my teeth into a single coherent thought and was afraid that if I couldn’t find one soon, I’d slip back into the void.

  Finally I found a thought that I could cling to.

  These were my parents. br />
  I was grateful to know this, but I also knew that my parents should not be here. They were supposed to be somewhere else. Where were they supposed to be?

  “Chicago,” I said, my voice sounding like gravel in a sieve.

  My eyes came into focus, and I saw my mother smile. It was the first time I had seen her smile since the good old boring days. “Forget Chicago,” she said.

  All at once, the eventful summer began to flood in on me, starting with Grant and the glove, then the compound, then the explosion, then winking out of existence while starting at Paula’s face.

  “How long?” I asked.

  “Almost a week,” Dad said. Which surprised me—I was sure I must have been out of it longer, considering how awful I felt.

  I had no clue where I was. It wasn’t home; it wasn’t anyone’s house I knew. And I was lying on a soft fur rug.

  For an instant I thought that the ships might have arrived while I vegetated and perhaps I was aboard one of them—but it was nothing so spectacular. The glass of water I was drinking from said HOLIDAY INN. I smiled. How gloriously unexciting.

  “You made a real mess of things in Billington,” said my father. “It was on the news, the tabloids—even the respectable papers were running stories about aliens.”

  I could see great disappointment in both of their faces. “Sorry I couldn’t be the son you wanted.”

  My mother turned away to wipe the tears from her eyes. And my father sadly shook his head in shame. “It’s our fault,” Dad said. “If we had seen how you really felt about things, we would have made you a part of what we were planning.”

  “I was a part,” I reminded them. “I was at the meetings—”

  Mom gripped my hand. “No, we mean what your father and I were planning.”

  Dad sighed. “We thought you’d be ashamed of us—that you’d turn us in if you knew we meant to sabotage our own scheme.”

  I stared at them in dim disbelief, but rather than stuttering whats, whos, hows, and wheres, I took the glass from my mother, drank the water, and listened. They told me how it had been—how all the others shifted quickly in reverse and denied their twenty years of being human the moment Grant announced that he received his fuzzy transmission. Better to side with the strong team, I suppose. Much more convenient. It’s funny how convenience can sometimes knock out conscience in the first round.

  “We couldn’t let Grant run the show,” Dad told me, “so we pulled rank and took over our old roles.”

  “We’d always been trustworthy,” Mom added. “So no one suspected what we were really up to.”

  I sat up and grinned. “What a bunch of traitors we turned out to be!” And then, when I glanced at the bed, I noticed something odd.

  There was no fur rug down there.

  When the truth dawned on me, it came in such a violent rush that I began to shake. I closed my eyes and let it sink in. I must have known all along but refused to let myself consider it. Even before I had slipped out of consciousness in the field, I had felt things changing inside of me—the penalty for trying to counteract the serum. Now I took a few deep breaths, held up my hand in front of me, and opened my eyes.

  My skin was the color of perfect peach marble.

  “Mom!”

  They both reached out to grab me, as if I would go into convulsions.

  “There was nothing we could do,” they told me. “By the time we heard about the explosion and came home, it had already happened.” They told me about how Paula and Wesley sat by my side, hidden in our garage, terrified that I might die. Then they told of how all the Transitionals fled when the investigators started to show up. Even Wesley had to make a quick exit.

  “They left Billington, and no one knows where they’ve gone.”

  I thought about them all out there. Without the benefit of Doc Fuller, they would finish their transition the same way I had finished mine. Although I doubted theirs would be as bad, since they were so much further along than me. Without a means of finding their parents, they would stick together—they had to—hiding from the world until the ships finally came, tomorrow or in ten years. They would survive, but what a humbling experience it would be.

  I slowly stood up, then went into the bathroom and raised my eyes to the mirror, to see what looked back at me. A strange and perfect face, gossamer hair like diamond thread—I was a thing of unimaginable splendor. Then a tear came to the corner of my intense blue eyes. Because more than anything else, I wanted to be J.J. Pohl.

  Mom brushed a hand across my soft shoulder. “You’ll grow used to it,” she said in her comforting way, “but life is going to be very different for us from now on.”

  “Can you ever turn me back?” I asked.

  Dad shook his head sadly. “Not after what you’ve been through. And even if we could, that DNA no longer exists. The human part of you is gone forever.”

  I gazed at my exotic, unfamiliar image in the mirror, and in spite of everything, I didn’t feel all that bad. Maybe because I knew that in a very important way, my father was wrong.

  A few days later, my parents drove me on a three-hour trek at my request. Paula came along. To be honest, I might not have had the courage to go without her.

  “I told my parents I’d bring you home for dinner if they let me go,” she told me. I didn’t know whether her parents were extremely cool or just morons. But somehow I didn’t think morons could give rise to someone like Paula.

  Halfway through the trip, she asked me why I kept looking out of the window. “What do you see out there?” she said.

  I shrugged. “Just what’s there.”

  “You’re so weird now,” she said, and I knew she wasn’t talking about my face. It was the way I sniffed the air when we rode past a field of flowers, the way I held my hand out to feel the pressure of the wind in my palm, and the way I stared at everything from barns to bicycles as we passed. It had nothing to do with the way I looked, but everything to do with me.

  We arrived, and the others left the car first. It took a moment for me to build up the nerve. As I stepped from the car into the busy street, people backed away. Some laughed at first, as if it must have been some gag, but when they took a good look at me, they knew I was a genuine article. Their eyes showed a strange mix of fear and amazement, which must have been how I had looked when I’d first seen Ethan.

  “What’s the matter,” Paula scoffed at them, “you have a problem with extraterrestrials?”

  The four of us walked side by side as we mounted the many steps of the state capitol, my parents standing proud as I’ve ever seen them. Seas of people parted for us. A few took pictures, but their hands shook so much, I can’t imagine they’d be in focus. Still, I smiled for them. It all made me think of the time in sixth grade when I painted a green streak in the middle of my hair just to be different. Some kids just shook their heads, others came in the next day with streaks they had painted in their own hair, impressed by whatever statement I was making. Today, too, was a day to make a statement.

  “I’m afraid there won’t be any glory,” my mom had said. “History isn’t kind to traitors.”

  “That depends on whose history you read,” I told her.

  At the entrance to the state senate, where the governor was delivering an address, a guard gripped his gun in mortal terror as he saw us. Then, as I got closer, he just dropped all of his defenses and stared in wonder. That was part of the problem we needed to fix.

  “We would like to address the legislature,” said my father.

  The guard just shook his head and stammered, “But—but—”

  I took a step toward him. “Please.”

  I suppose the magic word worked, because he reached for the brass knobs of the high double doors and swung them wide. Inside, a booming voice echoed a speech about taxes and budget to the crowd. I took a deep breath. Warning the world had to start somewhere. This was as good a place as any.

  “Are you sure you want this, Jason?” my mom asked as people insi
de began to take notice.

  I nodded. “More than anything.”

  The awestruck guard couldn’t stop staring. “Who are you?” he dared to ask. “What are you?” I answered him only with a smile as wide as the space between stars. Then I strode forward, down the red-carpeted aisle, proud amid the gasps and confusion, never letting that smile fall from my face.

  Sometimes we make our alliances not by the shape and color of our flesh but by the convictions of our heart. I know that Wesley, Ferrari, and all the others will have to find peace with themselves very soon—but as for me, you could say that my ship has already arrived. Because no matter what my reflection tells me—no matter what genes give rise to my form—I know exactly who and what I am.

  I am Jason Jonathan Miller. And I am human.

  In a society where unwanted teens

  are salvaged for their body parts,

  three runaways fight the system

  that would unwind them.

  * “Gripping, brilliantly imagined futuristic thriller. . . . The issues raised could not be more provocative—the sanctity of life, the meaning of being human—while the delivery could hardly be more engrossing or better aimed to teens.”

  —Publishers Weekly, starred review

  Available now from

  CONNOR

  “There are places you can go,” Ariana tells him, “and a guy as smart as you has a decent chance of surviving to eighteen.”

  Connor isn’t so sure, but looking into Ariana’s eyes makes his doubts go away, if only for a moment. Her eyes are sweet violet with streaks of gray. She’s such a slave to fashion—always getting the newest pigment injection the second it’s in style. Connor was never into that. He’s always kept his eyes the color they came in. Brown. He never even got tattoos, like so many kids get these days when they’re little. The only color on his skin is the tan it takes during the summer, but now, in November, that tan has long faded. He tries not to think about the fact that he’ll never see the summer again. At least not as Connor Lassiter. He still can’t believe that his life is being stolen from him at sixteen.