The A-Word

  Only then did we slow down. And we walked the tracks and I told them. I talked and talked and talked. The long version this time, not the short story of last night that Maggie hadn’t believed. My heart galloped at first, then settled because the more I spilled, the calmer I felt. Like what I had needed all along was someone who I could tell this all to. At one point the breeze picked up and my pulse zoomed. Did Bo and Amber know what I was doing? That I was outing them all word after word? If they were watching, they were hidden.

  Only when I finished did I notice we’d walked all the way to Bryce’s neighborhood. We were standing in front of the Chateau Hills sign. Various SUVs and pickup trucks lumbered by, but no one hollered at us to get back to school. Briefly I thought about Terry McClain, who lived over here, too. A flash of panic zipped through me. What if he drove by and saw us? Would he recognize me? Would he narc on me to Amber, thinking to get back in her good graces? I was already on his shit list …

  It was the middle of the morning. He had to be at work. At Texicon, right? Probably drinking some of that leftover Extra Energy while he experimented on more mice. I had nothing to fear from Terry McClain. He was just an ordinary human. Not an angel with a hopped-up Spidey sense.

  “Well, Jenna,” said Ryan Sloboda. “Everything you told me makes more sense than what I was imagining. ’Cause you know. Zombie apocalypse is just for TV.”

  I started, thoughts of Terry McClain fleeing my brain. “You know this is real, right? Not like The Avengers. Not like Tony Stark.” That popped out before I thought it through, and then I felt nervous. How would he take it?

  “Nothing’s like the man in the can,” Ryan murmured, eyes dancing with both fear and resolve. He drew in a breath. “Because that isn’t real life.”

  He was cuter than sin, that Ryan Sloboda. Once again, it took every ounce of control I had not to kiss him in front of Mags. He knew my secret. He was still standing here. He believed me.

  And he remembered.

  What did that mean? Was he stronger than Bo’s damage control? Or—I hadn’t thought about this at first but the more we walked and talked, the more real estate it took up in my tired brain: Had Bo allowed Ryan to remember?

  “Now what?” Mags asked.

  “Well, I realized something,” Ryan said without missing a beat. “Your brother and that Bo guy and that Amber chick—they’re angels, right? We’re accepting that as true. Let’s go with that as our starting point. But here’s the thing. They would stop a zombie apocalypse, right? Not cause one.”

  “Enough with the zombies,” Mags groaned.

  “But that’s the point!” Ryan said. “Remember how everyone was acting last night? It was like everyone was all drugged or something. I mean I guess it’s not as weird as your brother having wings, but weird, right?”

  It was.

  “How would they have gotten drugged?” Mags asked. “Was it in the air or something? The cafeteria food? Maybe someone could have—”

  “Extra Energy!” Ryan and I gasped at the same time. I took his hand and squeezed it. In my head, I saw all those sample bottles lying empty on the ground. What better way to drug up a bunch of high school students? I mean, beyond the obvious stuff that guys like Dave supplied for a fee. But seriously: Free samples of some new tasty energy drink with a cute name and multiple colors?

  Only why? Had Texicon done this on purpose? Laced our drinks and studied us like … lab mice? Maybe a year ago, I might not have believed it. But now I knew that anything was possible.

  “Did you guys drink any?” Ryan asked breathlessly. “I didn’t. Coach doesn’t believe in that crap. Says it’s a bunch of chemicals and sugars and doesn’t do what you think it does for your electrolytes.”

  Mags shot me an I-told-you-so smirk. I sheepishly shook my head. I was suddenly very, very glad she’d been so pissy about the whole thing.

  But now what? For a few seconds I had one VERY DARK worry, that maybe Bo had made all this happen for a reason I couldn’t figure out. Could he be that bitter and sad somehow? It was possible. You’re a good daughter, he’d told me.

  No. Bo Shivers was a mystery and a bastard, but even though he hid the truth under a bunch of bullshit, he never actually lied. So I pushed that thought away. It wasn’t like it mattered now anyway. Casey was gone. Maybe he’d come back. Maybe he wouldn’t. But he had come to me in my dream and told me I had to solve this whole mess. The mess that had started with my mom’s depression and my sickness. The mess that had started with Dr. Renfroe …

  Which was when I realized we hadn’t hiked all the way here by accident. We’d come to the exact neighborhood of the exact person we needed to talk to. Extra Energy was a subsidiary of Texicon. Amber’s ex, Terry McClain, was a scientific genius and a head lab guy. Just because he wouldn’t talk to me about Amber didn’t mean he wouldn’t talk about this.

  Plus, the way I figured it, Terry McClain was exactly the type of guy who would want to get the glory for figuring out how his own employers had zombied up most of the student body and almost caused fatalities. This was the guy who’d solved the mystery of my mother’s memory loss, and I bet he was probably hoping it would be a stepping-stone in his career. Bringing down Texicon would guarantee him celebrity and a big fat job anywhere he wanted. Once he found out his company had some diabolical dealings, no way would he ignore it.

  Okay, he couldn’t answer the part about the storm and the lightning and the fire, but that was nature. (Either nature or something bigger I couldn’t understand, the something Bo had warned me about. But I couldn’t go there right now.) Texas had natural disasters and brush fires all the time. Point was: in answering questions, maybe Terry would spill about that night five years ago. Maybe I could kill two birds with one stone. So to speak. And then maybe Management would have to bring Casey back. Because not only had he saved the day, I would really need him to protect me from future drug company shenanigans.

  I explained all this as best I could to Maggie and Ryan.

  “I’m in,” Ryan said. “I guess I have to be, if I believe you.”

  “Me, too,” Mag said.

  “It has to be now,” I said. “I don’t think we should wait.”

  I eyeballed Ryan. I knew from my brother that if a player skipped school during the week before a game, Coach wouldn’t let them play. But he didn’t hesitate, not even for a second. “I said I’m in. I don’t say things I don’t mean. You need me. I’m here.” He did kiss me then, his lips taking me by surprise. Not a sloppy kiss, but a sweet one.

  Maggie cleared her throat. “Standing right here.” she said.

  I stepped back and looked at them both. “You’re my Twelfth Man, Ryan Sloboda,” I announced, because what else did I have to lose by telling him that particular truth, too? “You, too,” I told Maggie.

  “Twelfth Woman,” she amended. Maggie prided herself on political correctness.

  “Whatever.”

  It was only five miles from here to the Texicon headquarters. We could totally do this, right?

  I fished the spare Merc key out of my pocket. Time to go back to the car.

  “Which one of you wants to drive?” I asked.

  The plan was to be back by lunch. If we were lucky, Ryan could make up some excuse to his teachers and maybe Coach Collins wouldn’t look too carefully at the daily attendance. I was just glad there was no sign of Bo or Amber. At least not yet. We needed to get a move on before one or both of them popped up out of thin air. My only hope (and it was a grim one) was that Casey’s disappearance into the ether had thrown a temporary monkey wrench into that little party trick for the whole A-crew, too.

  But, I reminded myself, we were alive. And the more important part of the plan was to present Terry with a bunch of Extra Energy bottles in hopes that he’d analyze them. We’d found a couple of unopened samples lying around the parking lot and stuck them in a plastic bag. Mags and Ryan knew that Terry had tested my mother’s blood. He was the overeager intense sort (which in my opinion ou
tweighed his cuteness factor) but Amber had said more than once that he lived for shit like this. Who better to help us prove that someone was conducting nefarious experiments on impressionable teenage brains?

  I ended up driving. I knew the Merc. Casey had let me practice those times in the parking lot. Plus Mags had whispered that it was best I act assertive and not too girlie to counteract potential romantic fallout from the Twelfth Man comment. This was a lot to process given my emotional state, but I did the best I could.

  We all sat in the front, Mags in the middle, Ryan navigating. “Stop for kolaches,” Maggie said. I shot her a “you are crazy” look but then she said, “Trust me,” and so I white-knuckled it an extra mile, the Merc chugging and my heart thundering.

  Maggie insisted we get an entire dozen, which meant we had to pool our resources. But she pointed out that now we would have a box, and it would look like a real delivery. This sounded as logical as anything else at this point. I remembered the blog post Terry had written about his love for doughnuts, but I didn’t want him to think I was stalking him. Kolaches it was.

  Since it was only a prop to make us look like we had a purpose for visiting a company that tested things on rodents and researched DNA and sponsored Jumbotrons and sold energy drinks—none of which we were qualified to do—we each ate a kolache on the way.

  TEXICON WAS A thirty-story steel and glass building in the middle of a wooded area that wasn’t far off the main streets but was so tucked away that if it weren’t so tall, you’d totally drive by. I wondered if this was on purpose.

  We parked, got out, and walked inside to the front desk, Ryan carrying the bag of energy drink bottles and the big white box of kolaches.

  “Hey,” I said to the guy in a security guard uniform sitting on a tall chair. “My cousin Terry McClain works here. We’re bringing him lunch today.”

  It was nine thirty in the morning.

  The guard gave me the stink eye, then perused a clip board.

  “You’re not on the visitor list,” he said.

  “It’s a surprise,” Maggie told him.

  We would have gone on like that for awhile. But Maggie Boland is a resourceful girl. She snagged the box from Ryan. Thumped it on the counter. Opened it and swiped up a fat kolache, one of the cheese ones. “It’s his favorite,” she said, then took a huge bite. “See,” she said, spitting pastry crumbs, “they’re still warm.”

  And then she crumbled to the floor clutching her throat like she was choking.

  My pulse hit the ceiling. Ryan’s eyes bugged out.

  “Shit!” Ryan and I slammed to the floor next to Maggie. Figured I’d yank the kolache piece out of her mouth before I attempted CPR. “Open up,” I hollered.

  She was still chewing. She winked at us, making sure Ryan saw too, since he was new to her wily shenanigans, then went back to pretend-choking.

  I gave her pretend CPR while the guard wrung his hands and Ryan counted.

  Maggie sat up, red-faced.

  “It’s a miracle,” I hollered. I leapt to my feet, dragging Ryan with me. “Please, if you could watch her while we deliver the rest of these to Cousin Terry, that would be awesome. Third floor, right?”

  “Fourth,” he mumbled, puzzled eyes still glued to Mags.

  Before he could protest, we took off for the elevators.

  My adrenaline was pumping like nobody’s business.

  Maggie was a badass. Ryan Sloboda was a badass. I was no longer keeping the BIGGEST SECRET EVER from my best friend and my boyfriend. Life was a shit show, but somehow manageable, no matter what happened here.

  As my brain filled fast with these exclamatory revelations, the elevator door opened. We walked out, trying to look casual. And just about slammed into Terry McClain. The look on his face was part angry, part confused, part nervous. Least as far as I could tell. It occurred to me that the guard must have called while we were riding up. I guess there was only so much recovery time Mags could fake.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked. He was polite but uneasy-sounding, his voice rising more than a question’s worth. On the other hand, two ninth graders had just barged into his workplace uninvited.

  “Well,” I said, drawing it out while my brain whirred. “As I mentioned, I’m on the school paper. So’s my friend Ryan. A lot of kids over at Spring Creek were complaining about feeling sick this morning.” I plowed forward, suddenly on a roll. “Bellyaches and tiredness and one girl said she, um, didn’t remember what outfit she’d worn last night. Which you know, with girls, is so important.”

  I did a mental eye roll at myself. When I lied, I sounded like an idiot. I’d have to work on that.

  “Here.” Ryan thrust the bag of energy drink bottles at him. Also the box of kolaches. “We brought a couple of the sample bottles. Oh. And snacks.”

  Terry McClain frowned. His face looked extra pale—grey actually, like he was coming down with the flu or worse—but maybe that was because he was wearing a white lab coat over his khakis. His cheekbones stood out sharper today—had he lost weight? Eyes on us, he unhooked the bag of Extra Energy samples from Ryan’s thumb, dipped his hand inside, and hauled out one of the small bottles. Blue raspberry. It was the color of that window cleaner stuff. Like I said, use the word “free sample” with a bunch of mostly cash-poor high school students, and they’ll consume pretty much anything. Easy pickings if someone really wanted to drug people up.

  That part was weighing harder on me now. Were these drinks really responsible for a chain of events that had barrel-raced into Casey’s saving Lanie and then … I shivered. Maybe it was just this building, all glass and steel and anonymous. My brain offered up a brief memory of Bo’s loft. Lots of windows there too, but cozy somehow, even if Bo was sad and unpredictable and angry. This place was … institutional. There was no personality, no character. No emotion. As Ryan might say, It was a zombie apocalypse.

  I eyeballed Terry—studying him as he studied the gross blue drink, squinting, puckering his lips. Maybe he’d suspected something about this place, too, even though he bragged about his job. People were funny like that. Maybe that’s why he looked so out of sorts. I suddenly wished Amber were here. If I could get Ryan and Mags to believe the truth when they’d suspected something was very wrong, I bet she could take his suspicion and turn it around, too.

  “Let’s go into my lab with this,” Terry said. He jabbed his finger toward the hall to his right.

  My chest loosened. He was going to help us. He was going to figure this out. I would finally have my leverage to get Bo and Amber to make those Management angels bring my brother back. Casey had saved me with everyone else, hadn’t he? And look at Bo. He’d saved the wrong person straight out of the box. And he was still here. (I felt bad about thinking that since it was the woman he loved, but I hadn’t made up those stupid rules, had I?)

  “You sure about this?” Ryan whispered in my ear. “Guy seems kind of squirrelly.”

  “It’s fine,” I whispered back, distracted as his hip bumped against mine. “He’s a genius.” But even as I said the words, I knew it wasn’t that. It was that he’d been Amber’s boyfriend. He’d seen that something in her that was angelic. The same thing Lanie had seen in Casey. Even if he’d cheated on her. And I was pretty sure he’d seen the error of his ways, too. He still cared enough to give her that necklace she wasn’t wearing.

  Ryan blinked a few times, looking troubled. He followed along with me to Terry’s lab, still toting the kolaches.

  “How’s Amber?” Terry asked, striding ahead of us, lab coat flapping against the backs of his legs.

  “Great,” I told him. I decided to leave it at that.

  The lab was big, with long tables and sinks, beakers and stainless steel instruments and blank screens everywhere. He motioned us to keep following, past the lab tables and into what I guess was his office.

  “Sit,” he said when we were inside. He gestured to a couple of chairs in the corner. “How about some coffee?” he added, setting th
e Extra Energy bottle on his desk. Sure enough, another one of those fancy K-cup machines was sitting on a side table. “Y’all pick whatever you want. I have lots of choices.”

  Something was making my stomach uneasy, but we chose our flavors and went through the smashing of the little container so it could pee out our drink. I picked a chocolate glazed donut and Ryan picked Kahlua.

  “Milk?” Terry offered. He opened the mini-fridge sitting on the far end of the table. Pulled out a small unlabeled bottle, like the special organic stuff they sell at Whole Foods.

  He topped off our cups with frothy white liquid. It was fancy whole milk, definitely. I usually went for 2 percent, but decided not to push it. Honestly, it looked delicious. I could live a little right now, given the circumstances. “Just hang here for a bit,” he said, picking up the blue Extra Energy bottle and peering at it through his smudgy hipster glasses. “I’m going to look at this. So you say everybody acted ‘wonky.’ Tell me again what you mean by that.”

  So I told him, obviously leaving out the A-word parts. It came out in the same rapid-fire jumble as had a lot of what I’d been saying today. I sipped my coffee in between sentences. It was delicious: chocolaty and the milk made it thicker, like one of those Starbucks drinks. Texicon knew how to treat their employees.

  Ryan was staring at his, so I elbowed him. “Drink some,” I whispered. “Or he’s going to think we’re ungrateful.”

  He took a small sip. Then shrugged and gulped a bigger mouthful. “Mmm,” he said. Which was the exact moment that my eyes started feeling heavy as lead.

  I blinked hard and rubbed my eyes. Looked over at Ryan. My vision was hazy. All at once he seemed closer and then farther away and then my head swirled and I was pretty sure I was about to yak up the coffee.

  “Jenna,” Ryan said. A distant whisper. Shadows enveloped him.

  “Drink up,” said Terry McClain from somewhere that I could no longer see.