Struck

  15

  I’M SURE MIA will deliver the bad news for us, Katrina had predicted. I hated to give her the satisfaction of being right, but that was exactly what I intended to do.

  At home, I headed straight for Parker’s closed bedroom door. I raised my fist to knock, but was distracted by a voice coming from down the hall, from Mom’s room. She and Parker must be in there together, probably having a meaningful conversation about what Mom had revealed at the survivors’ meeting. And I was being left out. Again.

  I crept down the hall and opened Mom’s door a crack.

  Parker wasn’t there, and at first I didn’t see Mom either. Then I spotted her kneeling beside the bed, hands clasped. I sucked in a breath when I realized she was praying. I hadn’t seen Mom pray in years, and only in Grandma’s presence. Never alone.

  “—forgive me, Dear Lord, for failing as a mother … failing to lead my children to the light. Their sins are my sins. Please, God, forgive my daughter. Show her the light and the way of righteousness. And … and please forgive her for what she did to those people in Arizona. Please don’t let her hurt anyone else. Please help me forgive her. Please, please take this terrible curse from her—”

  Stunned, I backed silently away from her room until I stood in the living room, in the dark.

  Cursed? Was that what she thought of me? Granted, I’d referred to myself as “cursed” more than a few times, but Mom was always the first to insist that I wasn’t cursed at all. She said I was special. Unique.

  She was lying.

  I unlocked the front door and stepped outside onto the porch. I needed some air, but the moist ocean breeze carried its pins-and-needles storm warning to my skin, which did nothing to help with my building anxiety. In the distance, I could see hundreds of fires dotting the beach in Tentville, gray smoke tunneling into the sky.

  I surveyed the dark street, and wondered …

  I cleared my throat. “Jeremy?” I called softly, feeling ridiculous. “Are you there?”

  As though he’d been waiting for an invitation to appear, Jeremy stepped from behind a hedge like a shadow that had shaken its maker. Again, this version of Jeremy in the dark, this light-rimmed silhouette, reminded me of something, and again I struggled to grasp what that was.

  I didn’t move from the porch. I let him come to me, and as he approached, the porch light gave him color and the memory slipped away.

  “Where’s your militiaman?” he asked, glancing around.

  “I gave him the night off.” I narrowed my eyes at Jeremy. “Why? Do I need protection from you?”

  He shook his head, but yellow light from the porch lamp reflected off the lenses of those black-framed glasses, screening his eyes.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  He shoved his hands in his pockets like he didn’t know what else to do with them. His cheeks looked smooth, like he’d just shaved. My fingers wanted to feel them to know for sure, so I trapped my hands in my pockets, too.

  “I wanted to make sure you were okay after what happened on the beach, and—” He cleared his throat and lowered his eyes. “After what I showed you.”

  I didn’t know what to say. The truth was, I still hadn’t really processed what had happened that day. What was still happening.

  “Why do you care?” I descended the steps until we were nearly at eye level. “And why do you seem so familiar to me? Have we met before today?”

  Jeremy lowered his chin, turned his face away. He pulled a hand from his pocket and smoothed his hair down over his forehead. He glanced up at me through the tops of his glasses. His voice was soft. Low. “I’ve seen you before.”

  My cheeks felt warm. “There you go, sounding like a stalker again.” But I found myself wanting to stand closer to him. Jeremy’s pull was like an opposite charge, asking me to reach out. To connect. It was so similar to that feeling I had when a storm moved in overhead, that need to call the lightning down and let it inside me.

  I descended another step. Only one more and I’d be right in front of him, inches of nothing separating us. “Jeremy, have you ever heard of something called the Spark?”

  The muscles in his neck tensed. “Who told you about that?”

  “You know what it is, then. And you know who the Seekers are.” I swallowed. “You’re not one of them, though, are you? I mean, you’re not trying to recruit me to some … some cause or army or something?”

  He shook his head quickly. “No, I’m trying to keep you out of that.”

  “Why?”

  “The fewer questions you ask, the better off you’ll be.”

  I ignored this advice. “Can I tell you something, even if it sounds crazy?” I watched for his reaction. “Those people you warned me about, the Seekers … they told me the apocalypse is coming, and claimed some fortune-teller had a vision about me a couple hundred years ago, something to do with the Tower.” I searched Jeremy’s face. He didn’t even blink. “Also, I think Mr. Kale can read minds and talk without opening his mouth. Not like a ventriloquist. Like he can talk inside your mind. What do you think about that?”

  A ripple of disturbance appeared on Jeremy’s face. “I think you should guard your thoughts carefully when you’re with Mr. Kale. Or avoid him altogether.”

  “Doesn’t any of this sound the least bit strange to you?” I answered my own question. “I guess it wouldn’t to someone who can do what you do.”

  Jeremy took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “This is harder than I thought it would be.”

  He stepped closer to me, pulling his hands out of his pockets like he wanted to reach out and touch me. But he kept his arms at his sides, straight and stiff, like he didn’t trust them.

  “The things I showed you this afternoon …”

  “The dreams?”

  He shook his head. “They’re more than dreams. They’re warnings. Visions. And I’ve been seeing them and thousands of others like them for as long as I can remember.” His eyes locked onto mine. “You’ve been in my head for years, Mia. I’ve seen you so many times, in so many possible situations, I can’t remember them all. Now you’re right in front of me, and I don’t know what to do.”

  I opened my mouth to say something, not sure what that something would be, but Jeremy raised a hand to silence me.

  “Let me finish,” he said. “I don’t know how to stop the things I’ve seen from happening. I don’t know how to stop any of this without … I don’t know, tying you up and locking you in a closet until it’s over.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” I eased backward up the steps. “I definitely don’t like the sound of that.”

  He dug his hands into his hair in frustration, clenching fistfuls. “That came out wrong. I didn’t mean I would actually do it. Only that I don’t know any other way to protect you from the Seekers. And from yourself. I don’t think you have any idea what you’re capable of, but the Seekers do. And Prophet … if he knew about you, he’d—” Jeremy cut off, as though he’d said too much.

  “He would what?”

  “He would want you,” Jeremy said simply. “He would do whatever it took to turn you to his side, and that would be worse than if you joined the Seekers. But if you stay out of everything … if you don’t get involved—”

  I cut him off. “You think I want to be involved in any of this? I don’t want people having prophecies about me, or giving me tarot cards, or trying to recruit me for Team Apocalypse. And … and I don’t want your dreams or visions or whatever they are.” I sighed. It was a mistake to come out here. I already had more problems than I could handle without Jeremy and his tortured eyes piling a few more complications on my back.

  “Please stop following me,” I forced myself to say. “I’m going to need you to leave now. Goodbye, Jeremy.”

  I was at the front door when he called after me.

  “You don’t sleep. Not very often, anyway.”

  I turned around. “How do you know that?”

  My head was partially
blocking the porch light, casting Jeremy in shadow again, and the memory of where I’d seen him came rushing at me like water from a flash flood.

  The dream I’d had, of the boy at my bedside with his knife.

  Nightmare Boy.

  No wonder I hadn’t remembered. I hadn’t thought he was real.

  “You were in my room,” I said before I could stop the words.

  Jeremy’s eyes widened and I saw the truth in them.

  “Mia, I—”

  “What were you going to do with the knife, Jeremy?”

  “Nothing!”

  “Then why did you have it? Why did you break into my house and come up to my room and stand there with a knife like you were going to stab me?”

  “I swear I wouldn’t have done it. I thought I could. I didn’t see any other way—”

  “Any other way to what? To protect me from myself?”

  He took a step toward me, but stopped when I backed up against the door.

  “Mia,” he said carefully. “I don’t know how else to put this … I tried to show you, but I don’t think you understand. There is a strong possibility that, within the next few days, you will do something terrible. Something I’m trying to prevent.”

  I was shaking all over. “Something you tried to prevent by killing me.”

  “But I didn’t go through with it!”

  “I don’t care,” I said, grabbing the doorknob and wrenching it. “Stay away from me. If you come near my house again, I’ll call the cops or the militia or whoever will answer.”

  “Mia, please—”

  I didn’t give him a chance to finish. I slipped inside and locked the door behind me, watched through the front window until Jeremy went away. Only then did I take what felt like my first breath in minutes.

  Before going to my bedroom, I went through the house and checked every door and window.

  Even when I was in bed under my blankets, I couldn’t stop shaking. I wasn’t cold.

  I was never cold.

  I was terrified.

  PART 2

  “Ain’t a cloud in the sky …

  Don’t see no sun but don’t see no cloud neither.”

  —Flannery O’Connor,

  A Good Man Is Hard to Find

  APRIL 15

  Two days until the storm …

  16

  AFTER LYING AWAKE all night, stacking up my worries one on top of the other like I was trying to build my very own tower out of them, I got out of bed when the first hint of light touched my bedroom window. It wasn’t even six, but I was supposed to be in Mr. Kale’s classroom at seven for “initiation,” whatever that meant. I had yet to talk to Parker about the deal I’d made with Katrina.

  In the bathroom, I turned on the faucet to brush my teeth. Nothing happened. There was only a dry chugging of pipes. The water was off again. Great start to what was bound to be another in a series of bad days. I would have to skip a few steps in my morning routine, but oh well. Who was I trying to impress? Not Jeremy, stalker with aspirations of murder.

  I hadn’t made good on my threat to call the police and report his B&E&IK (intended knifing), but I had a feeling Jeremy wouldn’t be breaking into my house again anytime soon. Still, I had another feeling I hadn’t seen the last of him.

  I climbed into an outfit that looked identical to what I’d worn the day before—black turtleneck, black jeans, black boots, black fingerless gloves—realized I wasn’t sure they weren’t the same clothes I’d worn yesterday, realized I didn’t care, and headed downstairs.

  I’d thought I would be the only one awake so early, but I could hear someone in the kitchen. I figured it was Parker. He thought he still had an initiation invitation. I steeled myself for the reaction I was bound to get when he heard how and why things had changed.

  I stepped into the kitchen and blinked in surprise. Mom stood at the counter, not Parker. She was dressed in clean clothes, and her hair was pulled back, not hanging greasy in her face as it usually was, hiding her scars. Now they were fully revealed, a pink slash across her forehead, one below her left eye, and a series of them striking her right cheek.

  “Morning,” Mom said, smiling at me. Two pieces of toast jumped from their toaster slots. At least the electricity was still on. Mom grabbed them, set them on a plate, and inserted two more pieces of bread. “Do we have any butter or jam left?”

  I shook my head. I was having trouble accessing basic vocabulary words like “yes” and “no.”

  Mom made a face. “Dry toast. Hm. Well, I made oatmeal, too.” She indicated three bowls of congealing beige mush on the kitchen table.

  “Mom?” I said as she stacked the toast on a plate.

  She looked up at me. “Hm?”

  I wasn’t sure what I’d meant to say, so I didn’t say anything. Instead I surprised both of us by wrapping my arms around her and hugging her. For a split second she tensed, as though afraid I might hurt her. Then she relaxed and gathered me closer to her.

  “I love you, Mom,” I told her.

  “I love you, too, Mia,” she said in a whisper, like she wanted to keep it between us.

  She thinks you’re cursed, a nasty little voice reminded me.

  Parker appeared in the doorway, dressed for school. When he saw us, he stared, looking as dumbstruck as I’d felt a moment before.

  “Hungry?” Mom asked him.

  “Starved,” he said. His eyes met mine for a moment and he grinned. Remembering the deal I had made with Katrina last night, I did not return his smile.

  “I have to be at school early,” I told him, taking my seat at the table. “Eat quick.”

  “No, no,” Mom said, “I want you two to relax and enjoy breakfast. Whatever’s going on at school can wait.”

  “It’s pretty important,” I said, still giving Parker sliver eyes as he sat down across from me.

  “Mia, please.” Mom brought the last of the toast to the table. “This is a special morning. Before we start eating I think we should offer a prayer.”

  Parker froze with a spoonful of oatmeal halfway to his mouth.

  She went on. “There’s not much time left. We have to start living right, and we have to start now. You heard what Prophet said about the storm. Only three days—no, two days until it arrives. We have to get right with God before then.” Mom’s eyes went to me. “Mia, will you pray?”

  Parker slammed my car door. “Why couldn’t you just say the stupid prayer like she asked? If praying before we eat makes her feel better, we should do it.”

  “It may make her feel better, but it’s not going to make her better,” I said.

  “But she is getting better! You saw how she was this morning. She got out of bed, got dressed. She made breakfast for us. She’s trying! I bet it’s because she’s not on all that medication you were forcing her to take.”

  “I wasn’t forcing her to take anything,” I snapped, pulling sharply away from the curb. “Besides, she thinks the world is going to end in a couple days. Do you call that a healthy mind? I don’t.”

  Parker stewed in silence.

  “Speaking of the world ending …” I said casually. “You haven’t heard from any of the Seekers, have you?”

  “No.”

  “Good.” I nodded to myself. “Now I know you’re willing to lie straight to my face.”

  My brother went still, like a deer hoping it hasn’t been spotted by a hunter. Then he released the breath he’d been holding. “Like I had a choice? If I told you, you’d freak out on me, and …”

  “And what?”

  “And I’d join them anyway! I think they’re right, Mia! There’s something wrong in L.A., and it’s bigger than the earthquake. I can feel it. Don’t tell me you can’t.”

  “I don’t feel anything,” I said. “And you’re not joining the Seekers.”

  “I am. It’s the right thing to do.”

  “No, Parker, you’re really not.”

  He stared at me for a long moment, reading me. “You were at th
e school last night. That’s why your car was gone when we got home.” His voice came out flat. “What did you do, Mia?”

  I told him. It didn’t go well.

  As soon as we reached the Skyline parking lot my brother was out of the car, running through the crowds of students toward the school.

  “Parker, wait!” I called after him.

  He didn’t even turn around.

  17

  “I TOLD YOU she would come!” Katrina said when she opened the door to room 317. She wasn’t talking to me, though. She was talking to the roomful of people behind her … people wearing long, bloodred cloaks, almost like graduation gowns, but with hoods pulled over their heads, and black, featureless masks concealing their faces. The only ones not wearing masks were Mr. Kale and Katrina, though both were draped in the same red cloaks as the others. Katrina’s lips matched her cloak perfectly.

  My gloved hands clenched into fists. I glared at Mr. Kale. “You said this wasn’t a cult.”

  Katrina yanked me inside and locked the door behind me. “Secret society,” she said. “There’s a difference.”

  “Not from where I’m standing.”

  “Then have a seat,” Mr. Kale said, patting the back of a chair positioned at the center of the room. The desks had been pushed back against the walls, making space for the cloaked, masked people. The lights were off and the blinds drawn, so Mr. Kale’s spectacular ocean view was obscured.

  I sniffed, smelled something burning.

  Katrina grabbed a rectangle of black construction paper with tape already on one side and stuck it to the small window in the door, making it impossible for anyone outside the room to peek in.

  The people in the red cloaks watched me silently from behind their black masks. One of them could be Parker and I would never know.

  Katrina didn’t need her uncle’s ability to read my mind. “Parker was just here. Uncle Kale sent him away.”

  I nodded, as relieved as I could be while still in my current situation. I wondered how long Parker would stay mad at me.