Struck

  The scientists handing out their educated guesses during news interviews were divided. No one could prove the lightning theory, but no one could disprove it either. One thing I had learned firsthand, though, was that you should never underestimate lightning, or what it was capable of. Lightning was the ultimate trickster. Among those who’d been struck, it never affected two people the same way.

  The only thing you could be sure of when it came to lightning was that the whole “lightning never strikes twice” theory couldn’t be more wrong. Once an object had been struck, it was that much more likely to be struck again. It had to do with an exchange of positive and negative energy. Something positively charged on the ground reaches out to the negative charge in the clouds. The two charges meet, and you get lightning. So the reason I was struck again and again was because of my overwhelmingly positive energy. Funny, I’d always thought of myself as a pessimist.

  When the bell rang thirty minutes later, students crowded around Mr. Kale, thrusting their ration cards in his face for him to sign. If we didn’t have signatures from all of our teachers, we wouldn’t get our ration from the aid workers.

  Katrina had told me to meet her in room 317 after school, and although I was anxious to get out of Mr. Kale’s classroom before she showed up, I stayed in my seat, waiting for Jeremy to join the rest of the students so I wouldn’t have to pass by him again. But Jeremy remained seated, and I couldn’t take my eyes off him. His head was bowed, hands covering his face, and his whole body was trembling. I wondered if he was sick. He looked like he was having a seizure.

  Then a flicker of motion caught my eye. The door had opened, and Katrina stepped inside.

  I slumped lower in my desk, but there was no one for me to hide behind. The room had already started to clear out.

  Katrina saw me and smiled.

  Then a lot of things happened at once.

  Katrina stepped to Mr. Kale’s side. They leaned their heads together, and she whispered something to him. His usual stoic expression was replaced by one of unmasked surprise. Then both he and Katrina were staring at me as I sat frozen in my seat.

  Jeremy stopped shaking and abruptly rose to his feet, turning to me. As he did so a breeze pushed its way into the room, through the windows at my back, and my skin began to tingle, like my whole body had fallen asleep and was now waking up to thousands of tiny pinpricks.

  A storm.

  There was a storm coming.

  And Jeremy was walking straight toward me.

  7

  “I NEED TO talk to you,” Jeremy said. From the grim tone of his voice, it sounded like he was about to tell me he’d run over my dog. Not that I had a dog.

  “One second.” I tore my eyes from Jeremy and about-faced in my seat, pressing my hands against the window-pane. I searched the hazy horizon line where the sky pressed against the Pacific. But there was not a breath of white in all that blue. If clouds were gathering, they were beyond my range of sight.

  Not if. Clouds were gathering somewhere. I could feel it. The storm would be here tomorrow. Maybe the day after that. I couldn’t say for sure, but I knew it was coming. Knew it in my warming blood and my tingling skin.

  I swiveled back around in my seat.

  Jeremy stood at the foot of my desk, gazing down at me. I swept my books into my bag and accordioned myself out of my seat. Over Jeremy’s shoulder I could see Katrina and Mr. Kale watching us. Katrina had hoisted herself up to sit on Mr. Kale’s desk, and was swinging her booted legs rhythmically.

  The rest of the students had cleared out, but Mr. Kale’s door was still open, and two more students walked in. Schiz and Quentin, from the cafeteria.

  “Kale, we might have a lead on—” Quentin began, but both he and Schiz froze when they saw me. “Never mind,” Quentin finished.

  “I found her first,” Katrina said. “Me.”

  “No one’s giving out awards,” Schiz told her.

  “But if they were, I’d win.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Jeremy said to me, keeping his voice low. “You don’t know me, Mia, but I need you to trust me. You do not want to get involved with these people. They’re dangerous.”

  He had me at Let’s get out of here.

  “Miss Price,” Mr. Kale said, “a word, please.”

  I don’t know why I did what I did next, but I did it. Call it lack of impulse control, or temporary insanity, or both.

  As I slid past him I grabbed Jeremy’s hand to pull him along after me.

  A wave of heat washed through me, starting in my hand and coursing up my arm, through my shoulders, boiling up my neck and into my brain.

  I had a moment to think, This can’t be good, before my mind went white. And then dark.

  And the dark stayed.

  And the heat stayed.

  And then I—

  —stood on the roof of a building, high, high above the ground. Out in the open air. The city spread out in patches of light far below.

  I was at the Tower.

  In the Waste.

  The wind charged at me suddenly, knocking me off my feet. I fell back, and my head turned up, and what I saw above me stopped my heart and then started it beating faster than ever. Faster than any heart has a right to beat.

  Black clouds filled the sky above my head, hanging so low I could reach up and skim my fingers through them if I chose to. They boiled and grew and spread.

  I felt the charge building.

  Inside the clouds.

  Inside me.

  Opposite charges, needing to connect.

  I got to my feet and held my hands up to the sky, willing the lightning to come to me.

  “Mia. Mia, look at me.”

  I tore my eyes from the massing storm and saw him. Jeremy. Standing near the edge of the roof, shaking his head.

  “It doesn’t have to be like this,” he said.

  “But it does,” I told him. “This is who I am. This is what I’m supposed to do.”

  “You can change it.” He looked so sad it made my heart ache.

  But I turned my face back to the storm, still reaching up.

  Light pulsed in the clouds, but it wasn’t white. It was red. Light the color of blood.

  Thunder pummeled my heart.

  I—

  —opened my eyes. Flat on my back. Blinking up into a ring of faces. Mr. Kale, and Katrina, Quentin, and Parker—

  “Parker?” I sat up so fast my forehead smacked against my brother’s.

  “Ow,” Parker and I said together, rubbing our heads. The bump must have jarred something into place, though, because I remembered what had happened right before things went black and I dreamed …

  Dreamed of the Tower. And lightning. And Jeremy.

  “Are you okay?” Parker asked me. “Did you hit your head?”

  I prodded my skull. No sore spots, except where Parker’s forehead knocked mine. I looked around for Jeremy. “Where did he go?” I asked.

  No one got a chance to answer. Just then Schiz burst back into the room and bent over, panting. “He was too fast,” Schiz wheezed. “I couldn’t … couldn’t …”

  “Couldn’t get your atrophied limbs moving faster than a trot without giving yourself a heart attack?” Katrina said. “I would have had more chance of catching him, and I’m wearing three-inch heels.”

  “Jeremy ran away?” I asked, still foggy.

  “Stayed long enough to catch you before you hit the ground,” Katrina said. “What a gentleman.” She turned back to Schiz. “Did you at least get a read on him before he left you in the dust?”

  “No!” Schiz pounded his fist on one of the desks, and it clattered over on its side.

  “Calm down, Mr. Buckley,” Mr. Kale said, his voice so low it rumbled, reminding me of thunder, of the dream. My heart continued to vibrate in my chest.

  “Don’t tell me to calm down! He could have been a spy for them! Just because he wasn’t wearing white—”

  “Mr. Buckley!” Kale said sharply, s
taring him down. The air felt suddenly prickly as some unspoken communication seemed to pass between them. It wasn’t my imagination. I could feel the static in the air, the way I could feel the electric energy in an approaching storm.

  Schiz folded his arms across his chest. “Okay, I’m cool. See? I just can’t believe he got away.”

  “I can,” Katrina said. “Ever heard of a treadmill?”

  “Screw you.”

  “Careful, or I’ll ask Uncle Kale to fix you so you can’t talk back to me.”

  “And I’ll say no,” Mr. Kale told her stiffly.

  “It’s my fault,” Quentin said. “I should have gone after him, too. I got distracted.” Quentin nodded at Parker. “Didn’t expect to see you here, man.”

  Parker shook his head, confused. “I still don’t know what I’m doing here.”

  Katrina turned to me with her hands on her hips. “What did he say to you?” she demanded. I was still on the floor, so she towered over me.

  I assumed she was talking about Jeremy. “N-nothing,” I stammered. “He said he wanted to talk to me.” And that you were dangerous.

  “Are you sure?” Katrina narrowed her eyes.

  “Why would I lie? I don’t even know him. Never seen him before in my life.” But there was something familiar about him, wasn’t there?

  “Good. Stay away from him,” Katrina said. “Don’t have anything to do with him.”

  Funny, he said the same thing about you.

  “Katrina, give her some room.” Mr. Kale nudged her aside. “Can you stand, Miss Price?”

  “I guess so.” I couldn’t believe I’d passed out. I couldn’t believe I’d passed out and then Jeremy had ditched me. Jerk. Beautiful, beautiful jerk.

  Mr. Kale offered me his hand to help me up. I caught sight of the ring of red scar tissue on his palm. His hand gripped mine and electricity jolted through me, like I’d grabbed hold of a live wire.

  I gasped, tried to take my hand back, but Mr. Kale didn’t let go until he’d hauled me to my feet. Then I was stumbling away from him. From all of them. Back toward the bank of windows and the ocean breeze that carried its storm warning.

  “What was that?” I demanded. “What did you do?”

  The buzzing in my palm where Mr. Kale touched me was suddenly in my head. I slapped my hands over my ears, but I couldn’t shut the sound out. The buzzing was inside, rattling my brain. My head felt like it was full of flies. Full of static, so loud I could barely hear my own thoughts.

  My eyes flew from face to face. Who were these people, and why were they looking at me like they’d found a hundred-dollar bill on the sidewalk and planned to keep it? And what was Parker doing here?

  “He was invited,” Mr. Kale said. “Like you.”

  “What?” I lowered my hands from my ears. I couldn’t have heard him right.

  “You wondered what your brother is doing here. I’m telling you.”

  “How did you … you didn’t … you couldn’t …” I couldn’t. Finish the sentence, that is.

  I thought of the way the air had prickled when Mr. Kale stared Schiz down, and how that prickling had migrated into my skull, and I was suddenly terrified.

  He read my mind. He read my freaking mind!

  No way. Not possible.

  In an instant, the buzzing died down. Mr. Kale’s mouth twisted into a knowing smile. A knowing-too-much smile.

  I looked at Parker. He reached into his pocket and removed a flat, rectangular card. He flipped it to show me the face. The image. An androgynous person floating in the center of a circle. Another tarot card. Another circle.

  I shook my head. “What does it mean?”

  Katrina plucked the card from his fingers, produced her deck, and slid it back among the other cards.

  “The name of his card is the World,” Katrina said, and smiled at Parker. “It’s the card he drew. The card that drew him, actually. It’s a sign that he’s meant to be one of us. Potential Seekers always draw the World, and this deck is never wrong. It’s more than two hundred years old. Belonged to my great-great-great grandmother, the founder of our circle, and it always knows what’s inside a person. Parker is meant to serve our cause.”

  I raised an eyebrow at my brother, who held up his hands in a show of helplessness.

  “She stopped me in the hall before fourth period and asked me to pick a card,” he explained. “Then she told me to come to this room after school. She said you’d be here, too.”

  My gaze swung to Katrina. She was standing on her heels, arms behind her back, biting her lip in a playful, seductive way. Like Lolita.

  “Who are you? Do you even go to this school?” I asked her. “I’ve never seen you before today.”

  “Oh, I’ve been hanging around a lot lately,” she said. “I thought we’d tested nearly everyone at Skyline for the Spark. I couldn’t believe we’d missed you until Uncle Kale told me this is your first day back since the quake.”

  Now it was Parker who raised eyebrows at me, waiting for an explanation. All I could do was shake my head, but the word she used, the Spark … that was what it felt like when Mr. Kale touched my hand.

  Sparks. Miniature lightning bolts.

  Mr. Kale cleared his throat. “We’ll explain as much as we can. Mia, Parker, please have a seat.”

  In my mind, I heard Jeremy say, You do not want to get involved with these people. They’re dangerous.

  “I think I’ve heard enough,” I told them.

  “Mia,” Parker said. “Let’s listen to what they have to say. It can’t hurt.”

  “No. We need to go home. Now. Mom is waiting for us. Remember her? Remember Mom?”

  Parker’s face flushed red. He lowered his eyes. “I have a feeling this is important.”

  “I’ll take you home, if you want to stay,” Quentin said, that watchful gaze of his steady on my brother.

  Parker nodded his head, almost imperceptibly. He seemed mesmerized. “I’m staying,” he said, and there was no room for argument in his voice.

  “Five minutes,” I said to Mr. Kale. “Who are you people?”

  As though they’d run through this scenario beforehand—and as far as I knew, they had—Mr. Kale, Katrina, Schiz, and Quentin raised their right hands like they were taking an oath. Each of them had a perfect circle of scar tissue branded on his or her palm.

  “We are members of the Circle of Seekers,” Mr. Kale said.

  “The Circle of Seekers,” I repeated slowly. “Whatever you say. So what are you ‘seeking’? Buried treasure? The holy grail?”

  “People,” Mr. Kale said, and the four of them lowered their hands. “People like you.”

  Katrina sauntered toward me, hips swaying. “We are the answer to a question you have yet to ask. Who is going to save Los Angeles from the false prophet and his Followers? Who is going to save the world?”

  “That’s two questions,” I pointed out.

  She ignored me. “Answer: We are.”

  My gaze traveled from one face to the next as I tried to judge whether they were serious. But Parker was nodding silently to himself, as though Katrina had confirmed something he suspected all along.

  “Did you know about this?” I asked Parker.

  His nodding turned to a head shake, but it was a hesitant transition. “I—” he began, and then scrubbed a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. Ever since the quake, I’ve felt—”

  “Like the earthquake was only the beginning,” Schiz said. “The precursor for something worse.”

  Nodding again, fervently now. “Yes.”

  The whites of Schiz’s eyes were veined red, like he hadn’t slept in days. “We felt it, too, like this sense of inevitability. Like there’s something we’re meant to do, and the earthquake was our wake-up call. And it was. There’s a war coming, and we need every soldier we can gather before the big day arrives. Consider yourselves drafted.”

  “Why us?” Parker asked.

  Quentin slapped Parker lightly on the should
er. “I guess you could say you both have certain qualities we’re looking for.”

  Parker’s eyes were wide. “The Spark?” he said. “I have it?”

  “Well … not exactly.”

  Some of the eagerness went out of Parker’s eyes. “Oh.”

  “Hey, don’t worry about it. I don’t have the Spark either, but that doesn’t mean my role isn’t important. I’ll play my part in this, and I’m glad to do it.”

  “What exactly is your part?” I asked. Curiosity was starting to get the better of me.

  The Seekers shared a glance, but it was Mr. Kale who answered, looking at my brother as he spoke.

  “Seekers who don’t possess the Spark can still sense it in others, as you sensed it in me when I touched your hand, Mia. But all Seekers, once they’re bonded to us, act as conductors for the Spark.”

  My head pendulumed slowly back and forth. Bonding? Conductors? Sparks? I knew the meaning of these words, of course, and I knew about conductors. A conductor transmitted energy. “Conductor” was another word for a lightning rod, and being a human lightning rod myself, I was also, technically, a conductor. It sounded simple enough, and yet I didn’t understand any of it.

  “Okay, I’ll bite,” I said. “What’s the Spark?”

  “Simplest explanation,” Mr. Kale said. “The Spark is energy. Electricity.”

  “Can I geek out for a second?” Schiz said, looking to Mr. Kale for permission. The teacher nodded, and Schiz’s eyes lit up. He spoke so fast I could barely keep up. “It’s like our bodies produce this electromagnetic field, and when the voltage is high enough, it extends beyond the body. Did you know every thought you have creates an electrical impulse in your brain? Imagine if you have a hundred times more electricity in your body than a regular person. Or a thousand times. A hundred thousand! Get it? You can learn to use the energy by will alone. Imagine what you could do with a single thought!”

  Parker and I shared a glance, and I knew he was thinking about what happened in Lake Havasu City before we fled. I looked away first.