I Am Number Four

I walk the rest of the way as silently as I can, Sam tiptoeing behind me. When we are just a few feet away a twig snaps beneath Sam’s foot.

“John?” Sarah asks. She’s sitting on a large rock with her knees to her chest and her arms wrapped around them. She isn’t wearing goggles and squints in our direction.

“Yes,” I say. “And Sam.”

She smiles. “Told you,” she says, and I assume she’s talking to Mark.

The water I heard is nothing more than a small babbling brook. Mark steps forward.

“Well, well, well,” he says.

“Shut up, Mark,” I say. “Manure in my locker was one thing, but you’ve gone way too far with this one.”

“You think? It’s eight on two.”

“Sam has nothing to do with this. You scared to face me alone?” I ask. “What are you expecting to happen? You’ve tried kidnapping two people. Do you really think they’ll keep silent?”

“Yeah, I do. When they see me whip your ass.”

“You’re delusional,” I say, then turn to the others. “For those of you who don’t want to go into the water, I suggest you leave now. Mark is going in no matter what. He’s lost his chance to barter.”

All of them snicker. One of them asks what “barter” means.

“Now’s your last chance,” I say.

Every one of them stands firm.

“So be it,” I say.

A nervous excitement plants itself in the center of my chest. As I take one step forward Mark steps back and trips over his own feet, falling to the ground. Two of the guys come at me, both bigger than me. One swings but I duck his punch and send one of my own into his gut. He doubles over with his hands holding his stomach. I shove the second guy and his feet leave the ground. He lands with a thud five feet away and the momentum pushes him into the water. He comes up splashing. The others stand rooted, shocked. I sense Sam moving over toward Sarah. I grab hold of the first guy and drag him across the ground. His errant kicks slice through the air but hit nothing. When we are at the bank of the brook I lift him by the waistband of his jeans and throw him into the water. Another guy lunges at me. I merely sidestep him and he lands face-first in the brook. Three down, four to go. I wonder how much of this Sarah and Sam can see without goggles on.

“You guys are making it too easy for me,” I say. “Who’s next?”

The biggest of the group throws a punch that comes nowhere near hitting me, though I counter so swiftly that his elbow catches me in the face and the goggle strap snaps. The goggles fall to the ground. I can only see slight shadows now. I throw a punch and hit the guy in the jaw and he falls to the ground like a sack of potatoes. He looks lifeless, and I fear that I’ve hit him too hard. I rip his goggles from his face and put them on.

“Any volunteers?”

Two of them hold their hands up in front of them in surrender; the third stands with his mouth gaping open like an idiot.

“That leaves you, Mark.”

Mark turns as though he intends to run, but I lunge forward and grab him before he can, pulling his arms up into a full nelson. He writhes in pain.

“This ends right now, do you understand me?”

I squeeze tighter and he grunts in pain. “Whatever you have against me, you drop it now. That includes Sam and Sarah. You understand?”

My grip tightens. I fear that if I squeeze any tighter his shoulder will pop from its socket.

“I said, do you understand me?”

“Yes!”

I drag him over to Sarah. Sam is sitting on the rock beside her now.

“Apologize.”

“Come on, man. You’ve proven your point.”

I squeeze.

“I’m sorry!” he yells.

“Say it like you mean it.”

He takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“You’re an asshole, Mark!” Sarah says, and slaps him hard across the face. He tenses, but I’m holding him firmly and there isn’t a thing he can do about it.

I drag him to the water. The rest of the guys stand watching in shock. The guy I had knocked out is sitting up scratching his head as though trying to figure out what has happened. I breathe a sigh of relief that he isn’t badly hurt.

“You’re not going to say a word to anybody about this, you understand me?” I say, my voice so low that only Mark can hear me. “Everything that has happened tonight, it dies here. I swear, if I hear one word about it in school next week this is nothing compared to what will happen to you. Do you understand me? Not a single word.”

“Do you really think I would say anything?” he asks.

“You make sure you tell your friends the same. If they tell a single soul it will be you that I come for.”

“We won’t say anything,” he says.

I let go, put my foot on his butt, and push him face-first into the water. Sarah is standing at the rock with Sam beside her. She hugs me tightly when I get to her.

“Do you know kung fu or something?” she asks.

I laugh nervously. “Could you see much?”

“Not a lot, but I could tell what was happening. I mean, have you been training in the mountains your whole life or what? I don’t understand how you did that.”

“I was just scared something would happen to you, I guess. And yeah, there was the past twelve years of martial arts training high in the Himalayas.”

“You’re amazing.” Sarah laughs. “Let’s get out of here.”

None of the guys say a word to us. After ten feet I realize I have no idea where I’m going so I give the goggles to Sarah to lead the way.

“I can’t friggin’ believe that,” Sarah says. “I mean, what an asshole. Wait till they try to explain it to the police. I’m not letting him get away with it.”

“Are you really going to the police? Mark’s dad is the sheriff, after all,” I say.

“Why wouldn’t I after that? It was bullshit. Mark’s dad’s job is to enforce law, even when his son breaks it.”

I shrug in the darkness. “I think they received their punishment.”

I bite my lip, terrified of the police getting involved. If they do I’ll have to leave, no way around it. We’ll be packed up and headed out of town within the hour of Henri knowing. I sigh.

“Don’t you think?” I ask. “I mean, they’ve already lost several of the night-vision goggles. They’ll have to explain that. And that’s not to mention the icy cold water.”

Sarah doesn’t say anything. We walk in silence and I pray that she is debating the merits of letting it go.

Eventually the end of the woods comes into view. Light reaches in from the park. When I stop, Sarah and Sam both look at me. Sam has been silent the entire time and I’m hoping that it’s because he couldn’t really see what was happening, the dark for once serving as an unexpected ally, that maybe he’s a little shaken up by everything.

“It’s up to you guys,” I say, “but I’m all for just letting the matter die. I really don’t want to have to talk to police about what happened.”

The light falls on Sarah’s skeptical face. She shakes her head.

“I think he’s right,” Sam says. “I don’t want to have to sit and write a stupid statement for the next half hour. I’ll be in deep crap; my mom thinks I went to bed an hour ago.”

“You live nearby?” I ask.

He nods. “Yeah, and I gotta go before she checks my room. I’ll see you guys around.”

Without another word, Sam hurries away. He’s clearly rattled. He’s probably never been in a fight and certainly never one where he was kidnapped and attacked in the woods. I’ll try talking to him tomorrow. If he did see something he shouldn’t have, I’ll convince him his eyes were playing tricks on him.

Sarah turns my face to hers and traces the line of my cut with her thumb, moving it very gently across my forehead. Then she traces both my brows, staring into my eyes.

“Thank you for tonight. I knew you were going to come.”

I shrug. “I wasn’t going to let him scare you.”

She smiles and I can see her eyes glistening in the moonlight. She moves towards me and as I realize what’s about to happen my breath catches in my throat. She presses her lips to mine and everything inside of me turns to rubber. It’s a soft kiss, lingering. My first. Then she pulls away and her eyes take me in. I don’t know what to say. A million different thoughts run through my head. My legs feel wobbly and I’m barely able to stay upright.

“I knew you were special the first time I saw you,” she says.

“I felt the same with you.”

She reaches up and kisses me again, her hand lightly pressed to my cheek. For the first few seconds I’m lost in the feel of her lips on mine and in the idea that I’m with this beautiful girl.

She pulls away and both of us smile at each other, saying nothing, staring into each other’s eyes.

“Well, I think we better go see if Emily is still here,” Sarah says after about ten seconds. “Or else I’ll be stranded.”

“I’m sure she is,” I say.

We hold hands on the walk to the pavilion. I can’t stop thinking about our kisses. The fifth tractor chugs along the trail. The trailer is full and there’s still a line ten or so people long waiting their turn. And after everything that happened in the woods, with Sarah’s warm hand in mine, the smile doesn’t leave my face.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THE FIRST SNOWFALL COMES TWO WEEKS LATER. A slight dusting, just enough to cover the truck with a fine powder. Since just after Halloween, once the Loric crystal spread the Lumen throughout my body, Henri has begun my real training. We’ve worked every day, without fail, through the cold weather and the rain and now the snow. Though he doesn’t say it I believe he’s impatient for me to be ready. It started with disconcerted looks, his brows crinkled while he chewed on his bottom lip, followed by deep sighs and eventually sleepless nights, the floorboards creaking under his feet while I lay awake in my room, to where we are now, an inherent desperation in Henri’s strained voice.

We stand in the backyard, ten feet apart, facing each other.

“I’m not really in the mood today,” I say.

“I know you’re not, but we have to anyway.”

I sigh and look at my watch. It’s four o’clock.

“Sarah will be here at six,” I say.

“I know,” Henri says. “That’s why we must hurry.”

He holds a tennis ball in each hand.

“Are you ready?” he asks.

“As ready as I’ll ever be.”

He throws the first ball high in the air, and as it reaches its apex, I try to conjure a power deep within me to keep it from falling. I don’t know how I’m supposed to do it, only that I should be able to do it, with time and practice, says Henri. Each Garde develops the ability to move objects with their mind. Telekinesis. And instead of letting me discover it on my own—as I did my hands—Henri seems hell-bent on waking the power from whatever cave it’s hibernating in.

The ball drops just as the thousand or so balls before it did, without a single interruption, bouncing twice, then lying motionless in the snow-covered grass.

I let out a deep sigh. “I’m not feeling it today.”

“Again,” Henri says.

He throws the second ball. I try to move it, to stop it, everything inside of me straining to just make the damn thing move a single inch to the right or left, but no luck. It hits the ground as well. Bernie Kosar, who has been watching us, walks out to it, picks it up, and walks away.

“It’ll come in its own time,” I say.

Henri shakes his head. The muscles in his jaw are flexed. His moods and impatience are getting to me. He watches Bernie Kosar trot off with the ball, then he sighs.

“What?” I ask.

He shakes his head again. “Let’s keep trying.”

He walks over and picks up the other ball. Then he flings it high in the air. I try to stop it but of course it just falls.

“Maybe tomorrow,” I say.

Henri nods and looks at the ground. “Maybe tomorrow.”

I am covered in sweat and mud and melted snow after our workout. Henri pushed me harder than normal today and came at me with an aggression that could only be steeped in panic. Beyond the telekinesis practice, most of our session was spent drilling technique in fighting—hand-to-hand combat, wrestling, mixed martial arts—followed by elements of composure—grace under pressure, mind control, how to spot fear in the eyes of an opponent and then know how best to expose it. It wasn’t Henri’s hard training that got to me, but rather the look in his eyes. A distressed look, tinged with fear, despair, disappointment. I don’t know if he’s just concerned about progress, or if it’s something deeper, but these sessions are becoming very exhausting—emotionally and physically.

Sarah arrives right on time. I walk outside and kiss her as she’s coming up to the front porch. I take her coat from her and hang it when we’re inside. Our home-ec midterm is a week away, and it was her idea to cook the meal before we’ll have to prepare it in class. As soon as we begin cooking Henri grabs his jacket and goes for a walk. He takes Bernie Kosar with him and I’m thankful for the privacy. We make baked chicken breasts and potatoes and steamed vegetables, and the meal comes out far better than I had hoped. When all is ready the three of us sit and eat together. Henri is silent through most of it. Sarah and I break the awkward silence with small talk, about school, about our going to the movies the following Saturday. Henri rarely looks up from his plate other than to offer how wonderful the meal is.

When dinner is over Sarah and I wash the dishes and retreat to the couch. Sarah brought a movie over and we watch it on our small TV, but Henri mostly stares out the window. Halfway through he gets up with a sigh and walks outside. Sarah and I watch him go. We hold hands and she leans against me with her head on my shoulder. Bernie Kosar sits beside her with his head in her lap, a blanket draped over both of them. It may be cold and blustery outside, but it’s warm and cozy in our living room.

“Is your dad okay?” Sarah asks.

“I don’t know. He’s been acting weird.”

“He was really quiet during dinner.”

“Yeah, I’m going to go check on him. I’ll be right back,” I say, and follow Henri outside. He’s standing on the porch—looking out into the darkness.

“So what’s going on?” I ask.

He looks up at the stars in contemplation.

“Something doesn’t feel right,” he says.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re not going to like it.”

“Okay. Let’s have it.”

“I don’t know how much longer we should stay here. It doesn’t feel safe to me.”

My heart sinks and I stay silent.

“They’re frantic, and I think they’re getting close. I can feel it. I don’t think we’re safe here.”

“I don’t want to leave.”

“I knew you wouldn’t.”

“We’ve kept hidden.”

Henri looks at me with a raised brow. “No offense, John, but I hardly think you’ve stayed in the shadows.”

“I have where it counts.”

He nods. “I guess we’ll see.”

He walks to the edge of the porch and places his hands on the rail. I stand beside him. New snowflakes start falling, sifting down, specks of white shimmering on an otherwise dark night.

“That’s not all,” Henri says.

“I didn’t think it was.”

He sighs. “You should have already developed telekinesis. It almost always comes with your first Legacy. Very rarely does it come after, and when it does, it’s never longer than a week later.”

I look over at him. His eyes are full of concern, and creases of worry traverse the length of his forehead.

“Your Legacies come from Lorien. They always have.”

“So what are you telling me?”

“I don’t know how much we can expect from here on out,” he says, and pauses. “Since we’re no longer on the planet, I don’t know if the rest of your Legacies will come at all. And if that is true, we have no hope of fighting the Mogadorians, much less defeating them. And if we can’t defeat them, we’ll never be able to go back.”

I watch the snowfall, unable to decide whether I should be worried or relieved, relieved since perhaps that would bring an end to our moving and we could finally settle. Henri points at the stars.

“Right there,” he says. “Right there is where Lorien is.”

Of course I know full well where Lorien is without having to be told. There is a certain pull, a certain way that my eyes always gravitate towards the spot where, billions of miles away, Lorien sits. I try to catch a snow-flake on the tip of my tongue, then close my eyes and breathe in the cold air. When I open them I turn around and look at Sarah through the window. She’s sitting with her legs beneath her, Bernie Kosar’s head still in her lap.

“Have you ever thought of just settling here, of saying to hell with Lorien and making a life here on Earth?” I ask Henri.

“We left when you were pretty young. I don’t imagine you remember much of it, do you?”

“Not really,” I say. “Bits and pieces come to me from time to time. Though I can’t necessarily say whether they are things I remember or things I’ve seen during our training.”

“I don’t think you would feel that way if you could remember.”

“But I don’t remember. Isn’t that the point?”

“Maybe,” he says. “But whether or not you want to go back doesn’t mean the Mogadorians are going to stop searching for you. And if we get careless and settle, you can be assured they’ll find us. And as soon as they do, they’ll kill us both. There’s no way to change that. No way.”

I knows he’s right. Somehow, like Henri, I can sense that much, can feel it in the dead of night when the hairs on my arms stand at attention, when a slight shiver crawls up my spine even though I’m not cold.

“Do you ever regret sticking with me for this long?”

“Regret it? Why do you think I would regret it?”

“Because there’s nothing for us to go back to. Your family is dead. So is mine. On Lorien there is only a life of rebuilding. If it wasn’t for me you could easily create an identity here and spend the rest of your days becoming a part of someplace. You could have friends, maybe even fall in love again.”

Henri laughs. “I’m already in love. And I’ll continue to be until the day that I die. I don’t expect you to understand that. Lorien is different from Earth.”

I sigh with exasperation. “But still, you could be a part of somewhere.”

“I am a part of somewhere. I’m a part of Paradise, Ohio, right now, with you.”

I shake my head. “You know what I mean, Henri.”

“What is it that you think I’m missing?”

“A life.”

“You are my life, kiddo. You and my memories are my only ties to the past. Without you I have nothing. That’s the truth.”

Just then the door opens behind us. Bernie Kosar comes trotting out ahead of Sarah, who is standing in the doorway half in and half out.

“Are you two really going to make me watch this movie all by my lonesome?” she asks.

Henri smiles at her. “Wouldn’t dream of it,” he says.

After the movie Henri and I drive Sarah home. When we get there I walk her to her front door and we stand on the stoop smiling at each other. I kiss her good night, a lingering kiss while holding both her hands gently in mine.

“See you tomorrow,” she says, giving my hands a squeeze.

“Sweet dreams.”

I walk back to the truck. Henri pulls out of Sarah’s driveway and steers towards home. I can’t help feeling a sense of fear while remembering Henri’s words the day he picked me up from my first full day of school: “Just keep in mind we might have to leave at a moment’s notice.” He’s right, and I know it, but I’ve never felt this way about anyone before. Like I’m floating on air when we’re together, and I dread the times when we’re apart, like now, despite having just spent the last couple of hours with her. Sarah gives some purpose to our running, and hiding, a reason that transcends mere survival. A reason to win. And to know that I may be putting her life in danger by being with her—well, it terrifies me.

When we get back, Henri walks into his bedroom and comes out carrying the Chest. He drops it on the kitchen table.

“Really?” I ask.

He nods. “There’s something in here I’ve wanted to show you for years.”

I can’t wait to see what else is in the chest. We pop the lock together and he lifts the lid in such a way that I can’t peer in. Henri removes a velvet bag, closes the Chest, and relocks it.

“These aren’t part of your Legacy, but the last time we opened the Chest I slipped them in because of the bad feeling I’ve been having. If the Mogadorians catch us, they’ll never be able to open this,” he says, and motions to the Chest.

“So what’s in the bag?”

“The solar system,” he says.

“If they aren’t part of my Legacy then why have you never shown me?”

“Because you needed to develop a Legacy in order to activate them.”

He clears the kitchen table and then sits across from me with the bag in his lap. He smiles at me, sensing my enthusiasm. Then he reaches down and removes seven glass orbs of varying sizes from the bag. He holds them up to his face in his cupped hands and blows on the glass orbs. Tiny flickers of light come from within them, then he tosses them up in the air and all at once they come to life, suspended above the kitchen table. The glass balls are a replica of our solar system. The largest of them is the size of an orange—Lorien’s sun—and it hangs in the middle emitting the same amount of light as a lightbulb while looking like a self-contained sphere of lava. The other balls orbit around it. Those closest to the sun move at a faster rate, while those farthest away seem to only creep by. All of them spinning, days beginning and ending at hyperspeed. The fourth globe from the sun is Lorien. We watch it move, watch the surface of it begin to form. It is about the size of a racquetball. The replica must not be to scale because in reality Lorien is far smaller than our sun.

“So what’s happening?” I ask.

“The ball is taking on the exact form of what Lorien looks like at this moment.”

“How is this even possible?”

“It’s a special place, John. An old magic exists at its very core. That’s where your Legacies come from. It’s what gives life and reality to the objects contained within your Inheritance.”

“But you just said that this isn’t part of my Legacy.”

“No, but they come from the same place.”

Indentations form, mountains grow, deep creases cut across the surface where I know rivers once ran. And then it stops. I look for any sort of color, any movement, any wind that might blow across the land. But there is nothing. The entire landscape is a monochromatic patch of gray and black. I don’t know what I had hoped to see, what I had expected. Movement of some kind, a hint of fertileness. My spirits fall. Then the surface dims away so that we can see through it and at the very core of the globe a slight glow begins to form. It glows, then dims, then glows again as though replicating the heartbeat of a sleeping animal.

“What is that?” I ask.

“The planet still lives and breathes. It has withdrawn deep into itself, biding its time. Hibernating, if you will. But it will wake one of these days.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“That little glow right there,” he says. “That is hope, John.”

I watch it. I find an odd pleasure in seeing it glow. They tried to wipe away our civilization, the planet itself, and yet it still breathes. Yes, I think, there is always hope, just as Henri has said all along.

“That isn’t all.”

Henri stands and snaps his fingers and the planets stop moving. He moves his face to within inches of Lorien, then cups his hands around his mouth and again breathes onto it. Hints of green and blue sweep across the ball and begin to fade almost immediately as the mist from Henri’s breath evaporates.

“What did you do?”

“Flash your hands on it,” he says.

I make them glow and when I hold them over the ball the green and blue come back, only this time they stay as my hands shine upon it.

“It’s how Lorien looked the day before the invasion. Would you look how beautiful it all is? Sometimes even I forget.”

It is beautiful. Everything green and blue, plush and verdant. The vegetation seems to waver beneath gusts of wind that I can somehow feel. Slight ripples appear on the water. The planet is truly alive, flourishing. But then I turn my glow back off and it all fades away, back to shades of gray.

Henri points at a spot on the globe’s surface.

“Right here,” he says, “is where we took off from on the day of the invasion.” Then he moves his finger half an inch from the spot. “And right here is where the Loric Museum of Exploration used to be.”

I nod and look at the spot he is pointing to. More gray.

“What do museums have to do with anything?” I ask. I sit back in the chair. It’s hard to look at this without feeling sad.

He looks back at me. “I’ve been thinking a lot about what you saw.”

“Uh-huh,” I say, urging him on.

“It was a huge museum, devoted entirely to the evolution of space travel. One of the wings of the building held early rockets that were thousands of years old. Rockets that used to run on a kind of fuel known only to Lorien,” he says, and stops, looking back to the small glass orb hanging two feet above our kitchen table. “Now, if what you saw did in fact happen, if a second ship managed to take off and escape from Lorien during the height of the war, then it would have to have been housed at the space museum. There’s no other explanation for it. I’m still having a tough time believing that it would have worked, and even if it did, that it would have gotten very far.”

“So if it wouldn’t have gotten very far, then why are you still thinking about it?”

Henri shakes his head. “You know, I’m not really sure. Maybe because I’ve been wrong before. Maybe because I’m hoping I am wrong now. And, well, if it had made it anywhere, then it would have made it here, the closest life-sustaining planet aside from Mogadore. And that’s to assume that there was life on it in the first place, that it wasn’t just full of artifacts, or that it wasn’t just empty, meant to confuse the Mogadorians. But I think there had to have been at least one Loric manning the ship because, well, as I’m sure you know, ships of that nature couldn’t steer themselves.”

Another night of insomnia. I stand shirtless in front of the mirror, staring into it with both lights in my hands turned on. “I don’t know how much we can expect from here on out,” Henri said today. The light at Lorien’s core still burns, and the objects we brought from there still work, so why would that magic have ended there? And what about the others: are they now running into the same problems? Are they without their Legacies?

I flex in front of the mirror, then punch the air, hoping that the mirror will break, or a thud will be heard on the door. But there is nothing. Just me looking like an idiot standing shirtless, shadowboxing with myself while Bernie Kosar watches from the bed. It’s nearly midnight and I’m not tired in the least. Bernie Kosar jumps off the bed, sits beside me, and watches my reflection. I smile at him and he wags his tail.

“How about you?” I ask Bernie Kosar. “Do you have any special powers? Are you a superdog? Should I put your cape back on so you can go flying through the air?”

His tail keeps wagging and he paws the ground while looking at me through the tops of his eyes. I lift him up and over my head and fly him around the room.

“Look! It’s Bernie Kosar, the magnificent superdog!”

He squirms under my grip, so I set him down. He plops on his side with his tail thumping against the mattress.

“Well, buddy, one of us should have superpowers. And it doesn’t look like it’s going to be me. Unless we go back to the Dark Ages and I can supply the world with light. Otherwise, I’m afraid I’m useless.”

Bernie Kosar rolls onto his back and stares at me with big eyes, wanting me to rub his belly.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

SAM IS AVOIDING ME. AT SCHOOL HE SEEMS TO disappear when he sees me, or always makes sure we’re in a group. At the urging of Henri—who’s desperate to get his hands on Sam’s magazine after combing through everything that came up on the internet and finding nothing like Sam’s magazine—I decide to just go over to his place unannounced. Henri drops me off after we’ve trained for the day. Sam lives on the outskirts of Paradise in a small, modest house. There’s no answer when I knock so I try the door. It’s unlocked and I open it and walk through.

Brown shag carpet covers the floors, and family photographs from when Sam was very young hang on wood-paneled walls. Him, his mother, and a man who I assume is his father, who is wearing glasses every bit as thick as Sam’s. Then I look closer. They look like the exact same pair of glasses.

I creep down the hallway until I find the door that must be to Sam’s bedroom; a sign reading ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK hangs from a tack. The door is open a crack and I peer inside. The room is very clean, everything consciously put in a place. His twin bed is made, has a black comforter with the planet Saturn repeated across it. Matching pillowcases. The walls are covered with posters. There are two NASA ones, the movie poster from Alien, a movie poster from Star Wars, and one that is a blacklight poster of a green alien head surrounded by dark felt. In the center of the room, hanging from clear thread, is the solar system, all nine planets and the sun. It makes me think of what Henri showed me earlier in the week. I think that Sam would lose his mind if he were to see the same thing. And then I see Sam, hunched over a small oak desk, with headphones on. I push the door open and he looks over his shoulder. He isn’t wearing his glasses, and without them his eyes look very small and beady, almost cartoonlike.

“What’s up?” I ask casually, as if I’m at his house every day.

He looks shocked and scared and he frantically pulls the headphones off to reach in one of the drawers. I look at his desk and see that he’s reading a copy of They Walk Among Us. When I look back up he is pointing a gun at me.

“Whoa,” I say, instinctively lifting my hands in front of me. “What’s going on?”

He stands up. His hands are shaking. The gun is pointed at my chest. I think that he’s lost his mind.

“Tell me what you are,” he says.

“What are you talking about?”

“I saw what you did in those woods. You’re not human.” I was afraid of this, that he saw more than I had hoped.

“This is crazy, Sam! I got into a fight. I’ve been doing martial arts for years.”

“Your hands lit up like flashlights. You could throw people around like they were nothing. That’s not normal.”

“Don’t be stupid,” I say, my hands still in front of me. “Look at them. Do you see any lights? I told you, they were gloves that Kevin was wearing.”

“I asked Kevin! He said he wasn’t wearing gloves!”

“Do you really think he would tell you the truth after what happened? Put the gun down.”

“Tell me! What are you?”

I roll my eyes. “Yes, I’m an alien, Sam. I’m from a planet hundreds of millions of miles away. I have superpowers. Is that what you want to hear?”

He stares at me, his hands still shaking.

“Do you realize how stupid that sounds? Quit being crazy and put the gun down.”

“Is what you just said true?”

“That you’re being stupid? Yes, it’s true. You’re too obsessed with this stuff. You see aliens and alien conspiracies in every part of your life, including in your only friend. Now quit pointing that damn gun at me.”

He stares at me, and I can tell he’s thinking about what I said. I drop my hands. Then he sighs and lowers the gun. “I’m sorry,” he says.

I take a deep, nervous breath. “You should be. What the hell were you thinking?”

“It wasn’t actually loaded.”

“You should have told me that earlier,” I say. “Why do you want so badly to believe in this stuff?”

He shakes his head and puts the gun back in the drawer. I take a minute to calm myself down and try to act casual, like what just happened is no big deal.

“What are you reading?” I ask.

He shrugs. “Just more alien stuff. Maybe I should cool it a bit.”

“Or just read it as fiction instead of fact,” I say. “The stuff must be pretty convincing, though. Can I see it?”

He hands me the latest copy of They Walk Among Us and I sit tentatively on the edge of his bed. I think he’s calmed down enough to not spring a gun on me again at least. Again, it is a bad photocopy, the print slightly unaligned with the paper. It isn’t very thick—eight pages, twelve at the most, printed on legal-sized sheets. The date at the top reads DECEMBER. It must be the newest issue.

“This is weird stuff, Sam Goode,” I say.

He smiles. “Weird people like weird stuff.”

“Where do you get this?” I ask.

“I subscribe to it.”

“I know, but how?”

Sam shrugs. “I don’t know. It just started arriving one day.”

“Are you subscribed to some other magazine? Perhaps they pulled your contact info from there.”

“I went to a convention once. I think I signed up for some contest or something while I was there. I can’t remember. I’ve always assumed that’s where they got my address.”

I scan the cover. There’s no website listed anywhere on it, and I didn’t expect there to be, considering that Henri has already searched the internet high and low. I read the headline of the top story:

IS YOUR NEIGHBOR AN ALIEN?

TEN FAILSAFE WAYS TO TELL!

In the middle of the article there’s a picture of a man holding a bag of trash in one hand and the lid to the trash can in the other. He is standing at the end of the driveway and we’re to assume he’s in the process of dropping the bag into the can. Though the whole publication is in black-and-white, there is a certain glow to the man’s eyes. It’s a horrible image—as though somebody took a picture of an unsuspecting neighbor and then drew around his eyes with a crayon. It makes me laugh.

“What?” Sam asks.

“This is a terrible picture. It looks like something from Godzilla.”

Sam looks at it. Then he shrugs. “I dunno,” he says. “It could be real. Like you said, I see aliens everywhere, and in everything.”

“But I thought aliens looked like that,” I say, and nod to the blacklight poster on his wall.

“I don’t think all of them do,” he says. “Like you said, you’re an alien with superpowers and you don’t look like that.”

We both laugh, and I wonder how I’m going to get myself out of that one. Hopefully Sam never finds out I was telling him the truth. Part of me wants to tell him, though—about me, about Henri, about Lorien—and I wonder what his reaction would be. Would he believe me?

I flip the paper open to look for the publishing page that all newspapers and magazines have. There isn’t one here, only more stories and theories.

“There isn’t a publisher info page.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know how magazines and newspapers always have that page listing staff, editors, writers, where it’s being printed, and all that? You know, ‘For questions, contact so and so.’ All publications have them, but this doesn’t.”

“They have to protect their anonymity,” Sam says.

“From what?”

“Aliens,” he says, and smiles, as though acknowledging the absurdity of it.

“Do you have last month’s issue?”

He grabs it from his closet. I quickly flip through it, hoping that the Mogadorian article is in this one and not an earlier month. And then I find it on page 4.THE MOGADORIAN RACE SEEK TO TAKE OVER EARTHThe Mogadorian alien race, from the planet Mogadore of the 9th Galaxy, have been on Earth for over ten years now. They are a vicious race on a quest for universal domination. They are rumored to have wiped out another planet not unlike Earth, and are planning to expose Earth’s weaknesses in a quest to inhabit our planet next.(more to follow next issue)

I read the article three times. I was hoping there might be more to it than what Sam already said, but no such luck. And there is no Ninth Galaxy. I wonder where they got that from. I flip through the new issue twice. There is no mention of the Mogadorians. My first thought is that there was nothing left to report, that more news failed to present itself. But I don’t believe that’s the case. My second thought is that the Mogadorians read the issue and then fixed the problem, whatever the problem was.

“Do you mind if I borrow this?” I ask, holding up last month’s issue.

He nods. “But be careful with it.”

Three hours later, at eight o’clock, Sam’s mother still isn’t home. I ask Sam where she is and he shrugs as though he doesn’t know and her absence is nothing new. Mostly we just play video games and watch TV and for dinner we eat microwavable meals. The whole time I’m there he doesn’t once wear his glasses, which is odd since I’ve never seen him without them before. Even when we ran the mile in gym class, he kept them on. I grab them from the top of his dresser and put them on. The world becomes an instant blur and they give me a headache almost immediately.

I look at Sam. He’s sitting cross-legged on the floor, his back against his bed, with a book of aliens in his lap.

“Jesus, is your vision really this bad?” I ask.

He looks up at me. “They were my dad’s.”

I take them off.

“Do you even need glasses, Sam?”

He shrugs. “Not really.”

“So why do you wear them?”

“They were my dad’s.”

I put them back on. “Wow, I don’t see how you can even walk straight with these on.”

“My eyes are used to them.”

“You know these will screw up your vision if you continue wearing them, right?”

“Then I’ll be able to see what my dad saw.”

I take them off and put them back where I found them. I don’t really understand why Sam wears them. For sentimental reasons? Does he really think it’s worth it?

“Where is your dad, Sam?”

He looks up at me.

“I don’t know,” he says.

“What do you mean?”

“He disappeared when I was seven.”

“You don’t know where he went?”

He sighs, drops his head, and resumes reading. Obviously he doesn’t want to talk about it.

“Do you believe in any of this stuff?” he asks after a few minutes of silence.

“Aliens?”

“Yeah.”

“Yes, I believe in aliens.”

“Do you think they really abduct people?”

“I have no idea. I guess we can’t rule it out. Do you believe they do?”

He nods. “Most days. But sometimes the idea just seems stupid.”

“I can understand that.”

He looks up at me. “I think my dad was abducted,” he says.

He tenses the second the words leave his mouth and a look of vulnerability crosses his face. It makes me believe that he has shared his theory before, with someone whose response was less than kind.

“Why do you think that?”

“Because he just disappeared. He went to the store to buy milk and bread, and he never came back. His truck was parked right outside the store but nobody there had seen him. He just vanished, and his glasses were on the sidewalk beside his truck.” He pauses for a second. “I was worried you were here to abduct me.”

It’s a hard theory to believe. How could nobody have seen his father abducted if the incident occurred in the middle of town? Perhaps his dad had reason to leave and he plotted his own disappearance. It’s not hard to make yourself disappear; Henri and I have been doing it for ten years now. But all of a sudden Sam’s interest in aliens makes perfect sense. Perhaps Sam just wants to see the world as his dad did, but maybe part of him truly believes that his dad’s final sight is captured in the glasses, somehow etched into the lenses. Maybe he thinks that with persistence one day he’ll eventually come to see it as well, and that his dad’s last vision will confirm what is already in his head. Or maybe he believes that if he searches long enough he’ll finally come across an article that proves his father was abducted, and not only that, but that he can be saved.

And who am I to say that he won’t one day find that proof?

“I believe you,” I say. “I think alien abductions are very possible.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THE NEXT DAY I WAKE EARLIER THAN NORMAL, crawl out of bed, and walk out of my room to find Henri sitting at the table scanning the papers with his laptop open. The sun is still hidden, and the house is dark, the only light coming from his computer screen.

“Anything?”

“Nah, nothing really.”

I turn on the kitchen light. Bernie Kosar paws at the front door. I open it and he shoots out into the yard and patrols as he does every morning, head up, trotting around the perimeter looking for anything suspicious. He sniffs at random places. Once satisfied that everything is as it should be, he bolts into the woods and disappears.

Two issues of They Walk Among Us are lying atop the kitchen table, the original and a photocopy that Henri has made to keep for himself. A magnifying glass lies between them.

“Anything unique on the original?”

“No.”

“So, now what?” I ask.

“Well, I have had some luck. I cross-referenced some of the other articles in the issue and got a few hits, one of which led me to a man’s personal website. I sent him an email.”

I stare at Henri.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “They can’t track emails. At least not the way I send them.”

“How do you send them?”

“I reroute them through various servers in cities across the world, so that the original location is lost along the way.”

“Impressive.”

Bernie Kosar scratches at the door and I let him in. The clock on the microwave reads 5:59. I have two hours before I have to be at school.

“Do you really think we want to go digging around in all this?” I ask. “I mean, what if it’s all a trap? What if they are simply trying to root us out of hiding?”

Henri nods. “You know, if the article had mentioned anything about us, that might have given me pause. But it didn’t. It was about their invading Earth, much the same way they did Lorien. There is so much about it that we don’t understand. You were right a few weeks ago when you said we were defeated so easily. We were. It doesn’t make sense. The entire situation with the disappearance of the Elders also doesn’t make sense. Even getting you and the other children off of Lorien, which I have never questioned, seems odd. And while you’ve seen what happened—and I’ve had the same visions, too—something is still missing from the equation. If we one day make it back, I think it’s imperative to understand what happened in order to prevent it from happening again. You know the saying: he who doesn’t understand history is doomed to repeat it. And when it’s repeated, the stakes are doubled.”

“Okay,” I say. “But according to what you said Saturday night, the chance of us going back seems slimmer every day. So, with that, do you think it’s worth it?”

Henri shrugs. “There are still five others out there. Perhaps they’ve received their Legacies. Perhaps yours are merely delayed. I think it’s best to plan for all possibilities.”

“Well, what are you planning to do?”

“Just make a phone call. I’m curious to hear what this person knows. I wonder what caused him to not follow up. One of two possibilities: either he found no other information and lost interest in the story, or somebody got to him after the publication.”

I sigh. “Well, be careful,” I say.

I pull on a pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt over two T-shirts, tie my tennis shoes and stand and stretch. I toss into my backpack the clothes I plan to wear to school, along with a towel, a bar of soap and a small bottle of shampoo so I can shower when I get there. I’ll now be running to school each morning. Henri ostensibly believes the additional exercise will help in my training, but the real reason is that he hopes it will help my body’s transition and pull my Legacies from their slumber, if that is indeed what they are doing.

I look down at Bernie Kosar. “Ready for a run, boy? Huh? Want to go for a run?”

His tail wags and he turns in circles.

“See you after school.”

“Have a good run,” says Henri. “Be careful on the road.”

We walk out the door and cold, brisk air meets us. Bernie Kosar barks excitedly a few times. I start at a slight jog, down the drive, out onto the gravel road, the dog trotting beside me as I thought he would. It takes a quarter mile to warm up.

“Ready to step it up a notch, boy?”

He pays me no attention, just keeps trotting along with his tongue dangling, looking happy as can be.

“All right then, here we go.”

I kick it into high gear, moving into a run, and then into a dead sprint shortly after, going as fast as I can. I leave Bernie Kosar in the dust. I look behind me and he is running as fast as he can, yet I am pulling ahead of him. The wind through my hair, the trees passing in a blur. It all feels great. Then Bernie Kosar bolts into the woods and disappears from sight. I’m not sure if I should stop and wait for him. Then I turn around and Bernie Kosar jumps out of the woods ten feet in front of me.

I look down at him and he looks up at me, tongue to the side, a sense of glee in his eyes.

“You’re an odd dog, you know that?”

After five minutes the school comes into view. I sprint the remaining half mile, exerting myself, running as hard as I can because it is so early that there is no one out and about to see me. Then I stand with my fingers interlocked behind my head, catching my breath. Bernie Kosar arrives thirty seconds later and sits watching me. I kneel down and pet him.

“Good job, buddy. I think we have a new morning ritual.”

I pull my bag from over my shoulders, unzip it, and remove a package with a few strips of bacon and I give them to him. He scarfs them down.

“Okay, boy, I’m heading in. Go on home. Henri’s waiting.”

He watches me for a second, and then goes off trotting towards home. His comprehension completely amazes me. Then I turn and walk into the building and head for the shower.

I am the second person to enter astronomy. Sam is the first, already sitting in his normal seat at the back of the class.

“Whoa,” I say. “No glasses. What gives?”

He shrugs. “I thought about what you said. It’s probably stupid for me to wear them.”

I sit beside him and smile. It’s hard to imagine I’ll ever get used to his eyes looking so beady. I give him back the issue of They Walk Among Us. He tucks it into his bag. I hold up my fingers like a gun and nudge him.

“Bang!” I say.

He starts laughing. Then I do, too. Neither of us can stop. Every time one of us is close the other starts laughing and it begins all over again. People stare at us when they enter. Then comes Sarah. She walks in by herself, saunters up to us with a look of confusion and sits in the seat beside me.

“What are you guys laughing at?”

“I’m not really sure,” I say, and then laugh a little more.

Mark is the last person to walk in. He sits in his usual seat, but instead of Sarah sitting beside him today there’s another girl. I think she’s a senior. Sarah reaches beneath the table and grabs hold of my hand.

“There is something I need to talk to you about,” she says.

“What?”

“I know it’s last-minute, but my parents want to have you and your dad over for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow.”

“Wow. That would be awesome. I have to ask, but I know we don’t have plans, so I assume the answer is yes.”

She smiles. “Great.”

“Since it’s just the two of us, we don’t usually even do Thanksgiving.”

“Well, we really go all out. And my brothers will both be home from college. They want to meet you.”

“How do they know about me?”

“How do you think?”

The teacher walks in and Sarah winks, then we both start taking notes.

Henri is waiting for me as usual, Bernie Kosar propped up on the passenger seat with his tail wagging, thumping the side of the door the second he sees me. I slide in.

“Athens,” says Henri.

“Athens?”

“Athens, Ohio.”

“Why?”

“That’s where the issues of They Walk Among Us are being written, and printed. It’s where they are being mailed.”

“How did you find that out?”

“I have my ways.”

I look at him.

“Okay, okay. It took three emails and five phone calls, but now I have the number.” He looks over at me. “That is to say, it wasn’t all that hard to find with a little effort.”

I nod. I know what he is telling me. The Mogadorians would have found it just as easily as he did. Which means, of course, that the scale now tips in favor of Henri’s second possibility—that somebody got to the publisher before the story further developed.

“How far away is Athens?”

“Two hours by car.”

“Are you going?”

“I hope not. I’m going to call first.”

When we get home Henri immediately picks up the phone and sits at the kitchen table. I sit down across from him and listen.

“Yes, I’m calling to inquire about an article in last month’s issue of They Walk Among Us.”

A deep voice responds on the other end. I can’t hear what is said.

Henri smiles. “Yes,” he says, then pauses.

“No, I’m not a subscriber. But a friend of mine is.”

Another pause. “No, thank you.”

He nods his head.

“Well, I’m curious about the article written on the Mogadorians. There was never a follow-up in this month’s issue as expected.”

I lean in and strain to hear, my body tense and rigid. When the reply comes the voice sounds shaken, disturbed. Then the phone goes dead.

“Hello?”

Henri pulls the phone away from his ear, looks at it, then brings it back in.

“Hello?” he says again.

Then he closes the phone and sets it on the table. He looks at me.

“He said, ‘Don’t call here again.’ Then he hung up on me.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

AFTER DEBATING IT FOR SEVERAL HOURS, Henri wakes up the next morning and prints door-to-door directions from here to Athens, Ohio. He tells me he’ll be home early enough so we can go to Thanksgiving dinner at Sarah’s house, and he hands me a slip of paper with the address and the phone number of where he’s going.

“Are you sure this is worth it?” I ask.

“We have to figure out what’s going on.”

I sigh. “I think we both know what is going on.”

“Maybe,” he says, but with full authority and none of the uncertainty usually accompanying the word.

“You do realize what you would tell me if the roles were reversed, right?”

Henri smiles. “Yes, John. I know what I would say. But I think this will help us. I want to find out what they have done to scare this man so badly. I want to know if they have mentioned us, if they are searching for us by means that we haven’t yet thought of. It will help us to stay hidden, stay ahead of them. And if this man has seen them, we’ll learn what they look like.”

“We already know what they look like.”

“We knew what they looked like when they attacked, over ten years ago, but they might have changed. They’ve been on Earth a long time now. I want to know how they’re blending in.”

“Even if we know what they look like, by the time we see them on the street, it’s probably going to be too late.”

“Maybe, maybe not. I see one, I’m going to try and kill it. There’s no guarantee it’s going to be able to kill me,” he says, this time with the uncertainty and none of the authority.

I give up. I don’t like a single thing about him driving to Athens while I sit around at home. But I know my objections will continue to fall on deaf ears.

“You sure you’ll be back on time?” I ask.

“I’m leaving now, which puts me there about nine. I doubt I’ll stay more than an hour, two at the most. I should be back by one.”

“So why do I have this?” I ask, and hold up the slip of paper with the address and phone number.

He shrugs. “Well, you never know.”

“Which is precisely why I don’t think you should go.”

“Touché,” he says, bringing an end to the discussion. He gathers his papers, stands from the table, and pushes in the chair.

“I’ll see you this afternoon.”

“Okay,” I say.

He walks out to the truck and gets inside. Bernie Kosar and I walk out to the front porch and watch him drive away. I don’t know why, but I have a bad feeling. I hope he makes it back.

It’s a long day. One of those days where time slows down and every minute seems like ten, every hour seems like twenty. I play video games and surf the internet. I look for news that might be related to one of the other children. I don’t find anything, which makes me happy. That means we’re staying under the radar. Avoiding our enemies.

I periodically check my phone. I send a text message to Henri at noon. He doesn’t reply. I eat lunch and feed Bernie, and then I send another. No reply. A nervous, unsettled feeling creeps in. Henri has never failed to text back immediately. Maybe his phone is off. Maybe his battery has died. I try to convince myself of these possibilities, but I know that neither of them is true.

At two o’clock I start to get worried. Really worried. We’re supposed to be at the Harts’ in an hour. Henri knows the dinner is important to me. And he would never blow it off. I get in the shower with the hope that by the time I get out, Henri will be sitting at our kitchen table drinking a cup of coffee. I turn the hot water all the way up and don’t bother with the cold at all. I don’t feel a thing. My entire body is now impervious to heat. It feels like lukewarm water is streaming over my skin, and I actually miss the feeling of heat. I used to love taking hot showers. Standing under the water for as long as it lasted. Closing my eyes and enjoying the water hitting my head and running down. It took me away from my life. It let me forget about who and what I am for a little while.

When I get out of the shower, I open my closet and look for the nicest clothes I have, which are nothing special: khakis, a button-down shirt, a sweater. Because we live our life on the run, all I have are running shoes, which is so ridiculous it makes me laugh—the first time I’ve laughed all day. I go to Henri’s room and look in his closet. He has a pair of loafers that fit me. Seeing all his clothes makes me more worried, more upset. I want to believe he’s just taking longer than he should, but he would have contacted me. Something has to be wrong.

I walk to the front door, where Bernie is sitting, staring out the window. He looks up at me and whines. I pat him on the head and go back to my room. I look at the clock. It’s just after three. I check my phone. No messages, no texts. I decide to go to Sarah’s and if I don’t hear from Henri by five, I’ll figure out a plan then. Maybe I’ll tell them Henri is sick and that I’m not feeling well either. Maybe I’ll tell them Henri’s truck broke down and I need to go help him. Hopefully he shows up and we can just have a nice Thanksgiving dinner. It will actually be the first one we’ve ever had. If not, I’ll tell them something. I’ll have to.

Without the truck I decide I’ll run. I probably won’t even break a sweat, and I will be able to get there faster than I would in the truck. And because of the holiday, the roads should be empty. I say good-bye to Bernie, tell him I’ll be home later, and take off. I run on the edges of the fields, through woods. It feels good to burn some energy. It takes the edge off my anxiety. A couple times I get up near full speed, which is probably somewhere around sixty or seventy miles per hour. The cold air feels amazing whipping across my face. The sound of it is great, the same sound I hear when I stick my head out the window of the truck as we’re driving down a highway. I wonder how fast I’ll be able to run when I’m twenty, or twenty-five.

I stop running about a hundred yards from Sarah’s house. I’m not short of breath at all. As I walk up the driveway I see Sarah peek out the window. She smiles and waves, opening the front door just as I step onto her porch.

“Hey, handsome,” she says.

I turn and look over my shoulder to pretend she’s talking to somebody else. Then I turn back around and ask her if she’s talking to me. She laughs.

“You’re silly,” she says, and punches me in the arm before pulling me close to give me a lingering kiss. I take a deep breath and can smell the food: turkey and stuffing, sweet potatoes, brussels sprouts, pumpkin pie.

“Smells great,” I say.

“My mom has been cooking all day.”

“Can’t wait to eat.”

“Where is your dad?”

“He got held up. He should be here in a little while.”

“Is he okay?”

“Yeah, it’s not a big deal.”

We go inside and she takes me on a tour. It’s a great house. A classic family home with bedrooms on the second floor, an attic where one of her brothers has his room, and all of the living spaces—the living room, dining room, kitchen and family room—on the first floor. When we get to her room, she closes the door and kisses me. I’m surprised, but thrilled.

“I’ve been looking forward to doing that all day,” she says softly when she pulls away. As she walks towards the door, I pull her back to me and kiss her again.

“And I’m looking forward to kissing you again later,” I whisper. She smiles and punches me on the arm again.

We head back downstairs and she takes me to the family room, where her two older brothers, home from college for the weekend, are watching football with her father. I sit with them, while Sarah goes to the kitchen to help her mother and her younger sister with dinner. I’ve never been that into football. I guess, because of the way Henri and I have lived, I’ve never really gotten into anything outside of our life. My concerns were always with trying to fit into wherever we were, and then getting ready to go somewhere else. Her brothers, and her father, all played football in high school. They love it. And in today’s game, one of her brothers and her father like one of the teams, while her other brother likes the other team. They argue with each other, taunt each other, cheer and groan depending on what’s happening in the game. They’ve clearly been doing this for years, probably for their entire lives, and they’re clearly having a great time. It makes me wish Henri and I had something, besides my training and our endless running and hiding, that we were both into and that we could enjoy with each other. It makes me wish I had a real father and brothers to hang out with.

At halftime Sarah’s mother calls us in for dinner. I check my phone and still nothing. Before we sit down I go to the bathroom and try to call Henri and it goes straight to voice mail. It’s almost five o’clock, and I’m starting to panic. I come back to the table, where everyone is sitting. The table looks amazing. There are flowers in the center, with place mats and table settings meticulously placed in front of each of the chairs. Serving dishes of food are spread around the inside of the table, with the turkey sitting in front of Mr. Hart’s place. Just after I sit down, Mrs. Hart comes into the room. She has taken off her apron and is wearing a beautiful skirt and sweater.

“Have you heard from your dad?” she says.

“I just tried calling him. He, uh, is running late and asked us not to wait. He’s very sorry for the inconvenience,” I say.

Mr. Hart starts carving the turkey. Sarah smiles at me from across the table, which makes me feel better for about half a second. The food starts being passed, and I take small portions of everything. I don’t think I’m going to be able to eat very much. I keep my phone out and on my lap, and have it set to vibrate if a call or text comes through. With each passing second, however, I don’t believe anything is going to come through, or that I will ever see Henri again. The idea of living by myself—with my Legacies developing, and without anyone to explain them to me or train me, of running on my own, of hiding on my own, of finding my own way, of fighting the Mogadorians, fighting them until they are defeated or I am dead—terrifies me.

Dinner takes forever. Time is moving slowly again. Sarah’s whole family peppers me with questions. I’ve never been in a situation where I’ve been asked so many things by so many people in such a short period of time. They ask about my past, the places I’ve lived, about Henri, about my mother—who, I say as I always do, died when I was very young. It’s the only answer I give that has even the smallest sliver of truth. I have no idea if my answers even make sense. The phone on my leg feels like it weighs a thousand pounds. It doesn’t vibrate. It just sits there.

After dinner, and before dessert, Sarah asks everyone to go out to the backyard so she can take some pictures. As we go outside, Sarah asks if something is wrong. I tell her I’m worried about Henri. She tries to calm me down and tell me everything is fine, but it doesn’t work. If anything, it makes me feel worse. I try to imagine where he is and what he’s doing, and the only image I can bring is him standing before a Mogadorian, looking terrified, and knowing he’s about to die.

As we gather for the pictures, I start to panic. How could I get to Athens? I could run, but it might be hard to find my way, especially because I would have to avoid traffic and stay off the major highways. I could take a bus, but it would take too long. I could ask Sarah, but that would involve a huge amount of explaining, including telling her I was an alien and that I believed Henri had been either captured or killed by hostile aliens who were searching for me so that they could kill me. Not the best idea.

As we pose I get a desperate urge to leave, but I need to do it in a way that doesn’t make Sarah or her family mad at me. I focus on the camera, staring directly into it while trying to think of an excuse that will get the least amount of questions. I’m wracked with full-on panic now. My hands begin to shake. They feel hot. I look down at them to make sure they aren’t glowing. They’re not, but when I look back up I see that the whole camera is shaking in Sarah’s hands. I know that somehow I’m doing it, but I have no idea how or what I can do to make it stop. A chill shoots up my back. My breath catches in my throat and at the same time the glass lens of the camera cracks and shatters. Sarah screams, then pulls the camera down and stares at it in confusion. Her mouth drops open and tears well up in her eyes.

Her parents rush over to her to see if she’s okay. I just stand there in shock. I’m not sure what to do. I’m bummed about her camera, and that she’s upset about it, but I’m also thrilled because my telekinesis has clearly arrived. Will I be able to control it? Henri will be beside himself when he finds out. Henri. The panic returns. I clench my hands into fists. I need to get out of here. I need to find him. If the Mogadorians have him, which I hope they don’t, I’ll kill every damn one of them to get him back.

Thinking quickly, I walk over to Sarah and pull her away from her parents, who are examining the camera to figure out what has just happened.

“I just got a message from Henri. I’m really sorry, but I need to go.”

She’s clearly distracted, glancing from me to her parents.

“Is he all right?”

“Yes, but I have to go—he needs me.” She nods and we kiss gently. I hope it’s not for the last time.

I thank her parents and her brothers and sister and I leave before they can ask me too many questions. I walk through the house and as soon as I’m out the front door, I start running. I take the same route home that I took to get to Sarah’s house earlier. I stay off the main roads, run through the trees. I’m back in a few minutes. I hear Bernie Kosar scratching at the door as I sprint up the drive. He’s clearly anxious, as though he also senses something amiss.

I go straight to my room. I retrieve from my bag the piece of paper containing the phone number and address Henri gave me before leaving. I dial the number. A recording comes on. “I’m sorry, the number you are trying to reach has been disconnected or is no longer in service.” I look down at the piece of paper and try the number again. The same recording.

“Shit!” I yell. I kick a chair and it sails across the kitchen and into the living room.

I walk into my room. I walk out. I walk back in again. I stare in the mirror. My eyes are red; tears have surfaced but none are falling. Hands shaking. Anger and rage and a terrible fear that Henri is dead consume me. I squeeze my eyes shut and squeeze all the rage into the pit of my stomach. In a sudden burst I scream and open my eyes and thrust my hands towards the mirror and the glass shatters though I am ten feet away. I stand looking at it. Most of the mirror is still attached to the wall. What happened at Sarah’s was no fluke.

I look at the shards on the floor. I reach a hand out in front of me and while concentrating on one particular shard, I try to move it. My breathing is controlled, but all the fear and anger remain within me. Fear is too simple a word. Terror. That is what I feel.

The shard doesn’t move at first, but then after fifteen seconds it begins to shake. Slowly at first, then rapidly. And then I remember. Henri said that it’s usually emotions that trigger Legacies. Surely that is what is happening now. I strain to lift the shard. Beads of sweat stand out on my forehead. I concentrate with everything that I have and everything that I am despite all that is going on. It’s a struggle to breathe. Ever so slowly the shard begins to rise. One inch. Two inches. It is a foot above the floor, continuing up, my right arm extended and moving with it until the shard of glass is at eye level. I hold it there. If only Henri could see this, I think. And in a flash, through the excitement of my newly discovered happiness, panic and fear return. I look at the shard, at the way it reflects the wood-paneled wall looking old and brittle in the glass. Wood. Old and brittle. And then my eyes snap open wider than they ever have before in all of my life.

The Chest!

Henri had said it: “Only the two of us can open it together. Unless I die; then you can open it yourself.”

I drop the shard and sprint from my bedroom into Henri’s. The Chest is on the floor beside his bed. I snatch it, run into the kitchen, and throw it on the table. The lock in the shape of the Loric emblem is looking me in the face.

I sit at the table and stare at the lock. My lip is quivering. I try to slow my breathing but it is useless; my chest is heaving as though I just finished a ten-mile sprint. I’m scared of feeling a click beneath my grip. I take a deep breath and close my eyes.

“Please don’t open,” I say.

I grab hold of the lock. I squeeze as tightly as I can, my breath held, vision blurry, the muscles in my forearm flexed and straining. Waiting for the click. Holding the lock and waiting for the click.

Only there is no click.

I let go and slouch in the chair and hold my head in my hands. A small glimmer of hope. I run my hands through my hair and stand. On the counter five feet away is a dirty spoon. I focus on it and sweep my hand across my body and the spoon goes flying. Henri would be so happy. Henri, I think, where are you? Somewhere, and still alive, too. And I’m going to come get you.

I dial Sam’s number, the only friend besides Sarah I’ve made in Paradise, the only friend I’ve ever had, if I’m to be honest. He answers on the second ring.

“Hello?”

I close my eyes and pinch the bridge of my nose. I take a deep breath. The shaking has returned, if it ever left in the first place.

“Hello?” he says again.

“Sam.”

“Hey,” he says, then, “You sound like hell. Are you okay?”

“No. I need your help.”

“Huh? What’s happened?”

“Is there any way your mom can bring you over?”

“She’s not here. She’s working a shift at the hospital because she gets paid double time on holidays. What’s going on?”

“Things are bad, Sam. And I need help.”

Another silence, then, “I’ll get there as quickly as I can.”

“You sure?”

“I’ll see you soon.”

I close my phone and drop my head to the table. Athens, Ohio. That is where Henri is. Somehow, some way, that is where I have to go.

And I need to get there fast.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

WHILE I WAIT FOR SAM I WALK THROUGH THE house lifting inanimate objects up in the air without touching them: an apple from the kitchen counter, a fork in the sink, a small potted plant sitting beside the front window. I can only lift the small things, and they rise in the air somewhat timidly. When I try for something heavier—a chair, a table—nothing happens.

The three tennis balls Henri and I use for training sit in a basket on the other side of the living room. I bring one of them to me, and as it crosses his line of sight Bernie Kosar stands at attention. Then I throw it without touching it and he sprints after it; but before he can get to it, I pull it back, or when he does manage to get it, I pull it from his mouth, all while sitting in the chair in the living room. It keeps my mind from Henri, from the harm that may have found him, and from the guilt of the lies I’ll have to tell Sam.

It takes him twenty-five minutes to ride his bike the four miles to my house. I hear him ride up the drive. He jumps off of it and it crashes to the ground while he runs through the front door without knocking, out of breath. His face is streaked with sweat. He looks around and surveys the scene.

“So what’s up?” he asks.

“This is going to sound absurd to you,” I say. “But you have to promise to take me seriously.”

“What are you talking about?”

What am I talking about? I’m talking about Henri. He has disappeared because of carelessness, the same carelessness he has always preached against. I’m talking about the fact that when you had that gun on me, I told you the truth. I am an alien. Henri and I came to Earth ten years ago, and we are being hunted by a malicious race of aliens. I’m talking about Henri thinking that he could somehow evade them by understanding them a little more. And now he is gone. That is what I’m talking about, Sam. Do you understand? But no, I can’t tell him any of these things.

“My dad’s been captured, Sam. I’m not entirely sure by who, or what is being done to him. But something has happened, and I think he’s being held prisoner. Or worse.”

A grin spreads on his face. “Get out of here,” he says.

I shake my head and close my eyes. The gravity of the situation again makes it difficult to breathe. I turn and stare pleadingly at Sam. Tears well up in my eyes.

“I’m not kidding.”

Sam’s face becomes stricken. “What do you mean? Who has captured him? Where is he?”

“He tracked the writer of one of the articles in your magazine back to Athens, Ohio, and he went there today. He went there and he hasn’t come back. His phone is off. Something has happened to him. Something bad.”

Sam becomes more confused. “What? Why would he care? I’m missing something. It’s just some stupid paper.”

“I don’t know, Sam. He’s like you—he loves aliens and conspiracy theories and all that stuff,” I say, thinking quickly. “It’s always been a stupid hobby of his. One of the articles piqued his interest and I guess he wanted to know more, so he drove down.”

“Was it the article on the Mogadorians?”

I nod. “How did you know?”

“Because he looked like he had seen a ghost when I mentioned it on Halloween,” he says, and he shakes his head. “But why would somebody care if he asked questions about a stupid article?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I would imagine these people aren’t the sanest in the world. They’re probably paranoid and delusional. Maybe they thought he was an alien, the same reason you aimed a gun at me. He was supposed to be home by one and his phone is off. That’s all I can say.”

I stand and walk to the kitchen table. I grab the slip of paper with the address and phone number of where Henri has gone.

“This is where he went today,” I say. “Do you have any idea where it is?”

He looks at the slip, then at me.

“You want to go there?”

“I don’t know what else to do.”

“Why can’t you just call the cops and tell them what happened?”

I sit down on the couch, thinking of the best way to respond. I wish I could tell him the truth, that the best-case scenario with the cops getting involved would be Henri and I leaving. The worst case would be Henri being questioned, maybe fingerprinted, thrust into the sluggish-paced bureaucracy, which would give the Mogadorians the chance to move. And once they find us, death is imminent.

“Call which cops? The ones in Paradise? What do you think they would do if I told them the truth? It would take days for them to take me seriously, and I don’t have days.”

Sam shrugs. “They might take you seriously. Besides, what if he just got held up, or his phone broke? He might be on his way home now.”

“Maybe, but I don’t think so. Something feels off, and I have to get there as soon as possible. He was supposed to be home hours ago.”

“Maybe he got into an accident.”

I shake my head. “Maybe you’re right, but I don’t think you are. And if he’s being harmed, then we’re wasting time.”

Sam looks at the sheet of paper. He bites his lip and remains silent for fifteen seconds.

“Well, I know vaguely how to get to Athens. No idea how to get to this address once we’re there, though.”

“I can print directions from the internet. I’m not worried about that. The thing I am worried about is transportation. I have a hundred and twenty dollars in my room. I can pay someone to drive us, but I have no idea who I would ask. There aren’t exactly a whole lot of taxis in Paradise, Ohio.”

“We can take our truck.”

“What truck?”

“I mean my dad’s truck. We still have it. It’s sitting in the garage. It hasn’t been touched since he disappeared.”

I look at him. “Are you serious?”

He nods.

“How long has it been? Does it even still run?”

“Eight years. Why wouldn’t it still run? It was nearly new when he bought it.”

“Wait, let me get this right. You’re suggesting we drive there ourselves, me and you, two hours to Athens?”

Sam’s face twists into a devious smile. “That’s exactly what I’m suggesting.”

I lean forward on the sofa. I can’t help but smile as well.

“You know we’ll be in deep shit if we get caught, right? Neither of us has our license.”

Sam nods. “My mom will kill me, and she’ll maybe kill you, too. And then there is the law. But yeah, if you really think your dad is in trouble, what other choice do we have? If the roles were reversed, and it was my dad who was in trouble, I would go in a second.”

I look at Sam. There isn’t an ounce of hesitation on his face in his suggesting that we drive illegally to a town two hours away, and that’s not to mention that neither of us knows how to drive and that we have no idea what to expect once getting there. And yet Sam is on board. It was his idea even.

“All right then, let’s drive to Athens,” I say.

I throw my phone in my bag, make sure everything is zipped and in order. Then I walk through the house, taking everything in as though it will be the last time I see any of it. It’s foolish thinking, and I know I’m merely being sentimental, but I’m nervous and there is a sort of calming sensation to it. I pick things up, then I set them down. After five minutes I am ready.

“Let’s go,” I say to Sam.

“You want to ride on the back of my bike?”

“You ride; I’ll jog alongside.”

“What about your asthma?”

“I think I’ll be okay.”

We leave. He gets on his bike. He tries to ride as fast as he can, but he is not in great shape. I jog a few feet behind and pretend that I’m winded. Bernie follows us as well. By the time we get to his house, Sam is dripping with sweat. Sam runs into his room and comes out with a backpack. He sets it on the kitchen counter and goes to change his clothes. I peer inside of it. There is a crucifix, a few cloves of garlic, a wooden stake, a hammer, a blob of Silly Putty, and a pocketknife.

“You do realize these people aren’t vampires, right?” I say when Sam walks back in.

“Yeah, but you never know. They’re probably crazy, like you said.”

“And even if we were hunting vampires, what the hell is the Silly Putty for?”

He shrugs. “Just want to be prepared.”

I pour a bowl of water for Bernie Kosar and he laps it all up immediately. I change clothes in the bathroom and remove the door-to-door directions from my bag. Then I walk out and through the house and into the garage, which is dark and smells of gasoline and old grass clippings. Sam flips on the light. Various tools have rusted with disuse and hang on the Peg-Board walls. The truck sits in the center of the garage, covered with a large blue tarp that’s coated with a thick layer of dust.

“How long has it been since this tarp was removed?”

“Not since Dad went missing.”

I grab one corner, Sam takes the other, and together we peel it away and I set it in the corner. Sam stares at the truck, his eyes big, a smile on his face.

The truck is small, dark blue, room inside for only two people, or maybe a third if they don’t mind an uncomfortable ride sitting in the center. It will be perfect for Bernie Kosar. None of the dust from the past eight years has made it onto the truck, so it sparkles as though it was recently waxed. I throw my bag into the bed.

“My dad’s truck,” Sam says proudly. “All these years. It looks exactly the same.”

“Our golden chariot,” I say. “Do you have the keys?”

He walks to the side of the garage and lifts a set of keys from a hook on the wall. I unlock the garage door and open it.

“Do you want to paper-rock-scissors to see who drives?” I ask.

“Nope,” Sam says, and then he unlocks the driver’s side door and gets in behind the wheel. The engine cranks over and finally starts. He rolls down the window.

“I think my dad would be proud to see me driving it,” he says.

I smile. “I think so, too. Pull it out and I’ll close the door.”

He takes a deep breath, and then puts the truck in drive and slowly, timidly, inches it out of the garage. He hits the brakes too hard too soon and the truck slams to a stop.

“You aren’t all the way out yet,” I say.

He eases his foot off the brake and then inches the rest of the way out. I close the garage door behind him. Bernie Kosar jumps up and in of his own volition and I slide in beside him. Sam’s hands are white knuckled at the ten and two positions of the wheel.

“Nervous?” I ask.

“Terrified.”

“You’ll be fine,” I say. “We’ve both seen it done a thousand times before.”

He nods. “Okay. Which way do I turn out of the driveway?”

“We really going to do this?”

“Yes,” he says.

“We turn right, then,” I say, “and head in the direction away from town.”

We both buckle our seat beats. I crack the window enough so that Bernie Kosar can fit his head out, which he does immediately, standing with his hind legs in my lap.

“I’m scared shitless,” Sam says.

“Me too.”

He takes a deep breath, holds the air in his lungs, and then slowly exhales.

“And…away…we…go,” he says, taking his foot off the brake when he says the last word. The truck goes bouncing down the driveway. He hits the brakes once and we skid to a stop. Then he starts again and inches down the drive more slowly this time until he stops at the end of it, looks both ways, and then turns out onto the road. Again, slow at first, then gaining speed. He is tense, leaning forward, and then after a mile a grin begins to form on his face and he leans back.

“This isn’t so hard.”

“You’re a natural.”

He keeps the truck close to the painted line on the right side of the road. He tenses every time a car passes in the opposite direction, but after a while he relaxes and pays the other cars little attention. He makes one turn, then another, and in twenty-five minutes we pull onto the interstate.

“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Sam finally says. “This is the craziest shit I’ve ever done.”

“Me too.”

“Do you have any plan when we get there?”

“None whatsoever. I’m hoping we’ll be able to scope the place out and go from there. I have no idea if it’s a house or an office building or what. I don’t even know if he is there.”

He nods. “Do you think he’s okay?”

“I have no idea,” I say.

I take a deep breath. We have an hour and a half to go. Then we’ll reach Athens.

Then we’ll find Henri.

CHAPTER TWENTY

WE DRIVE SOUTH UNTIL, NESTLED IN THE FOOTHILLS of the Appalachian Mountains, Athens comes into view: a small city sprouting through the trees. In the waning light I can see a river curling gently around that seems to cup the city, serving as the border to the east, south and west, and to the north lie hills and trees. The temperature is relatively warm for November. We pass the college football stadium. A white-domed arena stands a little beyond it.

“Take this exit,” I say.

Sam guides the truck off the interstate and turns right onto Richland Avenue. Both of us are elated we made it in one piece, and without being caught.

“So this is what a college town looks like, huh?”

“I guess so,” Sam says.

Buildings and dorms are on each side of us. The grass is green, meticulously trimmed even though it is November. We drive up a steep hill.

“At the top of this is Court Street. We want to turn left.”

“How far are we?” Sam asks.

“Less than a mile.”

“Do you want to drive by it first?”

“No. I think we should park the first opportunity we get and walk.”

We drive down Court Street, which is the main artery in the center of town. Everything is closed for the holiday—bookstores, coffeehouses, bars. Then I see it, standing out like a jewel.

“Stop!” I say.

Sam slams on the brakes.

“What?!”

A car honks behind us.

“Nothing, nothing. Keep driving. Let’s park.”

We drive another block until we find a lot to park in. By my guess we are a five-minute walk at most from the address.

“What was that? You scared the crap out of me.”

“Henri’s truck is back there,” I say.

Sam nods. “Why do you sometimes call him Henri?”

“I don’t know, I just do. Sort of a joke between us,” I say, and look at Bernie Kosar. “Do you think we should take him?”

Sam shrugs. “He might get in the way.”

I give Bernie Kosar a few treats and leave him in the truck with the window cracked. He is not happy about it and begins whining and scratching at the window, but I don’t think we’ll be long. Sam and I walk back up Court Street, the straps of my bag pulled over my shoulders, Sam holding his in his hand. He has removed the Silly Putty and is squeezing it like people do with those foam balls when they’re stressed. We reach Henri’s truck. The doors are locked. There is nothing of importance on the seats or dash.

“Well, this means two things,” I say. “Henri is still here, and whoever has him hasn’t discovered his truck yet, which means he hasn’t talked. Not that he ever would.”

“What would he say if he talked?”

For a brief moment I had forgotten that Sam knows nothing of Henri’s true reasons for being here. I’ve already slipped and called him Henri. I need to be careful not to reveal anything else.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I mean, who knows what sorts of questions these weirdos are asking.”

“Okay, now what?”

I pull out the map to the address Henri had given me that morning. “We walk,” I say.

We walk back the way we came. The buildings end and houses begin. Unkempt and dirty looking. In no time at all we reach the address and stop.

I look at the slip of paper, then at the house. I take a deep breath.

“This is us,” I say.

We stand looking up at the two-story house with gray vinyl siding. The front walk leads to an unpainted front porch with a broken swing hanging unevenly to the side. The grass is long and untended. It looks uninhabited, but there is a car in the driveway at the rear. I don’t know what to do. I remove my phone. It is 11:12. I call Henri even though I know he won’t answer. It’s an attempt to establish my wits, to come up with a plan. I hadn’t thought this far ahead, and now that the reality is here my mind is blank. My call goes straight to voice mail.

“Let me go knock on the door,” Sam says.

“And say what?”

“I don’t know, whatever comes to my mind.”

But he doesn’t get a chance to because just then a man walks out of the front door. He is huge, at least six feet six, two hundred fifty pounds. He has a goatee and his head is shaved. He’s wearing work boots, blue jeans, and a black sweatshirt pulled up to his elbows. There is a tattoo on his right forearm, but I am too far away to see what it is. He spits into the yard, then turns around and locks the front door, walking off the porch and heading our way. I stiffen as he approaches. The tattoo is of an alien holding a bouquet of tulips in one hand as though offering them to some unseen entity. Then the man walks right past us without saying a word. Sam and I turn and watch him go.

“Did you see his tattoo?” I ask.

“Yeah. And so much for the stereotype of scrawny nerds being the only ones fascinated by aliens. That man is huge, and mean looking.”

“Take my phone, Sam.”

“What? Why?” he asks.

“You have to follow him. Take my phone. I’ll go into the house. It’s obvious there is nobody there or he wouldn’t have locked the door. Henri might be in there. I’ll call you as soon as I can.”

“How are you going to call me?”

“I don’t know. I’ll find a way. Here.” He reluctantly takes it.

“What if Henri isn’t in there?”

“That’s why I want you to follow that guy. He might be going to Henri now.”

“What if he comes back?”

“We’ll figure it out. But you have to go now. I promise, I’ll call you the first chance I get.”

Sam turns and looks at the man. He is fifty yards away from us now. Then he looks back at me.

“Okay, I’ll do it. But be careful in there.”

“You be careful, too. Don’t let him out of your sight. And don’t let him see you.”

“Not a chance.”

He turns and hurries after the man. I watch them go and, once they vanish from sight, I walk up to the house. The windows are dark, each one covered with a white shade. I can’t see in. I walk around to the back. There is a small concrete patio leading to a back door, which is locked. I walk the rest of the way around the house. Overgrown weeds and bushes left over from summer. I try a window. Locked. All of them are locked. Should I break one? I look for rocks among the brambles, and the second I see one and lift it from the ground with my mind an idea occurs to me, an idea so crazy that it just might work.

I drop the rock and walk to the back door. It has a simple lock, no deadbolt. I take a deep breath, close my eyes in concentration, and grab hold of the doorknob. I give it a shake. My thoughts move from head to heart to stomach; everything is centered there. My grip tightens, my breath is held in anticipation as I try to envision the inner workings. Then I feel and hear a click in the hand holding the knob. A smile forms on my face. I turn the knob and the door swings open. I can’t believe I can unlock doors by imagining what is inside of them.

The kitchen is surprisingly clean, the surfaces wiped down, the sink free of dirty dishes. A new loaf of bread sits on the counter. I walk through a narrow corridor into a living room with sports posters and banners on the walls, a big-screen TV sitting in a corner. The door to a bedroom is off to the left side. I poke my head in. It’s in a state of disarray, covers thrown aside on the bed, clutter atop the dresser. The foul stench of dirty laundry covered in sweat that has never dried.

At the front of the house, beside the door, a flight of stairs ascends to the second level. I begin walking up them. The third step groans under my foot.

“Hello?” a voice yells from the top of the stairs.

I freeze, holding my breath.

“Frank, is that you?”

I stay silent. I hear somebody stand from a chair, the creak of footsteps on a hardwood floor approaching. A man appears at the top of the stairs. Dark shaggy hair, sideburns, an unshaven face. Not as big as the man who left earlier, but not exactly small either.

“Who the hell are you?” he asks.

“I’m looking for a friend of mine,” I say.

He screws his face up into a scowl, vanishes and reappears five seconds later holding a wooden baseball bat in his hand.

“How did you get in here?” he asks.

“I would put the bat down if I were you.”

“How did you get in here?”

“I am faster than you are and I am far stronger.”

“Like hell you are.”

“I’m looking for a friend of mine. He came here this morning. I want to know where he is.”

“You’re one of them, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know who you are talking about.”

“You’re one of them!” he screams. He holds the bat as a baseball player would, both white-knuckled hands at the thin base poised to swing. There is genuine fear in his eyes. His jaw is tightly clenched. “You’re one of them! Why don’t you just leave us alone already!?”

“I am not one of them. I’ve come for my friend. Tell me where he is.”

“Your friend is one of them!”

“No he isn’t.”

“So you know who I’m talking about?”

“Yes.”

He takes a step down.

“I’m warning you,” I say. “Drop the bat and tell me where he is.”

My hands are shaking from the uncertainty of the situation, from the fact that he has a bat in his hands while I have nothing but my own abilities. I’m unnerved by the fear in his eyes. He takes another step down. There are only six stairs between us.

“I’m going to take your head off. That’ll send your friends a message.”

“They aren’t my friends. And I assure you, you’d be doing them a favor if you hurt me.”

“Let’s see then,” he says.

He comes racing down the stairs. There is nothing I can do but react. He swings the bat. I duck and it hits the wall with a thud, leaving a large splintered hole in the wood panel. I come up after him and lift him in the air, one hand gripping his throat, the other in his armpit, carrying him back up the stairs. He flails, landing kicks to my legs and groin. The bat drops from his hands. It bounces hollowly down the stairs and I hear one of the windows break behind me.

The second floor is a wide-open loft. It is dark. The walls are covered with issues of They Walk Among Us, and where the issues end, alien paraphernalia takes up the rest—but unlike Sam’s, the posters are actual photographs taken over the years, blown up and grainy so that it is hard to make them out, mostly white blips on black backdrops. A rubber alien dummy with a noose around its neck sits in the corner. Somebody has added a Mexican sombrero to its head. Glow-in-the-dark stars are stuck to the ceiling. They seem out of place, more like something belonging in a ten-year-old girl’s room.

I throw the man to the ground. He scoots away from me and stands up. When he does I put all my power into the pit of my stomach and direct it towards him with a hard forward-thrusting motion, and he goes flying backwards and crashes into the wall.

“Where is he?” I ask.

“I’ll never tell you. He’s one of you.”

“I’m not who you think I am.”

“You guys will never succeed! Just leave Earth alone!”

I lift my hand and choke him. I can feel the flexed tendons beneath my hand even though I am not touching him. He can’t breathe and his face turns red. I let go.

“I’ll ask again.”

“No.”

I choke him once more, but this time when his face turns red I squeeze tighter. When I let go he begins to cry and I feel bad for him, for what I’ve done to him. But he knows where Henri is, has done something to him, and my sympathy ends almost as soon as it began.

After he catches his breath, and between sobs, he says, “He’s downstairs.”

“Where? I didn’t see him.”

“In the basement. The door is behind the Steelers banner in the living room.”

I dial my phone number from the telephone atop the middle desk. Sam doesn’t answer. Then I pull the phone from the wall and break it in half.

“Give me your cell phone,” I say.

“I don’t have one.”

I walk to the dummy and remove the noose from around its neck.

“Come on, man,” he pleads.

“Shut up. You’ve kidnapped my friend. You’re holding him against his will. You’re lucky all I’m doing is tying you up.”

I pull his arms behind him and tie the rope tightly around them, then tie him to one of the chairs. I don’t think that it will hold him for very long. Then I duct-tape his mouth shut so that he can’t yell and I sweep down the stairs and rip the Steelers banner from the wall, revealing a black door that is locked. I unlock it as I did the other. A set of wooden stairs leads down to total darkness.

The smell of mildew reaches my nose. I flip the light switch on and begin walking down, slowly, terrified at what I might find. The rafters are littered with cobwebs. I reach the bottom and immediately feel the presence of somebody else, somebody there with me. I stiffen, take a deep breath, and then turn.

There, in the corner of the basement, sits Henri.

“Henri!”

He is squinting from the light, his eyes adjusting. A length of duct tape is across his mouth. His hands are bound behind him, his ankles tied to the legs of the chair in which he is sitting. His hair is tousled, and down the right side of his face is a line of dried blood that looks almost black. The sight of it fills me with rage.

I rush over to him and rip the piece of tape from his mouth. He takes a deep breath.

“Thank God,” he says. His voice is weak. “You were right, John. It was foolish to come here. I’m sorry. I should have listened.”

“Shh,” I say.

I bend down and begin untying his ankles. He smells like urine.

“I was ambushed.”

“How many are there?” I ask.

“Three.”

“I’ve tied one of them up upstairs,” I say.

I free his ankles. He stretches his legs out and sighs with relief.

“I’ve been in this damn chair all day.”

I begin working his hands free.

“How in the hell did you get here?” he asks.

“Sam and I came together. We drove down.”

“You’re kidding me?”

“I had no other way.”

“What did you drive?”

“His father’s old truck.”

Henri is silent a minute while he ponders what that means.

“He doesn’t know anything,” I say. “I told him aliens are a hobby of yours, nothing more.”

He nods. “Well, I’m happy you made it. Where is he now?”

“Trailing one of them. I don’t know where they went.”

The creak of a floorboard comes from above us. I stand, Henri’s hands only halfway untied.

“Did you hear that?” I whisper.

We both watch the door with our breaths held. A foot steps onto the top stair, and then a second, and all at once the large man I passed earlier, the one Sam was trailing, comes into view.

“The party’s over, fellas,” he says. He is holding a gun aimed at my face. “Now, step away.”

I hold my hands up in front of me and take a step back. I think of using my powers to pull the gun away, but what if I somehow cause it to fire by accident? I’m not confident in my abilities just yet. It’s too risky.

“They told us you might be coming. That you would look like humans. That you were the real enemy,” the man says.

“What are you talking about?” I ask.

“They’re delusional,” Henri says. “They think we’re the enemy.”

“Shut up!” the man screams.

He takes three steps towards me. Then he moves the gun from me and fixes it straight on Henri.

“One false move by you and he gets it. You understand?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Now, catch this,” he says. He pulls down a roll of duct tape from the shelf beside him and throws it towards me. As it moves through the air, I stop it, suspended about eight feet off the ground, halfway between us. I start spinning it very quickly. The man stares at it, confused.

“What the…”

While he’s distracted, I move my arm towards him with a throwing motion. The roll of tape flies back and slams him in the nose. Blood starts gushing, and as he reaches for it he drops the gun, which hits the ground and goes off. I point my hand towards the bullet and I make it stop, and behind me I hear Henri laugh. I move the bullet so that it hangs in front of the man’s face.

“Hey, fat boy,” I say.

He opens his eyes and sees the bullet in the air in front of his face.

“You’re gonna need to bring more.”

I let the bullet fall to the ground at his feet. He turns to run, but I bring him back across the room and slam him against a large support pole. It knocks him out and he slumps to the floor. I grab the tape and tie him to the pole. After I’m sure he’s secured, I turn to Henri and finish freeing him.

“John, I think that’s the best surprise I’ve ever seen in my entire life,” he says in a whisper, such relief in his voice that I think tears might come next.

I smile proudly. “Thanks. It showed at dinner.”

“Sorry I missed it.”

“I told them you were tied up.”

He smiles.

“Thank God the Legacy came,” he says, and I realize that the stress of my Legacies forming—or the fear of them not forming—took a far greater toll on Henri than I imagined.

“So what happened to you?” I ask.

“I knocked on the door. All three of them were home. When I walked in one of them clubbed me in the back of the head. Then I woke up in this chair.” He shakes his head and says a long string of words in Loric that I know are curses. I finish untying him and he stands and stretches his legs.

“We need to get out of here,” he says.

“We have to find Sam.”

And then we hear him.

“John. You down there?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

EVERYTHING SLOWS. I SEE A SECOND PERSON at the top of the stairs. Sam yelps in surprise and I turn to him, silence filling my ears with the discordant hum that comes with slow motion. The man behind him gives him a hard shove that causes his feet to leave the ground, and, when he hits, it will be at the bottom of the stairs, where the concrete floor awaits. I watch him sail through the air, flailing his arms with a look of terror on his anguished face. Without giving it a single thought, my instinct takes over and I lift my hands at the very last second and catch him, his head a mere two inches above the basement floor. I set him down gently.

“Shit,” Henri says.

Sam sits up and crawls backwards like a crab until he reaches the cinder-block wall. His eyes are wide-open, staring at the steps, his mouth moving but no words coming out. The figure who pushed him stands at the top of the stairs trying to figure out, like Sam, what just happened. It must be the third one.

“Sam, I tried to—,” I say.

The man at the top of the stairs turns and tries to sprint away but I force him down two of the stairs. Sam looks at the man being held by an unseen force, then looks at my one arm extended towards him. He is shocked and speechless.

I grab the duct tape and lift the man in the air and carry him up to the second floor, keeping him suspended the entire way. He yells obscenities while I tape him into a chair, but I hear none of them because my mind is racing to figure out what we will say to Sam about what just happened.

“Shut up,” I say.

He unloads another string of cuss words. I decide I’ve had enough so I tape his mouth shut and walk back to the basement. Henri is standing near Sam, who is still sitting there, with the same blank stare on his face.

“I don’t get it,” he says. “What just happened?”

Henri and I look at each other. I shrug.

“Tell me what’s happening,” Sam says, his voice pleading with us, tinged with desperation to know the truth, to know that he’s not crazy and that he didn’t imagine what he just saw.

Henri sighs and shakes his head. Then he says, “What the hell’s the point?”

“The point in what?” I ask.

He ignores me, and instead turns to Sam. He purses his lips together, looks at the man slumped in the chair to make sure he is still out, and then at Sam. “We aren’t who you think we are,” he says, and pauses. Sam stays silent, staring at Henri. I can’t read his face, and I have no idea what Henri is about to tell him—if he will again make up some elaborate story or, for once, tell him the truth—and it’s this latter that I’m truly hoping for. He looks at me and I nod my head in agreement.

“We came to Earth ten years ago from a planet named Lorien. We came because it was destroyed by the inhabitants of another planet named Mogadore. They destroyed Lorien for its resources because they had turned their own planet into a cesspool of decay. We came here to hide until we could return to Lorien, which we will one day do. But we were followed by the Mogadorians. They are here hunting us. And I believe they are here to take over Earth, and that is why I came here today, to find out a little more.”

Sam says nothing. Had it been me who told him as much, I’m sure that he wouldn’t believe me, that he might become angry, but it is Henri who has told him, and there is a certain integrity within Henri that I have always felt, and I have no doubt that Sam feels it also. He looks over at me.

“I was right: you’re an alien. You weren’t joking when you admitted it,” Sam says to me.

“Yes, you were right.”

He looks back at Henri. “And those stories you told me on Halloween?”

“No. Those were just that,” Henri says. “Ridiculous stories that made me smile when I stumbled across them on the internet, nothing more. But what I told you now is the honest truth.”

“Well…,” Sam says, and trails off, grasping for words. “What happened just now?”

Henri nods to me. “John is in the process of developing certain powers. Telekinesis is one of them. When you were pushed, John saved you.”

Sam still smiles beside me, watching me. When I look at him he nods his head.

“I knew you were different,” he says.

“Needless to say,” Henri says to Sam, “you’re going to have to be quiet about this.” Then he looks over at me. “We need information and we need to get out of here. They’re probably nearby.”

“The guys upstairs might still be conscious.”

“Let’s go talk to them.”

Henri walks over and picks the gun up from the floor and pulls the clip. It’s full. He removes all the bullets and sets them on a nearby shelf, then snaps the clip back in and tucks the gun in the waistband of his jeans. I help Sam to his feet and we all go upstairs to the second floor. The man I brought up with my telekinesis is still struggling. The other one is sitting still. Henri walks over to him.

“You were warned,” Henri says.

The man nods.

“Now you’re going to talk,” Henri says, and he pulls the tape from the man’s mouth. “And if you don’t…” He pulls the slide back on the gun and aims it at the man’s chest. “Who visited you?”

“There were three of them,” he says.

“Well, there are three of us. Who cares? Keep talking.”

“They told me if you showed up and I said anything, they’d kill me,” the man says. “I won’t tell you anything more.”

Henri presses the barrel of the gun against the man’s forehead. For some reason it makes me uncomfortable. I reach out and move the gun down so it points only at the floor. Henri looks at me curiously.

“There are other ways,” I say.

Henri shrugs and sets the gun down. “The floor is yours,” he says.

I stand five feet in front of the man. He looks at me with fear. He is heavy, but after catching Sam as he sailed through the air, I know that I can lift him. I hold my arms out, my body straining in concentration. Nothing at first, and then very slowly he begins to rise off the floor. The man struggles but he is taped to the chair and there is nothing he can do. I concentrate with everything I have, and yet in my peripheral vision I can see that Henri is smiling proudly, and that Sam is, too. Yesterday I couldn’t lift a tennis ball; now I’m lifting a chair with a two-hundred-pound man sitting in it. How quickly the Legacy has developed.

When I have raised him to face level, I flip the chair over and he hangs upside down.

“Come on!” he yells.

“Start talking.”

“No!” he yells. “They said they’d kill me.”

I let go of the chair and it falls. The man screams but I catch him before he hits the ground. I raise him back up.

“There were three of them!” he yells, talking fast. “They showed up the same day we sent out the magazines. They showed up that night.”

“What did they look like?” Henri asks.

“Like ghosts. They were pale, almost like albinos. They wore sunglasses, but when we wouldn’t talk one of them took the sunglasses off. They had black eyes and pointy teeth, but they didn’t look natural like an animal’s would. Theirs looked as though they had been broken and chiseled. They all wore long coats and hats like some shit out of an old spy movie. What the hell more do you want?”

“Why did they come?”

“They wanted to know our source for the story. We told them. A man had called, said he had an exclusive for us, starting raging about a group of aliens that wanted to destroy our civilization. But he called on the day we were printing, so instead of writing the full story, we put in a small quip and said more to follow next month. He talked so fast that we hardly grasped what he was saying. We were planning on calling him the next night, only that didn’t happen, because the Mogadorians showed up instead.”

“How did you know they were Mogadorians?”

“What the hell else could they have been? We wrote a story about the Mogadorian race of aliens and lo and behold a group of aliens shows up on our doorstep the same day wanting to know where we got the story. It wasn’t hard to figure out.”

The man is heavy and I’m having trouble holding him. My forehead is beaded with sweat and it’s a struggle to breathe. I flip him back over, begin to lower him. When he is within a foot of the floor I drop him the rest of the way and he lands with an Oomphf. I bend over with my hands on my knees to catch my breath.

“What the hell, man? I’m answering your questions,” he says.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “You’re too heavy.”

“And that’s the only time they came?” says Henri.

The man shakes his head. “They came back.”

“Why?”

“To make sure we didn’t print anything else. I don’t think they trusted us, but the man who called us never answered his phone again, so we had nothing else to print.”

“What happened to him?”

“What do you think happened?” the man asks.

Henri nods. “So they knew where he lived?”

“They had the phone number we were supposed to call him back on. I’m sure they could have figured it out.”

“Did they threaten you?”

“Hell, yes. They trashed our office. They screwed with my mind. I haven’t been the same since.”

“What’d they do to your mind?”

He closes his eyes and takes another deep breath.

“They didn’t even look real,” he says. “I mean, here are these three men standing in front of us talking in deep, raspy voices, all in trench coats and hats and sunglasses even though it was nighttime. It looked like they were dressed up for a Halloween party or something. They looked funny and out of place, so at first I laughed at them….,” he says, his voice trailing off.

“But the second I laughed I knew I had made a mistake. The other two Mogadorians started towards me with their sunglasses off. I tried to look away, but I couldn’t. Those eyes. I had to look, as though something was pulling me there. It was like seeing death. My own death, and the deaths of all the people I know and love. Things weren’t so funny anymore. Not only did I have to witness the deaths, but I could feel them, too. The uncertainty. The pain. The complete and utter terror. I wasn’t in that room anymore. And then came things I’ve always feared as a kid. Images of stuffed animals that came to life, with sharp teeth as mouths, razor blades for claws. The usual stuff all kids are afraid of. Werewolves. Demonic clowns. Giant spiders. I viewed them all through the eyes of a child, and they absolutely terrified me. And every time one of those things bit into me, I could feel its teeth rip the flesh from my body, I could feel the blood pour from the wounds. I couldn’t stop screaming.”

“Did you try to fight back at all?”

“They had two of these little weasel-looking things, fat, with short legs. No bigger than a dog. They were frothing at the mouth. One of the men was holding them on a leash, but you could tell they were hungry for us. They said they would turn them loose if we resisted. I’m telling you, man, these things weren’t from Earth. If they were dogs, big deal, we would have fought back. But I think those things would have eaten us whole despite our size. And they were pulling against the leash, growling, trying to get to us.”

“So you talked?”

“Yes.”

“When did they come back?”

“The night before the next magazine went out, a little over a week ago.”

Henri gives me a concerned look. Only one week ago the Mogadorians were within a hundred miles of where we live. They could still be here somewhere, maybe monitoring the paper. Perhaps that is why Henri has felt their presence of late. Sam stands beside me, taking everything in.

“Why didn’t they just kill you like they did your source?”

“How the hell do I know? Maybe because we publish a respectable paper.”

“How did the man who called know about the Mogadorians?”

“He said he had captured one of them and tortured it.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. His phone number was from the area code near Columbus. So north of here. Maybe sixty or eighty miles north.”

“You spoke to him?”

“Yeah. And I wasn’t sure if he was crazy or not, but we had heard rumors about something like this before. He started talking about them wanting to wipe out civilization as we know it, and sometimes he talked so fast that it was hard to make sense of anything he said. One thing he kept repeating was that they were here hunting something, or somebody. Then he started spouting numbers.”

My eyes open wide. “What numbers? What did they mean?”

“I have no idea. Like I said, he was talking so fast that it was all we could do to write it all down.”

“You wrote while he talked?” Henri says.

“Of course we did. We’re journalists,” he says incredulously. “Do you think we make up the stories we write?”

“Yeah, I do,” says Henri.

“Do you still have the notes that you wrote?” I say.

He looks at me and nods. “I’m telling you, they’re worthless. Most of what I wrote are scribbles on their plan to destroy the human race.”

“I need to see them,” I nearly bellow. “Where, where are they?”

He motions towards a desk against one of the walls.

“On the desk. On sticky notes.”

I walk over to the desk, which is covered with papers, and start looking through the sticky notes. I find some very vague notes on the Mogadorians’ hope to conquer Earth. Nothing concrete, no plans or details, just a few indistinct words:

“Overpopulation”

“Earth’s resources”

“Biological warfare?”

“The Planet Mogadore.”

I come to the note I’m looking for. I read it carefully three or four times.Planet Lorien? The Loric?1–3 dead4?7 trailed in Spain.9 on the run in SA(what is he talking about? What do these numbers have to do with invading Earth?)

“Why is there a question mark after the number 4?” I ask.

“Because he said something about it but he talked too fast and I didn’t get it.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me?”

He shakes his head. I sigh. Just my luck, I think. The one thing said about me is the one thing that wasn’t written.

“What does ‘SA’ mean?” I ask.

“South America.”

“Did he say where in South America?”

“No.”

I nod, stare at the slip of paper. I wish I could have heard the conversation, that I could have asked questions of my own. Do the Mogadorians really know where Seven is? Are they really following him or her? If so, the Loric charm still holds. I fold the sticky notes and slip them into my back pocket.

“Do you know what the numbers mean?” he asks.

I shake my head. “I have no idea.”

“I don’t believe you,” he says.

“Shut up,” Sam says, and pokes him in the gut with the heavy end of the bat.

“Is there anything else you can tell me?” I ask.

He thinks about it for a moment, then says, “I think bright light bothers them. It seemed to cause them pain when they took their sunglasses off.”

We hear a noise downstairs. Like someone trying to slowly open the door. We look at each other. I look to the man in the chair.

“Who is that?” I quietly say.

“Them.”

“What?”

“They said they’d be watching. That they knew someone might be coming.”

We hear quiet footsteps on the first floor.

Henri and Sam look at each other, both terrified.

“Why didn’t you tell us?”

“They said they’d kill me. And my family.”

I run to the window, look out the back. We’re on the second floor. It’s a twenty-foot drop to the ground. There’s a fence around the yard. Eight feet of wood slats. I move quickly back to the stairs, and peer down. I see three huge figures, in long black trench coats, black hats, and sunglasses. They’re carrying long gleaming swords. There’s no way we’re going to make it down the stairs. My Legacies are growing stronger, but they aren’t strong enough to take on three Mogadorians. The only way out is through one of the windows or over a small porch at the front of the room. The windows are smaller but the backyard will allow us to escape unseen. If we go out the front, we will most likely be visible. I hear noise coming from the basement and the Mogadorians talking to each other in an ugly, guttural language. Two of them move towards the basement while the third starts walking towards the stairs that lead to us.

I have a second or two to act. The windows will break if we go through them. Our only chance is the doors leading to the second-floor porch. I open them using telekinesis. It’s black outside. I hear footsteps coming up the stairs. I pull Sam and Henri over to me and I throw each of them over my shoulders like sacks of potatoes.

“What are you doing?” whispers Henri.

“I have no idea,” I say. “But I hope it works.”

Just as I see the top of the first Mogadorian’s hat, I sprint towards the doors and right before the ledge of the porch, I jump. We go flying into the night sky. For two or three seconds we’re floating. I see cars moving down the street beneath us. I see people on the sidewalk. I don’t know where we’re going to land, or if my body will support all the weight I’m carrying when we do. When we hit the roof of a house across the street I collapse, with Sam and Henri on top of me. I get my breath knocked out of me, and it feels like my legs are broken. Sam starts to stand, but Henri keeps him down. He drags me to the far end of the roof and asks if I can use my telekinesis to get him and Sam onto the ground. I can and I do. He tells me I need to jump. I stand on legs that are wobbly and still hurt, and just before I jump, I turn and see the three Mogadorians are standing on the porch across the street, looking confused. Their swords are gleaming. Without a second to spare, we got away without them seeing us.

We get to Sam’s truck. Henri and Sam have to help me walk. Bernie is there waiting for us. We decide to leave Henri’s truck because they most likely know what it looks like and would track it. We pull out of Athens and Henri starts driving back to Paradise, which it really might be after the night we just had.

Henri starts from the beginning, telling Sam everything. He doesn’t stop until we are pulling into our driveway. It’s still dark. Sam looks over at me.

“Unbelievable,” he says, and smiles. “It’s the coolest thing I’ve ever heard of.” I look at him and I see the validation he has always looked for in his life, an affirmation that the time he’s spent with his nose in the conspiracy rags, looking for clues to his father’s disappearance, wasn’t in vain.

“Are you really resistant to fire?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say.

“God, that’s awesome.”

“Thanks, Sam.”

“Can you fly?” he asks. At first I think he is joking, but then I see that he isn’t.

“I can’t fly. I’m resistant to fire and can turn my hands into lights. I have telekinesis, which I only learned to use yesterday. More Legacies are supposed to come soon. We think so, anyhow. But I have no idea what they will be until they actually develop.”

“I hope you learn to make yourself invisible,” Sam says.

“My grandfather could. And anything he touched also became invisible.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes.”

He starts laughing.

“I still can’t believe you two drove all the way to Athens by yourselves,” Henri says. “You guys are really something. When we stopped for gas I saw that the plates have been expired for four years. I really don’t see how you made it without getting stopped.”

“Well, you can count on me from now on,” says Sam. “I’ll do whatever it takes to help stop them. Especially because I bet they’re the ones who took my dad.”

“Thanks, Sam,” says Henri. “The most important thing you could do is stay quiet with our secret. If anyone else finds out about this it could lead to our deaths.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll never tell anyone. I don’t want John using his powers on me.”

We laugh and thank Sam again and he pulls away. Henri and I go inside. Even though I slept on the drive back, I’m still exhausted. I lie down on the couch. Henri sits in a chair across from me.

“Sam won’t say anything,” I say.

He doesn’t respond, just stares at the floor.

“They don’t know we’re here,” I say.

He looks up at me.

“They don’t,” I say. “If they knew they’d be following us now.”

He stays silent. I can’t take it.

“I’m not leaving Ohio on nothing more than speculation.”

Henri stands.

“I’m happy that you’ve made a friend. And I think Sarah is great. But we can’t stay. I’m going to start packing,” he says.

“No.”

“When we’re packed I’ll go into town and buy a new truck. We need to get out of here. They might not have followed us, but they know how close they were at catching us, and that we might still be nearby. I believe the man who called the magazine did in fact capture one of them. That was his story, that he captured one and tortured it until it talked and then he killed it. We don’t know what kind of tracking technology they have, but I don’t think it will take them long to find us. And when they do, we’ll die. Your Legacies are emerging, and your strength is growing, but you’re nowhere near ready to fight them.”

He walks out of the room. I sit up. I don’t want to leave. I have a real friend for the first time in my life. A friend who knows what I am and isn’t scared, doesn’t think I’m a freak. A friend who is willing to fight with me, and go into danger with me. And I have a girlfriend. Someone who wants to be with me, even without knowing who I am. Someone who makes me happy, someone I would fight for, or go into danger in order to protect. My Legacies haven’t all emerged yet, but enough of them have. I took down three grown men. They didn’t stand a chance. It was like fighting with little kids. I could do anything I wanted to them. We also now know that humans can also fight, and capture, and hurt, and kill Mogadorians. If they can, then I definitely can. I don’t want to leave. I have a friend, and I have a girlfriend. I am not going to leave.

Henri walks back out of his room. He is carrying the Loric Chest that is our most prized possession.

“Henri,” I say.

“Yes?”

“We’re not leaving.”

“Yes we are.”

“You can if you want, but I’ll go live with Sam. I’m not leaving.”

“This is not your decision to make.”

“It’s not? I thought I was the one being hunted. I thought I was the one in danger. You could walk away right now and the Mogadorians would never look for you. You could live a nice, long, normal life. You could do whatever you want. I can’t. They will always be after me. They will always be trying to find me and kill me. I’m fifteen years old. I’m not a kid anymore. It is my decision to make.”

He stares at me for a minute. “That was a good speech, but it doesn’t change anything. Pack your stuff. We’re leaving.”

I raise my hand and point it at him and lift him off the ground. He’s so shocked that he doesn’t say anything. I stand and move him into the corner of the room, up near the ceiling.

“We’re staying,” I say.

“Put me down, John.”

“I’ll put you down when you agree to stay.”

“It’s too dangerous.”

“We don’t know that. They’re not in Paradise. They might not have any idea where we are.”

“Put me down.”

“Not until you agree to stay.”

“PUT ME DOWN.”

I don’t say anything back. I just hold him there. He struggles, tries to push off the wall and the ceiling, but he can’t move. My power holds him in place. And I feel strong doing it. Stronger than I’ve ever felt in my life. I am not leaving. I am not running. I love my life in Paradise. I love having a real friend, and I love my girlfriend. I’m ready to fight for what I love, be it with the Mogadorians, or be it with Henri.

“You know you’re not coming down until I bring you down.”

“You’re acting like a child.”

“No, I’m acting like someone who is starting to realize who he is and what he can do.”

“And you’re really going to keep me up here?”

“Until I fall asleep or get tired, but I’ll just do it again once I get some rest.”

“Fine. We can stay. With certain conditions.”

“What?”

“Put me down and we’ll talk about it.”

I lower him, set him on the floor. He hugs me. I’m surprised; I expected him to be pissed. He lets go of me and we sit down on the couch.

“I’m proud of how far you’ve come. I’ve spent many years waiting and preparing for these things to happen, for your Legacies to arrive. You know my entire life is devoted to keeping you safe, and making you strong. I would never forgive myself if something happened to you. If you died on my watch, I’m not sure how I would go on. In time the Mogadorians will catch up with us. I want to be ready for them when they come. I don’t think you are yet, even though you do. You have a long way to go. We can stay here, for now, if you agree that training comes first. Before Sarah, before Sam, before everything. And at the first sign that they’re nearby, or are on our trail, we leave, no questions asked, no fighting about it, no levitating me up to the ceiling and holding me there.”

“Deal,” I say, and smile.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

WINTER COMES EARLY AND WITH FULL FORCE to Paradise, Ohio. First the wind, then the cold, then the snow. Light dustings to start, then a storm blows through and buries the land so that the scraping sound of snowplows is as consistently heard as the wind itself, leaving a coat of salt over everything. School is canceled for two days. The snow near the roads segues from white to dingy black and eventually melts to standing puddles of slush that refuse to drain. Henri and I spend my time off training, indoors, outdoors. I can now juggle three balls without touching them, which also means I can lift more than one thing at a time. The heavier and larger objects have come, the kitchen table, the snowblower Henri bought the week before, our new truck, which looks almost exactly like the old one and like millions of other pickup trucks in America. If I can lift it physically, with my body, then I can lift it with my mind. Henri believes that the strength of my mind will eventually transcend that of my body.

In the backyard the trees stand sentinel around us, frozen branches like figurines of hollow glass, an inch of a fine white powder piled atop each one. The snow is up to our knees aside from the small patch Henri has cleared away. Bernie Kosar sits watching from the back porch. Even he wants nothing to do with the snow.

“Are you sure about this?” I ask.

“You need to learn to embrace it,” Henri says. Over his shoulder, watching with morbid curiosity, stands Sam. It is his first time watching me train.

“How long will this burn?” I ask.

“I don’t know.”

I am wearing a highly combustible suit made mostly of natural fibers soaked in oils, some of which are slow burning, some of which are not. I want to set it on fire just to be rid of the smells that are making my eyes water. I take a deep breath.

“Are you ready?” he asks.

“As ready as I’ll ever be.”

“Don’t breathe. You’re not immune to the smoke or fumes and your internal organs will burn.”

“This seems foolish to me,” I say.

“It’s part of your training. Grace under pressure. You need to learn to multitask while consumed in flames.”

“But why?”

“Because when the battle comes, we’re going to be greatly outnumbered. Fire will be one of your great allies in war. You need to learn to fight while burning.”

“Ugh.”

“If you get in trouble, jump into the snow and start rolling.”

I look at Sam, who has a big grin spread across his face. He is holding a red fire extinguisher in his hand just in case it’s needed.

“I know,” I say.

Everyone is silent while Henri messes with the matches.

“You look like Sasquatch wearing that suit,” Sam says.

“Eat it, Sam,” I say.

“Here we go,” says Henri.

I take a deep breath just before he touches a match to the suit. Fire sweeps across my body. It feels unnatural for me to keep my eyes open, but I do. I look up. The fire rises eight feet above me. The whole world is shrouded in shades of orange, red, yellow that dance in my line of sight. I can feel the heat, but only slightly as one feels the sun’s rays on a summer day. Nothing more than that.

“Go!” Henri yells.

I hold my arms out to my sides, eyes wide-open, breath held. I feel as though I’m hovering. I enter the deep snow and it begins to sizzle and melt underfoot, a slight steam rising while I walk. I reach my right hand forward and lift a cinder block, which feels heavier than normal. Is it because I’m not breathing? Is it the stress of the fire?

“Don’t waste time!” Henri yells.

I hurl the block as hard as I can against a dead tree fifty feet away. The force causes it to smash into a million little pieces, leaving an indentation in the wood. Then I raise three tennis balls soaked in gasoline. I juggle them in midair, one over the other. I bring them in towards my body. They catch fire, and still I juggle them—and while doing so I lift a long, thin broomstick. I close my eyes. My body is warm. I wonder if I’m sweating. If I am, the sweat must be evaporating the second it reaches the skin’s surface.

I grit my teeth, open my eyes, thrust my body forward and direct all of my powers into the stick’s very core. It explodes, splintering into small bits. I don’t let any of them fall to the ground; instead I keep them suspended, collectively looking like a cloud of dust hovering in midair. I pull them to me and let them burn. The wood pops through the flicker and hum of the flames. I force them back together into a tightly compacted spear of fire that looks as though it has sprung straight from the depths of hell.

“Perfect!” Henri yells.

One minute has passed. My lungs begin to burn from the fire, from my breath still held. I put everything that I am into the spear and I hurl it so hard that it speeds through the air like a bullet and hits the tree, and hundreds of tiny fires spread throughout the vicinity and extinguish almost immediately. I had hoped the dead wood would catch fire but it does not. I have also dropped the tennis balls. They sizzle in the snow five feet away from me.

“Forget the balls,” Henri yells. “The tree. Get the tree.”

The dead wood looks ghastly with its arthritic limbs silhouetted against the world of white beyond it. I close my eyes. I can’t hold my breath much longer. Frustration and anger begin to form, fueled by the fire and the discomfort of the suit and the tasks that are left undone. I focus on the large branch coming off the tree’s trunk and I try to break that branch away but it won’t come. I grit my teeth and furrow my brows and finally a loud snap rings through the air like a shotgun blast and the branch comes sailing towards me. I catch it in my hands and hold it straight above me. Let it burn, I think. It must be twenty feet long. It finally catches fire and I lift it into the air forty or fifty feet above me and, without touching it, I drive it straight into the ground as though I’m staking my claim like some old-world swordsman standing atop the hill after winning the war. The stick totters back and forth smoking, flames dancing along the upper half of it. I open my mouth and instinctively take a breath, and the flames come rushing in; an instant burning spreads throughout my body. I’m so shocked and it hurts so much that I don’t know what to do.

“The snow! The snow!” Henri yells.

I dive in headfirst and begin rolling. The fire goes out almost immediately but I keep rolling and the sizzle of snow touching the tattered suit is all I hear while wisps of steam and smoke rise off of me. And then Sam finally pulls the clip from the extinguisher and unloads with a thick powder that makes it even harder to breathe.

“No,” I yell.

He stops. I lie there trying to catch my breath, but each inhalation brings about a pain in my lungs that reverberates throughout my body.

“Damn, John. You weren’t supposed to breathe,” Henri says, standing over me.

“I couldn’t help it.”

“Are you okay?” Sam asks.

“My lungs are burning.”

Everything is blurry but slowly the world comes into focus. I lie there looking up into the low gray sky at the flakes of snow sifting sullenly down upon us.

“How’d I do?”

“Not bad for your first try.”

“We’re going to do it again, aren’t we?”

“In time, yes.”

“That was wicked cool,” Sam says.

I sigh, then take a deep, labored breath. “That sucked.”

“You did well for your first time,” Henri says. “You can’t expect everything to come easily.”

I nod from the ground. I lie there a good minute or two, and then Henri extends a hand and helps me up, bringing about the end of training for the day.

I wake in the middle of the night two days later, 2:57 on the clock. I can hear Henri working at the kitchen table. I crawl out of bed and walk out of the room. He is hunched over a document, wearing bifocals and holding some sort of stamp with a pair of tweezers. He looks up at me.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“Creating forms for you.”

“For what?”

“I got to thinking about you and Sam driving down to get me. I think it’s foolish of us to keep using your real age when we can just as easily change it according to our needs.”

I pick up a birth certificate that he has already finished. The name written is James Hughes. The date of birth would make me a year older. I’d be sixteen and able to drive. Then I bend over and look at the one he is in the process of creating. The name listed is Jobie Frey, age eighteen, a legal adult.

“Why didn’t we ever think to do this before?” I ask.

“We never had reason to.”

Papers of different shapes and sizes and densities are scattered across the table, a large printer off to the side. Bottles of ink, rubber stamps, notary stamps, metal plate-looking things, various tools that look as though they belong in a dentist’s office. The process of document creation has always remained foreign to me.

“Are we going to change my age now?”

Henri shakes his head. “It’s too late to change your age in Paradise. These are mostly for the future. Who knows what will happen that will give you reason to use them.”

The thought of moving in the future makes me nauseous. I would rather stay fifteen and unable to drive forever than move someplace new.

Sarah returns from Colorado a week before Christmas. I haven’t seen her in eight days. It feels as though it’s been a month. The van drops all the girls off at the school and one of her friends drives her straight to my house without first taking her home. When I hear the tires come up the drive I meet her with a hug and a kiss and I lift her off the ground and twirl her in the air. She has just been in a plane and a car for ten hours and she is wearing sweatpants and no makeup with her hair pulled into a ponytail and yet she is the most beautiful girl I have ever seen and I don’t want to let go of her. We stare into each other’s eyes beneath the moonlight and all either of us can do is smile.

“Did you miss me?” she asks.

“Every second of every day.”

She kisses the tip of my nose.

“I missed you, too.”

“So do the animals have a shelter again?” I ask.

“Oh, John, it was amazing! I wish you could have been there. There were probably thirty people helping out at all times, around the clock. The building went up so fast and it’s so much nicer than it was before. We built this cat tree in one of the corners, and I swear the whole time we were there, there were cats playing on it.”

I smile. “It sounds great. I wish I could have been there, too.”

I take her bag and we walk into the house together.

“Where’s Henri?” she asks.

“Grocery shopping. He left about ten minutes ago.”

She walks through the living room and drops her coat onto the back of a chair on her way into my bedroom. She sits on the edge of my bed and kicks her shoes off.

“What should we do?” she asks.

I stand there watching her. She is wearing a red hooded sweatshirt with a zipper down the front. It is only halfway zipped. She smiles and looks at me through the tops of her eyes.

“Come here,” she says, and holds her hand out to me.

I walk to her and she takes my hand in hers. She looks up at me and squints her eyes from the light shining overhead. I snap my fingers with my free hand and the light turns off.

“How’d you do that?”

“Magic,” I say.

I sit beside her. She tucks a few loose strands of hair behind her ear, then leans over and kisses me on the cheek. Then she cups my chin and pulls my head to hers and kisses me again, softly, delicately. My whole body tingles in response. She pulls away, her hand still on my cheek. She traces my brow with her thumb.

“I really did miss you,” she says.

“Me, too.”

A silence passes between us. Sarah bites her lower lip.

“I couldn’t wait to get here,” she says. “The whole time I was in Colorado, you were all I could think of. Even when playing with the animals, I was wishing you were there with me playing with them, too. And then when we finally left this morning, the entire trip was hell even though every mile we traveled was another mile I was closer to you.”

She smiles, mostly with her eyes, her lips a thin upturned crescent that keeps her teeth hidden. She kisses me again, a kiss that starts as slow and lingering and goes from there. Both of us are sitting on the edge of the bed, her hand on the side of my face, mine on the small of her back. I can feel the tight contours beneath the tips of my fingers, can taste the berry gloss on her lips. I pull her to me. I feel as though I can’t get close enough to her despite our bodies being pressed tightly together. My hand running up her back, the smooth porcelain feel of her skin. Her hands through my hair, both of us breathing heavily. We fall back on the bed, on our sides. Our eyes are closed. I keep opening mine to see her. The room is dark aside from the moonlight entering through the windows. She catches me watching her and we stop kissing. She puts her forehead to mine and stares at me.

She places her hand on the back of my neck and pulls me to her and all at once we’re kissing again. Entangled. Meshed. Our arms tightly around the other. My mind clear of every plague that normally visits and every thought of other planets, my mind free of the hunt and pursuit by the Mogadorians. Sarah and I on the bed kissing each other, falling into each other. Nothing else in the world matters.

And then the door opens in the living room. We both jump up.

“Henri’s home,” I say.

We stand and quickly brush the wrinkles from our clothes, smiling, a secret shared between us that makes us giggle as we walk out of the bedroom holding hands. Henri is setting a bag of groceries on the kitchen table.

“Hi, Henri,” Sarah says.

He smiles at her. She lets go of my hand and walks over and hugs him and they start talking about her trip to Colorado. I walk outside to get the rest of the groceries. I breathe in the cold air, try to shake my limbs free of the tension of what just happened, and the disappointment of Henri coming home when he did. I’m still breathing heavily as I grab the rest of the groceries and carry them into the house. Sarah is telling Henri about some of the cats that were at the shelter.

“And you didn’t bring one of them back for us?”

“Now Henri, you know I would have happily brought you one if you had told me,” Sarah says, her arms folded across her chest with her hip cocked to the side.

He smiles at her. “I know you would’ve.”

Henri puts the groceries away and Sarah and I head out into the frigid air to go for a walk before her mom arrives to take her home. Bernie Kosar comes with us. He takes the lead and runs ahead. Sarah and I hold hands, walking through the yard, the temperature slightly above freezing. The snow melting, the ground wet and muddy. Bernie Kosar disappears for a time into the woods and then comes running back out. His bottom half is filthy.

“What time is your mom coming?” I ask.

She looks at her watch. “Twenty minutes.”

I nod. “I’m so happy you’re back.”

“Me too.”

We go to the edge of the woods but it is too dark for us to enter. We instead walk along the perimeter of the yard, hand in hand, occasionally stopping to kiss with the moon and stars as witnesses. Neither of us talks about what just happened, but it’s obvious that it is on both of our minds. When we make the first lap Sarah’s mother pulls into the drive. She’s ten minutes early. Sarah runs up and hugs her. I walk inside and grab Sarah’s bag. After we say good-bye, I walk to the road and watch their taillights recede in the distance. I stand outside for a while and then Bernie Kosar and I go back into the house. Henri is halfway through making dinner. I give the dog a bath. When I’m finished dinner is ready.

We sit at the table and eat, not a word passing between us. I can’t stop thinking of her. I stare blankly into my plate. I’m not hungry but I try to force the food down anyhow. I manage a few bites, and then I push the plate out in front of me and I sit there in silence.

“So are you going to tell me?” Henri asks.

“Tell you what?”

“What’s on your mind.”

I shrug. “I don’t know.”

He nods, goes back to eating. I close my eyes. I can still smell Sarah on the collar of my shirt, can still feel her hand on my cheek. Her lips to mine, the texture of her hair when I ran my hand through it. All I can think about is what she must be doing, and how I wish she were still here.

“Do you think it’s possible for us to be loved?” I ask.

“What are you talking about?”

“By humans. Do you think we can be loved, like, truly be loved by them?”

“I think they can love us the way they love each other, especially if they don’t know what we are, but I don’t think it’s possible to love a human the way you would love a Loric,” he says.

“Why?”

“Because deep down we’re different from them. And we love differently. One of the gifts our planet gave us is to love completely. Without jealousy or insecurity or fear. Without pettiness. Without anger. You may have strong feelings for Sarah, but they aren’t what you would feel for a Loric girl.”

“There aren’t many Loric girls available for me.”

“Even more reason to be careful with Sarah. At some point, if we last long enough, we will need to regenerate our race and repopulate our planet. Obviously you’re a long way from having to worry about that, but I wouldn’t count on Sarah being your partner.”

“What happens if we try to have children with humans?”

“It’s happened many times before. Usually it results in an exceptional and gifted human. Some of the greatest figures in Earth’s history were actually the product of humans and the Loric, including Buddha, Aristotle, Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein. Many of the ancient Greek gods, who most people believe were mythological, were actually the children of the humans and Loric, mainly because it was much more common then for us to be on this planet and we were helping them develop civilizations. Aphrodite, Apollo, Hermes, and Zeus were all real, and had one Loric parent.”

“So it is possible.”

“It was possible. In our current situation it’s reckless and impractical. In fact, though I don’t know her number, or have any idea where she is, one of the children who came to Earth with us was the daughter of your parents’ best friends. They used to joke that it was fate that the two of you would end up together. They may well have been right.”

“So what do I do?”

“Enjoy your time with Sarah, but don’t get too attached to her, and don’t let her get too attached to you.”

“Really?”

“Trust me, John. If you never believe another word I say, then believe that.”

“I believe all the words you say even if I don’t want to.”

Henri winks at me. “Good,” he says.

Afterwards I go into my room and call Sarah. I think about what Henri said to me before I do it, but I can’t help myself. I am attached to her. I think I’m in love with her. We talk for two hours. It is midnight when the call ends. Then I lie in bed smiling through the darkness.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

THE DAY HAS GROWN DARK. THE WARM NIGHT carries a soft wind and the sky is scattered with intermittent flashes of light, clouds turning to brilliant colors of blue and red and green. Fireworks at first. Fireworks that segue to something else, louder, more menacing, the oohs and aahs turning to shrieks and screams. A chaos erupts. People running, children crying. Me, standing in the middle of it all, watching without the benefit of being able to do anything to help. The soldiers and the beasts pour onto the scene from all directions as I have seen before, the continuous fall of bombs so loud that it hurts the ears, the reverberations felt in the pit of my stomach. So deafening it makes my teeth ache. Then the Loric charge back with such intensity, with such courage, that it makes me proud to be among them, to be one of them.

Then I am gone, sweeping through the air at a rate that causes the world beneath to pass in a blur so that I can’t focus on any one thing. When I stop I am standing on the tarmac of an airfield. A silver airship is fifteen feet away and forty or so people stand at the ramp leading up to its entrance. Two people have already entered, standing in the doorway with their eyes on the sky, a very young girl and a woman Henri’s age. And then I see myself, four years old, crying, shoulders slumped. A much younger version of Henri just behind me. He, too, is watching the sky. On bended knee in front of me is my grandmother, gripping me by the shoulders. My grandfather stands behind her, his face set hard, distracted, the lenses of his glasses gathering the light from the sky.

“Come back to us, you hear? Come back to us,” my grandmother says, finishing speaking. I wish I could have heard the words that came before them. Up until now I have never remembered anything that was spoken to me that night. But now I have something. My four-year-old self doesn’t respond. My four-year-old self is too scared. He doesn’t understand what is happening, why there is urgency and fear in the eyes of everyone around him. My grandmother pulls me to her and then she lets go. She stands and turns her back to keep me from seeing her cry. My four-year-old self knows that she is crying, but he doesn’t know why.

Next is my grandfather, who is covered in sweat, grime, and blood. He has clearly been fighting, and his face is twisted as though he is straining, ready to fight more, ready to go and do all he can in the struggle to survive. His, and the planet’s. He drops to a knee as my grandmother did before him. For the first time I look around. Twisted heaps of metal, chunks of concrete, large holes in the ground where the bombs have fallen. Scattered fires, shattered glass, dirt, splintered trees. And in the middle of it all a single airship, unharmed, the one that we are boarding.

“We gotta go!” somebody yells out. A man, dark hair and eyes. I don’t know who he is. Henri looks at him and nods. The children walk up the ramp. My grandfather fixes me with a hard stare. He opens his mouth to speak. But before the words come I am again swept away, hurled up through the air, the world below again passing in a blur. I try to make it out, but I am moving too fast. The only discernible sights are the bombs, continually falling, large displays of fire of all colors that sweep through the night sky and the perpetual explosions that follow.

Then I stop again.

I am inside of a large, open building that I have never seen before. It is silent. The ceiling is domed. The floor is one great slab of concrete the size of a football field. There are no windows, but the sounds of the bombs still penetrate, echoing off the walls around me. Standing in the very middle of the building, tall and proud, alone, is a white rocket that extends all the way to the apex of the ceiling.

Then a door slams open in the far corner. My head snaps around to it. Two men enter, frantic, talking quickly and loudly. All at once a herd of animals rush in behind the men. Fifteen, give or take, continually changing shape. Some flying, some running, on two legs, then on four. Bringing up the rear, a third man follows and the door is shut. The first man reaches the spacecraft, opens a sort of hatch on the ship’s bottom, and begins ushering the animals in.

“Go! Go! Up and in, up and in,” he yells.

The animals go, all of them changing their shapes in order to do so. Then the last animal enters and one of the men pulls himself in. The other two begin throwing bags and boxes up to him. It takes them a good ten minutes to get everything on board. Then all three scatter around the rocket, preparing it. The men are sweating, moving frantically until everything is ready. Just before the three of them climb inside the rocket, someone runs up with a bundle that looks like a swaddled child, though I can’t see well enough to tell. They take whatever it is and go inside. Then the door snaps shut behind them and is sealed. Minutes pass. The bombs must be just outside the walls now. And then from nowhere an explosion occurs inside the building and I see the beginnings of fire shoot from the bottom of the rocket, a fire that quickly grows, a fire that consumes everything inside the building. A fire that consumes even me.

My eyes snap open. I am back home, in Ohio, lying in bed. The room is dark, but I can sense that I am not alone. A figure moves, a shadow thrown across the bed. I tense myself to it, ready to snap my lights on, ready to hurl it against the wall.

“You were talking,” Henri says. “In your sleep just now, you were talking.”

I turn on my lights. He is standing beside the bed, wearing pajamas pants and a white T-shirt. His hair is tousled; his eyes are red with sleep.

“What was I saying?”

“You said ‘Up and in, up and in.’ What was happening?”

“I was just on Lorien.”

“In a dream?”

“I don’t think so. I was there, just like before.”

“What did you see?”

I scoot up the bed so my back rests against the wall.

“The animals,” I say.

“What animals?”

“In the spaceship I saw take off. The old one, at the museum. In the rocket that left after ours. I watched animals being loaded into it. Not many. Fifteen, maybe. With three other Loric. I don’t think they were Garde. And something else. A bundle. It looked like a baby, but I couldn’t tell.”

“Why don’t you think they were Garde?”

“They loaded the rocket with supplies, fifty or so boxes and duffel bags. They didn’t use telekinesis.”

“Into the rocket inside the museum?”

“I think it was the museum. I was inside a large, domed building with nothing inside of it but a rocket. I can only assume it was the museum.”

Henri nods. “If they worked at the museum then they would have been Cêpan.”

“Loading animals,” I say. “Animals that could change their shape.”

“Chimæra,” Henri says.

“What?”

“Chimæra. Animals on Lorien that could change their shape. They were called Chimæra.”

“Is that what Hadley was?” I ask, remembering back to the vision I had a few weeks ago, the vision of playing in the yard of my elders’ home when I was lifted in the air by the man wearing a silver and blue suit.

Henri smiles. “You remember Hadley?”

I nod. “I’ve seen him the way that I’ve seen everything else.”

“You’re having the visions even when we’re not training?”

“Sometimes.”

“How often?”

“Henri, who cares about the visions? Why were they loading animals into a rocket? What was a baby doing with them, or was it even a baby? Where did they go? What purpose could they possibly have had?”

Henri thinks about it a moment. He shifts the weight of his body to his right leg. “Probably the same purpose we had. Think about it, John. How else could animals repopulate Lorien? They too would have to go to some sort of sanctuary. Everything was wiped out. Not just the people, but also the animals, and all plant life. Maybe the bundle was just another animal. A fragile one, or maybe a young one.”

“Well, where would they go? What other sanctuary exists besides Earth?”

“I think they went to one of the space stations. A rocket with Loric fuel would have been able to make it that far. Maybe they thought the invasion would be short-lived, and they thought they could wait it out. I mean, they would have been able to live on the space station for as long as their supplies lasted.”

“There are space stations close to Lorien?”

“Yes, two of them. Well, there were two of them. I know for sure the larger of the two was destroyed at the same time as the invasion. We lost contact with it less than two minutes after the first bomb fell.”

“Why didn’t you mention that before, when I first told you about the rocket?”

“I had assumed that it was empty, that it went up in the air as a decoy. And I think that if one space station was destroyed, then the other was as well. Their trip, unfortunately, was probably done in vain, whatever their goal was.”

“But what if they came back when their supplies ran out? Do you think they could survive on Lorien?” I ask in desperation. I already know the answer, already know what Henri will say, but I ask anyway in order to hold on to some sort of hope that we aren’t alone in all this. That maybe, somewhere far away, there are others like us, waiting, monitoring the planet so that they, too, might one day return and we won’t be alone when we go back.

“No. There is no water there now. You saw that for yourself. Nothing but a barren wasteland. And nothing can survive without water.”

I sigh and scoot back down into the bed. I drop my head onto the pillow. What’s the point in arguing? Henri is right and I know it. I saw it for myself. If the globes that he pulled from the Chest are to be trusted, then Lorien is nothing more than wasteland, a dump. The planet still lives but on the surface there is nothing. No water. No plants. No life. Nothing but dirt and rocks and the rubble of the civilization that once existed.

“Did you see anything else?” Henri asks.

“I saw us on the day we left. All of us at the airship right before we took off.”

“It was a sad day.”

I nod. Henri crosses his arms and gazes out the window, lost in thought. I take a deep breath. “Where was your family during it all?” I ask.

My lights have been off for a good two or three minutes, but I can see the whites of Henri’s eyes staring back at me.

“Not with me, not on that day,” he says.

We are both silent for a time and then Henri shifts his weight.

“Well, I better get back to bed,” he says, bringing an end to the conversation. “Get some sleep.”

After he leaves I lie there thinking of the animals, of the rocket, of Henri’s family and how I’m sure he never got the chance to say good-bye to them. I know I won’t be able to go back to sleep. I never can when the images visit me, when I feel Henri’s sadness. It must be a thought constantly on his mind, as it would be for anyone who left under the same circumstances, leaving the only home you’ve ever known, all the while knowing you will never see the people you love again.

I grab my cell phone and text Sarah. I always text her when I can’t sleep, or she texts me if it’s the other way around. Then we’ll talk for as long as it takes to become tired. She calls me twenty seconds after I hit the send button.

“Hey, you,” I answer.

“You can’t sleep?”

“No.”

“What’s the matter?” she asks. She yawns on the other end of the line.

“Was just missing you is all. Been lying in bed staring at the ceiling for like an hour now.”

“You’re silly. You saw me like six hours ago.”

“I wish you were still here,” I say. She moans. I can hear her smile through the darkness. I roll to my side and hold the phone between my ear and the pillow.

“Well, I wish I was still there, too.”

We talk for twenty minutes. The last half of the call is both of us just lying there listening to the other breathe. I feel better after having talked to Sarah, but I find it even harder to fall back asleep.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

FOR ONCE, SINCE WE ARRIVED IN OHIO, THINGS seem to slow for a time. School ends quietly and for winter break we have eleven days off. Sam and his mother spend most of it visiting his aunt in Illinois. Sarah stays home. We spend Christmas together. We kiss when the ball drops at midnight on New Year’s Eve. Despite the snow and the cold, or maybe even in retaliation against it, we go for long walks through the woods behind my house, holding hands, kissing, breathing in the chilly air beneath the low gray skies of winter. We spend more and more time together. Not a day passes during that whole break that we don’t see each other at least once.

We walk hand in hand beneath an umbrella of white from the snow piled atop the tree branches overhead. She has her camera with her and occasionally stops to take pictures. Most of the snow on the ground lies undisturbed aside from the tracks we have made on the walk out. We follow them back now, Bernie Kosar in the lead, darting in and out of the brambles, chasing rabbits into small groves and thickets of thorny bush, chasing squirrels up trees. Sarah wears a pair of black earmuffs. Her cheeks and the tip of her nose are red with the cold, making her eyes look bluer. I stare at her.

“What?” she asks, smiling.

“Just admiring the view.”

She rolls her eyes at me. For the most part the woods are dense aside from sporadic clearings we continually stumble upon. I’m not sure how far in any one direction the woods extend, but in all of our walks we have yet to reach their end.

“I bet it’s beautiful here in the summer,” Sarah says. “We can probably picnic in the clearings.”

An ache forms in my chest. Summer is still five months away and if Henri and I are here in May, we will have made it seven months in Ohio. That is very nearly the longest we have ever stayed in one place.

“Yeah,” I agree.

Sarah looks at me. “What?”

I look at her questioningly. “What do you mean, ‘what?’”

“That wasn’t very convincing,” she says. A mess of crows fly by overhead, squawking noisily.

“I just wish it was summer now.”

“Me too. I can’t believe we have to go back to school tomorrow.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me.”

We enter another clearing, larger than the others, an almost perfect circle a hundred feet in diameter. Sarah lets go of my hand, runs into the middle of it, and drops into the snow, laughing. She rolls to her back and begins making a snow angel. I drop beside her and do the same. The tips of our fingers just barely touch while we make the wings. We get up.

“It’s like we’re holding wings,” she says.

“Is that possible?” I ask. “I mean, how would we fly if we’re holding wings?”

“Of course it’s possible. Angels can do anything.”

Then she turns and nuzzles into me. Her cold face against my neck makes me squirm away from her.

“Ahh! Your face is like ice.”

She laughs. “Come warm me up.”

I take her in my arms and kiss her beneath the open sky, the trees surrounding us. There are no sounds save the birds and the occasional pack of snow falling from the nearby branches. Two cold faces pressed tightly together. Bernie Kosar comes trotting up, out of breath, tongue dangling, tail wagging. He barks and sits in the snow staring at us, his head cocked to the side.

“Bernie Kosar! Were you off chasing rabbits?” Sarah asks.

He barks twice and runs over and jumps up on her. He barks again and pushes off and then looks up expectantly. She grabs a stick from the ground, shakes the snow off it, and then hurls it into the trees. He races after it and disappears from sight. He emerges from the trees ten seconds later, but instead of returning to the clearing where he had exited it, he comes from the opposite side. Sarah and I both spin around to watch him.

“How’d he do that?” she asks.

“Don’t know,” I say. “He’s a peculiar dog.”

“Did you hear that, Bernie Kosar? He just called you peculiar!”

He drops the stick at her feet. We walk towards home, holding hands, the day nearing dusk. Bernie Kosar trots beside us the whole way out, his head on a swivel as though ushering us along, keeping us safe from what may or may not lurk in the outer dark beyond our line of sight.

Five newspapers are stacked on the kitchen table, Henri at his computer, the overhead light on.

“Anything?” I ask out of habit, nothing more. There hasn’t been a promising story in months, which is a good thing, but I can’t help but always hope for something every time I ask.

“Actually, yes, I think so.”

I perk up, then walk around the table and look over Henri’s shoulder at the computer screen. “What?”

“There was an earthquake in Argentina yesterday evening. A sixteen-year-old girl pulled an elderly man free from a pile of rubble in a tiny town near the coast.”

“Number Nine?”

“Well, I certainly think she’s one of us. Whether she’s Number Nine or not remains to be seen.”

“Why? There’s nothing really extraordinary about pulling a man from rubble.”

“Look,” Henri says, and then scrolls to the top of the article. There is a picture of a large slab of concrete at least a foot thick, eight feet long and wide. “This is what she lifted to save him. It must weigh five tons. And look at this,” he says, and scrolls back to the bottom of the page. He highlights the very last sentence. It reads: “Sofia García could not be found for comment.”

I read the sentence three times. “She couldn’t be found,” I say.

“Exactly. She didn’t decline to comment; she simply couldn’t be found.”

“How did they know her name?”

“It’s a small town, less than a third the size of Paradise. Most everyone would know her name there.”

“She left, didn’t she?”

Henri nods. “I think so. Probably before the paper was even published. That’s the downfall of small towns; it’s impossible to remain unnoticed.”

I sigh. “Hard for the Mogadorians to go unnoticed too.”

“Precisely.”

“Sucks for her,” I say, and stand up. “Who knows what she must have left behind.”

Henri gives me a skeptical look, opens his mouth to say something, but then thinks better of it and goes back to the computer. I return to my bedroom. I pack my bag with a fresh change of clothes and the books I’ll need for the day. Back to school. I’m not looking forward to it, though it’ll be nice to see Sam again, whom I haven’t seen in nearly two weeks.

“Okay,” I say. “I’m off.”

“Have a good day. Be safe out there.”

“See you this afternoon.”

Bernie Kosar rushes out of the house ahead of me. He’s a ball of energy this morning. I think he’s come to look forward to our morning runs, and the fact that we haven’t done one in a week and a half has him chomping at the bit to get back to it. He keeps up with me for most of the run. Once we make it I give him a good pet and scratch behind his ears.

“All right, boy, go home,” I say. He turns and starts trotting back to the house.

I take my time in the shower. By the time I finish, other students are beginning to arrive. I walk the hall, stop by my locker, then go to Sam’s. I slap him on the back. It startles him, then he flashes a big toothy grin when he sees that it’s me.

“I thought I was going to have to whip somebody’s ass there for a minute,” he says.

“Just me, my friend. How was Illinois?”

“Ugh,” he says, and rolls his eyes. “My aunt made me drink tea and watch reruns of Little House on the Prairie nearly every day.”

I laugh. “That sounds awful.”

“It was, trust me,” he says, and reaches into his bag. “This was waiting in the mail when we got back.”

He hands me the latest issue of They Walk Among Us. I begin flipping through it.

“There is nothing on us or the Mogadorians,” he says.

“Good,” I say. “They must fear us after you visited them.”

“Yeah, right.”

Over Sam’s shoulder I see that Sarah is coming our way. Mark James stops her in the middle of the hallway and hands her a few sheets of orange paper. Then she continues on her way.

“Hi, gorgeous,” I say when she reaches us. She stands on her toes to kiss me. Her lips taste like strawberry lip balm.

“Hi, Sam. How are you?”

“Good. How’re you?” he asks. He seems at ease with her now. Before the incident with Henri, which was a month and a half ago, being in Sarah’s presence would have made him uncomfortable, and he wouldn’t have been able to meet her eye or know what to do with his hands. But now he looks at her and smiles, speaking with confidence.

“Good,” she says. “I’m supposed to give you both one of these.”

She hands us each one of the orange sheets Mark just gave her. It’s a party invitation for this upcoming Saturday night at his house.

“I’m invited?” Sam asks.

Sarah nods. “All three of us are.”

“Do you want to go?” I ask.

“Maybe we could give it a shot.”

I nod. “You interested, Sam?”

He looks past Sarah and me. I turn to see what he is looking at, or rather who. At a locker across the hall is Emily, the girl who was on the hayride with us, and who Sam has been pining for ever since. When she walks past she sees that Sam is watching her and she smiles politely.

“Emily?” I say to Sam.

“Emily what?” Sam asks, looking back at me.

I look at Sarah. “I think Sam likes Emily Knapp.”

“I do not,” he says.

“I could ask her to come to the party with us,” Sarah says.

“Do you think she would go?” Sam asks.

Sarah looks at me. “Well, maybe I shouldn’t invite her since Sam doesn’t like her.”

Sam smiles. “Okay, fine. I just, I don’t know.”

“She kept asking why you never called after the hayride. She kind of likes you.”

“That is true,” I say. “I’ve heard her say it.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” says Sam.

“You never asked.”

Sam looks down at the flyer. “So it’s this Saturday?”

“Yes.”

He looks up at me. “I say we go.”

I shrug. “I’m in.”

Henri is waiting for me when the final bell rings. As always, Bernie Kosar is in the passenger seat, and when he sees me, his tail begins wagging a hundred miles an hour. I jump into the truck. Henri puts it into gear and drives away.

“There was a follow-up article on the girl in Argentina,” Henri says.

“And?”

“Just a short article saying that she has disappeared. The mayor of the town is offering a modest reward for information on her whereabouts. It sounds like they believe she’s been kidnapped.”

“Are you worried about the Mogadorians having gotten to her first?”

“If she’s Nine, like the note we found indicated, and the Mogadorians were tracking her, it’s a good thing that she vanished. And if she’s been captured, the Mogadorians can’t kill her—they can’t even hurt her. That gives us hope. The good thing, aside from the news itself, is that I imagine every Mogadorian on Earth has poured into Argentina.”

“Speaking of which, Sam had the latest issue of They Walk Among Us today.”

“Was there anything in it?”

“Nope.”

“I didn’t think there would be. Your levitation trick seemed to affect them rather profoundly.”

When we arrive home I change clothes and meet Henri in the backyard for our day of training. Working while consumed with fire has gotten easier. I don’t get as flustered as I did on that first day. I can hold my breath longer, close to four minutes. I have more control over the objects I lift, and I can lift more of them at the same time. Little by little, the look of worry I saw on Henri’s face during the first days has melted away. He nods more. He smiles more. On the days it goes really well he gets a crazed look in his eyes and he raises his arms in the air and yells “Yes!” as loudly as he can. In that way I am gaining confidence in my Legacies. The rest have yet to come, but I don’t think they’re far off. And the major one, whatever it will be. The anticipation of it keeps me up most nights. I want to fight. I hunger for a Mogadorian to saunter into the backyard so that I may finally seek revenge.

It’s an easy day. No fire. Mostly just me lifting things and manipulating them while they are suspended in the air. The last twenty minutes pass with Henri throwing objects at me—sometimes just allowing them to fall to the ground, other times deflecting them in a way that emulates a boomerang so that they twist in the air and go blazing back towards Henri. At one point a meat tenderizer flies back so fast that Henri dives face-first into the snow to keep from being hit by it. I laugh. Henri does not. Bernie Kosar lies on the ground the whole time watching us, seeming to offer his own encouragement. After we are done I shower, do my homework, and sit at the kitchen table for dinner.

“So there is a party this Saturday that I’m going to go to.”

He looks up at me, stops chewing. “Whose party?”

“Mark James’s.”

Henri looks surprised.

“All that’s over,” I say before he can object.

“Well, you know best, I suppose. Just remember what’s at stake.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

AND THEN THE WEATHER WARMS. BRISK WINDS, bitter cold, and continuous snow showers are followed by blue skies and fifty-degree temperatures. The snow melts. At first there are standing puddles in the driveway and the yard, the road wet with the sounds of splashing tires, but after a day all the water drains and evaporates and the cars pass as they do on any other day. A lull in the action, a brief reprieve before old man winter takes up the reins again.

I sit on the porch waiting for Sarah, staring up at the night sky full of twinkling stars and a full moon. A thin, knifelike cloud cuts the moon in two and then quickly disappears. I hear the crunch of gravel under tires; then headlights come into view and the car pulls into the driveway. Sarah gets out of the driver’s side. She’s dressed in dark gray pants flared at the ankles, a navy blue cardigan sweater beneath a beige jacket. Her eyes are accentuated by the blue shirt peeking out where the jacket’s zipper ends. Her blond hair falling past her shoulders. She smiles coyly and looks at me, fluttering her eyelashes as she approaches. There are butterflies in my stomach. Almost three months together and yet I still grow nervous when I see her. A nervousness that’s hard to imagine time will ever assuage.

“You look gorgeous,” I say.

“Well, thank you,” she says, and bobs a curtsy. “You don’t look so bad yourself.”

I kiss Sarah on the cheek. Then Henri walks out of the house and waves to Sarah’s mom, who is sitting in the passenger seat of the car.

“So you’ll call when you’re ready to be picked up, right?” Henri asks me.

“Yes,” I say.

We walk to the car and Sarah gets behind the wheel. I sit in the back. She’s had her learner’s permit for a few months now, which means she can drive so long as a licensed driver sits in the passenger seat beside her. Her actual driver’s test is on Monday, two days away. She’s been anxious about it ever since making the appointment over winter break. She backs out of the driveway and pulls away, eventually flipping the visor down and smiling at me through the mirror. I smile back.

“So how was your day, John?” her mother turns and asks me. We make small talk. She tells me of the trip to the mall that the two of them made earlier in the day, and how Sarah drove. I tell her about playing with Bernie Kosar in the yard, and about the run we went on after. I don’t tell her about the training session that lasted for three hours in the backyard after the run. I don’t tell her how I split the dead tree’s trunk straight down the middle through telekinesis, or how Henri threw knives at me that I deflected into a sandbag fifty feet away. I don’t tell her about being lit on fire or the objects that I lifted and crushed and splintered. Another kept secret. Another half-truth that feels like a lie. I would like to tell Sarah. I somehow feel that I’m betraying her by keeping myself hidden, and over the last few weeks the burden has really begun to weigh on me. But I also know I have no other choice. Not at this point, anyhow.

“So it’s this one?” Sarah asks.

“Yes,” I say.

She pulls into Sam’s driveway. He paces at the end of it, dressed in jeans and a wool sweater. He looks up at us with a deer-caught-in-the-headlights blank stare. There is gel in his hair. I’ve never seen gel in his hair before. He walks to the side of the car, opens the door, and slides in beside me.

“Hi, Sam,” Sarah says, then introduces him to her mom.

Sarah reverses the car out of the driveway and pulls onto the road. Both of Sam’s hands are planted firmly on the seat in nervousness. Sarah turns down a road I’ve never seen before and makes a right turn into a winding driveway. Thirty or so cars are parked along the side of it. At the end of the driveway, surrounded by trees, is a large, two-story house. We can hear the music well before we reach the house.

“Jeez, nice house,” Sam says.

“You guys be good in there,” Sarah’s mom says. “And be safe. Call if you need anything, or if you can’t get ahold of your father,” she says, looking at me.

“Will do, Mrs. Hart,” I say.

We get out of the car and begin walking to the front door. Two dogs run up to us from the side of the house, a golden retriever and a bulldog. Their tails are wagging and they’re sniffing spastically at my pants, smelling the scent of Bernie Kosar. The bulldog is carrying a stick in his mouth. I wrestle it away from him and throw it across the yard and both dogs sprint after it.

“Dozer and Abby,” Sarah says.

“I take it Dozer is the bulldog?” I ask.

She nods and smiles at me as though in apology. I’m reminded how well she must know this house. I wonder if it’s odd for her to be back now, with me.

“This is a horrible idea,” Sam says. He looks at me. “I’m only now realizing that.”

“Why do you think so?”

“Because only three months ago the guy who lives here filled both our lockers with cow manure and hit me in the back of the head with a meatball during lunch. And now we’re here.”

“I bet Emily is already here,” I say, and nudge him with my elbow.

The door opens into the foyer. The dogs come rushing in past us and disappear into the kitchen, which lies straight ahead. I can see that Abby is now holding the stick. We’re met with loud music that we have to yell over to be heard. People are dancing in the living room. There are cans of beer in most of their hands, a few people drinking bottled water or soda. Apparently Mark’s parents are out of town. The whole football team is in the kitchen, half of them wearing their letterman jackets. Mark comes up and hugs Sarah. Then he shakes my hand. He holds my gaze for a second and then looks away. He doesn’t shake Sam’s hand. He doesn’t even look at him. Perhaps Sam is right. This may have been a mistake.

“Happy you guys could make it. Come on in. Beer’s in the kitchen.”

Emily stands in the far corner talking to other people. Sam looks her way, then asks Mark where the bathroom is. He points the way.

“Be right back,” Sam says to me.

Most of the guys are standing around the island in the middle of the kitchen. They look at me when Sarah and I enter. I look at each of them in turn, and then grab a bottle of water from the ice bucket. Mark hands Sarah a beer and opens it for her. The way he looks at her makes me realize yet again just how little I trust him. And I realize now just how bizarre this whole situation is. Me, being in his house now, with Sarah, his ex-girlfriend. I’m happy that Sam is with me.

I reach down and play with the dogs until Sam comes out of the bathroom. By then Sarah has made her way to the corner of the living room and is talking to Emily. Sam tenses beside me when he realizes that there is nothing else for us to do but walk up to them and say hello. He takes a deep breath. In the kitchen two of the guys have lit a corner of the newspaper on fire for no other reason than to watch it burn.

“Make sure you compliment Emily,” I say to Sam as we approach. He nods.

“There you guys are,” Sarah says. “I thought you had left me all by my lonesome.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I say. “Hi, Emily. How are you?”

“I’m good,” she says, then to Sam, “I like your hair.”

Sam just looks at her. I nudge him. He smiles.

“Thank you,” he says. “You look very nice.”

Sarah gives me a knowing look. I shrug and kiss her on the cheek. The music has grown even louder. Sam talks to Emily, somewhat nervously, but she laughs and after a while he eases a little.

“So are you okay?” Sarah asks me.

“Of course. I’m with the prettiest girl at the party. How could things be better?”

“Oh shush,” she says, and pokes me in the stomach.

The four of us dance for an hour or so. The football players keep drinking. Somebody shows up with a bottle of vodka and not long after that one of them—I don’t know which—throws up in the bathroom so that the smell of vomit wafts throughout the whole downstairs. Another one passes out on the living-room sofa and some of the others draw with marker on his face. People keep filtering in and out of the doorway leading to the basement. I have no idea what is going on down there. I haven’t seen Sarah for the past ten minutes. I leave Sam and walk through the living room and the kitchen, then walk up the stairs. White, thick carpet, walls lined with art and family portraits. Some of the bedroom doors are open. Some are closed. I don’t see Sarah. I walk back downstairs. Sam is standing sullenly by himself in the corner. I walk over to him.

“Why the long face?” I ask.

He shakes his head.

“Don’t make me lift you in the air and turn you upside down like the guy in Athens.”

I smile, Sam doesn’t.

“I just got cornered by Alex Davis,” he says.

Alex Davis is another of Mark James’s brood, a wide receiver for the team. He’s a junior, tall and thin. I’ve never talked to him before, and likewise know little else about him.

“What do you mean by ‘cornered’?”

“We just talked. He saw that I’ve been talking to Emily. I guess they dated over the summer.”

“So what. Why does that bother you?”

He shrugs. “It just sucks, and it bothers me, okay?”

“Sam, do you know how long Sarah and Mark dated?”

“For a long time.”

“Two years,” I say.

“Does it bother you?” he asks.

“Not in the least. Who cares about her past? Besides, look at Alex,” I say, and nod to him standing in the kitchen. He is slumped against the kitchen counter, his eyes aflutter, a thin layer of sweat glistening on his forehead. “Do you really think she misses being with that?”

Sam looks at him, shrugs.

“You’re a good dude, Sam Goode. Don’t get down on yourself.”

“I’m not down on myself.”

“Well then, don’t worry about Emily’s past. We don’t have to be defined by the things we did or didn’t do in our past. Some people allow themselves to be controlled by regret. Maybe it’s a regret, maybe it’s not. It’s merely something that happened. Get over it.”

Sam sighs. He’s still wrestling with it.

“Go on. She likes you. There’s nothing to be scared of,” I say.

“I am, though.”

“Best way to deal with fear is to confront it. Just walk up to her and kiss her. I bet you she kisses you back.”

Sam looks at me and nods, then goes to the basement, where Emily is hanging out. The two dogs come wrestling into the living room. Tongues dangling. Tails wagging. Dozer drops his chest to the ground and waits for Abby to come near enough and then he jumps at her and she jumps away. I watch them until they disappear up the stairs, playing tug-of-war with a rubber toy. It’s a quarter till midnight. A couple is making out on the couch across the room. The football players are still drinking in the kitchen. I’m starting to get sleepy. I still can’t find Sarah.

Just then one of the football players comes rushing up the basement stairs, a crazed, frantic look in his eyes. He rushes to the kitchen sink, turns on the water as high as it will go, and begins throwing open the kitchen-cupboard doors.

“There’s a fire downstairs!” he says to the guys nearby.

They begin filling pots and pans with water, and one by one they rush down the stairs.

Emily and Sam come up the stairs. Sam looks shaken.

“What’s wrong?” I say.

“The house is on fire!”

“How bad?”

“Is any fire good? And I think we started it. We, uh, knocked a candle into a curtain.”

Sam and Emily both look disheveled and have clearly been making out. I make a mental note to congratulate Sam later.

“Have you seen Sarah?” I ask Emily.

She shakes her head.

More guys rush up the stairs, Mark James with them. There is fear in his eyes. For the first time I smell smoke. I look at Sam.

“Go outside,” I say.

He nods and takes Emily’s hand and they leave together. Some of the others follow, but some stay where they are, watching with drunken curiosity. A few people stand around stupidly patting the football players on the back as they rush up and down the basement stairs, cheering them on as though it’s all a joke.

I go to the kitchen and grab the largest thing left, a medium-sized metal pot. I fill it with water and then go downstairs. Everybody has evacuated aside from us battling the blaze, which is far bigger than I expected. Half the basement is consumed in flames. Dousing it with the little water I have left is completely futile. I don’t try, and instead drop the pot and dash back up. Mark comes flying down. I stop him in the middle of the stairway. His eyes are swimming in booze but through it I can see that he is terrified, that he is desperate.

“Forget about it,” I say. “It’s too big. We have to get everyone out.”

He looks down the stairs at the fire. He knows that what I’ve said is true. The tough-guy front is gone. There is no more pretending.

“Mark!” I yell.

He nods and drops the pot and we go back up together.

“Everybody out! Now!” I yell when I get to the top of the stairs.

Some of the drunker ones don’t move. Some of them laugh. One person says, “Where’s the marshmallows?” Mark slaps him across the face.

“Get out!” he screams.

I rip the cordless phone from the wall and shove it into Mark’s hand.

“Dial 911,” I yell over the loud voices and the music that still blares from somewhere like a sound track to the erupting pandemonium. The floor is getting warm. Smoke begins to billow up from beneath us. Only then do people take it seriously. I start pushing them towards the door.

I dart past Mark as he begins dialing and rush through the house. I take the stairs three at a time and kick through the open doors. One couple is making out on a bed. I yell at them both to get out. Sarah’s nowhere to be found. I sprint back down the stairs and through the door into the dark, cold night. People are standing around, watching. Some of them I can tell are excited by the prospect of the house burning down. Some laugh. I can feel myself begin to panic. Where is Sarah? Sam stands at the back of the crowd, which must total a hundred people. I run to him.

“Have you seen Sarah?” I ask.

“No,” he says.

I look back at the house. People are still coming out. The basement windows glow red, flames licking against the panes of glass. One of them is open. Black smoke pours out of it and floats high in the air. I weave through the crowd. Just then an explosion rattles the house. All the basement windows shatter. Some of the people cheer. The flames have reached the first floor, and they’re moving fast. Mark James stands at the front of the crowd, unable to divert his gaze away from it. His face is illuminated by the orange glow. There are tears in his eyes, a look of despair, the same look that I saw in the eyes of the Loric on the day of the invasion. What an odd thing it must be to watch everything you’ve ever known be destroyed. The fire spreads with hostility, with disregard. All Mark can do is watch. Flames are beginning to rise up past the first-floor windows. We can feel the heat on our faces from where we stand.

“Where’s Sarah?” I ask him.

He doesn’t hear me. I shake him by the shoulder. He turns and looks at me with a blankness that suggests he still doesn’t believe what his own eyes are telling him.

“Where’s Sarah?” I ask again.

“I don’t know,” he says.

I start to weave through the crowd looking for her, getting more and more frantic. Everyone is watching the blaze. The vinyl siding has begun to bubble and melt. The curtains in the windows have all burned away. The front door stands open, smoke pouring out of the top of it like an upside-down waterfall. We can see all the way into the kitchen, which is an inferno. On the left side of the house the fire has reached the second floor. And that’s when we all hear it.

A long terrible scream. And dogs barking. My heart drops. Every person there strains to listen while hoping like hell we didn’t hear what we all know we did. And then it comes again. Unmistakable. It comes in a torrent and this time it doesn’t let up. Gasps filter throughout the crowd.

“Oh no,” Emily says. “Oh God no, please no.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

NOBODY SPEAKS. ALL EYES ARE WIDE-OPEN, staring up in shock. Sarah and the dogs must be somewhere in the back. I close my eyes and lower my head. All I can smell is the smoke. “Just remember what’s at stake,” Henri had warned. I know damn well what’s at stake, but still his voice echoes. My life, and now Sarah’s life. There is another scream. Terrified. Severe.

I feel Sam’s eyes on me. He has seen firsthand my resistance to fire. But he also knows how I am hunted. I glance around. Mark is on his knees, rocking himself back and forth. He wants it over with. He wants the dogs to stop barking. But they don’t stop, and he takes each bark as though being stabbed in the gut with a knife.

“Sam,” I say so that only he can hear, “I’m going in.” He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, fixes me with a stare.

“Go get her,” he says.

I hand him my phone and tell him to call Henri if for some reason I don’t make it out. He nods. I begin moving to the back of the crowd, weaving in and out of the mass of bodies. Nobody pays me any attention. When I finally reach the back I make a mad dash for the yard’s perimeter and then sprint to the rear of the house so that I can enter without being seen. The kitchen is completely submerged in flame. I watch it for a brief moment. I can hear Sarah and the dogs. They sound closer now. I take a deep breath and with that breath other things come. Anger. Determination. Hope and fear. I let them in, I feel them all. And then I lunge forward and sweep across the yard and burst into the house. I am swallowed by the inferno immediately, hearing nothing but the crackle and hum of the flames. My clothes catch fire. There is no end to the blaze. I move to the front of the house and half of the stairs have burned away. What is left is on fire, looking brittle, but there isn’t time to test them. I rush up but they collapse under my weight when I reach the halfway point. I tumble down with them, the fire rising as though someone has stoked the flames. Something pierces my back. I grit my teeth, still holding my breath. I stand from the rubble and listen to Sarah screaming. She’s screaming and she’s scared and she’s going to die, die a hideous miserable death if I don’t get to her. Time is short. I’ll have to jump to the second floor.