Break Away (Away, Book 1) (11 page)

Somehow, something inside of me had always
sensed it, and just like I’d sensed it before, I knew things were
going to get worse, and that no lab would come to the rescue this
time. That little voice in the back of my head told me this was out
of our hands.

I flinched.

“I know. This is getting creepier,” Linda
said, as if backing up my reaction. She frowned at the girl sitting
in the middle of the staircase, obstructing everyone’s flow like a
statue, and threw a look over her shoulder at the Star Wars geek a
few steps up, edged on the same spot he’d used yesterday. She
turned to look at me. “Creepy as in a Stephen-King-kind of
way.”

We circled around the statue-like girl and
kept climbing down the stairs, stopping until our feet reached the
crammed parking lot. A truck was vibrating behind my black Mini,
the driver shouting something about going to Los Cabos at the guy
half-opening his car next to me. A group of buzzing people a few
slots away was smiling and bragging about their vacations, too,
names like Florida and Mexico mixed in the laughter. Friday air was
charged with rapture, the soft breeze almost purring in delight.
Spring break fever sizzled everywhere. With the sun pouring
gold-blinding light on me and the steamy warmth frizzing my
hair—like I’d said, the weather here was bipolar—picturing bright
beaches and salty zephyrs blowing at my face was inevitable, even
if minutes ago my arms had been dotted with goose bumps all
over—the chills a ghastly reminder of the daunting events.

My black
Bad Samaritan
shirt stuck to
the thin droplets of sweat on my back, and I couldn’t stop thinking
with a pang of annoyance of how from all days, I’d picked this hot
one to wear black. But that wasn’t what threw me out of balance in
that sun-drenched stance. The contrast between both sights—the
jumpy crowd seething around and the becharmed ones curling within
themselves—was too hard to digest.

A conflict of emotions surged in me, my body
confused over feeling excited or afraid, over feeling hot or cold.
The thrill of the vibrant students was contagious, even the cars
pulsated eagerly, their roars adding a notch of cheer in the
triumphant air. Flowers blossomed to bright colors around. Trees
flickered in farewell waves. Yet, that intuitive part of me wrapped
my insides with ice, frosting the walls of my stomach and heart to
a brittle shape of dread. Something wasn’t right. Something odd was
happening, and nobody seemed to notice.

“You’re not listening to me, aren’t you?”
Linda’s voice broke into my mind, cracking my foggy thoughts. I
turned to look at her and leaned against the Mini’s polished door.
“Surfing away?” she added annoyed, crossing her arms over her
chest, her thin eyebrows pulled in an arc.

I sighed. “I feel like I’m in the middle of a
wicked-cool playground, only that it’s surrounded by a high-voltage
electric fence, waiting to scorch us.”

“You’re still worried about those guys.” She
motioned her head to the two bookworms on the staircase. I glanced
at the one cross-legged on the sidewalk. “Do you really think all
of this has to do with the people on the news?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.” I settled my eyes on
another one sitting by a tree. “I still don’t see why, though.”

Linda followed my stare, paused for a moment,
and her shoulders sagged. “Even with all this frenzy they don’t
stop,” she said bewildered. She looked at the girl with the thick
book under the shadow of the imposing oak, and she straightened.
“Hey, that’s one of the girls we saw in the hallway reading
yesterday.” She brought my attention to a brunette who was opening
the door of a small Chevy a few steps away, narrow glasses hanging
at the bottom of her thin nose. I remembered her right away. The
girl with the purple book. “Since she’s not carrying any books or
stopping like an addict to read one…I guess this
thing
is
not as bad as we thought. Maybe we’re seeing stuff that isn’t
there.” She turned and looked at me reassuringly.

Linda was right. The girl didn’t look
entranced at all. Her eyes were wide open, not glazed over and at
half mast. A sparkle of joy lighted them alive. She blended into
the vibrant crowd. But, “What about the others? They’re still the
same way.”

“We don’t know if the rest is still the same,
Dafne. We’ve only spotted a few.”

“Yeah, but…” I hesitated, trying to pull out
a good argument, but didn’t find any. I let out a breath. “Yeah, I
guess…”

“Besides, we seem to be the only ones
worrying over this. I think that what everyone is seeing is just
people, well, reading—and there’s nothing wrong with that. The
written word is fascinating. Maybe they’re clutching the books a
bit too obsessively, but that happens when you love something,
right? You hold on tight, whether it’s a book, a movie, a song—or a
painting.
” She added, looking at me pointedly. “Don’t tell
me you don’t get dreamy-eyed with a Bonet.”

“
Monet
.”

“That one, yeah. I’ve seen how you space out
when you look at his paintings in that arty book you have. You
almost look as if you want to step into it.”

“Yeah, but…”
It’s not the same thing
,
I continued inwardly. I wanted to tell her that my dreamy-eyed
expression had nothing to do with that glazed look, that even if I
loved to lose myself into that symphony of soothing colors, it
wasn’t an obsession, only a heart-swelling journey. But half of me
was already considering Linda’s words. What if I was, indeed,
seeing or sensing things that weren’t there? What if these people
had just decided to pick up a book and read it? What if
I
was the one who’d blown things out of proportion this time?

“I really do think it’s only a coincidence,”
Linda prompted, deciding to fill the silence I’d cast over us.
Smiley and teasing shouts fluttered in the background. “Those
people in the news fell into coma doing nothing—none of them were
working or overexcited or anything. They just fell, all of them
doing meaningless things.” I opened my mouth to add something but
she cut it with a pointed tilt of her head. “And I know what you’re
going to say but just
one
of them was reading—the woman you
told me yesterday. The rest were watching TV or listening to music.
I think a few of them were at the cinema, too—but not reading.”

I shook my head with a sigh. “I don’t know,
Linda. There’s something weird with them, I…I don’t know how to
explain it, but I feel it in my gut.”

“Well, I’ll give you that. If you wouldn’t
have told me, I think I would’ve never noticed anything.”

Because people don’t open their eyes to
the realities of others.
We are too busy with our
own.

How many times hadn’t I slithered by that shy
boy at my old school and hadn’t bothered in saying “hi” or giving
him a smile? He’d always wandered school alone, with no friends
filling his empty sides, slumped. The blue in his eyes had been
overshadowed by a dark storm of sadness. A sadness that had weighed
my heart down every time I’d spotted those sullen pools in the
hallway. I’d known he avoided the crowds, hanging out in the
bathroom during lunch time, and I’d known that those sullen pools
had gotten deeper, fathomless, and out of reach over the days. Guys
hadn’t bothered him. Girls hadn’t spoken to him. No one had showed
any sign of awareness in his presence. He’d been like a ghost—a
ghost no one had taken their time to acknowledge.

Until one day.

Mrs. Morrison, our English teacher, strode
into the classroom, halting everyone’s frantic chatter. Her lips
were pressed tightly, and her face was paler than usual. I thought
she was sick—an upset stomach perhaps. She had the same look a
person had before throwing up. But then, her words broke through
the narrow space of her mouth, and the light in the room seemed to
dim. My breath caught up in my throat for a few heartbeats.

His name was Sam. Sam Collins. He liked
playing the electric guitar, going to wild concerts, and he dreamed
about having a band someday. Possibly landing a record deal later
on as well. Everyone in school seemed to know him, as if he’d been
part of every group, every social circle. An article in the school
newspaper was everything that had taken to finally acknowledge him.
And his death. A death that had been given by his own desperate
hands in solitude.

And that smile I’d always wanted to give him
would forever remain in my lips, unused.

Maybe all of this persistence had something
to do with the remorse I couldn’t seem to push away. I didn’t want
other names haunting the depths of my mind. “I know reading isn’t
an evil-starred thing, and that everyone has their own obsessions
to handle, but this is different, Linda. There is something wrong
with them, and I don’t know how to prove it, but it’s all connected
with those people in the news.”

“Dafne, I understand…”

“Don’t give me that I-get-it-but-you’re-crazy
tone. I know what I'm saying,” I said. “You’re the one who’s always
arguing we should ‘grasp the inner nature of things intuitively,’
to trust our third eye or whatever they teach you on those
meditation classes. Well, I'm doing it now and look what you’re
doing…”

“I wasn’t trying to…”

“You agreed with me on this before. You saw
all the weirdness—still see it. So why are you backing down all of
a sudden? Is it because you’re afraid?” I asked her. “Believing a
lie is simpler, I guess—safer.”

“Please, don’t start with your psychological
archery,” she said with an exasperated sigh.

“My what?”

“You always do that when you want to break
through someone’s armor with the arrow of your tongue.” She lowered
her eyes, her foot tapping the ground impatiently.

I swallowed back a laugh. “Did the arrow hit
the center?”

The tapping increased, the tip of her shoe
beating the ground as if running for its life. In her mind though,
I figured she was running away from the words about to tear loose
from her mouth. She halted her leg shaking and uncrossed her arms.
“Maybe I just wanted to enjoy my spring break without a bee in my
bonnet.” She groaned, looking at me. “Is that a crime?”

Oh.
“Of course not,” I told her
ashamed for pushing her so hard. “I forgot about your cruise trip,
I’m sorry.” Her parents had been saving up for the last three years
to go to Bahamas as a family. Linda’s older sister was going to
join them in Florida for a week of battery reactivation and fun
under the sun—what everyone looked to when given the chance to get
off of the working wagon. And Linda had been excited over sailing
turquoise waters bordered by sugar-white beaches and splaying palm
trees. She needed the break. Her heart was still too dented because
of the bitter hailstorm Brad had caused inside of her, and soaring
above the ocean while soaking up some vitamin D was positively the
best therapy for her.

I, on the other hand, was adding more
turbulence in her head with my worries
and
ruining her whole
experience. So much for being a good friend. “I wanted to know I
wasn’t alone in this, that’s all.” I added with a sharp tinge of
regret in my tone.

“You’re not alone in this, Dafne. You’re not
getting crazy or anything, but…what can we do? It’s like searching
for a needle in a haystack. Where do we start searching? And
what
are we sear…” She trailed off with the sound of keys
rattling behind her. A guy was battling with the keyhole of the car
where Linda’s back was pressed. It was an old one, probably from
the late eighties—an era where automatic door locks still were a
half-baked idea.

“Oh, sorry,” Linda told the guy, unstitching
herself from the car in a flash.

“No problem,” he said with a shy smile,
barely glancing at us. But that glint of time was enough to
recognize those eyes.

“Hey!” I called before he would slip inside
the car. He’d already won the battle against the keyhole. He
stopped and turned to look at me, surprise and confusion swimming
together in his hazel eyes. Something must’ve snapped him out from
the bafflement though, because he shook his head a second later and
proceeded to slip inside again.

“Hey!” I tried once more and closed the
distance with the window opposite to his. I bent forward and tapped
the crook of my finger against the class. “Can I talk to you?” I
looked at him with beseeching eyes, softening the planes of my face
to that dainty expression I knew no guy could fight.

His hazel eyes widened, surprise and
confusion spinning in them again. He turned back and pushed his
door open. I straightened and found Linda’s lips mouthing
what
are you doing
a few inches from me. I smiled and told her under
my breath, “our search just started.”

She frowned and aimed her brown-black eyes on
his, which looked even more baffled under the sun, like dry leaves
fluttering restlessly over moss. “Were you talking to me?” he asked
me, his voice fading with uncertainty.

Was that so shocking? “Yeah, why the
surprise?”

He waved his eyes around and stopped on mine.
“Because you never talk to anyone—besides your friend,” he added
with a polite smile for Linda, as if remembering she was there next
to me.

It was true. I couldn’t remember the last
time I’d spoken to someone in school willingly and not because the
circumstances had forced me to. He must’ve been wondering why the
sudden change. “Look, I saw you the other day—actually, for several
days—reading inside the school and everywhere…and I was wondering
if, I don’t know, you’ve felt an
urge
or something weird
going on inside of you that pushes you, um, to pick up a book.”

“Excuse me?” he said, looking at me as if I
was an alien from planet Mucus. “Is this a joke or something?”

Linda stepped closer to the car. “What she
means is that…” She paused, trying to formulate some logical
explanation, and gave up. “We’ve been seeing a lot of people
reading, okay? Like, more than usual. And some of you have this
look
, as if you're under a spell of the Wicked Witch of the
West and…” She stopped, noticing the guy’s face had gone more
incredulous—and fearful. I didn’t need to read minds to know he
thought we belonged in a mental institution.