HEAR (16 page)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

As we run through the halls of the Merion Building, the disturbing images of the blaze are long gone. In my brain, there's nothing but a low-level hum; white noise replaces everything else. We pound up the stairs two by two and race toward the lab. Finally, as we approach, I hear something: part of a conversation between Mara and Dan.

“. . . never survive it,” Dan is saying.

“I don't know if that's true.” Mara sounds almost pleading, as if she's trying to will another outcome.

“That's just how I see it going down,” Dan says.

Pankaj flings the door open.

Dan and Mara look like they've been caught doing something they shouldn't.

“Hey, guys,” Dan offers, startled. “What's up?”

“Have you seen my uncle?” I gasp.

“Not recently.” He glances at Mara, who quickly and dismissively looks away from me, turning her eyes to Pankaj.

I glance at the wall clock and see it's late. There's no reason he'd be here. There's no reason the two of them should be here either . . . and I get another feeling—a physical sensation—different than the ones I've recently experienced, but no less powerful. It's a feeling of exclusion. It's that sense of knowing you're not wanted or welcome in a conversation. Given how Mara has turned away from me, I can't help but recall the vision with the hazy three-versus-one prophecy.

“He left with the guy with the flowing white hair,” Dan adds.

“That was Figg,” Mara confirms. “We saw him earlier. He's been around a lot since that professor was shot. We figured he had a meeting here with Professor Black. Might have had something to do with the Internal Review Board decision. Professor Black is really worried that they'll cut off his funding and shut the lab.”

“I know . . . Will they?” I ask, finally seeking the answer I've been afraid to hear.

They shrug and shake their heads, implying they don't know. I can't tell if this is the truth. I sense more powerfully than ever that they're hiding something from me, but I don't know why.

“We need to find the professor,” Pankaj says to all of us. “Right away.”

“Let's just call him.” I unzip my bag to take out my cell phone.

“Won't work,” Dan says. “The professor doesn't have his cell with him. I saw it on his desk when he was leaving with Figg. I tried to hand it to him, but he wouldn't take it.”

“It
was
weird,” confirms Mara. “If he didn't want to be disturbed, he could have just silenced it.”

“I even made a joke. Well,
I
thought it was a joke,” Dan continues. “I said, ‘You afraid they'll use it to track you?' He didn't think that was funny at all. He tossed the phone back on top of his desk.”

Pankaj shoots me a look.

Mara takes it in. “Why are you two so desperate to find the professor?” she asks.

“We both saw something,” Pankaj says. “A fire. Here.”

Dan's eyes widen. “On campus?”

I nod. “But we don't know where or when.”

Mara glances between Pankaj and me. “It was a simultaneous vision? What are you seeing now?”

“Me? Nothing,” Pankaj says. “Kass?”

“Nope. All of it's gone: the sight, sound, smell. Gone. Dan, is that what happened when you got your impression?”

He looks confused.

“I mean about . . . your dad?”

“Oh,” he says. His eyes go blank, the way they always do when he's thinking hard about something. Then they snap back onto me. “That one hung around for a while. Sometimes I still see it in my dreams.”

None of us say a word. For a moment, I regret I even brought it up; the trauma must be hard for him to shake. It's only been two years.

Then something strange happens. Mara takes Dan's hand.

The spontaneous gesture of empathy catches him off guard. Pankaj looks surprised too. The jealous, threatening, unpredictable drama queen is gone.

“Let's get Alex on this,” I say urgently. “Where is he?”

Dan frowns, still puzzling over Mara's hand. “I don't know. He said he had a dinner date with Erika, but then he got back to the dorm really early, carrying a doggie bag or something. He seemed off to me. Upset.” He shrugs. “But what do I know?”

“Maybe he saw the fire too,” Pankaj says. “ You think he was having a vision?”

“It didn't seem that way to me.” Dan pulls his hand away and scratches his head. “Maybe that's because it's not how I react when I get one. I'm more matter-of-fact about these things.”

“Well, let's try to find him just in case,” Pankaj says. “He could be closer to figuring this out than we are.”

Dan nods. “Besides, I don't think Professor Black intends to be found tonight.”

It doesn't take long
to locate Alex. Pankaj and I find him leaning over the pool table in the Miller Student Center, measuring a shot with his cue. As soon as I spot him, I text Dan to tell him and Mara to meet us here. Alex looks up and catches Pankaj's stare.

“Cool if I play?” Pankaj asks.

Alex nods. I'm glad Pankaj speaks first since his greeting makes this sound like a nonchalant run-in as opposed to a desperate stalking. Pankaj picks up a cue from the rack that hangs on the wall and starts chalking it. He waits for Alex to get his shot off, but Alex paces up and down the length of the table, making it clear that
he's
in no rush.

“We've been trying to find you,” I say.

“ Yeah? Why?”

“We need your help with something. We got a feeling something bad's about to go down, and we think you can help us stop it.”

Alex backs away from the table. “It's too late.” He exhales, his face clouding. “It already happened.”

A pit forms in my stomach. “What already happened?”

“I was dumped.” He looks back to the pool table as Pankaj starts lining up his shot. “Erika wants nothing to do with me.”

I try to stop my eyes from rolling. Given what's at stake, getting rejected by a girl you just met doesn't seem all that traumatic to me. I glance at the entrance and spot Mara and Dan, and I wave them over to us.

Alex leans against his cue. “I really thought we had a connection. I was already picturing a future together when I started school here.”

“Here?” I ask, distracted, panic about the fire kicking in again. “Aren't you going to Harvard?”

“I was, but I asked Professor Black if he could pull some strings. I want to stay here at Henley.”

Pankaj and I share a look.

“Um, I don't want to sound insensitive,” Pankaj says, “but you guys only just met, and you've already made plans to switch schools?”

Alex exhales dramatically. “I always fall fast and hard. I don't even know how to explain it, but when something's there, it's intense. It's like there's a straight line from my heart to my head. As soon as someone starts making my heart beat faster, my brain gets taken up too. So whenever I get dumped, I'm wrecked.”

The brain on love
,
I think to myself.

“What was it about her you liked so much?” Mara asks sharply, without bothering to say hello. Whether she just wants him to snap out of his self-pity or whether there's something like jealousy at play, I can't tell.

“She was unique and beautiful, like this perfect butterfly. I guess I just found her . . .
blindingly attractive
.”

The phrase “blindingly attractive” sends a chill up my spine. Pankaj said those exact words to me earlier. My head snaps in his direction, but he's focused on Alex.

“I'm sorry she broke up with you, man, but we kind of have an emergency here,” he says. “Kass and I both saw a fire.”

“And we know that people are going to die,” I add. “But neither of us knows where or when it's going to happen. We thought you might be able to channel something?”

Alex slowly nods. “I'll try.”

Mara watches Alex intently, as if she's analyzing him. “Do you need anything?” she asks. “Like a pillow, someplace to lie down?”

He shakes his head. Without saying anything more, he skulks over to one of the leather club chairs in the corner. The four of us watch as he leans forward, putting his elbows on his knees and shading his eyes with his hands. Tears start rolling down his cheeks. Pankaj nudges me
.

Could it be he's crying because of the intensity of the vision?
I ask Pankaj silently.

He gives me a hopeful shrug, though I'm not quite sure what to wish for anymore.

“I'm sorry, you guys,” Alex says when he finally rises from the chair. “I didn't get anything. So I think you should just follow your instincts. If you think something's going down, be really careful, okay?”

“It's okay,” I say, though I wish he would try harder. I want to push him, but I know there's no use.

“What now?” Dan asks.

Mara leans against the pool table. “I have a thought. I'm most receptive when I'm emotionally plugged in.” She glances at Pankaj, then looks at me. “ You guys said you had a joint vision. Were you doing something that produced an emotional response?”

“We were sharing a pizza,” I blurt.

“And that caused a joint vision?”

“It was really
amazing
pizza,” Pankaj adds.

She grimaces. “Okay then. You need to repeat the experience exactly. Go back for more ‘pizza,' and see if it brings you back to that place.”

I'm surprised. Shocked, really. Mara doesn't buy the lame pizza line, that's obvious. And that would seem to suggest she's giving me the go-ahead to be with Pankaj. But the longer I look at her, the more I get the sense that she's giving us these instructions while holding her nose; Pankaj and me hooking up is the lesser of two evils in her mind, which makes me wonder how awful the alternative must be.

“If the pizza's really that good, I want to go too,” Dan says.

“No,” Mara snaps. “We don't know how much time they have to get this right, and any outside interference could throw things off. We can't risk it at the moment.”

Dan crosses his arms over his chest. “Fine. But you guys better bring me back a slice or two, okay?”

I look at Pankaj.
Did you put the thought of trying that in Mara's head?

I de
fi
nitely would have if it had occurred to me.
Then out loud, Pankaj announces, “We should get going.”

I nod, not knowing which of my feelings to trust, and walk over to Alex, whose cheeks are still wet.

“ You're going to be okay,” I say, squeezing his arm. “ You're going to find someone else who's even better and who appreciates you for who you are.”

“Thanks, Kass.” He forces a smile. “I know I have to do a better job getting my emotions under control. I just . . . I know it's ridiculous. I hardly knew her. This is just the way I am. We all have our stuff, right?”

I nod. “That we do.”

As soon as the
door to the student center closes behind us, Pankaj says, “Well this is an outcome I didn't expect.”

“No kidding. And that Mara is telling us to do this? You think she knows what we were really doing?”

Pankaj is nodding before I even finish the question. “Oh, she definitely knows what's up. Alex may be the best telepath—when he's channeling things properly—but Mara's the one with the best understanding of the way it all works. If anyone can see the order behind things, it's Mara. She's tuned in on that deep Jungian level, the particle level.”

I'm now too curious not to ask. “So what did she tell you when she gave you your reading?”

We walk in the direction of the Henley Gardens, and since we don't have a particular destination, this seems as good a place as any.

“She nailed my family, knew about some really tough stuff with my sister, Nisha,” Pankaj says. He steers us to a bench that's partially obscured by the branches of a dogwood tree and brushes away the fallen petals before we sit. “She kept mentioning how important my mom was, and that I needed to listen to her.” He rolls his eyes. “And then she said that I'd meet a dangerous girl who'd try to seduce me in a secluded wooded area.”

“Dangerous, huh?” I say, cuffing him on the arm.

“She was pretty adamant about this girl bringing about my demise.”

I catch a slight waver in his smile, and the expression betrays his confidence. He's wondering if I'm the threat. “Am I scaring you?”

“ Yeah . . . but in a good way.”

We say nothing for a moment, looking around at the flowers and shrubbery and trees and everything that is not each other. The fact that we need to get back to the “place” we were, as Mara put it, consumes us—and I think it's fair to say we're both terrified. I've started feeling shy and self-conscious on top of that, wondering if Pankaj has ever truly been attracted to me or if he and Alex just came up with a set of lines together. I'm midspin in this wheel of insecurities when I realize Pankaj is staring at me.

“What?”

He doesn't answer. Instead he simply leans in and kisses me. When I pull back, thinking I should apologize for something (though I'm not quite sure what), he puts his arms around my waist and pulls me close. The gesture makes me feel singular, special. Doubt dissolves. I close my eyes and feel the heat radiating between us.

Then I start smelling smoke. The vision comes: flames, curling paper; sparks and shards flying skyward. The smell is so pungent that my eyelids squeeze tighter on instinct to prevent the smoldering ash from getting in.
I hear Pankaj trying to communicate something over the roar of the inferno.

Body.

“Body?” I cry out loud.

“ Yes!” he says. “Pea! Body! The library . . . Peabody Library's on fire.”