New Sight (4 page)

“Lys?” Mr. Mason prompted.

“Oh!” Lys looked around, distracted from Kamau. What had Mr. Mason asked? “I, uh, I’m from California, but because of my dad’s job we’ve moved around a lot. It’s just me and my parents.” She paused. “I, I love art and movies and hanging out with my friends.” It sounded really stupid coming out like that—nothing like being the prince of a tribe.

Brady saved her. “What kind of art do you like? Do you draw or paint?”

“I like painting, but I’m better at drawing.”

“I have the greatest idea for a manga, but I can’t draw. You could teach me!”

A comic book? “Uh, sure.”

Brady’s attention span was about two seconds. “Can I have more chicken?”

“Have all you want,” Mark said, laughing as he passed the plate.

Brady looked at Lys’s plate. “Is that all you’re going to eat?”

She glanced down. “Yes?” It was more than she’d eaten at once in a long time.

“I don’t understand you light eaters. Personally, breakfast is my favorite meal of the day. Although I prefer tomatoes”—Brady pronounced it ta-mah-toes“—and beans to your American cold cereal.”

“That’s sick.” Lys made a face, imagining eating any sort of bean for breakfast. It must be a boy thing.

“What do you eat?” Brady asked Kamau. It was obvious the younger boy was dying to know more about this African tribe.

Kamau grinned, glancing at Lys. “I’d rather not say at the table.”

“Are you sure you don’t want any beans?” Brady asked Lys, raising the bowl.

“I’m good.” She held up a hand.

“What’s your story?” Brady asked Mark.

Mark finished chewing before he wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Mr. Mason here found me and helped me go through what you’re going through. That was a few years ago. I decided I wanted to stay on and help everyone else. We’re kind of a tight family here.”

“We’re lucky to have a lot of dedicated, resourceful people to help us,” Mr. Mason said.

Mark nodded. “You’re in good hands.”

The conversation paused. Lys felt like they were dancing around the proverbial elephant in the room—the question they were all thinking but no one wanted to ask. Knowing everyone’s names was nice, but she had bigger reasons for being here.

“So,” she said, turning to Mr. Mason. “You mentioned that we would start treatments tonight?”

Chapter 5

Genni smiled.
“Are you ready?” How could Genni be so casual? The question reminded Lys of something her mother would ask her like, “Do you have your keys?” or, “Do we need milk?” Not, “I’m about to give you some ‘tonic’ that’s going to counteract the deadly drug in your system trying to kill you. It might be uncomfortable. You’re going to feel horrible for the next week or so, but trust me, you’ll live.” That’s not exactly the way Mr. Mason described it, but that was the gist.

“Sure,” Lys said aloud. “Why wait?”

The woman handed Lys a large glass of cloudy, white liquid. “You might want to sit down on the bed first,” she said.

“Will it affect me that fast?” Lys asked, eying the liquid with new suspicion.

“It does some people.”

Lys sat. She stared at the glass in her hand, wondering how something that looked like the dregs of a science experiment could cure her.

How bad could it be? She’d seen TV. Movies. Sure, people went through withdrawal all the time. Flu like symptoms, puking everywhere, looking like a bus just ran over you, and probably feeling that way, too. Lys swallowed. I can handle this, she told herself. She’d had the flu last year. She’d been hit in the face by more than one volleyball in her gym classes. Feeling like crap—she could take it.

Bringing the glass to her lips, Lys sniffed. No smell. Of course she couldn’t smell much anyway. As Mr. Mason had predicted, her other senses had started to dull over the past few days, with her sense of smell going the quickest. Lys could feel Genni watching her, waiting. So in one, daring chug, Lys tipped the glass back and drank.

It was the same liquid Ayden had given to her when she’d collapsed on the front stairs. At least it tasted the same—flat Sprite.

“Good job.” Genni took the glass. “You might want to lie down.”

Lys went to swing her legs up.

“Take your shoes off first.”

Wow, bossy. Lys kicked off her shoes and lay down. She didn’t feel any different. When Ayden gave her the drink it only took a few seconds to—

Lys gasped. Her intestines suddenly felt like they were being grabbed and wrung out, like someone squeezing the water from a towel. Her senses exploded. Whereas a moment before she hadn’t been able to smell anything, now she could smell everything. Mountain air, musty carpet, old people stench, antiseptic, and the woman’s body odor beside her, thinly disguised by deodorant. It all hit her like a hammer on an anvil. Lys felt herself gagging.

A roaring that put a rock concert to shame started in her ears. It got louder and louder, pulsing with new chords so dissonant that it hurt. Lys could hear herself screaming. Her insides burst into flames; her skin went cold like clammy ice. Dark lights blinked behind her closed eyes. Was this the end? Mr. Mason said if she didn’t get treatment fast enough that the drug would kill her. She wondered if she should have taken that option.

Black—a word she’d never really
thought about. Black was dark; it usually represented evil, loneliness, or pain. Now Lys would forever associate black with fear. She’d never been afraid of the dark, but after spending so much time in a deep well she couldn’t penetrate with any of her senses, Lys changed her mind.

She didn’t know how long she stayed in the dark. It could have been an hour, but it felt more like eternity. Her life before this madness was gone, hidden away—hardly even aware of its own existence. When the light came, Lys wept with gratitude.

It shone through the black like a ray of hope after the worst day of her life. The blue light came toward her, and Lys thought it might be the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. It shot past her awareness, looped around her, and then flew off back to where it had come from. The light left behind a trail of spreading joy, eating the black away, leaving hope.

As the world appeared around her, Lys found herself on the front porch of her house. The Halloween decorations sat by the stairs—a few hay bales and a scarecrow. She reached out a hand and opened the door, walking inside. She took a breath, trying to inhale the sweet scent of home, but it didn’t work. She smelled nothing.

Lys glanced around. The pictures hung on the walls, and her mom’s purse sat on the edge of the table. However, the feeling of home that rushed over her each time she walked in the door didn’t come. Nothing came. The house felt more like an empty shell than the place she lived.

Lys didn’t want to be alone. So she went back outside, looking for her parents.

That’s when she noticed the yard. Her attention had been directed at the house before, but now that she looked around at everything else, she knew something was very wrong.

A gigantic hole filled the spot where the driveway should have been. Her father’s car sat smoldering, blown in half like in a movie. Lys panicked. She ran toward the car, hoping—praying—that her father was not inside. When she got to the driver’s side she stopped. Someone was in the front seat. Only two people drove this car. She swallowed and looked away.

This must be a dream. She closed her eyes, and then opened them again. Eyes? Two? Lys reached up a trembling hand to touch the right side of her face. There was no patch or bandage there. She let her eyelashes brush her fingers as she blinked. She had two eyes. Two good eyes—she could clearly see out of both. She had her eye back, but she’d lost her parents?

No, this couldn’t be. Her eye was ruined. The doctors said she could keep it, but she’d never see out of it again. This had to be a dream. She could control a dream. Lys closed her eyes and concentrated on waking up.

Nothing happened. She took a breath, not sure it would help, and tried again, filling her mind with thoughts of the real world. The light faded, and she felt herself being pulled back into the dark.

Lys sat up, gasping for
breath, her sheets drenched in sweat. She immediately doubled over, dry-heaving into a bucket that resided next to her bed.

Was this the second or the third time she’d woken up? Lys didn’t know. She remembered Genni giving her more tonic, but she had no idea when that had been. Yesterday? Five minutes ago? Time meant nothing in the darkness, and since each time she closed her eyes, that’s where she ended up. She didn’t have any idea how many minutes, hours, or days had passed.

Lying back in the bed, Lys kept one hand on the lip of the bucket. She held it like a rescue rope. Sleep came for her again. The darkness crept in, and no matter how hard she tried, Lys was helpless to keep it at bay.

This time she didn’t start
out trapped in the abyss. This time she recognized her surroundings immediately. She floated above Los Angeles; it was burning. The center of the city—all of the skyscrapers—smoldered. Like a giant torch, they lit the smoke-filled sky with an eerie glow.

Somehow, Lys was flying. For reasons she didn’t understand, she flew closer, drawn to the scene by the desire to know what had happened. Below her, the streets lay mostly deserted. The first person she saw was a little girl. Not more than five or six years old, the little girl stood in the middle of the street, surrounded by holes that looked like they had been punched into the roadway by a giant hammer.

When Lys moved closer, she could see that the little girl was giggling, but she couldn’t hear anything. To Lys’s surprise, the little girl bent over and tapped the ground with her hand, like packing sand. When she did so, the ground gave way as if a wrecking ball had hit it. The asphalt spider-webbed out for a dozen feet in every direction.

What in the world? Lys stopped, shocked. She fluttered over the little girl, who must have noticed her presence because the little girl looked up. Lys met her eyes. They were filled with a blue-green swirling vortex. Lys recoiled from the alien orbs, flying away, arms pin-wheeling. But she didn’t get far before the Need swelled up inside of her. It stopped her retreat and propelled her forward again until Lys hovered within reach of the girl. The little girl waved, and Lys pounced.

Lys woke with a gasp.
Her whole body shook. She always woke up shaking. These withdrawals made the flu feel like a sniffle. Sometimes she wished that the option of dying was still on the table. She had to use the bucket again. The lack of contents in her stomach almost made Lys wish she’d eaten more at her last meal. Whenever that had been.

They were expected to come down to meals. Nobody ate much—appetites were no real concern for anyone. Lys didn’t care if she never ate anything again. Ever.

But, three times a day a knock came at her door. One of the women on the staff would be outside, dressed in their green and khaki uniforms, ready to escort her down to breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Sometimes it was all Lys could do to not yell at them to go away.

Lys thought that sleep would drag her in again, but this time the dream left her wide awake. She lay there, one arm dangling off the bed and touching the bucket, wondering if a knock would sound. Maybe that’s why she woke up.

Had it been three days since they arrived, or four? She could clearly remember her arrival, Kenny and dinner, with Mr. Mason’s explanation that the drug’s effects were long lasting if not handled properly, and she remembered breakfast from this morning. Or was it yesterday?

Sleep did not come. Lys was grateful. She rolled onto her back and glanced at the window. No light filtered in through the green curtains. Could it be morning? She didn’t want to get up.

Lying on the bed was the only thing that felt remotely comfortable. Standing, walking, talking, and pretty much everything else was, well, it was hard. It hurt, and she didn’t want to do it. Any of it.

Unfortunately she had to pee.

Sitting sent waves of excruciating pain through her entire body. Working up to the effort of swinging her legs off the bed took a good ten seconds. Her head felt like it might split in half. The pain had begun after she’d drunk her first round of tonic, and it hadn’t stopped since—an angry little man with a big hammer was whacking the inside of her skull.

She placed her hands on the bed, one on each side of her hips. This was the really horrible part. Lys took a breath, which caused her head to throb even harder, and stood. She only got halfway before she doubled over, and she had to wait for a wave of dizziness to pass. Or at least abate. Reaching out for the dresser, Lys straightened up.

The first step was always iffy; having only one good eye didn’t help. Lys shuffled her right foot along the thin carpet, moving the heel of her right foot just past the toe of her left foot. Good, no falling.

The second step she actually lifted her left foot off the ground. Her hand stayed on the dresser. The foot made a tiny arch and came back down onto the rug, right on an orange patch of the pattern. If she could hit the orange patches all along the floor she would be at the bathroom in five steps. She’d tried to follow the greenish patches once, and the counselor had had to come in and pick her up off the floor.

She made her way slowly to the door that led into her private bathroom. It seemed to take forever to do anything, and using the toilet was no exception. However, by the time she finished, she felt even more awake than before.

An impulse from another life hit Lys, and she turned to look at herself in the mirror. Needles of pain ripped through the base of her skull. The dim light gave her just enough illumination to see by. Her eye met itself in the mirror and she glared.

Was that her? So haggard and sallow? Her sunken cheeks looked yellow. At least she thought it was yellow. Lys still saw things that weren’t there. As a matter of fact, suddenly, staring back at her in the mirror was her face from before. Her young, beautiful, perfect face. Not this horror that she had become—no eye patch, no deathly pallor.

Lys’s teeth ground together. She used to cry, in the beginning, but now she got angry. When she got angry, the Need came, and when the Need came, she wanted to hurt people. More and more she wanted to give in, to just let her body and her emotions do what they wanted to, but a small part of her was still sane, still Lys. She wondered how long it would last. The tonic helped, but not enough.

She turned away from the mirror, not bothering to brush her long, dark hair back or straighten her shirt. She went to flush the toilet, and nothing happened.

Another try didn’t improve the situation. “Figures,” she said to herself.

With a sigh, Lys moved out, following the orange spots until she reached the call button and pressed it. Nothing happened. Lys frowned and pressed it again. Still nothing.

A few seconds went by. There was supposed to be a counselor at the desk at all times. Usually one of them knocked on the door or buzzed the room right away. Strange that no one answered.

Lys took a firm grasp on the door handle. Once she balanced, she lifted her other hand and knocked.

“Hello?” Lys said as loudly as she could in a gravelly voice. It felt like talking through a mouthful of marbles. No one answered.

Okay, now she was concerned. Lys jiggled the knob and knocked again. To her surprise, the knob turned. It wasn’t locked?

Lys opened the door and slowly stepped into the hall.

Moonlight streamed in through the windows at the end of the hall, leaving illuminated squares on the linoleum. The rest of the lights were off. Lys took a few more steps. She felt her balance begin to return as she moved.

Well, since the door was open, and Lys didn’t want her toilet overflowing, she decided to make her way to the main desk. That’s where the call button should be directed to, right?

The world tilted back and forth as she followed the linoleum squares. Her fingertips stayed on the handrail attached to the wall, lightly caressing the wood surface.

Silence surrounded her. Lys could hear the sound of her own heart beating, and the slap of her bare feet landing on the floor. When she got around the corner, she stopped. A single reading lamp lit the desk, but she didn’t see a counselor.

Lys turned, looking back toward her room. Where was everyone?

The light from the main desk darkened for a moment. Lys turned back, hoping to find that the counselor had returned. No luck.