Sophomore Freak (Reject High: A Young Adult Science Fiction Series Book 2) (5 page)

“Hey!” shouted Sasha.

How did she get here?
I didn’t see her. It could have been any of her clones. Spivey shot in her direction, but she disappeared into the darkness behind a fake tree.

“You missed,” she said, taunting him from my right. He shot wildly, hitting nothing but trees and black air.

My strength finally evened out. Once I had his exact position I’d attack.

When Sasha appeared the next time she got a little too close and Spivey grabbed her. “You’ve got until three before I shoot,” he said with the gun at her temple. “Three.”

CHAPTER SIX

Sasha and I cross the line

I jumped forward, crashing through real trees and cloned ones to get to Spivey. I think his gun went off – I ‘m not sure. Sasha couldn’t be dead! Surely she’d managed to dive out of the way.

Once our momentum drove us to the ground I pinned the officer. Spivey spit in my face.

“What are you gonna do, kid? Kill me?” he asked.

He made a good point. If I let him go, all he’d do is come back after us. If not me, then Sasha, or Rhapsody, our families, other people. What was I supposed to do?

I wiped my forehead and sent a regular punch across his jaw. Then I dragged him by the ankles back to his patrol car, where his emergency lights still flashed. Susan had told me “stay in control.” It took control not to knock his teeth out for spitting on me.

Sasha found me straddling Spivey’s midsection, with my left hand at his throat. I must’ve squeezed the sides of his neck a little too hard because he started acting woozy.

“What are we supposed to do with him?” I asked her. “We can’t let him go.”

Sasha shrugged. “I don’t know. You’re going to kill him?”

I paused. “No, I guess not.”

“Go ‘head. . .” Spivey mumbled. “Kill. . .me.”

Not really my style, but he shouldn’t push me.

Sasha smacked my arm. “Wait, is that what you were thinking? We should
murder
him?”

I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about it. “Murder is definitely wrong.”

“Right,” she said halfheartedly. The red and blue lights flashed across her face. She was thinking. “We could keep him. . .
somewhere.”

Who had time to watch a prisoner?
“We can defend ourselves. What about our families? Wherever he goes he’ll know who we are, everything about us.”

Sasha’s eyes brightened with an idea. “Not necessarily.” She cloned herself. “Do you have any red isotopes on you?” Original Sasha asked me. Her mannerisms were sterile and cold. Clone Sasha, in the sundress she’d worn at Giovanni’s, stood beside me and held onto my arm.

“Yeah, I do.” I handed over Spivey’s bracelet and Ryan’s necklace. “Why? What do you need them for?”

She put a finger up to her lips. “Hold him down. I’m going into his mind.”

Spivey wildly thrashed his arms and legs. “You don’t have the nerve!” he screamed at her. “You don’t have it in you!”

“You can do that?” I asked Original Sasha. “How? Can scarlet emeralds do that?”

She closed her eyes and concentrated for a minute. Sweat formed on her forehead. She gasped and put her hand to her mouth. Clone Sasha disappeared. Spivey stopped moving. The night was quiet, except for the soft clicking of the rotating red and blue police lights.

Sasha’s lip quivered and she broke down. Crying bitterly, she walked over to me and planted her face into my chest. I held her tightly and gazed over at Officer Spivey long enough to confirm he was still breathing. His eyes were fixed on the sky and he blinked a lot. Whatever she did to him, it was
serious.
I said his name, “Spivey?”

He did not answer. His facial expression did not change a bit.

“Stu. . .Stuart? Can you hear me?”

Sasha’s cries grew in intensity and she shook her head. Something had gone wrong when she went fishing around inside of his brain. Spivey
couldn’t
answer me. Nothing good was going to come of our staying here with him.

I reached in Sasha’s front pocket for Spivey’s cloned cell phone and dialed 911. After giving the dispatcher his information and location, I hung up and gave the phone back to Sasha. She had quieted down, but her body was shaking. I placed Spivey in the driver’s seat of his car, hoping whatever condition his mind was in, that he didn’t remember anything about us.

By the time we dropped down at Sasha’s, it was after eleven. Joyce wasn’t there – probably on one of her late night dinner dates. I wanted to go home and shower. I reeked of sweat and blood, and after tonight’s events, I might actually sleep.

Sasha, however, was in no condition to be left alone. We usually relaxed for a while after weird nights – played video games or watched TV. It helped us feel like fifteen-year-olds without superhuman powers.

There would be none of that tonight –not after what I’d just witnessed. Accidently or not, Sasha had damaged a man’s brain and turned him into a vegetable. The image of Spivey drooling on himself and staring into space etched into my thoughts. No one could pin us to it, but that didn’t do anything for the guilt over my part in it.

We went upstairs to her bedroom. Sasha stripped down to her underwear and crawled underneath her pink and white bed sheets. She said nothing. I took off both my t-shirt and undershirt and got in next to her. Sasha faced me and lay across my chest. I stroked her wavy hair until the tears stopped rolling down her cheeks and she fell asleep. Soon my fatigue caught up with me and I felt myself drifting off.

Sometime in the middle of the night, my phone buzzed. I rubbed my eyes and scooted away from Sasha so that I could look at it without disturbing her. I’m sure Ray doesn’t have my number, so it wasn’t him. Was it Debra wondering where I was? She always expected me to check in, but tonight was unusual.

The text was from Rhapsody. The time stamp said 3:01 a.m. but the message section was blank. She could be in trouble and I had no way to find her.

I eased from beneath Sasha’s arm and used my cell to find my way to her dresser. In the bottom drawer were supplies she stashed for me for times like this. I collected jeans shorts, an undershirt, Raiders t-shirt, underwear, lotion and a value-priced deodorant and sneaked into the bathroom connected to Sasha’s room.

At the risk of waking her up or getting caught by Joyce, I showered and dressed as quickly as possible. It gave me a minute to wake up and think. Would she send me a blank message on purpose? Why would she do that? She can turn invisible, go anywhere. Where’s one place she could go where I’d always find her, no matter what?

That’s when it hit me. I knew where she was, or at least I thought I did.

I hated leaving Sasha. I kissed her gently on the cheek and pulled the covers up to her face. I transferred my things from my dirty shorts’ pockets to the new shorts I wore. Tiptoeing downstairs, I got to the alarm keypad in the living room and reset it, allowing myself ninety seconds to get out of the house. As I entered the last number I sensed someone in the room. The end table lamp flicked on and I cursed.

Dressed in a shiny red bathrobe, Joyce lay back in a white leather chair, her legs crossed over the edge. Her eyes were bloodshot, and she held a drink in her right hand. The corked bottle wasn’t far from her grasp. She swished the reddish brown liquid around and sipped it.

I froze, unsure what to do or say. For every second the alarm beeped, my heart beat two or three times. I waved, hoping Joyce didn’t have a gun in her robe. I really couldn’t handle being shot at again.

She tipped her glass and examined the contents. “So, you are. . . the boyfriend. . .or the
videographer?”
she slurred.

“Boyfriend,” I said.

“The last one. . .he was both.” Joyce let out a tiny belch. “Have a name. . . Boyfriend?”

The alarm kept beeping – I had, maybe thirty, forty-five seconds tops before it reset? Was she going to let me out? “Jason Champion.”

“Jason Champion.” S
he said it like my name was impressive. “Did you have fun?”

I pretended not to hear that. “Sorry?”

“I hear my husband likes blondes with legs. Do you like. . .blondes. . .
with legs?”

Not blondes, really, but I did appreciate girls with nice legs. “No,” I lied.

Joyce pointed her glass to the back door, which was a good fifty feet away. “If you leave here. . .my daughter. . .you come back to her. . .”

“Mom!” Sasha yelled from the staircase. Wearing a Hello Kitty bathrobe, she ran down the stairs and turned off the alarm just before it reset and locked me in.

“Sasha!” Joyce said merrily. “I was just telling the boy about some things.”

Sasha took the liquor bottle to the kitchen, uncorked it, and emptied it out in the sink. When she finished she wrestled the glass from her mother’s hand until it spilled. Joyce giggled and finished off what was left.

I met her in the kitchen. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s a. . .$200 bottle of brandy, young lady!” Joyce yelled at us, laughing.

Sasha refused to look at me. “Sorry for what, leaving me? Or my dad leaving me holding the vomit bucket and moving to Portland?”

Sadly, all of this was familiar. “I know how that feels.”

She touched my right hand. “She’s a joke. All her friends call her ‘Corky’ because she drinks too much,” she said, trying to hold back tears. “I’ll deal. Wherever you’re going,
go.
She’ll cuss me out in the morning for pouring out her top shelf brandy again and she’ll forget you were even here.
”

“Are you sure?” I asked. “I’ll stay.”

Sasha held her hands to her mouth and let a sniffle escape. “Truth? We’d be upstairs asleep if you were going to stay.”

It wasn’t a fight I was going to win. I kissed her on the cheek and exited through the back door. Her intruder spotlight shined in my eyes. I walked out of its range and jumped away.

From the sky I could see that the area around Reject High was pitch black. It made sense that Rhapsody would try to meet me here. It’s where we first met. Until I landed, I’d have to trust my instincts were right and I’d be in the right spot.

Sure enough, when my feet hit the pavement I was at the front door. The building had been stripped of everything important, including the security system. The place was a wreck. According to the news, the heating and air conditioning units had exploded because of a gas leak, not six super-humans fighting each other.

I felt around for the door handle and pulled it open. My cell phone cast enough light for me to see a couple of feet ahead.

I leaned against the wall and waited near where the metal detectors would have been. I sniffed the air for Rhapsody’s perfume and tried not to cough when I inhaled dust instead.
Was I wrong? Maybe she meant the gym – I saved her there. Or the cafeteria, that’s where she kissed me. It couldn’t be the dungeon, in its condition.