Sophomore Freak (Reject High: A Young Adult Science Fiction Series Book 2) (8 page)

CHAPTER NINE

se almost get busted

Courtney knew about our powers, or at least
mine.

“We cleaned up the mess at Giovanni’s so that no one suspected you.” Courtney folded her hands on her lap. “Brainwashing isn’t as easy as you may think.”

How many others knew? My stomach tightened. Rhapsody and I kept quiet.

Ruby, who poured the world’s slowest glass of water, didn’t say anything above a whisper from the kitchen. Was she praying?
Does she plan to hop the back fence and run off to Panama?
I swore the back door hadn’t opened, but I could have missed it. No way had Rhapsody’s mom climbed out of the window, but I’d pay money to see her try.

Too bad for me – she returned with a glass of ice water and handed the envelope to Courtney. “Take your money. I’m not leaving my daughter and her father.” 

She pressed the paper back into Ruby’s hand. “You misunderstand,” Courtney said with definite force. “You’re in danger. This way you can choose where you go.”

Ruby’s eyes narrowed and she squeezed the envelope into a ball. “If we’re in so much danger, then the
police
can protect us
.
Explain your bribe and identity to them!”

“She called the police.” Courtney checked her fancy watch, as if she’d expected it. “Rhapsody, how far is the police station from here? Give me a tight ballpark.”

“Umm. . .four or five minutes, nonstop through lights,” she answered.

Courtney accessed the case she’d brought into the house by placing her thumbs on two black, square plates. The locks popped and she opened it. Inside was an impressive display of silver plated equipment. She tossed black packages wrapped in plastic, one to Rhapsody and another to me. “Two minutes. Put these on.”

Rhapsody grabbed my hand and we ran into her bedroom. I felt nervous enough to throw up. I’d never undressed in a girl’s room besides Sasha’s, and even then we weren’t doing much of anything. 

She kicked off her leather boots and dropped her loose-fitting blue denim cut-offs and golf t-shirt to the floor. Beneath them she’d wore black spandex shorts and a purple bra with small holes on the sides. I tried not to look at her but she caught me.

“Don’t wanna touch the merchandise, but window shopping is okay?” she asked while unwrapping the plastic. “Eventually you’re gonna buy. That’s how it works.”

I didn’t follow what she was saying, so I busied myself with dodging the junk spread out on her floor and unwrapping my package. It was some sort of flexible Kevlar body suit, like footie pajamas for adults. There were gloves and the shiny overlay looked like a metallic chain link skin. There was excess material at the top – a hoody? No, it was a mask.

I stepped into the suit, zipping it up just below my neck. Stashing my pouch of crystals in the inside breast pocket, I let the mask dangle at the back of my head. By the time I noticed it, Rhapsody was fully dressed. She was curvier than I thought.

When we left the bedroom our appearance spooked Ruby. Her eyes bulged and the skin on her arms and face shone with sweat, but she didn’t try to stop us. Either our hidden lives were too interesting or she was in total shock.

Fortunately for us, we had experience with this type of thing.

“Jason.” Courtney called my name from the back door, where she crossed her arms over her breasts and tapped her foot. I focused on her voice. Everything else faded. Rhapsody talked Spanish to Ruby nearby, but I did not hear them. “Jason?”

I blinked. The inside of my mouth dried and my skin tingled. “Yeah?”

“Focus,” she said, touching my cheeks. Her palms were soft and smelled like citrus fruit. “North Hospital. Straight to room 313.” She dropped the zipper on my suit and tucked a business card in the inside pocket behind the prisms. “Masks on – keep your speed up. Meet us at the coordinates on the card when you finish.”

George’s room used to be on the third floor, until they moved him to ICU on the fifth floor. I thought of the hospital’s address. Just as soon as I did, it disappeared. I repeated it to myself twice to keep it fresh in my mind. 

Courtney zipped me back up and pulled the mask over my head. It had mesh one-way viewing windows on the inside and a small rubber mouthpiece. “Good luck.”

I ran out of the house, almost breaking the door off of the hinges as I did it. Rhapsody followed me. She whisked her hair into a bun and pulled her mask down. Both of us looked like two weirdoes in tight metal spandex, but Rhapsody’s clung to every curve of her body.
Yep, I’m staring again
.

Courtney waved to the air and pointed. Holding Rhapsody much closer than I wanted to, we lifted off into the air. Police cars swerved to a stop in front of her house, where the neighbors had crowded together to watch whatever had just made a sonic boom.

Rhapsody placed a hand on my chest and made us invisible for our landing a few seconds after we ascended. Going supersonic made for quick travel.

Our feet never touched the roof of the hospital. We ghosted right through it, drifting through the top twelve floors and becoming solid on a level that looked familiar. It wasn’t the third, which was our destination. I noticed an emerald green strip the width of my hand running along the edge of the freshly-mopped white floor.
Any shade of green, but especially that one, catches my eye now.

I unmasked and the rubber mouthpiece hissed with leftover air. “We didn’t go far enough, did we?” I whispered to her. “Which level are we on?”

“Five.” She found my hand and pointed it ahead. “ICU is this way. Follow me.”

“But Courtney said go to 313 first.”

“She isn’t here, is she?” Rhapsody said, annoyed. “Invisibility goes with me.”

I remembered the plan. “Crystals go with
me.
313 first.”

Rhapsody cursed and shoved me in the shoulder before dropping us down two more levels without warning. My stomach dropped, and when we landed my insides shook. She could have warned me, but she was pissed and unreasonable.

Rounding the beige counter where the nurses stationed themselves, we followed the navy blue and white-lettered signs on the wall to the room.

She kept her hand at the small of my back, which I forced myself to accept as we walked down the white corridor. It reminded me that although our lives were in danger, things were still strange between us. We’d have to talk about the kiss some time.

When a pair of male doctors in green scrubs almost bumped into us, Rhapsody quickly turned us intangible. My heart seemed to stop every time someone walked
through
me. How had she gotten used to her new powers so fast? Were mine more complicated, or was I somehow making it harder than it was?

Before peeking into Room 313, we examined the patient’s medical chart like we knew what we were looking for. He was anonymous, nicknamed “John Doe.” His admission date was May 8 – right after Reject High exploded. I didn’t feel good about this. Still, I kept reading. His diagnosis was. . .
osteosarcoma?
“No,” I said out loud.

Rhapsody nudged me. “That’s the same kind of cancer Pápa has.”

“Yeah. My mom had it, too.”

Who was this guy?

Now visible and tangible, we proceeded forward. Rhapsody closed the heavy wooden door behind us.

A black-screened monitor beeped, followed by another one we couldn’t pinpoint. A ventilator pumped air into his lungs. There was movement beneath his blue hospital gown. A few seconds later, it deflated. His body sagged. Another set of beeps seemed to echo in the room.

The door handle clicked, and Rhapsody turned us invisible again. A nurse peeked in, walked through us, looked around, walked back through us, and closed the door.

Both of us sighed. There wasn’t much time. Never was. 

I unzipped my suit and pulled it down far enough to retrieve the prisms. Once I got them out, Rhapsody dropped her powers. I’d use half of the emeralds on this guy. That’s what Courtney needed us to do, I guessed. The other half were for George.

We moved closer to the bed and touched the silver guardrails. A large plastic bag of clear liquid dripped into an intravenous tube implanted in his right hand. His body was skeleton-thin and covered by wrinkled, dark brown skin. Even when the ventilator cycled on, he looked like that. He had these gross open sores dotting his forearms. Wild white hair covered his head, sprouted from his face and reached down to his chest. 

“We don’t have all day, Cap,” Rhapsody said sharply over another set of beeps. “Get it over with. My dad’s on a different floor.”

“Don’t rush me.”

After pocketing the other crystals and zipping back up, I palmed fewer than half of the green emeralds and placed them underneath the mystery man’s right hand. His skin was leathery, but dry, like it hadn’t been moisturized in ages.

Nothing happened.

The ventilator did its work. Beeping and hissing continued.

Rhapsody grabbed my elbow. “Let’s go. Now. . .”

She lingered on her last word when the stranger inhaled during an off-cycle for the ventilator.

He’d done it on his own.

After a few seconds it hit me that I’d stopped breathing and my heart had skipped a beat. Rhapsody didn’t even have the presence of mind to curse, which she would have had done had she not been totally freaked out, like I was.

Suddenly his body arced, filling and stretching like a human balloon. Rhapsody turned her back to him. I had to watch.

It was way too intense to stop staring, but we backed away at the same time. The sores on his arms disappeared into completely healthy skin. He opened his eyes.

In that second I guessed who he was.
Peters.
Our old Physical Science teacher who had figured out we had powers and almost killed me three times. He was alive after all, but fighting Welker in the gym had left him like this. Courtney had tricked us into reviving a monster. Were they friends? Lovers?

“It’s Peters,” Rhapsody said. She held her arm out to push me back.

I should have let her push me, but after our last encounter with Peters, I could only think one thing.

Run
.

Peters snatched the needle from his hand and pulled the ventilator tubing out of his mouth. “Wait,” he said in a hoarse voice. “Don’t!”