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Sam looks down at the flyer. “So it’s this Saturday?”
“Yes. ”
He looks up at me. “I say we go. ”
I shrug. “I’m in. ”
Henri is waiting for me when the final bell rings. As always, Bernie Kosar is in the passenger seat, and when he sees me, his tail begins wagging a hundred miles an hour. I jump into the truck. Henri puts it into gear and drives away.
“There was a follow-up article on the girl in Argentina,” Henri says.
“And?”
“Just a short article saying that she has disappeared. The mayor of the town is offering a modest reward for information on her whereabouts. It sounds like they believe she’s been kidnapped. ”
“Are you worried about the Mogadorians having gotten to her first?”
“If she’s Nine, like the note we found indicated, and the Mogadorians were tracking her, it’s a good thing that she vanished. And if she’s been captured, the Mogadorians can’t kill her—they can’t even hurt her. That gives us hope. The good thing, aside from the news itself, is that I imagine every Mogadorian on Earth has poured into Argentina. ”
“Speaking of which, Sam had the latest issue of They Walk Among Us today. ”
“Was there anything in it?”
“Nope. ”
“I didn’t think there would be. Your levitation trick seemed to affect them rather profoundly. ”
When we arrive home I change clothes and meet Henri in the backyard for our day of training. Working while consumed with fire has gotten easier. I don’t get as flustered as I did on that first day. I can hold my breath longer, close to four minutes. I have more control over the objects I lift, and I can lift more of them at the same time. Little by little, the look of worry I saw on Henri’s face during the first days has melted away. He nods more. He smiles more. On the days it goes really well he gets a crazed look in his eyes and he raises his arms in the air and yells “Yes!” as loudly as he can. In that way I am gaining confidence in my Legacies. The rest have yet to come, but I don’t think they’re far off. And the major one, whatever it will be. The anticipation of it keeps me up most nights. I want to fight. I hunger for a Mogadorian to saunter into the backyard so that I may finally seek revenge.
It’s an easy day. No fire. Mostly just me lifting things and manipulating them while they are suspended in the air. The last twenty minutes pass with Henri throwing objects at me—sometimes just allowing them to fall to the ground, other times deflecting them in a way that emulates a boomerang so that they twist in the air and go blazing back towards Henri. At one point a meat tenderizer flies back so fast that Henri dives face-first into the snow to keep from being hit by it. I laugh. Henri does not. Bernie Kosar lies on the ground the whole time watching us, seeming to offer his own encouragement. After we are done I shower, do my homework, and sit at the kitchen table for dinner.
“So there is a party this Saturday that I’m going to go to. ”
He looks up at me, stops chewing. “Whose party?”
“Mark James’s. ”
Henri looks surprised.
“All that’s over,” I say before he can object.
“Well, you know best, I suppose. Just remember what’s at stake. ”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
AND THEN THE WEATHER WARMS. BRISK WINDS, bitter cold, and continuous snow showers are followed by blue skies and fifty-degree temperatures. The snow melts. At first there are standing puddles in the driveway and the yard, the road wet with the sounds of splashing tires, but after a day all the water drains and evaporates and the cars pass as they do on any other day. A lull in the action, a brief reprieve before old man winter takes up the reins again.
I sit on the porch waiting for Sarah, staring up at the night sky full of twinkling stars and a full moon. A thin, knifelike cloud cuts the moon in two and then quickly disappears. I hear the crunch of gravel under tires; then headlights come into view and the car pulls into the driveway. Sarah gets out of the driver’s side. She’s dressed in dark gray pants flared at the ankles, a navy blue cardigan sweater beneath a beige jacket. Her eyes are accentuated by the blue shirt peeking out where the jacket’s zipper ends. Her blond hair falling past her shoulders. She smiles coyly and looks at me, fluttering her eyelashes as she approaches. There are butterflies in my stomach. Almost three months together and yet I still grow nervous when I see her. A nervousness that’s hard to imagine time will ever assuage.
“You look gorgeous,” I say.
“Well, thank you,” she says, and bobs a curtsy. “You don’t look so bad yourself. ”
I kiss Sarah on the cheek. Then Henri walks out of the house and waves to Sarah’s mom, who is sitting in the passenger seat of the car.
“So you’ll call when you’re ready to be picked up, right?” Henri asks me.
“Yes,” I say.
We walk to the car and Sarah gets behind the wheel. I sit in the back. She’s had her learner’s permit for a few months now, which means she can drive so long as a licensed driver sits in the passenger seat beside her. Her actual driver’s test is on Monday, two days away. She’s been anxious about it ever since making the appointment over winter break. She backs out of the driveway and pulls away, eventually flipping the visor down and smiling at me through the mirror. I smile back.
“So how was your day, John?” her mother turns and asks me. We make small talk. She tells me of the trip to the mall that the two of them made earlier in the day, and how Sarah drove. I tell her about playing with Bernie Kosar in the yard, and about the run we went on after. I don’t tell her about the training session that lasted for three hours in the backyard after the run. I don’t tell her how I split the dead tree’s trunk straight down the middle through telekinesis, or how Henri threw knives at me that I deflected into a sandbag fifty feet away. I don’t tell her about being lit on fire or the objects that I lifted and crushed and splintered. Another kept secret. Another half-truth that feels like a lie. I would like to tell Sarah. I somehow feel that I’m betraying her by keeping myself hidden, and over the last few weeks the burden has really begun to weigh on me. But I also know I have no other choice. Not at this point, anyhow.
“So it’s this one?” Sarah asks.
