Seers (21 page)

He’s priceless. Can’t I figure a way to bottle him and take him with me? Life is just better with him in it.

“Very funny. I’m fine. Tired maybe.”

“All three of you look tired. Where was the party? You look like you were up all night.”

We sidestep the unwanted attention. Each of us starts a conversation. Eri turns to Frances, I ask Daisy how Jackson is, and she eagerly inquires about my bracelet and about how I’m feeling. Luke gets Patrick going by bringing up how his training for the next race is going. We try to pep up. But a heaviness surrounds us that we can’t shake. I am willing the clock forward despite cherishing these last moments as a group. The next period is art. My last art class with Eri.

Just yesterday I sat across from her and attempted to Navigate her. Today I sit across from her and see an Aurae, a friend, and someone I will miss terribly.

She leaves her canvas in front of her to grab paint and brushes from the back of the room. She has been working on this piece the past few days. I stand up and walk around our table to face it. It’s Boathouse Row at night. The white string lights on the houses dapple the purplish black sky. Her blending of colors is elegant. I guess she would be good with color.

“You like?” she says, trying to imitate my voice when I used those sarcastic words on her earlier.

I laugh. “Yes. I do. It’s beautiful.”

We get to work. Me on my sketch of horse and rider and her on the finishing touches of Boathouse Row. We are both immortalizing memories. Trying to hold on as long as we can. The silence is relaxing. It’s not until the bell sounds that I realize that the school day is done. And that means my meeting is just around the corner.

“You’re going to be okay, aren’t you? Luke may not worry about you, but I can’t help it. You don’t know what Tobias is capable of. What if he takes your exposure of these memories as an accusation? What if he retaliates?” Eri’s voice is pinched and shaky.

“He
will
take it as an accusation, because I am accusing him, Eri. He is responsible for my missing memories. He is responsible for messing with you and your father. Let’s not forget the things we are speculating he will do once he has the ability to Extract. He’ll do it. All the things we talked about. Changing people’s lives, destroying people. He’ll do it. He is capable of it. I’m going after him.”

I’m cooking up to something here. I can feel the rage in me moving and churning. I need this. I need to be fired up before I get home and lose my nerve. “I’m taking him down. For what he did. For what he’s going to do.”

“Aren’t you scared? Haven’t you thought about the fact that you have to get out of there? You’re planning to drop this bomb on him and then, what? Say, ‘Okay Tobias, nice talking to you. Bye’?”

“I’ll figure that out once I’m in there. I’ll be fine. Just go to your house. Wait for me there. I’ll be there by five.
I will.
”

“Okay,” she answers. She Reads me one last time and goes.

Luke is at my truck. Of course.

“Hey,” he starts.

“Hey.”

“You ready?”

“I’m ready,” I say flatly, even though I want to follow it with a question: You don’t think you’re coming, do you? But I wait.

“I think I should follow you,” he says. “Look. I’m not trying to invade your space. I’m not trying to protect you. I just want to be there in case.”

“In case what?”

“In case you don’t come out.”

Well, I can’t argue with that, can I? For Eri’s sake, for Dr. Kuono’s sake, for the sake of all Seers and Extractors, I have to come out. And if I don’t, Luke needs to hightail it to Eri’s to protect her and her father.

But I am going to come out.

I think he will read the journal entry. I think he will look at me with raised eyebrows that will deepen the crevices on his forehead into caverns. He will ask me about the memory. He will ask for specifics. I will be vague and toy with him. He won’t like it. He will ask about the mission. I’ll be vague again. He’ll want to explode, but he won’t. Tobias is calculating, methodical, exacting. He researches and waits, waits and researches. He will not be ready for a rash move. He will dismiss me and immediately begin plotting retaliation.

And I will be a move ahead. At Eri’s. With the information he wants planted safely in Luke’s brain.

“You can follow me because it makes sense. And it will help Eri to not freak out as much. But I am going to come out.” I finish with raised eyebrows that challenge him, dare him to disagree with me.

He sees my challenge, and it seems to amuse him.

“I know,” he says, “but I want to be there when you do.”

He had been leaning on my truck, a favorite pastime of his, but now he stands straight and takes a step forward. His eyes never shift from mine, but he moves swiftly. His arm is around my waist before I can react. I don’t move my feet an inch, but my body curls back as I inhale sharply. If we were dancing, this would be the point at which I dip. Instead I straighten up and tilt my head back.

We’ve been entranced so many times. So caught up in each other so many times. That this first touch, this first embrace, should feel awkward. But one fits in to the other like a puzzle piece finding its place. Our faces are inches apart,
too many inches apart.

I melt into him for a second before my arm curls under his and slides around his back, and I pull him closer. He sighs deeply and puts his other arm around me. He has been waiting for this, too.

In a swirl of minutes that could be hours or seconds, we lose ourselves as our lips do the dancing while our bodies are still. In this moment there is no mission. No discovery. No danger.
Well, there’s danger. But this danger is fun.

As if a bell sounded, we release each other. Time’s up, and we know it.

Now the difficulty is trying to focus after that.

“Okay, then. I guess I’ll have the air on the whole way there,” I say as I fan myself and bite my lip.

He laughs. It’s the loudest and best laugh I have heard from him. He puts a hand on my shoulder to steady himself while the laugh dwindles to a chuckle. He eats it up. The compliment. Everybody wants to hear they can get someone all hot and bothered.

“Right. I’ll open my windows, too,” he says, and laughs again.

And we part. That’s how we leave it. It’s perfect. No heaviness. No warnings or rehashing of plans. Just a kiss … and a laugh.

As soon as I turn onto Girard Avenue, I lose Luke. He has purposely slowed down, and I’m assuming he’ll circle around and park after me so we don’t pull up at the same time.

It had taken me until I was over the bridge to get focused. If this mission were me conducting research on Luke’s kissing style, there’d be no problem. Since it’s not, I had to get a grip and remember what we’re doing here. This is a big deal. I park, take a deep breath, and get out. I focus straight ahead on the door that leads to the stairway up to my apartment. I don’t want to look around and accidently see Tobias in a window, or any Seer, for that matter. I don’t want to be beckoned into his office before I can get to my apartment to get my journal.

I unlock and open my door and turn immediately to the left. I had set my journal there on the table last night. But now there is nothing on the table but the little brass tray I use as a key holder. Where is it?

I jerk my head up and cross the room to my desk in the corner by the kitchen doorway. Maybe I just thought I set it on the table for easy access. That’s it. I just forgot.

The desk is clear. I snap my head to the right. My chair is empty except for a throw pillow. I bound across the room and jerk up the cushion. Nothing.

A bomb goes off in my chest. Because I know what this means. I know what happened. Tobias doesn’t like to be kept waiting. And he wanted that journal entry. So he sent Daniel in here to get it.

Crap!

What am I going to do? He’s downstairs! With who knows how many Seers. I’m a sitting duck. Every once in a while, the cocky overconfidence I feel before doing something turns out to have been blatant denial. This is one of those times. How could I have thought Tobias would have been that easy to play?

I take a breath to collect myself. He’ll let me come to him, won’t he? I’ll walk in, and he’ll be sitting, waiting with the journal in his hands. He’ll relish the look of surprise and panic on my face. And then he’ll have me surrounded.

So I’ll walk down as if I’m heading into his office but just keep going. I’ll just leave. Yes. I have to leave.
Now.

I cross back to the door. I look at my hand to make sure I have my keys, and with the other hand I turn the doorknob.

Just before I open the door, I listen. I should hear quiet. It’s just me up here. Just my apartment at the top of a landing. I am the only one who uses this stairwell.

Then why do I hear the slight tapping of feet on the stairs?

Do I? Am I just being paranoid?

No. I hear them.

Definitely feet. Definitely coming this way.

My body begins to react without bothering to confer with my brain. Suddenly I am across the room again, through the kitchen to the chair by my window. I am up, standing on the cushion. I shove my palms on the glass of the window and heave up. The old window creaks and groans, and the wooden frame splinters as it slams open. I dig my fingers into the metal lift handles to raise the screen. The screen is old, like the rest of this place, so it sticks and resists my efforts.

With the screen three-quarters of the way up, I make myself as scrunched as possible. I ease both legs out, put my weight on the back of my chair, and flip over so I go out butt first. I want my feet to hit the fire escape while I’m still grasping something, so I can see if the thing’s even sturdy enough for me. I also want to watch the door as I exit.

The fire escape wobbles under me a little, but it’s all I’ve got. No going back in now. In fact I’m sure I see the door handle turning as I drop onto the landing. When I attempt to stand and take in my surroundings, it occurs to me that Tobias could have sent people out here, out back, to be sure I am coming down. Or he could have someone at my truck. Once again, no going back now. I make my way down the grate steps to the next landing. I look to my right down the alley. I can see Girard. My best bet is bolting and hoping I see Luke’s car. My feet plant solidly on the cement, and I poise to take off. I hesitate and decide that bolting seems predictable. And conspicuous. If I take off, I’ll stand out on the sidewalk, which an hour before rush hour is only slightly peppered with people. I decide to hide myself as much as I can and hug the sides of the buildings on the way to the street as I look for Luke.

Thanking the weather channel for telling me it would be a chilly day, I tuck my conspicuous hair down my back into the hooded sweatshirt I put on this morning. I guess a girl with a hood covering her head is conspicuous, too, but it’s not as much of a bull’s-eye as my mass of curls.

I hit the sidewalk and back up to my building. I glide against the bricks to the corner, climb over a gnarled mass of rust and wire, which was once an intact fence between the neighbors and us. I hug the neighbor’s building. The scary truth is that if they are looking for me, they will see me. I feel a little hidden, though, just by not being in the middle of the sidewalk. At the corner of this building, I am out of hugging options. The next structure is not a house, but a church. Its back is gated with that kind of black fencing that look like rows of arrows joining hands and pointing to the sky.

With no buildings left to shield me, I make a break for it. At the corner of the house, I turn to face Girard and take off. I convince myself that I can make it. Until at the corner of Girard, I see three men by my truck. One is in front of the driver-side door. He is tall and lanky. He watches the front entrance of my building. Another is in front of the passengerside door. This man is younger but bigger than the other two. He is scanning the sidewalks up and down Girard. The third is standing in the street directly in front of the truck itself. He blocks my truck’s path as if saying,
You’ll have to run over me first.
He is burly and nasty and looking in my direction.

The panic and fear I was feeling is instantly smothered. In its place is a sickening rage that I can feel travel through me. And suddenly I don’t want to hide. I don’t want to run. I want to rip their faces off. How dare they? How dare Tobias? What have I done to him, to these punk followers who have my truck surrounded? How do they plan to stop me? Hit me? Attack me? I wish I could rip out the fire hydrant I am about to run past and beat the three of them to a pulp with it. Other than that I see no other object I can grab that will sufficiently batter them beyond recognition.

But at once I recognize something else. Luke’s car. He is inching slowly onto Girard. He must have been circling the block. I don’t know whether I am relieved or disappointed. Three grown men, against me? I would have gone down. But I would have gone down swinging.

As soon as Luke sees me, he stops the car, and I rush into the street to jump in. Just before I close the door, I glance behind me at my truck. The man in front is gesturing toward me, pointing and waving the other men forward.