Struck (17 page)

I went in search of Parker, starting outside on the school’s cement front steps, where he and his friends used to eat lunch.

There was a breeze blowing off the ocean, and my skin seemed to shrink around my body when it touched me. The storm was closer now. If there actually was a storm. I’d checked the weather report again that morning. The forecast hadn’t changed. The promise of sunny, seventy-degree days stretched ahead of us for the next week.

A group of Followers dressed in white that was blinding to look at in the noon sun were standing on the sidewalk out in front of the school, holding hands and swaying and singing some sort of tinny, high-pitched hymn. The Followers on each end of the line held up white poster board signs glued to wooden stakes.

Only the Righteous Will Survive
, one sign read.

My skin ached. My thoughts were scrambling over and over one another like ants racing to the top of their hill.

What if Parker went back to Mr. Kale to beg to join the Seekers?

I hadn’t fulfilled my part of the bargain.

I had run away before they could complete their initiation.

Parker was still fair game.

No. I’m the one they want
, I reasoned with myself.
I’m the one with the Spark. I’m the supposed Tower girl
.

Reminding myself of this didn’t ease my mind. There was only one way to do that, and it was to find my brother. I had already searched for him in all the places I could think to look, except one, the last place I wanted to go, but the first place I ought to have checked.

Room 317.

But when I got there I found that Mr. Kale’s door was locked and the lights were off. Had he gone home for the day to treat the burns I’d inflicted on his hands? I didn’t feel the least bit sorry for what I’d done. I hoped I had fried the brand right off his palm. That’s what he deserved for trying to mind-control me.

I listened at Kale’s door for a moment, but heard nothing from the other side.

I did hear voices, though … coming from one of the classrooms down the hall. Since I had no other lead on where Parker might be, I decided to investigate. I followed the voices to the source and peered through the small rectangular window in the classroom door.

At first all I saw were the Followers, five of them, their white-clad bodies seeming to blend into one mass. You almost couldn’t tell where one of them ended and the next began. They were crowded around someone, and I couldn’t see who that someone was. But now that I was right on the other side of the door, I could make out their words.

“—a fight you can’t win,” said a female Follower with her hair pulled back in a brutally tight bun. Rachel. I recognized the raw, red place on the back of her neck where her
tattoo used to be. “Prophet’s Followers outnumber your Seekers, and we have God on our side. The sixth seal will open on April 17, and the earth will tear itself apart, and the unrighteous will be destroyed. There will be no afterlife for your kind. You will be sucked down into oblivion and exist forever in an eternity of darkness.”

Rachel moved slightly, and I caught a flash of black hair and red lipstick. I sucked in a breath.

Katrina.

“We’ll see,” Katrina said, affecting an air of indifference.

“Prophet
has
seen it! There’s nothing you can do to stop the storm!” This from another of the Followers, a guy whose white clothes were so pristine I figured he must carry a bleach pen everywhere he went. His tongue darted to lick his lips, leaving them wet and glossy, pink as raw pork. “It is God’s will that the earth be cleansed. Prophet tells us so.”

Katrina smiled and told the guy to perform a physical impossibility.

The Follower sputtered, pink lips squirming on his face like a sea creature had attached itself to him. “You can’t speak to me that way. I am a Follower of the Light! Show some respect!”

“If your God has a problem with it, what’s he waiting for?” Katrina asked. “Tell him to strike me down.” She threw her hands in the air and stared up at the ceiling. “Come on, God of the Followers! Let’s see what you can do! Show me some wrath!” She cocked her head, as though anticipating thunder, and then smiled. “Nothing.”

Pink Lips smiled back. “Our God is too great to trouble Himself with an insignificant creature like you. He works
through us, His faithful servants. And I believe it is His will that you learn some humility. Don’t you, Sister Rachel?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “I think that’s an excellent idea, Brother Anthony.”

Katrina’s confident expression departed. She looked longingly at the door, as though wishing she were on the other side of it. When she saw me she blinked, her mouth parting, as though she would call to me for help.

But she didn’t. She clamped her mouth shut and took her eyes away.

The Followers broke their wall of white and fell on Katrina like a pack of jackals on a wounded gazelle. But Katrina wasn’t wounded. She was fully alive and ready to fight. She kicked and punched and struggled and bit Pink Lips on the hand so hard he screeched. I stood like a statue outside the door, my mind racing toward the inevitable conclusion that any second now I was going to have to do something to help this girl I despised.

But I hesitated, and then hesitated some more.

Despite Katrina’s savage efforts to free herself, the Followers pinned her flat on her back on the surface of the teacher’s desk.

Rachel grabbed Katrina’s hair and yanked it until her neck stretched, winding it around her fist. “Such pretty hair. I used to dye my hair black, before I found Prophet, but it never looked like this. It was always dull. Yours is so shiny. I bet you love it, don’t you?”

There was a big pair of metal scissors in a ceramic jar on the desk, among the pens and pencils. Rachel grabbed the scissors in her free hand and went
snip, snip
at the air.

Katrina’s eyes grew to the size of golf balls.

Something broke in me. Maybe it was because I’d had my hair sheared away by lightning so many times, but I couldn’t stand to see it happen to anyone else, even someone I hated.

I swung the door open, but too late. Rachel chopped through Katrina’s hair, right next to her scalp.

Rachel let out a cry of triumph as the thick rope of glossy black hair came free in her hand. “Who owns this school now, Seeker?”

The door was on a spring and slammed shut behind me with a
BANG!
startling me almost as much as it did the Followers.

“Let her go,” I said, proud of the implied
or else
tone I achieved without having to make an actual threat I probably wouldn’t be able to carry through. And it turned out I didn’t need threats. My sudden appearance surprised the Followers so much they lost their grips on Katrina.

She tore free of them and shot toward me. Eyes glassy, she reached up and touched what remained of her hair. She appeared younger without that black river swimming down her back, her oil-dark eyes bigger and wider, almost innocent.

The Followers smirked at us. They had formed their unbroken line again, standing shoulder to shoulder.

“You’re one of them now, aren’t you?” Rachel said. “I told you not to join them. Our numbers are far greater than theirs. The tide has turned in favor of the light. You could have been saved.”

“As long as I’m not one of you, I’m happy,” I told her.

“Two days,” Rachel said. “That’s all the time you have
left. When the storm comes, you’ll wish you’d chosen differently.”

“What are you going to do when the world doesn’t end?” I asked her. “Will that prove once and for all that Prophet is a fraud, or will he make some excuse, convince you God was testing your faith?”

“Prophet is a true prophet of God,” Rachel said, doing her best to stare me down. I had to admit, she was good at it. “He’s never wrong. You’ll see.”

I spoke with more confidence than I felt. “I can’t wait to watch your prophet make a fool of himself in front of the whole world.”

Rachel took a step toward me, eyes dangerous. Her arms hung at her sides, one hand still clutching the scissors, going
snip, snip, snip
.

Katrina moved for the door. “Let’s get out of here,” she said.

For once, I had no problem doing what Katrina wanted me to do.

19

AGAIN, I FOUND
myself in the ladies’ lounge with Katrina, when I should have been looking for my brother. At least I knew he wasn’t with the Seeker I trusted the least.

I leaned against a sink and watched as she picked at the remains of her hair with trembling fingers.

“Maybe we should tell someone what happened,” I suggested. “The principal or whoever’s in charge now. Rachel and those other Followers would probably be expelled.”

Katrina let her arms fall to her sides, giving up. “It won’t change anything.”

Her eyes began to water. Her face was emotionless. She didn’t make a sound. But tears leaked from her eyes one after another. Then her chin trembled, and she broke. A single sob wrenched from somewhere down deep inside her.

“My hair …” she said, and covered her face.

My chest felt tight, like my heart had swelled and there was no more room for it behind my breastbone. I couldn’t help it. I felt the pressure of sympathy tears trying to pop free. I thought of all the times my hair had been scorched away and I’d been left not just a lightning-scarred freak, but a bald-headed, lightning-scarred freak.

“It’s not that bad,” I said. “It’s kind of cool, actually. You
just have to even it out and put some sticky stuff in it. Then you’ll look like Audrey Hepburn. Very classy.”

Katrina lowered her hands. Black mascara tears cut crooked trails down her cheeks. “Thank you for helping me up there. I know I’m not your favorite person. You could have left me with them, and I don’t know if they would have stopped at cutting off my hair.”

I looked at the floor, thinking of how long I’d watched at the window, doing nothing. If I had interrupted sooner, Katrina might still have her hair.

“You’re welcome,” I said humbly. It was easy to be humble when you had nothing to be proud of.

“And I’m sorry,” Katrina said. “You know, for blackmailing you and everything. I didn’t see any other way to get you on our side.”

I wasn’t quite ready to forgive her for that one. “How did you end up in that classroom with a bunch of Followers?” I asked, changing the subject.

Katrina shook her head. “It was my own fault.
Sister
Rachel set a trap for me and I fell right into it. She let me see her ‘spreading the good word’ to a couple of girls near the staircase, and then she took off up the stairs. I followed her. She knew I would. She stayed just far enough ahead of me to make me think I was chasing when she was actually leading.”

I hoisted myself up to sit on one of the sinks. “What’s so important about Skyline? I mean, why are you so protective of this school?”

“Because the Seekers claimed it first.”

“As your recruiting station? And the White Tent is Prophet’s recruiting station?”

“Only he keeps trying to invade our territory.” Katrina’s lip curled in a silent snarl.

“Why use a school, then? Why not set up your own tent on the beach? Lure people in with granola bars or whatever.”

“That’s not the way we work. We don’t bribe people to join us.”

“But you do blackmail them.”

Katrina frowned. “That was a one-time thing. And I said I’m sorry.”

“Uh-huh. So how many Seekers are there, exactly? Was the whole gang present, you know … this morning?” I felt awkward bringing up my failed initiation. I didn’t want to think about it, much less talk about it.

“Not all of them,” she said vaguely. “There are others. In other schools. Young people make the best Seekers. Our senses are more awake, and our minds are more open, for the most part.” She glanced at me. “There are always exceptions, though usually not among people who have the Spark.”

I shifted uncomfortably. She was obviously referring to me.

“What about Mr. Kale?” I asked. “Is he cult president?”

“More like our general,” Katrina said. “He’s had the Spark the longest—ever since he was our age—and he’s the most powerful. In our circle, the leader is the one with the most power. Before Uncle Kale, it was—” Katrina lowered her chin and stared at her hands. “It was someone else, but she’s gone now.”

“Gone?” Then it was possible for someone to check out of the Circle of Seekers.

“Dead,” Katrina said flatly, and I gulped.

Katrina’s eyes went blank for a moment, as though she were trying to figure something out. “I guess if you were to join us for real, you’d take Uncle Kale’s place.”

I burst out laughing. I couldn’t help it. But Katrina didn’t even smile.

“Oh, come on,” I said. “You’re not serious.”

“Those are the rules,” she said, her tone somber.

My laughter tapered off. “I hate to break it to you, but I only play by one set of rules.”

“Let me guess. Yours?”

“Pretty much.”

She studied the ground. “It won’t matter anyway. You wouldn’t become our leader, not if the prophecy—” She bit her lip and shook her head. “Never mind.”

Part of me wanted to hear what Katrina was holding back. But I’d been the focus of our conversation for all of thirty seconds, and already I was anxious to change the subject.

“So is Rachel like you?” I asked. “Does she sense the Spark in people and report them to Prophet?”

“I’m sure she would if she could, but she doesn’t have a direct line to Prophet. He has too many Followers at this point to give individual attention to each of them. My guess is she has some knack for sensing the Spark, but that doesn’t do her any good unless she can convince people to attend one of Prophet’s revivals and receive his blessing, like she tried to do with you yesterday.”

I shuddered at the memory of the intensity in Rachel’s eyes, her strong hand squeezing my arm. I was surprised she hadn’t left bruises.

“As long as you stay away from the White Tent, you’re safe,” Katrina said. “The only people Prophet trusts to do his recruiting are his Apostles, and they have their hands full recruiting the Displaced in Tentville.”