Swarm (26 page)

Every now and then Mom, making sure everyone was happy, would watch Emile chattering for a little while. But she never once lifted her gaze from her youngest son to her eldest.

*  *  *

The first Christmas after leaving home had been the worst.

Thibault had stayed away completely that year, still angry at everyone for forgetting him—especially Grand-mère. When she'd moved in after her stroke, her presence had upped the Curve in the household, pushing him out of everyone's minds. Thirteen-year-old Thibault had loved Grand-mère, but that had only made her erasure of him harder to bear.

Sitting here again, he knew he'd been right to stay away. Being ignored at home hurt a lot worse than sitting alone in a hotel room on Christmas Eve, or wandering the empty streets of Cambria.

Had it been the same for that other Anonymous, the one in Portland? Had that poor guy been crowded out of home too?

Had his family even
noticed
that he'd died? If Zero powers still worked after death, a Stalker's body could be found over and over, with no one remembering it long enough to call the cops.

Maybe John Doe made more sense as a code name than Stalker, or Anonymous.

Do you prefer “Forgettable”?
He remembered Davey's contemptuous gaze in the rearview.
Homegrown ninja?

Then suddenly Davey's handcuffed arm was in his mind, the rest of him torn away, the crowd ravening around him, Ren screaming—

No. Running it over in his mind again and again was not the Middle Way.

He breathed deeply of the piney smell, drank in the sight of his blissfully unaware family. It was hard to believe in a Zeroes killer here.

“Oh man, really? For true?” Emile's shouting pulled Thibault the rest of the way back. “A
phone
? Are you
serious
? I love you guys!”

Emile flung himself on Mom and Dad, hugged them, disentangled himself to admire the phone again. “See, Grand-mère?”

“How grown-up you are!” she laughed.

Emile's attention whipped around for someone else to share his joy with. It landed on Auguste. “Hardly
anyone
at school has a phone!”

“I hope you guys've porn-blocked that thing,” Auguste said with a smirk.

Mom clicked her tongue, and Emile tore his connection off Auguste.

“
Thibault, did you see? I got a phone!”

That soft shock went around the room again. Thibault ignored it, more grateful than he could say for this jab of attention.

“Yeah, cool! Welcome to the twenty-first century!”

“Ah, Thibault,” murmured Grand-mère. “Of course. There you are.”

Again, his mother's attention was the last to drift from him, her face turning anxious again. Emile sat next to Thibault, but as he started the phone's setup procedure, his attention shrank to a short glowing leash between him and the tiny machine.

Prompted by the sight, Auguste started communing with
his
phone, taking pictures of his gifts to send to friends. Grand-mère sat back, smiling gently, her attention a soft net spread so broadly that Thibault claimed some of it. Mom disappeared into the kitchen, muttering about hot chocolate, the troubled expression still on her face.

“Ha!” said Emile as his phone chimed to life.

Thibault bent down to him. “Can I do something?”

“Sure.” Emile handed it over.

He watched as Thibault opened the address book, created a new contact—
Thibault (brother)
—and entered his number.

“Like I know any other Thibaults,” Emile scoffed.

“You never know, bro. There are a lot of us around.”

*  *  *

He chose his moment to join Mom in the kitchen.

She'd mixed all the chopped-up chocolate into the milk,
and there was only the whisking to do. By some miracle Grand-mère wasn't with her, and the aunts were out on the patio, smoking in the cold.

“
Joyeux Noël
, Mom,” he said in the doorway.

She looked up, the whisk pausing in the pot.

Her smile, nervous at first, firmed up. She straightened and put her arms out to him. “
Joyeux Noël
, Thibault!”

He held the hug as long as he could. What if it was the last one he ever got from her?

“You've grown so tall!” she exclaimed as they drew apart. Then she touched her mouth, embarrassed. “But why should I be so surprised . . . to see my own son?”

He tried to laugh. “You never remember I'm coming, Mom. That's just how it is with me.”

“But none of us got you . . . I don't know if there's anything for you under the tree!”

He shrugged. “Hey, where I'm living, stuff's just a nuisance.”

“Where's that again?” she said, hands to her cheeks.

“In the Heights. A really nice place. I'll show you some pictures later, on my phone.” But he wouldn't be there much longer.

Keep separate. Be a moving target,
Nate had said, his impassive voice as chilling as his words.

The posse of aunts gathered at the back door—soon they'd crowd in here and he'd fall off Mom's radar. “Want me to keep whisking that for you?”

“Why, thank you, sweetie.” Uncertainly she watched him stirring, glancing at his face with that touch of fear, that touch of shame, that always broke his heart.

Finally she turned to the mugs lined up on the counter, counted them. “Oh, you'll be wanting some chocolate too, won't you?”

“Yes, please!”

And she took down another mug and lined it up with the others, like it was nothing special at all.

KELSIE HAD NEVER SPENT CHRISTMAS
without her dad before.

He was the heart and soul of high spirits. He'd gather all their friends in whatever rental he and Kelsie could afford that year—not for a meal, because food wasn't a big deal for the Laszlos. But there'd be drinks and music and feats of crazy bravery with illegal fireworks. And Kelsie got to stay up all night, riding wave after wave of good cheer.

But all that felt like a long, long time ago. She'd been dreading this first Christmas alone. And since the mall, she could feel the dark chain that connected her to Swarm like an anchor, dragging her down.

Yesterday afternoon, while they were wiping down the stolen car, Chizara had rescued her with a quiet, hesitant invitation.
And now Kelsie was sitting at the Okeke family dining table, trying not to look shell-shocked while Chizara's mom offered her more jollof rice and curry and bread. She'd never seen so much food in one place.

“This is really good, Mrs. Okeke,” she said.

“Call me Niyi,” Chizara's mom said.

“It's delicious, Niyi,” Kelsie said, and meant it. She couldn't believe Chizara got to eat like this all the time.

“Oh, honey,
you
can come to dinner anytime!” Niyi chuckled.

Beside her, Chizara rolled her eyes, but she looked almost as pleased as her mom.

Chizara's mom was sweet and sharp, with a broad smile. And she knew about Chizara's power. Exactly the way Kelsie figured a good mom should just
know
things without her having to explain them like she'd always had to with Dad. Even then, Dad had never really understood.

She liked the rest of Chizara's family too—her father, Sani, and her brothers, Ikem and Obinna. With Kelsie that made six people, enough for the Curve, so she'd taken hold of the feedback loop as soon as she'd stepped into their house. She'd grabbed Niyi's doubt about
one of Chizara's superpowered friends
and smoothed it out. Then she'd tugged on Ikem's Christmas excitement, stretching it like taffy until it wrapped around all of them.

When Kelsie had found a gift under the tree with her name on it, her gratitude had sent the energy in the room spiraling
higher. She'd ripped off the bright green paper to find a babydoll sweater inside—embroidered red cherries on a snowy white background. She'd put it on at once.

It was amazing how different Chizara's life was outside the Zeroes. Here there was no hint of Nate's bombastic plans or Ethan's lies. No petty crime or spying through anyone else's eyes. Just nice, happy people sharing a meal.

During dessert Niyi leaned in close. “I was sorry to hear about your father, sweetheart.”

It was the first time anyone had brought it up, and Kelsie felt her grief spike hard into the feedback loop. Ikem looked up, confused, and Sani's face rumpled with shared sorrow.

Under the table Chizara's knee bumped Kelsie's.

“Sorry,” Kelsie mumbled.

She swallowed her own pain, groping for the happiness of a moment before. The contentment of the Okeke family made it easy to find. Their solidity was a refuge where she could think about bad stuff without bursting into tears. Davey, killed in that fountain. Swarm's power inside her. The way Nate seemed helpless in the face of this new enemy.

She tried to remember something happy. The bike Dad had gotten her one Christmas.

Though, actually, Dad had stolen the bike. Kelsie had ended up riding right past the house he'd lifted it from, and she'd had to face off with a kid twice her size. She was more careful with the skateboard he gave her the next year.

But another year he'd taken her to see the Christmas pageant on ice. For once he'd paid actual money instead of sneaking in, so she'd been able to sit up front. It had been a window onto a strange, other world. One where everyone was beaming with joy, and the audience sang along with the music, their mood as choreographed as the skaters' moves. Where the skilled, graceful, glittering cast was in charge of keeping everyone happy.

Kelsie wished she had even a tiny piece of that kind of control. Skating across the bad emotions. Only ever feeling the good stuff and scattering it out into a delighted world.

*  *  *

After lunch, Ikem and Obinna cleared the table while their parents made phone calls to faraway relatives. That left Chizara and Kelsie in the living room, staring at a tree with lights that shimmered and winked.

“Your family's awesome,” Kelsie said.

“Nah. They're pretty normal.”

“Exactly.” Kelsie felt anything but normal, most of the time. “Is it really okay that I'm here?”

“Are you kidding?” Chizara said. “You're the best thing about this Christmas.”

Kelsie nearly burst out laughing. She felt her delight bloom across the family, who were still connected, even spread across the house.

“I mean it,” Chizara said shyly. “Mom's always giving me death stares when I mention my friends—a bunch of spoiled
white kids with
weird powers
. But then you show up, and she's all smiles.”

“I get it,” Kelsie said with mock seriousness. “You miss the death stares.”

“If you'd
seen
the death stares, you wouldn't joke.” Chizara lowered her voice. “It's not fair, though. You use your power to make everyone happy, and you're her long-lost daughter. When I use mine, I'm a moral failure.”

Kelsie was stung. “It's not like I'm
making
anybody feel anything. I'm just using what's already here. And imagine if your family wasn't here, Zara. What we'd be feeling now . . .”

Kelsie let the sentence taper off. They'd be feeling Davey die, again and again. And she would be feeling Swarm showing her the dark door in her own soul.

“That's sort of my point,” Chizara said. “You amplify happiness. I specialize in property damage! Nate says
crash this fountain
or
fry this cop car
, and I do it. And half of the time, it's to help
Ethan
.”

“He'd do the same for you. Any of the Zeroes would.”

“We can't keep committing
felonies
for our messed-up friends!” Chizara whispered. “Do you remember what happened last summer? Officer Bright's still in rehab, for a start.”

Kelsie was quiet. Maybe Chizara had forgotten, but her dad was one of the prisoners that had escaped that day—prisoners the Zeroes had released. And if he'd stayed in jail, he might still be alive.

She caught hold of her grief before it could flood the family.

“I almost wish Ethan's sister
would
blab to their mom,” Chizara went on, lost in her own emotions. “If the cops shut the Dish down, we could all go back to our real lives.”

“You can't be serious.” Kelsie was horrified. “On top of everything else, you want to lose the Dish?”

“We experiment with people there,” Chizara said. “How is that right?”

Kelsie shook her head. She tried to hold on to the cheerfulness of earlier.

“It's not experimenting. It's sharing what we have.”

“My mom thinks what we have is evil—bad juju. What if she's right? Think of all those people at the mall. From what I've seen, they
remember
what they did.”