The Dark Side of Nowhere (20 page)

So I locked my eyes on Paula's, determined to keep her face with me as I was dragged kicking and screaming into the darkness.

And then I died.

T
here was no funeral.

There were no mournful friends.

There was nothing but water. I was drowning in a glass of water.

“Swallow, Jason. Swallow. . . . Good.”

The water tasted cool and sweet on my parched lips. I opened my eyes and saw nothing but a round opening before me, pouring more water down my throat. I coughed and gagged.

“Is he awake?”

“He's starting to come around.”

The voices were familiar. I took another gulp of water. This time my throat muscles did what they were supposed to do.

I tried to put my thoughts in order, but it was like bobbing for apples. I couldn't get my teeth into a single
coherent thought and was afraid that if I couldn't find one soon, I'd slip back into the void.

Finally I found a thought that I could cling to.

These were my parents.

I was grateful to know this, but I also knew that my parents should not be here. They were supposed to be somewhere else. Where were they supposed to be?

“Chicago,” I said, my voice sounding like gravel in a sieve.

My eyes came into focus, and I saw my mother smile. It was the first time I had seen her smile since the good old boring days. “Forget Chicago,” she said.

All at once, the eventful summer began to flood in on me, starting with Grant and the glove, then the compound, then the explosion, then winking out of existence while starting at Paula's face.

“How long?” I asked.

“Almost a week,” Dad said. Which surprised me—I was sure I must have been out of it longer, considering how awful I felt.

I had no clue where I was. It wasn't home; it wasn't anyone's house I knew. And I was lying on a soft fur rug.

For an instant I thought that the ships might have arrived while I vegetated and perhaps I was aboard one of them—but it was nothing so spectacular. The glass
of water I was drinking from said
HOLIDAY INN
. I smiled. How gloriously unexciting.

“You made a real mess of things in Billington,” said my father. “It was on the news, the tabloids—even the respectable papers were running stories about aliens.”

I could see great disappointment in both of their faces. “Sorry I couldn't be the son you wanted.”

My mother turned away to wipe the tears from her eyes. And my father sadly shook his head in shame. “It's our fault,” Dad said. “If we had seen how you really felt about things, we would have made you a part of what we were planning.”

“I
was
a part,” I reminded them. “I was at the meetings—”

Mom gripped my hand. “No, we mean what your father and I were planning.”

Dad sighed. “We thought you'd be ashamed of us—that you'd turn us in if you knew we meant to sabotage our own scheme.”

I stared at them in dim disbelief, but rather than stuttering whats, whos, hows, and wheres, I took the glass from my mother, drank the water, and listened. They told me how it had been—how all the others shifted quickly in reverse and denied their twenty years of being human the moment Grant announced that he received his fuzzy transmission. Better to side with the strong
team, I suppose. Much more convenient. It's funny how convenience can sometimes knock out conscience in the first round.

“We couldn't let Grant run the show,” Dad told me, “so we pulled rank and took over our old roles.”

“We'd always been trustworthy,” Mom added. “So no one suspected what we were really up to.”

I sat up and grinned. “What a bunch of traitors we turned out to be!” And then, when I glanced at the bed, I noticed something odd.

There was no fur rug down there.

When the truth dawned on me, it came in such a violent rush that I began to shake. I closed my eyes and let it sink in. I must have known all along but refused to let myself consider it. Even before I had slipped out of consciousness in the field, I had felt things changing inside of me—the penalty for trying to counteract the serum. Now I took a few deep breaths, held up my hand in front of me, and opened my eyes.

My skin was the color of perfect peach marble.

“Mom!”

They both reached out to grab me, as if I would go into convulsions.

“There was nothing we could do,” they told me. “By the time we heard about the explosion and came home, it had already happened.” They told me about how Paula
and Wesley sat by my side, hidden in our garage, terrified that I might die. Then they told of how all the Transitionals fled when the investigators started to show up. Even Wesley had to make a quick exit.

“They left Billington, and no one knows where they've gone.”

I thought about them all out there. Without the benefit of Doc Fuller, they would finish their transition the same way I had finished mine. Although I doubted theirs would be as bad, since they were so much further along than me. Without a means of finding their parents, they would stick together—they
had
to—hiding from the world until the ships finally came, tomorrow or in ten years. They would survive, but what a humbling experience it would be.

I slowly stood up, then went into the bathroom and raised my eyes to the mirror, to see what looked back at me. A strange and perfect face, gossamer hair like diamond thread—I was a thing of unimaginable splendor. Then a tear came to the corner of my intense blue eyes. Because more than anything else, I wanted to be J.J. Pohl.

Mom brushed a hand across my soft shoulder. “You'll grow used to it,” she said in her comforting way, “but life is going to be very different for us from now on.”

“Can you ever turn me back?” I asked.

Dad shook his head sadly. “Not after what you've been through. And even if we could, that DNA no longer exists. The human part of you is gone forever.”

I gazed at my exotic, unfamiliar image in the mirror, and in spite of everything, I didn't feel all that bad. Maybe because I knew that in a very important way, my father was wrong.

A
few days later, my parents drove me on a three-hour trek at my request. Paula came along. To be honest, I might not have had the courage to go without her.

“I told my parents I'd bring you home for dinner if they let me go,” she told me. I didn't know whether her parents were extremely cool or just morons. But somehow I didn't think morons could give rise to someone like Paula.

Halfway through the trip, she asked me why I kept looking out of the window. “What do you see out there?” she said.

I shrugged. “Just what's there.”

“You're so weird now,” she said, and I knew she wasn't talking about my face. It was the way I sniffed the air when we rode past a field of flowers, the way I held my hand out to feel the pressure of the wind in my palm, and the way I stared at everything from barns to bicycles as we passed. It had nothing to do with the way I looked, but everything to do with
me
.

We arrived, and the others left the car first. It took a moment for me to build up the nerve. As I stepped from the car into the busy street, people backed away. Some laughed at first, as if it must have been some gag, but when they took a good look at me, they knew I was a genuine article. Their eyes showed a strange mix of fear and amazement, which must have been how I had looked when I'd first seen Ethan.

“What's the matter,” Paula scoffed at them, “you have a problem with extraterrestrials?”

The four of us walked side by side as we mounted the many steps of the state capitol, my parents standing proud as I've ever seen them. Seas of people parted for us. A few took pictures, but their hands shook so much, I can't imagine they'd be in focus. Still, I smiled for them. It all made me think of the time in sixth grade when I painted a green streak in the middle of my hair just to be different. Some kids just shook their heads, others came in the next day with streaks they had painted in their own hair, impressed by whatever statement I was making. Today, too, was a day to make a statement.

“I'm afraid there won't be any glory,” my mom had said. “History isn't kind to traitors.”

“That depends on whose history you read,” I told her.

At the entrance to the state senate, where the governor
was delivering an address, a guard gripped his gun in mortal terror as he saw us. Then, as I got closer, he just dropped all of his defenses and stared in wonder. That was part of the problem we needed to fix.

“We would like to address the legislature,” said my father.

The guard just shook his head and stammered, “But—but—”

I took a step toward him. “Please.”

I suppose the magic word worked, because he reached for the brass knobs of the high double doors and swung them wide. Inside, a booming voice echoed a speech about taxes and budget to the crowd. I took a deep breath. Warning the world had to start somewhere. This was as good a place as any.

“Are you sure you want this, Jason?” my mom asked as people inside began to take notice.

I nodded. “More than anything.”

The awestruck guard couldn't stop staring. “Who are you?” he dared to ask. “
What
are you?” I answered him only with a smile as wide as the space between stars. Then I strode forward, down the red-carpeted aisle, proud amid the gasps and confusion, never letting that smile fall from my face.

Sometimes we make our alliances not by the shape and color of our flesh but by the convictions of our
heart. I know that Wesley, Ferrari, and all the others will have to find peace with themselves very soon—but as for me, you could say that my ship has already arrived. Because no matter what my reflection tells me—no matter what genes give rise to my form—I know exactly who and what I am.

I am Jason Jonathan Miller. And I am human.

In a society where unwanted teens
are salvaged for their body parts,
three runaways fight the system
that would unwind them.

*
“Gripping, brilliantly imagined futuristic thriller. . . . The issues raised could not be more provocative—the sanctity of life, the meaning of being human—while the delivery could hardly be more engrossing or better aimed to teens.”
—
Publishers Weekly
, starred review

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“There are places you can go,” Ariana tells him, “and a guy as smart as you has a decent chance of surviving to eighteen.”

Connor isn't so sure, but looking into Ariana's eyes makes his doubts go away, if only for a moment. Her eyes are sweet violet with streaks of gray. She's such a slave to fashion—always getting the newest pigment injection the second it's in style. Connor was never into that. He's always kept his eyes the color they came in. Brown. He never even got tattoos, like so many kids get these days when they're little. The only color on his skin is the tan it takes during the summer, but now, in November, that tan has long faded. He tries not to think about the fact that he'll never see the summer again. At least not as Connor Lassiter. He still can't believe that his life is being stolen from him at sixteen.

Ariana's violet eyes begin to shine as they fill with tears that flow down her cheeks when she blinks. “Connor, I'm so sorry.” She holds him, and for a moment it seems as if everything is okay, as if they are the only two people on Earth. For that instant, Connor feels invincible,
untouchable . . . but she lets go, the moment passes, and the world around him returns. Once more he can feel the rumble of the freeway beneath them, as cars pass by, not knowing, or caring that he's here. Once more he is just a marked kid, a week short of unwinding.

The soft, hopeful things Ariana tells him don't help now. He can barely hear her over the rush of traffic. This place where they hide from the world is one of those dangerous places that make adults shake their heads, grateful that their own kids aren't stupid enough to hang out on the ledge of a freeway overpass. For Connor it's not about stupidity, or even rebellion—it's about feeling life. Sitting on this ledge, hidden behind an exit sign is where he feels most comfortable. Sure, one false step and he's 404'd on a windshield—fatal error, system crash, end of story. Yet for Connor, life on the edge is home.