Undertow (19 page)

“How did it go with Tammy?”

She beams. “Good.”

“Really?”

“Really. He's gone. She packed his stuff. I think she's serious this time.”

Tammy has been “serious” before, but I'm not going to dump my skepticism on Bex's smile. Let her have her hope.

“Shadow has questions,” I whisper.

She looks at me and gives me the “I don't know what you're talking about” grin.

“I think you can trust him. He has put in the time, after all.”

Mr. Ervin looks out at us with a grave face, then takes attendance. There are a lot of names he no longer has to call, and not having to shout to be heard . . . well, I can tell it feels unnatural to him.

Suddenly, he calls Fathom's name. He's not in his seat, which sends a jab of panic poking into my belly. Visions of him injured or dead hover in front of my face.

“I am present,” a voice says from the back of the room.

I turn and see him huddled in the far corner, as far from me as the room will allow. When he catches my eye, he looks up at the brown paper on the windows like it's some intricate work of art. I can't believe it. Why is he avoiding me? We were finally getting along, a little at least. Why would he want to wreck that? Maybe he's playing with me. Gabriel used to do this too. He would lure me in and then ignore me. It worked like a charm!
No, it can't be some stupid boy thing. Fathom wouldn't do that. He doesn't think about me like that. But more important than why he's acting like a butt is why I care. A couple of days ago, I would have been thrilled that he was trying to keep his distance. Today my stomach is doing backflips, and there's a nervous energy crackling in all the worst places of my body. Am I . . . is this . . . Why am I crushed?

“Lyric?” Bex asks.

I turn to her, and she tilts her head to the other side of the room. Gabriel is there, sitting erect, burning holes into me with his eyes. He shakes his head and stares at the opposite wall.

Bex leans over and giggles in my ear. “He's jealous.”

My classes are quiet. If there are any Niners who survived the Great Hylan High Purge, they are keeping to themselves. Bullying has come to a complete stop. For the first time since day one, Bumper walks down the halls unmolested. And my locker is tag free. Unfortunately, Doyle's utopia gives none of us solace. We're all on high alert.

I dread seeing Fathom. Imagining his disinterested face when I enter our room is brutal. With every step closer to our meeting room, I feel my heart rate accelerate. I'm jangly and loose-limbed, sunburned on the inside, and nervous like a child who has lost the hand of her mother in a big crowd of strangers. And I'm angry, too. What wall fell down inside me that has now let this boy—this arrogant, angry, moody punk—charge inside and seize territory?

And I'm disgusted with myself. Disgusted with the jumble of confusion in me, my suspicions whispering the truth in hushes, explaining it all in a voice that's just below audible.
You are feeling that boy in every cell.

“I thought he was coming around,” Bonnie says to me when I arrive. Clearly my face is broadcasting what I'm trying to fight inside my head.

I shrug. “Every day is something new.”

“Today he's sullen,” Terrance warns.

I take a deep breath and reach for the door.

Fathom is in his spot beneath the window. He doesn't look up, just stares into the slightly-less-little tear in the paper and says, “I believe that we should stop meeting.”

I stand as still as I can, willing myself not to run away.

“I am uncomfortable with these meetings and—”

“We can't.”

He sits up and looks at me, confused.

“Why can't we?”

I shake my head, not so much at him but to myself. I can't tell him why these meetings have suddenly become important.

“You're being forced?” he continues.

I nod.
Oh, yes, Lyric. Remember why you're doing this? You're trying to get your family out of town. Remember that plan, stupid?

“My father ordered me to come to this school so your people will stop harassing us. I have no choice either, but I believe Fiona will help me with reading just as well. Meeting with you further is tedious. It also threatens to poison my traditions with—”

“Poison?” It's an ugly word, and the insult makes my face sizzle with anger.

“I do not want to be a human,” he says. “I know it's your job to make that happen. I won't let it.”

Pop!

“What was that?” he asks.

I raise my finger to my lips, hoping he understands the international gesture for “Shut the hell up,” then I move to the door and listen. I know a gunshot when I hear one. The guards are shouting into the radio, demanding information, while a voice barks back at them: “Shots fired. Shots fired. We have a hostile in the building. One minute to lockdown. All nonmilitary personnel and police must get out of the halls. This is a military action. I repeat, all nonmilitary and police need to get into a classroom now for lockdown.”

I hear another
pop!

I open the door and tentatively step into the hall. “What is going on?”

“Get back into the room, Lyric!” Bonnie shouts. “There's a shooter in the school!”

“How?”

“Get in the classroom!” she bellows. I turn to do what she asks, but Fathom is behind me, blocking my way.

The door closes behind him, and then we hear a loud buzzer. Bonnie rushes and tries the knob.

“It's locked,” she shouts as she rushes to another door, but it's locked too, as is the next one. She pounds on a door and demands to be let in, but no one answers. “The auto locks have activated.”

“Auto locks?”

“They're part of the school's security measures. In an emergency they lock automatically. It keeps a shooter from going room to room on a killing spree,” another of the soldiers explains. “We can't get in unless someone opens the door from the other side.”

“We've got to find a place for these kids to hide,” Bonnie orders as she grabs my arm and pulls me down the hall. She jerks me so hard, my bag falls and everything spills out. I watch the contents skitter across the floor: pens, notebooks, tampons. I lean down to grab them, but Bonnie pulls me up.

“Leave it!” she yells. I look up and see a soldier shoving Fathom into a janitor's closet.

“An Alpha does not hide,” Fathom argues.

“Whoever is firing that gun is dangerous.”

“I am dangerous as well,” he says as his black blades fully extend.
Shnikkt
.

“Hostile has a grenade!” a voice shouts through a radio.

“Both of you in here, now!” Bonnie barks.

There is an explosion, and a black, acrid smoke drifts up the stairwell.

“Suspect has discharged an ordnance and is heading up the north stairwell!” another person shouts on the radio.

“What is an ordnance?” Fathom says just as Bonnie pushes me into the tiny room too.

“Keep quiet,” she orders, then slams the door tight, plunging us into darkness.

“This is cowardly,” Fathom says.

My hand reaches up and clamps down on his mouth. He's irritated but doesn't pull away, and we stand in the dark, quiet and waiting. When I'm sure he understands he needs to be silent, I let him go. We wait in this tiny room without an inch to move left or right, so near that when he exhales I can feel it tickle my eyelashes. His body is boiling hot, a furnace. I can almost hear him crackle and pop. Or is that me? Because something is going on here, something that feels like a craving.

Boots stomp down the hall outside, and someone tries our door. I hear someone raging about the Lord's Army and “a righteous war,” but other people are shouting too. It's hard to tell if there is just one maniac or a whole legion.

Bang!

The sound is right outside, which causes me to jump and let out a little squeal, and this time it's his hand on my mouth. I can smell the salty sea on him, an aroma I know from my mother's hugs and the beach and yoga. Maybe it's psychosomatic, but it calms me.

“I will not allow you to be harmed, Lyric Walker,” he whispers.

I stare up into his face, catching only the outline in all this dark, and I believe him.

A voice rings out through the halls, “The emergency is over. However,
please remain in your classrooms for the time being. We will make another announcement when we are ready to proceed with dismissal. Teachers and staff, please stay near your interschool emergency phones to await updates and directions.”

He takes his hand from my lips, and I miss it. It was proof that I survived, and right now I need to feel alive. I reach out, wrapping my arms around his body, clinging to him like a drowning man clings to a life raft, so that I can remind myself that the dead do not feel. They don't smell another person's skin or hear the breath of someone leaning into you or feel the warm blood inside another's veins.

“I know you think I'm disgusting,” I say. “But I really need this right now, so just don't talk, okay?”

We stand there, still as pines. I feel alive and grateful, and it is only when I hear the doorknob jiggle that I let go of him.

Pale-faced parents wait and watch until they are reunited with their kids, and together they succumb to sobbing. There are reporters everywhere scurrying around the police, military, ambulances, the bomb squad. A few protestors triumphantly bellow how they told us something bad would happen, but most of the others seem shocked. I wonder if they feel any responsibility for this.

My father rushes to me and pulls me into a hug, wrapping me up like he will never let me go. His face is pale and tired. I have never seen him afraid. I hate it. I want that Easter Island head. I want my stony, unmovable dad. Then there are more arms. My mother is here.

“Are you okay?” she cries.

My father panics. “Summer, you can't be here.”

“I can't be anywhere else,” she says.

Bex's dauntless smile has shattered. Shadow stands nearby, trembling and off-kilter. Their shoulders lean in to each other, forming a bridge between the two, a way to pool and share what courage they still possess. The connection is broken only when Shadow's mother arrives. She's a short, round Latino woman with thick glasses who drags the boy into a hug, nearly knocking him and Bex to the ground. His mother sobs, chattering a mile a minute in Spanish, while he tries to calm her. I don't know more than twenty words in Spanish, which is disgraceful, since one of my best friends speaks it fluently and I am surrounded by people who use it every day, but I don't really need to know what she's saying to her son. She's grateful.

“I'll take everyone home,” my father promises.

Shadow tells this to his mother. Worry flashes across her face, and she shakes her head and waves us off.

“It's really no trouble,” my father tries to explain. “It's best if you go home with a cop. There might be other people out here bent on hurting kids.”

Shadow shakes his head. “We're fine.”

“I really have to insist,” my dad presses.

“Dad, let it go,” I say.

Shadow takes his mother's hand and walks away.

“She's not a citizen,” Bex explains.

My father nods. “Yeah, okay.”

Tammy pushes through the crowd. Her hair is wet, and she's wearing a pair of dirty shorts and a shirt that stretches across her belly.

“Are you okay?” she cries, trying to hug Bex. My friend's arms are up, keeping her from a full embrace.

“I'm fine,” Bex says as she steps back.

“Who did this?” Tammy says.

My father scowls. “Someone inside the school opened a door and let a lunatic inside. We're going through the tapes now, and we'll be able to identify them soon. None of the children were hurt.”

“Did they catch the guy?”

“He's dead.”

“Mom, I want to go with Lyric,” Bex says.

“I want you home. You belong with me,” Tammy cries.

“It's really no problem,” my father says.

Tammy turns on him, and there is a fire in her face that reminds me of the way a lioness protects her cubs.

“You have been good to her, and I appreciate that, but she already has a family,” she bites, then snatches her daughter by the hand and drags her down the street. Bex looks back at me, but after a few seconds I lose her in the crowd.

“She picks now to be mother of the year?” I cry.

“When you're a parent, you'll find that you're capable of making huge changes and sacrifices for your child,” my mother says knowingly.

“She's just going to screw up again,” I say bitterly.

“Let her try,” my father says.

I
am shaken out of a deep sleep, and
I
leap out of bed,
still feeling the anesthetic-like pull of the dream world. I don't really know where I am or who is hovering next to me, but I am at once convinced that the lunatic from school has found me. I swat at the air, ready to fight for my life.

“Lyric!” a voice shouts, and strong hands grab my wrists.

I shake off the remains of the unconscious sludge and realize I am in my room. There is no lunatic, only my father, doing his best to avoid a punch in the face.

“What's wrong? What happened?” I cry.

“Get your things. Russell got out of jail,” he says.

“When?”

“Two days ago,” he says.

“Tammy lied to her,” I say.

I snatch my stuff, and we head into the living room. My mother is waiting. “I'm going too.”

My father is ready to argue, but thinks twice. The three of us dart into the night, ignoring the state-mandated curfew, and walk through the empty streets until we arrive at Bex's house. Shadow is sitting on Russell's lawn chair, nursing his face with a cold beer bottle. The knuckles on both his hands are bruised and bleeding.