Midnight on Strange Street, page 11
“This isn’t your fault, Lols,” Avery said, gently placing a hand on Lola’s knee.
“But,” said Lola, “it could still be about us. And the aliens.” Then a new, frightened look crossed her face. “They…spoke to me. Tonight.”
“What?” On instinct, Dani scooted closer. “How? What did they say?”
Lola looked uncertainly at Dani, then the others. “It wasn’t food this time. It was my artwork, in the kitchen. But it was like you said, Dani: The paper turned to memories—my memories. They were showing me glowboarding on Hazard Hill. And they said that’s where they’re going to meet us. They started to say when, but the message broke up. It got all fuzzy, and I couldn’t get them to come back.”
“Oh man,” said Avery, putting a hand to her head. “Oh man.”
“The when is kind of important,” Bastian said. “It’d be nice to know what day they plan to wipe out humanity.”
“Don’t say that.” Lola shook her head fiercely. “That’s not going to happen.”
“It will,” Dani said, “if we don’t figure out the rest of the message. Lols, were you trying to talk to them?”
“No.” Lola sniffed. “No, it just happened.”
Dani nodded, thoughtful. “It was the same with me. But it doesn’t mean reaching out won’t work. We should still try.”
“I did,” Avery said. “Turns out talking to an apple doesn’t work.”
“Lola,” Bastian said. “The aliens showed you memories. And they showed you memories, too, right, Dani? Of Mitchell being a jerk.”
“Yeah,” Dani said, not sure where Bastian was going with this.
“Well,” he said, “maybe that’s important. They’re sending us messages telepathically, but for some weird reason, their words keep breaking up. Maybe it’s an alien translation thing. Or maybe their spaceship, or whatever, is too far away from Earth. But it sure seems like they put a lot of stock in memories. And if they communicate using our memories, maybe we can communicate back the same way. Not through words, but pictures. If we can show them all the good things about Earth—our families and glowboarding and stuff we like—maybe they’ll see it doesn’t deserve to be eradicated after all.”
“But how do we do that?” Dani asked. “We can share thoughts, but I’ve never shared a memory with any of you.”
“Try now,” Bastian said. “Send me something.”
Dani, still uncertain, scrunched up her face. Bastian readied himself, placing his palms flat on the clubhouse floor, trying—Dani guessed—to open his mind.
Then Dani shut her eyes and conjured one of her favorite memories. It was a warm April day, and she was inside the Gloworks store on Main Street, trying out a glowboard for the very first time. Sure, Zander was in the memory—that wasn’t pleasant—and sure, the board was way too expensive. But this was the day everything had changed. This was the day the thrill, the possibility of skating had first entered Dani’s heart.
She remembered the dappled sunlight in the store, the glossy green of the board, the way her foot first wobbled, then steadied. She remembered Zander’s stupid smile and the scent of fresh, new plastic in the air. Then she took all those memories, bundled them together, and tried to send them to Bastian.
Moments passed. Then Dani opened one eye. Well? she asked Bastian. Did you get it?
Bastian’s face fell. “Nope,” he said, for everyone to hear. “I heard your thoughts just now, but…I didn’t see anything.”
Dani shrugged.
Bastian, however, wasn’t giving up that quick. “Maybe,” he said, “it takes practice. Maybe we should work on taking memories from our heads and pushing them out.”
Dani scoffed. “You make it sound easy.”
“Well, why not?” Bastian was growing more enthusiastic. “Maybe it’s like glowboarding: We practice, and we get better. We put together a whole collection of our best memories. Then, once the aliens get here—whenever that is—we can show them all the reasons why Earth isn’t a bad place.”
Lola was nodding. “I agree with Bastian. We should practice. We should try.”
Bastian turned to Dani. “If they’ve reached out to you and Lola, there’s a good chance they’ll reach out again, maybe to me and Avery. And if they do, we’ve got to be ready for it.”
Bastian pointed to the paper swan in Lola’s hands.
“Now, what about this?” he said. “And the silver suits you saw. They could have something to do with us, too.”
“Or not,” said Dani. “We don’t know that for sure. Maybe Nando and all this DGE stuff has nothing to do with us. A weird coincidence, that’s all.”
“I don’t know,” said Avery. “The timing is kind of suspicious, isn’t it? I mean, Nando got here right when the weird stuff started happening.”
“What’re you saying?” Lola asked. “You think Nando is doing something bad?”
“No,” Avery said quickly, looking almost apologetic. “I mean, I bet he doesn’t think it’s bad. But he does have a top secret government job. And why is he in Callaway when there are plenty more important things to do in DC? It’s just…weird.”
Radar barked—in agreement, it seemed, with Avery’s assessment.
Lola, however, was shaking her head. “I know Nando. He’s a good person. The best. He wouldn’t do anything bad, and he definitely wouldn’t do anything that would put us in danger. Like Dani said, it’s a coincidence.”
With that, she set the swan in the center of their circle. All eyes turned to the paper animal. Dani was thinking hard. She knew as well as the rest of the Sardines that something was happening here. Something scary, maybe wrong. All they had right now, though, was a bunch of maybes.
“Man,” she mumbled. “I miss when we just came here to play sardines.”
Hazard Hill was, hands down, the best place to downhill glowboard in the city—maybe even in the whole wide state of Texas. According to Lola’s mother, when Callaway’s new Component G industry had boomed fifty years ago, people had moved from all over, and apartments and houses couldn’t get built fast enough. Hazard Hill had been planned as an exclusive, upscale community, complete with fancy gates and a giant swimming pool. The developers had even planned to change the name to Heartland Hill, to make the place more appealing. Then things went bad. The investors bailed, and the project was never finished. All that remained of Hazard Hill was the paved road that wound from its base to the very top: the perfect downhill track.
The hill was a good distance from Cedar Lane, a half-hour skate through neighborhood streets, and then out of the city, on through craggy desert terrain. Today, Lola pushed and carved along the desert road, allowing the rhythm of the board to guide her through the air alongside Bastian and Avery. Dani was already out at the hill, as she always was before practices. Lola had once asked Dani what she did out there, and Dani had replied, simply, “I envision.”
When Lola and the others reached the hill’s base, there was no sign of Dani, so they skated on, adjusting to the incline of the track. They sped up and up, as the city grew smaller, sprawling out beneath them. There were no guardrails on the track, just brush and boulders to hide the steep drop-off. The highest a glowboard could hover was one foot, tops. If you skated off those cliffs, you’d fall right to your death.
So Lola skated with feeling, but with caution, too, hugging the corners of the track, bending her knees and grazing her sliders when needed. At last, they reached the hill’s flat crest, and there was Dani, carving slow circles on her board. Dani had stopped wearing her old orange-rimmed glasses after her bat mitzvah last September; Lola thought the contacts made Dani look older. Or maybe, really, Dani was getting older. Maybe they all were.
“Good!” Dani shouted when she spotted them. “You’re here. We can start.”
“Hello to you, too,” said Avery.
“We can be polite again once we’re back to two fifteen,” Dani said. “Let’s get to the game plan, huh? I got a new practice angle. I call it…tethering.”
Lola’s heart took a dive, landing in her stomach. “You mean,” she said unsteadily, “what we did yesterday? Sharing our thoughts?”
“What you did yesterday,” Dani corrected.
Lola cleared her throat. “Just because I did it first doesn’t mean I’m the only one who can. I’m sure we can all…um, tether.”
But Dani was shaking her head. “Nope. I’ve been trying to connect our thoughts since you guys showed up. Feel anything?”
“N-no.” Lola faltered, then turned to Bastian. “You try. Imagine little lines connecting us all. Focus your blue flame. It’s easy.”
Bastian frowned but closed his eyes, concentrating. After a long moment, Lola heard his voice in her mind, asking, Like this?
She turned eagerly to the others. “Did you hear him, too?”
Dani and Avery looked blankly back.
“Well, try again!” Lola said, more desperate. “I’m sure we can all do it.”
“We can’t, Lola,” Avery said softly. “I’ve been trying, too. You’re the one who has the power. Just you.”
Tears were forming in Lola’s eyes. “But I—” I don’t want the power, she thought, only to herself.
“Lola.” Avery touched her elbow. “I know you’re scared. It’s a super-scary thing. But, for whatever reason, you can do something awesome. Something none of us can.”
“Look,” said Dani, beginning to sound impatient. “If I could connect us, I would. It’d make sense, me being captain and all. But you’ve got the power, Lols. And you can really help us out.”
Lola asked, “Help us out how?”
“Can you connect us right now?” said Dani.
Part of Lola didn’t want to, but another part…that part was curious. Yes, she was scared, but she was with her friends. They had tele-whatevers of their own. They wouldn’t let her powers get out of control, not if they could help it.
So Lola focused on the blue light inside. She pushed the light out, quickly finding a link in Avery’s mind. Then Bastian’s—a worn and familiar thread. Last of all, she reached out to Dani. And just like that, the Sardines were connected.
Tethering, Dani began, without missing a beat, is what’s going to win us this race. Think about it: What team wouldn’t kill for the chance to link minds? We’ll all be in each other’s heads. Never out of sync. If we focus, we can be in perfect harmonization.
Is that a real word?
Dani responded to Avery’s interruption with a pointed look. Yeah. It is.
Because it sounds like a disease, said Avery, who seemed unbothered by looks, pointed or otherwise.
“This is what I’m talking about!” Dani threw her hands in the air. “We have to focus. Eyes on the prize. Stop with the stupid jokes!”
“Um, Dani?” Lola said, in what was barely more than a whisper.
“Yeah?” said Dani irritably.
“Are you saying you want me to tether us when we’re racing?”
“Yeah.”
“I just…” Lola’s cheeks grew hot. “I don’t know if I can do that. I’ve never tried.”
“Well, that’s what practice is for,” Dani said. “We’ll work on it. Anyway, Lola, it’s not like you do a ton when we draft train. You’re not leading or whipping or crossing. You’re just skating. Now you’ve got something extra to do, like the rest of us.”
Lola bit her lip, feeling a flash of anger. Dani didn’t understand. Lola liked the fact that all she did was skate. She didn’t want more responsibility. She’d never asked for it.
“Hey,” said Avery. “Dani, give her a break, okay? This is new to Lols. It’s new to all of us. We need some time to let it sink in.”
“But we don’t have time,” Dani retorted. “Glow in the Park is in—”
“We know when it is,” Bastian cut in. “In less than three weeks. You won’t let us forget.”
Dani’s face turned purplish red. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means,” Bastian replied, “that sometimes you make glowboarding…not so fun.”
The color in Dani’s face intensified, then drained away entirely.
“Hey, I get it, Dani,” said Avery, glancing between her and Bastian. “We all think it’s worth training so hard for draft train. Right, Bastian?”
Bastian stared at the ground, making a noncommittal grunt.
“But,” Avery continued, glancing at Lola, “you know, we stopped going to all the events around here that don’t give trophies. And, well…sometimes those were more fun? Because there was less pressure.”
Dani shook her head. “But the Grackles don’t compete at those, either. If we want to stay competitive, we have to compete. In real races. With prizes. Like Glow in the Park.”
“Sure,” said Avery, “but some of us aren’t as competitive.”
Avery was talking about her, Lola knew. And Avery was right: Over their many months of practices, as the other Sardines had focused on form and efficiency, Lola had felt an itch, a deep-down desire to simply coast, her mind free of the microseconds she had to beat. That itch had been building inside her, hot and blue.
Lola wasn’t sure what gave her the confidence—the fact that Bastian and Avery had spoken first, maybe, or the new discovery that she could tether when nobody else could. Or maybe it was the softness in Avery’s eyes when she looked Lola’s way. Whatever the reason, Lola found her voice.
“Maybe,” she said, “we could do something different today. Maybe we could free skate?”
Dani blinked at her, uncomprehending. “But this isn’t free skating. This is practice.”
“I know,” Lola said, nervous, but now determined to say what she had in mind. “It’s pretty clear, though: We’re all stressed out after what happened at the race. And then the message. And our powers. Well, and whatever ‘DGE’ means. We can’t exactly get harmonization if we’re stressed.”
“But that’s not the point of—”
“Please?” Lola didn’t like interrupting. She hardly ever did. But if Dani was going to ask her to tether, then Lola was going to ask something in return. “You always say we’ll free skate if we have time, but then we practice so long, we never do. I think it’d be nice to, you know, have some fun. Like before. And I think we’d all tether a lot better afterward. It’s easier for me to connect us when our brains are calmer.”
Lola wasn’t sure if this last part was true, but she decided it was worth saying.
Dani was quiet. Scarily quiet.
“I’m with Lols,” Avery piped up. She shot Lola a wink that filled her heart with relief. “Maybe we’d all skate better if we loosened up. And then we can really focus on…um, tethering.”
Dani faced them all, her arms crossed tight. “You think so, too, Bastian?”
“Sure,” said Bastian. “Free skate would be nice.”
A few more seconds passed, and then Dani heaved a beleaguered sigh. “Okay. This is a democracy, or whatever. I’m not going to, like, force everybody to practice.”
“So,” said Lola, a little uncertain she’d heard Dani right, “we can free skate right now?”
By way of reply, Dani jumped on her board and took off down the hill.
“Eat my dust!” she shouted back at the others.
“Hey!” Avery laughed. “This isn’t a race!”
Dani called back, “Then how come I’m winning?”
The others hurriedly dropped their backpacks and rummaged out their gear. Lola tugged on her slider gloves, checked the strap of her helmet, and mounted her board. Then, with a big starting kick off the ground, she zoomed down the track. Lola gulped down the onrushing wind and let it flow inside her. She bent her knees and tilted her body in time with the rhythm of the road. She breathed in the hot June air as dust and rock flew past.
The downhill ride was always too short. Too soon, the track flattened, ending at the half-built residential gate. Lola slid to a stop across the finish line, breathing deep and hard. She shaded her eyes and looked up to see Bastian and Avery neck and neck, both skating with their glowstreams on. Bastian’s stream was silver, a liquid wave fluttering out behind the board. Avery’s was green, a faint lime shine in the sunlight.
As they reached the hill base, Avery cut a sharp turn, sliding in front of Bastian and whooping in victory. Bastian tried to pull back and avoid her glowstream, but it was too late. At the last minute, he sprang off his board, jumping over the solid green stream as his glowboard shot beneath it. Then, smack—his sneakers connected with the board. He wobbled once, then regained his balance, and carved into a stop. Avery was already off her board, her stream vaporizing behind her.
“Dude!” she shouted, running to Bastian. “That was awesome. Did you see him, Lols? Dani, did you see that?”
Bastian looked flushed but gratified. “It was instinct,” he said.
“See?” Avery said to Dani. “Lola was right: Free skate’s great for practice.”
Avery shot Lola another wink, and Lola felt flushed with happiness.
“See you all at the top!” she shouted, mounting her board and pushing uphill in a new burst of energy.
The Sardines kept it up, straining uphill and coasting down, weaving in each other’s paths in effortless crisscross patterns, occasionally kicking on their streams, sometimes falling down. Lola fell once after knocking into Bastian’s stream—a hit that shredded up a layer of skin on her forearm. She didn’t mind the asphalt’s burn or the prickling blood on her skin, though. This was what glowboarding was about: mistakes and tumbles and finding things out for yourself.
On her seventh time up the hill, Lola swung to a stop, dismounting for a moment to catch her breath. She walked to the edge of the hill crest, looking out. There was Callaway, a shiny new city made of metal and glass, winking in the lowering Texan sun. In the distance, large factories rose, manufacturing the many forms of Component G that would be sent across the country and the world.
Avery joined Lola, crunching through loose red rocks until they were standing side by side.
Hey. The word entered Lola’s mind, sounding tentative.
She turned and found Avery’s face radiant in the orange light. Lola felt a fluttery burst of nerves.
