Midnight on Strange Street, page 15
“Um…” Lola cleared her throat. “I can try.”
Dani watched as light sprang to Avery’s eyes, then to Bastian’s. Then she herself felt a familiar sensation in her head: a rope thrown out for her to catch. Dani took hold, and instantly, new images rushed into her mind: Radar catching a Frisbee, rainbow sprinkles atop oatmeal, the vast sprawl of the Grand Canyon.
All right. Bastian’s voice shot along the tether. Let’s try this again. All together. Everyone focus, hard.
The sensation that Dani felt then was new: Her memories began to merge with the others, swirling together in a bright blur of color. She heard Lola’s thoughts: Please, reach us, light beings. She heard Avery’s: Hey! Can you hear us? She heard Bastian’s: See our memories. Understand. Then she added her own plea, directing it upward: It’d be nice if you could make contact right about now.
Inside Dani’s chest, the blue flame waxed larger. Her ribs began to feel hot and fragile—as though they might break. She could feel heat on her face, could sense the blue flames in all the others, expanding, sizzling along their tethers, merging into one raging fire.
Then, in an instant, there was a loud POP! Dani’s tether snapped, sending her sailing backward. She landed on her back with a hard thud.
Blinking in bewilderment, Dani looked around. The other Sardines had been thrown back, too, and like her, they lay sprawled on the ground in a state of shock. Radar stood over Avery, whimpering and pawing at her shoulder.
“What was that?” Avery asked. Slowly, she sat up, rubbing down Radar’s fur in a daze.
“I—I’m sorry,” Lola said, collecting herself into a sit. “The tethers broke. It was…too much. I couldn’t hold them all at once.”
Bastian said nothing. He had risen to his feet and was staring up at the sky.
“Bas—” Dani began, but he waved violently, a plea to be quiet.
Dani said nothing else, only got to her feet and then helped up Lola. The girls gathered close to Bastian as he stared upward.
Then, at last, he dropped his gaze and let out a long, defeated sigh.
“Nothing,” he muttered. He motioned limply to their collection of glow cartridges. “Guess it was a stupid idea after all.”
“We did feel something,” Dani offered. “That big popping sound. You all heard it, too, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” Avery said. “We all got thrown on our backs. That’s not nothing.”
“It was our blue flames,” said Lola, looking contemplative. “All of ours, they joined together. For one moment, it was all one flame.”
“Yeah,” said Dani. “That’s what I felt, too.”
“We didn’t reach the aliens, though,” said Bastian, stooping to pick up his cartridge. “I’m…sorry. I really thought it might work.”
“You don’t have to apologize,” said Lola, kneeling to place a hand on his. “I’m glad we tried. It seemed like a good idea.”
So they’d combined their blue flames into one. Maybe that was cool, but from what Dani could see, it didn’t make a difference. It wouldn’t help their race time, and it certainly hadn’t put them in touch with the light beings. It seemed they were stuck waiting like before, back at square one.
Dani felt weary. She rubbed at her eyes and shrugged. “Well, that’s that,” she said. “Guess we can head ba—”
She didn’t finish, though. She’d turned toward the trees and come face-to-face with someone.
Not a Sardine.
A Grackle.
Mitchell Jensen.
Dani sucked in a breath.
A smirk stretched out on Mitchell’s face as other figures emerged from the trees: Kyle Bridges, Ross Mondt, and none other than Zander Poxleitner.
“What I want to know,” said Mitchell, throwing out his chest, “is what you Sardines are doing on my property.”
“Talking to aliens,” Avery said. She grinned, even after Bastian had punched her in the shoulder.
Dani could see Avery’s point: Why bother lying? The truth was so ridiculous, no one would believe it.
Mitchell gave Avery a dirty look. “Freak,” he said. “No one invited you here.”
“No one needed to invite us,” Bastian shot back. “It’s a public event.”
Mitchell fixed his eyes on Bastian. “Is that so, Gil?” he asked, sauntering up to him. At his back, Ross and Kyle snickered. “I don’t think it’s so public if you’re banned. And I ban you. All four of you freaks. But especially you.” Mitchell reached out a finger, poking Bastian hard in the chest. “I don’t like girly boys on my property. So leave.”
Bastian’s lip was trembling. There was heat in his eyes, and Dani could swear his glare was tinged with blue.
“Hey, hey,” said Avery, waving her arms between Bastian and Mitchell. Beside her, Lola’s small hands had balled into fists. “It’s whatever. We were leaving anyway.”
Bastian was still glaring—no longer at Mitchell, but beyond him, at Zander.
“Nice, Zander,” he spat out. “You really are a snitch, aren’t you?”
Zander had gone horribly pale, and Dani was close enough to hear him mutter, “I didn’t tell him you were here.”
“Yeah, right,” Dani scoffed. “Like we’d ever trust the word of a traitor.”
Mitchell let out a high-pitched, unkind laugh. “Poxleitner, a traitor? At least he had some sense.” Mitchell returned his glare to Bastian. “Unlike you.”
Dani watched then as, in a horrible instant, Mitchell puckered his lips and spat right into Bastian’s face. The glob of bubbly saliva landed on his left cheek.
Bastian said nothing. He only lifted his arm and wiped the spit from his face while Ross and Kyle howled with laughter. Rage swelled inside Dani, stoking the hot blue flame. She felt nearly ready to burst with it, and across from her, she saw Lola’s arms trembling with anger.
But before they could do anything, Radar let out an angry howl and lunged forward, snapping at Mitchell with bared fangs.
“Yaaah!” Mitchell shrieked, stumbling back. “What the heck, Miller?”
Avery had pulled back Radar by the leash, but she didn’t seem perturbed by her dog’s snarls. “He never acts this way. I don’t know, seems like he smells something he doesn’t like.”
Mitchell, having regrouped with the Grackles, had regained his composure. “You just keep him away from me,” he ordered. “I mean it. Keep that stupid dog away, or I’ll have him taken away. Don’t think that I don’t know the people who can make that happen.”
Avery’s eyes narrowed. “You leave Radar alone!” she shouted.
“Come on,” Dani said to the Sardines. “Come on, let’s go. Let’s just go. Don’t engage, remember?”
She didn’t look at any of the Grackles—Zander included—as she marched away from their pack. She heard the others following suit, walking behind her, and she didn’t look back again until they had cleared the cedar trees and reached a slope of grass that led up to the glowboard racks.
She noticed first that Lola was crying, her head on Avery’s shoulder. Bastian looked angry enough to burst into flames.
“Don’t let them get to you,” she ordered. “Sardines are stronger than that.”
Even as she spoke the words, a great boom resounded in the sky. Dani looked up, startled, to see the first of the Glow Expo fireworks exploding, showering silver sparks across the dusky sky.
It was a beautiful sight, she had to admit. A beautiful sight to end an ugly night.
So much for team morale.
“It’s here.”
The man in the navy suit looked up from the papers on his desk—ledgers, figures, and memos, all important to his job, but none so important as what the woman with the high ponytail held in her hands.
“The report,” the woman said, laying a stiff sheet of paper before him.
On the paper was a graph, and on that graph was a severe spike, dated the night before.
“This event produced more concentrated activity than we’ve ever seen before,” said the woman. “An all-time high in GAR. They’re getting stronger. Much stronger.”
“Yes,” mused the man in the navy suit. “They are. And at a far quicker rate than we anticipated. Than you predicted. We can no longer sit back and observe. We need to act.”
“What do you propose we do?”
The man swiveled his chair toward the office window. He looked out on the city of Callaway—his city. His home. Soon, he would be this city’s hero.
“The key,” he said at length, “is stealth. I want the subjects trailed and observed. Eyes on each one of them, at all times. This incident has proved what I’ve suspected: The subjects possess an inextricable connection to glow. So glow is what we’ll use to bring them to us.”
The woman lingered, her brow creased.
Slowly, the man in the navy suit swiveled to face her. “What is it?”
“It’s only…they are children.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” the man replied, heat in his voice. “But it’s what’s best for them, as well as for this country. They don’t know their own strength.”
“And we do?” the woman asked. “Do you think turning them into weapons is what’s best for them?”
The man rose from his chair. “Believe me, I understand the gravity of the situation. My work is, and has always been, a matter of gray areas. So please, I ask that you trust my decision. That’s what this relationship is based on, isn’t it? Trust.”
The woman with the high ponytail was silent for a moment. Then, nodding stiffly, she answered, “Yes. Trust.”
“Up you go. You’ll be the turret.”
Avery was in her bedroom, training her eyes on a small, square book entitled Pacific Volcanoes. The blue flame flowed through her, picking up Pacific Volcanoes and carrying it through the air, resting it gently atop a three-foot-high stack of books.
Building book towers was a much better use of energy than worrying about the big race in a few days’ time, or about an alien threat to abduct her and destroy the earth, or about the fact that the Sardines’ plan to contact the light beings had failed tremendously.
The night before, the team had trudged, defeated, away from Jensen Ranch. In silence, they’d unlocked their glowboards from the rack.
Then Bastian had said, in a small voice, “It was only an idea.”
“We tried,” Lola had added.
“Yeah,” Dani had said. “Looks like all we can do is wait.”
“It doesn’t mean my memory plan is wrong,” Bastian had said almost pleadingly. “I still think we can convince the aliens that way. We should keep on practicing sharing our memories. We should be prepared for when they do reach out.”
No one had responded to that. Avery, for one, had felt exhausted. Whatever sensation the Sardines had created together in that copse, with their hands joined tight—whatever had made that loud POP! and knocked them off their feet—had drained the energy from Avery’s body. And so, with no other plans or conclusions, the Sardines had skated back to Cedar Lane.
Now, in the morning light, a small but sturdy fear sat in Avery’s gut, near the place where the blue flame burned. As she felt it stir, she shook her head and concentrated, raising Tuck Everlasting high in the air. Radar happily barked at the soaring book.
Avery focused extra hard, fanning out the book’s pages and carefully positioning it over the tower to form a hardcover roof.
The kitchen digipad rang, breaking her concentration. Tuck Everlasting quivered, then dropped to the ground, and Avery jumped to her feet.
Avery ran downstairs, skidded into the kitchen, and punched the answer button on the digipad.
“Hello?” she said breathlessly.
“Vee, is that you?”
Avery froze. She knew that voice. Deep, smooth, and clear.
Her father.
“Uh. Yeah?” She turned to Radar, who had followed her downstairs.
Help me out, she thought to him, but of course, Radar didn’t speak.
“I’m glad you’re home,” Mr. Miller was saying. “Your mom said to call first but, well…I’ve called. And here I am.”
Avery frowned at the digipad’s call screen. “Wait. What?”
“I’m right outside, Veemeister!”
There was a knock at the front door, and Avery’s heart gave a massive thud.
Her father. Her dad was here, at the house.
No. That wasn’t right. Avery wasn’t expecting this.
Forcefully, she punched the end call button and turned, staring at the door.
The knocking continued.
Help me, she thought again to Radar, but he was too busy barking at the commotion. With dread, Avery walked to the door. She undid the locks and opened it to find that, sure enough, her father, Eric Miller, was standing on the front porch.
“Veemeister!” He flashed a radiant grin. “How’s it going?”
Avery stared. What did he want her to do? Give him a hug? Say It’s so nice to see you?
Yeah, right.
Avery crossed her arms. “What are you doing here?”
Radar was barking wildly and leaping around. Avery shooed him back and stepped out on the porch, closing the door behind her.
Mr. Miller’s smile fell only a little. “Well, when your mom told me how disappointed you were that I had to cancel my trip—”
“A third time,” Avery interrupted, glaring hard.
Her father’s smile faltered again. “Yes, well, when she told me that, I reconsidered. She said this Glow in the Park thing was a big deal for you. A kind of once-in-a-lifetime event. I didn’t want to miss that.”
Avery kept on glaring. “What about your important work stuff?”
Mr. Miller shrugged casually. “I decided I could put that on hold.”
“Huh,” Avery said. “Well, too late. Mom told you I don’t want to see you, and I don’t. So you can go back to California, or whatever.”
This time, her father’s face fell all the way. “Veemeister,” he said—now less of a shout and more like a plea. “I thought, once you saw me, we could…talk. Maybe set some things straight?” When Avery didn’t reply, he said, “I guess I should’ve listened to your mom.”
“Guess you should’ve.”
Avery knew she was being mean. Maybe too mean. Guilt tapped on her heart, making her suddenly uncertain. Her dad looked so downcast. Like maybe he really had come to patch things up. Maybe he’d even come to apologize for not taking her side in the principal’s office all those months ago.
“I don’t think you should come inside,” Avery said, lessening the venom in her voice. “Not without Mom’s permission.”
“Yeah, I see that now. I guess I just got…I wanted to see you, kid. I didn’t think.”
The guilt tapped harder on Avery’s heart. That’s why her dad had come here, unannounced? Simply because he wanted to see her? Her. His Veemeister.
Maybe, she thought, she shouldn’t turn him away so fast.
“I dunno.” She swung her arms, not meeting his gaze. “The race is coming up, so I’m kind of busy. But we could maybe get breakfast together, if you want. If Mom’s cool with it. There’s this place called Pizza Palace? They have a brunch buffet.”
“Pizza for breakfast?” Mr. Miller said, laughing. “I’m in. And don’t you worry, I’ll be at that race. It’s why I’m here, remember?”
Avery looked into her father’s eyes. She knew them very well—they were her own after all. That’s what her family and friends always said: Avery got everything from her mom, except the bright hazel eyes.
“So…you’re coming?” she asked him. “You’re gonna watch me race?”
Mr. Miller knelt before his daughter. Normally, Avery would find this annoying, him treating her like a little kid. But now, for some reason, she didn’t mind. Maybe it was the smile on her dad’s face, or the warm way he said, “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Inside the house, Radar continued to bark, pressing his nose against the storm door and glaring at Avery’s dad.
Mr. Miller laughed again. “Your mom told me you got a dog. Aussie, right? Seems like a good one.”
“He is,” said Avery, smirking back at Radar.
It’s okay, she tried to think at him. It’s fine, you can stop.
Radar kept barking.
Avery sighed and turned back to her father. That was when she noticed the taxicab idling on the street.
“Came straight from the airport,” Mr. Miller said, noting her gaze.
“Huh.”
The guilt tapped harder on Avery’s heart.
“I should head to my hotel,” her dad said, chucking her shoulder—a familiar move Avery hadn’t felt in over a year, “but I’ll call your mom. We’ll set up a time for that breakfast.”
Then he was running out to the taxi and shutting himself inside, and the taxi was off, nothing more than a dab of yellow fading against the horizon. Avery glared after the car, trying to make sense of her feelings. There was anger there. Sadness. Guilt. But there was something else, too:
A scrap of hope.
Maybe this time her dad was going to make things right.
Glow in the Park was one day away, but Lola wasn’t thinking of racing. She sat in the backyard, many feet off from Cedar House, where a patch of dandelions grew. They were untouched by the work of the weed control men who visited the Gils’ house every month. Mrs. Gil had been complaining recently about the workers’ lack of thoroughness, but secretly, Lola was grateful these dandelions had been spared. To her, they were not weeds. They were lovely—perfect, spherical clouds of fluff that blew into the wind like tiny umbrellas. Why did that bother people so much? Lola had read once that people in France ate dandelions, stirring them into salads and stews. They appreciated their beauty and their flavor.
Lola was certain she would get on very well in France.
Concentrating hard, Lola drew up the burning blue flame inside.
No danger here, she told herself. There’s no one watching, no one you can hurt. No food, no other kids, and no explosions. It’s only you and the flowers.
Lola focused the flame with her mind, directing it toward the biggest and fullest of the dandelions.
