Overpowered Page 12

  7. NOW YOU SEE ME

  * * *

  Jackson was right about the effects of the pulse wearing off after about twenty-four hours. By early the next morning both he and Oliver—and everyone else at school—had returned to “normal.” Whatever normal was. It felt like that bad dream you quickly forget as soon as you wake up and get out of bed. Except the three of us were wide awake and knew exactly what had gone down and couldn’t forget it.

  Oliver, Jackson, and I met up in the quad during lunch for a bit of a reality check. All around us kids were chatting, laughing, listening to music. Acting totally cheerful. As if yesterday’s harsh moods had suddenly evaporated or been wiped clean from their brains.

  “I’m not sure if this means anything, but check it out.” I took out my laptop and showed them the Report on Solar and Geophysical Activity with all the graphs I’d downloaded as PDFs.

  “They’re measuring electromagnetic radiation,” Oliver said, eyes lighting up in excitement.

  “Of course you’d know what they were,” I teased Oliver as his eyes eagerly devoured the scientific data like they were puffs of cotton candy.

  Oliver continued, his technogeekness unharnessed. “Solar activity was very low. A few low-class B flares observed here.” He pointed to a couple of small spikes in one of the graphs. “But check out those spikes there. The geomagnetic field is majorly unsettled.”

  Jackson grabbed my laptop, intrigued. “Where did you find this, Nica?” He scrutinized it more closely.

  “I’m not really sure,” I admitted, shrugging sheepishly. “It was from the university in Boulder. I was looking at so many sites last night I kind of lost track.”

  “Check out the spike right there,” Jackson interrupted, pointing to one of the graphs. “Ten eighteen p.m. Exactly when the pulse hit.”

  “Yeah, I noticed that too,” I acknowledged.

  “So, the big question is . . . ,” said Oliver, expounding like he was Albert Einstein or Stephen Hawking, “did the pulse cause the huge spike in electromagnetic radiation? Or did the EMR spike cause the pulse?”

  Science was not my passion. I was more like my mother: Studying human behavior and people’s interactions fascinated me. While Oliver attempted to unpuzzle the graphs, I couldn’t help but notice Maya and her cheerleading clique giggling and flirting with Chase and his crew. They seemed happy and carefree, with no trace of tension or animosity. “So we’re just supposed to act like everything’s okay,” I blurted out. “Like nothing happened?” This keeping my mouth shut was easier said than done.

  “Yeah. That’s exactly what we’re doing.” Jackson shut my laptop and handed it back to me, leveling his intense gaze my way. “At least until we know what we’re dealing with. And who to trust.”

  “And how do you propose we figure all that out, Jason Bourne?” In the cold light of day Oliver seemed considerably less excited by his short-lived burst of extraordinary abilities.

  “By working together.” Jackson looked at Oliver and me, dead serious.

  “A team? As in the three of us?” I asked, staring back at him, secretly hoping that was precisely what he meant.

  Jackson nodded. “People already think I’m wacko. That I’ve gone over the edge. Which means they’re always watching me.”

  “You’re talking about Bar Tech,” I muttered skeptically.

  Jackson pressed a finger to his lips, shushing me. The guy really was paranoid.

  “What?” Oliver flashed a look of complete incredulity. “You think they . . . ?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know,” Jackson admitted, eyes nervously darting around the quad. “Point is, until I’ve found proof, it’s best not to take any chances. Meanwhile you guys—”

  “Can blend in. The perfect cover,” I interjected, finishing his thought. “Act as if nothing’s happened while keeping our eyes and ears open.”

  “Like Desmond in Assassin’s Creed. Awesome.” Oliver smiled, hopping to his feet, totally stoked for the team to get to work. “Where do we start?”

  “At the beginning,” Jackson replied as he stood up. “Oliver, why don’t you focus on the science of it all? See where that leads you.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain Winters. I’m on it,” Oliver replied, giving him a Star Trek salute as he grabbed his things and scurried off, intent on his covert mission.

  “What about me, Captain? What should I focus on?” I kidded, eager to hear what assignment Jackson had in mind for me.

  “You can still walk away, you know. Steer clear of all this shit,” Jackson whispered as we stood next to each other under the oak tree. I noticed Maya checking us out across the courtyard. One could almost think we were a couple chatting about what movie to see over the weekend instead of two kids conspiring to unravel the biggest mystery of their lives.

  “Are you serious? After everything I’ve seen?” I looked at him, perplexed, wondering if he wanted me to back off because of what had happened to Dana. “For all any of us know, aliens really have landed in Barrington.”

  “I just want you to know what you’re getting into,” Jackson answered. I could tell by the pained look in his eyes that he was trying to protect me.

  “I appreciate your concern, but I can handle things,” I countered, not wanting him to think I was some scared little girl that had to be coddled. Walking away wasn’t an option. Working closely with Jackson and confiding in each other sounded so enticing. A dream come true. Except for all that paranoia stuff.

  • • •

  For the next two weeks the three of us alternated night-watch shifts, staying up late and looking out for any unusual activity in the sky. At the end of my nightly three-hour stint, I’d text either Oliver or Jackson depending who was up next to make sure he was awake and let him know if anything looked suspicious before his shift began. And vice versa. Despite us being hypervigilant, our neighborhood watches didn’t produce any useful clues or stop Jackson from continuing his nightly rides through town. In fact, life went on as usual at home and at school.

  • • •

  Fifteen days after the pulse Maya cornered me in the bathroom before sixth period. “What’s the deal between you and Jackson?” She was definitely not one to beat around the bush.

  “Nothing. What are you talking about?” I was more than a little bit defensive. Partly because I’d promised Jackson I wouldn’t tell anybody about what we were doing. But mostly because of how much I wished her insinuation were actually true.

  “Lunch. Every day in the quad.” Her voice had an annoying singsongy quality. “You guys looked awfully cozy.” She grinned knowingly as she stared in the mirror and expertly applied pink-sparkler lip gloss to her mouth.

  “It’s hardly romantic. Are you forgetting Oliver eats with us too?” I hastily added with a casual laugh, hoping to convince Maya she was wildly off base.

  “The Three Musketeers,” she said with an eye roll. “I can’t imagine what you all have to talk about. But that’s just me.” She capped her lip gloss and tossed it into her bag, obviously skeptical. “Listen, Nica. Can I give you some advice?”

  “Sure.” I took a deep breath and braced myself for her words of wisdom.

  “You’re still new here, and you don’t know that Jackson is crazy. And you certainly don’t want people to think that you’re crazy. It’s bad enough you’re hanging with that nerd Oliver. Anyway, I just want to help you out because we’re friends.”

  Though I wanted to reply, You’re a bit crazy yourself, I bit my tongue and politely replied, “Thanks.”

  “Well, don’t linger. I hear Ramirez is giving a pop quiz in math.” Maya then swept out of the bathroom just as the class bell rang.

  I sighed in exasperation and quickly followed, realizing I was as unprepared for a surprise algebra quiz as I was for Jackson’s covert operation. But that’s just me.

  • • •

  On the sixteenth day after the pulse Jackson stopped hanging with Oliver and me at lunch. In fact he pulled another of his I’m-not-c
oming-to-school disappearing acts. I texted him, but he never replied. Even Oliver became concerned by Jackson’s longer-than-usual absence, which extended to four days. He stopped by Winters Sporting Goods and spoke to Jackson’s parents, who claimed that their son was home sick. It made me suspicious. Had Jackson vanished like Dana did, never to be seen again? Or was he off on his own looking for Dana or pursuing clues about Bar Tech and the pulse? Or was he just avoiding me for some reason?

  I went to Jackson’s house after school, but no one answered the door. If Jackson was sick, wouldn’t he be home in bed? I went around to the backyard and boldly knocked on the living room sliding glass doors.

  “Jackson? You home?” I kept knocking on the glass, but the house seemed totally still, empty. If he wasn’t at home, then where could he be?

  In a last-ditch effort to find out what had happened to Jackson, I stopped by his family’s store and tracked down Mrs. Winters. She was assisting a customer with a merchandise exchange in the autumn section. Hiking boots. I hovered around a display case, trying on various leather gloves, until she finished.

  “Looking for a different size, Nica?” Mrs. Winters asked, gesturing to the pair of mocha open-back leather driving gloves I was holding in my hand, as she walked over.

  “No. These are awesome. It’s just . . .” I hesitated, not wanting to come off as too clingy or stalkery. “I haven’t seen Jackson around school for several days. Is he okay?”

  Mrs. Winters’s face grew visibly strained as she formulated her answer.

  “My son is . . .” Before she could say another word, I heard a familiar voice interrupt.

  “Right here, Mom.”

  I turned around as Jackson suddenly stepped out from the turtleneck rack.

  “Jackson, I wasn’t expecting you,” his mother remarked, clearly on edge. She was as surprised to see Jackson as I was.

  “I promised to help Nica check out snowboards,” Jackson snapped back without missing a beat. “Right, Nica?”

  “Yeah . . . absolutely. Might as well, now that I’m stuck in the land of mountains and snow.” I went with Jackson’s story, not wanting to get in the middle of anything.

  “Well, maybe you can get Jackson back on a board again,” Mrs. Winters commented sadly, giving Jackson a guarded look before walking off toward the front of the store.

  “Was that a note of tension I detected?” I remarked as Jackson navigated me toward the snowboard section. Mrs. Winters was definitely keeping her eyes on us.

  “More like a symphony of major disappointment ever since I gave up competitive racing. She had this fantasy that I’d actually compete in the Olympics,” he replied dismissively, changing the subject while picking up a totally tricked-out board. “So, do you need a freestyle, Alpine, or all-mountain board?”

  “I haven’t a clue.” I shrugged. “One that goes downhill, hopefully.” They all looked vaguely similar to me. Just decorated in wild colors and exotic designs. “So why did you give it up? Boarding.”

  Jackson exhaled before responding, his expression darkening with pain. “After Dana disappeared . . . everything seemed so . . . ridiculous.”

  “Football, too?” I wanted to understand Jackson. I wanted to hug him, to make him feel better.

  “Yeah, football. And good grades and honor society and class president and every other frickin’ lame-ass activity I’d been dutifully performing for the past seventeen years.” Jackson looked at me and laughed as he shook his head at the pointlessness of it all.

  “I know. I mean, not to get all existentialist about life, but sometimes it all seems so absurd. High school. Being stuck in one place for so many years.” I empathized with what he was going through. The world suddenly seemed incredibly ridiculous to me, too. “Maybe my mother has it right after all? Always staying on the move so she avoids complications and never gets bogged down. I kind of miss that life . . . that freedom.”

  We stood there staring at each other, connected, if only for a moment. It felt as if we were two kindred souls trapped in this insane universe called Barrington.

  “So,” Jackson said, shifting tack, shaking off all emotion. “Beginners generally look for shorter boards to enable them to maneuver easier.” Jackson stood a bright red one adorned with black Japanese characters alongside my body to demonstrate. “Between the collarbone and chin is a perfect height.”

  I felt a shudder of excitement as his fingers grazed the middle of my neck. Jackson looked at me and held my gaze. I worried that my face was turning red from embarrassment. Could he tell how I was feeling?

  “By the way,” Jackson added, “all of these boards have been evaluated by our expert testers.”

  “Testers?” I laughed, shooting him a skeptical look. “You actually have testers?”

  “All right, tester. As in yours truly,” Jackson whispered with a sheepish grin. “When it comes to boards, I know my shit.”

  “So I see,” I said, checking out the many photos of Jackson boarding that were plastered up and down the nearby wall. “What about other things?”

  “I’m working on it,” Jackson responded solemnly, circling around me with the board, alluding to the pulse.

  “Anything specific?” I gently probed, hoping for some new insight or information.

  “The less you know the better. Get on the board,” he instructed me, laying the board on the floor, fully aware his mother was still watching us.

  I obeyed, cautiously putting my left foot forward on the wobbly board. Jackson grabbed hold of my arms, steadying me. I exhaled and steadied my breathing as he adjusted my body position with his hands, gently shifting my right leg to the back of the board. I tried to focus on my feet instead of how close Jackson’s body was to me.

  “Don’t come back in here again,” he ordered, whispering in my ear as his body suddenly tensed up. “It’s too risky.”

  I followed Jackson’s gaze and spotted a couple of Bar Tech Security guards chatting with his mother.

  “I’ll be in touch once I know something more.” Jackson nodded, stepping away and disappearing toward the rear of the store.

  And that was the last time I saw Jackson for the next week.

  • • •

  While I waited in limbo for Jackson to contact me, I spent every night aimlessly trolling the Internet at night for any more unusual phenomena—weather or otherwise. It wasn’t like I could follow a trail of bread crumbs out of the woods to an answer—I was flying blind. Hoping for that one-in-a-million hit that would unlock the mystery of the pulse.

  I pursued all possibilities, no matter how irrelevant they seemed, from strange bird behavior and unusual encounters to random UFO sightings around the country. Oliver, meanwhile, investigated every mysterious incident from NASA rocket launches to missing planes in the Bermuda Triangle. He even scoured the most outrageous alien-conspiracy-theory blogs. All of which he dismissed as bogus and none of which had anything to do with explaining the pulse.

  “The effects of EMR upon biological systems . . . ,” Oliver began, trying to explain exactly what he was tracking, while we huddled at the back of the school library during lunch.

  “On biological what?” I immediately interjected, needing a translation.

  “On humans . . . ,” Oliver clarified in a hushed whisper. “Our bodies are powered by bioelectric impulses to the brain. The effects of EMR on humans depend both upon the radiation’s power and frequency.”

  “So in theory, the more often the pulse happens . . . ,” I replied, keeping my voice down in case anyone was trying to eavesdrop, “the greater the effects on you and Jackson.”

  “Exactly,” Oliver answered, happy that I was following his train of thought. “Though I’m seeing nothing out of the ordinary since that night.”

  Which meant another dead end for our investigation.

  • • •

  I felt a bit directionless without Jackson. Not that he was our official leader or anything like that, but Jackson did seem to have a gut instinct a
bout what might be going on beneath the surface in Barrington. That got me wondering: Did he know more than he was letting on? Was he possibly withholding information from Oliver and me? About Dana or Bar Tech?

  Unfortunately, since Bar Tech was a privately owned conglomerate, there wasn’t much publicly available information beyond the standard corporate PR bullshit about their awesomeness. What little I could find out was that they were one of those ultrasecretive companies that manufactured an array of high-tech equipment—everything from medical supplies to solar and green technology. Not to mention they also gave very generously to a host of charitable causes. Other than their private security patrol in Barrington, there wasn’t much else suspicious I could find online that made me believe they were causing the pulse.

  Nevertheless I found myself constantly glancing over my shoulder wherever I went. Whether walking down a hallway at school or along Main Street through town, I checked out every person and vehicle I passed. Perhaps some of Jackson’s paranoia had rubbed off on me, but I was also hyperaware of every word that came out of my mouth, no matter how trivial. Every seemingly innocent conversation I had with fellow students or teachers or even my dad, I filtered through a lens of wariness and suspicion. I was afraid of making a misstep by inadvertently revealing a clue about what had happened to Oliver and Jackson.

  Oliver tried to step into the void and take on a leadership role, but it wasn’t the same. While he did know a lot about science and math, he didn’t have the knowledge that Jackson possessed. We needed Jackson’s insight to help unravel what was going on. I needed him. More to the point, I missed being around him.

  • • •

  When nothing had happened twenty-two days after the pulse, I started second-guessing myself. Wondering if what I’d seen that night with Jackson hadn’t just been a fluke—a random event. After all, I only had Jackson’s word to go on that he had actually experienced the pulse twice before that night. Still, despite Maya’s warnings, Jackson didn’t strike me as a crazy person who made things up for attention. If anything—other than the whole Dana-Fox-is-missing mystery—he went out of his way to be left alone. That and the fact that I had witnessed him shoot electricity out of his fingertips, not to mention seen Oliver leap fifty feet across my yard, convinced me we weren’t suffering from the same delusion. And yet there was no guarantee any of this would ever occur again.