Priya liked Connor’s house. It was big and made of painted wood and had both flowers and vegetables growing out front. “Connor,” she said, pointing at the window beside the front door, “I think someone’s watching us.”
He knocked on the glass and called through, “Lily, don’t be creepy.”
The door opened and a red-headed girl—about nine—popped out. “I’m not creepy, I’m preclocious.”
“You’re precocious, and you can be both at the same time.” Connor grinned and flicked the girl’s ponytail. “This is Priya, by the way. She’s the friend I told Mom was coming by this morning. Priya, this is my sister Lily.”
“Ooooooh,” said Lily. “Oh! You have to meet the rabbits.” And she turned and raced through the house. Priya and Connor followed her, pausing briefly to introduce Priya to Connor’s mom as they passed.
The rabbit hutch was in the backyard, a pleasantly foul-smelling wooden box with a wire grille. Connor pulled out a rabbit, a nut-brown ball of fur. “This little guy’s name is Jerkface. I really shouldn’t have answered Lily when she asked what ‘ironic’ meant.”
He held the rabbit to his chest, cupping its soft brown body in one hand and stroking its quivering ears with the other. Priya thought of all the strength he was restraining to touch it so soft. It was the most attractive thing she’d ever seen him do.
“What’s your favorite color?” asked Lily. “I mean your favorite animal color?”
“I hadn’t thought about it before,” said Priya. “I guess I like black animals. I like how they seem simple.”
“Alright,” said Lily, reaching into the hutch. “This is Snowball.” She grinned. “Her name is ironic, too.”
Priya held Snowball in her cupped hands. The black rabbit was soft and warm and quiet, and its small wet nose trembled against her fingertips.
“Do you think lunch is ready?” asked Lily.
“How fast can you find out?” asked Connor.
“So fast!” she shouted, and headed back to the house in a goofy pre-adolescent sprint.
Priya laughed, and Connor stroked the back of the rabbit she was holding, and she moved one hand on top of his and said, “I think I had a brother. When I was really little, in India. A big brother.”
She looked up at his face, and she could tell he didn’t know what to say, and he said, “You think?”
“I came here when I was very young. It’s hard to remember. I don’t think I had parents, living parents, but I’m pretty sure there was a boy—I don’t remember his name—and I thought he was the most wonderful person in the world and I was absolutely certain he would take care of me.”
“What happened to him?”
“I think… he died.”
Just then, Lily came out to tell them that Dad had managed to take his lunch break at home, and everyone was waiting for them.
#
Coming back to Stephanie’s after spending the morning with Priya and his family felt like waking up from a dream. It made Connor want to be grown up already with a wife (not necessarily Priya, that would be creepy, just a general wife) and children and animals and maybe he’d learn how to cook.
Did he have to come back to Stephanie’s? It surprised him to realize he hadn’t even thought about that question before. It was an assumption, buried deep as breathing, that you came back to base.
Rod was perched on the roof at the front of the house, his legs dangling over the side. When he saw Connor getting out of his car he shouted for him to come up and join him. Connor clambered up the wall to sit by his friend.
“Just come from Ya-Ya, huh?” asked Rod.
“How could you tell?”
“Your inner glow.”
Connor rolled his eyes. “Shut up.”
“No, I mean it. You’re like a young child who’s just seen their first sunset or a veteran returning home right as the snow begins to fall on the rocky hills. Or a pregnant lady. How are things going with Ya-Ya, anyway?”
“Better, I think. She seems to be liking me more lately.”
Rod nodded. “So this, uh, new attitude of hers, it started after the whole Sammy Lecker deal, right? When you laid into me about it?”
“About then, I guess.”
“Figures.”
Rod didn’t say anything else, because if he could make Connor ask what he wanted him to ask it would mean he had won this conversation. Whatever. Connor might as well go along with it. “How does it figure, Rod?”
“Remember that night at the party when you and I first met Ya-Ya?”
She had been wearing lip gloss. She had asked what position he played. He had wondered why Danny always got the best girls.
“Yes.”
“At one point, I was saying something about her sister—”
“Something obnoxious.”
Rod nodded, acknowledging the point. “Anyway, Danny spoke up on the side of the sister and Ya-Ya kissed him on the cheek.”
That made Connor raise an eyebrow in surprise. “You make fun of me for being obsessed with her, and you remember that?”
“I noticed,” said Rod, “because kissing people on the cheek is sort of awkward and no one really does it. I remember because it’s when I learned something about her which has come to form the basis of my deep understanding of her character. Namely, that when a guy does what she wants she awards him with affection.”
“Oh come on.”
“She thinks you listen to me too much, you chew me out, she starts to warm up to you. Those were the steps.”
“Listen to yourself, Rod. I did something she liked, and so she liked me more. That’s how liking people works. It’s natural.”
“What she does is not natural. It’s technique.”
“Oh yeah, she’s manipulating me with her feminine wiles.”
“Pretty much.”
“I was joking.”
“And I wasn’t.”
“Rod, you just—You shouldn’t think that about girls.”
“Even if it’s true?”
“It’s not true.”
“Uh-huh. How do you know?”
“Because…”
“Because if you thought she was manipulating you, that would make you a bad guy. Good guys don’t think girls are manipulating them, even if all signs point in that direction.”
“What signs? There’s no signs.”
“Pay attention, dude.”
###
E-MAIL FROM ELIAS KAPLAN TO KSENYA CARPENTER:
This time I lost food. I eat and I taste things, but I don’t care how they taste.
Remember that burger place in Johnston with all the Grays and their sinister salads? (Sinister Salads = band name.)
I can remember everything on that menu, and the prices, dollars and cents. That’s some stupid stuff to remember. Do you think there’s a way to wipe it off? I need an erase button.
###
The Blues were gathered in the cabin’s absurdly large kitchen. Marlie and Breanna had decided to make donuts, and they had littered the room with white drifts of spilled flour and piles of sticky eggshells and popping, snapping pans of oil. All the boys except Danny were helping out and/or getting in the way (Danny had been sent to the store for milk, which had been declared necessary for dunking purposes). Lorraine, who disapproved of donuts on a deep spiritual level, sat at the table. She’d found one of those brain teaser toys with the interlocking metal bits you have to untangle, and the pieces clicked together as she worked on it. Kess sat next to her and read Elias’s last e-mail over again for the third time.
She wished he could tell her whether he’d been in contact with Holifeld, and whether he knew when they’d be making their move against the Grays. She knew why he couldn’t—Holifeld had explained that the Grays were possibly reading their e-mails and texts. He’d given Elias a little black device that could receive messages from Holifeld’s secret base, but there hadn’t been one for Kess.
It still ate up at Kess not knowing how long they had to wait. All she got from Elias were these horrible progress reports. How much of Elias would degrade before they got their chance to save him?
“You texting that boy?” asked Lorraine.
“What?”
“That boy you’re investigating with, or whatever.”
“Oh. Yes, sort of. Just reading an e-mail from him.”
“It’s funny he hasn’t turned into one of us yet. The Blueness seems to spread pretty easily as long as the person’s around our age.”
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
“It’s complicated,” said Kess. Why hadn’t she been telling the other Blues about the Grays and all the things she’d discovered with Elias? Because it seemed somehow private or separate from her life with them? That was a dumb reason. “There are these people—”
Just then, Danny came in, back from the store. “Lorraine! I got you a thing.” He handed her a bun wrapped in plastic. “It’s made with honey and grains and stuff. That makes it healthy, right?”
She looked down at the pastry in her hands and smiled a little. “Yeah, Danny. That makes it healthy. Thanks.”
With all the bodies and the stove burners on high, the kitchen was getting hot. Curious, Kess switched to heat vision.
Kess’s heat vision didn’t look like the heat-vision-goggle views she’d seen on TV. It wasn’t color-coded, for one thing. She saw heat as purple-red light, with higher heat glowing more intensely. Right now, in the kitchen, each person became a shining violet figure, with the brightest light glowing from their chests and stomachs. The stovetop blazed with deep maroon, and the air above it was a shifting colored haze. This was what friendship looks like, Kess realized. Like a room of warm, wine-colored light.
She cycled back to normal vision. Many of the wavelengths didn’t show anything at night. Without the sun shining there were no faint x-rays coming through the ceiling to bounce off the appliances. Everyone’s phones were shining from their pockets, of course, and—
“Guys,” she said in a small voice. “There’s someone outside the house.”
“What?” asked Lorraine. “How can you tell?”
“I can see their cellphone through the wall. It’s hard to say how far away they are. Maybe in the woods, but they might even be right there in the backyard. Let me get a better look.” She stood up and moved so she could see through the window. “Right at the edge of the woods. They’re hiding in the dark, behind a tree.”
Danny just nodded. Then he stood up and clapped to get the Blues’ attention. They stopped in the middle of dripping white glaze over hot donuts and turned to him.
“Everybody,” he said. “Kess has spotted a Red outside, watching us. Speaking one-by-one, what do you think we should do about it?”
They did not speak one by one.
“Is spying allowed?”
“We should throw rocks at them!”
“I know Kess says it’s impossible to aim our lightning, but what if we could?”
“I don’t think spying’s allowed.”
“Just like they threw rocks at us, you know? It’s poetic.”
“We can’t throw rocks hard enough to hurt a Red,” said Danny. “Also we don’t throw rocks. That’s not our style.”
“Just zap them when they don’t even expect it.”
“Why haven’t we been spying?”
“Zapping them is our style.”
“We capture them,” said Lorraine. “And take them to the Reds and dump them at their feet and gloat.”
“I like that idea,” said Breanna. “That’s classy.”
“I like it too,” said Danny. “Thanks, Lorraine. Now let me think for a second.” Everyone erupted into chatter again. It took a moment for Danny to calm them down when he wanted to talk again.
“Okay,” he said. “The Reds are faster than us, so we have to be careful. Marlie, Breanna, Bradley, come with me. Greg and Paul and Samuel go with Lorraine. Lorraine’s group will come at them from the left side, along the edge of the trees. My group will circle around the other side and come back behind. Hopefully, if he runs away from Lorraine he’ll smack into us.”
“And what about me?” asked Kess.
“You’re the most important part. You stay here and watch everybody’s cellphone signals. You’ll help my group get in position behind the Red, and then tell Lorraine so she can make her move. And of course you’ll tell us if the Red moves. Does anybody have some of those earbuds that work as microphones?”
Two sets of microphone-earbuds were dredged up from purses and backpacks. Lorraine and Danny each plugged one into their cellphones, so that they could talk with their phones in their pockets. Lorraine, Danny, and Kess connected to a group call. And then all the Blues but Kess left the house through the front door.
Kess stood by the kitchen window and watched the white lights in the darkness. The light marking the Red’s cellphone stayed still, thankfully. The Red didn’t seem to notice as the Blues creeped through the dark trees. Kess directed them from the kitchen. It seemed fake, watching the small white stars that moved when she told them to. Like a video game.
“It’s funny,” said Danny through her phone. “I almost know where to move before you say. Maybe the mindreading thing works all the way out here.”
“Maybe,” she said. “We can experiment later. But for right now, you’re all set up. Lorraine, you can move.”
As Kess watched the four white lights that were Lorraine, Samuel, Greg and Bradley move towards the intruder, she had a sudden, terrible thought:
What if it wasn’t a Red out there? What if it was a Gray?
A Gray would have a gun.
“Lorraine! Lorraine, wait—”
But it was too late. There were already shouts coming from outside. And the intruder, instead of running back towards Danny’s group like they’d planned, ran towards the house.
Towards Kess.
She sprinted out the door. In the soft yellow light coming from the kitchen window, Kess saw a Red girl, the skinny blonde one. She was dressed in black with her hair pulled back in a braid. The girl met Kess’s eyes for a split second and then jumped. She soared over Kess’s head and hit the wall behind her, sticking to it like a frog. Kess spun and jumped and grabbed for the girl’s leg. Her fingers didn’t quite touch the girl’s bare ankle. But blue sparks jumped in the black air, and the girl fell backwards. She hit the ground and sprawled at Kess’s feet.
She started to get up, so Kess shocked her again.
Then the other Blues showed up. “Good job, Kess,” said Danny, just barely out of breath from running.
“Stephanie,” said Marlie. “She wouldn’t come alone for an attack or anything. Definitely spying.”
“What are you going to do with me?” the blonde girl asked.
“That is a difficult question,” said Lorraine. “Don’t make it easier by trying to get away.”
“Lorraine,” said Danny.
“Don’t say ‘Lorraine’ like that,” said Samuel. “Now she knows we’re not going to do anything.”
“We’re not not going to do anything. We’re not going to hurt her, but we are going to take her back to the other Reds.”
“Should we tie her up?” asked Bradley.
“That sounds good. Somebody get rope.”
But Kess shook her head. “She might be strong enough to break out of ropes. I’m not sure how strong they are exactly, but…”
Danny sighed. “Alright. Stephanie, we’re not going to tie you up. We don’t need to, because you know you’re surrounded, and we’re watching you, and one of us will be able to shock you before you get away.”
“How is that different from what I suggested?” asked Lorraine.
Danny didn’t look away from Stephanie. “We don’t want to hurt you more than we have to, but we don’t want you to get away before we can turn you back over to your friends and have a talk with them about what you were doing here. Do you understand?”
In the light from the kitchen, Stephanie looked very pale. Kess couldn’t tell if she were frightened or angry. Either way, she nodded.
###
SECURE COMMUNICATION BETWEEN ELIAS KAPLAN AND VANCE HOLIFELD:
VH: Trusting you is out of character for me, and they know I would never approach their facilities myself. They won’t expect this form of assault. That is our greatest asset.
EK: Why wouldn’t you approach the facilities yourself?
VH: Because I am old and it is dangerous.
VH: You knew that I was old. Did you not know that this operation is dangerous?
EK: I know. So does Kess.
EK: Kess really wants to do it though.
VH: And what do you want, cleverhandle?
EK: I want to do what she wants. Still seems like a bad idea though. If I was a little Grayer I probably wouldn’t do it, just out of rationality.
VH: The Alphas will remake the world. They are already breaking it down behind the curtain of public ignorance.
VH: This bad idea is necessary.
###
Rod slouched in the armchair in Stephanie’s living room and read a fat book about paratroopers. Most of the others were with their parents tonight, but Connor and Priya were on the couch across from him. Priya had her feet propped up on Connor’s leg as she painted her toenails.
“Dude,” said Rod. “She literally has you under her feet.”
Priya rolled her eyes. Connor grinned. “You’re just jealous because you don’t get to experience the joys of lady-feet.”
That actually made Rod laugh (good job, Connor). “Oh, I’ve got all the lady-feet a guy could ask for. When the girls see me, they can’t help themselves. They just—”
“Kick you?” said Priya, smiling.
“Yeah. Kicks of passion.”
Priya laughed. Rod wasn’t sure he’d actually heard her laugh before, though she did get this face when she realized something was funny but still disapproved of it. She looked nice laughing. But then her face fell.
“What’s wrong, Ya-ya? You look ever-so-slightly concerned, like my father trying to add double digit numbers.”
“I’m just wondering where Stephanie is.”
“Oh, she’s off spying on the Blues.”
“What?”
“And now you’re going deaf like my dad, too. She’s-off-spy-ing-on-the-Blues.”
“Why would you do that without telling the rest of us?”
“This wasn’t even my idea. You should have known that—my ideas are more aggressive.”
“Spying isn’t aggressive?”
“No. It’s not. Spying is the opposite of aggressive—it’s cautious. It was Harry’s idea, actually, but Stephanie volunteered for the first night.”
“So when did you guys discuss this?”
Connor sighed. “Everyone knows but you and me, Priya. Because they knew you wouldn’t like it and they knew I’d tell you.”
Rod nodded. “Pretty much, yeah.”
Priya’s face went rigid, and her lips pressed together, and she was probably holding back tears.
Oh charming. She was upset at being defied.
“Even allies spy on each other, you know. England has little James Bonds wandering around Washington faking American accents and wiretapping the First Lady.”
Priya glowered. “It makes it look like we don’t trust them.”
“You trust them?”
“No. But if we act like we trust them maybe they’ll act like they trust us and that’s almost as good as trusting each other.”
“No it’s not.”
“Connor,” said Priya, turning to him with a look so obviously demanding it would have been over the top even if they were actually going out. “What do you think?”
“I think…” said Connor. “I think we could take the Blues if they tried anything.”
“What does that have to do with—”
“So we can afford not to spy on them, it won’t hurt us. And if they figure out what we’re doing it will make us look bad.”
Rod rolled his eyes. “It will make us look bad to our enemies. Somehow I think we’ll survive the shame.”
“We can afford to take the moral high ground,” said Connor. “That’s all I mean.”
Rod was about to say some amusing yet incisive things about moral high grounds when the doorbell rang. “If you’ll excuse me,” said Rod, hopping to his feet.
Danny was at the door. The rest of the Blues stood clumped behind him, with Stephanie standing awkwardly at the center of the clump. None of them said anything.
Rod should have gone instead of Stephanie. Yeah, she’d wanted to do it, but he could tell it was because she wanted to wear black and pretend to be in a spy movie. She didn’t think she’d actually get hurt. It should have been him.
“Yeah?” he said, leaning against the doorframe.
“We caught Stephanie spying on us,” said Danny.
“Uh-huh.”
“Rod, come out here and we’ll talk about this.”
“No thank you. I like it here, not out there surrounded by creeps.” Something moved behind him—Connor and Priya had come over to see what was happening.
Now that Rod had loudly refused to move, his moving became a Thing. If he managed to stay put in the doorway, the Reds won, if he walked out into the night, the Blues did. Danny clearly recognized this. “Come out,” he said, “and discuss, and then we’ll turn Stephanie over to you.” And just for emphasis, he held his hand out from his side and shot a bright flash of cracking blue lightning to the ground.
“You’re not going to get me out there by flashing your one and only trick.”
“Oh really?” said Lorraine. And she reached out and poked Stephanie in her side. Steph squeaked and jumped—shocked, but not badly, or she’d have fallen. Some of the Blues laughed.
Before Rod knew what he was doing he was out of the doorway with his arms thrown out to the sides. “How about you do that to me, Lorraine?” Moving in that creepy all-together way of theirs, the Blues closed around him, and one of them even got between him and the door.
“You guys did this,” said Danny. “You sent someone to look into our window. Did we do that to you?”
“No, Dan, you didn’t.”
“And at the summit, when we were trying to calm things down, did you attack us or did we attack you?”
“We attacked you, Dan.”
“Don’t spy on us again. We’ll know if you do. We do have more than one trick, Rod, even if you don’t know all we’re capable of. It’s how we caught Stephanie, and it’s how we’ll catch you if you try this again. We stay off each other’s territory, alright? If we don’t do that what’s the point of territory?”
“Don’t know, Dan.”
Danny nodded. “Stephanie, you can go.”
Steph ran past Rod into the house, where Priya intercepted her. The two of them went off somewhere to talk about Steph’s trauma or whatever. The Blues, as one, peeled away and walked back toward that big ugly van they’d picked up somewhere. Lorraine, turning and walking backwards, wiggled her fingers at Rod in a mocking goodbye. Sparks popped between her silver fingertips.
Connor came out and stood next to Rod.
“So,” said Rod, “you sided with your girl in the Great Debate, huh?”
“I meant everything I said. The moral high ground’s what lets Danny talk to us like that.”
“The only thing letting Danny talk to us however he wants is us. Anyway, you made a good tactical decision, siding with her. That’s gonna work out well for you.”
###
E-MAIL FROM ELIAS KAPLAN TO KSENYA CARPENTER (UNSENT):
I’m still afraid, that’s not gone yet, though it’s going.
I’m afraid of losing my parents like I lost music, that they’ll turn into just people like all the other people. That’s already started too. And I’m afraid of losing you.
When I remember meeting you, the memory is covered in lights.
I’m afraid that meeting you will become just something that happened.