11

Jared put his hand over my mouth, stifling what I was about to say.

His lips met my ear. “They are already on their way.”

I shivered, all the way through my body.

He whisper-answered a question I had not asked: “Silent alarm.”

I had guessed that it was a silent alarm, of course, and felt a tickle of resentment. He must think I’m really inept, I told myself, to go explaining something like that.

But the feeling in my belly was no longer anything like pleasure. The tiniest bit of pee leaked from me, and I felt it blot into my underwear. I groped for him, and tried to hang onto him, drag him away.

He cringed just far enough to avoid me.

I sensed his laughter. His voice was a whisper, but it was a statement that canceled every thought in my mind. “I’ll be back in ten seconds.”

Come away with me, my soul called, as though he were already someone who could be reached only by prayer. Please, Jared.

He was gone.

I had always known he was like no one else. But now I understood what a rare creature he was. Jared could feel no doubt, and no fear. He was like no other human being.

And he had left, to escape from the ordinary company of a person like me. I felt what Jared must see in me: how common I was, how unsure of myself.

I should have held him, wrestled him, made a noise to force Jared out of the house. Even now I could call out, and wake up the sleeping strangers.

There was a whisper of footfall on the stairs, a sound I sensed more than heard. There was, more than that, a silence that spilled upward, into the second floor, a nonsound that I knew was Jared’s presence.

I held my breath for a moment, imagining—knowing—that he must be in the bedroom now, must be creeping toward the dresser with its dimly lit personal treasures.

I huddled, my heart beating so hard, each beat rocked my body, my throat so constricted I nearly could not breathe.

It ended quickly.

Brakes moaned outside, and a car door made a metallic cough as it was flung open. There were two cars, and steps on the pavement—crisp, hard noises that were at the very edge of my hearing.

Yet a third car sighed into place somewhere in the street, beyond and far away and yet right there, right inside me, each quick footfall, each creak of clothes or leather, sounds not heard so much as felt, like the mutterings of my own body, the clicks and whispers of my insides.

The fanged voice in me said: let’s see you turn invisible now.

Tires crackled on the asphalt, and a car jockeyed to a new place in the night, perhaps to block the street, and as it worked into the position a light flashed red, splashes of vermilion blinking off and on.

The scarlet warning flashes lasted for only a few heartbeats, and then someone, an unseen hand, snapped it off.

But the blunder had been made.

Wooden floors made the softest click. Jared was on the stairs. I straightened, lips parted, screaming in my mind: run!

But Jared was there in the hall, his silhouette blocking sight of the little red star for an instant. The sight of him spun me, freed me to escape because I knew he was right there, behind me as I ran. I skittered briefly on the waxed floor, plunged into the laundry room, and snaked my way through the window.

I did not fall. I clung, gasping, to the sill.

A flashlight worked the dark. The beam swung toward me and missed. It pooled on the brilliant blades of grass, then swung from tight circle to oblong. It pulled back toward me where I squirmed, dangling from the window.

I fell.

What you have to do, Jared had said, is roll, lowering your shoulder, tumbling into the fall. That way you can’t get hurt. I have injured myself before. I lost time as a sophomore, having to study at home because I stepped funny on second base.

My mouth filled with warm water. I was all over the grass, one arm far away, by the fence, the other hand squashing an ice plant. My skull was in fragments, all wet and leaking, the crushed bits of it rasping as I jerked my head.

Jerked, and then woke.

I plunged upward, onto my feet, and staggered. I tasted blood, and ran a ragged, drunken course to the back fence, barely aware of what my legs and arms were doing as they fought the back fence, punched it, kicked it, found some purchase in a knothole, a splintery grip at the top edge.

I windmilled over the top of the fence, and half stumbled to the gritty pavement. I lunged onward through the dark, and then I saw it.

It was the distinctive shape of a police car, that brute-vehicle menace that means: power.

I stopped myself, bent double, and knelt. The ground swung back and forth around me. Nausea flashed on and off.

Jared was nowhere.

I had left him behind.

I put my hands to my hair, feeling above my ear for the stuff that had leaked from inside my head. It was wet and gluey. My fingers moved gingerly, and I knew that a brain infection was what I deserved for abandoning my friend.

Back. I have to go back.

I stood up slowly. My hand felt for support, and found a cinderblock wall. I was going to throw up, and then, just as surely, I wasn’t.

I knew where I had to go.

I sprinted back toward the fence, one of my knees so weak I ran with a crazy limp. But I was fast.

Until I realized that my body had grown heavy. I was slow and fighting something. I was struggling to overcome a strange, ungainly weight. I was struggling against a shadow that clung.

It was a human being.

My adversary’s grip was on my shoulder, and pulling me back by one arm.

I went down.

Caught.