Fluorescence: The Complete Tetralogy (13 page)

Kareena shook her head and looked away.

Chapter 18

S
unday afternoon.

Mom had gone shopping, leaving me alone in the house. I sat on my computer chair with my knees pulled up to my chest. Thinking. Regretting. Hating myself for being so nosy. Contemplating how I might find a way to spend time with Brian again.

I wanted to see Brian. I wanted to see Sam, too, but mom wouldn’t let her over for another three weeks. It was part of my punishment. Basically grounded from life for a month, grounded from Brian for “forever,” and not allowed to walk home from school until Mom deemed it okay. With such little time between classes to be with my friends, it was starting to wear me thin. And to think, I had another four months of it to endure before summer break. That’s when things would get really tough.

Life sucked.

My phone chimed—text message.

UNKNOWN: Hey! We need to talk.

ME: Who is this?

UNKNOWN: OMFG. Kareena.

Even her texts had attitude.

ME: Mom won’t let me out of the house.

UNKNOWN: Sneak out grl!!

ME: No way! :O Mom would freak!

I added her number to my contact list while waiting for a reply.

KAREENA: @ the cafe on the corner of Forth and Birch. Brian’s here.

ME: . . .

KAREENA: No, really. Can send a pic.

ME: I hate you.

KAREENA: U coming?

ME: Mom will KILL me.

KAREENA: Have it UR way. L8R

She made me so angry, I could spit. As if it wasn’t bad enough I couldn’t see Brian outside of class; now he and Kareena were hanging out. Sure, Mom would be gone for a little while longer but not long enough for me to sneak out and sneak back in without her knowing. The last thing I needed was her banning me from the world and… who knows… pulling me out of school or something crazy.

I snatched a pillow off my bed and jammed my face into it, screaming and kicking my feet until I ran out of breath.

That took a while.

I could
try
to leave, but if I didn’t get back in time, it’d be the end of it. Right there.

The End.

I groaned and tossed my pillow at the door. I walked over to look out my bedroom window, pulled up the blinds, and then pried the window open. Cool air gushed through and I shivered, slamming the window back down.

Forget that.

I wanted to text Brian something… anything. But she’d find out. I couldn’t let this be the end of us. I liked Brian way too much to let it end now. Things would never progress if my mom kept stifling us, though.

“Most high school romances don’t last,” she’d said to me the other night, hoping I’d give up my incessant brooding.

If that really was the case, then I wouldn’t let it be just a “romance.”

. . .

I shoved my notebook into my locker and
sighed, puffing out my cheeks. My four-week complete social banishment had finally ended and I could hang out with Sam again. That didn’t fix everything, though.

Someone’s arms circled around me, ensnaring me by the waist. I squealed.

“Hi, Alice,” chuckled Brian, embracing me and craning his neck to kiss the side of mine. I melted, closing my eyes as he nuzzled the back of my head.

He let go and I spun around to face him.

We’d had zero private time together since the
accident
, and I had somehow convinced myself that
not
kissing him would make our time apart easier to tolerate.

I was wrong. Every time I saw him it was all I could think about. All. Day. Long.

Teen separation anxiety at its max.

Brian got a mischievous look in his eyes. He raised an eyebrow at me and a grin curled across his lips. He reached past my head to pull my locker door open further and took a step closer. I backed up, bumping against the other lockers. He leaned in to steal a kiss, our faces partially hidden from the public.

I exhaled a sigh as he brushed my hair behind my ear.

“Why did that take me so long to try?” He chuckled.

“Not here,” I said, embarrassed, wriggling away from my locker door, hoping my shoulder wouldn’t flare. “You know better!”

He shrugged and rolled his eyes. “Okay. Then find somewhere else we can go and I will gladly kiss you there. I’m tired of this.” He exaggerated a frown and made sad, puppy-dog eyes. “I need you, Alice.”

“I don’t want to take any chances here, you know?”

“Yeah,” he said, stroking his fingers through my hair, giving me goose bumps. “Sucks you can hardly get out of the house anymore. I want to be with you. More.”

“I know, but that’s life for now. Until we can find a way to change things.”

“I think you should tell your mom the truth.”

“Are you crazy?” My eyes widened. I shut my locker and spun the combination lock. “Why?”

“You can trust her, right? You trust your mom, don’t you?”

“Well, yeah, but… what if she freaks out? This isn’t something that happens to normal teenagers.”

“If you trust her, then tell her. We could use her help.” He shrugged again. “I’m just saying, it’s an option. Maybe?” He took my book bag from me and shouldered it.

We walked together toward history class.

“Anything new with Kareena?” She kept giving me the silent treatment during lunch.

“Don’t know. I don’t talk to her much more than you do. But no, I don’t think so. Ask her yourself when she’s done with… whoever that is.” Brian gestured toward the lockers on the other side of the hall.

“Ew!” I gagged.

Some senior jock had Kareena plastered up against her locker, his hands in all the wrong places while they made out. This was a school…

Gross.

“Aw, now I’m jealous.” Brian smirked at me.

I stopped dead in my tracks and shot him a dirty look. “Excuse me!?”

“No. No. Not of
him
being with her. I meant of me not being able to do that with you.” He stared longingly at me. “Oh, Alice, if only you’d let me…”

I whimpered. I couldn’t even imagine Brian’s hands all over me like that… Or maybe I had already. My face felt flushed.

Br
ian beamed a toothy grin at me and then took
my hand. “But I respect you
so
much more than that,” he added. “Besides, I wouldn’t want to embarrass you in public. Especially not doing what he’s doing.”

I sighed in relief and we laughed it off together.

“What the hell?” Kareena shouted with a stomp of her heel against the tile floor.

Something was wrong.

The crowd of passing students had become frozen in time, their silent mid-sentence expressions captured in slow-motion. The jock she’d been swapping spit with was also freeze-framed, propped up against the lockers in front of her.

“Oh, no.” I closed my eyes and recoiled, knowing what came next.
Brian grabbed me, pulled me closer, and
shielded his eyes with his arm.

The floor disappeared. White hot light burned through my eyelids, stinging my retinas.

Weightless. Spinning. Falling.

Kareena screamed, wasting her breath. I was clutching onto Brian’s shirt, so I couldn’t cover my ears. I wanted to tell her to shut up—that it would be okay, that it would all be over soon.

But I couldn’t breathe.

Chapter 19

T
he sour smell of vomit made me retch.

Kareena fell to her knees and arched over, hands flattened on the once immaculate white floor. She coughed hard,
her face drained of color. I looked
away and dry heaved, trying to occupy my mind with thoughts of butterflies and kittens. Anything to keep my own stomach from erupting.

She wiped her face with the back of her arm and gagged again, keeping it down this time. A putrid stench wafted through the air, stinging my nostrils. I grimaced, holding my breath as I tiptoed over the mess.

“Don’t freak.” I touched her shoulder and then offered her a hand.

She staggered to her feet, putting
so much weight against me, I nearly toppled over. Brian grabbed onto my other arm. He tried hard to keep his cool, even as Kareena clenched her fingers onto his jacket sleeve and hung off him, staring into his hazel eyes like a miserable puppy.

You threw up. Get over it.
That’s what I had wanted to say out loud, but there were too many other eyes watching us now.

The room flooded with bright light a second time and I gasped. Kareena screeched
. I let go of Brian to cover my
ears and squeezed my eyes shut until she stopped.

“It’s okay.” He pressed his fingers against the small of my back. I eased open my eyes. Kareena had let go of him. The floor was immaculate. Not a trace of her mess.

Lightning-fast room service.

“We have brought you to the council once more for the purpose of discussion,” the one we thought was the translator said stoically. He stepped in front of several others there and their outlines blurred and faded into the white of the room, going out of focus. I squinted, trying to readjust my eyes, but it was no use. They were purposely camouflaging themselves to keep our focus on the one that mattered.

“Brian?” The Savior’s grey eyes focused on him.

Brian flinched.

“What?” He straightened up. I wrapped my fingers around his hand.

“You and… Alice…” The figure stopped to study me as my name caught on his tongue. “You do not spend adequate time together. This is of great concern to us.”

“We have parents, that’s why,” I butted in. “We can’t just run around doing whatever we want, you know?”

The translator tilted his head and stared, blinking at me as if
I
were the idiot.

“In an era of freedom and advanced rights, why does this prove to be an issue? Historically, humans have chosen mates at much younger ages. Do your parents not wish for you to become independent?”

“Sure they do,” Brian added. “But legally, we aren’t allowed to. Not until we’re older. It’s the law.”

The translator’s eyes narrowed. “The law? Excuses,” he said without inflection, and then directed his attention to Kareena who stood embracing herself, shaking. “You. You are not authorized to choose a mate.”

“What?” Her voice cracked. “What does that mean? Who the hell are you guys anyway?”

Brian shrugged. “I think it means you can’t go around hooking up with everyone,” he said out of the side of his mouth. “Just shut up and listen.”

“Hey!” Kareena pursed her lips and took a step closer, analyzing the Savior’s chalky-white skin. “Listen, you—who could totally use a tan—I can do
whatever
I want with
whoever
I want.” She squared her shoulders and jiggled her head like a diva, brushing her hands down her skirt. “I’m a free bitch, baby.”

The translator stared. Silent. Unmoved. Deathly still. His ashen eyes glazed over with apathy. Raising her voice to him was like arguing with a robot. An ultra-realistic robot with human features and the sallow skin of a fresh corpse.

Kareena backed away, whimpering beneath her breath and softening her posture.

“You cannot allow others to interfere or discover what you are.”
Though the inflections were subtle
, he meant
business. “
Unauthorized interaction with others will
jeopardize this. You
will
stop.”

Her jaw dropped. Telling Kareena to stop hanging out with boys was like telling a normal person to stop breathing.

She would have scoffed if the air hadn’t been so thin, but she was struggling to breathe already. Her chest was probably tightening, like ours. I could see it on her face. Each subsequent breath became heavier—harder to suck in.

The translator approached and looked down his small, sharply-curved nose at us. He stood well over a foot taller than Brian.

“You possess it now,” he said to Kareena.

“Possess what?” Her lips quivered.

Brian fake-coughed. “An STD,” he muttered.

I shot him a dirty look, but he stared at me with widened eyes like he was totally in the right. Maybe he was. But still.

“The bioluminescence implanted inside you lives now, started—activated—by Alice not too long ago.”
He lifted a flattened hand and drifted his palm over Kareena’s face, a few inches above her skin. The hot pink light flared up on the right side of her face. Thin jagged lines of color forked and spread from her cheek to her forehead, as if her veins had suddenly been illuminated from the inside. She gasped, likely seeing the pink tint in her eyes.

He moved and hovered his hand near my shoulder. Green sparkled through my sleeve. Then he stepped over to Brian who stiffened considerably, his left hand and forearm already beaming with hot azure light.

“Due to your differing genetic makeup, the fluorescent proteins have bonded with each of you differently.”

Brian rolled his shoulders back. “Why have you done this to us?” The question had been burning in my own mind for a while. “We deserve to know.”

“The answer to that is not a simple one,” the Savior said, lowering his hand back down to his side. “A virus has long plagued our race, taking us one by one until we are few more than those you have seen here. We are working to create a cure but it is taking longer than expected. The virus grows stronger every day we fail to annihilate it. Humans are closely compatible with fluorescence in terms of genetic makeup. We are using you to preserve a portion of our own DNA while we search for a cure.” His gaze went back to Kareena. “However, to keep the strain pure, you must abide by our requests to segregate yourselves from those who are not part of the preservation process. We cannot risk the proteins being tainted.”

“B-but,” stammered Brian, pointing at me and then himself. “Alice and I are okay together, right?”

The translator tipped his head, something he must have picked up from watching us because he’d never used a gesture before. He had been observing us intently today.