“Extract. Remove. Take by force,” Marcus said like some cold-hearted thesaurus as he scanned the trees again.
I stared down at my ghost hand. “You mean take my hand?”
“Yes,” he turned back to me, his face grim.
conscious
CLUELESS
“How do you know all this?” I asked, staring at Marcus. “How do you know that guy followed me from Emma’s, or who he is, or what that meter thing does?” I ploughed on, my voice growing shriller and shriller as I went.
“Shhhh!” he said, raising his hand in my face and cocking his head as if he heard something.
I hated to be shushed. There was nothing I hated more than being shushed, and I was about to tell him that when I heard it too. Men’s voices. Distant, but drifting down to us from the upper cemetery.
“They’re coming back,” Marcus whispered. “We need somewhere to hide.”
“I know a place.” I scrambled on the ground for my backpack, finding it by feel, by the gentle hum of the blades. “But won’t they just track us with the new minus meter?”
“Maybe,” Marcus said. “Would you rather stay here and find out?”
“No.”
He stood up and flourished his hand in a gentlemanly “after you” gesture.
I raised my eyebrows at him and that old smirk from Calculus flitted across his lips.
“This way,” I said, slinging my backpack on and leading us deeper into Sunset Hill Cemetery.
It was my fault, what happened next. I thought I knew the cemetery so well. Every rock, every scraggly tree and grave marker. Nothing ever really changes in a cemetery. Well, one thing changes, but only when someone dies, and that doesn’t happen all that often in Greenfield.
So, I didn’t see the freshly dug grave until I was literally teetering over it, dirt cascading out from under my feet.
I pumped my arms like reverse propellers and threw myself backwards.
Marcus was following very closely behind me.
I collided with him, the backpack nailing him in the chest, and I knew what was going to happen, even as I hurled myself to the side, spinning away from him and falling to the ground.
He screamed—a really freaky scream—a someone-being-brutally-tortured-scream.
When I looked up he was bending over me, clutching his chest and gasping for air, his eyes staring wildly down at me through his bangs. I was just glad to see he wasn’t unconscious. Or dead again. Though it certainly would have been a convenient location for it.
“Oh God. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” I said, struggling to my feet and reaching out to touch his shoulder.
He flinched away, and I couldn’t really blame him.
“What—the hell—is in there?” he asked, wheezing between each phrase. Then, “Don’t ever touch me with that bag again,” his eyes gleaming dangerously.
Voices. The CAMFers’ voices. Louder and closer now.
“Fuck!” Marcus said. “They definitely heard that.” He straightened up even though it obviously pained him. “We have to get moving.”
“This way,” I gestured, carefully skirting the grave.
I led us to a small grouping of maintenance sheds. The biggest one had two padlocked barn-style doors to accommodate the riding lawnmowers. It also had a smaller locked back door we could use to make our escape if we were discovered. Neither of the locks would be a problem for my ghost hand.
While I was picking them, I heard the voices again, not too far behind us. Whether by special device or old-fashioned means, we were definitely being tracked.
Once inside the shed, we both crouched near the door. I reached my ghost hand through and fiddled with the chain and padlock until it was neatly locked up again on the outside.
See, it’s still locked. No one in here. Go away and leave us alone
.
“What’s that noise?” Marcus whispered in my ear, close enough that I felt his breath on my cheek.
“The sound of you panting like a Labrador?” I whispered back.
“No, that buzz.”
“It’s—from my backpack. They won’t hear it.”
“God, what do you have in there?”
“Shhh,” I said. I really didn’t want to answer that question.
Maybe he didn’t like to be shushed either, because I could feel him move away from me. I listened at the door, peeking through the crack, but I couldn’t see anything useful. I glanced back, trying to find Marcus in the dark, and I could just make out the vague outline of a riding lawnmower with his shadowy frame perched on the seat. I crawled quietly across the cold cement floor, reached out, and touched his leg. He didn’t flinch away this time.
“Quiet,” he whispered. “They’re close.”
And he was right. If the blades hadn’t been telling me, the shuffle of feet and the rumble of male voices from outside the shed would have.
“We’ve lost the trail,” one of the voices said.
It was so close and loud I pressed against the lawnmower and Marcus’s leg, willing myself imperceivable.
“And both these meters are on the fritz,” the same voice said in frustration. No accent, so it wasn’t the Dark Man.
“I told you.” That was definitely him though. “Something is jamming the signal.”
“I thought these things couldn’t be jammed.”
“So did I,” said the Dark Man, not angry, but cold, hard, emotionless. “And I thought this girl knew nothing about us, but it seems we were wrong on both counts.”
“She doesn’t know anything. No one in this backwater town has any idea what’s going on in the real world.”
“And yet,” the Dark Man countered, “our monitors recorded a major PSS flare in this town just this afternoon. And now the only defective living here has evaded us, and apparently she has something that can jam technology you claim she had no knowledge of.”
I did not like that voice. It was not a nice voice. And had he just called me defective?
“She’s not jamming them,” the other voice argued. “They’re just broken. I’m telling you, I’ve been watching this girl for years, and she’s as clueless as they come.”
Watching me for years? Did I know that voice? Someone in Greenfield had been watching me for years. What the hell for?
Marcus must have sensed me tensing up because he put a hand on my head and patted me like I was a spastic dog.
The voices were moving away. “She’s not in here. It’s locked tight. All these buildings are locked.” That was the spy’s voice. So I was clueless, was I? At least I had enough sense to know someone with a PSS hand could pick a lock and close it up again from the inside.
“It doesn’t matter,” said the Dark Man’s voice, receding. “There are other ways of getting—”
Of getting what? My hand? What perfect timing for them to move out of ear-shot. I felt myself begin to shake, but I didn’t know if it was from fear, or anger, or what.
“The buzzing stopped,” Marcus whispered.
“I know,” I said. “It’s some kind of reaction to those devices. I think it’s what’s jamming them.”
“Wait, you mean the thing you pulled out of that girl in Math class zaps the hell out of people
and
jams minus meters?”
“How did you—Did you see me pull it out?” I demanded.
“No,” he mumbled. “I heard you say it, here in the cemetery.”
“You were listening in on my private conversation with my dead father?”
“I was trying to warn you that a CAMFer was stalking you.”
“Right,” I snapped. “By falling on me and making my backpack torture you. I almost forgot.”
“Oh, give me a break! I just saved you out there.”
“You saved me? You have got to be kidding me. You spent most of the time playing dead. If anyone saved anyone, I’m pretty sure I saved you.”
“Saving someone you’ve just killed hardly counts.”
“Hey! I had no idea it would do that.”
“Exactly! You have no idea about anything. You have no idea what your hand can do, or what it pulled into the world. You’re walking around with something in your backpack that can torture people on contact. Something those CAMFers would kill to get their hands on. You need to come with me,” Marcus insisted, but he didn’t grab me this time, and I knew why. He was afraid of getting zapped again. “I can help you keep that thing from falling into the wrong hands,” he said, glancing at my backpack warily.
“Come with you? Come with you where? You’re in high school, just like me. How in the hell are you going to keep me safe from militant CAMFers?”
“I just can,” he said, stepping off the lawnmower and moving past me toward the door. “Trust me. There’s a place in the woods—”
“No,” I said. “I can’t go with you. Don’t you get it? My mom expected me home like an hour ago. She’s going to be seriously pissed, especially after I tell her some guys were following me in the cemetery.”
Marcus’s silhouette stopped in its tracks halfway to the door and turned toward me. “That is a really bad idea,” he said.
“Why is that a bad idea?”
“Because,” he sputtered, “she’ll probably call the cops. Someone in this town has been watching you for years. Might just be one of your friendly neighborhood officers.”
“It could be anyone,” I argued, but I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. Someone in Greenfield, someone I knew, someone I had known and trusted for years, had been spying on me.
“The point is you don’t know who you can trust,” Marcus was saying.
“No,” I said, getting up and moving toward him, “the point is I need answers, and you have them, and you’re using them to try and get me to disappear into the woods with you. How am I supposed to trust that?”
“I can’t tell you what I know unless you come with me,” he said in frustration.
“Why, because you don’t trust me?”
“No,” he shot back. “Because as long as you’re within their reach, they won’t give up. And if they take you, they’re going to find out whatever you know, and I can’t risk that.”
“I don’t know anything! I’m clueless remember?” I said, struggling to keep my voice down. “And take me?” I blinked at him. “I thought they wanted to take my PSS, not me. Where would they take me?”
He just stared at me, his arms crossed.
“At least tell me how you fixed my hand in Calc today.”
“Come with me, and I will,” But he couldn’t even look at me as he said it. He knew it was a cheap shot.
“Oh. Wow. Thanks for nothing,” I said, pushing past him. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him step back, moving well clear of any contact with my backpack. At the shed door, I slipped my ghost hand through and popped the lock.
“Olivia,” he said, half-plea, half-warning.
“What?” I said, looking back at him as I pushed the shed door open a crack.
“That thing in your bag. If it can block their minus meters, keep it close to you. And don’t let them get their hands on it.”
“I get it. I’ll be careful,” I said, before I turned and slipped out, heading toward the south gate of the cemetery and home, leaving Marcus alone in the dark, which seemed appropriate, since that was exactly how he’d left me.
MY MOTHER
On the way home, I kept looking over my shoulder, but if Marcus or the CAMFers were following me, I didn’t see them, and the blades had fallen completely silent, which seemed like a good sign. At the cemetery’s south gate, I made quick work of the lock, then jogged up North Elm Street and turned onto Durley. My house was the two-story, second on the left. The lights were on, and my mom’s sky blue VW bug was in the drive. Now, all I had to do was face the onslaught of her anger and get to my room where I could hide the blades until I figured out what to do with them.
I walked up the path to my front door and turned the knob. It wasn’t locked. No one locked their doors in Greenfield unless they were going out of town. Even then, sometimes they left them unlocked so their neighbors could feed the cat and water the plants. I opened the door and walked into the entryway.
The overhead light was off, but a sconce on the wall illuminated one of my favorite paintings by my dad. He had painted it when I was four, around the time my parents had informed me that I was never going to have a little brother or a little sister to play with. It was an oil-on-canvas of a pale, glowing girl on a deeply black-blue background. The girl was ethereal and ghostly, except for her right hand, which was the most realistic, fleshy hand I had ever seen. It looked like you could reach out and take that hand in yours. Everyone who saw the painting said that. My father had titled it
The Other Olivia
, and I had fought long and hard to keep that painting in the entryway after my father had died. My mother had packed up all his other work and stored it in his old garden studio out back.
I smiled at
The Other Olivia
and pulled the front door closed, making sure to lock it behind me.
“No, she isn’t home yet,” my mother’s voice was saying to someone on the phone, and then, “Olivia, is that you?”
“Hey,” I rounded the corner into the room’s arched doorway, the brighter lights blinding me for a second.
“I have to go,” my mother murmured into the receiver and hung up without even saying goodbye.
“Who was that?” I asked.
“I’ve been waiting for you for over an hour,” she said, staring at the phone, her voice tight and throaty. “I can’t believe you’d disrespect me like this.” She looked up and her mouth dropped open in surprise. “What on earth!” She jumped up from the brown leather couch. “Olivia, you’re bleeding.” She didn’t sound concerned as much as she sounded annoyed, but I was pretty used to that. My mother wasn’t great at personal empathy. She was paid to be professionally empathetic but, apparently, she used it all up on her clients.
“I had a little accident on the way home,” I said. “It’s just a few scratches.” I’d realized that Marcus was at least right about one thing; telling my mother that CAMFers had been chasing me was not a good idea.
“Little accident? You’re bleeding and you’re filthy,” she said, taking my left hand and pulling me further into the light.
I gasped and jerked my hand away.
“What—?” she grabbed my wrist and turned my hand palm up. It was bright red, and oozing blood and dirt. “How did you do all this? It’s not that difficult to walk home from Emma’s.”
“I took the cemetery shortcut,” I said, “and I tripped on a tombstone in the dark. I tried to catch myself with this hand, but I ended up landing face-first in a bush.” I wasn’t a great liar, but I could usually pull one off when I had to.