“Whoa, there. You okay?”
The brick wall speaks?
I took a slight step back and looked up to see that I’d smacked right into the chest of a guy wearing a flannel shirt. He looked down at me with wide green eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and took another step back. “I didn’t see you there.”
But really, I didn’t know how I hadn’t noticed this guy before. I mean, if I thought I stood out here, how had I not noticed someone like him in a place like this? While the current fashion statement in the club involved ink and an abundance of black, this guy wore a green flannel shirt, light blue jeans, and a large bronze antiquey-looking belt buckle that resembled a Texas marshal’s star. He had wavy hair the color of milk chocolate that stuck out from under the edges of his blue baseball cap, and his tan face was completely free of weird markings or bad facial hair, unlike most of the guys here. I looked down, expecting him to be wearing cowboy boots, but instead he had on a pair of gray Nike running shoes—otherwise, he would have looked like he’d sauntered right in here off a ranch or farm or something.
He gave me a friendly smile—making his tanned, chiseled cheeks dimple—and he wrapped his warm fingers around my elbow. “A pretty girl like you should be more careful in a place like this,” he said, and pulled me farther away from the fight that brewed behind me.
“Yeah. Um. I know. Sorry.”
His large, callused hand was still on my elbow. His words—pretty girl like you—finally sank into my brain. I bit my lip as heat rushed into my cheeks. I wanted to excuse myself and run off to hide in the bathroom or something.
The guy’s smile widened, and it struck me that there was something about him—perhaps the shape of his mouth, or the tone of his voice—that seemed inexplicably, yet comfortingly, familiar. Like the first wafting scent of warm caramel-apple pie on Thanksgiving Day after a full year of not having tasted it. I realized then that for the same reason this guy stood out like a sore thumb in this place, he was probably the only person here I’d actually feel safe asking about Jude. “Hey, can I ask you something?”
He let go of my elbow. His green eyes flicked in the direction of the shouting gamers only a few yards away and then rested back on my face.
“Sure thing, love.”
“Have you … Ahh!” I clasped my hands over my ears as a burst of pain exploded in my eardrums and my hearing magnified ten times. The vibration of the blaring music was excruciating, but mixed with the chorus of shouting players and the sound effects from several different video games going on all at once, it was downright nauseating. “Never mind.” I winced and backed away.
“Are you okay?” The sound of his voice so close made my eardrums throb even more.
I waved him off and retreated to an empty corner. I took in ten deep breaths and concentrated on filtering the barrage of sounds like Daniel had tried to teach me. After a long moment, I was finally able to separate the music blasting from the stereo system from the beeping and wails of the video games, and then the lower noises of human conversation. People discussing their strategy for taking on the next level of a game, a guy trying to convince a girl named Veronica to go home with him, the guys at the gaming station I’d been near still shouting at one another, someone else asking where he could “score some smack.”
And then suddenly the shrill sound of a female voice shouting: “Stop it! Leave me alone!”
I whirled toward the voice, knowing instantly it wasn’t just a sound effect from one of the games. I’d been distracted and taken my eye off April, and now she wasn’t sitting at the Wi-Fi bar anymore. She was standing, trying to push away a guy in a leather jacket who had her by the wrist.
Another guy stood behind her, his fingers in her hair. April tried to turn around to push that guy away, but the one in the leather jacket pulled her in tight against him. She shrieked. The noise sliced into my ears.
My legs ached with power, and I bolted across the room in a matter of seconds.
“Let’s dance,” the guy said to April, crushing her against him.
She shrieked again. The sound almost split my eardrums this time. Which was good, actually, since it meant my powers were still working—at least for the moment.
I strode up to the guys and said in my best faux I’m-not-scared-at-all voice, “Let her go.”
The two guys looked at me and laughed. The one who had his fingers in April’s hair let go of her and smiled at me. He was a young guy, maybe nineteen, but one of his teeth was missing, and the others were yellow—probably from years of smoking, gauging by the smell of him. But there was another, underlying scent in the air that kept my arm hairs standing on end. Something I couldn’t quite place. My muscles twitched as the guy approached me.
“Looks like our little bird brought a friend. How many dances do you think we can get out of them?”
“At least three,” said the one holding April.
“Gross!” April kicked him in the shin, but he just laughed.
These guys were ticking me off—more so even than Pete and his nasty friends—and I was happy that my powers were pooling in my muscles, searing under my skin. I was in no mood for playing the part of the damsel in distress.
“I like this one’s hair even better,” the yellow-teethed one said, and he reached his large, dirty hand toward one of my dark curls.
I felt a tiny pop of power as I swung my arm up and smacked his hand away before he could touch me. The guy looked stunned for a second. He shook his hand like I’d actually hurt him. Then he smiled even bigger. “This one’s got some real fight in her. I like that.”
He reached for me again, but before I knew what I was doing, my fists were up in the boxing stance Daniel had taught me. I knocked the guy’s hand away again and bounced back on my heels. When he came at me for a third time, my muscles flared with heat. I swung my leg and my high-
heeled foot landed a perfect roundhouse kick in the guy’s stomach. I felt the sheer power in the movement, but I was still surprised when he went flying back. He collided with his friend. The leather-jacketed dude let go of April, and the two guys landed in a heap in front of the docking station.
I grabbed April’s arm. We were about to turn and run when I felt an iron-hard hand grip my ankle. The hand tugged on my leg. My pointy heel slipped out from under me. I let go of April and toppled backward, slamming back-first onto the concrete floor.
The noise and the motion of the lights suddenly came to a standstill, like time had stopped. All I could feel were a crushing pain around my ankle and April’s grasp as she tried to pull me up. My powers were gone. I’d felt them dissipate the second I hit the ground. I shook my head, and my vision and hearing improved a bit.
The pain eased on my ankle, but then it moved up to my knee. Maybe it was because my powers were suddenly gone, but the crushing force of his grip felt practically superhuman. The guy kept me pinned by the leg as he leaned over me—his yellow teeth and rotten breath only inches from my face. He raised his fist. “Why you little bi—”
“STOP!” someone shouted. But it wasn’t a scream. It sounded like a command.
The yellow-teethed guy let go of my leg almost instantly and backed away.
“Well, if it isn’t the Good Samaritan,” his friend said. “What do you want?”
“These girls are with me,” the commanding voice said, “so get the hell out of my sight, now!”
Yellowed-teethed guy scrambled a good ten feet away, and his friend mumbled something like, “Whatever. Have fun with ’em,” and disappeared into the crowd of gawkers that had formed around our little altercation.
I was still confused, shocked really, when I realized someone else leaned over me now, holding his hand out to pull me up. I could barely see him at first with all the flashing lights and fake fog, but when I finally focused on his face, I gasped.
I didn’t know who I’d expected to have come to my rescue—maybe Daniel had secretly followed me here, or perhaps even Jude had come out of hiding when he saw his sister and girlfriend in distress—but I certainly hadn’t expected the boy in the flannel shirt to be the one who’d saved me.
OUTSIDE THE CLUB
The next thing I knew, I was being pulled through the throng in the club toward the exit, April following close behind. People practically jumped out of the flannel-shirt guy’s way in order to let us through. It wasn’t until we were up the stairs and outside in the slightly fresher air—and I realized that the guy was holding me by my hand—that I got my bearings enough to react.
“Where are you taking us?” I tugged my hand from his grasp, expecting him to keep it imprisoned in his, but he let go without hesitation.
“To your car,” he said. “I assume you drove a car here. You don’t seem like the girls who live nearby, and I’m guessing you’re not the public-transit sort.”
I hugged my arms around my bare stomach. I’m sure that only reinforced his assumption that we didn’t belong here.
“We’re the Corolla at the end of the street.” April pointed in the direction of my car, parked near the only working meter we could find. “We drove all the way from Rose Crest.” April sounded all breathless, and I couldn’t help noticing her smiling at the guy in an all-too-friendly way.
“April,” I snapped. I gave her a look that was supposed to say, We don’t know this guy from Adam, so don’t tell him where we live!
“What?” she whispered, not quietly. “The dude just saved our lives … and he’s cute.”
For some reason, heat flushed into my cheeks. I couldn’t deny the guy was attractive—in a down-home boy-from-the-farm sort of way, with his milk-chocolate-brown wavy hair, dimples, green eyes, and massive forearms that made it look like he’d spent hours baling hay. Even his flannel shirt and faded jeans screamed Clark Kent—without the superpowers, that is.