Peter laughed. “My face even hurts.”
Both of us moaned as we swung ourselves over and out of the dumpster, and in seconds, a small red Toyota Prius squealed to a stop at the end of the alleyway.
“Where are we going?” I asked as we jogged toward the car.
“Well, you have two choices. You can stick with me or you can go home.”
“Faith!” I heard a voice call through a gust of wind.
“Did you hear that?” I asked Peter.
“Hear what?” he asked as he slid into the front seat.
I shook my head and got into the back. I was so desperate to hear my own name again that I could even hear it in the wind.
A white girl a little older than me with her black hair chopped into a pixie cut raised a perfectly manicured and pierced eyebrow at me from the rearview mirror. “Who’s this?”
“I’m Faith,” I told her. “Thanks for the ride.”
“Kris,” she said, and turned to Peter. “You want to tell me what the hell is going on?”
As Kris drove us out of town, Peter told both of us everything. The Harbinger Foundation wasn’t as benevolent as they’d made themselves out to be. Toyo Harada was building an army of psiots and wanted Peter to activate them at his command. This left Peter with no choice, since he was the only psiot with his particular skill set.
He turned back to me. “Activation is like those old witch tests from back in the day, when they’d throw suspected witches in a lake with boulders weighing them down. Escape and you’re a witch. Sink and congrats! At least you were human. Activation is a fifty-fifty chance of survival at best. But because of whatever messed-up stuff I have going on in my head, I can attempt activation without harming the subject, so my options were stick around and watch Harada’s lackeys attempt activation on innocent people and possibly kill them or help Harada build his army of psiots, which I’m pretty sure he doesn’t plan on using for good.”
“That’s, like, straight out of a comic book,” I said. “Do you have, like, a secret identity or something?”
Kris laughed. “I like her.”
“So I don’t know what’s next, but I know it includes taking down Harada,” Peter said.
“What about the other kids I was brought in with?” I asked, remembering that girl on the bus with freckles peppering the bridge of her nose.
He shrugged. “A few were successfully activated, but some are probably dead.”
The thought made me sick with guilt.
“Listen,” Peter said. “I’m haunted by plenty of things. Trust me. Don’t let this destroy you.”
In the rearview mirror, Kris gave me an encouraging smile. “You’re alive. You saved Peter. That counts for a whole hell of a lot.”
Their words helped, but I still thought about not only the others who had died, but the ones who had been activated and would be Harada’s pawns. They were trapped, and I hadn’t even tried to go back and free them.
“Peter,” I said, “why did you even bring me here to begin with if you were just going to ditch this place anyway?”
He shook his head. “I guess I still had faith.” He chuckled. “I thought maybe Harada wasn’t all bad and that I don’t know . . . but I was wrong. That’s for sure.”
The three of us sat there in silence for a moment, allowing the weight of that to sink in.
“So, Faith,” Peter said, interrupting our guilt fest. “We can take you home or you can stick with us if home isn’t a good option . . . or if home doesn’t even exist.”
The way he said it sounded like he spoke from experience and that home wasn’t a concept Peter had much practice with. I was lucky, though. I had a home. I had friends. I had Grandma Lou. But this could be an adventure. My greatest adventure. I could kick ass and maybe even save the day. It all came back to Grandma Lou, though. We only had each other. If I was going to leave, it couldn’t be without a goodbye. “Home,” I finally said.
Peter studied me for a moment before nodding.
I liked Peter and Kris. I liked how familiar they were with each other and all the ways they reminded me of Ches and Matt . . . if Ches and Matt also had raging crushes on each other. The three of us took turns driving, and Kris even ran into a truck stop and bought me some sweatpants and a T-shirt.
It was early morning when Kris crossed the town line for Glenwood, the splintered welcome sign greeting us. “Home sweet home,” she chirped.
“You sure you can’t stay with us?” Peter asked as we stood in front of my house. Grandma Lou would be awake at any moment. Miss Ella was probably already snooping from her bedroom window.
“This was a mistake,” I told him. “These last few weeks were a huge mistake.” But the truth was that part of me wanted to stick around with Peter and Kris. After Ches and Matt ditched me to go to Georgia for the summer, it was hard to feel like I even had anything to go back to.
“Didn’t seem like a mistake when you saved my life.”
I laughed. “Someone would have caught you.”
He shrugged. “I’d rather you stick around so I don’t have to take my chances.”
“Peter,” I said. “Thank you for saving me. In the lab. And then freeing me. I would’ve . . . who knows what would’ve happened to me?”
“Guess that makes us even then,” he said.
“Guess so.”
“Besides, you need to graduate high school. Do all that normal teenage bullshit I missed out on.”
Kris rolled her eyes. “Psiot or not, normal teenage shit never stood a chance against you, Peter.”
That morning when Grandma Lou woke up to find me back home, she let out a delighted squeal and immediately made plans for some kind of Spam-based dinner that night. She couldn’t believe I was home a few days early and that the camp bus had dropped me off at my house.
“Now, that’s what I call service,” she said.
She berated me a bit for never responding to her calls or postcards—none of which I ever received. I spent the next few days breathless over the fact that I’d come home so simply, reinserting myself into normal life like nothing had changed. Like I hadn’t been part of some dangerous experiment I’d only barely survived and as if I hadn’t woken up with a superhuman ability to soar through the sky.
Now, with the memories of a summer I wish I could forget spread out in front of me, I tap Peter’s number into my phone. For a quick moment, I wonder if this was the kind of emergency he meant, but truthfully, I don’t have time to second-guess myself. I can only act.
The line rings over and over again so many times that I almost just hang up, but then Peter’s voice says, “If you’ve got this number, you know who this is. If you don’t know who this is, lose this number. If you’re still on the line, leave a message after the beep.”
“Peter. It’s Faith. I’ve gotten myself into—something’s going on in Glenwood. I need you to call me back.” And because I don’t want there to be any mistake, I add, “This is an emergency.”
I try calling again but get the voice mail again. With little else to do, I put everything back under my mattress, and then I lie on my bed and call Peter once more. This problem is much bigger than me.