He looked up as if considering this and then furrowed his brow. “Ew, there’s gum under here.”
“Come on, I’m going to help you find your brother, okay?” This place was huge, and I could imagine his brother frantically looking for him in the mob scene. Plus, I obviously wasn’t getting any reading done. I slid out from under the table and tucked my books under one arm.
“What does he look like?”
“Who?”
“Darth Vader.”
“Huh?”
“Your brother, of course.”
“Oh, uh . . .” He screwed up his face. “He has brown hair and big muscles.”
I laughed. “Okay, that might help.” We walked the entire perimeter of the upstairs area and didn’t find his brother anywhere, so I led him toward the stairs.
“There he is!” The little boy pointed over the railing.
I followed his gaze, prepared to see the brown-haired, big-muscled guy, and felt my mouth open a little. “Trevor.” My heart gave a flip that surprised me.
It shouldn’t have surprised me. Trevor was even cuter in person than in his pictures in Stephanie’s room and a lot cuter than I remembered him being at the football game. Not the obvious cute. In fact, taken individually, his features were a little off: his lashes too long, his nose slightly crooked, his cheekbones too high. And yet as a whole, they made him uniquely attractive.
“Trevor!” the little boy yelled.
Trevor looked up, pointed at him, and then pointed at the ground beside him. As in, Get your butt down here.
“Looks like you’re in trouble,” I said.
“He pretends like he’s mad, but he never really is.”
I laughed.
“I better go.” He rounded the railing and took off down the stairs at a run. Halfway down, he turned and waved good-bye to me. I saw his misstep, the way his heel nicked the edge of the stair, causing him to lose his balance. He was going to fall the rest of the way down the wooden staircase. My breath caught, but then the world slowed.
The boy flew in the air, slowly careening backward, ready to land on his spine. I let go of my books, and as they swam toward the floor, I rushed forward and positioned myself below him. Then I directed him toward my lap, wrapping both arms around his waist and bracing my feet against the stair below me. It was a good thing I did, because the minute I touched him, he plopped into my lap. His momentum jerked me forward a little, but I was able to maintain my grip on the stair with my shoes.
I sat there for several deep breaths, not letting go, while the world around us took its time returning to normal speed. Then I panicked. I’d just used my ability in a store full of Norms. It was over, wasn’t it? I was in huge trouble. But when I looked around, nobody was even paying attention. Nobody was looking at us. Well, except Trevor.
He took the stairs two at a time and, when he arrived in front of us, squatted down. “Are you okay, Brody?” he asked, smoothing the boy’s hair out of his face.
“I almost fell.”
“Yes, you did. You scared me.”
I let go of Brody’s waist and he slid off me sideways, leaving Trevor and me face-to-face without a barrier. He met my eyes, his chest brushing lightly against my knees. “Are you okay?”
My heart beat out of control from where it seemed to have taken up residence in my throat. I stared at him in shock. This was my vision in the hospital. The wooden staircase, Trevor and his question. Why? Could I see the future without Searching now? Why had my brain picked this moment? I leaned back on my elbows as a wave of pain struck behind my eyes, causing Trevor’s image to blur. I tried not to cringe. “I’m fine. Just need to catch my breath.”
He looked up the stairs and then back to me. “You came out of nowhere.”
“No, I was on my way down too. You probably didn’t see me. I’m just glad he’s okay.”
He stayed kneeling in front of me, but reached a few feet to my right and picked up my purse. I had no idea how it ended up there. I had probably let go of it halfway down the stairs. I wasn’t sure if it was his hair or his deodorant that I got a whiff of as he stretched to reach it, but it smelled amazing.
“Thanks,” I said, breathless, when he handed me my purse.
He nodded and stood, then held out his hand. I took it, letting him help me to my feet.
He ruffled Brody’s hair. “You sure you’re okay, kid?”
He scrunched his face up, and I held my breath. Once I had pulled him onto my lap, had he been able to see the world in slow motion around us like I had?
“Your books,” Brody said. “Where’d they go?” He looked down the stairs, like he would find them in a heap at the bottom. I knew they were at the top, confirming that I hadn’t been on my way down at all and had been way too far away from Brody to catch him like I had.
“I put them down up there, when we saw Trevor, remember?” I pointed.
“No, you didn’t.”
“I’ll get them for you,” Trevor said.
“That’s okay,” I objected, but he was already walking up and up and was probably realizing just how far I had come in less than a second. When he finally reached my books, I noticed they were scattered, as though dropped in a hurry. He squatted down and picked them up one at a time and then shifted his gaze between them and Brody and me for a few beats before coming down again.
“Thank you,” I said, taking them from him. The confused look on Trevor’s face made me know I needed to quickly get his mind off the books and what he had witnessed. “Well, good to meet you, Brody. Have fun drawing your spaceships.”
I walked down, and they followed.
“Have we met before?” Trevor asked.
Apparently, I wasn’t very memorable. “Yes, we sort of met at a football game a couple weeks ago.”
“So how do you know my brother?”
“I don’t. We just met here.” I pointed up the stairs.
“She was under a table reading comics,” Brody said with a smile.
Trevor’s already lowered brows got lower.
“She wanted to be alone,” Brody whispered loudly.
Trevor studied me for a moment. “A football game?” Then recognition came into his eyes. “You’re Duke Rivers’ girlfriend.”
He must’ve been a Duke fan. Like every other football player seemed to, he probably thought Duke was amazing. I knew something that would make him hate Duke in under a second flat. I had the strongest desire to share it with him. “No, no, no . . . no,” I said both to answer his question and to stop myself from saying what I really wanted to.
He smiled. “Are you sure?”
“Sorry, it’s just . . . we broke up.” And he and his buddies screwed up your shoulder.
He nodded, then looked at his brother. “Well, Brody, we better let . . . um . . .”
“Addie,” I filled in for him.
“Addie?”
“Short for Addison.”
“We better let Addison go. Tell her thank you.”
“Thank you, Addison,” Brody said.
Trevor took a step back. “Maybe we’ll see you around.” He gave one last glance up the stairs to where my books had been, his eyes flashing suspicion. Was this why my brain had warned me about this moment, about Trevor? Because he was someone I needed to be careful around? Make sure nothing about the Compound slipped?
“Yeah, maybe.” I waved and then turned on one foot and made a beeline for the nearest bookshelf. Once safely behind it, I leaned against it and tried to quell the pounding in my skull.
At home later, my head still ached. I tried a few mind patterns, which helped a little, then headed for my bed, thinking a good nap would heal me completely. It didn’t. I tried to analyze when and why this was happening. The added ability wouldn’t have weirded me out so much—abilities grew and expanded all the time—if it didn’t come along with this massive headache.
I rubbed my temples and watched the light on my ceiling dance as the heater blew the drapes. I hadn’t Searched anything since Bobby’s house. What if I just tried a simple Search, two minutes? The choice: Should I get up and get some water or should I stay in bed and stare at the ceiling? I would Search that easy choice.
I took a deep breath and drew on the energies. I felt the cold glass in my hands and the memory of water trickling down my throat. It layered with the other memory of staying where I was, the pillow fluffed up around me. Just when I thought I had nothing to worry about, a pain so intense I had to push my palms to my temples radiated through my head.
I rolled onto my stomach and pressed my face into the pillow. It took a few minutes for the pain to dull. I took a deep breath and forced the tension out of my shoulders. Then I rolled out of bed.
After I walked to the kitchen and took my first drink of water, my dad came in through the garage door.
“You’re home,” I said. It sounded more like a sigh than the happy declaration I was going for.
He set a bag of groceries on the counter. “Not feeling well?” It must’ve been pretty obvious.
“Headache.” I thought about all the things that might happen if I told my dad what was going on with my ability. Would he send me home to have tests run? “I’ve been getting them lately.” I chose my words carefully. I didn’t want him to worry if this really was nothing. “Is that normal?”
“When do they come on?”
“Right after I Search.” I left out the part about being able to slow down time.
“That can be normal.” His eyes looked worried. I may not have been a lie detector, but his look seemed to oppose his reassurance. “Why don’t you rest your ability for a few weeks and we’ll see how you feel then?”
I thought about pressing him. But resting my ability sounded nice. I needed a break. This had to work itself out.
CHAPTER 8
Laila: Your hot ex-boyfriend is annoying.
Take-out bag clutched firmly in hand, I headed for the door of the diner. I’d almost reached it when I saw his blond hair out of the corner of my eye. Duke. I stopped, then backed up and plopped down at the table across from him.
“Where’s your fan club?”
He met my gaze, and a smile formed on his lips. Was that just habit, or was he seriously happy to see me? Because I’d be the last person I’d want to see if I were him. “Laila.”
“You remember my name? I thought I took care of that.”
His smile faltered for a split second. Then he must’ve decided I was joking, because it was back in full force. Why hadn’t I ever Erased any of Duke’s memories? Guilt. I didn’t think I deserved to have Duke look at me normally after what I’d done to Addie. And yet here he was, looking at me like nothing had happened. The boy had nerve.
“You’re going to have a nice future working for the Containment Committee, since you seem to have absolutely no problem wiping unsuspecting people of their memories.”
It’s what everyone assumed a Memory Eraser would do—work for the CC. Erase the memories of Norms who had found out about the Compound. “Such a noble profession,” Mr. Caston had claimed one time when we were forced to fill out a Your Future form in class. I had written Designer, and he had clucked his tongue and shook his head and said, “What a waste of a perfectly usable ability. Not everyone gets something that can translate into such a noble profession.” Blah, blah, blah. He could take my noble profession and combine it with his noble profession and save the world with them. My ability was for me and the memories I wanted to keep to myself.