The Elementalists Page 19

  With that, she’d officially won over the bleachers, but there was still a lot of laughter and hard looks directed her way from the dance floor. In the corner of her eye, it looked like Principal Harlow was preparing to step in and cut her off at any moment. “But I do want to say one thing about our new Homecoming King,” she shot a deadly look back at Ezra and enjoyed the momentary chink in the armor of his smile. “You might know him as a ladies’ man and football phenom, but who knew that he was such a humanitarian toward the disenfranchised underclassman?”

  The whole crowd answered with a roar of laughter.

  Chloe unexpectedly felt life stirring within again. “He’s right about one thing, though: he is the champion we need and deserve to take this school into the future, and I for one will do my part to support and follow his inspired lead,” she managed a playful smile, starting to get a little heady with the resonant sound of her own voice. She swept an arm back toward Ezra. “It is my honor, no, my duty to re-present Charlottesville High School’s real Black Knight—King Ezra the First: Dragon Slayer!”

  The crowd went bonkers. Chloe looked back again to meet Ezra’s smirk. He answered with only the faint shake of his head before stepping forward again to jam the cardboard sword into the air and reclaim the attention he so enjoyed. Chloe tried to step back out of the spotlight just as Principal Harlow took back the microphone.

  “And now it’s my pleasure to introduce this year’s Charlottesville High School Homecoming King and Queen for their first dance,” he announced before briskly stepping away with a relieved exhale.

  Chloe found herself facing Ezra again as the first few notes of an old Lionel Richie slow jam climbed out of the speakers. King Ezra offered his hand for the dance. Aware of Kendra’s burning gaze of hatred upon her, Chloe took it and let him pull her close. His other arm reached down and wrapped around her waist, and his strong fingers pressed into the small of her back. She shivered a little and tried not to look out at the milling crowd. Some had broken off into dancing pairs again, but many continued to watch the stage. Chloe could not let them see that a part of her loved the way this felt—the hidden-away and disenfranchised girl that wanted to spin joyously across the stage for all to behold. She couldn’t even afford to acknowledge the existence of that girl to herself. God, Mom is going to be so happy!

  She looked almost straight up to find Ezra’s waiting eyes. “I don’t think I’ll ever forgive you for this,” she said.

  “You will,” he answered assuredly. “And one day, you’ll thank me.”

  Chapter 15

  The Unexpected Turn

  Chloe did her stint dancing awkwardly on the stage. Then she had to pose for a photograph with Ezra, which would no doubt rekindle half the school’s hatred for her on Monday morning when it appeared on the front page of the Charlottesville High Herald. After that, she returned the ceremonial crown to its velvet pillow, received a trio of pinch-faced smiles from the Homecoming Committee, and got the hell away from there as fast as possible.

  She was waiting for the hot sting of Kendra’s knife in her back as she fought her way through the crowd; instead she received supportive pats and sporadic bursts of applause the whole way. She did her best to smile when Liz blocked her retreat with an ecstatic dance that consisted of jumping up and down while spinning and squeaking in an octave that most people probably couldn’t register. God, why didn’t she elect herself Queen?

  “I am so happy, I think I might explode!” shouted Liz.

  “Please don’t. That would be really messy, and I kind of like this dress,” Chloe responded with as much joy as she had to give. “Was this your idea?”

  “No, it was Ezra, but he recruited me a few weeks ago to help rally the soccer team and underclassman to the cause!” She started bouncing again. “I can’t believe it actually worked!”

  Chloe laughed without humor. “Yeah, me neither.”

  “Did you see Kendra’s face? She looked like she was going to burst into flames!” Liz added triumphantly. “You’re like the most popular girl in the school!”

  “That’s not really the role I’m trying out for here,” Chloe muttered.

  Liz trilled like a pixie, “I know, that’s why you’re so good at it.” She was completely undaunted by Chloe’s obvious discomfort. “I knew that if they made you give a speech, you’d say something awesome!”

  Chloe could only glower.

  Liz answered by bouncing toward her like a crazed rabbit and planting an almost dainty kiss on Chloe’s cheek. “You’re the queen,” she whispered.

  Liz smelled like honeysuckle and spring. Some of Chloe’s happiest memories had been accompanied by that smell. Liz was impossible to stay mad at for long. “Thanks, Liz.”

  Liz bowed with a formal flourish and then bounced back toward Paul and a cluster of the other varsity soccer players. As Chloe started moving again, Paul turned to give her a salute.

  The whole world has gone crazy!

  She made a beeline back to the comparatively sane company of Stan. But by the time she’d climbed to the summit of the bleachers, the combination of Stan’s illicit brownie and the absurd spectacle of the evening had sent him into a perpetual state of unnecessary giggles and overly happy feelings.

  “You are now my hero, dude! This night is better than I would have ever thought possible!”

  “I’m so glad,” Chloe snapped. “But we’re leaving now, and we’ve got to do it quickly and quietly, so stop laughing.”

  “What are you talking about? I don’t ever want to leave,” Stan admitted with a grin that showed little chunks of chocolate between his teeth. “I’m here with the Homecoming Queen!”

  “Yeah, well, you owe me, remember? And you have the car,” she reminded him with a hint of desperation. She swallowed the urge to scream and let her newly found noble blood do the talking. “And if I’m your queen, then you have to do as I say, and I say we’re going right now!” she declared without any room for discussion.

  This just made Stan laugh harder.

  “Pull yourself together, make sure you have the car keys, and start moving toward the door,” Chloe hissed… “Or I’ll tell our new king that you’re trying to get me to do drugs.”

  Stan stopped laughing and stood up straight. “Yes, my queen, as you command.”

  But Chloe was already moving, with her head down and her eyes locked on the red glow of the ‘Exit’ sign. “Follow me.”

  • • •

  Chloe drove back up the winding hills above Charlottesville—where life made more sense. She hadn’t bothered to get her learner’s permit yet, but Audrey had let her try out the CR-V a few times already, and there was no way she was going to let a high Stan drive her home again. She cruised along the mountain roads that she knew so well in the Strakowski station wagon she didn’t know at all.

  Chloe had never driven at night before, but the power of the wheel behind the bright headlights was intoxicating. The big boat of a car hugged the road at exactly 30 miles per hour as Stan smiled in the seat beside her, occasionally scanning his iPod in pursuit of a better classic rock song to fit his flighty whim. Once she’d hustled him into the car and wrestled the keys from his grasp, he’d settled contentedly beside her, clearly not caring where she might take him or how qualified she was to operate heavy machinery.

  It was only 10:30, and she was still buzzing on the adrenaline of the night—not ready for home just yet. Stan bobbed his head to a spacey guitar riff, and Chloe realized how much she enjoyed his mellow, unencumbered company. Just as Ezra tended to make her feel grounded and safe, and Kirin inspired her to be more fluid and open to new experiences, Stan had the ability to make her see the world as if from above, and he helped her to not take that world too seriously.

  Chloe smirked as she remembered the tingling sensation of grabbing Kirin’s hand and the odd sense that she had watched as it happened from somewhere outside herself. I really like Kirin…and he might actually like me back!

  And I’m t
he Homecoming Queen! She still couldn’t wrap her head around that inexplicable fact. And she doubted that she’d ever fully accept that she had been the one responsible for that impromptu speech on the stage.

  I really must be losing my mind, she realized as she tried and failed to swallow the giggle that spilled out of her. The hilarity only grew with her attempts to quell it, and before she knew it, she’d erupted into an all-out, stomach-clenching laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” asked Stan as the virus of her unhinged humor started to spread.

  Chloe glanced over at his bug eyes and curling lips and started laughing so hard that tears ran down her cheeks. The rapid firing of her lungs left little room for a full breath. A moment later, Stan was roaring right along with her, even less aware of why he was doing so, but for the simple joy of letting go and floating away.

  But her laughter stopped abruptly as she stomped on the brakes, pulling to the side of the road with a reckless skid through leaves and gravel. The car came to a halt amid a plume of dust. She peered across the street with laser intensity. She knew this stretch of the Ford’s Loop Road by heart; it was the place where Kirin had parked before she had led him along her secret path through the woods to the pond.

  A big, white sign that she’d never seen before was practically glowing in the light of her high beams. There was a dirt road beside it that hadn’t been there a week earlier, stretching off into the darkness of the forest. Hundreds of healthy trees were gone. Chloe’s heart started going a mile a minute as her eyes scanned the black words:

  PROPERTY OF THE DAEDALUS GROUP

  NO TRESSPASSING

  VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED

  Her mind took a moment to process what she was seeing. Those bastards!

  Stan finally stopped laughing as he followed Chloe’s hateful gaze to the sign. “Hey, that’s Paul’s dad’s company,” he noted.

  “What does Paul’s dad do?” Chloe hissed.

  “I think he’s like a nuclear engineer or a rocket scientist or something,” Stan offered. “My dad always said that Dr. William Markson was the smartest man he’d ever met.”

  “And the Daedalus Group?” Chloe asked through clenched teeth.

  “I don’t know; they’re into all kinds of stuff,” Stan speculated. “Bioengineering, alternative fuel sources, government contract work. My dad also said that Dr. Markson had sold his brain to Richard Roberts and his soul to the devil.”

  Without any warning, Chloe switched her foot to the accelerator and jerked the wheel. The back tires fishtailed through the grass before the wagon shot across the street and raced down the new road. Stan watched the sign fly by his window as the high beams illuminated the otherwise lightless and bumpy path through the trees.

  The way stretched into pitch darkness, and he felt the press of eerie shadows beyond the headlights’ reach. He’d never seen Chloe like this: red-faced with the veins pulsing in her neck. He waved his hand, trying to draw her determined scowl and wondering if it was safe to speak.

  “Uh, Chloe…what are you doing?”

  “I have to see something,” she muttered. The car was only doing about 25 mph along the hard-packed dirt, but it seemed like it was going much faster.

  “I’m not so sure this is a good idea, dude.”

  “You owe me, remember?” Chloe said without breaking her focus. “We’re doing this, so turn off the music and keep on the lookout.”

  Stan sat up straighter, switched off the music, and nodded. “Yes, my queen…but what exactly is it that we’re doing?”

  Chloe didn’t answer as her foot pushed down harder and the little red hand in the dashboard climbed back up to 30 miles per hour. Stan glanced into the side mirror as the dust cloud rose behind them, and then he looked unsuccessfully for the glow of the moon through the branches above. The clouds flashed with the dance of electricity, but there was no thunderous report that followed. He buckled his seatbelt.

  After another tense minute of violent vibration, the car began to slow and the tree line broke ahead. The road ended in a wide, grassy clearing that opened out of the woods. Chloe rolled to a stop and abruptly silenced the engine.

  “You know where we are, don’t you?” Stan observed as Chloe peered through the windshield with alarming intensity.

  Her eyes climbed the hill to the place where the lightning-struck oak had been, but the tree lay in a sawed-up pile, and the hill was now capped with a massive metal tower that climbed high into the sky over the forest. Her mouth fell open as she took in the full scope of the abomination: thirty feet wide at the base and at least a hundred feet tall with a series of blinking red lights at its crown. The hill itself was crisscrossed and gouged with numerous deep tire tracks. A bulldozer, forklift, and crane were still parked on the level ground beside the pond.

  Chloe’s special place—which Kirin had been so right to claim as her own—had been destroyed. Again, the clouds above the clearing lit up with the hidden crawl of a noiseless electric charge.

  “What the hell is that?” asked Stan with an open mouth as he craned his neck toward the heights.

  “A lightning tower,” whispered Chloe as she remembered the way that Mr. Roberts had grilled her about her incident here and his odd fascination with lightning in general. She tried to remember how much she’d told him as a swell of guilt bubbled up from her gut. She opened the door, deaf to Stan’s halfhearted protests behind her.

  She was already marching toward the defiled hill before he cracked his door to call after her. “Maybe we should get out of here?” he suggested to her back.

  But Chloe was too mad for reason. Her heels got caught in the mud, and she yanked them off without thinking, gripping the delicate, soiled footwear tightly as she continued the furious ascent with the cold grass poking at her toes. Stan stepped from the car and slammed the door behind her as the clouds flared again. He doggedly started to follow.

  Chloe could run ten miles with breath to spare, but she was so full of adrenaline and rage that she was breathing hard by the time she crested the rise. The wide, four-legged base of the tower covered the place where she’d been struck by lightning, and the closest steel girder tore through the spot where she’d spent the better part of the summer. Trying not to cry, she craned her neck back and looked straight up at the metal monstrosity. High above, the blinking red lights taunted her with their steady mechanical rhythm.

  She actually snarled as she turned away and stormed to the nearby woodpile that had once been a tree. She scanned the various stacks of neatly cleaved limbs and claimed a halved branch that she brandished like a club.

  Only halfway up and Stan was winded for real. “I need to get in shape!” he announced with his hands on his hips. He watched as Chloe set her unhinged gaze on the shiny new structure and came at it with the big stick cocked over her head.

  She swung with everything she had, and the wet wood connected with the metal leg with a sharp CLANG that echoed about the clearing. The impact’s vibration traveled unpleasantly up her arms, but she swung and connected again and again with building ferocity. The ringing took on an odd rhythm as the CLANGS and ECHOES became indiscernible from each other. The stick was coming apart with exposed gouges of blonde wood, but she persisted. Her hands were scraped and buzzing.

  Stan came up behind her and claimed a quarter-sized rock from the grass. With a feral yell, he hurled his imposing weapon at the unresponsive enemy. “Stupid tower!” he yelled as the rock bounced harmlessly off an upper support and fell away into darkness. Chloe turned back to look at him with wild eyes. He gave her a big grin and a thumbs-up. “We totally kicked its ass, dude.”

  She couldn’t help but burst out laughing, though the part of her that held to idealism, nostalgia, and all that she’d ever believed in wanted to weep. She dropped the stick and looked at the ineffectual smears of wood resin and bark across the steel.

  Stan leaned in close to the offending girder. “Look at that,” he pointed to what looked like a faint scratch on the
surface of the metal. “I think you hurt it.”

  Chloe deflated. “This was my special place that no one else knew about.” She scanned the view that had held her attention through warmer times, now littered with construction debris and garbage. “They’ve ruined it.”

  “This is where you got struck by lightning, isn’t it?” asked Stan.

  Chloe pointed to the now-barren earth at the center of the tower’s footprint. “Over there,” she said as the ripple of electricity danced through the clouds again, this time with a low grumble of thunder to accompany it.

  Stan eyed the ominous sky and absently wondered about the decision to have this conversation beside a lightning tower. “You really do have a somewhat jarring effect on the weather, don’t you?”

  Chloe looked to the glassy sheen of the pond before she answered. “Yeah…things have been a little strange for a couple months now.” She remembered the way the pond had lurched and thrown her to the shore, then the five clawed tracks through the street. She could picture the words, “TIPPING POINT PROPHECY,” blazoned across her computer screen in a swirling aqua green font…and then the word spoken by Kirin earlier that evening: “DRAGONS!”

  “Let’s hear it, dude,” Stan suggested. “I spend most of my time thinking strange thoughts.”

  “I don’t know; this is stranger than most,” she challenged.

  He flashed his best Cheshire grin. “Try me,” he said before plopping to the ground, already forgetting his intention to make a hasty retreat. He patted the earth beside him and looked up expectantly.

  Chloe tossed her shoes and joined him in what was left of the tamped-down grass, facing the pond and the heavy construction vehicles beside it. Stan was high as a kite and already half-asleep with heavy lids over red-washed eyes, but Chloe was still hesitant to tell her story of preternatural weather and alarming memory gaps.