Chapter One

"Now if I only knew how to finish this."



The comfortable silence between us had hung for a good seven minutes. I sat in front of a music score sheet at my desk with my cell phone on speaker to my right. Todd usually called me right about this time of day during the summer, and usually I was unoccupied for the rendezvous. But something about this week's restless energy had compelled me to pull out one of my half-finished scores. Todd knew better than to interrupt me whilst in the middle of a creation minefield, so he had been sitting patiently at the phone, listening to me alternately tapping notes on my nearby keyboard, scatting beats, and scribbling notes onto the score with pencils, all the while muttering to myself like a crazy person.


"You're welcome to hang up any time, you know," I said. "I'm not one for conversation right now."


"I know." I heard him grunt with a stretch on the other side of the line. "It's fun listening to you while you're composing, though. You say some crazy shit every now and then."


I focused on bubbling in a quarter note, stuck in writer's block. "Like what?"


"I dunno. I think a while ago you said something about hornets bleeding out a heart from the inside out or something."


"Did I?"


He laughed with mock unease. "I keep tellin' you to stay away from that crack, but do you listen?”


Hornets…that seemed to strike something. I drummed a frantic beat with my right fingers, recording them on the score with my left. “I like it.”


“What do you like?”


“Hornets. Have you ever been stung by one?”


“Yeah, I did. It hurt like a bitch.” I heard his voice cringe at the memory.


I smirked in his direction. “Poor baby.”


“I know, right?” He sighed wistfully. “Life is so hard when you get stung by an insect.”


“I can only imagine,” I mumbled absent-mindedly. Suddenly blooms of bowed basses were coming to me and were echoing through the corridors of my skull. This was brilliant. “You know why I like having you around? Because you’re dense; it’s easy to bounce ideas off of you without worrying about you getting cocky and trying to remold them into other things.”


He laughed incredulously; the sound warmed something in my heart. “I’m…flattered, I guess.”


“Take the compliment. It’s the only one you’re getting tonight.”


“Aww…”


I gently picked up the phone and pressed my cheek affectionately to it. Of course he wouldn’t ever have knowledge of me doing such a gesture, which is probably why I did it. We’d been broken up for a good six months now, and I was still trying to convince myself of the fact. But it was hard to do when we still called each other every weekend and he still made me smile the way he did.


I sighed. “You’re too good to me, you know.”


He must have been reading my mind, because he replied teasingly, “Maybe I should hang up and leave you like a real jerk would.”


“You wouldn’t,” I laughed.


“Yeah, you’re right.” His sounded a bit more somber now. “Even if I tried, I couldn’t. You’re like oxygen; I try to go for twelve seconds without you and I start to asphyxiate.”


“Isn’t that a bit romantic?”


“If you’re a masochist, maybe,” Todd quipped. “I’m just stating a fact.”


I got up from the desk and laid myself onto my bed beside it. “Maybe you should stay here, then, if I’m so necessary to your existence.”


His voice dropped to barely a murmur. “I would if I could. Believe me.”


My face heated up at the soft intensity of his voice. I picked up the phone and turned off the speaker. I was suddenly aware of the quilt underneath me, its softness and how it brushed my skin as I stretched my arms over my head. I wondered how thin the walls around me were and if they would keep what went on in here a good enough secret. My head spun as the light above me cast watchful shadows on the walls.


“So how do you survive between phone calls?” I asked. “You didn’t sound asphyxiated when you dialed.”


He sat silent for a moment. “I dunno. Maybe knowing I’ll call you the next day’s enough to keep me alive.”


I smiled sadly to myself. “Maybe you don’t need to be right here to stay alive.”


“Well, that’s like saying I can survive by bread and water alone,” he remarked. “While that’s probably true, I’d much rather have a feast.”


I laughed my growing melancholy off. “You and your metaphors.”


I could hear the smile in his voice, knowing he had averted any further trouble for my sore heart. “I try.”


Perhaps too much, though, I thought. If you keep bending for me like this, someday I’ll snap your spine in two and be none the wiser.


A sudden rapping at my door interrupted my musing.


“Hey, hold on a second,” I said to Todd. I pulled the phone away from my ear and called, “Yeah?”


My sister Lisbeth stuck her head through the door. “Dinner!”


“All right.” I turned back to the phone. “I gotta go eat dinner now.”


“Okay. I’ll call you…next week?”


Next week…Perhaps he fared without me better than he realized. “Sure.”


I hung up with his goodbye hanging in the air, wishing the echo would remain until his next call.

Chapter Two

I was surrounded by the smell of ramen noodles before I reached the bottom step. Metal silverware chinked underneath the roar of the microwave oven. Composing always left me ravenously hungry, and even though this was probably the third day in a row that we’ve had ramen with frozen vegetables, I was determined to get my fill.



My dad was looming over the stove when I bounded into the kitchen. I said a cordial “thank you” to him and pulled two plates out of the dishwasher—one for myself and one for my sister. He mumbled something that sounded like an acknowledgement but didn’t take his eyes off of the monotonously spinning plate of meatballs in the microwave. I shrugged and proceeded to scoop two helpings of rice on my plate.


“Joelle, did you see the mail?” Lisbeth asked.


I took her plate and scooped for her two helpings of rice as well. “No, I didn’t. Why?”


“I think Iris’ letter just came in.” She went over to shuffle through the pile of letters on the counter. “Yeah, here it is!”


Lisbeth exchanged the letter for her plate and went to help herself to the ramen. I examined the letter closely. The return address came from their house in Boston, so it had to have been fairly recent. I recognized Iris’ bubbly handwriting immediately and smiled to myself. Even though we both had email addresses and were friends on the same internet social network, we saved our big moments for old-fashioned snail mail. We sent tons of letters to each other when school came around, because her school’s Wi-Fi service was limited and constantly monitored by the technicians at the academy.


We sat down at the table, and I ripped open the envelope to read the letter.






Dear Joelle,


I know I should have written to you earlier, but life has been a bit hectic here at home after Anthony and I got back from Spektrum. It’s good to be back in Boston, though I was hoping we’d be able to stay over at your house for a week or so before we flew out of Tennessee. I can’t wait for Christmas break when we get to see you and Lisbeth again. You never know, Leon might be coming along, too. If your mom hasn’t heard from my mom yet, Leon found his affinity last week! He’s a Fighter, can you believe? He’s still as twig thin as ever, but he’s been running up and down walls and knocking holes into the shed all weekend. I get tired just watching him! Thankfully, Tony’s a Fighter, too, and he has Tito Robin’s Psychic affinity, so he’s been able to help Leon control his jitters and calm down. Only for brief moments, though.


But enough about me. How’s it been with you lately? Excited you’re not in middle school anymore (you’re so lucky; I don’t hit high division for another year)? I got your last letter with the CD—I swear you are way too talented to be stuck in Normal school. The high division’s field crew NEEDS a music director with your skill and creativity (last year’s show was just all over the place)! Keep sending me CDs whenever you make new ones; I’d love to show Tony’s friends your stuff when school starts again.


Can’t wait to see you on Christmas! Say hi to the famm for me, alright?






Love ya, sis!


Iris <3






“Can I read it?” Lisbeth asked when I looked up.


I handed her the letter; she scanned it before gasping with envy. “Leon’s a Fighter?! Lucky!”


“I know, it’s crazy,” I remarked, twirling my ramen with my fork. “He’s still just entering third grade, too. That’s supposed to be pretty rare for a homunculus; Iris only found hers two years ago, and Tony didn’t find his until seventh grade.”


“Do you think you could find yours any time now, Joelle?”


The fork was halfway to my mouth, but I had to stop and give her a look. “I’m Normal, Lis, just like everybody else in this family. You know that.”


“I know,” she hummed pensively. “But still, wouldn’t that be so cool? You’d be walking in on your first day of high school, and all of a sudden, FLAMES start shooting from your hands, or you turn into a DRAGON! Just like that!”


It was hard for me to keep a straight face while listening to her babble. Her imagination was almost as crazy as mine sometimes. “That’s not gonna happen.”


“But it could! It happens to some people. They grow up in Normal families, right? But they turn out to actually have the homunculus gene from some other, distant relative. Like Tito Robin! He has a Psychic and a Spirit affinity—”


This time I really had to glare at her into shutting up. I cast a quick glance over at my dad; he was pacing around aimlessly near the foyer, but he was still within earshot. It was always risky business to talk about homunculi and the Villanuevas around him—while he was always friendly to them when they came to visit, he became very sullen and moody when we started talking about what if’s. He wanted us to be happy being Normal. At least, that’s what my mom told us; he hardly ever spoke a word to me anymore.


The garage door rattled open from outside just then. My sister got up and ran to open the door to the garage. I squinted at the analog clock propped up on the wall. Mom was usually a good thirty minutes earlier to come home than this.


Her clacking heels came through the door, as well as a flurry of exasperation and fatigue. Unlike my ever-stoic father, you could read everything my mom was thinking with one look.


“Dong!” she called to my dad as she was slipping off her heels. She flew right into a rant about her day in rapid Tagalog. I caught words like “elections” and “flooded” and “romping bastard”, but everything else flew right over my head.


“Hi, Mom!” Lisbeth threw her arms around her in an affectionate hug.


“Hi, dai,” she greeted back somewhat distractedly. “And then he had the nerve to tell me that the whole commercial had to be reshooted because I had to mention something about the oil leak. Who gives a damn about the oil leak?! I haven’t mentioned anything about it in my entire two-year campaign, and I’m not going to spend another million dollars to reshoot a commercial just because the people want to feel safe knowing their next Tennessee congressman is thinking about it.”


“Mom, you’re coming to the open house this Friday, right?”


Mom waved her hand at me dismissively. “I have to check my schedule, dai. Things are getting busy around this time.”


“But you’ve known about this open house since the school year ended,” I reminded her. “This is important; they’re going to be giving a whole assembly on freshman AP classes, and I need to—”


She rubbed her eyes with furrowed eyebrows. “Look, I told you I would check, right? Don’t overload me with so much right now, I just got back from the office.”


I rolled my eyes to the ceiling. Of course it wouldn’t have occurred to me that Mom would have forgotten about the open house. All she’d cared about for the past year was the elections for Tennessee’s new congressman. It’s not that I didn’t want her to run; I was happy that she wanted it so badly and would do any honorable thing to get the seat so she could represent the state well in D.C., but little things like me entering into my first year of high school and my sister’s violin recitals always seemed to slip out of her mind. I could be pregnant now and it would take her four months before she would start asking questions, and maybe another two before she’d take me to an OB GYN.


Mom was tapping on her BlackBerry when she finally said, “I have Friday morning open. Your dad’s going to have to pick you up from the place, though; I need to run out right before noon.”


“Great!” I said with enough chipper in my voice to bleed her ears. “I’m so glad I fit so conveniently into your busy schedule.”


She set her phone down and gave me a hard look. Even through the election, she hadn’t lost her ability to detect sarcasm from my voice. “Joelle Christine, you know I do my best to juggle my election with our family life, but it takes some accommodating, and a few sacrifices have to be made. Not everything’s about you.”


“Right. It’s about you, isn’t it?”


I knew I was being childish, and my comebacks were always horrible when I was upset. My mom still looked mortally offended as I walked past her to dump my half-finished dinner in the garbage can. Ramen noodles just didn’t appeal to me anymore.


I stormed up the stairs and locked my room shut for the rest of the night.

Chapter Three

Silence was never comfortable when I was alone with my mom in the car. If she wasn’t on the phone with her campaign manager, she was staring bullets at the road with her lips zipped. The radio was tuned to the Top 40 station on her assumption that I was like any other stock teenager with a bad taste in music. I glared at the dial and turned the volume up on my iPod, hoping in vain that Massive Attack would drown out Lil Wayne’s offbeat crooning.



Mom deftly plucked an ear bud out of my left ear. “So run this by me again. We’re taking a tour of the school, listening to the AP courses assembly, and finishing up registration for your classes. Is that it?”


“You got it.” At least she had bothered to remember the agenda.


She sighed as if undergoing a great labor. “This better not go longer than noon. These sorts of things are designed for stay-at-home parents, and they honestly take much longer than necessary. The administration needs to consider people with actual jobs and careers.”


Sometimes I wondered how I managed to grow up without contracting her ridiculous vanity.


We approached the green and white FOLLOWILL HIGH SCHOOL sign, which was lettered with an announcement for the Open House as well as football conditioning. As we entered the gates, I looked around and saw the anxious parents and even more terrified new freshmen walking through the doors. This was the place I would be spending the next four years sitting in airtight classrooms and acquiring a mediocre education. The football stadium loomed over me threateningly, forcefully reminding me that these stands were soon to be the nucleus of my social life. Upperclassmen littered the place with fake tans and pumped up biceps.


“Now I want to make one thing clear as we’re going in.” She stopped the car and looked me straight in the eyes. “You’re not to take one step out of line. Any bad decisions you make will not only hurt your first impression to the school; it’ll ruin our public image and severely hurt my chances at the elections.”


“Of course,” I muttered, watching a girl with ass-riding shorts as she pounced on an eager fellow in a football jersey. Mom followed my eyes and shuddered with disgust.


“Those are not the types of people you want to be grouped with,” she continued. “So, no texting during the assembly, no laughing obnoxiously with your gal pals, no sneaking around corners with your boyfriend—”


“Mom, I don’t even have a boyfriend.”


She down her nose at me and gave me a look, disbelieving and haughty; the pretentious bitch as always.


“You could have at least chosen a more presentable look,” she noted disapprovingly. “Your hair is sticking up in tuffs, and those clothes make you look like you fell out of a smoking hippie van.”


I opened the door of the passenger seat without replying. Thankfully, the wind was outside to welcome me with unassuming friendliness. My skirt, white and brushing my ankles, was caught in its playful frolicking. I stretched my hands to the sky and spun in the sunlight, drinking in my last bits of freedom before I had to take my first steps into prison. Some of the upperclassmen packs stopped in their pointless ambling to watch me. I saw their snickers but didn’t mind one bit. My mom rounded the back end of the car and gave me one last warning look before leading me into the school.


It was even more crowded when we got inside. There was something about new and unusual places that had a way of paralyzing people into traffic jams of sweaty bodies and anxiety. Impatient, Mom grabbed me by the wrist and pushed her way through the confused crowd at the door. I craned my neck over and around people. Todd was supposed to be here, too, and I hoped I could catch a glimpse of him and pass him a look that showed how relieved I was to see him here to ease the pain of this long-drawn torture. He wasn’t anywhere in the hall that I could see, though. We walked into the auditorium and sat through twenty minutes of an old bat fumbling through a PowerPoint, all the while explaining to the group of inept freshmen that we were brave to try AP in our first year of high school but were doomed to fail and might as well prepare for the letdown ahead of time.


“Not my daughter, she will,” Mom protested under her breath. “If you’ve inherited any sort of sense from me, it’s your refusal to fail.”


I kept silent, hoping this meant she’d finally gotten off my back about the C- I got on an Algebra quiz last year. I peered around at the seats and couldn’t find Todd anywhere. He was supposed to be in here—we were going to be taking AP World History together this year. Perhaps he was coming with the next group.


But I still hadn’t spotted him by the end of the tour around the school. The school was big, but not so big that he could hide from me this well.


“I have to use the bathroom,” I told my mom and sprinted off before she could protest.


I slammed my body into the door, and it flew open to a vacant restroom. I locked myself in the farthest and largest stall with a tiny window near the ceiling and pulled out my cell phone from my skirt’s pocket. When I stretched it up toward the window, it caught a bar of signal; his number was dialed in a heartbeat.


It took him four rings before he finally picked up. “Hello?”


“Todd!” I was absolutely breathless. “Where the hell are you? I’ve been looking for you all over the school, and I haven’t seen you anywhere.”


“The school…?” He sounded confused.


“Yes, the school! Quit acting like a dumbass. Did you forget there was an open house today or something?”


At last he finally seemed to catch up. “Oh, right! I couldn’t go to that today.”


I wanted to chuck my cell phone at the wall. “I scour every inch of this whole school for you, and you’re not even here! You could have called me last night to tell me, at least.”


“My plans changed sort of last minute…”


“What’s that supposed to mean?”


He was no doubt scratching his head on the other side of the line. “Well, you see…I’m not going to Followill for this school year…or any school year, really.”


This time I did throw the phone at the wall. Miraculously, it stayed in one piece. I heard his panic from the phone, buzzing with worry. I ignored him for a good two minutes before I picked it back up.


“When did you decide this?” I hissed. “Yesterday? Or have you been neglecting to tell me this for the whole summer?”


“I couldn’t help this, Joelle,” he protested feebly. “I…I found a good school. It’s a great school, actually; their AP program is ten times more versatile than Followill’s. It’s a little far from here, but I’ll still be able to call you and stuff on the—”


“You’re avoiding the question.”


He sighed. “I’m telling you the truth, Joelle. This honestly didn’t…strike me until today. This morning I was all ready to go and see you, but then…I had to find an alternative, Joelle. Followill just isn’t suited for me.”


“Well, I’m glad one of us came to our senses in time,” I muttered.


“…So does this mean you’re not mad at me?”


I hung up on him without replying and threw the stall door open. It hit the back with a deafening rattle and startled a woman who had just walked in. I couldn’t even think of coherent words to express how flaming mad I was. All I could think of doing at that moment was destroying this phone and hope some of the pain and ruin it would feel would transfer to him.


But I left it whole and close to my hand in my pocket. Just in case he decided to call back.


Outside the restroom, the crowds were starting to clear. I felt my phone vibrate and whipped it out—it was a text from my mom. Disappointed, I opened it to read that she had already left the school, the registration was taken care of, and I needed to wait for my dad to pick me up at the front. She hadn’t even bothered to ask me if I was all right after having been in the bathroom for a whole fifteen minutes.


I walked out to the front of the school and sat on the curb. I squinted up at the sun, daring it to burn my eyes out of their sockets. What was the point of sight if I would only have this eyesore to look at for the next four years? There was too much cookie cutter cement and not enough trees, in my opinion. Todd would have liked to see more trees…


I buried my face in my knees. If I still believed in God, I would have blamed him for this. Instead, all I could do was admit defeat. He had chosen a path separate from mine. At least one of us had our priorities straightened out after the mess we’d made over the last two years of our twisted relationship. I should have been happy for him. But I wasn’t.


Would u believe her clothes?


I sat up abruptly and looked around, expecting to find somebody standing behind me, but there was nobody there. It was definitely too noisy outside for me to have heard such a low voice so clearly. The only people near me were two girls on opposite sides of me, but they were still a good four yards away, and they were only texting each other.


Does she think she’s in some 60s revival? Tlk about weird.


ikr!?


I was pretty sure that they were texting about me. But how was I able to tell? Maybe I was reading their minds, I thought sardonically, and Lisbeth was right all along about me finding my affinity. Something was off about this, though. The girl on my right, strawberry blonde with light freckles, put her phone down briefly and waved over at a dashing, roguish boy passing by. Except for the obvious attraction to him that she was showing through her hollering, I couldn’t tell what was going through her mind. But then her phone buzzed, and when she picked it up, I felt another tug.


I think she’s staring @ u.


Her phone. It was like I could read her phone. How strange.


Ew, she digs girls, 2? I thought she was with that 1 guy. Tom?


Todd, I’m pretty sure. I think she broke up with him.


Who would be stupid enough to do that?? He was soo hot!


Maybe he wanted to do it with her and she wasn't "ready" or something.


My heart ticked faster in ferocity.


If he’d asked me, I would have done him in a HEARTBEAT!


I felt a different sort of tug then, deep in the nerves of my fingers. They were jittering out of control, like an itch I couldn’t get rid of. Something about the strawberry blonde’s phone burned in my eyes like a red hot neon sign. It pulsed with a feverish throb; I felt the currents running through it as if it were the blood of my own veins. And the longer I looked at it, the harder it seemed to pulse, until at last I pulled my eyes from it and I heard a destructive crack.


“Ow! What the f—?!”


“Katie!”


The other girl, a brunette bob slathered in purple eye makeup, ran up to her bewildered friend. Peripherally, I saw that the strawberry blonde’s phone had cracked into a pile of pieces and had made a gash in her hand. A smile played on my lips in impish satisfaction. I don’t know how I did it, but it served her right, the bitch.


The brunette bob tried to calm her strawberry blonde friend, Katie, down. “Hey, what happened to your—?”


“It was her!” Katie screeched and pointed in my direction. “She—she blew up my phone! She’s one of those goddamned—!”


This time, I stood up. “If you want to tell me something, tell it to my face instead of referring to me in the third person.”


It took her a moment to understand what I had told her, but after a while she said hoarsely, “They have institutions for your kind, don’t they?”


The prickling feeling in my fingers started acting up again. “You’re being awfully vague. I’m not sure what you mean.”


“I’m talking about your damn superpowers, you freak!”


I couldn’t see the girl’s freckles anymore; her face was so red with fury. She stepped closer to me, evidently thinking that she could beat the freak out of me, and her hand came down on my face. But rather than a sting, the impact kindled a charge underneath my skin. The charge shocked the girl and threw her onto the concrete road. She kicked and shrieked in fury and indignation and demanded that I approach her so she could obtain her revenge, but I held no further interest in her.


My dad’s SUV pulled into the parking lot just then. I climbed in and shut the door before the commotion bubbling forth from the school found me standing around.