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“I should go,” I said, always aware I was the only girl.
“She didn’t like the trick,” Cyrus said, laughing.
Despite that I’d grown up with these seven boys and that no one in this group would ever think of doing anything to hurt me, I felt vaguely uneasy when I looked around. Over the past year they had transformed their appearance like I had. They were deeply attractive, but they appeared hardened now with their abundance of tattoos and scars. And they were in fact hardened after a year of living with their wings clipped.
I reminded myself it didn’t matter that I was the only female. It had just been me for the past year. I couldn’t help thinking that if any other girls had been included in our particular group, things wouldn’t be as out of control. There was too much testosterone. Every night the boys wanted to play in secret, practicing skills we didn’t understand and weren’t supposed to explore—thanks to me and my moment of weakness telling Angus what had happened last spring.
I had explicitly disobeyed Novak when I shared my secret, wanting to impress Angus. Novak had warned me not to say anything after I’d gathered my courage and told him about the odd experience I’d had on a ski trip to Park City, Utah.
It had started with a stupid mistake. I’d locked myself out on my bedroom balcony when I went to smoke a cigarette in the middle of the night. For hours I’d been trapped in the well-below-freezing temperature in shorts and a T-shirt, kicking myself because the cigarette wasn’t even worth it—it had no short-term or long-term effects on us. It was just something to do. I told my father how, instinctively, I had closed my eyes and focused inward, visualizing the color blue turning to warm red, and I must have raised my core temperature because I didn’t feel cold while I was stranded out there. Then I showed Novak how, if I concentrated my energies on an object, I could move it or even break it—like a door lock, which is how I got back into the ski house after I eventually grew bored waiting for someone to come rescue me.
I was surprised how fast he shut me down. “Those are only tricks. We’re capable, but we don’t practice them because they aren’t worth the exposure. Don’t tell anyone what happened, and don’t do it again. Understood?”
Immediately I felt like an idiot because I actually thought I’d done something extraordinary. Apparently it was nothing. I had irrationally hoped it would be enough to get me moved to the other set of teenagers in our group. In keeping with tradition, those sixteen-and seventeen-year-olds were finally getting answers about themselves and all the inexplicable things we could do. Those of us who remained, myself and the other teenagers in my group, were the first of our kind ever to be kept in the dark. I thought of us as the Lost Kids.
Paul suddenly began to back away from the group, walking toward the driveway. We understood. We could all sense there were suddenly more of us in the vicinity. His parents were almost home. Moments later we could hear their car driving toward us, just a few blocks away now.
“Come on.” Angus breezed past his friends, walking toward his brand-new and badly dented black BMW without giving them a glance. He knew they would follow.
“Where to?” Rob unfolded his long body from a steel bench and stretched, showing off defined abs.
“Julia!” Angus pulled my attention away from Rob. I could tell Angus noticed I was noticing, and he didn’t like it. I smiled to myself, feeling more optimistic about tonight. I walked down the path to join him and arched an eyebrow. Whatever trepidation I was feeling inside, I had almost complete confidence I was masking it. Even if I was the bastard child and a Lost Kid, I was Julia Jaynes, Novak’s daughter. And I owned it. Because if I didn’t, I’d have no place in the world.
“Where do you want to go tonight?” Angus looked in my eyes and, briefly, we shared a moment. I knew he was wondering if I would play along tonight and that he was willing to try to charm me into it. I didn’t totally trust Angus, not after he broke his promise to me at the beginning of summer and showed these boys what I’d taught him how to do. They had taken the idea that they could assert their minds over their bodies and quickly gone to extremes. I understood: it felt good. It was a way to channel that pent-up feeling that physically hurt. But I couldn’t show them anything else or Novak would kill me and he might punish the boys.
The ultimate threat of being left behind was almost enough to dissuade us from breaking the rules. Almost. More often the residual anger at being demoted and segregated from our other friends just empowered us to rebel.
Still, for tonight I could go along for the ride and enjoy as Angus continued to try to make it up to me for telling my secret.
“The train tracks,” I said. I tossed my hair and stood at my full five feet four inches. It was an announcement, not a question. I saw surprise and respect on Angus’s face.
“You going to jump trains with us tonight, Julia?” he asked flirtatiously. We all started pairing off and climbing into the collection of luxury sports cars in the circular drive of Paul’s parents’ contemporary monstrosity. We weren’t that far from my house.
“We’ll see,” I flirted back. I wished I could stop the blush that warmed my face when Angus opened the passenger door for me. I hated it. No one else in the group did that. Everybody seemed to have near-perfect command over their emotions and only showed what they wanted others to read.
Car doors slammed behind me in perfect unison. Angus and I would lead them where I wanted to go. It was a powerful feeling. Train jumping should distract them. It was challenging enough. They might not ask for more.