When the Sky Fell on Splendor(43)

“Great point, Sofía,” Levi chimed. “We should give the alien a name.”

“Not . . . what I was saying,” Sofía said.

Arthur tapped his chin. “E.T.? Like the movie.”

“There are any number of alien films we could pull from,” Levi said. “Let’s not go straight for the most obvious.”

“Are y’all kidding?” Nick drawled. “Call it Alf, call it Leonard Freakin’ Nimoy—this thing is dangerous either way!”

“Do you think sleepwalking is my superpower?” Levi’s mouth stuttered between hopeful optimism and a frown. “That’s anticlimactic.”

“Oh yeah?” Nick said. “I’m pretty sure Alf gave me missile codes to activate a piano bomb, wanna trade?”

Tuning everything out like always, Arthur bent to touch the track switch and looked up, eyes lit with excitement. “Still warm. Can you do it again, Franny?”

I shook my head. “I don’t—”

“Try,” he implored.

Instinctively, I looked to Sofía for support. Her lips were pursed tight, but her eyes were still avoiding me.

It’s for the best, a little voice said. If you’d told her, it would have been too much. If she really understood what was happening to me, she’d be sitting in the sheriff’s office right now, spilling everything.

“Just try,” Arthur said, impatient.

“You can do it, Fran!” Levi cheered.

The birds tattooed on Nick’s fingers seemed to fly across his stubbly jaw as he rubbed it. “Probably should at least try.”

I sighed and crouched in front of the switch. I wasn’t sure what to do, so for a few seconds, I just stared. When that did nothing, I imagined it snapping sideways, pushed by an invisible force, by me.

I tried to summon that charged feeling into the air.

I pictured light crackling off my skin and energy building in my veins until it thrummed and trembled, down through my feet, into the metal rails as it had back in the tunnel.

I could feel all four sets of eyes homed in on me, all four bodies inclining expectantly.

Move, I thought. Move.

My mind wandered toward the memory of the white light unspooling across the gravel lot, into me. Move.

I closed my eyes, and pictured the rail switch flopping like a fish on dry land as that buzz rode through my blood. I could feel the energy, but it was like it was no longer close to the surface, and the tendrils of it I grasped at were evasive, slippery.

MOVE.

My eyes snapped open. Art, Levi, Nick, and Sofía were all still leaning toward me, eyes wide and tense.

The switch was lifeless.

“I can’t.”

Levi let out a breath, and Arthur pressed his thumb to his chin. “You made it happen back at the hermit’s house, and then again when he was closing in on us in the tunnel.”

“And when you were alone in the Jenkins House.” Sofía pursed her lips. “Maybe it’s like a defense mechanism? Like adrenaline. Like an energy source that’s released when her pulse speeds . . .”

“You’re saying she has to be scared?” Arthur asked, and she shrugged.

“Maybe not has to be. Being scared or surprised might make her involuntarily release the energy, but there could be a way to voluntarily trigger it.”

“Like pee,” Nick said. “You can get it scared out of you, but you can also go in the toilet.”

“Charming,” Sofía said.

“I think she’s right,” I said. “I can feel it in me, but it’s subtle, not like when we were in the tunnel.”

“On par with the fainting goat or the dead-playing opossum,” Levi narrated, “the Frances Schmidt has been known to respond to threats with displays of electrokinesis.”

“Electrokinesis,” Sofía pointed out, “does not exist. I’m not even sure that word exists.”

“Tell that to Electro,” Arthur murmured.

“Superhero?” she guessed.

“Villain,” I said, and she looked away suddenly. Arthur had never cared for Spider-Man—he was more of a Batman guy—but Mark briefly had, so we were both familiar.

“She has to be scared,” Nick mumbled to himself. “We can work with that.”

I gave him a shove. “I carry Mace. Think about that before you try to scare the lightning out of me.”

“You own Mace, Franny,” Nick said. “You don’t carry it.”

“She’s supposed to.” Arthur lit up a cigarette—did he keep hand-rolled cigarettes in his pajama pants now?—and took a long puff. “We’ll work at it more tomorrow. I’ve got a plan.”

“Great,” Nick called. “So now we just drop the alien hunt you were so amped on for Operation Superhero?”

“We still need answers, something that will keep us out of jail if we get linked to those field burns,” Sofía said.

Arthur waved, like they were flies buzzing around him. “Figuring out what our extraterrestrial did to us is only going to help us figure out what it is, what it wants, and where it went. Trust me.”

Levi nodded emphatically. “Right, if it wants something from us, then our abilities are the key to determining that.”