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“Don’t fall,” he said.

I blinked my eyes open and I was back to the field with a killer headache. “I’m trying not to.” I felt like I’d taken a sip from a firehose—and it’d almost blasted my lips off. But I knew what it was that he’d sent. “You took a picture of your hand, holding out three fingers.”

“Yeah.” He beamed at me and held out his hand in real life. “Time to do science. Gimme your phone.”

I handed it over, and he told me to go long.

Over the course of the next hour, we discovered the limits of my range—I had to be between the phones and the tower to get information faster than the phones, and I could swat texts out of the air like flies, or just read them and let them flow on, as long as I was in the right place at the right time. None of what we found out explained how I was doing any of it, but it was nicer than I cared to admit to be working with him.

At the end of things, when my headache won, I lay down on a safe patch of grass trying not to let it show.

Darius lay down beside me an arm’s length away, propped up on his side, and put our phones between us. I reached out for mine and rested it on my stomach, staring up at the clouds billowing overhead, like massive ships sailing across the sky.

“Kansas has clouds like God meant man to have them,” he said, after his gaze followed my own.

“Who said that?”

“I did. Just now.”

I made an agreeable sound. “It’s poetic.”

“Thanks.”

The world felt like it was slowing, or maybe I just wanted it to be. The headaches I felt seemed to be commensurate with the effort I put out—the harder I tried, the worse I hurt later. With everything I’d attempted and failed at last night, I was lucky I didn’t have a headache-hangover this morning—but right now it felt like someone was learning how to play maracas inside my skull.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah. It’s just—any time I do my thing, I pay for it in here,” I said, rubbing my temples.

“That makes sense. In comics, powers always have a price. If they don’t, you turn into a villain.”

I pushed myself up on one elbow, facing him. “What about Superman?”

“His price is he can never have a normal relationship.”

“Huh.” Who knew Superman and I had so much in common. I pushed myself up on one elbow, facing him. His phone was still between us. “You realize I could read your whole phone right now?” I asked.

“Yeah—after you confessed, I deleted everything off of it that might’ve been questionable.”

“Like what?”

“Some porn. And a Taylor Swift album.”

I laughed. But if he was that smart—I’d seen Amy’s message go through to him last night. And he himself had been going to Liam’s party. In a work capacity, but still—he knew other girls.

“Do you go to all the parties?”

“Only ones I’m invited to.”

“I never pegged Liam for a stoner.”

“Are you kidding me? Half the team would kill and eat each other if they didn’t smoke pot—it smoothens out the ‘roid rage. I’m practically doing a public service.”

“But—why?” I’d seen his Uncle’s house. It was plenty nice—and he’d had a job, until the incident at the Shax. It wasn’t like he desperately needed money.

“Because I want to go back to California.” He gestured at the world behind me. “Nothing personal,” he added, apologizing to me and Kansas simultaneously.

“Yeah, of course.” I knew all about wanting to be somewhere else.