Page 15 of Electricity

I fought to stay with this version of reality, the one I could feel solidly under my feet—but the other kept calling me.

There were blurs in my vision like water drops caught in my eyelashes every time I stopped and stared up at a wall, feeling the cables pulsing behind it—I had a sudden silly image of impossibly long ferrets running through the walls—and everyone’s phones were sparkling now, like everyone had a jar of fireflies on them but me.

I wanted to touch them—but I was afraid. I didn’t want to break anyone else’s phones—or accidentally read all their texts or see all their photos. I’d been on the internet long enough to know that some things couldn’t be unseen.

So the rest of the day was one long nervous ramp up to chemistry. I got there before Liam arrived, in the hopes of giving him the opportunity to continue whatever conversation we’d been about to have earlier before Darius walked up.

But I didn’t want to look like I was stalking the door, so I made sure to be staring off into space in that ‘I’m not really here’ way that I got at crowded places to cover when you really were staring at someone over something but didn’t want them to know.

So I saw him walk in, pretended to be glazed, then blinked back to life, and did some sort of weird smile-nod of acknowledgement that I instantly hated myself for doing afterwards—for the half-a-second it took for him to return it back.

Then I felt myself flush and ducked down to busy myself bringing my textbook out of my bag to hide behind my hair.

He took his seat behind me and I could swear I felt him there.

Not just his phone—which I did feel, along with everyone else’s in the class—but him.

I didn’t have like a super lot of reasons to be looking behind me? But once I yawned and twisted like I was stretching, and another time our teacher pointed back and I made sure to look, and another other time I dropped my pen and leaned over to get it in a complicated fashion.

Each of these times only served to confirm what my new sixth-sense was telling me. Liam was looking at me. A lot.

Had he always been looking at me? I mean, I’d been looking at him since 6th grade, turn-about was fair play, but, if he was, I figured I should put on a show.

I went through assorted moods over the course of all fifty-minutes.

I pretended I was a beautiful super model who of course tossed her hair back over her shoulder and smiled blandly at nothing in particular with a soft pout.

I felt stupid doing that and slouched into being a punk, tucking my seat forward and my hunching my back, like I was too cool to be here.

I pretended to be studious, I pretended to be insane, I eventually got tired of overthinking things and wound up being my plain old self and generally feeling like an idiot by the time the bell rang.

I packed up my books without thinking, and stood to find him beside me.

“You’re doing good in this class, right?”

I brushed my bangs out of my face. “I’m doing well in this class, yes,” I said, wondering if he’d catch my correction.

“Our final’s coming up—think you can help me study?”

“Sure?” I said, like it was a question.

“Cool. Thanks. We’ll work something out.” He gave me a smile and brushed by me. Our arms touched and a spark jumped between us—and then ran up and down my spine. Suddenly all I could think about was working-something-out with him. I clamped down on it before it could go anywhere.

“Static—sorry,” he apologized, then turned away.

“No problem,” I lied.

I rode the shame train home, and Kortney ignored me in that overly-ignoring-you way where you knew you were being ignored and occasionally laughed at.

It didn’t matter. All I could think about was Lacey—and Liam—and Lacey at Liam’s.

Between that and my phone-zapping powers, I’d never been so confused.

But by the time the bus reached my park I had a plan. I’d go home, check in with Allie, avoid my mom, and then head over to Lacey’s, where I’d somehow avoid her mom and talk to her. Several parts of it were impossible—the avoiding moms parts—but I had to try.

Luckily for me, Lacey was waiting at the bus stop.

The snickers on the bus stopped, replaced by silence before starting up again, redoubled.

“It’s her?—”

“How dare she show her face?—”

“It’s the puke queen!”

I stood and walked off the bus right toward her as she stood stiff-backed glaring past me. The cretins in the bus behind me hooted like animals as Lacey stared them down.

“Puke princess!” one of them shouted through an open window. I shuddered. That kind of alliteration would be hard to live down. Lacey flipped off the bus with both hands as it drove away.

“What’re you doing here?” Didn’t she know better? I hugged her tight.

She hugged me back and pulled away. “I had to show them I wasn’t scared.”

“Why? They’re idiots, you know that; ignore them.”

She looked at me out of the corner of her eye. “You’re still grounded, aren’t you?”

“Yeah—”

“I’ll show you. In private.” She turned to walk toward my trailer.

“Good luck getting that at my house,” I said under my breath.

I followed her with a half-open mouth. Something had changed for me, too, and I wanted to tell her—after killing Sarah’s phone, Lacey was the only person that I could tell about it. But compared to what’d happened to her, it just seemed so weird I couldn’t bring myself to bring it up.

“Lacey! Are you okay?” Allie sprang off the couch and ran for Lacey’s open arms.

“I am, thanks.”

“Did it hurt?”

Lacey looked at me.

“I don’t ever want my appendix out.” She went on in a rush.

Lacey gave her a half-smile. “Yeah, I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“Is Mom asleep?” I asked.

“She went to take a nap about an hour ago.”

I glanced into the kitchen where three beer cans were lined up waiting for there to be more room in the recycling. We probably had another safe hour without her.

“Lacey and I have to do homework,” I said. I took Lacey’s arm, ditched my backpack, and started hauling her toward the back door.

“Outside?” Allie said with a squint.

“Yep. Just for a little bit. It’s a…biology thing. Weather patterns.” Clearly my sister wasn’t buying it. “But after that, we’ll come in here and help you out with yours.”

“Together?” Allie’s face lit up. My sister thought that all my friends hung the moon.

“Together.”

“For a little bit. My mom gets home at five,” Lacey said.

Allie nodded, understanding the nature of avoiding moms. “Okay. Hurry. I’ll save you good coloring.”

“Thanks,” Lacey said, ruffling Allie’s hair once before letting me drag her outdoors.

“Sorry about that. We gotta go somewhere she can’t hear.”

“I understand.”

We walked to the end of our property, angling away from Razor, who’d started barking the second I’d opened the door. Our trailers were spaced far enough apart that only people who had dogs had fences—and Razor needed his. I’d had nightmares about him getting out and eating Allie for years.

My trailer was on a slight hill and the land behind it had a hump and then a ditch where water ran off after snow melt and got trapped in shallow puddles that bred mosquitos every summer.

We walked over the hump to sit behind it and once Razor couldn’t see us he stopped snarling, out of sight, out of mind.

And I was surprised to find out that I wasn’t even away from electricity out here. Power lines were strung overhead, like God’s own piano wire. They sizzled in the humid summer air, and if I squinted a little, they glowed.

“How was school?” Lacey asked.

I made a disparaging sound. I should’ve punched Kortney in the face this morning. “Bad, but not that bad. It’ll ease up. I think. I don’t know. But no one seems to know, if that’s what you’re asking. They all think you broke up a senior party.”

“Technically, I did,” Lacey said, mostly to herself. Everything about her was dampened, like someone had turned her dial down from ten to three.

“That’s not why that happened.”

She shrugged a shoulder.

“What was that at the bus stop?”

She sighed and took out her phone, tapping on the screen and handing it over to me. “Here.”

I made to touch it, and then stopped myself. I couldn’t break hers like I’d broken Sarah’s, she wouldn’t have backups. “I can’t, Lacey?—”

“Why not?”

I looked nervously over my shoulder. “Because if my mom comes out and sees me with your phone, I’ll never get my phone back.”

Lacey looked at me like that was absurd, because it was, but then said, “Here. I’ll do it for you,” she said, and then acted like a hand model, scrolling through pictures for me on ZoomBoom, all tagged as her.

They were all assorted buttholes. Dog, cat, giraffe, cow, horse, dog, dog, cat—I suspected I was looking at the buttholes for every house pet from the entire senior class, with more being added every second.

I wondered if I knew Sprite’s well enough to spot his, after having gone through approximately 4 million of his pix on Sarah’s phone.

“Jesus.”

“Yeah. Emily texted me to tell me she’d started it. Which was why I had to go and stare her down.”

“It’s bullshit,” I said, as she took her phone back.

“And then there’s this.” She flashed me the screen again.

u know you liked it

I felt sick. “Oh, God.”

Lacey nodded and kept nodding.

“Who sent that?”

“Who do you think sent that?”

It took all the power I had to not rip the phone out of her hand.

“ He did. Whoever he was.”

“But—”

“ He used ZB.”

I groaned. ZB had a chat function. I hardly ever used it, because it was generally awful and full of people looking to hook up—or talk about hooking up, at least. You could chat with anyone on ZB from anywhere, but they could block you at the drop of a hat.

It was generally catfishing central, with everyone lying to everyone else.

But that—it felt real. Even when I wasn’t the one holding the phone. “What’s his name?”

“On ZB? MysteriousAzzho1e,” she said with a snort. “Does anyone at school, I mean anyone , know?”