Page 49 of Electricity

D arius started hauling us again immediately.

“You heard the man—ladies?” he said, making a beeline for the parking lot.

We obediently followed, walking just as slowly as the rest of our dazed and frustrated classmates.

It was only nine. The prom was supposed to go on for at least another hour—I had a feeling the parties would go on tonight regardless.

I wondered what’d happen to Danny at them.

I wondered where Mason had gone. I wondered what was wrong with me, as the blood burbled down the back of my throat, thick and salty.

Darius beeped his doors open when we were fifteen feet away and herded us inside, locking the doors the second they were shut. Then he started to dig around inside his car until he found some Snax Shax napkins for me to shove into my nostrils.

“Lacey,” I said, turning toward her, sounding nasal. “I so did not mean to do that.”

She held her phone out to me with my text on it. “I think I know.”

“Oh God?—”

“Don’t apologize.”

“I got so mad—I didn’t know what else to do,” I said. Darius was uncharacteristically quiet—I hoped he wasn’t judging me.

“No—I mean, it sucks, don’t get me wrong. But—if any of those pictures get out now, people will assume that’s who sent them—so he can’t post them, right?” She reached inside her skirt to start undoing safety pins.

“But he can still send them—” I hadn’t gotten them all, when I’d been so sure. Goddammit.

“No. I was having a good time tonight until then. It made me realize I’m tired of being scared, Jessie. I don’t want to be anymore.”

“Good.” The car slowed to a roll as Darius navigated around another wave of kids leaving the gym.

I heard a lot of shouting and cursing and recognized a ton of the voices—the entire drunken baseball team.

They wanted to know, ‘Who the fuck did that!’ and to ‘Fuck that lying fucker!’ and my heart started beating a million miles a minute.

I could see the swirling lights of data surrounding their cellphones, illuminating them, like they were the torch-holding villagers in a pitchfork mob, and a fresh wave of blood leaked down my throat.

“Whatever you’re doing, stop it, okay?” Darius said, and I wanted nothing more at that moment then to crawl over into his lap again and feel safe. He was concentrating on driving though—getting us out of here safely.

I looked back at Lacey in the rearview—with the napkins up my nose I looked like a bloody walrus. “Should we tell Jonah?”

“Last time I saw him he was making out with Sam. I don’t think he cares,” Lacey said, and finished unfolding the bottom of her dress out to a church appropriate length.

We drove back in near silence, me swallowing blood, which seemed commensurate with the horror of the evening. I had no idea what the repercussions would be, only that I sure there would be some.

Darius remembered where Lacey lived and stopped in front of her trailer.

“Talk to you tomorrow, yeah?” Lacey said, after she hopped out.

“Yeah.” I agreed, and she closed her door.

Then Darius took us to his traditional spot, well down the street from my trailer. “That was crazy.”

“Tell me about it.” I tugged the napkins out, relieved no new geysers erupted.

“No really, Jessie, you’ve got to stop.” The overhead light showed his earnest expression.

“Huh?” I lifted my chin, showing him my likely blood smeared face. “I’m fine, see?”

“No—what you did tonight—it’s not safe.”

“Darius—”

“Headaches are one thing—spontaneous nosebleeds another. I read enough comic books to know where this ends.”

“I get the power of flight and hide on Mars?” I said, trying to deflect him. “It’s not like my brain’s going to explode.”

“How do you know?”

“Because that’s impossible.”

“As impossible as being able to send out texts to a hundred people at once?”

I sank back under the force of his logic. “After tonight, what other reason would I have to use them?”

“I don’t know. But you shouldn’t. It’s not safe. Promise me.”

I looked down at my hands. I could feel the slight pull of the battery I’d charged, the strangely delicate distance between Darius and me, the xylophoning of news pinging ZB on both our phones.

“No. It’s my power. I’ll be careful—I’ll be safe—but I don’t want to make any promises that I can’t keep.

” His dark eyes met mine and it was hard not to look away. “Are you mad at me?”

“Of course not. I am, however, disappointed.”

“Dar-i-us?—”

“It’s the worst, I know. That’s why I said it. I’m just worried about you now is all.”

“Well, don’t be. I’ll be fine.” I wished I weren’t in this silly dress, so I could curl up in the seat like I always did. I could go inside if I wanted to—but I still had hours till my curfew.

He rocked against the window behind him, too, putting us as far away as we could be from each other while still in the same car, but instead of trying to hide like I was, he was taking up space as if to better survey me, like I was something best appreciated from a slight distance.

The thought that that might actually be the case --

“Does this mean our pause is off?” he asked, his voice low.

I looked over at him from behind a protective veil of hair. Was it? Things were irrevocably over now. The entire school knew about Danny. There wasn’t any point in hiding.

“Yeah,” I said.

His lips curved in a slow smile. “C‘mere.”

I leaned toward him as he leaned in and kissing him again was as beautiful and good as I thought it’d be.

The overhead light had gone out, leaving us in the dark, so I didn’t have to worry about smudging lipstick or the probable disarray of my hair.

His hands reached for my head to bring me closer and I felt the soft fuzz of his as I reached up behind his ears and I was far more likely to die from all the feelings I felt now than from anything I’d done earlier on in the night.

And then his hands wandered slightly lower and I pulled back.

He yanked his hands back like I was a flame. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be—” I wished I hadn’t moved—why had I moved? Stupid body, mistrustful body.

Then his attention flickered over my shoulder, and I turned to see the light in Allie’s room on and reality, cold and unwelcome, washed in. I sighed and sank back, still able to taste his lips against my mouth and feel where his hands had tugged my hair.

“A real date. First,” I said, putting a definite hand on the door’s handle. “In a week or two. Give my mom a chance to get over the dream of Liam.”

He laughed and it made my heart swell. “Fair enough.”

“Dinner, and a movie. But maybe then we sit, like, at the back of the theater. In the dark. Watching something neither of us are really interested in seeing.”

“Sounds good,” he said, as I got out of his car. “I can’t wait.”

“Me either,” I said, carefully shutting the door quietly and waving as he drove away.

I was in bed wellllllllll before midnight and sent my mother the photographic evidence she’d requested. She texted back asking for a new photo of me, holding up four fingers and sticking out my tongue. I obliged, feeling silly, being ever so glad my mother wasn’t on ZB, and then tried to wind down.

Darius was amazing, and most of the night before that largely so. If I just concentrated on that, I could almost blot out the rest of the evening.

Then a firefly zipped into my phone. I read it at the same moment my thumbs pulled up my screen.

Ur dead

It wasn’t from a number I knew. I jumped into ZB and scanned.

There were a jillion new photos of everyone’s prom, and then a lull during attendance, a spike during the slideshow, a lull during the parties, and then a ton of curse words and all caps promising violent retribution as assorted classmates got drunker.

Oh no. I knew there was no point in reading, or responding, or anything—the advice I’d given Lacey week ago was the only advice I’d had.

I’d had to do it tonight. For Lacey’s sake, and also because Mason and Danny couldn’t win. But being right didn’t stop me from spinning in my sheets after I turned my phone off, like I was spiraling down a drain.

I got up the next morning and my phone’s dead screen taunted me. For as long as it was turned off—as long as I had the strength to keep it off—I could pretend that prom hadn’t happened.

I made myself get up, eat breakfast, and hang out with Allie.

In the middle of one of her cartoons, there was a commercial for the evening news, full of teasers for that night’s show, and Rebecca Molange popped up, her concerned face looking straight into the camera, saying: “Local prom ruined by master hacker.” I stared at the screen, jaw dropped.

“All that and more at 6!” she proclaimed, before a toy commercial came on.

I couldn’t stand it anymore—I walked back to my room and turned my phone on.

Information flooded in. ZB was busier than it’d ever been before—people rehashing what and who they’d done at the parties. At least that part of prom hadn’t been canceled, or there’d likely be a mob outside my door.

But interspersed with all the gossip and the trash was an obsessive level of threats against me via texts and ZB as whoever had decided that I was dead got increasingly upset that I wasn’t responding, until about five AM when I assumed they’d finally passed out.

If that was happening to me—I sent Lacey a quick text with my mind:

You okay?

and paced my room in circles till she sent back:

Yeah. You?

I lied.

Yeah, just checking.

I stared at the vitriol on my phone. I’d started getting texts from more than one number, but the messages were all the same: they wanted to hurt me, wanted me dead, because I was a whore.

If I was a whore—me who hadn’t ever done anything ever, like just had gotten kissed for the first time this past week—what chance did Lacey have?

And it pissed me off! I’d been reading enough guy’s phones this past week—I knew they all wanted sex—they were dying for it! So shouldn’t they be happy if I was actually as whorey as they claimed?

Damned if I was, and damned if I wasn’t.

I sat on the edge of my bed. Did I actually need to be afraid?

Not after what I’d done to Razor. But I didn’t have eyes in the back of my head—and sometimes I was in cars that could be run off the road—and I wasn’t with Allie or my mom all day every day.

And what if they did something to the trailer while all three of us were gone?

Despite the fact that I’d personally wanted to burn the trailer down before didn’t mean that I really wanted it to happen.

The threats hadn’t branched out yet, but what would I do if they did? I doubted the same cops that’d ignored a bleeding Lacey would give two shits about anonymous text threats to me.

It hadn’t started up again this morning though—maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe I’d get lucky and he, whoever he was, would move on to the next girl.

I frowned at my phone for thinking that—and then the doorbell rang and I jumped up.

It was too late, Allie’d beaten me to the door. I had visions of the baseball team reaching in and pulling her out, hoisting her over their head like a virgin sacrifice to a volcano god.

“Barbar!” Allie flung the door open, revealing Barbara standing outside, looking a little bit like a horror movie actress with her scissors in one hand. Barbara was my mother’s best friend, fellow bar employee, and had been cutting all of our hair since I was five.

“Allie! Jessie!” she announced, as Allie let her in, and there were hugs all around. “Go get the tarp, will you?” she told Allie, who obediently ran off.

“Mom’s not up yet—” I said.

“Rachel! I’m here!” Barbara shouted, loud enough to get through the walls to my mother’s room. “Get your lazy ass out of bed!”

I stood in awe of this woman who could get away with that, and then she beamed at me. “I’ll start with you two, until the bear wakes up.”

“Yeah, Rachel, wake up!” Allie shouted, two never-had-a-pack-a-day-habit octaves higher. I reached out and planted my hand over her mouth, and then we unfurled the tarp together.

Barbara cut Allie’s hair while Allie danced in her seat, animating cartoons she’d seen that morning for Barbara with her dolls.

She was definitely a moving target, but her hair was wavy enough to forgive a few inches here and there.

Mine, however, was still sprayed and teased from prom.

Barbara sent me to the shower to wash it out as she finished up on Allie.

I did what I always did when I was in the bathroom now—I turned to look at my naked back. The lightning lines were definitely fading. But it was easy while I was in there to remember what it felt like when Darius had touched them for the first time—and against last night?—

“Jessica?” Barbara shouted. I quickly returned to the living room with my hair in a towel-turban over my head.

“Don’t do that, it’s bad for your hair—stresses the strands.”

“Sorry,” I muttered, while tugging the towel off. She tapped the seat and I sat down. Within seconds, she was pulling a comb through and finding all the tangles that I’d missed.

“Your mom told me all about prom,” Barbara said, scissors snipping by my ear. “You and Liam Lewis! Who would’ve thought!”

“Not me,” I admitted.

“I feel so bad about what happened though,” she went on.

“That poor—” she began, and the moment stretched out as she measured my hair.

I imagined all the right things she could say, before she didn’t with a snip.

“…boy. I mean, just think. Everyone in town—how is he going to hold his head up high anymore? Doesn’t matter how good he is at baseball now, after that.

Everyone’s going to be thinking things when they see him, from here on out. ”

“Yeah, they are,” I agreed, because I hoped that it’d be true.