Page 55 of Electricity
I didn’t have any other homework—well, I’d had some, but it’d gotten left in my locker at school, what with my bag trauma—I lay down on my bed and held my phone on my chest like a corpse in a cartoon holding a flower. Then I turned it on.
Texts hadn’t eased up and someone had put a photo of my bag on ZB. The subsequent captions were charming. But interspersed with all the other useless data were three anonymous private messages:
Hey
TheDramaLlamaThatsYourMama:
Are you for real?
1IcecreamIncident2:
I hate those fuckers!
from entirely different accounts. I concentrated on them to the exclusion of all else, and sent back,
To starlightpixel333:
I’m here
To TheDramaLlamaThatsYourMama:
Completely for real
To 1IcecreamIncident2:
I hate those fuckers too.
They were out there. It was time for phase two—figuring out where Mason would be.
I moved to sit with my back against the door, so anyone disturbing me would wake me, and I tossed my phone a few feet away, I didn’t want anything incoming from it to mess me up. Then I turned the laptop on, felt it boot and—nothing.
I knew my powers were still there. Just—not working, like a battery that wouldn’t turn. I put my hand against the screen, revved up mentally, felt everything shift and—stop.
Come on, Jessie.
I had to get in, to break into the school system to find Mason’s schedule, otherwise how would I get in the right place? And I needed to do it between now and the next commercial break most likely, there was no way Allie wasn’t going to bother me again tonight.
comeoncomeoncomeon
Everything in me jumped forward? And then dropped.
I was just like Darius’s battery pre-me on lightning-night. Only now I was scared I was going to blow it, which I knew wasn’t helping. If I couldn’t do this, how would tomorrow go?
My phone buzzed.
“What?” I asked it, as Allie tried to come in, whapping the door against my back. “Hey!” I shouted at her, closed the laptop and slung it under my bed in the moment of surprise that that bought me.
“Aren’cha gonna come and watch TV?” she asked, from the fraction of the door that was open.
“Yeah. In a second,” I said, standing up and sweeping up my phone.
I’d gotten another text. This one was all poorly spelled versions of UR gonna die alone!
, as if they’d gotten too excited to type properly.
I wasn’t sure what I felt more threatened by, the actual threat, or the implied illiteracy.
Then I hopped into ZB, into my message file, typed out a message once and copied and pasted it two more times to spam all three of them:
I really need to know where Mason’s gonna be tomorrow, at 10:55. Help?
There was no proof that the people who’d responded on ZB were real. Some of them—maybe all of them!—might be from the baseball team, trying to figure out what I was doing. But thirty seconds later I got a message back from DramaLlama.
He’ll be in room 501.
I hoped she (or he) was right—but it felt too easy. I messaged back.
Awesome. Thanks.
NP. I’ve spent the last eight months avoiding him.
That…sounded legit. I walked out into the living room with a warm feeling about llamas.
Lacey picked me up the next morning with her ratty backpack from eighth grade in the passenger seat. “I dared hopping on ZB last night.”
“Heh. Thanks.” I picked it up and put it in my lap. If I visited my locker in between every class today, maybe I wouldn’t lose any more notes. Or many-more notes. “As long as you’re not attached to it. I can’t guarantee its safety.”
“Gotcha. Did anyone respond?”
“Yeah.” I told her about the three mystery people, my question, and Llama’s response.
“You think that’s right?”
“I don’t know what else to do if it’s not.”
“Me either. Jessie, are you really going to be able to do this?”
“Hope so!” I said, to try to shut it down. I wondered if this was how Liam felt on game days, when everyone was slapping his back in the halls, telling him to hit a home run. “What’d you do last night?”
“I texted with Sarah about three hundred times.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“What about?”
“Everything. Ryan, her sister, her mom—that if it was up to her, she’d figure out a way to have Sprite chew Danny’s balls off.”
I felt overly familiar with Sprite after my time with Sarah’s phone. “She could probably train him to do that. They’re very close.”
“It was…nice. Like, the first time I felt like things might really get back to normal, you know?”
“Yeah,” I said, with a deficit of conviction.
Lacey took the final turn into campus. “Jessie, no matter what happens today, things are gonna be okay, okay?”
I turned toward her as I realized she was pre-forgiving me. “Yeah,” I said, bravely. “Just don’t forget to meet me in the cafeteria.”
I’d almost forgotten how awful school was going to be because I’d been Not Thinking about it so hard it’d almost worked.
More people knew about my ostracization since yesterday, which was good and bad—more kids felt free to take pot shots with their bags, but others avoided me like I had the plague, giving me more room to maneuver.
And when I got to Biology, Sarah was there looking angry at me.
“What?” I asked as I sat down.
“Don’t talk to me,” she said loudly, and then under her breath, “Ryan saw your ZB post last night. He’s freaking out, says I can’t talk to you.”
“And you didn’t tell him to shove it?” I whispered back.
“Not yet. Don’t worry, I’m going to. I just want to see where this thing leads first.”
“Hedging your bets?”
“Hell no. But if your thing works, I’m going to write an amazing expose for my personal essay,” she said, while looking over my head at a crack in the ceiling as if I were invisible. “I’ve got your back but I’m not blind—everything that’s going down is also journalism scholarship material.”
I sat there momentarily bewildered by Sarah’s ability to always land on her feet, no matter the situation, and right after that, Ms. Libel started teaching.
I spent class drawing a map of campus. If the nearest cell phone tower was west of us and all the history classes were all clustered on the north side, then I needed to be north-west to be between the two—and to make sure I got the text, I needed to give myself at least a half-hour, maybe more.
By the end of class, I’d missed most of the lecture, but I had a plan and I already knew where I’d hide.
Sarah elaborately sighed for the back of the room’s sake, so everyone knew sitting beside me was awful, and was currently making a constipated face as we picked up our bags. “Keep your phone on, okay? I might need you,” I said.
“Will do,” she said, and winked.
I walked down halls like I was headed somewhere for the entirety of break and then dove into the appropriate bathroom at the end of it.
The one with the writing on the far wall was the most north-west bathroom in school—a little north-north-west, but it’d do, if I knew a hawk from a handsaw.
(Mrs. Jadeberry would be so proud of me.)
As the final bell rang the bathroom emptied and I faced a wall of mirrors alone. It was impossible not to do what I’d done in front of every mirror since that night—I pulled up my shirt a little, and turned around, and confirmed what I already knew: the marks on my back were almost gone.
I went into the last stall, slammed my bag up on the coat hook, and sat down on the toilet. I just needed one more day. “Come on,” I said to no one—and phased.
Instead of being the bright fireflies and fireworks it had been prior, Lightning Land was dimmer now, like trying to see the stars beside a streetlamp.
I could feel the cold pressure of the seat beneath me, sense the claustrophobic metal walls, visualize the checkered laminate flooring under my shoes—everything in me wanted to be distracted, because if I didn’t try I couldn’t fail.
“This is the last time we’re doing this, okay?” I said, trying to coax my powers. And as if sensing the truth in that, the engine turned and purred and they finally unfurled like gentle wings.
I knew texts lulled during classes as teachers enforced no-cell-phones-policies, but kids found ways. Right now, I envisioned my powers as some kind of net, reaching up wide behind me, a filter-feeding organ made from my own body, capturing texts like whales caught plankton.
And despite classes occurring all over campus, there was a beautiful steady stream.
Why won’t you?—
I hate you?—
Fuck that!
Hey can u?—
blow me
Mrs Halloway sucks
this test OMG?—
what’s for lunch?
please?????
The net—my mind—billowed full almost to the point of tearing, messages overflowing, faster than I could read them, voicemail full. I blinked and found myself curled over, chest on knees inside the bathroom, gasping for air, like I’d been netted myself and been dragged ashore.
I was at toilet paper level, and I could tell it was ten-forty-five without looking at my phone.
How fast a test-taker was Mason’s accomplice?
Did someone who was barely passing take their time to try to pass?
Or just guess as quickly as possible, all the better to goof off?
My headache made me see stars, brighter than the other-world, and they danced like uncaught fireflies, mocking me.
Behind them, though, were the same notes on the wall that I’d seen yesterday. And one new written much more faintly beneath the others in pencil.
He is. My sister warned me.
My hands clawed at my calves as they turned into fists. I sprung back into action, unfurling anew.
Tomorrow?
Who else is going?
That is an ugly dress.
Your mom is such a bitch.
They’re my favorite band
how do you know
whatshisnumber
i’mgonnafail
iwishiwere
they’llneverfindoutifwedon’ttellthem
Everything was jumbled and blurred into one giant seething undifferentiated mass of high schoolosity and I was drowning in it then:
1 A 2 C 3 A 4 D 5 B 6 D 7 C 8 D 9 A 10 B 11 C 12 A 13 D 14 C 15 A?—
came through, a string of numbers and letters, like the nucleotides of an alien DNA. I caught it, all of it, kept it for myself and resurfaced into the bathroom with a gasp.
Oh my GOD.
My head felt like it was on fire and I wasn’t done yet—I leaned sideways against the cool steel metal stall, not caring how gross it was from probable flush-spray—I just had to make some changes and?—
“What’re you doing in there?”
The cheap locks of the stall gave and the door swung into my knees. I jumped three feet to standing, straddling the toilet seat, staring directly into the chest of our janitor—who had Mrs. Ellis peering over his shoulder.
“Jessica McMullen, are you high?”
I blinked—I could hardly focus on her—my head felt like one continual explosion, and I still had to— “What?”
“Why on earth are you hiding out in a toilet stall?” She pushed the janitor back to take charge of the situation.
I had to send Mason a text back—I knew he was waiting—he took his history class next—was he texting his accomplice right now for a resend?
“I just—” I tried to think of something to buy me more free time. “I felt sick to my stomach.” I clutched my belly to prove my claims.
One of her eyebrows rose. “So you thought you’d sit there, with your jeans on?”
“I flushed a few times already.” I said.
“Why don’t I believe you?”
“I—I don’t even know how long I’ve been in here.” If I could maybe get her to feel my head—it felt hot on the inside, maybe the outside felt hot too?
“Well Mr. Juarez does,” she snipped, and I could see the janitor’s name embroidered on his shirt.
“He’s been waiting patiently for you to leave so he can repaint this stall.
Then he started to get worried that you might be dead or something.
” Mrs. Ellis sniffed, as though that might be a more preferable state of affairs.
The warning bell rang and Mason was still waiting. I reached for my powers desperately, like I was grasping for straws.
SARAH I NEED A DISTRACTION BY THE SCIENCE BATHROOMS NOW!
“I just need another second.” I put a hand to my head.
I was going to phase out again, audience be damned.
I could see the answers Mason was supposed to get in my mind—I pulled all the letters and reversed their order, so the first question had the fiftieth’s answer, when I heard: “Fight! FIGHT!” outside in the hall.
“FIGHT!” someone else shouted—still loudly, but a little down the hall, along with the sound of fast running, like an oncoming storm.
Mrs. Ellis turned on her heel and tromped out to see as I heard the jeers of kids on either side emptying out of their classrooms. I could imagine them all so clearly, each of them had phones out, just in case—what was better than watching a fight, live?
Videoing it, so you could share it on ZB later.
I sagged against the bathroom stall and in a second—a glimmering second—I crafted my own firefly and set—it— free ?—
“Sorry to rat you out—but I’m supposed to paint that stall by the end of the day,” Mr. Juarez explained from a distance as I re-woke up.
“It’s okay—I get it—I’ll go to class now, thanks,” I said, stepping out and around him, running down the hall in the opposite direction.