Aprilynne Pike: Earthbound

The moment gets a little heavy, and to cover my anxiousness, I lean away from Benson and start digging around in the bottom of my backpack again.

“What are you looking for?”

“My ChapStick,” I grumble. The cold air here is surprisingly hard on my lips. The winters were plenty harsh in Michigan, but Reese says that the salt from the ocean is what’s making my skin dry out. So now I carry ChapStick everywhere.

Except when I misplace it.

Which is frequently.

“Look in your pocket,” Benson says with apologetic warmth in his voice. “It’s always in your pocket when you can’t find it.”

Making a silent wish, I dig into my pocket and breathe a sigh of relief when my hand closes around the familiar tube. “You’re a genius.”

“You’re an addict,” he counters.

“I’m telling you,” I say, pausing to rub my lips together, “in five minutes I’ll just have to do it again. I think I’ve become immune.”

“I think you have a serious problem, Tave. You need to go to therapy.”

“You’re so weird,” I say, turning back to my homework.

“No, seriously,” Benson says. “It’s almost three o’clock. You need to get to physical therapy.”

I hesitate. In the face of everything that has happened, going to physical therapy seems so small. So unimportant.

As though reading my thoughts, Benson squeezes my hand as he says quietly, “Let me think on this for a bit. It’s hard to take in all at once. Go ahead and go to your appointment and text me later, deal?”

I muster up a smile and say, “Deal,” feeling a little better. I pull on my jacket and, in a playful impulse, grab Benson’s face, planting a ChapStick kiss on his cheek.

As soon as my lips make contact with his skin, he stills, his hands tightening on my arms, and I wonder if I’ve made a mistake.

But then he’s wiping his cheek and his eyes aren’t on me and I’m not completely sure it happened at all. ‘Tavia,” he protests. “Gross!”

“See you tomorrow,” I say with a little finger wave.

“Addict,” Benson hisses one more time just before I reach the front doors.

The route from the library to the physical therapy center takes me up Park Street, through an old section of town. This area is an eclectic mix of old and new: a gas station, an ancient brewery, a famous house that’s now a historic monument—beautifully restored—all amid a formless mix of office buildings, many in the shells of their original two-hundred-year-old structures. It’s a clashing of times that feels dissonant, yet reeks of awesome. I love it.

But enjoying the scenery is kind of low on my list at the moment. I’m trying to keep my pace up while walking to a steady four-count in my head. O ne, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. It’s a trick my physical therapist taught me a couple weeks ago.

“Tavia Michaels, you should not have a limp anymore,” she insists. But after months of shying away from the pain, it’s become a habit—my natural cadence even though the pain is gone.

Most days.

Pure physical therapy only gets you so far; now it’s a question of resetting my mind. So I count. A lot.

But my even pace is a little hard to maintain when my eyes are darting to the space above every building, every front door, looking for symbols.

I blink. Was that a flash? I peer harder, blink again. Nope. This time I really am just seeing things. Great.

I try not to look at the next house, but I can’t help it. My eyes wander to the door all on their own.

What the … ? I come to an abrupt halt, and a man in a jogging suit mutters as he sidesteps to keep from running into me.

It’s not a triangle this time, and it’s not glowing, either. This one looks solid and … real. I take a few steps toward it, peering at the symbol carved into the beam above the door. It’s so worn—not to mention painted over—that I can’t quite tell what it is; something round but elongated over some curvy lines. It could be anything, but it’s definitely something , and it sets my heart racing the same way the glowing triangles did.

I attempt to look casual—like I’m not some creepy voyeur—as I pull out my phone and take a quick picture. As soon as the phone clicks, I shove it in my pocket, hoping no one noticed.

I lower my chin and start counting my strides again, trying to take my mind off the symbols. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four.

When I look up to gauge how far it is to the end of the block, a hint of gold flashes through gaps in the pedestrians in front of me. It’s him! Over the shoulder of the man in the jogging suit, not far past a lady with a stroller, I make out that now-familiar blond ponytail at the nape of his bronzed neck.

Apparently his long hair is real.

And it looks silky and soft.

My jaw tightens against the thought and I begin walking again, faster now, marshaling my courage. I should at least talk to him—find out what he thought he was doing last night.

I shoulder my way around a couple holding hands. Only two more people between us. My leg twinges, but I ignore it. I’ve stopped counting, too. Never mind my gait, I’m totally focused on him . I can’t yell—he’d probably run—but I’m almost close enough to grab his arm.

Almost there.

Almost.

But as I reach out to tap his shoulder, he steps around the corner into a narrow alley and is gone.

“No you don’t,” I mutter, and pivot without slowing, determined to catch him.

Pain hits me as I slam into a wall and the collision radiates down my spine, collapsing my knees and dropping me to the sidewalk. I blink and try to focus as faces enter my field of vision.

“Are you okay?”

“Someone call an ambulance.”

“She’s having a seizure!”

“Miss? Miss?”

“I’m fine,” I mutter, blood rushing to my cheeks. And despite being at a higher risk for them since the accident, I most certainly am not having a seizure. I rub a searing spot on my head and squint up at what I thought was an alley.

There is no alley there.

It’s a gray stone real estate office—a newer building, with flashy posters of available properties hung all over the windows.

But …

I want to die of humiliation as about six people help me to my feet. Their hands worry over me, touching me, violating my bubble of personal space—which has always been large, but has expanded with the isolation of the last several months. I put my arms out, nudging people away, chanting, “Thank you, I’m fine, thank you, I’m fine, thank you, I’m fine,” until they finally leave me alone, only one or two glancing after me.

“You have a scrape on your forehead,” a woman says. She looks at me so intently I wonder if she knows me. If I know her. Worse, if she knows Reese and Jay—it’s not a particularly large city—and is about to open up her cell phone and call them. What a disaster that would be. I open my mouth to speak, but before I can, she presses a Band-Aid into my hand, turns to cough politely into the crook of her arm, then walks up the street.

I watch her go, and just as I start to look away, she flickers.

What the hell?

I study her back—a spot of blue pastel among the pedestrians—willing her to flicker again, to have someone else notice, to prove to myself that I’m not crazy. But after about ten seconds of nothing weird happening, she takes a left and walks out of sight.

I brace my shoulder against the gray stone of the realty office and try to convince myself that I must have just blinked or that it was my imagination or something.

The blond guy is nowhere to be seen, which is probably a good thing since I’m not sure I could keep myself from screaming at him. He wants me to come to him; he runs away from me.