CHAPTER TWO

Luke

I had been wandering in the rain on the outskirts of downtown Portal for the past thirty minutes. One of the guys on my lacrosse team told me about a place called The Spotted Pig that allegedly sold the best jerky in town. But it must move around because my navigation kept taking me to different locations. Although I missed living in London, the outdoor activities here on the East Coast of the US were exceptional, and decent snacks were necessary to keep up my energy.

An ear-piercing sound suddenly emanated from my phone. I ripped it out of my jacket pocket and cupped my hand over the screen. The banner reported a tornado sighting, which meant I either needed to run into a nearby store or haul ass to the Rover. Based on my limited knowledge of tornadoes, the last option struck me as a bad idea. I let out a few curse words in frustration and tugged the hood of my mac a little further over my head as I prepared to leave the cover of my bus stop vestibule.

I headed to the nearby hardware store, but my destination changed when an enormous boom violently shook everything around me. The windows, the newspaper racks, the bus stop enclosure, and even the sidewalk. When the car alarms went off, I immediately ducked down and felt my body temperature rise in fear despite the rain and the cool air. Without warning, I was back on that London street covered in cement, dust, and glass. The bile rose in my throat, and my palms became clammy. Unable to move, I waited for another loud bang.

Instead, a bloodcurdling scream came from somewhere overhead. Its trajectory was indeterminable in the rain, and when I looked up, there was a dark blur against the sky. As suddenly as it had started, the scream cut short somewhere a few dozen feet in the street in front of me, accompanied by a loud resounding thud. The rain clouded my view, but then it momentarily cleared and I saw something move in the middle of the road.

In a state of slight panic, I looked to the right and left of the two-lane highway and swore when I saw a truck headed toward where there was movement. Without thinking, I ran into the street and started waving my arms. After waving my arms a few times and praying the driver wouldn’t run me over, I heard a groan behind me. I turned around and saw a figure on the ground trying to crawl. It was a girl—a girl in a soccer uniform. I turned back and waved harder. The truck stopped a few feet from us, kicking up a backsplash from the sudden stop.

The driver yelled out of his window, but I ignored him, turned back to the girl on the ground, and crouched down to get a better look. A mass of black hair covered her face. But I recognized the uniform as my new school’s colors. She had stopped moving, and bubbles came from the water near her face. Wrenching off my mac, I turned her head slowly and placed it under her cheek so she wasn’t face down in the water. I cleared her hair from her face but didn’t move her anymore for fear of a spinal injury. When I looked closer, the water dripping down her face appeared to have a pinkish hue. Gently, I walked my fingers over the back of her head and yanked my hand back when it touched something thicker than water.

After a few seconds of trying to recognize the girl, the rain stopped falling on my head. I looked up and found a tall, brawny man with a flannel shirt and beard holding a giant black-and-white striped golf umbrella. I guessed it was the driver of the truck.

“What’s going on?” the driver shouted over the deluge of water.

I stood up so that we didn’t have to shout. “I think she fell… and…” I looked down at my hand. “She hit her head pretty bloody hard on the pavement.”

The driver nodded and pulled out his phone. “I’ll call 911.”

He stayed next to me with the umbrella to make the call, and I stooped back down to check on the girl. Her hair had fallen back over her face, so I moved it again, hoping to recognize her. As I stared at her face, I remembered her from some of my classes, but couldn’t recall her name. It was something like Eve… or Ivy.

The driver interrupted my internal litany of three-letter names when he squatted down next to us. “Good, you got her face out of the water. Did you hear that boom a few minutes ago?”

I nodded yes and asked if he knew what it was.

“No clue, but it shook my whole damn truck.” He stopped talking and got a puzzled look on his face. He nodded his head in her direction. “Maybe that’s what caused her to fall. Especially with those cleats on.”

I hadn’t noticed the cleats. This added to the mystery of why she was in the middle of the street during a downpour. I wasn’t about to tell him what I suspected, not that he would believe me. Hell, I seriously doubted my suspicions.

I nodded and said in a bit of a daze, “Could be.”

After a car passed a little too quickly for comfort, the driver handed me the umbrella and told me he would put up some safety cones and flares to warn the other drivers. Somehow, it didn’t surprise me he had traffic cones and flares in his truck.

I crouched back down to watch over her and tried to remember what I knew about her. A bit of a dark horse at school, not so much a loner as a drifter. She talked little and had earbuds constantly plugged in. And, if I recalled her correctly, she usually dressed like a drunken sailor with cargo pants rolled above thick wool socks and combat boots. It surprised me she played a team sport and surprised me even more she had shapely legs under those cargo pants. Every curve of which was covered in tiny purple bits that looked like bubble gum.

Her eyes fluttered and appeared to be open. She blinked a few times and lifted her head slightly. A groan escaped her lips, and she put her head back down. She whispered something inaudible over the rain. I had taken my fair share of first aid courses and reassuring the person to keep them calm was top of the list. So, I got closer and placed my hand on her upper arm. I told her my name, Luke Vaughn, asked her not to move, and told her the ambulance was on its way.

Then she did the strangest thing. She laughed and tried to shake my hand off her arm. Not loudly and not for more than a couple of seconds, but unmistakably a laugh. I wondered if hitting her head caused brain damage. Confused, I removed my hand and sat on the road next to her head to keep a check on her breathing. About ten minutes later, the ambulance arrived.

The paramedics did their thing quickly and efficiently. They had her in the ambulance in less than five minutes. As they were loading her, they asked me what happened. I told them the same thing I told the driver. I had some guilt for not telling them everything, but I knew they would do a full check-up before removing her from the backboard. Strangely, a small part of me was desperate to go with her, an emotion I loathed.

The driver of the truck and I shook hands goodbye, and I observed a titanium wedding band. His enormous umbrella now made a little more sense. He struck me as the type of guy to make sure his lady didn’t get soaked in the rain. I started walking to my ride, still in a state of shock. It had stopped raining, but it had become darker during my time in the middle of the road with her. Which is why I didn’t spot the pothole before I stepped into it. When I looked down at the hole in the street, I found a large dark lump next to it. I bent down and saw it was a backpack. I picked it up and kept walking, unable to stop thinking about what had just happened.

After I hopped in the Rover, I placed the pack in the passenger seat after removing a spare T-shirt to wipe the water off my face. Then I mentally punched myself for picking up an unknown pack after hearing a loud bang. But as I worked through my memory, I realized the noise wasn’t the same as an explosive device. Examining the pack, I saw it was covered in sewn-on patches that reminded me of travel stickers of foreign countries on luggage trunks from old movies. I flipped the pack over to locate an identification pocket and found a slot the size of a business card, which was waterproof. The card inside slipped out with a tug. It stated the pack belonged to Iva Galen. Well, I had been in the general ballpark on her name.

Turning the pack around, I looked for the zipper on the most oversized pocket, only to find a lock. And not just any lock, a biometric fingerprint lock. I skipped that pocket and examined the smallest pocket on the front, which didn’t have a lock, so I opened it. Inside was a pack of bubble gum, two dollars in quarters, and a weird dark-blue plastic ring. I debated for a few seconds and then stole a piece of bubble gum and popped it into my mouth. It was grape, my favorite. The pack was just as mysterious as the girl. What kind of teenage girl bought fingerprint locks for her backpack? Maybe the kind that fell from the sky and lived to crawl away. I didn’t believe that’s what happened, but somehow, a nagging feeling told me that I wouldn’t be satisfied until I uncovered the truth. Somehow, I didn’t think this girl would give up her secrets without a fight.