Ignition (William Hawk Book 1) Read online

  “What?”

  I held out my left hand for him to see the strange cross. His eyes squinched. “William, you can’t draw on yourself and say that some alien left his mark…”

  “I didn’t draw it, Arthur. It just appeared on me.”

  “Get outta here.”

  “Wash it off.”

  He turned the hose on the cross full blast. He held it there for a while.

  “Damn,” he said.

  “You can’t wash it off. I already tried. It’s permanent.”

  Arthur’s face grew darker, and he edged away a little. “I gotta be honest, man, you’re freaking me out.”

  “I’m freaking myself out.”

  “But if you need any help, you know to call me.”

  “Thanks.” I got to my feet.

  “Hey, what are you doing with Julia today?”

  I froze in my tracks. Julia. The girl I had a date with this afternoon.

  “I don’t know. I guess I forgot,” I said.

  Arthur was looking at me dumbfounded. “How could you forget? Everybody wants to hang out with that girl. I would cut off my arm for a shot at her.”

  “She’s the last thing on my mind right now.”

  “If you need any help entertaining her, call me.”

  I grinned. “I’ll let you know how it goes.”

  With that, I turned on a heel and headed back toward my house.

  As much as I had wanted to be a sixteen-year-old and do the kinds of things that people my age liked to do, I was beginning to realize that was no longer possible. My mind was filled with an unbelievable mix of emotions, information, experiences, and memories that span lifetimes and centuries. At the moment, I couldn’t make sense of the whole package. I needed to assemble this immense library that existed in my head into a pattern. Then I had to find a tangible course of action.

  After I got home, I tried to text Julia, but my fingers felt like they were encased in cement. I didn’t want her to be upset with me. As much as I wanted to get to know her better, it would just have to wait. Sorry JJ don’t think I can make it today, not feeling so hot.

  Almost instantly my cell rang. It was her. I’d expected as much. Julia was always very prompt in returning communication. I looked at the phone, listening to the ringtone, but I couldn’t pick it up. She would know that I was avoiding her, since I’d just used the phone to text her.

  Suddenly I felt my body erupt in lustful desire. Julia was a good girl who went to church every weekend, a pretty girl. I felt the memories of flesh, lips, breasts suddenly flood my entire nervous system. Then I realized something else.

  Those weren’t memories of Julia.

  We hadn’t done those sort of things. Those must have been memories from experiences that I’d had in some other time, some other place. But when, where?

  Maybe another life? Then I wondered why I had even thought that. What the hell?

  The phone went to voicemail and immediately began ringing again. I relented, took a breath, and picked up.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “You’re such a flake,” she said. I could tell she was angry.

  “It’s just that something has come up,” I said.

  “What has come up, William? It’s your birthday, and I wanted to see you.”

  Her voice sounded stressed. It occurred to me that she cared for me, a lot. She was the overly attached girlfriend.

  “All right, fine,” I said, without thinking. “Come pick me up and we’ll go do something fun.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  I spotted my muddy hiking shoes in the corner. “We’ll go hiking at Bison Creek.”

  Silence from the other end of the phone. Then, “All right. Be ready by two o’clock.”

  Julia disconnected. I looked at the phone, thinking that I was disconnecting as well—maybe too much to ever be part of normal life again.

  For the next hour, I pursued one of those harebrained ideas that make perfect sense at the time, but that seem totally ridiculous in retrospect.

  I tried to burn off the mark on my hand. Well, first I scrubbed it with Lava soap, the stuff that is grainy and gets everything off. It didn’t work.

  Then I tried a steel bristle brush. That succeeded in ripping the skin off my hand, but not the mark.

  Then I had one more idea. Fire.

  Okay, I didn’t say it was a good idea.

  I found a magnifying glass on the basement “science shelf,” as my dad called it. Then I went out to the driveway, where the sun was always the strongest on our property, crouched down, and held the lens about six inches above my hand. After looking around to make sure no one was watching this display of idiocy, I aimed that little point of concentrated sunlight in the center of the strange cross.

  After a moment, it started to hurt. Then it really started to hurt. I gritted my teeth but kept my left hand planted against the concrete.

  Across the street, a neighbor stepped out of her house. Her name was Miss Camille, and she was an eccentric. Nobody knew much about her, except that she liked to walk around and stare at people as if whatever they were doing was her business too. She was wearing a purple muumuu, like she always did.

  She was staring at me. Though to be honest, I would’ve stared at me, too. The pinprick of heat had grown unbearable, and no doubt that pain was showing in my face. I swayed like a drunken sailor, dropped the magnifier, felt my body falling to the right, and I lost consciousness.

  Then I had a vision.

  Rolling green hillsides, yellow flowers lining the valley, the distant tinkling of a pristine silver stream.

  I see a man fishing at water’s edge.

  “Where are we?” I ask him.

  He slowly looks up at me, rubbing his beard thoughtfully. “We are here.”

  I realize conversation won’t be ordinary with this man, and I rephrase the question. “Why am I here?”

  He points toward the sky. “For the storm.”

  I turn my gaze to follow his finger. Above us the sky is a shade of blue a thousand times purer and more crystalline than I’d ever seen.

  “I don’t see anything.”

  “It’s always there,” he explains. “See, a wise man knows when the storm is coming and finds a place to stay dry. Some people don’t move in quite quick enough. They get sprinkled on, just a little bit. Others get a little wetter, but they’re not soaked yet. So they take a little longer to dry off.”

  “And then?”

  “And then there are those who get soaked to the bone. They don’t seem to know when to come in out of the rain. And they may never dry off. Are you ready for the storm?”

  I spin around, scanning the horizon. “But I still don’t see anything.”

  He turns and looks me square in the eyes. “The storm is already here.”

  I came to. I was lying on my back on the driveway, the cracked magnifier next to me.

  Above me was the inscrutable face of Miss Camille, wrinkly around the mouth and eyes, kind of rubbery, but not unpleasant. She dabbed the sweat off her cheeks with a handkerchief.

  “You did it now, son,” she said. “You passed right out.”

  I propped up on my elbows and looked at my hand. The cross was still there.

  “There’s something wrong with me,” I said.

  She looked at me with clinical detachment. “I’ll say. What were you thinking, boy?”

  “I’m not myself these days.”

  “Well, I used to be a nurse. Let me look at you.”

  She peered into my eyes, then put her fingers on my throat and found my pulse. Then she circled around, looking me over.

  Finally, she circled back around. “Open your mouth,” she said.

  I obeyed. Miss Camille peered into my throat, cupped my chin, stuck her finger into my mouth, and tipped my head up. I felt like a horse that was being inspected for a sale.

  “All your vitals look good,” she said. Then she helped pull me up to my feet. I stood there, a little
wobbly, my hand pulsing.

  “Try to stop smoking pot, will you?” she said.

  “I wasn’t smoking pot.”

  “You don’t have to lie. I come from a long line of hippies.”

  She winked at me. Then walked over to her house, turned back for another look at the village idiot, and shook her head before going inside.

  At two o’clock, I heard a honk outside. I pushed aside the curtain. Julia sat behind the wheel of her Jeep, Ray-Bans up on her head. I grabbed my backpack and ran out the door.

  I jumped in the Jeep and gave her a quick peck on the cheek. She seemed surprised. It was almost as if when I kissed her cheek I had given her a little electric shock. That would make sense, I thought, now that I had the First Activation engaged, though I was still foggy about exactly what this meant.

  Settling into the seat, I turned on some tunes. I noticed her sketchbook at my feet. Julia was an excellent sketch artist, and I figured that she was going to work in a courtroom someday, drawing those charcoal sketches of the defendants.

  “So where are we going?” she asked.

  “The mall.”

  “I thought you said that you wanted to go hiking.”

  “I have to buy something at the mall first. It’ll only take a minute.”

  As we pulled down the street, I drummed my fingers on the door. The word snaps floated into my head. What were snaps? I became aware that Julia was saying something, but I couldn’t really focus on what it was.

  With effort, I turned my head. “Did you hear me?” she said.

  “No,” I said.

  “Do you ever listen to anybody?”

  “I’ve been distracted lately.” It wasn’t an apology, just an explanation.

  “If you don’t pay attention to me, I’ll go out with one of the other guys who keep calling me.”

  That got my attention. “Like who?”

  “Like Sean Wilder. And Thad Chadwick.”

  I felt jealousy shoot through me. It was a palpable pain.

  “You don’t want them,” I said.

  “How do you know that?”

  It was time to play it cocky. “Because they are losers. And you like me more.”

  “You are different from other guys,” she continued. “There’s something about you that I just can’t figure out. But you don’t answer my phone calls, then you flake on me? It’s, like, why am I with you?”

  I didn’t say anything to that, feeling that small wriggle of panic in my body again. I didn’t want to lose Julia—that much was for sure. I would have to pay more attention to her once I learned more about what was happening to me.

  We cruised for a few more minutes down the suburban boulevard to the local shopping mall. I’d been shopping here my whole life, and I knew the exact place that I had to go.

  “Where should I park?” she asked.

  I pointed to the right. “Over there, in front of the sporting goods store.”

  “What do you have to buy there?”

  “Helmets.”

  She looked at me. “Are we, like, doing some dangerous hiking? Forget it, I’m not going dirt biking, no way…”

  “It’s not for us,” I said. “It’s for a project I have to do.”

  Julia parked, and we got out of the Jeep and headed into the sporting goods store. She followed me as I wound through the aisles, scanning for the helmets.

  “Julia!” a voice said.

  We looked over. It was some guy, the kind girls would probably call “handsome.” He was taller than me, dressed like a golfer, and he had black hair and a big smile. He was everything I wasn’t, and I hated him for it. I can admit that.

  “Oh my gosh!” she said.

  I watched my date, my girlfriend—I don’t know what you want to call her—run over to this guy. I watched him envelop her in an embrace in his pumped-up arms. She pulled back. They spoke in low tones to one another. As if I wasn’t even there.

  I felt jealousy gathering inside of me. It surprised me to feel that, because I hadn’t realized that I was so attached to her. Anyway, I wasn’t the jealous type—they’re real losers.

  They continued talking. I could see the delight on Julia’s face. I could see the smirking on his face as he made her laugh, and as she smacked him playfully on the shoulder. They were flirting with one another, right in front of me.

  My whole body tensed. I felt the rage brimming within me. I looked down at the cross on my hand. It was glowing.

  Then I sprang. But it was like I was outside myself, watching.

  I sprinted over to him, hoisting him like he was a rag doll, and I threw him down the aisle. He went at least ten feet. I knew I was finding some of that special power I had envisioned earlier. His body crashed into a display of soccer balls, and they went bouncing all over the store.

  “William,” screamed Julia, “what are you doing?”

  She tried to grab me, but I pushed her off. Still furious, I saw a rack of baseballs above his head. I held out my left hand, squinted at them, focused hard—and the rack tipped over. The baseballs rolled off the display and fell onto his back, one by one. He covered his head and shouted for help.

  Julia gaped at me, seeming to be unsure if the balls had fallen at my beckoning or if they had simply toppled on their own. As I headed back toward the bozo she had been all over, she jumped in front of me, pushing me back.

  Suddenly, I was as shocked as she was at what I had done. I tried to justify it.

  “That guy was flirting with you!”

  “That’s Dean! He’s my cousin!” she shouted.

  I heard a gasp. To the left was a group of three women who were staring at me with horror.

  “Did you see what he did?” one said, pointing at me. “He threw that boy like a wrestler!”

  “Yeah,” another said. “Then the baseballs nearly knocked the kid silly!”

  The third said, “Wait, did this guy make the balls fall?”

  The second: “Now, how in the world could he do that?”

  “I don’t know, but he was kind of pointing at them, then they…”

  “Oh, stop it!” said the first.

  “I’m calling security,” said the second.

  “Don’t call security,” said the third. “Call the police. That was assault!”

  I stood there, breathing hard as the old gals’ words drove the point home: I’d just assaulted Julia’s cousin. In a rage of some kind that I didn’t understand.

  With some ridiculous power that I’d never had before this morning.

  Julia helped her cousin sit up. He wasn’t hurt, but he sure was stunned at what had happened.

  “Who is that lunatic?” he said. “Your boyfriend?”

  They both turned to me with accusatory eyes. I saw a security guard appear near them. He looked at me.

  “What’s your name?” he said, starting toward me.

  I stared at him, and then I turned and ran.

  I sprinted as fast as I could, outside the store, across the parking lot toward the boulevard. I didn’t know where to go. I had to hide, but this was totally new ground for me. Where did people go to escape the police?

  I saw a bus slowing down at a stop nearby. The doors opened, and I sprinted across the grass and ran onto the vehicle. The driver sat behind a pane of glass with an angry look on his face.

  “How much is it?” I said.

  “You got a pass?”

  “No. How much is it?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “We only take bus passes.”

  I looked down at the meter. It had a slot to accept bills and another slot for coins.

  “But this looks like it accepts cash,” I pleaded.

  “Naw, it’s broken.”

  “Are you sure?” I said. I pulled a dollar bill from my pocket and held it at the front of the slot. The bus driver swore under his breath and leaned over and touched something under the machine. The small red light above the feeder slot turned on.

  I fed my bill into the slot. It acce
pted it. I looked at the bus driver. He was staring straight ahead, impassive, a block of stone. “It was working all along. You just didn’t want to turn it on.”

  “Please stand behind the line,” he said.

  “Do I get any change?”

  “It doesn’t give change.”

  “Where does this bus go?”

  His eyes found me in the rearview mirror. “Where are you going?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then sit down, and I’ll tell you when we get there.”

  He wasn’t going to cooperate, not on anything. I walked to the middle of the bus, past all the others looking out the windows, and plopped down in a seat. A girl stepped on the bus and came and sat a few rows behind me. I kept thinking that she was looking at me, but every time I turned for a peek over my shoulder, her face was turned away, against her shoulder like she was napping.

  “William,” I heard her say, but again, she wasn’t looking at me. I was hearing things. Maybe I had gone over the edge.

  The bus pulled away from the curb.

  We drove about a mile and stopped, letting people off. Then we drove another mile and did the same. A couple people got on; even more stepped off. After driving for about thirty minutes, we’d left the city behind and were now out on a lonely two-lane road, desert all around. There were only three of us on the bus now: the driver, the girl who got on the bus at the same time I did, and me.

  The driver’s eyes found me in the rearview mirror and looked at me as though he could see into my soul. “Last stop,” he said.

  I peered at the barren landscape around me. “Where exactly are we?”

  The bus driver shrugged. “I don’t know the name, but it’s a few miles from the middle of nowhere. That’s for sure.”

  “That’s fine by me,” I said.

  The bus slowed to a stop. As I walked past the man, he caught me by the arm. His grip was strong, and it took my breath away. I turned my face to his. The man’s eyes were full of pain. “You be careful out there.”

  “I will,” I said. “There’s still one more girl on the bus.”

  He looked in the rearview. “I don’t see anybody.”

  He was right; the bus was empty. I hadn’t seen the girl leave. Somehow, I knew she was still there, but I shrugged, stepped off the bus, and heard the doors close behind me. I watched it pull away and disappear into the distance.