“WE’RE NOT GOING TO SARAH’S,” SAM SAYS, following me along the edge of the forest. “We got this tablet thing, possibly the transmitter we were after, and we’re going back to help Six.”
I step towards him. “Six can handle herself. I’m right here and Sarah’s right here. I love her, Sam, and I’m going to see her. I don’t care what you say.”
Sam backs down, and I keep walking towards Sarah’s house. Sam says, “Do you really love her though, John? Or are you in love with Six? Which one?”
I twist around and shine my palm in his face. “You think I don’t love Sarah?”
“Hey, come on!”
“Sorry,” I mutter, lowering my palm.
He rubs his eyes. “It’s a valid question, man. I see you and Six flirting all the time, all the time, and you do it right in front of me. You know I like her, and you don’t even care. And to top it all off you already have like the hottest girlfriend in Ohio.”
“I do care,” I whisper.
“You care about what?”
“I care that you like Six, Sam. But you’re right—I like her too. I wish I didn’t, but I do. It’s stupid and cruel to you, but I can’t stop thinking about her. She’s cool and she’s beautiful and she’s Loric, which is like, extracool. But I love Sarah. And that’s why I have to see her.”
Sam grabs my elbow. “You can’t, man. We have to go back and help Six. Think about it. If they were waiting for us at my place, then even more of them are waiting for us at Sarah’s.”
I gently pull my elbow away from his grip. “You got to see your mom, right? You saw her in the backyard?”
“Yeah,” he sighs. His eyes find his shoes.
“You got to see your mom, so I get to see Sarah.”
“That doesn’t make as much sense as you think it does. We got the transmitter, remember? This is why we’re in Paradise. It’s the only reason.” Sam hands me the tablet, and I stare at its blank screen. I touch every inch of it. I try telekinesis. I hold it to my forehead. The tablet remains off.
“Let me try,” Sam says. As he fumbles with the tablet, I tell him about the ladder, the huge skeleton with the pendant, and the desk and wall covered in papers.
“Six grabbed a handful of the papers, but it’s not like we can read them,” I say.
“So my dad had a secret underground lair?” Sam smiles for the first time in hours, handing the tablet back. “He was so cool. I’d really like to look at the papers Six took.”
“Absolutely,” I say. “Right after I see Sarah.”
Sam opens his arms in astonishment. “What can I do to change your mind? Just tell me.”
“Nothing. There’s nothing you can do to stop me.”
The last time I was at Sarah’s house it was Thanksgiving Day. I remember walking up the driveway and seeing Sarah wave from the front window.
“Hey, handsome,” she said when she opened the door, and I turned around to look over my shoulder to pretend she meant it for someone else.
Her house looks completely different at two in the morning. With every window dark, with the garage doors closed, the house looks cold and empty. Uninviting. Sam and I are on our bellies in the shadow of a house on the corner, and I don’t know how I’m going to talk to her.
I pull the prepaid cell phone I’ve had turned off for days out of my jeans. “I could text her until she wakes up.”
“That’s actually a pretty good idea. Just do this already so we can get out of here. I swear, Six is going to kill us, or worse, maybe she’s about to be killed by a swarm of Mogs and we’re here lying in the grass about to go through a scene from Romeo and Juliet.”
I power up the phone and type: I promised I’d come back. U up?
We count to thirty after I send it, and then I type: I love you. I’m here.
“Maybe she thinks you’re pranking her,” Sam whispers after we wait another thirty seconds. “Say something only you would know.”
I try: Bernie Kosar misses you.
Her window lights up. Then my phone buzzes with a text: Is it really you? You’re in Paradise?
I pull up a handful of grass, I’m so excited.
“Chill out,” Sam whispers.
“I can’t help it.”
I respond: I’m outside. Meet me at the playground in 5?
My phone buzzes immediately: I’ll be there. :)
Sam and I are hiding behind a Dumpster at the end of the street when Sarah takes her first steps onto the concrete playground. From the moment I see her, I’m breathless, flooded with emotions. She’s twenty yards away, wearing dark jeans and a black fleece jacket. A white winter hat is pulled over her head, but I can still see her long blond hair, and it brushes over her shoulders in the slight wind. Her flawless complexion glows in the lone playground bulb, and I feel instantly self-conscious about being covered in dirt and Mog ash. I take a step away from the Dumpster, but Sam grabs my wrist and holds me back.
“John, I know this is going to be really hard,” he whispers. “But we have to be back in those woods in ten minutes. I’m serious. Six is counting on us.”
“I’ll do my best,” I say, not even thinking of the repercussions at this point. Sarah is right there, and I’m so close I can practically smell her shampoo.
I watch Sarah turn her head back and forth looking for me. Finally she sits down on a swing and twists herself, the ropes above her becoming taut. Sarah starts to spin slowly, and I shuffle around the perimeter of the playground, pausing behind trees, watching her. She looks so beautiful. So perfect.
I wait until she’s facing the other direction before stepping out of the shadows, and when she twists around again, there I am.
“John?” The toes of Sarah’s sneakers scrape on the concrete to stop her from twisting back around.
“Hey, beautiful,” I say. I can feel my smile reaching the corners of my eyes.
Sarah covers her mouth and nose with her hands.
I walk towards her and she tries to get off of the swing, but its ropes are too taut for her to escape.
I jump forward and catch the swing’s ropes in my hands. I twist her towards me and raise my arms, lifting her and the seat so her face lines up with mine. I lean in and kiss her, and the instant our lips meet, it’s as if I’d never left Paradise.
“Sarah,” I say into her ear. “I’ve missed you so, so, so much.”
“I can’t believe you’re here. This can’t be real.”
I kiss her again, and I don’t stop while I twist us both around and around until the ropes above her separate. Sarah pushes off from the seat and lands in my arms. I kiss her cheeks and her neck, and she runs her hands over my head, gripping my short hair between her fingers.
I set her down and she says, “Somebody got a haircut.”
“Yeah, it’s my whole tough-guy-on-the-run look. What do you think? You into it?”
“I am,” she says, pressing her palms to my chest. “But you could be bald for all I care.”
I take a step back to cement this image of Sarah. I note the brightness of the stars behind her, the tilt of her winter hat. Her nose and cheeks are red from the cold; and as she bites her lower lip and stares at me, a small cloud of breath floats from her mouth. “I’ve thought about you every single day, Sarah Hart.”
“I promise I’ve thought about you twice as much.”
I lower my head until our foreheads touch. We stay this way wearing ridiculous grins until I ask, “How are you? What are things like for you around here right now?”
“Better now.”
“It’s so hard being away from you,” I say, kissing her cold fingers. “I’m constantly thinking about what it feels like to touch you and hear your voice. I’ve come close to calling you every single night.”
Sarah cups my chin and runs her thumbs over my lips. “I’ve sat in my dad’s car so many times just wondering where you are. All I needed to know was which direction and I would’ve started to drive.”
“I’m right here. Right in front of you,” I whisper.
She drops her hands. “I want to come with you, John. I don’t care. I can’t go on like this.”
“It’s way too dangerous. We just finished battling fifty Mogs over at Sam’s place. That’s what life is like with me right now. I can’t put you in the middle of all this.”
Her shoulders shake, and tears dot the corners of her eyes. “I can’t stay here, John. Not with you out there and me not knowing if you’re dead or alive.”
“Look at me, Sarah,” I say. She raises her head. “There’s no way I’m going to die. Knowing that you’re here waiting for me, it’s like a force field. We’re going to be together. Soon.”
Her lip quivers. “It’s so hard. Everything is awful right now, John.”
“Everything’s awful? What do you mean?”
“People are jerks. Everyone’s saying hateful things about you, and they say a lot of things about me, too.”
“Like what?”
“That you’re a terrorist and a murderer and you hate the United States. Guys at school call you names like Bomb Smith. My parents say you’re dangerous and I’m never supposed to talk to you again no matter what; and as an added bonus, there’s a reward on your head, so people are always talking about shooting you.”
She puts her head down. “I can’t believe you have to put up with all that, Sarah,” I say. “At least you know the truth.”
“I’ve lost almost every friend I had. Plus I’m at a new school where everyone just thinks I’m this weirdo.”
I’m devastated. Sarah was the most popular, most beautiful, most liked girl at Paradise High School. Now she’s an outcast.
“Things won’t always be this way,” I whisper.
She can’t hold back the tears any longer. “I love you so much, John. But I can’t imagine how we’re going to get out of this mess. Maybe you should turn yourself in.”
“I’m not turning myself in, Sarah. I just can’t. We’ll get out of it. Of course we will. My one and only love, Sarah. I promise, if you wait for me, things will get better.”
But the tears don’t stop. “How long do I wait, though? And what happens when things do get better? Will you go back to Lorien?”
“I don’t know,” I finally say. “Paradise is the only place I want to be right now, and you’re the only person I want to be with in the future. But if we’re able to somehow defeat the Mogadorians, then yes, I have to go back to Lorien. But I don’t know when that will be.”
Sarah’s phone buzzes in her pocket, and she pulls it halfway out to check the screen.
“Who’s texting you so late?” I ask.
“Just Emily. Maybe you should just turn yourself in and tell them you’re not a terrorist. I don’t want to lose you over and over, John.”
“Listen to me, Sarah. I can’t turn myself in. I can’t sit in a police station and try to explain how an entire school was destroyed and how five people were killed. How am I supposed to explain Henri? Those documents they found in our house? I can’t get arrested. I mean, Six would absolutely kill me right now if she knew I was here talking to you.”
Sarah sniffs and wipes her tears away with the backs of her hands. “Why would Six kill you if she knew you were here?”
“Because she needs me right now and it’s dangerous for me to be here.”
“She needs you? She does? I need you, John. I need you here to tell me everything is going to be okay, that all this is worth it.”
Sarah walks slowly over to a bench marked with initials. I sit down next to her and lean my shoulder onto hers. We’re out of the light and I can’t see her face very well.
I don’t know where it comes from, but Sarah leans away from me and says, “Six is very pretty.”
“She is,” I agree. I shouldn’t have, but it just fell out of my mouth. “Not as pretty as you, though. You’re the prettiest girl I know. You’re the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen.”
“But you don’t have to stay away from Six like you have to with me.”
“When we go on walks we have to be invisible, Sarah! It’s not like we can just hold hands and walk down the street. We have to hide from the entire world. I’m hiding just as much when I’m with her as when I am with you.”
Sarah shoots off of the bench and turns around. “You go on walks with her? Do you hold her hand when you two walk down the street?”
I stand up and approach her with my arms out, the sleeves of my coat still caked with dirt. “We have to. It’s the only way I can be invisible.”
“Have you kissed her?”
“What?”
“Answer me.” There’s something new in her voice. It’s a mixture of jealousy and loneliness, and enough anger to give each word a kick.
I shake my head. “Sarah, I love you. I don’t really know what else to say. I mean, nothing’s happened.” A tsunami of discomfort crashes into me, and I rifle through my vocabulary to piece together the right words.
She’s furious. “It was a simple question, John. Have you kissed her?”
“I haven’t kissed Six, Sarah. We haven’t kissed. I love you,” I say, and then I cringe at the acidity of the words, the sentence sounding far worse than I thought it would.
“I see. Why was that question so hard for you to answer, John? My life just keeps getting better and better. Does she like you?”
“It doesn’t matter, Sarah. I love you, so Six doesn’t matter. No other girls matter!”
“I feel like such an idiot,” she says, crossing her arms.
“Stop, please. Sarah, you’re misinterpreting everything.”
“Am I, John?” she asks, turning her head and staring fiercely at me with tears in her eyes. “I’ve gone through so much for you.”
I reach out and try taking Sarah’s hand, but she snatches it away the instant our fingers touch.
“Don’t,” she says, a hard edge in her voice. Her phone buzzes again in her jacket pocket, but she doesn’t make a move to check it.
“I want to be with you, Sarah,” I say. “Nothing I say right now seems to come out right. All I can really say is that I’ve spent weeks missing you terribly, and there hasn’t been a single day that I didn’t think about calling you or writing a letter.” I feel wobbly. I can tell I’m losing her. “I love you. Don’t doubt that for a second.”
“I love you, too,” she cries.
I close my eyes and breathe in the cool air. A bad feeling rushes over me; a prickly feeling that starts in my throat and claws its way into my shoes. When I open my eyes, Sarah has taken several steps away from me.
There’s a noise to my left, and I whip my head to see Sam. His eyes are downcast, and he bobs his head in a way that tells Sarah and me that he’d rather not be approaching but he has to.
“Sam?” Sarah asks.
“Hey, Sarah,” he whispers.
Sarah wraps her arms around him.
“It’s really good to see you,” he says into her hair. “But, Sarah, I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry and I know you guys haven’t seen each other in a long time, but John and I need to go. We’re in a lot of danger. You have no idea.”
“I sort of do.” She pulls off of him, and just as I prepare to start reassuring her how much I love her, just as I’m about to start saying good-bye, chaos erupts.
Everything happens so fast I’m unable to take it all in completely, the scenes randomly skipping like a movie reel gone mad. Sam is tackled from behind by a man in a gas mask. The blue jacket he wears has the letters FBI on the back. Someone wraps their arms around Sarah and whisks her away from me. A metallic shell skids across the grass and lands at my feet, and the white smoke billowing from both ends burns my eyes and throat. I can’t see. I hear Sam gag. I stumble away from the canister and fall to my knees next to a plastic slide. When I lift my head I see over a dozen officers surrounding me, all with guns drawn. The masked officer who tackled Sam has his knee on Sam’s back. A voice through a megaphone blasts: “Don’t move! Put your hands on the top of your head and get on your stomach! You are under arrest!” As I place my hands on the top of my head, cars that have been parked on the street the entire time we were there suddenly come to life; their headlights turn on, red lights flash from dashboards. Cop cars screech around the corner, and an armored vehicle with swat written on its side jumps the curb and slams on its brakes in the middle of the basketball court. Men yell and pile out of it at an alarming rate, and that’s when someone kicks me in my stomach. Handcuffs are clicked around my wrists. Above me I hear the whir of a helicopter.
My mind grabs hold of the only explanation it can come up with.
Sarah. The text messages. That wasn’t Emily. The police were talking to her. What little of my heart that didn’t break when Sarah backed away from me now shatters.
I shake my head with my face against the concrete. I feel someone remove my dagger. Hands take the tablet from my waistband. I watch as Sam is pulled off the ground by his arms, and our eyes meet for a brief second. I can’t tell what he’s thinking.
Cuffs are slapped around my ankles, and a chain connects to the cuffs around my wrists. I’m jerked up from the ground. The cuffs are too tight and dig into my wrists. A black hood is pulled over my head and secured around my throat. I can’t see a thing. Two officers grab my elbows while another shoves me forward.
“You have the right to remain silent,” one of them begins as I’m led away, and I’m thrown into the back of a vehicle.