I Am Number Four
Page 5

“You should keep those on until we’re home,” Henri says.
I put the gloves back on and look over at him. He is smiling proudly.
“Been a shit long wait,” he says.
“Huh?” I ask.
He looks over. “A shit long wait,” he says again. “For your Legacies.”
I laugh. Of all the things Henri has learned to master while on Earth, profanity is not one of them.
“A damn long wait,” I correct him.
“Yeah, that’s what I said.”
He turns down our road.
“So, what next? Does this mean I’ll be able to shoot lasers from my hands or what?”
He grins. “It’s nice to think so, but no.”
“Well, what am I going to do with light? When I’m getting chased am I going to turn and flash it in their eyes? Like that’s supposed to make them cower from me or something?”
“Patience,” he says. “You aren’t supposed to understand it yet. Let’s just get home.”
And then I remember something that nearly makes me jump out of my seat.
“Does this mean we’ll finally open the Chest?”
He nods and smiles. “Very soon.”
“Hell, yes!” I say. The intricately carved wooden Chest has haunted me my entire life. It’s a brittle-looking box with the Loric symbol on its side that Henri has remained completely secretive about. He’s never told me what’s in it, and it’s impossible to open, and I know, because I’ve tried more times than I can count, never with any luck. It’s held shut with a padlock with no discernible slot for a key.
When we get home I can tell that Henri has been working. The three chairs from the front porch have been cleared away and all the windows are open. Inside, the sheets over the furniture have been removed, some of the surfaces wiped clean. I set my bag atop the table in the living room and open it. A wave of frustration passes over me.
“The son of a bitch,” I say.
“What?”
“My phone is missing.”
“Where is it?”
“I had a slight disagreement this morning with a kid named Mark James. He probably took it.”
“John, you were in school for an hour and a half. How in the hell did you have a disagreement already? You know better.”
“It’s high school. I’m the new kid. It’s easy.”
Henri removes his phone from his pocket and dials my number. Then he snaps his phone shut.
“It’s turned off,” he says.
“Of course it is.”
He stares at me. “What happened?” he asks in that voice I recognize, the voice he uses when pondering another move.
“Nothing. Just a stupid argument. I probably dropped it on the floor when I put it into my bag,” I say, even though I know I didn’t. “I wasn’t in the best frame of mind. It’s probably waiting for me in lost and found.”
He looks around the house and sighs. “Did anyone see your hands?”
I look at him. His eyes are red, even more bloodshot than they were when he dropped me off. His hair is tousled and he has a slumped look as though he may collapse in exhaustion at any moment. He last slept in Florida, two days ago. I’m not sure how he is even still standing.
“Nobody did.”
“You were in school for an hour and a half. Your first Legacy developed, you were nearly in a fight, and you left your bag in a classroom. That’s not exactly blending in.”
“It was nothing. Certainly not a big enough deal to move to Idaho, or Kansas, or wherever the hell our next place is going to be.”
Henri narrows his eyes, pondering what he just witnessed and trying to decide whether it’s enough to justify leaving.
“Now is not the time to be careless,” he says.
“There are arguments in every single school every single day. I promise you, they aren’t going to track us because some bully messed with the new kid.”
“The new kid’s hands don’t light up in every school.”
I sigh. “Henri, you look like you’re about to die. Take a nap. We can decide after you’ve had some sleep.”
“We have a lot to talk about.”
“I’ve never seen you this tired before. Sleep a few hours. We’ll talk after.”
He nods. “A nap would probably do me some good.”
Henri goes into his bedroom and closes the door. I walk outside, pace around the yard for a bit. The sun is behind the trees with a cool wind blowing. The gloves are still on my hands. I take them off and tuck them into my back pocket. My hands are the same as before. Truth be told, only half of me is thrilled that my first Legacy has finally arrived after so many years of impatiently waiting. The other half of me is crushed. Our constant moving has worn me down, and now it’ll be impossible to blend in or to stay in one place for any period of time. It’ll be impossible to make friends or feel like I fit in. I’m sick of the fake names and the lies. I’m sick of always looking over my shoulder to see if I’m being followed.
I reach down and feel the three scars on my right ankle. Three circles that represent the three dead. We are bound to each other by more than mere race. As I feel the scars I try to imagine who they were, whether they were boys or girls, where they were living, how old they were when they died. I try to remember the other kids on the ship with me and give each of them numbers. I think about what it would be like to meet them, hang out with them. What it might have been like if we were still on Lorien. What it might be like if the fate of our entire race wasn’t dependent on the survival of so few of us. What it might be like if we weren’t all facing death at the hands of our enemies.
It’s terrifying to know that I’m next. But we’ve stayed ahead of them by moving, running. Even though I’m sick of the running I know it’s the only reason we’re still alive. If we stop, they will find us. And now that I’m next in line, they have undoubtedly stepped up the search. Surely they must know we are growing stronger, coming into our Legacies.
And then there is the other ankle and the scar to be found there, formed when the Loric charm was cast in those precious moments before leaving Lorien. It’s the brand that binds us all together.
CHAPTER SIX
I WALK INSIDE AND LIE ON THE BARE MATTRESS in my room. The morning has worn me out and I let my eyes close. When I reopen them the sun is lifted over the tops of the trees. I walk out of the room. Henri is at the kitchen table with his laptop open and I know he’s been scanning the news, as he always does, searching for information or stories that might tell us where the others are.
“Did you sleep?” I ask.
“Not much. We have internet now and I haven’t checked the news since Florida. It was gnawing at me.”
“Anything to report?” I ask.
He shrugs. “A fourteen-year-old in Africa fell from a fourth-story window and walked away without a scratch. There is a fifteen-year-old in Bangladesh claiming to be the Messiah.”
I laugh. “I know the fifteen-year-old isn’t us. Any chance of the other?”
“Nah. Surviving a four-story drop is no great feat, and besides, if it was one of us they wouldn’t have been that careless in the first place,” he says, and winks.
I smile and sit across from him. He closes his computer and places his hands on the table. His watch reads 11:36. We’ve been in Ohio for slightly over half a day and already this much has happened. I hold my palms up. They’ve dimmed since the last time I looked.
“Do you know what you have?” he asks.
“Lights in my hands.”
He chuckles. “It’s called Lumen. You’ll be able to control the light in time.”
“I sure hope so, because our cover is blown if they don’t turn off soon. I still don’t see what the point is, though.”
“There’s more to Lumen than mere lights. I promise you.”
“What’s the rest?”
He walks into his bedroom and returns with a lighter in his hand.
“Do you remember much of your grandparents?” he asks. Our grandparents are the ones who raise us. We see little of our parents until we reach the age of twenty-five, when we have children of our own. The life expectancy for the Loric is around two hundred years, much longer than that of humans, and when children are born, between the parents’ ages of twenty-five and thirty-five, the elders are the ones who raise them while the parents continue honing their Legacies.
“A little. Why?”
“Because your grandfather had the same gift.”
“I don’t remember his hands ever glowing,” I say.
Henri shrugs. “He might never have had reason to use it.”
“Wonderful,” I say. “Sounds like a great gift to have, one I’ll never use.”
He shakes his head. “Give me your hand.”
I give him the right one and he flicks the lighter on, then moves it to touch the tip of my finger with the flame. I jerk my hand away.
“What are you doing?”
“Trust me,” he says.
I give my hand back to him. He takes hold of it and flicks the lighter on again. He looks into my eyes. Then he smiles. I look down and see that he is holding the flame over the tip of my middle finger. I don’t feel a thing. Instinct causes me to jerk my hand free anyway. I rub my finger. It feels no different than it did before.
“Did you feel that?” he asks.
“No.”
“Give it back,” he says. “And tell me when you do feel something.”
He starts at my fingertip again, then moves the flame very slowly up the back of my hand. There is a slight tickle where the flame touches the skin, nothing more. Only when the fire reaches my wrist do I begin to sense the burn. I pull my arm free.
“Ouch.”
“Lumen,” he says. “You’re going to become resistant to fire and heat. Your hands come naturally, but we’ll have to train the rest of your body.”
A smile spreads across my face. “Resistant to fire and heat,” I say. “So I’ll never be burned again?”
“Eventually, yes.”
“That’s awesome!”
“Not such a bad Legacy after all, huh?”
“Not bad at all,” I agree. “Now what about these lights? Are they ever going to turn off?”
“They will. Probably after a good night’s sleep, when your mind forgets they’re on,” he says. “But you’ll have to be careful not to get worked up for a while. An emotional imbalance will cause them to come right back on again, if you get overly nervous, or angry, or sad.”
“For how long?”
“Until you learn to control them.” He closes his eyes and rubs his face with his hands. “Anyway, I’m going to try to sleep again. We’ll talk about your training in a few hours.”
After he leaves I stay at the kitchen table, opening and closing my hands, taking deep breaths and trying to calm everything inside of me so the lights will dim. Of course it doesn’t work.
Everything in the house is still a mess aside from the few things Henri did while I was at school. I can tell that he is leaning towards leaving, but not to the point that he couldn’t be persuaded to stay. Maybe if he wakes and finds the house clean and in order it’ll tip him in the right direction.