--another longer chapter--

I'll never get tired of sunset colors, and especially tonight's oranges. So many of them. Fiery orange, peach orange, copper orange, saffron orange, lily orange... all blending together across the sky. For the last time, I sit here, listing in my head the variety of oranges and their related objects. Usually, in the privacy of my little ritual, I feel close to a monk's peace. Straddled on my board, needing nothing more than this sky and this calm sea. But this is my last ritual from home. I can almost hear Mom calling me back to the house, though her voice would never carry past the shore. It's late already. I should be in bed, so we can catch her plane and Dad. The beautiful colors, you will have seen the whole show if you wait for dark. I'm not supposed to but witnessing the end of something perfect might give me some courage. I lay down and leave my knees dipped in the water. My hand instantly lowers to my stomach, expecting to double over from sharp pain. I'm suddenly wondering how is it that I can breathe. I sit upright again and look in the direction of my house. Mom's not there. She can't be. The distant beach seems cold all of a suddden. I'm looking at it, and yet it's so empty. All the regular joggers and humdrum vacationers the size of an ant are gone. I am completely alone on the surface, and somehow I know that if I step one foot in the sand, whatever chased the people away will find me. Someone is waiting for me, but it isn't Mom. 

Amelia's features floated in my mind.

Nothing else registered at first. For a while, the world was mere colors. My mouth was pasty. The position was comfortable. I didn't want to leave the fog but it was evaporating bit by bit.

This was indeed a bed. I lied on my side under a blanket. Sunlight crept in through blinds. The pale blue room was quite empty, with no specific decoration. Just a nightstand near my head and a dark brown dresser in the back.

My breath escaped me.

"Oh, are you awake?"

I shifted and inadvertently tugged something under my forearm. Still, I saw her face burned in my eyelids and didn't know where the hell I was. The covers flew off to reveal an... an IV line. Plastic stuck on the skin of my chest and I realized nobody had removed Ethan's sweater off of me.

I peeped in. Some white patches all over were tied to a small electric device.

"Hey."

I pushed against the headboard, knocking down some dense packs that had been around my body. Ethan was sitting on a chair by the other side of the bed. So many things I needed to know. Where was I? What hour was it? Where was Luc? Who did the IV line if I wasn't in a medical building?

"You're in a guest room," he said, guessing that one. "You can take it easy, no one is looking for you, and it would be best to rest. I'm glad to see you can move around."

I pointed at the IV. "Did you do this?"

He hadn't seemed to notice until then. "That? No, my mom did it, she's a doctor. We keep some basic stock in the house just in case... when the hospital isn't a great option for us. How do you feel?"

"I..."

The door opened, and this silvery blonde, long-legged woman strode in. Her hair was tied in a loose bun, and she wore bunny slippers beneath a flowery robe. "Hello! I thought I heard some bumping and talking. Riley, good to see you're holding yourself up after that ordeal. I'm Heather."

She didn't offer her hand. Instead, she stopped behind her son and gripped his shoulder.

"How... did we get here?"

"One of you woke me in the middle of the night and made me drive with a bunch of blankets and hand warmers," she explained, smiling. "Your heart was working too hard and you were not responding. I gave you some fluids, quite a dose of arrythmia medications and a little monitor. Ethan acted as my substitute for a special air heating unit."

The boy bounced forward. "How is it that you've never had symptoms the whole time? The rest of us change at the same time as puberty. We get massive headaches and mood swings, and then shit starts flying everywhere."

He might as well be speaking latin, because I had no clue. Heather pressed his arm.

"Maybe you can ask her at a better time. Right now, I just need to check in."

"Symptoms of what?" I said as she settled at my bedside. I didn't remember bunching my knees to my chest until she gestured at me to relax, which I briefly debated not to do.

Ethan nodded and mouthed some reassuring phrase.

"Symptoms of w—" A ringtone cut me off, just as the woman had placed her fingertips on my wrist.

She reached into her pocket. "Great timing, for once. Hiii, I hope you're calling to say you're still in one piece?" She turned her head away from the call to whisper Luc's name to me, and I sat straighter. "She turned up? Uh-huh. Well, that's not surprising but I don't see what more can be done about this until... I think you should head on over. Someone's up bright and early."

A moment later, I accepted the phone with numb fingers.

"I just woke up at Ethan's house."

"Hope that's not a problem, we didn't exactly have time to guess your favorite hotel," arrived the reply, and my throat knotted. He must have not slept a wink the whole night through, whatever he was doing now.

Ethan and his mother exchanged an eye roll and mumbled things I didn't care to understand.

"Where are you?"

"On my way. How are you doing?"

I stared at Heather and shrugged, unable to give this a name. Like living when you should have died. Grey. Sucked dry. Like emerging from a cramped box after hours stuck there. I wiggled my toes, sensing them work normally.

"Better. Is Amelia alive?"

In the background, a car door snapped and beeps faded.

"Yeah. A midnight dip is an unpleasant evening when you control how much heat your body makes. Killing her would have made all of this worse. I'm already on the hook for even scratching her. It's bullshit."

"What do you mean, on the hook?" I asked apprehensively.

Luc sighed over the line. "I'll explain... when I get back here. There's stuff we need to talk about."

It was all I could do but agree. Thinking about Amelia running free made me nauseous. Wherever Ethan lived, she probably knew and could decide to drop by, since she was so determined. She could wait and wait for another opportunity while I returned to school, resumed a routine... And she might not be alone.

Heather quietly wrapped a hand over mine to reclaim her phone. "Doctor's advice, if one of you boys can get ahold of Emma and work something for her father, that'd be appreciated. She's too pale and the holter monitor says there's been some irregular heartbeats in the last two hours. Pulse is too fast at the moment."

"How long you wanna hold her?"

I could have piped in because I hated any talk about me without my input, but this conversation was flying past at the speed of light. I leaned my head against the board, limp.

"Ideally until afternoon."

"I'll do it!" Ethan volunteered.

"Ahhh, sure," Luc said to us, now on speaker. "Greg's driving me. He'll fill you in. In the meantime, I'll hurry."

Heather offered a weak smile. "Of course. There's food in the fridge for everyone. And Riley, you could try to eat and drink. It wouldn't hurt."

They hung up, and I just couldn't seriously consider even looking at a plate. I noticed a full water bottle on the second nightstand, at arm's reach.

"What's a holter monitor?"

"The patches under your shirt if you noticed, they're like a portable ECG. The readings are on my phone," she explained with a wink. "So I always know what's going on. Practical little tech."

"Maybe I could call Dad... tell him I'm spending more time with Emma. It'll be more believable," I proposed. "Is my phone around here somewhere?"

Ethan jumped from his chair and fished it out of his pocket. "Got it. Somebody found your backpack stranded on the mountain when it was time to go. Well, after we saw the smoke from that burning tree, we were combing the woods for either one of you."

His mother tsked, eyes fixed on the wall. "What a mess."

"Can she show up here...? Amelia?"

She held my gaze, rather unbothered if I read it correctly.

"Yes. That doesn't mean it's a wise choice. You shouldn't worry about that—worry about rest. Right, Ethan? I think the heat part has been covered."

The way she sat with her legs crossed, a slender arm supporting her weight on the mattress, and how she shifted from warm smiles to assertive words were confusing. It was like she was a mom one second and a businesswoman the next. But it made me nod obediently, all too eager to avoid thinking of the hard problems.

Ethan stayed a while after his mom left the room. I was able to buy us more time with Dad. I managed to drink water. Then exhaustion caused me to roll back under the covers.

"I passed out, right?" I said. "After you were gone and there was just Luc. What happened next?"

"I went out half-naked to pass the message to get Mom. So yeah, you were out by the time I came back. There was still a long wait until her car would be in the area, and Luc spent a lot of energy, so we kept you in a sandwich hug," he answered, grinning until I was, too. "I ripped a jacket off of someone, too."

"But you didn't find a spare shirt anywhere for yourself?"

"Like he said on the phone, it's nothing if you control your body heat."

"Convenient," I yawned.

"One last thing." He searched his other pocket, tongue sticking out of a corner. A heavy object clattered on the wood, and his hand withdrew to reveal my taser. "That baby is no joke. I couldn't walk for a minute or two—yes, I tried it out in the yard. Hope you don't mind."

My imagination must not do justice to how it actually played out. "You should have waited to show me."

"Ah well, I was too curious." He paced to the door, hands pulled behind his back and front turned to me. "Anyway, sweet dreams. Yell if you need stuff."

The door creaked and sleep absorbed me like a black hole. It didn't stir up memories of the beach again. It was grainy and superficial, where I heard shuffling and whispers or dreamt them, but each attempt to emerge from it was overcome with another wave.

When my lids seemed to have more strength, they settled on a newly-brought stuffed chair at the bedside. Luc sat in it. He was steadily resting, hands flat on the chair's arms.

Hours must have passed since his call. I wanted to know how many and wormed toward the nightstand. Up on my elbows, I rated his face for signs of disturbance.

So far so good.

When I took possession of my phone and unlocked it, the cursed thing chimed and pinged under an onslaught of notifications. Luc's eyelids twitched.

Rubbing the shadow along his cheek, he pulled himself out of it and squinted ahead for a second.

"Hey," I whispered, feeling like he was worse off than me.

"You sound popular."

"It's emails and apps... mostly." Not that it mattered, but I simply couldn't find a less awkward reply.

He leaned his head on the stuffing and focused his gaze. "You gained back some color—your skin. It's not what it was before I left."

I guess I did feel like my blood was finally running warm again. It had been three hours since I first woke up in this new place. "Why did you leave?"

"You mean, after the huge fight Amelia and I had, you thought there wouldn't be questions to answer in front of a whole room of people? I had to explain the number she did on me as she was making a case against me."

"Well, I wasn't thinking much, to be honest..."

"I'm aware."

And we paused over that. Through cautious movements, I huddled against the headboard. His gaze was burning on me.

"What do you remember of last night?" he asked.

Right now, I had a difficult time digesting the part where he undressed me and held me until help arrived. The blindfold didn't reassure me as much as I wished it would—the problem was the knowledge of where his hands went and that his recollection was less blurry that mine.

Okay—okay. Didn't matter. I cleared my throat.

"There was a... a bloody leaf in my backpack and the tree... was lit on fire. I ran and she let me go. One Eye tracked me down..."

"One Eye? You mean that dead Wanderer?"

I nodded. "I stabbed his eye out on my first weekend, before you found me. I recognized him."

"How did you manage to kill the thing?"

My mouth opened, and then I wasn't sure about that part. In the back of my mind, I'd decided the taser finished the job in a haze of panic, because no bullet hit the creature, but that didn't make sense either. I distinctly recalled charred skin all across.

"A flare might have..."

"All your flares are still in the backpack," Luc informed, eyes narrowed. "That can't be it."

Weird. Maybe it self-combusted, if they were prone to such an outcome. Amelia thought I did something and she went berserk. She kept asking who I killed, but I didn't kill a single person. It was messed up to even wonder.

"I don't know," I mumbled, at a loss. "You believe me, right? All the stuff she said—"

"I believe you." Luc stared at the ceiling, and then leaned forward on his elbows. "Now, you need to listen carefully and believe me because it's going to sound impossible. No other explanation fills in the gaps. It was you who killed the Wanderer."

"I mean, yeah. But I don't remember how. We fought and I ran until I couldn't anymore, then... "

"I mean with your bare hands. As in abilities."

I clutched a pillow and squeezed it on my lap. Abilities?

"It does sound impossible. You're joking, right?"

His expression didn't betray an ounce of humor. Quite the opposite. "You saw something like lightning, didn't you?"

"I don't know what I saw, Luc. And it doesn't work. It's insane."

"Insane, maybe, but after I saw you do it on Amelia—when she was going to strike you again—there's no question. You have abilities—"

"What? No—"

"And there were red flags before that I couldn't figure out—"

"What are you doing?" I called out, sickened. "You said nobody becomes one of you. There's just no way you know everything that happened. Did you ask yourself if maybe healing me gave me temporary side effects? Or the Wanderer... I don't know, malfunctioned? You were injured badly, too, maybe seeing nonsense. I'm not to blame, okay?"

Luc rubbed his jaw until I finished. He shook his head. A plastic bag rustled at his feet, beyond my point of view.

"Me fixing someone never did anything of the sort in my entire life, Sunshine. What I know is that the first bite didn't paralyze you like it would have done to a human. Hell, you shouldn't have been able to climb a tree. The painkillers... it wasn't stress, not really. And when you touched the restaints for our lure and your hand was red, I had no more doubts. It was the missing puzzle piece : why these predators were set on you. Nothing more appetizing than a mutated but defenseless person. They figured it out long before any of us."

Holy baloney. Wow, he didn't recover inside as nicely as on the outside. "Jesus, you need to stop the bit."

"I'm as confused as you."

"I'm not whatever Amelia thinks I am," I said, tightening my arms around the pillow. "I'm not a monster. You can't just start telling me this like it's real. I know myself, I'm normal. You missed something."

He looked so conflicted in that moment. I felt that he wanted to say nevermind, but couldn't give up on his silly idea. The bag rustled once more, and he retrieved one of those metal chains he used on the Wanderer. Taking one hand off and holding it in the air, he opened his palm.

And there was the bright red mark, identical to the rash I'd developed in his driveway.

"It does not burn human skin," he continued calmly as I recalled the vivid, undeniable sting and my knees began to shake. No... No way... "No exceptions. I wasn't sure what I was dealing with. But you, for some reason, express abilities like us. Last night, Amelia came at you and you protected your head immediately. Your hands lit up. She took a direct bolt from you." He moved to the edge of his chair. The walls and light fixture quietly began to fuzz for me. "I get how this doesn't add up and you'll need time, but we'll figure it out. No one goes through this alone."

"You're wrong. It—It'll wear off."

His lips formed a thin line. Luc's fingers unclenched one by one, and he let the chains clink at the bottom of the bag with a scowl.

I was ready to ignore his existence in favor of another round of naps, but then a name surfaced in my mind. I wiped tears off my face and shot him a direct stare. "Who's Clare?"

His eyes instantly flicked up.

"Am I just like her?"

The exchange he had with Amelia, some of it had to do with that name and something bad happening all over again. He hesitated.

"Why did she come up?" I insisted, teeth gritted.

"Clare, she... was a normal, human person. Nonetheless, she got my sister killed."

So what exactly was Amelia afraid of?

"Did you kill her?" I asked him in a whisper.

"I didn't need to. She died with her."

"Just... Wait. How could have she gotten someone like you killed? This whole time, Wanderers couldn't kill you with rematches, how could she have done anything?"

"It's not what she did, it's what she got wrapped into. We're not getting into this today."

"I deserve to know why Amelia compared us." I frowned. Usually, I didn't push, but it had to do with me and why somebody almost drowned me.

Luc's jaw ticked. "She can't think you can be any different. It's as simple as that, even if it's not the case. I told no one about you until very recently... and it was restricted to those you know. Because of Amelia, it all came out wrong. Everyone's up in arms because of her."

"Luc, what about me is making all your people nervous?"

His gaze was murky before he lowered his head. "They just don't trust you."

I felt anger rising in my chest like a flame spark. He was back with those damned non-answers while my body was repiecing itself. No amount of bending over backward would get him to speak clearly. My hands balled into useless fists.

"You knew for so long that something was weird. Things about me," I strained, trying to keep my voice even. "And I asked questions. Each time, you shut it down."

At least he didn't jump to deny that. But it didn't help.

"I warned you it wouldn't be fair."

"Not like this!" My voice finally cracked. I should have stopped there because my breath went short and hard to control, but instead it poured hot and frantic. "You lied! Since the very beginning! You didn't want to keep me alive, you wanted to see what's wrong, and you carried your little observation for weeks! As if I had no right to understand! Now, all the others think I'm some fucking horseman of the apocalypse and probably want me dead! Fuck, this is a mistake! People want to kill me over a mistake!"

His face didn't budge, and if he ever intended to extend me the grace of answering, he didn't get to. The door swung on Heather's head. This time, she was more put together. Sleek and shiny hair ended at her chin. She'd traded the pajamas for jeans and a work jacket.

"Everything okay here? Lucas?" She stared at his sulked shoulder.

"I need to go home," I declared. "I feel good enough for