Alive (Book 1)

Twenty-Five

“So, you’re really the notorious Ellie Armstrong, huh?”

            I tore a bite out of the cheeseburger with ferocity, nodding. “Yep,” I said around a mouthful. “That’s me.”

            “Hm.”

            His name was Ryan. After sitting at the table in the kitchen and watching the four people interact, I had finally begun to tell them apart. They were all twenty-two except for Jessica, who was twenty-three. Ryan had short brown hair and a goatee kind of thing going on. Blake was blonde, and liked to keep his face clean-shaven, or so he said. All of them seemed friendly enough, and slowly, the walls around my mind broke down bit by bit.

            “You don’t look that deadly,” Ryan said, squinting his eyes at my face. “I mean, you’re, like, really pretty. It doesn’t make sense.”

            Jessica swatted the back of his head, sucking on a popsicle. “I could kick your ass any day of the week and I’m beautiful, aren’t I, Ryan?”

            He smiled sheepishly. “Ha ha, yeah . . . uh . . . yeah.”

            I smiled. They were amusing.

            “But, really,” Ryan continued, focusing on me again. “You can like control people, right? With your mind? Can you do me?”

            “Knock it off, moron,” Blake snapped, cuffing the back of Ryan’s head as well. Ryan cringed.

            “I’m just curious,” he whined.

            “It’s okay,” I said softly, pushing my empty plate away. “It’s not that I use my mind, Ryan. Just that . . . that I can feel people, more so than others. Like right now, I can hear and feel your blood and your heartbeat, and everything that makes you, you.”

            His eyes widened. “Whoa.”

            Even Jessica and Blake seemed awed. “That’s amazing, Ellie,” Jessica said.

            I shrugged, a blush staining my cheeks. “Not really. I hate it.”

            “Yeah?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Wow. I think I would love having something like that, to whip out whenever I needed it.”

            It wasn’t that great, though. Nothing that deserved the praise she was giving it.

            “How did you find me?” I asked, because that was what I’d been wondering myself. That Augie would track me down was one thing, but for him to find and bring back up? I was lost.

            Jessica laughed. It was light and airy. She took a seat at the table and cupped her chin in her hand. “Jim keeps track of all this stuff,” she said. “He knows every safe house, every compromised area, everything, really. Apparently when you were kidnapped Augie called him and he had his suspicions. So he sent us out as reinforcements. A lot of good that did, eh? August almost died.”

            I swallowed hard. I hated thinking about it. “Thank you,” I whispered, feeling gratitude was due. “I really appreciate that.”

            She waved it off. “Like we said, we’re here to help. I just want the world to go back to being a perfectly weird—but semi-normal—place to be.”