Page 81 of Electricity

The cell tower kept blossoming like a volcanic eruption behind him, all the data swooping in and pouring out, every time I closed my eyes. Images flickered in the flow before they were swallowed in or rushed away, twinkling like sunlight off a fast-moving stream. “I just don’t get it.”

“Get what?”

“How come I can see all of this—but I couldn’t get what I was looking for the other night.”

Darius looked behind himself at the cell tower, and then again at me. “Maybe…because it wasn’t there?”

I rocked back. Why wouldn’t it be there, on Danny’s phone?

Because the pictures were on someone else’s.

Someone else had been in the room. And someone else had all the photos. Who? Which member of the baseball team would I vote Most Likely to Document a Crime?

Danny’s perpetual side-kick, Mason.

I turned to Darius, my jaw dropped. “Oh my God, Darius. You’re a genius.”

He gave me a mockingly profound look. “I like to think so.”

Without thinking, I leaned in and kissed him.

I meant to kiss him like I kissed Allie sometimes, a fast smooch to show how much I cared. But when I pulled back, our faces were so close, and our lips even closer.

“I’m—sorry?” I stuttered.

“Don’t be,” he said, and leaned in.

His lips touched mine and I didn’t know if I was good at it, or if he was, but everything about it felt right, the way his tongue pushed into my mouth as our heads tilted perfectly. Electricity raced up and down my entire body, turning me into a creature of heat and light and for the first time since the power started flowing through me, I wasn’t scared of losing control.

Then I heard an echo of Lacey’s voice.

I pushed Darius away, coming abruptly back to reality.

“I’m—sorry?” It was his turn to guess.

“Shhhhh.”

“What?” he asked, looking worried, breathing hard.

“I—”

Had I really heard her? I looked up at the cloud of data roiling behind him.

Please.

I heard her voice echo like a ghost’s in a horror movie, words stretching out, rising and falling as if from a great distance.

It’s my mom. You have to save her.

I gasped and sat straight up.

“Jessie?” Darius’s voice had a note of concern.

“We have to go. Now.” I got up on my feet, and then grabbed him—we were on a touching basis now, right?—to haul him up behind me. “You have to take me to Lacey’s right now. Something’s wrong.”

He glanced up at the cell tower and then again at me, holding my hand out, pulling away. He took it and we raced together across the field.

CHAPTER 32

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