My mom used to tell me, if I didn’t stop doing that, one day I was going to have a panic attack. I wanted to tell her that, if I ever did have one, the whole town might ignite in to flames. But, since she isn’t aware of my supernatural ability that is attached to my emotions, I’ve always kept my lips zipped.
“Her parents haven’t even been found dead yet,” Nina grumbles as she reaches for her pack of cigarettes on the dashboard. Then she suddenly pauses, her worried gaze flicking to me. “Sky, I’m so fucking sorry. That was totally insensitive.”
I zip up my leather jacket and prop my boots up on the dash, remaining calm. Because calm is easier than actually feeling what I feel. “You’re fine.” I hug my arms around myself as the winter air seeps into my bones. “My parents aren’t dead, just missing. I tried to point that out to the lawyer, but he said I didn’t have a choice. My parents have a will, and that will states that, until I’m eighteen, if anything should happen to them, I have to go live with these Everettson people.” I rest my head against the headrest and take a deep breath to steady my heart rate. “What I don’t get is why they put these people on the will when I’ve never even met them before.”
Gage inhales from the cigarette. “Aren’t you related to them?”
I shake my head. “No. The father is supposedly my dad’s best friend. But, how can they be that great of friends if I’ve never even heard of him?”
It’s been bugging me since the lawyer told me. Why would my parents decide to leave me with people I don’t know? Then again, the only remaining relative still alive is my mom’s sister, who I haven’t ever met. From what I understand, she currently lives at some mountain ret
reat with a bunch of middle-aged, free-spirited people who believe in a simplistic lifestyle. When my mom told me this, I stated that it sounded an awful lot like a cult. She only laughed and patted my head, saying, “One day, you’ll understand why not everyone wants to live in this modern day, technology-driven world.” Maybe she was right, but right now, I can’t even imagine parting with my cell phone or laptop.
“Don’t you have someone you’re related to that you can go live with?” Gage asks, flicking the cigarette out the window.
I shut my eyes, the chilly air burning my lungs, but inside, I feel a hot spark in the center of my chest.
Shit.
Calm the fuck down, Sky.
I gradually exhale. “Just my aunt. But I… I don’t even know how to get a hold of her or I would’ve tried already.” I would’ve tried the day I realized my parents weren’t coming back from the bar.
They had told me they were going to go out for a while to get a couple of drinks at the bar a few blocks down from our neighborhood. That was nothing new. My parents usually spent Saturday nights drinking there with their friends.
They left around nine o’clock at night, and I fell asleep around midnight. When I woke up around ten the next morning, their bed was empty and still made, which I thought was odd but not completely out of the ordinary. There had been a couple of times when they’d gotten too drunk and passed out at a friend’s house. And sometimes they’d take off for a few days to go on road trips, but they usually checked in when they did that.
Around three o’clock on Monday, after two days of not hearing from them, I started making calls to everyone I could think of. No one had seen them since early Saturday morning. Not even at the bar.
When I realized they’d never made it to the bar, I panicked, which led to a fire erupting in the middle of the living room. After I put it out, I took a few shots of vodka to calm the hell down. Then I called the police.
It was another twenty-four hours, three exploding light bulbs, and two small fires before I could fill out a police report. My emotions had been all over the place that night, along with my ability. In fact, I hadn’t felt so out of control since I was six years old and discovered my emotions set off elemental-related reactions—fire, wind, water, ice, etc.
No one knows about my ability, not even my friends. If someone did find out, I might end up becoming a lab rat for scientific experiments or be put into a psych ward, which is part of the reason I’m so worried about moving in with a strange family. The change might disrupt my emotions too much … and my ability right along with it.
But the only way I can get out of moving in with them is if my parents just simply return home or the police find them. The latter seems unlikely since, so far, the police have only asked around town and did a quick search through the house. None of the evidence they found indicated any signs of foul play.
I overheard an officer telling another officer that he thought my parents had just bailed on me. When I told him he was wrong, he looked at me with pity and said, “Kid, as much as I hate to say this, you might not know your parents as well as you think you do. A lot of kids don’t.”
I got what he was saying, but that doesn’t mean I believe him. Sure, I live on the other side of the railroad tracks, the lower-class area of Honeyton where the drug and crime rates are higher, but that doesn’t mean my parents would just bail on me.
They’re decent enough parents. They have jobs. They put a roof over my head and food on the table. And yeah, they aren’t home a lot, but they’d never just leave me.
Knowing that doesn’t make me feel any better, though, because it means something bad has more than likely happened to them.
I suck in a breath as tears sting my eyes and ice begins to spiderweb across the windshield.
Crap. I need to calm down.
Calm down, Sky. Calm down now!
I inhale another deep breath, then another, and the ice crackling finally ceases.
“Earth to Sky.” Gage waves his hand in front of my face.
I tense, worried he noticed the ice on the windshield. “Yeah?”
“You seriously spaced out for, like, five minutes straight.”