Powerless

  To Faolan and Aedan, who gave me the inspiration to begin—and to Alisha and Will, for giving me a reason to finish.

  In loving memory of Shirley Ann Cody.

  Prologue

  The wind howled in Michael’s ears. He would be picking bugs out of his hair for days, but he didn’t care. The air down here was unusually warm for this time of year—an Indian summer. The heat and moisture had collected into a low-hanging cloud that hid the peak of Mount Noble, but it couldn’t hide Eric and Mollie. He could just make out their silhouettes against the dark cloud-wall, and though he couldn’t tell which was which, it was safe to assume that Mollie was out front. She was faster, the fastest flier Michael had ever seen. But then, speed wasn’t everything.

  He had given them a head start by counting to thirty before even leaving the ground. By now they were a good two hundred yards in the lead. Michael smiled to himself as he took in a deep breath of mountain air, savoring the clean tang of pine in his nostrils, and watched as the forest disappeared beneath his feet—this was going to be fun.

  It wasn’t enough to be naturally fast; you needed to know how to ride the wind if you wanted to win. If you fought too hard against nature, you would quickly tire and lose. So Michael held back until he found an updraft of warm air from the valley. Spreading his arms, he caught the wave of heat and added to it his own power, hurling himself straight up into the ceiling of gray cloud cover. Conditions were turning rough up here where the warm gusts met the cold, high winds, and soon the skies would be too dangerous to ride. Already Michael could feel his skin prickle with static, and it wouldn’t take long for that static to turn to lightning.

  But Michael would end this race long before that happened. Up and still farther up he soared, expending the last of the momentum borrowed from the updraft. In a great curving arc he flew, breaking the cloud ceiling for a glimpse of the twilight skies above, and then, folding his arms tight at his sides, he dove back down to earth like a rocket, like a meteor.

  Cold rain stung his face as he plummeted through the mist, but he laughed anyway. He felt the speed in the pit of his stomach, in the tips of his fingers; he felt the speed in every nerve and it was exhilarating. When he cleared the clouds, he spotted Eric and Mollie, each a few hundred yards from the peak. They were looking over their shoulders, searching for him, confused by his sudden disappearance. But he wasn’t behind them, he was above and in front, just seconds from the peak, just seconds from the chosen finish line.

  He almost felt sorry for them, losing another race, their last race all together, but his pity didn’t last long. It was swept away in the thrill of speed and freedom, drowned out by the roar of the wind. Michael was just born to fly….

  From the moment he opened his eyes, Michael felt as if something was wrong. It was a strange feeling, like waking up in a dark room in a bed that wasn’t your own. But this was his bed—he recognized the sheets dotted with little stars and half-moons, and sunlight streamed through his open window, revealing blue sky outside. He was in his own room and he had woken to a beautiful early morning. And yet there was this nagging itch, somewhere in the back of his brain. Scratching at him, as if he’d forgotten or misplaced something.

  Michael looked at the alarm clock next to his bed—6:20 a.m. Far too early for a lazy summer morning. Squeezing his eyes shut, he rolled over and tried to will himself back to sleep. But it was no good. He was wide-awake now, and after a few minutes of restless tossing and turning, he gave in with a sigh and hauled himself out of bed. Maybe if he got started with his day, he’d feel better.

  Unsatisfied, the little itch in his head continued to scratch.

  Michael grabbed a wrinkled pair of jeans off the floor and the dirty T-shirt draped over the bedpost—he didn’t feel like digging through his dresser for a clean one. When he had finished dressing, he looked in the mirror and gave himself a weak smile.

  “Happy birthday, Me,” he told himself.

  He certainly didn’t look thirteen. At least he didn’t look the way he’d always pictured himself looking at such an important age. He’d always pictured the thirteen him as tall, more grown-up, maybe even with a muscle or two. But the boy in the mirror looked just as short and just as skinny. He looked, well, twelve.

  As he frowned at the mirror, he noticed something odd. Something in the reflection that shouldn’t be there. Once again he was in a room that he didn’t quite recognize. It was something about the walls….

  When he turned around, he saw them everywhere. Drawings. They were taped to the wall above the bed, on the closet door, even stuck to the window. Everywhere he looked were more drawings—he must have been half blind not to notice them before. Leaning in close, he studied one. It was an ink sketch of a boy floating in a cloudy sky. Across the top, in bold Magic Marker, were the words “You Can Fly.”

  As he took a step back, he realized that they were all pictures of the same thing, repeated over and over again: the boy soaring above the rooftops or over the mountains or through the clouds. It was a little frightening. Though he couldn’t remember drawing them, they looked like his—they all had the same awkward hands that he could never get right. And each one contained the same message written in his own messy scrawl:

  You Can Fly.

  Michael’s first impulse was to call out for his parents. They were sleeping just down the hall, and if he yelled, they’d be there in a matter of seconds. But he was thirteen today, and thirteen was the age when you started taking care of yourself, when you started figuring things out, and so that was precisely what he decided to do.

  Michael knew that when he was little, he would sometimes walk in his sleep. He’d wake up at the foot of his bed or at the other end of the hall. Once his parents had caught him at the front door. Perhaps he had gotten up in the middle of the night and drawn a bunch of pictures. He hadn’t sleepwalked in years, but what other explanation was there?

  Then something began to happen: the longer he stared at the drawings, the more they started to feel … familiar. The harder he concentrated, the stronger the feeling got. There was something about them that he recognized, beyond the badly drawn hands. It was like a memory of a dream—it didn’t make sense exactly, yet it seemed so real. The itch in his head grew insistent and when he closed his eyes, he could almost hear the sound of wind roaring in his ears, feel the cold, crisp air biting against his cheek….

  All at once he felt sick. A queasy feeling twisted in his gut, and his head threatened to split open with a jabbing pain. His knees buckled as the room started to spin, and he had to grab hold of his desk just to stay upright. An awful fear gripped him—that there was something waiting for him when he closed his eyes. It was like a bad dream coming to life, a shadow blacker than the surrounding black—a living menace in the dark. And it was reaching for him, reaching …

  And like that, it was gone. He opened his eyes and the darkness, the spinning, the horrible sickness—all of it vanished as quickly as it had come. The itch receded once more to the back of his brain, chased there by the terrible shadow.

  “HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MICHAEL!”

  He looked up to see his parents in the doorway. They were still in their pajamas.

  “Hey, Michael, what’s the matter?” asked his dad. “You look a little pale.”

  Michael thought about telling them everything that had just happened—the mysterious drawings, the strange memories of cold wind … the thing in the dark. They were his parents—surely they could help?

  “I’m … I’m fine. It’s just a little early in the morning,” he answered instead. He was thirteen today, after all.

  To Michael’s parents his birthday party probably looked just like any other. The kids finished up their cake speckled with melted candle wax and went out into the yard to play ca
tch. Eric teased Rohan whenever he dropped the ball (which was most of the time), while Mollie complained that boys didn’t throw straight anyway, so why were they even playing such a stupid game? Louisa and little Rose just watched and cheered and tried to ignore Simon as he flicked ladybugs at their hair. But to Michael, everything felt different. He couldn’t get those pictures out of his head, or the fear that if he shut his eyes for too long, something would be there waiting for him.

  His friends were acting strange, too. On the outside they seemed all right—joking around and laughing—but Michael caught them giving each other looks when they thought he wasn’t paying attention. It reminded him of when Charlie Campbell’s dad passed away—how all the kids at school treated Charlie on his first day back. Everyone had been extra nice, but no one had been themselves.

  When they got bored with playing catch, Michael halfheartedly asked what they wanted to do next. Rose pointed up at the sky and grabbed Michael’s hand. “Let’s go up! Let’s go up!” she was saying.

  Michael was about to ask Rose what she meant, but before he could say anything, Louisa shushed her sister and whispered something in her ear. For some reason Rose turned red-faced, ashamed. That was when Michael noticed how quiet it had turned. He looked around to see his friends all watching him, as if they were expecting him to burst into flames or something.

  Michael didn’t know why, but this made him absolutely furious. Why were they all staring at him anyway?

  “Aren’t you a little old to be picked up?” Michael snapped. “What are you, Rose, some kind of baby?” He turned to the rest of his friends. “And why do you all keep staring at me? What’s the matter with you?”

  Louisa didn’t look at Michael; she just put her arm around her sister and gently pulled her away. But Mollie turned and stalked off. Without a word, she got on her bike and pedaled away.

  Michael looked around, confused. His head felt thick, as if it were stuffed with cotton balls. His eyes stung with tears. “What’s going on?” he asked. “What’d I do?”

  Eric took Michael by the shoulder, scowling as Mollie disappeared down the street.

  “You didn’t do anything, Michael. Mollie’s just being a girl, you know?” he said, tossing him a catcher’s mitt. “Here, wanna throw the ball around some more?”

  But Michael didn’t want to be outside anymore. He didn’t want to be around them anymore. He dropped the mitt at Eric’s feet and went inside without bothering to say goodbye.

  After dinner he said good night early and went up to his room to be alone. He tried reading a comic, but it was just another story about some superhero doing impossible things, and that annoyed him, too. He found himself wondering why all those comics had to feature people doing crazy stuff, like lifting cars over their heads and outrunning trains. It was really pretty stupid when you thought about it.

  Once again Michael studied the drawings on his wall. A flying boy. It was as if someone had collected a montage of dreams and plastered his wall with them. A child’s dreams.

  He walked over to his desk and ripped the first picture down. The corners tore away, leaving four little triangles of paper and tape stuck to the wall. He ripped down another. Then another. It felt good. He was reaching for more when he saw something moving in the moonlight just outside his window. Michael’s house was three stories tall, and his room was on the top floor. An oak tree grew outside his window, and the uppermost branches reached almost, but not quite, to the window. There, sitting in the tree, was Mollie. She was wearing a Windbreaker with the hood up, but he could still see her face. She looked upset, and she might even have been crying, but it was hard to see in the dark. As he watched, she slowly lifted from the branches of the giant oak until she was no longer in the tree but above it, several feet above the highest branches. And she was waving goodbye.

  At that moment a cloud must have passed in front of the moon because the yard was suddenly covered in shadow, and Michael couldn’t make out anything. He was so shocked that he couldn’t even speak. He just stood there, frozen, waiting for the cloud to pass. When it did, Mollie was gone. All that was left was the old oak, swaying in the breeze.

  Michael leaned heavily on his desk. He wanted so badly to give in to that itch—that dim memory somewhere in the corners of his mind—but the sickness threatened to return, and with it the shadow that haunted him. If he allowed himself to remember anything, he’d have to remember everything, and that was something he just didn’t have the strength to do.

  Michael suddenly surprised himself with a laugh—what an imagination he had, to think he saw Mollie out there floating in the yard! He had clearly spent too many hours reading too many comics and wasting his time with stupid drawings. Now he was seeing things—menacing shadows in his head and friends floating in trees. The sickness passed again with a few deep breaths, and this time the itch disappeared entirely and for good. His head clear for the first time all day, Michael gathered up the rest of his drawings and dumped them all, unceremoniously, into the garbage.

  It was easy to forget now. A new voice in his head was whispering to him, telling him that it was time to put away childish things. He realized now that the voice had been trying to talk to him all day long, but he’d refused to hear it until now—that the itch had been keeping him too distracted. But no longer. He pulled the shade down, so he wouldn’t be tempted to look out again at the old oak, and climbed into bed. He turned out the light, and before long he was fast asleep.

  You Can Fly.

  That night, and every night thereafter, Michael dreamt ordinary dreams.

  You Can Fly.

  And he never flew again.

  Chapter One

  The New Kid

  WELCOME TO NOBLE’S GREEN, PENNSYLVANIA—THE SAFEST TOWN ON EARTH!

  The safest town on earth? thought Daniel. Couldn’t sound lamer.

  Daniel Corrigan and his family saw the sign from their car just a few miles outside town. When it came into view, Daniel’s father honked the horn of their minivan as his mother clapped her hands. Of course Daniel’s baby brother, Georgie, had to join in, squealing with delight while kicking his plump legs against his car seat. Georgie was only two years old and he always just assumed that everyone was clapping for him, which was usually the case. Daniel’s parents clapped when Georgie smiled or spoke or even burped.

  Instead of joining in the applause, Daniel just buried his nose deeper in his book. His mom warned him over and over again that reading in the car would make him sick, but he did it anyway. The Sherlock Holmes mystery The Hound of the Baskervilles was one of his favorites. Daniel had a thing for detective stories, and Sherlock Holmes was the best detective ever. Period. While Daniel was completely aware that a middle-aged, pipe-smoking British sleuth was not the typical hero of the average twelve-year-old boy, peer pressure meant little to him. He liked spending his time amidst the gaslit streets and horse-drawn carriages, the dangerous arch-criminals and, of course, trusty sidekick Dr. Watson.

  Daniel sometimes wished for a trusty sidekick. All he had was Georgie, who was too young to be of much help in anything. With a sidekick like Georgie, not even Holmes would have solved many crimes, thought Daniel. He would have been too busy clapping all the time.

  Besides, Daniel understood something that Georgie didn’t—that his parents were clapping to get their minds off why they were moving in the first place. They were moving to Noble’s Green because that was where Gram lived, and she was very, very sick. For Daniel, the best way to escape that sad fact was to disappear between the covers of a well-read book.

  The moving truck was waiting for them by the time the family minivan turned onto Elm Lane, the Corrigan family’s new address. The truck was backed into the driveway as far as it could reach—it was one of those big tractor-trailer types and the front cab stuck out into the street. He didn’t understand why they would need all that stuff, even if they were going to be here for a long time. The thought of their old apartment sitting empty back in Phila
delphia filled Daniel with a strange sadness.

  When they pulled up, the movers were already unloading the truck.

  “C’mon, Daniel,” said his dad. “We’ll let your mom go in and tell your gram that we’re here. I’ll give you the grand tour.”

  “Watch yourself getting out of the car, honey,” said his mom as she unbuckled Georgie from his car seat. “The oncoming traffic can’t see you with that big truck in the way.”

  His dad smiled as he gestured to the giant wraparound porch. “Pretty cool, huh?”

  Gram’s house was two stories tall, three if you counted the attic, and the whole thing was painted a sort of pale blue, with white doors and window frames.

  “You’ll get the attic bedroom—it’s got a great view of the mountain—and Georgie will sleep in the one next to ours.”

  Daniel didn’t say anything; he just focused on not looking impressed.

  They ended their tour at the back of the house, next to a set of double doors. They were closed, but Daniel could hear the sound of laughter on the other side.

  Daniel’s father knocked very gently, and a small voice answered from the other side, “Come on in!”

  His father put his hand on Daniel’s shoulder and gave him a reassuring squeeze, then opened the door.

  The master bedroom was bright and airy. Floor-to-ceiling windows covered two of the walls, and the light filtered down through the trees, shining in beams along the dark wood floor. A large four-poster bed sat in the middle, and there was a soft sofa against one of the windows. Daniel’s mother was holding Georgie in her lap, while a woman in a nurse’s uniform perched on a stool, reading a magazine. And there, seated on the edge of the bed, was Gram. She looked thinner than he remembered and her hair seemed whiter, even though it had only been a few months since she had last visited them in Philadelphia. A small plastic hose extended from her nostrils to a tank around her waist, but she was smiling.