Solstice Survivors (Book 1): Superhero Syndrome Read online

  Apparently, everyone in upstate New York was heeding the media’s advice to see the meteor shower, and the entrance to Thatcher State Park was congested with cars and tour busses. I pulled off to the side of the road, parking between a Volkswagen camper van and an old station wagon. Around me, people piled out of their cars carrying folding chairs and coolers. I dug my sketchbook and pencils out of my duffle, grabbed Davies’ blanket, and rubbed the car’s cracked vinyl dashboard.

  “So long, baby,” I whispered. “You were good to me.”

  I left my keyring on the dashboard. Someone who needed a ride could drive the Escort home after the shower, and they could have my laptop and cell phone as well. Climbing out of the car, I followed a large family who was ducking into the forest at a nearby trailhead. Many other feet had walked this trail in the hours before us, packing down the snow and making a wide path. I struggled to move my atrophied legs fast enough to keep up and eventually allowed myself to lag a bit behind the family. There was only one path, and I didn’t want an audience to my wheezing.

  Just as I started to worry that I’d drop dead before reaching a good spot to watch the shower, the trees opened into a wide clearing. Someone had taken the time to stamp down the snow so the ground was flat and hard, and hundreds of people were setting up chairs and laying down blankets in preparation for the big show. I chose a small gap between a few clusters of people, folded Davies’ blanket in half a couple of times for extra insulation, and wiggled my way under the top layer. I pulled the blanket in tight around me, wrapping myself in it like a cocoon.

  I felt someone’s eyes on me but ignored them. I knew what I looked like. I knew how my hazel eyes had started to look too big for their sockets and how my swollen joints looked wildly out of proportion with my thin limbs. I snuggled into the blankets and pulled out my sketch pad, drawing the people around me to keep my fingers warm. In front of me, a short woman with poofy red curls was digging around in a picnic basket, handing sandwiches to the two small children who sat beside her. To my right, a middle-aged guy with glasses was cringing as he tried to pop the cork on a champagne bottle. I flinched when he finally succeeded. The cork shot off into the trees, and the people around him laughed nervously, probably as happy as I was that they hadn’t lost an eye.

  A lump formed in my throat, and I gripped my pencil tighter as I sketched. Everyone here had a future. They had something to look forward to tomorrow… and the day after that. Once the meteor shower was over, they’d go home to warm kitchens and cups of hot cocoa and talk about how perfect and beautiful the night had been.

  And I… well, I’d be here until someone found me, I supposed.

  The sky above us was rapidly darkening. Millions of stars shone, and everyone in the clearing stared upward waiting for the show to begin.

  The universe did not disappoint.

  Sometime around midnight, a streak of light appeared above me. I gasped as it bolted partway across my field of vision before vanishing. A few minutes later, another appeared. Then another. It was unlike any meteor shower I’d ever seen, and from the gasps and oohs around me, I could tell I wasn’t alone in my awe.

  I tasted salt. When did I start crying?

  The cold seeped through my jacket and Davies’ blanket, stinging my skin, but it didn’t bother me. My tears could freeze right on my face for all I cared. I could melt into the ground beneath me and not even feel it. There was no looking away; I was riveted by the magic above me.

  Three lights appeared in the sky at once. They were much brighter than the streaks that had preceded them, and they tore through the stars like soldiers rushing into battle. My eyes went wide. I knew it had to be an optical illusion, but they appeared to be coming right at me.

  As the meteors sped toward the clearing, a rushing sound filled my ears, growing louder with each breath. A wave of nausea hit me, and I realized I was about to pass out. It’d been happening a lot lately. The edges of my vision fuzzed into blackness, but the cluster of meteors shone in the center, still appearing to speed directly at me.

  This is it, I thought.

  This was no ordinary fainting spell. It was different; I could feel it. The skin from the top of my head down to the soles of my feet began to tingle and burn, and my heart pounded in my ears.

  These were my last moments.

  A face, so much like my own, swam in front of my eyes. My sister smiled at me, but her eyes were filled with sadness.

  “Goodbye, Bethany,” I whispered.

  And the world went dark.

  Holy shit, there really is a white light.

  The brightness shone through my closed eyelids, which fluttered open, trying to see what would be waiting for me on the other side. Grandma McBray? My hamster, Scampers? The light was too glaring; I couldn’t see anything.

  But boy, oh boy, could I feel. My body was on fire, burning and tingling, and my face was like a freezer-burned popsicle.

  The light shifted, moving above my head.

  “Miss?” a gruff voice asked.

  The world around me came into clearer view. Next to the source of light, a bearded man in a green hat hovered over me. At least eight other faces of varying sizes and colors ringed his, and every pair of eyes was fixed on me. I recognized none of them as dead relatives or beloved pets, but I did recognize the green leaf emblem stitched onto the bearded man’s hat; he was a New York State Park Ranger, and he was shining a flashlight right at me.

  “Miss?” he said again.

  I groaned in response. The onlookers leaning over me breathed a collective sigh of relief, and one older woman blessed herself.

  “All right, everybody, give her some room.” The park ranger raised a hand, warding off the crowd. He leaned down and rested a hand on my forehead; I guessed he was checking my temperature.

  If I could’ve managed anything more coherent than a groan, I could’ve saved him the trouble. That ever-present fever was one of many reasons I’d been looking forward to death… to an end to the pain and discomfort of my wasted body, and the constant shivering…

  “Well, you don’t have a fever,” he announced.

  The connection between my brain and mouth was suddenly reestablished. “What?”

  The park ranger raised his voice. “I said, ‘You don’t have a fever.’ Did you get enough to eat today? Enough to drink? Do you have a history of seizures?”

  “Seizures? I—no.” I struggled against my blanket, in which I’d somehow become tangled. “I’ve never had one of those. I just… yeah. I didn’t get much to eat today, that’s all.”

  “She doesn’t look like she gets enough to eat, ever,” the old woman who’d blessed herself muttered to the man beside her.

  Stop looking at me! I wanted to scream.

  If these people decided I was unwell, they might call an ambulance or something, and back to the hospital I’d go. The thought galvanized my stringy muscles into action, and I managed to squirm out of my blanket and lift myself to my knees. The park ranger helped me to my feet and held a hand on either side of me as though waiting for me to fall over.

  “I’m fine.” Then, as an afterthought, “Thank you. Thank you all for your concern. But I’m fine, I swear.”

  I realized the truth of the words as I spoke them. The tingling burn that had coursed through my skin when I’d first woken up had dissipated, and I felt no lingering dizziness from losing consciousness. For the first time in weeks, I had zero nausea. I sucked in a deep breath of crisp, cold air and grinned. I wasn’t even wheezing. I raised my hands and patted my face. It still felt skeletal and thin on the outside, but on the inside… everything just felt right. I’d forgotten what it felt like to not live in constant pain. I could flex my fingers without my joints screaming in protest. I could even raise my arms above my head and bend in every direction at my waist, and nothing hurt. I laughed as tears streamed down my face.

  “Miss?” The park ranger reached out and touched my shoulder. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
/>   “I’m great.” I smiled at him and nodded to the onlookers. “Thanks again for checking on me. Really.”

  With that, I gathered up the brown blanket and headed down the path as quickly as my legs would carry me. They were still weak and little more than skin on bone, but I no longer felt like they were going to give out from underneath me. Instead, it reminded me of pushing myself during gym in high school, trying to improve my mile time for a chance to win an Amazon gift card. It didn’t feel good, necessarily, but my body didn’t really seem to mind the extra effort.

  A feeling I never thought I’d have again began to stir awake inside of me. Hope. I was alive. More than that, I was better. I didn’t even feel the urge to go to a doctor to confirm it; I just knew. The syndrome had left my body. Somehow… I’d survived.

  “Suck it, Dr. Frederickson!” I shouted. My words echoed off the trees around me, and I let out a whoop. I’d never need to see or hear from him again.

  Except…

  “Dammit!” I came to a halt beside my car as a thought struck me. I’d certainly be hearing from him again. Or at least I’d be hearing from the hospital when they billed me for my inpatient stay. I didn’t dare guess how much it would cost. No matter the amount, it’d be too much for me to pay.

  Sliding behind the wheel of my car, where my keys were thankfully still resting on the dash, I felt all the hope and joy from the last few moments seep out of me. I was alive, but what kind of life did I have? I was broke, unemployed, and nobody in the world cared about me.

  That’s not true. She probably still does.

  I saw my sister’s face for the second time that evening. I’d been surprised when hers was the image my brain drudged up to show me in my last moments. I don’t know what I’d been expecting to see exactly, but it hadn’t been Bethany.

  And why would it have been? I hadn’t seen her in years. We hadn’t spoken since I’d left home. I was sure the divide was her fault.

  Probably, anyway.

  For all I knew, she’d left Weyland after I had. Maybe she’d followed my parents to Florida or finally made good on her dream to move to Paris to work in the fashion industry. But if I had any money for betting, I would’ve put it all on the odds that she was still living in Weyland, still married to that walking liquor bottle, and still working at the cosmetics store in the mall.

  Thoughts of her tugged at my mind, and as I sat in my car staring out at the dark woods, pieces of a plan snapped together in my head like a dollar-store jigsaw puzzle. Enough bits were missing that I couldn’t make out the whole picture, but even partially completed it made more sense than staying in Albany. Weyland was cheap. Weyland had jobs. And Weyland had my sister, who’d spent her childhood cooking colcannon and Shepherd’s pie beside my mom and who might be willing to have me over for dinner four or five times a week.

  My empty stomach gurgled and squeaked, and a few more pieces popped into place—enough to convince me to do something I never thought I’d be crazy enough to do.

  It was time to go home.

  I’ve made a huge mistake.

  Downtown Weyland surrounded me. Commercial high rises blocked out the sky except for what was directly above me, and the stench of auto exhaust and bus fumes hammered my sinuses as the frigid January air bit at my cheeks.

  What on earth had possessed me to come back here? I’d turned what little life I’d built in Albany completely upside down in the past week, breaking the lease on my apartment and even selling my car to fund this nutty scheme. I’d spent eight brutal hours on a bus cruising down the East coast at a miserable sixty miles an hour… for this?

  “Hey lady, you comin’ or goin’?” A burly man in a pinstriped suit waved a briefcase at me. “Some of us wanna get home by dinner.”

  “Sorry.” I stepped into the doorway of the diner behind me and tried to find my bearings. It’d been three years since I’d been in this city. Even then, I’d spent most of my time in the suburb where we lived and only came downtown for concerts or school events.

  I admitted defeat and ducked into the diner, where the hostess was kind enough to give me directions to the nearest train station.

  As I trudged down Keel Avenue in the direction she’d pointed me, I flirted with the idea of calling my parents to tell them I’d come back to Weyland, but ditched the notion almost immediately. I wasn’t ready for my mother to shriek, “I told you so!” She’d hated the idea of me moving out of state in the first place—never mind the fact that she and my dad bolted from Weyland the instant I was out of the house.

  Her words from our last telephone conversation before I’d checked into the hospital still rang in my ears. “It’s probably food poisoning, Tess. You know you should be more careful about what you eat. And how much you eat. Are you watching your weight? You know you tend to carry a little extra pudge in your tummy.”

  If only she could see me now. In the days since the meteor shower, I’d had the appetite of a thirteen-year-old boy. I ate out at restaurants every single meal and never skipped appetizers or dessert. This new “Eat Everything!” diet was doing my stringy limbs some good, and I was starting to feel less like a newborn deer.

  My credit card company had already texted me four times to make sure the charges were legit. I normally only splurged at Shelton’s Comic Chalet on some Wednesdays—okay, every Wednesday—especially if an alternate cover issue was being released.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket. I had to unzip my long, puffy black jacket to fish it out of my jeans. Bethany’s face grinned at me from the display.

  “Are you in town? How was the trip? When are you coming over?” My sister rattled off questions like bullets, and she was as loud as gunfire to boot.

  Wincing, I held the phone away from my ear. “I literally just got off the bus. I have to drop my bag off at my apartment first.”

  “Where are you living?”

  “I found a place off Triton.” I weaved through the crowd of office drones who were marching toward the train station with me. “My stuff is supposed to be waiting for me.”

  Silence from the other end of the phone.

  “Hello? Bethany? Are you still there?”

  She exhaled into her mouthpiece. “Triton? That’s in the Trident.”

  “Yeah, I know. How else do you think I could afford it?”

  “I don’t like it. It’s not safe there.”

  “As opposed to your neighborhood? By the docks?”

  “You think the docks are dangerous?” Bethany said with a snort. “Watch the news, Tess. There’ve been a lot of kidnappings. Girls our age. Jim Jenkins says it’s a human trafficking ring.”

  “Don’t tell me that old vampire is still doing the news.”

  “Every night at five. Listen, I’m not kidding around. At least ten girls have gone missing in the last month alone, and four of them were last seen in the Trident. Promise me you’ll be careful.”

  “Hey, you know me. Careful is my mid—”

  “I mean it, Tess.” Her voice was firm.

  “You sound like Grandma.”

  “Good. She was the only person in the whole family with any sense. Now promise me.”

  “For God’s sake, settle down. I’ll be careful. I swear.”

  “Okay. Do you remember how to get here? Dinner’s tomorrow at six.”

  “Yeah, I’ll take the Fishbone to Portside, right?”

  “Right.” Bethany giggled into the phone, sounding more like a little girl than my older sister. “Aw, you’ve always loved those trains. I wish I was there to see your wittle face when you get to ride them again.”

  “I do not love the train. It’s gross and smells like fish, just like the rest of this godforsaken place.”

  A tall woman in a cream-colored pea-coat shot me a dirty look. I raised my eyebrows at her.

  “If you don’t like what I have to say,” I told her, “don’t eavesdrop.”

  The woman wrinkled her nose and picked up her pace, quickly outstripping me with her long le
gs. I glared at her back as she went. Weylanders, I thought. Bunch of jerks.

  “What was that?” Bethany asked in my ear.

  “Nothing. I’m coming up on the station. I’ll see you soon, okay?”

  I hung up the phone and shoved it back into my pocket. The throng of commuters into which I’d managed to insert myself had reached the wide staircase that led to the elevated train platform, and I wanted both hands free in case I had to shove my way onto a train car. I managed to hustle my way in front of a few people to board the train and slid down into a plastic yellow seat with a sigh.

  As far as I was concerned, Weyland was a stinking bucket of fish guts. I hated almost everything about this town. Not the trains, though. Bethany was right; I loved them. The steady click-click-clack-clack as the railcars sped away from downtown was comforting, like laying my head on my mom’s chest and hearing her breathe when I was little. I’d been riding these trains my whole life, and everything about them—the elevated tracks, the screeching of the brakes, even the ever-present discarded coffee cups and fast-food wrappers from the hordes of commuters—reminded me I was home.

  Back in the early 1940’s, Weyland had tried to re-invent itself as the premier cultural center of the Atlantic coast. The city council went on a spending spree, authorizing millions to build up infrastructure. The crown jewel was the WART. That’s right, WART. Weyland Area Rapid Transit.

  Did I mention yet what a well-thought-out place my hometown is?

  The elevated commuter rail system was modeled after Chicago’s famous L trains, and the city council hoped to bring in new businesses and young working-class couples who would fill in the new subdivisions around the shipyards. They even dared to dream that families with new money would build summer homes along the coastline. The strategy worked, bringing in people like my grandparents, who’d imagined kissing their children goodbye and then reading the paper on the train as it carried them from their tidy bungalows near the docks to the new downtown high-rises. The blue-collar workers in the canneries and factories near the docks gave the main rail line and its splintering sub-lines a more fitting name: the Fishbone.