The bell rang.

The air was charged with something like an approaching storm, although the sky was clear. Kaila looked at Jordyn, Echidna, Lucius, Toby, Antonia, and Viktor. Yes, she knew all their names now.

She had never communicated with Viktor, but something about him frightened her. He had curly hair the color of fire and a short red beard, reminding her of a cross between a Viking warrior and the sky G.o.d Zeus. Viktor stared at her with . . . was that loathing? His eyes crackled electric blue, and if she looked closely, his pupils ran a vertical line like a snake's. He had a charge about him that repelled and made her nauseous and dizzy.

Priscilla Snowden tossed her head and said like sweet tea, "Feels like bad energy here."

Her words no sooner escaped her lips and Viktor, like a thunderbolt, was before Priscilla. The pupils in his eyes split the blue in half in one line as he said, "Yes. There is very bad energy here."

Again, Kaila detected some sort of silent exchange going on as the two eyed each other. She was also getting an impression that there was a light around Priscilla. Was she seeing it or feeling it? Was she going insane? She was seeing, feeling, knowing more than she ever had. Kaila scratched her arms.

"Perhaps," Priscilla said to Viktor, "you should go back from where you came and leave these innocent people alone."

"And perhaps," Viktor said quietly, his words seething with the force of lava erupting from a volcano, "you should go back from where you came from and die."

Two forces had collided, two forces Kaila didn't understand, but she knew intuitively a submerged potential existed for explosion.

"I have free will to choose," Priscilla said. "The same as these people."

"Free will is a lie," Viktor said, "so be gone little girl." He scrutinized her b.r.e.a.s.t.s beneath her sundress. "Are those real?" he asked.

Pia thrust her pointy nose straight in Viktor's face. "Leave her alone, you hole! You have no right to talk to her this way."

"Get away, wh.o.r.e!" Viktor backed away as if Pia were a cobra. "Do not infect me with your stupidity."

Priscilla draped her arm around Pia. "He can't hurt you, Pia."

Viktor bared his teeth. "I could eat her-"

Suddenly, Mrs. Bourg burst into the group, grasping Viktor's arm, jerking him sideways.

"It's time for cla.s.s," she said sternly, her eyes like marbles, gazing at Priscilla.

"You are so right," Priscilla said sweetly. "Kaila, do you remember how to find your homeroom?"

"I do," Kaila said, in a daze. Holy h.e.l.l, she thought. Jordyn would not look at her. He had something in his face she hadn't seen before, something like sadness?

Mrs. Bourg held open the door. "Kaila, Melissa, Pia, Priscilla-go!" She glared at the hybrids, the hive.

OMG. WTF was that out back? Melissa pa.s.sed a note to Kaila in English.

Lunch. Kaila wrote back. Let's talk.

Brandy Powell, prep number one with silky strawberry hair, stopped at Kaila's desk.

"Hey," Brandy said.

"Hey," echoed Kaila.

Kaila was perplexed. Did she say "hey" because she had changed her outfit from hick to prep?

Tara Melancon, prep number two with long brown hair and trademark pearls said, "Hey," as she pa.s.sed. Tara didn't look at her like she was catfish rotting in the sun anymore.

A paper football hit the back of Kaila's head.

Derek Mendoza and Wade Stoops puckered their lips at her from the back of the room. Below his buzz cut, Wade wore this look on his flushed face as he stared at her. Kaila didn't like it. A word came to mind: l.u.s.t. She turned away.

The guy with long hair next to her buried his head in his arms on his desk. She wondered if he was on drugs or depressed or sleepy. And further: what would she see if she went into his mind?

At lunchtime, Kaila met Melissa and Pia in the cafeteria, got a smoothie, and went outside. The three girls scanned the field and saw the aliens a.s.sembled under the far oak tree. They stood in one line, staring back at the rest of the school.

"That was weird this morning," Melissa said. "I was talking to the one named Toby-"

"Shut up, Melissa," Pia said. "Let's just go over there. We all know there's something going on. Let's. .h.i.t it head on."

Kaila admired Pia's frankness. As they walked across the gra.s.s, Pia added, "There's a lot going on here and I'm going to figure it out."

Kaila doubly admired Pia, her muscular body, her home-made beaded jewelry, her little pointed nose, plodding steadfastly across the gra.s.s in her skinny jeans and Converse sneakers.

Pia marched in front of Kaila and Melissa. "Earth to s.p.a.ce," she said holding up her hand. The hive stared blankly. "We come in peace."

Nervously, Melissa started giggling.

"Shut up, Melissa," Pia said.

The hive stared at the girls.

"I mean," Pia continued. "We all know there's something going on, and I want to know what it is. Now." She put her hands on her hips.

No one said a word.

Then, Antonia, the girl with the dark skin and eyes broke the silence. "I admire your approach. You, as your friends, are intuitive. That is good. You are evolving."

"I don't want to hear any bulls.h.i.t," Pia said. "I mean, I want to know what's going on. Like, why do you all wear the same silver bodysuits and act so weird and flipped out by us. Are you aliens?"

Viktor's cheeks reddened, like his hair. He said, "And if we were, what would you do?"

"She would put on her high heels to mate with you, fool," Lucius said.

"I'll have nothing to do with that," Viktor said. "Especially with a female." He retreated a few feet.

Pia said to Lucius, "Hey m.o.f.o, I never wore high heels in my life. As far as who I mate with, that's my choice. Got it?

"And as for you," she called to Viktor, "you have no right to talk to Priscilla Snowden the way you did."

"She's a busybody who should mind her own business," Viktor shouted. "We don't like interference." He glowered at Pia.

Echidna stepped in front of Pia. "My," she said, her sleek dark bangs unmoving above her black eyes. "You seem to have a lot of anger emotion."

"Yes," Pia said. "I do have a lot of anger emotion. Do you know why?"

Echidna stepped closer to Pia and said, softly, "That's your problem, not ours."

Kaila, watching this exchange, felt afraid and confused. There was so much more being said than she understood.

"We are here to learn," Jordyn said, pointedly to Echidna. "Let go of the mission, leave these people in peace."

Echidna tossed her head, her black shiny hair with each strand in perfect alignment. "The mission is all. I have nothing to learn. You learn."

Then Echidna put her face close to Kaila's, her large black eyes accusing.

"Wake up," she said. She tapped her long fingers on Kaila's wig. "And be rid of this. You are one of us and you know it."

The one named Toby, with the bright blue eyes, pudgy face, missing eyebrows, and st.u.r.dy body said, "We are mixing. We are having emotion. I like it." He said to Melissa, "You told me this morning you are an artist. I would like to see your artwork. We never had art-"

"No!" Lucius shouted.

Antonia said, "Stop, Lucius. We are becoming infected. Look at you. You have the emotion of anger. Toby has the emotion of gladness. Let him look at her art. The artwork is not important!" Then a moment pa.s.sed where the hive looked at each other in silent communion.

There was a scream near the school as Douglas was dumped into the trash can again. Then voices in the background chanting, "Loser, loser."

Kaila was sickened by the cruelty in school. Then, suddenly, she remembered the dream of floating with Jordyn. She recalled holding his hand and feeling his heart and mind energy. She yearned to yank the plastic from her head and let her real hair loose.

Viktor stared at her with disgust. Kaila grew confused. Her right temple throbbed.

The world was spinning too fast; the ground appeared to loom closer. She lost her footing.

Jordyn was instantly by her side, his hand on her lower back. "Look at me," he said.

"No," Kaila said. She knew they had secret power in their eyes.

"We are experiencing emotion too," Jordyn said. He put his arm across her waist with his left four-fingered hand taking hers. He put his tiny lips to her ear. "Understand, Kaila. This is hard on us too. We are trying to understand like you."

His lips brushed her earlobe; his fingers entwined hers. She turned to face him, saw his eyes glimmering.

Deep down, Kaila knew what was happening. She hadn't allowed it to surface to consciousness. She was like the mullets in the pond that swam in murky waters but only jumped out of the water into the light when they were being chased by predators. Still, the charge from Jordyn's touch exhilarated her.

"Hey," Kaila said. "Next week is my birthday. I'm having a party. So, I invite you all to come. You can ride horses. Eat barbecue. What do you say?"

The hive stepped into one line as a military formation. Six pairs of eyes fixed on her. They said nothing.

"We need to try and get along," Kaila coached. "Though we are different, we need to live in peace with each other."

Lucius snorted.

Viktor smirked as if Kaila were the ultimate saccharine chump. He leered at her like a lion from his lair.

"We will come," Jordyn said. "Thank you for inviting us."

Toby licked his small mouth and asked, "Will your other friends be there?" He looked at Melissa.

"Everyone is welcome," Kaila said. She turned to Melissa and Pia. "Of course you're invited!"

"Thank you," said Echidna.

"Thank you," said Antonia.

"Thank you!" cried Toby.

Lucius and Viktor said nothing, both looking at Kaila like she was a juicy gra.s.shopper whose blood they'd love to suck, leaving nothing but a withered carca.s.s.

The bell rang. Time for advanced physics.

Chapter 5.

Kaila was pushed through the doorway with the crowd. Again, the shouts of "Three! Three! Three!" as the students taunted Albert Jackson for eating three lunches.

"Hey," Melissa called. "You want to come over tonight-you, me, and Pia?"

"Sure," Kaila said, adjusting her wig.

"We gotta talk about all this," Melissa said.

Kaila nodded, then saw Douglas Lafarge, the guy with oily curly hair freshly emerged from the dumpster trudging down the hall in his baggy pants.

And she saw Phyllis Joiner, the girl with stringy hair and bulging eyes from . . . a thyroid problem? The one whose father had left her with the alcoholic mother . . . the one who had a crush on Derek Mendoza. Kaila wondered how this information came to her, but she knew it was true.

Wade hovered behind Phyllis and shouted, "Hey bug eyes! When you gonna wash that hair? When you gonna stuff that bra?"

He slapped hands with Derek as they guffawed. "Why're your eyes bugging out? See a big one you like?"

Kaila realized how intensely this must hurt with Derek being Phyllis's crush. Phyllis scurried away, head bowed.

Dark horses trampled through Kaila's mind as she hurried out the door to the back field to advanced physics. These people were so cruel! Yet this morning Priscilla Snowden had taken a protective stance. Who was Priscilla, really? Kaila determined to find out.

As Kaila walked through the maze of modular units, she saw Jordyn standing near the back of the physics mod.

Calm the wild horses in your mind.

And she calmed. She stepped through the gra.s.s, hearing the exhaust from the air conditioning unit above them, outside the mod.