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Jesus. But it was what was in the comments section that elevated us to the status of urban myth. Everyone and their brother claimed to have seen us do extraordinary things. More than one person said they’d seen us off to one side, mastering a professional-level gymnastics move or skateboard trick before simply dropping it to move on to the next thing. Others commented on ESP-level powers of anticipation—turning to the exact page in a book before we were told, opening a door before someone knocked. It was all true. Those were moments when we had been sloppy.

  The article had surprised us when it appeared out of nowhere a little over a year ago. No one spoke about how much it had gotten right. Suddenly anyone who hadn’t heard about our presence in Austin was aware of us. That’s when Novak began to make changes and segmented us into smaller groups. After a bit the conversation died down, but from there on out you could feel people’s excitement when they thought they had identified one of us around town.

  I wondered if John had made his way to the one comment that unnerved us most of all, the one that named us. After reading this, John would feel both better and worse. He’d know he wasn’t making things up, but he would also be scared. Even if you thought you were an open-minded person, it had to be different when you saw something so strange with your own eyes.

  I exited the article and went through his open tabs. The first tab was a search for “Julia Jaynes.”

  “Hand it over.” Victoria’s voice cut through the car.

  Dammit. She’d seen exactly what I’d done at the police station. I quickly looked for one more second, wanting to see his emails, his photos.

  “Now.”

  I handed the phone over to Victoria. We were close to the house, but she made a detour farther down the road to a dock landing. Pulling right up to the water’s edge, she stopped the car and looked down at the phone in her hand. Victoria also looked through his searches quickly, the only indication we had of what might be on a potential witness’s mind. Regardless of what he might say, it was obvious that what had happened today would reignite the fire this article started a year ago. I couldn’t overestimate how much trouble I was in.

  Victoria handed the phone back to me like it was something disgusting. “Get rid of it.”

  I opened the car door and walked in the dark to the water’s edge, throwing the phone as far as I could out into the lake.

  I sensed Novak before I saw him, my eyes coming to rest on a shadow in the corner of the dark living room when we entered. He appeared to be lounging lazily in a soft, upholstered chair. Just sitting and waiting, which struck me as odd. Then I realized I never saw him not in motion or without his phone.

  Crossing the room, Victoria stood before Novak, and I could sense the change in her attitude.

  “Didn’t know,” Victoria said, so softly, most of her words dropping away.

  “Not to try,” Novak said.

  “Private. Please.”

  She was pleading with him. And most definitely not for me. Her golden child had screwed up, and Victoria didn’t want to discuss it in front of me. He would never send our future leader down to our group, the Lost Kids, if that was what Victoria was worried about.

  Liv and I stood in the foyer, the waiting making it worse. We were not together in this. Until this summer I’d never felt apart from my sister. Even when we were small, we didn’t fight—I didn’t dare, and Liv was too kind to and wanted to please me. She had broken our dynamic first by taking one step too deep into my territory.

  My dad stood up, light on his feet. He was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt from a local club, his feet bare. I still saw him through a little girl’s eyes and could perfectly recall him tossing me into the air, me practically weightless and laughing uncontrollably.

  “Liv, come with me.” Novak turned to walk toward his large office at the top of the stairs. I watched Liv, spine curved, flip-flops slapping on the limestone, following him at a snail’s pace. “Vic, come on,” he tossed out. Victoria snapped into motion and trailed them up the staircase, not sparing a backward glance for me.

  I didn’t bother to sit down. Chewing a nail nervously, I walked over to the wall of glass and looked out at the water. At night, the house felt like a houseboat sitting on the silvery lake, the moon glinting off the water’s surface. Most of the lights were off in the houses across the lake. My stomach ached. How much should I tell Novak about what happened?

  Should I tell him everything the stranger may have seen? There were so many things, all because I’d paid him far too much attention. If we hadn’t been speaking, he wouldn’t have followed me.

  And then there was the other question: what I should tell Novak about myself. In the space of a couple of hours, I’d read someone’s mind and I’d known with certainty from a football field away that Liv was drowning. I’d suddenly seen all of Barton Springs in total clarity, like a scene laid out in front of me, and known exactly where to run. I didn’t understand it—was this what all the adults were capable of? This kind of power didn’t seem inconsequential the way Novak had said when I came to him after the ski trip. I didn’t know what to do, because after that meeting I was no longer certain what Novak’s reaction would be.

  I heard a door open, and voices poured out into the hallway, echoing off the high ceilings. “Julia,” my dad called. His voice sounded so nonthreatening. Numb, I walked over to the stairs and looked up. Liv and Victoria stood in front of the display of family photos, watching me. When I reached the top, I edged past them, keeping my gaze averted.

  I hadn’t been inside my dad’s office in years. To me this office felt like the nexus of power—where the secrets and the future were managed by my dad, “the Chosen One,” as Angus had once mockingly called him. It was only over the course of this last summer when I heard some snide comments about my dad slip out from the Lost Kids that I realized not everyone admired him. They especially loved talking about “Novak’s girls”—the revolving door of assistants he chose from an elite-seeming pool of predominantly female outsiders. Eventually, each and every one of them was dismissed and cut off when they’d inevitably become too infatuated with Novak. There’d been more than one restraining order. Novak knew we had that effect on the select few chosen to get that close to us, so it was a mystery why he continued to court trouble.

  I could see how it would be easy for the other Lost Kids to resent Novak. Still, no one would ever dispute his leadership. For our own safety, no one mentioned the immediate past, but from the time we could speak we were introduced to our culture with stories of our ancestors and the diaspora of our people. As children we heard tales of the great ones—those who lived to one hundred and thirty, who could levitate, who could heal with their touch, and who could, most important, see the future. And we came to understand that Novak was like the great ones, the first in many generations, and he received guiding visions.

  Novak had foreseen our inability to have children in spite of all attempts. He knew Liv would be our future leader, and for reasons that weren’t clear to me a vision had brought us to Austin. These foresights were also what enabled Novak to see three steps ahead on the chessboard of our lives and know just how to manipulate and outrun an increasingly volatile world.

  I was sure there were other billionaires hiring top minds, figuring out how to protect their direct descendants as the planet grew warmer and the world more unstable. But it made members of the group nervous that Novak was out front and center, influencing political leaders and CEOs, ensuring they made decisions that landed in his favor. As he smiled in public, behind the scenes he was using the wealth he’d accumulated to secure resources for our future by any means necessary, within an inch of the law.

  The office seemed smaller to me now that I was older, but by entering the room I still felt that shift in perspective, as though you were walking into the presence of something larger than yourself. The door closed behind me, and for a second I wondered if my father had closed it from several feet away or if I had imagined that. Just like outsiders watc
hed us, the kids in our group grew up vigilantly watching the adults, trying to catch them doing things they didn’t yet trust us to know they could do.

  My father sat behind his marble-topped desk that I always thought looked like a cloud. Floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides made it look like we were sitting directly atop the lake. Wood built-ins with a series of locks on them like safety deposit boxes lined the wall. The vault was disguised by the built-ins. I wondered if Liv and the others had seen inside.

  Usually all surfaces in the home were clear, but today his desk was covered with photographs. Pictures of what looked like nature scenes straight out of storybooks—streams, mountains, forests. I scanned a piece of paper with a census of game that must be in the area, such as fish, elk, deer, and fowl.

  “It’s perfect, isn’t it?” Novak asked me. “It will be like going home,” he said more quietly.

  I nodded wholeheartedly in agreement. In a flash, Novak gathered up the photos and they were out of sight. There was no point in asking where it was. He wouldn’t tell me.

  I didn’t know if I should take a seat, so I stood waiting. His energy was calm and neutral. Any trace of that morning’s loving father—or his version of how an average loving father behaved—was wiped away. Not being able to read any emotion made interactions disorienting.

  “This will be quick,” my dad began. “You need to tell me what that boy saw.”

  It was my chance for full disclosure and sparing myself months of worry, wondering if any lies would come back to haunt me. Still, I chose to lie. I couldn’t risk what might happen if Novak knew how bad it was.

  “He helped pull Liv to the side. He only saw what everyone else did. It was too cloudy under the water to see much of anything.”

  “Why was he arrested?” I’m sure my father already knew the details but wanted to hear it from me.

  “He was in the middle of everything. Just wrong place, wrong time. It was a mistake. Can you get him out of it?” I knew he wasn’t my responsibility, so I surprised myself by asking.

  Novak narrowed his eyes and said ruefully, “Really, Julia? More damage control?”

  “Can you fix it?”

  “You know I don’t like to interfere with them.” But I sensed an agreement that he would take care of it. He wouldn’t risk someone going to court.

  Suddenly Novak stood up, crossed to the other side of the desk, and perched on the edge, directly across from me. He rubbed his face and then slid his hand into his hair. All at once I realized he was about to break some bad news. Oh shit. He was purposely giving me time to steel myself.

  “Sit down, J,” Novak said. I sat on the edge of a nearby chair, which brought me even closer to him. Now I had to crane my neck to look up at him.

  “Dad…,” I began.

  “Let me start.” That put me back on my heels. “You let randomness in today.” He leveled his eyes on mine. I wanted nothing more than to break eye contact and look down. “That makes it much harder for me to do my job, to keep everyone safe and to see clearly. Do you know what it took to get everyone’s fingerprints back? Not to mention getting Angus off those charges? If anyone had been badly hurt today, if someone had gone to the hospital, if our blood had been taken…”

  Novak lithely stood up and circled back behind the desk, quietly sitting down in his chair across from me. He then looked at his watch, as though he didn’t have much time left for this conversation. It was the longest I’d been alone with him in so long I couldn’t remember. But I was relieved we were almost done. Maybe this talk was the extent of any punishment.

  Before continuing, Novak seemed to take me in, pausing to study my features closely for a moment, like he was trying to recognize something, or someone, in me. I may have been wrong, but I thought I saw some kind of recognition pass over his expression. This time, he broke eye contact first. I wondered how often he thought about my mother when he looked at me.

  “Julia, I need to put some distance between you and the other kids. I’m aware you’ve been showing the boys your tricks. This is after I specifically warned you never to do that. You’re going to have to leave the group for a bit.” Novak looked at the ceiling while he said this, before turning his once-again-impassive expression back to me.

  I didn’t think I’d heard him correctly. “Excuse me?”

  “As we get close to Relocation, I assess everyone,” Novak continued. “For our protection and longevity, individuals who aren’t committed don’t move on with us.”

  “You’re saying I’m not coming?” I felt jolted into a hyperreality, scared out of my mind.

  “No,” Novak said hastily, “for now, you’re simply going to a different school—a public school. You need to comprehend exactly what you did, Julia. Feel how it is to be on your own in their world and show me you can earn your way back. Prove to me that you listen to rules, that you won’t influence others. In December you’ll be eighteen, an adult. Show me you can be an asset to the group, that you would never threaten everyone’s safety.”

  “What about everyone else from today? Is anyone coming with me?”

  “No,” he said simply. In our culture, isolation was the biggest insult there was.

  How had I become the scapegoat? What about Angus, who assaulted a cop? Novak stood, finished with our conversation. I didn’t move. Here was my chance to tell him what an asset I could potentially be, that I wasn’t the juvenile delinquent everyone seemed to think I was. I knew Victoria was standing outside the door listening. I wasn’t sure when or if I would ever get this audience with my father again.

  “So—”

  “No, Julia.” He stopped me. “You know I have to put the group first. Even above my own daughter. This is about you putting your ego in check.”

  What ego? I wondered angrily. I hadn’t been showing off when I jumped in the water to rescue Liv. His accusation gave me pause. It wasn’t the right time, and I was almost relieved not to have to tell him. It was safer to take the punishment than to risk him reacting unpredictably.

  I found my voice again. “Where am I going?”

  “Kendra will get in touch with you with the details,” he said, referring to his latest assistant. Novak’s eyes rested on my wild ones. “Think of yourself as our ambassador. Show them we are just like them, no differences. You’ll learn self-control. Before you know it, it will be June and everyone will be appeased and assured you belong with us.”

  So he was delivering this punishment to make other people happy as well. Everyone hated me, apparently.

  “Julia, I have faith in you. Show me you want this.”

  The funny thing was, no one wanted it more. I had rebelled over the past year, but there was never any question in my mind that I wanted to be a member of this group. That’s all I’d ever wanted, since it had never seemed like a given for me. Since I was a little girl, I’d wished I was exactly like them.

  I thought we were done, so I wasn’t prepared for the last insult. “Also, Victoria wants you to give Liv some space. I don’t know if it was hanging out with your friends today or a first rebellion, but Liv needs to refocus.”

  I was incredulous. “You’re asking me to stay away from my sister? We live in the same house.”

  “More like telling you to. Obviously, you will sleep here, but we’d like you to spend less time at the house. For Liv’s sake. We know you invited her to go with you today.”

  I didn’t bother to correct that misinformation, because I was stunned he was asking me to stay away from my own home. That must have been Victoria’s request.

  “But I’m one of you.” It came out pathetic and bold at the same time. “Novak”—his eyes snapped to mine at my use of his name—“I saved Liv today.”

  He shifted his position again and looked out the window. “You broke rules by going out in public as a group, you were the one who started these challenges that could have killed your sister, and then you made a scene. People who were there believe they witnessed a miracle when Liv came to. Tha
t endangers all of us.”

  The finality and horror of what was taking place hit me. I had to do everything he asked. I had to stay away from my sister and from my de facto family of the Lost Kids. I had to become the outcast. I couldn’t give them a single excuse to leave me.

  My dad stood up. “So we’re clear? I want you to start the school year at your new school. No discussion about this with anyone. I’ll be the one to explain what’s happening.”

  Victoria walked into the office, cutting off the conversation. She crossed the room to perch next to my father. She looked more beautiful without makeup, but also more worn and tired.

  I stood up, my legs visibly quaking as I turned to leave the room. To my shame, tears filled my eyes, and both Victoria and Novak saw. Another flaw, another failure.

  When the office door shut behind me, I had the physical sensation of being kicked out of their world. I was headed to the one that lay outside the gates—ugly and a complete unknown.

  SEPTEMBER

  I turned off the car and sat stock-still, the hair on the back of my neck raised, my breath ragged. I was in the west parking lot of Austin High after getting briefly lost, even though Novak’s assistant had provided me with a folder containing everything I needed to know: a map of campus with the parking lot and my classrooms highlighted on it, the list of my classes, how afterschool sports worked. My tennis gear sat in the trunk—playing tennis was my way of getting out of PE. I wondered what Kendra thought about all of this. Ironically Kendra, the regular person, was now less of an outsider than I was.

  I had intentionally arrived early so I could adjust. I hadn’t slept at all last night, going over the rules again and again, telling myself I would be able to mask all my differences. Don’t speak in whispers, listen closely while shutting out surrounding noise, don’t act on what hasn’t yet happened. Tamp down my reflexes in sports, my hyperfocus in class. Essentially, quash all my natural instincts. Most important to maintaining the plan: keep that imaginary wall firmly in place between them and me. If I got overwhelmed, I would be less in control, and unexpected things could happen like they had at Barton Springs.