face buried in the damp pillow, catching my breath. Slowly, the pain began to subside. The stillness helped.
You’re okay. You lifted yourself too fast. Breathe in…breathe out…
I tried to think positively. The last thing I remembered, Dr. Flood was rushing off to notify the OR. That meant I’d had an operation. Okay. This made sense. I wasn’t convulsing or dizzy or hallucinating anymore. No more wooziness. I had a voice. I could move and see. So the operation must have worked, and I was hurting because of the surgery. That had to be it. When Dad had had surgery on his back a year ago, he’d been in bed for two days. I would need to recover, that’s all. I had to look on the bright side.
Surgery, I realized, was a good excuse for missing a math test.
I took a deep breath. Had they cured whatever had happened to me?
In a few moments, I cautiously turned my head. I could see that they’d moved me to another part of the hospital. Dressed me in a set of pajama pants and a neat white polo shirt. It was quiet here, not like the first room. No beeps or voices or traffic noise. The room was dimly lit by a pre-morning glow. The walls seemed to be a peaceful bluish shade, maybe turquoise. The floor was polished wood.
“Hello?” My voice was hoarse and barely audible. I wondered where I was. How long I’d been out.
A breeze wafted over me, pungent and salty.
Salty?
I moved a little more until I could see the windows. They were open. A nearly full moon was fading overhead into a shimmering, silvery sky. I’d seen that color only once before, on the day after Mom had died. Dad and I had stayed up all night and seen the sun rise.
It was warm out, but I’d been wearing a coat when I had my accident.
I thought back to what the doctor had said. A highly rare set of symptoms. Patients with rare conditions sometimes had to go to special hospitals with the right doctors and equipment. This seemed like California or Hawaii.
A closed door stood about ten feet away. Carefully I rolled over and sat up. The back of my head felt like an epic smackdown between John Henry and Thor. I sat for a long moment, took some deep breaths, and stood.
With tiny steps, I shuffled toward the door. I was fine as long as I didn’t move my head too much. Propping myself up on the doorjamb, I pushed the door open onto a long hallway.
It had a new-building smell, like sawdust and plastic. A carpet stretched down the corridor, past a few closed doors. At the end of it, a hospital orderly sat on a stool, snoring. His back was against the wall, his face drooped down into his chest. He had broad shoulders and sharp cheekbones. A flat cap was pulled down across his eyes, and he wore fatigues and thick boots. On his belt was a holstered pistol.
What kind of hospital armed its orderlies?
Waking him up seemed risky. I backed into the room. I needed to call Dad. I wondered if he’d landed yet, and if he knew where I was. How long had I been unconscious? How much time had passed since I was in Indiana?
Slowly I worked my way over to the foot of the bed. There, on top of a steamer chest, someone had placed my backpack and my clothes, neatly folded. I reached around in the pockets of the folded jeans for my phone, but it was gone. It wasn’t in my backpack, either.
But Mom’s birthday mirror was.
I pulled it out. Her smile seemed to blast out of the photo, cutting through the darkness. Across the room, the bathroom door was open, and I could see my reflection in shades of gray. I wondered what exactly they’d done to the back of my head.
Taking the mirror into the bathroom, I turned on the light.
I barely recognized the kid in the big mirror over the sink. My face was ghostly pale, my head completely shaved. I noticed for the first time a monogram on the polo shirt—KI.
I turned and held the small mirror so I could see the back of my head in the larger one. The white hair had been shaved off with the rest. But someone had drawn a shape in black marker, from the top to the bottom of my head, outlining exactly where the upside-down V had been. Bandages had been placed at the bottom of each line, just above the neck. I touched one and began to pull, but the pain was too sharp. There must have been stitches underneath. Incisions.
“What the—?” The mirror slipped from my hand and crashed to the counter. The mirror cracked instantly, as did the frame, one horizontal line down the center, separating the image of four-year-old me from still-alive Mom.
As I reached to pick it up, I heard a click behind me. I spun around to see a figure standing in the door. It was a guy about six feet tall. He slipped inside and shut the door behind him. “Hey,” he said. “You okay?”
I stepped toward the bed, barely feeling the pain now. “Fine, I guess,” I rasped. “Who are you?”
“Marco Ramsay.” He was wearing the same clothes as I was, but three or four sizes larger. His shoulders were wide, his feet enormous. He had high, chiseled cheekbones dotted with small patches of acne. Dark brown hair hung down to his brow, making his eyes seem to peer out of a cave. They darted toward the door as if he’d done something wrong. “Because I heard a noise from in here…” he said.
“I dropped a mirror, that’s all,” I said. “Um, I’m Jack.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I know. Anyway, that dude outside—you know, Conan? Special Ops, Sleep Division? He should have been in here to check on you, but it’s hard to wake him up. And if you do, he gets nasty. So I figured I’d check in myself. But it looks like you’re okay, so I guess I’ll go…” He began to turn back to the door.
“Wait!” I said. “This guy, Conan? Since when do they allow guns in a hospital?”
Marco gave an uncomfortable shrug. “Maybe one of the patients is a terrorist?”
The door swung open again and two others scurried in, a skinny guy and a girl with dyed-pink hair and a mole on her left cheek. She was about my age and looked like someone you didn’t cross. The guy seemed maybe a little younger and was a curly-haired version of George, the little guy from my school who’d been bullied by Barry Reese. “This is what we’re doing? We’re going to be in deep doo-doo, Marco,” the little guy said.
“Fun’s over,” the girl added, her voice a tense whisper. “C’mon, back to the kennel, Big Foot.”
Marco laughed. “Oh, look who’s Little Miss Obedient!” he said, also in a strange, whispery voice.
“Why are you guys whispering?” I said. “And what are you talking about? Kennel?”
“That’s supposed to be a joke,” Marco said. “Aly is a one-person Comedy Central.”
“Time to go!” said the shorter guy, his voice about three times as loud as the others. As he pulled the door wide open, he gave a dramatic wave. “See you at breakfast!”
“Dude, you’ll wake Conan!” Marco snapped. “Last time we did that, he punctured my basketball.”
“Will you guys at least tell me who you are and what we’re all doing here?” I shouted.
From out in the hallway, Conan let out a snort and a mumble. Marco froze.
The little guy was halfway out the door. “I’m Cass Williams, and this is Aly Black. Look, don’t get the wrong impression. We love this place, really. You will, too. It’s awesome. They’ll tell you everything soon. But we’re not supposed to be here right now. That’s all.”
Aly nodded and scurried out the door. Marco backed out, too, shooting me a thumbs-up. “Seriously, dude. Best place in the world. Great breakfasts. All you can eat. We’re all happy here. Later.”
Before I could say another thing, they were gone.
For a moment I wanted to race after them, but I knew