Lost One
A scraping sound came from the kitchen below the little girl's bedroom. She wondered if her parents were still cleraning up form dinner. Sbe glanced at the clock on her nightstand. It was four in the morniing. At this hour they should be in bed, deep in slumber.
Another, softer noice made her tense. It wasn't the natural creak and pop she sometimes heard at night. Thump. The noise repeated. She sat up with a start. Someone was walking up the stairs. She threw back her covers, crept to her door, and peered into the hallway.
Her heart lurched. Two shadowy figures pressed against the wall. She could scream for her parents, but caution told her to be still. Instead she slipped back acroos her bedroom to her open window, pushed out the screen, and crawled onot the thick branch of an elm tree. She had done this many times. She liked to sit there to think and write in her journal.
She had never clambered the length of the branch to her parents' bedroom before, but it looked possible. She tugged at her nightgown and struggled to their window, then stretched her armso ut to pukll of their screen, but suddenly stopped.
The streetlamp cast a beam of light across their carpet. Why were they sleeping, sprawled across the floor? She bit her tongue hard to keep the scream in her throat from coming out, then she blinked rapidly, not allowing herself tears. She needed her strength to find her sister, Jamie.
With new resolve she reached forward and tore off the screen. It fell to the ground below, landing silently in a bed of pink and red carnations.
She mounted the windowsill and pulled herslef inside. She didn't let her mind consider what made the carpets warm and wet beneath her bare feet as she crept forward. She crouched behind their door and looked out.
The two men were entering her room now. As soon as they did, she dashed on tiptoe acroos the hallway to where her sister slept. She rushed in and almost tripped over Jamie, lifeless and curled in a ball near the canopied bed.
Her knees were suddenly too weak to hold her, and she sank to the floor, realizing everyone in her family was dead. She knew that soon the men would be looking for her. She rose and started to hide in the closet, but something stopped her. Instinct told her the two men would find her there.
Quietly she raced across the hallway and down the stairs, stopping low against the banister. When she reached the landing, she heard the men behind her She swung open the door as their footfalls pounded down the steps.
At last she ran out into the night , guided by the full moon.
When Tianna wakes up one day, she doesn't know where she is. And more important, she doesn't know who she is. All she has is a note written in her own handwriting warning the police that someone is trying to kill her. Soon Tianna realizes that she is not like other people. She has the power to move things with her mind. Then she notices Vanessa, Serena, and Jimena watching her. What is her connection to the Daughters of the Moon?
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At that moment Tianna spied a skateboard. Her hand acted on its own, and before she knew what was happening she had grabbed the board, sent it rolling, and jumped on. Two strokes with her right foot, then she pumped, moving her knees from side to side. She curved down the front sidewalk, bumping over the bricks, and just before reaching the front steps, she turned a high ollie and landed on the thick iron banister. She tailslid down the rail, then bent her knees to cushion her landing and kept going.
"Awesome," she breathed, impressed with herself.
She jetted down the middle of the street, the breeze rushing through her hair. She dodged around traffic and eased up on the sidewalk and back out into the street again.
When she was a mile away, she slowed. She didn't know where she was and she didn't care. At lease she had gone far enough so their powerful mind control couldn't reach her. Why would they want her? There was nothing special about her.
She continued past a parking lot and a taco stand, then looked up and saw that she was at the crossroad of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine. Kids in front of a bar started an impromptu rap. Pedestrians hurried around the hat the kids had set on the sidewalk for tips. She passed a tattoo-and-piercing parlor, a movie memorabilia shop, and a doughnut stand.
Tianna turned the skateboard and wove through tourists gathered around a pink granite star embedded in the sidewalk. She hopped off the curb and sped down the middle of a side street, pumping. She glanced back. No one was following.
When she faced forward again, a black Oldsmobile was racing towards her, engine roaring. She jumped and rode the board over the top of the car, down the back windshield, and off the trunk.
The car screeched to a stop.
She did a one-eighty, whirling around to face the driver and see what kind of damage she had caused, then she did a wheelie stop near the back of the car.
Mason stepped out and grinned at her.
She grabbed the skateboard and heaved it at him, then ran. She ducked behind a line of parked cars and scurried forward, her breath coming in rapid gulps. She scrambled across a parking lot as the sun balanced on the horizon, then crouched low behind a delivery truck. She felt as if she were drowning in her own fear.
She peered from behind the bumper. She couldn't see either of them, but she had an inexplicable feeling that they were close. With a shudder she understood why. An eerie prickling sensation rolled inside her head, and she wondered if they could send out brain waves like some kind of mental radar, searching for her. She knew that she needed to get farther away.
She dodged into an alley that smelled of rotting garbage and kicked through newspapers and broken beer bottles, then climbed a Cyclone fence. The gate swayed back and forth like a snake trying to shake her off. She jumped from the top and landed in the trash that had swept against the bottom of the wire mesh.
She sprinted past a rusted Dumpster and stopped, then twirled around, the stench unbearable. She had boxed herself in. She heard a sound and turned. Justin had the toe of his shoe in the wire mesh and started to climb the fence.
"Hi, Tianna," Mason stood beside him, casting a huge shadow down the alley.