The Prophecy of Arcadia Read online

  “Nobody,” Sam replied icily.

  “Matt.” It could only be him by the way Sam had answered.

  I had never really understood what had happened to them. Matt and Sam had been inseparable until the age of ten, and whenever I had been around, our uncle had called us the Three Musketeers. But then Sam had gotten into an accident, the one that had turned her hair completely white. An accident that Dad and Uncle Gary never really explained to us. All we knew was that it had been pretty serious, and she had almost died. After that, Matt avoided Sam like the plague.

  “Yes, your favorite person in the whole wide world is here.” There was a brief pause, then I heard some sort of scuffle on the other side of the line. “No, Matthew! Leave me alone, I’m talking to Alexia!”

  I overheard Matt asking for the phone. Sam wouldn’t let him talk to me, so I pleaded, “Come on, Sam. Give Matt a break and let me say 'Hi'.”

  “Fine!” she said. By the sound of it, she had thrown the phone at him.

  “Hello, Gorgeous!” Matt’s voice came through the phone. Oh, how I had missed him.

  “Hey, Matt. How is it going?”

  “Fine, just fine. I’m counting the hours until you get here. Did Sam tell you about Gary’s crazy idea for your party?”

  “She didn’t mention anything. Should I be scared?” I heard him laugh, which brought a smile to my lips. He didn’t laugh much these days.

  “Yes!” He replied, trying to contain his laughter until he suddenly stopped. I heard Sam’s voice in the background, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying. When she stopped talking, he continued. “I’m glad to have you here as a buffer between Sam and me. She’s getting bitchier with old age.”

  “Oh, please! When are you two going to finally grow up and patch things up?”

  I sat at my desk and stared at my pin board, more specifically at a picture of Matt, Sam, and me dressed as Athos, Porthos, and Aramis for Halloween when were four years old. Because we all had wanted to be D’Artagnan, Uncle Gary had solved the problem by claiming the role for himself. That picture brought me such sadness when I thought about Matt and Sam still mad at each other.

  “Ouch!” Matt screamed and I came back to the present.

  “What happened?”

  “She threw a bloody pineapple at me! Goddamn it! She’s not only getting bitchier but also crazier!” Matt shouted. He wasn’t joking.

  “I miss us being the Three Musketeers.”

  “Hey, talk to your BFF. She was the one who started this cold war thing.”

  “That’s not true. You were the one who got weird first.” My statement was met with silence, and I immediately regretted bringing that topic up, especially with Matt already on edge.

  “That was different. You wouldn’t understand,” he replied. His tone had gone ten degrees colder.

  “Why don’t you try to explain it to me?” I asked, but I knew he wouldn’t open up.

  “It doesn’t matter. It happened a long time ago, and I apologized for it. It’s up to her now.”

  “Maybe it would have helped if you had told her the real reason why you acted the way you did.” I said it for the thousandth time. How many times would I have to have this conversation with him? He had once said that Sam was stubborn, but it takes one to know one.

  “If you really want things to be okay between you and Sam again, just be honest with her. I know she misses you.”

  He was silent for a moment before he finally continued. “I miss her too,” he said finally, “but… Never mind. I’ll see you later at the airport, okay?”

  “Uh-oh…” I let it escape. That would be trouble. Sam wanted to be the one who picked me up, and she had made me promise that I would keep the rest of the gang from coming. She wanted to spend some time alone with me so we could talk freely about my mishap with Thomas. However, I couldn’t say no to Matt. He was one of my best friends too.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Uh, Sam sort of volunteered…”

  “So? I think we can manage to not kill each other on the twenty-minute ride to the airport. It will be fine.”

  “I kind of promised…” I couldn’t finish that sentence. If I told Matt not to come, he wouldn’t.

  “Never mind. The cab is here. I’ll see you soon,” I told him as I hastily put my wallet in my purse and did one more double-check in my room to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything.

  “Bye, Alexia. Have a safe trip,” he said before hanging up the phone.

  I sighed, staring at the cell phone in my hand. What was I going to do with those two? We would be going to college soon enough, and I couldn’t let them go their separate ways still angry at each other. If only Matt would trust someone with his secrets.

  CHAPTER 3

  Matthew

  “Knock, knock,” I said before opening Sam’s bedroom door. No point in waiting for permission I wouldn’t get. I closed the door behind me.

  “What do you want?” she asked without looking in my direction. She was lying on her bed pretending to read a book.

  Her white hair was fanned out on the pillow, and wherever the light touched it, it shone like silver. Her entire room was all white with black accents here and there. She looked like she was part of the décor lying like that, white hair against black pillow.

  “I just came here to let you know that I’ll be picking Alexia up at the airport with you.” I casually leaned against the closed door and put my hands in my pockets.

  “Whatever. I don’t care.” She didn’t even glance in my direction. It pained me to see her so distant. It also infuriated me.

  I hadn’t been lying when I’d told Alexia that I missed having Sam as my friend. Every time I looked at her, I felt a pang in my heart. But I could not explain my behavior after her ‘accident’ in Arcadia, because I didn’t know why I felt the way that I did. None of us had any recollection of the events of that week. I just wasn’t able to look at her after that without feeling deep anguish. I had known then that if I let Sam get close to me, she would see it written all over my face. So I had avoided her instead. With time the anguish feeling had passed, but by then it had been too late. She wouldn’t talk to me anymore.

  “Stop pretending I’m invisible, Sam!” I exclaimed as I propelled forward, forgetting my casual stance.

  The conversation with Alexia had made me edgy. I walked toward the middle of the room, getting closer to Sam so I could have a clear look at her face. Even though I could tell she was trying to be stoic, I wanted to see if there was any sign that she still cared.

  She closed the book she was pretending to read and sat up on her bed, looking at me like I was a nuisance. “You know I don’t want to talk to you. Why do you insist?”

  She stood up suddenly, throwing her book on the bed with such force that it bounced and landed on the floor. My gaze followed the book’s trajectory and stayed on it for a few seconds as I tried to control my rampant emotions. Sam’s question hurt, and it subdued my anger a little. I took a deep breath and found her face again.

  “Do you even have to ask? How many times do I have to say I’m sorry for what I did to you seven years ago?” My voice came out strained. I was sure she had noticed, but her angry posture didn’t change.

  “Just tell me what really happened then. Just tell me, Matt.” She used my nickname — something she only did when she forgot she was supposed to be mad at me. Her voice had a pleading tone to it now, and it gave me hope. I looked into her eyes and saw all the hurt there. I wanted to tell her, I truly did, but I just didn’t know what to tell her.

  “Sam,” I said as I carefully approached her. She gasped as I placed my hands on her arms. I looked deep into her eyes. That close, I could see little gray specks in a sea of dark blue. “I, I, can’t tell you,” I finally said.

  She pushed me away from her with a powerful shove and I had to take several steps back to regain my balance. “You can’t, or you won’t, Matthew?”

  Her own anger fueled mine. I didn�
��t want to lose it with Sam, but I also wasn’t able to walk away from this conversation now. She had balled her hands into fists, and that did something to me.

  I hesitated to tell her the real reason because she probably wouldn’t believe me. But the swell of emotions within me just made me want to yell the truth at her. But how could I tell her that looking at her after the accident made me feel like the most despicable person in the world?

  “I can’t tell you because I don’t know why!” I watched her expression change from anger to disbelief and back to anger again in a matter of seconds.

  “Bullshit!” she said.

  Sam was ready for a fight. Her muscles were tight with anger. The air around us felt charged, like the calm before the storm.

  Ignoring the signs that we were escalating this argument beyond our control, I moved closer to her again. But now my movements had a menacing quality to them. I was letting her know she wouldn’t be able to push me away this time as I pleaded my case.

  “Why can’t you believe me? Why is it so hard for you to trust me and forgive me?” My temper was rising, and I was starting to feel feverish. I opened and closed my hands, trying to control the rage boiling inside of me. My entire body shook and I knew I had awakened the Phoenix. It didn’t take much these days. Sam had the power to evoke feelings in me that I would rather keep buried.

  She took a few steps back until she reached the edge of her bed and couldn’t retreat further. “Because you won’t trust me!”

  I closed the final distance between us, grabbed her arms a little too forcefully, and started to shake her. “I trust you! I trust you! Can’t you see?”

  I kept seeing flashes of a younger version of Sam. She was looking at me with fear in her eyes. The old image blended with the present one, making me more frustrated and, if possible, angrier. I didn’t want to hurt or frighten her. So why was she so scared?

  “Matt! Stop! You’re hurting me!” She screamed as she tried to pry my hands off her.

  It was like I was seeing everything from far away. I knew I was out of control, but there was nothing I could do to stop it. All I wanted to do was make Sam understand. Then more flashes came, and this time I was seeing red. Literally. Everything was touched by red. When I realized that the red film painting my vision was actually blood, I lost it completely.

  Sam’s blue eyes started to glow. I felt a rush of energy surround me.

  “Matt, STOP!” It sounded like a thousand voices in unison. I could feel the power in her words. She screamed again, and vines of electricity took hold of my body. I was jerked away from her and fell to the floor. She stood paralyzed by her bed, staring at me, breathing hard. Her blue eyes were like saucers, and brighter due to unshed tears.

  I stared right back at her, stunned. What had I done? I looked at my hands, sure that I would find them covered in blood, but they were just pale white, like all the blood had been drained from them.

  She knelt next to me. “Are you okay?” Her voice was shaky. Her entire body was trembling. She looked as pale as my hands.

  I could only nod. When I finally thought I could speak, her face changed from worry to outrage. I was about to say how sorry I was when she slapped my face, hard.

  “Don’t ever use your powers on me again!”

  I put a hand over the spot where she had hit me. It stung. She got up and left the bedroom, leaving me sitting there on the floor.

  Mia walked in a few seconds later. “What the hell happened here?” She looked at me sprawled on the floor, her eyes missing nothing, and her face turned a shade paler. “Where is Sam?” There was a certain desperation to her voice, which I thought odd even given the state I was in.

  I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts and compose my face. “Nothing happened.”

  I got up, avoiding her questioning stare. I felt dizzy as the room started to spin. I walked a few steps toward Sam’s bed and sat on the edge, putting my elbows on my knees and hiding my face between my hands.

  “Bullshit! Something huge happened here. I felt it. Hell, I can still feel it,” she replied. She sat by my side.

  I dropped my hands and turned to face her, trying to strip all the emotion from my face. A hard thing to do when I was still reeling. I could hear my pulse pounding in my ears.

  “I’m telling you, nothing happened. Just let it go, Mia.”

  Her eyebrows furrowed as she narrowed her eyes at me. “She used her powers on you.”

  “What?! What are you talking about?” I stood up and walked to the window, putting some distance between us. Whatever Sam had done, it had stunned the Phoenix for a while, but I was feeling it coming back again.

  “Sam is a broadcaster. I can pick pieces of her thoughts when she’s in distress. I felt her fear, followed by her outrage. So I’m going to ask again ‘what happened Matt?’”

  Sam was a broadcaster? I didn’t understand. Granted, we didn’t know much about our powers — only that they had been growing exponentially for the past few months.

  I could feel Mia looking my direction, waiting for an answer. I stared out the window seeing nothing, just replaying the scene with Sam over and over again in my mind. Those damned flashes. What did they mean? Were they memories from Sam’s accident? Was I somehow responsible? Shouldn’t I remember, if that was the case? I had so many questions and no answers.

  “Matt, if you don’t tell me I’ll have to report what I sensed to Gary. You don’t want me to do that, right?”

  “Why can’t you just let it go, Mia?” I answered without facing her again. “This doesn’t concern you, or Gary. It’s between Sam and me.”

  “It concerns me because our powers are growing too fast, and we don’t know how to handle them. The other day Zach almost set the pool table on fire because he missed a shot.”

  She was serious, but the image of composed Zach losing it over a pool game was kind of funny. I couldn’t help but laugh. Mia didn’t. “Oh, you find that amusing, don’t you? Well, it’s NOT!”

  My shoulders sagged. She was right. I had lost control earlier, and I was scared. Trying to laugh it off wasn’t going to help. What could I have done to Sam if she hadn’t stopped me?

  “Fine, you win. Sam and I had a fight, as usual. But I don’t know what happened this time. I just lost it.” I turned to see how Mia reacted to my confession and found her deep in thought.

  “And that’s when she struck you with her powers,” she replied.

  “I guess so. As I said before, it’s all foggy. I can’t remember the details. One moment I was holding her, the next I was being pulled from her by an unseen force.”

  I deliberately kept the part with the flashes from her. I had an uneasy feeling about them, and I didn’t want to share my experience with anyone.

  Mia got up and walked toward Sam’s dresser, where there was picture of all of us. She picked it up and stared at it. “This is bad timing. Why couldn’t our powers start to manifest a little bit earlier?” she asked. “Alexia being here will complicate things even more. There are so many loose ends with the Prophecy and with her, the last thing we need is a bunch of uncontrollable Prodigies.”

  She looked up, and gave me a sad smile. How many times had we heard that while growing up? The Arcadian Council liked to keep us on a tight leash, and “uncontrollable” was their favorite word to describe us. The funny thing was, the word hadn’t really applied to us until very recently. I guess if you keep voicing your fears, one day they are bound to manifest.

  I walked over and took the picture from her hands. I remembered when we had taken it, just before Sam’s accident. I traced Sam’s face with my finger. Her hair was still dark brown there, like Mia’s. She looked so happy in that picture. We were standing next to each other, and Sean was giving us bunny ears. We all looked truly happy there. Probably for the last time, until everything changed.

  Mia took the picture and placed it back on the dresser. She grabbed my hand and forced me to look at her. “Matt, promise me that you will te
ll Gary if your powers, or Sam’s, become too dangerous.”

  The intensity in her eyes reminded me of Sam. They might be identical, but they had such different personalities that sometimes I forgot they were twin sisters. I didn’t want to make any promises I wasn’t sure I could keep, but I knew she wouldn’t drop the subject until I did. So I found myself saying, “I promise.”

  Samantha

  I wanted to disappear. I still couldn’t believe what had gone down in my bedroom. Matthew had gotten inside my head, literally. When he’d touched me and made me look into his eyes, I could feel his presence in my brain. I could hear his thoughts, feel his despair. I didn’t know he was able to do that. I had gotten so frightened, I had just wanted him to stop. Then I had felt the current of energy going through me, and suddenly a blast whooshed from my hands.

  Matthew had ended up sprawled on the floor, looking stunned. The moment I recovered from the shock, a wave of rage had run through me. Matthew had not only manhandled me, he had used his powers on me. There was no excuse for that. I had lost control then and slapped him. I had never hit him before in my life, not even when we were kids.

  Feeling lost and overwhelmed, I ran all the way to the beach. Lack of stamina wasn’t a problem for us. I needed to burn off some steam and think about everything. I shouldn’t have hit him. I knew that, and I felt guilty about it.

  There were a lot of things going through my mind. I was confused about my powers and more short-tempered than usual. We were all having difficulties adjusting to the increase in them. It wasn’t as bad for Mia, Sean, and Zach, since they had elemental powers. Apparently they weren't as complex and mysterious as my powers, or Matthew’s.

  Melanie also had one of the Zenith powers. The fact that the Council had decided to keep her in Arcadia until she finished her training didn’t bode well. It meant Matthew or I could be next to be stuck on the tiny planet. It also meant we could lose control in front of Alexia and have our covers blown.

  Thinking about Alexia made me think about the Prophecy, too. I was concerned about the guilt she was feeling about her ex-boyfriend, Thomas. She considered herself a mean person for doing what she did to him, but I knew the real reason she hadn’t been able to give her heart to him: the Prophecy. She was destined to be with someone else.