Fade Read Free

world’s great hope. It would keep these remaining children away from the diseased life they’d faced for the past few years and, if the rest of the plan worked, the changes they had made to its power down sequence would deal a major blow to the enemy. When they were safe where they were going, the portal’s last gust of energy would power a very specific cascading EMP that would leave the weapons and armor that gave the Fade such an advantage defunct. For the first time, the battlefield might be balanced, maybe even tilted a little in their favor.
    A small, blue circle opened in the room. Without hesitating, he began to walk the three girls through the portal. Angela wailed, but followed nonetheless. Cynthia, her pale face dripping with tears, pulled at his hand, reaching out, crying for her mother as they disappeared into the light.

TWO
    C ynthia stared up at the sky thinking nothing ever changed. Haircuts and language maybe, but life was what life had always been. That she ached for more was some cosmic joke on humanity. Drugs helped. But when there were no drugs, smoking helped. That’s what she and her best friend Jan did while everyone else swept crepe paper and glitter from below the cardboard Eiffel Tower in the gym. They had slipped out when Mrs. Walker began throwing her hands up and gasping for air because they’d ran out of red masking tape. This was forever where Cynthia saw herself and somehow where she always ended up—just outside of where she was expected to be.
    Jan sat on the edge of a listing picnic table, lighting up another clove, sticking it between her black lips. She pointed at Cynthia, who rested against the wall across from her, "You, me. Hanging out tonight, ma'am."
    Cynthia suppressed the urge to frown. In general, that would have been good news, but she was tired and just wanted to go home, curl up with a French philosopher or two and get nice and baked. Still she’d been present for the event that was Jan’s mom that morning. The woman had been slurring her words before they even left for school. She knew Jan’s mom, and an early morning drunk almost always meant a late afternoon rage-a-thon. Leaving her friend to her mother’s drunken rant would be, in her estimation, a shitty thing to do. So, she agreed to go with a press-on smile.
    When they slipped into the gym again, which stank of glue and trying too hard; everyone else was gone except Mrs. Walker, who still stapled this and taped that with the ferocity of a middle-aged woman who defined her self-worth by how well a plaster Arc de Triomphe looked. The teacher called out preoccupied thanks for the girls’ help, maybe never noticing that Cynthia and Jan had been missing. The girls grabbed their bags and headed out to Jan’s car, which now sat alone on that side of the building.
    Jan breathed in deep. “Freedom!”
    “Just a day-pass, Jan-Jan. Hell continueth tomorrow, my friend!” Cynthia said.
    “Don’t be stealing my false sense of liberation! My self-delusion is all that gets me through the day.” Jan laughed, the two thin strips of black in her otherwise wrapping paper red hair danced into her face.
    “My apologies: Freedom! ” Cynthia said, throwing a fist in the air like some suburban freedom fighter.
    As they made their way over to Jan’s car, Cynthia took in the lot. It was almost always full of cars and crowds of students milling around like fashionable zombies. It somehow felt wrong being there without them and the authority figures with their cheap ties and K-Mart dresses. It made her want to get a six-pack and do donuts on the football field, knowing that the only person who could stop her was a frantic English teacher trying her best to turn a school gym into some semblance of A Night in Paris . Then she shivered at the thought of prom.
    Cynthia figured prom was supposed to be some modern rite of passage. At best, it was the gaudy celebration of passing from learner to learned. But she could not find it in