Scorpion Shards by Neal Shusterman Page A

growing . . . I could feel my body drawing energy right out of the air—maybe even pulling it from other people’s bodies. I had stopped eating, but I still grew. That’s when I knew the problem wasn’t just food.”
    Then Lourdes gently squeezed Michael’s hand, which rested so calmly in hers; Michael focused his eyes on the distant stars. “When I was thirteen,” he said, “my friends dared me to talk to this high school girl who I had a crush on. She was three years older, and a head taller than me, but the crush I had on her was out of control, so I just had to talk to her. I went up to her, but before I could open my mouth to say anything, she looked at me and WHAM! I felt there was some sort of weird connection, like I was draining something out of her, right through her eyes—and I knew right then I should have stopped and walked away, but I didn’t, because I liked the way it felt. It was cold out, but suddenly the whole street began to feel hot like it was summer. I asked her out, and she said ‘yes.’ Ever since then no girl has ever said ‘no’ to me, and no guy has wanted to be my friend.”
    Winston moved his Nike against Tory’s shoe and shifted his head against the comfortable pillow of Lourdes’s sleeve, making sure not to break the circle.
    â€œMy mother used to get these swollen feet ’cause she stood all day long working at the bank,” Winston began. “It was always my job to massage her feet when she got home. We already knew I had stopped growing, but that’s all we knew. Then one day, I’m massaging her feet, and she tells me how good it feels, ’cause she can’t feel the pain no more, so I keep on massaging. And then, when she tries to get up, she can’t. She tries to feel her legs, but she can’t feel nothin’. Doctors said it was some kind of freak virus, but we all know the truth, even if Mama won’t say it. I paralyzed her legs. A few weeks later, we knew for sure that I was growing backward, too.”
    Winston wiped a tear from his eye, and Tory began to speak. “There was this blind boy in my neighborhood, with allergy problems so bad a skunk could have walked into the room, and he wouldn’t have smelled it. Once I started breaking out, he was the only boy who liked me. Then one day he brushed his fingertips across my face. He pulled his hand away and turned white as a ghost, then he ran off to wash his hands over and over again, trying to wash the feel of my face off his fingers. He came down with pneumonia a few days later and was in the hospital for weeks. He was the first one to get sick from touching me. And that’s how I knew it wasn’t just zits.”
    No one spoke for a while. They rested their voices and minds, listening to the singular whoosh of their breaths, feeling each other’s parallel heartbeats, and it seemed to make everything okay. They needed no more words to express how they felt.
    I want to forget who I am.
    I never want to leave here.
    I want to stay in this tight circle of four forever.
    But they couldn’t stay like this, could they? They would freeze to death. They would starve to death. And they wouldnever solve the mystery of who they were, and why they were dying these miserable deaths.
    Yes, they were dying. Although they never dared to say it out loud, they all knew the truth. Tory’s disease would eat away at her until there was nothing left. Michael’s passion would consume him like a fire, Lourdes would become so heavy her bones would no longer be able to hold her, and Winston would wither until he became an infant in search of a womb to return to, but there would be none.
    Better not to think about that.
    I want to forget who I am . . .
    While the others seemed content to shut their minds down, Tory could not. Mysteries did not sit well with her and she despised riddles of any sort. From the moment