closed my eyes and focused. Four heartbeats. Two were farther than the others. I recognized Beatrice and Robert’s voice, but couldn’t identify the other two. As far as I could tell, the other two weren't whispering, and given their conversation, they didn't seem to be there with malicious intent. Something smelled good, too. I couldn't identify it, but it definitely wasn't food.
Satisfied, I pushed the door open further and walked straight into the kitchen.
“Hey! Two of your friends are waiting for you in the living room, Hunter.” My dad said.
Beatrice leaned in close and whispered, “I haven't seen them before, but the girl is cute.” She winked.
What? I walked into the living room. That was when I met Lucas. I'd seen Riley around my high school before. She was a popular girl who never paid any attention to me. It seemed that Lucas was trying to explain something to her, and she was pretending to listen. She had her smartphone out and was texting her friends, while nodding periodically at Lucas’s statements.
I cleared my throat. “Hey.”
Riley looked up and smiled. “Hi, you’re Hunter Lane, right?”
Let me get this straight. Beatrice was wrong, okay? Riley wasn't cute at all, because she was hot. I looked her over in a few milliseconds. She had a slight tan, and had an athletic build. She had long, silky brown hair, with blonde highlights. Her smile made my heart melt, and her blue eyes were beautiful. I don’t know anything about makeup, but I’m confident that she had put it on perfectly. She didn’t have much perfume on, but she smelled like heaven.
“Uh, yes, who wants to know?” I stammered.
Lucas stood up and started to introduce Riley and himself. I cut him off, saying that I knew Riley. Lucas was short, and also had a slight tan. However, I didn’t see much muscle on him. It was possible that he was just outside a lot. A slight outline in his eye told me that he wore contacts. Someone who spent time in front of a computer and who was outside a lot? Interesting.
“I don’t mean to be that kind of guy,” I started, “but, um, what are you guys doing here? You told my parents that you were my friends, and I’ve never seen the two of you in my life.”
“Your adoptive parents.” Riley stated.
I raised my eyebrow. “That’s really none of your business.”
Riley shrugged. “It really kinda is.”
I looked at Lucas.
Lucas nodded. “Right. Let me explain. What I’m about to say is going to sound ridiculous. Please just let me finish talking before you say anything else.” He then explained that he had found me through the Brigham and Women’s hospital database, and that like me, both his and Riley’s mothers had died in labor. We had all been born on the same day, at the same time, at 7:43, along with three other babies. Those three other kids had also lost their mothers. Lucas told me about how, on our shared birthday, at around 7:43, exactly fifteen years after we were all born, he had gotten in incredibly painful headache. He had woken up later and discovered that he had photographic memory, and was able to absorb a large amount of information extremely fast. He had learned how to hack in a few minutes, and had made sense of Riley’s situation, who, by the way, happened to be the girl who the news reporters had been talking about when I was at Mass General.
“So basically, we want to know if you were experiencing anything weird too.” Lucas continued, “I found out that you had only started playing paintball nine days ago, on our birthdays, and you’re already going to competitive paintball matches with Team Revolution. And if I’ve learned anything over the past week, it’s that there’s no such thing as a coincidence.”
I swallowed, then slowly shook my head no. “No, nothing weird has been going on with me, and I don’t know who you two think you are, walking into my house like this. Leave now and I won’t call the police.”
“I thought you’d might say that. Let me show you one last thing before we leave, though.” Lucas turned around and reached into his bag. Click.
I haven’t watched too many cop shows, but I know the sound a gun makes when it’s being cocked. Before he could pull it out of his bag, I ran and ducked behind a couch. “Please, no!” I pleaded.
Riley started walking over. Frantically, I looked for a way to get out of the living room safely. Unfortunately, there would be no way out without giving Lucas a chance to shoot me. I had just opened my mouth to shout for Beatrice and Robert when Riley clamped her hand over my mouth.
“Hush,” She said. “We’re not going to hurt you.”
I think if Lucas had done that, I would’ve tried to bite his hand as hard as possible, but since it was Riley, I felt strangely safe. Her hand was over my lips, but that meant my lips were also on her hand. I was basically kissing her hand. Right? Hm. What was I talking about?
Lucas then walked in front of me and showed me his smartphone. He had played the sound of a gun cocking at the smallest sound setting. Oops. “Uh huh. Nothing weird at all, you say. I modified my phone to make it play 95% quieter than the minimum usually allows it to.” Lucas said pointedly.
I stopped kissing Riley’s hand. I mean, Riley took her hand off my mouth. “Okay, fine. But how did you know that I would hear that?”
Lucas grinned. “I was hoping that you would ask me that. I pulled up some videos of you playing paintball, and noticed that you would almost always know when someone was about to shoot you. The interesting thing was that there was one situation that you were in, where a police car went right by the field, and the siren was quite loud. You seemed to be in distress, and then you were shot by someone in the back. A minute later, you told everyone that you were fine and had just gotten a headache. This didn’t happen again, at least, on the field. I hacked into the paintball place’s surveillance camera footage and saw that you would almost routinely take breaks. As the days went on, these breaks had more and more space in between. This wouldn’t be much of a discovery, except that when the police car was going by, you hadn’t taken a break in over two hours. And as I’ve already said, there’s no such thing as a coincidence.”
“Hm.” I pursed my lips. “Okay. But let me be clear, you don’t tell this to anyone. I don’t want to be poked and prodded at in some lab, and I don’t want to be disqualified from participating in the paintball league either.”
“Yep, no problem.” Riley smiled at me.
I blushed and looked down.
Lucas raised his eyebrows, and asked, “Are you able to do anything other than hear so well?”
“Yeah. I can see like an eagle, and smell Riley’s godlike perfume from a thousand feet away.”
Riley scoffed. “Boys.”
If it was possible, I blushed more.
“Cool.” Lucas grinned.
Before they left, we decided on three things. First, we would be talking to Carol Cade next. She had apparently talked a man down from committing suicide. A power of persuasion, maybe? Secondly, we needed a place to be able to test and hone our abilities. Last, we needed to find out what happened to us fifteen years ago.
Carol
What
