***HARRIS***

Snooze. Snooze. Snooze.

I hit the snooze button on my alarm clock three times before realizing, oh crap, I'm late for school!

But then I bolt out of bed and realize my mistake. It's Memorial Day, and that means not only no school, but also that we'll be going down to San Jose to see Tomorrowland with Morgan, Anjali, and of course that little dude with the glasses, Henley. I pick up the printout of my prepaid ticket, which has been sitting on my desk for a couple of weeks now. Most of the theaters in San Jose, including the one we're visiting, are AMC theaters, which make you reserve your seat in advance. AMC theaters don't exist in this part of the Bay Area, so we Spellmanites aren't used to it, and my dad was in full teeth-gnashing mode when I told him the way it worked. "You're not getting seats at the Metropolitan Opera," he muttered while typing in his credit-card information to buy my ticket on Fandango. "You're just seeing a friggin' Disney movie. Why do they gotta make it so prestigious and pricey?"

"Morgan says this theater's got reclining seats and tons of snacks and drinks to choose from," I said.

"Hmm. It's highway robbery, is what it is."

I'd also noticed, while selecting a seat in the middle row (we're all going to cluster together roughly in the center of the theater), that there were very few seats already taken. At the time, I'd figured that it was because it was the tail end of the long weekend, and everyone was reserving seats on Friday and Saturday, even Sunday. But no, it turns out the movie hasn't attracted the audience we all expected it to get. Which mystifies me, because it looks like the most fun we're going to have at the movies this summer, other than maybe Jurassic World or Ant-Man.

Oh well. I bet whatever amount of money Tomorrowland gets won't be an accurate reflection of how good it is anyway.

But before I do anything else today...dear God, do I need a shower or what? It was hot enough last night that when I woke up, my sweat had me sticking to my bed. Gross, gross, gross. Even Thor refuses to say good morning to me in this state - he takes one hearty sniff in the general direction of my ass, then stalks away, whining in disgust and despair and dismay. To be fair, though, it was my ass he was smelling. Whatever it is that makes dogs want to sniff each others', we humans clearly don't have.

So. Shit, shower, shave, as they say. Well, barely a shave. I'm embarrassingly slow to grow facial hair. Any kind of hair, really, other than the hair on top of my head. I can go a week and still barely have any kind of stubble on my face, but that's okay. Dad tells me that he didn't have to shave daily till he was eighteen, and that's still a year and some odd months away for me. As for the rest of me, I've never even had enough chest hair to shave. I'm jealous of Jay, who's got a shit-ton of the stuff himself. One of these days, he's gonna turn into a regular Zac Efron in Neighbors. Sunglasses, barbecue, Greek-letters tattoo and all.

It's still unbearably hot this morning. So much so that I completely neglect to put on anything besides my underwear when I go to the kitchen to grab some grub. While I drum my fingers on the countertop, impatiently waiting for my toast, Dad comes in from the garage, carrying a pair of large iced Mintee Mochaz.

"You," I say, "are a lifesaver." I take one of the drinks and slurp up maybe a quarter of its sweet brown contents through the straw.

"And you," Dad says, "are a drama queen. Fires are good in heat!"

"I'm half Dark, remember?" I raise my eyebrows at him. "Also, don't say 'good in heat' anymore. You know what that really means, right?"

Dad shudders when that real meaning finally comes to mind. "Okay, forget I said that."

"What?" I ask. "What did you say?"

He winks. "Or..." He sips his own Mintee Mochaz creation, which looks more like a plain old black coffee, iced. It's their last-place seller, I think, but they do sell enough of it to warrant its continued place on the menu. "Or did you figure you'd just take the opportunity to show off how much you've grown?" His arm snakes out, and he squeezes my biceps in his own infamously iron grip until I manage to successfully flex my way out. (I could probably have tried to pin him to the floor or something, but only Jay gets that treatment from me. And he's overdue for one, so next Friday, I'm absolutely not going easy on him.)

"Maybe," I say. "Every boy wants his dad to be proud of him, right?"

Dad nods. "Good for you, Harris. It's great that you're taking this seriously."

"He says, like I haven't been for the last few months."

Dad laughs along with me. "Believe me, I've noticed. You used to have a lot of trouble getting Thor into the bathtub-"

"Still do," I say as the dog comes in, his ears pricked up. He must think we're planning to surprise him with another bath today.

"Not as much as you used to," Dad says. "Hell, I think by now you've been able to do it on your own for a while."

Thor growls loudly.

"No bathtime today, buddy," I tell him. "I promise." I kneel next to him, and he sniffs me - this time around my pits - then licks my face until I start giggling, Joker-like.

"You, my son, need help." Dad crosses over to the counter and starts fixing himself a bowl of oatmeal. "By the way, your toast is ready. Wheat today, huh?"

"We're out of white," I say as I let go of Thor and grab my toast, which by now has cooled off just a bit. The butter probably won't melt, but that's okay. I actually kinda like it when it doesn't really melt.

"You like wheat now?"

"Yeah."

"Enough to not get white anymore?"

I scoff. "White's not healthy enough?"

"You know what they say," Dad says. "Your body is-"

"-a temple, yeah." I shrug, then take a huge bite of my toast. The wheat bread is bigger than the white bread I've always made toast and/or sandwiches out of, so it'll take me just a little longer to eat. "Sure, let's just stick to wheat now."

"Good boy." Dad lays his meaty hand on my shoulder. Then he goes into the fridge and digs a couple of fruit out of the crisper. "Want a plum?"

"No thanks," I say, unable to resist a small shudder. Plums are strange fruit - they taste like peaches on the inside, but grapefruit on the outside. And the outside, the harder rind versus the softer flesh, is the part that takes longer to chew, so its taste lingers much longer on the tongue. Disgusting.

"Guess even you have your limits." Dad cuts his plum in half, carves out the pit, and tosses it into the plastic box where we're supposed to leave all our food waste. "Wait, when's your movie again?"

"1:05," I say. "Don't worry, I got plenty of time before I have to put on my pants."

"You're such a boy," Dad laughs. "You lazy little shit."

"It's my body, I'll wear no pants if I want to!"

"Lazy. Little. Sheeeeee-yit."

"That's 'shit-biscuit' to you," I say.

"I may look like Abraham from The Walking Dead," Dad jokes, "but I sure as hell don't have to cuss like that mother-dick!"

"You just did."

"Did I really?" He puts on an un-Abraham-like (and un-Dad-like) innocent face.

I nearly spit out my toast from laughing my ass off. "It sounds like you did, anyway. Like, you know how they like to put all the swear words in a hat and pull them out to invent Abraham's lines?"

"Is that really how they do it?"

I turn away from him while rolling my eyes. "You need to stop falling asleep on Talking Dead."

"No promises." Dad sits down with his bowl of oatmeal and sliced plums, then pounds his fist lightly on the table. "Did you feed Thor yet?"

"Shit. No, I didn't!" I leap up from my seat and run into the garage to get that done. Thor waits patiently while I pour another generous helping of kibble into his big doggie dish. Patiently, and also with an expression that says, "No, Harris, you don't look sexy doing this in your Star-Lord boxers."

To which I respond with a look that says, "Hey, dawg, can I help it if being an underwear model's my fallback?" (It's really not - I don't stand a chance in that kind of cutthroat world. My real fallback is a much more attainable job as a janitor on the set of Supernatural.) "What geekboy doesn't wanna be on a Marvel calendar?"

Thor: "One with only a six-pack and not an eight-pack. At least you have the requisite borderline-zero body fat for a superhero."

Me: "Not my fault I burn fat so fast."

Thor: "Hey, I won't skinny-shame you...as long as you don't call me 'dawg' ever again."

Me: "Deal. Now eat, you big bag of dicks."

Thor's tail slaps the floor a couple of times, then he slinks around me, shadow-like, and gets busy taking care of his munchies.

I promise, I'm still as sober as a judge. And Thor, he's a smart beast. But you already knew that, didn't you?

In the end, I'm only motivated to get dressed again when Aimee texts me around eleven. For some reason, I feel like when I text her back, she's going to be fully aware of my scantily clad state otherwise. Even when I simply send her the innocuous message of "Yeah, I'm ready to go. Duh."

Barely two minutes later, Michelle texts me to let me know she's pulled up to the curb. I say goodbye to Thor and Dad - the latter promises to get started on our traditional massive Memorial Day barbecue as soon as his old army buddies get here, which could be any day now, really. Thor, meanwhile, gets emotional to see me leave (as he usually does), but as soon as the word "hot dog" comes out of Dad's mouth, he salivates. Considerably. Isn't that some kind of pseudo-cannibalism?

"Good thing we're not seeing this in 3D," I say as I bump fists with Kevin. He pretends he can't see mine at all, laughing the whole time. "Your depth perception's a little screwy today."

"If I were as hormonal as you," Kevin says in the deepest, most menacing voice he can manage, "I'd say 'fuck you' and I'd mean it."

"Yeah, you're not that violent," Michelle deadpans.

"Or that sexual," Kevin snickers.

We all laugh along with him. During the quake the other day, Jeremy had accidentally found some mixed porn (straight and gay both, I mean) under Kevin's bed, and he was quick to explain that he'd tried jerking off to them, only to find out none of it was cutting it for him. With Jay and Jeremy's encouragement, he's come out as ace to the rest of us, and like with me, everyone's cool with it.

We're all crammed into the Land Rover pretty tightly, but I don't mind at all. Kevin's up front, Jeremy and Adele are sharing the middle seat in the second row with Jay and Evan on either side of them, and Aimee and I are in the back. Eventually, one of us has to get his or her license and start driving some of us around - if only so we don't run the risk of Michelle's ride going over its weight limit. I think Jay and Evan have their permits too by now, but I'm not sure how long it'll be till any of them is ready to drive. And as for me, I'm still looking forward more to July 17th, when I'll finally get to start practicing on Dad's old motorbike.

Morgan, Anjali, and Henley await us at the AMC theater in South San Jose. "Get ready, guys," Morgan says, hopping up and down on the spot. "All the Coke flavors known to man await you at that concession stand!"

"What about coffee?" Jay asks, winking.

"Trust me," says Morgan, "this place will make you see that Fires and their tastes for sweet red fruit are where it's really at."

"He's not wrong," I say, grinning even as Jay and Jeremy look at me like I'm a traitor to warlock-kind. It's adorable how proud they are of being Dark. Half-Dark, in Jay's case. Jeremy, he could be half-Ice too, but you never know.

Going into the theater, we get another surprise when we see the ticket booths are entirely automated, with the only human presence being the ticket taker sitting off to one side. Other than that, we have to paw at these touch screens like we're in the self-checkout line at the grocery store. At least we've already got our ticket codes to redeem. But when the tickets themselves print out, I'm surprised to find that they're flimsy little rolls of paper - again, something you might get out of a machine at the grocery store checkout. Not at all like the more rigid tickets we get at the Century Theater in South Spellman - I have a few rows of these on my bedroom wall, all shiny and colorful. Hard to believe this place is the "upscale" theater, huh? I mean, look at the touch screens. They're so buggy, with their long lag between the time when we type something and the time the screens react to us.

High tech magnificence in the Silicon Valley. I don't think so.

The Coke machines, however, are the stuff of Heaven, just how Morgan kept hyping them up. While the rest of the food selection is a bit wonky - everything's spread out far and wide, and the butter dispensers for the popcorn don't work too well - those Freestyle machines, with their 100+ promised flavors, more than deliver. Until today, most of us didn't know Raspberry Coke was even a thing. Now, it's my new favorite soda. And Jay's. ("Mmm, so good!" he says when he has his first taste. Even the tiny earring in his left ear, the one Evan gave him months ago, looks like it's glowing a little bit more as he enjoys this rare flavor.) Evan, meanwhile, embraces her Light side a little more strongly, going for vanilla Coke. Even though vanilla's more of a Normal flavor, it's the closest to the traditional Light favorite of white chocolate we can get from the Freestyle.

I'm surprised to find that there's no usher or anything to enforce the reserved seating thing in the theater itself. But given that there haven't been any fights breaking out, I guess we're all trusted to get to the right place.

"Gotta say, I love the decor in this place." I look around at the matte-black walls and the red lights all over the place.

"It's our colors," Morgan says, extending his thumb and pinky in a "hang loose" sign for whatever reason.

"Is this place run by Fires?" I ask.

"The company's Chinese-owned," Anjali says, "and there are a lot of Fires in China, more than any other kind of warlock, I think."

"East Asia in general, really," says Henley. "No wonder red is so common there."

"That," I say, "and the fact that it's just a cool color, period."

After the movie, we stick around and talk about it for at least another hour and a half. There's just so much to take away from Tomorrowland, least of all the recurring message of "feed the right wolf." I think it comes from a Native American legend or something - positive and negative emotions being represented by a pair of wolves, and whichever one you feed grows stronger.

"No wonder nobody's watching this movie," I say. "It wants us to have hope for the future."

"You got that right, amigo," Kevin says, winking through his one good eye.

Between our secret despair at the rest of humanity willfully ignoring Tomorrowland's message, and the not-so-secret glee that watching this kind of movie gives us, it's no wonder we can't stop talking about it. That is, until we finally break off and get back to our rides - Henley and Anjali both need to get home. While the rest of us (except Morgan, of course) start the drive back to Spellman, we sit in Michelle's Land Rover in silent contemplation of the movie's message. Or, at least, that's what I'm doing. I'll have to tell Dad all about this movie later. Hell, I have to make sure he gets a chance to see it in theaters himself. But not an AMC theater. Those pricey reserved seats are too prestigious for his taste.

"Whoa, what the hell?" Michelle speaks up for the first time since she fired up the ignition.

I look around to see another Land Rover - a newer, bigger, and flashier model - bombing past us in the next northbound lane. Then, when it gets in front of us, it slows down almost to a crawl, forcing Michelle to stomp on the brake as well.

"Jesus!" she cries, smacking the steering wheel in frustration. "Dude, fucking move!"

"There's nobody coming up to our left," I say. "Get around him that way."

Michelle calms down long enough to check the mirror and confirm I'm telling the truth. "Thanks, Harris," she says.

"You're wel-whoa, shit!"

"What?" Michelle looks in the mirror again and sees the next big road-rage threat - another giant SUV, an Expedition, swerving into our new lane from the other side. She mashes down the gas pedal, slamming us all back into our seats as she speeds away from this guy and the other Land Rover both.

We pass the other Land Rover effortlessly - and Jay looks into the driver's window to see who's driving. "Old man," he says. "Probably on his way back from the country club."

"Or to," Evan suggests.

"Guys?" Aimee's turned around, pointing out the back window. "That other SUV's climbing up our ass."

"Oh really?" Michelle speeds up again, bringing us somewhere in the neighborhood of 75 mph. There better not be any cops to come after us, that's all I'm saying.

To our left, another black Suburban speeds past the first one, then lines up perfectly with our car. Ahead, there's a third one humming along steadily.

My heart rate spikes as I realize what's happening. Someone's coming after us, and they're boxing us in.

Elena. It's got to be Elena.

Not again!

"Michelle!" I yell. "Get to the-"

"I know, I'm on it!" She speeds into the right lane, the only way we can go - because it's the only direction not blocked by a matte-black, window-tinted SUV.

An SUV with Utah plates.

Coming right up is one of San Jose's biggest interchanges - where the 101, 280, and 680 freeways meet. 680 would take us back to South Spellman, to the rich neighborhood in the hills where Michelle lives. We came into San Jose on 101, because it leads more directly to North Spellman. Looks like if we're going to escape these guys, we'll have to take an alternate route.

Are we being herded this way, like sheep? 680 leads not only to Michelle's neighborhood, but Elena's as well.

Thinking along similar lines, Michelle takes the onramp for the interchange, then swerves away from the 680 ramp, in favor of the 280 ramp leading downtown. The other SUVs fall away from us - they must not have expected us to go this way.

Or did they? Is this all part of the trap? It's Elena. Nothing would surprise me.

Nothing but an explosion right in front of us as what looks like an RPG flies up and impacts on the edge of the overpass.

Michelle screams and tries to put on the brake, but we're moving so quickly that she can't get the job done in time. We fishtail all over the place, bouncing off the sides of the overpass, before finally spinning out and rolling over a couple of times.

Thank God for airbags.

But we're still upside down, trapped in a wrecked car, and as I look around, I see most of my friends unconscious. Am I the only one still moving?

Am I the only one still alive?

I feel Aimee's pulse - yeah, she's still alive, but bleeding profusely from her scalp. I'd stay with her, but everyone else is in just as much distress, if not more. I unbuckle my seat belt and collapse to the ceiling - now the floor - and crawl over to the second row. In between coughs and groans of pain - I might have bruised a rib or six - I say, "Guys? Guys, w-wake up! Come on, we gotta get out of here!"

Jay twitches, but otherwise doesn't move. Jeremy and Adele are completely out of it, but they're clinging to each other very tightly all the same. Evan, however, thrashes in her seat like a fish on a hook, because her seat belt is stuck and she's still upside down. With a broken nose. Is she drowning in her own blood? As fast as I can, I burn my way through her seat belt, and she slides down to the ceiling headfirst, gracelessly. At least she's able to breathe again, although she's quick to say that it hurts just to do that. Relieved that she's alive, I kiss her cheek, feeling hot tears - and a little more blood from some cuts on her face - against my lips.

"Adele? Wake up!" Evan cries in a nasally voice, shaking her sister's shoulder. She and Jeremy aren't pinned like Evan was, so we have no problem unbuckling them and helping them down.

I hear Aimee moaning in the backseat, so I rush to help her. She, like Evan, is stuck, so I have to burn her loose. After that, she climbs down and takes my hand as I crawl forward to Jay. Blood rushes to his face, and I'm about to get him down, but then he wakes up and says, "Get out of the way."

Out of the corner of my eye, I see him aim his left fist at the window, then a set of three huge Ice spikes extend from his knuckles. He twists his wrist, the Ice turns opaque in a blast of serious cold, and the window shatters, forcing us to cover our eyes.

"Shouldn't have taught me that one, Elena," he mutters to himself. Note to self - ask him about that later.

Jay crawls through the hole he's just made, then leans down and holds out his hand. "Come on out," he says.

Without thinking, I push Jeremy through the broken window, wincing as I see him leave behind blood - his back rubs up against some of the bits of glass all over the place. At least the pain is enough to wake him up. But he wakes up screaming. I don't think I could ever apologize enough for getting all this glass embedded in him. Jay probably feels the same even as he pulls his baby brother out into his arms, then turns him around to pick out the glass as best he can.

To one side, Michelle's grabbed one of those sharp-edged ice-pick-type tools from the glove box, and she smashes her own window with it. She climbs out, but very awkwardly - and when she's out on the ground, it's painfully clear that she's broken her leg.

I edge aside as Aimee climbs out, joining the others. Evan and I then carefully lever Adele through the window Jay broke, taking care not to cut her the way we accidentally cut Jeremy.

That just leaves Kevin, who hasn't moved at all.

"He's still breathing," Evan says. "Come on, let's get around to the other side."

"You sure?" I ask.

"We can help him better that way."

I nod once, then climb out onto the asphalt - just in time to see one of those black Suburbans with the Utah plates drive up and release a full contingent of body-armored men with guns. Non-lethal guns - tranqs and tazers - but still, guns.

"Freeze!" they yell in unison. Eerie, flat-voiced unison. I zero in on the nearest one to us - he looks as dead-eyed as any of Elena's zombie-warlocks. But is he a warlock? Elena's little minions favored elemental attacks, not firearms. Unless these are the kind she designed to hurt warlocks, specifically?

Either way, I don't have much time to think on it. Even when we all raise our hands in surrender, the zombie-mercs open fire, zapping and knocking us out all at once.