Hydropower Chapter 2
Evie explores
Last time on Hydropower: Evie, Ash, Cairo, Fletch, Maxie, Scott, and Jasmine were all in contact with water in the town of Crowhill Cove at exactly midnight - when lightning struck the sea, all the water seemed to boil, and then everything went back to normal. Or did it?
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Chapter 2
Evie gasped in shock, holding her arms out to the side and looking down at herself. She was soaked from head to toe, her red hair plastered down against her skull and face. Ash was not faring any better.
He stared at her and his mouth formed the word ‘what’, though no sound came out. Wide-eyed, Evie agreed with a confounded nod.
“We should get up,” she said, scrambling to her feet on the seawall so that she could jump down to solid ground. “In case there’s another one.”
Ash swept an alarmed gaze back to the sea and hurried after her. Neither of them needed to discuss the idea. It was a minor miracle that they hadn’t been swept over by the wave, given that they were sitting on the edge of the wall with no railing to hold onto. They weren’t going to tempt fate by letting another wave get a second chance to drag them under.
“Oh, god!” Evie complained, her feet squelching in wet shoes with every step as they moved back towards the line of stores at the other side of the promenade. All of the businesses were closed at this time of night, their façades dark. An older man with a small terrier on a leash chuckled at them, though, shaking his head in amusement. He must have seen the wave splash up and over them, making them scream.
Ash tapped Evie’s shoulder. There was a kind of urgency in it, and she half-expected as she turned to him to see him pointing at another huge wave threatening to drench them a second time. Not that it would make much difference, at this point. Wet was wet.
But Ash was only staring at her, his mouth slightly parted, with a look of deep concern.
Evie frowned. “What’s wrong?” she asked. She touched her hair self-consciously, wondering if there was something in it – seaweed or driftwood or some tiny jellyfish that hadn’t yet stung her scalp.
Ash opened his mouth and formed the shape of a word, but once again, nothing came out. No sound that she could hear.
Wait.
Had she lost her hearing?
Evie cocked her head to the side. No – no, she could hear the sound of the waves, ever-present in the background and so much calmer now that the storm had died away.
She looked at the horizon with a frown. It had died away. So suddenly, too. Where had the lightning come from, if the sky was now clear?
What had just happened?
She thought about that moment, trying to decipher it, and…
Lightning hit the water –
And the water rose up, a rogue wave out of nowhere –
And splashed down on them, soaking them to the skin –
Evie gasped in shock, holding her arms out to the side and looking down at herself. She was soaked from head to toe, her red hair plastered down against her skull and face.
And she was on the wall again.
Ash was next to her, just as soaked as she was.
He stared at her and his mouth formed the word ‘what’, though no sound came out. Wide-eyed, Evie stared back at him. He’d already done that. And how were they back on the wall?
She looked back at the ocean. It was completely still.
“Where’s the storm gone?” she asked.
Ash swept an alarmed gaze back to the sea and then exchanged a frown with her. He looked up to the stars and down to the waves, as if the storm clouds were simply hiding.
“We already got up,” Evie said faintly. What was happening, here? Ash showed no surprise at the fact that they’d moved back across the promenade in an instant, as if nothing had happened, or at the fact that another wave had splashed down over them.
How had another wave hit, when the storm was clear…?
Evie thought back to that moment, to the crashing down of the water over them, and –
Lightning hit the water –
And the water rose up, a rogue wave out of nowhere –
And splashed down on them, soaking them to the skin –
Evie gasped in shock, holding her arms out to the side and looking down at herself. She was soaked from head to toe, her red hair plastered down against her skull and face. Ash was just as wet.
He stared at her and his mouth formed the word ‘what’, though no sound came out.
“What the fuck,” Evie whispered, “is going on?"
Ash only looked down at himself with a look of disgust, waving his arms up and down with a sharp movement that made water dredge out of the sleeves of his thick hoodie.
Evie looked back at the water.
Three waves was enough.
“We should get up,” she said, scrambling to her feet on the seawall. “In case there’s another one.”
Ash swept an alarmed gaze back to the sea and hurried after her. Evie’s feet squelched in wet shoes with every step as they moved back toward the line of stores at the other side of the promenade. All of the businesses were closed at this time of night, their façades dark. The older man with his small terrier on a leash chuckled at them, shaking his head in amusement.
“What are you laughing at?” Evie demanded. He’d already laughed at them once. What was he doing, standing around watching to see if they got wet again?
Ash tapped Evie’s shoulder. There was a kind of urgency in it, and she half-expected as she turned to him to see him pointing at another huge wave threatening to drench them a fourth time. Not that it would make much difference, at this point. Wet was wet.
But Ash was only staring at her, his mouth slightly parted, with a look of deep concern.
Evie frowned. “What’s wrong?” she asked. They’d been here before. All of this had been before. Her head was spinning. What was going on?
Ash opened his mouth and formed the shape of a word, but once again, nothing came out. No sound that she could understand.
This was all too much. The ice-cold water, three times now, and then the laughing man, and Ash being so weird and cryptic…
Evie needed it all to just stop. Just stop, for a minute, so she could think.
She opened her mouth to say so, then almost choked on her tongue.
The sound of the waves… it was gone.
Maybe she was going deaf, after all?
She looked back at Ash, to see if he was trying to speak still…
His mouth was open, wide open at a strange angle, like he was halfway through a word. His eyes stared straight at her, but seemed at the same time to see nothing. Evie moved from side to side, but his pupils didn’t swing with her.
She looked at the man with the dog, halfway to the next pool of light from a streetlamp. He was also frozen in place.
His dog was frozen.
Evie could believe Ash might play a prank on her by freezing still and pretending she couldn’t hear what he was saying. She could believe an old man down the street might stand still for a moment by coincidence.
But his dog – frozen perfectly with two paws on the ground, two paws in the air?
Evie turned in a circle, panic growing and fluttering in her chest like a caged bird.
What the hell was going on?
She stepped away from Ash, casting backward glances with each step to see if he was still there, and made her way cautiously back to the wall.
Looking over the side, she yelled in shock, stumbling backward.
The waves were still.
She spun in a circle, a cacophony of images hitting her eyes, shattering her mind. A lone late seagull, caught in flight, wings arched against the wind, hung suspended in the sky. Further down the promenade, a woman had stopped mid-gesture, throwing her scarf over her shoulder – and the scarf trailed into the air like the string of a kite. The bare-limbed November branches of the trees that sprouted down the middle of the promenade, planted seemingly in concrete, had no leaves to shake and shiver; in one of them, though, Evie saw now what she hadn’t seen when everything was moving – a tiny bat, wings spread but upside down, either just leaving or just returning to a roost.
“Oh, god,” Evie said out loud.
She’d gone back and relived the same moment three times, and now everything was still.
She’d thought hard about – mentally gone back to – the moment in question, and she’d wished for everything to stop, and both of these thought processes happened directly before the respective results.
Somehow – somehow – even though it seemed completely impossible…
Did she, Evie Alexander, somehow have the power to control time?
She walked back towards Ash and touched him on the shoulder, even shook him a little. There was no response, no movement.
She had no idea how to undo all of this – how to make everything move again. She had a sneaking suspicion that all she had to do was want it – but…
Everything was frozen. Why not see how far this went? If there was a boundary?
With a regretful look at Ash – she’d have taken him with her, but she couldn’t exactly haul him around on her shoulder – she set off for the steps leading up from the promenade to the town above. Here, at the northern edge of Crowhill Cove, the cliffs were steep and the streets followed them, crisscrossing higher and higher until the land leveled out again. The beach, then the promenade one level up, then more stores and restaurants above them, and finally, a tier back and up, the residential houses.
Right the way to the cliff’s top, which was reserved for expensive homes mostly owned by out-of-towners who came in only for spring break or a summer vacation.
A smile twisted Evie’s lips. Maybe she could go check out some rich idiot’s home. That would be something Ash would have loved to see.
She looked back over the edge of the railing, back to Ash on the promenade. He would still be there, waiting for her, when she started time again. All of this would still be here. She was sure of it.
And if she was wrong about how all of this worked, then there was no time to lose in exploring what she could while she had the chance.
The first level of the town was quiet, but deceptively so. Evie noticed a few people skulking in alleyways, including a homeless man slumped against a wall with his eyes closed – for a second, Evie thought he might be dead, but there was really no way to check, so she hurried on.
The world was eerie when it was frozen like this. Everything was so quiet. Even her footsteps had no echo, so that sometimes she actually had to look down at her own feet to make sure they were making contact with the ground. They were – she hadn’t, apparently, gained the power of flight.
She hadn’t.
But there was a scruffy-haired young guy who appeared to have floated out of a window in one of the homes on the level above her, and who wasn’t falling or looking afraid. His head was up, his eyes forward. He was too far away for her to make out precise details, but she could see his face, a pale moon against the night. Evie stopped and considered him for a long time – if time had any meaning here.
The thought jolted her. When things went back to normal, would time have passed? Was she wasting away hours, time in which Ash would no doubt be frantically looking for her, just to walk among all of this unnoticed?
She started walking on, hurrying, heading for the sloped street that would take her up a level.
As she passed an alleyway, a form took her notice – something from the corner of her eye, or maybe an instinct, made her stop and look. There was a man in the alley.
Except…
Something was wrong with his face.
Evie stepped closer, squinting, afraid in spite of the fact that she was fairly certain none of these people could see, hear, or do anything to her. What was that…?
His face was twisted to the side as if he’d been caught on camera on some zero-gravity ride, skin pulled back taut. But that was only half of it. The other half…
It was like there was another face growing out of the side, ready to take over, to slide over the skin on his head and replace it.
His body, too, was twisted. He was dressed warmly for the night, but one of his hands was white and male with a smattering of dark hair across the knuckles – but the other was slim and female, darker in tone and bedecked with crimson nail polish.
“What the hell?” Evie said out loud. Her words seemed swallowed up and muffled the second they left her mouth, as if sound could have no impact here. She reached out, but stopped short of touching him. Testing things on Ash was one thing. She did not want to wake this… thing up. She didn’t want to find out what was wrong with its face.
She stepped back, looked to the sky for confirmation that there was no change in the position of the moon or the degree of lightness, and hurried on.
Why was she going up there, anyway? Just to tell Ash she had?
Something stubborn inside her had decided on a course of action, and even now, as she began to question whether it was a good idea, she found herself plunging forward.
Let’s see how the other half live, a determined voice in the back of her head said, her feet forging a path upward.
She passed a bicycle leaning against a wall, its owner – some kind of courier – just about to lock it up for the night. That would help her get somewhere faster. She reached out for it, trying to wrench it away from the wall…
It came, quicker and easier than she expected, nearly knocking her to the ground.
Hah. So, not people, but things. She sat on the bike, tested the pedals experimentally, and set off, eating the distance between herself and the top of the cliff faster now.
This was so easy. As soon as she got up there and then away, she would set time going again, just by thinking hard about it, picturing it in her head, and then –
Ash blinked at her, like he was waiting for a response.
Evie spun around in alarm. She was there.
Back on the promenade.
The water was washing gently against the seawall behind her, the man and his dog were walking away, and Ash was grabbing her by the shoulder.
She looked down. No bicycle.
She’d thought about starting time again too hard, and it had happened.
And she’d been shot right back to square one.
“Huh,” she said. “That’s interesting.”
And Ash tilted his head at her – but the funniest thing was, he didn’t even look like he was asking what she meant.
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