I Am Number Four by Pittacus Lore, James Frey, Jobie Hughes Read Free Book Online Page B

members.”
    “Don’t be such a dick,” Sarah says to him. I look at her as I pass, into her blue eyes that make me feel shy and self-conscious, that make my cheeks warm. The seat I sat in the day before is occupied, so I head to the very back. The class fills and the kid from yesterday, the one who warned me about Mark, sits next tome. He’s wearing another black T-shirt with a NASA logo in the center, army pants, and a pair of Nike tennis shoes. He has disheveled, sandy blond hair, and his hazel eyes are magnified by his glasses. He pulls out a notepad filled with diagrams of constellations and planets. He looks at me and doesn’t try to hide the fact that he is staring.
    “How goes it?” I ask.
    He shrugs. “Why are you wearing gloves?”
    I open my mouth to answer, but Mrs. Burton starts the class. During most of it the guy beside me draws pictures that seem to be his interpretation of what Martians look like. Small bodies; big heads, hands, and eyes. The same stereotypical representations that are usually shown in movies. At the bottom of every drawing he writes his name in small letters: SAM GOODE . He notices me watching, and I look away.
    As Mrs. Burton lectures on Saturn’s sixty-one moons, I look at the back of Mark’s head. He’s hunched over his desk, writing. Then he sits up and passes a note to Sarah. She flicks it back at him without reading it. It makes me smile. Mrs. Burton turns off the lights and starts a video. The rotating planets being projected on the screen at the front of the class make me think of Lorien. It is one of the eighteen life-sustaining planets in the universe. Earth is another. Mogadore, unfortunately, is another.
    Lorien. I close my eyes and allow myself to remember. An old planet, a hundred times older than Earth. Every problem that Earth now has—pollution, overpopulation, global warming, food shortages—Lorien also had. At one point, twenty-five thousand years ago, the planet began to die. This was long before the ability to travel through the universe, and the people of Lorien had to do something in order to survive. Slowly but surely they made a commitment to ensure that the planet would forever remain self-sustaining by changing their way of life, doing away with everything harmful—guns and bombs, poisonous chemicals, pollutants—and over time the damage began to reverse itself. With the benefit of evolution, over thousands of years, certain citizens—the Garde—developed powers in order to protect the planet, and to help it. It was as though Lorien rewarded my ancestors for their foresight, for their respect.
    Mrs. Burton flicks the lights on. I open my eyes and look at the clock. Class is almost over. I feel calm again, and had completely forgotten about my hands. I take a deep breath and flip open the cuff of the right glove. The light is off! I smile and remove both gloves. Back to normal. I have six periods left in the day. I have to remain at peace through all of them.
     
    The first half of the day passes without incident. I remain calm, and likewise have no further encounterswith Mark. At lunch I fill my tray with the basics, then find an empty table at the back of the room. When I’m halfway through a slice of pizza, Sam Goode, the kid from astronomy class, sits across from me.
    “Are you really fighting Mark after school?” he asks.
    I shake my head. “No.”
    “That’s what people are saying.”
    “They’re wrong.”
    He shrugs, keeps eating. A minute later he asks, “Where’d your gloves go?”
    “I took them off. My hands aren’t cold anymore.”
    He opens his mouth to respond but a giant meatball that I’m sure is aimed for me comes out of nowhere and hits him in the back of the head. His hair and shoulders are covered with bits of meat and spaghetti sauce. Some of it has splattered onto me. While I start cleaning myself off a second meatball flies through the air and hits me square on the cheek. Ooh s filter throughout the cafeteria.
    I