The Piken is almost on top of me.

Sarah’s face flashes again to the forefront of my mind. I have to try. I grit my teeth and dig down deeper.

With a massive woomf, a wave of telekinetic force hits the Piken and knocks it into the air. The beast’s muscular legs flail wildly. It lands back-first on top of a stop sign, the pole impaling the beast right through the heart.

That didn’t come from me.

I lower the couple safely to the ground, toss the fire escape aside and turn in the direction the telekinetic blast came from.

Sam stares at me. He’s frozen. His hands are extended out in front of him like he just shoved the Piken and still hasn’t finished with the follow-through. Slowly, he blinks his eyes. Sam looks down at his hands, then over at me.

“Holy shit,” he says. “Did I just do that?”

EXCERPT FROM I AM NUMBER FOUR: THE LOST FILES: RETURN TO PARADISE

WITNESS THE RETURN OF AN OLD ALLY WHO UNCOVERS A VITAL MOGADORIAN SECRET!

CHAPTER

ONE

I HAVE TO KEEP REMINDING MYSELF WHO I AM the first week at the new school. Not, like, I lost my memory or something. I know who I am in a literal sense. But I have to keep forcing myself to remember what being me means. So all week I keep a single thought repeating through my head:

You are Mark James.

It’s what I think on Monday when some douche bag trips me while I try to find an empty seat among a precalc classroom full of strangers.

You are Mark James, the guy everyone at your old school looked up to. These idiots will learn.

And Wednesday when someone loots my locker during weight training and forces me to walk around in sweaty gym clothes for the last two periods.

You are Mark James, all-conference quarterback. They’re just jealous.

And at lunch on Thursday when I sit on the tailgate of my truck and someone in a loud old Camaro zips past, hurling an oversize Styrofoam cup of orange soda at me while yelling what I think is “ass pirate.”

You are Mark James, and you are the best fucking athlete the Paradise High Pirates ever saw.

If someone had asked me a year ago what my future held, I’d probably have said something like “Mark James, Ohio State star quarterback.” Maybe if I’d had a beer or two I’d go so far as to say, “Mark James, first-round NFL draft pick.”

What I wouldn’t have said—what I couldn’t have even imagined thinking—was anything remotely close to “Mark James, survivor of an alien attack.”

For my entire life, the future seemed set for me. As soon as I threw my first pass, I knew what I wanted to do. Paradise High QB, college football star, NFL hopeful. But now the future is this stupid, dark thing I can’t predict, and I feel like my whole life has been heading towards something that doesn’t even matter. Might not even exist if we end up conquered by a bunch of superpowered aliens. I mean, my all-conference trophy was used to murder an alien. A Mogadorian. A bunch of pale, janky-looking assholes from another planet came to Earth hunting for a very human-looking alien named John Smith—ha—and his invisible friend. Then they destroyed my school. My kingdom. Almost killing me in the process.