Bright Star (11 page)

“Please send her away or at least get your Service to take her, Jacks. You know Sandoval won’t turn her away once they see what she can do.”

Jackson thought about that long hidden memory. He thought about his mother saving him from the knife and the way she had stripped him of that memory for his own protection. She didn’t want her own special, precious child to look on her with the disdain she’d felt her whole life. He considered Bright Star and her fragile nature. He thought of her lying near dead on a rooftop from self-inflicted wounds. Then, he thought of the rock that was in his pocket at that very moment. He had taken that rock from a man he considered a friend. A man who was now strongly sedated, whose only words from time to time were “my rock.”

Jackson knew what would happen. They would test her, hold her, study her the way they had when he was boy, the way they still wanted to now. They would hurt her and not even know it and expect him to help like he had with Thad. He couldn’t do that to her. He couldn’t. “I can’t do that,” he told his older brother. But, Rush was no longer there.

Electricity

Bright Star had been in their home more than a month before it happened again. She had a bedroom. She was there for meals that she sometimes prepared. She watched TV with them from time to time. She was learning all of the shortcuts in the virtual racing game they played. Her clothes were there, though Jackson was not sure when that happened. Hell, he didn’t even remember them having a third bedroom. Jackson saw her when he left for work in the morning and found himself looking forward to seeing her when he came home. Jackson found himself talking to her about his day. He would tell her what he had seen at the Service, what he’d been asked to do, and the new things he had learned about High Energy.

Bright Star didn’t pay rent or utilities as far as he knew, but somehow that didn’t matter, either. Her presence had become so much a part of their lives that Jackson could barely remember the time without her. She was like the water in the pipes, the signal in the radio, the electricity in the wires.

Rush had become more of a recluse than ever. Jackson barely saw him. But Bright Star was there when he left for work, and there when he came home. She sat with him and ate with him. She laughed with him and, Jackson believed, was happy with him. Perpetually in action, she cleaned and cooked and followed Rush around whenever he deigned to come out of his room. And she always took time to practice newer and more difficult Shifts with Jackson as a witness.

Sometimes, Jackson liked to practice with her. It was at those times that he was more and more amazed with her significant Talent. For a civilian, she had amazing control over her High Energy. From birth, Jackson had always known his power to be great; greater than anyone that had ever walked the earth. That was due to being Precocial, they theorized at the Service. He’d had the gift from birth so it had more time to grow and develop. As with all other aspects of a child’s formative years, the potential to grow was exponentially greater than in a teenager or adult. It was the reigning theory, but Jackson was beginning to doubt that was the only reason.

In his own family he had discovered two other Shifters who seemed to have greater ability than he. Amazing. When he was young and his Talent had been first recognized, Jackson remembered that the Service had tested his entire family. Everett, Janie, and Jacob. None of them had shown the slightest signs of having the power to Shift. But that had been nearly twenty-five years before, and the technology—traditional and Shift-enhanced—had been nowhere near as advanced. He wondered how they would all fair today.

Bright Star, he already knew, would test off the charts. As they practiced, they would focus on a single item and start with light shifts. One day, they each began with a plastic cup with their signatures on them. Bright Star stood casually barefoot in faded jeans, a white shirt, and giant white hoops in her ears. She raised only an eyebrow and the cup with her signature levitated from the table into thin air. Jackson did the same with his own cup.

Bright Star’s cup wiggled a little from side to side. Jackson’s cup did the same. He couldn’t suppress the smile caused by the hum of controlled High Energy coursing through his body. Bright Star’s cup went up and down, so did Jackson’s. Bright Star walked over to her levitating cup and slipped off the shiny white band she always wore on her left ring finger. She put it in the cup marked Bright Star, then the cup disappeared. Jackson slipped off his watch then put it in his cup and that one disappeared at Bright Star’s will as well.

“Now bring it back,” Bright Star ordered, exposing a dimpled cheek.

Jackson grinned at her then closed his eyes. He slowed his breathing then held up one hand as he searched for the distinct Energy frequency that was the cup. Like a deep red thread, so dark it was almost invisible, Jackson read the link to the cup. Ah. She hid it in Rush’s closet. How expected, Jackson thought sardonically.

“OK,” he said brandishing the cup and giving her ring back. “Bring mine back.”

Then, with a slight bit of more visible effort, she closed her eyes and held her hands up as if she were being robbed. Then she reached one out and plucked the cup from the air. She dumped Jackson’s watch out in his palm. Jackson chuckled until he realized she wasn’t done. With her other hand, she plucked another cup with his signature on it from the air and dumped that watch in his hand as well. It was the same one with an
identical
energy. It was real, not a suggestion with identical Energy. Impossible. Bright Star produced a third cup, and a fourth and fifth. All frighteningly,
exactly
the same. She was reaching for another before Jackson’s hand clamped around her wrist. He didn’t mean to hurt her, but this wasn’t right. That was not the way High Energy worked. He swallowed deep and his heart thumped aggressively in his chest.

“Stop,” he rasped. “Stop!”

Bright Star did stop and snapped the fingers of her free hand to make all of the cups and watches except for the original go away.

The speed and effectiveness of that Shift without even so much as a blink told Jackson more than anything that she had not even begun to show him her Talent. She’d been humoring him, teasing him. She hadn’t experienced the ill effects of Perma-Shift once and already, Jackson felt a low throb in his head, a pulse deep in his cheekbones, behind his eyes. He was lucky in that no matter how severe the Perma-Shift, it never affected him much more than that. Except for the times he tried to save her on that rooftop and the time Rush shut him out.

“I didn’t mean to scare you.” Bright Star apologized.

Jackson stepped away from her. He’d be lying if he said those words had not been an attack on his pride.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Bright Star offered, only making it worse.

Jackson couldn’t speak. His heart had started pounding when he’d inspected that second watch, and it was still racing. He couldn’t talk about it. Not then. He couldn’t take the hand she offered, and started to leave the room.
Parameters of Shift 101
, he thought in amazement. One could not make something from nothing. That’s why it was called Shift in the first place. Something could change to imitate something else, as long as it already existed. One could take an object and bend it, invert it, convert it, but one could not create something that had not existed in one form or another.

Every object had its own identifying Energy, even the set of sixteen physically identical plastic cups in a convenience store. Everything. Each and every one of the cups possessed a unique natural signature. But Bright Star, somehow, managed to create something from nothing and give it the exact Energy as the original item. According to what he’d been taught, it was impossible.

A hand appeared on his shoulder. It was small and feminine with blunt nails. “It’s nothing compared to what Rush can do,” her low voice came from behind him. The last thing Jackson wanted to hear, but he accepted that she couldn’t stop herself from saying it anyway. He didn’t turn around. The warm hand slid down to his bicep as she stepped around him and faced him again. “I’m sorry, Jackson,” she said honestly. “I know this is hard for you especially.”

“I’ve always been… I don’t know…”

“Special?”

“Yes.” He nodded slowly, deliberately. “Special. And now, it’s almost as if everything that has made me special…doesn’t even exist anymore. And it’s all happened so incredibly fast.”

Bright Star nodded sympathetically.

“I always knew, deep down, that Rush was hiding his strength. Even when we were kids, I looked up to him in a way that went beyond a younger brother’s awe of his older brother. I always knew it, but I never knew how Talented he was.”

“I know why you’re worried,” Bright Star soothed. “But you don’t have to be. You are still the most important thing in this world to Rush.”

“He told you that?” Jackson whispered.

“No.” Bright Star shook her head slowly. She sighed, and it sounded like sadness. “I’d have to be a fool not to know it, though. And you are a fool, Jackson, to believe that what is happening is any less important than it is. I know you think I’m crazy—”

“I don’t—”

“Fine,” she conceded. “You think I’m disturbed. A danger to myself. But, even still, I know that you and I have something in common.”

“What’s that?”

“We believe in your brother equally. I can’t let my personal worries or fears get in the way of what I know. Neither can you.”

“Bright Star, this has nothing to do with me. All of this tension is between you and Rush.”

“We all have our parts to play,” she answered cryptically.

Jackson stood there staring at the watch still in his hands. Bright Star dropped something round and smooth into his palm next to it. She left the room before Jackson realized it was a shiny hematite rock. He followed her and reached for her arm. “How did you get this?”

Bright Star did not answer. She didn’t say a word. Jackson grabbed her arms, shook her. “How did you get this?”

She said nothing for a moment. Jackson could feel the frustration mounting to extreme levels inside of him. The tendons in his hands strained.

“You keep it on your nightstand, Jackson. I took it from there.”

Her voice was small, vulnerable. Jackson let her go and she nearly ran away from him while he stood in the hallway trying desperately to control the pounding of his heart.

*

It happened the next morning.

Rush was still in bed… or at least in his room. Jackson had just finished getting ready for work.

As with every day, he and Bright Star met each other in the kitchen. She usually woke up just before he left. This day, she stumbled in as he poured himself some coffee. She fished in the refrigerator for juice. After finding a carton, she leaned against the closed door. Jackson leaned against the counter across from her that held the coffee pot. They sized each other up in silence. Then, like always, Jackson gave it a shot.

“You do know how much we care about you,” Jackson opened.

“You mean how much
you
care,” she returned, tilting her head to the side with a sleepy but patient smile.

“Rush cares, too. I think he’s just worried. I’m worried, too.” He added that last quickly. “But I think he’s worried that this can’t be fixed. I think it can.”

“What?”

“What what?”

“What do you think can be fixed?” she clarified.

“I think that you can—”

“I can be fixed?” This time, she full out grinned. She was playful in the mornings: her body slow and languid, her mind quick and teasing.

“That’s not what I mean, Bright Star, and you know it.” Jackson was half exasperated half amused. “Fine, then. I care about you. I believe that you are smart, beautiful and Talented.” Bright Star looked directly at him. But mentally, he could tell, she was rolling her eyes. He plowed ahead. “You don’t deserve to be hurt, even by yourself.”