Glimmer (7 page)

Mom didn’t seem as pissed off by that proposal as I thought she would be. “Okay.  That’s a reasonable request.  You are still going to have some studying to do, I mean, you’re only at the beginning of your Junior year, but you’re smart.  If that’s what you want, I’ll talk to your dad about it.”

“Sure you don’t need to ask Mr. and Mrs. Adams too?” I quickly glanced out the window, afraid I’d just put my foot in my mouth big time.  Why was I always ruining things for myself?

She let it go, thank God, simply saying, “Nope.”

When we arrived at the See-Saw, I noticed that Grandma’s Beemer was already there. The idea of seeing Claire and my sister cheered me up a bit. The parking lot was packed with SUV’s, their ski racks loaded.  The diner was the only inexpensive place to eat on the way to and from the mountain if you didn’t want to get stuck paying six dollars for a Lodge Dog.

Mom parked way around back by the dumpsters. I got out of the car and raced inside, too impatient to wait for her.

I hurried to the far corner where our group was sitting around two tables that had been pushed together. Everyone looked up at me from their menus and smiled.  I took a seat across from Ben, in between Melody and Claire.

Ben winked at me. “Nice eyes. You find a helpful bellhop too?”

“What?” He’d lost me.

He pointed to his eyes.  “I discovered what takes the red out and I was going to offer my services, but it looks like you’ve already, uh, hooked that up, so to speak.”

Oh. “Yeah, not if you were the last--”

“Chill, Little House, I was just joshing ya.”

“Little House?” It was like he spoke another language or some hipster dialect I wasn’t familiar with.

“You know. Little House on the Prairie?”

“Uh huh.  And...”

“Oh, c’mon!” He turned to Claire. “Explain to Zellie why it’s funny that I call her Little House.”

She choked on the drink of water she was in the process of swallowing.  Ben swiftly rewound her and waited for her to finish her mouthful before asking the question again. She got a serious case of the girly giggles.  I was a little bit embarrassed for her.

“That is too funny!”

Aunt Hazel tsked Ben for rewinding.  He shrugged her off. “You wear a lot of floral prints, that’s all. Well and the red hair and you give off a very wholesome virginal vibe.”

I glowered at Claire, her face flushed from laughing so hard.  Glad someone thought it was funny.

Ben reached across the table and chucked me under the chin.  “Hey, don’t be pissed.  I didn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with you and you’re obviously not as virginal as I thought if you and Avery managed to clear up your eyes.”

“Thanks for reminding me,” I said under my breath as I sank down into my chair.  Where the heck was the waitress? I was going to need chili fries and a hot fudge sundae STAT. I caught her attention and she smiled. “Be right over in a sec, Zellie.”

My gaze landed back on Ben.  Wait, his eyes really weren’t red anymore. I leaned across the table. “
Did
you hook up with a bellhop?  For reals?”  I whispered.

“More like bus boy,” Claire snarked. “After we finally got Frank to tell us what he thought the red eye antidote was, I said I’d help, but totally got shut down.”

“Clairecita, you know I like my women curvy, Latin, and rich, but you’re not even sixteen yet.”  Ben grinned a lascivious grin. “Still, check back with me after your birthday okay?”

Because she’d attended boarding school before moving to Rosedell, Claire had tested a grade level ahead of where her age put her.  Not that she’d ever had trouble keeping up.  Her sixteenth birthday was only a little over a month away, at the beginning of February. I’m sure her parents were going to get her a really nice car that she wasn’t going to be able to drive. Due to the accident she claimed to have caused to cover up my first chaotic rewind, she was restricted from driving until she turned seventeen.  It looked like we were going to be biking it and depending on other people for rides for another whole year.

The waitress came over and took our orders.  Everyone but Mom got something covered with chili, and Mom would have, she said, if even smelling it didn’t give her heartburn.  We all continued to make chit-chat, Ben teasing and flirting with me and Claire, Mom, Mel, and Aunt Hazel hanging on Frank’s every word.  Halfway through the chili fest it finally dawned on Ben that Avery wasn’t there.

“How come your boy’s not here, Little House?” Ben said, licking chili from his fingertips.

I took a deep breath and then in a low voice told him about Mrs. Adams’ diabolical plan to keep Avery and me apart.

“Damn!  That’s harsh,” Ben said loudly, quieting our table and making everyone look at him. “Did you all know about this Avery ban?”

Frank spoke first. “Yes.  Grace filled Hazel and me in on the plan over the phone earlier today.”

“And I made Claire tell me,” Melody said, frowning.

“Sorry, Zel, but I thought--”

I cut Claire off. “It’s fine.  Okay, so now everyone that needs to know knows.  Frank, Ben, Aunt Hazel, any advice?”

None of them said a word.  The situation was hopeless, just as I feared.

“All right then,” I sighed, “let’s forget about me and my impossible problem and move on to what we’re going to do about the...” I looked around the diner; all the other patrons were preoccupied with their own food and conversations.  Frank, Aunt Hazel, and Melody all nodded at me to continue, having come to the same conclusion. “Ben, when was the last time you did a rewind, because I haven’t done one since August.”

He cursed and shook his head. “Middle of September.”

I made eye contact. “And you’re not doing anything?  Can you steal other Retros’ visions like normal or--”

“Hey! I don’t steal visions. I just don’t have my own.” He popped a soggy fry in his mouth, acting like I should’ve known all this already. 

“Every vision you have is someone else’s?”

“Except my trigger vision and the one about my mom, yeah.”

Now I didn’t feel so bad about having my first rewind whisked out from under me. It would seem that what Ben had done to me was what he did to everyone. “And you’ve always been like that?” I wanted to be sure I was getting the whole story from him, although I was beginning to think that he wasn’t the threat that we’d all believed he was.

Ben rolled his eyes at me, getting annoyed. “I don’t know what I’m going to have to do to convince you I’m not the bad guy that you think I am.” He searched my neutral expression and then sighed, explaining. “Before Mom drowned, she and I shared visions and worked together with Frank as our Lookout.  After she died, I started getting the same visions as whatever Retro I was nearest to.  When Frank and I were passing through Portland on our way back home to San Fran from B.C., I had your vision about David.

“I glimpsed you, saw that you might need back-up and decided to stick around.  If you’d been a more established Retroact, I probably would’ve passed, but I don’t meet very many of us that are close to my age.”

We were finally going to have the conversation I’d been waiting months for. My stomach turned over.  I pushed my chili fries towards Melody. “You didn’t have to ambush me, you know. I would’ve killed to meet another Retro that wasn’t my grandma. We could have gotten together beforehand, planned what to do.” Ben continued eating, but I could tell by the way that he nodded his head he was actually paying attention to what I was saying and not blowing me off.

“Having another Retroact help me wasn’t the problem, God knows I need all the help I can get.  But surprising me when I was trying to focus on saving David’s life...by doing something that not even my grandma knew was possible...”

Claire threw a balled up napkin at his head. “You scared the crap out of her, dude.”

Ben reached across the table and took my hand. “Zel, it’s because of your grandma that I was afraid to do anything but ambush you.  She’s one powerful lady.”

Aunt Hazel, her mouth pursed with worry, addressed Frank, “Did Rachel know Ben’s mother?”

Frank nodded. “She did, but I’m not sure Rachel would remember her. I never met your sister. She and Laura were acquainted during the time Rachel was the enforcer of The Society’s policies on children. I was in grad school in Chicago taking a break from my Lookout duties.”

Mom and Mel and I looked at Aunt Hazel, questioning. “What policies?” Melody asked.

Aunt Hazel filled us in on all the horrible things her and Grandma, mostly Grandma, had to do and say to convince other seers to give up their male and non-Retroact children.  It was disgusting.

“It’s not like that anymore is it?” I asked.

Aunt Hazel shook her head. “No, absolutely not.  They discontinued the practice almost a decade ago.”

I looked at Ben. “Grandma tried to get your mom to give you up because you weren’t supposed to have powers?”

Ben met Aunt Hazel’s gaze, she nodded. “Go ahead, she should know.”

“Your Grandma’s specialty, Zellie, was glimpsing a pregnant seer’s future and if the child was male, she’d force the seer to get an abortion or have them exiled from The Society.”

To be more incognito, Christopher pulled the collar on the gray ski jacket he’d changed into up past his ears.  He was sitting in a booth, his back to Zellie and Ben’s table, listening in on their conversation. 

So, Rachel Loughlin had tried to convince Ben’s mother to get rid of him too, but in an even more horrible way? 
Interesting.
  Rachel must have started using the abortion angle fairly soon after Rita’s time, Ben was only five years younger than him. 

Zellie didn’t even try to be indignant on behalf of her own grandma. She must sense that what Ben was telling her was the truth.  Melody, on the other hand, told Ben to shut his pie hole.  Christopher had always preferred her to her sister.  She had more guts and way better fashion sense.

He scooted over to the edge of his seat. They’d all been conversing at a reasonable volume when talking about The Society’s policy on children, but now had grown quieter again.  Zellie was speaking.

“So, do you think that everyone’s rewinds have stopped?” she asked of Ben, presumably.

“No.  As far as I can tell, it’s just you and me.  I’ve checked in with Retros who know about me and they’re all still getting visions and rewinding, I’m just not picking them up anymore.”

“Until the one this morning.”

“Yeah.  Like I said though, I’ve never had a vision that was painful before.” He took a noisy slurp from his drink. “And also, I’m not completely convinced that we had the same vision.  They were similar, but I saw the fire and you only felt it.”

“Couldn’t that be a side effect of what is happening to us though?”

It was.  Christopher’s ultimate goal had been to only give them enough information through their shared vision to lead them into his trap, but Ben’s abilities were more attuned to the sharing and it was more of a challenge to control what he saw. No matter.  They’d shared what they’d seen and were heading down the path he wanted them to go.  It wasn’t easy trying to make two teenagers do something that wasn’t their idea.  Wes reminded him of that constantly, having died and remained seventeen, while Christopher aged.

He and Wes definitely didn’t have a conventional relationship to begin with, but when they’d attached at least they had been the same age.  Now, at almost twenty-four-years-old, the attachment with Wes was becoming more complicated than he liked.  He was stuck with a lover he couldn’t touch, couldn’t talk to in public.  They had a future together only because they were stuck with one another.

Finally free from parental persecution, Christopher had tried to convince Wes that he should at a minimum be able to date a living, breathing man.  He wasn’t a monk for God’s sake.  But Wes had refused, grown angry, and made so much constant noise that Christopher hadn’t been able to sleep for days.  No, their relationship wasn’t a conventional or even often enjoyable one, but they needed each other.  Without Christopher, Wes would be stuck in the chapel in Utah for eternity. Without Wes, Christopher wouldn’t have a reliable connection to the spirit world, a connection that had told him who he really was and what he was capable of.

The waitress came around and left the bill for his coffee and pie on the table.  As she approached Zellie’s table, the group ceased talking about anything important.  After they’d all divvied up who’d had what and settled the bill, he heard Zellie and Ben set up a meeting with each other for late the next morning - the late request being Ben’s of course. Christopher couldn’t argue that the boy’s beauty sleep did serve him well.  Wes may be able to prevent him from dating, but he couldn’t do anything about who he looked at.

He finished his coffee and laid a few bucks on the table, waiting for Zellie’s group to leave.

“Hey, Pastor Morris,” Melody Wells said to him. “Did you play hooky and go to the mountain today?”

Christopher cleared his throat.  How long had she known it was him sitting in this booth eavesdropping? “Hi, Mel,” he said, flashing his most charming smile, “I’m actually headed up the mountain for a little nighttime snowboarding.”

“Cool,” she replied, her mouth smiling but her eyes sending a different signal. Was that a warning that she was onto him? “You should have come and sat with us, met my new friend Ben and his dad Frank.” She flipped her long blonde hair back off her shoulders. “Anyways, have fun.  See ya in church on Sunday.”

“See you Sunday.”

With the group gone, Wes appeared beside him.  “Great, nearly two years working side by side with their dad, gaining the trust of their family and now the little Lookout suspects something.” He motioned as if brushing the hair back from Christopher’s face.

Absently, Christopher reached up and pushed the hair back himself. “I suppose that’s the end of casual surveillance,” he muttered into his coat collar.

“I don’t know why you care about hearing all of their stupid gossip first hand anyways.  Boo-freakin’-hoo, Zellie and Avery can’t be together.  Boo hoo, Ben the super hottie misses his dead mommy.  Life’s not all cuddling and trips to Hawaii.  You glimpsed this shit two days ago--”