He’s afraid
, I thought,
afraid he’ll end up like the chipmunk
. I couldn’t blame him. I was afraid of that, too.
I knew Myra had been lying to him. I just didn’t understand why. But
it made me wonder — what if Mom had been lying all these years, too? What if all her threats about diseases and insanity were some perverse desire to keep me the way she wanted me — normal and perfect. She’d struggled for so long for the town’s acceptance. Maybe this was all just one more piece of that. Myra lying I could believe — she was an evil old witch. But Mom wasn’t like that.
The green wicked witch image popped back into my head, making my breath catch.
“I see your real face,” I said to Zach.
He looked confused.
“Superimposed over the scars, I see the face you would have had, your whole face.”
His mouth opened like he wanted to say something, but he didn’t.
“It’s … you’re beautiful,” I whispered, looking down at my hands.
He shook his head. Tried again to speak. There was heat betwee
n us — like an echo of the fire. My shield was weak.
“I should go,” I said. Something more than just his tug pulled at me as he sat there, not knowing what to say. I smiled at him. “Get some sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow night.”
He nodded and lifted a hand to wave.
I walked slowly back through the trees and boulders and up the hill to my house. My head felt too full of mixed up thoughts. I wondered if this w
as a preview of what Gran felt — as if there was just too much to think about, and it was hard to find any one strand that held together.
Way too early the next morning Luke shook me awake. “Get up, lazy.”
I opened one eye. “What are you doing here?”
“Kidnapping you,” he said. “Come on, we’re going to the river.”
“I can’t,” I mumbled, turning over. “I have big plans today.”
“Big plans? Okay, let’s hear it.”
“I’m stalking Old Myra Clay to convince her to let me work for her.”
He knocked on my head. “Hello! It’s Saturday! I have no clue as to why you would want to work for that old hag, but regardless, it’s the weekend and you deserve to have a little fun. So get your ass out of bed and let’s go.”
“Since when do you come by to take me to the river on a Saturday morning anyway? Mom put you up to it?”
“No!”
“Liar.”
“Nuh-uh,” he teased.
“Yuh-huh,” I played along.
He grabbed the extra pillow on my bed and whacked me with it. “So who cares anyway?” he said. “Point is your favorite brother is here wanting to spend time with you. Why complain?”
“Point is my brother is being forced to babysit me cause Mom is worried I’m losing it.”
“Is that why?” he asked, blowing his own cover. “Why would she think that? I mean you’ve always been weird, but I don’t see anything different than usual.”
“Ha ha. She thinks I’m heading for Meadowland. Maybe I have been acting weirder than usual lately, but I have my reasons.”
“I’m sure you do.” He pulled the quilt off me.
“Are we really going to the river?” I asked. It wasn’t often he came around to hang out.
“I’m game if you are,” he said.
“No girlfriend tagging along today?” I asked.
“Nah. Just you and me, kid. Get moving.” He grabbed the Green Day CD he’d given me for my birthday off my shelf on his way out. “Hey, can I borrow this, and is there any pie in the fridge?” He didn’t wait for an answer to either question.
While he scrounged for baked goods, I got into a bathing suit. Guilt curdled up inside me. It wasn’t like Zach could take a day off of life and go lie in the sun. Even if I did find a way to free him from Myra Clay’s, would he ever go out in public with those scars?
Luke’s jeep refused to start. “Let me,” I said. Directing the energy of The Hollow, I turned the key and it started right up. He rolled his eyes.
On the way to the river, Luke and I bickered over radio stations and which beach to go to. We finally decided on Hummingbird Cove, where the water was gentle, the rocks were big enough to sunbathe on, and the hummingbirds endlessly flitted. When we got there, he hopped out of the car without shoes, pulled off his tank top and jumped into the river in his shorts, splashing everything in the vicinity. There was no one else around. We had the place to ourselves.
I took the towels and stretched out in the sun on a big flat rock, staring up at the blue of the sky. Luke hopped out of the water and sat dripping next to me.
“So what’s the real deal?” he asked. “Why’s Mom flipping a shit all of a sudden?”
I squirmed. But this was Luke. If there was anyone I could talk to it was him. I wasn’t sure how to start. “I’m just trying to make sense of things, to understand how to avoid ending up in Meadowland. Last time we visited, I think Gran was trying to tell me that I should use my … sensitivity. That it’s
not
using it that makes us lose it.”
“You do realize she’s nuts, right?”
I swatted him. “You hardly ever visit them. You don’t know. Sometimes she seems totally out of it, but other times, I don’t know, she makes sense. I admit it’s not always in the most straightforward way, but if you pay attention.”
“What does Mom think?”
“She thinks they’re both crazy and the sensitivity is what made them that way. She wants me to avoid healing like the plague. She doesn’t get it, though. She doesn’t understand the pull it has. It’s like, I don’t know, if Mom said you could never date a girl ever again for the rest of your life. Don’t you think that would be hard?”
“Impossible,” he agreed.
“See?” I said, relieved that he was getting it. “So I’ve been experimenting just the tiniest bit… only it hasn’t exactly been working out.”
“Meaning?” He slapped at a mosquito.
I looked away. “I tried lowering my shield in town and I passed out, or I might have had some kind of seizure or something.”
“Seriously?
No wonder she freaked.”
“How else am I supposed to figure this out if I don’t try? It’s not like anybody is going to
teach
me what to do!” The hummingbirds zipped from bush to bush.
“Okay, okay, what else happened?”
I hesitated. I couldn’t admit to full-out disobedience. But this was Luke. He wasn’t exactly an angel. “There was this chipmunk.”
He giggled.
“What?”
“Sorry, nothing, go on,” he said.
“There was a chipmunk…”
“It was dying. I know I’m supposed to let nature do
its thing or whatever, but, Za…” I stopped short.
I almost mentioned Zach!
“That! That chipmunk — you know it was really cute and tiny and anyway, I tried to heal it, and… instead I killed it.”
He knocked his elbow against mine. “What do you mean you killed it? You said it was already dying.”
“Yeah, but I revived it. Only then it died.” I hated remembering how it looked, so pathetic.
“Maybe you healed it, only it wasn’t enough for it to last.”
I shook my head. “It died really suddenly, like it was super strong and healthy for a minute, like crazy good, and then it had a heart attack or something and croaked.”
“Maybe you just need some practice. There must be somebody who knows how to do it right, who can help you figure it out.”
He wasn’t mad. He didn’t think I was crazy for trying it. “You think so?”
“You can’t be the only weirdo healer in the whole world. Look it up online or something.”
He made it sound so sane, so reasonable. If it was online it had to be real, right?
I thought about the book Astrid had loaned me. Just because it had it all wrong didn’t mean there might not be information out there that would help. “Mom has forbidden me to even
try
this stuff.”
“She’s only trying to protect you.”
“I know that. Don’t you think I know that! Maybe I don’t want to be protected.” I was so sick of her deciding everything in my life.
“Yeah, I get that. So what are you going to do?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Disobey. It’s the only thing I
can
do. Lives depend on it, I mean, you know, I need to figure it out — for myself. I have to find a way to make it work. Because I can’t spend the rest of my life pretending I’m normal, and I’ve begun to highly doubt that using it will cause me to end up in Meadowland.”
“Okay,” he said, ruffling my hair. Then he leaned over, picked me up and tossed me into the icy water, howling and jumping in behind me.
When he dropped me back home, he didn’t stop the engine.
“Aren’t you going to come in for dinner?” I asked, secretly wishing he’d tell Mom what he’d told me, somehow convince her that it was okay.
“Not tonight,” he said, lowering his face to hide a grin.
“You have a date,” I teased.
“Hey, take it easy on Mom, all right?”
“How about telling her to take it easy on me?”
“Look,” he said, “I know you have to do what you have to do, just … be smart, okay?”
“I’ll be fine, just as long as Mom gives me some space to figure this stuff out. I’m not going the way of the rest of them, wasting away in that place, drugged out to keep my brain from inventing its own realities. I have to figure this out. I have to help Z…” I bit my tongue, shocked that I’d almost spilled it yet again.
“Help who?” he asked.
I shrugged. “You know, the animals and maybe someday people. Anyway, I better go in. Have fun on your date. And thanks for … you know, hanging out or whatever.”
“No problem. You can call me… if you need to. And if things get bad with Mom, you can always come crash on my couch.”
“Thanks.” I kissed him on the cheek and ducked out of the car.
“Did you have a nice day?” Mom asked when I came in.
“Yeah, I did. Thanks for making him hang out with me,” I said.
She sputtered, but said nothing.
I helped her take the food to the table. As we sat down to eat her veggie lasagna, garlic bread, and salad, she asked, “So what did you two talk about all day?”
“Nothing much.” I knew it was torturing her, but she could wait.
“Must have been nice to have something different to do for the day.”
I shrugged. “I always like hanging out with Luke.”
“Maybe next weekend we’ll see if Gabriel wants to take you,” Mom said.
I stopped eating. “
That
would not be a good idea.”
“Why not? You and Gabriel are old enough not to bicker over every little thing anymore.”
“Gabe and I don’t get along. Just face it. We’ve both accepted it. We stay out of each other’s way. And don’t go calling Michael either. I can take care of myself.” I could freaking drive myself to the river if that’s what I felt like doing.
“All right, all right. Don’t get so upset. I thought you could use a little distraction.”
“More like a little babysitting,” I grumbled.
“Sweetheart, don’t be like that. I was only trying to help.”
“Why can’t you be honest?” I slammed down my cup. “You think I’m losing it.”
“I don’t think that,” she said.
“But…?”
“But I’m worried about you. You’ve been acting strangely and I think you have too much time on your hands. I think you should start helping me out in the bakery. You mentioned you could use some extra cash. I know you’re a long way off from earning that car.”
“Mom,” I said. “You know how I feel about working in the bakery. That’s why I was trying to get Myra Clay to hire me. It’s not that I don’t want to be helpful. It’s just … the bakery’s not for me. Maybe you could talk to Myra Clay, put in a good word for me.”
She took a couple bites of her food. “I don’t think she’d hire you. She’s a very private person.”
“She doesn’t seem so private when she’s blabbing about her so-called ghost.”
“That’s different. She’s not really exposing herself in any way then. That’s just for fun.”
It made me sick to think of her lying about Zach as fun.
“You don’t understand the older generation,” Mom said.
That’s what you think.
I so wanted to tell her about Zach, to get her help, to get him out of there. But he wasn’t ready yet. He needed to be ready.
“I’ll tell you what. I’ll talk to her about it. But maybe in the meanwhile you could try spending a little time with Sierra or some of the other girls.”
“They don’t interest me,” I said.
“What
does
interest you?” she asked, setting down her fork so it clattered against her plate.
“You want to know what interests me? Gran and MK interest me. Our sensitivity interests me. Learning to use it so I don’t go freaking nuts interests me. Helping… healing animals and people, that interests me. Mom, please,” I said. “What if
not
using it is what makes us crazy?”