“It’s distracting!” I said.
“Sorry,” he replied, but he didn’t stop staring.
I warned him about Martha
, and he promised to help if she gave me a hard time.
“Hi, Martha,” I said, when she buzzed us in. “This is my friend, Zach.”
No smiles from her. “No funny business,” was all she said.
I held Zach’s hand on the way to Gran’s room. I still felt electricity when we touched. “This is it,” I said, pointing at the door. “She might be wild, or she might be mellow. I never know what to expect.”
“Are you coming in or aren’t you?” Gran yelled through the closed door.
I opened it. “Hi, Gran,” I said. She was in her nightgown, messing with some kind of shoebox-tinfoil contraption.
“Hi yourself,” she said, staring at Zach. She turned to the air next to her and said, “You might be right, but he’s much too young.”
Zach squeezed my hand.
“I do see the resemblance,” Gran was saying. “But it doesn’t seem likely.”
“Gran,” I called, trying to bring her back to reality.
“That was a dark time,” she continued. “Dark as a lark, crazy as a loon. It’ll be back soon. Soon so soon.”
“Are you sure you can’t do anything to help her?” Zach asked in a whisper.
“Not without The Hollow,” I said and my stomach knotted up. I wondered where The Hollow’s energy had gone, how it could have just disappeared into nothingness. If only it had lasted long enough for me to do this one last thing. “Gran,” I said. “Do you want to go to the garden? Zach and I came to hang out with you. Maybe you could leave your… um, your project for later.”
“Later?” she said, twisting the tinfoil into a tall, tight spike. “It’s a well-known fact that the more there is to do, the more time you need to … devote to your … prioritizing the choices when they float up from below like dead fish in the water.”
“What about the girl in your kindergarten?” Zach whispered. “You healed her at school, not in The Hollow, didn’t you?”
I’d never put that together before. Why had I never thought about that? My mind started racing. How could I have healed Sierra’s finger without The Hollow? Had I somehow called the energy all the way up to the schoolroom? That didn’t seem likely. Had I always been in The Hollow when I’d healed small animals or my brothers back then? I couldn’t remember clearly, but I didn’t think so.
I placed my hand on Gran’s arm, tried to imagine the energy of The Hollow rushing into me. But all I felt was her black tug. I pulled back my hand.
Zach touched my shoulder as if to comfort me. The spark between us flashed. As I focused on it, the electric feeling grew, magnified until suddenly the whoosh of energy overwhelmed me. I pulled away.
“Did you feel that?” I asked Zach, while Gran continued talking as if we weren’t there.
He nodded. “What was it?”
“It felt like… but how could it be? The energy of The Hollow.” I said. “I felt it inside you.”
“A person couldn’t possibly hold that inside them,” he replied.
My mind raced. “You’re descended from Tall Tree,” I said, thinking aloud. “The earth was splitting. The Hollow was erupting. It needed somewhere for the energy to go. Maybe it gave itself to you.” I gasped. “Zach! Maybe it was
you
that took the crazy away. You healed me.”
Gran turned to us, then back to her invisible friend. “You were right. It is him!”
Zach’s eyes locked onto mine. “I don’t know. I wasn’t aware of doing anything like that. How could I have The Hollow inside me without even knowing it?”
“Haven’t you felt different since then?” I asked.
“Of course, but that’s because you healed me — not just my scars, but also inside, all the dark places, all the blocked memories.”
I shook my head. “I think it’s more than that. I’ve known the flow of The Hollow all my life. It’s been gone since that day. It explains the weird energy thing I feel every time we touch. I think The Hollow is inside you.”
He didn’t say anything for a minute, as if he was trying to digest this new possibility. Then he looked at me. “I don’t know if I believe it,” he said. “But just in case it’s possible, do you think…” He looked at Gran. “Maybe we could… together…somehow... help her?”
My insides lit up. “Should I try?”
“Yeah, if you think there’s any chance,” he said.
I took his hand, felt the flow of The Hollow. “I don’t know what it will do to me, or you.”
He nodded, touched my face. “She’s been waiting a long time.”
I loved this about him, his kindness, his willingness, his total lack of selfishness. I closed my eyes and focused my attention on the surge of energy coming from Zach. “I don’t want to drain you,” I said.
“I’ll be okay,” he replied.
I placed my hand on Gran’s arm.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she snapped, pulling her arm away from me.
I looked into her eyes. “Trust me,” I said. “I’m a Wylde and I’m a healer and I’m going to take the dark crazy away from you.” I could not believe how confident I sounded, and I prayed she couldn’t tell that I was bluffing.
“Dark crazy?” she said in a hushed tone.
“Confusion,” I replied, recalling what it had felt like, “fear, blurred lines between worlds. Okay?”
She nodded without speaking and sat perfectly still.
I put my hand back on her arm and let the whoosh of energy between Zach and me build up and spill into her. I was scared as hell to let down my shield in a place like this, but I knew I had to let her crazy into me if I was going to be able to heal it. I just had to hope that whatever this thing was between Zach and me, it would be enough to bring her sanity and protect us from taking on her illness.
Her crazy felt completely different from MK’s. It was like a black hole, all her thoughts loose and whirling, no connections between them, reality and other all lived together, no separation. Her mind felt like a tornado and its aftermath all swirled into one. And it sucked me in. The black hole drew me into the abyss. I tried to rear back, but its pull was strong. Fear overwhelmed me even as the rush of Hollow energy coursed through me and into her. What if I couldn’t get out? What if I tugged Zach in with me? What if Johnny Rocket came in and found the three of us blacked out on the floor? Wave after wave of energy slammed into the black hole. Swirling, whirling, dancing round the bend, ring around the rosy, ashes, lashes, syncopated dashes. Falling, falling…
Yank. Suddenly, I was back in my body, out of Gran’s mind. The energy rush between Zach and me continued to fill my body, taking away the desperate feeling of drainage. Gran was gasping like she was having a heart attack. I pulled my hand away.
“Gran! I’m so sorry! Gran, are you okay?”
She panted. “What in the name of heaven or hell was that?”
Zach stared at me. “You were getting lost. I could feel you pulling away. I had to jerk you back. I hope that’s okay.”
I nodded, feeling like I might cry. “Should I call a nurse?” I asked Gran.
She looked around her like she wasn’t sure where she was. “The sun is shining in my head.”
Zach and I turned to each other. She was talking crazy.
Gran started cackling. “You don’t understand!” she shouted. “The sun! Daylight!” She stepped up on the bed and started jumping, laughing in a wild, witchy way.
“Gran, oh God, Gran, I think you should get down. You’re going to hurt yourself. Someone’s going to hear you! Gran!”
“Did we mess up?” Zach asked. “Should I get help?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “It might be like the running around, streaking kind of thing. She might be okay. I don’t know. Gran? Come down.”
She sat down, looked heartbroken. “They’re never going to believe it. They believed it about Mary Kate, though. Right? Clarabelle will make them see.” Then she stood up and charged me with a hug.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
She raised her eyebrows, looking from Zach to me. “He likes you,” she whispered loudly. I blushed. She put her arm around Zach. “Not to worry, sonny, in case you hadn’t figured it out yet, the feeling is mutual.”
Mortification spread across my face. “Gran,” I said. “Be serious. I’m trying to figure out if this worked or not.”
She took both our hands. A zing of electricity shot between us and she dropped them both. “Interesting,” she said. “It worked, Seraphina, and grandchild of Abraham Clay, descendent of Tall Tree. I’m as sane as a saint. Now all we’ve got to figure out is how in the world you’re going to spring me.”
It was a crazy afternoon. Between convincing Mom Gran was sane, having her evaluated by Dr. Gates, and getting her released from Meadowland, there didn’t end up being time to prepare a family meal. So Mom ordered pizzas from Pizza Guys. By seven o’clock that night, sitting around the dining room table were my mom, my three brothers, my aunt and my grandmot
her, my best friend/boyfriend (!), and me. I expected it to be an awkward meal, with long silences. But instead, Gran had us all laughing so hard, root beer squirted out of Gabe’s nose. And the boys stuck around after dinner, not in such a great hurry to leave now that The Hollow wasn’t agitating them.
I wished Zach could move in with us or at least stay the night. But I was assured that wasn’t a possibility. All evening long Mom kept sneaking glances at Zach and me, probably trying to figure out how we’d managed to recreate the energy of The Hollow. I wasn’t entirely sure myself. But I noticed that after we healed Gran, Zach’s pink scars faded even more. And I, I felt like I could fly on the wings of the clearest thoughts I’d ever known, like the brightest of blue skies, the crispest of summer breezes.
When we’d finished our pizza and had our fill of MK’s creations, we talked in the living room, listening to Gran tell stories of when Mom and MK were little.
“Poor little Clarabelle was always a dud,” Gran was saying. “I imagine it was because she was born so far from The Hollow.”
I looked to Mom to check her reaction. Her face looked blank.
“That doesn’t make sense,” Michael said. “According to the stories, the Wylde women were, uh,
you know — different even before they came to Hell’s Hollow.”
Everyone looked at Gran for an explanation. “That’s true,” she said, looking puzzled.
“Mom’s not a dud,” I said.
“Oh, now,” Gran replied. “Don’t worry, I didn’t mean it like that, just that I always felt badly for her when she was a kid because she didn’t have the family … trait.”
“More like family curse,” Gabe grumbled from his spot on the floor where he was tossing an old soccer ball up in the air.
“I know,” I said to Gran. “I’m telling you, though, she’s not one.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Mom said, her voice sounding thin and reedy.
“It took me a while to figure it out,” I said. “How you sometimes just seemed to know what was needed in any gi
ven circumstance — like the way you always have your customers’ orders ready for them before they ask.”
“That’s the mark of any good businessperson,” Mom said.
“Or the way you always know what I need when I’m not feeling good — soup or chocolate or meds.”
“The sign of a good parent,” she said.
“How you knew to come down to The Hollow that time with the skunk.”
She shook her head silently. Luke and Michael whispered to each other on the couch.
“You came home early the day with Sera and MK in The Hollow,” Luke said.
“Not early enough,” Mom replied. “My car wouldn’t start.”
“I couldn’t figure out at first,” I explained, “why you wouldn’t have pushed me to heal Gran and MK. But then I realized that your drive to protect me always outweighed everything else. You, unlike the rest of us, mastered the art of letting your sensitivity… your
gift
guide you when you wanted to and shutting it down when you didn’t. I think it’s why you didn’t go crazy like the rest of them.”
“I didn’t go crazy because my sensitivity, if there is one at all, is weak. It never took over my life. It was never something I could count on.”
I shrugged. “MK’s visions weren’t exactly predictable. Either way — you’re not a dud.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Mom said, “now that The Hollow is gone.”
I touched Zach’s hand. “Not gone really,” I said.
“You know there is an upside to The Hollow’s destruction,” MK said, looking at Mom. “We’re no longer bound.”
“What difference could that possibly make now?” Mom asked. But there was something weird about her voice, the way she sounded when she was saying something just to be polite.
“You could change your life,” MK was saying, “do anything you want.”
“Don’t be silly,” Mom said. “I still have Seraphina to watch out for, and something tells me she’s not going to want to move any great distance in the near future.” She winked at Zach and me.
“Ma and I will be here to watch her,” MK said. “If you want, I mean. You could travel. All these years you’ve been the responsible one. You deserve a break, time to take care of yourself.”