Indigo (18 page)

“Corrine, you’re going to resurrect an amoeba.” Mia-Joy cackled, then started looking in cupboards for something. But I studied Rennick, wondering at the worry line between his eyes.

“Did you make any headway last night, trying to summon it?” he asked.

I shook my head. Even after his impromptu visit, I hadn’t had any success. But I had spent a lot of time leafing through his sketches, some watercolors, some pastels. Jesus, they were beautiful. Just colors and colors, prisms of light. And there was one aura, repeated over and over, each one from a different perspective. I wanted to ask him if it was mine. I wanted it to be mine, for him to have thought so much about me, even when we weren’t together. But it seemed much too personal a question right now, in front of Mia-Joy, in the daylight.

“I’m making coffee,” Mia-Joy announced, pulling the
canister from the cupboard. “Where’s the sugar?” I pointed to the cabinet next to the sink.

“Did you check your schedule online?” Rennick asked.

“School?”

“Yes, Corrine,” Mia-Joy chimed in. “Three weeks till senior year. And why the hell won’t this coffee machine turn on?”

“I haven’t even thought about school.” The whole concept seemed far away, like it belonged to a different Corrine.

“So are you two going to be all will-they-won’t-they, making eyes at each other all school year?” Mia-Joy said, eyeing me. She gave the switch on the coffee machine several last tries and then swore under her breath.

“Try another outlet, farther from Corrine,” Rennick said. “Corrine sort of
interferes
with machines.”

Mia-Joy laughed. “Okaaaay.” She turned her attention to me. “There’s also this article I wanted to tell you about.”

“The one where they refer to me as the anonymous teenage healer, yet they name my parents one paragraph later? Or how about the one where I’m the Gypsy medicine woman. That was on someone’s blog.”

“No,” Mia-Joy answered. “Something else.”

Rennick shook his head and took one of the minnows out of the water, placed it on a paper towel. I watched its eyeball. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t look away. Its mouth kept going, kept hoping and trying for that water.

I reached to scoop him up and put him back in Rennick’s
cooler, but Rennick gave me a look. “It’s a minnow,” he said. I stopped myself.

“So tell me,” I said.

Mia-Joy was pouring water into the coffeemaker now. She and Rennick were having some sort of conversation with only their eyes. It ended with the haughty look I’d seen Mia-Joy give so many times, to her mom, to me, to everyone. Mia-Joy did what she wanted.

“Mia-Joy, we talked about this.” Rennick sat down at the table. “Are we going to start?” he asked me, a last-ditch effort.

“No. Tell me about the article.”

“You’ll only get upset and—”

“Listen,” I said, an edge to my voice, “you may have your opinions. You may think you know what I do or don’t need to know. But I am not some delicate flower. And I want to know.”

Rennick looked taken aback, Mia-Joy pleased with herself. “Okay,” she said. “The boy you spilled coffee all over at Café Du Monde last summer. Remember, Bryant? Apparently, he’s some kind of seer or telepath. Whatever.” Rennick shook his head, got up from the table, and for a second I thought he was going to leave. But he didn’t. He just walked over to the sink, stared out the window for a second.

“What about him?” I said. “Did you know he was …?”

He nodded. “His aura.”

“He got beat up, Corrine. Pretty bad,” Mia-Joy finished.

“Why? I mean, why did they—” I hadn’t been expecting this. I balled my hands into fists. I thought of Bryant’s smile, the way he always opened the door for Mia-Joy and me before bio. He had the most perfect teeth. Had they punched him in those pretty teeth? “Why?”

“He pissed off the wrong kids,” Rennick said. “Who knows? He’s different. It’s all some people need to know.” And when he turned around, I saw that hopeless look on his face, and I absolutely hated it.

And before I realized it, it was there. In my chest. Flaring.

I summoned my courage, visualized harnessing this light in my chest. I made myself stay there in the kitchen and not run away. “I gotta try it,” I said, breathless. “Stand back,” I ordered them. “Is the minnow dead? Is he really dead?” I was out of breath now, and it was working itself up into a rolling, churning engine of heat and power in my chest. My limbs started to tingle and my vision seemed to focus, clear itself of everything but what was on the kitchen table.

I eyed the dead crayfish already on the paper plate. Several half-squashed roly-polies, a long-dead cricket. It was like I could see everything so clearly. Defined.

Rennick picked up the minnow, shook it. “Dead,” he said, and what was there in his face? Did he look a little scared? I looked away. I took a deep breath, and it rolled inside me, growing and blossoming.

“It’s tied to your emotions, girl,” Mia-Joy said. She took a
few steps closer, like she wanted to get a good look at what I was about to do.

“Stand back. I mean it, you two. And no matter what happens, if I pass out, whatever, don’t you touch me!” I screamed at them. And then it was there, the indigo lens, and I could feel it charging, pulsing through me, out to my limbs, like a hard, powerful light surging through me, out of my eyes, out of my hands.

I picked up the minnow, and I cupped it between my palms, and at first nothing seemed to happen. Its scales were wet and cold. It was still. I relaxed my muscles, let the surge move through me, reach its fever pitch, work its way into my hands. And then out of my hands.

The current prickled the inside of my palm. And there it was. I felt movement, something whisper-soft against my flesh. I removed one of my hands and looked at the fish. The minnow’s eye was
back
, the life behind it was there. The mouth moved, hoping again, its body bucked.

I dropped it back into the water-filled cooler and watched it swim. I was breathing little shallow breaths.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Mia-Joy said. I looked at her. She was still blue, indigo.

“Sit down, Corrine,” Rennick said. “Before—”

“No!” I said. “It’s not gone.” And I picked up the crawdad, pressed it between my palms. Pushed the surge through me. Held it there in my hands. Focused it.

The crawdad came alive. That same tickle. The antennae,
the claws. I laughed as I dropped it on the table, and Rennick laughed too.

I picked up those damn roly-polies, and sure enough, in a few seconds all but two came back alive, squirming, rolling themselves into little balls. I placed them on the table, moved to the cricket. I pressed him between my palms. Nothing.

“No, been dead too long,” I said. “Too long.” And I moved on to another crayfish.

I pressed it between my hands and closed my eyes. My breath came in fits and starts now, and I kind of half sat, half fell into the kitchen chair.

I became aware that Rennick was pleading with me. “No more, Corrine. It’s too much.” I opened my eyes and placed the newly alive crayfish on the table.

“I did it!” But I saw now that Rennick was right next to me.

“No more, please.” He was desperate. I didn’t know what was wrong. I was so happy! I couldn’t fight this kind of evidence, but Rennick’s eyes were pleading.

“Just one more. It’s amazing. It’s crazy, and the blue isn’t gone yet—”

“I’ll touch you, Corrine!” he said, low, serious. “No more, please.”

Mia-Joy watched us intently, playing with the newest crawdad. She placed it on the table.

“What are you afraid of?” she asked him.

But I was already nodding. The lens had shifted. It was
gone now, and I was exhausted. But I couldn’t tear my eyes away from Rennick’s. He looked so panicked, wide-eyed and desperate.

“I’m sorry,” I said, not knowing exactly what I was apologizing for. The moment passed, and Mia-Joy was jumping around.

“She did it!” Mia-Joy screeched. She gave Rennick a high five that seemed to snap him back from wherever he was.

“Proof! Real live proof!” he said.

He turned to me then, and it’s like he forgot himself. He reached to pull me out of the chair, but I recoiled.

“Right,” he said. “Sorry.”

“I did it!” I said, smiling, trying to gloss over the rebuke. “I can’t believe it, but this is really true. This part of it.”

“But you can’t
hug
us,” Mia-Joy said, plopping down in the chair across from us.

“This is
part
of it,” Rennick said, sinking into the chair next to me, our victory celebration amazingly short-lived. “But you think there’s another part.”

I nodded. My body ached, exhausted. And suddenly, I couldn’t think anymore. It’s like the pathways in my brain were worn and short-circuited, all used up. “I’m just so tired,” I said.

“You need to get some rest,” Rennick said. “Sleep.”

He and Mia-Joy started to pack everything up. But before he left, he said, “Promise me, no more today.”

“Okay.”

“I mean it, Corrine. If you ever, ever trusted me, like I knew anything, you promise me that.”

I knew for whatever reason this meant something to him. “I promise,” I said. He watched me carefully for a long moment and then finished putting away the fish, the crawdads.

My nerve endings felt frayed and raw, my head fuzzy and heavy.

“Corrine, we should be celebrating. You gotta give this thing up,” Mia-Joy said. I nodded.

But Rennick interrupted. “You’re doing great.” And I managed to stick out my tongue at Mia-Joy, who only stuck hers back at me.

Part of me wanted to yell after Rennick,
Stay with me!
Don’t leave me here without … what? You.

Then they were gone, along with my newly alive menagerie. For a second, I kind of wished that they had left the evidence. I wanted it near me, so I would know it was real. I had
healed
.

Mom came in the door just as I was trudging up the stairs, my legs heavy with exhaustion. “Corrine! I just ran into Rennick and Mia-Joy outside!” she yelped. “You did it!”

She ran to me and hugged me. I bristled, but she didn’t relinquish her hold on me. And after a few seconds, I kind of collapsed into her. I don’t really remember getting to my room. But Mom must have gotten me there, where I fell onto my bed.

*  *  *

I woke up much, much later, from a deep and dreamless sleep. My room was pitch-dark, with only a slight sliver of a moon visible out my window. But there it was again, the
plink-plunk
of the pebbles.

I lay there for a long time, listening to his persistence.

Then I got up and snuck outside.

He was different at night, alone in the dark. I felt different too.

We seemed like truer versions of ourselves here. In the dark. It was easier to put away all the pretenses without the sunlight glaring off our intimate truths.

“You came,” he said, standing up from Sophie’s bench. I took a step toward him, shoved my hands into the pockets of my robe. I could barely make out the features of his face, but I knew he was smiling. It was in his voice.

“Hi,” I said like a moron.

“Hi, you,” he said. We stood there for a long moment. He took a step toward me, and then another. I tipped my face up to him. We were close, so close, and I didn’t back away.

“What is it?” I said, breathless.

“I have to tell you what I know. I have to tell you about Dell. How he died. What I think happened, Corrine.”

“He died?” I asked, taking a seat on the garden bench. He paced a little bit.

“The whole thing is a little foggy, like memories can
be when you’re little, you know. I was only eight. Cale was twelve or thirteen.”

“Your brother?”

He nodded. “Dell was his friend. They hung out all the time, started getting into trouble. Anyway, I’m not making sense.” He stopped. Ran his hand through his hair. “There’s a lot to the story. But the gist is that looking back, I think Dell had the touch.”

“His aura was like mine?”

“In a way,” Rennick said. “I think maybe when I was about eight, he saved me.”

“You’re kidding.”

Rennick shook his head. “We were fishing, Dell, Cale, and me. I went out too far at the end of the wharf. Fell in. Couldn’t swim back then. I had a huge fear of the water. Used to have all these drowning nightmares. Anyway, we were fishing on Algiers Point, and the current swept me along down the shore. By the time Cale got me out, I mean, I don’t know. I can’t remember it. Not well. But I think I was gone. I was outside myself. Hovering. I think I was dead.”

“Jesus, Rennick.”

“I watched him save me. He put both his hands on my chest, and something racked through his body. And then it was like I got sucked back into myself. Came back, sputtering water.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this?”

But Rennick ignored me now. He was remembering. “Dell was a normal kid. He was always around. He and Cale still hung around a little in high school. Dell knew what he was by then, I bet. There was a car crash, some kid trying to outrun a train out in the Marigny one night. Two kids got killed. But Dell was at the party where they were headed. Anyway, I’m not sure, but I’ve heard kids tell it, and I think … I think he saved the girl. April, her name was. And he died.”

“How did he die?”

“I think he used himself up.”

I processed this. “That’s why you were scared today.”

“I’m still scared. That you could give away your spark. Use it up. Whatever
it
is.” And I thought about those frog legs. Electricity made them move, mimicked life. But what was it that Dell—or I—could also give them? Life?

When you put it that way, the enormity of it squashed me. The pressure that would come with it. The sheer vastness of responsibility. This thing was ginormous. Why me?

Rennick sat down next to me, our legs touching, and I looked into his eyes. There was fear there. What else?

“Rennick …”

I watched him searching me with his eyes. I recognized something in him. Something I knew too well, from the mirror. He was telling me about Dell. But … Things fit into place then, and I got it. I understood. I realized what was at the heart of all this for Rennick.