Indigo (25 page)

There were no cutesy looks, no jokes when I sat down at
the table with them now. I tried not to wince as the muscles in my rib cage spasmed.

Dad spoke first. “We have to control this, babe.”

Mom’s eyes and nose were raw and red from crying. “I think it’s already beyond that, honey. I think we just go back to Chicago for a while. Let this cool off. Return when people have forgotten.”

“No!” I objected.

“Just hear us out,” Dad countered. “Not leaving forever. Just a break from the craziness. Then we can come back, if we choose, and then you can do this … healing quietly. It is imperative that we work harder to keep it quiet.”

“Why?” I said, and I hadn’t meant to sound so snarky, but there it was.

“You’re not thinking clearly,” Mom said.

“Right,” I snapped. “I want to help people. Of course that’s not thinking clearly.”

Mom brought her fist down on the table hard. I don’t know who jumped more, me or my father. But she pointed at me, and she hissed, “Rennick told us both what happened to his mother, what happened to this Dell he knew. What do you have to say about that, Corrine Marie?” My eyes dropped to the table. They had me there. “What are you doing to prevent that? Can’t we go in the shallow end, Corrine? Or do we have to just jump right in, let this thing swallow you whole? I’m not going to let that happen.”

I answered with silence, and Dad reached over and put his hand on Mom’s arm. She was crying now, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. She whispered, “Not you too, Corrine. I can’t lose you too.”

“Corrine, your mother and I are going to think this over. And you have a right to know that. But if we decide it’s best to leave, we’re all leaving.”

I thought of Mia-Joy, of Mrs. Rawlings, but mostly of Rennick. I didn’t want to leave. Because of them. But it was more than that. I didn’t want to go back to a life of silence and inaction. A life of all the things that could’ve been for Sophie. I needed a different focus, and the touch gave me that. I didn’t know exactly how these things were so tightly and intricately wound up inside of me, but I knew, I
knew
, that if we went back to Chicago, I would suffer, my power would suffer.

I quietly pushed my chair back and worked my way up to my room. What in the world could I do?

I lay awake on my bed, feeling too warm, relishing the open-window breeze, thinking about my options. I was nearly eighteen. I would only have to be in Chicago for a year. Even if they never decided to come back, I could come back.

I could try to reel myself in. Keep things going, but in moderation.

All of this seemed impossible to me. It was like the touch was the only thing keeping me from going back to my
guilt-ridden world, and I had to use it, keep it in motion and alive. I knew it didn’t make a lot of sense, but there it was.

I must’ve dozed off eventually because I awoke to a one-note whistle, the gray-yellow light of an overcast sunrise filling my room. I got up and looked out the window, and sure enough he was there. When I went down to greet him, I knew I looked like a hot mess.

But I didn’t care. He opened his arms to me, and I was in them, folded into him, resting my head on his chest, his chin on the top of my head. “Corrine,” he said. He kissed the top of my head.

I could smell the leaves of the banana trees out in the wet dew of the morning. And I could smell the scent of Rennick, his laundry-fresh skin.

“You told my parents,” I said into his chest.

“I had to.”

“I’m trying not to be mad at you.”

“And I’m trying not to lay you down on this grass and get us both into more trouble than we need.”

This made me chuckle. I lifted my face to him, and he kissed me, slow and soft. “Mmm,” I said. “Good morning.”

“What do you say we go to Jackson Square today, maybe ride the ferry? We only have so many free days till school.”

I shook my head. “I’m going back to the Shack. Come with me?” I readied myself for an argument.

He sighed deeply, and I braced myself. “Corrine, I think
your parents are right when they say that you have to walk a thin line here.”

“They are talking about moving.”

I watched him closely, to see if he knew this, but when this registered, his face blanched and he had difficulty recovering. “We gotta play by their rules. I want you here.”

I nodded. But I knew I had to do what I had to do. “Let me shower, and meet me in the kitchen in ten.” I pulled myself away from him, but he held on to my hand.

He shook his head at me. “Corrine, I told myself I wasn’t going to come here and give you ultimatums. I wasn’t going to try to pressure you. I figure you got enough of that on all sides. But going right back there this morning?”

I nodded, jutted my chin out in defiance.

“Do you still have a fever?” he challenged.

“No.”

“Are you still shaking?”

I held my hands out in front of me and, thank God, they were steady. He rubbed at his jaw, pulled me over to Sophie’s garden, and sat us down on the little cement bench. “Why can’t you let it go?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You didn’t kill your sister.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

I couldn’t hold his gaze. He continued, “Is that what this is about? Trying to make up for allegedly killing Sophie?”

“No.” But it felt like a lie, and the heat kicked on under my sternum.

“Because I think that’s what this is about. I watched you yesterday, and it was like you didn’t give a shit about what happened to you. You just kept going and going. It’s like you didn’t even want to have time to think. You just wanted to
do
.” His eyes pierced me.

I rubbed my knuckles against my lips. I knew there was some truth in this. I hadn’t really been able or willing to put words to it, but I knew there was a part of me, a huge, self-destructive guilty part that knew there was truth right there. A seed of it in everything Rennick was suggesting.

“I can’t say no to anyone.” My voice sounded small.

“How many will it take to make up for Sophie?”

I shrugged and fought against the tears in my eyes.

“A hundred? A thousand?”

I said nothing.

“Or will it only be even when you use yourself up and kill yourself in the process?”

It fired up, roared, and I swallowed it back down. Rennick reached for me, just a tiny gesture, a hand to tip my face up, but I pushed him away. Pushed him hard. I got up and walked back into the house.

I hated him. Because of what he’d said.

Because it was true. Every word.

The Crawdaddy Shack opened at seven, but there were already a few people out front when I came biking up. “Morning,” I greeted them.

“Good morning, Corrine,” one middle-aged man answered. The rest sort of chimed in.

None of these patrons had any requests for me, so I went into the kitchen when Mrs. Rawlings opened up, and she was all up in my business from the get-go. “You are not going to make me a party to this when you know good and well your parents are taking issue with you setting up shop here.”

I ignored her as much as I could. I greeted Casey and grabbed a deep-fried donut from the cooling tray, poured myself some coffee. But Sarah Rawlings did not suffer being ignored.

“Girl, you better look at me when I’m talking to you.”

I turned around, looked into her face. “I have to do this,” I answered.

To my surprise, Mrs. Rawlings looked more empathetic than I had expected. “You got till noon. Then I am kicking you out.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Granny Lucy used to help a lot of folks. You girls, you laugh at the old tinctures she used to put together. The spells. But there was something to them. She had herself a way, Corrine. She kept it on the down low.” She eyed me. “You’ll learn.”

I heard Mia-Joy’s barking laughter from out front, and then she was calling for me.

The little restaurant was filled again, and there was already a small crowd around the bistro table from yesterday, front and center. “This woman here, she’s got lupus and lymphoma,” Mia-Joy whispered to me.

“Ma’am,” I said in greeting, sitting down at the table. One look at this poor woman’s face and I knew I was right to come back here this morning. She still had all her hair, but her cheeks were sunken, her skin sallow, her fingernails yellow. She looked seventy-five if a day, so when she began speaking, no wonder the flames erupted inside me.

“I’m only forty-four,” she began, and I fought against a gasp. “I don’t have insurance. I didn’t get any treatment, and I know I’m almost at the end of it here. My children don’t know that, but I know it,” she said. And the matter-of-factness in her voice leveled me.

I gripped her skeletal hands and let it rise, brewing and growing, swelling into one powerful wave. The woman’s eyes, they had a flat look to them, of things borne, endured. I wanted to help her. I let the current reach its frenzied peak. And when I focused the flame, when I directed it into this woman, something happened. It left me in a different way, not in a smooth current but in jolts. I couldn’t see anything different. It was all still indigo blue, but it felt different, spastic and uneven.

The woman jerked, fell to the ground, and seized with ugly convulsions. Like she was being electrocuted. Just like in the movies. Horrible jerky movements.

I broke the connection, let her hand go. I held my hands out in front of me, watched them for a moment before I bent down next to the poor woman at my feet. Was it my imagination, or could I see little sparks of something crackling off the tips of my fingers, flaming indigo?

I heard the gasps from the other customers. I saw Mia-Joy running toward her, and I heard Mrs. Rawlings screaming for 911, but none of this really registered. It was like it was all happening far away from me.

“What was wrong with her again?” This was a paramedic in his blue uniform. He was right next to me, kneeling. How he got there so quick, I didn’t know.

“I have the touch?” I told him.

“We know about you,” he said. “But what is her ailment?” He was listening for breaths as he spoke to me.

I racked my brain. I could sense that I should know this, that I
did
know this less than five minutes ago. It was there, on the very edge of my brain, but I couldn’t grasp it. What was wrong with her? What was I fixing?

“She has lymphoma and systemic lupus,” Mia-Joy answered, eyeballing me and pushing me down into my chair. I sat there, watching the events unfold around me. The saving of this woman’s life. The sideways glances from the other patrons. The clucking of Sarah’s tongue as she brought me a glass of ice water.

Then all of a sudden it was like I lost some time, because Rennick was next to me but I didn’t know when or how he had gotten there. I looked around and saw that the woman and the paramedics were gone.

“It was akin to a mild electric shock. She just passed out,” he was saying in a soothing voice, over and over. Like a repeat sign at the end of a measure.

He reached for my hand. I yanked it back.

“You should be glad about this,” I snapped. “Now it’s all gone to shit. They can just move me back to Chicago. Everyone can forget about it all.” I got up so quickly that I knocked my chair backward.

“Corrine!”

I didn’t turn around. I stalked out to my bike and rode home. Confused. Hot. Frayed. Guilty.

I retreated to my room. It was like I didn’t know anything anymore. I played Angry Chipmunks on my iPad and
listened to music through my earbuds as loud as I could stand it, and I forced myself, tried desperately at least, not to think.

Mom and Dad tried to talk to me. Mrs. Abernathy was fine. Rennick had been right, it was only a moderate electric shock. She had not been cured, but she was getting treatment, thanks to the donations Mia-Joy had been collecting. And thanks to a handful of generous doctors on her case. But I hadn’t saved her.

I had expected a quiet relief on Mom’s face or in Dad’s demeanor, because maybe people would leave me alone now after such a public failure. But no, there was none of that. They were my parents, after all. It made me feel guilty for thinking that they could so easily be appeased by the situation when they knew it made me miserable.

The next morning was Sunday. Dad went with Mom to her church, and I stayed holed up in my room. When the doorbell rang, I looked out my window and saw Rennick’s Jeep.

I waffled for a long minute, but eventually I let him in, and we stood in the foyer awkwardly. He looked at me with those eyes, those eyelashes, and I wanted to cross the distance between us. I wanted to throw my arms around his neck. But I didn’t trust myself. My hands. My body. What lived underneath my ribs? I didn’t want to hurt him.

Was I back here? Really? Had I ever left?

“How are you?” he said as he moved into the living room. I backed away from him, but still he stood only a foot away from me.

I shifted from one foot to the other. I tried to hold it together, I really did. But a couple of tears slipped down my cheeks. I wiped them away quickly with the back of my hand. I looked up at him, shook my head. My lip trembled.