by B D Grant
“I did. Thanks for getting the good kind.”
I tuck the used sheets under my arm and then carry them to the upstairs laundry room.
As I dump the laundry in the washing machine, I hear Dad’s muffled voice say, “What’s done is done.” He speaks sharply. His words are followed by a cabinet door slamming shut in the kitchen.
“They got one name out of me,” Jake snaps. “And it wasn’t hers. Got it?” Hurried steps tromp off from the kitchen, heading in my direction.
“No one else knew,” Dad calls after him.
Jake walks past the laundry room, he grumbles when he spots me, “Someone did.”
The pressure in my nose builds again. I hate this feeling. I pinch my nose tight, and slowly it subsides. I wait until I hear Dad leave the kitchen before going in search of cold medicine.
Clairabelle’s medicine cabinet does not disappoint. I take a tiny pink pill from the bottle labeled “allergy relief.” There’s a drowsiness warning in bold white letters across the bottom of the bottle. The pill goes down easy.
I shut the cabinet door and hear, “Did you hear any of that?” Dad is standing at the fridge next to me holding an empty glass. I didn’t see him coming with the cabinet door open.
“Hear what?” I ask defensively.
“Our conversation,” he says, opening the refrigerator door.
“Some,” I admit.
“Jake swears he didn’t tell them about you.” Dad doesn’t beat around the bush. “The Rogues running the basement found out about you.” He grabs the pitcher of tea and refills his glass.
“Dad, you don’t have to tell me—“
“You need to know,” Dad interrupts me, shutting the refrigerator. “They knew about your mom. We were dating when I…back when your mom and I still lived in Aurora. I had my wallet on me when they grabbed me, so it took them no time to show me the family photos they got from our house. That’s how they learned about your mother and you, but I wouldn’t tell them where you two went.” Dad shrugs and looks down at the tea in his glass. “I knew what The Movement was doing to their opposition; it’s why we left Aurora. But I’d figured they were just killing everyone they took.” Dad looks up at me. I want to say something, but I don’t want him to stop talking so, I just watch him as he looks over, staring uncomfortably at his forehead. “I didn’t know where your mom would take you, but the things they did to me made me wish I knew. I told them about our family vacation spots and all of the towns where we’d lived after leaving Aurora.
“Things changed right before the raid. They found out about your ability.” He gives me a meaningful look. “They interrogated me, wanting to know how much you could do besides identifying lies.” Dad stops again to glance out of the kitchen. Apparently satisfied that no one’s listening in, he says, “I was sure that Jake had finally told them.” Dad gently swirls his glass around watching the tea move inside. “So was he lying earlier?” he asks, stopping the swirling to take a sip.
“Lying about what?” I ask.
“About not telling Rogues about you.”
“I only heard him say that he gave them one name, and he wasn’t lying when he said it wasn’t my name.”
Dad looks tired as he scratches the corner of his right eye. The weight he’s put on since getting out of the basement has done nothing for his sunken cheeks, but it has enlarged the bags under his eyes. “Okay then.” He heads out of the kitchen holding the glass at his side. “I’m about to rent a movie,” he says without looking back. “You want to join?”
“No thanks,” I call after him, already contemplating whether or not I should take another pill for good measure.
With the potential for sleep on my horizon, I eagerly go to my room, trying not to think much about what my dad just told me. If I add anything else to my list of things to stress about, I’ll never sleep again.
I pull out the one present I have opened from the bottom of my suitcase. The book cover shows an ebony hand holding a pencil to unlined paper. The hand appears as though it’s just finished writing the title, The Happiness Inside, in large, scrolling cursive letters.
I read over the opening chapter. The book begins with the author’s personal experience with mounting responsibilities and inconsistent routines, which caused a steady stream of stress in her life. I flip a few pages further for a change of topic.
I plop my head back on the pillow after a few minutes, frustrated that the medicine isn’t kicking in yet. I flip through the pages again. What catches my attention is the line, “To improve your life, you first must improve yourself.” Like most of the books my parents have given me over the years, it’s intended for people twice my age.
I continue scanning through the pages until a picture stops me. A woman is sitting Indian-style, her head tilted back where the camera can just make out her closed eyes and relaxed facial features. She looks totally relaxed. I look at the picture longing for that level of relaxation. The caption says it is a photo of the author in a meditation pose. It was taken shortly after she began her search to find inner peace. I decide to start there, in the section about the yoga sessions. I read every word of her yoga experience. With every breath, I inhale peace and exhale the day’s stresses. I release all of it, little by little, until I’m left with only myself. Every worry is gone. It is a transition that takes me from who I am to who I want to be. My body is in control. The depth of my breathing deepens as I begin the flow, pulling my feet to my hips and forming a lotus pose. And at last, I feel my body relaxing.
There is nothing to see when Sidney connects with me. Her eyes are shut, and her breathing is slow and deep. She has been searching for me, filled with the same sense of dread. She plays back my past few weeks, too quick for me to see any one particular memory. But she doesn’t seem to be interested in what I have been doing as much as how I am doing.
I’m safe, I whisper as she catches up on everything she’s missed. I feel her relief for me.
She gives me a taste of what the past week has been like for her. It comes across our connection like a whip on my rear end. She’s been struggling to hide her fear for my wellbeing from her keepers. She has tried to connect with me too. She’s been frustrated.
I don’t even know how to connect in the first place, I point out.
You took something to fall asleep. If we go more than two days without connecting, do it again. She shuffles through my mind again stopping at the last good memory I have of Karen, her sister. She misses her.
She wasn’t on the bus. Uncle Will had Karen go to The Southern Academy with some of the healthy students saved from the raid. They were gone before I had totally come out of my coma. Karen’s age may keep her from being a part of the student body, and her extra chromosome hinders her from replacing any of the teaching staff Uncle Will lost from the raid, but I’m sure she’s a welcomed addition to the campus.
Sidney’s mind drifts, and I can tell she’s thinking about her sister. I push slightly, wanting to see more, but Sidney shoves the memory out of my reach.
Why not? You’ve seen everything in my head, I say.
I can keep secrets, Taylor. At least, when I connect this way.
How do you connect in the first place, I ask. I’ve tried to figure it out before, but now that I’ve gone so long worried about her, it seems unfair that I don’t know how to do it too.
That’s a good question. Our connection falls silent, but she hasn’t gone anywhere.
You’re not going to tell me?
I don’t tell anyone, she says.
I feel almost cheated on. How many people are you connecting with?
Only you, now. It’s become too dangerous to be like us. She shows me a memory I’ve seen before; I see a partially unzipped body bag containing a man with a visible tattooed arm and blood covered shirt visible from the eyes I’m looking through standing over him. She loved him; I can feel it from her, and the immense loss she felt from his death.
If she isn’t going to tell me anyth
ing about connecting, than I’ll try for something else. I show her the image of the mysterious man hovering over her from our last connection. His face is bathed in darkness as the bright light behind him gives off an almost-grey halo around his short hair.
Who is he?
You don’t want to know, she says bitterly.
Without any visuals, I play her his voice, the moment when he threatened me and everyone close to me. His words linger in our connection: “None of you are safe.” She’s unmoved, so I conjure up more of his words: “Running and hiding won’t change the outcome.”
Amusement dances in Sidney’s head as she hears it. This is my life he’s talking about; how could she find this funny?
Oh, get over it. It’s ironic, is all.
As calmly as I can muster I ask, How so?
Because the last part is so true. She pelts me with images. I see people being grabbed in the middle of the day from off of a sidewalk, a father and child pulling out of a driveway and then fast forward to the same vehicle empty being pulled from out of a ravine. Others going willingly. I know without asking that Sidney has connected with all of these people. I know that the last thing she felt from them was terror.
Then, I see a memory she has already shown me. I see her running from a burning house. She takes a much younger Karen with her to a safe house. Well, I thought it was safe, she corrects.
I don’t want to see what’s coming next. She takes pity on me as I relive her memories, allowing the scenes to blur. I guess she doesn’t want to see it any more than I do. But I can still feel the fear as the Rogues chase her, the sense of a needle sliding into skin. When it’s over, both of our minds are mute. I feel the darkness of her mood wash over me in slow, dull waves.
Again, I offer the change in subject. Mom doesn’t think I survived the hospital attack. I show her the memory of my connection with my mother. She didn’t respond to me. But she had to have felt me there.
She thinks you’re dead, Taylor, Sidney says, never one to sugar coat things. People have wild dreams when they sleep. Anyone who’s just lost somebody would think it was just in their mind. But you figured out how to connect with her. I think there’s a trace of pride in her thoughts. It took me much longer to get the hang of things.
I don’t know how to respond. Well, it’s kind of put a target on my back. As soon as I think it, I regret the words. After all, I’m much better off than she is right now.
You think I would tell them about you? After all that? She doesn’t need to remind me of what she’s been through. But still, I can’t get the image of that guy out of my head.
Maybe not intentionally, I say cautiously.
She hits me with flashes of my father, my own memories being pulled to the surface. She throws my reunion with Jake in the basement at me next. I throw my arms around him, pulling him towards me. He stares ahead, numb. I’m not the only one who knows about you, Taylor. Don’t try to pin that on me.
He was scared for my safety, I say defensively.
She makes me watch as Jake pushes me away as he’s telling me that I shouldn’t be there.
He knew you were in danger because he was the one who told the Rogues about you. Why else would they have allowed a Sensaa to live? The longer I’m in the Seraphim world the more I understand what Seraphim like my uncle have had to deal with being Sensaa, who most Seraphim consider to be the lowest of the abilities since we all have the Sensaa ability to some degree. Like my uncle, Jake is also a Sensaa.
Sidney is still talking. Why would they keep someone alive who they knew was raised by Seraphim who hated the Rogue movement? You don’t think it’s funny that they kept him alive? Absolutely not. I know Jake better than I know anyone! Sidney, of anyone, shouldn’t blame him for being traumatized. Think about it, she insists. And she’ll know if I’m not. How did your father look when you found him? How did all the others look? When we found Jake, he was pretty much unscathed, wearing the same school uniform as Kelly and the other students.
He’s young and they thought they could manipulate him. It’s just like the others that were in that school, all the kids the Rogues wanted to use. And then, because I can’t help it: You’re being ridiculous.
I know that she’s just trying to defend herself, but I can’t help feeling a sense of betrayal. Sure, I’ve never met Sidney in person, but I thought of her as closer than a friend. We shared a mind, practically. I don’t think she meant to tell them, but there’s no mistaking how that man reacted when he saw her talking to me. And I would know if she was lying. Don’t be a fool, she says silently. He was in the basement before any of your people got down there. You have no clue what he was doing down there all that time.
She waits for a response, but I think nothing. Or rather, I think too many things to form any intelligible stream of communication. At last, she snaps. He knew, Taylor. He knew what was happening to all of us down there, and he left your father to rot while he sat around playing school, getting three meals a day!
She breaks our connection.
I know with certainty that my dad didn’t give me up to the Rogues who took and tortured him. Jake, on the other hand, may not have given them my name, but other than that he hasn’t said much about what happened to him since he was dragged off his front yard, but we’ve hardly spent any time alone. Even when Jake and Miles sit outside on the veranda, they don’t talk. Usually, Miles chats on the phone with a bandmate or strums his guitar softly. Other than that, it’s silent. A couple times now, he’s joined Dad and me for chats in my room, but even then he mostly listens.
Perhaps I don’t know either of them as well as I’d thought.
Without Sidney in my head and now that I’m finally sleeping somewhat deeply, I am able to dream like a normal person. The inside of my old house unfurls in front of me. I’m in the living room with my parents who appear to be a decade or more younger than they are now. They are in the middle of sword fighting with pencils, and my dream self knows that they’re from our miscellaneous drawer we have always kept in the kitchen. They shuffle in over-dramatized choreography to the living room.
It feels familiar, like a childhood memory that I was too young to hold on to.
Mom wins the duel, her pencil at Dad’s neck. He admits defeat by leaning forward and kissing her on the lips. She drops the pencil, cradling his face within her hands. He tosses his pencil over his shoulder and wraps his arms around the small of her back, pulling her to him.
I awkwardly look around the living room as things heat up. When Dad moves down to kissing her neck, I’ve had enough.
“Break it up,” I say uncomfortably.
Mom lazily looks over at me while Dad continues kissing down the hollow of her neck. She turns back to Dad, stopping him as he’s unbuttoning the top of her blouse. “Did you hear something?” she asks.
“Not a thing,” he says, struggling with the first button.
I look around for something to throw at him. “Not funny, guys,” I say as I reach for one of the small pillows on the couch to toss. But my hand can’t grasp the material. It passes through it like a hologram.
“I have to pee,” Mom says as she pushes Dad away, gently disentangling him.
Suddenly I have the same urge. Mom, Dad, and the entire living room blurs as the dream starts to fade.
“It isn’t my dream,” I say as the blurriness skews my parents’ features.
Mom looks my way again as she fades from the living room. This is her dream.
I try in vain to speak. She hasn’t woken up yet, but the need to go to the bathroom is real and steadily increasing.
Her thoughts turn to me. She pictures me as a toddler, curled up on her lap giggling up at her. Her mind is working in a blurry mess as it struggles to remain asleep. I feel her thoughts turn to an image of the hospital, a sadness spilling over the memory. I see the faces of the two bombers. When they start talking, I realize this is an image from my own memory. It’s all my mother has to go on.
I catch a
flash from her memory that feels more recent. I see a sign-in book with around twenty names written on it. The book is gone before I can make them out.
She will ensure that they pay, all of those responsible. She has thought this out obsessively, meticulously. The people who killed me will suffer every bit as much as she believes I suffered. I feel only quick bursts, flashes of her plans, but it is enough.
She wakes up, and our connection is broken.
I’m left alone, horrified. It is a well-thought-out suicide mission.
Chapter 12
“It’s not a good idea,” Miles tells me. He hands me a third option for his bands’ upcoming album cover. “What do you think of this one?”
“All I want is to drive around the block,” I say. “I need the practice. What’s the point of having a license if I can’t even use it?” I hadn’t actually gotten my driver’s license yet. My sixteenth birthday happen to fall on the weekend that Rogues found and kidnapped my father and the Angelos. I was expecting keys to a car when I got home that weekend, not to find out that my family had been on the run from a murderous group of people who had the same abilities that I had spent my life keeping under wraps from the regular civilians we surrounded ourselves with.
I set the cover design down on top of the first two. All of them have a pirate theme and feel rather gloomy, smoke or fog or something wafting across the images. I’m not going to bring up the fact that this may confuse any potential jazz fans who might otherwise listen to his music. I haven’t been giving him much feedback since none of them stand out the way I know he’s wanting them to. Judging by his face as he hands them to me, he knows that they aren’t that good.
When I don’t comment on the third design, he hands me another from the stack he’s holding. “Plenty of people your age don’t drive regularly.”
The fourth cover design has a solid white background with a black skull and cross bones in the middle. The skull has a red eye patch over one of its empty orbits. I find myself scrutinizing the red eye patch. It vividly stands out against the black and white.
