“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?”
“What if using it kills who you are?” she whispered.
“It won’t,” I promised.
“You can’t know that. “
And I knew I wasn’t going to win this one tonight. We were deadlocked. “Thanks for dinner,” I said, clearing my plate.
“Seraphina, you promise me you aren’t going to try anything.”
I went to the bathroom to take a shower.
“Seraphina!” She sounded frantic.
Somehow, I had to make her understand. If she knew about Zach maybe everything would be different. If I could make her believe me that he existed. First I had to convince him it was a good idea. I wouldn’t break his trust. I hoped he’d come down below later. We so needed to talk.
Chapter Twelve
“I asked Myra Clay to give me a job working for her around the house,” I told Zach that night.
“She’ll never do that,” he said. “She’d never let anyone in.”
“She must get deliveries sometimes.” I knew he was used to her restrictions. But we had to find some way to loosen them.
He focused on the chocolate croissant I’d brought him.
“Zach?”
“It’s no big deal,” he said. “She just … when she goes out, or when a repairman comes, she sorta locks me in.”
I gasped.
“It’s not as bad as it sounds. It’s just so no one finds out.”
Maybe my sensitivity was in overdrive, but I couldn’t swallow, couldn’t talk, couldn’t stand the thought of him locked up like a prisoner, not just in the house, but… “Where?” I asked.
He shrugged. “A small bedroom upstairs.”
“Your dad’s old room?”
He shook his head.
“Like a guest room?”
“Not exactly. And it’s not like I’m up there all the time. I used to think of it as my own little hideout. I’ve got my dad’s old weights up there now so I can exercise. I’m getting stronger.”
“Zach?”
“It’s just one level up from the bedrooms, that way I don’t have to worry as much about being heard.”
One level up from the bedrooms? There was no other level. Only… “She locks you in the attic?”
“Seriously. It sounds way creepier than it is. And I spend most of my time downstairs. It’s only at night and when she goes out.”
“She locks you in at night?”
“You’re making too big a deal of it. And besides, locked in or not, I find my way out. I’m just saying I don’t think it’s likely that she’d hire you, that’s all.”
“And if she did, it would mean more time locked up for you.” Now I hoped she wouldn’t hire me. This whole thing was so messed up. I wished I could fix it for him, fix something, anything in his messed up life.
“There’s something I need to do,” I said. “Something I want to try.” Talking to Luke had given me courage. And I was pretty sure I’d figured out what I’d done wrong with the chipmunk — giving it too much of The Hollow’s energy for its little body.
“What is it?” Zach asked. And there was something about him, sitting there in The Hollow in the moonlight, that for a moment I thought I might want to kiss him. I pushed the thought away, knowing he could never feel the same about a freak like me.
“Come over here,” I said, as I moved to my spot beneath the sequoia.
“Sera,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re not supposed to.”
“You’re not supposed to be here, but you are. And I’m afraid that shutting out the healing might end up being the thing that actually makes me crazy. This could help me understand what the right thing to do is — to give in or not. You’d be doing me a favor. Please?”
He crept over to my side of The Hollow. “Are you sure?”
I nodded. “Are you scared?”
“No,” he said without hesitation.
“It won’t be like with the chipmunk. I know what I did wrong. He was so little. I should have only let a bit of The Hollow go into him. I didn’t remember I needed to control the amount.”
“I’m not afraid,” he said. “I’m only afraid of hurting you.”
My heartbeat sped up. “You can’t,” I replied. “Just sit here beside me and open to the energy I send into your body.”
“If it doesn’t work, don’t be disappointed,” he said, tugging at his jeans.
“It’s okay,” I said, thinking he was the one that was worried it wouldn’t work. “I’m nervous, too. We won’t know until we try.” It had been a long time since I’d healed a human. I imagined roots growing down from my body, intertwining with the roots of the sequoia for strength. “Okay,” I said, “here we go.”
Our eyes met. Heat pulsed between us. I put my hands on his knees — they were solid, he was real. I dropped my shield. At once the power of The Hollow smashed into me along with the pain of Zach’s wounds.
The feeling of damage overwhelmed me. So much damage. The Hollow poured into the deadened, wounded areas. But it was as if they were so starved for healing they pulled me in along with them. And inside there, below the damage raged a raw, rancid pain — as if his initial wounds had been reopened. They burned like nothing I’d ever imagined. It shocked me, like lightning strikes from within. I needed to pull away. It was too much. I couldn’t bear it. I was terrified I’d kill him. But I didn’t know how to pull back, how to make it stop. And there was this magnetism between us that held me to him. I couldn’t let go. I couldn’t breathe. I reared back, pulling The Hollow into myself. Zach’s pain was so huge
, I couldn’t hold it. My head felt like it would split open. I lost all sense of my own body as I fell into the raging chasm.
When I came to Mom was screaming. My head pounded. My skin burned. I was on the front steps of the house. He must have carried me up here, because there was no way I could’ve done it myself. Oh, poor Zach, what I put him through, what he must have thought. At least if he’d managed to get me up here that meant I hadn’t killed him.
“Jesus, Seraphina! What happened? Why are you crumpled out here like this? Did someone hurt you?” Her pink bathrobe felt soft against my face, which burned.
It took all my effort to get words to come out of my throat. “I’m fine,” I lied. My head felt like it was under one of those pounding machines I’d seen at construction sites — crush, crush, crush. And the rest of me felt like it had been thrown from a horse and trampled. There was nothing left but a whisper.
“If you’re so fine, then get up,” she said.
I couldn’t, didn’t even have the strength to sit.
“I’m calling 911.”
“Mom, don’t,” I said. “I just need to rest.”
“What. Happened?”
I shook my head.
She tried to sit me up, but I couldn’t hold myself. “We’re going to the hospital.”
“No, not there!” I cried, using the last of my strength, before passing out again.
The next time I woke up, my clammy sheets wrapped around me. My dry throat felt like it had been laced with sandpaper. My skin felt sunburned. I forced my eyes open. Mom was sitting in the rocking chair that usually lived in her room.
I tried to talk, but my throat was too crackly. She handed me a glass of water with a straw from the bedside table. I slurped down the whole thing, then realized I probably shouldn’t have when I felt it rising back up.
“Anchor it with some food,” Mom said, handing me a couple of crackers.
The saltiness calmed my stomach. “Can you get me something for my headache?” I asked.
She drew a bottle of pills out of the pocket of her flower print dress.
“Prepared as always,” I said, trying to smile. She didn’t smile back. “Shouldn’t you be at work?” I asked.
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