Bright Star

by Grayson Reyes-Cole

  “I am blessed.”

  Rush scoffed audibly and bit into a piece of chicken. Jackson didn’t believe it either. “How did you get up there? Who attacked you?”

  “I told you, Jackson.” She didn’t raise her voice, but he could tell her patience was wearing thin. “It doesn’t matter.”

  Jackson thumped his fists against the table in frustration. He didn’t like puzzles. He didn’t like that this beautiful woman was keeping a secret from him or his brother’s cryptic smirk. He pushed back from the table and covered his eyes with his hands again. Gradually, he was able to slow his breathing and his heart rate. Gradually, he was able to make out that scene on the top of that building. He saw her lying there. He saw himself at her side. He began tapping his forehead with his fingertips unconsciously as he tried to force the images to go in reverse. It didn’t happen as readily as he wanted, and already he tasted bile. He hadn’t done that good of a job preparing himself.

  He felt an intrusion and a jolt that he knew to be Rush. Rush was easing his path as he struggled. The images behind his eyelids jumpstarted and he saw Bright Star with her arms out, leaning over the rail of the roof into the frigid, wet wind. She smiled as if she had just found home. Jackson was struck with how perfect she looked.

  Then she leaned back and turned around. She picked something up out of a bag on the ground. She leaned down again and came up with a glinting, black-handled chef’s knife and a thermos. Jackson recognized the knife as the one he’d pulled from her near lifeless body. Bright Star twisted the cap on the thermos until it came free. She tossed it into the bag. Then she poured some of the contents into the hand holding the knife. At first, Jackson could only see that it was water. Then she turned and went to the edge of the roof again. She held one hand over the mouth of the thermos as she poured with the other. Water dribbled out from the cracks in her fingers. She made a small, tight fist. When she opened her hand once again, it was littered with tiny red blossoms. Blood.

  Before Jackson could begin to guess, Bright Star turned up the glass to her lips and drank the whole mixture of water, acid, glass, and chamomile. When she was done, she staggered, but still managed to put the thermos away in her bag. Then she gripped the knife in both hands, holding it high, the blade pointed inward. She smiled wide, rapture on her lips, then plunged the blade into her gut, just below her sternum. It sank in to the hilt. This time she fell. She lay there for more moments than Jackson cared to count, then the bag disappeared and he saw himself standing in front of her.

  Jackson shook his head to come back from the memory and stood up. Unfortunately, he took part of the tablecloth with him and all the items on top of the table spilled off. Bright Star dropped to her knees and began cleaning up the mess.

  Jackson backed away and kept backing away until his back came against the wall. He couldn’t take his eyes off the girl whose russet head was bent over the busy task of cleaning up his mess.

  “You tried to commit suicide,” he accused.

  With that, her glowing eyes actually beamed hot blue light at him. She stood, drawing herself up impressively even though she was a good deal shorter than he was. “I didn’t.”

  “But, I saw you,” Jackson yelled pointing at her.

  “I know what you saw,” she agreed. “And it is true that what happened on that roof I did to myself. But I didn’t commit suicide, nor was I trying.” Finally, she looked over at Rush and her eyes found his, directly. “Rush didn’t let me die.”

  “Jackson didn’t want you to die,” Rush replied as if that answered all questions.

  “You saved me,” Bright Star spoke to him in a forceful tone. “Jackson, I would not kill myself. I did it for Rush. I did it because… I just wanted your brother to understand.”

  “To understand what?” Jackson asked horrified. “What could hurting yourself possibly make him understand?”

  Bright Star opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out. No words. She tried again to the same outcome. For a moment, her eyes looked mutinous. Then she was docile again. The bright blue dimmed. She dropped to her knees and went back to cleaning up the mess on the floor.

  “Why won’t you let her tell me why she did it?” Jackson came to stand eye to eye with his brother.

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “That’s not your fucking decision, Rush!” Jackson growled. “I don’t care what she said. That girl tried to kill herself last night and I demand to know why.”

  Bright Star raised her head and, this time, Rush did not stop her words. “Jackson, I’m not suicidal. I never appreciated life until I met your brother, and now I think I appreciate it more than anyone else does in the universe. No, I didn’t try to kill myself, I only gave Rush an opportunity to save me.”

  “You what?” Jackson gasped, brushing his palm over his head.

  “Because that’s his destiny.”

  Had the answer been less dramatic, Jackson would have been inclined to believe it. But this he couldn’t handle. Here was a girl who had chewed poisoned glass and plunged a knife into her delicate body trying to tell him about destiny. He started to laugh. She was crazy.

  “I’m not crazy,” she argued, picking the thought directly from his mind. “I’m not.” She looked at Rush again, who remained painfully silent as she pleaded with Jackson. “Please listen. If you believe in Shift and you believe in High Energy, then you know there are some things greater in this world than what we can see, taste, hear, smell, or touch.”

  “Of course I know that.”

  “Then if you know it, you must know that sometimes we can overcome time and space.”

  “Parameters of Shift 101,” Jackson retorted with condescension. “I know that as well.”

  “Then how can you not understand or at the very least entertain the thought that there may be a destiny for all of us. That it already exists. There, perfect, waiting, and that we might be able to see it ahead of time?”

  “I’m not denying that,” Jackson argued. “But are you telling me that Rush’s destiny was to save you on a friggin’ rooftop last night?”

  Rush swallowed audibly. He watched them both intently.

  “Yes and no,” Bright Star offered. She put out a hand in entreaty. “What happened last night was fate. That was like a beginning, though it wasn’t. Destiny does not start or stop. It culminates. Manifests. Events lead up to it. All events lead up to it. This was just one such event.”

  “You don’t believe this.”

  “I believe it.” She came around the table and grabbed his forearm in a firm grip. “I believe it, and you will believe it.

  Jackson rolled his eyes and puffed his cheeks out. She stepped away from him.

  “Okay, fine.” He halted her. “Where does Rush’s destiny culminate?”

  “Jacob Rush will save the world!” Bright Star proclaimed with a joy so strong that she laughed and clasped her hands together.

  Jackson started laughing for an entirely different reason. This had to be a joke, a preposterous one at best, but a joke just the same. He laughed so hard tears started in his eyes and he sank bank into his chair holding his stomach.

  “How long did you think this could go on?” he asked his brother, who had never once, not even when they were children, played a practical joke on him.

  “It’s not a joke, Jackson,” Rush said. “And for the record, I don’t believe any of it either. It’s preposterous, just like you think, but she’s not kidding. That’s why I told you to leave her alone. She really believes what she’s saying. She does. And there’s no telling what she’s willing to do to prove it.”

  Jackson sobered. His brother, in his own expressionless way, looked petrified. There was something about his demeanor, the way he sat on the edge of his chair. The way he had finally stopped eating. This was no joke.

  “Why does she have to prove it?” he questioned hesitantly. “If it’s your destiny to save the world, then why can’t she just wait until you do it?”

  “Ja
ckson,” Rush returned. “Sometimes you’re brilliant. Bright Star, if it’s my destiny, then won’t the deed be its own proof?”

  Bright Star did not address either brother. She succeeded in getting all of the debris off the floor and back onto the table where she folded the ends of the tablecloth over the mess and tied it up so she could take the bundle to the kitchen closet. She was dressed in all white again. A pair of white slacks. A white sweater with a low neck. White shoes. He didn’t get any of this.

  “Are you crazy?” He posed the question as if it were a question that ever elicited more than one answer.

  “No.” She shook her head with its silken red locks, took her bundle, and left the room.

  Of course, she would say no. When she was gone, Jackson and Rush faced each other. “Now do you understand why she has to go?”

  “No,” was Jackson’s answer. “Now I see why she needs our help. She’s obviously a danger to herself, Rush. You and I both know that. If we turn her out now, there’s no telling what she might do to herself.”

  “Jackson, we are not psychiatrists. We can’t help her. Don’t you think she belongs somewhere where people really know how to help?”

  Jackson’s mouth came open in shock. What Rush had just suggested was unthinkable. Where people really know how to help?

  “Jackson,” Rush attempted to soothe the effect of his last words. “It won’t be the same.”

  “People in institutions do not understand how to handle Shifters. Most of the world still doesn’t even believe High Energy exists. I was lucky to go into the Service. At least they knew what it was. They understood how to handle it. They trained me to use it to…” Jackson choked off those last words as he felt the old emotions wash over him.

  “Then take her to the Service.” Rush leapt on his brother’s words. “You were quick to suggest it for me.”

  “You’re stronger than she is—”

  Rush ignored that comment. “You’re the one who said I had to be trained. You can take her there. Take her to Ronald—”

  “Randall—”

  “Whatever. He won’t be able to resist getting his hands on someone like her. He’ll monitor her twenty-four hours a day. You can’t do that. Leave it to someone who can.”

  The option had not occurred to Jackson. Still, as quickly as he considered it, he disposed of that as an option. “She won’t go there.”

  “But, Jackson, you just said—”

  “You should see the way they hold Thad.”

  “Thad goes voluntarily.”

  “Thad realizes he’s a threat to others.”

  Rush started to say something but Jackson interrupted. “She is only a danger to herself.”

  “You don’t know that—”

  “And, I don’t think they will understand how to help her. She’s unstable, but all they will care about is her Talent. They’ll keep her physically alive, but they won’t take care of her mental health.”

  “That’s not true, and you know it. You’ve told me so many times how they help Shifters deal with their Talents. As you well know, Shifters have a higher incidence of emotional and behavioral problems.” Rush was regurgitating everything Jackson had told him over the years.

  “This is different. Bright Star is different. She is vulnerable,” Jackson’s voice broke, betraying his attempt to sway his brother.

  “Not as vulnerable as you think.”

  “You might have saved her, Rush, but you weren’t there.”

  “Why didn’t you call the police, Jackson?”

  “What?”

  “Why didn’t you go after her ‘attackers,’ Jackson?”

  “I don’t—”

  “Why did it never occur to you to take her to her own home, Jackson?”

  Rush’s little brother had no answers.

  “Vulnerable?” Rush gave a nasty chuckle. “Vulnerable, Jackson? She’s not fucking vulnerable. She played you like a goddamned piano, man. That woman in there is not Mom.” Rush stated soulfully. “She’s not being persecuted or ostracized for being different. We are not casting judgment on her without all the facts. She is not broken the way our mother was broken. You know Randall Sandoval. He might be an asshole, but he would make sure she was treated well. And she truly is dangerous. You’ve seen it with your own eyes. Our mother was not crazy. She was unhappy, very unhappy, but not crazy. Please,” he begged, “don’t get the two of them confused. Bright Star will hurt people.”

  “She only hurt herself.”

  “She will hurt others,” Rush declared.

  “So what? You can see the future, too?” Jackson snarled this with sarcasm. He nearly bit his tongue when his brother only glared his affirmation at him.

  “Please send her away or at least get your Service to take her, Jacks. You know Sandoval won’t turn her away once they see what she can do.”

  Jackson thought about that long hidden memory. He thought about his mother saving him from the knife and the way she had stripped him of that memory for his own protection. She didn’t want her own special, precious child to look on her with the disdain she’d felt her whole life. He considered Bright Star and her fragile nature. He thought of her lying near dead on a rooftop from self-inflicted wounds. Then, he thought of the rock that was in his pocket at that very moment. He had taken that rock from a man he considered a friend. A man who was now strongly sedated, whose only words from time to time were “my rock.”

  Jackson knew what would happen. They would test her, hold her, study her the way they had when he was boy, the way they still wanted to now. They would hurt her and not even know it and expect him to help like he had with Thad. He couldn’t do that to her. He couldn’t. “I can’t do that,” he told his older brother. But, Rush was no longer there.

  Electricity

  Bright Star had been in their home more than a month before it happened again. She had a bedroom. She was there for meals that she sometimes prepared. She watched TV with them from time to time. She was learning all of the shortcuts in the virtual racing game they played. Her clothes were there, though Jackson was not sure when that happened. Hell, he didn’t even remember them having a third bedroom. Jackson saw her when he left for work in the morning and found himself looking forward to seeing her when he came home. Jackson found himself talking to her about his day. He would tell her what he had seen at the Service, what he’d been asked to do, and the new things he had learned about High Energy.

  Bright Star didn’t pay rent or utilities as far as he knew, but somehow that didn’t matter, either. Her presence had become so much a part of their lives that Jackson could barely remember the time without her. She was like the water in the pipes, the signal in the radio, the electricity in the wires.

  Rush had become more of a recluse than ever. Jackson barely saw him. But Bright Star was there when he left for work, and there when he came home. She sat with him and ate with him. She laughed with him and, Jackson believed, was happy with him. Perpetually in action, she cleaned and cooked and followed Rush around whenever he deigned to come out of his room. And she always took time to practice newer and more difficult Shifts with Jackson as a witness.

  Sometimes, Jackson liked to practice with her. It was at those times that he was more and more amazed with her significant Talent. For a civilian, she had amazing control over her High Energy. From birth, Jackson had always known his power to be great; greater than anyone that had ever walked the earth. That was due to being Precocial, they theorized at the Service. He’d had the gift from birth so it had more time to grow and develop. As with all other aspects of a child’s formative years, the potential to grow was exponentially greater than in a teenager or adult. It was the reigning theory, but Jackson was beginning to doubt that was the only reason.

  In his own family he had discovered two other Shifters who seemed to have greater ability than he. Amazing. When he was young and his Talent had been first recognized, Jackson remembered that the Service had tested his entire family. Everett, Jani
e, and Jacob. None of them had shown the slightest signs of having the power to Shift. But that had been nearly twenty-five years before, and the technology—traditional and Shift-enhanced—had been nowhere near as advanced. He wondered how they would all fair today.

  Bright Star, he already knew, would test off the charts. As they practiced, they would focus on a single item and start with light shifts. One day, they each began with a plastic cup with their signatures on them. Bright Star stood casually barefoot in faded jeans, a white shirt, and giant white hoops in her ears. She raised only an eyebrow and the cup with her signature levitated from the table into thin air. Jackson did the same with his own cup.

  Bright Star’s cup wiggled a little from side to side. Jackson’s cup did the same. He couldn’t suppress the smile caused by the hum of controlled High Energy coursing through his body. Bright Star’s cup went up and down, so did Jackson’s. Bright Star walked over to her levitating cup and slipped off the shiny white band she always wore on her left ring finger. She put it in the cup marked Bright Star, then the cup disappeared. Jackson slipped off his watch then put it in his cup and that one disappeared at Bright Star’s will as well.

  “Now bring it back,” Bright Star ordered, exposing a dimpled cheek.

  Jackson grinned at her then closed his eyes. He slowed his breathing then held up one hand as he searched for the distinct Energy frequency that was the cup. Like a deep red thread, so dark it was almost invisible, Jackson read the link to the cup. Ah. She hid it in Rush’s closet. How expected, Jackson thought sardonically.

  “OK,” he said brandishing the cup and giving her ring back. “Bring mine back.”

  Then, with a slight bit of more visible effort, she closed her eyes and held her hands up as if she were being robbed. Then she reached one out and plucked the cup from the air. She dumped Jackson’s watch out in his palm. Jackson chuckled until he realized she wasn’t done. With her other hand, she plucked another cup with his signature on it from the air and dumped that watch in his hand as well. It was the same one with an identical energy. It was real, not a suggestion with identical Energy. Impossible. Bright Star produced a third cup, and a fourth and fifth. All frighteningly, exactly the same. She was reaching for another before Jackson’s hand clamped around her wrist. He didn’t mean to hurt her, but this wasn’t right. That was not the way High Energy worked. He swallowed deep and his heart thumped aggressively in his chest.