Heal Me (A Touched Trilogy Book 2)

by Angela Fristoe

  He nodded and folded me into a comforting hug. When I was little, Dad’s hugs were like being wrapped in blanket that would squeeze all of my fear and pain away. I tightened my grip on him, wishing I could get that feeling back.

  “I’m worried about you, sweetheart,” Dad said, his breath brushing the curls along the top of my head. The prickling along my skin had already told me how worried he was. “You’re not the same and I don’t think I realized how different you were until the past few weeks. But I don’t know how to help you.”

  “It’s not something you can help me with, Dad.”

  His arms tightened for a moment and he pressed a kiss to the top of my head, then he let me go, his concern only a vague impression as the calm I’d given him settled in. “Just promise me that if things get bad...”

  “I promise.” I didn’t need him to say Dylan’s name to know he was worried I’d make the same choices.

  “Good, good.” He walked over to his recliner and sat down, pulling the remote control from the pouch hidden along the side of the chair. “How was bowling?”

  “It was okay, but I wasn’t really in the mood. I’m going to finish up some homework and maybe watch a movie.”

  He waved me off, already focused on his search for a show to watch. I headed downstairs and while there was no homework, I did watch a movie. I fell asleep halfway through and woke up only when Phoebe came in. I pretended to be sleeping when she checked on me, waiting until she’d been in her room a few minutes before quietly making my way to my bedroom. She would just hound me with questions about either Micah or Nathan and frankly I was tired of thinking about Micah and Nathan held no interest for me, especially when Phoebe’s questions would involve seeing him naked.

  Chapter 15

  At first, I tried pushing everyone out, like Owen had managed to get me to do at the bowling alley. It had been exhausting, even more than it would have been to heal all of them. I went back to eating outside or alone at one of the tables in the corner of the cafeteria, avoiding people as much as possible. It was either that or be tempted into going on a touching frenzy again.

  Chloe and I had yet to talk about what had happened and the tension didn’t seem to be lessening. We pretended nothing was wrong and I wanted to simply ignore it until it was simply a bad dream, but that didn’t seem to be happening. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore and that Friday after school, I went to her room.

  I knocked on the door, and then pushed it open. “Chloe?”

  “Hey.” She sat on her bed, papers scattered in front of her, looking surprised to see me. I couldn’t blame her for that. Even before things had happened with Micah, or even Dylan, I’d never been one to seek my sisters out. They were both high drama, always ready to confront people.

  “So...”

  “Are you guys finally going to talk?” Phoebe stopped beside me in the doorway. “Thank God. Chloe’s moping is even more annoying than yours.”

  I rolled my eyes, stepped into the room, and swung the door shut on her. Phoebe could only make a situation worse. There was a pause between Chloe and me, while we both tried to figure out what to say.

  “Lils, I never would have gone out with Micah if I knew you guys were...” she finally said and I nodded. “Why didn’t you tell me about you and him?”

  “I didn’t want anyone to know. It all happened so quickly.”

  “Explain it to me.”

  “I don’t think I can.”

  “Try.”

  I closed my eyes as a sigh escaped my lips. “Why? It’s over.”

  “Because I need to know.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to know why you were sleeping with a guy who wasn’t your boyfriend, why you were passing out, why you didn’t tell me you were hurting, why you told Phoebe all about this but not me.”

  She was hurt. I’d always assumed Phoebe and Chloe were the emotionally indestructible ones. They fought, argued, got mad, but never really got hurt, at least not by me. She wanted to know things I wasn’t sure I wanted her to. It would be so easy to simply reach out and take that hurt from her, but that would just delay the inevitable, because Chloe would simply keep coming back to it until she got her answers.

  “Everything was just gone. I didn’t feel anything. At least, I didn’t feel anything myself. All of the emotions in me were from other people, but with Micah, I felt something inside of me, that didn’t come from another person and I didn’t want it to stop. I wanted more. As for not saying anything, it felt wrong to talk about it. It’s private. I know you and Phoebe talk about stuff like that with your friends, but it makes me uncomfortable.”

  “You told Phoebe all about it,” she huffed.

  “No, I didn’t. She guessed.”

  She looked mildly pacified for a moment before she began shuffling the papers in front of her. Her nerves practically vibrated and swarmed me with their strength.

  “Nothing happened with Micah,” she said. “Okay. No. We kissed. But not like that. I mean it was, but it wasn’t. It felt like one of those things we had to do, you know? But neither of us really felt anything and it was kind of awkward. And after it felt weird, like I’d kissed a brother or something. So, there’s nothing there. Between us, I mean.”

  “Chloe,” I interrupted. “It’s over.”

  “But, are we okay now?”

  “You’re my sister.”

  “So? You know Phoebe wouldn’t let this go.”

  “Yeah well, Phoebe also broke up with Nathan for some stupid reason and then made all of us suffer for weeks before she finally admitted how ridiculous she was being.”

  She snorted a laugh and let a smile break through. I forced myself to smile back. We would be good again. No guy was worth losing my sister over.

  “Do you want me to try looking into your future?” she asked, her head still down. Her guilt said she’d already done it.

  I thought about what Owen had said, that I needed hope. Having Chloe tell me what she saw in my future made that impossible to believe in. If she saw me without Micah, there’d be no hope for us. If she saw me with him, I wasn’t sure I could trust in that vision. She had missed so many things and even been wrong about a few. I’d always wonder if she was wrong about me.

  “No. I’m happy not knowing.”

  I went back to my room, closing the door and turning the lock behind me. Phoebe had developed a bad habit over the last few months of barging in. She’d always done it, but it was becoming a daily occurrence.

  Grabbing one of my magazines off my nightstand, I belly flopped onto my bed. It was one of my favorite art magazines and even though it was an old edition I’d picked up from a garage sale, I loved flipping through it again and again. I use to dream about having my work in there one day along with an article about my own gallery showing. Mrs. Stewart, the art teacher, had quickly dashed those dreams. A successful artist requires pure talent along with technique, and sadly, I had neither. I wondered what Dad would say if I told him I was thinking of going for a degree in art history. He’d probably start talking about back up plans and double majors.

  Eventually, I placed the magazine back in place on the nightstand and rolled onto my back. College seemed so far off, but I knew it wasn’t. Even Phoebe had sent off some applications. Maybe I was already too late. A year off wouldn’t be horrible. I could take my time and figure out where I wanted to go and if art history was really what I wanted. I could work or travel. Of course, in order to travel I would need money and a car. Neither of which I could picture Dad just giving me. Work was more likely.

  I flicked off my table lamp and stared up at my stars. Dylan’s drew my eyes immediately. What would I have done if he were still here? I couldn’t even remember talking to him about my plans. Most of the time he talked about us going to Stanford or Harvard. Had he ever considered that neither of those schools would have seen me as a prospective student?

  I pushed Dylan to the back of my mind. It didn’t matter anymore what he wo
uld have thought or done. There was nothing he could do.

  I forced myself up and over to my desk to do my homework. With a history and English paper due on Monday I wanted to double check my editing before Phoebe sucked me into doing hers first. Besides homework was the best way for me to get my mind off everything else.

  School became bearable and I didn’t spend a moment moping about Micah. I refused to do that. Micah and I wanted completely different things, or people really. It was a fact I could accept. Still, I found myself hovering on the edge of Phoebe’s group of friends. Not really with them, but not on the outside either. They tried to include me, even Micah did, occasionally asking me things, trying to draw me closer to them. But I couldn’t. I needed to hold myself together, find a way to get through the days until somehow I found my way out. Each day it was easier to accept Dylan’s absence, to be apart from Micah. I was finding a way to be myself.

  My schoolwork was getting more attention than ever and somehow I was making an A in English. Although, I suspected that had to do with Ms. Garcia feeling bad about the disastrous character analysis. With my homework done and double-checked, I curled up in bed and tried to picture a happy place that didn’t conjure thoughts of Micah, Dylan or my mom.

  The next morning, I awoke with a sweat. I’d dreamed of Mom. That wasn’t unusual this close to the anniversary of her death. The dreams start off nice enough. She’s with Dad at the hospital, finally giving in to the doctor’s request to do a c-section. She radiates happiness at finally seeing us, but even then, there’s a dark and heavy feeling to her. She turns hazy after they gave her some medication. Then we’re there with her and she holds each of us. We are grown, yet she coos to us and cradles our heads to her chest as if we are babies.

  I feel something is wrong. When she holds me, I scream at the agony of what she is holding in. There is no way to describe what it is, only that it is the most devastating thing I’ve ever felt.

  My arms flail as I try to latch onto her, but they refuse to cooperate and she passes me to my father. I can no longer scream the pain is so bad. I lay staring at the white tiled ceiling, whimpering as I feel her life drain away until finally I wake.

  I wiped the sweat and tears from my face and reached for my water glass. The cool water soothed my ragged throat. I may not have screamed tonight, but the memory of it lingered. When I finally get out of bed, I know where I need to go.

  Most people find cemeteries cold and sad places, but for me I found peace there. I use to go to Mom’s grave every week, then Dylan and I had started dating and I’d gone less and less. It had been nearly eight months since I’d last been. Dylan’s memorial service had been at the funeral home and I hadn’t gone to the graveside service, although I’m not sure why. My memory of that time was permanently foggy.

  I walked to Mom’s grave without hesitating. Each step was as familiar as the walk from our driveway to the front door. The gravel path between the rows was neatly groomed and the grass trimmed. Fresh flowers lay against the small headstone etched with her name. Uncle Silas and Aunt Lita always came a week before the anniversary of her death. Picking up the flowers, I moved them to the side and sat down with my back against the headstone. The coldness of the stone quickly made its way through my thin cardigan and t-shirt.

  My eyes drifted closed and I took in a deep breath. The pain my mom suffered as she died pulsed through me as it always did when I came here and I struggled to pull in more air. After a few moments, the pain lessened and my limbs went slack as if my life were drained from me, just as it had her. The hard stone kept me upright, and the impression of letters and numbers dug into my back.

  “Even then you wanted to help.”

  My eyes flew open to see Nanna standing a couple of feet away, her face wrinkled with the gentle smile she wore. She looked so much older than she had short weeks ago. The anniversary of Mom’s death was hard on her still. It was an aching hole that never soothed or fully healed. There’d been a time when my touch could bring her a moment’s peace, but that had slowly faded over the years. Her hands trembled slightly as she held one out to me. I grasped it and she stood for a moment staring through me into my past. Finally she leaned into my hold as she knelt then sat beside me.

  “You’ve always cared so much, trying to take care of everyone else. It used to worry me that you never stopped to take care of yourself.” She laid an arm over my shoulder and pulled me in until my head rested on her shoulder and she could run her hand along my head.

  “I didn’t need to take care of myself,” I said softly.

  “Didn’t you?” She sighed and squeezed me closer. “Healing is a difficult gift to possess. I remember how your uncle Silas struggled when he was younger. He hated everything to do with his gift. Knowing every feeling the people around him had and why. It took him a long time to find a way to control it.”

  “I use to think my ability was a gift, but now I wonder if it’s not a curse. It’s horrible,” I said, surprising myself with how I described my ability. Tears pooled in my eyes and slid slowly down my cheeks. “I constantly hurt and even when I try to help, it doesn’t really heal anyone. I tried with Dylan, so many times, but he still...he still killed himself. What if I hadn’t taken away his anger and pain all of those times? Maybe he would have gotten help.”

  “We’ll never know what would have happened with Dylan, but that doesn’t mean what you did was wrong, or caused him to do what he did. Dylan made a choice and that’s it.”

  “That’s not it, Nanna. He didn’t have a choice. All of those times I was supposed to heal him happened whether he wanted it to or not, whether I wanted to or not.”

  “Maybe it’s what needed to happen, regardless of what was wanted.” She looked at me and I tried to avoid her gaze. “What’s making you question yourself so much?”

  “Someone said that what I do is stealing. That people need the pain and anger to move forward.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “I think he’s right.”

  “Perhaps, but this is more than you wondering if people need to feel those things. So why are you asking all of these questions now?”

  I pursed my lips and picked at a blade of grass that tickled my leg. “I don’t understand why it hurts all the time. It doesn’t matter if I heal someone or not, their emotions burn through me.”

  “And you want to know why?”

  “Yeah.”

  “When you feel someone’s anger or pain, how do you feel?”

  “Like I’m on fire.”

  “And what do you feel for them?”

  “Sympathy, I guess. I feel bad that they are suffering.”

  “But are they really suffering? Or is your friend right? Are they are healing themselves?” Nanna asked. I shrugged and glanced at her, wondering where she was going with this. “Have you considered that the sympathy you have for them is what’s causing you to lack control?”

  “How can I not have sympathy for them? I can feel everything they are going through. Do you know how hard it was to even be near Dylan’s mom? I saw her the other day and it was suffocating. There was this huge ache in her that squeezed my chest so hard I wasn’t sure I could breathe. I couldn’t walk away from her. I had to heal her.”

  “Lily, dear, I’m not saying you should walk away. But you can’t heal them either, at least not the soul deep hurts that make people who they are. I’ve seen the effect you have on people. I’ve experienced it. You take all of the bad and leave nothing in its place. Perhaps that is why it doesn’t heal everyone. Instead of trying to take it all away, give them something to hold onto.”

  “I don’t have anything to give.”

  “You don’t need to give them anything. Most people have something good there, no matter how small, you just need to search for it. Find and let them feel it again.”

  The idea terrified me. What if I tried and it didn’t work? What if it just made everything worse? My head drop onto her shoulder and I drew in a deep breath. She
took my hand in hers and squeezed.

  “Are you going to ask about Micah?” she asked after a few minutes of silence.

  “Micah?” I glanced up at her confused.

  “You’re healings are different with him. I’ve seen it. You spend a lot of time with him, yet you’ve only done a few transfers with him and when you do it causes you to faint. Tell me about it.”

  I struggled to find the words to describe what happens. Nanna waited patiently, simply holding my hand.

  “I don’t know why he’s so different. Sometimes I can feel his emotions and yet nothing transfers. The times I do heal him are so intense I completely black out. I have no memory of the actual transfers. I just wake up a bit tired.”

  “Tired? Is that all?”

  “Sometimes I feel relaxed or at least more aware of what is inside of me. Do you think something is wrong with my ability?”

  “No, not with you.” She gripped my hand tighter, raising it as she looked at me questioningly. I nodded, giving her permission to search my past deeper. She bent her head slightly and her eyes drifted closed. A moment later she opened them again. “I see Phoebe’s being as nosy as ever. I do admit, I’m surprised Chloe hasn’t noticed anything odd about Micah. Though I suppose she is too busy worrying about that Andrew boy.”

  I’d wondered if she were able to look into my sisters’ lives through me. Now I knew. Even avoiding Nanna your past wasn’t safe from her prying. “What’s so odd about Micah?”

  “From what I saw through you and your sisters, Micah is most likely a buffer. I’ve only met a few buffers in my lifetime.”

  “What is a buffer?”

  “It means that somehow he manages to prevent your gift, and most likely Chloe and Phoebe’s gifts, from working on him. I imagine that when he finally lets it through, it can be powerful. Buffers are typically very private people, unwilling to share the intimate patys of their lives. Which is why most our family’s gifts don’t work on them. Many buffers are fearful of being hurt and that fits the Micah you’ve shown me. He wants to feel the comfort he thinks your gift holds, but at the same time he resists it because to lose that hold on his emotions means risking who he is.”