The Athena Effect

by Derrolyn Anderson

  ~

  He took her to the newest burger chain in town, watching her amazing eyes dart around, taking in all the details. She asked him to order for her, and then watched him do it like he was giving a speech. She followed him to a booth, sliding in and inspecting everything on the table.

  She poked at the napkin dispenser and picked up a laminated advertisement to read with her brows knit together. She squeezed the catsup in the little packets from side to side.

  “Have you ever tried this place before?” he asked.

  “I’ve never been to a restaurant before,” she said lightly, like it wasn’t the weirdest thing in the world to say. She was constantly saying the last thing he ever expected to hear.

  He looked at her in amazement, wishing that he’d taken her someplace nicer.

  “So … why didn’t you have electricity?” he asked.

  “We were too far away.”

  “Away from what?”

  “From everything.”

  “So you had no TV?” he asked.

  “I had books.”

  “Where did you go to school?”

  “I didn’t,” she said defensively, getting uncomfortable. All of a sudden she clammed up, folding her arms across her chest. She felt like he was interrogating her, and she remembered her parents’ warnings. She shouldn’t trust anyone, they’d said, and she should keep her abilities to herself. He’d already seen too much of what she could do.

  She met his curious eyes. “How did you know what Caledonia means?”

  He looked sheepish, smiling. “I Googled you.”

  She looked confused. “You what-ed me?”

  “I searched you on the net.” She looked even more baffled, and he realized that she really did grow up without electricity. “You know, on a computer.”

  “Oh … computers. I don’t know how to use them.”

  “It’s not that hard, and you can find out anything you want to know.”

  Her eyes flew open wide. “And you found me?”

  “Not you, just the meaning of your name.”

  She looked down. “The school computer said that there were no records, and they didn’t want to enroll me. It took a long time to get an identification card. My aunt got really mad.”

  “They’re a bunch of morons,” he scoffed. “There are records of everyone. They must not have looked in the right place.”

  She was quiet for a minute, and she looked up at him with the biggest, clearest, most beautiful eyes he’d ever seen. “Could you show me how to search in the nets?”

  “Sure,” he smiled. “What for?”

  “I want to see if my parents had any records.”

  “Okay,” he nodded. “We can do it after we eat.”

  When their number was called he got up, returning with a tray of food. He watched her scarf down her burger and fries like she hadn’t eaten in a week. He was starting to suspect that her aunt didn’t do a very good job of feeding her. She leaned back in the seat with a groan.

  “Are you full?”

  “Completely … I think I ate too much,” she moaned.

  He nodded his agreement. “This food is kind of a gut bomb.”

  She giggled at the imagery like he’d just said the funniest thing in the world. He joined in, and they both started laughing. He was suddenly feeling really happy, and he wished he could make her laugh all the time.

  They climbed back on his bike in the crisp night air, and again, he was acutely aware of her hands on him the whole ride home. He pulled up at the house, relieved to see the place was quiet this time.

  “This way,” he said with a toss of his head, directing her to the front door. She followed him in warily, afraid of what she might find inside. She knew from Angie’s house that evil could be lurking inside, hiding right behind kindness.

  The outside of the house was neglected and rundown, and the inside wasn’t any better. The walls were bare, the furniture sparse. Caledonia peeked in from the entryway to see a sunken living room that opened up to a dining area housing an octagonal table covered with plastic poker chips. The carpet was stained and there were empty bottles and cans piled up on the kitchen counter.

  Cal’s brother and his girlfriend were lounging on a couch that was patched with duct tape, watching a huge television that was mounted on the wall. It was the one new-looking thing in the whole place. They both looked up expectantly.

  “Hey, Cal.”

  “Caledonia, this is Jarod and Crystal”

  Jarod squinted at her, “Hey–I know you! You’re that dog whisperer chick!”

  “She’s the one that helped me break Rufus out of the pound,” Cal said.

  Jarod got up, advancing on her. She held out her hand, but he swept her up into an enthusiastic embrace, clapping her on the back.

  “Thanks, man! You saved his life! If there’s anything I can ever do for you, just say the word!”

  She stood stiffly, not at all sure if she liked him. “You’re welcome.”

  He pulled back, taking a closer look at her. “Whoa! Your eyes are freakin’ awesome! What was your name again?”

  “You can call me Cal.”

  “Cal and Cal?” he asked, looking at his brother with a grin.

  “Cal and Cal,” Crystal repeated from the couch. She squealed, “How cute is that?”

  “I call her Cali,” Calvin said, rolling his eyes.

  Calvin waved for Caledonia to follow him down the hall to his room, flipping on the light and directing her to have a seat on his unmade bed. She could see he was nervous, and she was too, standing awkwardly and looking around at the things that he surrounded himself with.

  The closet stood open, clothes spilling out of it onto the floor, and a messy bookshelf lined the wall opposite the door. She saw more books than she expected, scanning the spines and recognizing a few of the titles. The walls were covered with nicely done pencil drawings of cars and motorcycles, tacked up in between posters of girls in bikinis rolling on sandy tropical beaches.

  Calvin picked up a laptop computer from a bedside table and smoothed the blanket before sitting down and flipping it open.

  “So what are your parents’ names?” he asked her.

  “Mackenzie,” she said, “Jenny–um, Jennifer and David.” He started typing on the keyboard, and she sat down tentatively, leaning over to see the screen.

  “Check it out!” he exclaimed, “There’s a ton of stuff here!”

  She moved a tiny bit closer to see the image on the page he clicked open.

  The first thing she saw was a picture of her parents that looked like it had been taken on their wedding day. Her mother’s big brown eyes were happier than she’d ever seen them, and her father looked so young and hopeful. A flood of emotion overwhelmed her, and she let out an involuntary sob.

  He turned to look at her. He didn’t even have to ask if it was them.

  Tears spilled out of her big eyes, streaming down her face to splash down on her lap, leaving dark spots on her faded jeans. She willed herself to stop crying, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. He could see her shoulders shaking from the force of her suppressed emotion.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, wanting to take her into his arms, but afraid that he might drive her away. He reached over and patted her back gingerly.

  She struggled to regain control, gulping, “I–I don’t have any pictures of them. I thought I’d never see them again. I was afraid that I’d forget how they looked.”

  “I know,” he said. He understood, because he was afraid of exactly the same thing. He’d been fighting to hold onto an increasingly hazy image of his own mother. Caledonia took a deep breath, composed herself and scooted right up next to him. She leaned in for a better look. “What does it say about them?”

  Her hair was coming loose, and she flipped it back over her shoulder, brushing it lightly across his face. She smelled clean, like soap and fresh air, without any of the cloying perfume that the girls at school were usually drenched in.
He took a deep breath in through his nose, turning to focus on the computer screen.

  The picture was from an old newspaper article about the mystery of her parents’ sudden disappearance, and the more they read, the more mysterious it got. The article described recently married graduate students with a bright future; it detailed two lives full of promise, abruptly abandoned. They had disappeared into thin air, all of their material possessions and identification left behind. Foul play was suspected.

  Neither one of them had any relatives to interview, but their landlord described them as “a nice quiet couple who always paid their rent on time” and “reliable.” A professor from the university had posted a huge reward for information on their whereabouts, sending out a heartfelt plea for their recovery. Professor Theodore Reed was quoted as saying, “Those kids were just like family to me. I even walked Jenny down the aisle.”

  “Whoa,” Calvin said, clicking onto a few missing person reports. The more they read, the weirder and weirder the details became.

  Her mother’s name appeared in a listing of MacArthur genius grants, her field of study listed as advanced neuroscience. They learned that both of Caledonia’s parents were brilliant graduate students, working on cutting-edge research in the field of neurosurgery and molecular neurobiology. They had been specifically recruited to come and work for Professor Reed on something called “Project Athena.”

  “They were like, brain surgeons,” Calvin said.

  “I only knew that they met in school,” Caledonia said, looking up at him with sad eyes.

  There was a press release from the university announcing Project Athena, featuring a group photo in the laboratory. Her parents stood flanking the professor, surrounded by six other graduate students that were touted as the best in their respective fields. They all wore white lab coats and broad smiles.

  It was too much to take in all at once, and Caledonia’s shoulders slumped with exhaustion. She fell backwards on the bed, her eyes squeezed shut tight.

  He closed the computer and fell back too, propping up on one elbow and looking over at her. “I don’t understand,” Calvin said, “Didn’t they ever talk about any of this stuff?”

  “No,” she shook her head. “They were always afraid whenever they thought about it.”

  “About what?”

  “About the past. About being found. They thought that someone might be coming for us.”

  “Why?”

  “They told me that if I ever saw a stranger I should hide, because they might try and take me away.”

  His eyes flew open. “Is it because of what you can do with animals?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied, wondering if she should tell him she was learning to do it with people too. She was suddenly afraid that he might not want to be her friend if he knew. Nobody would ever want to be around her because of it. It was a frightening thought.

  He saw the look of fear flicker across her face, and it made his heart ache.

  “Who did they think was after you?”

  “They never said. Something awful happened that they never wanted to talk about. They had these terrible–”

  She checked herself, remembering her parents’ constant warnings to be careful, to never tell anyone who she was, to never show anyone what she was capable of. And here she was, breaking all the rules, spilling her guts like an idiot.

  “Terrible what?” he asked.

  She turned her head to see his dark eyes watching her intensely, thinking how much she wanted to tell him everything. He was thinking that her hair looked so soft that he wanted to reach out and touch it. He reached down and took hold of her hand instead. She didn’t pull it away.

  “I was ten years old before I met anyone aside from my parents,” she confessed.

  “So … you spent your whole life hiding,” he said softly. “No wonder you’re so good at it.”

  She relaxed and started to talk, answering some general questions about her childhood spent in the woods. She eventually told him about her parents’ horrific flashbacks and how they helped each other through their terrifying seizures. She confessed that she suspected it might have been what caused the motorcycle accident.

  She told him about the day of the accident, and how the sheriff refused to let her stay all alone in the remote cabin. Calvin could hardly believe that she had lived in such a primitive way, but Caledonia protested, trying to explain what a happy, safe childhood she’d had.

  “I never felt like I was missing anything. I wish I was back there right now.”

  “What about your aunt?” he asked. “Don’t you like her?”

  Her eyes clouded over. “She’s all right, I suppose.”

  “Why are you always walking around alone at night?” he pressed.

  Now she pulled her hand back and looked away, ashamed. Her own aunt didn’t want her around, and refused to believe her or protect her from Phil; everyone at school thought she was weird. She knew that she didn’t belong here, and so did everyone else.

  Her parents were right. She was as different from other people as her odd eyes were from each other. She concluded that there was something profoundly unlovable about her; she was all wrong. Mama and Papa had probably kept her hidden away to shelter her, knowing that society would summarily reject her.

  “I just want to go back home,” she said sadly.

  “You’d go back … to living like that? All by yourself?” He seemed surprised.

  She nodded without hesitation. “I suppose there’s one thing I’d miss.”

  “What?” he asked, suddenly, irrationally, hoping that it might be him.

  “Hot water,” she said firmly.

  He laughed, and she couldn’t help but join in. She liked the way he sounded, and she liked looking into his smiling eyes, dark as deep pools of water. She relaxed, feeling completely safe for the first time since the accident.

  She looked up at the walls. “You’re a really good artist.”

  He was surprised. “How did you know I drew those?”

  She shrugged. “An educated guess.”

  “But you never went to school,” he teased her, his lazy laughing eyes smiling back at her.

  She found herself growing drowsy, exhausted from a long week of sleeplessness. She felt like she was floating in the warmly colored glow he was casting over her. She yawned, prompting a yawn from him in response that made them both laugh again.

  “Calvin,” she whispered, “Thank you … for everything.”

  Her eyelids grew heavy, fluttered, and finally shut as she drifted off to sleep. Cal got up and bent down to lift her feet onto the bed, feeling a lump on her ankle. He looked up the leg of her jeans to see a leather sheath strapped to her calf. The handle of a large hunting knife was sticking out of it.

  He pulled a blanket over her, tucking it under her chin. He stood there for a minute, admiring the way her golden curls spread out across his bed, marveling at how she could look so innocent and vulnerable, all the while concealing a deadly weapon that he had no doubt she was capable of using.

  He flipped off the light and lay down alongside her as gingerly as possible, careful not to wake her up. He wanted to keep her there, and it surprised him.

  He usually didn’t like to bring girls to his room, preferring to sneak into their bedrooms or apartments so he could leave whenever he pleased. In his experience, girls always ended up trying to control him, claiming him as their boyfriend and vying with each other for his attention.

  He never made any promises, unwilling to let some girl think that hooking up meant anything more than a good time. There would be no strings tying him down; no one would ever control him again.

  But Caledonia was completely different from any other girl he’d ever met. Every little thing she did was interesting; her every gesture fascinated him. She was one surprise after another, and the more he was around her, the more he wanted to be around her. He wanted to know everything there was to know about her.

 
Calvin was amazed by what he’d learned already, but he sensed that she was holding something back, and it made him even more curious than ever. Her talk about leaving town bothered him, but he reminded himself that she was bound to disappear into thin air someday, like the ghost he first thought she was.

  Like her parents had before her.

  But she was here right now, and he lay as still as he possibly could, listening to her regular breathing. For some reason, he felt strangely peaceful.

  ~

  Chapter Nine

  CARNIVAL