by Lee Davidson
I consider it. The bright side is not having to strain myself with the pain of blocking; the dark side is that Billy gets another shot. And Evelynn, too. I have my doubts that either will play nice.
After a few seconds of weighing the options, I agree.
He claps his hands. “Excellent.” He blows the whistle and everyone gathers around him.
“Grant has graciously agreed to let each of you block him today. For some of you, this will be the second time. The purpose of this exercise is to test Grant’s stamina…”
Whoa, what? That’s not why I signed up.
“…and also to possibly give each of you a healthy does of failure. After many years of success, I think this will prove to be a humbling opportunity on all accounts.”
And I think Jonathan has lost his mind. My stamina? Meaning, like, we’ll go until I fail? Or until my mind cracks in half by way of multiple personality disorder?
Everyone is lining up before I can argue. Billy wears a smile so big he could compete with Willow. He would have been first in line if Evelynn hadn’t used her barely-clad hip to knock him out of the way. God, help me.
Jonathan is way too eager about this. “Whenever you are ready.”
“Maybe tomorrow,” is what I want to say, but before I can, Evelynn has already said, “Do whatever you want.”
What the heck does she mean?
“Haze,” she says. The black, iced wall is gone as quickly as it came.
Holy—
She’s beautiful. And those lips, those full, wet lips. I have to taste them. Now! I can’t get to her fast…
No, you moron!
Kiss her!
No!
“No!” I yell, three inches from her face when I gain my bearings and my blue sight. “I thought we had moved past this.”
“Doesn’t mean I can’t still have a little fun with you,” she says and smiles. I smile back because of her changed demeanor, which is now more playful than wicked. She huffs her peppermint breath in my face and does a runway walk to the back of the line.
Billy steps up like he’s just won the lottery. “Do whatever.” He shows his pointy teeth. “Haze.”
I hardly notice the darkness or the temperature drop because all I notice is Jackson. He’s short, yes, but he’s…hot! Who knew someone like him would be my type? Me, that’s who! He’s gorgeous! There’s no other word to describe…
What the heck is wrong with you?
Go get him, Tiger.
Huh?
No! No! No! “No!”
Billy laughs while heated anger crawls up my face. Thankfully, no one else knows what he was trying to plant in my head.
I try to telepathically deliver my thoughts to Jonathan so he’ll stop this nonsense, but he’s choosing not to read my mind right now. Figures.
I’m unable to make eye contact with Jackson when he steps up.
“Come after me,” Jackson says.
Oh, dear God.
“You all right, man?”
“Oh. You mean like attack?” I ask.
Billy’s laughter belts out loud enough that the others turn toward the back of the line.
“Yeah, of course. What else—”
“Go!” I yell.
After the confusion leaves his face, he gives the order and the cold, black wall comes for an instant.
I want to back up. Badly. My feet should not be forced to carry me forward anymore.
Back away, man, back away…
No, stupid!
Back away!
Two inches from driving my shoulder into Jackson’s head, I manage to stop myself. My breath comes a little faster. “I can’t attack you, but I can’t back away either. Sorry.”
Before Reed gets his chance, Jonathan announces the end of training, but relief doesn’t have a chance to set in before he adds that we’ll be picking up with the same torturous drill next time. Billy may as well be giving Evelynn a fist bump.
I walk slowly towards the doors, hoping my plan to wait for Trina is not too obvious.
Trina ends her conversation with Jonathan and skips up the hill. When she gets close to me, I say, “Can I talk to you for a sec?”
“Sure,” she answers.
I steer her into one of the empty hallways off the lobby, internally freaking out because I have no idea what I’m going to say to her.
She lifts my wrist and opens my hand, revealing the tarnished gold locket I have dug out of my jeans. “It’s beautiful.” Her green eyes are larger and brighter than usual. A curl has escaped from her ponytail and follows the soft line of her cheek. “Good job out there.” She keeps my hand in hers and my heartbeat picks up.
“Thanks.”
“You’re different.”
Yeah, haven’t I already told her this? I’m a freak—and not in the tatted-up-and-pierced way, but the screwed-up-in-the-head way, which is far worse. Before I can say anything, she continues.
“You’re humble. So many Satellites have this air about them like they’re extraordinary.”
Looking into her eyes, I forget to talk until my subconscious kicks me in the butt. “Aren’t they?”
“Only because of how they’re built. What they do comes naturally because of their genetics.”
“It’s not without effort, though.” I’m not really sure why I’m arguing the fact when I couldn’t agree more.
“I know. I just feel like what we do doesn’t make us more special than anyone else, living or dead.”
“I agree.”
“You do?”
I nod. “You sound surprised.”
“Most people around here don’t, that’s all.” Trina releases my hand, leaving me disappointed.
Maybe it’s the red sweater that clings to her in all the right places, or because I can’t stop watching her lips. Whatever the reason, before I can think about what I’m doing, I grab both of her hands and lean into her.
Her green eyes widen as she leans forward and, a second later, her lips are moving with mine. I release her hand, push my calimeter to silence it, and wrap my arm around her waist. She pulls her other hand free to grab my neck. Her body pushes harder against me. She feels so good, so right. My fingers work themselves into her ponytail, making tight fists around her curls.
And then—
Ahhhhh!
It takes everything I have not to bite through her tongue from the fire in my scars. I push her back as lightly as I can manage and hunch over in pain.
“Grant?”
I can only imagine the look on my face. If my expression mirrors my insides, deranged would be an understatement.
“I’m so sorry,” I croak, fighting to keep from screaming in pain.
I give the order to displace and pray that I’m still holding Meggie’s locket. Thankfully, the floor falls out and the whooshing air camouflages my tortured wailing.
12. If Upper Management found out, they’d send you off to the Probing Department
I’m glad Lawson landed in the living room so I don’t have to face him. One look at my neurotic state would prompt an interrogation and there’s no way I could sanely answer a line of questioning right now. I’m not even sure what happened when I kissed Trina, but the lingering heat in my scars won’t go away.
After doing my daily reading, I spend the rest of the afternoon and entire night in the bathroom, wondering what is wrong with me. Three hours after the sun breaks through the peach curtains, I get my first reprieve from my crazy thoughts by blocking Meggie before she makes it to the vanity.
“You look terrible,” Lawson says to me when I follow Meggie into the living room.
Meggie speaks before I have to offer an explanation. “I’m sorry.”
“Me too, baby. Come here,” Brody says from the chair.
Meggie falls into Brody’s lap and the two of them silently cry together for awhile.
“I guess it’s better than fighting,” Lawson says.
I agree and we let the couple share their sorrow until Ryan shows up.
Elliott starts in immediately. “Tate’s favorite food is pancakes. Green is her favorite color. She loves fall more than the other seasons. Her favorite…”
Someone help me; he won’t let up. I manage to tune him out and focus on Meggie, Ryan, and Brody’s conversation in the kitchen. Ryan agrees that Brody should try to get back to work, at least part-time, for some normalcy. Meggie chooses not to argue this time, but ignores Ryan when he mentions that maybe she should do the same.
“…favorite sport is baseball. She loves dogs, all kinds, mostly the big ones. Her favorite subject has always been art. She drives too fast. You hated that. She—”
“Elliott!” My tone shocks him into silence.
“Yeah?”
“Stop!”
“I can’t. I have to try. It’s my purpose now.”
“Get a new purpose,” I pause, “like watching Ryan.”
“Ryan’s fine,” Elliott answers, but retreats to the far side of the kitchen and decides to leave me alone.
In the silence, my mind goes blank and it’s smooth sailing until my calimeter beeps.
“See you at break?” Elliott asks.
“Doubt it.” I displace before having to hear another word from him.
When I land in my room, I have two choices; coding or Benson. Coding could possibly kill me—again. On the other hand, Trina is sure to be in Benson. Facing her after the embarrassing kissing disaster may kill me, too. And Elliott will be there. Ugh.
I glance down the hallway and weigh my options while I change clothes, eventually choosing the least of the three evils.
“You got a minute?” I don’t let Trina answer and park myself in the neighboring leather chair in a corner of Benson. “I’m really sorry. I don’t know what happened.”
When she says nothing, I go on. “I liked it. Kissing you, I mean. But something happened. I can’t explain it. It was…I don’t know…weird.”
She marks her page in a book that features an intimidatingly buff guy on the front cover and lays it on the coffee table. “Kissing me was weird?” She winces on the last word.
Do I tell her or not?
She continues to wait silently while I argue back and forth with myself. I lower my voice. “I’m having some issues.”
Finally, her expression lightens. “Oh!” After ten more seconds, she adds, “I’ve heard that kind of, um…problem, I mean issue, happens to a lot of people.” Her face blushes darker and darker until her skin almost matches her red-tinted hair.
“Huh?” Oh, dear God, she thinks—“No!” My voice lowers to almost a whisper and I make sure no one is eavesdropping. “Not that kind of issue.”
Her expression makes me feel like I have a third eye.
“When we kissed, my skin felt like it was on fire,” I explain, hoping to regain my manhood.
She pauses and then nods. “I thought it was pretty hot, too.”
Sheesh.
“No, I mean, it hurt. Physically.”
“My kiss hurt you?”
I take a deep breath. “Can I start over?”
She waves her hand through in the air and sits back. “Be my guest.”
“This goes back to coding, really. I’m having problems in that area.” Great. Now she surely thinks I’m an idiot. “I’m getting…interrupted when I code.”
She opens her mouth, then pops it closed when my hand signals for silence.
“It starts off fine, but then the scene changes to my old bedroom, the one from my previous life, and I’m paralyzed. A freezing pain, like ice, crawls from my stomach to my ear every time. But lately, the ice has been turning to a scorching heat. Then something whispers to me.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Say what?”
“I know how bizarre this sounds.”
“Do you?” She’s skeptical when she pauses. “What does the voice say?”
“My name, come back to me, I love you, things like that. Just recently it said, remember me.”
“Is it a guy’s or a girl’s voice?”
“What kind of question is that?” I accuse. Billy must have spilled the goods about his block in training and…Jackson.
“Chill. It’s a legit question.”
So I overreacted. A lot. “A girl’s voice,” I say, nicer than before.
“What does this have to do with our kiss?”
Here it goes. “I felt the same pain when I kissed you.”
“Did you hear voices, too?”
When she puts it that way, I sound like I really have lost my mind. “No.”
“The pain, did it crawl up your stomach like before?”
“No, it was centralized on my scars.”
“Your what?”
Oh, right, my scars. I haven’t mentioned those yet. “I have two scars. The pain lingers in them after these episodes. Pretty ferociously, actually. When you and I kissed, my scars burned hotter than ever.” There’s no way to redeem my sanity at this point, so I add, “They changed color, too.”
Yep, I’m insane. Trina’s expression proves it. “Where are they?”
“One’s on my chest. They other is on my knee.”
“Come with me.” She pushes up from her chair, shoves her book in her bag, and grabs my hand.
She tows me along through a maze of hallways. When we finally stop, she stands close to me like she did before our kiss. “Let me see.”
“See what?” I ask.
She eyes my chest. “Your scars.”
“Are you trying to get me naked?”
She laughs and tells me to shut up. I make sure the hall is vacant before stripping off my T-shirt.
“You like what you see?” I say to mess with her.
She rolls her eyes, but her face flushes. She trails her finger across the lesion. “It’s warm.”
Her touch has me thinking things I shouldn’t, especially after what happened during our last kiss.
She looks down at my legs, or in that general vicinity. “The one on your knee?”
“It’s the same. Identical, actually.” I pause, and then immediately want to break the uncomfortable silence. “You want to see?” I joke, but after the words are out, I’m a nervous that she may actually say yes.
She acts like she’s considering, but thankfully says, “I’ll take your word for it.”
“Any theories about what would cause this?”
She shakes her head. “No. None.”
Figures.
“I can check around,” she offers.
“No!”
She steps back and I force myself to chill the heck out. “Sorry. I don’t think it’s a good idea for this to get out.”
She leans in like she’s sharing a secret. “You’re probably right. If upper management found out, they’d send you off to the Probing Department.”
I double-check that we’re still alone. “You’re kidding?”
“Yes, I’m kidding! You need to unwind.” She steps closer and spreads her hand over the middle of my bare chest. “Seriously. You need to calm down.”
Embarrassingly, my heart drums faster.
“Do you want to try again?” she whispers and leans closer to my face.
I’m unable to speak. Of course I want to kiss her again, but I’m terrified of the results. We remain motionless for a long time until I wrap my hand around her warm neck and lean down.
She tastes like vanilla today. When I pull her closer, she moves her hand from my chest so our bodies are touching. She pushes my hair behind my ear and then everything feels wrong.
I try to push her away gently, but she stays glued to me while the heat in my scars ramps up. When I finally break free from her grasp, she stumbles back from the force. I manage to apologize before the pain takes over.
Trina’s voice is far away. “Grant! Grant, look at me.”
I can’t get past the bur
ning to open my eyes.
“Grant!” her shout echoes and my face is yanked upward. “Look at me!”
I open my eyes and concentrate on her face, which appears to be vibrating. I’m not sure how I even got to the floor. When the burning lessens enough to breathe and there’s just one of her in my vision, I begin to relax.
Trina’s sucks in air. “What’s going on with you?”
That seems to be the question of the week.
After I get my shirt back on, Trina and I spend the rest of break sitting in the hallway staring at the opposite marble wall. She invents a few theories about my scars, none of which I like. By the time she mentions that maybe my scars are possessed, I have to tell her to cool it.
“I’m just trying to help.”
Helping is the last thing she’s doing. I’m feeling more like a kook by the minute.
A few silent minutes go by. Trina breaks the awkward tension with, “The kiss was nice.”
“It was.” Before my scars tore in half.
“We could keep trying. Maybe we could find a work-around,” she jokes.
My eyes can’t stay off her lips, but the thought of more pain is too scary. “Not today.” I think I do a decent job at keeping my voice light, and then go for a subject change. “How long have you been here?”
“Forty-three years.” She pauses. “Some of my assignments seem like centuries ago, especially my pre-Elite ones. I really miss my Tragedies sometimes.”
“What about Maintenance?”
Trina picks at the frayed canvas of her slip-on shoe. “Twelve of my pre-Elite Tragedies are dead. The five who are living are well enough that they don’t require Maintenance.”
I think of Ryder. “Shouldn’t you check in anyway?”
“Being an Elite doesn’t allow for much time off.”
“How’d you die?”
“I don’t remember.” She shakes her head like this frustrates her. “I heard you had cancer.”
“Melanoma.” The image of the little boy that passed me when Meggie and Brody were leaving the hospital enters my mind and my stomach tightens. “Do you remember anything from your life?”
“I have a twin brother. I was twenty seven when I died and he and I were really close. I can’t imagine what my death did to him.”
