by Gina Linko
“I’ll take the top. You take the bottom. We’ll sort of push against each other,” she said. And for once, I let her take the lead. And it was scary and it was weird. It wasn’t the way I usually went about things. But it worked.
We both concentrated. I made the front of my brain just sort of shut off—I couldn’t ask how or why right then. I knew that would kill it, whatever was taking root and coming alive. So I let those questions lie.
The little butterfly shook again, and I heard a gasp from Tempest as it lifted off the grimy picnic table, just an inch or so. But then I took a deep breath, and I pushed it with my mind. Up.
And Tempest pushed it down. Together we kept it suspended, just like that poor old frog in the science lab. Levitating. Magnetic fields, opposing poles. That, my mind understood; but how we got that butterfly to move—to really fly, not just hang there like a shaky marionette … I didn’t know. I didn’t care.
I let it fly. Tempest and I worked together, anticipating each other’s moves. Making that butterfly soar and swoop. Climb high and dive low.
“Do another,” Digger said, his eyes wide as golden dollars.
Keep that one up, I told Tempest. But I didn’t use my mouth. I used my mind. I held the butterfly with Tempest, with my brainpower, but then I turned toward the dragonfly too.
I pushed it up. Tempest joined me, our forces working together, opposite but together. Equals.
But just when the dragonfly began to move steadily, the butterfly fell with a crash that scared us both.
The dragonfly clattered to the ground too, and we giggled as we tried again. And again. And then some more. Until we could do it.
Two at a time, with different flight patterns, separating our focus. We had almost all the animals flying figure eights over the table, while Digger got busy coiling more wire. “I don’t know,” I said, as I tried to help Tempest keep the first two up at the same time I got the sparrow started. It was heavier in general.
But Digger quickly made another butterfly and a second dragonfly, and pretty soon the area around us was full of tiny, flying copper creatures. Six of them. Tempest and I had them all going, our forces pulling and pushing. The invisible cords of communication between us wrapped tight around each other, amplifying our power, making things possible. Boosting our magnetic force. Whatever we were doing, it was only because it was both of us.
Tempest and I had just launched the seventh little animal—a bumblebee—into the air when we heard a voice.
“My God.”
The magic, or whatever had pushed the force of the air underneath those tiny copper wings, disintegrated into nothing in the blink of an eye. And the animals fell, all seven of them, one of the beaks hitting me square on the nose. “Ouch.”
“Aunt Grania,” Tempest said. She looked to me for help explaining.
“How in the world can you girls do that?” Aunt Grania asked, and I didn’t like the look on her face, which was something other than just awe or wonder. There was fear.
I answered her with a shrug, gave her a smile.
“We’re working together,” Tempest answered.
I had this energy pushing out from the center of me, making me brave and alive. I knew we could do this. I didn’t want to stop.
But just then, I had a flash of that wave, that moment on the beach. When I was darn near pulling the whole ocean toward us.
I shivered in fear. What was I doing playing around with this power?
Aunt Grania narrowed her eyes at me, and she looked just as stubborn as Mama in that moment. “What you two have, it’s bigger, more powerful than anything your mama and I had. You need to be more careful. This is … scary.”
“We have Tempest though. She’s a genius.” I held up my wrist, showing Aunt Grania the cuff, feigning confidence.
I watched Aunt Grania grimace and the last of that light feeling in my chest just sort of flittered off into the air.
I saw the cuff for what it was, what it looked like. And I doubted us. Was this flimsy piece of metal really all that was keeping Tempest and me from … what?
Blowing up?
Crackling into flames?
Or worse, living apart?
And my mind replayed the scene at the beach earlier—what could’ve happened, what nearly did happen. I felt suddenly silly and naïve.
What were we playing at?
19
Fat Sam came walking up just then, a worried look to his brow. “There’s somebody out yonder looking for y’all.”
“For who?”
“He’s up near the ticket booth. Asking for the Numbers Girl.”
I followed Tempest toward her rickety old card table near the midway, oblivious to the buzz and noise of the carnival.
It was turning toward night now, and the nearly full moon hung large in the cloudless sky. Shining and sleek, yellow against a black sky, the edges fuzzy with clouds. How could something so beautiful be so threatening?
In two days, Tempest and I would be thirteen. The Flower Moon would be upon us, its powerful pull at its peak.
And … what then?
Suddenly, I was struggling for breath. I couldn’t relax and my throat tightened. I took two puffs of my inhaler, but it didn’t help much.
It was already getting dark, and the lights strung up around the midway swung in the breeze, casting little shadows that danced around us as we approached Tempest’s card table. A man who appeared to be older than God sat next to Tempest’s table in an aluminum lawn chair. His walker, complete with those goofy tennis balls on the ends, stood next to him, a bit askew, as if he’d sat down in a hurry.
Digger approached him first, and he held out his hand to shake. “Good evening, sir.” The man shook it, not getting up, his eyes working from Tempest to me and back again.
“We’re twins,” Tempest said to him, gesturing toward me.
“I guess so,” he answered, his yellowed teeth appearing in a surprisingly tender smile behind his ancient lips. Tempest gave that old man a good looking-at, but she shook her head. “I’m not getting anything, sir. My number radar is not absolute.”
“Oh, it’s not me who’s wanting to see you. It’s my grandbaby.” As if conjured, a little girl, maybe six or seven, came running up with her bag of popcorn, her right front tooth missing.
“She’s here!” she said, eyeing Tempest and me. “There’s two of them!” she exclaimed, her head whipping back and forth to look at both of us.
“I’m the Numbers Girl,” Tempest said.
“Scarlett here is obsessed with numbers,” the old man said, repositioning the tubes that went into his nose. That’s when I noticed the oxygen tank that he held in a cotton-patterned sling over his arm. His breath wheezed in and out as he mussed the little girl’s hair affectionately. “Scarlett heard about you down at the pier, and I just had to bring her to meet you.”
“I do Sudoku and math puzzles, jigsaws and sequences. Do you?” the little girl said.
“Sometimes,” Tempest answered. “I like all kinds of brain teasers.” Tempest was looking at her hard, and I noticed the dark smudges underneath Tempest’s eyes. How rough had the past few days been on my sister? Making this cuff. The whole fiasco at the beach. Fighting what was between us.
Tempest pushed against her temples with her fingers, then sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m just not getting anything. Usually, I get a … well, a flash of knowing, or something, but—”
She stopped and looked at me. “It’s you, Tally. You’re jamming me.”
“I am?” I backed away.
“Could we try together?” she asked.
“No, I don’t think—”
“You know, I think this is all meant,” she motioned from her to me and back again, her voice now a whisper. “This is all meant for us to do together. That’s why, I think, the beach was such a disaster—”
“Give me a second,” I said. I knew she was right. I did.
I pressed my hand to the cuff on my wrist.
&n
bsp; Was I going to trust this?
What Tempest and I had done with Digger’s flying creatures … I don’t know. It had seemed so hopeful.
“Okay,” I said, finally. “Together.”
Tempest smiled. She closed her eyes.
A small crowd had assembled around us by now—a knot of carnival-goers and workers alike. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes too. I felt the thrum of my sister’s energy working in the air around us. I took a step forward, like it was sucking me in.
I held on to the metal cuff at my wrist.
“You’re both in on this, huh?” the old man asked. My eyes popped open and Tempest was watching me.
“Well, we’re kind of a team,” Tempest explained. “Like the earth and the moon.”
Tempest fixed the little girl with a stare. I searched for Tempest’s energy.
My power met hers, and they intertwined, coiled together …They thrummed, beat a rhythm together. They existed on their own, but when they joined, they morphed into something wild.
But I couldn’t get scared now. That wasn’t what my sister needed.
I concentrated, letting my eyes close, and I could feel this buzzing, like an electric toothbrush, on my wrist cuff, the vibration traveling up the length of my arm.
Just reach out, Tempest said in my mind. Reach out.
I did like she told me. I listened with my energy, let it combine with Tempest’s, and we reached out. Together.
It came to me in a jolt, as if I was waking from a nightmare. A number. A date.
November 3rd.
I said it out loud, and I looked to Tempest. She was smiling wide, all triumphant-like. She had felt it too.
But then I looked at the girl, and her nose wrinkled. Something wasn’t right. Something felt off.
November 3rd. It wasn’t the girl’s number.
No, it wasn’t going to mean anything to her. I’d gotten my wires crossed somehow.
Because suddenly I knew what November 3rd meant, clear as a June Georgia sky.
I turned around to see Digger standing right behind me. Surely he’d been peering over my shoulder the whole time. He stared at me now.
November 3rd.
Digger. All hopeful eyes and supportive smiles.
My Digger.
My dear, favorite friend, whose parents were divorcing. Digger, who’d been hurting all summer long, hoping for something that was never gonna happen. Did he know?
Did he suspect?
When I met his stare, I tried to shutter my gaze before he saw, but his eyes widened for a moment.
In that second, I think he knew; he sensed the date had something to do with him.
“What is it, Tally?” Digger asked. His face fell, and he let out this nervous chuckle. “Really, just tell me. You’re kinda freaking me out.”
I took another step toward him. I started to say something, wanted to say anything comforting.
November 3rd.
I couldn’t find the words.
“Tally, you don’t get to throw something like that out and then look at me all panic-eyed and not explain yourself.”
“What is it, Grandpa?” the girl asked from behind me.
“I’m sorry, kiddo,” Tempest explained, “but this thing is not a perfect science, and we aren’t getting a number for you today.”
“Aw, no fair,” she grumbled, and then her old grandpa stood up with his walker and shuffled away with her. Tempest followed them, trying to make it up to the little girl with a trip to the Candy Wagon. I wanted to follow them, to get out from under Digger’s gaze. I took a step or two backward, but then Digger stopped me with a hand on my shoulder.
“Hey.”
And in that moment, with Digger’s hand on my shoulder, the connection sparked clearer in my mind, and I saw it.
I didn’t want to see it.
The slow-moving image of Digger’s smiling mother, her red hair pushed up into a knot, held together by fancy pearl barrettes. The blue-and-white, stained glass windows of the church glowing with sunlight. The balding man standing next to her in a blue three-piece suit.
November 3rd.
Digger’s mother was getting remarried.
There wasn’t going to be any reunion between his mom and Fat Sam. She was going to marry this other guy, and Digger’s heart was going to crack because of it, all his hopes lost.
And he knew this now because of me.
Digger’s eyes went wide.
“You saw it too?” I asked, but I already knew the answer. Digger nodded once, slow and sad. I reached for my inhaler, my lungs squeaking around a breath. “I’m so sorry, Digger.”
“Tally …”
“November third,” Tempest said, joining us again, and I hated the sound of the words as they hung in the air.
All I ever wanted to do was protect the people I loved. Why couldn’t I ever manage to do it?
“It’s just a shock, is all,” Digger said.
“We could be wrong,” Tempest offered.
“Yeah,” Digger said, but his eyes were wet, his shoulders slumped, and I hated everything and everyone in that moment.
The crowd around us was dissipating, with low murmurs and suspicious glances toward Tempest and me.
I swallowed hard through the pinhole my throat seemed to have become.
I took two more puffs from my inhaler.
“Tally.” It was Tempest’s voice, low and worried, her hand coming up to touch my elbow.
I jerked it away.
“I think I’m done here,” I said, not looking at her.
I turned and stalked off down the midway. But as I made my way past Tempest, something buzzed and crackled on my wrist, and suddenly, whatever the cuff had been doing, it didn’t do it anymore. A near explosion of pressure pushed me away from my sister, in a force so large that my feet lifted off the ground. I sailed back onto my butt, skidding to a halt on the gravelly midway.
The air flew out of my lungs.
“Tally!” Digger said, coming to my aid, but I shoved him away. I couldn’t get a breath.
I saw Tempest across the midway from me, on her rump as well. She rubbed at her shoulder like she’d hit it when she landed.
I found my voice, struggling to stand up. Suddenly so angry. “What did we think? This was going to solve it? Nothing’s solved!” I ripped that cuff from my wrist and threw it on the ground near Tempest. As soon as I got my feet under me, I took off running.
I didn’t listen to my sister calling after me. I didn’t wipe the tears from my cheeks. I didn’t do anything but get myself away.
I tripped on some litter on the midway and nearly fell face-first in the gravel. Digger had chased after me, of course, and now he tried to help me up. I shook him off. “Leave me alone,” I barked.
I ran all the way down the midway and past the crabgrass field, toward the abandoned airplane hangar.
I wanted to go home. I wanted Mama. And Daddy. I wanted to go back to Atlanta, to Bones and his fleas, to not knowing anything about anything. I just wanted to be a regular kid.
I kept walking, over the unused airstrip, and past that even, toward the stand of peeling birches and their canopy of kudzu.
It wasn’t until I was there and I had plopped on the ground that I truly began to sob, shoulders shaking, chest heaving. “Son of a monkey’s uncle,” I barked at myself, wiping at those silly tears. “Grow up, Tally!”
I sat there for a long time, and then I reclined onto my elbows, spotting the shining stars through the trees, trying to focus my thoughts on only the song of the cicadas, the accompanying harmony of the frogs.
The moon in all its near-full glory shone above me, so large and powerful, mocking me and my sorrows.
I stood up and cursed at that moon, raised my clenched fists at it. Said every bad swear I’d learned from Arnie and Hames and the rest of the carnies. I found some rocks in the dirt, and I threw them stupidly up at the moon, watched them do nothing but arc into the air and fall helplessly back
to earth.
I collapsed into a heap on the ground.
I pulled my knees to my chest and let my head fall against them. I took deep breaths for a long time, finally calming my lungs down.
Eventually, I lay back onto the grass, exhausted. I swatted at the mosquitoes and no-see-ums, but other than that, I just lay still, the earth cool and calming beneath me. The rhythmic swaying of the Spanish moss on the branches above my head comforted me somehow.
And I thought about Mama and the secret sadness behind her eyes, about Aunt Grania, about this strange sisterly curse, and about the power I’d just felt between my sister and me.
I thought about our birthday, about what more could possibly be coming our way. And I heaved a great big sigh.
I plucked a few blades of the grass beneath me and chewed on them. They tasted bitter.
What was it all for anyway? Digger’s Mom. Pork Chop’s rusty nail. What was this power—this curse—good for anyway?
“I give up,” I whispered into the night.
“No, you don’t.”
I opened my eyes. Digger stood over me, blocking out the light of the moon. But then he moved, sitting down in front of me, cross-legged.
“The Tally I know has more fight in her than that.” He reached for my hand, pulled me to a sitting position.
And then I couldn’t get my apology out fast enough. “I’m sorry I was so mean to you down at the graveyard. I’m sorry about your parents splitting up. I’m sorry I never said anything before now. I really am, Digger.”
“I know, Tally.” He let go of my hand and stretched his legs out in front of him, all long limbs and easy smile.
“How are you? You okay?”
Digger smiled. “I’m all right, Tally Jo.” He brushed me off in his usual, laid-back, Digger way, but I could tell it meant something to him, that I was talking to him about all this. Finally.
“And I’m real sorry about just now. Your mom remarrying. And I—”
“Tally, none of that is your fault. And it’ll be fine. I mean, I want my mom to be happy. And I think I kind of already knew there was no chance …” He gave me his Digger smile then, all full of mischief and easy optimism. “But I’m a dreamer, you know?”
