The Weird Travels of Aimee Schmidt: The Curse of the Gifted

by J. A. Schreckenbach

  “I can stay for as long as you want me to.”

  “If you’re sure you don’t need to go, I’d really like you to stay. Would you like something to drink or eat?” Aimee was trying hard to stay focused on Dylan and not the mysterious intruder.

  “Nope, I’m fine.”

  Aimee stacked the pillows up against the headboard and crawled back against them, then pulled the quilt up over her knees. She held the quilt up, gesturing to Dylan to slide in next to her.

  “You don’t mind?” he asked.

  “Not at all. I’ll be able to relax if you lie next to me. I mean, if you want to.”

  Dylan rolled his eyes, then in a flash kicked off his shoes and slid in under the quilt, easing his body up next to Aimee. She rested her head on his shoulder while Dylan gently rubbed her back. She fought to stay awake, to savor every second of his touch, but within minutes her mind drifted into darkness and Dylan whispered into her ear that he was leaving.

  “No, don’t go,” she groggily begged and sat up quickly.

  “No, babe, I better let you get some sleep. I know today has been stressful. If you don’t have to work tomorrow, I’ll pick you up for school,” he said while he put on his shoes. He pulled on his coat, then helped her up.

  Aimee said, “That would be nice.” She followed him to the front door, unlocked the deadbolt and opened the door.

  He kissed her one final time before stepping out on the porch. “I love you,” he said softly. “Sleep tight. See you in the morning.”

  “Ditto,” she whispered, and then let his fingers drop.

  The next couple of weeks passed in warp speed. School and work were a major inconvenience preventing Dylan from spending every waking moment with Aimee. Life was perfect, and she relished every moment except for her brief encounters with Brandi. Dylan had confronted her. He said after Brandi finished calling Aimee a few choice names she adamantly denied any involvement saying she wouldn’t waste any of her valuable time on the crazy bitch. Aimee wasn’t totally convinced Brandi wasn’t capable of such criminal intent, but it didn’t surprise her Brandi didn’t fess up. She decided she'd better try to keep her distance from Miss Peters, and hope Brandi would get over Dylan soon.

  Chapter 9 Bad Day

  It was fourth period, right after lunch, and Aimee was losing a battle to stay upright in her desk. Mrs. Little droned on and on incessantly about English writers. Normally she loved literature, but today her mind drifted effortlessly from The Hobbit to the ski slope, and her weekend plans to catch some powder with Dylan, James, and Sacha.

  The weather had been dreary, typical for February. A few days earlier in the week higher elevations received adequate precipitation for excellent skiing so Dylan was really pumped about their trip. While she flew down the run on her board with Dylan chasing behind, Mrs. Little decided to bring Aimee off the slopes.

  In a perky voice, she asked, “Aimee, could you please read the second paragraph for us?”

  Quickly Aimee eyed Devin’s book to see what page she was on. Devin pointed to the correct paragraph while Mrs. Little patiently waited for Aimee with a big smile plastered on her face. Aimee stood up, as Mrs. Little required, cleared her throat and quickly mouthed the paragraph, projecting no special emphasis with the dialogue like Mrs. Little preferred.

  “Thanks, Aimee. Okay, Jennifer, read the next page for me.”

  Thank God she moved on to someone else. Aimee quickly sat back down. Her new cell phone vibrated gently in her backpack. Jennifer was still reading her page, orchestrating her voice as if she was on stage in front of an audience. Geez, Jennifer’s such a drama queen, Aimee mused. Mrs. Little was gleaming at Jennifer, totally engrossed in her performance so Aimee skillfully eased her hand into the pack while warily eyeing Mrs. Little. No one noticed her stealthiness. She snuck out the phone and spotted a text message. DT was on the screen. She peeked around to see if anyone was watching before clicking on View.

  Wup babe?…ratcliff is showing a really lame movie…thinking of u instead...totally stoked about Saturday…see u n a few…love u

  Mrs. Little had moved her hour of torture on to writing notes on the overhead projector. Aimee obviously found Dylan’s message more interesting than taking notes.

  Little is killing us today…really stoked about this wkend too…best part is getting to spend the day with u…hope james behaves…he can b a real ass sometimes…see u n 102 min…luv u back

  Aimee hit Send and stuffed her phone back in the pack.

  The remaining two classes dragged endlessly as well. At last, the welcome trill of the final bell sent her racing to the student parking lot. There was Dylan leaning against her car looking like a hot movie star. She gathered her senses and stepped up her pace. He stretched out his arms when she approached, and quickly enveloped her in a big hug, followed by a delightful smooch.

  Lane Randall, one of Dylan’s football buddies, slowly cruised down the aisle in his truck. Another friend, Derrick Ponzio, was hanging out of the passenger window shouting at a couple girls walking by. Lane honked, and then Derrick pitched a wadded piece of notebook paper at Dylan. Dylan snagged the chunk of paper before it hit the ground. Derrick nodded at Dylan, and stared coldly at Aimee. Then Lane sped off. Dylan shrugged at Aimee and reeled around to iron out the crumpled piece of paper on the roof top of the Bug. Aimee could tell it was a handwritten note when she peeked over Dylan’s shoulder.

  Dylan hissed, “Bitch…” through his clenched teeth, then crushed the paper and dropped it on the ground. His face hardened. His eyes narrowed while he scanned the parking lot. Aimee scooped up the paper and unraveled it to read what had upset him so. Dylan didn’t stop her.

  Dylan, I’ve been trying to call you at your house for the past few days but you won’t return my calls. Your mom always says you’re out. You never answer your cell. And you won’t talk to me at school. PLEASE call me. I miss you terribly, and I need to talk to you.

  Love you forever, XOXO Brandi <3

  When Aimee looked up, Dylan was staring at her. She guessed he was trying to figure out if she was angry, but all Aimee could feel was doubt. It resurfaced in her heart and swelled in her body until her eyes revealed uncertainty.

  “Dylan,” she started with a stutter, “you didn’t tell me she was still calling you. If…” Aimee dropped her gaze and watched her shoe reflexively kick at the asphalt. She continued timidly, “…if you need to talk to her, don’t let me stop you. I mean…it’s obvious she still has feelings for you. I don’t know what I would do if it were me.”

  Instantly he slid his fingers under her chin lifting her face to look at him. He drew a deep breath and looked into the sky. He closed his eyes for a few seconds, then lowered his head and stared intensely into Aimee's eyes. His voice was dark and severe when he spoke. “It’s over with us, and she knows it’s over. I have nothing else to discuss with her.” He pulled her close into his body. His warmth instantly melted Aimee's anxiety, and her body molded into his. In a softened voice he continued with his cheek cradled against her face. “I only care about you. No one else matters.” His hug was powerful. Aimee strained to breath. After a long minute he released her, but held tight to Aimee's hand while he opened the driver’s door. “I guess I better talk to Miss B,” he grumbled.

  “Be nice. Okay?”

  “Yeah, right. I’ll be nice. As nice as she’s treating you,” he said shortly before he reached in and kissed her. “I’ll see you later tonight. Don’t worry. I won’t let her get to me. I’ll be…” He cleared his throat before finishing. “…nice.” He smiled limply, and then shut her door.

  Aimee groaned. Brandi’s love note to Dylan was disturbing. She watched Dylan disappear through the maze of cars, and then she cranked the ancient Bug.

  Without warning, before Aimee could kill the motor, it happened!

  Her head felt like someone delivered an axe to the midsection of the cranium. She didn’t even have time to look around to see who was left in the parking lot and
she was gone. Vanished without a trace! Just like every journey, she was suddenly entombed in darkness, spiraling through the frigid tunnel. The crushing pressure around her body, so recognizable by now, squeezed the air from her lungs. She gasped. She knew it would only last less than a fraction of a second, but the unbearable pain lingered for an eternity. Aimee pleaded to God to be merciful, to end the torture and take her without delay. Surely a loving God will take pity, right? But before He could answer her prayer, the searing light pierced through the tunnel and abruptly she crashed.

  The air choked out of her throat while she rolled through the sand. Finally her body stopped. She lay there too dizzy to look up until a wave broke, and the warm surf washed over her. She popped up immediately, still dazed by the jolt of the impact, but her senses were heightened by the synchronized salty dunking and the powerful tide dragging her through the sand towards deeper water. Before Aimee could straighten completely, a giant surge of water lobbed over her, smashing her into the sandy floor of the ocean, then jerking her further out into the surf. With all her strength, Aimee pulled up and out of the water, then started coughing the salty gunk from her lungs. She looked down. Her shoes had been sucked off upon impact and were nowhere in sight. She took a few steps in the wet sand. It felt like she was walking in wet cement.

  The sun overhead was blotted out totally by gray portentous clouds, and the water reminded her of a dark beer with a foamy head. Aimee surveyed for others up and down the beach, but she was the only person, at least within sight. This beach, and the ocean lapping at its edge, definitely wasn’t on the west coast where the frigid water made you don a wet suit to survive. It reminded her of the Gulf of Mexico; brown and tepid. The waves were little except during a hurricane or after a northerner. But they were rolling in crafted sets of five to six with swells greater than eight feet. Based on their size, the pitting wind, and the menacing sky, Aimee knew trouble was brewing. She had journeyed here just prior to landfall of a hurricane. No doubt there was someone in danger close by.

  Aimee started jogging, embedding footprints deep into the wet grit. The shells bit her socked feet. She ran unsure of which direction to head. She didn’t see any form of life. She needed to climb up to survey the beach. About one hundred feet back from the water’s edge, Aimee spotted a row of sand dunes four feet higher than the rest of the surface. She raced for the dunes, then tore up one dodging the panicum grass rooted around the edge of the mound. She looked from left to right across the horizon. The waves were building in faster sets, higher now than just a few minutes earlier.

  About a half mile down the beach, to the right of her dune, Aimee eyed some pilings barely clearing the surface, then disappearing again as the waves heaved furiously over them. Something white bobbed at the water’s edge parallel to the pilings, and about four feet back an object lay stretched across the sand. She couldn’t tell exactly what it was, but it looked like it might be a body. Aimee needed to get closer. She stumbled down the dune and somersaulted through the damp, fine sand. It caked in blotches across her clothes and hung like Medusa’s snakes from her hair, but she couldn’t stop. She forced herself to run. The wind pushed fiercely against her. It felt like she carried an extra one hundred pounds of weight, and her lungs wanted to burst from sucking briny air deep into them. But Aimee kept moving towards the mysterious object. Within a couple hundred yards her worse fear was confirmed.

  The body of a young man lay motionless. His white surfboard pitched back and forth angrily against the edge of the water, and a bungee cord, still attached to his ankle, kept it anchored from drifting out to sea. His body jerked towards the water slightly every time the water sucked the board into its hungry clutches.

  As fast as she could, Aimee ran into the wind with it whipping salty pellets into her face. Within minutes she reached the young man and turned him over to his back, then ran her fingers across his jugular feeling for a pulse. Nothing. She frantically slid her fingertips across his neck searching for something indicating a beating heart. Am I imagining it? She thought she felt something move. Aimee leaned her ear across his face with her sandy-crusted cheek against his nose. She couldn’t feel any air escaping.

  The adrenaline surged through her like heroin into the veins of a junkie. She flew automatically, methodically, through the CPR training she had last summer when she volunteered at the camp. Aimee rushed through the steps of the test on the adult dummy. Tilt the head. Check the mouth for anything lodged. Breaths. Is it two, three, or five? She couldn’t think straight, but she sealed her mouth across his and forced two long breaths. Her eyes focused on his chest.

  Nothing.

  She tried once more. Reposition the head. Two more deep breaths. Dammit, no rise in his chest. Something must be blocking the air. Aimee straddled across his pelvis noticing for the first time a bloody, jagged bone protruding through his upper arm. She imagined other bones were broken, but at least it was the only one poking through the skin that she could see. Instantly Aimee exerted force against his diaphragm with her palms, pumping against his rib cage praying she had pushed with enough strength to expel whatever blocked his air. No response. A couple more quick thrusts. “Come on, dammit. BREATHE!” screeched Aimee through her teeth at the lifeless surfer. This time something purged. Water mixed with grit gushed from his mouth, but the young man showed no response. No sputtering. No wheezing. Nothing like she remembered in the CPR film.

  She scooted back swiftly to check his airway. Nothing. Reposition the head. Two quick breaths. Check for a rise of the chest. Pray to God. Nothing. “Damn you, don’t you die on me!” she shrieked at him. Tears spilled out of the corner of her eyes soaking into her sandy cheeks. Chest compressions. Do them. Don’t stop. You can’t die. I wasn’t sent here for nothing. One and two and three and four and five and six and…breathe…breathe…check.

  Nothing.

  She continued the compressions until she felt like fainting. An eternity passed. The young man’s skin turned from cool to icy cold. His lips and nail beds were pale blue. She leaned back on her heels and threw up her arms in the air shaking her fists at the evil colored sky. “Why did you send me? To witness death! WHY?!” Her enraged voice vanished into the gale. She collapsed on top of his body, no longer able to control the angry sobs inching up from the depths within her. The exhaustion of the journey consumed her, and Aimee lay there crying until her eyes ran dry.

  The rain, pelting her back through her shirt, felt like needles being shoved through silk. The sting stirred her back to consciousness. Aimee reared up and looked at his face. Too young to die. He was maybe a couple years older than Aimee. Crazy fool! What was he doing out here by himself in a hurricane? Such a waste. The anger turned to pity. But she knew she didn’t have a lot of time left, and if she couldn’t save him, she wasn’t going to just let him lie here and get sucked out to sea when the tide pushed in. He was someone’s son, maybe someone’s brother, and perhaps someone’s lover. He deserved better than floating off to become shark bait.

  Aimee jumped up and looked both directions. The storm was moving in fast. The beach was desolate. Even the seagulls were hunkered down. She looked back towards the dunes about a half mile down course, and there it was. It had to be his truck; a four wheel drive with surf racks on the top.

  She hesitated for only a second before diving into action first ripping off the bungee cord connecting him to the battered board. Immediately the board pulled out into the surf and bobbed around like a toy boat while the waves swallowed it, then regurgitated, shooting it through the curl. Aimee looked at his broken arm, grimaced, then grabbed his ankles. She tugged with all the strength a one hundred and twenty pound girl could muster. A second wave of adrenaline pumped through her, and she dragged his body through the wet sand like a feather across the surface of a pond. She had the power of four linebackers and within minutes they were at the truck. Aimee pulled the handle and it gave way. She peered into the cluttered interior and spotted a pile of clothes stuffed behind the dr
iver seat, then craned in and snatched his shorts. They felt heavy, like the pockets were filled with items.

  Her hand hit a lump in the pants’ back pocket. “Yes!” she exclaimed. Aimee yanked out a weathered, brown leather wallet and flipped it open. A Texas driver’s license was stuffed inside the slot with a plastic cover protecting it. The picture of a very different man stared back at her. This man wore a grin across his face. He had dimples, and his blue eyes were filled with life. The license said: Jack Reynolds, Brownsville, Texas, date of birth, January 23, 1960.

  Aimee looked at Jack’s rigid body propped against the oversized tires of his beat-up rusty truck. The rain was picking up and really beating down on them. His front had been washed clean from the raging downpour. She had to do something, and she had to do it fast. Aimee figured she should have been gone by now. She had failed at saving him, but she darn well could preserve his remains as much as possible, and hope to God someone would stumble across his body. If she could just lift him into his truck, he would at least be protected from the crushing weather.

  Quickly she plotted the mechanics of hoisting Jack into the truck, then inhaled a couple deep breaths. Within a minute she had Jack spread across the seats with his head propped against the passenger door. She placed his driver's license on the dashboard and stared at his lifeless face for a long moment before slamming the driver’s door.

  Aimee didn’t know what else to do, where to go, or even how to get out of this forsaken stretch of the beach in the middle of a hurricane, and she wasn’t going to sit it out in a truck with a dead man. She grabbed hold of the mirror to keep the fearless wind from bowling her down. Suddenly a pain ripped across her right side, dropping her to her knees. A flying object ricocheted off her ribcage, and Aimee felt, and heard, something crack. She gasped for air, and instantly everything appeared snowy, like the pattern on a television after the cable goes off. She winced in pain and clutched her injured side. But before Aimee could suck enough air into her drained lungs to snap her mind back, she was gone.