Night Sky

by Suzanne Brockmann

“Do you think there’s a chance that…maybe I am prescient, and…Sasha’s still alive?”

  Dana looked out at the water. Her eyes were glazed and unfocused. She looked profoundly sad.

  Then she looked back at me, and it was as if she had snapped herself out of a trance. “No,” she said. And her voice was solid with conviction. “The sooner you stop thinking that, the better off you’ll be.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Today’s lesson focused on telekinesis.

  I sat with Dana on the sand. The wind had picked up, and I tucked my hair behind my ears.

  “I was pretty little when I first started to move things,” Dana told me, “It was…ugly. At first.” She smiled. “Whenever I got angry or really upset, things would jump around the room.” She laughed. “It used to scare the hell out of my dad.”

  “I’ll bet,” I said, thinking of my own experience with the hairbrush. I smiled as I imagined it chasing my mom around the house.

  “This one time?” Dana told me, still laughing. “I blew out the dining-room window. Just boom! It was totally an accident. I had no idea I could do that. I was super pissed about something stupid—I don’t even remember what anymore.

  “When I was a little older, I realized that if I could channel those intense emotions, I could use them to move things intentionally. But it took serious practice,” she continued. “And repetition. I learned to use specific mantras, and… Here’s how it works: if you think about a stressful event, and go through the event in detail, your body will react as if it’s literally reliving it. Especially if you have an eidetic memory and can focus on the details with as much precision as possible. Scientists have done studies. Your heart rate actually increases, and you even sweat and become breathless. It also increases the presence of adrenaline which, by the way, is your new best friend.”

  Adrenaline. Best friend. Got it. I nodded. But… “Rewind a sec to those windows breaking,” I said, because something about Dana’s recollection had struck a nerve. I swallowed hard. Windows breaking. No explanation. I’d been there, done that. Or rather, I’d been there while someone else had done that.

  “Dana,” I said. “You think there are other Greater-Thans around us right now? I mean, not here at the beach. But, just walking around, maybe at school or, you know, out there, in real life?”

  Dana nodded. “Of course, Princess. There are plenty of us out there—although most girls don’t realize their own powers. Some recognize that they’re different and try to repress it. And keep in mind that there are varying degrees of G-T abilities. Some G-Ts can lift a pencil for a second. Big woop, right? They’re on one end of the spectrum. On the other are the ones who can blow out windows when they get pissed off.”

  I nodded. “Last year I met a girl at school, and I’m pretty sure she was on the blow-out-the-windows end of the spectrum. Her name was April.”

  “Was?” Dana asked. As usual, she didn’t miss a detail.

  “She kind of…self-destructed.” I told Dana briefly about that spring day in the quad when Cal’s former friend April brought a pair of handguns into school and starting waving them around. She’d cornered me, and kept saying really weird and creepy things like, “You’re one of us.”

  I’d been certain she was going to kill me and Calvin. But Cal, quiet hero that he was, managed to knock her down with his wheelchair, allowing me to kick her guns away and pin her in place until the police arrived. It had been a seriously crazy day. And that was putting it mildly.

  “Just as April went down,” I continued, explaining, “all of the cafeteria windows exploded.” I swallowed. “It was never explained.”

  The police had insisted that no shots had been fired, but everyone in school was convinced they were lying, on account of all that broken glass. But if April was a Greater-Than, she definitely could’ve done it with a blast of her powers.

  “I’m assuming the police took this girl away,” Dana said grimly.

  I nodded. “They shot her with some kind of tranquilizer gun.” Right before April had lost consciousness, she’d begged me to kill her.

  “Did she ever stand trial?” Dana asked.

  “Not that I know of.” I tried to remember the rumors that had flown around the school in the weeks following April’s meltdown. “She didn’t actually hurt anyone. It turned out her guns weren’t even loaded. Calvin was pretty sure she just wanted…” It was so awful, I couldn’t even say it.

  Dana said it for me. “She was committing suicide-by-SWAT-team. She waves weapons around, everyone scatters, police make the scene, she won’t drop the gun, so bang, she’s dead. Or in this case, bang, she’s tranked and delivered to some mental hospital, where they recognize she’s a G-T and sell her to the nearest Destiny farm where she’s tortured and bled dry. End result’s the same. Another girl is dead.” She laughed harshly. “A bullet to the head would’ve been more merciful.”

  Did April somehow know what was going to happen to her? Kill me, Skylar! Kill me now! Please!

  I had more questions, but I wasn’t sure how to ask. So I started delicately. “April was… Well, she seemed, um… Well, you said it was just a myth, but…”

  “Whatever you’re dancing around, Cupcake, just say it.”

  So I did. “Do you think that being a Greater-Than drove her crazy?”

  Dana laughed. “Probably,” she said. “There are times it drives me freaking crazy.”

  “I’m serious,” I said.

  “I am too,” she countered. “Look, who knows why this girl tried to end herself? Whatever stresses she was under, did her G-T powers make things worse? Probably. You want a life lesson from her sad story? Learn to control your powers so they don’t control you. And you start by giving yourself access to your adrenaline.”

  “My new best friend,” I repeated her earlier words.

  “Yup. And like I said, reliving a stressful event can actually produce adrenaline, almost as much as your body makes, living it in real time. Lucky you, we just pinpointed an event that was probably pretty effing stressful. Girl brings guns to school. Windows explode. That’ll get your blood pumping.”

  I nodded. My heart was actually beating faster just remembering how scared I’d been.

  “But you don’t need to use that scenario. It can be anything you want.” Dana held up another piece of driftwood. “If I wanted to move this telekinetically, first I’d focus on it and then relive a stressful, adrenaline-inducing scene from my past—but I’ve found out through trial and error that it doesn’t have to be bad stress. Think about times when you’ve ridden on a roller coaster. You were probably smiling and screaming, but your body was producing adrenaline the same way that it would if you were really heated about something.”

  I nodded. “That makes sense.”

  “But it’s harder to access those happier feelings,” Dana told me. “It’s easier, when you’re starting, to let yourself get good and mad.” She put the piece of driftwood on her lap. “Now. Once you’ve got that craptastic experience in your mind, which—again—means you’ve tricked your body into producing adrenaline, then you refocus your attention on the object you’re hoping to move.”

  “Where does the whole mantra thing come into play?”

  “Usually, while I’m trying to move something, I’ll repeat two or three words. Like I’ll pick the object, and then I’ll pick the route I intend for the object to take. And I’ll look at both and say here, there; here, there over and over again.” She smiled at the expression on my face. “I know it’s a lot to think about, but after a while, once you’ve practiced enough, it becomes second nature.”

  “Exactly how long do you think I’ll have to practice before it becomes second nature?”

  Dana shrugged. She placed the piece of wood on the ground and studied it intently for just a moment. The wood lifted off the sand and sailed into the air, landing several feet in front
of us in the ocean. “I don’t know. I’m sure it’s different for everyone. It took me a few years to really hone it.”

  “A few years?” I watched the piece of driftwood as it dipped and bobbed.

  “Who knows? Maybe it’ll take you less time. I wasn’t working on it twenty-four seven. It was more of a fun hobby than anything else, and I was also really young…a lot younger than you are now.”

  I sighed. “I hope it doesn’t take that long.”

  “Let’s try practicing,” Dana said. “You up for it?”

  Before I could answer, Dana had stood up. She wiped the sand off her leather pants and turned to look back at a trash barrel, where she used her telekinesis to extract a discarded water bottle. As I watched, she moved it all the way across the beach and into the ocean. She dunked it into the water, then—still not touching it—she unscrewed the cap and held it under the waves, filling it before she screwed the top back on. The bottle then sailed back toward me and settled gently in front of me in the sand.

  “Focus on the bottle,” Dana commanded. “And think about a moment in your life when your adrenaline spiked. Really think about details. What was the temperature? What did you smell? How did you feel that day? Was there music playing? People talking…?”

  I don’t know why, but for whatever reason the first images that popped into my head weren’t about April. Instead, they were memories of that night seven months ago—the night of the accident. I thought about that narrow, winding New England road. I thought about the trees, and how the moonlight had filtered through the budding spring branches. I thought about the music that had been playing, an old hip-hop song with a driving beat. I’d never liked that song, but Nicole had played it ad nauseum.

  I thought about Nicole’s tears and anger, about how I’d shouted for her to slow down, about how quickly the road curved into an unexpected bend. And the squealing sound of tires on the asphalt as Nicole attempted to steer us away from the median.

  But the more she’d tried to turn, the more the car spun out of control. And then the car had slid sideways, and Nicole looked at me with an expression of utter helplessness before she’d finally sucked in a thin burst of air. Then…impact.

  Here on the beach, Dana was saying something to me, but her voice sounded hollow, like she was speaking at the other end of a tunnel.

  “…going, Sky,” I heard.

  But I was on that road in Connecticut in that wreck of a car, next to my best friend who was now bleeding. God, there was so much blood. And I was fishing for a cell phone, but I couldn’t find it…It was so dark.

  She was gasping, gurgling, struggling to breathe, and I heard someone screaming and screaming and screaming, but suddenly it wasn’t Nicole in the car; it was Sasha. She was covered in blood, and the terror in her eyes as she screamed was horrible to see.

  “…keep going. Open your eyes…”

  Heart pounding, I opened them, and I saw the water bottle in front of me, hovering slightly above the surface of the sand. But then, it zoomed up into the air, disappearing from sight.

  Sasha’s screams still echoed in the corners of my mind. But the beach was quiet, except for the lull of the waves and my labored breathing.

  Then, with a thunk, the soda bottle fell from the sky and landed at my feet.

  “Nice,” Dana said.

  And that’s when I burst into tears.

  —

  It’s important to take a moment here to note that I hardly ever cry.

  I mean, seriously. It rarely happens.

  The last time I’d let my emotions loose was after Nicole was nearly killed in the accident—and even then I’d made sure I was safely behind my closed bedroom door, where I was spared the embarrassment of anyone witnessing the event.

  Last time I cried in public…? That was probably second grade, when Malcolm Murkoff lied to me in art class and told me I’d have to get my head shaved, because the paint that I’d accidentally gotten in my hair was radioactive.

  But now I was on the beach bawling my eyes out in front of Ms. Bionic, of all people. She probably hadn’t let out a wail from the moment her mother birthed her.

  Fan-friggin-tastic.

  But, try as I might, once the tears started, they didn’t want to stop.

  Nicole. I’d been thinking about Nicole, but then…I’d seen Sasha. Sasha, with blood on her face… She’d looked so scared.

  But it was more than just a look. It was as though I’d actually ingested her fear…as if the same feelings she was experiencing had traveled into my psyche. I knew how she’d felt—literally.

  It was a very specific sensation, that kind of conviction. It was more than a feeling—it was an absolute certainty.

  I’d heard her voice in my core, and it had whispered breathily, I’m going to die.

  “I’m… I’m… Oh my God.” Gulping in snotty breaths of air, I collapsed onto the sand, pulling my knees in to my chest, sobs racketing through me. “I’m sorry,” I managed, burying my face in my hands.

  My eyes were closed, but I could feel Dana as she took a step in my direction and then, slowly, sat down beside me. I shook my head, digging the palms of my hands against my eyes as if manually redirecting the tears back where they came from.

  “Hey,” Dana said softly. I could feel her hand as she placed it gingerly on my shoulder. “Hey.”

  “I’m so—orry,” I hiccupped again miserably.

  “Sky, you don’t have to apologize.” Dana’s hand on my shoulder was as much a comfort as it was a surprise. She wasn’t exactly the hugging type.

  But I couldn’t stop crying, and Dana didn’t do a thing other than rub her hand gently up and down my back.

  Finally, after what felt like hours or even days, I had nothing left. My sobs quieted, and I pulled my head up. Strands of hair fell into my eyes, and I slowly pushed them away. Staring out at the ocean, I tried to take some deep breaths. My nose was so frigging clogged that I had to open my mouth.

  Dana probably thought I was such a loser.

  “What did you see?” she asked when she was finally sure my little nervous breakdown had come to a close.

  “It was… It was really awful.” I forced myself to look over at Dana. Her face was grim. I cleared my throat and braced myself, because I knew once I said the words out loud, it would be even more real than it already was. “I think I just had one of those visions again. I think when I moved that bottle I saw…”

  Dana kept her eyes locked intently on mine. “It’s okay,” she said. “Tell me.”

  “I think I saw Sasha getting killed.”

  And there it was.

  Dana’s eyes grew almost imperceptibly wider for only a fraction of a second. She took back the hand that she’d been using to rub my shoulder and leaned her elbows on her knees as she sat tailor-style in the sand. “I’m sorry you saw that.” I could tell that Dana was dying to ask about the details, but she kept her mouth shut to allow me time to process everything.

  “I want to catch these bastards,” I hissed through gritted teeth. For the first time, I was honestly glad that I was a Greater-Than, because being a G-T was going to help me catch them. “I want them to pay for everything they’ve done.”

  “Believe me, kiddo,” Dana replied, “we’re on the same page.”

  “She was terrified,” I blurted. “God, it was beyond terror. She knew she was going to die.”

  The corner of Dana’s eye twitched as I spoke, almost like she wanted to wince but couldn’t quite bring herself to show that much emotion.

  “But I didn’t see who she was looking at,” I realized. “No! No! I should have turned around, but I wasn’t thinking. It didn’t even occur to me—”

  “You might not have been able to see her killer,” Dana tried to reassure me, even though I could tell that she was bitterly disappointed. “Visions are what they are—�
��

  “But I didn’t even try. What kind of psychic doesn’t at least—”

  “A beginner,” Dana interrupted me again. “You’re a beginner, so give yourself a break.”

  “I don’t want to be a beginner,” I told her. “I want to be like you! Please teach me everything. Everything.”

  Dana studied me somberly for a few moments. Her crystal-blue eyes were almost the same color as the sky. “I’ll do my best,” she replied.

  I looked at her and nodded, before turning away and gazing out at a distant pair of sailboats sweeping gracefully across the sparkling, sunlit water. It was difficult to believe that this beautiful world was a terrible place with terrible people.

  But that was the truth. Innocent people like Sasha suffered at the hands of the evil and the greedy and then… Oh, God, I missed Sasha so much….

  Dana’s voice jolted me out of my thoughts. “Bubble Gum, it’s gonna take time.”

  I exhaled hard. “Still. There must be some exercises I can do while I’m at home—”

  “I’m not talking about your training,” she said. “I’m talking about…” She cleared her throat. “The way you feel. It’s gonna take some serious time before it fades. And every second until it does is gonna suck. But it will get easier. One morning you’ll wake up and you’ll be able to breathe again. I promise.”

  Anyone else giving me that spiel would have been offered a swift eye roll. But it was Dana. And something about the way she spoke those words made me feel like she knew a thing or two about grief as well. Also, that cinnamon I could smell? It didn’t lie.

  “Come on, Bubble Gum,” Dana said, standing up and brushing the sand off her leather pants. She offered me a hand and I took it, giving her permission to pull me up. “Let’s get going. I think this is enough for one day.”

  “But I barely even—”

  Dana shook her head quickly, dismissing my thought before I could spit it out. “Doesn’t matter. You did more than you think. Remember—always do your best. Never more than that.”

  “Never more than my best?” I asked, laughing a little at the thought.