by Diane Farr
“Like hell they do.”
“They do! People do!”
He shook his head. “Ask any addict. It never goes away.”
“Well, yeah, okay, but that’s my point.” I was ranting now. “An addict maybe is what you are, but the addiction doesn’t have to define your life. Not if you stop using. If you don’t touch the stuff, you can lead a normal life. And you know what? If they can do it, I can do it. I’ll go cold turkey. I’ll let reality be. I won’t touch it. Forever. I’ll never use my powers again.”
It sounded feeble, even to me.
Lance leaned back in the wicker chair and folded his arms across his chest. It would have helped me out a lot if he had lost his temper or something. I was just itching for a fight. He was too cool for that, though, of course. Instead of yelling at me or calling me a fool, he just said, “Good luck with that.”
Maddening.
“You don’t think I can do it? Hah!” I tossed my hair back, hoping the gesture made me look proud and defiant. Zara Norland, warrior queen. “All it takes is a little willpower. It’s not even that hard. I’ve kept a lid on it for years.”
“Have you?”
“Sure.” He didn’t say anything, but I felt his eyes on me. The Water Park Incident bubbled up to the surface of my memory. So much for keeping a lid on it. I shoved the image guiltily back down before he could see it. “Mostly,” I amended. I hated to give an inch, but hey. I am, essentially, a truthful person. “Maybe I slip up every once in a while. But that’s rare. I mean, okay, it’s not easy. Sometimes the power gets away from you, you know. You act without thinking. But usually I can control it.”
“Uh-huh.” His voice was dry with sarcasm. “And as long as you don’t use your gifts, you blend right in. Nobody would guess there was anything different about you ... Spook.”
Ouch. How did he know about that?
“They call me that, but nobody really believes it. It’s just a nickname. Meg’s the only one who ever guessed that there was anything behind it.”
“Are you kidding? One look at you, and anyone can tell you’re different. Your whole life, people have been trying to guess what you are. She’s just the only one who guessed right.”
Come to think of it, she didn’t even guess right. My mind flashed back to that long-ago day at Camp Greenhorn, where Meg and I met. I remember rising up out of the lake and seeing Meg, all alone on the shore, staring at me. I’ll never forget the look on her face. I had been breathing underwater, and she had seen me do it. Her first guess? That I was a mermaid.
I didn’t know what I was, but I knew I wasn’t a mermaid. And our experiments started shortly thereafter—the ones where we tried to figure out what I am.
And now here’s Lance, come to answer my questions. And I’m kicking and squirming and plugging my ears. Go figure.
“Zara.” His voice called me back to the present moment. “You can’t deny what you are.”
“Oh, yeah? Watch me.”
For a second or two, I thought I had impressed him. He was staring at me with a kind of amazed look. I was posed by the door to my house, glowering at him with my balled fists planted on my hips. I bet I looked ferocious. I certainly felt ferocious.
And then he burst out laughing.
So much for my ego. It wasn’t a loud laugh or a mean laugh or anything; Lance’s laugh is almost noiseless. But he was laughing, all the same.
“What’s so funny?” I demanded.
“You are.” He shook his head, still laughing a little. “All through the ages, there have been sticks who wanted to be spellspinners. You’re the first spellspinner I’ve heard of who wanted to be a stick. You probably have an advantage. You can impose your will on the universe—within limits—and sticks can’t. But you know what? In the end, I bet you won’t be any more successful than they were.”
And then he rose up out of his chair in one smooth movement. It surprised me. Before I had time to move—or put a piece of furniture between us—he was in my face. Inches away. I felt my eyes widen and my breath catch in my throat. His deliciousness surrounded me, drugging me, making me weak.
“Zara,” he murmured. “Don’t fight it. You’ll lose.”
All my ferocity melted away like smoke in the wind. I thought he was going to kiss me. I mean, I honestly thought that for a second. He was so close, and he was whispering and all. I was SCARED TO DEATH that Lance Donovan was about to kiss me.
I was also dying for him to kiss me.
This makes no sense at all.
Needless to say, he didn’t kiss me. (And my seventeenth birthday draws yet another day closer. @#$!!!!) But his eyes grabbed mine and held. I couldn’t look away.
The urge to surrender was overpowering. Was Lance doing that to me?? Part of me wanted to say, Yes, you’re right. Of course. You’re right. I was born for this. I can’t fight it. I had to struggle to get my anger back, just to keep my wits about me.
“I will fight it,” I said. My voice barely registered. “If I decide I want to, I will.”
He went on, just as if I hadn’t spoken at all.
“It’s not just the magic,” he told me. Did he speak? I can’t remember. I just know I heard him. “Being a spellspinner isn’t about the things you do, or the things you don’t do. It’s who you are. You’re special. You’re different. Zara, have you ever caught a cold? Have you ever had a cavity? You don’t need to answer. I know the answer. You never have, and you never will. Bacteria doesn’t grow on you. A virus can’t survive in your bloodstream. When you’re cut, you heal perfectly. No scars, no infections.”
He was right. But I didn’t care. “Is that supposed to separate me from the rest of humanity? Get real.”
“Have you ever tried to lose weight?”
I blinked. “What kind of personal crap is that?! I don’t need to lose weight.”
“Okay. Have you ever tried to gain weight?”
“What’s your point?”
“Try it, Zara. Either one. I dare you.”
I don’t know why this was disturbing, but it was. “Are you telling me I can’t?”
“That’s right. You can’t gain weight, no matter how much you eat. You can’t lose weight, either. You can’t get sick. There’s not a bug—or an animal—on this planet that will bite you. You already know you can’t get a tan. And now you know why. You’re a spellspinner.” His voice dropped to a whisper again. “Even the sun can’t touch you.”
I shuddered. I couldn’t help it. Who wants to be more powerful than the sun?! Not me.
Lance backed off at that point, to my infinite relief. I guess he figured he’d scared me enough.
But he wasn’t done with me yet. He got as far as the porch railing, and then he stopped and looked back at me. “You can ignore your nature—maybe,” he said. “But you can’t get rid of it. It will always be there, waiting. You don’t have to use your gifts if you don’t want to, I suppose. But if I were you, Zara, I’d learn everything I could about them. You can’t control what you don’t understand.”
Well, there’s an idea to strike fear into your heart, eh?
“Wait a minute.” My voice was shaking. And Lance was strolling off like a cowboy at the end of a bad movie. “Can you really teach me? I’m not saying I want you to. And I’m not saying I don’t want you to. I’m just asking if you can. You’re only a year older than I am.”
“Well, that’s true.” He did stop, with one foot still on the bottom step. “But I was raised a spellspinner.” He shrugged. “You’re all messed up, Zara. You were shoved into the wrong nest, like the ugly duckling.” I saw a gleam of white flash against the dark and knew he was grinning at me. “Guess what, babe? Your duckling days are over. The swans are coming to claim you.”
And poof, he was gone. Which really made me mad, because it’s so unfair. You never get the last word with a guy who can vanish like that.
I’ll tell you what, though. I’d rather be ticked off than scared, any day. So if those are my two options
with Lance, I think I’ll stay mad at him.
But ... um ... he called me ‘babe.’ What’s that about?!
I don’t want to think about it.
It’s probably no big deal. ‘Babe’ is so lame. He was probably joking or making fun of me or something.
Whatever. I don’t want to think about it.
Of course, for all I know, ‘babe’ isn’t lame where Lance comes from. In which case he might have been hitting on me.
I do NOT want to THINK about it!!
I didn’t have to think about it right then, because my phone was playing “Disturbed.” I didn’t stop to consider that tonight, for once, I might want to compose myself a bit before talking to Meg. I just pounded up the stairs and fell on the phone the way wolves fall on fresh meat, ready to pour my heart out to my best friend.
Bad idea.
Fortunately I realized that, as soon as Meg started talking. Because all she wanted to talk about was Lance, Lance, Lance. I wanted to talk about him, too, but I couldn’t have the conversation I needed to have. Not about Lance, anyway. So I changed the subject to the Nonny-isn’t-my-aunt thing—which I really needed to vent about anyway—and in all the excitement about that, we didn’t get back to the topic of Lance for a long, long, time.
It was one of our marathon phone calls.
When we did finally get to Lance, she was all, “Isn’t he hot?” and “Isn’t he cool?” and neener neener yada yada this, neener neener yada yada that.
I finally said, “I can’t believe you like him.”
And she said, “I can’t believe you don’t like him.”
And I braced myself for an argument, you know? Only I didn’t get one. And now I’m feeling totally dense. Because—now that it’s way past midnight and I can’t call her back—I realize she’s glad that I don’t like him.
I seem to have plunged into some complicated teenage mating-dance ritual. I am totally not used to this. But yeah, I can see that if you believe in your bones that your best friend is a raving beauty and that you are, at best, a 5 on a scale of 10, you would be thrilled to discover that your hot friend is not interested in a boy you like. And that is Meg’s situation in a nutshell.
I keep reminding her, you know, that I’ve never been on a date, never had a boyfriend, never been kissed, et cetera. But when push comes to shove, I have to admit that that’s largely been my own choice. And Meg feels (to put it bluntly) that she’s never been kissed, either. Since she was the instigator, it’s more like she has kissed. She hasn’t been kissed. And she insists that there is a difference.
I sort of see her point.
I’m just thankful that she’s my friend, because if Megan really believes that—that I’m so hot and she’s a reject—it actually says a lot about her character, you know, that she’s willing to hang with me. I have met girls our age, I kid you not, who deliberately choose unattractive friends so they can be “the pretty one.” Sad but true.
Anyway. Meg shows all the signs of forming a mad crush on Lance. And I may not be able to pull the plug on it. Especially since I don’t know how.
And, oh yeah. I almost forgot. Lance is here for ME. Lance is all about ME. And as soon as Megan picks up on that—which will probably be, like, tomorrow—she’s going to find out why they call it a “crush.” Because she’ll be crushed.
Sweet sixteen. Hah!
8
Just when you have things more-or-less figured out—at least to the point where you know what your problems are, even if you can’t exactly solve them—life throws you a curve. My day had barely begun when a whole new thing to worry about reared its ugly head.
I had just lifted my orange juice glass to my unsuspecting lips when Nonny said, "So, Zara, when do I get to meet your new friend?"
The good thing about a coughing fit is, it gives you time to think. The bad thing is, whatever sent you into the coughing fit is usually something unthinkable. Like Nonny in the same room with Lance. Unthinkable.
"Um," I said. Eventually. "Uh. What new friend?" As if new friends were arriving by the truckload and she had to tell me which one she had in mind.
She settled into the chair across from me and pointed at me with a piece of toast. "Don’t make me say it, Zara." Was she twinkling? Heaven help me. The woman was twinkling. "Your new boyfriend."
I spluttered. There is no dignified term for the sounds that emitted from me. I spluttered. If I said anything coherent at all, I do not recall it. What I do recall saying was along the lines of, "Bawk!"
Nonny took a bite of toast and chewed, watching me. "He’s not a boyfriend?"
"No," I managed to say. "He’s not. Not a boyfriend."
"Wasn’t that him who dropped by last night?"
"Dropping by at night does not a boyfriend make." There. That sounded lofty. Much more impressive than bawk.
"Mm." She swallowed. "Well, if I can’t refer to him as your boyfriend, I’ll have to use his name. What is it?"
Oh my oh my oh my. A deep unhappiness settled into the pit of my stomach, forcing me to look down and fiddle with my spoon. The mental image of introducing Lance to Nonny made me ill. What a ghastly prospect. I hated even telling her his name. I wanted her to have nothing to do with him. To know nothing about him. To never meet him.
I wanted to keep her safe.
See, this is the thing. It has nothing to do with wanting to have a secret boyfriend, or wanting Nonny to stay out of my love life, or any of that other stuff a normal teenager might feel. I want to keep Lance away from Nonny ... or Nonny away from Lance ... because I have this idiotic notion that he might hurt her. Now, why do I feel that?? I don’t know why Lance would want to hurt Nonny. It’s absurd. And if he wanted to, how could he? She’s the grownup, he’s the kid.
Yeah, right. The normal power equations don’t apply here.
I know Lance could hurt Nonny. I don’t know exactly how, and I don’t know why he would want to. So I don’t know IF he would hurt her. But I do know that he could.
Call it instinct.
Lance is, as I think I mentioned before, a creature of power. And, I guess you could say, it takes one to know one. But if I am a creature of power, I’m like a watch battery. Lance seems more like a fuel cell. Maybe, on a good day, I can make a second hand run around a plastic dial. He sends two-ton cars from zero to sixty on a regular basis.
I’m babbling.
My point is, Lance has power. He has plenty of power. And frankly, the more he intrudes into my life, the more power he has. And—gee, what a surprise—the less I have. It’s bad enough that he is worming his way into Megan’s gullible little heart. What if he starts sucking up to Nonny? Complimenting her cooking? Offering to carry heavy stuff for her? Doing some greasy Eddie Haskell routine???
Aieeeee!!!
It might be different if, at the same time he was getting to know Meg and Nonny, I got to know Lance’s people. But he has managed, thus far, to keep himself a complete mystery. And I can already tell that I will never get within fifty miles of his near and dear. If he even has near and dear, which, quite frankly, I have a hard time picturing.
It wasn’t possible, of course, to prevent Nonny from learning Lance’s name. What was I going to say? That I didn’t remember it? No, I had to tell her. I hated that, I really did.
Nonny could tell something was wrong, but she couldn’t tell what. She sat there with this puzzled look on her face while I traced a pattern on the tablecloth with the edge of my spoon and mumbled, "Lance."
"His name is Lance?"
I nodded. I couldn’t even look at her.
"Well. That’s a nice name." She was fishing, I could tell. Just saying something, anything, to draw me out. She wanted me to talk about Lance, to give her a clue or two. But I couldn’t bear it. I just shrugged.
She tried again. "It means ‘spear,’ or ‘spear-carrier.’ Or, if I’m not mistaken, ‘he who serves.’"
"Very interesting." Not to me, however. But Nonny has a thing about names, so I thought
I’d humor her. "What does ‘Donovan’ mean?"
"Darkness. Why?"
Oh, great. He Who Serves Darkness. I might have guessed.
"Nothing. That’s Lance’s last name."
"Don’t you like him, Zara? You spent quite a bit of time with him yesterday."
"Meg likes him."
"Ohhh." That seemed to be the answer that satisfied her, because she left me alone after that. For the life of me, I don’t know what strange inference she made. All I said was that Meg liked Lance—something that is true, but not necessarily illuminating, as far as I can see. Honestly, old people. Who can tell what they’re thinking?? For some reason, ‘Meg likes him’ told Nonny all she needed to know. And you know what? Fine. That’s just fine. As long as I don’t have to talk about Lance, I don’t care WHAT peculiar notion Nonny has in her head.
Not that I can put this off forever. They are going to meet.
You know what I hate the most? This lack of control. I feel so helpless. This is not a feeling I have on a regular basis. Is this how most people feel all the time?? If so, Lance may have a point. Being a normal person isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I’ll take the power, thank you.
Like I have a choice.
Most summer days in Cherry Glen are beautiful, with cool, sunny mornings that gradually warm to excellent swimming weather by lunchtime. Today was no exception. But I still felt this cloud of doom hovering over me, in spite of the bright blue sky. And it didn’t take long for the cloud of doom to start drizzling.
I hung out on the porch, waiting for Meg. She usually shows up around mid-morning. Nine o’clock, no Meg. Nine-thirty, no Meg. I was just about to text her when I looked out my bedroom window and saw two figures strolling up the road toward me. One of them was short and bouncy and topped with a mop of untidy brown curls. The other was tall and lean and masculine.
I couldn’t believe it. I’m not sure why I couldn’t believe it, but I couldn’t believe it. "My" Lance and "my" Meg, together without ME. I mean, shouldn’t I be, like, the indispensable element?? Am I, or am I not, the only thing these two have in common??
