by Diane Farr
And guess what? I got nothin’.
I tried harder. Still nothing. Her mind was a vast, inscrutable blank.
I fell behind, letting Meg and Lance walk on ahead of me. And, directly behind her, I tried it the other way around. I tried sending instead of receiving. I sent her a simple thought: Meg. Look at me. Turn around and look at me.
She continued to talk to Lance, oblivious. And I could feel my words going nowhere, pushing into the air and hitting nothing at all.
I tried again. Meg, scratch your ear. When that didn’t work, I sent out something more subliminal: Meg, your ear itches. Ooh, it itches something fierce. Itchy itchy itchy. I concentrated so hard, I made my own ear itch. Meg just kept walking and talking.
I cut my eyes at Lance. Had he heard any of this? He gave no indication. He certainly didn’t scratch his ear.
Wow. This could be huge.
I don’t think he heard me.
How could he not hear me?? I mean, he can pick up all kinds of stuff floating around in my mind, so why not this? This was a virtual shout, for Pete’s sake. And he was right there, not ten feet from me.
!!!???
They were ignoring me anyway, so I trailed behind them, mulling it over. All this time, I’ve been assuming that my communications with Lance are the telepathic equivalent of speaking out loud. Guess not.
And you know what? It really steams me that Lance hasn’t bothered to mention this. Among all the other things he hasn’t bothered to mention. He doles out little bits and pieces of spellspinner trickery, just to toll me on. He leaves stuff out, to make sure I don’t know what I'm doing.
So if Meg can’t receive a message beamed directly at her—and she obviously can’t— where does it go? Does it go nowhere?
I’m guessing yes. It hits the intended target, or it hits nothing.
Too bad there’s no way for me to test the theory. In order to beam my thoughts at someone other than Lance, I’d have to find another person who can hear my thoughts. Right now, that doesn’t sound too appealing. I’ve lost enough privacy as it is.
So. Mrs. O’Shaughnessy met us with her old Camry. With my new awareness of seating arrangements, I had the presence of mind to duck quickly into the back seat. Hah. I didn’t care who sat back there with me; either way, Meg and Lance would be separated.
My maneuver earned me a scornful look from Meg as she hopped into the front. Lance held the doors open for both of us. What a gentleman. (Yeah, right.) So I ended up sitting in the back seat with Lance. No biggie. The seat belts kept us apart, and the fact that he was wearing jeans kept our skin from touching even when he leaned his knee against mine. Which he did, by the way. Repeatedly.
We made small talk about the movie. (Meg: “It was wonderful.” Me: “It was okay.” Lance: “Not enough action.”) When we got to my house, Lance—still in gentleman mode—got out and walked me to the door.
“Such beautiful manners,” I said sweetly. “Meg and her mother will be so impressed.”
He waited until we were halfway up the walk, then said, “I don’t care about them. It’s you I wish I could impress.”
He sounded sincere. I sent out my feelers and confirmed it. He was speaking truth, at least as far as the words went. This kind of threw me for a second.
Then I remembered. Of course he’d rather impress me. Meg and her mother are sticks.
I frowned. “You want to impress me? Act like a human being.”
“Sorry, babe. No can do.” He reached to hold the screen door for me, then lowered his voice. “I’m too much more than that.”
He was so close to me, I could feel the electricity humming off his skin. That’s what it feels like to me, anyway. He seems to give off energy, like a high voltage wire.
“Look,” I said. “This is important to me.” I stopped in the doorway, squared my shoulders, and faced him. “If you’ll leave Meg alone, I’ll give you a day. One day. Show me what you’ve got, Donovan.”
“I need more than a day.”
“Tough. One day is what you’ll get.”
“You’re on.” He gave me that slow, sexy smile. And I knew what he was thinking: I’ll win you over, Zara. One day at a time. “See you tomorrow.”
He strolled back to the car while I watched from the doorway, appalled at my own rashness. I should have promised him an hour or something. Not a whole day.
Oh, well. It’s only a day. Let’s not get carried away, here. Nothing earth-shattering can happen in a single day. Right?
I heard no call tonight. Felt no impulse to wander into the meadow or hang out on the porch. My mind is utterly silent and peaceful. Nobody’s knocking at the edges of my thoughts, demanding entrance.
Ahhhh. For the first time since I met Lance Donovan, I’m going to get a good night’s sleep. And even though spellspinners don’t actually need a good’s night sleep, I’ll tell you what: they enjoy it when they get it.
One thing I do miss. No call from Meg tonight. But what am I supposed to do? Apologize? For what???
11
I didn’t actually sleep that great. But that’s okay. I love waking up early on a summer morning, listening to the Chapmans’s rooster sounding off every so often, and watching the light gather and grow ... it’s delicious. Especially when you can lie there and relish the idea of a whole, long day stretching before you with no school.
Today, of course, was different. I knew it would be a school day for me, in a way. But I lay there and watched the shadows cast by my lace curtains as they stirred lightly in the breeze, and I let myself drift toward whatever the day would bring.
My body felt weightless. My mind shifted into neutral. And when a meadowlark started warbling in the distance, my heart swelled with an emotion so sweet it was almost sorrow—a sort of nostalgia, if that makes sense. Can you feel nostalgic about stuff that still exists? Or is nostalgia only for things that have passed away? Anyhow, that’s what I felt. I ached for the beauty of this day, this morning, this place, this moment. This life. My life.
I really do love it here. But all things change. All things pass away. And my days of watching the summer sun steal across the sky in Cherry Glen are almost over. I can feel it.
As the lacy shadows swam across my sunlit ceiling, I felt something else, too. I felt Power gathering in the corners of my room.
I’ve never written about this before. I’ve never told a soul, not even Meg. But sometimes—and more often, as I get older—magic forms like a cloud around me ... I wish I could find better words for it. I can feel it, hovering. Waiting. Growing. Demanding my attention.
I don’t really blame Lance for laughing at my bravado. I must have sounded like an idiot, telling him I don’t want to be a spellspinner. It’s ridiculous for me to say that I’ll fight it, that I won’t use my powers, that I’ll leave reality alone and live a normal life. Truth be told, I haven’t found a way to live without magic. It’s like trying to live without sneezing. No wonder he said, “Good luck with that.” He’s right. Sometimes, you just gotta sneeze. And there’s not much you can do about it.
On days like this, when I feel the Power building like steam in a teakettle, you know what I do? I go off by myself and throw it at the ground. Seriously. I hurl my power at the ground like a grenade, and watch the earth explode. Or I aim it up into the sky and blast the prevailing weather pattern to smithereens. I send it somewhere, anywhere. But I have to use it. There is no other way to get rid of it.
I think I may have mentioned that my spells (if that’s what we call them) don’t hold forever. I never know exactly how long the effects will last when I do this power-sneeze thing, but I do know they are temporary. When I blast the sky and hold back the rain, it only lasts a few seconds, or maybe a minute. When I discharge a wad of magic to blow a crater in the bottom of the creek or something, the crater fills in. Eventually. Certainly by the time I feel the pressure building again. So I’m not wrecking people’s pastures or destroying the ecosystem or whatever. Not permanently.
/> Today, I didn’t have to sneak off and find a safe place to vent the magic. Today, I could keep it with me. I was going to use it for something. I didn’t know what, not yet. But I knew I was going to use it.
The idea felt downright naughty. I’m so used to feeling ashamed of my magic, or afraid of it, that it was really hard to accept the concept. But that was the reality. I was going to use my powers. I was deliberately going to use my powers. Today.
The realization shot so much nervous energy through me, it got me out of bed.
It was still early. I heard Nonny moving around downstairs and another wave of nostalgia, or whatever it is, swept over me. I slipped into some clothes— cropped pants, a cami and a lace shrug—and drifted down the narrow stairs from my loft to the dining room. By the time I got there, Nonny was digging through the cupboards, singing to herself.
I hung back in the passage to the kitchen and listened for a few seconds. That peculiar nostalgia was still tugging at my heart. It seemed to me that there was something almost unbearably dear about this moment ... that this picture of Nonny in the kitchen was a memory I would carry with me forever.
Everyone has images that imprint themselves in the brain, memories you can pull out like old photographs and thumb through on a rainy day. This would be one of mine: Nonny in her ratty old bathrobe, hunting for her favorite frying pan and singing, while the sun slanted across the kitchen floor and finches whistled happily in the crepe myrtle outside the screen door.
Nonny sings a lot. She has a nice voice and always gets the tune right, but she hardly ever knows the words. It cracks me up. Today she was singing that trolley song from an old Judy Garland movie—Meet Me In St. Louis, I think it is. But, as usual, she didn’t know the words. And, as usual, that didn’t even slow her down.
“Clang, clang, clang, something something,” sang Nonny. “Ding, ding, ding, something else. Stop, stop, stop, something something—” She saw me in the doorway and blew me a kiss. “Morning, sweetheart. What’s the occasion?” She gestured at my outfit.
“Occasion?” I looked down at myself. I guess it was the lace shrug that caught her eye. Normally in summertime I wear the bare essentials. The lace was purely decorative, no weight to it at all. So it wasn’t warm or anything. But it was definitely … extra. “I might be going somewhere with Lance.”
Ooh, I hadn’t meant to say that. But, come to think of it, I probably had to. She was bound to notice. She keeps a pretty good eye on me from the nursery, believe it or not. After all, it’s right across the street. Anyway, her eyebrows went up. “With Lance, huh?” I could practically see the wheels turning in her brain. She set the frying pan on the stove and went to the fridge. Her back was to me as she said, “Well, you look beautiful. Where’r you going?”
“I said might. I really don’t know.”
“I thought you didn’t like him.”
“I said Meg likes him. I didn’t say I didn’t like him.”
“Oh, dear.” Nonny straightened up, eggs in hand, and turned to look at me. “I hope you and Meg don’t like the same boy. I would hate for anything to come between you two.”
I had to roll my eyes. “Believe me, it’s nothing like that.”
“Is Meg going with you today?”
“Um. I don’t think so.” I had no clue what we were doing, come to think of it. “But don’t worry, okay?”
Too late. She was worried. Her apple-doll face was starting to pucker. “It seems to me that if Meg likes this boy, this Lance, you shouldn’t go places with him. Not without Meg.” She held the eggs up in the air. “How many do you want?”
“Two. And I don’t even know where we’re going, if we’re going, or whether Meg will come. Not for sure.” I was pretty sure Meg wasn’t coming with us, but 99% certainty is not certainty. That’s what I told myself, anyway.
I think of myself as a truthful person, but I swear, ever since Lance entered the picture, it’s getting harder and harder.
I heard feet crunching in the gravel walkway beside the house. Adrenaline ripped through me. I knew who it was, of course, way before he stepped up and rapped his knuckles on the frame of the kitchen screen door.
“Hi,” said Lance, peering in through the screen. He was backlit, and the morning sun outlined him like a halo. How deceptive. “Am I too early?”
Welcome to my nightmare. Lance was about to meet Nonny. And there wasn’t a single thing I could do about it.
Nonny tugged her bathrobe together under her chin with one hand and scooped the other hand through her uncombed hair. “Oh, heavens. Yes. You must be Lance. Zara, why didn’t you tell me what time he was coming?” She went to pull the screen door open for him.
“I didn’t know,” I said. “Here, let me get that.” I beat her to the door. She let me, since she was embarrassed about the way she looked.
“I’m going to make myself presentable,” said Nonny. “Come on in, Lance. I’ll be right back.”
I heard her bare feet, behind me, padding off toward her bedroom. I just stood there for a minute with my hand on the latch, looking at Lance on the other side of the screen. I spoke softly, so Nonny wouldn’t hear. “Troublemaker. Why are you here at the crack of dawn?”
“It’s not the crack of dawn. It’s practically 7:00.”
“It’s 6:40 a.m. and excuse me, that’s not a normal hour to drop in. Can’t you wait till Nonny goes to work? She’ll be outta here in another forty minutes. She opens the nursery at 7:30.”
“I think I’ve waited long enough.”
Something in his eyes sent shivers through me. But not shivers of horror. Oh, no. Shivers of something else entirely.
Did I mention that Lance Donovan is dangerous? Well, he is. In more ways than one.
He was dressed up, too, so it wasn’t just me. I don’t normally think of brown as a power color, but on Lance, with that chestnut hair and those jewel-green eyes, it was killer.
He saw, in my eyes or in my mind, what I was thinking. And he smiled. And he let me into his mind, to see his view of me.
I definitely blushed.
Nobody was ever as pretty as Lance Donovan thinks I am.
Oh, and another thing: it’s true what they say about teenage boys having sex on the brain.
After that peek into each other’s thoughts, we were both smiling—a bit self-consciously, at least on my part. I slipped the hook out of the eye and pulled the door open for him. “Okay,” I said. “I’m not going to make you stand on the stoop. Come on in the kitchen. But don’t get any big ideas.”
“Babe, I got nothin’ but big ideas.” He stepped past me and looked around, his head swiveling like a tourist’s. “This is nice.”
“Nice would be the word for it,” I agreed. “And stop calling me ‘babe.’”
It was fun to see Nonny’s kitchen through Lance’s eyes. It’s a big, old-fashioned kitchen. Not big in a Mc-Mansion way, of course. Big in a farmhouse way. It has a linoleum floor, and all the appliances are shoved up along the walls in a square, the way it was in olden days. There’s a regular horse trough of a sink, an elbow-deep, ceramic rectangle. The sink has a window over it and the window has curtains with embroidered tie-backs. And there’s a flower box outside the window, currently sporting red geraniums and yellow and white marguerite daisies. And, of course, don’t forget the screen door. That’s a great, retro touch. The middle of the room is dominated by the kitchen table, a sturdy, wooden affair with a clean linen cloth and a glass Mason jar of fresh flowers in the center. We always have fresh flowers.
“Very homey,” said Lance. And he meant it.
“This is nothing. Wait till you smell breakfast cooking.”
Nonny bustled back in, smiling brightly. She doesn’t do makeup, but her gray-brown bob was tidy now, and she was wearing her work clothes: a polo shirt and khaki pants, over which she wore a green bib apron with Norland’s embroidered at the top in white. With the shirt tucked into the waistband and the apron tied on, her body looked like a Twinkie with a
rubber band around it.
“Hello again,” she said, grabbing a kitchen apron. She tends to layer a kitchen apron on top of her work apron—which totally kills me. “I’m Helga Norland. You’ll probably end up calling me Nonny, like Zara and Meg do.” She moved forward to shake Lance’s hand. The top of her head was about level with his shoulder.
“Pleased to meet you. Lance Donovan.” He shook her hand with his best smile, the really charming one.
And an interesting thing happened. Nonny took one good look at Lance’s face and almost dropped the apron she was carrying. I could swear she looked ... well ... flummoxed. Just for a second. It was almost like she recognized him. Or maybe he reminded her of someone.
She recovered immediately, though, and tied the kitchen apron expertly around her own back while saying, “I think I’m supposed to say, ‘oh, I’ve heard so much about you’– but actually, I haven’t. I’ve seen you, though, of course.”
He looked a little startled, so I helped him out. “The nursery’s just across the street. And we spend a lot of time on the porch. So she sees us. From a distance.”
“Oh,” he said, trying not to look too relieved. “Of course.”
“Have you had breakfast?” Nonny headed for the refrigerator. “I was about to whip up some eggs.”
“I never turn down food,” said Lance. “Thank you.”
“Sit down,” I told him. He did, and I started setting the table. I was watching Nonny out of the corner of my eye. She can make breakfast in her sleep, so just because she was cooking didn’t mean she wasn’t focused on Lance. She was.
“How do you like Cherry Glen, Lance?” Out came the cutting board.
“I like it a lot.” He put his charming smile back on. “Cute girls here.”
The charming smile was wasted. Nonny was chopping herbs. “Where do you live?”
He hesitated just a fraction of a second too long. “Not far from the mall,” he said.
Yeah, right. I bet. He’s probably commuting from Transylvania, just beaming himself to Cherry Glen every day.
