by Gina Linko
And even in the awkwardness of initiating the first hug in a long time, I thought of how easy it would be to return to a normal life of casual conversations and everyday physical interaction. In that moment, my mother holding on to me, me hugging her back and watching Mrs. Twopenny there with a little more color in her ancient cheeks than earlier, I felt like it all actually might be possible.
And there was a part of me—probably a large part—that knew I was being foolish and naive to let this one moment, this one victory, symbolize a new start for me. I tried to temper my hope, to reel myself back in.
I knew I had to. So when I went home that night, I did not sit and talk it all out with Mom and Dad. I didn’t share the roast beef sandwiches at the kitchen table with them. I took my food upstairs instead, feeling their shared glances behind me.
I took the photo album off Mom’s shelf and made myself look at Sophie’s gap-toothed smile, made myself remember that although today had gone well—today had hopefully been some kind of game changer—nothing could bring Sophie back.
I took out her rocks. From that night on the beach: the Petoskey, the agate, two other rocks that I couldn’t name. Sophie would’ve known what they were. I had shoved these in my sock drawer in a ziplock baggie so long ago, when Mom had given them to me after the funeral. I hadn’t even wanted to look at them then. Or ever. But now it seemed so important. My last link to her. I rolled them around in my hand, wondered at their histories, their origins. Sophie’s last rocks.
Who was to say that the next time I felt that surge of energy, saw blue, it would turn out like Sophie or Lucy and not like Lila Twopenny? Or who was to say it wouldn’t be something else completely unexpected?
As I stared into Sophie’s nine-year-old Girl Scout portrait, the rocks still in my hand, I knew that I understood nothing more than I had yesterday about this “touch,” as Lila Twopenny had called it. Nothing except that I now had reason to stay and dig out some more information, some knowledge.
I knew I would have to talk to not only Lila but also Rennick.
As I bit into the hearty roast beef sandwich, I savored the salty taste. I hadn’t enjoyed food—or anything—for so long. It tasted good.
And when the telephone rang, near dawn, not an uncommon thing to happen in a minister’s household, I didn’t pay it any mind. But then I heard Mom’s footsteps coming up the stairs. I braced myself. Bad news? Mrs. Twopenny? Had it just been delayed for a few hours?
Mom knocked on the door frame. I sat up, bracing myself.
“Mrs. Twopenny’s not in hospice anymore.”
“She died?” I croaked.
“No, sweetie!” Mom said, sweeping into my room and throwing her arms around me. “They can’t find the spots on her lungs in the MRI. Not on her liver. Not on her spleen.”
Mom released me, stood there, waiting for a reaction, something.
“Holy shit,” I said, not meaning to swear but not quite able to absorb her words.
Mom laughed, this loud, jingle-bell laugh, and hugged me again. Dad joined us, and there we stood, all three hugging, the photo album open on my bed to Sophie’s smiling portrait.
Chartrain had a cat, a little tiger-striped cat with an attitude. It roamed freely, and when I got to Mrs. Twopenny’s room the following day, the cat was curled into a ball at the foot of her bed. Mrs. Twopenny was snoring lightly.
I had heard of animals, even animals that lived in old folks’ homes like this, that could sense death and would often sit or keep company with a patient for hours or even days before the medical staff knew that death was imminent. So the sight of the cat kind of creeped me out. Maybe Mrs. Twopenny was still going to die from my handshake of doom.
The cat woke up lazily and saw me standing in Mrs. Twopenny’s room, gave me half a glance, and jumped off the bed, sauntering slowly out to the hallway. A nurse came in and checked a few things on Mrs. Twopenny’s monitor. “You’re kind of famous around here,” he said.
“Yeah,” I answered, feeling a blush creep up my neck. I averted my eyes. I could sense him watching me as he wrote some abbreviated nurse’s code on the whiteboard. And I had this weird feeling then, a twist in my gut. Because what had happened yesterday was crazy and miraculous. But it was mine. Even though I didn’t feel like I had control of it. It was on my shoulders—for better or for worse. For the moment it was a good thing.
But already, even though I hardly believed in my ability, there was a part of my mathlete brain worrying about malpractice insurance, trying to figure out how exactly I was going to live with this gift. Like, should I save all sick kids first, and old people last? Like some kind of supersensory triage? And how would I make those decisions? Fluck. Already I was wearing myself out with the logistics. Would I stay in New Orleans, or would I take my act on the road? I was already picturing circus sideshow banners with a caricature of me and my pointy chin smiling out at the customers. Or maybe I should just keep it all secretive so I wouldn’t get too famous. Work out of Mia-Joy’s basement or something. This was how a logical girl’s brain worked in a very illogical situation. Not exactly A=B, but A=I’m screwed.
Although much less screwed than if I were the angel of death.
Mom came in then with her cup of coffee and traded hellos with the nurse, and Mrs. Twopenny was startled by the voices. She bolted upright in bed. It made me nervous.
But she greeted me—and my mom—with such exuberance, I put my nerves about everything in the back of my mind. Mrs. Twopenny swung her legs over the side of the bed completely unassisted. She got up and hugged both of us, squeezing me tight with those same frail-looking arms and petite hands. She had color high in her wrinkled cheeks, her hair pulled back in a silver chignon at her neck.
I let her hug me, but I pulled back quickly. No field of energy drew us together today, but I was alert around her, my senses heightened a bit.
“Lordy! You are like my daughter Ruthie! I already called my Clara. She is coming down from Atlanta. She is going to want to meet y’all.”
She beamed at us, and although I had relaxed my silence rule and bent my touching rules, I wasn’t sure what to say now. I was unable to take credit here, unable to explain it, and frankly I couldn’t really swallow it. The whole healer thing.
“Miss Corrine, you realize you done fixed me?” Mrs. Twopenny said.
I looked at Mom.
“It’s a miracle,” Mom said, putting her arm around my shoulders slowly, as if asking permission. I let her and she pulled me close. Do I know this is safe now? I told myself it was. I wasn’t feeling any of the warning signs.
“It is a miracle!” Mrs. Twopenny said, sitting daintily on the edge of her bed, her hands clasped under her chin like a child. “That’s exactly what Clara said.” She turned to me then.
I didn’t know how to start. I had a lot of questions. First and foremost, could I ever expect to control this?
“What about your daughter Ruth?” Mom asked, sitting down in a visitor’s chair and pointing toward the rocker for me. I took a seat and listened.
“Ruthie, she’s gone.” Mrs. Twopenny did not look up.
“She passed away?” I asked, but I knew this from Rennick.
“And she was the one with the touch?” Mom asked.
Mrs. Twopenny nodded.
“Mrs. Twopenny,” I started hesitantly, “can you tell me how your daughter dealt with this? I mean, how did she control it?”
Mrs. Twopenny nodded again, brought her finger to her temple in a gesture that said she was thinking. “Couldn’t always bring it around. Ruthie would sometimes get so frustrated. It wouldn’t always come. And even if it did, it sometimes wouldn’t work. Too far gone, Ruthie would say. Too much for me. But we kept it a quiet secret. It didn’t set easily with some folks, you know.” Mrs. Twopenny lowered her voice. “Ruthie tried. She really tried. Until the end.”
Mom and I just nodded. It seemed both too much information and nothing at all. I wanted to ask how Ruth had died, but it seemed too
private a moment for Mrs. Twopenny, who had yet to look back up at us.
“Does Clara also have the touch?” I asked.
“No, she does not, but she has her own gift. They tell me that is how it is with twins a lot of the time, with this supersensory business.” Mrs. Twopenny had finally looked back up at us, now that the topic had turned away from Ruth.
Mrs. Twopenny rang the nurse’s button on her bed rail, and Mom and I looked at each other. “Are you worn out, Lila?” Mom asked. “We can leave.”
Mrs. Twopenny shook her head. A nurse’s voice broke over the intercom. “Lila, can we help you?”
“Yes,” she answered, looking at us pointedly. “My grandson is wandering around out there by the vending machines. Can you send him in?”
“Certainly.” The intercom clicked, and Mrs. Twopenny leaned toward us conspiratorially.
“Rennick has the same gift as Clara. I reckon it is hard to describe to y’all, but he’ll do a fine job.”
Mom gave me a look then. Of the why-haven’t-you-told-me-this variety.
Rennick came in and nodded hello, stood near Mrs. Twopenny, wearing his uniform of jeans and a T-shirt. The atmosphere in the room changed. It became thicker, closer.
Mrs. Twopenny noticed it and looked from Rennick to me as she introduced everyone.
“We know each other,” Rennick said to her.
Mom smiled. “Yes, pebbles at the window.”
“I was hoping, Renny, that you could explain the colors.”
“Well,” he said, eyeing me with a sheepish grin.
“They were asking about your Aunt Clara, and it sounds a tad loony coming from an old lady who happened to just cheat death.” Mrs. Twopenny giggled.
And it was contagious. I chuckled too, and Mom joined in. Rennick watched me closely, a smile on his face. But his eyes were serious.
He answered Mrs. Twopenny’s question. “I see auras around people.”
I glanced away from his gaze; so this explained the wall in the garage. I caught Mom nodding. She had taken in a lot in the past twenty-four hours. We all had. And if we were going to open the door to one miracle, could we shut it on another? Laugh at it? Discredit it? No, we were all joining the crazy party here.
I looked back at Rennick and nodded, hoping he’d go on.
“Specific colors mean specific things on people. Emotions. Character traits. Physical characteristics. There’s a lot of science to it. I’ve read a lot about it, studied. But it’s also an art.…” He became suddenly self-conscious, rubbing his palm across his jawline, giving an apologetic smile.
“What does blue mean?” I asked him, wondering why he had told me he saw the blue and whether it linked to the indigo lens in my episodes.
“Depends.” He gave me a look, considered.
“Rennick believes there’s a magic in electricity we are only learning about now.” Mrs. Twopenny’s eyes twinkled, and I saw in that look how much she admired him. Rennick cleared his throat, looked away nervously.
At that moment, we heard voices in the hallway, great, boisterous exclamations, and like a whirlwind a dark-haired, very pretty older woman blew into the room, along with a camera crew, a guy holding one of those boom mikes, and two other people, who both carried clipboards and looked somewhat official.
The dark-haired woman had already perched herself on the bed with Mrs. Twopenny and started talking a mile a minute. “Well, good day. Mrs. Twopenny, yes?” the woman said, but didn’t allow Mrs. Twopenny to answer. “They told me it was a ninety-year-old woman I’d be interviewing, but my goodness, do you look young.” Mrs. Twopenny clearly fell for the flattery, raising her hand to her cheek in mock humility. “Would you mind being on camera? Channel Thirteen News?”
The woman paused now, and I put it together just as Mrs. Twopenny gasped. “You are Myrna Sawyer!”
More fake humility. “That I am!”
“My Clara is on TV too,” Mrs. Twopenny explained.
There were too many people vying for too little space in the room now. The boom mike poked me right in the face, so I took a step toward Rennick, hoping to slip out the door. Mom eyed me over the head of the red-haired assistant with the cell phone to her ear. There were too many people here, and the other assistant’s clipboard hit me on the arm. Although my rules were relaxing, and I knew I was going to be starting a new kind of normal, this was too much.
My skin tightened and the hairs on my neck prickled. I couldn’t breathe. I needed room to breathe.
Myrna Sawyer popped off the bed as she spied me maneuvering past Rennick toward the door. “You, young lady,” she said, jumping in front of the door before I could get there. “Are you the young lady? Are you the one?”
I couldn’t breathe right, my temples thumped with each beat of my pulse. “I need to—” I tried to look over the head of the cameraman, who now had his camera pointed in my face. I tried to signal my mother.
I shook my head, reached for the doorknob. Then Myrna Sawyer reached out, grabbing my forearm. I supposed she wanted to guide me back into the room. But I got a shock when she touched me. Maybe it was just a regular, everyday, static-electric shock, but it scared me.
I jumped away from her like a startled animal. Myrna reared back, offended.
“She doesn’t want to talk,” Rennick said, just this side of polite. He stepped in front of me, opened the door for me. He followed me out.
I stalked into the waiting area, my arms crossed against my chest, my shoulders hunched. “I’m scared,” I said.
“I know,” Rennick said. “It gets better.”
“Yeah?”
Mom came out of the room now, and a man in a suit met her just outside the door. They stood talking, their faces serious. We were out of earshot. “Who is that?” I asked Rennick. Mom took out her cell phone and looked at it.
“I don’t know.” We watched their conversation and waited.
Mom was shaking her head as she came toward us. “I guess this place is swarming with news reporters. That was a bigwig here at the nursing home. And Dad just texted me. There are reporters at the house too.” Mom rubbed her knuckles across her lip.
“Corrine’s a real hero, front-page news,” Rennick said. But none of us smiled.
“I can’t talk about this yet,” I said. Mom nodded.
Rennick rubbed his jaw. “I can help,” he said.
“What are you thinking?” Mom asked.
“Corrine could come to my house for the day. There won’t be any paparazzi there.” He seemed a bit bashful, looking up through his eyelashes. And although I had been wondering about his motives, it came to me in a flash. I mean, why did he want to help me? But it just hit me—could Rennick Lane possibly like me? Was it that simple?
It was a comforting thought. So very normal. So very high school. So much like my old life. But no, I knew that Rennick had his own reasons. Totally.
I smiled as he explained to Mom where he lived. Forty-eight hours ago, I wouldn’t have dreamed of going to Rennick Lane’s house for the day. But today was a new day in many ways. And it was tempting to think he could give me more insight into what I was going through.
I pushed away the idea that this was Ren from the Pen. The things I had heard at school, they didn’t jell with the boy in front of me here.
Mom turned toward me. “What do you think, Corrine? It’s up to you. We could just hole up at home. Dad could make sure the reporters let us in the door at least.”
“I want to go with Rennick,” I said. “I think we have a lot to talk about.” This was me jumping in, giving it my whole self. Swimming the butterfly. I wanted to figure this thing out. And I felt myself slide back a little, back to my old self. Back into that comfortable place where I knew right from wrong, where I followed my instincts, where I acted with certainty and confidence. What was that word? Mrs. Smelser had taught me all about it when I had been learning that last piece by Chopin. A continuous, unbroken slide from one note to another. Glissando.
My decision.
Mom nodded. “I’m sure that’s true.” She gave me a look, eyebrows raised.
“Really, I want to go,” I reassured her. Mom blew me a kiss then, and I surprised her by grabbing her hand and squeezing it. I think I surprised myself too.
“You better hurry,” she said, glancing toward the door of Mrs. Twopenny’s room. “And Mr. Huskins said to use the cafeteria kitchen door.” I was kind of shocked that Mom was letting me go with Rennick, not really knowing him. It seemed out of character, but as I turned to follow Rennick toward the elevator, Mom called, “Tell your grandfather I’ll bring those seeds I promised him next week.”
And then it all came together for me. Duh. Mom knew his family. Figured. And this made me feel a little better too.
We walked toward the front entrance of Chartrain, and I kept looking over my shoulder, expecting a camera flash or something. I took account of my body, the way my skin felt, the normal, everyday feeling in my chest. It seemed almost difficult to recall the faraway feeling of the indigo flame under my ribs.
We neared the front desk, avoiding Holly, who was on today, and I peeked out the front window. Sure enough, there were two news vans, and at least a dozen people in front on the sidewalk.
We turned, facing each other for a second in an odd, what-do-we-do-now kind of way, and Rennick just laughed, easy and low. “Let’s go through the back,” he said. He stuck out his elbow for me to lock my arm through.
I hesitated just for a second and was actually about to loop my arm through his when he thought better of it. “Oh, sorry,” he said, dropping his arm.
We walked side by side toward the cafeteria. I lengthened my steps to keep up with him. “I’m parked in the back lot, so that works,” he said.
“Why do you care about me? Why did you try so hard to help me?” The words came falling out of me just as we hit the cafeteria.
I stopped, waited for him to answer. He looked back, a serious expression on his face, but one corner of his mouth rose into the slightest of smiles. “Your aura.”
I waited, but he didn’t say anything else.
