by Gina Linko
“What about my aura?”
He smiled fully then, a little bit embarrassed—flirting? Was he flirting? I smiled too, and my stomach did this flip-flop. God, he was hot. That tousled hair. And he liked my aura.
“I can tell a lot about people from the colors, and I’m usually—no, always—right.”
I told myself to settle down. How could I go from so abnormal right back to total high school girl in the amount of time it took to notice the ridiculous length of his eyelashes, the deep indigo of his eyes? I swallowed hard, rolled my eyes at myself. I started walking toward the kitchen again, and he fell in step beside me.
“I have a lot of questions,” I said.
We reached the kitchen, where Rennick said hello to a few people. Then he pushed the back door open, toward the alley. We stepped outside and looked at each other.
“I really should say thank you. I mean, I don’t know what is going on exactly, but the possibility that I am not the Grim Reaper herself is pretty explosive. I can’t thank you enough for trying to help me.”
“Of course I had to help you, Corrine. You saved my grandmother,” he said, shielding his eyes from the sun. He pointed toward the gravel lot on the left. “And you’ve got this inexplicable power, this sixth sense going on. We extrasensory loners gotta somehow look out for each other.”
Oh, so that was it. I was part of some sliver of society with this gift or something. Of course that was it. Weird kinship. He had a duty to reach out a helping hand. I shook my head a little as I followed him to the car. Of course. I was silly for thinking it was something else. Something more personal.
As Rennick chivalrously opened the passenger door for me, I actually swallowed a laugh. I wasn’t twenty-four hours back into the regular world. Not twenty-four hours back into interaction, talking, relating with others, and already I had fallen into the worst trap for a seventeen-year-old girl: a cute guy with a killer smile.
He drove like a grandpa, five miles under the speed limit, and he never took his eyes off the road. It made me want to make a joke about it. I almost did, but he was so earnest, sitting at the wheel of his dirty, beat-up Jeep, old country music playing on the radio.
“You know Mia-Joy?” I had nearly forgotten how to make conversation.
“Some,” he said. “Interesting aura.”
I wondered at this. But I plunged into a different subject. “You go to Liberty.”
He nodded. Nothing else. I rubbed my knuckles on my lip, thought about all that had happened, where I was, who I was with. “You went to Penton Charter.”
“I had to leave and come live with my grandfather. Help him out.”
“That’s nice of you.”
His expression changed a little, darkened. “Plus, I needed a change.”
I could tell he didn’t want to talk about it. There was something behind his face I couldn’t quite read. I let it go. I looked out the window, leaned my forehead on the cool glass. It felt too weird to talk, to let myself look at him, to not temper all of my movements and interactions. I couldn’t exactly remember how to be normal. How did I used to hold my hands before? How did I tilt my head? Was I staring too much?
“We’ve lived like bachelors for a while,” he said as he pulled into the driveway, as if this explained many things: the house, the boat propped up on his porch, him. He stopped the car.
“We’re here.” He got out of the Jeep, and Bouncer came bounding out from the nearby tree line. His front paws were on Rennick’s shoulders in a heartbeat, and then he put his chin to the ground, looking up at me with those big brown eyes.
“He wants you to pet him,” Rennick said.
I bent down next to the dog. His tail beat harder against the ground. His eyes were so humanlike. I reached out my hand. My hand. Was I really going back to a normal life? Was what happened with Lila Twopenny enough to prove anything?
I reached my hand out and placed it on Bouncer’s forehead.
I was going to try.
His fur was smooth and glossy. I scratched his ears, his neck, and Bouncer rolled over on his back, put his paws in the air.
“Oh, you’ve made a friend,” Rennick said, and I rubbed the dog’s belly.
“You sure he’s not a bear?” I said. “He’s totally big enough.”
“And he’s just a pup.”
“Really?” Bouncer was following us up the porch now.
“Yeah.” Rennick laughed, his eyes crinkling into half-moons. “Dodge found him out near the gravel quarry. Someone had neglected him, hit him, I think. He was mean, snarling, if you can imagine it. Bit my grandfather on the hand. Bit me too. More than once.”
“Jeez,” I said. “Is that where you got that scar, the one on your elbow?” I had seen it when he was driving, a messy white zigzag of flesh from elbow to wrist.
“Yeah,” he answered. “And this one.” He pointed to his eyebrow, and I could see small, jagged lines.
“Were you scared of him?”
Rennick shook his head, put his key in the front door. “He just needed to learn kindness from someone.”
I followed after Rennick and Bouncer, turning that phrase over in my mind, loving the frank way Rennick had said it. As if it had been so obvious. Kindness. The answer.
We walked immediately into a family room with polished wood floors and an old woodstove. The walls were cluttered with maps, some framed, some held up with thumbtacks; some were recent aerial images with crisp colors, others black-and-white, smudged, older than old. I walked directly toward a plain wood frame holding a dog-eared, yellowed, gorgeous map.
When I got closer, I could see that it was topographical, mapping the land, the rivers, the streams, and the swamp areas of this little wedge of the Gulf Coast. It was hand-drawn, intricate, handsome. And it inexplicably reminded me of Rennick himself.
“It’s from the eighteen hundreds.”
“Yeah?” I asked.
“Not too long after the Louisiana Purchase and everything. It’s French.”
I noticed then that the key and the compass rose were in French, which made the map seem all the more elegant. I found the French Quarter; it was marked, and there were several named parishes, all written in a romantic curlicue script.
I followed Rennick into the kitchen and sat down at the farmhouse table. The kitchen had white cabinets, white everything, very homey but spare and simple. There was no microwave, no dishwasher.
“We kind of live like pioneers,” he said, chuckling. “Been just me and Dodge for a while. But Lila’ll soon …” His voice trailed off.
I chewed on my thumbnail, didn’t meet his eyes. I didn’t want to take credit. It didn’t seem real.
“You must be hungry,” he said finally. He pulled out an old iron skillet.
I suddenly realized I was. “Starving, actually.”
“Omelet or grilled cheese? That’s about all there is on the menu del Rennick.” He cast a smile over his shoulder at me, and I thought I saw his hand shaking a little when he placed the frying pan on the stove.
“Grilled cheese, and thank you,” I said.
“I’m hungry too. I just figured—”
“No, I mean, thank you for getting me out of Chartrain today. For trying so hard to help me the other day. For—”
He stopped what he was doing, turned and looked at me. “You don’t have to thank me, Corrine.”
I shook my head. I got up, leaned on the counter. “Rennick,” I said, and saw the left corner of his mouth go up in a nearly imperceptible grin when I said his name. “Why, though? Why did you try so hard to help me when I was nothing but a bitch to you? I mean, did you just know I could help your grandmother or—”
“No, I didn’t even think of that.” He didn’t look at me. He stared down at the floor between us, scuffed the heel of his shoe back and forth for a second. And it hit me at that second how much Rennick reminded me of this shy kid Lester Meechum that I went to grade school with. I wondered at that. Could Rennick Lane be nothing more tha
n the shy, smart, nerdy kid in the class, stuck in the body of a rebel with the hair of some kind of emo lead singer? This idea seemed right. And I was beginning to realize that Rennick didn’t even know how he came off. Did he still see himself as that nerdy kid? A boy with a microscope and test tubes in his bedroom?
“Why did you help me?” I repeated.
“Can’t a guy just like your aura?” He didn’t look at me, but he smiled. My mouth turned up as well. The air between us prickled again, and the tension against my skin changed, the air against me … tightened. Rennick’s head snapped up.
“Do you feel that?” I said. Bold. More like the old Corrine than ever.
Rennick nodded.
“What is it?”
“A charge. Electric. Physio-electric.”
“I only feel that with some people. Between me and certain people. Or only before … before an event like Mrs. Twopenny.” I was really putting my cards on the table. For just a moment, I realized that I was here in this backwoods house with some guy I hardly knew, telling him my darkest, deepest secrets and doubts. I tried not to stand outside of myself and see it like that. Because it seemed like the first time in a long, long time that I might be getting back to some kind of normal, and I didn’t want that to end.
Rennick went to the fridge and took out bread, cheese, and butter. “I feel it too, sometimes. I know what you mean. I think … I think it ties into body chemistry, electrical impulses in the body. That’s how a lot of what you do and what I see works. I think that’s how it all works. Proving it is another story.”
He turned toward the stove. I sat at the table again, and when he passed by the sink window with the sun streaming through, the light hit him; for a split second I saw a rainbow of colors around him, enveloping him, lots of reds and oranges. It left as soon as I noticed it. I blinked a few times and rubbed my eyes. I almost said something. I started to, but I stopped myself. Had I just seen his aura?
No. I dismissed it. A trick of the light.
“Rennick, I have a zillion questions.”
“Well, that’s a relief. Just ask. I want you to.” He flipped the toasted bread with a spatula. “I just don’t know how to get started. I don’t want to scare you away.” And although he wasn’t turned completely toward me, I could see in his face that he meant it. His brow was furrowed, his jaw tight. He was nervous.
I sighed. “Tell me exactly what you see.”
“Colors. Halos of color. Sometimes colors that seem like they are radiating off of people’s skin, their whole bodies, like an outline.”
“So what exactly is interesting about Mia-Joy’s?” I asked.
“Jagged, ripped hole in her aura.”
I watched him finish toasting the sandwiches. Had I been in Chicago, I would’ve laughed right here. Thrown my head back and laughed at the whole situation. But I was not in Chicago.
Rennick went to the fridge, got a jar of pickles, a pitcher of tea. He put the grilled cheese on plates, scooped out a couple of pickles from the jar, and brought the food to the table. “Grilled cheese and pickles. Gotta love ’em.”
“So, a hole in an aura, does that usually mean … what?”
“There is no manual,” he said, taking a seat next to me, handing me a glass of ice-cold tea. “But I’ve seen similar things with some people. It usually isn’t good.” He looked at me hard.
I swallowed. “Her diabetes? She’s okay, though. Her mother said that it smoothed out since she switched to shots.”
He nodded.
“You’re not telling me the whole thing here.”
“I think she’s not okay. Mia-Joy will have a setback, if I’m right. And then we’ll have to, you know, figure out a way for you to …” He let his voice trail off, and I realized then what he meant. He looked at me like maybe he had said too much.
“So you’re sure that I’m a healer?” I said, taking a bite of my sandwich.
“Aren’t you?”
I shrugged.
“My grandmother’ll tell you stories about my mom, about the people she healed, the lives she saved. But she’ll tell you too that Mom only really remembered the few that she couldn’t help, the ones she couldn’t heal.”
I sat silently looking out the window at the garage. Thinking of the beauty it held. Thinking of Sophie.
“Your sister,” he said, setting down his sandwich. “I know what you’re carrying around.”
We sat in silence, and I heard the clock above the kitchen sink ticking quietly. Bouncer came and rested his head on Rennick’s lap. Rennick gave him a pickle. “The monster eats pickles, for God’s sake.” He shook his head and laughed like it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. The timbre of his laugh. It was a beautiful note, G-sharp, then F-sharp.
“Go lie down,” he told the dog, and the dog did.
I swallowed hard. “Sophie … It was the same as with Mrs. Two—I mean, your grandmother, the whole thing. It just didn’t end up the same, you know? How can I ever … I mean, who knows if I might save somebody or kill them?” I shook my head, put my hand out for Bouncer, clicked my tongue. He came over and let me scratch him behind the ears. I needed something else to do, to look at, besides the well of concern in Rennick’s eyes.
Rennick shook his head. “I don’t think—”
I couldn’t hear his excuses right then. I didn’t want to. I changed the subject. “Tell me about your mother. Her power.”
He didn’t like this, and there was something there, in the way he held his jaw, guarded. “She could only summon it about half the time she wanted, Grandma said.”
At that moment, the front door opened. An older man with a shaggy beard and salt-and-pepper hair came in. When I saw his hat, I realized it was the man who had been sleeping in the recliner in Mrs. Twopenny’s room. Of course. Dodge.
“Hey-o,” he called. He walked into the kitchen with heavy footfalls, whistling loudly.
“Dodge,” Rennick said, standing up from the table. “This is Corrine.”
Dodge stood up straighter, put a hand to his old fishing hat in greeting. He looked kind of like a quarter note standing there. “The famous Corrine. How can I ever …” His voice trailed off. He held his hands to his heart in a gesture that was at once so genuine and so heartbreaking, I had to look away. “Thank you, my dear.” He walked toward me, put out his hand. I considered it. Then I offered my own. He held it between both of his for a beat, then kissed the back of it. He looked at Rennick, winked as he let go of my hand. “Prettier than you even said.”
“Dodge,” Rennick admonished him.
I tried not to blush, however impossible that was. Dodge’s eyes held mine, and I saw a bit of Rennick in his grizzled gray face. The same dark blue eyes. I smiled. How could I possibly be standing in this man’s house? A man whose wife I had just saved from imminent death? A man who accepted that fact with no question?
I didn’t know which seemed more impossible.
“You want a sandwich?” Rennick asked, gesturing toward the stove.
“No sirree,” Dodge said, pulling out my chair for me at the table. Rennick would not meet my gaze, and I saw the little boy inside him again. He didn’t blush, but he laughed to himself, head down.
Dodge crouched down to nuzzle Bouncer. “Got myself some pickled herring.”
“Fabulous,” Rennick said, wrinkling his nose.
“Son, just go on out to the lake, sit on the swing if you can’t handle the smell of it. Take the rest of your lunches. You can have some privacy.”
“You mind, Dodge?”
Dodge shook his head.
Rennick grabbed his plate and motioned to me. He avoided my eyes, held the back door open for me. “This okay, Corrine?”
I nodded. “Nice to meet you,” I told Dodge, grabbing my food.
“My pleasure,” Dodge said, giving me a wink. Bouncer stayed with Rennick’s grandfather, and we went out the back door toward the lake. It was gorgeous back there. I hadn’t fully appreciated the wildflowers when
I had been there yesterday. The scents. The scenery.
I took in the big vegetable garden too. I spied ripe purple eggplant. The frilly edges of coriander. No wonder Mr. Twopenny and my mother knew each other. Mom would love these gardens.
Rennick and I sat down on the big old swing that hung from the magnolia-covered arbor. It faced the lake, which was murky and swampy, yet serene and beautiful in its own way. The muddy green tones of the water reflected in the way the sun played on the waves, the grasses and bulrushes swaying in the breeze on the water’s edge, the throaty, buzzing croaks of the locusts and frogs echoing in the distance.
“So how long have you lived here with your grandfather?”
I picked the crust off my sandwich, pushed my feet on the ground to move the swing a bit. Rennick smelled like his clothes had been dried on a line outside on the first day of spring. And the shape of his jaw just kept drawing my eyes. Chiseled, that was a good word for it.
“I moved here last summer.” He looked at me from the corner of his eye and added, “I didn’t get kicked out of Penton.” He wolfed down the last half of his sandwich. I did the same and became very interested in my iced tea, trying not to ask but hoping he would elaborate.
He didn’t. I held my tongue for a quarter rest, tried to wait out a whole note. I wanted to hear more. A crow swooped down and cawed near the water’s edge, picked up something in its mouth. I had to fill the silence.
“Do you think the newspapers, the reporters, will give up after today?” I asked.
“No.”
I hadn’t expected this answer. Rennick turned to me. “Things have been going on in New Orleans.”
“What do you mean?”
“More people like us.” I gave him a look. “People with extrasensory powers. Sixth sense of some kind. Clusters of us.”
Bouncer came storming out of the back door, Dodge following. He walked hurriedly, a hitch in his step, and spoke in a low whisper. “Some reporters at the door a minute ago. Told ’em you weren’t here.”
“Should we take a walk?” Rennick looked at me seriously.
“Maybe if I just answer a few questions,” I offered.
