Impact

by Steven Whibley

  Lisa must’ve seen something on my face or in my eyes. She stepped close and whispered, “I’m glad you said what you did.”

  I smiled at her. That made one of us. Looking at Archer, I asked, “So what now? Do we head to the air show? Go over plans?”

  It was barely afternoon but I had a feeling we were in for a long day. I wondered what I would tell my parents. Sorry, but I need to go save lives so I won’t be home for supper.

  Dad would probably want to sit me down and have a long talk, and Mom would stick something on my forehead to see if I had a fever. They sure wouldn’t let me stay out all night and all day tomorrow. Could I invent a story for them?

  Thoughts kept spinning, but Archer started leading us to the front of the CS offices. “I’m taking you guys to the mall.”

  CHAPTER 9

  “We’re not buying equipment? We’re not on a mission? You’re really dropping us off at the mall?” Colin stared out of Archer’s car at the entrance. People walked in and out, talking and laughing. I wondered how many of them planned to go to the Abbotsford Air Show tomorrow. A shiver slid over my skin—and not from my still-damp clothes.

  Archer unlocked the car doors. “Might be a touch odd if I drop you off at home. I don’t think you want your parents asking who I am.”

  “What about all this?” I said, gesturing to my clothes. They were mostly dry, but they were terribly wrinkled. And I still smelled like chlorine. So did Colin.

  Archer shrugged. “I’m sure you’ll think of something. Keep your phones handy. You guys have done a lot today. Get some rest and be ready. We’ll need all hands on deck tomorrow.”

  We got out of the car, and Archer drove off. Colin pulled out his phone and started messing with it, probably downloading apps and getting it set up just the way he liked. Lisa had been pretty quiet in the car. She stood there now with her arms crossed and her forehead scrunched. She seemed really pale, as in, you could count every freckle on her face. “You okay? You look a little scared.”

  She swiped at her hair, pushing the loose strands back. I recognized her nervous tick and saw that her hands trembled a bit before she finally spoke. “I don’t think I’m as scared as I look. But it’s probably pretty close.”

  Colin weighed in. “Hey, I’m about as afraid as you look, too. My dad always tells me when you’re shivering inside you need to start doing something to loosen up so you don’t get frozen by the fear.”

  “Come on. Let’s walk home. And this time we’re going to do our homework on the way.”

  As we walked, I pulled out my phone and nudged Lisa to do the same. She shook her head and leaned over to look at my phone or at Colin’s.

  “Doris sent us everything on Karl McKnight.”

  Lisa grabbed Colin’s shirt to keep him from walking into someone else. “It’s like a full Wiki listing. The guy is thirty-nine. Lives in Melbourne, Australia. He’s married and has a six-year-old daughter named Madeline.”

  We stopped at a street corner to wait for the light. Lisa’s eyes went wide as she stared at my phone. “Wow. Doris really did get everything. His school and military records, hospital records—”

  “Police records,” Colin said, scrolling fast. “Guy was in a bar fight a decade ago and broke his jaw. So much for g’day, mate.”

  “Ouch,” Lisa said, rubbing her chin. “Well, if you think about how much the CS knows about us, it’s not surprising they have this kind of information about McKnight. How is this helping?”

  The light changed, and we started walking again. Colin tapped his phone. “He’s some kind of national hero down under. Former RAAF pilot, decorated war veteran. It’s his first time at the Abbotsford Air Show.” He looked up. “Do you think the CS has those zone things in Australia?”

  “I bet they have them everywhere,” Lisa said.

  “Oh, sweet!” Colin held up his phone to show a photo of a silver plane with two red and black stripes running down the body. “Did you see what this guy flies? An F-86 Sabre.”

  Lisa cocked her head to the side. “Is that supposed to mean something?”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “He doesn’t have a clue what it means either.”

  “Hey! First swept-wing jet the US ever made. Canada and Australia built their own versions. It was outdated in the late years of the Cold War, but it had a top speed of like six hundred miles, which is basically a rocket. An F-86 is like—”

  A small, high voice cut off Colin’s words. I jumped, and we all stopped when we saw Rylee Davis standing on the sidewalk outside of a taco stand. “Hi, Dean.”

  She smiled and walked over to us. The breeze blew a few loose strands of her brown hair across her face. My heart thudded up into my throat. “Um … hi, Rylee.”

  She glanced from me to Colin, frowning. “Did you guys go swimming?”

  “Training for a triathlon,” Colin said. He gave her a firm nod. “We train fully clothed. Makes the day of the race a lot easier.”

  Oh, no way would she buy that. But I plastered on a smile like I believed every word he said. Rylee gave Colin a sideways gaze, as though she wasn’t sure if he was lying or not.

  Then Rylee glanced at Lisa. “You’re not training?”

  Lisa smiled but didn’t say anything, which was a bit weird.

  “So … um … how are you?” I asked.

  Glancing back at the taco stand, Rylee said, “My mom’s getting dinner. Y’know, I kind of miss our weekly meetings. Did I hear you’re still going?”

  Rylee had been going to therapy with us, but her mom pulled her out after the first few sessions. I’d overheard Rylee telling her friends that her mom thought therapy was for really messed up people and that if she kept going it would give her a stigma or something. That was silly, of course, and even Rylee had said it was. It sounded to me like her mom didn’t really understand the point of therapy.

  I bobbed my head. “Yeah, you know, it’s good to talk about everything that happened.”

  She gave me a shy smile. “I don’t remember you talking a whole lot before, but I understand needing to, that’s for sure. And you had a lot more to deal with, what with seeing your neighbor get killed and then you getting hit by that car.”

  “Hit by a car,” Colin said with a chuckle under his breath. “Classic Dean stunt.”

  That got a smile out of Lisa.

  Rylee bit her lip. “Right, well, are you guys going to the air show tomorrow?”

  I cringed, and then my skin turned cold. I did not want Rylee going to the show—not tomorrow, at least. I shook my head.

  “Oh, not tomorrow, or not this year?”

  “Not at all,” I said.

  “You don’t you like planes?” she asked.

  “He’s got a fear of them,” Colin said. “It’s called aerophobia.”

  Rylee eyes went as big as an anime character’s. “Really?”

  “No, not really.” I frowned at Colin.

  Lisa leaned over to Rylee. “He’s embarrassed about it.”

  I gave Lisa a hard scowl, but she just shrugged.

  A car honked, and Rylee turned and waved. “It’s my mom; I better get going.” She flicked a strand of hair out of her face. “So you probably don’t want to meet me at the air show tomorrow, hey?”

  “Yeah, sure. That would be awesome … I mean—no! No way. That’s a dumb show anyway. There’s this great 3-D movie out. I’m planning to see it tomorrow.”

  Lame, lame, I thought. Add to that I couldn’t think of the name of a single movie that I could actually mention and maybe get Rylee to go and see instead. Rylee stared at me, her face scrunched with worry. I grabbed her hand. “I’ll text you. How’s that? You don’t want to go to the air show anyway. It’ll be too hot outside.”

  Her smile brightened. “Okay.”

  I let go of her when her mom honked again. She started to turn away, but I said, “Wait, I don’t have your number.”

  She grabbed my phone out of my hand. “Cool cell,” she said, tapping the screen.
She handed it back, and said, “Password, please.”

  I’m pretty sure Archer would kill me for letting another kid even touch my CS phone, but I could not say no to this girl. I entered my password, then put my phone back in her waiting hand. Five seconds later, her phone chimed in her purse and she handed my phone back to me. “There. I sent myself a text so now we have each other’s numbers. See you tomorrow.”

  As Rylee walked away, Lisa turned to me. “How are you going to explain to her that you’re not going to the movies tomorrow but you are in fact probably going to the air show? And you’re going there to try and keep a bunch of people from dying?”

  I didn’t know what Lisa’s problem was, but I wasn’t in the mood to fight. I decided not to answer and instead watched Rylee get into her mom’s car.

  Colin shook his head. “Man, I can’t believe Rylee Davis is even giving you the time of day, let alone her phone number. She seems to actually like you. You. How crazy is that, right?”

  Letting out a breath, I was almost speechless myself. “I know. I don’t get it either. I also don’t know what I’m going to tell her to keep her home tomorrow.”

  Slapping my arm, Lisa started walking. Colin and I trailed after her. She dragged out her phone and started punching at it, jabbing at the screen like she wanted it to tell her something good. “I’m sure you and Rylee will be magic together, but right now, she’s a distraction. Can we focus on that homework? I do not want a repeat of what happened at the museum!”

  “Hey, we’re saving lives here. Rylee’s a life too. Anyone we can get to stay away from the air show tomorrow is one more save. Right?” I hadn’t noticed Rylee in my vision, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t been there. There were too many people, and I hadn’t really gotten a good look at everyone. Plus, I only had visions of people who’d die. There were bound to be even more people seriously injured. I felt a chill at that thought but forced it out of my head.

  We crossed the street and headed down another block. Lisa looked up from her phone. “Sorry, Dean. I guess I’m just worried about … well, everything. I keep thinking about what Matthias said.”

  Colin stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “Don’t tell me you believe that old man?”

  The breeze rustled the tree leaves overhead. Lisa stared up at them and back at her phone. “We caused a lot of damage. We injured people. We lied to the police. We stole.”

  I stepped up to her. “What do you want to do? Turn ourselves in?”

  She lifted and dropped her shoulders.

  Colin threw out a hand. “Time to reset the top priority. Stuff is just stuff. You can replace things. You can fix anything you break. However, you cannot bring someone back to life. If that’s not number one over everything else, then what are we even doing?”

  Lisa turned toward Colin, her eyes bright and her face red. I cringed. She looked ready to tear into him, but her stare was still fixed on her phone. Her mouth hung open.

  “What?” I asked, trying to see what was on her phone.

  “Yeah,” Colin said, edging closer too. “You look like you found naked pictures of your grandpa.”

  I punched Colin’s arm. “Why? Why do you insist on putting those images into my head? I don’t want to think about that.”

  “You have problems, Colin. Real problems. But so do we,” Lisa said. “Look at this. Karl McKnight arrives here today at six p.m. That’s still a couple hours away. So he’s not even here yet. And, yep, it says it again: he’s never been to Abbotsford before. So, Dean, you want to tell us how you had a vision of him if he’s never been here and you’ve never met him?”

  “You never touched him?” Colin said, sounding uneasy as he shifted his feet.

  I let out a long breath. “That’s what I told Archer.”

  “And you were going to tell us about this … when?” Lisa asked. She narrowed her eyes and propped one fist on her hip. Colin stared back at me like I had leprosy and it might spread.

  I threw my hands up in near defeat. “I’ve been trying to figure it out. Archer said McKnight was probably someone I bumped into at the hotel this morning. I just thought …” I shook my head. “I had wanted Archer to be right. I hadn’t wanted to really think a lot about this.”

  Colin scratched his chin with his thumb and forefinger. “That makes sense. Harrison Hot Springs seems packed with people from all over the place.”

  Pushing her phone into his face, Lisa shook her head. “Are you even listening to me? He doesn’t get here for a couple hours. He isn’t now, and certainly wasn’t earlier today, at the hot springs.” She tilted her head at me. “Can you have visions now of people you haven’t touched?”

  I stuffed my hands into my front pockets. I’d forgotten my windbreaker in Archer’s car, and the day had cooled off. I wished I had it on now.

  Colin gave an uneasy laugh. “That’d be weird. Dean could end up having visions of random people he’s never met.”

  I imagined the bodies of the people I couldn’t save piling up around me. What if I did just keep seeing deaths—dozens, hundreds, thousands of deaths? My stomach flopped. A cold sweat soaked the back of my T-shirt. I could see myself in some place for the insane with white walls and me lying on the floor having vision after vision, trapped in nothing but a gray world of dying strangers. I started to breathe fast and shallow. How could I deal with this? And how could I even think of giving this to two other people—the only way I could get rid of it?

  Colin jostled me by the arm. “Come on. Let’s go figure this out at my place. My folks won’t ask why we look like we went swimming in our clothes, and I can put yours through the dryer. You guys can call your parents from my place to let ’em know you’re staying over with me tonight. Sound cool?”

  What would be cool would be to figure out just how my visions really did work—and if they were something the CS had never really seen before. I also wondered if Vidmar had given me his gift in a way that made it go all wrong.

  I really had to find out some answers, but I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to find them at Colin’s.

  His house sat back a long way from the street with grass and trees and shrubs in the front and a wide curving driveway made of concrete tiles that fit together like pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle. It had that perfect-house look. Behind the driveway, three floors of bricks and glass rose up like something you’d seen in a fancy magazine. Lisa gawked at it every time we came over, and today I wished I could too.

  We pushed through the oversized front doors and into an entry. Family pictures and framed movie posters of films I’d never heard of hung on pristine walls. Either Colin’s mom had acted in each of the movies or his dad had worked as a location scout on the film.

  From the next room back—the kitchen—I could hear Colin’s mom humming, something bright and cheerful. As far as I knew, Mrs. Blane hadn’t been in a movie for years, but to me, it always seemed like she was ready to step up and perform for us. I wondered if the stay-at-home mom role was something she pretended to do, rather than something she did.

  “Colin, is that you?” she called out. She made the words into a singsong, her voice lilting and pretty.

  “Hi, Mom,” Colin yelled back, poking his head into the room. The kitchen sat just behind there. Lisa and I added our own calls so she’d know we were here too.

  “Kids! Snacks in the kitchen—come and get them!” she shouted. She sounded like a commercial for something that tasted really good.

  Colin motioned down the hall. “I’ll grab food and meet you in my room.”

  His room was about twice the size of mine at home. It looked as photo-ready as the rest of the house: bed made, books in order on the shelves, a desk set up near the front windows, a couch and TV, dark navy curtains, and matching carpet. I knew the tidy room wasn’t Colin’s doing. The mess in his school backpack could make a homeless person cringe. But Colin had said his parents hired a cleaning service. I wished mine would. I had to face a weekly inspection, and if my room didn’t
at least have the underwear off the floor, I spent Saturday picking up everything.

  I plopped onto the small sofa that sat in front of his flat-screen TV. His room was big enough that all the extra furniture didn’t crowd it. Lisa pulled out the desk chair and sat down, her phone in her hand.

  Colin’s movie infatuation showed in the posters plastered over the walls like some kind of papier-mâché project. “An ode to every movie I’ve seen and loved,” he’d said after we’d had to study odes and epic poems in English.

  Back when he only had a hundred or so posters, it hadn’t looked that cool, but now I had to admit, the layers had become intense. Plus, it brought back a lot of memories.

  “Remember that one?” Lisa asked, gesturing to where half a poster from a spy movie peeked out. Colin had dragged us to that one a couple summers ago. Everyone in the movie spoke Russian, but English had shown on the screen as subtitles so you could read what they were saying. It had been interesting to see the Russian spy be the hero and the American turn out to be the bad-guy terrorist.

  “Yeah, that’s the one that had Colin saying nyet for no and swearing he was going to become Blane, Colin Blane, double-oh-seven.”

  “And look at us now,” Colin said, walking into the room with a plate of chocolate chip cookies. He set them down on his desk beside his laptop. “Living a double life, having dangerous adventures.” He pulled out his phone. “Gadgets even.”

  I had to grin at his assessment.

  This was exactly what I needed. Me and my friends hanging out. It felt like forever since we’d sat around eating stuff that would rot our teeth and making each other laugh. Even Lisa was smiling. She needed this too.

  Then all our CS phones rang at the same time.

  CHAPTER 10

  I answered my phone first.

  Sarah Pickett’s face came on the screen. “Dean, Lisa, Colin, I’m patching you into our update meeting.”