Standing there, head thrown back and panting, is Julia. She slowly comes back to herself, an ethereal beauty. Her curls are wild around her. She all but floats off the ground like some goddess descended from the stars. She reminds me of Storm from the X-Men after she reigns down a lightning storm. That’s what the air feels like, charged with energy.
Goosebumps prickle my whole body.
“Wow,” I say.
When she seems to come back to herself and the light diminishes to a soft glow, her gaze is downcast. She studies the ground, her head low as sadness permeates off her. I’m in absolute awe. How could I not be? And yet she seems hesitant, her body already losing the confidence from only seconds ago.
I tap the glass loudly so she looks up, eyes wide with fear. I don’t know how to process anything I’ve just seen. I can’t scientifically explain anything. But what I do know, is that a mournful woman stands in front of me. I see somebody that has carried the burden of an unexplainable talent her entire life, totally alone. She has borne it in solitude and she has chosen to share this story with me. Me. Of all the people on this planet, she put her life in my hands. What have I ever done to deserve this sort of trust?
I lift my hand and press it to the glass. It’s still warm.
Her features relax into hesitant hope as she walks up to the glass. She is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. She places her hand over mine on the partition, her face both so fearful and expectant. She’s a wild siren and I race to crash myself against the rocks at her feet.
For once, I don’t have any answers, but I know whatever comes next, we will figure it out together.
* * *
Julia
I’m light as air. I actually check to see if my feet are still on the ground. My kneecaps tingle, my whole body buzzes. I’ve never gone off like that. It felt different from ever before but the marks on the walls and the burning smell warns that as always, I’m still dangerous. I can only assume the change is because of Nathaniel. If he knew how my thoughts featured him as I danced … I couldn’t share my feelings that seem to be growing too fast and too soon. But I can pour my aching soul into that dance. I showed him everything. I hope he understands.
I don’t have the courage to look up right away. What will I do if he’s horrified? Or worse—what if he’s left me alone?
A knock on the glass has me lifting my head. His head is tilted and I struggle to process this emotion. His features are flat? Sad? He’s looking at me differently. Of course he is. Now he sees everything about me, how could he ever look at me the same?
I want to cry. Maybe I have made the biggest mistake of my life.
He lifts his hand to the glass. An offering. I let out a long and shaking breath. I step toward him and meet his hand with mine. This may be the closest we ever get to acknowledging this tension between us. I have to tell him the truth about what happens. I’m more than just a firework; I’m a bomb. But right now, in this moment, I let myself have this. This connection.
For the first time in a long time I’m not so alone.
He nods to the side, asking me to come out. I glance around the room to see if I caused any damage. Heat still pours off the walls but I don’t see any permanent destruction. At least we can blame the lasers if anybody notices the burns. Everything else is exactly as it was. Except me. I feel like a totally different person.
He lets me out of the side door. His hands are deep in his pockets.
I don’t speak. I don’t imagine there is anything I can really say.
“Are you hungry?” he asks.
I was not expecting that. I stand dumbfounded, my jaw swaying in the wind.
“I’m going to order a pizza. I figure we’re going to be here a while,” he explains with a smile.
“We are?” I ask.
“Oh yeah. You aren’t going anywhere.”
I shrug. “I could eat.”
12
Julia
I’m on my second veggie slice, answering all that I can in between bites. Turns out I’m ravenous. We sit cross-legged on his office floor, the open pizza box between us. My words fall out without thought. There’s no need to filter myself when I have nothing to hide. It’s freeing. While the truth remains—that we can never go forward with the touching and kissing—it’s nice to have a friend to share with. The freedom of being wholly yourself is a heady thing.
“I can’t believe you drive all the way up to the old factory every month,” he says, chewing thoughtfully.
“More often lately,” I admit.
“That’s so far. And dangerous. Aren’t there a bunch of unsecured mines that they never cleared? I’ve seen all sorts of signs warning about collapses and such.”
I nod.
“I used to go hike up there with Lincoln. When I used to do things,” he mumbles half-jokingly.
“It’s the only place I know where I won’t hurt anybody. I can completely … unleash, so to speak. This is so hard to explain.”
“So is it always the same? The bright light and intense heat?” he asks. Then immediately adds, “And the shocks from earlier. Was that part of it?”
“I think so.” I fiddle with a piece of crust. “I have, like, levels of being worked up. A warning system, I think. So far as I can tell, it’s glowing first, then little shocks, then it sort of escalates from there. But I haven’t spent a ton of time testing it.”
I look away. I don’t tell him how different it was today compared to the other times. I don’t tell him how it’s sort of impossible to measure it when it’s always just me. Everything was so sporadic at first. Once Grandma Sue and I discovered that dancing was a way to release, we didn’t want to risk messing around with it. We had a system that worked. Mostly.
“Interesting …” he mumbles, but I can tell his mind is running a million miles away.
His focus is above my shoulder but his foot dances as always. He’s gone. I love when he gets like this. Lost in deep thoughts. I like to imagine his brain as a super-complex machine filled with cogs and gears that rapid-fire when he is coming up with a new idea. I imagine them all working in tandem like a steampunk mechanism. He thinks on another level. His intelligence is completely enthralling and exotic to me. As if it isn’t already enough that his eyes glow with different shades of browns and greens like some multifaceted gem. It’s not enough that he has the perfect sense of humor and disarming charm. That he’s tall and handsome. It’s still not enough that he gets along with everyone and treats all people with the respect that they deserve. He also has to have a freaking supercomputer mind. He took it all. How could anybody compete with that? How can I leave this place and not compare every single person I meet to this man?
I must accidentally sigh because he snaps his attention back to the present. My brain grapples quickly for something to say and hope he doesn’t notice my swooning.
“Can I just say, you’re handling this really well.” I use my tongue to fish in a thin string of cheese from the side of my mouth and he watches the action before bringing his focus back to my eyes.
He tilts his head like he doesn’t understand. A brow lifts in question.
“You’re an engineer,” I explain. “I guess I thought you’d be trying to figure out how I faked it.”
He sets down his plate and dusts his hands off. “Did you know that there is a woman in Ireland who can smell when a person has Parkinson’s disease?” he asks.
“I did not know that,” I say cautiously.
“Yeah,” he says. “Not only can she tell who has it, but she can sense how developed their case is. And it’s not just Parkinson’s either. Alzheimer’s. Various types of cancers. When asked what they smell like she said something along the lines of, ‘It’s like when you smell milk and know it’s gone sour.’”
“Wow. That’s incredible.”
“I read about another woman who can supposedly predict events with frightening detail that have yet to happen,” he continues. “In her dreams. She writes them down
as soon as she wakes up. They’ve recorded her doing it.”
“Hmm. A psychic? I happen to think that those people are highly intuitive and pay attention to details. And then make a lot of guesses. Like they say, even a broken clock is right twice a day.”
He grins at me. “Quite the skeptic for being a human lightbulb.”
I cough on a mouthful and have to chug my water. “Fair point.”
“But don’t you think that intuitiveness is, in its own way, a power? Or what about people who can play complex sonatas after hearing them one time? Or look at some athletes. I don’t think just anybody can do those things. My point is, to people who lack the innate talent for it, those things might seem like a superpower.”
I lean back and stretch out my legs so my feet are just to the right of his hips. “Ah. I see what you’re saying. People who sing beautifully are a species I’m jealous of. It’s unreal how some voices can be so perfect.”
“Your voice is lovely,” he says earnestly, holding my gaze.
I flush and look away. A napkin twists between my fingers. “The thing I have though—it’s more like a defect.”
He frowns. “How could you say that? I just saw you. It was amazing.”
“Maybe it looks neat but—but it’s ruining your tests. And when I’m like that, I hurt people.”
“What do you mean?” he asks.
“When I go off like that people get sick. Small things die. It’s more a curse than anything. I can’t really touch people. Skin to skin.” When I say that I look at him meaningfully and he frowns.
“That’s why you go to ‘discharge’ every month?” he asks. I can see he’s mentally taking notes.
“At least. It’s been harder lately to control. I thought it was just because …”
Okay, so maybe I wasn’t ready to tell him everything. He doesn’t need to know my super-dirty thoughts of him have led me to self-flagellation. “I thought it was the stress from the new job,” I finish.
“So you discharge because if you don’t, you get sick.”
“Correct.”
“But if you were to go off right now, I’d get sick?”
We’re wandering into dangerous territory. It is lovely to be able to share but I don’t want him to know what a monster I am. How even my grandparents who loved me still feared me.
“I haven’t been able to really test that theory. As far as I figure, I’m blasting dangerous energy. I kill small things. Plants.” I pick at the cuticle of my thumb.
“Ferngully?” he asks.
I sigh. “A helpless bystander. I keep hoping that if I can control it longer, then I’ll be able to dance without going off. I’m getting better, but I can never fully let go.”
“Okay.” He nods once.
“And that’s why I have to leave.” The somber air returns. “I’m out of control lately. I’m not sure if the tests are failing because I’m going off or the tests are setting me off. Regardless, I can’t be this close to whatever is happening in that room.” I gesture in the direction of the testing facility. “I can’t ruin this contract for you.”
I can’t be the reason all your dreams come crashing to the ground. It’s bad enough I have to live a half-life. I won’t do that to anybody else. It will be hard, but it’s better to get out now before any more lives are ruined.
“But you don’t hurt people unless you go off, right?”
I can see he doesn’t understand the danger. “No. I don’t know how it works. Sometimes just being near people when I’m buzzing makes them sick,” I say hesitantly.
But if I was being honest with myself, there’s just something draining about me in general.
When I look up again he’s watching me closely. His knee bounces like it does in meetings when he’s talking about something he’s really excited about.
“What?” I ask.
“I have a proposition,” he says. “I don’t want you to leave.”
Inexplicably, chills run down my arms and my neck tingles. Why does he have to say things like that? If only he knew how my poor lonely heart interpreted them.
“I don’t want to leave yet,” I answered honestly.
I don’t. I love this weird little town. I don’t want to leave this team, this project. I don’t want to leave Nathaniel. I have this very real and very scary feeling that we were meant to meet. But still, I come with an expiration date. I will have to leave eventually.
But maybe just not yet.
“So don’t go. What if you used the testing facility to … decompress every week.”
Decompress is a much better word than discharge. I’m already leaning into this idea. The long, dark drives up to the abandoned factory are so cumbersome. A new hope starts to flare deep inside me.
“I’m not technically allowed in the test facility. I don’t want you risking this project for me,” I say. “We have to be practical.”
“That part is a gray area. But it’s not like I’m just letting you hang out in there. I’d be there. I’d be taking measurements. I’d be running tests,” he says carefully, watching me closely.
“You want to run tests on me.” The understanding hits me.
He doesn’t want me around. He wants to study whatever this thing is inside me. His science brain wants to understand it.
I should have known.
He sits up, hands out. “Nothing you aren’t comfortable with,” he says. “I just want to understand the type of energy you output. It’s clear you don’t understand a lot about it. But there is potential for real scientific development here. What if your energy can be harnessed somehow, like what Lite-Brite does? Don’t you want to know where the energy comes from, where it goes? Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. There has to be some explanation. I have to understand how it’s impacting the tests. It could mean the contract.”
He’s so animated and I am the great sphinx he has uncovered. Nothing more than an intriguing mystery. I am no longer a person. I chew the inside of my lip, unable to meet his gaze for the sadness that seeps into my good mood.
“You could change the world, Julia.” He speaks to me with such earnestness I have to meet his gaze.
How do I explain to him the weight of this supposed gift? How do I explain the years of pain and suffering and loneliness this has caused me? How can I tell him I just want to be normal when he seems so excited for me? I can’t. I simply can’t.
“I do want to understand more about it,” I choose to say.
“Let me help you. We will be careful. What if you could help people?”
I love that that’s where his mind goes. He’s so genuinely altruistic. He will realize in time this is nothing more than a defect, an anomaly of DNA that will never be anything more than a drain on society.
“With what time?” I ask. “You’re already working way more than any human should.”
“Don’t worry about me. It may require you working some long days though. We’d obviously have to be discreet so nobody else notices. Maybe you come back after seven? Your social life might suffer.”
I snort, completely unladylike.
“Same here.” He looks up at me conspiratorially.
“What about Lincoln?” I ask.
With that reminder, he frowns guiltily. “I haven’t thought about how that will work. But if you stay, we can make it work.”
I go back to worrying my cuticle. I don’t want to involve anybody else. It was bad enough that he might potentially get hurt. Adding a kid makes things so much more complicated.
“You can’t expect me to let you go now.”
I fight the gasp that wants to escape. How can I leave when he wants me to stay? This is such a bad idea. I know this will only bring bad news, but I’m so selfish. I’m so alone and so selfish. I just want any excuse to spend more time with him. Maybe he could actually figure it out. Maybe he could figure out how to stop it or make it go away completely?
“Okay,” I say.
“Okay?” he asks with exci
tement.
He reaches for my hand but I pull back. “No touching,” I repeat. “For safety,” I add.
“That’ll be tricky.” He studies where he almost touched me.
I hide my smile and collect the pizza box. Maybe this is the start of something. Hope washes through me. Time after time, hurt after hurt, I always end up hoping for the best.
Little jewel …
I shut down the echo of Grandma Sue’s warning. I’m so in over my head.
13
Nathaniel
The regret hits when I’m lying in bed that night. I’ve made a mistake. It’s well after midnight but sleep evades me as it always does when my mind starts to whir like this. I need to evolve past needing sleep to survive. Or maybe learn to thrive on only a few hours. That would be a cool superpower. A superpower. Julia has a superpower and this discombobulating fact still bounces around my brain like a photon.
What if there are others like her? Statistically, it’s more than likely. What she showed me was more than just a trick of light. There was a lot of light, but no tricks. What if there are a ton of people out there that have real abilities and we just don’t know? I could easily see how, if a government knew about people like Julia, they would want to keep it secret or worse—capitalize upon it.
A new sort of dread seeps in. What if she really does hurt people, even by accident, and me knowing and not doing anything is considered some sort of criminal activity?
“Oh God,” I groan and stretch to lay on my back.
The streetlights outside my window streak across my ceiling, the lights flashing with the occasional passing car. The longer I’m away from Julia, the more worries seep in. There are more variables I didn’t consider in my excitement. I still can’t believe I offered to let her into the top-secret room of the testing facility. I could already be fired for what I did. I risked the whole project—and my team—because I was briefly enamored by something I’ve never seen before.
The Untouched: THE UNSEEN SERIES, #2 Page 10
