Bloom (3 page)

Colton felt the warmth in his own palm move to the tips of his fingers and flow outward, toward Henry. He let the energy he had taken from the apple move into the homeless man—it felt like someone was pulling a strand of yarn from the tip of each finger. The dark circles on Henry’s face lightened and his arm stopped shaking. His breathing cleared and deepened. A tear rolled down his cheek.

When Colton had no more to give, he stood up from the table.

“Very nice to meet you,” he said.

3

“S
he is an excellent student, Mrs. Kincaid. We just don’t understand why she continues to act out in such a manner. This
is
Scottsdale, after all—not Mesa or Casa Grande, for goodness sake! Children here just don’t act this way.”

Principal Rivera sat behind her desk, hands clasped together atop a manila folder that contained Haven’s school file. She looked at Haven’s mother as if she expected a simple, all-encompassing answer.

“I don’t understand it either, nor does my husband. Up until we received your call, we never knew that Haven was causing any kind of trouble whatsoever.”

“Well,” said Principal Rivera with a sigh, “her grades are still exemplary, and if there had been any kind of drop in her performance, I would think there was more to worry about…”

Haven let the voices drone away into the background. She turned in her chair and looked just past the office door to where her little brother Noah sat playing with a small toy car. He was pretending his legs were ramps and launching the car off one thigh and making it land with a screeching sound effect from his mouth on the other. Their mother had taken half a day off of work at the hospital to come to school for the meeting and picked up Noah from daycare on the way.

Haven turned back to Principal Rivera.

“…don’t think we have anything to worry about, really. Haven has indicated to me how bored she is in her current classes, which might be a reason for her recent impulsive behavior.”

“Well,” said her mother, “she
does
have a short attention span when it comes to things she isn’t interested in.”

No kidding,
thought Haven.

Principal Rivera smiled. “Which is why I’ve starting looking into our Advanced Placement courses. I know we are already a few months into the school year and it goes against protocol to change a student’s schedule, but I’m sure the teachers would be more than willing to make an exception in Haven’s case. I think she would do quite well with the added challenge offered by college-level classes.”

“That sounds like just the thing!” said Haven’s mother. She turned and addressed Haven for the first time during the entire meeting. “I know we talked about this and you wanted to take it easy at your new school, but what do you say to a little extra challenge?”

Haven barely tried to hide her sarcasm. “Sounds like just the thing.”

“Excellent,” said Principal Rivera. “I’ll speak with the teachers and get the ball rolling. Unless you have any other questions, I say we let Haven get back to lunch so you can go enjoy the rest of your day.”

They shook hands and Haven followed her mother and Noah out of the office building.

“There, now,” said her mother, “that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

Haven had already started to pull away for fear one of her friends would see her talking to a strange lady. “Yeah, it was great, Mom. I’ll see you when I get home.”

“Bye, Haven!” said Noah. He waved his toy car in the air in farewell. Haven’s mother held his hand and steered him toward the parking lot.

“Bye, Noah,” said Haven quietly.

She smiled as he continued to wave his car in the air long after he said goodbye. Her smile quickly faded when she thought about the meeting and how it made her feel like everyone was talking about her as if she barely existed. A lot of times it seemed like her parents regarded her more as a way to gauge their own progress than as someone who might actually have a problem with the way everything was going in her life.

Haven walked around the corner of the administration building and headed toward the cafeteria.

George Walker High School in Scottsdale, Arizona, had no interior hallways. The buildings stood separated by plots of green grass and long concrete sidewalks. Students milled about the commons area; some eating, most simply socializing. They formed loose clusters in the bright midday sunshine, sitting or lying on the grass; laughing, kissing, playing.

Haven followed a sidewalk past the library and walked into the cafeteria. She smelled fried food and disinfectant. The room rumbled with the sound of a hundred students talking, laughing, shouting, and moving all at the same time.

Haven felt a tug on the back of her hair and spun around.

“How’d the meeting go, troublemaker?” Kayla put her hands on her hips and shook her head as if she were ashamed. Her short black hair bounced lightly against her cheeks.

“Shoot me now,” said Haven.

“That bad, huh?”

They each grabbed a food tray and walked over to the lunch line to see what was available.

“Probably. I sort of zoned out in the middle. They want me to take Advanced Placement classes.”

“Ew!” said Kayla. “You can’t switch
now,
we’re almost out of this dump! Besides, only nerds take college classes in high school.” She spooned a huge portion of white macaroni and cheese onto her tray.

“And people who want to actually
succeed
a little bit in life, maybe?” Haven dropped a much smaller helping onto her own tray. She took two pieces of cornbread from a plate at the next window.

“Well, you know my plan: marry quick and marry rich. I don’t even care what either of ‘em looks like!” Kayla slapped her thigh and fake-laughed at her own joke, which she had told more times than Haven could count.

The girls had met while working at an ice cream shop downtown during the summer right after Haven first moved to Scottsdale. Her parents told her that it was okay for her to focus on school and worry about getting a job later, but Haven enjoyed the small amount of money—and freedom—that working at the ice cream shop provided. The job also helped to take her mind off the fact that she would probably never see any of her friends again.

Having her choice of forty ice cream flavors didn’t hurt, either.

She and Kayla hit it off quickly and soon they were carpooling to work and hanging out whenever they had free time. They didn’t have any of the same classes at school but still saw each other during lunch.

Kayla plopped a piece of chocolate cake onto her tray as she moved down the line to the cashier.

“You sure you don’t want more mac and cheese?” asked Haven. “Right now you only have enough for your next three lunches.”

“Speak for yourself, Cornbread Queen. Tell your hips to watch out.”

“Your kid’s kids are gonna be fat if you finish everything on your tray,” said Haven.

“That’s where ‘marry rich’ comes in. Money fixes everything, don’t you know that?”

They paid the cashier and turned around to find a table.

“Oh my god!” said Kayla. She stopped walking and stared ahead.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“There’s your boyfriend!” She nodded to a table a few feet away.

Jason Turner sat at one of the round cafeteria tables, surrounded by a group of his friends. He smiled and laughed easily, and always seemed to be in a good mood whenever Haven saw him.

“Shut your mouth, Kayla!” she hissed between her teeth. Haven sidestepped around her friend and walked quickly to the other side of the room, looking away from Jason’s table as she passed. She took a seat at the first empty table and faced the wall.

“Geez, you’d think you’d never seen a hot guy before,” said Kayla. She placed her tray on the table and sat next to Haven.

“I just don’t appreciate you announcing it to everyone around, that’s all.”

“Nobody heard me, you nutcase,” said Kayla. “And besides, it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if somebody—oh my God!” She stopped talking and looked behind her.

“Would you stop saying that?”

“He’s coming over here!”

“What? Who?” Haven turned and saw Jason walking over toward their table. She spun back around and stared at her tray. “What’s he doing?!” she whispered.

“He’s still headed straight for us!” said Kayla.

“He’s not turning away?”

“Nope.”

“Is he looking at you?”

“Yep.”

Jason sat on the empty seat next to Haven. “Afternoon, ladies.”

“Hi!” said Kayla. “Oops! Forgot a napkin. Be right back.” She stood up to leave but Haven had a tight grip on her leg. Kayla lightly slapped her hand and smiled sweetly at Jason before walking away.

“So,” said Jason. “How’s it going?”

“Uh, fine,” said Haven. She mentally slapped her own forehead.
Uh, fine. Uh, fine.

“Look, I’m not trying to embarrass you or anything, but I heard you wrote my name on the gym wall.”

Her face flushed with heat and her eyes felt like they grew to the size of saucers. He left out the part about the giant heart, so maybe he was trying to break it to her easy. “You sure have a funny way of not embarrassing someone,” she said. She kept staring at her food tray. “Who told you it was me, anyway?” Haven could tell she was getting defensive, even though she wanted nothing more than to be as casual toward Jason as he was being toward her.

“Yeah, hey, it could have been anybody, right? I didn’t mean to say that you would draw
my
name instead of another guy’s, it’s just that if it
were
my name, I think it would be, I dunno, kinda cool.”

Haven blinked. “Did you say ‘cool’?”

“Yep.”

“Don’t you mean creepy or pathetic or something?”

“Nope. We should hang out sometime. If it was me, I mean.”

“If what was you?”

“The name you were writing on the wall,” said Jason.

“Oh, right.”

“I’m not asking you to marry me or anything, I just thought it would be nice to get to know you.”

“Oh.” She thought for a moment. “It wasn’t you, but yeah, let’s hang out.” She looked at him. “It wasn’t you.”

He smiled. “Fair enough. Listen, I’m having a party at my house tonight. You and your friend—Kayla, is it?—you guys should go.”

Haven heard herself speak before she even thought about an answer. “Okay, sure. We’ll be there.”

“Great!” Jason stood up. “Everyone’s showing up around nine.” He walked away and Haven heard his friends teasing him about the visit.

“Oh my God!” said Kayla as she came back to the table and sat down next to Haven.

“Seriously, Kayla! Broken record!”

“What did he say?”

Haven shrugged in an attempt to hide her excitement. “He just wants us to go to some party tonight at his house.”

“Oh my G—I mean, wow, neat. So we’re going, right?”

“I said yes before I really thought it out. My curfew’s still ten, but what about you? You have to be home before the party even starts.”

“Haven’t you ever snuck out of the house before?” asked Kayla. “My parents go to bed
early
, so I can leave whenever I want as long as I’m quiet. Just tell your parents you’re
not
going out, then wait until they’re asleep and then
boom
, you’re at a party with the hottest guy that’s ever talked to you.”

Haven thought about it for a moment. “They usually go to bed around nine if I’m not out of the house.”

“So we’ll be a few minutes late. Big deal. It won’t really get started until we show up anyway.”

“Oh, yeah, we’re real party animals,” said Haven.

Kayla hugged her. “That’s the spirit.”

4

C
olton started the long walk home from the homeless shelter. The path he always took wasn’t the quickest, but he thought it was the most scenic. He passed three parks along the way, their wide, grassy fields providing a calm, momentary escape from the concrete jungle everywhere else in the city.

The apartment building where he was staying was just on the edge of Parkchester in an area that barely clung to the image of wealth and power that had been slowly receding for decades. Even with the steady decline in real estate value, apartments in the building where Colton lived still cost a small fortune to rent. He tried to convince Reece to move someplace more affordable, but Reece needed what he called “the flash”. He didn’t seem to care that they could be paying half of what they shelled out every month and still live in a decent part of town.

Reece’s family had money.

His father was a partner at a major law firm in Manhattan and his mother was a well-known news anchor in the city. It was impossible to walk downtown without turning a corner and seeing a bench or a billboard plastered with one of their smiling faces. His father’s picture was on the benches, and as such suffered the wrath of marker-wielding teenagers who never stopped inventing new ways to draw a mustache on his face.

Colton looked up at a huge banner hanging on the side of a tall building as he walked past. “Channel 8 News: Your Source For Truth”. Reece’s mother smiled down at him, beaming with confidence, sympathy, and wisdom all at once. If Colton actually watched the news, or any television for that matter, he would probably watch her show. Reece hated his parents’ success—even though it allowed him to live comfortably—and quickly changed the channel every time one of their advertisements aired.

“Lousy phonies,” he would say, shaking his head. “If people only knew!”

Colton had met them at a dinner party months ago when he first moved to New York. They seemed genuine enough to him, and as he watched their interactions with Reece over the course of the evening, he figured out that they were embarrassed by their son. Reece resented them for thinking they were better than everyone else—just not enough to stop taking the checks they sent him every month.

Eventually, the small divide between Reece and his parents turned into a chasm. His father told him that they would pay for him to go to any college or trade school, but Reece sneered at the offer and told his father outright that it would never happen. He continued to accept the sizable checks they sent him every month, but beyond that he had no contact with his parents whatsoever.