Love Over Matter

Love

Over

Matter

a novel by

Maggie Bloom

Published by ElkNewt Press at
Smashwords

Copyright 2013 by Tara
Nelsen-Yeackel

Cover Art © Can Stock Photo
Inc./designfgb

All rights reserved.

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For everyone who’s ever
dared to love

chapter 1

If I believed in heaven, I’d be dead
right now. Instead, I’m ricocheting around in the back of Ian
Smith’s crappy, hand-me-down van—the Love Machine, as he
sickeningly refers to it—like a pinball on LSD.

“
Hey, watch it!” I spout as
the van hits another beach-ball-sized crater in the road. Something
heavy with the feel of metal (a giant Maglite flashlight?) bounces
off my forehead in the dark. “Ouch!”

Now, in addition to the rug burns that
are splashed across my shins and palms, I’ll be sporting a happy
little bruise or a nascent egg over my unkempt, white-blond
eyebrows. A fugly third eye.

The van zings around a turn, tossing
me into the wheel well and literally rattling Clive’s cage. In
retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have toted a rescue crow along on
a clandestine recovery mission. But Clive is my insurance policy.
If my powers go wonky, he’ll be there with his twitchy British
accent to save the day.

With a pinch, I trigger the glow light
of my sports watch. The time is 1:33 a.m., an hour at which I’m
normally curled into the shape of a cinnamon bun beneath an
avalanche of blankets, sleep whistling in and out of my
nose.

But Ian needs me—or, more
specifically, his father needs my gift. And I haven’t spent two
years turning into a psychic voodoo princess (seriously,
there’s
got
to be
a better way to refer to the extrasensory perception I’ve honed!)
to deny a sick old dude my potentially life-saving
services.

“
We’re almost there,” I
whisper to Clive, who’s been abnormally mute since our little
quintet slithered out the back exit of New Beginnings, the
temporary housing complex where the Town of Milbridge is stashing
Ian and his dad.

Even in the inky blackness, I sense
Clive doing a peppy hop around the forest of branches I’ve
constructed in his jail cell to lend it a bit more ambience and
authenticity. To be honest, I didn’t think the dumb bird was going
to last very long after his mate got squashed by a semi and he
nearly ended up as bobcat food. But now he seems poised for a
comeback.

A few silent minutes pass, and the van
makes a series of left-hand turns, followed by a half mile (or so
I’m guessing) of low rumbling along a gravel road before meandering
to a stop.

I hope this works,
I think. Because even though I’ve been sequestered
for the better part of an hour, I’m not in the zone
tonight.

The back doors of the van squeak and
groan as they inch open on Ian’s mousy profile. For a guy two years
my senior, not to mention a senior in high school, he sure has a
lot of growing left to do. “You all right?” he asks warily, his
gaze hesitant to meet mine.

“
You can look at me,” I say
with a huff, scooting toward the moonlight. “I won’t turn you to
stone.” I sweep a cross over my chest. “Promise.”

Ian slips past me, clambers into the
van and gropes around for something. Soon a flashlight beam hits my
face. “What the heck?” blurts Haley—my wise-mouthed little
sister—from the shadows, referring to the obvious whack I’ve taken
to the skull.

I shimmy off the tailgate and skid the
back of my hand over my forehead. “Job hazard,” I
mutter.

“
Looks like crap,” Haley
says.

While Ian wrestles the
metal detector from its cubbyhole, I glance from my sister who is,
as usual, clad in black from head to toe (and not just because
we’re aiming for ninja stealth) to her Goth-in-training sidekick,
Opal.
Why did I bring these irritants
along again?
I wonder.
Oh, yeah: blackmail.

“
Just get Clive,” I tell
Haley. “Opal can hold the divining rod.”

“
She’s such a freak,” Haley
whispers about me, a tone of reverence in her voice.

Opal gives a shaky nod that
reverberates through her eighty-pound frame. “I know.”

These kids could have worse role
models, I figure. The funny thing is, I’m not what they think I am.
I’m more a desperate, heartbroken girl grasping at any means
possible of contacting the boy she’s lost than an exalted priestess
of the occult. But why split hairs?

Haley bangs Clive to a
rocky stop at my feet, and he caws a silence-shattering,
“
Hell
-o!”

“
Shh!!!” I hiss, giving his
cage a little kick. Because the last thing we need is this nutso
bird alerting the neighbors, who may then alert the police, to our
technically illegal hijinks. Then again, we’re loitering at the
edge of a tree line, a hundred yards from the camp Ian’s
grandparents used to own, in a lakefront community populated by
seasonal residents who have yet to arrive for the summer. And it’s
two o’clock in the morning. So, really, who could possibly hear
us?

“
Hell
-o!” shrieks Clive again.

It’s hard to explain, but this bird
and I have a weird case of simpatico. A kinship of grief. “Come
on,” I tell him, wiggling my fingers into his cage. He gives my
pinkie a peck. “Be a good boy.”

Ian pops up at my side, the metal
detector slung over his shoulder. “Ready?”

I haven’t thought this mission
through. Not totally. “I guess,” I say with a shrug. I hate to ask
this, since it might call my powers into question, but
 . . . “Which way?”

Ian squints into the trees, trains the
flashlight on a muddy spot of earth that could be a rough footpath
or the tire tracks of a 4-wheeler. He heads for the mud, and Haley,
Opal, and I traipse raggedly along behind.

“
What are we looking for
again?” Opal asks.

My tennis shoes sink into a mucky pit
of dead leaves and storm water. “Buried treasure,” I whisper. And,
for once, I’m not kidding.

In a heavy voice, Ian grumbles, “Slim
chance we’re gonna find it, though.”

My feet are so sopping wet they’re
going numb. I shift off the path onto some trailside brush, which
scrapes at my ankles as I trudge ahead. “Thanks a bunch,” I say,
“for the vote of confidence.”

“
Hell
-o!” squawks Clive.

“
Pipe down, birdbrain,” I
mutter.

Opal shoots me a sidelong glance. “Is
that all he can say?”

I shake my head. “Uh-uh. He
also says
yellow
and
mellow
and
fellow
.”
I give her a grin she probably can’t see in the weak glow of the
moon. “And a few other choice things.”

In ten more feet, we hit the perimeter
of Ian’s grandparents’ former property. Ian abruptly stops and the
rest of us clatter into each other like runaway train cars.
“Sheesh,” I say when Haley slams Clive’s cage into my knee. “Be
careful, would ya?”

The air is heavy and storm charged.
Fat raindrops spit at my face. “This is it,” Ian says, motioning at
a boarded-up, weather-beaten cabin that, in the dark, reminds me of
a haunted house.

“
Any idea where I should
start?” I ask.

He shrugs. “Under a tree? That’s where
it’s supposed to be.”

“
What is it? Bars of gold
or something?” asks Haley.

I pry the divining rod from Opal’s
death grip (who knew someone so tiny could be so strong?).
“Something like that,” I say. “Coffee cans full of—”

Clive ruffles his feathers, mimicking
our cleaning lady, Rosie, shaking out the bed sheets.

“
Gold coins,” Ian explains.
“My old man says Uncle Ted buried loads of ‘em here during the
Great Depression, even though it was illegal. Even though the
government was confiscating them.”

Haley pulls a quizzical face. “So your
uncle was a traitor?”

“
Great-
uncle,” Ian corrects.

“
Cool,” whispers
Opal.

I can’t help rolling my eyes. “I’m
freezing,” I say, wrapping my arms around my chest for warmth (and
nearly poking Haley’s eye out with the divining rod). “You guys
stay here. I’m gonna get started.”

Ian taps me on the shoulder with the
Maglite. “Forget something?”

“
Oh, yeah. I guess you’re
gonna have to come with me,” I reluctantly admit, “so I can
see.”

Haley and Opal exchange anxious
glances. “What about us?” my sister asks.

“
You’ll be fine,” I say.
“Clive will protect you.”

Haley snorts. “More like the other way
around.”

I take a step and Ian follows, as do
Haley, Opal, and Clive (but at least they pretend to be sneaky
about it).

Now I’m doomed,
I think. Because as scattered as my mind is
already, I’ve just become the grand marshal of a parade of misfits
and oddballs.

And suddenly I can’t stop thinking
about George.

Two years = 24 months = 104 weeks =
730 days = way too many hours, minutes, and seconds since I last
saw George Alfred Brooks, the only boy I may ever love.

And I never told him.

And now he’s gone.

And it’s my fault.

“
Hey, Cass,” Ian says
across what seems a great distance, “you okay?”

Sometimes I go into a trance, and I
have a hard time coming out of it. With effort, I focus on the tips
of my tennis shoes until they’re as clear as the crystal pendant
slung around my neck. “Yep,” I report.

Ian shines the flashlight
at the base of a thick tree, on which I concentrate intently, the
divining rod weightless and alive in my slack grip. Before George
died, I thought of myself as ordinary. Simple. Destined for the
meaty part of the curve. But then I found my powers—or
they
found
me
.

“
We’re getting warmer,” I
say with confidence, the rod humming gently against my fingertips.
I conjure the sight of an empty white room, an imaginary place
where walls, floor, and ceiling meld together, forging a hole of
nothingness. The epicenter of my gift.

The rod tugs left around a tree, to a
spot equidistant from the mouth of the lake and the cabin’s
lopsided screened porch. I stop at this unmarked place, the rod
going still and my feet starting to prickle. “Try here,” I tell
Ian, who is already firing up the metal detector, its gauges
sputtering to life with a series of beeps and clicks.

I step aside and he scans the earth,
anticipation thickening the night air. “Do we get a share of
whatever we find?” asks Haley, the metal detector’s chirping
intensifying.

“
Are you sure there’s no
one out here?” I ask, suddenly nervous. My radar is
pinging.

Mice,
I think.
Or raccoons.
Hopefully.

Instead of answering, Ian kicks a clod
of dirt from the spotty lawn, carves a rough X in the earth with
the heel of his boot and powers the metal detector down. I hold it
upright while he reaches into his backpack for the shovel, a
collapsible number folks keep in the trunks of their cars or the
beds of their pickups for snow emergencies in our untamed part of
Vermont (though, technically, we’ve now crossed over into New
Hampshire).