Spring Tide (32 page)

He took a big bite and answered. “The shimp is awefum and yeah, lez go or oo go, whateffer oo want.” He swallowed. “I think it’s a good idea. Remind you that for the most part, life is life.” He pointed to his plate. “What’s the green stuff?”

“Avocado mousse.”

“Looks gross but it’s really good.”

We left in the morning and spent the first day with Mom. I was out-of-my-mind nervous. Moms saw things in their children that no one else could. I lit up my eyes several times but she didn’t react at all. She did notice I was acting weird and told me so. It felt so good to be with her, sit with her on the couch or at her piano. I was still her daughter, no different in her sight.

The next day, we stopped at Sarah’s.

I put extreme eye contact in force, slightly nodded, and kept my tone sedate as I spoke to her. “Hey, we’re gonna go see Derek’s mom. I want you to be a part of that. You have so much energy and life to share. It’s beautiful.”

Her hand rose to her throat. “Oh, I don’t know. What do I say to her? I mean—”

“She was our Brownie Troop leader, molded us into caring, happy individuals. We owe her our strength and good vibrations.”

“Yeah, but I sucked at being a Brownie! Why are you talking to me like this? It’s freaking me out!”

I tried to pull a Cosmic Jeff and had royally failed. “C’mon Sarah, it’s time to release your inner Girl Scout. Get in the car.”

Derek met us on the front porch of his house. “She’s tired, had a treatment, so you might wanna keep it short. I gotta finish fixing the garage door opener, piece of crap, so Dad doesn’t have to waste time on it tonight. I’ll be done in a few minutes. Edwards, you feelin’ okay?”

“Fine. I mean, good.”

Sarah, Jericho, and I went in the front and saw his mom, Mary, sitting in a recliner in the living room. There was no color in her cheeks and it looked like she’d aged ten years since Thanksgiving. But she was as warm as always, complimenting each of us while scolding me for bringing her a veggie strata. We were only able to chat for about ten minutes before Mary’s head fell to the side and she dozed off. Derek hadn’t come in so Jericho went out to see if he could help.

I put an afghan over Mary, kissed her cheek, and then grabbed Sarah’s hand and yanked her into the kitchen. We went stealth mode down the back hall and peeked out the interior door’s little window into the garage, ready to giggle over Derek’s ineptitude when it came to anything even remotely mechanical. Jericho and Derek were talking in the center of the space, both of their faces way too serious. Derek’s arms were folded across his chest and Jericho was repeatedly running his hand through his hair.
Bad signs. What in the world are they talking about?
I tried to read their lips but it didn’t work.
What good is being chosen if I can’t hear through walls? Oh no!

I lightly kicked Sarah’s shin. “Go around the side of the house and eavesdrop.”

“Why? They’re in deep discussion about gears or power trains or something. Little paranoid today?”

“Derek planted one on me big time before he left for Tulane.”

Her lips formed a huge
O
and she slapped my arm, possibly exposing us.

“I’ll tell you about it later. Just go,” I whispered.

She quickly tiptoed away with her hand over her mouth to hold in the I-can’t-believe-you-didn’t-tell-me exclamation.

She came back a minute later and we sat, hunched over the kitchen table.

“So?” I scanned the perimeter to make sure they weren’t coming.

“Okay, ready for this? The problem with the garage door opener was that a fuse was blown.” She sat back and stared at me like she’d given away a national secret.

“That’s it?”

“Uh huh. Then the door went down. Scandalous, isn’t it?”

Holy guilt attack.
I admitted to myself right then that even though the kiss had happened months prior, I probably needed to come clean about it to Jericho.

The rest of the week was nice and normal. I packed a picnic basket and Jericho, Sarah, her boy de jour, and I had lunch in the park. It was way cheesy but Sarah loved that kind of thing. I also played tennis with Derek and schooled him. Then we played video games and I let him own me. On the last night, we all went to amateur hour at a jazz club, where I was harassed by Sarah and Jericho into doing an acoustic number. When I finished my own medley of James Thompson songs, ending with the chorus from “Daughter of Time,” people actually clapped for me. That applause should have made me feel like a rock star, but it didn’t.

On the drive back to Corpus, I put my hand on Jericho’s but kept my eyes on the road. “When I did that little ditty at the jazz club, I couldn’t help but think about how much my energy enhances my ability. I hate to ask this, but how did you get any satisfaction from your surfing wins knowing your magic heightens your performance?”

“Wasn’t like that. Julia bound me from use of my magic with a spell before every event, often a whole tour. It made me as human as everyone else.”

Bound?
“I can be bound from my magic? That’s what I want. That’s what I want for you. We could be average yet cool people living regular lives. How do we do it?”

“Not gonna happen. No one is bound without a very important reason.
They
gave you your energy to be put to good use, for your purpose, and you can’t forsake it out of doubt or fear.”

Shut down.

He put his index finger against mine and tapped it twice. “Besides, I think you’re The One of Green Water.”

“The who of what now?”

“It’s a legend in our assembly. The One of Green Water will return the unkept flame. Don’t give me the ‘you’re-out-of-your-mind’ stare. I know that look. It’s old-timey language and I don’t know what it means, but I truly believe you’re going to make a huge contribution to the bright race.” He tickled me under my arm. “No pressure.”

Yeah, unkept flame, got it.
I loved him for loving me so much that he thought I could be an ages-old, totally screwy sounding legend. I loved him more for being a dreamer sometimes. It was a side of him I rarely saw.

That night, he stopped saying “sleep well.” Every night the same dream came, permeating our subconscious, pulling him to me and me to him. His arms held me too tightly as I clutched him, energy surging between us. We woke in the morning stiff with sore muscles, eyes aflame. It was his sign to me that our coming together wasn’t far away.

CHAPTER TWENTY

He walked into the garage. “Hey, Derek. Need help?”

“I think it’s the wiring.”

He climbed the ladder. “Wiring looks okay. Did you try the reset button?”

“Didn’t do that. What’s up with Edwards?”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s got this look she gets whenever something’s on her mind or when she’s about to go Section 8, go freakshow. It’s subtle.”

“She’s been stressed about the college thing, deciding her future. She’s dealing.”

“She’s not dealing. I know Edwards. If she says she’s fine, she’s not.”

“It’s not the reset button either.” He jumped to the ground.

“Hey, if you’re with her, then make her talk about it,” he crossed his arms, “else step aside and let someone who loves her take care of her.”

“Maybe there are some things about her you don’t understand.”

“And you do? I know everything about her.”

He ran his hand through his hair. “So if she ever needs anything, you’d help her out, right?”

“That’s what I’ve always done,
for years
.”

“Then do me a favor. If somewhere down the line you see her or talk to her, and she’s being cold and distant, angry or dark, you know, just not acting like herself, call Julia, okay?”

“Julia? Why—?”

“What I said before. Kris is stressed, feels left behind and it’s affecting her, is making her act out. Julia’s been in the exact same place, a place you and I have never gone. She’s been helping Kris find her worth in the grand scheme of things, and they’ve gotten really close. Julia’s good for Kris.” He walked to the breaker box. “The opener’s fine. You blew a fuse.” He hit the button and the door went down.

_______

A
fter his surfing buddies left on Monday afternoon, he grinned at me. “You look like you wanna go to my super-secret spot.”

“I do? Oh, the bluff. You bet I do.” I followed him out to his truck.

The beach was empty except for a couple taking a walk. I was hoping he was going to point out people and tell me what they were feeling. Instead, he asked me to sit on my knees and then he sat behind me with his hand flat against my stomach.

“Here’s the deal. Our energy can be harmful to humans and animals. It’s not electrical, but acts in some of the same ways. You can set fires with your magic and stop hearts from beating. That’s why I brought you up here, where it’s unlikely you’ll do any harm except to a stray bird or two.”

I turned my head back to him. “The Bakery?”

“I used a small amount of energy to knock out your attacker so I could get you out of all the broken glass and Donovan and I could heal you.”

“How can our energy both harm and heal?”

“Mindset and purpose. When we’re making out, my energy doesn’t sting like it does when we’re fighting. Our energy is both a defense and a cure, and extra sexy too.” He patted my stomach. “This is your center. It’s the place where your magic is stored. You hold a tremendous amount of power within you and because your magic springs from your fingers, it gives you a dexterity that most of us don’t have. You know how to direct your magic to one person or mark. What I want you to try to do is spread your magic along the horizon and magnify the strength.”

“Like the ball of light, karate chop thing you do?”

“No, that’s a skill particular to my … training. It’s called scanning. When I put out energy, can you feel it inside you, not on your skin?”

“No.”

“When I release energy or suddenly disappear or reappear by lightning, that’s my signature. It’s specific to me. Yours is specific to you. I have a very strong sense for signatures and scanning allows me to track them within fifty miles or so. I know how far away, in which direction energy was put out, as well as roughly within what period of time. And, if I’ve been exposed to the signature before, I know whose energy it was. What you’re trying to do is more of a nuclear blast. It’s called
the interference
, is kind of an urban legend in the bright world.”

I might’ve sighed. “Again with the legends …”

“Hey, if you can have an anthem for your life, I can have a few legends.” He raised his hand toward the water. “Now, imagine there are twelve bad guys evenly spaced along the shoreline. They want to hurt you or kill me, whatever gets ya goin’. You want to take all of them out at once with one tremendous burst.”

“I don’t think I can do it. That’s why it’s an urban legend.”

He kissed my cheek. “I think you can. I can’t, but I think you might. And some legends are worth believing.”

“I appreciate the confidence but, dude, that sort of release will decimate me.”

“You’re getting much stronger. There’s a feeling that works with your energy to set it into motion. It’s not rage. Collin, the one bright I’ve heard that can do it … guy has the zaniest hair I’ve ever seen. Anyway, Collin was said to have described it as dead calm. Erase everything from your mind, understand the danger you face, and find that calm to make it happen.”

My tutoring included Zen meditation and I was stumped, searching for a transcendental state to enact an emotion. I closed my eyes, pretended to be Jeff, and sought inner peace. He whispered to me to stop thinking. For thirty minutes I tried so hard for him, his fingers sliding through my hair to loosen me up, but I failed. I was scrubbing my face to ease the tension so I could further explore the whereabouts of dead calm when he stood.

“We’ll try again another day.” He helped me up. “Don’t get frustrated, none of this comes easily. It’s called magic, but there’s nothing instant about it.”

The entire next day I couldn’t make heads or tails of dead calm—stupid urban legends. Around eight, I waited for the sun to set, resigning myself to a book about deep water currents. It was one of twelve ocean-related publications that I’d checked out of the library before my awareness, to help me find an explanation for his magic. There were zero references to brights in writings about the tides and he’d been watching my research, knowing I was way off track.