Lightning Kissed (2 page)

A smug grin overtook my face as I eyed the
skyscrapers around me. My heart thundered in my ears, and I took
inventory of each building. It would only take a second to be at
the top of those buildings. I’d never ridden in an elevator in my
life. I never would either.

I walked into the corporate headquarters and
dialed the pre-plotted number in my disposable cell phone. I let it
ring twice, and when the male voice answered, immediately hung up
and diverted my path to the nearest restroom and locked the door
behind me. That was his cue to clear the riff raff from his office.
By riff raff, I meant loose-lipped humans who’d all jump at the
chance to make the news—even in the capacity of a tattle-tale. But
even the dumbest of Lucents knew how to prep for prevention of such
things.

Before my first job with this company,
they’d sent me a live-stream video of the path from the front of
the skyscraper to the office in which I’d make the drop. Now it was
a breeze.

Not that I’d taken the path they’d given me.
The visual cue was used simply to carve it into my mind for
flashing purposes.

The process was simple. Small distances
didn’t cause much of a flash, which is why I chose to come into the
building instead of flashing directly from the tunnel—less wake.
And with less wake, there was less chance of the person receiving
the delivery freaking out—which meant less chance of them screaming
or worse—blabbing.

My mom said that once, when she was a girl,
she’d flashed to an amusement park from school—right into the fun
house. Her light burst forth, and its reflection bounced around the
mirrors in the place until she was overcome by the power of it—and
passed out cold.

The news crews called it a fluke
accident.

My grandmother called it a month’s
grounding.

I could imagine the things they’d ask us.
How did we do it? How far could we go? Did it hurt?

Flashing didn’t hurt. It felt as if, for a
fraction of a second, my entire body went concave, almost
flattening into itself and then retracting, though I’d never
suffered a broken bone or internal injuries. I’d love to know more
about how it works, but all we knew were the histories. When I was
a kid, it thrilled me. I could get my chores done like nobody’s
business. I was never late for school or swim practice, but there
were always consequences.

My mother was a flasher—don’t laugh—not that
kind of flasher. It was a genetic gift or curse, depending on how
you viewed it.

The gene was passed from mother to daughter,
so she knew what once tickled me as a toddler would, with the
onslaught of pubescence, become a compulsion. I flashed because I
had to. I’d tried to deny myself the adrenaline rush as a teen,
longing for the chance to be normal. It’s not like the other kids
were normal, but I knew deep down inside that something cataclysmic
separated me from them. That period of stillness nearly killed me.
And then, when I could take it no more, I flashed constantly, from
Italy to Greece, from Argentina to Vancouver and back. For an
entire month, I whisked through time and space, getting it all out
of my system.

It bordered on madness, but the cure was
travel.

That’s when YouTube video number one came
into being. Some rent-a-cop caught me on a security camera in
Santiago, Chile outside of President Franco’s office just after two
in the morning and thought it would be wise to plaster it all over
the internet. I had just been sightseeing, getting a better view.
Get over it—effing part-time, wanna-be policia.

My mother never flashed much—not until my
dad died. When they first met, the adrenaline of first love equaled
the rush of flashing, so it wasn’t until after she had me, when
time and age had lessened the thrill of married life that the itch
of needing to travel slammed into her again. The first time I’d
seen her flash, at the tender age of three, I’d mimicked her by
instinct, flashing from my room to the park, and it had nearly
given her a coronary trying to find me.

Most children would get into trouble. I was
praised for flashing such a large distance and was kindly asked to
let them know where I was going the next time.

She’d sat on my bed that night and explained
it all to me. I’d loved her as a child before I knew about our
gift, and after that night, I worshipped her.

That was the first time she’d taught me the
meaning of
relâmpago
, the lightning bolt,
in Portuguese. Our people are named after the breath of electricity
whose bolts brighten the sky during storms. In modern times—the
younger generations—we called ourselves Lucents. But I would always
remember my mother proudly telling me that my gift was born from
pure light—the light of the lightning and the light of the
Almighty. We were all descended of Xoana, daughter of Ofelia, who
stood in the fields of Portugal, cursing her father for not
allowing her to travel to other lands because she was his only
daughter and he feared for her safety. Xoana had a hunger—a desire
so deep that it flooded her veins, to see the world. As she stood,
surrounded by the wheat crops she loathed, and used his scythe to
drive her anger into the heavens, the Almighty struck her down with
a bolt of lightning, blessing and cursing her all at once.

Xoana was the first Lucent and we, her
daughters, called her light to this day. Some crudely called us
teleporters. I’d always despised that name. Either way, I could
travel anywhere in the blink of an eye thanks to Xoana and her
curses. I did all this without stepping foot on any land or oceans
between myself and my destination.

And I’d perfected the art.

My father had tried to understand it, he
had. Many a night he’d stayed up by the light of his lamp, sitting
in his chair, studying our history. I couldn’t keep track of the
many times he’d asked my mother how it felt to travel—and later
he’d asked me. He would beg my mother to take him with her. “Just
try it,” he’d say. But there were rumors—females of our kind who’d
tried to share the experience with their husbands, friends, and
lovers and lost them in the fray—never to be seen again.

He’d died of a heart attack on a jet, headed
to Portugal to meet her—alone, eternally chasing his love.

I was sure there were those who envied our
gift. But what good was the ability to travel the world in seconds
if you were perpetually lonely.

I was lonely without Theo, though I’d never
tell him.

The bridges of Paris, packed with embracing
patrons reminded me.

The scrolling, illustrious sunsets on the
coast of the Sierra Leone made the fact gleam.

We couldn’t be together. It was too
dangerous.

ALL LUCENT BIRTHS MUST BE
RECORDED BY THE SYNOD WITHIN TEN DAYS.

Flashing, to me, was like a jewel I
continued to polish and shine. I could now slide gracefully into
the driver’s seat of a parked car, the pew of an abandoned chapel,
a conspicuous phone booth, or my chair at the dining room table
without a sound.

Most Lucents could only flash once or twice
a year, but I’d stretched my talent to its borders—and found it
limitless.

My mom screamed, “Colby, you really should
give me some warning. I swear you scare the shit out of me when you
do that.”

She held her chest in panic and I quickly
squelched the laugh that threatened to bubble up at her
dramatics.

“Sorry, Mom. Mr. Sato started asking me
questions, so I had to duck out early before he completely
wigged.”

She grabbed Mr. Sato’s invisible neck with
her hands, choking him hypothetically. “Why do they do that? Do
they think we’re just going to have a seat in one of their
modern-glass office chairs and give an exclusive interview? It
never fails. They need to learn to accept the delivery, pay up, and
shut up.”

She flitted about the kitchen while she
spoke. We were kinda like birds in that we tried to eat very little
to stay as light as possible. I’d gained twenty pounds in my phase
of rebellion, and when I’d finally flashed again, well, let’s just
say it had taken a little more effort than usual.

“I’m really not hungry, Mom. I picked up
some soup in the city.”

“That’s fine. I’ll just eat some salad. And
by the way, Ari called, she wanted to know your decision about
Friday night—some club called Orion’s Belt?”

I laughed at her exuberance. My mom would be
the first one in that club. She was a clubber type.

My mom was more of a friend than a mother.
She still strongly resembled a woman in her thirties and dressed
like a conservative teen. Our hair was exactly the same in color,
sandy blonde. But where hers was straight and shined like glass,
mine puffed out in curls that I barely managed to contain after ten
bottles of product.

Eventually, I just stopped trying.

“It’s in Spain, right in the middle of
Madrid, underground. You’ve been there, Mom. It’s just another
European club—nothing special. But she saw this guy there, so she
wants to go back and see if she can spot him again.”

“Madrid, huh?”

“Yes, Madrid. But I probably won’t go. How
about you and I go to Costa Rica or maybe the Caymans?”

She said nothing and I knew why. It was a
running silent argument, had been since the day Theo and I had
split up. She just couldn’t contain herself for very long, so once
in a while, she’d politely sneak it into regular conversation.

Or just blurt it out like right then.

I groaned. “Just say it.”

She sat down beside me, holding a white bowl
with various julienned vegetables shimmering a bit from a drizzling
of olive oil and lemon juice.

“I was already married by the time I was
your age. It’s possible, you know, marriage, family. Just because
Lucent females are travelers, doesn’t mean we can’t have some
stability. Our husbands give us a home to return to—a home that
isn’t a place, but a person to belong to.”

The older female generations called it
traveling—called themselves travelers. But it sounded like a convoy
of gypsies to me and my generation had more readily adopted the
term flashers. Plus, the word flashers was more fun. And flashing
sounded—naughty. The term earned giggles from pre-pubescent Lucents
and scolding glares from the older ones. It was a win-win.

“I’ve heard this lecture, Mom. I just—can’t
right now.” My mom knew nothing about why Theo and I weren’t
together anymore, and it was safer all the way around if she
didn’t—that was the whole point of this exercise—to keep all of
them safe and at a safe distance from me and my antics. She was
hinting, not so subtly, at the fact that Theo had spent the summer
in Madrid. She probably didn’t know he’d moved on.

She changed the subject quickly. “I haven’t
been to Belize in years. Maybe we should just go there. You love it
there.” We tried very hard not to fight. There were a lot of things
that could go wrong when you traveled through chasms of space. You
could get stuck. You could get misdirected. You could get
caught—any of us could get caught.

I got up from the table and scooted my chair
under it. “Let’s leave Friday morning—spend the weekend.”

“Sounds good. Sleep tight, Colby. I love you
more than time and space.”

“Love you too, Mom.”

I trekked down the hall toward my room and
paused midway to let my fingers glide along the last picture of my
dad. It was a selfie we’d taken the day before he had gotten on the
plane. He was ecstatic to see Portugal for the first time. He and
Mom were going to have a second honeymoon. He was happy. I was
happy. We were invincible.

And then he was gone.

I headed straight for the shower. I didn’t
stink per se, but I always smelled like the last place I’d been. It
was disconcerting to say the least. It made me forget what country
I was in. Peeling off the leather pants, I reveled in my freedom as
the hot water deflated my hair and cascaded down my back. Most
people, excluding my mother, and from what I’d heard, my
grandmother, were exhausted after flashing. But I was exhilarated,
alive from the core of my body to the electrical pulses in my
brain.

I washed Japan from my skin and then brushed
my teeth to the beats of Moby. My landline rang, and I knew it was
Ari. She was one of only a few who knew the number.

I plopped on my bed, still wrapped in my
gray towel, and answered the phone, “Hello, you’ve reached the
voicemail of—Colby Evans—please leave a message after the
tone.”

She laughed before replying. “It’s really
scary how good you are at that customer service voice. You’d think
you were human.”

“You’re such a snob. And by the way, no, I’m
not going to Spain. Mom and I are going to Belize for the
weekend.”

“That’s fine. I’m thinking about not going
myself. Think Sable would mind if I tagged along?”