Spiritdell Book 1 (8 page)

Alone again, I pull the musty-smelling sleeping bag up to my nose. My feet are cold, which means I won't be able to fall asleep for some time. I close my eyes and focus on sending warm blood down to my toes. Once, I tried to test if I could manually override my body's autonomic system by warming up just one foot, and I swear it was working, but I fell asleep too soon to tell. Now, whenever I'm tired but can't sleep, I focus on making my right foot warmer. Or is it my left foot?

* * *

I'm woken up by James coming in the door. He trips over something and then all is alarmingly quiet. I unzip out of my sleeping bag and turn on the light to make sure he hasn't impaled himself on the coat rack. If Julie's annoyed with me now, I can only imagine the treatment I'd get if I let her brother bleed out on the floor of the cabin.

James, crumpled on the floor, moans as he blinks against the bright light. One of his eyes is red and swollen.

Pointing to his face, he says, “It's dark out there between the cabins. I tripped and landed right smack-dab on a tree branch. Lucky I still have the old eyeball.”

“Seems like a plausible explanation,” I say. “And far less embarrassing than admitting the girl you picked up by the lakeside was riding you like a horsie when things got kinky and she punched you in the face.”

He rolls on his back and covers his face with both hands. “She asked if she could hit me, and I thought she was role-playing, but no. She up and wailed on me!”

“You agreed to being hit?”

“Wait, how'd you know I didn't fall on a tree? You saw the whole thing in your damn vision, didn't you? Dude! You could have warned me.”

“Would you have listened?”

“No.” He forms a megaphone with his hands and whispers, “I had sex. Wanna hear about it?”

“Already kinda ... um ... saw it.”

“That's sick, man. Your tummy-pokey-thing is an invasion of my personal privacy.” He sits down on the pull-out bed next to me. “I looked awesome in your vision, though, right? I've been doing a lot of situps.”

“I wasn't looking at your abs. I wasn't looking at your
anything!
”

“Your loss,” he says. “This is shaping up to be a strange summer so far.”

“True. And apparently my power's still working,” I say.

He gingerly touches his red eye, wincing. “Zan, did you ever wonder why or how you got this power?”

My voice casual, I say, “All the time.” James doesn't know this, but the truth is I have a pretty good idea about how I got my power, and it has everything to do with my father. My insides quiver at the thought, so I push the memory away.

“I'm sure you weren't given this gift just so you could be picky about girls,” James says. “Maybe you have some sort of purpose in life, like saving mankind and all that.”

He pushes me over on the squeaky pull-out bed and steals a pillow.

“Save mankind from what?” I ask as he commandeers the softest spot on the bed.

“Save mankind from an asteroid,” he offers. “Or from ... ourselves?”

“Trans-fats,” I counter.

“Whaling.”

“High-fructose corn syrup,” I say as I switch off the light.

“Movie theater popcorn,” he says.

“It's like a heart attack in a cute paper box,” I agree.

“Movie sequels.”

“And prequels.”

“The diamond trade.”

“Global warming,” I say.

“Candies that look good but taste like soap.”

“Sharting,” I say, laughing.

“I think you get sharting from eating soap candies, so if you get rid of one, it solves the other.”

“Good point,” I say. “What about gift cards? You get them for Christmas and it's mentally taxing trying to remember which ones you have and how much cash is on them. Gran gets me twenty different ones because she's a big believer in not spending it all in once place.”

“Sounds like a nightmare,” he says. “Gift cards. Yup, pure evil. But what about poverty, or terrorism, or Mad Cow Disease. You never hear about Mad Cow Disease these days. Do you think it's been eradicated and nobody told us?”

“Oh, yeah, I took care of that last week. I stuck a lady's finger in my belly button and got the recipe for a vaccine. I didn't tell you?” I chuckle for a moment, staring at the moon-lit shadows on the cabin's log ceiling.

Is a spider climbing down from the ceiling toward my face, or is that moving dark spot a trick of my mind? If you stare too long in the dark, you can begin to hallucinate, albeit mildly. Your brain's trying to make sense of what little information it can get, and tries fitting meaning to the tiniest patterns.

James, who I thought was asleep, suddenly asks, “Do you sometimes wish you never had your power? Or you lost it?”

“I don't know. It's a part of me. Would I still be me? Can you ever recover from losing the only thing that makes you special and unique?”

“Don't say that about my friend. You're plenty special.”

“We should get some sleep,” I say. “If you're too tired to make it to your room, could you at least turn your face away from me? You've got that girl's ashtray smell all over you. You reek like a sun-dried tomato.”

“Totally worth it,” he says.

“How about your eye? Does it hurt?”

“Yes. Still totally worth it.”

“Guys do strange things to be with girls, don't they?”

“You just summed up all of human history,” he says.

James is a pretty smart guy sometimes.

* * *

We were planning to stay past dinner on the second day at the lake, but between the black eye on James and the bad mood on Julie, nobody's feeling like sticking around. The vegan hot dogs we have for breakfast aren't improving the overall atmosphere.

I stir up the orange juice and think—again—about Austin. My next move should be to go to the coffee shop where she works. No, too intense. I'd love to phone, but that would mean trying to get her phone number through Julie, who's staring at me when she thinks I'm not looking, then quickly turning away to avoid eye contact. James has gone out to ask a neighbor for a painkiller, leaving the two of us alone.

“Julie, wanna know the truth about how James got his black eye?” I ask her.

She pauses in chewing her breakfast, which is mayonnaise and potato chips on a bun—no hot dog. With a hand over her mouth, she says around the gummy food, “He didn't fall and hit a tree branch?”

“No. Can you keep a secret?”

At the word secret, the corner of her mouth turns up. I knew it! No girl can resist a secret, not even Julie, who pretends to be above such girly things. I pour us both some orange juice, lean in conspiratorially, and tell her the real story.

Julie cracks a smile. “That's why he wants to go home early,” she says. “He's afraid to run into her!”

“No doubt. She might ask to go for round two, and he'll go for it—because he's James—and she'll punch out the other eye.”

“Serves him right, going off with some girl he doesn't know.”

“Now, now, we don't condone violence, do we?”

Julie snickers into her hand. “Of course not.”

James walks in the door and stamps the dust off his feet. Julie and I try our best to look innocent as he eyes us suspiciously.

“You told her, didn't you, Zan?” James says. “You two can be such gossipy girls!”

“Calling me a girl, are you? I'll take that as a compliment.” I initiate the secret handshake with Julie, who accepts readily. Outside the window, the sun comes out from behind a cloud, bathing the breakfast nook in golden light. Everything's better now that Julie and I are back on track as friends.

So, if all is good, why do I feel like things are about to go terribly wrong?

* * *

We grab our bags and load up the Jeep. Julie's been driving James nuts with her need to analyze what happened to him last night.

“I've heard about this phenomenon,” Julie says. “The gender politics are quite fascinating. It started because of some TV show, where a young girl punches an older guy during sex. Someone started a web site.
Facepuncher,
or something like that. Lots of women sign on and post their own stories.”

“You're making this up,” I say.

She rubs her arm, which is still red from the bee sting yesterday, but less so. “Like you guys made up the story about a bee sting being lucky?”

“Damn,” James says. “Now I can't remember if I made it up or not. It's all in my head together, like those urban legends about kidnappers posing as birthday party clowns.”

“Who'd trust a clown?” I say as I put the bag of leftover buns and potato chips in the back of the Jeep. “Besides, kidnapping can't be so difficult. Just go to one of those big grocery stores and help yourself to some screaming brats.”

“It disturbs me that you two put so much thought into such things,” Julie says. “Now, about this odd trend of young women embracing violence as a means of expression ... did she explain to you why she punched you? Is it for a performance art project or something?”

“There wasn't a lot of talking,” James says.

“Shotgun,” Julie says coolly, just as I'm reaching for the passenger-side door.

I start to protest that Julie had the front on the way out, but instead, I hold the door for her. “After you, m'lady.”

“Don't play like you're being chivalrous,” Julie says. “I called shotgun fair and square, just like a guy would. I demand to be treated equally!”

“Yes, Sir. Uh. Yes, person.”

Once we're all inside the vehicle, James says, “I think the real kidnapping money's in getting the rich kids. For ransom.”

“Phew, we're safe,” I say. “I have nothing of value.”

“Zan, your power's valuable,” Julie says. “I have nothing as good as that, whatsoever. If you wanted to give your power to me, I'd take it. I'd probably even pay you.”

James starts the engine and drives the Jeep to the road exiting the lake. We spend the next half hour talking about ways to
monetize
my power, but most of them are pretty evil and involve extortion.

* * *

We're back on the highway now, getting closer to civilization, and my cell phone has a signal. Julie seems to not hate me, so I figure I'm safe asking her for Austin's number.

“Julie-ee-ee-ee,” I say. “Could I bug you for Austin's phone number?”

“Where?” she responds. “Who? Don't you want to call Raye-Anne and talk about your great night together? About all the … sexy sex you were having?”

“Raye-Anne? No. I went home with Austin after your party. Austin. With the long hair, almost silvery-white. She has really beautiful hair.”

“Who?”

“I said. Austin. She's friends, or cousins, with one of your friends.”

“I thought you hooked up with Raye-Anne Donovan.”

“No, Raye-Anne has some … well, she has a dark side I didn't like the look of. Didn't you see? I left your party with Austin.”

Julie pulls out her phone and scrolls through a list. “You mean Tina? Short for Austina?”

“She said her name was Austin, but ... Austina, yeah, I guess that would be her!” I say brightly. “You have her actual number?” I grab for the phone, but she yanks it away.

“You slept with Brain Tumor Girl?”

I lean back in my seat, trying to process what Julie said. She said Austin is also Tina, and then she said something mean about her.

“Just because she's cute and a blonde,” I say, “doesn't mean you can call her awful names.”

“That name's not awful,” Julie says.

James interjects with, “Actually,
Brain Tumor Girl
is the definition of awful.”

“Yes,” I say. “I've heard you and your friends talking about each other. It's always Fatneck and Sadmachine and Stumpy. Who's Stumpy anyways?”

“I'm Stumpy. They call me Stumpy,” she says.

“Julie, you do know guys who are friends don't call each other mean names,” I say.

Her voice getting shrill with agitation, she says, “Yes, you do so. You call James a
jamtart
and he calls you a
nozzle,
whatever that means.”

“But that's to the face,” I say. “You can say anything to the face. You don't say it behind the back.”

She crosses her arms across her chest. “Fine! Now that I know the rules for your boys' club, I'll try to follow them. Cut me some slack, okay?”

The dash beeps and James grumbles to the Jeep, “Gas? Already? I don't understand, I just filled you up.”

An image appears in my mind, as familiar as ... well, the back of my hand. “Around the next corner, on the right, there's that gas station. We'll stop there.”

We round the corner and find the gas station, as though conjured. “You really have memorized this route,” Julie says. “You have some sort of photographic memory you're not telling us about? I don't remember this place, whatsoever.”

James puts on the turn signal and we pull into a little gas station with no name, just a faded Orange Crush sign.

“Julie,” James says slowly, as though negotiating a social minefield. “Why is Austin, or should I say Tina, called Brain Tumor Girl?”

Julie turns to me with sad eyes. As the Jeep crunches to a halt on the gravel, the whole world stops, holding its breath. Julie's eyes tell me something is wrong.

“Zan, I'm sorry,” she says.

Something is very wrong.

I want to punch something. I clench my jaw and wait for the punching feeling to pass, then say, “Just tell me. You're making it worse, dragging it out.”

“She has an inoperable brain tumor,” Julie says. “For real.”

I clench and unclench my fists in my lap.

Austin. With her soft hair flowing all the way down to her waist, her perfect, creamy skin, and that laugh that's been stuck in my head since I first heard it. She's not the one who's sick; Julie must be mistaken.

“No, she's totally healthy,” I say to James and Julie. James is also wearing the sad eyes, nearly identical to Julie's. Four sad, blue eyes peer into me. “Stop looking at me like that! I would have known if she was sick. It must be someone else. I'm talking about Austin, she was at the party.”

“Yeah, in the dress with the stars,” Julie says, beginning to cry. James has watery eyes too, but Julie's tears are like nails being pounded into my heart.

James turns off the engine and turns away. “Unreal,” he says.