Paranormal After Dark

by Rebecca Hamilton

  Hearing about seers got me thinking about the one seer I had ever…well, seen. It was no good though. Thinking about the girl in the tower only got me thinking about Echo and the connection that the two of us might share.

  To that end, I did my best to dodge him. I couldn’t bear to look at him at the moment, to think about what might or might not be true, to wonder about why our eyes were the same color. If I didn’t ask him the question, then he couldn’t answer it. And if he couldn’t answer it, I could go on pretending the entire idea was ridiculous.

  The closest I came to broaching the subject was when I worked up the nerve to ask Dr. Static if it was possible that a Breaker might go out into the world, find some random to shack up with, and get a Breaker kid out of the deal.

  Though he seemed a little taken aback by my use of ‘shack up’, he conceded that it was “theoretically possible, I suppose, though the odds are infinitesimal.”

  I stopped listening after possible. With possible, I could manage. With possible, I could hang on to the shredded tether of normalcy that was left to me. I could deal with possible, even if it was just theoretical.

  That did mean that I had to steer clear of Echo though. One wrong word and he’d probably know something was up. Then his weird Breaker powers would pull the truth out of me like a shiatsu with a rubber hot dog. That was pretty easy though. What with the insane amount of classes I was going to (I swear, there were like ten a day), I was busy enough that running into him was never a real problem. Besides, he wasn’t the only one I was trying to stay away from.

  Since my blowup with Owen, I had done my best to try to put him out of my mind. I would just focus on my classes, focus on this crazy secret world that had just opened up at my feet, and then I wouldn’t have to think about him. I wouldn’t have to think about the deep blue pools of his eyes, or the way his lips always curled when he said my name. I wouldn’t have to think about the way his arms bulged under his shirt sleeves, or the nape of his neck, or the small of his back….

  No. I wasn’t thinking about any of that.

  To his credit, he made it easy on me. Whenever we had to share the same space, he was always careful to keep his distance. When we were at lunch, he’d always sit by himself off to the side. Platters would be served to him, which he would barely touch, and I only caught him looking at me twice.

  I, on the other hand, was routinely surrounded by friendly faces. It was like we had slipped into some kind of bizzaro DeSoto land where I was the popular one and Owen was the outcast. I couldn’t go three seconds without someone introducing themselves or offering to show me around. They were even cool about Casper, who was taking to this whole thing so much better than me.

  Turned out there was a certain cache to being a human inside the Breaker world. Crazily enough, most of them had never met someone who wasn’t a Breaker before. Casper was an oddity, a rooster in the henhouse. They had countless questions for him; about the way humans thought, the things they liked to do, about what a Kardashian was. Casper was the most popular guy around, and he ate it up, especially from the girls.

  The only person who was in higher demand than my ginger haired best friend was me. My story, or the pieces of my story that weren’t still shrouded in mystery, became the only thing anybody talked about. I was the Breaker from the other side of the tracks; the prodigal daughter whose secret life literally exploded when the truth came out. Everybody seemed to have a theory about why my mom kept me hidden all these years.

  Teera, a large girl who introduced herself by taking half of my chicken kabob, thought Mom had grown tired of her life as a Breaker and, when her mission went south and she saw a way out, took it. She didn’t say it, but there was something in Teera’s voice that made me think she would do the same thing if given the chance.

  Edison, a bookish boy with golden spiked hair, said that a lot of people thought Mom must have had an affair and, knowing that genetic testing after my birth would prove it, decided to bolt instead of staying and facing the shame. Of course, he wasn’t one of the people who thought that.

  Jackson thought I was an alien. “A really pretty one, but an alien all the same.”

  None of them, it seemed, thought that my dad was actually my dad. That was too out there even for them.

  The one part of my story that didn’t spark any debate was Owen. Everyone, every single person I talked to, painted him as an idiot. He wasn’t malicious. He wasn’t trying to destroy me or my family. They didn’t give him enough credit for that. He was just the Breaker that got tricked, the boy who should have known better, the guy who let his ambition get the better of him and, in doing so, shamed his family. Maybe that’s why everybody kept their distance from him; they didn’t want the embarrassment to rub off on them.

  I wanted to feel for him, even if I couldn’t bring myself to actually tell him so. But I still wasn’t sure how I felt about him, about everything. And besides, I had more than enough to keep me busy.

  Once the ‘asthma medicine’ had worked its way out of my system, I started noticing weird things. First off, the symptoms of my asthma, the shortness of breath, the closing throat, all vanished. Then a veil seemed to lift from my mind. It was like I was waking up from a long sleep or something. Pieces of my brain I didn’t know I had clicked on, and the results were pretty huge.

  On Monday, I learned French…the entire language. On Tuesday, I took, and completed, Beginner’s Geometry, Biology, and Physics. On Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, they crammed as much world history into my mind as possible. I started seeing cyclical patters in time. History really did repeat itself. I started seeing patterns in everything else too. German came easy because I already knew French. Putting what I learned to use, I cracked Russian in half an hour. I was a machine, and what was more, I enjoyed it.

  It was like, since my mind had gone so long denying everything it could do, it was thirsty for the knowledge. I soaked it up like a sponge and licked the bowl when I was done. It was gratifying, like scratching a decade old itch that I had never noticed before. These connections, Dr. Static said, were only the first steps in what I would eventually become. Once my mind managed to push past the confines of what it had been trained to do my entire life, I’d start to feel the real effects of being a Breaker. Maybe I’d be able to move things with my mind, like Ezra. Maybe I’d be a human lie detector, like Echo. Or maybe I’d be a superhumanly frigid bitch, like Dahlia.

  Though it took most Breakers years to fine-tune their strengths and coax out their abilities, they were much younger when they started. Dr. Static told me that my own progress would be a little trickier to gauge. I was older, which meant my mind was more set in its ways. But it also meant that I presumably had a maturity that many of Breakers didn’t when they were just learning the basics at four or five. Which was a good thing, if being told you’re probably more mature than a five year old was even a compliment.

  The point was I had things to keep my mind busy; busy enough that I didn’t have to think about Owen, Echo, the girl in the tower, or that fact that nine days after she left, Merrin still hadn’t returned. She had said it would take her two hours; that, in that time, she’d pull apart every secret hiding in Crestview. Maybe she was just bragging though. Maybe she wasn’t being literal and this sort of thing took time. Or maybe what she found in Crestview was so big that she had to stay awhile. Maybe whoever was after me was so unexpected, so impressive and intimidating, that it was taking this long just to feel them out.

  It had been two weeks since Casper and I had drove up to Weathersby’s gates, and I still hadn’t really found a footing. I began to think that maybe the kids at DeSoto High hadn’t been the problem. Maybe it wasn’t that they were small town. Maybe I was just closed minded. It certainly felt that way to me, because no matter how many perfectly cool looking Breakers walked up to me and offered friendship, I just wasn’t interested. Even Jackson; a cool little kid by anyone’s standards, wasn’t someone I’d consider a friend.

 
; So, I suppose it shouldn’t come as a surprise that, as I walked down the hall of the common area, waving at the rock-climbing, arrow-shooting, and holographic puzzle-solving Breakers that I passed, the only thing I really wanted to do was veg out with Casper in front of the TV.

  Wonder if they have pay-per-view here.

  “You think we can find a Criminal Minds marathon or something on?” I asked, pushing into Casper’s room without knocking, the way I used to back in Crestview when the world was normal.

  Casper wasn’t there though. Instead, I was met with a very intense looking, and very shirtless, Owen. His cuts had healed over, his bruises had faded, and his face had leveled out into its natural look. Aside from a few small gashes that only served to make him look rugged, he was his old self again. And I, against my better judgment, found myself falling back into old patterns. My eyes lingered on his body, tracing the arch where his neck spilled into his shoulders, running along the peaks and valleys of his smooth arms, corded with muscle, resting on the light trail of hair that ran down from his naval.

  “Sorry. He-uh, isn’t here,” Owen said, blinking hard. He had a shirt in his hands, a plain black tee, but didn’t make any move to put it on. In fact, he didn’t move at all. It was like the sight of me, or maybe the fact that I had actually spoken, even if it wasn’t meant for him, froze him where he stood. “He-I can-I’ll tell him you came by.”

  “Okay,” I answered in a small voice. I turned to leave, but stopped, not sure of anything except that I didn’t want to leave just yet. Questions or not, lies or not, Owen had been my friend once. He had been more than that once, and I missed him. “What are you doing here, in Casper’s room?” I asked, turning back to him.

  “It’s my room now too,” he answered, twisting the black shirt so that it swirled into a spiraled rag in his hands. I tried not to notice the way the muscles in his chest flexed while doing it. “They moved me in with Casper until it’s time for me to go back to the Hourglass.”

  “You’re leaving?” I hated the way my heart sank when I considered that.

  “I have to go before the Council of Masons because of what I did to you,” he explained. His voice cracked with the last words: ‘to you’.

  I forced myself to stay completely still, afraid that if I moved even an inch, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from going to him.

  “Are you in trouble?” I asked, trying to sound flippant.

  “Maybe. Probably.” He gave one of those closemouthed smiles people do when they’re trying to make you feel better about something bad happening. “I’m sure they’ll make me wear these for a little while longer.” He lifted his arms to reveal a pair of thin metal rings circling either forearm. It was strange that I hadn’t noticed them before, given how thoroughly I had inspected those arms. “They bind my abilities,” he explained, reading the confusion in my face. “I guess they want to make sure I’m trustworthy before I have access to my powers again. Or maybe it’s a way of punishing me for everything that happened. Either way-“

  “You’re neutered,” I finished.

  “That’s one way of putting it,” he smiled a little wider.

  “When will you go?” I asked. The shirt was a ball in his hands now, which had me yearning for my lost necklace or anything to fiddle with.

  “They’ll probably send for me in a few days, which is fine. Things haven’t exactly been easy here.”

  “I noticed. They’re pretty hard on you.”

  “It’s nothing more than what I deserve,” he straightened. “I was manipulated. I let myself be used. It was shameful behavior.”

  I remembered what it was like to see Owen’s life through his own eyes, the thoughts he had about his father. What kind of father could instill that sort of need for perfection in his son? I wondered how many of Owen’s words were his own and how many belonged to his father.

  “For what it’s worth, I hope things work out for you,” I said, but didn’t look at him. “I really do,” I turned again, this time intent on actually leaving.

  “You were wrong,” he said, and it stopped me in my tracks. “When you said you didn’t know me, you were wrong.”

  “Owen, I-“

  “You’re the only person who really knows me, maybe the only person who ever has.” He scrambled toward me now, clutching at his twisted shirt like a life preserver. “You were the first real person I ever knew. The first thing I said to you, they were like my first words.”

  “You asked me where the Science lab was,” I said, perplexed.

  “And you told me,” he continued. “And then you made some joke about Mr. Harrison’s hairpiece, and that’s when I knew you weren’t just some mark. You’re a person. You’re-you’re amazing.”

  My mouth was dry, my heart racing. But I didn’t know how to react. Turns out I didn’t have to, because he wasn’t finished.

  “The point is, I don’t remember who I was before Crestview, and I don’t think I want to. That boy was lost. He was scrambling for things that other people told him were important. I’m Owen Jacobs. I’m the guy who watched Pulp Fiction with you while the rest of the sophomore class quoted scripture. I’m the guy who hates olives and doesn’t know how to dress. I’m the guy you cried in front of when your mom didn’t do anything for your dad’s birthday because it hurt too much. Council or not, Breaker or not; that’s who I am. You know me Cresta. You do.”

  He turned away from me and slid on the now wrinkled tee. Before he did though, I noticed a black splotch, like one of those Rorschach tests Dr. Conyers used to give me, stretched across his back. I flashed back to another memory I saw through his eyes. His mother was in front of him when he was a child. There was a searing pain in his back. It must have been that. She must have been giving him a tattoo. But why would a kid who couldn’t have been more than nine years old need a tattoo? What was it she had said to him?

  Owen turned back to me, wiping a single tear from his eye. “And the worst of it is, I lied to you when it mattered most.”

  “You were tricked,” I said, my tongue betraying my quickly faltering steely persona.

  “Not about that,” he walked closer. “When you said you had feelings for me, I lied to you.”

  “You did?” I asked and, for the first time, took a step in his direction.

  “I had a safe house across the street from you. I had viewing perches nearly everywhere in town. I didn’t need pictures of you on my phone. The reason I had them was because I have feelings for you too. I have for a long time now. “

  My heart jumped as he stepped even closer.

  “I know you said you didn’t want anything to do with me, and I guess I understand why.” He touched my hand. I let him. “But if anything of what you felt for me has survived this, let me know. Because I’m not sure what’s going to happen to me, and I’ve spent way too long wondering what kissing you feels like.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say. I didn’t know how I felt anymore. The only thing I knew for sure, the one thing that was crystal clear to me was, that my heart was pounding and Owen was still touching my hand.

  I opened my mouth, still unsure of what I was going to say. “I…” was the only word that would come out.

  He looked at me, his eyes hungry. “Close enough,” he said, and dove toward me. Before I knew it, he had swept me up into his arms. He lifted me off the ground and breathlessly kissed me. Maybe I should have pushed away. Maybe I should have held strong to the sheen of anger I still felt toward him, but his arms were around me, wrapping me up. His chest was pressed against mine, our hearts beating as one. The smell of him, the heat of him, and the taste of him as his lips melted into mine, invaded me and rendered any argument useless.

  I was so tired; tired of running, tired of feeling afraid and alone. I didn’t want to hurt anymore. The whole world had split open under my feet and nothing made sense. But somehow, Owen’s hands through my hair, his breath on my skin, did make sense. And for a minute, for a sweet minute, it made me forget everything
else.

  It may have lasted a second, maybe a minute, an hour, or a year. The world seemed to freeze on a picture of us together and, when it started spinning again, we were both flushed and panting. We parted slowly. His arms tensed as he lowered me to the floor.

  “You know, don’t you?” He whispered into my ear. “What you mean to me. You must know. You have to.”

  He looked at me. His eyes were bright, expectant, and, even though we had just shared the most intense kiss of my life, somehow still hungry. I opened my mouth to answer, to tell him that I did know, that now I finally knew, but the words wouldn’t come.

  The door flung open, startling the both of us. I would have jumped if I hadn’t been pushed out of the way by a swirl of hands and black hair. I thought we had been ambushed when the blur jumped on Owen. Whoever blew my house up had found us, and they were going to take out Owen and then come for me. But, as the picture settled down, I realized that wasn’t what was happening at all.

  This wasn’t Ezra or Jiqui. This was a girl. And she wasn’t hurting Owen. She was hugging him.

  “I knew it wasn’t true,” her light voice said over and over again. “I knew you weren’t some turncoat. I knew you’d come back to me.”

  He didn’t have to say who she was. I knew. She didn’t have the bleach blond hair or the tanned beach body that I had once expected from her, but I could tell who she saw by the way she looked at him. She was the one in his memories; the girl with the black hair and familiar touch, and who she was made sense now.

  He pulled back from her and, looking as surprised as I’d ever seen him, said her name.

  “Merrin?”

  Chapter 12

  Perfect. Just Perfect

  MERRIN, IT WAS Merrin. How was that even possible? Somewhere along the line, I must have added Merrin to the pile of things Owen had made up to keep his cover. His cross-country girlfriend had just been a beard to dodge questions about why he wasn’t after any of the girls in Crestview, me included. Wasn’t she?