My luck could have been worse.
Ms. McDowell was hunched over behind the school nurse, whose name I never bothered to learn. The nurse was holding my left eyelid open, shining one of those bright doctor lights directly at my eyeball. She was squinting, making an open-mouthed grimace, greeting me with her yellowed, plaque-infested chompers.
Delightful.
“He’s back with us,” the nurse shouted, delivering a breath full of what I was sure must have been Cool Ranch Doritos.
“Will he be okay?” Ms. McDowell asked.
I started to squirm away from Dorito zone, anticipating the nurse’s reply.
“He should be. Looks like it was just a little spell.”
“What about his eyes?” Emilie interrupted with a hint of panic in her voice. “Did you see his eyes?”
“They look fine to me,” the nurse calmly replied.
“Green as always,” added Ms. McDowell.
“But I swear they were orange! Bright, glowing orange!” Emilie insisted.
“It must have been a reflection,” Tyler hypothesized, gesturing toward the incandescent lights above us.
I was starting to get back on my feet.
“I know what I saw, Tyler! It was no reflection. His eyes were glowing.”
“That’s impossible, Emilie.”
“It must not be, considering I just saw it flippin’ happen, Tyler!”
“Whoa. Whoa, you guys,” I interrupted. “I’m fine, by the way… you know, in case you were wondering.”
Emilie lunged at me with a hug. I squeezed back, awkwardly patting her back. Why the heck did I add the pat? I’d just given her an uncle hug. Dammit.
Tyler rolled his eyes.
Pulling away from Emilie’s embrace, I checked myself in a mirror conveniently mounted by the chalkboard. I figured Ms. McDowell used it to get a better view of the class from her desk. I looked at my eyes. Nothing unusual. I ran my fingers through my shaggy, dark hair. It was a mess. But that’s how it was supposed to be—it was a strategic mess.
I wasn’t one to brag or anything. I was never going to be a model. Still, I was a decent-looking guy, I thought. I’d always had a bit of a baby face. I was sure I’d appreciate that when I was, say, thirty. Being just a day shy of eighteen, though… having a baby face wasn’t exactly an asset.
“How do you feel?” Nurse Frito-Lay questioned as I was fixing my hair.
“Fine, I guess.”
“Has this ever happened before?”
“No, ma’am. I guess all the nerves from the exam got to me. I probably stood up too quickly.”
“What have you eaten today?”
I hesitated. I wasn’t sure. I’d always had a bad habit of skipping breakfast. Sleep > breakfast. “Just a granola bar on the way to school.”
“What have I been telling you, you putz?” Tyler interjected as he tossed me another granola bar he had stowed away in his backpack.
I caught it and peeled it open. “Thanks, man,” I said as I took my first bite.
“No worries, dude. I took it from your stash.”
“Ass.”
“Language, Mr. Wadsworth,” Ms. McDowell rebuked me forcefully from her desk as she resumed business as usual.
Tyler laughed.
Smirking, I grabbed my backpack and headed for the door. Tyler and Emilie followed close behind.
“You know,” Tyler said, “if you can’t learn to stay on your feet, we might have to get you one of those life-alert necklaces from TV.” He attempted his best impersonation, throwing his voice into a cracking, high-pitched tone. “I’ve fallen… and I can’t get up!”
“Keep working on that impression, bro. If you really want to, I’m sure you could just identify as an old lady.”
“Hey, I’m not the one who almost kissed the tartar queen back there.”
“Ty, don’t hate. I can’t help that I’ve got game with the old ladies.”
“Old-lady game? You mean like canasta?”
I laughed. “I was thinking Twister. Hey man, you take it where you can get it.”
Emilie shook her head. “You guys are horrible!”
“Well, I’m glad you’re all right, bro,” Tyler said, barely managing to push a few words through his chuckle. He took a sharp right turn, cutting down an adjoining hall toward his next class. “See you, Emilie.”
“Thanks for the warning,” she shouted his way as he was already a few paces away.
Tyler lifted his hand over his right shoulder, affectionately extending his middle finger as he departed our company.
While Tyler was one of my closest friends, we were really more like brothers than buds. He was an only child before the Harleys took me in and, for medical reasons, I’d always had enough wisdom not to inquire about why they’d never had any more. They’d always said I was the answer to their prayers. For a while I resented that. I mean, what kind of sadistic “God” would kill most of a family in a fire to answer another family’s prayer for a second kid?
While I’d never taken to the Harley family religion totally hook-line-and-sinker, they had dragged me along to church enough to understand, sort of, what they meant. As Mrs. Harley said, “God is in the redemption business.” I suppose if God existed, he was capable of bringing good out of tragedy.
For me, the Harleys were that good. If I ever had prayed, they would have been God’s answer to my prayer, too. Yeah, Tyler and I were like brothers. We picked on each other incessantly, but never out of hate. At the end of the day we had each other’s backs. And, as much time as I spent with Emilie, she and Tyler had the brother-and-sister banter going on as well. While some had called Tyler a “third wheel,” he was really the glue that held our little trio together.
Emilie hooked her arm around mine as we proceeded down the hall. “Bear… what really happened back there?”
“I… I really don’t know, Ems.”
“Your eyes were glowing!”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah…”
I hesitated a moment. I mean, I usually told Emilie everything. She was the one person I could literally bare my soul to. She always listened. Always understood. But this? This was uncharted territory. At the same time, though, if I didn’t tell someone it would drive me nuts trying to figure out on my own.
“Ok… you promise you won’t think I’m crazy?”
Emilie laughed. “I already know you’re crazy, Bear! But I’m still right here.”
“You know, you’re the only one left who still calls me that.” Emilie was the only one who knew the true story about what had happened to me at the zoo that day. She was the only one I trusted enough to tell.
“What can I say,” Emilie said. “I find ‘Bear’ endearing. Are you sure you’re okay?”
I was still thinking, Brain tumor! Still, I didn’t want to overreact to what had happened to me. “I’m sure it was nothing…”
“Seriously, Bear—what happened in there?”
I took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. I told her everything. Almost. I left out the part about staring at her ass while she cranked, semi-erotically, at the pencil sharpener.
“Wow. Intense.” Emilie loved the word intense for some reason. “Definitely weird. But intense!”
The thing is…” I continued, “the way I heard the teacher speak to me reminded me of the grizzly bear back in eighth grade. The way I seemed to experience his pain and sensed his thoughts felt somehow similar to this. When that girl touched my arm that day, it felt just like the tingle that spread across my brow when I heard Ms. McDowell’s voice…”
Emilie sighed. “I wish I had answers. I wish we knew who that girl was. I mean, you said she knew your name. Surely she knows something…”
I shrugged. “You don’t think I was hallucinating?”
“I don’t know. Maybe? But if you were seeing the right answer, it had to be more than a hallucination, you know? Like maybe you’re psychic?”
“Well, that would be good news. Miss Cleo l
eft that market wide open.” I laughed, awkwardly, at my own joke. “I don’t know. It might have just been my subconscious rising to the occasion after a sleepless night of gaming.”
“Maybe.” She paused a moment as if pondering the thought. “But none of that explains why your eyes were glowing, Bear.”
She was right. I mean, Tyler thought my eyes could have been reflecting the light. But Emilie wouldn’t have been freaked out by that. On the plus side, while I hadn’t checked out WebMD to confirm, I was pretty sure that glowing orange eyes weren’t a typical symptom of brain tumors, either. I knew Emilie. She’d seen my eyes glow, and neither one of us could explain it.
“Ems… I really don’t know. But I promise, if anything else happens you are the first—probably the only person—I’ll tell.”
Emilie kissed my cheek, which rouged immediately upon contact. “I know, Bear.”
“Emilie… can I ask you a question?”
“Um, sure. Anything.”
“Have you ever thought about… you know… us?”
Emilie sighed. “All the time.”
“And?”
“And I think you know, Elijah.”
“You don’t want to ruin…”
“It’s not that,” Emilie interrupted. “It’s… Well… Elijah, I love you too much to hold you back. You can do anything. Literally anything. But I’m stuck here in Missouri. Maybe someday you’ll come back, sweep me off my feet, and we’ll live happily ever after. But for now? I’m stuck here… and I don’t want to be the reason you end up stuck here, too.”
“You don’t have to be stuck, Ems…”
“Yeah… I sort of do…”
I nodded, putting my arm around her shoulder as we continued silently down the hall. She loved me too much… did she really just say that? I guess I knew it, but hearing it caused my heart to flutter. In her mind it just couldn’t be, and trying to argue the point wouldn’t make a difference.
Emilie’s dad had run off with a younger woman maybe a year or so after I lost my family. Her mom immediately found a new love in the form of a bottle. It left Emilie with the responsibility of stepping up to take care of Sam, her kid brother. Sam had just started high school last fall. He was a good kid. He could probably take care of himself. But Emilie still felt responsible. She’d applied to a local music program so she could stay close by. Emilie could have gotten full-ride scholarships to some of New York’s best programs... but she wouldn’t leave St. Louis. Still, she felt I, at least, should be able to leave town and go to college wherever I wanted.
And she was right. Even though she didn’t want to, she was holding me back. I was accepted to some colleges on the west coast. Still, I had no idea what I was going to major in, so moving out there to go to school didn’t make a lot of economic sense at this point. And of course, a part of the reason was because I was too afraid to leave Emilie behind. In a way she was holding me back, even though we weren’t “together.” It was my choice, sure, but I also knew she would blame herself for “trapping” me here. I mean, I could go anywhere. I could shake off St. Louis and make my mark in L.A. Why not? The Rams did it. Who could blame me? Emilie wouldn’t.
The last thing I wanted to do was add to her burden. But I didn’t want to leave her behind.
Love. It’s complicated.
“I love you too, Ems.” I leaned in and placed a friendly peck on her forehead as we parted ways to our respective classes.
How could I ever choose a college if I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do with my life? My parents left me the money for it. But what if I decided to do something else with my life? While they never specified “college” in their will—I don’t think they anticipated dying before I made it there—I assumed that was what they would want.
My guidance counselor gave me a test that was supposed to tell me what I was supposed to be. It came back and said, “Rabbi.” One problem: not Jewish. Stupid test. But how many people actually end up doing what they think they want to do when they graduate high school, anyway? I could get into a good college… but why travel across the country to attend a school when I had no clue what I wanted my future to be?
Also, no one ever said you had to move away to go to college. There were some great schools right here in St. Louis. I had a feeling I wouldn’t be going anywhere any time too soon. At the same time, I felt like the world as I knew it was never going to be the same.
3. Forest Park
AFTER THE DAY’S weirdness, another night of WoW raiding seemed underwhelming. I couldn’t get the sound of Ms. McDowell’s voice out of my head. One test question answered after the next. It wasn’t like I’d never cheated on a test before. I tried not to, most of the time. Still, this seemed like a whole new level of knavery.
I used to pray after my parents died, every night, that one day the Lord would grant me the powers of Superman. It was probably the only thing I ever prayed for. I’d watch those old Christopher Reeves movies and fantasize about what it must have felt like to wield immeasurable power. It wasn’t the power, though, that captivated me. It was the opportunity to defeat evil. It was the chance to come to people’s rescue, deliver them from life-altering peril, and allow them to go about their lives as before. I fantasized about jumping into a burning house, using my frost-breath to put out the fire, and saving my family…
God never answered that prayer. Instead, I now seemed to have an uncanny and supernatural ability to cheat on tests. Not only was it the lamest super power ever, but it was wrong. I was no hero. I was a fraud. A cheater.
It sucks having a conscience.
Not like I could go confess what happened, though, assuaging my inner pangs at the cost of my respectable GPA. Even if I explained what happened, it would sound like I retrieved the answers from my own mind. No one would think I cheated. They’d tell me, as they often did, that I had an over-active imagination and send me on my way. So, I did what I always do when I can’t stand living in my own skin. I went for a stroll in Forest Park.
I wasn’t afraid to walk these paths in the middle of the night if for no other reason than everyone else was. I was on a path I had taken a hundred times before: an unlit, winding trail past the golf course, leading toward the city art museum. I knew the trail well enough that the light from the moon was enough to keep me on course. Still, my phone—which now told me that it was ten ‘til midnight—could provide extra illumination if necessary. Humidity is the norm in St. Louis. Somehow, I had managed to live here my entire life without developing a set of gills. Tonight, however, was particularly muggy. A fog had set upon the trail, limiting my line of sight more than usual. The familiar path I took on my way past the art museum, toward the lake at the center of the park, brought me past a golf course near the park’s eastern edge. Often I’d take a short detour off my path and stroll the greens at night. There’s something oddly peaceful about walking a golf course alone at night, staring out across the well-manicured grass, enjoying the fresh air carried by the breeze.
As I made my way past the greens tonight, however, something in the distance caught my eye. Someone else was out there. Who in their right mind would walk out here at night? You’d have to be half-crazy. I only did it, myself, when I was feeling a little off-kilter.
I had to do a double take. A shadowy figure stood a good hundred yards away, invading my sanctuary.
Who is that? I wondered.
The figure was still, its posture erect, hands at its sides. Even more, it appeared to be looking in my direction.
Not wanting to elicit any unwanted attention from the stranger, I quickly turned and made my way back up the trail. Something was unsettling about the figure. It bothered me enough that I picked up my pace. The sound of my breathing and the quickening thud of my footsteps were all I heard as I tried to separate myself from the dark figure as quickly as I could.
I’d just made my way around the next bend in the path when I was forced to stop in my tracks. Not a hundred feet ahead of me stood the same dark
, shadowy figure. Before I could react, the figure began walking my direction. I could hear by the sound of its footsteps that its pace was accelerating. I was about to turn and run the opposite direction when I saw a bright-red glow shoot violently from the figure’s eyes.
I shielded my eyes, turning the opposite direction. Attempting to flee, something ensnared my right ankle. I looked down. Tree roots, darting out of the compact pathway, wrapped around my ankles and legs. I tried to wiggle myself free, but the more I resisted the tighter they constricted, rapidly encircling my thighs, then my waist.
“Who are you?” I shouted. “What do you want?”
The shrouded figure said nothing. Its red eyes illuminated the canopy of leaves all around as the figure casually approached my position. Removing a black glove, the figure extended a hand to my face. It was a soft and subtle touch. The hand was small and delicate, pale with black-tipped nails. It was a feminine hand. Yet, the touch communicated a strength disproportionately greater than its dainty appearance would lead someone to believe. With the touch, I felt a sensation of desire and infatuation come over me. The touch excited me, even as I was paralyzed by fear. All at once I felt like I belonged to this person, enthralled by a single touch, while at the same time everything within me rebelled against it. Equal sensations of obsession and repulsion assaulted my mind and body.
Elijah…
The figure did not speak, but I could hear a voice resonate somewhere deep in my mind. “How do you know my name… Please, let me go!”
Elijah… you know who I am…
“Are you… the girl from the zoo? Who are you really? Please, just tell me what you want with me!”
The girl in black raised a hand, clinching her fist. The tree roots around my legs and waist expanded, climbing my torso. They squeezed tightly around my arms and chest. I struggled against it, trying to move my arms, trying to expand my legs, trying to breathe. The roots tightened around me more, crushing me. Suffocating me.
You’ve suffered too much… Your whole life, you’ve been crushed. Crushed by loss. Crushed by despair. But you can take control. You have power. Seize the power! Never let anyone hurt you again!
Gates of Eden: Starter Library Page 3