Awakening Foster Kelly

by Cara Rosalie Olsen

  Despite the throb it rendered down the center of my forehead, I squinted, attempting to discern what it was. “I’m not su—Oh!” I exclaimed, surprising us both with my enthusiasm. Dominic continued to peer at me with amused interest. I pressed my knuckles to my cheek, and turned to a profile view, hoping to conceal the majority of the roused blush. “I’ve been looking for that all weekend. I—I thought I lost it.”

  I scolded myself for being too distracted with my face, and not nearly quick enough; before I could ask for the paper back, he had turned it around. I dropped my hand so it could accompany the other one fidgeting in my lap. Dominic studied it for a moment, silent and focused. “It’s the”—he broke off, his mouth shutting with a soft clap. He brought it closer for inspection, dark brows merging as he concentrated—“it sort of looks like . . .” He turned to me, still furrowing, perplexed and abashed. “Well, it looks like the periodic table of elements, but . . .” He shook his head, bemused. “But not.”

  “Yes,” I answered in what I hoped was a light, airy voice; the exact opposite of how I was feeling on the inside. “That’s what it is,” I confirmed, reaching toward him to collect the paper. He ignored my hand and continued to stare with fascination.

  “I’m missing something . . . what am I missing?” The quiet murmurs seemed to be more for himself than for me. He raised a hand, pulled it through his hair and tugged. Preoccupied as he was, it was possible he didn’t see my fingers, moving like tentacles in the space between us. He flicked his wrist when the paper started to fall backward, bringing it stiff with a snap.

  “Unless you’re not the only one who’s hit their head, it looks as if—instead of symbols . . . there’s, um . . .” He turned to me, clamping a hand around the side of his neck and rubbing in a gesture of apparent—and entirely justifiable—hesitancy at voicing his estimation. I had no desire to say it either. He was looking back and forth—paper, me, paper, me—disinclined to answer. I waited a second longer, my mouth twitching unconsciously, and then sighed in resignation.

  “Pizza toppings,” I answered for him in a quiet, but even voice. I hoped that by keeping my tone mild, the absurdity of what I was saying might not be as easily noticed.

  His consternation vanished immediately. “Okay, good.” He nodded, simultaneously dropping his hand from his neck. “I’m not losing my mind, then. I was pretty certain that’s what this was, but I’ve never seen anything like this.” He chuckled, then asked, “So, is Pizza Hut reaching out to a new demographic, or—”

  “It’s for a friend,” I said vaguely, moving my eyes to his hands to subliminally send him a message. He didn’t move them as I spoke. “He’s struggling in his Science class and hasn’t been able to pass one of the tests required to graduate.”

  “You made this?” I groaned inwardly. I hoped he might assume it was ripped from a page of a textbook or study-guide.

  “Yes,” I said reluctantly. My hand was still raised toward him; I pushed it forward a little further, certain my intention could not have been anymore clear. Somehow, Dominic managed to look through my hand, as if it were invisible. His eyes remained fixed on me, waiting with eager anticipation for more details. I dropped my hand, blushing and feeling utterly ridiculous. With no other option, I went about explaining myself. “Jake does well with, um, with food,” I qualified. “I thought he might have an easier time memorizing the table, if the atomic symbols were converted into—into pizza toppings.” It didn’t matter how applicable the idea had sounded in theory; hearing it aloud, it only sounded like lunacy. I couldn’t read Dominic; I began to shrink into my seat, awaiting invective and looks of derision.

  Then a slight, but plainly noticeable smile spread across his face. “That’s”—he shook his head disbelievingly—“brilliant. Has he seen it? Your friend?”

  “I—um, no . . . we don’t see—I mean . . . I haven’t shown it to him.” I was having trouble recovering, having thought for sure Dominic—or anyone else for that matter—would have thought the idea asinine. I swallowed and cleared my throat. “I don’t know if it will help—”

  “Of course it will, are you kidding me?” he interrupted, with a snort of excitement. “It’s ingenious.” He persistently went back to scanning the study sheet, much to my discontent. “Sodium: no anchovies, Phosphorus: pepperoni, Molybdenum: minced olives. Oxygen: oregano.” He made another noise in his throat, staring with rapt interest. “You even have an answer key breaking the table into solids, gases, and liquids. This is . . . incredible. Is it color coded, too?”

  “Um . . .” I considered explaining the formula behind it, and then firmly decided against it. “Yes.”

  “Mm-hm,” he murmured, eyes busily foraging the paper. Then they suddenly went buggy.

  “What?” I squeaked, leaning forward just a bit.

  “Did you”—he stared intensely at the paper, maddeningly keeping his thoughts from me—“did you make a cryptograph? Dividing the metals and non-metals?” I felt my eyebrows lift perceptibly. “The Alkali, Alkaline, and Transition metals are”—catching the look on my face, he cut his sentence short, and then gave me a highly infused sardonic expression—“okay, I may not be smart enough to come up with something like this, but I did read The Da Vinci Code, thank you very much,” he finished with a dignified blink.

  Then a supernova collided with my face.

  “Oh, no! I”—I began to backpeddle, but was so horrified by what I’d inadvertently alluded with my face, I could only stammer in reply—“I—I didn’t think—that’s not what—”

  “It’s okay.” He laughed, but was kind enough to end my suffering and dismal attempts to make restitution by raising a hand in dismissal. “I know you weren’t insinuating I was stupid,” he said, surprisingly good-natured when he could have very easily interpreted my reaction as a slight. And though it may have appeared that way, I truly hadn’t been questioning his intelligence. No. It was that other than my classmates and a few people with very select and isolated interests, I didn’t know many teenagers knew what a cryptograph was—or how to use one. Still, I was mortified by my insensitive reaction. Because of this, I knew my face likely bared a striking resemblance to a red delicious apple.

  “I’ve always been pretty good with puzzles,” he said conversationally. “As a kid, I could put a five-thousand-piece jigsaw together in under an hour. Formulas, algorithms, statistics—they’re just complicated puzzles. My brain sees the repetition and figures out how to work the numbers down to their simplest form.”

  While Dominic wasn’t denying he had a gift, he definitely wasn’t giving himself nearly enough credit. The model itself was simple—basic and familiar concepts were all that I allowed—but the methodology behind the pattern wasn’t as easily discernible. I realized then that I had just learned my very first fact about Dominic firsthand: he was incredibly smart.

  “But this”—he shook the paper he still held lightly, breaking through my traveling thoughts—“how did you come up with this?”

  “Well . . .” I shifted in my seat, searching for an innocuous answer that would reap the fewest amount of subsequent questions. “Once I had a list of all possible . . . toppings—it was just a matter of finding matching symbols, and assigning them to an element. It honestly wasn’t very difficult at all.”

  He gave me a skeptical look, as if reluctant to believe this, then after a moment nodded decisively. “Mm-hm. Maybe for you,” he said dryly. “Most people—and just to be clear, I’m including myself in this category—would not have been able to come up with a way to simplify the complexity of this. Actually . . . you could probably teach this to a child and they would understand.”

  “You made this by hand,” he said, once again absorbed. “It must have taken you forever to put this together—not to mention how long it had to have taken you to come up with the idea in the first place.”

  I went very still, like prey that has just spotted a much larger, infinitely more dangerous predator. One of two things would happen: eith
er he would ask, or he wouldn’t. The next couple of seconds would tell.

  What I did with the periodic table—it wasn’t special. The idea to associate foods with the symbols was in my mind and worked through in less than a minute. Charting everything out, the answer key, and the cryptograph—it took less than twenty. I fervently hoped Dominic was too distracted to ask for a specific answer. For the most part, half-truths worked wonderfully, but it was in the absolute and definite when they failed miserably. To my immense relief, he didn’t ask. What felt like hours later, he handed the paper to me and turned the key. Hattie started to life with an obedient groan, settling into a low-pitched hum when Dominic shifted her into drive.

  “He must be a very good friend, to have gone to all that trouble,” he said, with a glance in my direction. I smiled, but said nothing, and turned to stare out my window where it was starting to fog all along the edges; large disorganized raindrops dotted the glass, exploding where heaviness forced the droplet to burst, and then collide with fine rivulets strung together in a gauzy net.

  I turned my head and found Dominic watching me closely, eyebrows set low over his unhappy eyes. He had said something, but it was spoken so softly I hadn’t heard it. “I’m sorry,” I said, making an effort to smile. “What did you say?”

  Giving a half-hearted one himself, he replied, “I asked you where the Advil is.”

  “Oh!” I leaned forward, tugging on the latch of the glove compartment. “It’s in here.” The drawer fell toward me and I hurried to find the small bottle. “How many would like you?” I asked, turning back to him as I squeezed the safety lock buttons and twisted.

  The smile widened considerably, his lips breaking apart when he emitted a low chuckle. “Not for me,” he said, shaking his head and lifting one dark eyebrow. “For you.”

  I stared blankly. “Me?” Dominic’s other eyebrow rose up to meet its partner neatly. “Oh . . .” I said on an exhale, understanding bringing along company in the form of warmth. “Right.” My vision blurred and I strained to see how many pills were in my palm.

  “Do you have a water bottle with you?” He was still nearly whispering, but there were no longer traces of humor in his voice.

  “Um . . .” I glanced below and behind me, my vision struggling to keep up with my movements. “No. I don’t,” I said, a bit dismayed that the medication wouldn’t have time to kick in before we reached The House of Hope. “It’s not a problem, though. I can wait until we—”

  He was out of the car before I could finish my sentence. Without a word, he took off in a brisk pace, leaving me staring after him with wide-eyed bewilderment. The maroon fabric of his jacket creased with each movement, lines of strain pulling horizontally between his wide shoulders.

  I watched, fascinated by the speed and agility of someone nearly four inches taller than Jake, and considerably larger. Jake was no small boy, either. With the exception of a few football and basketball players, Dominic was easily one of the most developed seventeen-year-olds I had ever seen. In fact, his physique boasted nearly perfect proportions—strictly speaking from an anatomy perspective . . .

  I poked at a tender spot on my scalp, finding the culprit for my discomfort. As I examined the piece of gravel identical to the one Dominic had pulled from my hair, a seizing recollection of the stone-hard surface of his chest came unbidden to my mind. The contours of his muscles carved beneath soft flesh, his throat the color of a summer apricot.

  I dropped the gravel as if it were a hot coal, hoping the connection to Dominic’s sculpted abdominal muscles would be broken. It didn’t work.

  As if hearing my thoughts aloud, he suddenly whirled where he stood some thirty feet away, staring intently toward the car. I let out a squeak and slunk down in my seat. I peeked up to see Dominic hopping off the curb with ease.

  Suddenly something occurred to me:

  This is all for me.

  The pieces were coming together, one kind act followed by another. Insisting to drive, the whispering so as not to exacerbate my headache, reminding me to take Advil, and of course, where he was now presumably buying me a bottle of water so I wouldn’t have to wait any longer than absolutely necessary for relief.

  The second thing I learned about Dominic was a validation. Mr. Balfy hadn’t been mistaken; Dominic was polite, courteous and above all, extremely kind. I’d never known such a kindness could exist toward a person, while the aversion was comparably as strong. Blinking, and my head spinning from this onslaught of information, I glanced toward the dash where the heater had been turned on and vents angled toward me. I couldn’t remember him doing that.

  I was still staring into my lap, processing all of this when Dominic appeared with the noiselessness of an apparition. He scooted into the driver’s seat and then closed the door—just as expected—as gently as could be afforded.

  “Well, I hope I got you the right kind,” he said softly, though with some uncertainty. “I was halfway there when I remembered that some people are extremely finicky about what kind of water they’ll drink. My aunt only drinks Fiji—so that’s what I got, but if there’s another kind you would rather have, I can go back inside.” He checked with me before rebuckling his seatbelt, one hand on the door handle, the other clutching the clear bottle printed with a picture of green leaves and one pink Hawaiian flower.

  “Fiji is great, thank you,” I said with more enthusiasm than called for; however, listening to him explain the look outside the store, freed me of the residual anxiety I hadn’t been able to rid. I smiled, reaching out to take the purchase from him. He was about to hand it over, when he quickly pulled it back, adeptly twisting off the small blue cap in one swift maneuver. I thanked him again and set it on my thigh, mulling over the comment he made about people and bottled water. I personally didn’t have enough experience to feel one way or the other. Even with all the advancements made in recycling, my parents preferred to not waste if it wasn’t necessary. My father had taken care of attaching a filter to the sink and another into the intuitive super-appliance, otherwise known as our refrigerator. But if I wasn’t in the kitchen, I had no qualms with drinking straight from the tap.

  “She—my aunt,” he clarified, “buys it by the case, but I still drink from the tap.” I couldn’t help but smile a little, thinking he’d echoed my thoughts exactly. Dominic didn’t notice, but laughed somewhat sinisterly. “She’d probably have words for me if she ever found out—but I thought it might be interesting to see if she would really be able to tell the difference between waters, so one day I dumped out an open bottle she was drinking from and replaced it with water from the sink.”

  I laughed, mostly because this reminded me of something Jake might do to Emily. Too curious not to know, I asked, “And did she? Notice, I mean?”

  “I don’t know . . .” He pitched forward and clicked off the hazard lights, then leaned back, causing a rubbery sound from the leather. “She took it into the office with her, so I never found out. I’ll probably try again,” he said without pretense, and smiled wryly out the windshield. “You ready?”

  “Yes.” Out of the corner of my eye, I caught something long and rectangular in Dominic’s hand. I hadn’t noticed it before now, and squinted to get a better look. “Sometimes the brake pedal sticks,” I warned, my eyes glued to where a candy bar was laced between his middle and index fingers.

  He bent his head toward the floor and snorted. “I’m surprised there isn’t a hole punched through the bottom for my feet to go.” Absurdly preoccupied with wanting to know exactly which candy bar he preferred, I hadn’t quite heard what he had said. I looked from the steering wheel to his face, noticing right away the over expectancy.

  With an attempt to save face, and not embarrass myself in the same way I had over the Advil, I took a chance. “Yes,” I answered hastily, hoping that was the right answer. He smiled in a way that told me I was way off. “I mean . . . hm?”

  He repeated what I had missed, then waited, once again expectant. After some ver
y long seconds passed, he angled his head, reading my blank face. “The Flintstones?” he impelled, raising both eyebrows. “Fred? Barney? WILMA!” He whisper-shouted the last name, watching me closely and clearly anticipating perfect understanding to burst upon my face. I was very tempted to give him the response he was waiting for—an emphatic, “Oh!” but after considering the probability that this too would somehow backfire on me, I decided against it. When it became obvious to him that he wasn’t getting anywhere, he blinked hard, sank into his seat, and proceeded to send baffled and incredulous looks my way. “Seriously? I don’t believe it . . . did you not watch cartoons as a kid?”

  I suddenly wished the door was still open, warming again. “No . . . I, um—I don’t watch much T.V.”

  “Really?” Still a bit wide-eyed, he thought about this a moment, and then laughed. I thought it was with amusement more so than shock. “Yeah,” he shrugged, tossing his head from side to side, “I guess I really don’t watch too much anymore, either—but when I was a kid, I had no difficulty wasting an entire Saturday if cartoons were on. The Flintstones were my favorite,” he added, looking over his shoulder and out the back window.

  I stored this detail away for later and took advantage of the opportunity to learn another fact about him, but was disappointed at finding the candy bar eclipsed by his hand. Conspiratorially, I slid down in my seat, moving in minimal increments, and pressing my chin to my chest. I thought if I could just get a little lower, I might be able to . . .

  “Whatchamacallit.” He spoke so causally, and his body was still torqued checking out the back window for cars, that it took me a moment before I realized he had said the name of the candy bar.

  Not unexpectedly, I immediately flushed. “Oh, is that a good one?” I asked, trying to match his casual voice, while I attempted to furtively straighten up.

  He looked at me, smirked, then raised the candy bar to his mouth and bit off the corner of the wrapper. “Would you like half?”