by Brian Rowe
“You did?”
“Yeah. I told you last night.”
“I must’ve been tired. You know my hours are killing me, baby.”
He brought his hands past her shoulders and started reaching for her breasts. She quickly pushed him away.
“You know what this means, don’t you?” she said.
“What?”
“We’ve had a lot of fun together. And I don’t regret a second of it. But Shaun, this has to end here.”
“What does, baby?”
He still wasn’t getting it. “You know. Us. As a couple.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry. I just have too much to deal with right now.”
“You told me you loved me,” he said, looking away from her.
“I do love you. I did, I mean. I’m not just going on a trip, Shaun. I’m leaving San Diego. Forever. I’m not coming back.”
“I’ll go with you,” he said. “I’ll go wherever you wanna go. You wanna go to L.A.? New York?”
“It’s not about where I want to go. It’s about where I have to go.”
He didn’t say anything. He just stared at the wall, turned away from her, showing emotion for the first time in weeks. “You don’t love me anymore? I’ve been good to you.”
“I know you have. But it’s not gonna work. Not any longer. I’m sorry.”
She kissed him on the cheek, grabbed her bag of clothes, and headed down the hallway. Shaun didn’t try to stop her. He didn’t even move from the bed.
As Yolanda reached the end of the hallway, Shaun’s kid brother Kris grabbed her hands from behind.
“Yolanda! Yolanda!”
She turned around. Shaun’s five-year-old brother looked close to ten.
“What is it?”
“I wanted to know if you can stay and go swimming with me?”
She knelt down and smiled at him. “No. Unfortunately I have to get going. But I’ll take a rain check, OK?”
“What’s a rain check?”
“It means, another time.”
“Oh OK. Next time maybe we can go swimming. And then have lunch!”
She slapped him on his flat adolescent belly and stood up. “Watch your eating habits, Kris, or you’re gonna get super fat.”
He transformed his face into a vicious snarl. “Huh?”
“Nothing. Catch you later.”
Yolanda stepped out into the breezy afternoon sun and jumped into her Jeep Wrangler. She looked at the house one last time, veered onto the street, and headed for the I-5 Freeway. She put on her sunglasses and started blaring some cheesy 90’s soft rock music through the car’s front two speakers.
“Cuz I’m your lady…” Yolanda started singing, even though it sounded more like shrieking. “Whenever you reach for me… I do all that I—”
When her cell phone started buzzing on the passenger seat, she turned the music down and answered it right away, knowing who was to be the voice on the other end.
“Hello? Hey.” Yolanda swerved around a few cars that were going way too slow for her liking. “Yeah, I know exactly what to do,” she said on the phone. “Excited to see Cameron again?”
She didn’t know why but the voice on the other end was soothing her, like she was a part of a plan that was finally going to bring forth justice. She felt really good about this. And, considering she hadn’t taken an acting class since the seventh grade, she knew she was going to have to whip out her dormant theatrical chops for a few days, however long it would take to train the dumb boy.
“I couldn’t find the powers,” Hannah said over the phone. “They’re buried so deep within Cameron that you and Liesel need to do all you can to pry them out. Once I get Cameron’s powers, there will be no stopping me.”
“I know,” Yolanda said with a smile. “You’re already taking over the world. Just imagine what’ll happen when you inherit Cameron’s powers. The strength you’ll have… it’ll be otherworldly.”
Silence followed for a moment, and then an eerie giggling erupted on the other end. “I love that Alicia’s going to think you’re on her side.”
“I know.”
“She thinks after she abandoned us that you would still be on her side. How naïve.”
“Trust me, I know.”
“OK, well you know what to do,” Hannah said. “Just make sure you draw it out. Don’t have this happen too quickly. I want to make sure everybody Alicia knows are going to suffer long, agonizing deaths.”
“Including Cameron?”
“Of course, Cameron. That boy’s going to die at my hand. And we’ll see how that perky little Reno waitress Alicia… oh wait, excuse me, Liesel… fares in the long run when her goodie two-shoes husband’s no longer with her.”
“Oooooh, you are so evil, Hannah.”
“Evil? No. I am seeking justice. And we’re going to make our sister and her boy toy serve out that justice… right before the world becomes ours, and only ours.”
“I can’t wait to see you,” Yolanda said.
“Same to you,” she said. “Now get to Red Rock Canyon, put on a smiley face, and make sure those two don’t suspect a thing. I’m counting on you, Yolanda. You’re a major piece in this plan. If you screw up in any way, the whole mission could be at risk, do you understand?”
“Yes, Hannah. I promise you. I won’t let you down. Alicia has to pay for abandoning us the way she did. Leaving us all alone… with Mother. She’s not gonna know what hit her.”
“All right. I’ll talk to you in a few days. Keep me informed on Cameron’s progress. I’ll be waiting to hear from you.”
“OK.”
The line went dead, and Yolanda tossed her phone on the back seat. She couldn’t believe the time she was making. She was already out of San Diego, already headed for Los Angeles, Lancaster, Palmdale, and soon, Red Rock Canyon.
She was so excited to see her sister for the first time in five years.
But unfortunately for Liesel, it was for all the wrong reasons.
“Living a lie for a few days is just fine by me,” Yolanda said to herself, pulling into the carpool lane and speeding upward of 100 MPH. She glanced at her face in the rearview mirror. “Anything for Mother.”
8.
“Cameron… Cam…”
The voices were fading in and out. I could hear Liesel and her sister Yolanda talking to me, but the words were echoing through one ear and out the other. Worst of all, I still could only see black.
It was when I felt a sharp pain against my right cheek that I opened my eyes, finally able to see again.
“Cam! Are you awake?” Liesel was straddling me, not so much like she wanted to have sex, but out of concern over whether I was dead or alive.
“I’m… I’m fine…” I blinked about twenty times, then looked forward to see my wife slap me in the face, again. “Oww! Hey! Why’d you do that?”
“Just checking,” she said, standing up and shaking the dirt off her hands.
“Did I grow any older?” I asked. “Older? Younger? Fatter? Balder?”
“Nope. You still look the same.”
I stood up and looked at the sisters, who had inexplicable smiles plastered on their faces. “What are you two so happy about?”
“Your hair is a mess,” Liesel said, taking a step forward and brushing her hand through my dirty mane. I shook my head for a few seconds, allowing the brown wall of dirt to fall toward the ground.
“Well I’m glad it’s hilarious you think my hair looks goofy,” I said. “I just had the worst nightmare. I imagined you said I was a witch, Liesel. A witch just like you!”
“That wasn’t a nightmare. I said that.” She paused. “And please don’t faint again.”
I stepped forward and grabbed Liesel’s shoulders. “Leese, what is this? Some kind of joke?”
“Of course not.”
I never struck my wife, not ever. But I was mad now. “Why would you say that to me? You and I both know I don’t have any powers!”
; “You do, Cameron.”
“No I don’t!”
I wanted to slap her, but I didn’t. I just turned around and started marching with anger in the other direction.
“Cameron, listen to me!” Liesel shouted.
“You know what? I’m not in the mood to listen to you ever again, you understand me?” Halfway to my Toyota 4Runner, I turned around, and screamed, “I am sick and tired of these lies!” I leaned down, grabbed a heavy rock, and brought my arm back to throw it. “You understand me? No more l—”
When the rock exited my hand, a harsh green light shot forth from my palm and smashed the rock into a dozen pieces against the wall before me. Electric sparks darted off the wall like fireworks and fell to the ground just inches from my feet.
I immediately fell down on my ass and turned to the sisters. They were staring at me in awe.
I couldn’t say anything for a moment. I also found it hard to breathe.
What the hell…
“Now that was a neat trick!” I shouted. “Was it you, Leese? I guess you haven’t lost your powers, after all.”
“No, Cam, I—”
“You just did that to make me believe I was capable of shooting a lime-colored firework out of my goddamn hand!”
“Cam, I swear—”
I stood up and ran back toward the two of them. My eyes darted toward the mysterious, little-known Yolanda. “Or maybe it was Yolanda? You said she didn’t have powers, being adopted and all, but a big chunk of me’s thinking that’s a load of bullshit, am I right?”
“No, Cameron,” Yolanda said. “I’m able to help others develop their powers, and that’s why I’m here. What just happened was you, and all you.”
“But I’ve never been able to do it bef—”
“Yes, you have,” Yolanda added. “They’ve probably just been too minor for you to ever notice. This canyon brings the power out of you. That’s why Alicia and Hannah trained here for so many years.”
“I don’t buy it,” I said. I didn’t. I still didn’t believe it. “In nineteen years, I’ve never cursed anyone, made anything levitate, done anything to ever suspect—”
“How do you think you’re still alive, Cam?” Liesel asked, stepping in front of Yolanda and getting up in my face. “When you were aging, when you were eighty-five, do you think it was only my powers that saved you that night in the hospital? I helped you, that’s for sure. But it was your powers, hidden deep down in your body and soul, that wouldn’t let you die. If you didn’t have these powers, that curse would’ve killed you. It would’ve killed any normal human being.”
“As it’s doing so to millions of people around the world right now,” Yolanda added.
“And then last April,” Liesel continued, “when you survived yet again, a one-year-old, up top that mountain, with Hannah wanting you dead. You only survived, again, not because I saved you, but because your powers wouldn’t give up on you.”
I sighed, and shrugged. “Well, what about your mom? She had powers. And she died.”
“Yeah, from cancer,” Liesel said. “That disease wasn’t caused by a magic spell. There was nothing anybody could do about that. We’re not immortal.”
I didn’t know what to say. I stared down at my palms, which looked as normal as ever. “So what are we doing here, Leese? What are we really doing here?”
Liesel looked at Yolanda, then back at me. “Neither of us have any powers, Cam. But we have many, many years of training, and helping other witches reach their potential.”
When I looked down at my palms again, I witnessed something extraordinary. A small ball of green fire started elevating from my right hand. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I tried not to cry.
Liesel pursed her lips and took hold of my shoulders. “Cameron, you might not believe this. Not yet anyway. But you’re our last hope to defeat Hannah.”
She grabbed my hand and brought it up to her face. The green ball of light started reflecting off her cheek.
“Me?” I asked, my voice sounding like a whiny child. “The weight of the world… it’s resting on me?”
“No pressure,” Yolanda said.
Liesel kneeled down, kissed me tenderly on the mouth and said, “We’re going to train you, Cam. We’re going to get you to be the witch you never thought you could be.”
I sighed, loudly. “And then?”
“And then… you’re going to kill our sister.”
NURSE NEWT
“It’s the end of days.”
Aurora Newt stared at the bearded homeless man at the corner of 4th and Sierra Street and shook her head in amazement. After just a few days of these stories of young kids looking older than their ages, total mayhem throughout Reno had already begun. Her trip to the local supermarket, which she assumed would take thirty minutes max, ended up lasting over an hour, due to the long lines of frantic people buying everything in the store, as if Y2K or, as this madman on the sidewalk was saying, the ‘end of days,’ was arriving sooner rather than later.
Aurora lived on Kirman Street in not exactly the safest neighborhood in downtown Reno. She liked to think of her charming little apartment near the main road as a temporary residence, even though she’d lived there for nearly three years now. She didn’t make a lot of money—when she transferred at her middle school from the librarian position to that of the school nurse, her weekly paycheck had gone up, but not by much—and without a husband or rich boyfriend in tow, she couldn’t exactly afford to move at the moment.
“But I’ll have money soon enough,” she said to herself, making her final left turn on Kirman and heading down a few blocks toward her apartment. “Soon I’ll have more money than I’ll know what to do with.”
Aurora yawned. She was more tired than she’d been in weeks, and she didn’t know why. She hadn’t woken up early and hadn’t worked out in days. She attributed it to the stress of the supermarket excursion and hoped that a late afternoon nap would help her get through the day.
But she didn’t have time for a nap right now. She unlocked her door, stormed into her living room, sat down at her typewriter, and prepared the final chapter of her non-fiction book, titled The Strange Happenings of Cameron Martin. She had tried her hand at writing fiction for over ten years—she originally became a librarian merely to get inspired by all the books that surrounded her on a daily basis—but decided, upon hearing of an odd occurrence at nearby Caughlin Ranch High of two graduating seniors floating in the air, that non-fiction would be more up her alley.
Over the next year she tried to learn everything she could about Cameron Martin, and everything that happened to him between March and June of the previous year. It was one of those crazy stories that people whispered to each other all around Northern Nevada, but few believed to be real. Aurora eventually believed the story, however, and his aging disease was finally confirmed two months back when she encountered Cameron roaming the halls of her middle school, not seventeen, not eighteen, and not eighty, but thirteen or younger. She had been looking for material for a second book, since her treatment of her first book had drawn attention from a New York literary agent who had apparently watched the infamous Youtube video of the CRHS floating incident.
And now, here she was, sitting at her wooden desk, typing away at the final words of her manuscript. She hadn’t known how to end it for a while, until that last chapter came clear to her. She would begin and end the story by discussing the two floating teenagers, and then try to get to the heart of the part nonfiction, part fantasy, part science fiction epic in the middle. It wasn’t a long book by any means—it only ran about 55,000 words—but Aurora thought she had something here, and she even left the first book open for a sequel, signifying that Cameron might start aging backward in the second one, just in case the first installment was to be a success.
When she typed ‘The End’ on that final page, adding a goofy question mark for good measure, she leaned back in her chair and felt a sense of relief. This story had haunted her for th
e better part of eleven months, and she was thrilled to finally have a complete manuscript to show the New York agent. She knew what she needed to do now. She needed to go to the nearby Kinko’s on South Virginia Street, make about a dozen copies of her work, and get a copy mailed to the agent first thing tomorrow morning. Aurora didn’t believe in computers—she always had an old soul and didn’t find it particularly fitting to her character to ever purchase something as degrading as an electronic light box—and enjoyed the slower but more richly rewarding process of using an old-fashioned typewriter. Her father had given it to her as a teenager, and now, in her late thirties, she was finally able to call it her own.
“Now,” Aurora said to herself, “we celebrate.”
She headed into her kitchen to see the two bottles of wine she had purchased at the store still in their big brown paper bag. She couldn’t decide on the Cabernet or the Zin, but decided to go with the Zin because she knew it would have a sweeter, fruitier taste to it. She poured herself a glass, smiled to herself, and took a sip. It wasn’t perfect, but the taste fit the moment.
It only took her another minute to finish the glass before she returned to her living room to grab her manuscript and start organizing all the pages together before heading down to Kinko’s. She was stunned to see so many pages out of place—she found, for example, page 56 after page 30, and page 112 after page 12—and she spent close to an hour making sure everything was in its right place.
She dropped her manuscript in the same paper bag that had held the wine and set it on the kitchen table. She decided to have one more glass before heading down to Kinko’s. She heard police and ambulance sirens in the distance but tried to tune them out. This was a time for peace and quiet, a time to listen to her inner thoughts and try to imagine a future where she wouldn’t be shackled to this apartment and street but free to go wherever she wanted. She’d been getting a little sick of the students at her school, no pun intended, and she’d been thinking about leaving Reno for months. This manuscript, featuring interviews and research and plenty of theories about Cameron Martin’s extraordinary transformation from a seventeen-year-old basketball player to an eighty-five-year-old curmudgeon, would not only make Aurora rich but also win her the freaking Pulitzer Prize.