Zellie Wells Trilogy

by Stacey Wallace Benefiel

  “You can’t be serious!” I jumped up from the couch.

  “Zellie!” Dad yelled, standing up, getting in my face. He was one of the few people I knew that was tall enough to tower over me. “I’m very serious about this.” Avery and his mom pulled us away from each other.

  Mrs. Adams spoke succinctly, looking at me. “If we catch you alone together again before you’re eighteen, before you can prove to me that Avery won’t be harmed by being with you, you will be sent to live with your grandma Rachel in L.A. permanently.”

  “Mom, Zellie’s not gonna hurt me,” Avery pleaded.

  Mrs. Adams’ gaze stayed on me.

  The glimpse from earlier sprang into my mind. Of course. Now I knew why Mom and Mr. Adams had been so lenient with Avery and me, because Mom had glimpsed our future and it wasn’t this. We’d been older, that’s what she’d said. She’d also said that she would go along with the plan, that she “owed” whoever she was talking to. Well, if Mom owed anyone it was Mrs. Adams that was for sure.

  I grasped Avery’s hand, willing that contact to be enough to strengthen our bond. “Forget it. Your mom’s had a lot of time to think about this and we finally gave her a reason to put her plan into effect. And as for the rest of them,” I turned to my dad, “you’re angry enough about my stupid virginity and afraid enough of me to agree to anything. And Mom and Mr. Adams, they feel guilty about...well, everything.” I took Avery’s other hand in mine and looked into his eyes. “I’ll find their loophole, don’t you worry.”

  He moved his face towards mine, going in for one last kiss but Dad grabbed my arm and pulled me away, pushing me out the front door.

  Chapter Seven

  As soon as Dad parked in the driveway I leapt from the car and ran into the house, seething with anger and reeling in shock. I wanted to slam every door in the house so hard they fell off their hinges. Wanted to kick size 10 holes in the walls, and punch my fists into the family pictures that lined the hallway. Instead I grabbed the cordless phone from the kitchen and ran into my bedroom. I shut the door and sat down, leaning against it, barricading myself in and keeping Dad out. I dialed Claire’s cell.

  She answered, laughing into the phone. “Hey, Zel, what’s up?”

  “I...” the words stuck in my throat, replaced by a wretched, choking sob.

  “Shit. What’s wrong?” Claire asked, her voice low. She waited for me to answer. I couldn’t. “What happened? Are you hurt?” I listened as she moved away from the rest of the laughing people in the room and shut a door so she could speak more freely. “Zellie, answer me please, you’re scaring the crap out of me.”

  I inhaled as fully as I could, trying to stop the stutters in my breathing. “Dad and Mrs. Adams caught Avery and I...you have to promise not--”

  “This is between you and me, I won’t tell a soul,” she said before I could even get the request out. It wasn’t that I didn’t want her to tell anyone, I just couldn’t bear the idea of Ben knowing before I was prepared to deal with his witticisms on the matter.

  I managed to get through the retelling of events without breaking down into sobby spasms again. How, I don’t know. I’d held it together when I’d had Avery next to me. But when I heard Claire’s voice, when I didn’t have to be brave or obstinate, fear, insecurity, and hopelessness had crept in.

  There wasn’t a loophole for me to find. If there was one, every Retroact ever born would have used it. The triggers all died. If a Retro tried to stay with their trigger, the triggers died the way we saw them die. That’s what Grandma had said.

  She thought there was some hope for seers like Mom. She knew of a few examples of lucky ladies and their triggers waiting out the vision until it changed, until it wasn’t fatal anymore. Then they got to be together. A few. In hundreds and hundreds of years. Grandma suggested that maybe it had something to do with Mom’s kind being unable to physically change things. That they didn’t upset the balance between life and death like Retroacts did. Nobody knew for certain.

  There were zero examples of Retros who’d stayed with their triggers and successfully waited out the vision. If you were a Retroact, any hope of a fulfilling love life was pretty much a huge fail.

  What I did know, what Grandma had told me and Mom and probably Dad and the Adamses too, was that the survival rate of a trigger that is permanently separated from their seer is 99.9%. Not almost 100% that they won’t die, just that they won’t die the way we see them dying.

  Avery and I had accepted that refusing to be apart from each other meant he would die the death I’d predicted for him. We knew we wouldn’t be together forever, that we had maybe fifteen years at the most, but it was more than my mom and his dad had gotten and we were grateful for that.

  He knew. He knew there wasn’t a loophole either. The two years wasn’t a peace offering, it was meant to get us used to the idea of not being together. They threatened marriage because it was supposed to scare and embarrass us. The loophole clause was designed to keep us in check. If that didn’t work, I’m sure they hoped it would do what it was doing to me now. Devastate us.

  “What can I do?” Claire asked, pulling me from the numbed state I was dangerously close to slipping all the way into.

  “Nothing.”

  “Maybe Ben...or Frank? They know things The Society doesn’t.”

  “Maybe.” I swiped the back of my hand across my runny nose. “They might be my only option. Grandma and Aunt Hazel won’t see the point in my wanting to be with Avery, they’ve sacrificed everything to be in The Society and they think I should too.”

  “Do you want to talk to them now? I can go get B--”

  “No. I need a little time to think about what I’m going to ask Ben and Frank. We all froze in their presence this morning and it frustrated the crap out of me.”

  Claire chuckled. “That’s my girl. A frustrated Zellie is a proactive Zellie. Are you still going to meet us at the diner at four?”

  There was nothing in the parental decree that said I wasn’t allowed to learn about my magical heritage while enjoying chili fries, especially if Mom was going to be there.

  “Definitely. But first I’m going to have a good therapeutic cry and a long, hot shower.”

  “Excellent. My supernatural entourage and I will see you then.”

  I could almost hear her smirking through the phone. “I’ll see you at four, Claire, thanks for listening.”

  “Anytime, Zel, you know that’s what I’m here for.”

  Mom drove up at 3:30 to escort me to the diner. In her advancing state of waddle she didn’t even bother getting out of the car and coming to the door. She honked her car horn twice.

  After I’d gotten off the phone with Claire, Dad had informed me that he wasn’t a prison warden and that I was still free to see my family and friends. I suppose he thought he was being cool, calm, and collected letting me go with Mom. Whatever.

  I checked my reflection in my bedroom mirror, erasing all trace of my earlier sulking expression. I was not going to give either of my parents the satisfaction of thinking they had broken me.

  Dad waved goodbye to me from the kitchen. I ignored his gesture and walked out the front door.

  “Hey, honey,” Mom said as soon as I slid into the passenger seat.

  “Hey.” I stared straight ahead. All I wanted was to get to the See-Saw, talk to Claire and Melody, and get what information I could from Ben and Frank. I did not want to listen to my mom’s eleventy billion excuses for why she went along with Mrs. Adams’ plan.

  Surprisingly, she didn’t speak again until we were almost to the diner.

  “I ordered your home-schooling materials this afternoon.” I glared at her, but she pretended not to notice. “We won’t get them until next week, so it looks like you’ll have a few days off, maybe you can spend some time with Ben? Learn from him? I’m sure Frank has great insight into what it means to be a Retroact too, what with all the years he’s been a Lookout.” Now she did notice my expression and it colored he
rs. “This doesn’t have to be such a hard time, Zellie. There are some advantages--”

  “I want to get my GED.” I’d thought up that gem in the shower. If I didn’t have school to study for there would be more time. Time for me to become a better Retroact, to figure out what the deal was with the lack of rewinds, and time to get to the bottom of the fiery painful vision Ben and I’d had.

  Mom didn’t seem as pissed off by that proposal as I thought she would be. “Okay. That’s a reasonable request. You are still going to have some studying to do, I mean, you’re only at the beginning of your Junior year, but you’re smart. If that’s what you want, I’ll talk to your dad about it.”

  “Sure you don’t need to ask Mr. and Mrs. Adams too?” I quickly glanced out the window, afraid I’d just put my foot in my mouth big time. Why was I always ruining things for myself?

  She let it go, thank God, simply saying, “Nope.”

  When we arrived at the See-Saw, I noticed that Grandma’s Beemer was already there. The idea of seeing Claire and my sister cheered me up a bit. The parking lot was packed with SUV’s, their ski racks loaded. The diner was the only inexpensive place to eat on the way to and from the mountain if you didn’t want to get stuck paying six dollars for a Lodge Dog.

  Mom parked way around back by the dumpsters. I got out of the car and raced inside, too impatient to wait for her.

  I hurried to the far corner where our group was sitting around two tables that had been pushed together. Everyone looked up at me from their menus and smiled. I took a seat across from Ben, in between Melody and Claire.

  Ben winked at me. “Nice eyes. You find a helpful bellhop too?”

  “What?” He’d lost me.

  He pointed to his eyes. “I discovered what takes the red out and I was going to offer my services, but it looks like you’ve already, uh, hooked that up, so to speak.”

  Oh. “Yeah, not if you were the last--”

  “Chill, Little House, I was just joshing ya.”

  “Little House?” It was like he spoke another language or some hipster dialect I wasn’t familiar with.

  “You know. Little House on the Prairie?”

  “Uh huh. And...”

  “Oh, c’mon!” He turned to Claire. “Explain to Zellie why it’s funny that I call her Little House.”

  She choked on the drink of water she was in the process of swallowing. Ben swiftly rewound her and waited for her to finish her mouthful before asking the question again. She got a serious case of the girly giggles. I was a little bit embarrassed for her.

  “That is too funny!”

  Aunt Hazel tsked Ben for rewinding. He shrugged her off. “You wear a lot of floral prints, that’s all. Well and the red hair and you give off a very wholesome virginal vibe.”

  I glowered at Claire, her face flushed from laughing so hard. Glad someone thought it was funny.

  Ben reached across the table and chucked me under the chin. “Hey, don’t be pissed. I didn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with you and you’re obviously not as virginal as I thought if you and Avery managed to clear up your eyes.”

  “Thanks for reminding me,” I said under my breath as I sank down into my chair. Where the heck was the waitress? I was going to need chili fries and a hot fudge sundae STAT. I caught her attention and she smiled. “Be right over in a sec, Zellie.”

  My gaze landed back on Ben. Wait, his eyes really weren’t red anymore. I leaned across the table. “Did you hook up with a bellhop? For reals?” I whispered.

  “More like bus boy,” Claire snarked. “After we finally got Frank to tell us what he thought the red eye antidote was, I said I’d help, but totally got shut down.”

  “Clairecita, you know I like my women curvy, Latin, and rich, but you’re not even sixteen yet.” Ben grinned a lascivious grin. “Still, check back with me after your birthday okay?”

  Because she’d attended boarding school before moving to Rosedell, Claire had tested a grade level ahead of where her age put her. Not that she’d ever had trouble keeping up. Her sixteenth birthday was only a little over a month away, at the beginning of February. I’m sure her parents were going to get her a really nice car that she wasn’t going to be able to drive. Due to the accident she claimed to have caused to cover up my first chaotic rewind, she was restricted from driving until she turned seventeen. It looked like we were going to be biking it and depending on other people for rides for another whole year.

  The waitress came over and took our orders. Everyone but Mom got something covered with chili, and Mom would have, she said, if even smelling it didn’t give her heartburn. We all continued to make chit-chat, Ben teasing and flirting with me and Claire, Mom, Mel, and Aunt Hazel hanging on Frank’s every word. Halfway through the chili fest it finally dawned on Ben that Avery wasn’t there.

  “How come your boy’s not here, Little House?” Ben said, licking chili from his fingertips.

  I took a deep breath and then in a low voice told him about Mrs. Adams’ diabolical plan to keep Avery and me apart.

  “Damn! That’s harsh,” Ben said loudly, quieting our table and making everyone look at him. “Did you all know about this Avery ban?”

  Frank spoke first. “Yes. Grace filled Hazel and me in on the plan over the phone earlier today.”

  “And I made Claire tell me,” Melody said, frowning.

  “Sorry, Zel, but I thought--”

  I cut Claire off. “It’s fine. Okay, so now everyone that needs to know knows. Frank, Ben, Aunt Hazel, any advice?”

  None of them said a word. The situation was hopeless, just as I feared.

  “All right then,” I sighed, “let’s forget about me and my impossible problem and move on to what we’re going to do about the...” I looked around the diner; all the other patrons were preoccupied with their own food and conversations. Frank, Aunt Hazel, and Melody all nodded at me to continue, having come to the same conclusion. “Ben, when was the last time you did a rewind, because I haven’t done one since August.”

  He cursed and shook his head. “Middle of September.”

  I made eye contact. “And you’re not doing anything? Can you steal other Retros’ visions like normal or--”

  “Hey! I don’t steal visions. I just don’t have my own.” He popped a soggy fry in his mouth, acting like I should’ve known all this already.

  “Every vision you have is someone else’s?”

  “Except my trigger vision and the one about my mom, yeah.”

  Now I didn’t feel so bad about having my first rewind whisked out from under me. It would seem that what Ben had done to me was what he did to everyone. “And you’ve always been like that?” I wanted to be sure I was getting the whole story from him, although I was beginning to think that he wasn’t the threat that we’d all believed he was.

  Ben rolled his eyes at me, getting annoyed. “I don’t know what I’m going to have to do to convince you I’m not the bad guy that you think I am.” He searched my neutral expression and then sighed, explaining. “Before Mom drowned, she and I shared visions and worked together with Frank as our Lookout. After she died, I started getting the same visions as whatever Retro I was nearest to. When Frank and I were passing through Portland on our way back home to San Fran from B.C., I had your vision about David.

  “I glimpsed you, saw that you might need back-up and decided to stick around. If you’d been a more established Retroact, I probably would’ve passed, but I don’t meet very many of us that are close to my age.”

  We were finally going to have the conversation I’d been waiting months for. My stomach turned over. I pushed my chili fries towards Melody. “You didn’t have to ambush me, you know. I would’ve killed to meet another Retro that wasn’t my grandma. We could have gotten together beforehand, planned what to do.” Ben continued eating, but I could tell by the way that he nodded his head he was actually paying attention to what I was saying and not blowing me off.

  “Having another Retroact help me wasn’t
the problem, God knows I need all the help I can get. But surprising me when I was trying to focus on saving David’s life...by doing something that not even my grandma knew was possible...”

  Claire threw a balled up napkin at his head. “You scared the crap out of her, dude.”

  Ben reached across the table and took my hand. “Zel, it’s because of your grandma that I was afraid to do anything but ambush you. She’s one powerful lady.”

  Aunt Hazel, her mouth pursed with worry, addressed Frank, “Did Rachel know Ben’s mother?”

  Frank nodded. “She did, but I’m not sure Rachel would remember her. I never met your sister. She and Laura were acquainted during the time Rachel was the enforcer of The Society’s policies on children. I was in grad school in Chicago taking a break from my Lookout duties.”

  Mom and Mel and I looked at Aunt Hazel, questioning. “What policies?” Melody asked.

  Aunt Hazel filled us in on all the horrible things her and Grandma, mostly Grandma, had to do and say to convince other seers to give up their male and non-Retroact children. It was disgusting.

  “It’s not like that anymore is it?” I asked.

  Aunt Hazel shook her head. “No, absolutely not. They discontinued the practice almost a decade ago.”

  I looked at Ben. “Grandma tried to get your mom to give you up because you weren’t supposed to have powers?”

  Ben met Aunt Hazel’s gaze, she nodded. “Go ahead, she should know.”

  “Your Grandma’s specialty, Zellie, was glimpsing a pregnant seer’s future and if the child was male, she’d force the seer to get an abortion or have them exiled from The Society.”

  To be more incognito, Christopher pulled the collar on the gray ski jacket he’d changed into up past his ears. He was sitting in a booth, his back to Zellie and Ben’s table, listening in on their conversation.