by H. T. Night
Katherine looked at me and nodded. I was sure she didn’t quite make heads or tails of my last statement. But for whatever reason, she trusted me and proceeded to talk. “My dad raised me by himself since I was five years old. He died of leukemia a year ago.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that,” I said. “Were the two of you close?”
“We were close, but he never knew about the world I had discovered over the last five years.”
“What world is that?” I asked.
“Anthony Moon, I know who your mother is and I know who you are.”
I was startled. “How so?”
“Once I graduated, I met Archibald Maximus.”
“You have been in the secret room?”
“I’ve been Maximus’ assistant for the past six months. I wasn’t impressed anymore about his secret room. I wanted to feel more alive. I needed a change of pace. So, Mr. Maximus recommended that I learn the skill of being an alchemist. It wasn’t actually a recommendation. If I wanted to continue as his assistant, this school was a prerequisite.”
Things were adding up fast with Katherine. But I had a few questions. “You said you were raised by your father since the age of five,” I inquired. “What happened to your mother?”
“My mother died when I was five years old.”
I wasn’t ready to hear that both her parents had passed away. “I’m so sorry to hear that.” My own father had died years ago and I still didn’t know how to process it. I would tell Kat about him at a different date. And boy, there would be a lot to tell. At this moment, she was opening up herself to me and I needed to take it in without judgment or by giving immediate advice.
Kat looked off toward the trees in the forest. She continued to speak. “She didn’t just die... she was murdered.”
“Wow,” I said. I knew firsthand how wonderful mothers could be. I had the best and I could not imagine losing her. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you.” She continued, “You see, they never found out who murdered her.”
“The police never found the person?” I was shocked. “For the last eighteen years, this has been a cold case?”
Kat nodded.
“What city was she murdered in?’
“In Orange County, in the city of Westminster.”
I felt sick to my stomach and my chicken sandwich didn’t look too appealing. “Please go on.”
“There was never one solid lead. Not ever. Not one person came forward and said if they knew anything.”
“How did it happen?” I asked gently.
Katherine paused and said, “She went to the store in the evening and after an hour, she came back. She pulled up in our driveway. We didn’t park in the garage at my house. She pulled up to the edge of the driveway and grass that led up to our house. My dad and I were watching the news. I was five years old and I would watch whatever my dad watched.”
I listened intently, not wanting to prompt her or interrupt her.
Kat took another deep breath and continued her hundred-yard stare behind her sunglasses. “She never came inside. It was strange because whenever she went to the store, she would come to the door and ask us for help unloading the car. After fifteen minutes, I was impatient, as kids are, so I ran outside without asking my dad if it was okay.”
I stared at Kat and I knew this was going to become graphically ugly.
Kat continued speaking. Her voice was quiet, almost as if she was telling me a secret. In reality, she was. She continued, “I went to the driver’s side and saw her bleeding through the shattered window. The police always assumed it was an intruder who panicked, shot her and ran. We never heard a gunshot. But she sure had a bullet wound right in her forehead. I screamed and opened the car door and she fell out to the driveway. I yelled for my father. That was the last time I saw her.”
I was shocked and didn’t know what to say.
“So, there you go,” she said. “That is what happened, in a nutshell.”
“That is about the most heartbreaking, psychologically painful story I have ever heard.” I paused and waited for the right moment to speak. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Yes,” Kat answered.
“Why did you share this with me?”
“Because this is who I am. Every day, that person who killed my mother is out there is a day I have to live in fear that it could always come back for me.” Her voice trembled. She was so… vulnerable and fearful.
I looked at Katherine as she sat on her blanket, wearing a beautiful blue sundress. I wasn’t sure what compelled me to be so bold, but I leaped out anyway. I reached over and took Katherine’s sunglasses off her face so she could see me, eye to eye. Then, with the confidence of a superhero, I said, “I’ll protect you.”
“Protect me?” she said, blushing.
“As long as we’re friends and we are in each other’s lives, I will protect you from anyone or anything in the world that tries to hurt you.”
Katherine looked at me with her beautiful, greenish-blue eyes and held her stare for about fifteen seconds. I started to feel as if she might be able to read minds like my sister. I knew Kat was trying to see if I was for real and not just a guy who was trying to impress her, just to get into her pants.
She smiled at me with her sunglasses off. “You’re a good guy, Anthony. Thank you. That was an incredibly sweet thing to say.” Katherine started tearing up and I handed her my napkin so she could wipe her eyes.
“I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No, it was sweet. You can’t take it back. No one has ever told me they would protect me before.”
“Not even your father?”
“I mean, of course, he did protect me. But he never said it out loud.”
“That is the type of person I am.” I gave Kat a wink.
“A protector?”
“Yeah, you can say that. Like I said, I have seen some things.”
“Well, when you want to tell me about these things you keep mentioning, let me know. You’re filled with secrets, Anthony Moon. I look forward to getting to know you.”
I looked down at my phone and saw the time. I had three minutes to make it to my next class. “We need to go. I don’t want you to be late.”
We both stood up and threw away our trash and ran to our separate parts of the Academy.
During my meditation class, my mind was all about Kat and the news she’d shared about her mom being murdered when she was such a young age.
The fact that she had been the one to find her mother dead at Kat’s tender age of five must have been a horrific thing to go through as a child. She had been carrying that around for the last eighteen years. That type of tragedy did something to a person. I wasn’t a psychologist, but it must have been as traumatic as a life experience got. If not the worst. My heart ached for Katherine. I wasn’t sure how I was going to handle this information in regard to the future of our friendship. Well, I was hoping for something more than being stuck in the friendship department. Most guys might have been scared away by this shattering background story of her young life, but it only drew me closer to her. I had experienced a lot of pain and someday, I hoped to trust her enough to tell her my complete story. No one knew my life story. Not even my mom knew everything. At times, I tried to forget it myself.
So, I was now lying on my back on a gym mat in my meditation class. This act was instructed to us by Ms. Silva, the teacher. She has a doctorate in this stuff from Yale, of all places. There were fifteen minutes left and then I would be on my way to my last class.
I took a deep breath and sighed and relaxed my body. My mind was still racing about Kat’s mother when I heard the same woman’s voice speak in my head. “Hide your power one mile out.”
That was it. That was all I heard.
I think I might have fallen asleep after that.
Chapter Ten
My head was spinning from all the information I heard during the day. I was lying on my bed, h
alf dozing.
Barry was playing on the floor, playing video games on our only TV. Actually, my TV.
I sat up abruptly. I needed to go for a run.
It was nearing seven o’clock and I needed to clear my head. It would be my first high-altitude run of the new school year.
I put on my running gear while Barry started to doze off. He snored lightly, so it wasn’t too awful. I imagined by the time he hit forty, he would be a growler.
I left our dorm and ran past the courtyard to the front of the Academy.
I had a trail I liked to do. The trail had minimal uphill running. I didn’t mind uphill running in spurts but not as a long run. Uphill running was intensely painful, even for an experienced runner.
The eight-mile trail was off-road and made for hikers and bike riders. And if I decided to run the whole thing, that made it a sixteen-mile run, there and back. I felt good as I started running. I was going to go the distance and run all sixteen today. It had been a few days since I’d run, so it was time to put in the work.
To most people, running sixteen miles was an insane challenge, but I could usually finish it in a little over two hours. Two hours was always a good amount of time for me to run. Of course, I could run much, much faster than eight miles per hour, but if anyone clocked me breaking world records, well, Mom had already warned me that there would be consequences to exposing my powers.
I preferred to run one hour in the sun and one hour in the dark—this run would be no different. There were many pluses to running at dawn or twilight. You had the sun on you for half your run. Then, the second half was a cool night run. The best of both worlds. I had found that as individual runs, each experience was extremely different. I preferred the dark only because I was able to run harder and longer. When the sun was out, I headed up. I needed to pace my running bursts.
I was flying down the path. It was a strong first eight miles. I hit the edge of the mountain where the trail ended. I was a little over an hour into the run and it was time to turn around and head home. That was always a great feeling, knowing that I was closer to finishing than I was from starting.
I enjoyed the night sky as I pounded the dirt coming home. I started pacing myself and allowed my thoughts to drift to Kat and her mother’s murder. I couldn’t wrap my brain around the facts of the scene. It might have been my exhaustion, but the facts she gave me didn’t add up. I began to contemplate the order of events in how Katherine had said her mother had been murdered.
I kept dodging rocks on the trail and it was taking me out of my thought process. I figured I would just focus on finishing my run.
I began to run stronger, and before I knew it, I was about two miles from the dorms. I was a little rusty on the run. I looked down at my phone. I was approaching the two-hour mark, so I wasn’t quite as fast as I’d thought. I had more than a mile to go. I kept running and kept thinking about Katherine’s mom. Her unsolved murder was bothering me something awful.
As I ran, something came over me. I felt a rush of euphoria. This happened sometimes and I often wondered if it was connected to whatever my supernatural deal was. Throughout the last ten years, I had discovered some strange skills that I had. Usually, they only came out when I was in danger. This was an odd feeling. I wasn’t in danger, but yet, whenever I hit this type of runner’s high, I felt invincible. My thoughts were clear and my brain was high functioning. This was one of the reasons I loved running. There was a huge emotional payoff.
This time, the euphoria felt a bit more intense, as if I was being led to some type of knowledge. Usually, my mind felt crystal clear and joyful thoughts and memories seemed to surface. This was different, though. My mind was clearer than it had ever been before. Most everything in the world seemed to make sense to me. Everything except… Katherine’s mother’s murder and that damn last message I heard from the mystery woman. ‘Hide your power one mile out.’
Then it hit me. As I ran, the message became very clear to me. My power is fire. How I have fire is through the Fire Warrior and my fire potion. So, the power I am able to hide is my fire potion. I needed to bury it near the trail one mile from the Academy. I continued to run, pleased with my interpretation of Katherine’s mother’s voice.
Wait! I stopped in my tracks. Was it Katherine’s mother’s voice in my head? Why wouldn’t it be? Everything made sense now. Meeting Kat was no coincidence. Katherine’s mom spirit or aura or whatever it was that was speaking to me through my mind was leading me in a direction. And tonight, I need to bury as much fire potion as I could scramble together. Tonight, Barry and I were going to have a little adventure.
I continued running home, thinking now about Katherine’s mother’s murder.
There was something about her father in the story that bothered me. One detail that hadn’t bugged me until now. The bullet in the head was so extreme.
I imagined the scene as I ran. I put every detail that Kat had given me in order. Nothing made sense. No wonder it was a cold case. There were serious holes in the story. I knew she was just a child who was first on a crime scene, but her version of the events didn’t add up at all.
By the time I reached my dorm, I knew the way Katherine remembered the murder wasn’t what could have possibly happened. I needed to know more about the case.
Chapter Eleven
When I arrived back at the dorm from my run, I took off my clothes so I could take a shower.
I wrapped a towel around myself and opened the dorm room door to the hallway. I was startled to find someone trying to open the door from the other side. Barry both had our hands on the doorknob and we both yelped. Neither one of us screamed, but I’ll admit, the noises that came out of our mouths were comedy gold. We both looked at each other and chuckled.
Barry had a huge McDonald’s bag of food and another huge bag of Taco Bell food in his hands. They were two of the closest fast-food places to where we lived. About an hour walk away.
“Did you walk?” I asked Barry, who looked pretty worn out.
Barry walked past me and put the bags on the desk in the corner. “You have to do what you have to do when you hate what they are serving for dinner. The dinner menu at this school sucks.”
I nodded. “So, were you craving a little of everything?”
“Exactly, towel boy. Damn, you stink.”
“I was on my way to take a shower.”
“Well, go clean all your important parts.” Barry looked me up and down and added, “And, not so important.” He shoved two large french fry bags into our little microwave. “McDonald’s fries need to be hot to be good.”
“They need to be fresh and hot to be good,” I corrected him.
“Well, that’s why we have a backup bag of food.” Barry snickered. “I grabbed six burritos and tacos. I also grabbed a couple of those quesadillas you like so much.”
“I’m not that hungry. I just ran 16 miles.”
“That wouldn’t make you feel like you’re starving?” Barry asked.
“Nope, it does the opposite. Makes me nauseated for about two hours. But after the two hours are up, I could eat twenty tacos and burritos.”
Barry pressed 45 seconds on the microwave’s timer. “Then I’m glad I that I brought us a lot of food.”
Barry sat in the chair at the desk and began eating a Big Mac. “I’m starving after walking all that way.”
“You expect me to believe you didn’t eat at least four items on the way home, including half the fries?”
Barry grinned. “Damn, I think you can read minds like your sister.”
“I just know how my doughy boy rolls. I’m taking a shower.”
“That was mean and mildly clever. Mostly, though, it was mean.”
“Sorry. I have some things on my mind.”
“Already, that girl is messing with your head?” Barry shook his, as if he had any idea what he was talking about.
“Nothing like that.”
Barry looked at me, nodded and sighed. He wasn’t buying i
t, but I was telling him the truth. I didn’t feel I should share Katherine’s personal information with Barry right out of the gate.
“I’ll be back. Don’t eat everything.”
“Thought you weren’t hungry!” Barry yelled as I shut the door behind me. I headed down the hall in just my towel.
I took an extra-long shower. I often enjoyed my showers. It was my body rejuvenating itself. I felt the hot water flow down each muscle in my body. It was nice and calming.
I dried off and headed back to my room, now wearing a damp towel.
I opened the door and Barry looked up at me from his bed.
“Hey, sexy.”
“You look bloated, possibly even pregnant,” I said.
“I have eaten two tacos, two burritos, one Big Mac, a cheeseburger, and close to fifteen McNuggets. Not to mention, I polished off a shitload of fries.”
“That would do it.” I paused and looked at my friend who just downed ten thousand calories. “Want to help me?”
“Let me see, do I want to help you? I’ll need a little more info than that.”
“We need to break into the potions lab and make a ton of fire potion.”
“You want to break and enter at the place we live?” Barry laughed.
“Exactly,” I said. Appealing to my friend’s not-so-sensible side, I said, “If we live here, how are we breaking and entering?”
Barry thought deeply about that for a minute. “Sounds good to me. I need to drop a deuce, then I’m good to go.”
“Go get ‘em, boy,” I said. “That toilet doesn’t stand a chance.”
Barry grinned, stopped in his tracks and turned around. “You need me to do more than just help make the potion. Don’t you?”
I laughed and said, “Why couldn’t I have just have been funny, right now?”
Barry looked me over. “You’re not a poop-joke type of guy. You were reaching.”