Inherit

by Liz Reinhardt

  “I can deck whoever I want, wherever I want, and I don’t have to answer to you.” Yes, I realize how stupid I sound, but I can’t think clearly because I’m expending too much energy growling at Sakura across the glistening wooden floors.

  “What did she say that set you off?” His bluish eyes rake over my face, slightly narrowed.

  My voice sticks hard in my throat. “Nothing,” I squeak out. He raises an incredulous eyebrow, but drops the questions.

  We’re standing so close, I can smell the combination of slightly spicy, sharp manly smells that waft from his skin because of his deodorant, aftershave, and maybe cologne. Does Jonas wear cologne? I usually see him right after work, so all I really smell is motor oil. I wonder if I usually smell like chili cheese fries to him.

  This whole thought process is dangerous, because I need to focus on what’s important right now. And what’s important is squashing my smug ass of a cousin in warball. I join my teammates in a huddle and half-listen to Jonas’s advice on how to keep our offense fierce while maintaining a formidable defense.

  Sakura unleashed something in me with her tricky back-stabbing. I’m embarrassed about the flash of a minute when I imagined us being friends. I hate being tricked, I hate being made a fool of. And, suddenly, I hate losing.

  I want to beat her, even if it is just warball.

  I want it with every molecule of my being. Every fiber and cell in my body hungers to take her down.

  “Let’s do this,” I grit and throw my hand in. My teammates pick up on my ferocity and they all throw their hands in and shout some guttural, grunting chant about winning or destroying or something.

  I fly behind one of the mats and collect five balls, which is all I can hold without slowing myself down. Sakura’s pink hair should make her a clear target, but I soon find out it’s just a pink flag waving in my face as she gains a fast, definite upper hand and takes out four of my best teammates with half-hearted flicks of her wrist.

  The first minute of the game, she sends a ball flying right past my head. It hits the mat behind me with such a powerful whack, I know it would have made me see stars if it made contact with my face like she intended. And it annoys me to admit that Sakura probably could have hit me if she wanted to. That miss was a warning meant to toy with me.

  My fingers close tight over one ball and I visualize it sailing sure and true across the gym in my mind. Something shudders inside of me. The vibration starts in the pit of my stomach and radiates outward so hard my ears ring. Strength stretches my muscles into loose, warm ropes of power. Confidence sharpens my senses until I can hear the slightest squeak of sneaker rubber, see the quickest duck-and-roll escape, and hear the softest scoop and collect of balls off the floor.

  Balls are thwacking the walls behind me, my teammates are being pelted and leave the game with shameful limps and hung heads. I have no idea what the score is, and I don’t care. The only person I’m playing against is my nemesis, my cousin.

  My arm pulses, my sight hones in, sharper and faster than normal, and I zip from mat to mat until my eyes lock on my target. I lift my arm and let the balls catapult quick and sure, one, two, three.

  I watch as if in slow motion as they hurl across the gym where they should hit Sakura in each shoulder and the center of her chest. It seems like it’s all coming together, and I prep my evil laugh, but at the last nanosecond she puts up a lazy hand and an impossibly quick blip of energy makes the air shake and vibrate.

  She put some kind of a bubble-shield up.

  The shudder goes through me again. I scoop up some stray balls rolling my way, and this time, I let the shudder build up and vibrate over and over like waves building into a full-force tsunami. I focus the shudder again until I can see the air shimmer around me with an energy I somehow know I can direct. I palm the ball until the weight is a precise, sure quantity in my hand.

  Sakura laughs at me from across the room, holds her hands out, and waves her fingers to herself, a cocky, Bring it! dare that I’m not about to back down from.

  The ball in my hand levitates a fraction of an inch from my skin and spins with a crazy velocity that starts to warm my palm. I draw my arm back and shoot it forward. Sakura is nudging some adoring guy at her side and laughing, but she puts her hand up again, and I can see the shield glisten just before the ball I threw rips it to shreds and pelts her in the shoulder with such direct force it throws her around in a whip of pink hair.

  “Ow!” She grabs her shoulder and falls backward as the entire gym goes silent, then looks my way.

  Coach Kiley rushes to her side along with ninety percent of the guys in class. “Are you okay, Sakura? Vee, check that ball. Is it possible a harder ball got mixed in with the foam ones?”

  Vee holds up the innocent-looking blue ball that caused the problem and squeezes it in her hand. It makes a silly fweep that causes a wash of fury to redden Sakura’s face.

  “Oh, it’s not the ball,” Sakura covers, rubbing her shoulder with ginger fingers. “This is the shoulder I broke last year.”

  “You broke your shoulder?” Coach Kiley’s face is all worry lines.

  “It was so stupid of me. One of the campers in the Make a Wish camp where I worked got a horse that spooked. I got her down, grabbed the reins, and was knocked over. No big deal.”

  Every single person in the gym oohs and aahs over what I’m sure is her big, fat lie of a story, and I feel the energy shaking off of me in tremors. My whole body is molten, and I bounce another whirling ball in my hand, this time hell bent on knocking Sakura out when an icy cool creeps over me and calms the red-hot quivers.

  I look back and Jonas has his hand on my shoulder. It’s like a block of ice to my charred, shaking body.

  “Are you okay?” His eyes are sharp on me.

  “Fine. Why?”

  “I saw it.”

  I swallow hard. “Saw what?”

  “What you did. Saw you throw the ball at Sakura like Nolan Ryan on roids. What’s going on?”

  “Who’s Nolan Ryan?”

  “Stop changing the subject. Tell me what’s going on.”

  I look him right in the eyes. “I don’t know what you think you saw.” I say the words slowly to lend them authority, because his death stare is making me feel a little edgy. “But forget it. It’s not your business.”

  He fists both hands in his hair and groans with frustration, then blows the air out of his mouth in a long exhale and shrugs. “Fine. Whatever you say. But I know what I saw, and whatever you’re doing, you better be careful before someone gets hurt.”

  He breaks eye contact and stalks away. My body wants to puddle on the floor. Vee runs across the gym.

  “You’re white as a ghost. What’s wrong?” She runs a hand over my forehead. “Coach, Wren is burning up!”

  I try to tell her to stop or that I don’t need her help, but I can’t find my voice. Then everything flashes pitch black, and when I open my eyes I’m lying on the scratchy tissue paper of the nurse’s office staring at a poster from the 70s that shows some kids in funky bellbottoms high-fiving because they decided to ‘Just say no to dope!’.

  When I try to sit up, I fall back over, and a pair of strong hands catches me and lays me back on the crinkly tissue paper. “Jonas, what are you doing here?” I mutter through the dense fog of my smashing headache.

  “I had to carry you here after you fainted.” The cold clip of his voice makes a shiver trip down my spine. “Now I’m seriously pissed, and you have some explaining to do. What happened back there?”

  My instinct is to tell him to get lost, that this is all still none of his business, and that I don’t need his help. But I can’t even sit up on my own. The truth is, I do need help. What I did today could have really hurt Sakura, and it left me in a crumpled heap in the nurse’s office. I’m obviously in way over my head.

  But the worst part of this whole thing is the humiliation of being carried from the gym by Jonas Balto.

  “You carried me here?”
I peek at him from my half-closed eyelids. He shifts uncomfortably in the orange molded plastic chair.

  “I had to. You fainted.” He pinches the bridge of his beakish nose like an old, irritated librarian.

  “Coach Kiley let you?” Why didn’t they crack that smelly thing under my nose to wake me up and sit me in a nice, not-too-embarrassing wheelchair? Did everyone watch? It’s too mortifying to even imagine.

  “I, uh, convinced her it was the best way. Stop changing the subject. Tell me what you did back there.”

  “Okay, but this is going to sound super weird.”

  “Weirder than a lucky wish fox that’s making me fall for you?” He moves his jaw back and forth and smiles. “I doubt you can tell me anything that will shock me.”

  “Fine. This morning Sakura told me she wanted me to give her Loki in exchange for making sure Bestemor’s health is taken care of and some money.” I take a deep breath.

  “Not all that weird. Wasn’t Loki her family’s pet first?”

  “Yes. And I didn’t even get to the weird part.” I sigh. “So she talked to me in this bubble.”

  He frowns. “Are you using ‘in a bubble’ as a figure of speech?”

  “No.”

  “So was it like a soap bubble?” He squints like his head is aching. Boy, do I know the feeling.

  “No. Like a Jell-o bubble.”

  “What?” That one word changes his tone from humoring to demanding, and I wonder what Jonas might be hiding.

  “It’s hard to explain. But we were together in this kind of insulated, well, bubble. There’s really not a better word for it. Like, sounds from outside were muffled, and no one could hear us. But it was clear. And no one else seemed to notice. And I touched it. It felt a little like Jell-o, but it was see-through. And it rippled.”

  Jonas narrows his eyes and lowers his eyebrows, deep in thought.

  “And when I tried to ask her more about our family and why Loki was sent to me in the first place, she went psycho on me and told me that I was weak and powerless and she popped the bubble. In gym, she pushed my buttons again, and I wanted…I wanted to get her back so badly, and I had this weird tremor feeling take over my body.” My muscles twitch at the memory.

  He leans forward, brow creased. “Tremor?”

  “Like I shook.” I put a fist on my stomach. “It started in my stomach, and it just rippled out.” I open my fist to illustrate. “And it got stronger and it transferred to the ball. The first time I threw them, Sakura just made a Jell-o shield.”

  “More Jell-o?” Jonas’s eyebrows are knit in the center of his forehead.

  “Yes. The balls bounced right off, no problem, she laughed at me again, so I let the tremors build up a little. The next time I threw the ball, it broke through her shield and smacked her in the shoulder. Then the whole class fell all over her and her Make a Wish camp bullshit.”

  “Really? You think she lied about the cancer camp? I mean, your cousin seems kind of, uh, aggressive, but that’s low. I mean, there’s low and then there’s crap on the bottom of your shoe low.” Jonas shakes his head in disgust.

  I sit up on one elbow and stare at him. “I tell you that my cousin can make impenetrable Jell-o shields and you’re shocked by the idea that she would lie about working at a camp for sick kids?”

  Jonas rubs the back of his neck.“Lots of weird things happen. You know, unexplainable things. I guess I have an open mind where that kind of stuff is concerned. But lying about sick kids? That’s just lowdown and dirty.”

  That makes me smile, and my headache recedes a teeny, tiny bit. Just at that moment, our ancient nurse shuffles in. “Okay, Wren. I’ve contacted your grandmother and she wants you to come on home. Do you feel okay to drive?”

  Jonas looks at her and says, “Ma’am, I don’t believe Wren is able to drive. May I take her home please?”

  I try to hold back my snort. Nurse Hatcher is lovingly referred to as Nurse Hatchet because she’s despicably mean and strict. I’m shocked she even considered calling Bestemor on my behalf. I mean, all I did was faint. I didn’t even go into a coma or anything moderately debilitating by her standards. In any case, she isn’t about to let Jonas drive me home just because he used his best manners when he asked.

  But Nurse Hatchet is looking at Jonas with cloudy eyes. “Fine.” The sharp edge is gone from her voice. “Here’s your pass.”

  My jaw hangs open as she hands him a blue pass, and I can’t seem to get it closed as he drags me out of the office on my wobbly legs.

  “I can’t believe she just handed you a pass like that. She didn’t even argue with you.” I sneak a glance at his direction. I expect him to gloat or brag, tell me how he’s got a thing with the ladies, or laugh about it. It’s his odd avoidance of eye contact and uncomfortable attempt to shake it off that alerts my suspicions.

  “I just, uh, persuaded her,” he mumbles.

  Just like he, uh, persuaded Coach Kiley? Something about this doesn’t sit right, and it occurs to me in a flash that I may not be the only one hiding things about myself. I’m determined to get to the bottom of this.

  Chapter 16

  I want to ask Jonas about his ‘persuasive’ techniques. I want to ask him who’s going to get my truck home. I want to ask him if we can swing by tutoring services to tell them I won’t be in this afternoon, stop by civics so I can wave to Vee and let her see that I’m not dead, and get my books out of my locker so I can get my homework done. But I don’t manage to ask about any of that, because I have to use every last shred of energy in my body to get to the parking lot without needing to beg Jonas to carry me.

  I barely make it, and fumble with the door handle like such a clumsy ass, Jonas has to come over and open my door for me.

  “Thanks.”

  I reach for my seatbelt, but suddenly my nose is pressed against his neck because he’s already grabbed the belt and is leaned over my body to snap it in. I know it’s a one hundred percent necessary and helpful action, but I can’t seem to telegraph the message to my beating heart, which is interpreting romantic overtones where there are none. At all.

  I tell myself.

  Once Jonas is safely in his seat, he starts grilling me again, wanting to know what the tremors felt like, how I directed what I felt, how I felt while I was getting ready to throw the ball, both emotionally and physically. It’s hard to concentrate on what he’s saying. My eyelids feel like they’re made out of concrete. The back of my head bumps against the headrest and I close my eyes. When I don’t focus on the annoying words, his voice is actually very melodic.

  “Wren! Wren!”

  Jonas shakes me out of a pretty deep sleep. I grab for the door handle, but he’s already coming around to let me out. I’m so disoriented it takes me a few minutes of rapid blinking to process the fact that we’re not home. Or, not at my home, specifically.

  “Where are we?” We’re standing in front of a little ranch that is probably normal somewhere deep under all of the copper art sculptures, ornamental bird baths, bright flags, wind chimes, painted walkway stones, and a life-sized concrete Virgin Mary with a rainbow behind her.

  Jonas rubs his jaw. “My Aunt Magda’s.” He has the look of a man preparing to face a firing squad.

  “Why are we here?” I follow him up the tie-dye painted stone walkway and try to avoid the huge, stern-looking Holy Mother. Even the rainbow doesn’t make her smile less threatening.

  “Answers.”

  Cryptic. It’s taking a lot of energy to bat away all the wind chimes clanking merrily around my head when all I want is a nice long nap in my own comfy bed. What I get is entrance into the house of crazy.

  Which is not at all what I expected. I envisioned beaded doorframe hangings, some psychedelic prints of Jerry Garcia and Jimi Hendrix, a few scattered glass bongs, maybe some batik pillows and woven throws. What I see is a house so modern and chic, it should be in a movie about a high-paid lawyer with monetary excess but emotional emptiness. It dawns on me that Vee and I
watch way too many Lifetime movies.

  Jonas tugs off his workboots and I slip off my Vans. His socks are argyle. I giggle.

  “What?”

  “I just thought you’d have holey white socks. I had no idea you liked argyle.” My head feels swimmy, and there are little pinpricks of silvery light bursting in front of my eyes.

  “There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”

  We both look down at his socks for a second. He wiggles his toes and I giggle again. I’m finding it hard to keep my thoughts focused. All I can think of are his geektastic socks hidden under those grease-caked work boots. Jonas has layers.

  “C’mon.” Jonas breaks my train of thought and leads me down a long gleaming hardwood hallway. The walls are a tasteful mocha with black framed prints of modern artists I don’t know, but probably should. He comes to a shiny wood door with a brushed chrome doorknob and raps his knuckles on it.

  “Enter.”

  I would giggle again over how pompous it is that she actually said enter, but her voice is all steel, and I’m positive she would slice my giggles in half with one deft strike. I glance around Jonas’s back and see a youngish woman in a black suit with a blond bun pulled severely back from her face, filing through huge stacks of paper piled on a monstrous, shining desk.

  “Aunt Magda, this is Wren Kochi. She’s a shieldmaiden.”

  “What?” I look right at him, right at his chiseled jawbone, but he doesn’t make eye contact. “What are you talking about?” I try to sound outraged, but it comes off as squeaky, and he doesn’t answer anyway. He keeps his face forward, focusing on the woman who lifts her eyes, takes her glasses off her nose, folds them neatly, and looks at me with her head tilted slightly to the side.

  “Wren Kochi.” She rolls the name around in her mouth and presses her lips into a flat line. “You brought a witch here?” She flicks her cold grey eyes at Jonas, but he’s still staring, not saying a word.

  “I’m no witch.” If my head was woozy before, it’s spinning like a top now. I slouch against the doorframe.

  “You’re a Kochi.” Her eyes narrow. “Where’s her familiar?” She looks at Jonas.