The Athena Effect

by Anderson, Derrolyn

  “Morning,” his brother called from the couch.

  “How’s the finger?” he asked, helping himself to a cup of coffee.

  “It’s good. Are you gonna see Cali today?” Jarod asked, “Because I want you to thank her for me.”

  “You thanked her last night,” Cal reminded him.

  “Yeah, well… Just tell her again, okay?”

  “Sure,” Calvin nodded, He slugged his coffee and headed for the shower, eager to get to school for the first time in years.

  “Hey Cal–”

  He stopped in the hallway, “Yeah?”

  “Don’t blow it with that one… She’s a keeper.”

  He was quiet for a beat, “I know.”

  ~

  When Caledonia woke up the next morning, she was still clutching the little plastic keychain she’d gone to bed holding. She thought about Calvin, and held it up, studying the little bear. Images of their day at the fair danced through her mind, making her smile.

  She remembered all the people, the strange and greasy food, and the thrill of riding on the Ferris wheel. Every memory was tied to a picture of Calvin’s face watching her, and his beautiful dark eyes would not stop preying upon her mind.

  She stretched out her arms, feeling strangely happy. She got ready for school, thinking it would be nice to see him again; she felt a tiny flicker of optimism for the first time since the accident. She heard voices in the kitchen, and came down the stairs with her book bag to find Angie sitting at the table with Phil.

  “There you are,” Angie sounded exasperated, her voice filled with sour muddy disappointment. “Come sit down…We need to talk.”

  Caledonia edged into the kitchen, taking a seat across the table from Phil uneasily. Angie looked at her with tight lips, turning pale yellow with suspicion.

  “I got a e-mail from school that you missed some classes last week.”

  Caledonia looked down. She had skipped school the day they took Rufus to Calvin’s grandparents, but she never imagined her aunt might find out about it.

  “I made up all the work,” she explained. “I’ve gotten perfect scores on every test.”

  “What were you up to?” she asked.

  Cal shifted in her seat, unwilling to tell the truth. If Angie was upset about her skipping school, she really wouldn’t like the story about breaking a dog out of the pound. Caledonia didn’t like to lie, so she didn’t say anything.

  Phil and Angie exchanged a look, and her aunt’s lips tightened, “Cal, we were worried about who you’ve been running around with, so we looked in your room and found this.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a stack of twenty dollar bills, “Where did you get all of this money all of a sudden?”

  Caledonia’s eyes flew open wide. “You were in my things?” she said in horror.

  “Phil found it,” she replied.

  Cal reached out for it, but Angie snatched it back. “Where did this come from? Tell me!”

  “It’s mine… I earned it.”

  Phil laughed derisively, “I bet I can guess what she did for it. Those bikers must be paying her for her services.”

  He was exuding such an evil ugly color of greenish brown that Caledonia recoiled as if she’d been slapped.

  She turned towards her aunt with tears in her eyes, “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Then where did you get this?”

  She tried to explain, but the more she talked, the more the two of them exchanged knowing looks. They didn’t believe her about selling truffles any more than Calvin had before he actually witnessed it. Her aunt nodded at every nasty comment Phil made, mirroring his ugly skepticism.

  Phil was enjoying the interrogation, a sadistic glint in his eye, “I think we’re gonna have to hold onto it. Can’t you see that Angie has been working day and night to put a roof over your head? You don’t do a thing around here to earn your keep.”

  “And you do?” Caledonia retorted, indignant.

  Angie looked shocked, “Cal! You apologize to Phil right this minute!”

  Caledonia got up with a sob, running out of the house. With her aunt turning against her, now she was certain that she couldn’t stay any longer. Her money was gone, and her vague plans for getting away quickly were completely ruined. She wiped her eyes and shouldered her bag resolutely, setting out on her long march to school.

  Calvin stood in front of his house, leaning against his motorcycle with a helmet in his hand, waiting. He saw her figure approaching and couldn’t wipe the smile from his face.

  “Hey, I was thinking–” When she drew close he could see that she looked utterly miserable. “What happened?”

  She only shook her head and looked down, ashamed.

  “What can I do?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” she mumbled.

  He handed her a helmet, “Come on, I’ll give you a ride to school.”

  She hesitated, and finally reached out for it. He got on the bike, waiting for her to don the helmet and join him. When they pulled into the school parking lot there was a group of people standing around a shining new car, and she could see sour green clouds of surprise and jealousy appear when the girls spotted her riding behind him.

  “Hey Cal,” called Hillary, patting the hood of a candy-apple red Mustang with a smile as wide as the Cheshire cat’s. “Check out my graduation present.”

  “Nice ride,” he nodded. Caledonia took off the helmet and handed it to him, eager to flee the scene. Seeing the girl he’d had his hands all over not so long ago made her stomach twist with jealousy. She reminded herself that she must keep her emotions in check.

  “Wanna take it for a drive?” Hillary asked Calvin, dangling the keys in his face with a suggestive smile.

  Caledonia took her bag and slipped away, walking swiftly with her head down.

  “Not so fast,” Calvin said, coming up alongside her. “Talk to me. What happened this morning?” he asked.

  She paused, looking back to see the girls all staring. She sighed, “They took all my money.”

  “Who?” he asked, flashing crimson with protective anger.

  “My aunt and her boyfriend. They think… They think… They don’t believe that I earned it. They think I did something bad to get it.”

  “That’s bullshit!” He was suddenly very angry, “I’ll go tell them what happened! I’ll make them give it back!”

  She shook her head no, looking up at him with alarm, “They think you’re the one who gave it to me.” She looked away quickly, embarrassed.

  “Oh,” he said, feeling guilty.

  Calvin was used to the parents of girls he dated disliking him, but it had never bothered him at all before. He made it a habit to defy authority, and he liked being seen as a troublemaker. Girls were attracted to it, and he really didn’t give a damn what their parents thought. Now that his reputation was the cause of Caledonia’s troubles, he felt terrible.

  “Well, they’re fools.” He thought for a minute, “How much did they take? I can give you some money.”

  She looked at him with shocked eyes, and then shook her head no, “I couldn’t pay you back.”

  “How much do you need?” he asked.

  “I have to save enough to get back home and hide until I turn eighteen. Then they can’t make me come back.”

  He frowned, “I’ll give you whatever you want, but there’s only one problem…”

  “What?” she asked.

  He looked into her blue and green eyes, working up the courage, “I don’t want you to go.”

  She dropped her head, afraid that if she looked back up she wouldn’t be able to look away. She would drown in the deep pools of his eyes, and eventually be left as alone and dejected as all the other girls he’d toyed with and abandoned.

  When she failed to reply, Calvin felt a cold shiver of fear. Caledonia had singlehandedly ruined all other girls for him, and he hadn’t even worked up the nerve to kiss her. The thought of never seeing her again filled him with dread. He vowe
d right then to do whatever it took, deciding he had to figure out a way to make her want to stay.

  “A bunch of us are gonna cut out early and head to the beach,” a girl’s voice interrupted them. “Wanna come along?”

  Calvin looked up with irritation to see that Hillary had followed them from the parking lot, and Caledonia took the opportunity to try and slip away again, hoping to dodge his unspoken question. Calvin snaked out his hand, lightening quick, and clamped onto her wrist.

  “No,” he told Hillary curtly.

  She looked down at his hand on Caledonia, her eyes narrowing in anger. She stalked off, radiating emerald green envy, anger and disappointment.

  Calvin turned back to Caledonia, “Let’s do something after school…Okay?”

  She looked into his eyes and she could see that he was still glowing bright with affection, but there was something else behind it, a hard core of steel gray determination.

  “Okay,” she agreed.

  When lunchtime came he went looking for her, waiting outside of her classroom. Hillary re-appeared, flirting, posing and trying to engage Cal in conversation. Caledonia peeked out to see them, thinking that any boy in his right mind would prefer the fashionably dressed girl with the new car to her. She silently exited the other side of the room, slipping away unnoticed.

  After a frantic search, Calvin finally caught up with her at a different hiding place behind the school. “Hey,” he said softly, not wanting to startle her, coming closer to sit down by her side. He leaned back against the wall, watching her pretend to read. She finally looked up at him with a question in her beautiful blue and green eyes. Why me?

  A cat peered out from behind one of the storage sheds, capturing her attention. “It’s alright,” she told it, “He won’t hurt you.” The painfully thin creature slowly emerged from the shadows, skirting around Calvin to come close to her. She reached into her bag and pulled out her lunch, tearing off pieces of her sandwich and offering them to the starving animal.

  The cat wolfed them down, consumed by need; Calvin was reminded of Caledonia at his Grandparent’s house.

  “How does it work?” he asked. “How do you make them so tame?”

  She was hesitant, but he already knew a little, so she tried to explain how the animals were surrounded by colors that she could both see and understand. She told him how she’d experimented, finally learning how to throw her own color over them like a net, changing their state of mind.

  “Wow,” he whispered, at a loss for words. She was even more incredible than he had ever imagined.

  She looked down, shy, and he watched her in awe. Hair escaping her braid was blonde silk catching the light, surrounding her with a glowing halo. She looked like one of the angels in his mother’s old picture-bible, but that didn’t stop him from having impure thoughts about her.

  He wanted to reach out and touch her, to undo her braid, let her hair loose and weave his fingers through her soft curls. He wanted to pull her face to his and kiss her hard, wrap his arms around her and feel her body next to his. He wanted to crush himself into her and protect her all at the same time.

  He swallowed and blinked. He had never felt so insecure, and it was frightening. He wished that he knew how she felt about him, but she seemed either maddeningly indifferent or terribly shy.

  She looked over to see him staring and blushed prettily, looking back down again.

  He was in big trouble, he told himself.

  Calvin waited anxiously after school, only relaxing when he finally had her on the back of his bike. He sighed with relief when he felt her hands grip his sides, wondering if she was throwing a net of color over him. He didn’t care if she was, because when he was with her he felt so good that he never wanted it to stop.

  He took her to a park with a little lake in the middle, and they walked along a path that wound around it, startling frogs into the water. Calvin stooped to collect some pebbles from the shoreline, standing back to skip a few across the water. Caledonia watched him, admiring the way he moved, his broad shoulders and long arms sending the rocks skittering across the glassy surface.

  They walked on, coming across a duck dabbling comically in the water. A little band of fuzzy ducklings swam out of some reeds to surround it, making Caledonia smile. Calvin took her hand boldly, leading her to a grassy spot along the bank to sit and watch.

  There was a small patch of daisies growing in the lawn and she picked them, splitting the stems and threading them together to make a chain. When it was long enough, she formed it into a necklace, facing him as she slipped it over her head with a little smile. He was about to kiss her right then, but she turned away, watching as the mother duck came out of the water, leading her little family up the bank to settle in at their feet.

  He watched her in wonder, “You’re doing it now, aren’t you?”

  She looked over to see Calvin glowing with a bright purple and red affection, ringed all around with pink. It was the prettiest blend of colors she’d ever seen, and she was surprised to find it strengthening and growing more and more saturated.

  He must really like animals, she thought, watching him smile as they played with the ducklings that kept trying to climb onto their laps. His hair reflected the long rays of the sun like raven’s wings, and when his deep brown eyes smiled at hers she felt like her heart would burst with happiness.

  Shadows chilled their spot on the grass, so they returned to his bike for the drive back to his house. He felt her tense when they pulled up and parked, and he reached back to pat her leg reassuringly. Even though it was a Monday, the party at his house was already in full swing, and there were a dozen or so people outside. Caledonia had just gotten down from the bike when Jarod came flying at her.

  “Hey Cali!” he grinned just as handsomely as his brother did, engulfing her in a big drunken hug. “Good to see you!”

  She pulled away. “Are you keeping your wound clean?” she asked sternly, making him smile. He liked the way she scolded him. “You have to watch it carefully for signs of infection.”

  “Yes Ma’am!” he winked at his brother. “You guys hungry? We’re barbequing.”

  “Later,” Calvin told Jarod, not wanting to join the party. He took Caledonia’s hand, “Come on.”

  She followed him past the crowd of people to his room, and her heart started beating a little faster when he closed the door behind them. Neither one of them wanted to join the crowd, so Calvin left and brought some food back for them. He spread out a blanket for a picnic on his bedroom floor, and they ate, groping for things they could talk about, trying to learn more about each other.

  She picked up the sketch pad from his nightstand, leafing through the pages.

  “Wow,” she said, “You’re really talented. Are you going to be an artist?”

  He laughed at the idea, “Me? No… No way. It’s just something that I like to do sometimes.” He reached for the pad back but she turned away from him, looking at every page.

  “Why not?” she asked.

  “I don’t know… I think you have to go to school for it or something.”

  “So why don’t you?”

  No one had asked him about his future for so long that he didn’t know how to answer. His mother was the only one who’d ever encouraged him to draw, and when she died, all of his secret dreams of being an artist went with her.

  “Oh!” Caledonia said, smiling up at him, “I like this one!” She held the book open to a detailed drawing of a woman. She had long dark hair and gorgeous sloe eyes, “It’s really beautiful.”

  “That’s my mom. I drew it from an old picture of her.”

  Caledonia looked down at the drawing and back up at him, “You look a lot like her… She must have really loved your artwork.”

  “Yeah,” he said, remembering. “She did.”

  “She knew that you wanted you to be an artist… Didn’t she?”

  He looked over at her, amazed again at how well she seemed to know him. He was an open book sh
e could read at will, and it didn’t bother him. She understood him in a way that no-one else did, and he nodded, savoring the feeling.

  He maneuvered a little closer to her, slowly edging his arm around her. The warmth of her leg brushing against his was making his head spin, but he got none of the usual receptive signals from her. He wondered what she would do if he tried to kiss her, afraid of being rejected by her like he’d never been afraid of a girl before.

  She sat stiffly, wondering why he didn’t try.

  As the afternoon wore on, the party outside grew louder and louder. The sky darkened a little, and all at once, red and blue lights were flashing in the window. Calvin groaned, getting up to peek through the blind slats, seeing that two squad cars had arrived. She could see his alarm, and taste the metallic fear, bitter on her tongue.

  “Not again,” he said under his breath. He headed for the door, “Wait here… I’ll go see what’s going on.”

  Caledonia watched out the window as the police got out of their cars and started to shine flashlights at the partygoers.

  “Break it up, people,” they called out, “Time to go home!”

  The crowd started to disperse, with some people going inside, but most heading for their cars and bikes. Jarod came barreling towards the officers boldly just as Calvin arrived, grabbing his older brother’s arm to try and hold him back.

  “We weren’t doin’ nothing wrong! This is straight-up harassment!” Jarod bellowed.

  “We got a noise complaint,” a big cop with ruddy face shined a light into his eyes. “Had any alcohol today?”

  Crystal came running up, taking Jarod’s other arm, “Come inside baby, let’s get something to eat.”

  Jarod tried to shrug them both off, “I got my rights! You can’t just come onto my property–”

  All at once Caledonia was between him and the police, looking into Jarod’s eyes, “Why don’t you go inside with Crystal?”

  Calvin watched in amazement as Jarod nodded calmly, “Okay.”

  “Take him inside, and turn off the music,” Caledonia told Crystal firmly. She turned to the cops, “We’re sorry to have caused a disturbance. There won’t be any more trouble tonight.”