Run to You Part Three: Third Charm

by Clara Kensie

  One ring.

  She didn’t answer.

  Another ring.

  No answer.

  And another.

  Why wasn’t she answering her phone?

  After another ring, a chipper, animated voice told me to leave a message.

  I froze for a moment, unsure what to say. Then the message tumbled out of my mouth. “Oh my God, Jillian, Logan, it’s Tessa. I’m alive. Mom and Dad are alive. We’re in Wisconsin in a town called Lilybrook. They have us locked up in this place called the Agency for Psionic Research. But don’t come for us. Stay as far away as you can. They’re saying terrible things about Mom and Dad, they’re calling them the Kitteridge Killers....”

  I sucked in a lungful of air. “I’m trying so hard to prove them wrong. But they have a preschool here. A preschool! How could a place with a preschool be bad? I should tell you to run, to run and never stop, but I need you to come, even if you don’t want me anymore after what I did. Please, come. I need you. Because I—oh God...I...”

  No. I couldn’t say it. I wouldn’t say it. I bit my lips to keep from saying it.

  But the words came anyway. Soft, barely a whisper, but they came. “I think they might be telling the truth.”

  My voice, my heart, the air—they all shattered as I heard myself say those words. With a sob, I sank to the cot. From far away I felt Tristan take the phone from my hand, heard the tiny click as he closed it.

  Which is harder: To refuse to believe something, or to believe something and not want to?

  I hated that I knew the answer.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  We sat in heavy silence. Timidly, Tristan slid his hand over the periwinkle blanket so it touched mine. “So you believe me now about your parents?” he whispered.

  Unable to speak, I nodded. I drew my hands into my sleeves, hugged my knees to my chin.

  “You okay?”

  No. I was definitely not okay. Faith that my parents were innocent was all I had before. Now I had nothing.

  Even the fog wouldn’t come when I called it. Now there was nowhere to hide from the truth.

  The guard with squeaky shoes delivered dinner to our cell that night. Tuna casserole and green beans. Tristan automatically sent the guard to Hawthorne’s to get a meatless meal for me. I asked him to get one for my mom too. She could never eat the tuna. Even the smell of it would make her sick.

  By losing faith in my parents, I’d betrayed them yet again. Maybe all I needed to get my faith back and take the sledgehammer out of my heart was to do something nice for my mom.

  An hour later Squeaky Shoes returned with two Styrofoam containers of vegetable lasagna and blueberry pie, and a grunted promise to deliver one of them to my mother.

  It didn’t work. My faith didn’t return. The sledgehammer kept hammering away.

  My parents were guilty.

  As we ate I tried calling my brother and sister again. My eighth call that day, and they hadn’t answered yet. I tried Logan first this time. After four rings that stupid robotic voice requested I leave a message. With a sigh, I slid the phone shut and tried Jillian next.

  Her phone rang and rang, and I closed my eyes and pictured them, weary and frightened, hiding in a dingy motel room somewhere and wondering why we hadn’t come for them yet. And now, just as they feared the worst, Jillian’s phone would ring, and with trembling fingers she would flip it open, her gold bracelet sliding down her arm, the heart charm catching the dim light. “Mom? Dad? Tessa?” she would cry, so relieved she could barely speak—

  I shot up straight. “Tristan! I know where Jillian and Logan are!”

  * * *

  “Jillian had a boyfriend who gave her a gold bracelet,” I told Tristan. “She was in love with him. I bet they went to find him.” My leg bounced up and down, shaking the Styrofoam container on my lap and even the cot.

  “Where were you living then?” he asked.

  “Um...” Should I tell him? Now that I knew their location, any telepath in this place could just pluck the information from my mind anyway. “Nebraska,” I said. “Union, Nebraska.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Gavin. Gavin... He was quiet. Smart. But his last name...” Finally I gave up. “I don’t think I ever learned his last name.”

  “Let’s do a search for all the Gavins in Union,” Tristan said. “We can use a computer in the Lab.” He pressed the buzzer and looked over his shoulder. “You’re going to sp—”

  Too anxious to wait patiently for the guard, I jumped up. Vegetable lasagna and blueberry pie spilled down the Lilybrook Lightning hoodie I was wearing, and a bit got on my gray prison pants.

  Tristan chuckled and tapped his temple. “You’re going to spill, I was about to say.” He went to the bathroom for a towel as I grabbed the fuchsia and chartreuse backpack from under the cot.

  I shed my messy clothes and pulled on a pair of jeans. Tristan’s sister was two years younger than me, but her jeans were still too long. Even worse, they had five glittery, sequined butterflies appliquéd down one of the legs. “Are all of your sister’s clothes like this?” I asked Tristan, showing him the butterflies. Jillian and Logan would crack up, seeing me wear something so outrageous.

  He grinned. “That’s tame for her.”

  “She dyed her hair purple too.” I pulled her indigo sweater over my head, then slid into my laceless sneakers and pressed the buzzer again. “Bright purple with streaks of lavender.”

  “Yeah, it was pink last year,” Tristan said, then his smile faded. “Wait. How do you know her hair is purple?”

  I blinked. “I...I don’t know. I just do.” I searched for a loose strand of purple hair on the jeans or sweater. I must have seen one.

  But no, the clothes were clean.

  Tristan stared at me. “Tess...”

  I saw him walking to me, but I saw his sister too. Amber. No—her name was Ember. Wearing a pair of jeans with sequined butterflies. Hair shiny, straight and purple. Rehearsing with her band, strumming an electric guitar and singing into a microphone. A white sheet hung behind them, displaying the band’s name in gold spray paint.

  “Her band’s name is Lyre.” My whole body grew hot, then cold.

  “It’s the clothes,” Tristan whispered. “You’re wearing her clothes.”

  I shrieked and pulled them off as if they burned. The vision disappeared. Tristan pulled a new sweatshirt over me, and I put my gray pants back on. In a daze, I sank onto the chair. “What was that?”

  “I think you might be—Oh God.” He bounded to the door, then pounded on the buzzer and yelled for help.

  The fog was coming back, and I pushed it away. The Styrofoam container was still on the floor where I’d dropped it, and automatically I leaned down to pick it up. It slipped from my hands as an image blasted into my consciousness of the young woman who’d put my dinner in the carton—she’d just discovered she was pregnant and was worried she didn’t make enough money working at Hawthorne’s. Patricia Garrity. That was her name.

  Images of dozens of people who’d sat in the chair I was sitting in now appeared before me. The chair used to be in the prison’s visiting room. It looked just like all the other chairs, but I knew it was this exact chair, and then it sat in a supply closet for a couple of years before it was moved in here. Faces of all the people who’d sat in it flashed in my mind like a rapid slide show. I knew all their names. I knew if they were prisoners or visitors. I knew the name of the maintenance man who’d bolted the chair to the floor of this cell back in 1995: Jerry Herrington. He could change his hair and eye color at will.

  I shot up from the chair, and the visions faded a bit. Shaking, I clutched the wall for support. But touching the wall made it worse; more images exploded, sharp and vibrant images of everyone who’d ever been in thi
s cell.

  Dennis Connelly: so relieved his son was back home safe.

  John Kellan: too good to be just an investigator. Closing the Carson case should earn him that promotion.

  Dr. Sheldon: she doesn’t care what Kellan says, Tristan can stay with that poor neutral girl in the Underground as long as he wants.

  The guards: Weasel Face was Warren Fontanini. He was awed that someone like Tristan Connelly wanted to be friends with him. Sam Santiago was the heavy evening guard with the squeaky shoes. He planned to apply to be an investigator as soon as he lost weight. The day guard with the spiky yellow hair was Shawn Harris. He’d laughed at the note I’d written to my parents, and instead of delivering it, he’d crumpled it up and thrown it away.

  And the people who’d been held under observation in this cell over the years—men, women, even children...some psionic, some neutral, all frightened.

  Tristan’s hoodie forced images into me too: Tristan stuffing it into his duffle bag, realizing he shouldn’t have brought it to Twelve Lakes in case I saw it. Buying it from the Lilybrook High School bookstore with money he’d made from his first APR paycheck when he was fifteen. Wearing it last March when Kellan pulled him aside: Hey, Junior, how’d you like to jump-start your career and go on your first investigation?

  All these images swirled around me, making me dizzy. Faces. Names. Ages. Dates. Talking, thinking, chattering, becoming louder, faster, detonating one after another, forcing the real world down a long tunnel.

  Clutching my head, I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to block the visions.

  But they wouldn’t stop. They were suffocating me.

  So I did the only thing I could do. I opened myself up to the fog and called it in, called it all in, and it came swiftly, rushing to me, darker than ever before and so thick it was almost solid.

  tristanhelpme

  I had just enough time to see the breathless panic in his eyes before the fog slammed into me like a brick wall.

  And then there was nothing.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Heavy.

  Dark.

  Silent.

  Numb.

  And then...a whisper.

  “Tessa.”

  Tristan.

  “Wake up, Tessa.”

  So far away. So heavy.

  “Please, Clockwise. Open your eyes.”

  More voices. Low, mumbled.

  Tristan was gripping my hand.

  Then I heard other people around me. Doctors, nurses, guards.

  Each of them brought visions, and when they placed their hands on me, the visions became vibrant and razor sharp. They ebbed and flowed nonsensically through my consciousness, twisting together like snakes. With a whimper, I surrendered to the fog again.

  “Stop touching her!” Tristan’s voice crackled through the fog. “You’re making it worse.” Each word became harder to hear, the last part just an echo, and then they all disappeared.

  Only Tristan touched me now, but I went deeper into the fog until I no longer felt his hand on mine.

  If I wanted to, I could keep going, deeper and deeper, until I felt nothing at all.

  The fog never lied to me. The fog never betrayed me.

  In the fog there were no visions. No blood. No pain, no guilt, no all my fault.

  They could take away the shoelaces and drawstrings. They could take away the razor blades. But no one could take away the fog.

  And if I went deep enough, I could stay in the fog forever.

  But...

  Jillian. Logan.

  Mom and Dad.

  They needed me.

  So I clawed my way back from the blackness, lifting the fog, making it thin and thick, close and far, dark and light.

  There. Perfect.

  I held the fog steady.

  No more images appeared. No more visions emerged.

  Whatever was happening to me, I could control it.

  * * *

  I opened my eyes.

  He was there, staring down at me.

  “Tristan.”

  My voice was so soft I barely heard it, but he collapsed with a heavy sigh, his head burrowing to my stomach. “Thank God.”

  The guards left the cell, leaving Tristan and me with Dr. Sheldon.

  Dennis Connelly was there too, near the door. He watched me for a moment, brows knit with worry, then slipped out before I remembered to be afraid of him.

  Dr. Sheldon approached me, palms out, and I shrank back. Tristan immediately shifted to block her access to me, throwing his arms wide. “No one touches her.”

  Twisting her lips, the doctor retreated. “I will have to examine you soon, Tessa. But for now, let’s try to figure out what happened without me touching you. Tristan said you put on his sister’s clothes and had a vision of her, and then you fainted. Is that right? You had a vision?”

  I decided to cooperate, as long as she didn’t try to touch me. Being careful to keep the fog balanced, I sat up and drew my hands safely into the sleeves of Tristan’s hoodie. “I had more than one vision. A lot more.” I recounted my visions, giving her names, dates, details. “It’s almost like I was—”

  Tristan listened breathlessly until he stopped me with a single whispered word. “Retrocognitive.”

  I blinked at him. “Yeah, but I’m...I’m neutral.”

  “Retrocognition is psychically knowing the history of a person or object,” Dr. Sheldon said. “That’s what you did.”

  “You’re psionic, Tessa,” Tristan said.

  I said nothing, letting the word sink in.

  Retrocognitive.

  I was paranormal after all.

  I was psionic.

  Me. The runt of the litter. Tiny little Tessa.

  Earlier today I’d imagined the little boy losing his mitten, and Kellan breaking the coffee maker and flying into the fridge when Heath punched him. Were those images really visions?

  “But I don’t like that the visions made you pass out,” Tristan said. “Is that going to happen every time?”

  “The visions didn’t make me faint,” I said. “The fog did.”

  “What fog?” The question came from both of them.

  “The fog,” I said with a shrug. “It’s always been in the background, but I’ve noticed it a lot more since I’ve been here. I bring it when I’m upset and lift it when I need to think clearly.”

  When their confused expressions didn’t change, I explained further. “The visions wouldn’t stop. I tried closing my eyes, but they still came. Touching things made it worse, but even when I touched nothing, they still came. Faster and faster, dozens, hundreds, one after another. The only way to make them stop was to call in the fog. And it came in so fast and so heavy that I passed out.”

  “I bet that’s why you get sick in crowded places,” Tristan said. “The fog has trouble containing the visions from all those people. And I bet that’s why our psychics could never get a clear reading on anything your family left behind. That fog was obscuring their visions.”

  Could that be true? I was the reason Dennis Connelly couldn’t find us? I’d been protecting my family all these years?

  But I was also the one who’d betrayed them.

  “You had your ability extremely well-hidden,” Dr. Sheldon said. “I’ve examined you several times, twice specifically looking for psionics, and I never saw anything. This fog of yours must be very strong. It’s probably been stifling your retrocognition your whole life.” She slid her pen in her lab coat pocket and stood. “I’d like see it in action. Let’s go up to the Lab.”

  I stiffened. “No. Please. If I lift the fog I’ll lose control again.”

  “You’ll be perfectly safe.” She held out her hand.


  I shrank back behind Tristan, who immediately sprang up to shield me. “She. Said. No.”

  Dr. Sheldon tucked her clipboard under her arm and sighed. “I can’t test an unwilling subject. Maybe later this week?”

  I shook my head. I had no intention of having another vision, ever again.

  I only needed to do it one last time.

  * * *

  As soon as Dr. Sheldon left, I shot up and dug under the cot.

  “What are you doing?” Tristan asked, suspicion clear in his tone.

  I drew out the plastic bag I’d been searching for. “I’m going to read my parents’ rings.”

  “Why?”

  I almost laughed at him. “So I can prove the APR is wrong about them.”

  “But you already know they’re guilty.”

  “I was wrong about them too,” I said, and this time I did laugh, and it came out light and fluttery and gleeful. How could I not laugh? I was practically floating with joy. I was psionic! And now I had a way to prove my parents were innocent. How ridiculous of me to ever doubt them, to ever lose faith.

  Tristan knelt in front of me with a sigh. “Just...be careful. Promise you won’t run into the fog if you don’t like what you see.”

  No need to promise that. I wouldn’t see anything I didn’t want to. I’d never been more sure of anything in my life.

  I pulled the rings from the bag and closed my palm around them. Then I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and lifted the fog.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  The visions exploded into my consciousness, like they’d been trapped inside the rings and couldn’t wait to be released. Secrets imprisoned in darkness suddenly freed, bursting into the light. The big bang.

  Jumbled, twisted, so bright they were almost fluorescent, the visions blurred together and swirled around me. Only the occasional flash, snippets of my parents’ past, made it through—Logan plunking the keys of our grand piano with chubby toddler fingers, Jillian pouting at the sight of her private school uniform, my father taking my mother’s hand and whispering her name—as the snarl of visions became denser, tighter, closer, squeezing the air from my lungs.