by Clara Kensie
Once I swallowed my scream, I told her everything about my date with Tristan. She was the only person in the world I could tell everything to, especially the kissing part. We talked in whispers, smothering our giggles behind our hands until the sun rose.
Mid-morning, I rushed to meet Tristan for our daily run. It’d been too many hours since I’d last seen him. We ran down the path at a slower pace than usual, smiling widely and stopping completely when he pulled me behind a tree for a long, delicious kiss. Finally we found a quiet place in the park and lay on the grass and watched the clouds. How odd that our first date was just last night. I felt like we’d been a couple for years rather than only a few hours.
We were brand-new and forever at the same time.
He walked me home, holding my hand and sometimes raising it to his lips for a kiss, and when we reached my driveway, he gave my cheek a respectful peck.
I didn’t want respectful. I didn’t want a peck. Grabbing the collar of his T-shirt to pull him down, I sealed my lips to his. He slid his arms around me and lifted me to my toes. I slid my arms around his neck, bringing him even closer, never letting my lips part from his.
He tensed and pulled away just before I heard a deep cough from behind me.
“Hello, kids.”
Oh God. My dad.
Tristan scraped his hand through his hair, his face reddening as I felt the blood drain from mine. I’d been so entranced with him that I’d forgotten to send my father the crossed-fingers signal.
He strode over with an open smile and an extended hand.
“Morning, Mr. Spencer,” Tristan said as my dad gripped his hand and shook it up and down. Dad engaged him in a friendly discussion about the afternoon’s NFL games as he casually slid his hand onto Tristan’s shoulder and kept it there.
My father didn’t even like football. But he wasn’t out here because of the kissing. He could have just given a stern tap on the front window to stop us from kissing.
He was out here because he needed to shake Tristan’s hand again.
I tried to keep my breath even, calm.
With a final squeeze of Tristan’s shoulder, Dad released him. He caught my eye as he strolled back to the house. “Come see me when you get in,” he said with a reassuring wink. “No rush.”
“Whoops,” Tristan said as soon as we were alone again. “I hope I didn’t get you in trouble. He didn’t seem too upset though.”
I couldn’t speak. I gave him a noncommittal shrug instead.
“Want to come over and study later?” he said. “Maybe watch the games?”
“Um.” I couldn’t. I had to find out why Dad needed to shake Tristan’s hand again. “I can’t. Sorry.”
“Meet me at the corner tomorrow morning then,” he said. “I’ll walk you to school.”
“Okay.” I glanced at the house. “I have to go.”
He bent down to kiss me, then stopped. “Better not get caught doing that again.” He chuckled and jogged away.
I remained frozen on the driveway until the front door opened again, and my dad shuffled over to me. “Come on, Tessa Blessa. Let’s go in.” With his arm around my shoulders, he guided me inside.
The moment the door closed, I stammered, “What’s wrong?”
He stumbled to the living room, and with a huge exhale, collapsed on the couch. “I can’t see through Tristan. I tried last night and again this morning.”
A burning heaviness like hot coals formed in my stomach, and I sank next to him. “Your mobile eye stopped working? This is it? It’s over?”
“Nothing is over. My mobile eye is fine. I watched your sister’s boyfriend this morning as a test. He was sitting at his computer, filling out a college application. The problem isn’t me, Tessa. It’s Tristan.”
“Why? What’s wrong with him?”
“Nothing’s wrong with him. There have always been people it simply doesn’t work on. Tristan may be one of them. Sometimes it takes more than one handshake, and it doesn’t ever work on about five percent of the people I touch. They have some kind of natural immunity to it. Remember your first-grade teacher, Mrs. Heinrich? It didn’t work on her. There’ve been a few people over the years. And of course, it doesn’t work all the time on Dennis Connelly. I can only see through him if he’s close.”
I flinched at the sound of his name.
“We can say his name out loud, Tessa,” Dad said. “He won’t hear us.”
I shook my head, then had a thought that made me gasp. “You don’t think Tristan—”
“If Connelly knew we were in Twelve Lakes, he’d come here himself. He wouldn’t send a kid to do his dirty work.” He patted my knee. “I’d check on your boyfriends even if we didn’t have to worry about Connelly. Any parent would, if they had the same ability I have. Tristan seems like a great kid. But I simply can’t trust someone who I can’t watch.”
I remembered my parents demanded I be transferred from Mrs. Heinrich’s first-grade class, even though she was a sweet elderly woman and the closest thing to a grandmother I ever had. Now I knew why they didn’t like her.
“I’ll try to watch him again this afternoon,” Dad said. “If it works, you can go out with him again.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
He didn’t reply.
* * *
I spent the afternoon in my room, staring at my homework but unable to concentrate on any of it. After resisting Tristan for weeks, I’d finally faced my fears and gone out with him. And I’d loved it. But now, less than twenty-four hours later, I could lose him.
Dad didn’t come up to help me study. He was holed up in his office, concentrating on Tristan.
Please let his mobile eye work on Tristan this time. Please.
Mom called me down to make dinner, but I was more of a hindrance than a help. I put a tablespoon, instead of a teaspoon, of dill into the salad dressing, and I forgot to set the timer on the oven, so the pork chops burned. We had to toss everything and make spaghetti instead.
When it was time to eat, I sat down but didn’t pick up my fork. “Did it work?” I asked my dad.
His stony face showed me my answer. “I tried twice. It didn’t work either time.”
Logan spooned tomato sauce over his pasta. “What didn’t work?”
“Dad still can’t watch Tristan,” Jillian said.
I stared hard at my plate. “So that’s it? I have to stop seeing him?”
“I’m afraid so, Blessa,” Dad said. “I don’t like being blind to him. I’m sorry.”
I had to break up with Tristan.
I blinked, trying to make the idea sink in.
“But it’s not fair!” Jillian said. “If you didn’t have your mobile eye, you would trust him.”
Logan slurped a long noodle into his mouth. “He’s a great guy, Dad. He always stops by my locker to say hi. He even offered to tutor me.”
“Jillian, Logan, thank you for your input, but this is the way it has to be,” Mom said. She looked like she was about to cry. “I’m so sorry, Babydoll.”
Jillian pounded her fist on the table, making Mom flinch as if she’d been slapped. “You two have always been overprotective of her. We all have. And not just since Dennis Connelly tried to take her. We’ve always treated her like she’s breakable. But you know what? Tessa is not breakable. She’s normal. She’s the only normal person in this freak show of a family. So let her be normal. Let her be with Tristan.”
“It’s not just Tessa.” Dad nodded regally, like a judge. “We’d make the same decision about you if I couldn’t watch Ethan. Tessa can have a boyfriend. But it has to be someone I can watch.”
I didn’t want a boyfriend just to have a boyfriend. I wanted Tristan. But I couldn’t say that out loud. I couldn’t go against my parents’ wishes.
; But Jillian could.
“No. It has to be Tristan,” she said. Her utensils rose from the table and spun around like a tornado. “Tessa has friends for the first time in years, and it’s all because of him. If you take him away, she’ll just go back to the way she was before.”
“We are trying to keep her safe,” Mom said, spine straight, lips straight, eyes boring straight at Jillian.
A low rumbling noise came from the table. The bowl of spaghetti was vibrating.
“Mom, it’s okay,” I said. “I’ll do it. I’ll break up with him.” I shot Jillian a look. Stop.
“Five percent, Dad!” Jillian cried. “Your mobile eye doesn’t work on one out of every twenty people. That’s a lot. Tristan happens to be that one in twenty. You just don’t like it that he makes Tessa happy, and you can’t.”
“Enough!” Mom roared, and the bowl of spaghetti flew into the air, then hurled itself against the wall.
Trapping a scream behind my lips, I bolted, ducking behind my chair. Jillian’s utensils dropped like stones, clattering to the table.
Dad pushed himself up from the table and put his arms around Mom. “Jillian, go to your room,” he said without looking at her.
White-faced, Jillian scrambled away.
As our father comforted our mother, soothing her with his firm, calm voice, and Logan helped me to stand, I stared at the tomato sauce on the wall. It slowly dripped down, thick and pulpy and red, like blood.
Normally I would have cleaned it up. But this time, I just walked out of the room.
* * *
After our parents fell asleep that night, I went to Jillian’s room for her mobile eye training session. Logan wasn’t there yet. Good. I needed to thank my sister for defending me, even though it hadn’t worked. And then I needed to ask how to break up with Tristan when my heart felt like it had been hacked into thousands of tiny pieces.
She lay on her bed with a scowl on her lips and earbuds in her ears, ripping through pages of a magazine. Several items—a hairbrush, a hand mirror, a bottle of lotion—floated in the air, angrily pulsing to the beat of music I couldn’t hear.
I knocked on the door frame. “Jill?”
She looked up and pulled the earbuds out, and the items zipped to the dresser as she bounded across the room. “It doesn’t have to be over just because Mom and Dad say it is,” she hissed, dragging me to sit on the bed. “You don’t have to break up with Tristan. I can help you keep seeing him.”
“How?”
“I’ve been thinking about this all night. All you have to do is tell them you’re going to a friend’s house, like that girl Vanessa from your Spanish class. But really, you’ll go to Tristan’s.”
“But Dad watches us all the time,” I said.
“Don’t worry about that. I can tell when he’s doing it now. I get this little pull in my head. So every time he starts, I’ll text you.” She hopped up and pirouetted across the floor, her hairbrush flip-flopping behind her. “You can leave the room and go hide in the bathroom or something. He won’t watch you there.”
Jillian’s plan could work. For the first time in our lives, we could lie to our parents.
But we were already lying to everyone else. Home was the only place in the world I didn’t have to lie. It was bad enough we weren’t telling our parents about Jillian’s training sessions. But that was to protect them, so our dad could eventually rest. Sneaking around to see Tristan was completely different. It would be worse than a lie. It would be a betrayal.
I swallowed hard. “I won’t lie to Mom and Dad.”
She stopped mid-twirl and the hairbrush fell to the floor with a dull thump. She gave a long, slow sigh. “I know. Just thought I’d try.”
“It’s better if I end it now anyway,” I said, thrusting out my chin. “It won’t hurt to leave him when we have to run again.”
She raised one perfectly plucked eyebrow. “Now you’re just lying to yourself.”
There was a knock on the door frame, and Logan entered, carrying the Zener ESP cards. He slid them from the case and made them shuffle themselves in the air. “Ready to practice?”
Jillian’s face tightened. “Not tonight.”
“You’re not getting headaches, are you?” I asked.
“I’m just tired.” She waved a finger at the light switch, and the room darkened. “Get out. Both of you. I need to sleep.”
I thanked Jillian again and left with Logan. The Zener cards zipped after us just before the door swung shut, and he caught them in his palm. “That sucks about Tristan,” he said.
“Yeah.” One of the framed pictures on the wall was crooked. Perhaps at one time the yellow flowers in the picture were bright and cheery, but now they were faded and dingy.
Logan wiggled his index finger, and the frame straightened itself. “I’ll go jogging with you again if you want.”
“Thanks, Logan.”
When sleep finally came for me, my nightly dream came with it, Dennis Connelly’s eyes feverish with victory as he sliced me open with just a glance. I awoke shaking and breathless, biting my lips to stifle the scream clawing out of my throat, and I had to run my hands over my stomach to make sure my wounds were still closed.
He was coming for us anyway, whether my parents forbade me to date Tristan or not.
Chapter Thirteen
Tristan leaned against the thick oak tree at the corner the next morning, thumbs flying over his cell phone. When he saw me he tucked his phone in his pocket and gave me a cheerful wave. I had to force my feet to move toward him, when all I wanted to do was run back home and hide from what I had to do.
I studied him as I approached. What made him invulnerable to my father’s mobile eye? What made him different from almost everyone else in the world?
Probably the same thing that made me different from everyone else in my family: chance. Random, arbitrary, heartless chance.
We really did belong together.
And now I had to break up with him.
“Hi,” he said. “Was your dad upset about that kiss on your driveway yesterday?”
“He didn’t say anything about it.”
“Good. Then I can do this.” Dipping me backwards, he planted an enthusiastic kiss on my lips. He tasted like mint and smelled like soap. I wanted to slide my arms around his neck and press him closer and never let him go.
Instead I pushed him away. Closed my eyes. Took a breath.
Licked my lips, swallowed.
“Tristan, I—”
But I couldn’t say it.
“There’s something I need to do at home,” I said instead, then turned and ran back to the house.
* * *
My parents were still in the kitchen, eating breakfast and looking at papers spread over the table. When Mom saw me, she held her arms out. “Oh, Babydoll. That must have been so hard. Was he crushed? Come here.”
I didn’t step into her hug. I stayed where I was, gripping the strap of my book bag with both hands to keep them from trembling. “I won’t do it.”
They said nothing. They didn’t move at all except for raising their eyebrows in confusion, or maybe disbelief. Finally my mom’s arms dropped to her sides. “Tessa, don’t tell me—”
“There are a million reasons why you should trust Tristan,” I said, “and only one reason you don’t. A reason you wouldn’t even have if you didn’t have a mobile eye. But even if you never trust him, you can trust me.” I drew myself up as tall as I could. “Tristan thinks I’m Sarah Spencer, daughter of an author of economic books. He will never know the truth.”
With each word I spoke, I grew stronger. My hands stopped trembling, and I held my chin high. “I’m not going to lie to you. I’m not going to sneak around. I will still follow the rules. But I am not breaking up with Tristan.
”
I waited for them to respond or for Mom’s eyes to harden and the plates to start vibrating, but they just stared at me in stunned silence. So, keeping my chin high, I pivoted and marched out the door.
Tristan was walking up my driveway, tall and strong with concern visible in his eyes. “Everything okay?”
Laughing, I ran to him and jumped, wrapping my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist, and crushed my lips to his. “Everything’s perfect.” Not really, but he was perfect. And he was mine.
He spun me around, returning my kiss with one of his own before setting me down again. He took my book bag and put it over his shoulder, then tucked me under his arm as we headed for school.
I slid my arms tightly around him, determined to never let go until Dennis Connelly tore me away.
* * *
Mom was already in the kitchen when I went to help make dinner that night. Waiting for me, leaning against the table, wringing her hands. Rice, mushrooms, cheese and several cartons of organic chicken stock sat on the table behind her.
“I thought we were making chicken tetrazzini,” I said. Chicken tetrazzini was on the menu we’d planned for tonight. Simple, quick tetrazzini.
“I changed my mind,” she said, her voice forcibly bright. “Tonight we’re making mushroom risotto.”
Making risotto meant standing over the stove, adding the stock into the rice, a small amount at a time, and stirring, stirring, stirring until it absorbed.
She had me trapped.
Twenty minutes later, I’d grated the Parmesan, sliced and sautéed the mushrooms and coated the rice in oil in the pan. But she never said a word about Tristan or about my refusal to break up with him. She never moved from the table.
She just stood there. Watching.
Only when I was at the stove, stirring the first half cup of stock into the rice, did she say something. “I never wanted this life for you, Tessa,” she said. “I promised myself your childhood would be better than mine. And it was, at first. You had the biggest smile and these amazing green eyes that just sparkled.” She gave a mournful sigh. “But then everything...fell apart...and you lost your smile, and all I saw was the fear and loneliness in your eyes.”