by S. A. Fenech
“Yeah, that’s Emma. Sorry, I don’t know her last name.”
“That’s all right. We already have her details—just wanted to confirm it with you.”
“Has she been caught?” Dad asked.
“No, we’re still looking for—”
“Is she a risk to my daughter? Shouldn’t there be an officer on protection here?”
The detective didn’t seem guilty at all as he said, “There’s been a plain clothes officer outside the whole time.”
To protect us or to keep watch? I wondered, worried about what they might have seen or heard, and why they had kept their presence secret.
“We’re doing what we can to apprehend the other girl,” the detective continued. He put his tablet away and stood. “Thank you for your time, Olivia. I will be in touch, but feel free to contact me first if you do remember anything that could help us bring Emma in and help keep you safe.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The hospital courtyard was small and enclosed on all four sides with glass and brick, and filled mostly with people sitting and drinking coffee. But the grass was soft, and the trees created a soft, dappled-green light around us that lifted my spirits.
Dean sat on a bench about twenty feet away from me. He was off his drip and had been told to get some gentle exercise, so we walked slowly down from our rooms to get some fresh air, and do some testing. I needed to see how far his influence on me extended.
I took another step backwards and winced.
“There it is.” I wandered back to Dean and sat next to him. “That’s about it. I mean, I might be able to push a bit farther, but that’s the point when things start hurting.”
I rubbed my temples. “Hospital is probably one of the worst places to have enhanced emotion-based powers. So many intense feelings here. Maybe out in general public I could get farther away before things became too much for me. And at some point, I’m guessing I’m going to have to go back to high school.”
“Do you think it will be as bad as in hospital?”
I gave Dean a look that showed what I thought about the emotional levels of people in a high school. I made a little whooshing sound and mimed my head blowing up. “I need to get this under control though. I need to be able to be away from you. Not that I don’t like being with you—I mean, I do—but I’m sure you don’t want to be forced to follow me around all the time, and really, we only just met each other, and now we’re like, squish, together, with the close-proximity thing all the time and...” And I was rambling.
“I really don’t mind,” he told me softly. “Really.”
My heart fluttered and I fidgeted with my fingers. “It’s not ideal though. I don’t want you having to feel responsible for my sanity like that. It’s too much.”
Dean nodded, his expression vacant.
“Maybe you could block me again. Permanently. Then I wouldn’t have to deal with any of this. I’d be normal.”
I glanced over at Dean as he thought through my proposal. He was still so pale, and a small shine of sweat on his skin told me everything his lack of expression didn’t about the pain he was still in.
“But what about Emma? What if she comes back, decides she wants revenge or something? I’m safe; I can block her if she comes after me, but if you’re normal again, you won’t be able to protect yourself.”
“Then I’d need you to stay close by anyway. So no solution there. But to be honest, if she comes after me again, I kind of want to have my powers to fight back with.”
I hung my head, kicking at the dirt under the seat. My hand rested on the bench right beside Dean’s and he lifted his little finger and placed it over mine. We hadn’t really touched much, or kissed, or done anything romantic since I’d first woken up. And we hadn’t really talked about that night. What he wanted to tell me. What I felt for him.
Things were kind of awkward.
But that small action, that small touch between our fingers, meant everything to me. It gave me the strength to ask more from Dean than I wanted to.
“We’re going to have to work something out.” I looked him in the eyes. “And to do that, I think we’re going to have to tell my parents. Everything.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Mom popped her head around the corner of my door. She had a huge smile on her face. “Guess who’s getting discharged today!”
Dad walked in beside her. “Is it me? Gosh, I sure hope it’s me.”
“Daaaad,” I groaned. I sat cross-legged on my bed, and Dean was in the armchair by the window, as we’d both been waiting anxiously for my parents to arrive.
“Well, it does feel a bit like we’ve all had a long hospital stay. Aren’t you ready to go home?”
I paused and bit my lip. “Not really. I don’t think I can come home yet.”
“Do you think she’s scared about re-integrating into society?” Mom asked Dad, cheekily.
Dad looked at me, offended. “It can’t be that you like the food here more than you like my cooking.”
“I’m serious, guys. I... kind of can’t leave until Dean leaves.”
I didn’t need empath powers to understand the looks they were giving me.
“It’s not what you think. This isn’t just about some teenage crush. There’s more to it than that, and I know it’s going to sound crazy, but just hear me out. This is truth time, okay?”
At the word truth, I had their full attention. Mom sat on the bed beside me, dead serious. “Okay, Livvy. We’re listening.”
“There’s so much to tell you...” I took a deep breath and started at the beginning. I explained what I’d experienced the night of the quake, and leaving with Jake and his team. I explained my powers and how they worked. I explained how Jake was able to manipulate me, and them, with those same powers. I explained what had happened the night in the park, what had really happened, and what I’d really done. That I remembered it all, and the effect it was having on me now. I explained that was why I had to stay close to Dean.
My parents listened. They didn’t say anything. But what could they say when presented with it all?
“I know this is a lot to take in, and I know you are having trouble believing any of it is real, which is why I asked you to bring something in for me.”
Mom reached into her tote bag, looking dazed. “The phone directory? I had to ask around our neighbors to find one. What is it going to do?”
I half-smiled at my mom. “Hopefully, it will prove to you what I can do. It’s my disposable demonstration tool.”
I took the brick-sized book off my mum, and let the emotion I could feel nearby channel through me. Even with Dean in the room, I was still ‘on.’ With his blocker ability, he basically brought me back down to normal empath level. I had plenty enough strength for my demonstration, and without even flexing, I easily tore the phone book in half across its spine.
Mom gasped.
Dad picked up one of the halves and had a couple of unsuccessful goes himself, inspecting it for clues as to how I’d done it.
“It’s not a trick. And you know I’ve been screened for drugs—this isn’t some steroid- or meth-induced rage strength,” I reminded them.
The room was silent for a while.
“Okay,” said Mom.
“Okay?” I replied.
“Okay.”
“Okay,” added Dad.
“Okay,” Mom said again for emphasis.
She looked back at Dad and at me and at Dean.
“Well, this is huge. Okay.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Congratulations on having superpowers?” Dad half-smiled, and I laughed out loud.
“This is really real?” Mom asked, and Dean and I both nodded. “Okay. I believe you. I do.”
Dad became serious again. “Who else knows?”
“Just the girl, Emma. And the other guys that got brought into hospital, but... you know. I don’t think the detective knows. I’ve tried not to give anything away.”
�
�Good. That’s smart, Lollipop. We’re going to have to think about this some more, work out what it all means. But thank you for telling us. You really can tell us anything. Even when you develop superpowers, since that seems to be what you teenagers are doing these days.”
“Oh, my girl,” Mom sobbed and stepped across to wrap me up in a huge hug.
“Are you the same, with super-strength?” Dad asked Dean.
“It’s a bit different for me. Not as exciting.”
From within Mom’s embrace, I said, “His power is what’s keeping me stable now. He has sort of a dampening effect. That’s why I need to stay near him now my powers are overloaded. Dad, you saw it in the corridor that day.”
He puffed out a breath and rubbed the back of his head. “I did see something. I could see it was real, but I thought it was psychological trauma real, not paranormal superpowers real.”
I reluctantly withdrew from Mom so I could get to the next big issue. “That’s why I can’t get discharged until Dean does. I figure it will be easy to make them keep me in longer again. I just have to have another seizure.”
“On purpose?” Mom looked shocked. “We can probably just ask to hold off on discharging you. I know they are short on beds, but still.”
“Trust me, I’m not looking forward to doing it. But Dean could easily be in here another week or two, and they won’t let me stay that long without a reason. I mean, if they try and wheel me out of here, it’s going to happen again anyway.”
“Let us at least talk to the doctors first. We’ll say we saw some odd behavior from you just now. That should be enough to get some more time,” Dad said.
Mom took a chair by the bed, shaking her head slightly. “This is all so... Dean, how did your parents handle this when you told them?”
My whole body froze and I tried to somehow suck Mom’s words back out of existence, but there was no way of dispelling the tension they’d just dropped into the room.
Dean didn’t look phased, but he rarely did. He spoke calmly, and I gritted my teeth and tried not to cry as though every bit of emotion he was blocking ended up channeled into me instead. “My mom died a while ago, and my dad won’t visit hospitals. We haven’t told him anything. He’s not very... reliable.”
“He hasn’t visited you?” Mom looked enraged. “At all?”
Dean actually looked worried. He shrugged and mouthed ‘no’.
Mom stood back up and went straight to him, giving him a hug that was even longer and more smothering than the one she’d given me. I could feel Dean’s shock hit me like a wall as his blocking abilities disappeared for a moment and a huge swell of emotions washed over me.
Luckily, he recovered quickly, and he even brought his arms up and returned the hug. No one could deny a mom hug.
“What happens once you are both discharged from hospital?” Dad asked me, looking like he had already thought through what was going to happen next and wasn’t sure he liked it.
I put on my ‘please forgive me’ face. “Can Dean live with us for a little while?”
Chapter Twenty-Five
It had taken another seizure to convince the doctors I needed to stay, but we’d made sure Dean was close enough that it didn’t last too long. It still left me feeling like I was a sack full of vomiting cats.
I’d become the hospital’s favorite lab rat, with various specialists going over my case and seeming way too excited about the completely abnormal and inexplainable brain activity my scans were showing. I wished it all wasn’t on file, but I just had to hope there wasn’t some neural marker that screamed ‘this person has superpowers!’
The doctors decided to try a range of different medications, which I disposed of secretly instead of taking. I played it weak for a while after the seizure, then showed sudden improvement when the doctors started talking about releasing Dean.
It was another week and a half before Dean and I were both discharged at the same time.
I packed all the clothes and belongings my parents had brought in for me into the bag I’d been living out of. Dean didn’t have anything with him to take. No one had brought in belongings for him—no clothes or necessities for his stay. He’d mostly been living in hospital gowns at first, and more recently, his nurse had found a couple of changes of clothes from lost-and-found and charity boxes for him. The clothes he’d come into hospital wearing had been cut off him during surgery and were so covered in blood they were disposed of with the biological waste.
In the wait between being told we were being discharged, and actually officially being discharged, I thought I would go mad with impatience. I paced anxiously, but knew it wasn’t all just the waiting. There was something else. Something I didn’t want to do, but felt I had to all the same.
I had to stand on tiptoe to peek through the small window in the door of the dorm-style ward they were in. I wasn’t brave enough to go inside, but even from here, I could see them straight away. That Hollywood-crush-style blonde hair.
It was growing out now. I could see dark roots showing at both Jake and Jamie’s scalps. Of course. Everything about them had been fake. The casts on their arms were real though.
Dean had come with me, but I didn’t think he cared to see the person who’d shot him.
But I felt the need to see them again. To say sorry maybe, or goodbye, or I don’t know. After what I’d taken from them, I didn’t know what I could do or say to make up for it.
Even if they were able to hear me.
I almost pushed the door open to step in when I noticed other people in the room. Between Jake, Jamie, and Donny’s bed, a doctor was standing with an older couple, going over paperwork. One of them turned, as though sensing I was watching, and I ducked down out of sight.
I figured they were probably more detectives, based on how they were dressed. Detective Phillips had told me there were others working on Jake’s case, with the team gathering enough evidence to tie them to a number of crimes in the area and elsewhere. Regardless of what was going on, I didn’t want to disturb people in an intensive care ward.
As Dean and I walked back to our room, I said a silent goodbye to the hospital that had started to feel like home. Now we really were going home, I didn’t know what life would be like anymore. With Dean moving in, and dealing with our powers, and whatever our relationship was now, and my parents being involved in the lot of it—it was going to be complicated. I was going back home, but nothing could take me back to how things were before.
Everything had changed. I had changed.
I’d started out with such romantic, selfish notions of heroism. Now I had a new understanding of what being a hero really meant. The power, the risk, and the reality of danger and sacrifice.
Dean and I had survived our brush with heroism, but only just.
Doing whatever I could to go back to being normal was the best plan now. But I could couldn’t deny the fire of pure power, the desire to be more, have more, simmering inside me, fueled by emotions.
My experiences with Jake’s team, with Dean, had shown me there was injustice all around. I didn’t want to be a hero just for heroism’s sake anymore—but if I had the power to make a difference, didn’t the world deserve that? And how did that fit into my everyday existence, going to school, dating Dean and being a daughter to two amazing parents?
I didn’t know. I only knew that now I had changed, the world had changed for me too.
How could I ever be normal again?
Continue reading Livvy’s story in Book Two - Emotionally Unstable.
Free sample chapter at the end of this book.
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About the Author
Whether it's painting artworks or writing novels, creating fantasy works is Selina’s biggest passion. She lives in Australia with her husband and daughter and loves food, gardening, geekery, and all things fantasy.
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Memory’s Wake Trilogy
Memory’s Wake
Hope’s Reign
Providence Unveiled
Memory’s Wake Coloring Book
Memory’s Wake Companion Guide
Empath Chronicles
Emotionally Charged
Emotionally Unstable
Free Chapter from Empath Chronicles Book 2 - Emotionally Unstable
Dean put his hand on my shoulder to steady me.
We edged closer.
“I was wrong. I’m not ready,” I mumbled.
The energy flooded into me, like overactive bees humming through my veins. It already felt like it could drive me crazy.
“You can do it. You’re strong.”
We took another step closer to the school gates.
“Oof. Do you think you can ramp up your blocking amount at all?”