by R. T. Lowe
“I like—”
“It’s pathetic! The school’s trying to be something it’s not. Little Ben? Seriously? This is Oregon. Not England. Not Oxford. Not Cambridge. And you’re just a dumb kid from a small town who fell for it. This isn’t going to change who you are or where you come from.”
Coos Bridge? Is he making fun of my hometown? Is that where he was going with this? Please. This wasn’t going to make him angry.
“Why don’t you have a girlfriend?” Bill said to him.
“What?” Felix heard himself say.
“Why don’t you have a girlfriend?”
“Because… because Emma dumped me. I haven’t—”
“Why’d she dump you?”
“Why?” Bill was clueless if he thought this was going to piss him off.
“You know the answer!” Bill shouted. “Why’d she dump you?”
“She said… she said I wasn’t like her.”
“Is that what she said? Bullshit! She said you’re not good enough for her. Didn’t she? Didn’t she? Didn’t she?” Each time Bill said ‘didn’t she?’ his voice grew louder, higher and angrier.
“Yes!” Sweat trickled down his forehead. His face was hot. Now Bill was starting to irritate him.
“She knew you would never amount to anything. She knew you were going to be a failure. She thought you’d flunk out of college. Didn’t she? Didn’t she?”
“Yes!”
“She thought you’d end up in the mill, didn’t she?”
“Yes!” His limbs were growing warm.
“She’s right!” Bill screamed.
“What?”
“You’re too goddamn stupid to understand that Emma was right!”
“What? What are you talking about? No she—”
“You’re not good enough for her! You never were! You never will be!”
“Shut up!”
“She dumped you like garbage!” Bill screamed, spittle spewing from his mouth.
“Shut up!” His stomach felt strange. His legs were shaking.
“She knew she could do better than you!”
“Shut up!” Now it was working; he wanted to jump over the table and plant his fist in Bill’s face.
“Emma cheated on you! She liked cheating on you. It turned her on. You were nothing to her! You were just a pet. A goddamn fluffy kitten. Pretty with no substance. You hear that? No substance! None! Somebody to keep around until something better came along. And that’s what you deserve. Because you’re nothing! And you never will be! You’re a loser! You’re white trash! White. Trash.”
The table began to vibrate. Then it shook. The legs lifted off the floor and bounced up and down, banging against the wood like a barn door in a windstorm. The books shifted around. The ones at the top of the stack slid off their perch, landing on the table with light thudding sounds.
“Focus!” Bill screamed at him. “The Books! Make them move! Make them move!”
Felix felt like everything had suddenly snapped into slow motion. He gritted his teeth and whispered to himself: “Move. Move. Get. Off. The. Table. Now.”
Every book on the table rocketed across the room and smashed into the wall. The echo cracked and rippled, finally fading away into the dusty recesses of the library.
“What are you feeling?” Bill shouted. He was in front of Felix now, his fingers pressing into Felix’s shoulders. “What do you feel? Focus on what you’re feeling. Talk to me! What do you feel?”
Felix’s breath felt tight in his throat. His whole body was shaking. He didn’t know if he was in shock, or what, but he felt weird. It was like he was watching somebody else from above. Maybe it was what people call an out-of-body-experience. He’d just made thirty books fly across the room. People can’t do stuff like that, right? How did he do that? And then it dawned on him as suddenly as if the ceiling had crashed down on his head.
“It’s all true,” he whispered softly. The journal. Allison’s room. I’m the Belus. Lofton Ashfield’s the Drestian. My parents weren’t my real parents. My real mom died in a mental hospital. This isn’t a hoax. I’m not being punked. It’s all true. It’s really true. Damn.
“What are you feeling?” Bill demanded, giving him a shake. “C’mon! Focus for me.”
Felix still had an urge to punch him in the face. “Warm and cold. I feel… uh… I feel… my legs and arms are a little tingly. And there’s something in my gut. Here.” He placed a hand on his stomach.
“What is it? What do you feel?”
“I don’t know. It’s weird. Heavy. I guess. It feels kinda heavy.”
“This is very important,” Bill said slowly, emphasizing each word. “Listen to me carefully. Focus on what you’re feeling now. Focus very hard. You need to recapture it, okay? This is how you’ll feel when you use the Source. Can you remember this? Can you make yourself feel this way?”
“I just did that, didn’t I?” A smile spread across Felix’s face. “I just did that with my mind. Unbelievable!”
“Don’t be so impressed with yourself,” Bill chided. “You’re the Belus. That was child’s play.” He turned and took off across the room to where the books lay on the floor in a heaping pile. “I didn’t mean any of that, by the way! Emma’s just a stupid kid. And my apologies to PC, although I do think the clock tower belongs in a theme park.” He scooped up an armful of books and ran back to the table. “You’re not a loser. And you’re the furthest thing from white trash than anyone I’ve ever met.” He dropped them on the table, sending up little puffs of white dust into the chilly air. Then he went to work hastily constructing a leaning-tower-of-Pisa-like structure.
“You can do better than Emma,” Bill went on. “And you will.” Bill’s voice sounded higher than normal. He was excited, but trying to hide it.
“It’s okay.” Felix didn’t feel warm anymore—or cold—and he wasn’t angry at Bill. His arms and legs were no longer tingling. He ran his hand over his stomach. The heavy sensation was gone. “I’m over her. I totally don’t give a shit anymore.” He recalled the secret game he’d played with his friends a few weeks ago. “But for some weird reason she keeps coming up.”
Bill wasn’t listening. He was straightening up the tower. “I want you to do that again.” He stepped back from the table. “Just like before. Close your eyes and visualize what you felt when you moved the books. When you recapture that feeling, open your eyes and move them. Got it?”
“Okay.” Felix cracked his knuckles and rolled his shoulders, steeling himself, breathing out firmly. He stared at the books in the half light of the library and then closed his eyes. He’d used visualization techniques in high school. His basketball coach thought it would improve his jump shot. This was basically the same thing. He breathed in through his nose. The books were giving off a hint of dampness.
So my arms were tingling, he thought. Tingle. Start tingling. He concentrated on his arms. They began to feel warm. A moment later, his fingers, then his hands, began to tingle. The warm prickling sensation spread up his arms and through his torso. It worked its way down his legs to his sneakers. Now my gut. Heavy. Heavy. Heavy. Make it feel heavy. Something shifted and tightened in his midsection. It was an odd sensation. It wasn’t like eating too much and it wasn’t like doing a hundred crunches: this was completely different.
He opened his eyes.
“Do it!” Bill commanded.
Felix raised his right hand to shoulder height. He didn’t know why he raised his hand; it was almost like his arm had a life of its own.
“Do it!”
The books exploded off the table, blistering across the room and slamming into the wall like a flock of directionally challenged birds mistaking a window for open air. The sharp corner of one hardbound pierced the wood paneling like a dart.
“Wow!” Bill whistled appreciatively. “That had some velocity.”
Felix lowered his hand, laughing. “That was awesome!”
It looked like Bill was about to say something to put a
lid on Felix’s excitement, but then thought better of it. “Yeah—that was pretty awesome. How do you feel?”
“Fine.” He looked down at himself. Everything had already returned to normal. Nothing was tingly, heavy, warm or cold—except for his feet which were beginning to feel a little numb because of his wet shoes.
“Excellent. I want you to try one more thing before we call it a night.” Bill reached down under the table and picked up a single book. It was a Russian title with a long name Felix didn’t recognize. “Let’s work on your control. Above all else, at this stage, that has to be your goal. It’s absolutely critical. Okay?”
“So what am I doing?” Felix asked. He was eager to try it again, to see what he could do.
“Show me some subtlety.” Bill gently placed the book in the center of the table.
Felix raised his right hand and went through the same visualization steps as before. One corner of the book came off the table an inch or two, then it flipped over. It struggled, kicking like a turtle stuck on its back. It jumped up a foot, hovered for a second and then shot toward the ceiling as though guided by an invisible hand. He tried to control it, but it was resisting him, wobbling around like a drunken pigeon. He wanted it to go up, and immediately it dropped several feet like an airplane encountering clear-air turbulence.
“Dammit!” Felix shouted, as the book, its pages fluttering, shot across the room away from him. He directed every ounce of energy at the book and finally caused it to stop just as it kissed the wall. Then he pulled it back, reeling it in like a fish caught on a hook.
“I’m gonna send it over to you.” He glanced over at Bill to see where he was. The book floated past Felix, making its way toward Bill. It was directly over the table now. He felt like he could do this. He was getting the knack. He could control it. He guided it closer to Bill. Slow and gentle, he said to himself. It actually listened to him, gliding smoothly through the air. Slow and gentle. Slow and gentle. Slow and—
Ka-ploof.
The book exploded in a cloud of confetti that hung in the air for a moment before wafting down lazily to the table and the floor all around it.
“What the?” Felix said, stunned. “What happened?”
Bill was laughing. He picked up a handful of paper and tossed it overhead like a New Year’s Eve reveler. “That looked like a pillow getting in the way of a shotgun.”
“I didn’t try to do that. I don’t even know how I did it.”
“Don’t be discouraged.” Bill came over to him. “It’s going to take some time before you get the feel for this. You should focus on the bigger picture. Think about what you just accomplished. There’s only one other person in the entire world who can do what you just did.”
He thought for a moment and said, “Lofton?”
Bill nodded, brushing aside some paper from the table. “Would you mind bringing Allison by my office sometime? I’d like to meet her.”
“Uh… sure.” He paused, watching Bill, but his expression showed nothing. “Why?” he asked.
“Nothing in particular.” Bill started toward the doorway. Felix followed. “I just want to talk to her. But it may have to wait a while. I won’t be around much for the next week or two. There are some things I need to take care of. As soon as I free up I’ll text you.”
Bill turned off the lights and they carefully made their way back down the hallway and the warped stairs, slipping out of the building the way they came. In a pounding rain, they left the Old Campus in opposite directions.
Chapter 36
Birthday Wishes
Mia saw the crater in the road a split second too late. The front left tire of the Volkswagen Jetta sank into the rain-filled pothole and splashed muddy water onto the windshield. She cringed. German engineers had designed her car for paved roads, not roads like these. The suspension made a frightful grinding noise, causing her passenger to shout out: “What the hell was that?”
“Sorry, Ethan,” she said meekly, glancing over at him. He was wearing a thick knitted ski hat that was pulled down to his eyebrows. Beneath the hat was a blindfold. He couldn’t see a thing. She’d made sure of that.
“Where the hell are we?” He sounded like he was about to fly off the handle.
“Almost there,” she said.
“Almost where?”
“You’ll find out when we get there.” She let off the accelerator and swerved to avoid another hole. “Is it my birthday or yours?”
Ethan’s lips tightened for a moment, then he frowned. “Yours, dear.”
“So would this be my birthday wish or your birthday wish?”
“Yours, dear,” he said obediently.
“Thank you, Ethan,” she said in her customer-service-rep-reading-from-a-script-voice (because she knew it annoyed him). “And thank you for your cooperation.”
He groaned and folded his arms across his chest.
The rubber blades on the windshield wipers squeaked as they began to gain traction and catch against the drying glass. It had poured through the night, but when they left their apartment in northeast Portland in the small hours of the morning it had eased to an intermittent drizzle. Now the rain had finally stopped. And that was a good thing, because they were about to go for a walk in the woods.
Mia had been dating Ethan for almost four years and they’d shared an apartment for the last two. They worked for the same company—that was where they’d met—and they were both accountants. But their mutual attraction had very little to do with crunching numbers or auditing financial statements.
Their friends liked to call them ‘the crazy people with the boring jobs’. Ethan, clever man that he was, just referred to their lifestyle as mullet living. They were all business up front: predictable, conservative, white collar jobs. But in the back, on their own time, they were adrenaline junkies who fed their addiction with any activity where screwing up meant instantaneous death: cliff jumping, free climbing, sky diving and bungee jumping out of helicopters were some of their favorites.
When Mia analyzed their relationship, which she was doing quite a lot of these days since her parents were pressuring her to get married before she turned thirty (she’d actually called her dad an asshole the last time he told her it was “time to cut bait or fish”), she thought that a single event had defined it. She believed most couples could say that if they gave it a little consideration. And for Mia and Ethan, that event had occurred three years ago.
Just before Mia’s twenty-sixth birthday, Ethan had asked her if she had a birthday wish. After only a moment’s thought, she told him that she’d always wanted to hangglide along the northern California coastline. So on the night of her birthday, over a candlelight dinner at her favorite Turkish restaurant, he gave her a card that read: ‘Your wish has been granted. Your bags are packed’.
The trip to California was amazing. She had the time of her life. Ethan organized the whole thing, even down to the tiniest details, and catered to her every need. It was fun, exciting, and spontaneous, like something right out of a movie.
And that’s how the birthday wish tradition had begun.
Mia had absolutely and wholeheartedly loved the idea at first. It was romantic. It was thoughtful. Romance and thoughtfulness—two qualities she’d never experienced in a guy before. It was perfect. And it made her feel like Ethan really loved her and wanted to make her happy.
But now as they sped along the rutted, nearly washed-out forest service road in Mia’s not-all-terrain vehicle, she had very different feelings about the tradition—mixed feelings—and was beginning to wonder if she was taking things a little too far. She quickly dismissed that notion, tightening her fingers on the steering wheel. Even if she was getting a little carried away, it wasn’t her fault—it was Ethan’s. Although if Ethan knew what she was planning to do to him in a few minutes, he would place the blame squarely on an old lady who died before he had a chance to meet her.
When Mia was eight, her Serbian grandmother—Nana Vujicic—had read her pal
m after much pleading. Nana was different. And Mia sensed it. But it wasn’t really a secret. She scared the shit out of all the kids in Mia’s neighborhood and even Mia’s mom called her a ‘mad gypsy’. Nana just had a way about her that put people on edge; when she looked at you it was like she was seeing through you, inside you. And she had a tendency of saying the craziest things, but there was always truth in her words. In the old days, Mia imagined a pitchfork-carrying mob would have burned Nana at the stake for practicing witchcraft. On that day so many years ago, Nana had held Mia’s hand for a very long time, then she pulled it close to her weathered face and muttered something in Serbian, tracing her knotted forefinger along the lines of her palm. Finally, Nana let go of her hand and said in her heavily accented English: “You have much life in you, Mia. Much spirit. But I see sharks in your future. I’m sorry, dear.”
On the spot, Mia vowed she would never so much as dip her toe in the ocean. And she’d stuck to that promise. It wasn’t out of paranoia or superstition that she stayed out of the water—she’d felt the truth in her Nana’s warning deep down in her bones, and saw no point in making it a self-fulfilling prophecy.
And then six months ago, just prior to Ethan’s last birthday, while watching reruns of Sons of Anarchy in bed, he’d presented her with his birthday wish: scuba diving in Washington’s Puget Sound. Mia had an epic meltdown. She fought with him continuously for a solid month. She tried to talk him out of it. She tried everything. Desperate, she told him she would arrange to parachute off the Eiffel Tower. She was willing to spend time in a Parisian jail if it meant avoiding the ocean. But Ethan wasn’t interested in doing anything else and he wouldn’t back down. He cajoled her. He begged her. He promised her nothing would happen, that he would take care of her. He told her scuba diving was safer than crossing a street in downtown Portland. Ethan could be very convincing when he wanted to be. And in the end, he wore her down and she caved.
Mia and Ethan had spent less than an hour in the ocean. Nothing terrible happened. They saw lots of pretty fish. They didn’t see a single shark. But it was the worst hour of her life. She’d never been so scared or so certain that a dumb animal (a fish for Christ’s sake!) was going to eat her. When the dive master and her assistant pulled Mia back onto the boat she was shocked to still be alive. And all the way back to the harbor she whispered numbly to herself over and over: “Nana was wrong. Nana was wrong.”