by Gina Linko
His lips found mine again, then the point of my chin, my neck, that spot right under my ear. He pulled me close to him, pulled me onto his lap. And I ceased thinking. It was just Rennick and me, his tongue in my mouth, his hands on my body. It was at once more than I could take and not enough. A hunger deeper and stronger than I’d ever known had woken inside me, and it was singular, only for Rennick, for his touch, for his taste, for his body next to me, the feel of his fingertips tracing my collarbone.
When I didn’t think I could take it anymore, when I thought I would explode from the pleasure, I pulled him under the water. I opened my eyes and looked at him. He had done the same. I pulled away and just looked at him, letting my eyes soak up every inch of his face, his body. His eyes moved on me as well, and it made my skin prickle with life.
It was every bit as sensual as the kissing from a few seconds ago. But there was something else I wanted to do. Something he was waiting for. And so I did it. I reached out my hand and traced the beautiful structure that was his face, his jaw, down to his Adam’s apple. Then my fingers found his shoulders, and I flattened my hands, pressed them over his chest, moved them down over his stomach. I stopped there, my fingers running across the skin above his shorts.
My hands on Rennick. My hands.
He grabbed my hands then, and he held his hands up, in an obvious gesture. I placed my palms flat on his. A seal. A trust. All that I wanted to say to him was right there in that gesture.
We stayed that way until we had to break the surface. Annoyed that we had to give it up for something as mundane as breathing.
A flashlight shone on us, bright and unforgiving. “Get out of the water, kids.” The guard’s voice was bored and annoyed.
I heard Rennick suppress a chuckle behind me as I pulled myself up the aluminum ladder, but I couldn’t help it, I laughed. And then Rennick couldn’t stop himself. We didn’t win ourselves any points with the crabby guard. He gave us both a squinty-eyed shake of his head, but then he threw us each a worn white towel. “Just get yourselves home.”
I couldn’t be sure, but I think I heard him chuckle too.
I woke up with a start, knotted and tangled in my sheets. I could feel the tension in my throat, the one-note sound of it echoing in my ears. I must’ve just screamed.
I rubbed at the back of my neck, where there were new balls of stress in my muscles. Every part of me seemed to be sweating. I threw the sheets off, just as Dad knocked on the door. He came in, a look of concern knitting his brow.
They hadn’t been mad about my sneaking out of the hospital or my trip to the Kranes’, and I had sort of left out the detail about the pool, but still, I had thought they would be ecstatic, knowing I had saved Seth, knowing what I could now do.
I mean, their words were the right ones. It wasn’t that. But the worry lines on Mom’s forehead, the way she rubbed her knuckles across her lips, said otherwise. But I had been exhausted and had excused myself to bed. I hadn’t been up to hashing it out.
Dad settled his large frame into my desk chair, the back of his bed head standing up straight like a silver cock’s comb.
“So this touch is real, huh?” He scratched at his stubble and looked toward me with a mix of emotions on his face. Concern? Fear? For me or of me? Both?
I just nodded. I really wanted to take a cold shower, I was so hot. And drink a huge glass of water. Ice water.
“Corrine, we’re with you on this. It’s going to get huge, though, I think.” He held my gaze for a long moment. “Are you prepared for that?”
“No,” I said. “But I still have to do it.”
“You don’t have to,” he answered, and his voice was serious. He leaned forward. “We can leave, just disappear, if you need to, Corrine. If you don’t want this … if you want another choice.”
I nodded. I tried to picture that. It seemed an over-reaction, a parent’s worry. For me, I finally felt like I was on the right track, finally getting somewhere, moving forward, and I could’ve explained all this, but my throat was sandpaper. I had to get a drink, so when Dad got up and ruffled my hair awkwardly, I didn’t stop him. I didn’t explain that I had high hopes for my touch, that I thought Sophie would want me to make up for her death, to help others, to reach out. I just let him leave, and I quickly went into my bathroom, started the shower on cold, and drank for a long time, straight out of the showerhead.
Mom was jittery and talking constantly as I sat down with coffee. “Dad left already to check on the Kranes, see if he could get them to downplay what happened. Keep it quieter.
“I have to go to Chartrain today,” she said, tossing me a granola bar from the cupboard. “You look flushed.”
I shrugged. “Who do you think I should help first?”
Mom stopped washing her mug in the sink, turned slowly. “I don’t think we can do it that way, can we?” There was a little sense of panic in her voice. “I mean, we can’t seek people out, babe. If they seek you out, okay. But I just don’t know …”
“Okay,” I said. I had been thinking about this, and it did seem to make sense. “We don’t want anyone suing us or anything,” I chuckled. But Mom’s back straightened, and she stood very still for a moment.
She turned to me. “Dad is checking with his lawyers today. I mean, I don’t know, Corrine. Who do we talk to about this? Especially if we don’t want your life to, well …” She shook the thought away with a wave of her hand. “I would feel better if you would let me know when and where you were going to do this, so that I don’t have to worry that you’re off somewhere, needing me, or needing … I don’t know. Is there anything you need when it happens?”
“Water. I get hot.” I stood up, walked to where my mom was standing. She looked older to me, so scared. I hugged her. It had been a long time. Such a very long time. I just hugged her close. She grabbed my hand between hers, held it there. “Corrine,” she said, and she smiled. Then her expression changed.
“Do you have a fever?” She pressed her hand to my forehead. I shook my head. Mom held my gaze. “You feel all right?”
“Yeah.”
“And what are you doing today?”
“Hanging out with Rennick and Mia-Joy. We might go to the carnival over in Woodmere. Might be far enough away that people don’t know me.”
“Be careful.” Mom cupped my face in her hands. “I’ve missed you.” And she pulled me to her again. “Take your phone.”
And then she left for work, and I felt so very normal, so very seventeen again. I swallowed back the lump in my throat, pushed back the urge to pore over the pictures of Sophie upstairs. This was me. The new me.
If the past few days had been a new beginning for me, a new window back into life, arriving at the carnival with Mia-Joy, Jules, and Rennick was like baptism by fire—all the sights and sounds and smells. The Mardi Gras paper lanterns strung around the park, the sweet aroma of funnel cakes and cotton candy, the zoom of the salt-and-pepper-shaker rides, the ringing bells of the carnival games. The music was loud with a boom-boom-thwack bass beat that I could feel in my teeth. And the people.
So many people, their shoulders brushing mine, their laughter a little too loud, but everyone was so happy, so in the moment. Mezzo forte. I had missed being in a crowd like this.
Being so very alive.
From the second they picked me up, I could tell that Rennick had pulled out all the stops for me. His hair had a new, combed look about it, and he smelled fresh and clean, a soapy scent mixed in with the smell that was just him, his skin, his sweat. The confident smile, the easy way he laughed with Mia-Joy; he reminded me of my old black-and-white movie heroes. And I had dressed up too, my favorite summer dress, white, short, and flirty. I had knotted my hair at the nape of my neck, stuck a daisy from Mom’s garden in it on a last-minute whim.
But I knew I was hanging back a little. It was one thing to act boldly in the dark of the night. Everything seemed a little more possible then. But now, here, in the stark sunlight of the carnival,
I didn’t know how to act. It felt a little like last night hadn’t counted. It had been such a crazy time, with saving Seth and jumping into the pool.
Mia-Joy and Jules rode in the back of the Jeep. Jules’s arm swung around Mia-Joy, their heads together, talking, giggling. Jules was a big guy. I knew him from school, a little too popular. But Mia-Joy seemed to think he was better than all right. He paid me no attention, but that was fine with me.
As we walked into the carnival, Rennick saw me watching them ahead of us. They had skedaddled right for the Tunnel of Love.
“You don’t mind if we disappear, do you, Corrine?” Mia-Joy had asked. I shook my head.
“Jules is all right,” Rennick said, motioning ahead.
“Yeah?” I said, watching them, wishing I didn’t think that Mia-Joy only went for the lookers.
“Isn’t that what you’re worrying about? He’s got an ego, this whole cool thing going on, but he’s okay.”
“It’s not just that,” I said as we stood in line to buy some tickets for rides. “I just keep wondering when she’s going to have a … problem. The rip in her aura.”
“So you believe me,” he said with a grin. “Twenty bucks’ worth,” he told the ticket taker.
“I can pay too—”
Rennick shook his head, one curt little shake. I watched that gravity-defying lock of hair move back and forth.
A group of teenagers came at us then, laughing, sharing popcorn, and they weren’t looking where they were going. A short kid with a ring in his nose came stumbling right at me, and I tried to get out of his way but he ran square into me.
“Whoa!” he said, spilling his popcorn.
“Sorry.” I backed away from him, hands up in surrender.
“Sorry, dude!” he apologized, but the unwanted physical contact unnerved me.
“No problem,” Rennick said, but he was eyeing the kid.
Rennick grabbed my hand then, held it for a second, pulled me closer to him. “Okay?” he asked as he pressed his palm into mine. It was much rougher than mine. I let my palm press against his. My hand fit so perfectly in his, and my stomach flipped when he squeezed.
“Yes,” I answered, looking up at him.
“You sure? We don’t have to.”
I nodded.
We walked around the carnival for a while, slowly. We got ice cream cones. Pistachio for him, strawberry for me. And we talked about other things. I never let go of his hand—the connection there, it was something. Physio-electric. Both calm and alive. Reassuring.
He asked me about Chicago, about Sophie. My drawings. He told me how he wanted to travel out West before he went to college, maybe even med school after, if he could stomach school that long. It made me think of college again. I hadn’t for so long. And now I could hope and plan and do … anything.
I learned he hated pizza (Tomatoes, blech! he said), and he loved to golf. But his first love was definitely science. That’s what he had been doing all those years on the lake, on that Fourth of July when I met him. He had been collecting rocks.
Just like Sophie.
“So that’s gotta be weird, to love science and have this unexplainable power,” I said as we sat on a bench near the Ferris wheel.
“Nah,” he said. “It is science. We just haven’t figured out the equations behind it all, the figures. Not yet. I reckon soon.
“You want to ride this?” he said, gesturing to the Ferris wheel.
“Sure.” We stood up. I was taking a few last licks of my ice cream cone when that same bunch of teenagers came up out of nowhere, and one of the bigger ones—he had a spider tattoo on his neck—said, “That’s the girl from the news, from over in the French Quarter.”
“The freak show,” one of the girls cackled.
“Hey,” Rennick said. His voice was new, a warning.
“Why don’t you take your voodoo ass back to your own neighborhood,” the big guy said, and then the girl on his arm reached out and pushed my ice cream cone right into my chest, into my eyelet sundress. I stood openmouthed, unable to believe that somebody could be so brazen.
I didn’t have time to process it. In a flash, Rennick was in the guy’s face. His voice was a growl. I realized how deceiving his looks were—tall, sinewy, unassuming—but now, in the thick of it, the square of his shoulders, the clamp of his jaw looked so different and threatening. “You will step away right now. Or you will be sorry.” His fists were balled at his sides, and I saw the other guy’s reaction, how taken aback he was. How he hadn’t been expecting this from a skinny guy like Rennick—the fierce reaction, the fiery look in his eyes.
Rennick took one step closer, jabbed the guy in the chest with two fingers. “Now.” The guy stepped back. “Get out of here,” Rennick snarled, waiting for anyone to advance, cocking his fist. I found myself thinking, Rennick’s a lefty. “Get the fuck out of here,” he said to the whole group. They were all backing away. There was just something about this new version of Rennick.
You didn’t want to mess with him.
Rennick relaxed his shoulders. The group was going, gone.
“I’m sorry,” he said to me. He took my hand back, and I could feel that he was shaking. His breathing was quick, shallow.
“You said you didn’t fight at Penton or—” I didn’t know what to make of this scene.
“I don’t like fighting.” He gave me a look. “But I never said I couldn’t do it. Especially when some asshole is going to hurt someone I …” He let his voice trail off. He took his hand away from mine then, lifted his T-shirt to wipe his sweaty brow. But I caught it, the flush in his cheeks, however momentary. What had he almost said?
Mia-Joy and Jules came running up. She took the ruined ice cream cone from my hand, threw it in the garbage, fussed over me. “What happened? Are you okay?”
“Rennick just nearly punched somebody for me.”
“Rennick Lane? Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Could you guys get any more romantic over here? OMG!” Mia-Joy squealed as she hooked her arm through mine and led me toward the House of Mirrors. “Omigod!”
“Mia-Joy! Shhh!” I said, but I was smiling. Even though in my head, I saw Rennick’s face and heard the kid’s words—voodoo freak. Too much was happening. I couldn’t process everything. I needed things to slow down.
But Mia-Joy was already pushing me toward the House of Mirrors. “You okay? You look freaked.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Yeah?” she asked, eyeing me. Jules met up with us then, with Rennick hanging back.
“I’m fine,” I reassured her.
Mia-Joy gave me a look, hooked her arm through Jules’s, and made for the House of Mirrors. I waited for Rennick.
“Thank you,” I said as he walked up to me. I could see in his posture that he wasn’t sure about what had just happened.
We walked into the House of Mirrors. Pop music was blaring and lights switched from flashing disco bulbs to complete darkness to white Christmas lights. It was a little overwhelming. Rennick’s presence reassured me, but our unlinked hands were like a question between us. Our reflections kept time on either side of us in the funny mirrors, shorter, squatter versions of us. I stole a glance at Rennick’s face in the mirror. He looked embarrassed.
“Corrine,” he said. The disco lights switched to twinkling white. He stopped, faced me, and let a pair of little kids move ahead of us.
Complete darkness.
I felt it then, this physio-electric warmth between us, and I loved how unknown and exciting everything was in that moment, how it was all in front of us. I realized right then that this was life. And I hadn’t been living life for so many months, since Sophie. I had shut myself off, and that had taken away all the interactions, all the uncertainty, all the difficult decisions and judgment calls.
I had given up.
But here I was. Although I knew that I had a lot going on—I had some pretty spectacular things happening with the touch, with Rennick, with life—I also knew that I was jumping in hea
dfirst. Like the old me. Decisive? Reckless abandon? Somewhere in between. Choosing Faulkner. Choosing the butterfly. In life. Not just with the touch.
I had to. Wouldn’t Sophie want me to really live? And help others to do it too?
The decision, of course, had already been made. But it was right then that I acknowledged it.
And darkness or daylight, I knew what I wanted with Rennick too.
I reached in the dark for his face. I stood on my tiptoes and placed my hands on his cheeks. I pressed my palm against his stubbly chin and felt him exhale, his body lean into mine. I leaned in too, and my lips found his in the dark, so lightly, just brushing. I took a deep breath, savoring the roller-coaster-drop feeling in my stomach. But just as I was about to lean in again, kiss him for real, he pushed me away gently. “Corrine,” he said.
And the lights flashed on. He took a step back. I dropped my arms, looked up at him. I was confused by what I saw in his eyes—the tenderness, the brashness, the protectiveness, the hesitation. I let the charge between us, the electricity, sweep through me, flip my stomach, make my head woozy. Then I stepped back. “I’m sorry. I thought you wanted—”
“Corrine,” he said again, as the lights switched back to Christmas twinkles. “I wanted. I want. It’s just that I …” He ran his hand through his hair. “Is it because you need somebody, anybody, right now, or is it that you need me?” But then, before I knew what was happening, he had pulled me back to him. He put his arms around me, one on the small of my back, one higher around my shoulders, and he kissed me.
This time, it was a real kiss. I wrapped my arms around his neck, and I pulled myself to him. I pressed my body to his, he sighed behind the kiss, and my body shivered—seriously shivered—with excitement.
We ignored a group of tweens who giggled as they made their way past us. The lights went out, and in the darkness Rennick kissed my mouth earnestly, my neck, my jaw, behind my ear, and his hands pressed me into him. After a long moment, he broke from me. I opened my eyes and saw that his were still closed, and he was smiling. He wrapped his arms tighter around me, brought his lips to my ear. “Wow. And I thought nothing could top last night.”