by S. A. Beck
“This is unnatural,” he replied. Akiko nodded. “What do we do now?” he asked in a hoarse, uncertain voice.
“We do exactly as you originally suggested. We stay under the radar. We keep our noses clean, and most importantly, we make them believe whatever they need to believe to be able to trust us. Then, and only then, will we gain access to the information we need to make sure this project never, ever goes any further than it’s already gone.”
* * *
APRIL 12, 2016, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
9:45 AM
Jaxon was unable to keep up her charade.
She noticed him—Otto Heike—no matter how many times she looked away when he looked in her direction or how many times she pretended to be too preoccupied to pay attention to him. When she went to group therapy and listened as the other sixteen- to eighteen-year-olds chatted about their plans for the weekend, she couldn’t take her eyes off him. Breakfast wasn’t any better. For a second, he had looked as if he wanted to join her at the lonely table outside and away from everybody else where she crept to eat, but his friend, Lewis, had called his name, and Otto had sat with his regulars.
By the time she made it to class the day after her stint with Otto’s fitness group, there was no getting around it—she liked him. It was… different. The near brush with him in the dining hall at breakfast had left her frazzled and breathless. She had butterflies, tingly hands, and sweaty palms. Was that what it was like to like someone? She had never really liked a guy in that way. The word boyfriend tumbled around in her thoughts like a foreign word.
She fidgeted through class, struggling to maintain focus. Her grades at Forever Welcome were superb, according to her monthly progress report. “Get it together, Jaxon,” she admonished herself, reaching for the mouse and powering through another lesson. If she wanted to improve the B she had gotten in English Lit, she couldn’t spend the morning daydreaming about Otto. She banned him from her thoughts and finished her assignments.
Lunch time arrived, and Jaxon hurried out of class to steer clear of Lizzie but also to avoid Otto. She had no clue what to say to him. She caught his eye as she passed his cubicle and quickly ducked her head, blushing. “Where you runnin’ off to, dogface?” Lizzie called after her in the hallway, snickering. Jaxon ignored her and shoved open the dining hall doors.
She swiped her ID to clock in for lunch, taking her place in the line of students fixing plates at the buffet longboard, and as soon as she had what she wanted, Jax ducked through the stained-glass door to the patio. She sat at her table to eat in pleasant solitude. She was just about to congratulate herself for getting out without hassle when Otto dropped his tray on her table and plopped down with a friendly greeting on the bench across from her.
“What are you doing?” she asked. Her arctic eyes slid from his tray to his face. He was insanely cute. That face had haunted her dreams the night before and had been an obstacle in class. His square chin and angular cheeks, his hooded gray eyes and his lips—sweet mercy. Guys like that didn’t eat lunch with girls like her. She was average, barely even noticeable. Why was he suddenly so interested in her?
With dancing, mischievous eyes, he gestured to his food with his fork and knife. “What does it look like I’m doing?”
“No, I mean you always eat inside with everybody else. What are you doing out here?”
“I’m out here because…” He smiled and took a bite, chewed thoughtfully, and gazed off in the distance before giving her a focused stare. “I want to get to know you.”
She pushed back her plate, too nervous to eat. “There isn’t really anything to get to know.”
Otto wagged a finger at her. “Oh, yeah, there is. There’s something about you. I can’t put my finger on it, but you’re not like other girls.”
Jax squinted her eyes. He was right about that. He just didn’t know how right he was. She sighed, smiling. He was making it impossible for her to ignore him, avoid him, pretend he didn’t exist, and all of that was hard enough without him flirting with her. “I bet you say that to all the girls.”
“Yeah, you’re right. But it usually works. I must be losing my touch,” he said playfully. Jax grabbed a napkin, crumpled it, and threw it at him, and Otto erupted with laughter. “But seriously… I’ve been here for a year, going on two. I have a year and a half to go. In all the time I’ve been here, I haven’t met anyone who has captivated my attention quite the way you do. That’s not a line, either.”
“It sounds like a line,” she teased.
“Well, can you blame me? I gotta pull out all the stops to get you to notice me. You go out of your way to avoid people. You antisocial or something?” he said, eyebrow raised. “’Cause you make getting close to you about as easy as bear-hugging a cactus.” He chuckled dryly, sending butterflies through her core.
Jaxon shrugged and brushed her shoulder-length black hair out of her honey-brown face. “In my experience, sticking to myself is the easiest way to stay out of trouble. I’ve got two years in here, plus probation. I don’t want more time added onto me ‘cause somebody decides to be a jerk and set me off. So, I do what I have to do to limit my contact with others. Like, if I had a warning label, it would say volatile.” She chuckled, and he grinned at her.
“Ooh, should I stay back? Nah, you look harmless,” he said. His eyes crinkled with amusement as his gaze slowly trailed over her. Otto Heike liked what he saw.
“Don’t make me show you,” she warned.
“Show me what?” He dropped his voice intimately. He reached across the table and caressed her with a knuckle that brushed feather-light down the slant of her honeyed face. The unexpected skin-to-skin contact made Jaxon’s almond-shaped eyes widen and her mouth drop open. Color splotched the apples of her cheeks, and Jaxon leaned closer, spellbound. “The real you or the facade, Jaxon Andersen, ’cause I got a feeling there’s more to you than meets the eye. Am I right? You stick to yourself because you don’t want anybody to set you off, yet to me, that says you have a vulnerable side, so you kick up a defense to hide your weakness.”
She sat back, frowning. “I’m not weak,” Jax countered. She wasn’t sure she liked his phrasing, and his touch was distracting and probably a tad bit inappropriate. She shook off the disorientation that came from close contact with Otto. She hoped he wasn’t trying to put her down with a backward compliment. It would suck to have to instantly dislike him.
Otto waved off her response. “Everybody has a weakness, even me. I didn’t mean to offend you, though. I’m not saying you’re weak. I’m saying I find it alluring that there is a vulnerability to you as well as a fierceness. I’m curious to know why you’re here.”
“I thought it was rude to ask people questions like that. Come to think of it, I never hear anybody asking anybody else that, but two or three people have already asked me. See, that’s what I’m talking about. What, I don’t look like I have the balls to do something that will get me in trouble? I look too scrawny?” She was getting angry, and she didn’t understand why. It was obvious Otto was just trying to talk to her, but it felt like a personal attack. “I get this everywhere I go,” she whispered. “That’s why I’m here.”
Jaxon got up from the table to leave, but Otto reached out and caught her by the wrist. He stared up at her with his smoky eyes, and Jaxon was arrested by his gaze and the heat of his palm against her lower arm. She stopped.
“You don’t have to run off. If anybody should leave, it’s me. This is your table, and I’m sorry for getting you upset. But to be honest, all I want to do is sit out here in the sun with you and have a friendly conversation. Is that all right? I would love to get to know you better, but that’s on your terms. Look, you don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to talk about with me.”
She reluctantly resumed her seat. Otto chuckled. “Boy, do you have a temper on you.” He threw his hands up apologetically when she looked as if she wanted to protest. “Hey, no judgment from me. And by the way, the reason you p
robably never hear anybody else asking why the other residents are here is that most of us arrived long before you came. Everybody knows everybody’s backstory but yours. Now, me? I have a thing for lighting fires.”
“What?” Jaxon peered at him, surprised and not sure she believed his confession. “No way.”
Otto Heike seemed like one of the most responsible, mature people on the grounds. He was the resident assistant for the boys’ side of the dormitory floor, and he was entrusted with maintaining order when teachers or other staff were unavailable. He didn’t look like a problem kid. On the other hand, Jaxon realized she was judging a book by its cover, the same thing she hated people doing to her. Everybody in Forever Welcome was there because of behavioral problems back home. She looked at Otto with new eyes.
“I’m in here for arson,” he continued. “Ever since I was a little kid, I had an infatuation with the way a fire could slowly and beautifully wreak havoc. It started with small things like playing with matches or building little bonfires in the field behind my parents’ house. I didn’t get caught until I burned down an abandoned barn on my neighbor’s property. They pressed charges. Apparently, they had some antiques or something like that in there. I had to pay restitution and everything.”
“Wow, that’s crazy,” she said in awe.
“It was crazy. After the fact, I thought about what could have happened if the fire had gotten out of control. What if a spark would’ve made its way to my house or even to the neighbors’ houses? People could’ve gotten hurt. I made some messed-up choices, and I’m still struggling with the urge to light. I just really like to see a nice fire burn, you know?” His expression was wistful, as if he missed the smell of smoke and the heat of the flames.
Another fire was being tended at the table. Jaxon was awash in hormones, her interest impossible to hide. The faint hint of his cologne wafted to her nose. She studied his intense eyes, the lower lids as full as the top, giving him a bedroom-eyes stare. His lips curved upward in the left corner as he studied her just as closely. Jaxon suddenly wondered what it would be like to kiss those lips.
“Uh, we don’t want to be late back to class.” Jaxon shook herself out of her reverie.
“You barely touched your food,” he pointed out.
“I don’t eat much,” she said.
Otto grabbed a French fry off her plate and bit it. “We’ve still got fifteen minutes until lunch is over. But if you’re ready to leave, I’ll walk you back, if you’d like.”
She felt unsettled. He wouldn’t break eye contact, which made it hard for her to think. Jaxon opened her mouth to speak but forgot what she was about to say. She colored in embarrassment. Both Jaxon and Otto started to laugh.
Then, the sound of a throat clearing from the vicinity of the dining hall door got their attention. “Hi there, Otto,” Dr. Hollis said with a wave. He pushed up his glasses and took in the patio tableau, the teenagers wrapped up in conversation, and he felt a sense of accomplishment at crossing another hurdle with Jax, in a roundabout way. He had sent Otto to make sure no one was giving her a hard time, but it looked as if the two were hitting it off. “Jaxon, I just wanted to tell you the garden supplies are out at the greenhouse. So if you want to start this evening, you can.”
“Oh, thanks,” Jaxon replied. She sat up straighter in her chair and tried to look expressionless. She could tell the psychiatrist thought something was going on between her and Otto by the knowing look on his face. She smiled to herself when he ducked back into the dining hall. The question was, was there something going on between them?
“You’re working in the greenhouse?” Otto asked.
“Yeah, it’s my new extracurricular.”
Otto thrust his lower lip forward and crossed his arms like a petulant five-year-old. “I totally thought I’d won you over to the fitness group. You didn’t enjoy yourself yesterday? You looked like you were having a good time.”
Jaxon smiled. She had had a good time. Had she known about the fitness group before finding out about the greenhouse, she would’ve chosen it. “Maybe I can do both,” she suggested.
“I was thinking I could show you some self-defense moves, build up your confidence. If you want to do both, though, that’s even better. I show you some tricks, and you can show me some. I have to warn you, though. Every plant I’ve ever touched has died a slow, painful death.”
Jaxon giggled. “Slow and painful?” she asked. Otto nodded solemnly.
“It’s true. My mom took a cutting from one of those hanging houseplants and told me it would grow if I put it in a cup with water. Needless to say, it lasted a whopping three days before giving up the ghost.”
She doubled over, laughing harder. “Otto!”
“You’d be doing me a great service to teach me how not to kill flowers. A disservice to the plants, maybe.”
They rose from the table and grabbed their trays. He walked her back to class, and for the first time, Jaxon didn’t have to worry about anyone’s taunts or dirty looks. Loren and some of the others from the fitness group chatted with her before class was back in session. Her sense of belonging resurged.
Chapter 9
APRIL 13, 2016, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
3:30 PM
Jaxon slipped away from the main house at three thirty when classes were over to spend the hours set aside for extracurricular activities in the greenhouse. She had been reluctant to try what she was about to try, but she couldn’t get the idea out of her head. She hurried under the archway from the backyard to the secret garden. Wisteria blossoms trailed and dropped fragrant, feathery flowers in her hair. She passed the flowing fountain. She skirted the tidy rows of apple trees alive with the buzz of bumblebees, and she came upon the greenhouse at the back of the yard.
The building was small, only eight by six feet, its steel framework painted rust red with stabilized frosted-fiberglass walls and rooftop. From the outside, she could see the contours of plants. The door was unlocked, as it had been before, and when she walked into the much warmer room, she instantly started to sweat. Jax inhaled, feeling the tingle of awareness and the rich connection with the dirt beneath the mulch. The sensation of an unseen energy moving between her and the earth had only gotten stronger with her time at Forever Welcome, which she attributed to the group home’s verdant, vibrant gardens and landscape. But Jax wasn’t in the greenhouse to escape with her thoughts—she was there to experiment with the potting soil and seeds Dr. Hollis had procured for her.
On the back shelf where Dr. Hollis kept his plants, the citronella she had touched days before had grown another three inches, leaves spilling over the sides of the pot and a yellow flower blooming from a stalk near its center. Jaxon made a beeline for the grouping of mosquito plants and studied them in awe. “Unbelievable,” she murmured. She had done that. She had the power to do things like that. It was stunning and somewhat terrifying. She wondered what else she could do.
Jaxon didn’t know a thing about planting, but on the table in the middle of the cozy greenhouse were a bag of potting soil, several small earthen pots, and a tiny rake and trowel. She was out of her element, but she pushed up the sleeves of her denim shirt. Her hair was tied back with a silk scarf. She tore a tiny hole in the potting soil bag and scooped some of the rich, black dirt into each pot.
“All right. That looks about right.” Jax put her hands on her hips to survey the handiwork. There were crumbs of soil littering the table and spilling from the overfilled pots, but it didn’t look too bad. She set about opening each packet of seeds she had requested and poked them down into the soil. Jax had asked for herbs because she’d read somewhere they were easy to cultivate. She wasn’t sure how deeply the seeds needed to be planted. She didn’t know how much water they required or which fertilizer to add. Jax moved instinctively.
As she moved from the first pot to the second, she hummed a tuneless melody. She felt the tingle of awareness that was always strongest in the garden, and she sank into a relaxed, thoughtless z
one. Gradually, she became aware of a change in what was happening in her hands. The minute her fingers touched the seeds, they started to sprout. Jax stared at them. “Is this supposed to happen?” She hurriedly buried them in the dirt. Right before her eyes, lavender shoots pushed through the soil and stretched toward her body as if she were the sun.
Her eyes flew to the first pot she had planted. Skinny pale green stems covered in dusky oval-shaped leaves had already grown several inches high, and the lavender in front of her was still growing. A squawk of amazement hitched in her throat. Jax pushed both of the red pots away and took a few steps back. She hadn’t known what to anticipate but certainly not that. She stared down at her dirt-splotched fingers, flipping her hands over. There were crescents of soil under her fingernails and smudged into the creases of her palms, but her hands looked like ordinary hands.
Jaxon anxiously looked around to make sure no one was watching. She realized belatedly there was a single camera in the top corner of the greenhouse, and she remembered the whole campus was always under surveillance. She prayed whoever might be watching would assume their eyes were playing tricks on them.
A pins-and-needles sensation persisted in her feet. She wondered if it had anything to do with her newfound ability to make things grow. She wondered about the lure of the gardens. Why was she able to do those things? Jax sucked in an anxious breath and reached for the last pot of soil. She dusted off her hands and cautiously grabbed the last envelope of seeds. The same thing happened with the thyme. Everything she touched grew, and the more things grew, the closer she felt a connection with the earth. What was she?
Jax shook her head at the question. It was enough for the day. She had barely been in the greenhouse for a half hour, and already she had three pots growing healthy herbs. She hid them beneath a shelf so Dr. Hollis, with his water experiments, wouldn’t see them and ask questions. If anyone asked, she would tell them she hadn’t lingered in the greenhouse; she had spent the evening in group fitness. Jaxon tore out of the greenhouse and jogged across the yard to the house. She crashed through the kitchen door, jogged into the hallway, and took the stairs down to the basement, scrubbing her hands on her jeans as she went.