He felt the floor give way beneath his sneakers and felt the tug at his gut and then the brief sensation of being everywhere and nowhere all at once, a roller-coaster moment where he wasn’t sure which way was up or down, and then just as quickly as it had started, everything settled back to normal and he felt the rubber of his shoes touch down on the floor and—
“You’re doing it again, aren’t you?”
Lance opened his eyes and saw not the empty motel office he’d seen through the door just a moment ago, but instead two people standing on opposite sides of the L-shaped check-in counter. The room was much brighter than before, and Lance quickly turned around in his spot and looked outside. Gone was the night sky, and instead intense sunlight poured through the door’s glass. A hot summer day was nearing its end, the sun settling itself into position before it would start its descent. In the window next to him, the blinds were pulled down and sunlight slid through the cracks in the slats, giving the floor and part of the check-in counter a prison-cell effect. Curious, Lance stuck his hand out into the rays of light, turning it this way and that. The light passed right through, as if Lance weren’t there at all.
He’d never felt more like a ghost.
“Doing what?”
Lance focused his attention back to the people at the counter.
A version of Meriam that looked maybe twenty years younger, wearing cut-off shorts and a faded flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows, stood behind the counter with her hands on her hips, her head cocked to the side. Her hair was darker and fuller, her body more lively and fit.
She rolled her eyes and said, “Don’t play dumb with me. We both know you’re too smart for that.”
The copy-and-paste boy was on the other side of the counter, leaning down, resting his elbows on the surface top, flipping the pages of a comic book he had laid out before him.
Superman, Lance thought. And then he saw the boy was wearing the same clothes he’d been wearing when Lance had seen him talking with the man and woman who’d been murdered in room two. Which suggested a couple different possibilities: either the boy just happened to be wearing the same clothes in two different of these episodes Lance was experiencing, or Lance was seeing events from the exact same day as before, only earlier. The Superman comic caused Lance to lean toward the latter.
His mother had not been a believer in coincidences, after all.
“Look at me,” Meriam said, this time with a no-nonsense tone.
The boy looked up, then stood to his full height, towering over the counter just as Lance did. Lance took two steps closer, stopping just shy of the boy.
“Are you doing it again?”
They were both quiet for a moment, and Lance could practically hear the gears turning in the boy’s head as he struggled with some sort of internal debate—a conflict in which he wasn’t quite sure which direction to take. Finally, he let out an exasperated sigh and nodded his head.
Meriam, apparently displeased by this response, looked down to the floor and put both her hands on her head and shook it slowly back and forth. “You don’t even know these people.”
“Are we only supposed to help people we know? That doesn’t seem very Christian of you.”
Lance chuckled at this, but Meriam looked up with fire in her eyes. “I know you aren’t questioning what kind of person I am, young man. Not after all I’ve … well”—she paused, looked around the office as if somebody else might be listening—“not after everything.”
The boy shook his head, sighed again. “Of course not. I’m just showing you how I see it. These people need help, and I can give it to them.”
“By exposing yourself? Is that really the best choice?”
The boy thought for a moment, then smiled a smile that Lance thought might be hiding a certain degree of sadness. “The fact that you think I have a choice at all makes me think you really have no idea what it’s like to be me.”
Meriam didn’t like this either, Lance could tell, but her features softened a little and she stepped forward and placed her hands on the countertop. “If you’re asking me if I can empathize with somebody who has your … what do we want to call them, gifts or talents? Then, no, I can’t. And honestly, who could?”
Lance was at once enthralled by the conversation. Maybe more so than any conversation he’d ever listened in on throughout his entire life—with either the living or the dead. Because what he was hearing was a conversation he himself had been a part of many times over, both with his mother and with himself and with Marcus Johnston and even somewhat with Leah. Not the exact same words or the exact same situation, but the context was there. Nearly unmistakable. Between the exchange Lance was hearing now and all of the evidence he’d witnessed in his wild ride around the motel’s history lesson, it had to be so.
The copy-and-paste boy, to some extent, was like Lance. In some capacity, he possessed otherworldly—
“Abilities,” the boy said.
“What?” Meriam asked.
“These things I can do, I would never call them gifts. And neither would anybody who truly understood what it was like to live with them.”
Meriam was quiet then, her gaze shifting into something that looked stuck between sympathy and frustration. The boy said, “Look, you know I love you, and of course I appreciate all you’ve done for me over the years, but you have to understand this is just who I am. I didn’t ask for it, but that doesn’t change anything. Why else would I have been chosen by whatever power decided to make me this way if I wasn’t supposed to use these abilities to their fullest extent? It’s my duty to help these people. Don’t you understand that?”
“I do!” Meriam threw up her hands. “But don’t you worry? Aren’t you concerned that if the wrong people discover who you are, things could go terribly wrong terribly fast? I’m no scientist or theologian or anything special. I’m just a simple woman who runs a country motel. But even I have the common sense to think that if there’s a power, as you put it, that made you who you are, there’s a good chance there’s an opposite power that wants to put an end to you.”
She’s a lot smarter than she gives herself credit for, Lance thought, wishing he could get back to the present to have his conversation with her. Especially after having gathered all this additional information about who he was dealing with. Meriam had already known one person in her life who was like Lance, and Lance thought she was sharp enough to recognize him for what he was. In fact, she likely already had.
Lance noticed the silence in the room. Looked and saw that the boy’s head had dropped back down to the comic book on the countertop. And Lance saw some great secret there. Something hiding behind the boy’s kind eyes.
He knows something, Lance thought. He knows she’s not wrong.
The boy looked back to Meriam. “I can’t live in fear,” he said. “None of us should.”
“But you can be cautious,” Meriam countered.
The boy shrugged. “Some people don’t know the difference.”
Meriam didn’t disagree with this but added, “Just remember what happened with that woman who hanged herself in that room right over there.” Meriam pointed to the far wall, to room one. “Remember the effect your helping can have on others. Remember us.”
“That’s not fair,” the boy said. “I knew she was grieving, but despite my abilities, I can’t predict the—”
“Exactly. You don’t know everything. And I might not have all of your abilities, but I’ve got enough common sense to know you can’t just go around trusting everyone.”
“I don’t disagree with that,” the boy said calmly.
“Then what is it you’re not telling me?”
The boy said nothing. Lance waited.
“Well?” Meriam said. “You agree, at least by omission, that there could be people out there who, let’s say, don’t have your best interests at heart. And believe me, I’m showing a lot of restraint by phrasing it like that. And you also agree that, despite your good int
entions and obligation to help people, you simply can’t live your life trusting everybody you meet. Do I have that right?”
The boy nodded. “Yes.”
“You see the dilemma here, right? Your thinking doesn’t match up with your actions. What is it I’m missing? These people today, the…” Meriam pulled the registration book over and slid her finger down the list of names until she found what she was looking for. “The Backstroms. How are you so confident that when you’re finished helping them, there won’t be repercussions, or hidden agendas, or, I don’t know, three years from now, one of them says something to somebody else about what you did for them and that sets off a chain of events that leads to you being abducted by some government agency? Snatched in the middle of the night with a black bag thrown over your head and jetted across the country to some top-secret facility where they’ll make you nothing more than a test subject in an effort to figure out how they might be able to weaponize whatever the hell it is you have?”
“That’s oddly specific.”
Meriam slammed her hand on the countertop, the noise echoing like a gunshot in the office. “I’m serious, dammit!”
And then there was silence again. Lance stood and watched, his heart beating fast in his chest as he’d gotten caught up in the drama unfolding back and forth between the two people in front of him. He was experiencing the oddest form of elation, a sense of belonging unlike anything he’d ever felt before. For the first time in Lance’s life, he was standing in the presence of somebody else who knew exactly what it was like to be him. Somebody who understood the toll it took on the mind. Somebody who had to fight the frustrations of being unable to explain the full truth to somebody who wasn’t like them. Which, up until this moment for Lance, had been every other human being he’d ever met. Unfortunately, as of now, the other person who Lance wanted so desperately to meet and speak with, was nothing more than a figment from the past.
As if on cue, the boy began to move, walking around behind the counter, where he reached out and embraced Meriam, his long arms wrapping around her and pulling her close. “I can’t explain it,” the boy said softly.
Meriam said nothing for a moment, and then, as she gently pulled away from the boy’s embrace, she asked, “Can’t or won’t?”
The boy smiled. “Just trust me, the Backstroms will not be the end of me.”
Which Meriam picked up for the omission it was. She countered, “You would tell me if you knew something else, right? You would tell me if you thought something bad was going to happen? You would let us help you, right?”
The boy smiled again, and again Lance saw something hiding behind those eyes. Saw a tall, good-looking young man with an outward easy-going persona, a bashful sense of innocence. A young man who, under normal circumstances, should have an entire world to explore, an entire life to go and live to its fullest. But, Lance knew, inside the boy harbored secrets he could tell no one, carried with him a soul riddled with guilt and regret, found himself drowning in confusion so deep he thought he’d never see the surface again. Never take another breath of normal life. He was alive, but often wondered if he was living.
Lance saw himself.
“Of course I’d tell you,” the boy said.
And Lance knew he was lying. He’d had to tell similar lies himself.
You told the lies to protect others as much as you did to protect yourself.
Meriam said nothing for a long time, just stood back and looked up into the eyes of the young man who towered over her, searching for hidden meaning, pleading for the truth. Because she knows, Lance thought. Meriam knew the boy held secrets, understood that there were deeper truths locked away inside him that he very well might take with him to his grave. At the core of her, she knew these things, but Lance also saw the reluctance on her face, watched as the easier option presented itself to her.
She would have to trust the boy. She would have to accept the fact that whatever he wasn’t telling her was absolutely for her own good. Lance’s own mother had made her peace with this unfair side of their relationship very early in Lance’s life. She’d never prodded, never guilted him into divulging information he wasn’t ready to tell. But she could always sense when something was amiss, always had that motherly instinct that was triggered every time her son was wresting with something in his mind, unsure, lost, afraid, desperate to escape the burdens he’d been born with.
Meriam nodded, forced a smile and then reached up and patted the boy’s cheek. “Good,” she said. “You know we’re always here for you.”
The boy reached up and took her hand in his and kissed it. “Hey, where is Uncle Murry, anyway?”
Meriam began to busy herself with some pamphlets on the countertop. “Oh, he went fishing with Jimmy and Drew. Never mind the fact we got shingles need replacing and room six’s showerhead is leaking.” Meriam sighed but then followed it with a laugh. “What am I ever going to do with him?”
The boy walked back around the counter and scooped up his comic book. “Oh, I’m sure you’ll think of something. I can help with the shingles tomorrow, maybe.”
Meriam shook her head. “Nope. No way I’m sending you up on that roof. If anybody’s going to fall off it or through it, it’s going to be him.”
The two of them shared a laugh, and Lance stepped out of the way as the boy headed for the door. “I think they’re almost back. I want to check in with them and see how things went.”
Before the boy could leave, Meriam asked, “How bad was it?”
The boy stopped. Looked over his shoulder and said, “What?”
“For the Backstroms. How bad was whatever it was you had to help them with?”
The boy thought for a moment. “Nothing as tragic as the woman from room one, but … I think it had the potential to ruin their lives. At least their marriage. And they’re really good people, Aunt Meriam. They deserved to be happy together. I think that’s why I picked up they were having trouble.”
Lance was very curious about the boy’s phrasing: I think that’s why I picked up they were having trouble.
Picked up.
He badly wanted to ask the boy what that meant. Wanted to compare their abilities and intuitions and … everything.
Meriam nodded and then pulled a bottle of Pledge from under the counter and started spraying down the countertop. “Stop back in before you head home for the day. Maybe Murry will have some fish you can take home.”
The boy nodded. “Yes, ma’am.” And then he pulled open the door and stepped outside.
Lance didn’t hesitate. He moved fast and furious, not wanting to let the boy out of his sight. He didn’t even pause to take a deep breath and prepare his body for another moment of … what, transformation? Teleportation? Another Swayze moment? He didn’t have time to contemplate a proper label of the phenomenon. Hell, this entire day had been a phenomenon. He rushed across the floor and threw his body into the door leading outside.
The feeling of speed. The rushing of everything, as if he was suddenly not existing in any time or space and then being rapidly reassembled whole. Another crash landing of sneakers on—
Lance was not outside. Not on the sidewalk with the summer sun setting and the copy-and-paste boy heading down the sidewalk to lean against the motel’s wall, comic book opened in his hands as he waited for the Backstroms to return.
Lance was back in the office. Dim and full of shadows. He spun around, finding nighttime had returned. But what night was it? How could he ever know?
Voices. Coming from behind him. Lance turned back around and saw the bar of light slicing through the cracked door behind the check-in counter. The door to the living space where Meriam and, presumably, Murry lived together as they ran their business.
“Calm down,” a male voice said. Deep and borderline authoritative, but also concerned. “Meriam, take a breath, for God’s sake.”
“They’re going to come for him! I told him, Murry. I told him this would happen. Just today I did, but he wouldn’
t listen.”
“Stop!” Murry’s voiced boomed through the crack between door and frame. “You’re overreacting. Just because you think—”
“I heard them. They said—”
“People talk, Meriam. People talk all the time. They very rarely do anything.”
Meriam scoffed. “You sound like him.”
“And what exactly does he think about this situation? Have you told him?”
Lance started moving, heading around the counter to try and get a look inside the room.
“We got in a bit of tiff earlier about this sort of thing,” Meriam said.
“And?”
Meriam sighed. “And he’s not concerned, okay? But when is he ever, huh? I don’t think he fully understands the way the world works.”
Murry actually laughed at this. “I would argue he knows more about the way the world works than you or I ever will.”
Lance reached the door and positioned his face so that one eye could peer through the opening. He didn’t want to try and move himself through it, because he wasn’t sure he’d actually end up where he thought he was supposed to. To say that at this point he felt out of control of his entire situation would be the understatement of his life.
Murry was a short man, only a couple inches taller than his wife. Slim but wired with ropey muscle on display beneath his t-shirt. His blue jeans were spotted with dirt, as were the work boots he wore on his feet. His hair was buzzed close to his scalp. Stubble peppered his face. He reminded Lance a bit of Leah’s father, Sam, only with kinder eyes.
“But that doesn’t mean he’s always right, Murry,” Meriam said, her voice pleading. When Murry said nothing, Meriam added, “He’s like our son, Murry. Our son. It’s our job to protect him. And we owe it to my sister.”
Now it was Murry’s turn to scoff. “Hardly.”
“The only reason we have this place is because of her. You know that.”
Murry said nothing. Lance desperately tried to keep up, tried to make sense of the conversation.
Finally, Murry threw up his hands, an act of capitulation. “What exactly is it you’d like me to do? I can’t force them never to talk about any of this.”
The Lance Brody Series: Books 3 and 4 Page 29