by Sarah Noffke
“Why are we here?” she says, sniffing a bit. “And what’s that smell?”
“Shit. It’s the town’s currency,” I say.
“Why did you bring me to a Podunk town? Is this a part of a dream travel lesson?”
“Don’t use that word,” I say, grimacing.
“Which one?”
“That ‘p’ word,” I say like it’s something foul. “And yes and no.”
“Because it’s an American expression?” she says.
“Because it’s a dumb one.”
She looks around, her eyes studying the drab surroundings. Peavey is a mostly colorless town this time of year. Well most times of year. “So let me guess, you’ve brought me out to the middle of nowhere, but aren’t going to divulge why. I’m on a need to know basis, and you’re not revealing anything until you feel like it.”
I pause in the middle of the road, which doesn’t matter since traffic is unheard of in Peavey.
Adelaide turns and looks at me. “What?”
“I do believe against your efforts to resist evolution and education, you’re actually learning. Be careful, your head might explode.”
She tosses her long hair off her shoulder and wraps the scarf tighter around her neck. “Oh, whatever.”
“We’re down here,” I say, pointing to a dirt lane. When we pass the Gretchens’ farm my chest tightens, the same way it does on every one of these visits. They don’t feel forced, but it definitely doesn’t feel natural. I stop a few feet from the old oak door. It’s still the same faded red it’s always been, although it gets repainted every few years.
Adelaide looks at me, curiosity heavy in her eyes.
I open my mouth to say something. To give her information. To explain why I’ve brought her here. Why I’ve been, in my opinion, charitable. And yet there are no words that sound right. So I just shake my head and knock at the door.
Since he was probably sitting close by on the couch in the living room, my pops opens the door within a minute. He was no doubt expecting me, since this is our normal time to catch up. He’s brandishing a large grin, his clear brown eyes sparkling with life when he sets his focus on me.
“Right on schedule, as always,” he says, a chuckle in his voice, and with a grace I inherited he throws an arm around my shoulder, clapping my back once as he tugs me into him. My pops then freezes. I feel the tension press throughout his body. He pulls back his large frame and as I suspected his eyes have found Adelaide at my back.
“Hey, Pops,” I say, feeling an unsteady sensation spread through my abdomen. Suddenly this decision to bring Adelaide here seems like the worst one ever. Well, besides the one where I shagged her mum, thereby knocking her up. I just thought Adelaide could use this. And really I’m doing it more for my pops than anyone. I know he’s always wished our family was bigger; well, and not estranged.
“This is Adelaide,” I begin. “She’s—”
“My granddaughter,” he says, his voice cracking, his eyes glued to the girl in front of him. The one who is watching my pops, studying him in that way she does. That one where I know she’s cataloging.
“Yes,” I say, my voice deep.
He presses past me, his back straight, the position of his shoulders telling of his excitement. “Jesus Christ,” he says, awe written in his words. “You look just like her.” He’s addressing Adelaide.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. The word streams through my head as I press my palm into my forehead. It does little to ease the growing pressure in my head.
“What? Who?” Adelaide says, and from my dizzy vision I spy her step forward, toward my pops, her eyes wide and intrigue written on her face.
“Mary,” Pops says, and the way he speaks my mum’s name makes me miss her, makes me realize that almost twenty years later and he does too. “Your grandmum. You look just like her. Like the girl I married.” He chuckles loudly now, but it’s covered in a weighty emotion. When he turns back to me there’s a smile on his face I haven’t seen in too long, the smile he used to adorn when she was alive. It burns my insides. “She’s gorgeous, Ren. Your mum in every way. Uncanny, really,” he says, shaking his head and turning back around to stare at the girl who even I admit reminds me of the only woman I ever truly trusted. My mum wasn’t the type who people grew to trust. She earned that the moment she turned her earnest green eyes on a person and smiled with the light of an angel. She gave people too much credit. Loved them more than they deserved. Bestowed her unwavering attention on them. And it’s because of her that there’s any good in me. Most boys love their mum because they are their mum. I loved my mum because she was remarkable in every way. I knew why my pops chose her, a Middling, over partnering with a Dream Traveler. He would rather have had a short fifty years with her than a long eighty with someone from his own race.
I clear my throat. “Yeah, well, she’s—”
“I’m pleased to meet you, Reynold,” Adelaide says with that grace, the family one. She extends her hand to my pops and curtsies slightly.
“Granddad,” he says, the smile in his voice again. “You call me granddad. And we hug in this family.” And then the old man has his arms around hers so fast, pulling her tiny frame against his as he hugs her. He’s all arms and legs. All unyielding spirit.
Adelaide lets out a muffled laugh and the whole exchange is too much for me. I turn and walk into the house, preparing myself to stare at the wall for the next several hours as un-pleasantries happen. That’s what I’m expecting from this reunion. A preponderance of un-pleasantries.
Over-spiced beef stew is strong in the air when I enter the house. Pops can’t cook. It’s not like I’m comparing him to my mum. Compared to a blind man with no sense of taste, he can’t cook.
“You’re Ren’s pops?” Adelaide says as she enters the house. She has a confused expression on her face like she’s still struggling with disbelief and bewilderment.
“I am,” Pops says, that familiar disappointment already in his voice. “And you called him by his first name?” my pops says to Adelaide.
“Yeah,” she says a little sheepishly. “He told me to.”
“It’s my name. That’s what everyone calls me. Well, to my face,” I say.
“But she’s your daughter,” my pops says, wrinkles connected to his sudden stress surfacing on his face.
“Don’t call her that,” I say and grimace. “And before a week ago she was a stranger.” I grimace again.
“Has he always been like this?” Adelaide says, stepping up close to my pops. Both of them are glaring at me like I’m a gorilla on the other side of the glass at a zoo.
“Always,” my pops says, nodding. “But deep down inside, on a good day, Ren can be incredibly loving.”
“That’s completely false,” I say but get the sense they’re pretending not to hear me.
“You know, Ren was the best thing Mary and I ever did,” my pops says, his eyes now glowing with pride. Both he and Adelaide are regarding me with different levels of interests.
“Oh, for the love of God. Why did I bring you here? You two are going to cohort against me now,” I say.
“Why did you bring me here? That doesn’t seem in line with your usual actions,” Adelaide says, her proximity too close to my pops as though being near him is automatically natural.
I roll my eyes and then throw my hand in my pops’ direction. “I did it for him. He likes people and family.”
“Is there more family?” Adelaide says, turning to my pops.
He lets out a long sigh and presses his hand to the back of his head. “There is, but—”
“My sister is insane,” I say, cutting him off, relieving him of saying what I know he doesn’t want to admit. “She’s a permanent resident of a mental hospital. So be warned, crazy runs in the family.”
“I kind of knew that since we met,” she says, sticking out her tongue at me.
“She has daughters though. They’re American. Maybe you can be pen pals,” I say.
“I’m n
ot looking for a family reunion. And honestly I don’t really get along with girls. Or Americans,” Adelaide says.
“Because they’re wasteful?” I say.
“Because they think they’re better than everyone else,” she says.
“No arguments there,” I say.
“So you recently found Ren, I’m guessing,” my pops says to Adelaide.
“Yeah, he wasn’t happy about it,” she says.
“He will come around,” Pops says.
“I won’t,” I say.
“Having a child is a wonderful experience, Ren,” he says.
“For those with a soul,” I say.
He turns to Adelaide and winks. “Give him time and he will fall in love with you. I’m already endeared to you like a kindred spirit. Must be those eyes you inherited from my Mary.”
Adelaide gets an all wrong happy look on her face.
“She has my powers,” I say, cutting into their sappy-ass moment.
My pops drops his head a little, his eyes closing for a beat. When he looks at me, there’s the stress I knew would be caused by my admission.
“Yeah, not the little angel that you were thinking. When you hugged her she probably stole all your current thoughts out of your brain,” I say.
“I didn’t,” she says, and then hesitates. “At least I tried to ignore them.”
“I need to have a disclaimer plastered across your forehead,” I say.
“You don’t have one,” she says to me.
“I don’t touch people…anymore,” I add a second later.
“Having powers like Ren’s must have been very confusing for you. Is your mum a Middling?” Pops asks.
She nods.
“So you had no way of knowing what was happening to you, did you?” he says to her. Always the intuitive one, my pops.
“Right,” Adelaide says.
“Well, that must have been difficult. Ren has always known who he was and I fostered his skills, helping him to develop and control them,” he says.
“Which is exactly why I’ve taken the little monster in, and also another reason I brought her to you. Since you’re retired and bored to hell I figured you’d take on some of her training when I’m earning a bloody living to support her,” I say.
“Ren…” my pops says with that tone he thinks works on me. No tone works on me, I’m only compliant when I care to be.
“So you’ll train her when I’m busy, which means I won’t have to worry about her defacing parts of London. And as a bonus, then you won’t have to sit around here all day staring at the bloody walls. Haven’t I thought of everything?” I say smugly.
“I’d love it if you trained me instead of Ren,” Adelaide says.
“Not instead,” I say sharply. “My pops is good, but he only has one skill and it isn’t one we share. You still need my unique knowledge to make it out in the world. Or there’s always the option of offing yourself. That one is still on the table, you know.”
At this my pops actually laughs. “Oh, Ren, you and your jokes. They always sneak up on me and produce a laugh.”
I thread my arms together. “Not joking.”
He dismisses me with a wave of his hand and then turns to Adelaide. “I’m happy to help. But firstly, are you hungry?”
And although my reasons had been solid, I still knew that introducing these two was only going to create more problems for me. Adelaide is going to sew herself into my life until she is a permanent part of the patchwork.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“So you really think that teleporting is a skill that people can learn?” I say to Trey from my kickstand place against the wall to the training studio.
“Yes, but not every Dream Traveler could learn to teleport so easily, or maybe at all. Your powers as a Dream Traveler make it possible for you to hook in to potentially any skill,” he says, sitting on a chair in the corner, his elbows on his knees. “Really I think that your skills make it easier for you acquire powers. However, I firmly believe that any Dream Traveler with enough practice can obtain any gift.”
“So why aren’t you reading minds or controlling them?” I say.
“Who says I’m not?” Trey says, no smile on his face. “I got you to work for me.”
“I did it out of guilt,” I say.
“Control is a funny thing.”
“You’re a funny thing,” I say.
Trey pauses, then his face shifts. “Everything is energy, Ren.”
“Don’t patronize me like I’m one of your bloody residents. I already know the ‘everything is energy’ speech. I fucking wrote it,” I say.
“Well, then you know that our skills are just us accessing different energies. When you touch someone you feel the energy of their thoughts. When you control people you’re accessing the energy that produces their desires and actions,” Trey says.
“This is all very boring. You should leave the lectures to me. I’m theatrical when I teach,” I say.
“Yes, your students have mentioned that,” he says, a disapproving look on his face. “They also say some of your teaching tactics are a bit radical.”
For decades I’ve been teaching the employees of the Institute, training them on the dreamscape and its assorted powers. It was an extra duty I took on to ensure those who went through orientation got a proper education. Well, and also it was a way to entertain myself by berating halfwits.
“Well, under the right circumstances I think you’re powerful enough to teleport,” Trey says. “And if you’re going to work level five cases regularly then it’s a good idea to have an arsenal.”
“I will be working level fives,” I say.
“That’s yet to be determined. You’re getting this current case,” Trey says.
“Teleporting. Teach me your hocus-pocus,” I say, circling my hand at him.
Trey nods and then says, “The whole process works similarly to the one you use for creating illusions. You’re pulling from already present energy to manifest something that doesn’t really exist. In some ways you’ll find that illusions are harder because you’re creating that which isn’t real. With teleporting you’re only pulling your already existing energy to a new location using the fabric of consciousness.”
I pull out my pocketknife from my trouser pocket and immediately go to work cleaning under my nails, which I keep all the exact same length. One centimeter. Not too short. Not too long.
“You really do love to hear yourself talk,” I say, my eyes on my hand.
“Focusing on location is important, but you’re already comfortable with being precise with that due to dream traveling. The thing that makes the process of teleporting unique is belief. Remember how you reacted the first time you saw me teleport?” Trey says. “You didn’t believe it was real. You were in disbelief that I actually teleported.”
“To my credit, I thought you were trying to kill me,” I say, my mind flashing back to the long ago memory. Trey had intersected my path in an alleyway. Materialized out of the fucking air. Thinking he was an illusion, I ran straight into him. One of my palms is still scarred from the fall that resulted from that collison.
“The point is that you couldn’t fathom the possibility that teleporting was real and doable. That’s the hurdle for most people. Belief,” he says, tapping his head. “It’s the major prevention to a successful teleportation. You first learn the science and then you believe you can.”
“And then I chant some ancient babble and poof, I teleport?”
He shrugs. “Or you don’t and you sever your body from your consciousness. Or mangle your physical body. Or you disappear altogether. Never to be see again, stuck forever in the cosmos.”
I nod, having expected something like this to be unveiled casually. “And now you’ve finally disclosed why everyone in this bloody Institute isn’t popping around, teleporting their asses off.”
“Yes, it’s quite dangerous.”
“It sounds as though,” I say.
“That’s on
e of the reasons I’ve never taught this to anyone before. No one has ever had the right talents and level of power,” Trey says.
“So either your crush on me has gone too deep or you want me dead,” I say.
“The decision to make your first attempt to teleport is yours now that you know the risk. If you’re still interested in proceeding then I’ll share the process, which is surprisingly easy. But you have to be sure you want to do this, since it is incredibly dangerous,” Trey says.
“I’m not a fucking pansy. Tell me how to do this awesome party trick,” I say.
Chapter Twenty-Three
As I intended, I teleport behind the center column in the atrium of the Galleria mall in Dallas, Texas. Even after practicing a hundred times, the experience of teleporting makes me feel like my skeleton is being ripped through the pores of my body. It’s way worse than using a GAD-C, which I no longer really need. Hell, I don’t have to walk to the bloody post box if I don’t want to. I can just pop wherever I want on the globe. However, Trey has asked that I limit teleporting since apparently materializing out of the polluted air is somewhat uncommon. I’m only to use teleporting when traveling to secure locations or when I’m in desperate need. I deem this situation as such, since I’m here to intervene in something that although we don’t know much about, we suspect is of great threat.