The Once-Dead Girl
Page 8
She glanced all around again. Still no one watching.
But she did see a small white plastic bag further away and across the street. She tried just focusing visually on it and zapping it. Nothing happened. She tried several times, and finally gave up and pointed her finger at the target while wanting it to go away.
That worked.
There was nothing else around she wanted to destroy. She’d have to take some things to some remote place some other time and experiment with zapping them. She needed to know what she could do and how to do it.
Just in case there was an invasion from outer space. She could be one of the brave defenders!
Yeah. Right.
·
Later that day as promised Bethany was given makeup tests. The teachers were nice enough to grade them that afternoon and evening, despite Thanksgiving being the next day and (she imagined) the teachers busy preparing for it. Each phoned or emailed her in the evening and told her that she’d passed their test. Her math teacher even congratulated her on her success, but added that he hoped her exemplary progress would continue.
Annoying man!
Thanksgiving was the usual busy three days with her village-sized family followed by a loafing day. Beth spent a lot of that time with her “fireteam” at the mall and at two different Thanksgiving parties.
Monday she returned to school. Each teacher gave her at least a perfunctory Welcome Back. By the end of the school week she was back in the groove. And this time she was studying to the best of her abilities.
She wasn’t sure, but she thought her superhuman side was stretching those abilities.
·
The next Tuesday she ran across Steve in the hallway as she was on her way to lunch. She stopped him.
“Steve! I’ve been wanting to see you and apologize for my brother.”
He looked down at her. His manner was cool but she saw signs of embarrassment.
“Oh, it’s OK. Actually I don’t blame him. I like that he stood up for you. ”
“OK. Well, you know my so-called death really shook him up. And all my family.”
“I get that. Well, thanks for saying something. See you.”
“Sure. See you.”
She hurried to get to the cafeteria. She was meeting her “fireteam” there.
Moments after entering Naomi came up behind her.
“Girl! You can move. I’ve been trying to catch up to you.”
Beth looked up at tall black girl. “You should have said something.”
“With all the noise this herd was making? I’d have had to yell.”
At that they went their separate ways to join up a bit later at the outdoor patio in the middle of the school buildings. As usual Lihua had been ahead of the rest, her classroom being closest to the caf. She had snared a round plastic table with an umbrella to protect their ultra-blond friend Brigitte from the sun.
Just as Beth and Naomi sat down across from Lee that last came up and joined them. They set about arranging their food while Lee filled them in on a piece of gossip. She was their “intel troop” as Kendall called her because she had an endless fascination with other people’s lives.
Brigitte as usual was picking at a salad. She eyed Beth’s very full plate and the pace at which she was eating.
As he sat down Gerard said, “Do you have a tape worm or something? You ate like this all Thanksgiving. I thought it was just you getting into the Thanksgiving mood.”
“It’s because I lost so much weight while I was in a coma. I’ve got to build it back. Doctor’s orders.”
They didn’t know just how much she’d eaten over the weekend. Their schedules not coming together all the time, she’d been able to conceal that .
Boy. She was getting lots of practice lying and hiding her superhuman nature. They never mentioned that in the comics Kendall had convinced her to read.
“Say,” Naomi said. “I have something to tell you. I saw Beth and Steve in the hall. They were getting awfully cozy.”
Lee squealed. “I knew it! He asked about you yesterday when we crossed paths. I’ll bet he’s been secretly in love with you and has realized how close he came to losing you. So now he’s overcoming his shyness and going to ask you out.”
The others all looked at her. And then almost in unison sighed and shook their heads. Lee was always “discovering” secret love lives.
But three days later Steve asked Bethany out.
·
Saturday at noonBethany had her first date with Steve, lunch at the mall food center. He was funny, friendly, and asked her a lot of questions about herself. He even listened and was obviously interested in her answers, not just pretending to be.
“Do you know how rare that is?” said Brigitte when the four girls and Gerard got together at Naomi’s house late that Saturday afternoon. Her parent’s were old rich and had a house which was even more extravagant than Lihua’s, though their mini-mansion was more old-California traditional with lots of fake-adobe walls and red-tile roofs. But like Lee’s home it nestled into the first uplift of Burbank into the VerdugoMountains.
They were sitting around the outdoor pool, not the heated indoor pool. It had been a rare cloudy day for Southern California, but the grey sky was now broken up into individual clouds. This supplied them with spectacular orange, red, and purple clouds which piled high in the west and south. They also had a good view out over Burbank and the eastern edge of the San Fernando valley. Thousands of lights were beginning to twinkle like land-locked stars.
“Amen to that, home girl,” said Naomi. A jock obsessed with basketball and a ferocious player of it, her tall sleekly muscled body and elegant Nefertiti face made her very popular with boys. Her obsession with basketball and lack of obsession with boys also drew them like flies.
Lee shifted in her lawn chair and pulled her bikini back into position. “I think they talk so much about themselves because of the peacock reflex.”
Gerard leaned over to pick up his glass of fruit juice from a nearby table as he said, “The what?”
“The male peacock is an extravagant example of a pattern found in many bird species. It’s the male which has the most gorgeous plumage. He also struts and opens his tail wide to show it off to attract the females.”
All four girls turned their heads toward Gerard at that. He was wearing baggy flaming red swim shorts with large leaf-like orange patterns on it. A tight purple and green sleeveless tee molded itself to his body. His muscles were sharply sculpted, a development beginning two years ago.
“What?” he said. “I just like bright colors.”
“Gay colors, I believe the term is,” said Brigitte, adopting the somewhat-pedantic tone Lee did when she began expounding on some intellectual topic.
Solemnly he lifted his arms and struck a sitting bodybuilder pose, turning his head, lifting his chin, and assuming a noble expression.
All four girls in a long practiced routine sighed in unison and said, “Like a Greek god!”
And all five cracked up.
Chapter 3 - Abnormal Life
That Spring Bethany had her first brush with violent crime. And she learned that she had a taste for it.
She learned much else also during the winter and early Spring. She learned about her “superpowers.” She could zap a big old dead tree into flying dust and melt an old abandoned rusty automobile into a big pool of metal and stinking burning oil and plastic.
That had given her goose bumps all up and down her legs and arms. Scary that she was now more dangerous than a whole troop of soldiers with fully automatic weapons and bazookas and what all!
And exhilarating as Hell. She’d found herself grinning like an idiot after she’d gotten over the horrible sight of the car’s remains.
She was a dozen or two dozen times as strong as most people, able to run much faster, jump higher and farther, and endure more punishment. Her body found a hundred-foot fall a mild annoyance, a knife made her skin as hard as rubber, disease would n
ever touch her, and she would not be bothered if she found herself naked in the hottest and coldest places on the planet.
Though she did not need to experience any of those dangers. She could “look” inside herself and understand her resistance to danger deeper and better than any doctor or biologist. She could also share some of her ultra-health with others for a short time if she touched them and desired it.
She could also make them deathly ill with a touch. THAT she did learn from experience.
She also learned that dating a boy could be frustrating.
·
By the time Valentine’s Day came around she and Steve were an item. At least once a week they ate lunch together, sometimes just the two of them, sometimes with others .
Most Saturdays they had dinner and often movies, sometimes a teen dance, sometimes hiking in the VerdugoMountains or other nature preserve. They talked about all sorts of philosophical questions and their future plans. Mostly his, because hers were still so vague. And often they would find time to make out.
One of their latest places to do that was on a deserted construction site on a hill above Glendale, the city just to the east of Burbank.
He was kissing her nipples and fondling her breasts when Bethany became so turned on she decided to let him get to third base. Though maybe it should be called two-and-a-half base because she was not ready to go all the way to intercourse.
She pushed him back from her. He sat back in the driver’s seat of his car. The night air was cool on her bare nipples, wet from his kisses.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. It’s what’s right. I want to give you a BJ. If you’ll do the same for me.”
He was utterly still and silent.
Beth waited. And waited.
What had she done wrong? She knew men were supposed to make the first move, even in this day and age. Forward women were sluts. Everyone knew that. It was unfair but that’s the way the world was.
She looked more closely at him, turning up the sensitivity of her eyes. The light from the city before them and from a distant street light let her see almost as much detail as she would have on a grey day.
All the tiny symptoms which she’d been avoiding seeing for the last month were clear. He was not sexually interested in her.
Bethany before death would have been disappointed, hurt, perhaps angry. Bethany plus fragmented memories of Mael and several dozen aliens made her old and wise. And only sad.
Gently she said, “Do you want to tell me why?” But she knew why.
“I... I can’t....”
He could not go further.
She said, “I know why. You’re not attracted to me that way.” He could not be attracted to any woman that way.
Maybe if she and Lee had not been friends with Gerard since they had all met in elementary school she would have reacted badly despite all the strange wisdom.
She placed a hand on Steve’s hand closest to her, lying limply on the car seat between them. She sent ultra-microscopic messengers of comfort and caring into him.
His hand was still for long moments. Then it turned and squeezed hers.
They sat that way for many minutes before he smiled wanly at her and lifted his hand to turn the car key.
·
Hiding her superhuman nature every day for months had turned Bethany into a very practiced liar. And sympathetic to those with a secret. Her friends were sad a few days later when she told them her version of how and why the two of them had broken up. Steve had wanted to go all the way. She hadn’t. But they remained friends.
·
Bethany’s dreams increased after the night of the breakup. Some kind of coping mechanism? Something else entirely?
Most of the aliens who were her—ancestors?—were from advanced civilizations. In one dream she, he, or it was looking at a viewscreen. In it was an image of a huge glowing lens shape: a galaxy. S/he was deciding how to get from one place to another.
Burbank High had an Astronomy Club. She joined it, hoping she’d learn how to better make sense of her dreams.
She didn’t, at least not right away. But she did learn some interesting facts. It was a hundred thousand light-years across the Galaxy, and it was one of billions of other galaxies. It was made up of at least two hundred billion stars.
The numbers and the distances were beyond any human’s imagination. Yet they seemed totally natural to her. The benefit of being a (sort of) alien, she supposed!
She made friends in the club. They had periodic meetings to discuss new discoveries. Her fireteam friends might have been jealous, but each of them had their own extracurriculars, all of which would make them better candidates when they sought a place at a college.
·
On one Saturday three months into the new year their sponsor at school took them on a tour of the Rocket Propulsion Laboratory a half-dozen miles to the east. It was mid-morning and an ocean weather front had brought fog ashore to cover much of the Los Angeles coast, including Burbank.
Everyone was noisily cheerful as they entered the big yellow school bus parked outside the main entrance to the high school. The fog made anything over a block away invisible, making the world a spooky place.
“Hey, Dean. Thought you couldn’t make it,” said Marisol Lopez as she and Bethany waited in line to get on the bus .
Dean Bradley was a lean boy with long brown hair he kept swiping out of his eyes. He hurried up to them.
“Last minute change of plans by the ‘rents. They decided to put off the trip to Baja for a week.”
Marisol, a pretty Latina with brown hair as long and lustrous as Lee’s, spoke up.
“I don’t suppose it had nothing to do with you pleading and weeping and acting suicidal.”
“Nothing whatever,” he said with a smirk. He had a backpack slung over one shoulder.
The line advanced a few more steps and they entered the doors of the bus to be checked off a list by Mrs. Wallace Winslow, their sponsor. Then, when the last of the late arrivals had been let on the bus, she climbed in after them, closed the door, and told the driver to begin the trip.
It took about 20 minutes of cautious freeway driving through the fog to travel south and east, then east, then north, which took them up a long steep incline as the land rose toward the larger mountain range east of the VerdugoMountains. Looking back and westward Bethany could see that the fog was breaking up. Too, the bus was rising above the fog which covered all the lowlands of L. A. except the tops of the skyscrapers of downtown L. A.
East a few miles more brought them in sight of the Lab. It was built on a square mile or so of hillside above the huge and famous Rose Bowl Stadium and SportsCenter. There were several dozen buildings of several sizes, including a big tall one with black glass sides which reminded her of a domino playing piece. Trees several decades old for the most part rose around buildings, many of the central ones three or four stories tall.
At a guard gate they were let through to a turnaround in front of a visitor’s entrance.
The Visitor’s Center had a big room with a receptionist sitting on a high chair behind a counter top. To one side of her was a bank of flat screens showing various space scenes, some of them slowly changing such as one of a spaceship approaching the Moon.
In the center of the room was a gleaming deep-space satellite on a large pedestal. Atop it a golden parabolic disc pointed skyward. Beth ignored it for a minute to do an automatic situation assessment of people, doors, and windows.
Each of the students was signed in on an information slate and given a visitor’s badge. Then they were led by Mrs. Winslow into another room with lots of chairs with rounded plastic bottoms and backs. Opposite the front door was a low stage with a lectern near its front. The lectern was to one side so a speaker would not obscure the large wall screen at the rear of the stage.
Behind the lectern was a man with middle-eastern features in grey sports coat over a white shirt, navy pants, and grey running shoe
s. He got down from the stage and walked toward Mrs. Winslow, smiling. They shook hands and exchanged a few sentences. Then he turned to the students and raised his hands.
“Welcome to the Rocket Propulsion Laboratory. If you’ll all get seated we’ll begin.”
Bethany and her two friends got front-row seats off to one side opposite the lectern. Every one else settled, some more quickly than others.
The lights dimmed and the big screen lit with an image of a spiral galaxy shining like snow against the blackness of space. Within the white were pinpoints of all colors of the rainbow. Darkness separated several spiral arms of stars which coiled around the lens-like globular cluster in its center.
“I’m Dr. Elliott Elbaz. That’s an Arabic name, though I have little Arabic blood in me. It’s appropriate, however, because the Arabs were the first to study the skies intensively. Many of the stars in the sky have Arabic names. I imagine most of you know this already.”
A night sky replaced the galaxy. Several stars had white text beside them with names, including Algol, Betelgeuse, Deneb, Rigel, and Vega.
“There are several specialties within astronomy. Some of them include observation with optical telescopes. This is the closest one, on nearby Mount Wilson. Some of you may have visited it.”
An image of the domed observatory flicked onto the screen.
“We also use radio telescopes, some of them on the ground and some in space.” This was accompanied by several photos illustrating his point.
“My own specialty is astrophysics. People like me try to understand the ways stars and planets are governed by physical principle. Such as how stars burn, planets swing around the sun, and so on.” A succession of images.
“Let me tell you about recent research I participated in. Doubtless you’ve all heard of the five Lagrange points near us, two of them close to our moon.” A diagram of the Earth-Moon system came on the screen. A circle showed the Moon’s path around the Earth. Five labeled points showed where the L1 through L5 points were. Three of them were on the circle. The other two were near the moon on the near and the far sides.