Awakening (Book One of The Geis) (6 page)

Melancholy music pulled me into the gym. I recognized the theme song to Tchaikovsky’s
Swan Lake
. It matched my mood. My emotions were stretched and raw to the touch, like an open wound. I almost didn’t come to dance, but I knew it would help me get out of this funk.

Christa’s toe shoes were laced, and she walked over to me en pointe. “You’d better hurry—Ms. Slannon says she’s going to work us hard today.”

Most of the girls were already warming up on the gym floor. I shook the rain off my jacket and pulled one shoe from my dance bag. Panic set in as I remembered that I left my other shoe in my hurry to get out of the school the other night.

Ms. Slannon called out directions to the other girls in time to the music. She walked over and handed me the missing shoe without stopping her instruction. I mouthed a silent “thank you” and stuffed a wad of lamb’s wool inside the shoe before slipping it on. I tied a quick knot in my last ribbon and joined Christa in the middle of the floor to stretch.

So much had happened since our last class. I hadn’t even told her about seeing the janitor dancing.

Over the weekend, I had replayed the janitor’s dance in my mind. His movement was haunting—graceful and powerful in the same moment. The steps he’d danced were so similar to the Irish dancing I had seen. It had the same shuffling movements—the percussion and rhythm were its own music.

Never had I witnessed anyone dance with such a depth of emotion. When he’d stopped dancing, I’d felt self-conscious, like I’d overheard a personal secret. His anger at my intrusion had frightened me, but it wouldn’t stop me from asking him to teach me. I wanted to dance like that, to dance with emotional abandon.

I kept watch for the janitor during the entire class, hoping that he would show up in the hallway with his mop and bucket.

I tried to dance with emotion, the way he had done. The gloomy music of
Swan Lake
should have made it easier for me to dance with feeling, but it came out forced and mechanical, like the tiny dancer in my jewelry box—always spinning in time to the music, but never going anywhere.

“You okay?” Christa put her hand on my back. I didn’t realize that I had stopped. The other dancers continued the routine and Ms. Slannon looked our way before continuing her instruction.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said. Christa gave me a look. “I’ll talk to you after class.” Ms. Slannon clapped her hands to start the routine again.

A myriad of faint emotions swirled around me, fading in and out like radio signals, intensifying when someone spoke to me or made eye contact. My stomach lurched and I stumbled, off balance. After a few deep breaths, I regained enough control to continue with the exercise.

When class was over, Ms. Slannon called me to her.

“How are things going, McKayla?” she asked.

“Great,” I answered a bit too cheerfully.

“You seemed to be fighting against yourself in class today.” Ms. Slannon motioned to some other girls that she would be with them in a minute. “Are you feeling all right?”

“I think I ate too much dinner before I came. I can’t seem to get off the floor.” I smiled to assure Ms. Slannon that indigestion was the extent of my problems. The thought occurred to me that maybe Ms. Slannon would know something about the janitor. “Is the janitor around today?”

“Rourke? He’ll be around later to lock up the building. Is there a mess in the bathroom?”

“No, I just wondered.” I turned to leave, making a mental note of the janitor’s name. “Thanks.”

“McKayla, I ran into my college roommate the other day, the one who did Irish dancing. She lives in the valley, and I told her that I had a student who is interested in learning more about Irish dance.”

I turned back to Ms. Slannon. Adrenaline rushed through my body as if I were about to go onstage.

“Her husband built her a dance studio in their garage, but she hasn’t used it for over a year.” Ms. Slannon handed me a piece of paper with a phone number. “A little warning: Leah’s husband died of cancer last year. I don’t know if she will want to go back to dancing.”

“This is great. Thank you so much.”

Ms. Slannon smiled. I’d never noticed that she had freckles sprinkled across her nose. They endeared her to me even more.

Christa waited for me near the door. “You look better,” she said.

I grabbed her arms. “I can’t believe it! Ms. Slannon has a friend who teaches Irish dance, and she lives in Star Valley.”

“Whoa, no way!” Christa grinned. “We have to go call her right now.”

My black mood dissipated. I felt like dancing.

“Wait, do you think you could stay and practice?”

Christa looked at her watch. “Josh has wrestling practice. We could catch a ride home with him.”

Christa texted her brother, and I called my mom. Ms. Slannon asked us to turn out the lights in the gym when we were finished.

“Okay, spill it.” Christa said, as soon as we were alone in the gym. “What’s going on?”

I took a deep breath. “I came back to get my shoe last week, and someone was dancing in the gym. You’ll never guess.” The rush from learning such good news left me feeling giddy. I knew I was acting silly, but I didn’t care.

Christa sat down on the floor and put her shoes on again. “Lucas?”

“Not Lucas. Although that’s a sight I’d love to see.” The thought of Lucas dancing around the gym made me laugh. “It was the janitor.”

“The janitor was dancing? The one who trudges around, with a cane?”

“Yes, the only school janitor. His name is Rourke.” I kicked off my shoes, leaving them by my bag. “He wasn’t doing ballet, though. Get this—he was doing Irish.”

“The high school janitor was Irish dancing?” Christa burst out laughing. “That’s hilarious. What did he look like?”

“No, seriously. He was good. Not just good—he was better than anyone I’ve ever seen.”

“Weird.”

“What do you mean, weird?”

“Don’t you think it’s odd that a janitor would be dancing in the high school at night after everyone else is gone? And doesn’t he have a hurt leg or something?” Christa lifted her palms to me. “If this guy is so good, why doesn’t he make a living dancing instead of cleaning toilets? It sounds weird to me.”

“I didn’t think of it that way.”

We went through the same routine that I’d trudged through during class. Christa tired out before I did, and I used what was left of my adrenaline high to practice the few steps of Irish I had picked up on the Internet.

“I know how it’s supposed to look, but I can’t get my body to do it.” I looked over to where Christa was stretched out on the bleachers, reading a book. Christa shrugged, her eyes never leaving the page. Frustrated, I turned back to try again.

One, two, down—one, two, down
. The step sounded right, but my foot didn’t look the same as the Irish dancers I’d seen online.

A movement near the back of the room stopped my practicing. Behind me, Rourke stood on the edge of the wood floor, his mop propped against the wall.

I glanced at Christa, who sat up. Her book fell to the floor with a thud that sounded overly loud in the large room.

He stood inside the doorway, no words and no emotion from his stony face, like the lizard that curled next to the bucket at his feet.

Silence filled the room, pressing on my chest until I had to break free of it. I squared my shoulders to try again.

One, two, down.
The steps came from behind me.

Before I could begin, his foot had struck the floor and whipped back to its mate. Rhythm echoed in the silence. It sounded the same as when I’d performed the step, but Rourke knew how to control his feet. He clipped his foot on the ground, this time exaggerating the movement of his toe as his foot moved forward. He motioned toward me, the first time that he had acknowledged me.

I picked my foot up off the ground and concentrated on imitating the step.

One, two, down.
The step sounded the same as before, but the subtle change in foot position made all the difference. I tried the other foot. It felt natural to do the step, and I repeated it, moving forward until I was touching the bleachers. The step was elementary, I knew, but until now, my feet had refused to perform it.

I turned to thank Rourke, but he had already gathered his cleaning supplies and headed through the door.

“Wait,” I called.

Rourke stopped. His head was down and his eyebrows were furrowed so deeply that I couldn’t see his eyes.

Christa stared at us. The lizard crept forward to stand next to Rourke. No matter how badly I wanted to dance, at that moment I regretted calling out to him, and my voice came out small. “Will you teach me to dance?”

For a stretched-out eternity of a moment, Rourke didn’t move. He stared at the lizard at his feet. Then he limped to the door, his free hand waving in the air. It took me a moment to realize that he was using sign language. I knew a little bit of sign language from my human relations class, but the only thing I understood was the one thing his body language communicated: no.

When Rourke had gone, I sat on the floor.

Christa crossed to me. “You can’t just go around asking creepy janitors for dance lessons.”

“He fixed my step with one little demonstration, did you see that? Think how much I could learn if he would teach me.”

“Did you see the way he stared you down? That guy is a nut job.” Christa reached a hand out and pulled me to my feet. “Call Ms. Slannon’s friend to teach you.”

“I’m telling you, he can dance.” I couldn’t forget his emotional solo. “Where do you suppose he learned?”

“Knowing you, I bet you’ll ask him.”

I reached for Christa’s arm. “You are brilliant. If I learn sign language, I’ll be able to talk to him.”

“You’re crazy, girl. You don’t need to learn sign language to talk to him—he isn’t deaf.”

“I know, but he does sign. If I learn his way of speaking, maybe he will be willing to teach me his way of dancing.”

Josh was waiting in the car, a blurry form behind the wheel in the cascading rain. Christa and I ran from the school, but we were still drenched when we climbed, laughing, into the back seat.

“You two look like you just came from swim lessons,” Josh said.

I struggled to pull my jacket on over my wet arms, self-conscious in my leotard and stretch pants. “I wish we had. Then maybe I’d have a towel to dry off with.”

Christa grabbed a blanket and threw it around our shoulders. “Sorry we’re late, Josh. McKayla was asking the janitor how to Irish dance.”

“Irish dance?”

“McKayla saw some dancers in a competition and now she wants the janitor to teach her.”

“It sounds so creepy when you say it like that,” I told Christa. “I saw him dancing the other day, and he’s really good.”

Josh looked at me in the rear-view mirror. His face was flushed from practice. “A janitor who dances? Are you sure he’s legit?”

“Do you think you could do better?” Christa slugged Josh in the arm.

“Maybe.” Josh pulled onto Main Street, leaning over the wheel in an effort to see as the wipers struggled to sweep away the pelting rain.

“Aunt Avril took me with her to interview Mrs. Saddlebury’s neighbor,” I told Christa.

“Did they find out who murdered her husband?” Christa asked.

“Did you say murdered?” Josh whipped his head around.

“A guy was killed last week in Thayne.” Christa told him.

“A murder? I didn’t hear anyone talking about it.”

I smoothed my wet hair back from my face. “That’s because it didn’t look like a murder, it looked like a heart attack.”

“McKayla’s aunt took her to the investigation,” Christa told Josh. “I knew I should have skipped lunch to go with her.” She smirked at Josh’s reaction.

“When I sat in the room with this neighbor, the same thing happened as when I felt Mrs. Saddlebury get angry.” I lowered my voice, wanting to tell Christa, but not sure if I wanted Josh to hear about my strange connection to others’ emotions.

Christa shrieked. “You really are an empath. That is so cool! What am I feeling right now?”

I recoiled at the idea. Empath sounded too much like psychic.

“I can’t help it. I’m starting to pick up on emotions around me whether I want to or not. It’s getting to where I don’t even know how I feel anymore.”

“You can feel other people’s emotions?” Josh asked, his eyes on the road.

I nodded. “The first time it happened was at Mrs. Saddlebury’s house.” I turned to Christa. “That’s the thing—you would think that she would be feeling sad or shocked from the death of her husband. But she was so angry—angry with Aunt Avril. I didn’t just empathize with her, I felt so angry that it made me sick.” I hugged my stomach as the queasiness returned. “And then, today, I could tell that her neighbor was lying and embarrassed.”

“Maybe you really are psychic, like Aunt Avril.” Christa laughed until she saw that I wasn’t joining in.

Josh watched me in the mirror. I tried to block out the feeling, mentally staving off the sensation of concern that came from Josh in waves. Knowing that he was worried about me felt wrong somehow, like I was trespassing in his thoughts. Nausea swelled my throat tight. I gagged and swallowed. I had to figure out a way to get this emotional tuning-in under control.

We pulled over in time for me to lose my lunch in the field, one block away from my house.

A note was taped to the fridge, scrawled in Mom’s hasty handwriting: Pizza’s in the freezer. Cooking show—back at 9. Dad has the kids. Love, Mom.

Mom’s teaching people to cook, and I’m eating frozen pizza
. I took one look at the cardboard box, and put the pizza back in the freezer. The house was darker than usual because of the storm, and it was empty without the nightly bustle of my family there to fill it. Rows of homemade suckers sat on the counter. Mom was getting things ready for her county fair booth that weekend.

My stomach finally settled back down. Christa had fussed over me, but I had assured her that it was all of the excitement of the day. The rain had slowed to a drizzle, but Josh had insisted that he drive me the last block home.

I didn’t usually enjoy being home by myself, but this time I was glad for the privacy. I wanted to look up some more about Irish dancing on the Internet. But first, I had a phone call to make.