Balancer (9 page)

Bob Can’t Come to the Phone Right Now

Nicole flicked through
the morning mail and found the letter she was looking for. She headed back into her dad’s study with her computer and seated herself in front of his desk.

She placed her laptop on the desk and opened it. Her dad’s familiar, stubbled face and smiley eyes were frozen onscreen as he waited for her to resume their Skype call. He was wearing his usual jeans and dark green polo shirt as he reclined in his bland hotel room. The time difference meant it was still afternoon where he was and he’d just had lunch, the remnants of which were on a tray behind him.

Nicole unpaused the Skype call. “I got it. Came today.”

While her dad was away, Nicole was in charge of opening his correspondence. Her mom had so little time to go through the various bills and other documents coming his way that it seemed to work out better if Nicole acted as his administrative assistant. Her mom filtered out any important work documents early on, and going over the mail meant Nicole and her dad could keep a sense of normalcy between them. Nicole was, in her dad’s words, “scarily organized,” so the catch-up seemed a perfect arrangement.

This call was also helping take Nicole’s mind off of everything else that was going on, as the pleas from other TV networks for interviews hadn’t eased up. It was especially tough now that Ben’s emails were arriving two or three times a day.

“What’s the deadline?”

“Umm … expires in a month?”

“Great. Thanks, mouse. I’ll make a note of it.” Her dad yawned.

“Late night, huh?” Nicole ignored him calling her “mouse,” though it was a childhood nickname she’d prefer to distance herself from. He looked way too tired for a spat. Besides, in a way, she did still like it.

“Yeah, you know it,” he said with his trademark wide grin.

“Is it going OK?”

“We’ll get there. So you’re heading to the lake again today, huh?”

“Yeah, just for the day.”

“You and Amy gonna try and one-up your rescue? Maybe save a school bus of kids? Or — here’s a novel idea — maybe head to the pool like normal girls your age?”

Nicole laughed. She and Amy had every intention of enjoying the park the old-fashioned way this time, though they
had
talked about going into the forest to retrace their steps. She decided not to tell her dad about that part.

“How’s Bob?”

“Bob’s fine.”

“Bob,” her dad’s bonsai tree, had been a housewarming present from some Japanese neighbors when Nicole’s family had moved into their current home. Now, Bob the Bonsai Tree was not to be confused with Bob the stuffed horse, although understandably this had happened many times. Nicole would frequently run around the house looking for Bob, and her dad would point to the tree and say, “Relax. Bob’s right here.”
Not
funny.

Seven years old, Bob was her dad’s pride and joy, and whenever he was home, he could often to be found spritzing the leaves and trimming the branches. He found it very calming, a Zen-like escape from his intense work. Every now and then, Nicole even heard some snatches of man-to-plant “conversation” filtering out from the study.

Nicole leaned over the laptop and had to hide her look of horror. Bob was as arid as a desert and appeared very far from fine. His leaves had gone yellow.

She had forgotten to water Bob!

It was such a delicate plant — it could take years to recover. She crossed her fingers in hopes that her dad wouldn’t want to see his beloved Bob onscreen.

“When are you going to be home?” she asked, craftily changing the subject.

“Too early to say yet. I’ll keep mom posted.”

Nicole hid her disappointment.

“Has school improved? I hear you’re Miss Popularity.”

“Oh, yeah. If you count being stared at and having twenty questions hurled at me every other minute. I think they’ll give up eventually.”

“Well, like you said on the news, maybe leave the rescuing to mom for a little while.”

“I’ll try. Oh, she said she’d call again tonight.”

Her dad seemed happy with that, and Nicole caught him up on a little family news before the inevitable Skype farewell.

Whenever she got off the phone or Skype with her dad, Nicole always felt a little sad and, oddly, a little homesick, even though home was here. She knew that a lot of other people’s dads had pretty normal work schedules, and she’d never really experienced that. There’d be brief periods where her dad’s schedule would be calm and regular, plans would be made, and then
boom!
— plane crash. The NTSB would call and he’d be gone. Nicole felt guilty belittling a plane crash, but it happened so often that the guilty feeling was replaced by a numbness to it all.

She remained seated in her dad’s chair and rested her elbows on its leather arms. This was a rare moment of calm in two weeks of madness. With all the stresses of school, the TV interview, and now the incessant phone calls from old acquaintances and long-lost family friends coming out of the woodwork, she and her mom had forgotten to take care of Bob.

Nicole felt bad. Her dad would say he wouldn’t mind, but one thing he always did when he got home was head up to his study and reacquaint himself with the plant that reminded him of home. It had a calming effect.

Nicole had a strange feeling that she had somehow let her dad down, and she didn’t like it. She really missed him, and it was silly, but keeping Bob watered somehow proved to her dad that she was thinking of him outside of the administrative tasks and the Skype calls.

She shut her eyes and felt a little knot inside her stomach. She thought of her dad, his smiling eyes, the way she caught a whiff of cologne whenever he hugged her a bit too tight.

Whether it was the heightened emotion of the week or the fact that she was really missing her dad right now, a small tear began to form in her eye, clouding her vision.

She let it stay there for a few moments before taking a deep breath, wiping it away and getting up. She had some more packing to do before the lake, and she was going to choose one of her favorite old books to read to Ethan at the hospital.

As she left the study, she turned around for one last glance.

Then she saw it.

A sudden feeling of intense shock hit her at the sight of the bonsai standing green and healthy again.

She even turned on the study light just in case her eyes were deceiving her, but sure enough, Bob’s leaves were as green and lush as the day he was potted and given to her dad.

It took a few moments to sink in, and Nicole approached the plant cautiously. She turned it around slowly, touching a leaf as though it were some kind of mirage. But she hadn’t imagined it. The bonsai was real and it was alive!

Anxiously, she retraced the past few moments, trying to piece together what had happened. Moments earlier, when she had been thinking about her dad and had shed a tear, the plant was arid and dead. Afterward, it had been restored to life.

She had revived the plant?

Breathlessly and hardly thinking, she ran out of the study and into the dining room, where she’d remembered seeing a vase of wilting, long-stemmed yellow roses.

There they were, the centerpiece of the dining room table in all their faded glory, their petals crusting at the edges in the vase that had been her parents’ wedding present.

Nicole’s heart pounded furiously. Feeling giddy at the extraordinary possibilities, she directed her attention and her feelings toward the roses. She thought of how they’d been a long-distance present from her dad for her parents’ anniversary, and how happy her mom had been when they’d arrived, even if she’d complained a little about the cost. When she thought about the moment her mom beamed at the roses in her arms, warmth rose in her chest.

She felt the knot in her stomach unwind.

Then the roses began to change. Nicole fought the urge to look away in fear, and instead locked her gaze on what was happening to the roses. After a few seconds, they rose up a little straighter, like soldiers standing at attention again, their leaves lifting like a graceful ballerina’s arms. Very slowly but surely, the sunshine-yellow bloom returned to their delicate petals. Before long, the brown had disappeared completely, and the beautiful flowers were revived. They looked as fresh as the day they were picked.

It had happened again.

She could do it. She could revive plants. And she had seen their rejuvenation unfold with her own eyes.

She sat down heavily at the head of the table and rested her chin on her hands, staring and staring, unable to take in even the slightest part of the enormity of all of this. A huge grin spread across her face.

I gotta show Amy.

Do That Thing
With the Thing

A
my had just
opened the door to her car when Nicole came bursting out of the house as though there were another wildfire on her tail. She ran all the way down the driveway and was so out of breath by the time she reached Amy that she had to spend a moment leaning against the car, catching her breath.

Amy watched her best friend curiously, anticipation rising.

“Don’t tell me — your house is on fire and we have to run?” Amy joked.

Nicole was speechless and was frantically pointing back at the house.

“Car crash?”

Nicole shook her head, and Amy braced herself for the news.

“It’s me. I think it was me all along!”

“You … what?” Sensing this wasn’t going to be the quick pickup they’d arranged, Amy shut the car door behind her. Nicole was acting … weird. She was flailing around in the way Amy usually did, and it was a sight to see. “Whoa, Nix. Breathe. Breathe!”

Amy took in some breaths as if to show Nicole how to do it. The pair must have looked odd, hyperventilating together there on the driveway.

Nicole found it all hard to explain, but slowly she stuttered the odd story. She told Amy about Bob and then the rose experiment, choosing her words carefully and speaking slowly as she got back her breath.

By the end of Nicole’s explanation, it was evident by the look on Amy’s face that she could hardly believe it.

“I just need more plants to show you!”

“What are you talking about?”

“If I can find one, I can concentrate on it like I did before, and then I could show you.”

“Nicole, are you kidding me? Look.” Amy pointed, and when Nicole turned, she saw rows upon rows of small plants and flowers beneath the window of her dad’s study that were shriveled up and withered. They were just like the bonsai had been.

“But those were alive this morning.”

“Not anymore.”

“I don’t understand.”

Nicole had revived a plant and seemingly killed another. Was that how it worked? The reality now dawned on Nicole. It was bizarre — incredible almost. What was going on outside while miracles were happening inside? Was this the result of what she had done to Bob the Bonsai? Nicole pressed her hands against the side of her face like she did whenever she was confused or stressed.

“… I think I killed them when I revived dad’s plant.”

“Oh, man. No way. No way! This is huge. This is massive! Nicole, do you know what you’re saying?”

Nicole hardly knew what to do with herself, and neither did Amy now.

“OK. All right,” Amy said. “This is OK. This is perfectly logical. We can do this. We can get through this.”

Amy looked deep into Nicole’s eyes and placed her hands on her friend’s shoulders. She hoped she was being soothing; she wasn’t used to being the calming presence. That was usually Nicole’s job.

“OK, Nix. I think I’ve got a plan.”

Nicole hesitated. Amy’s plans usually had good intentions but sometimes negative side effects. There was no reason to believe this “plan” was any different from the others.

“If what you’re saying is true, what if you show me exactly how you did it,” Amy said, pausing for dramatic effect, “…by using those.” With a devious grin, Amy pointed to Mrs. Truman’s perfectly manicured front garden. Amy partly wanted to see Mrs. Truman’s garden wilt, but another part of her just couldn’t believe it could be done. She was merely enjoying the idea of wilting Mrs. Truman’s plants.

Nicole gasped. “Amy, we can’t.”

“Look, we can just try it. No one will know. Plus, it’ll be funny. It might not even work. Come on, we need a good laugh right about now. It’d be something to lighten the mood. We can get all heavy and morbid later.”

Nicole hesitated. She looked at the grumpy old woman’s flower bed and rosebushes. She recalled how many times she’d been humiliated by the bitter old lady. She then thought about how hilarious it would be when Mrs. Truman returned from calling 911 about her yard having been vandalized to discover everything restored perfectly. How would she explain to the officer what she thought she had seen? Nicole smiled. Amy was right. She needed something like this.

Nicole concentrated. She remembered the interminable weeding she would be made to do for Mrs. Truman as punishment for a bad ball shot during her younger years. She remembered that terrible sinking feeling she’d have when a Frisbee or ball flew over the hedge and landed squarely in Mrs. Truman’s garden.

“Holy …” she heard Amy start to exclaim.

She opened her eyes and saw the azaleas had shriveled up, their beautiful pink faded to gray and their fine, bright petals wrinkled into a papery mess.

Aghast, Amy grabbed Nicole’s arm, partly to steady herself.

“I saw it. I saw it all. It was like the flowers just … just … curled up and died.” Amy cheered with delight. “Ha! Take that, lady! Do more! The hedge! Do the hedge!”

Nicole giggled. “OK, OK …”

Amy excitedly took Nicole’s hand and squeezed it.

This time, Nicole didn’t close her eyes, but focused on the newly trimmed hedge. She recalled how, after knocking something over into Mrs. Truman’s garden, she would find herself uttering a little prayer that the battle-axe wouldn’t be at home. But inevitably she would see the lady’s shadow looming at the dining room window, as if she were psychically connected to each blade of grass on her lawn. Nicole flinched, remembering how belittled she would feel when the lecture came about how clumsy and stupid she was, and how frustrated she would be that the word “accident” didn’t seem to be in Mrs. Truman’s vocabulary.

Nicole felt her long-standing annoyances rise, and at that moment, the leaves on the hedge started to turn. They first browned at the edges, and the decay soon spread down the leaves and into the branches. The rot gathered momentum, and Amy issued a low hum at the sight of every single small leaf on the hedge drying up within seconds. Then, all at once, the brittle branches released every one of their rotten leaves, which cascaded into a heap on the ground.

Nicole could hardly believe her eyes.

Where there was once lush greenery and pruned plants now stood a wasteland of dried-up matter, all gnarled and yellowing.

The azaleas, the newly trimmed hedge, the flower bed — every leafy bit of green was withering on the branch, as if some invisible weedkiller had been poured from above.

“Nix, look.”

A new surprise? In contrast to the dead garden, the once perfectly manicured lawn had become a shoulder-high jungle of wild grass and massive weeds.

Amy screeched with delight. Nicole giggled. The experiment hadn’t quite come off as she’d hoped, though — the grass and weeds had overgrown.

“OMG,” Amy murmured.

“I know.”

“You totally did that.”

“I know.”

“OK. We need to think about this.” Amy started pacing. “I mean, really think. The wildfire, the animals, the fish.”

Nicole kept nodding. This opened up a whole new can of worms. It was momentous and massive in its implications, and the two best friends knew they were standing at the precipice of something life-changing.

Nicole felt overwhelmed all of a sudden, and her throat felt choked and sore with the emotion of it all.

Amy looked at Nicole’s reaction and realized they may have taken the prank too far. “All right. Well, as much as I enjoyed this, it’s a little harsh, even for Mrs. Truman. So just do your thing, put it all back, and let’s go.”

“OK.” Nicole concentrated again on Mrs. Truman’s plants. She thought about Amy and her sparkly green eyes and mad hair and how, even after all these years of knowing her, she seemed to get more brilliantly unpredictable by the day. She smiled at how she could never be angry with Amy for any length of time, and at how grateful she was for Amy’s friendship, even though the first time they’d met had been in kindergarten when Amy had stolen her sandbox spade.

“Go on then.”

“What?” Nicole held her eyes clenched shut, remembering her fury as a 5-year-old being replaced by glee when Amy had upended the spadeful of sand into her own shock of ginger hair.

“Do that thing you do with the …” Amy flailed her arms around, looking for a word that didn’t exist. “… thing!”

Nicole opened her eyes. “I am!”

She looked around her. Mrs. Truman’s garden was still in a state of dehydrated ruin.

Nicole shut her eyes again and tried to summon up something else. She needed something good to direct at the garden.

“Nix, I don’t think it’s working.”

Nicole’s heart sank.

“Maybe try the plants in your garden first? A smaller patch? Maybe it’s that.”

Nicole ran over to the flowerbox under her dad’s study. She summoned all of her energies and directed them toward the flowers. And yet nothing.

“Nix …”

Nicole glanced across to another neighbor’s garden. A previously withered clump of fern had unfurled and was looking positively vibrant.

A sinking feeling crept into her veins.

By the look on Amy’s face, she seemed to be sharing the same terrible thought.

What if it only works one way?

“Oh, God.” The words of horror tumbled out of Nicole’s mouth. “What have I done?” Nicole ran into the safety of her house. Fear pounded at her heart.