Glimpse (21 page)

After we’d come home from dinner with Mom, I’d told Dad that we knew about the baby.  He’d looked devastated. “I’m going to turn in for the night,” was all he’d said and then went into his bedroom and shut the door.

There was a light tapping on the window. We both sat up in bed to see what it was.

Avery waved and then motioned for me to come outside.  I checked with Melody.

“Do whatever you want.  I guess the Adams men are too irresistible to the redheads in this family.”  Melody rolled over, turning her back to me. She was reminding me more and more of Aunt Hazel everyday.  She was going to be an excellent Lookout.

As quietly as I could, I yanked on a pair of shorts underneath my beloved Minnie Mouse nightshirt. Since Dad had removed the desk from our room while we were in Portland to discourage the exact kind of behavior I was about to display, I took out the stepstool I’d stashed under my bed. Barefoot, I climbed up it and slid effortlessly out the window.

Avery grabbed me, pinning me against the side of the house and whispered in my ear, “Are you opposed to rushing back into things?”

“No, rushing’s good,” I said, nearly breathless.

He kissed me. Finally. A good, long, electricity sparking, sirens blaring, lip numbing sort of kiss. But that wasn’t what let me know that all was forgiven between us.

“You know that nightshirt makes me totally hot,” he said.

That was.

I giggled and pushed him off of me.  “C’mon, let’s get away from the house.”

We walked hand in hand to the park across the street.  Avery’s truck was in the parking lot.  “We can go sit in the truck if you want,” he laughed, “it’s a little more private than the park bench.”

I took his arm and put it around my shoulders. “Pervert.”

He brought me to him, kissing the top of my head. “Whatever.  You love me.”

“I do love you.  How is it that you love me though? I thought you were going to hate me forever and then you were so quick to forgive.” We got in the truck. 

Avery put his hand on my inner thigh and pulled me closer. His touch sent a shockwave right through me.  How I had missed him!  He let his hand rest on my knee. “I talked to Claire everyday. I know that’s more than you knew went on…we weren’t trying to be sneaky, we both just didn’t want to do any more harm to you than I’d already done.”

I nodded. “I’m glad you were careful, I was really messed up.”

He squeezed my knee. “From the day after you met your grandma until the day you came home, she told me everything your grandma told you. What she was teaching you to do. How you weren’t responsible for my dad’s death.” He squeezed my knee again. “She told me what happens in the vision you have of me and that you have it
every
night.  That’s pretty intense, Zel.”

I cringed, thinking about my gigantic pregnant belly.  The Adams men really were an addiction. “Which part is intense?” Did Claire have to share everything?

He laughed. “All of it. The wreck, the blood, we’re old…you’re pregnant!”

“About that—”

Avery put his hand up to stop me talking. “Yeah, I can see where you’re going with this.  Don’t freak. I know I’m your trigger, that we have a strong physical connection.” He cleared his throat. “Claire seemed really interested in that part.”

“God!” I huffed, “I wish she’d get her own strong physical connection and leave mine alone!”

“Really?” Avery laughed again. “‘Cause I’m pretty sure that Jason would help her out with that.”

“Seriously?”

Avery shrugged.

I took his hand from my knee, intertwining our fingers. “Is it okay if I’m not ready to…you know?  I mean, I’m kind of ready, but not ready, ready.”

He gazed into my eyes. “I’m not ready, ready either.” He put my hand on his heart, right over the spot I’d pulled the bullet from. “I love you, Zellie Wells.  We may have an expiration date, but we’ve got time.”

I rewound the last bit, just to hear it again.

The End

I would like to thank my Lookout, cover artist, and little sister, Valerie Wallace for inspiring me to write the Zellie books.  Thanks also to Sarah Scott, my BFF and the only person on this planet who has read Glimpse as many times as I have.

Kisses to Rob, Gus, and Arlo.  I’ll always do the welcome home dance for you.

The second book in the Zellie Wells trilogy, Glimmer, is now available.

For more information on Stacey Wallace Benefiel and her upcoming titles, please go to: 
http://staceywb.webs.com

Looking for more YA novels similar to Glimpse? Please enjoy these excerpts from Hush Money by Susan Bischoff and Jenny Pox by J.L.Bryan.

Hush Money

A Talent Chronicles Novel

Susan Bischoff

www.susan-bischoff.com

Joss

I already knew it had happened again.

Not like I’m psychic, not really, but you don’t have to have any special mental Talent to see the signs…if you’re paying attention.

Stacy Scarpelli had had her hand in the air for, like, five minutes. Eventually she was doing that thing where you lean one elbow on the desk, and your other elbow in your hand, like you’re going to collapse from the exhaustion of trying to get the teacher’s attention. But the teacher was paying attention. She was paying a lot of attention to checking off names on the role; or supposedly taking role but totally not looking at that whole side of the room where Stacy was flinging her hand limply about on her wrist.

And leave it to Stacy to be so wrapped up in Stacy that she didn’t notice how quiet it was this morning in first period English, and how everyone just kind of sat there. The whispering would start later, as the shock wore off. Later, people would be saying how long they’d suspected and how much they’d never really liked Krista anyway. But just then we were all looking around at each other and wondering who else was keeping secrets and who would be the next one to disappear.

Ms. Carter looked up and set her pencil down very carefully on her desk, lining it up precisely next to her planner, and finally raised her eyes to Stacy.

“Yes, Stacy?”

“You assigned me Krista to be my partner for the project. And it’s not like I wanted to leave it to the last minute, but she was always later later later, you know? And finally I said we gotta get together this weekend, and we were supposed to meet on Saturday morning before my tennis lesson? So I waited and waited for her, but she didn’t show up, and I
had
to get to my lesson, right? And then I called her house after, but no one answered. No one answered all weekend, and now she’s not even here today, and I don’t know if she did any work at all on it. I did some, but I was kind of waiting to find out what she had, you know, compare notes, because there was no point in us doing the same thing, right? But I couldn’t cause she wouldn’t answer her phone and then I didn’t know what to do, and I was going nuts all weekend trying to get ahold of her—”

“Ok, Stacy. See me after class and we’ll work something out.”

“I mean, I don’t think I should be penalized because she was too busy to work on the project. Which she probably didn’t anyway, which is probably why she didn’t show up Saturday and dodged my calls all weekend, and she’s probably ditching school today so—“

“She’s not ditching; she’s just gone.”

All eyes slid toward Dylan. He sat sideways in his chair, the back of his leather jacket against the chalkboard along the side wall, long legs stretched out in front of him, his expression unreadable.

In the seat behind him, Marco tipped back in his chair. “NIAC hauled her off.” His voice was laced with the kind of satisfaction over other people’s tragedies that made me think about his chair tipping too far and his skull bouncing off the linoleum.

Ms. Carter glanced nervously around the room. I felt bad for her. How’s a teacher supposed to handle this subject? Encourage open discussion? Answer questions? Should we all share our feelings about the fact that we were never going to see Krista Pace again? It just seemed to me that the faculty probably knew about it earlier. Hell, the
National Institutes for Ability Control
probably sent out some kind of official letter to the school, wouldn’t you think? Our regular teacher should have been there for support and guidance instead of leaving the poor student-teacher to the wolves. But then, what would Mr. Krause have done differently?

“[cough]Freak![cough]”

“Shut up, Marco.” Dylan continued to bounce his pencil’s eraser on the desk and examine his boot-tops.

“Why, did you and freak-girl have something goin’ on? Need a new date for Homecoming now that NIAC’s locked her up?”

Enquiring minds want to know.
My mind was particularly interested, unfortunately.

“Thanks, but you’re not my type,” Dylan sneered back at his friend.

“Ok, people, that’s enough,” Ms. Carter finally gathered the courage to enter the conversation. “The topic of Krista Pace is off-limits in this class. If you have questions regarding her disap— If you have questions, you may take them to Assistant Principal Sims—on your own time. Meanwhile, I believe we have some oral presentations to hear today. Stacy, you can see me after class about your project. Who wants to go first?”

Personally, I think the school system is pretty messed up. I mean, if Krista had been hit by a bus or if she’d died of some terminal disease she’d been bravely fighting in secret for years, there’d be announcements, a moment of silence over the PA, maybe a memorial assembly. And we’d probably have some kind of shrine where people would leave pictures of Krista with flowers and little teddy bears and stuff like that. Out front somewhere where the TV news cameras could see it clearly, and give it lots of attention, and call it a “makeshift memorial” fifteen times a freakin’ day. Like you’ve got to spend $5000 on a friggin’ stone pillar or fountain with an engraved placard on it because anything else is just “makeshift”.

But I digress.

Maybe we’d have grief counseling to talk about how she was just ripped from our lives, and we would never be able to say goodbye. We’d talk about how we felt that she’d never told us about this horrible disease she had, and if we’d known we would have been nicer to her, and now we’d never have the chance.

Because really, Krista was never coming back. And what she had was a lot like a disease. Something she was born with, something that couldn’t be cured, something very, very bad.

What Krista Pace had was a Talent.

* * *

Joss

God save us from guidance counselors…

I swiped my sweaty palm down the front of the vintage army field jacket I always wore before grabbing the doorknob and letting myself into the guidance department office. I handed my hall pass to the woman at the desk inside the door whose name I’d never bothered to learn.

I absolutely hated it here.

“Jocelyn. Yes, Mr. Dobbs is waiting for you. Go on in.”

I turned away and moved to the door, thinking belatedly that I should have said thank you. Eye contact, a smile, thank you. But I never was any good at that politeness stuff. I was a lot better at the being quiet and melting into the background stuff. Having someone call up my Math teacher, being singled out and told to report to the guidance office while the rest of the class waited to get on with the being bored—er, educated? It really messed with my whole
don’t notice me
program.

I was already on edge from that morning—because of the whole Krista thing—and this just made me twitchy. It didn’t help that I knew exactly why Dobbs had called me in here.

I did not want to talk about it.

“Joss.” He shuffled some papers into a folder, closed it. “Come on in. Have a seat.”

I took the seat across from the desk without speaking, keeping my messenger bag on my shoulder and my notebook to my chest. I kept my expression blank, rather than overtly sullen, but Dobbs prided himself on the whole reading the body language thing and my message should be clear.

He took off his glasses and drew the side of his hand along the bridge of his nose as he set them down on the desk. In a moment he would pick them back up and put them on again, because he needed them to see. But his ritual of taking them off, setting them down… that was his way of saying he was serious, yet caring, concerned, and open-minded.

See, I could do body language too.

“So….how’s it going?” he asked, dragging out the question.

“Ok.”

He picked up his glasses and put them back on. “You’ve heard about Krista.”

I didn’t say anything. It wasn’t a question, and what was I supposed to say anyway? It wasn’t like the school had any kind of official stance on this stuff. They must cooperate in whatever investigations went on, but they never made, like, statements to the press or anything. There was nothing for me to quote or agree with.

“I thought you might have some feelings you’d like to talk about.”

You thought that? Really? Are you new here?
“No, not really.”

“Joss, I know this must bring up some issues for you, feelings I don’t think you’ve ever really dealt with. About Emily.”

The name was like an execute command, automatically flashing a series of images across my brain that started out like a real estate or life insurance commercial. Little girls playing, laughing, holding hands, dancing in sprinklers, birthday parties, sharing secrets, fire, screaming, end of reel.

I jammed the playback to a stop before it could loop, forced my eyes from the stupid cartoon character on Dobbs’s tie, and actually met his eyes. I shoved the discomfort at the personal contact aside with the rest of my feelings and made myself cold. “Emily moved away. Lots of kids have childhood friends who move away. It’s sad at the time, but it’s not, like, traumatic or anything.”