Siphon (Siphon Chronicles, Book One) (4 page)

I forced my mind to forget him the whole day though my heart was racing at the mere thought of him. His energy field was cracking codes for more than just one year in the offering.  Did he know he was offering it to me?

Running down the hall, I was late for my after school college preparation class that was designed just for seniors who wanted a work release to intern at local businesses.  Today was the first day being that it wasn’t during school hours.  It was meant for just those who were serious about working volunteer hours.   I wanted to be a nurse.  So...I would go next week for my final semester in high school.  I had one more orientation this week before I could actually interact with patients even though I have been for years.  It was the only job that was safe for someone like me.

I stepped through the doorway with my prepared short speech of why I was late expecting Professor B, short for Baumgartner, to smile and give me a nod to just sit down.  It
was
a trek across the huge campus.  “Best made plans of mice and men often go awry” was calling it mild.

Her eyes lifted above her glasses to me and then behind me.  “And this is an example of why our program may be cut.  Being late to class exemplifies the wrong way to show a future employer you’re dependable as well as being late to class with said new kid standing next to you.”

I turned with a jerk knowing already what new kid would be late with me.  I, of course, smelled him. 
HE
wasn’t in this class.  How did he get here?

“Hey Pigeon.  Can I join you?”  His lady-killer smile enflamed me, giving me a whiff of something warm and distinctly cedar.  Either he was an avid Polo Brand kind of guy or he bathed in it.  I knew that scent.  Maybe his scent wasn’t just an abilities thing.  Sam and I stopped by every counter in the mall stores to douse our wrists in our favorite men’s cologne.  We told ourselves we were picking out the scent for the hottest man contest.

What do you know?  Mine was RL Polo.

A girl in the front row sighed and gave Daniel that complete “I’m crushing on you” look so he rewarded her with another wicked smile.  He cut his eyes to mine afterward and I had only a second to straighten my face to blank.  I had no business caring what anyone thought of his smirky buttheadedness.

The class roared with laughter at the two of us standing side by side.  Some whistled.   As Daniel made his way back to a seat to sit near the window, he received a few high fives including one from Foster, my ex. 

Great!  He was in here too.

My speech was ruined.  I was late and red-faced in front of twenty people who knew too well that I was never late and did not get flushed easily.  So much for subtle entries in disguise.

And both of us got detention for a non-class.  Professor B mumbled something about setting examples.

I surveyed the room for an empty seat.  With no seating arrangement, I was forced to look at each row in hopes for something to sit in and hide myself from this shame.

Sure enough, one seat was available and it was directly parallel to Mr. Calm, Cool, and Relentless.  I huffed like I’d never done before and made my way to the desk.

And if matters couldn’t be worse, Foster sat in front of me looking ready for battle.  He’d find any opportunity to cause embarrassment.  I knew he still liked me, I just didn’t give
it
up like his friends expected him to get and he knew something was off in our kiss that day.  Whether he thought it strange or strangely intriguing—I didn’t know.  High school can be so complicated.

Ignoring both of them, I tuned to Professor B’s list of placements and found out I wasn’t alone in going to Arlington Memorial Hospital for an internship. We had to pick our choices yesterday on the first day of school because we’d start the next Monday and Professor B needed our work assignments finalized by Friday.

Several were going into the junior high school as teacher helpers, one was going to a law office, and the rest were headed to a courthouse, real estate office, or building construction office for architecture. 

I was just pondering how Ray Downs was going to become an architect given he couldn’t pass algebra when a note fell on my desk. 

I looked at the hastily folded notebook paper that flopped right on top of the word hospital written in the middle of my blank page.  I’d traced the name of the hospital with doodles and such but now that was hidden. 

I don’t know what compelled me to do so, but I glanced East to the eyes that were watching me way too much lately.  I knew the note was from Foster.  Daniel didn’t smile.  He didn’t frown.  He scowled.  What the heck?

I unfolded the note hiding my face under my wall of blonde camouflage then slid down in the desk to hide behind the broad shoulders of said note writer. 

Guess we get to be together again soon.  I miss you Lark.  Maybe we could get to know each other again.

                            Foster

I paled at the words I read twice and a third time.  I couldn’t.  I wouldn’t go through that nightmare again.  I didn’t want to subject myself to the foolhardy belief that Foster really,
really
liked me or could survive my sick abilities.  He always had an agenda.  And I knew he’d
been
with girls since.  Eww!

So.Not.Gonna.Happen.

I peeked sideways again to see if my newest neighbor had tried to read my note and found him rigidly staring forward at the whiteboard.  I sighed with relief, but squared my shoulders a second later when I realized what the note meant.  Did Foster mean he would be going to the hospital with me?

I was in so much trouble.

I took my tardy note at the end of class and prepared my mind for extra detention after school.  Lark would be joining me but she didn’t stick around to let me catch up and give her some snarky statement to get her all flustered.  Her scent was easy to follow now that I had it.  It called out to me like the wind.  Not one other had ever left a trail for me to return to.   And I didn't even take from her like she offered.  Of course, none of anything was right since I turned eighteen.  Girls ran from me like the plague once I touched them.  Guys only high-fived and such.  Since it took such an amazing amount of effort to hold my breath in to arrest the heightened senses that I just refrained from it, I hadn't shaken a hand in years.  Maybe I’d try it again.
              That note was from her ex.  I’d learned as much from sitting at lunch with the craphead.  He was a leech who just wanted to use her.  A despicable example of the male species that used women for his own selfish desires.

Suddenly, I saw it from her eyes.  How she saw me.  She was comparing me to him.  It just wasn’t the same no matter how much I hated my indiscretions of the past.

I’d prove it to her.

I managed to get in her after school class by meeting with the counselor and making up some sob story about missing out on finishing my internship back home.  The classes during the day were boring me to the proper level that I was sorely upset I hadn’t made my schedule to match hers exactly, but she’d have wondered.  Not that she didn’t already figure out ten million other things that I’d managed to keep covered up from anyone else in this world including our own.  No one had ever...detected me.  Why could she?

Detention came.

I had a plan.

Lark sat on the other side of the room from me and was very happy with it until the teacher asked in her monotone drawl that we, all five of us, move to the front of the room so she could “keep an eye on us” better.

Lark avoided me in every way as she sashayed to the front making her hips move to a rhythm I swear was its own song.  Why did I like that?  She worked so hard at it!

A new, way off course, plan initiated.

She found my identical-to-her-earlier note and unfolded it.  Luckily, she was forced to sit right behind me giving me direct access to drop my bomb on her.

Guess we get to be together again soon.  I know what you know and that DOES make us alike.  Maybe we could trade secrets.

                            D

When I heard the pieces officially being torn over a dozen times I chuckled under my breath to make sure she heard.  She growled in that girly way that females do.  When it seemed she moved her head closer to the back of me.  I took the advantage of her position and rocked my chair back to land against the edge of her desk.  She squealed giving us away to the toad-faced woman who sat at the desk reading her stupid romance novel.  One eye rose above the book to look our direction, which was directly in front of her purple flowered teacher desk four feet away, and rested on me.  I sat my chair back down and waited for teach to lower her angry unibrow. 

I heard a giggle behind me.  So maybe she wasn’t completely in hate with me. 

His note disturbed me in more ways than one.  First, I would be with him every day, five days a week.  Second, I would be with him and Foster five days a week.  What cruel joke was someone playing on me?

Just like earlier, I felt like I couldn't breathe with  him near.  It was him.  I wanted to take from Daniel Crawford—steal every breath he owned.

I barreled out of the room wanting to get a breath of real H2O air that I’d been holding in with the thick as rainforest hothouse I’d just spent an hour in. Sweat was pouring off of me and it was sixty degrees outside the main doors where I heard birds singing to a song I didn’t know or care about at the time.   As long as it wasn’t me singing.  I raised my face to the air needing energy like never before.  I had no idea why I was so drained.

“Just say it, Pigeon.  You need it as bad as I do.”

His voice was so close.  I wanted to tell him off.

“I am not your dang Pigeon.  I don’t know what you’re doing to me, but stop it.  And don’t tell me what I need.  I take it from those who don’t have as much time left.  You take it from those who don’t know what they have left.  Revitalizing energy or killing a human being is not the same.”

Oh no! I said it aloud.  I.  I
told
him.

“Someone filled your head with lies.  What you do isn’t any better than my own way of dealing with what we are.  I tried it your way.  It didn’t work for me or my job status.  I couldn’t do it.  You call it revitalizing energy but it's life sustanance.  You stop, you die.”

I'd rather die.

If I were voting for good guy or bad guy right now, I’m afraid Mr. Daniel Crawford would fall into the latter.  Whatever his job status, I was getting an uneasy feeling he wasn’t in town to just check me out.

That stopped her.  Crap.  I’d said too much.

“You did it my way?” Her face was angled to mine following the way I moved then following my hands to my face.  I switched my head to face the west hall doors and she followed.  Thrown off by her mime-like ways, I finally replayed what she’d asked of me and formed an answer.

“I tried to focus on the dying for years but then it all changed.  Their essence...it made me sick.  I could feel their pain.  My father assigned me elsewhere.”

Her face paled.  I shoved my hands in my pockets and she followed them too.  She didn’t mime it, just watched.

“I can taste it. Their feelings or something.  Usually they’re calm and soothing.  Sweet.  Occasionally their bitter, but only if they are too close to death.”

She could
taste
their essence?   “Can you not smell it?”

She wrinkled her nose up, “Er, no.  Can you?”

Feeling suddenly defensive I realize I’d told her too much of myself.  More than I’d told any other human or anyone like us.  Like her.  Like me. 

Now I wondered if I’d assumed too much of our kind. Was she the anomaly or I?

I had to know more about why my father sent me to take her even though I wanted like anything to bust out of here and never look back.  The mere thought of leaving twisted my chest in torture. But I told myself the staying was just about information.

“When I take from them,” I stammered stopping to swallow.  This was difficult to put in words.  I’d never done it.  “...I can tell they are happy with me before I start and it makes a scent that is relative to their own...essence hovers above so to speak.  Then I absorb it.”

She just blinked rapidly with a blank state.

"As soon as they think I am there for their benefit, they freely give their essence over. Before I turned eighteen, it was never freely given.  That's why I
switched
.  I didn't like the pain and I didn't like giving it."

Her eyes said she was really listening to me.  Her hands said she was scared.  I was good at reading girls.

It’s the guys who scared me.  As if reading my mind she asked, “You only take from girls.  Why?”

How does she infer these things from the little clues she has? I nodded to answer then said what I didn’t want to share. “Girls are sweet.  Happy.  Not as disgruntled when I am done.  Guys just look at me with a stale expression and leave annoyed with me.  Sometimes before I approach them.  I can’t make them like me first, so it leaves me feeling the same.  Maybe I deserve it, but who wants to walk around feeling depressed on purpose?”

As if studying me too long and acknowledging I knew it, she shifted her feet.  We were alone on the front steps of the school and at the same time looked to our vehicles sitting beside the other in the parking lot.  At least no one heard our ridiculous conversation.  Anyone would think we’re mad.

I don’t know how she had me talking, but here I was listening to her assessments of my bad habits and what I should and should not do.  And I was all ears.

“I accidentally took from a friend one time.  It was painful.  I felt her sadness like I was stabbing her in the heart.  It was awful and I’ve stayed away from the young since.”

She was sharing.  I saw her mouth move and knew she would say something else.  What she said next made me rethink my whole outlook on what we were and why we existed.

“I also took from Foster once.  He kissed me,” she blushed and looked down, embarrassed.  “I took from him before I knew what was happening.  He was so angry with me for backing off.  I could tell he was in pain, but also in some kind of spacy trance.  It made my body feel like a thousand knives were stabbing me.  I never kissed him again.”

Had she not kissed anyone since?  I ignored the gut-wrenching ache that forced me to adjust my stance from the idea that she was pure, not tainted.  That was my cue, her silence.

“You are afraid that you will hurt them?”  She was.  Her fear stricken face said it all.   She sat down to face away from me allowing us both to breathe.  Under her scrutiny I felt like a reaper of taken lives.

“What happens when you take from the old or dying?”

We both sat on the step facing each other again after she conceded to tell me.  Her hands were folded between her thighs with my boots nearing hers.  This was closer to a girl than I’d ever been in a conversation that didn’t include just physical stuff or leading up to it for which was abruptly cut off by the pain it caused them.  Young or old, they couldn't handle the physical touch while we siphoned.  And siphoning was impossible to hold back in those acts. When we come of age, it is worse or completely painful for the human.  So many of us refrained.  The few friends I've asked did the same, said the same.  Some...had not.  Refraining meant saving their lives.  Not all of us are so caring.  I kept my abrasive attitude as a front because of who my father was.  I wasn't sure what he'd do if he knew I hated who I have become and just wanted to be free of the whole world associated with him.

She smiled like she was seeing something else in her mind’s eye, “They are happy.  When they feel me get close, they offer it to me.  I don't have to make them like me.”

Astonished, I answered with my own thoughts before going over it in my brain first and seeing that it was insane to share with this girl.  “Same here with the young.  When they decide I’m...” I searched for the right word even though my brain wasn’t functioning on anything but this girl, “like-able, they freely give it.”

But they
never
offer.  She’s the only one who ever did.  And they usually hate me after because they know they were tricked.  But they still never offered.

And not one other siphon have I ever heard of had that ability.