Chapter 19
The unforgiving time of seven thirty came too early. The sound of the bullhorn echoed throughout the campground, followed by tired groans from our cabin mates.
As we headed for our first class of the day—strength class—I began daydreaming about Anna and wondering what she would be doing right now. Probably still sleeping, lucky thing. Actually, it was Saturday morning, which meant she was probably at kick-boxing. She'd be wearing her black yoga pants. The ones with the pink stripes down the side, and her matching tank. She'd have her hair pulled up in a high ponytail, and she'd be grumbling about how early she had to get up to do it. But self-defence was something her parents insisted on since she didn’t have older brothers to protect her. And I had no doubt that she looked absolutely stunning as she pounded her tired fists into that bag.
Strength class was held in one of the smaller buildings next to the mess hall. We walked through the door and into the open room. The other guys from our cabin were already there and sitting around on the floor. We took our places with them and waited for the strength trainer to come in and show us his stuff.
“Who is the strength trainer, anyway?” Noah asked Nick.
“Sam Conrad. Gifted with Faith,” Nick told us.
“Is he the strongest Gifted One? Is that why he teaches the class?” I asked.
Nick laughed, obviously amused. “Yes, Sam is probably stronger than any of us here.”
A moment later I realized Nick's amusement. The door opened and in walked Sam Conrad. Or, I should say, Samantha Conrad. She was just shy of five feet tall, and couldn't have weighed more than ninety pounds. It appeared she enjoyed making an entrance like this and watched the shocked expressions from the newcomers.
“Good morning, class,” Sam said with a wide smile. “I'm sure you're all wondering why this puny, little lightweight is your strength teacher.” She paused, walked over to a tower of chairs by the wall and lifted them effortlessly with one hand. “It could be the faith, or it could be the discipline.” She put the chairs back down on the floor and continued, “I'm here to teach you how to have both. You don't need to be gifted with Faith in order to believe something. So, let's begin.”
Sam circled the group, eyeing up a candidate for her first volunteer. Her eyes fell on each person, playing a visual game of Duck, Duck, Goose, before she chose her first contender.
“You there,” she said, pointing to Noah.
“Me?” Noah gave a quick glance over his shoulder, making sure he was the intended target.
Sam laughed. “I don't bite, kid. I might be able to throw you back to your hometown, but I won't bite.” She laughed along with the rest of the group. “Stand up, please. What’s your name?”
“I'm Noah.”
“Welcome, Noah. Now show me what you can do.” She threw a large ball at Noah. He put his hands up to catch it at his chest, but was propelled ten feet back into the wall, crumpling to the floor.
I jumped up and ran to see if he was okay. Noah lay on the floor, gasping for air, with a cement-filled ball pinning him. I tried to lift the ball off of him, but it wouldn’t budge.
“Move!” I heard Nick's voice as he shoved me to the side. He picked up the ball, threw it, and then helped Noah up and ordered him to breathe. A minute later, Noah was breathing normally, although still quite shaken.
“What the hell was that?” I yelled, directing my accusation toward Sam.
“A test, actually. And you both failed, just so you know,” she said matter-of-factly.
“That wasn't fair at all!” I protested. “We didn't know what you were doing. We didn't have time to prepare.”
“And do you think you’ll have time to prepare in a real emergency? Do you think those people in the World Trade Center saw those attacks coming and had time to prepare?” she shouted, matching my anger.
I was taken aback by her tone and the realization that perhaps she had a point. I hadn’t had time to prepare for what happened at the ski lodge. Maybe if I’d been better trained, I would’ve been able to focus and save more people. I helped Noah to our seats. There was a long silence.
“I want to try again,” Noah said. He bravely looked Sam in the eyes and stood up slowly. “Do it again.”
“Good. Then think fast.” Sam hurled the ball in our direction and this time Noah let out a loud growl as he caught the ball firmly, stumbling back only a few feet this time, but he braced himself and was able to hold the ball with his shaking arms.
“That's two hundred and fifty pounds, Noah. Good job,” she said, applauding. “You ready to give it a try now?” she asked me.
I nodded, still a little skeptical.
“What’s your name, kid?”
“Jake Rovert,” I answered.
She stopped in mid-step and brought her eyes back to mine. “Jacob Rovert?”
My eyebrows crinkled. “Yeah.”
She smiled quickly, and then turned away. “Come to the front here. I have something I want you to hold.”
I walked to the front of the room and took a heavy metal platter from her.
“Now I'm going to stack some weights on here. You just keep believing and you'll be fine.”
Sam placed the first weight on the tray and I felt my arms get really heavy. Then another, and another. The tray began to shake as my muscles strained to hold it steady. I closed my eyes and tried to picture Anna, imagining that she was watching. If she were here, I'm sure she would be laughing at this insanity. Sam put another weight on and my arms collapsed. The platter and all the weights fell to the floor. I looked up, somewhat proudly, as I surveyed the weights sprawled across the concrete floor.
“How much was it?” I asked.
“A hundred pounds.” She rolled her eyes and motioned for me to sit down. “That was pathetic.”
“That's it? Are you joking?” I asked.
“I don't often joke, Jake. You didn't believe you could do it.”
“Yes I did.”
Sam stopped and turned to face me. “Really? Well, then I guess you're not cut out for this after all.”
Biting my lip, I decided to sit back down and see how the rest of the class did.
Nick took his turn and didn't disappoint Sam with his effortless abilities. Even the twelve-year-old skinny kid lifted four hundred pounds. Noah quickly caught on and was able to throw the cement ball over twenty feet by the end of the class. But everything I tried, I failed miserably at. What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I do this stupid task?
“Well, class, that's the end of your session,” Sam announced. “I will see you guys once more later this afternoon where we will touch on moving things with your mind.”
“What do you mean, with our minds?” one of the younger guys from our cabin asked.
Sam smiled, obviously pleased he asked. “I'll show you,” she said as she set a single chair on the floor in front of her. She closed her eyes and placed her palms together in front of her like she was meditating. Then she suddenly broke her hands apart and pushed her palms toward the chair, without touching it, and the chair flew across the room.
Applause erupted from her audience.
“I'll show you the technique later this afternoon, and you can take it home to practise. And maybe, just maybe, one of you might be able to do it someday too.”
Noah snickered, “I'll bet money that it won't be Jake.”
“Not funny,” I scowled.
“Don't be hard on yourself, Jake,” Nick said. “You're capable, but you're just not in the right frame of mind right now.”
“How do I get there?” I pleaded.
“I don't know how to tell you. It'll come.”
“Before or after I fail miserably?” I squinted from the sun as we stepped outside of the building. “Where do we go next?”
Noah checked his schedule. “It's gift training. I go to the mess hall for Languages. Healing is in the medical building down by the main entrance.”
“Great,” I mumbled sarcastically.
“See you later, then.”
“Meet you back at the mess hall for lunch?”
“Sounds good,” I said as I turned and left for the medical clinic. At least I knew I could heal, so that shouldn’t be as embarrassing.
I walked into the medical clinic and quickly remembered that there were only two of us with the Healing gift. The man from the campfire—the only other healer—stood at a long white counter at the back of the room.
“Jacob Rovert?” the man asked as he stood to shake my hand.
“Yes. Nice to meet you. And you are?”
“Matthias. I'm the other healer, as well as your teacher,” he said, motioning for me to have a seat.
“Matthias. That's a great name.”
He smiled and sat down next to me. “So let's get started. We only have an hour and a half.”
“So where do we begin?” I asked, pulling up my sleeves, ready to dive right in.
“Why don't you tell me what you've done so far with your gift?” Matthias had a soft-spoken voice and seemed very wise and respectable. I already liked him a lot.
“I healed my girlfriend's broken arm,” I said proudly.
“Did you now?” He seemed impressed by that.
“Yeah, and I may have helped heal . . .” my mind travelled back to the horrific scene at the ski lodge—the woman dying on the floor with her son beside her. Rachel had said I helped heal the kid’s mind, but how did I know that was true? And maybe that woman wasn’t really dying anyway, because I certainly wasn’t able to help Lexie. “No, I don’t think I did anything else,” I said, feeling slightly ashamed.
“So this is going to sound pretty bizarre,” Matthias began, “but I am going to set us up a little situation, if you will.” He walked across the room and pulled out a drawer from the white cabinets along the wall. He held up a scalpel and showed it to me.
“Probably the same thing Ms. Peters did to me a few weeks ago when she wanted to test my gift.” I held out my hand in anticipation.
“Not exactly. I'm confident you’re able to heal yourself. The next step is to be able to heal others,” he said as he closed his eyes and sliced a long incision down his leg. He hardly even flinched.
“But can't you just heal yourself?” I asked, puzzled as I watched the blood drain from his leg.
“I can, but I'm restraining myself so that you can do it. Go ahead now.” He scrunched his face and held his breath as he waited.
I laid my hands on his leg and imagined the same thing I imagined when it was Anna's broken arm. I starting recalling how I healed her arm and the thoughts that I was thinking at the time. I remembered how much pain she was in and how I felt when I realized that I had healed her.
When I lifted my hands and opened my eyes to meet Matthias', I felt proud of myself, but something in Matthias' expression caught me off guard. I quickly followed his eyes down to his leg and saw that the gash was still there. The blood was still oozing out and I had done absolutely nothing!
I fell back a few steps and looked at my bloodstained hands. “I . . . I . . . I don't know what I did wrong,” I stammered.
Matthias placed his own hands over his leg and healed it within seconds. He sat back in his chair and looked deeply into my eyes. “You remind me a lot of myself,” is all he said for several minutes as he continued to study my face.
“But it worked before! I did the exact same thing, but I was even more confident this time. I don't understand.” Frustration overtook me.
“How did you do in strength class, Jacob?”
“Horribly, why?”
“What are you thinking about when you are doing these things?”
“Nothing, really. I'm just thinking about how I healed my girlfr . . . my friend's arm.” I sat back down in my chair and leaned forward to rest my spinning head in my hands.
Matthias was quiet for another minute before he began. “I found out about my gift around twelve years ago. It was my fortieth birthday and my wife threw a big party for me, inviting everyone in our hometown. Most people, I didn't even know.” He chuckled as he recalled his memories. “Anyway, during the party, my youngest daughter Karly, who was four years old at the time, fell into the swimming pool. By the time someone noticed and we pulled her out, she was blue . . . and so lifeless. There was a doctor amongst the guests and after doing CPR on her for several minutes, he pronounced her dead.
“But I couldn't believe it. I watched my wife screaming for her little girl, and our other two daughters crying in the arms of their mother. I ran to Karly and picked her up in my arms and just prayed. I prayed to God, begging him to bring her back to me. I pleaded to have one more chance to push her on the swings, to teach her how to ride her new bike, to kiss her good night and sing her to sleep. And as I held her in my arms with my head buried in her chest, I heard the guests start gasping and saying something about a miracle. I looked up and Karly's eyes were open and she was looking back at me and said, 'Daddy, I went swimming with the angels!'” Matthias stopped to wipe the tear that was escaping down his cheek. “So that's how I knew. One of our guests actually came up to me afterward and talked to me about it. He was gifted as well, and he recognized my gift.”
“Wow, that's pretty amazing. Karly was very lucky to have you so close. Your family must be the safest family in North America.” I smiled, imagining how safe Anna would be with my constant protection.
Matthias swallowed hard, took a deep breath and continued, “That's what I thought too. You see, a few years after this incident, we were going on a family vacation down to Florida. I was driving our motorhome and we were going along the highway singing ‘One Hundred Bottles of Coke on the Wall.’” Matthias chuckled to himself, but then looked down as his smile faded. “We had made it to seventeen bottles of Coke when the man in the car in front of me suddenly slammed on his brakes. I tried to swerve out of his way, but couldn’t get control of the vehicle. We crashed through the guardrail and rolled down a deep embankment.” He paused and I could almost see the images unfolding through his eyes as they darted around in another dimension. “I walked away unscathed, but my wife and three beautiful daughters . . . they weren't so lucky. I tried my best to save them. I was so frantic and desperate to heal them. But I couldn't. It was too late.” More tears came.
“I'm so sorry, Matthias. That must have been so hard for you.” I tried, but I couldn't hold back my own tears. Imagining losing my whole family—everyone I loved—in one minute. What a horrible thing to have to go through alone.
Matthias straightened up in his chair and took a deep breath. “I believe it was the Defiers that took my family, Jacob. It was an attack on our family to weaken me. They knew I was going to be a great healer one day, so they took everything I loved. Everything I lived for.”
This was what Ms. Peters warned me about.
“Normally an attack like this would bring someone down and maybe even kill them, but I've found the inner strength to devote all my time and energy on growing stronger, smarter, and faster and on being a better healer. I found the strength for them. For my family. They are my reason, but not my purpose. It's not just your loved ones that you're here to protect—it’s everyone.”
I hung my head as I let the lesson sink in.
“Let her be your reason, but not your everything. If you make her your everything, Jacob, she’ll be taken in an instant. You don't want to lose her too.”
“No, that I definitely don't want.” I reacted quickly and assuredly.
Keeping Anna at the centre of my thoughts was actually inhibiting my growth. I had to put her aside and focus on doing this for the reason I was given the gift—to help everyone. Anna was going to be the reason that I had to be great. If I couldn't be with her, I'd do it for her. I needed to be able to protect her. To be there when she needed me.
“Tell me this, Jacob. If you could only save one or the other—this special friend of yours or a child you had never met, who would you choose?”
I knew what my answer was supp
osed to be, but my chest ached when I thought about it. I couldn’t make myself say it. So I didn’t. I couldn't answer.