“My truck won’t start.”
“Oh no, honey! That’s awful. What do you think it is?”
“No clue. But I don’t have time to figure it out. I need to get to school. What time are you leaving?”
“Not for another forty-five minutes or so. I’ve got a meeting close to here, so was going straight there, then in to the office. But I think your dad is leaving here shortly.” She turned and yelled across the house: “Dan! Sam needs a ride to school. Can you take him?”
“Yep,” he said in a much quieter tone, as he was just appearing around the corner of the entry way. “I’m headed out now. You ready, pal?”
“Yeah, Dad. Thanks.”
“No biggie. And I’ll come home early this afternoon to give you a hand under the hood. We’ll get it fixed this afternoon.” Sam was grateful that his dad was so handy around the house – especially with mechanical things. He guessed that was where he picked up much of his fix-it skills, tinkering around with his dad.
His mother turned back to Sam. “Lexi is supposed to come straight home from school to finish her biology project. Make sure you catch her at school, she can give you a ride home.”
“Mom, I can get a ride home…” The last thing he wanted to do was ride with his sister, for crying out loud.
“Okay, but if you need to, she can take you,” his mother insisted.
“Okay, Mom. Thanks.”
Mondays were always Sam’s favorite school day because instead of having to go to P.E. in fourth period, he was excused to participate in student government. Normally it wasn’t a big deal – the group got together to talk about upcoming events like Homecoming activities and the rules and regulations of the ad hoc student clubs. Sam would not have even run for election, except that he knew the activity would look good on his college applications. Plus, Ty ran with him, so it gave them an extra chance to hang out during school time.
Today, however, Sam was having a hard time concentrating on the agenda the group was discussing. His mind seemed to be on eleven different things, and this Monday couldn’t go quite fast enough. He needed to get home to fix his truck, then study for a health quiz, and most importantly he needed to do more research on senses.
“Hey Sam,” Ty whispered across his desk. “What’s going on tonight?”
“Uh, nothing man.” Sam was caught by surprise. Ty had kind of neglected him for the past few weeks, spending the bulk of his time with his girlfriend. He wondered if Ty was suddenly single again. “My truck wouldn’t start this morning, so I’ve got to get it fixed when I get home. Hey – can I catch a ride home with you after school tonight?”
“No, sorry. I’ve got to take Mena to shop for her dress for the dance.”
Well, that answers that. What a loser – he’s shopping for dresses?
“That’s okay, I can catch a ride with Lexi.”
“Do you want to try and get together tonight to watch the game? We could hook up for pizza? Mena wants to go out, and I can’t stand to be around some of the girls she’s invited…” Ty grimaced.
Oh, so now he’s using me as his backup entertainment. Great. Well, I am a good wing man, but I don’t have the stomach for Mena or her girlfriends. Not tonight.
“Ty, I can’t. I don’t know how long it’ll take to fix the truck, and then I’ve got that health quiz to study for.” Truth be told, Sam didn’t think he’d need long to study, but he was hoping to connect with Leesha online tonight to see if she got anywhere in her research attempts.
“No problem,” Ty said, though he sounded disappointed. “Maybe next time. I may bail anyway. She’s kind of getting on my nerves right now anyway.”
Big surprise. Huge. He’ll go anyway. She’ll make him.
When school was finally over, Sam walked out to Lexi’s car. He saw her over lunch, so she knew to wait for him before heading home. She was already inside, adjusting her radio and checking her lip gloss in the rear view mirror.
“It’s about time, bro.” She looked at him impatiently.
“Well hello, Lexi. It’s lovely to see you too. Thank you so very much for the gracious transportation.”
“Shut the sass or I’ll leave you here.”
He knew he was at her mercy. Normally the two of them got along, but like most brothers and sisters, they knew how to push each other’s buttons. He settled back in his seat as she put the car in reverse.
That’s when it hit. Like every other time, this one came out of nowhere. He wasn’t expecting it, and there was no warning whatsoever.
“Ahhhhhh!” Sam screamed and instantly gripped his temples and put his head between his knees, eyes clamped tightly shut.
“What?! What is wrong with you?” Lexi’s expression went from annoyance to wide-eyed horror in an instant. She slammed on the brakes.
“Nothing. Nothing. Just get us out of here.” Sam tried to concentrate on his breathing, but the vibration of the car motor was shaking his seat so badly he couldn’t clear his mind to focus.
“Sam! What IS it?” Lexi was screaming now. She’d never seen her brother in this much pain.
“Lexi. Stop shouting and get us out of the parking lot. Now!”
Lexi slammed on the accelerator, throwing gravel everywhere in her path, and headed for home. Sam thought his head would explode, or worse yet, he would throw up from the pain. In a moment of clarity, he glanced at his watch to note the time. He knew he would need to document this later.
In between breaths, Sam did a check list of his senses. His ears could hear each mechanical clicking, grinding and turning of the motor of Lexi’s VW. The other traffic on the road was just as noisy, with the turning of rubber wheels on the pavement and the vast array of radio stations that each car in the six block area was tuned on. He found that he could choose to tune that out and concentrate on the environment – the rustling of the leaves in the trees overhead and the chirping of birds in flight. Then, blocking that, he was able to focus on each house they passed and what was going on inside the walls – they just passed a television tuned to Oprah’s afternoon show, and the next house was having a debate over the dinner menu.
Selective hearing… I can focus on what it is I want to hear. That’s progress. Now let’s see if it works for my nose.
He sat back in his seat, eyes still shut, and breathed in deeply. At first notice, Sam caught the scents within the car – the gas that pumped through the ignition system, the oil, lubricants, and windshield washer fluids, and the dirt and dust that was caught in the car’s interior carpets and upholstery.
Gross! It stinks in here. Lexi really needs to clean her car!
Sam then tried to shut these scents off and reach out further. This was a little bit harder, but after a few seconds he noticed the scent of burning leaves approximately two blocks to the right of where they were driving. He also picked up the smell of freshly cut lawn from several different yards around them.
Ew, stank! Is that dog shit? Okay, block that one… It’s good I’m learning how to do this. It feels like the burn is starting to fade. Finally!
With that relief, Sam decided to try and open his eyes and test his sight. Looking out the window, nothing really seemed out of the ordinary. It was daylight, so he couldn’t test the see-in-the-dark theory, but he did notice that everything he looked at seemed a bit crisper, like he put on corrective glasses for the first time. He could see the ribbing of lines on the protective coating on the telephone wires above the streets, the rust crystals that stained the side of an office building as they turned the corner, and the pollen particles floating in the air each time the breeze seemed to spring up. It didn’t appear as if anything was closer to his eyes, but Sam noted the detail as if he were seeing it through a different lens – like a pair of binoculars or a microscope.
As they topped the hill, Sam looked down and realized that he could see the detail much further down the horizon than he ever remembered. Shifting his gaze, he looked down at the floorboard, to see if he could see the particles trap
ped in the car’s carpet. He squinted and focused on his eyes, and everything in his sight shifted. First he could see the carpet fibers and the dirt and grime that was tracked in over time. Then, as if he was concentrating too hard on seeing into the carpet, his eyes focused through the floorboard and he was suddenly watching the pavement below the car as it sped down the road.
“Oh. My. God,” was all Sam could get out.
“What?! What is it? You haven’t said a word since we left the school… Are you okay?” Lexi was almost hysterical with worry. He looked over and saw that her eyes were filled with tears and terror as she pulled into their driveway.
“Lexi, I’m fine. Calm down,” he tried to comfort her. “It was just a headache that hit very quickly. It’s gone now. Really, I’m fine.”
Then suddenly he heard her, only she wasn’t talking. She didn’t believe him. Her mind was racing, though he couldn’t make out any words. But he could sense her feelings, and he knew she was worried about him and contemplating whether or not to tell their parents about what just happened.
“Listen, Lex…” he pleaded. “Look at me. Look in my eyes. I’m fine. Believe me – there’s nothing wrong. Nothing at all. You don’t have to freak out, and please don’t tell Mom and Dad.”
She knows something is up. How can I convince her that everything is normal? Especially when I don’t even know what’s normal anymore?
“What do you mean don’t tell Mom and Dad? What is going on Sam?”
“Just trust me. I can’t explain it, but I promise you, there is nothing wrong. Please don’t tell anyone about what just happened.” Sam resigned himself to the fact that she knew something was off, so he improvised, because he knew he wouldn’t be able to convince her otherwise. “There is something weird happening, but I promise it’s not life threatening. I haven’t figured it all out yet, but I am getting help from someone, and I promise to fill you in when I know myself.” It was really all the truth he wanted to give her at this moment. He prayed it would be enough to satisfy her, for now.
Suddenly he could feel her calm down. She looked at him skeptically, but he knew she trusted and believed him.
“You promise? You’ll tell me everything?”
“I promise.” He hoped he could keep his promise. If she kept this secret for him, without knowing any of the details, he owed her at least that.
“Okay. I won’t tell. But promise me something else?”
“Sure, what?”
“You’ll come get me if you need me?”
“Sure, Lex. I promise,” and with that, he noticed that the burn was completely gone. He glanced down at his watch and noticed the time again.
I’ve got to go and write all of this down. Leesha’s gonna freak…
Chapter Eight
Sam spent the next forty-five minutes feverishly making notes of the afternoon’s episode into a journal file he created on his laptop. He knew his father would be home in the next few minutes, so he was trying to wrap up his documentation while it was still fresh in his head.
Lexi kept pacing back and forth from the hallway to the adjoining bathroom to peek in on him. It was kind of sweet, Sam thought, that she was worried about him. There had been studies and folklore for years about the bond between twin siblings, but Sam never really put any stock into it until today. They really did seem to have a connection, and Sam wondered if that was why he could sense what was going on in her head, or if it was perhaps another facet of his abilities.
He kept checking his senses, and up to this point, they were still heightened. He was starting to get used to this, and knew when they faded away this time, he would ultimately be disappointed. He was mostly intrigued with the ability to see through things, and kept testing this sense. So far he was able to see through the walls in his house, the floor between his room and the living room below, but he was unable to crack the stainless steel of the refrigerator door.
I wonder… Why can’t I see through metal? Will I be able to as my abilities strengthen?
Knowing he needed to get out to his truck, but still keep track of his thoughts and the timing of when his abilities faded, he stuck a Post-it pad and pen into the back pocket of his jeans and headed towards the stairs. He heard his father’s car turn the corner into the subdivision three blocks away.
Okay, here we go. Just act normal.
He put on his best game face and headed out into the front yard.
It only took them about ten minutes to realize that the battery cables to the truck were corroded and needed replaced. Sam and his dad hopped in the SUV and headed to the nearest parts department, relieved that they didn’t have to pay for a new battery, or worse yet, a new alternator. All along the drive, Sam continued to test his senses, which were going strong now for almost two hours.
As they hit the door to the store, Sam’s nose was greeted by twenty-two different versions of auto air fresheners, and since they were displayed to the immediate left of the entrance, his nose went berserk. He shook his head.
Wow! Um, yeah… Block this fast!
He reached out a little further, first with his nose, smelling the metal parts and cardboard boxes. Then he tested his eyes. It was funny how he could try and look through an entire aisle – he could see through the paper and plastic packaging, but anything that contained metal parts inside it left a big blind spot in his vision. The anomaly with metal is definitely something that he wanted to mention to Leesha. He figured if anyone could research the solution, she could.
Sam followed his dad to the area of the store where the battery supplies were, picked out what they needed, paid the cashier and headed for home. At this point, Sam noted by the clock on the dash, the sky should be getting dark, as dusk was setting in earlier and earlier. But his vision was still as clear and bright as if it were in the middle of the day.
Racing against the impending darkness, Sam’s dad quickly pulled into the driveway and the two of them unwrapped the parts they needed and proceeded to install the new battery cables. Sam’s head was under the hood of his truck and he was fastening the last clamp when all went dark in his vision.
Great. It’s gone. Crap!
He looked at his watch and discretely wrote the exact time down on the pad of paper in his pocket after he lowered the hood of his truck.
“Well, I guess we finished in the nick of time,” his dad said. “A few more minutes and we would have needed a flashlight.”
“Yeah, I guess we got lucky,” Sam responded, trying not to sound sour at his new misfortune.
“Go ahead and start it up. Let’s see if we got everything hooked up properly and fixed.”
Sam crawled in behind the wheel and turned the ignition. Sure enough, it started right up, and all was right in the world again.
Well, almost everything…
After dinner, Sam helped load the dishwasher and then excused himself to his bedroom. He finished his homework in his last period at school, so he booted his computer up with the hopes that Leesha was online. She was, so he sent her a message to let her know he had another flash earlier that afternoon.
Leesha was thrilled with the news and asked if he recorded everything. He said that he did, and he would share his notes with her at their next arranged meeting on Saturday afternoon. Beyond that, both of them were afraid to get too detailed with specific information online, in case anything they communicated got intercepted by some unknown source.
So they spent the next hour and a half chatting back and forth about normal teenage stuff – school, families, activities, homework. Sam had a lot of questions for Leesha about her past, but since they were online, he focused on asking her about her family and basic history. Since she seemed to be a talker, it wasn’t hard getting information of any kind out of her.
Leesha shared that she was an only child. Her mother, Toni, got pregnant with her when she was fourteen, and delivered her shortly after her fifteenth birthday. Since she was still in high school, Leesha’s grandparents were a major part
in raising her, especially in the first five or six years. They insisted that Toni go to college, which she tried, and eventually partied her way into failing out of in the middle of her fourth semester. She then bounced around from job to job, all the while they continued to live rent free at Toni’s parents.
Eventually Leesha’s grandparents got tired of Toni’s freeloading and failure to make anything out of her life. Conflicted about Leesha’s upbringing, but determined to teach Toni a valuable lesson, they kicked the two of them out of the house and set them on their way.
Leesha started kindergarten in the fall, and her grandparents continued to be a major force in her life – picking her up after school and babysitting when needed, even though the relationship between them and their daughter was strained at best. From what Sam could tell, Leesha loved her grandparents very much, and was grateful for all they had done for her throughout her life. She still saw them almost daily, but as she got older, her relationship with her mother grew more and more distant.
Toni, now in her early thirties and still never married, continued her party-animal lifestyle – freeloading now on boyfriends that would pick her up and take care of her as long as the relationship lasted. Her waitress job paid the rent in the little house she shared with Leesha, but neither of them saw much of each other. Toni slept during the day while Leesha was at school, and either worked or partied in the evenings and through the night while Leesha was asleep. In Sam’s opinion, it almost sounded like the roles were reversed – that Leesha was the responsible adult, and Toni was the undependable and irrational child.
I can’t believe that Leesha hasn’t screwed her own life up. Her mom’s a total deadbeat. It’s good she’s got her grandparents to depend on when she needs it.
Leesha started working when she was fourteen, and continued to pocket away money for a car she knew she would need when she turned sixteen. Every chance she got, she would try and make herself more and more independent.
There were times along the way when she figured out her mother was taking money from her savings, so she started hiding it away in different places in her bedroom – so that even if she found one of her hiding places, it wasn’t the entire stash. When she turned sixteen, her grandparents matched her savings, and she was able to afford a used, but respectable, compact car that served as reliable transportation to and from school and work.