“Sorry!” a voice called, and I put my hand to my eyes, shielding them from the sun. I could see it was Rennick. A shirtless, soaking-wet Rennick.
I gulped hard, telling myself not to stare. “I’m sorry,” I began. “I just had to come. I want to talk.”
“Yeah, I’m glad,” he said. He stopped to shake himself too, not unlike the dog. I couldn’t help but notice that he was thin, yes, but wiry, built. Defined. And when he reached me in the yard, I tried to keep the blush from climbing into my neck, my cheeks, but I knew it was useless.
The dog joined us, tennis ball in mouth, as if awaiting an introduction. I was so glad to have something else to look at, something that wouldn’t turn me into a slack-jawed moron.
“This is Bouncer,” Rennick said, taking the ball from the dog’s mouth, throwing it farther than I could see in the sun. The dog took off. “Want something to drink? I have some stuff in the garage,” he said.
I nodded, trying to smooth down my ignored and frizzled hair. I wondered how he could seem so easy, so confident.
I followed him toward the small garage, stealing glances at his tanned shoulders, the way his hair curled up at the nape of his neck. I stopped abruptly when I got inside the door of what I first had thought was just a junky shed. I guess I expected lawn equipment, maybe a rusted-out Chevrolet, an old boat, something that screamed Louisiana hillbilly, but this was altogether different, although the old country honky-tonk music played softly from a radio on the counter.
The garage was a large, bare space, with a high ceiling and exposed rafters. There were red-painted cabinets along the nearest wall, along with a sink and a mini fridge. In the middle of the room sat a long wooden table, just plywood on sawhorses. On it was a bunch of equipment, electrical cables, batteries, wires, things I couldn’t name. Books were everywhere. Piled in corners, stacks as tall as me. Books open on the table. Books on the floor, near the worn black leather couch in the back. But what really got me was the far wall. It was covered, absolutely covered, all the way up to the rafters, in canvases, papers, and tackboard. Painting after painting after painting. At first look, they seemed to be put up haphazardly, but if you studied them, they weren’t. Each one added to the ones near it. They built on each other. Some kind of messy, intricate design. They were all the same kind of painting, but each one was unique, just a study in color, in shading, in tone, in complements. They weren’t rainbowish, no. More like … descriptions.
Before I knew it, I had walked past the lab table and was standing right in front of the color wall studying the canvases up close, their brushstrokes, the technique. “They’re beautiful,” I said.
Rennick just laughed a little under his breath, but I heard it there, the twinge of nervousness behind his cool demeanor.
But for a second, it’s like I forgot why I was there. I forgot myself in those paintings. They weren’t rainbows, they weren’t color wheels, not haphazard combinations or streaks of colors, but rather descriptions of things. Things that defied words and description, things that didn’t really have names or titles. They were something akin to feelings. Truths. Shown through patterns and movement, through the slightest variations of blues. Shown through the arch of a slow gradation from yellow to orange, through the fierce growth from white to red to purple.
I saw … friendship? Patience? Pride? No, those words only hinted at what was in these paintings. It was indescribable. Like the feeling you get when you’re eight years old and you wake up on Christmas morning, everything in front of you. Or how it feels to look into someone’s eyes and know that they just really
Or how it feels to do something right, something selfless—that floaty feeling underneath your ribs. This was here, spelled out in his paintings.
I was mesmerized.
But then it kicked on. Inside me. That roiling flame in my chest, and I was right back inside myself. Right back to the same old problem. I cleared my throat and turned around, embarrassed by how caught up I had gotten in the paintings.
“They’re auras,” he said. He had found a T-shirt now and handed me a bottle of water from the fridge. He looked less sure of himself.
And I was aware of how these paintings, this place as a whole, was private to him.
“Your grandmother is Lila Twopenny?” I said. I fingered the top on the water bottle.
“Yes, and my mother had what you have.”
A beat passed until I realized I was staring at him, his dark blue eyes, the fringe of eyelashes. “How do you know about me? I’m sorry I’ve been … weird.” I blushed, not knowing where to look.
“I scared you. I didn’t mean to.”
“This is all just … kinda … an ocean of crazy for me. I think that I—”
“I heard what people said about you at school. I read some things. I kind of study this stuff.” He gestured toward his lab table.
“You think I’m electric?”
“It’s what we tap into, I think. All of us who are
“But how?”
“Now you’re asking questions I can’t answer … yet.” He smiled, back to his easy self.
“Have you seen your mom do these things?”
“No, she died when I was a baby.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. I waited for a second, took a drink of the water. “Could I ask your grandmother? I mean …”
“Sure. But it’s all magic to her.”
“It’s not to you?”
“No.” I liked his certainty.
“Do you know anyone else who can—”
“I did, years ago, when I was a kid.”
I let out a sigh. I so wanted to be able to have someone who had all the answers. A guru of physio- electricity. But I figured that would be too easy.
“So what is this?” I asked, motioning to the stuff on the table, the equipment.
“Experiments.”
“I see.… What are you testing?”
“Electricity. Life.” He laughed. It was a good sound. “I just started copying the masters.”
I raised my eyebrow.
“You know. Early electricity. Leclanche. Franklin. Faraday.”
“In the hopes of …”
He smiled. Seemed amused. “In the hopes of … everything. I mean, why not? Seemed like a good place to start. I mean …” He paused and motioned to a contraption on his table. A silver ball, about the size of a soccer ball, hooked up to some wires. “It’s a Van de Graaff generator.” I shrugged at this. He flipped a switch and a barely audible hum filled the garage. The atmosphere shifted a tiny bit, and he motioned me over toward him. “When the masters first learned how to harness this, grab some of the static electricity out of the air, they were wild at what that could mean. The possibilities, ya know?” Rennick reached out for my hand. I shook my head. “Just put your palm on here.” He motioned with his own. I shook my head again. “It’s not going to electrocute you.”
“You take your hand away. Then I’ll try,” I said, giving him a look. I waited, and when he did, I placed mine on the ball. It felt alive, in a very microscopic, tiny way. An electrical hum on the inside of my palm. Just as the ends of my hair began to lift up around me, I realized that I had seen this experiment in a video in science class. “The static electricity makes your hair stand on end,” I said, remembering. Rennick chuckled, and I caught a glimpse of myself in the window reflection, the top layer of my hair standing out in straight lines from my head. I took my hand away. “So what’s this got to do with me?” My hair floated back down. I smoothed it with my palms.
He nodded, sort of pushed his lips out, and I knew watching him that this must be his thinking face, his look of concentration. He switched off the silver ball, shook his head. “Maybe there’s more to electricity. A whole new
