The tapping on my window woke me in the morning. The new light of the day was just starting to eke into the room, all purple and blue in the slants between the pear tree branches. In my dream, Seth Krane was knocking repeatedly at my front door, but when I woke, I knew the sound immediately. Pebbles at the window.
I patted at my hair as I leaned my forehead onto the cool glass of the window, my hand already opening in a wave. There he was, a duffel bag slung over his shoulder, a box in his hands, his face full of something. Purpose.
I threw my blue fuzzy robe around myself and found Mom and Dad in the kitchen drinking coffee, Dad dressed for work and Mom looking a lot like me.
“He could’ve just knocked,” Dad said with a smirk. “What’s all the stuff? Is he planning on moving in?”
“Very funny,” I answered. “I don’t really know.”
I opened the back door and stepped out onto the stoop. The morning was really something, cool for New Orleans, with dew-wet grass and birdsong in the air. I could’ve just let him into the kitchen, but there was a part of me that wanted him and his visit all to myself.
Even with so much on my plate, and even with my morning breath, my tangled hair, my ratty old bunny slippers, I couldn’t help how I reacted to him. But there was something about him this morning, Rennick in all of his glory. Oh God, the shape of his shoulders through his T-shirt, the corners of his mouth as they turned up just as he raised his head to see me, the plane of his jaw. His hair was disheveled and he had on faded jeans, a tattered T-shirt. He was in full science-geek mode.
“Hi,” I said.
“We have to figure this thing out. Ourselves. You’ll believe it wholeheartedly. You’ll own it.”
I loved the way that sounded. Own it. “Then I can go find Seth Krane.”
“So you’re accepting this?” he asked.
“I am,” I said, grabbing the box from him. “What are we going to do?”
“Make a Leyden jar, for starters.” We moved toward the back door.
“We gotta have some rules,” I said. “I call the shots. If it gets too much. If I feel it getting … out of control, you have to listen to me and leave.” I had my hand on the doorknob and looked back at Rennick.
He nodded. Did some kind of crossing-his-heart, Boy Scout salute. He wanted me to smile, but I couldn’t. My mind’s eye kept flashing to Sophie’s little face. The goggles, the rocks in her hand, the empty look of her death on the Lake Michigan shore.
“ ’Cause I believe it, but I’m still scared. Of hurting someone,” I added, averting my eyes. “Seth Krane. Anyone.
“You’re scared to move on from this.”
I rubbed my knuckles on my lips, opened the back door. I nodded just once. There was some truth in that. I couldn’t deny it.
I expected Mom and Dad to be in the kitchen, all greetings and raised eyebrows, but I heard Dad’s truck pulling out of the garage, and so I assumed Mom was upstairs. I was getting privacy. They probably had talked about this. What had Mom called my friendship with Rennick, my attempt to help Seth Krane?
I didn’t know about that. But I had to do something.
“One more rule,” I said, unloading the box onto the kitchen table. I turned to look at Rennick, who was pulling all kinds of stuff out of his gym bag. Lengths of wire. A roll of tinfoil. A small cooler.
He looked up from under the fringe of his lashes. “Anything.”
“I can’t touch anyone yet. I just can’t do that for …”
“Got it,” he said, and continued to unload stuff onto the kitchen table. I watched him for longer than necessary. Did I imagine that he swallowed hard against that comment? Did he care about this? Me not touching him? What was I to him? Who was he to me?
I pushed these thoughts away.
He pointed to the glass jar on the kitchen table, the roll of tinfoil, a bottle of carpenter’s glue. “I already spoke with your parents. I hope that was okay. I just wanted them to know what we were doing.”
“What are we doing?” Oh Jesus, this sounded like a loaded question.
And something—embarrassment?—quickly flashed across Rennick’s face. “Only changing the world.” He gave me his most mischievous smile, and my mouth turned up.
He took this as encouragement. “We are going to plunge into this. Do some real work on this. Scientific stuff. Tests. My kind of thing.”
“I’m in, but—”
“You know, we could contact the Tulane lab, include the doctors working on—”
“No!”
Mom came in then to fill her coffee cup. “I can make pancakes?” she offered.
“No thanks,” I said.
“Sure,” Rennick answered at the same time. The two of them chuckled. He gave me a wink. “Moms love me,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “Of course they do.”
“You need to eat too, Corrine,” Mom said as she began to take ingredients out of the cupboard.
“If you say so.”
“So what are you going to make here?” she asked, eyeing the glass jar.
“A Leyden jar,” Rennick answered. “It’s part of our scientific approach.” He smiled easily at my mom.
I didn’t share in the smile. I did, however, resist—over and over again—the urge to close the space between Rennick and me, to sniff the scent of him, the sheets-dried-outside-on-the-first-day-of-spring smell that seemed to emanate from him. I wanted to kiss him for showing up this morning with all of this. For his plan of action. For his dedication.
And I wanted to kiss him for other reasons too. Just draw him near, run my hands through that ridiculous rock star hair, lick the stubble on his chin.
I absolutely loved him for showing up this morning, for coming back and trying.
I took the scissors from Rennick and began to cut the tinfoil as he instructed. “Just glue it all around the jar,” he told me. “It’s like an early battery.”
It felt right to be doing this in my kitchen, working at something tangible. This was good, productive, and maybe a little dangerous.
When we were finished with the Leyden jar—and the pancakes—he opened a cooler.
“I don’t want to,” I said.
“Corrine, they’re crawdads. We’re not using lab chimps.”
I looked up at the ceiling, took a deep breath. “I’ve read as much as I could online. There isn’t much.”
“I know.” He sat across from me. “But let’s get serious. The first step is that you have to control it. Whatever it is, you have to own it. Maybe summon it.”
I tried not to balk at this. Summon it. “Can you summon the power to see auras?”
He seemed to consider the idea. “Yeah. I see them always. But sometimes I want to see them more clearly. Focus. Anyway, that’s what you are going to do. Try and bring that feeling—whatever it is—back.”
“I have always spent so much time and energy praying for that feeling to stay away.” My voice sounded puny.
“You are in control,” he said, and looked at me sternly. “You gotta believe that, Corrine.”
I bit my lip.
“We can stop anytime.”
But could I?
He took out a small crayfish. Placed it on the coffee table, atop a paper plate. “He’s fresh. Hasn’t been dead long. Less than an hour probably. What can you do?”
Rennick sat back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, and smiled, watching me.
I closed my eyes and focused on the symptoms, the things that usually preceded the indigo lens. I thought about the churning in my chest, the engine of power flickering to life under my ribs, and I concentrated.
