balcony, cornstalk wrought iron along the porch. The cicadas hummed in the background as I listened to the nervous beat of my heart. I stuck one shaking finger out and pressed the doorbell. A light came on somewhere inside the house, and pretty soon I heard the clomp of footsteps on the stairs.
It was late, nearly midnight, but I didn’t think I could wait another minute. And Rennick, if he was nervous, if he doubted me, didn’t let on. He just kept his hand on the small of my back, a supporting pressure, steady. Constant.
It was Mrs. Krane who answered the door, her eyes going wide when she saw it was us. She didn’t even have the door all the way open before she was yelling for Declan, her husband. But he was already there, glasses cocked at a funny angle.
He gave me a skeptical look as Mrs. Krane ushered us into the foyer. “Are you here because you think …?” Clearly, he didn’t want to get his hopes up again.
I nodded, and Mrs. Krane fell to her knees, her body racked with sobs. It was too much for me, and I had to look away. I turned and Rennick held me against him, my head pressed into the hollow of his collarbone.
“You can do this,” he whispered.
I turned toward the couple. Mr. Krane was helping his wife up from the floor. She was gasping out a litany of thanks. “I’m sorry,” Mr. Krane said. “This is just more than …”
“I can’t make any promises,” I told them, my fists balled at my sides. I could already feel it inside me, awakening, coming to life, at the ready. The scene with the Kranes, the room thick with emotion, it was enough to get me where I needed to be.
“I’ll go wake him,” Mrs. Krane said, drying her eyes with a handkerchief from the pocket of her robe.
“Actually,” I said, “I could try it while he’s asleep.” I hadn’t even really known that I was going to say this, but there it was. And it made sense to me. So I decided to go with it.
The Kranes consulted each other with a look, and then Mrs. Krane nodded.
As we followed them up the stairs, I cleared my throat. “I have to remind you of what happened to my sister, to Sophie,” I said. “I can’t explain that. There’s a chance …” I let my words hang there, the implication plain and unyielding.
If I was going to do this, even though I now believed, I had to be sure they understood the risks. When you were dealing with this gift, this crazy, unexplainable thing, I couldn’t pretend to myself or to these poor tragedy- stricken parents that I knew all the ins and outs.
Mr. Krane turned around on the stairs then, leveled me with a look. I felt Rennick’s hand on my back again, that reassuring presence. “Corrine,” Mr. Krane said, “forgive my bluntness, but the doctors have given Seth
I nodded. The horrible words echoed around us, and the flame flickered higher inside me.
Seth’s room was decorated in an outer space theme. With only the dim light from the hallway, I could see the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling mimicking constellations. He had several NASA posters, hand-drawn rocket ship schematics, real or imaginary I had no idea. But there were also more ominous placeholders in his room, starting with the hospital-grade bed, the stainless-steel IV stand, the nightstand filled with medications.
I realized then that I was holding my breath and wringing my hands. The Kranes and Rennick were silent, watching me. Waiting. I didn’t quite know how long I had been standing there.
He looked so small in that big bed, his face pressed into a sleepy grimace. Was he in pain? I shook the thought away. It was time.
I closed my eyes and let the flame unfurl in my chest, fanned it with my will. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, when the buildup inside me was nearly more than I could bear, I opened my eyes, and I could see the blue, even in the dim-lit shadows. The indigo-blue lens.
I stepped forward, and the energy pulsated in me, around me, shooting through my limbs, out my pores. I reached for his hand. It was small and featherlight in my grip. And it was so cold.
His skin was like paper against mine, and that’s when I let it go. I let the power do what it was meant to do. It surged, blossomed wider, grew in waves, plunging out of me into Seth.
I was semi-aware of falling to my knees, but I paid no mind. I just held on. Whatever it was that I had, he needed it, as much as I could give him. I couldn’t back away.
The more it conducted into Seth, the more I felt his body actually pulling it from me. It was an odd feeling, like the pulling of a tooth, both right and wrong at the same time.
At some point, I opened my eyes, and the current waned. His eyes popped open. A smile replaced the grimace.
If he was surprised to see me, surprised to know I was holding his hand in his bedroom in the middle of the night, or if the physio-electric force falling silent between our hands seemed out of the ordinary, he did not let on.
He simply let out a great sigh. “Thank you, Corrine,” he said. And then he asked for a Popsicle.
We rode with the windows down in the Jeep, the wind tangling my hair. It was still and hot outside. I felt exhilarated and alive, so very alive. I talked on and on. And Rennick watched me, a little smile curling up the corners of his mouth. What was he? Proud?
“I mean, do you realize what this means I could do?” I said. “There are so many people. So many opportunities. I could really make a difference.” Already my mind was getting six steps ahead. “But how will I choose who to help? Will I just stay local? How many people do you think I could help, like, in one day, without … you know.”
Rennick’s face hardened, and I plunged ahead. “I mean, I’ll be careful. Very careful. I’ll never let it get so that I—”
“You know, my mother couldn’t help everyone.”
“I know,” I said, tipping my face into the wind out the window. But did I really know this? I mean, what if I had had to accept defeat with Seth? What if this had all turned out differently and I’d had to read his obituary in the paper in a few days? Could I handle the emotions that came with that? The guilt?
I thought of Sophie. I would have to handle it. For Sophie. I had to keep going. To make it all up to her somehow. I mean, I owed her that.
“Thank you, Rennick,” I told him. “I wouldn’t have been able to help Seth without you.”
He nodded, and for a second he looked like he was going to say something. But he didn’t. Then he slowed down, driving even slower than usual, and pulled us into the parking lot of the Upper Garden District’s community pool. The pool was dark and surely locked up tight at one in the morning, but his tires slowed against the gravel, and when he shifted into park he gave me a smile with that glint in his eye. “Let’s celebrate,” he said.
“Celebrate?” I asked, getting out of the Jeep and following him to the fence.
“Can you climb?”
“Of course. But why?”
“I’m hot.”
“Me too,” I said, and suddenly the idea of hopping over this fence and illegally cooling myself off in the water seemed like just the perfect ending to the night. Not only did I want to feel that cool water on my skin, I needed it. Ever since the Kranes’, my skin was tight on my body, hot and prickly.
I climbed carefully and tried not to seem like a clumsy moron. Rennick beat me over the side, and he was already pulling his shirt over his head when I hopped down. I kicked off my flip-flops. We both stopped, frozen for a second. Surely, he was thinking the same thing as me. What was I going to swim in?
I answered the question by taking a running start and diving right into the deep end, fully clothed. I gave a little war cry, and then I was in, the water hugging my tank top and jean shorts to my body. But oh it felt good, cool and calming. Rennick jumped in after me, but I was already swimming. The butterfly. He called after me, but I was in a groove, the water slicing around me, my body falling into the familiar pattern, my lungs burning. A relief to be so right here, so normal.
On the return lap, I switched to freestyle. As happy as I was, I was aware that my episode with Seth had taken a toll on me, my nerve endings on fire and frayed. But with each stroke in the water, that feeling disappeared a little bit more.
A few more laps, and then I stopped and scanned the darkness for Rennick, and he was there, at the shallow end. I caught sight of his lanky form, the silhouette of his torso against the far reaches of a blue security
