Indigo

it was surging, working, igniting.

I just grabbed her hand, sat on the bench next to her. This thing was bigger than me. I was its servant. I told myself not to ask too many questions or try to micromanage it.

Let the people in this little crowd see it. Let the word spread if it had to. I needed to help this poor woman.

I concentrated. The woman’s worry weighed down on me, her concern for her child, to be brought up without a mother. This was what I focused on, and this brought it to life. It sparked within me and grew quickly. I let it rise, flame into an inferno. It grew and blossomed, swelled. And I let go. I opened my eyes, and there it was, the indigo lens.

I pushed the power, the heat, through me, out of me, into this poor mother. The woman’s face, covered in tears, crumpled into itself and she fell backward, but Rennick was there. He caught her before she tumbled off the bench, and I didn’t let go. I gave it all to her, focused the current into her.

And when it waned, I let go, and I fell to my knees.

Her little girl was hugging her around her neck, pecking her with these little kisses, sloppy and desperate. “Wake up, Mommy. She fixed you!”

She woke up, looked momentarily dazed. But she took a few deep breaths and immediately got to her feet, swinging her little girl up onto her hip. For a moment I was terribly nervous, my stomach lurching up into my throat, but the woman had this unfathomable color in her cheeks. Healthy spots of peachy color right on the apples of her cheeks.

The knot of people around us had gotten so quiet, so reverent, but they clapped now, and I felt so … exposed. I caught Mia-Joy’s and Jules’s eyes in the crowd.

Mia-Joy mouthed the word “Wow” to me, but the woman was there, thanking me, shaking my hand, and I went wobbly-kneed. There were suddenly several people in my face. Questions. Did I always know I could? What was my phone number? Could I help someone’s aunt? Could I fix birth defects? What didn’t it work on? People were flashing their camera phones at me.

I swayed on my feet. And Rennick was there, leading me away quickly.

“I need a minute,” I told him. And Mia-Joy was suddenly at my elbow. “I think I might be sick.” She pulled me toward the washrooms.

“Girl, it’s like I believed it, but now I believe it!”

I bent my head over the disgusting carnival toilet, and Mia-Joy held my hair back. I wretched once, twice, three times. But nothing came out. The smell of the citrus disinfectant in the tiny cinder-block bathroom was overpowering. And the lights in the place were these weird rose-colored fixtures. They were blindingly bright.

I stood, moved to the sink, and splashed some water on my face, rinsed my mouth. After a few deep breaths, I was myself again. I stared in the mirror, and there I was, red-cheeked and wide-eyed.

Mia-Joy held on to my elbow as we left the washroom. “Think if you charged for this, Corrine. We could shop at goddamn Prada.” She was babbling. I laughed loudly, and I was happy to see there was no crowd waiting for us outside the bathroom.

I smiled, and then something—someone—caught my eye. I saw a little girl through the crowd, near the merry-go-round. She was wearing goggles, and her curls stuck out in all directions.

“What is it?” Mia-Joy asked, looking toward the merry-go-round.

“Wait here,” I said, and pushed past kids and teenagers, a man selling balloons. The girl stood near the entrance, next to the ticket taker. My heart thumped and I blinked a few times.

I was about twenty feet away from her. The girl saw me then, waved. It was her. A large group of mothers with their toddlers and several strollers cut in front of me.

I called her name. “Sophie?” My blood ran cold. The edges of my vision faded to dark. I took a few deep breaths and pushed forward.

I lost sight of her as the mothers passed. I ran over to the ticket taker. Sophie was nowhere. I circled the merry-go-round.

“Have you seen a girl? With goggles? About this high?” I asked the ticket taker, motioning with my hand to the height of my chest. I could hear the panic in my voice.

He shook his head, disinterested. I walked around the carousel several times, scanned the crowd on my tiptoes. I stood up on a nearby bench and tried to find her.

Mia-Joy and Rennick caught up with me. “What is it?” Mia-Joy asked. “Who did you see?”

“It was nothing,” I said, shaking my head, still scanning the crowd. I jumped down from the bench. I’m crazy, I told myself. I’m just seeing things. I swallowed hard and balled my fists at my sides. It’s just been too much to take in.

“We’re going to catch up with Clayton and Laura,” Mia-Joy told Rennick. Jules joined us now. He hung his arm around Mia-Joy. She smiled approvingly.

“You sure you don’t need a ride?” Rennick asked.

“No, you guys go be aloooone,” Mia-Joy said. “Privately.” She winked at me and I smiled back, but my mind was on the girl, the goggles. Rennick offered his hand to me and we headed for the parking lot. I scanned the crowds as we left, but I shook my head against it. It hadn’t been Sophie. Of course it hadn’t been Sophie. It was just like the other morning in my room. A new species of crazy.

“You okay?” he said.

“What does your aura look like?” I said to distract myself. “Is there a lot of red?”

“There is.”

Our feet crunching on the gravel parking lot made a ridiculously loud sound. I winced as the noise ground against my eardrums.

“You okay?”

I nodded. “So what does red mean again?”

“Passion. Creativity. You look flushed.”

“I think that might happen after … you know. I don’t know. I need a drink of water, that’s all.”

“You sure we shouldn’t go get you checked out or call your mother or just find a—”

“No!” I snapped, glad to be at the car now so I didn’t have to hear the grind of the rocks against my feet. Like nails on a chalkboard. Everything was magnified, the sounds, the heat, the brightness.

Rennick opened the door of the Jeep for me, and I sat down. He handed me a bottle of water out of the back, and I drained it quickly.

I rested my head on the window and asked him to crank the air conditioner.

I could feel his eyes on me, but by the time we were nearing the Garden District, I felt well enough to be myself, and I saw Rennick relax next to me. His posture changed, his gaze less questioning, more calming.

“I’m so proud of you,” he said, grabbing my hand across the seat.

“I’m proud of me too,” I answered.

I was okay now. At least well enough to ignore it.

But there was something nagging at the back of my mind for some reason, a diagram from one of Sophie’s favorite books. Do-It-Yourself Inventions, or something like that. It looked like one of those crazy setups from an old cartoon—all these little devices and intricate mechanisms, like where you drop a marble into a tube and then it goes through a bunch of machine parts in order to do something mundane like flip on a light switch. There was a name for these inventions. And it hit me, while I had my forehead leaning on the glass: Rube Goldberg. That’s what those things were called.

And I had a sinking feeling in my stomach, in my nerves, that the display at the carnival was the first domino falling in my very own life-size Rube Goldberg contraption. Something had just been set in motion.

When we arrived home that afternoon, Mom explained with a shocked look on her face that our voice mail was filled to capacity. Her work email had 672 messages asking about me. Asking for her help. Media outlets: newspapers, morning shows, from everywhere from Baton Rouge to Mobile. And Dad said the calls to Harlowe Construction were nonstop. That’s the word he kept repeating: nonstop. Nonstop requests. Nonstop calls. Nonstop texts, emails, people.

I listened groggily on the couch while Dad and Mom and Rennick brainstormed how best to stay ahead of all this. Apparently, the Kranes had immediately contacted their doctor this morning. The doctors took scans, blood