Indigo

samples, and several other kinds of tests, all of which showed that Seth was completely healthy. All traces of his leukemia were gone.

Between that, the carnival, and Chartrain, I knew I should be more concerned. But all I wanted to do was stick my head under a tap and drink. Water and more water. Either that or sleep. Exhaustion won as I drifted off. The last thing I heard was Dad say that a man from Tallahassee had contacted Suzy, the head of his legal department, and offered a check for one million dollars, no questions asked, if I would come and just try to heal his teenage son, who had lived with muscular dystrophy his whole life.

I pictured Tallahassee—a swamp? Alligators? Orange groves? And then I was out.

14

Mom shook me awake in the early morning. “Let’s get you out of here.” I didn’t know exactly why she wanted us to leave, but it wasn’t too hard to deduce. She smiled at me while I threw on some clothes, but it was painted on. Obviously, people were done with just leaving messages. People were showing up on the doorstep.

As we drove into the French Quarter, I told myself to stay calm and plead my case logically. “You know, Mom, I want to help these people. It’s okay.”

“Our home,” Mom said in a dark tone, “needs to be a safe place for you. For us. We will not let you think that every time the doorbell rings someone is going to be begging you, pleading with you. You have to have some say in this, Corrine.”

“But, Mom—” I began to argue. She cut me off.

“You may not think so right now, but twelve hours from now. Twelve days. You’ll be glad we set some parameters.”

I pulled down the sun visor and looked at myself in the mirror. My face surprised me. I looked healthy, pink-cheeked; my unwashed hair even had a sheen to it. I raked a brush through it and tied it back at the nape of my neck. I considered what Mom was saying.

“I can see your point,” I said. “Where are we going, though?”

“The Shack. Sarah said we could hide out upstairs.”

We rode in silence for a few moments, then Mom continued. “Dad’s lawyers are putting together kind of a contract, something people will need to sign. To cover us. Also, his legal team has contracted someone to make a website, an eight-hundred number.” Mom glanced at me, her mouth a hard line. “I want you to help these people too, Corrine. I just want you to be at the helm, okay?”

I nodded and thought about yesterday at the carnival. Mom hadn’t been there. She couldn’t know how some things, especially this particular thing, were not going to be orderly, controlled, or even logical. I knew that somewhere deep down. This was who I was now, and although it seemed scary and a little bit out of control, I welcomed it. It was better to step into this life than to keep going with my old one.

If nothing else, it gave me something to do, something beyond good. It gave me something to occupy my thoughts other than the way the air had smelled charged and alive on those rocks with my little sister. If it kept me from picturing her eyes rolling back in her head, well, then it was a good thing.

“What’s up?” Mia-Joy greeted me. She handed me a cafe au lait, just the way I liked it, but not before she took a sip for herself. Mia-Joy was still in a lacy pink nightgown, a do-rag covering up her hair.

Mrs. Rawlings pulled me into her arms, so tight it hurt a little. “God bless ya, Corrine. God bless you.” I nodded at her when she pulled away and stared at me level in the eyes. “You doin’ right.” She moved on to my mom then, and they chattered away. They moved toward the far end of the counter, and I could hear their voices above the din of the breakfast rush, Mrs. Rawlings’s all smooth with comfort, Mom’s all staccato with worry.

The Shack was really hopping, with the smell of Mrs. Rawlings’s famous beignets in the air. Clouds of powdered sugar puffed from customers’ mouths as they took that first heavenly bite.

“I need me one of those,” I said, scooting toward the kitchen just as Mrs. Rawlings yelled at Mia-Joy to go get some clothes on already. I grabbed a beignet off the cooling rack in the back, took a bite, and Mia-Joy pulled me up the stairs to their apartment before I had a chance to argue.

“So give up the goods already. Tell me about this boy.” I settled onto her patchwork comforter, made by Granny Lucy, and realized that Mia-Joy didn’t even know that the rumors about Rennick weren’t true. “He was about to just clock that guy for you yesterday. Are you okay with him? I mean, has he changed, or is he—”

I licked the powdered sugar from my lips, swallowed. “None of it was true, Mia-Joy. Really. He’s not like that.” But I couldn’t keep explaining, because she had her back to me and was changing out of her nightgown. And when I saw her bare back, I could hardly believe how thin she was, her ribs jutting. She had always been thin, always willowy, moved like a gazelle. But this, this was something new. Her ribs were too prominent, her shoulder blades sharp and protruding.

“So why did Rennick end up here?”

I shook my head and explained how we had both actually met him years ago on that Fourth of July at Lake Pontchartrain. But all the while, I was studying her face. Did she look unhealthy? I cursed myself for forgetting about what Rennick had said, about the rip in her aura. I should’ve been more in tune with Mia-Joy. What was going on?

“So we know him from what-in-the-what-what now?” She was fully dressed in capri pants and a hippie- looking tunic. She began combing out her gorgeous mane of hair, working product through it, and I tried to find a way to ask her about her health, her diabetes. But it just sat there on my tongue.

“So was Rennick always so fine? Even back then?”

“You should know. You were there.” I took another bite of my beignet.

“Was his ass just so pow even then?” She gestured with her hands like she was grabbing his butt, and I laughed.

“Mia-Joy!” I threw a pillow at her, and she flopped on the bed next to me.

“Girl, you look good. Rennick must be doing something right.” And she elbowed me in the ribs.

“It’s not like that,” I said, but did I want it to be like that? I swallowed hard. So much was happening.

“I like this.”

“What do you like?” I said. “Embarrassing me at every opportunity?”

“I like hanging with you. You really being here.”

“I like it too,” I told her. “Like old times.” I finished my beignet, licked my fingers.

“It’s like you’re coming alive again along with the people you’re saving, Corrine.”

She grabbed my hand and held it between hers for just a beat, such a very un-Mia-Joy-like action, it made my eyes tear up.

“Mia-Joy, are you feeling okay?”

She waved my question away with her hand. “Corrine, you playing the violin these days?”

“Yeah,” I said, but I realized that, curiously, no, I wasn’t. Just that one time.

Raised voices wafted up from the restaurant below. You couldn’t tell what was being said, but one voice was definitely Mrs. Rawlings’s booming tone.

“He looks at you, ya know,” Mia-Joy said.

“Rennick?” I asked. She nodded. “How?”

“It’s like you’re the only person in the room. No, that’s not it. It’s like you’re the only person anywhere. In the whole freaking galaxy. The only one who matters.”

I smiled, felt the blush rise in my neck. “He does?”

“You deserve that, Corrine.”

I smiled. “Thank you, Mia-Joy.”

“Seriously, you deserve it. I wish I had that. I think every girl does.”

“How can you say that? Half the guys at Liberty look at you that way!”

“No,” Mia-Joy said, suddenly so serious. “They ogle. That is different. Rennick looks at you differently.”

“Mia-Joy!” Mrs. Rawlings’s voice bellowed up the stairs.