“I’m coming!” Mia-Joy yelped. And I let it go. I didn’t ask her any more about her health. For better or worse, I let it go.
I quickly followed her down the stairs. But when we emerged into the back section of the kitchen, Casey, one of the bakers, did not look up at us, and I could tell by the way she hid behind the wall of her blond bangs that it was on purpose. Something was up.
And then we could hear them. Many voices. People were here. They had to be looking for me. Mia-Joy had my arm, tried to pull me back, but I yanked it away. I appeared behind the counter, and the whole place went quiet. The patrons were all looking up from their Saturday-morning coffees; the knot of people around Mom and Mrs. Rawlings turned, and I saw then what was going on. There was an older gentleman with silver hair, and with him were a younger man and woman, and then there was this young thing. This tiny girl, her legs in braces, her arms leaning on a walker, her limbs awkward and underdeveloped, the victim of some kind of disease. Maybe multiple sclerosis? I didn’t know. But her eyes found me. And they were bright and shiny, her smile radiant. “You don’t have to,” she said into the silence. “I’m okay with it, but Papa wants you to try.”
I took a big breath. I was going to help her, of course, but what to do about Mrs. Rawlings and Mom, I didn’t know. So I just ignored them. And I didn’t know if it was that they expected some kind of warning, some kind of preliminary setup or what, but they didn’t have a chance to intervene. Or maybe, maybe it was just that they knew, deep down, that this was bigger than me. Bigger than their worries about keeping a little slice of normal life for me.
I walked toward the little girl. “What is your name?”
“Amelia.” And in a moment, I had a whole narrative in my mind of Amelia’s life, the things she struggled to do like a normal child, how she wanted so badly to learn ballet, how second grade had been a tough year when so many kids ridiculed her condition. She loved farm animals, drew them on everything.
I didn’t know if any of this was true, probably not. But it made me see her in a deeper manner. It made the pilot light of my power switch on, fan and flame. I took some deep breaths, and before I knew it she had slid her hand in mine. I gripped it and let the current grow and shift until it became enormous, so powerful I could feel my body shaking, and then it plateaued. And I let it go. It surged out of me. I opened my eyes to see the restaurant flooded with the strange indigo light.
Little Amelia smiled through the entire exchange, although I shuddered with the power of it all. And when it had run its course, when I knew I had given all I could to her, I let go. And I sat down, my body feeling spent but more than that, fiery hot.
“Thank you,” Amelia said, and she brushed a strand of hair from my face. I laughed this little laugh. And then she turned toward her papa, her parents, and she very purposefully kicked off her leg braces, set her walker to the side, and took one, two, three unsteady steps.
The place buzzed and hummed in disbelief as her family enveloped Amelia in tears and hugs. But quickly, the crowd grew boisterous. People had their cell phones out, they were calling others, snapping pictures of Amelia and me.
And then Phillip Bullhouse, a kid at Liberty, came right up to me. “My father, he just had a stroke. He’s only fifty-three years old. Can I bring him here?”
I heard Mom’s voice behind me, but I nodded, and Phillip was off.
I stayed at the Shack the rest of the morning. Word spread quickly. Mrs. Rawlings sold more crawfish jambalaya than probably any other day of the year. Mom eventually settled into a quiet, somber watchfulness. Mia-Joy started passing around a wicker basket for donations, which I made her announce would go to the DayBreak Center in the French Quarter, helping the homeless and the needy. I didn’t want money for this.
In short, I healed thirteen people at the Shack that day. It made me ashamed about the kind of person I used to be, back in Chicago before Sophie, so oblivious to people’s suffering. Because didn’t we all suffer? In one way or another?
Several of the people had cancer, one of the pancreas, one with no voice—esophageal cancer. Some of them, I didn’t even know their exact ailments. One woman had such gnarled, arthritic limbs, I could hardly believe my eyes when her hands just straightened out, her joints moving backward in time in front of my eyes. One man was so thin he reminded me of pictures from the Holocaust in history class. He had cirrhosis of the liver, his skin a jaundiced yellow, but when he left he looked as healthy as anyone else.
And there were two more children. The Florida man with the son who had muscular dystrophy. He had found me in less than a day. “The power of the Internet and GPS,” the dad kept saying. His son, his body so atrophied from the disease, didn’t want to be here. The son scowled at me, crabbed about the whole ordeal, but in the end he let me grab his hand. I doubted my ability to help him, because the disease had so emaciated him, but he walked out of the Shack. On his own two legs, his eyes wide with disbelief.
It was after him—he was maybe the eighth person—that I began to feel the throbbing ache around my rib cage, and I knew that I should stop. But I couldn’t. I didn’t even really consider it.
There were so many intricate and horrifying ways for a person to suffer, and I was only able to help the physical. What I was doing seemed small, too small. How could I stop?
And they brought me things, odd little things. Heirloom jewelry. Pictures of what they looked like before they got sick. Pictures of loved ones who had passed on. Prayers written on napkins. They each wanted me to know their story. And it broke my heart in so many ways, like they had come armed with all of these things to show that they were worthy, loved, and I should choose them to be healed.
As if I could turn them away.
The kids brought drawings and thank-you cards. Stuffed animals. Their favorite Legos. And not just sick kids, but kids who had sick parents or sick relatives. These kids looked the worst. Worn out with worry. Lost little shells of the children I usually saw popping crawdads into their mouths during the lunch rush at the Shack.
People tried to give me money. Loads of it. Checks, coins, their credit cards. I pushed them off to Mia-Joy, who made bug eyes at the amounts these people dropped into our donation basket.
By two o’clock, I thought I spied Rennick’s face in the far reaches of the crowd, but I couldn’t focus on him. I needed water. I couldn’t wait any longer. So while the fourteenth person, a ninety-two-year-old man who had been blind since the ’40s, waited patiently for me to take a little break, I went into the back to get a drink. I felt a little woozy now too, along with this brittle, hollow feeling in my ribs, a deep muscle soreness around my midsection.
Mia-Joy went about scrambling some eggs for me. I was exhausted physically. Spent but invigorated too. My limbs, my hands, seemed to vibrate even as I shoveled the scrambled eggs into my mouth. And I drank glass after glass of water.
“What did you put in these? They are so good,” I said, talking around another bite of eggs. They tasted so hearty.
“Nothing, not even salt.” Mia-Joy filled my glass again from the tap. “Aren’t you a little bit freaked? I mean, come on. Aren’t you sort of all what-in-the-hell-am-I?”
I shook my head, then tilted it back to drink the water in one big gulp. The swinging door to the kitchen flew open and I spilled the water all over myself. It was Rennick. A crazy-looking, hair-in-all directions, wild-eyed Rennick.
“We had a deal. I’ve been watching.” He crossed the space between us in a few long steps, and then he was kneeling in front of me. “You promised me. You promised you wouldn’t use yourself up.”
My eyes shot over to Mia-Joy, and she looked at me with raised eyebrows. “Can you give us a minute?” I asked her.
“Nope. No way,” she snapped. “I want to hear this.”
I shook my head, didn’t like the idea of them ganging up on me. Knowing they would easily get Mom on their side too. “Rennick thinks I can use up my power, give it all away, and then give away my spark too … or whatever.”
“I don’t think anything, Corrine. I
“Is this still about Sophie?” Rennick said, placing his hand on mine.
I shook my head. Was it?
He placed a hand on my forehead. “You’re burning up, Corrine.”
