Forbidden (The Seeker Saga, #2) (3 page)

Chapter One – The Value of a Crystal

It is funny how things that at first seem so extraordinary and special have the disappointing tendency of becoming mundane and predictable over time.  Whether through familiarity or exposure, the items in question somehow always begin to lose their luster.  Something that was once new and exciting becomes old and stale, and it doesn’t take long for us to start seeking out the next fresh, shiny object to recapture our imaginations.

That has been my experience with many things in life.  Whether a new dress or a piece of jewelry, a new phone or some other gizmo, many of the things I remembered being thrilled about at first lost their appeal over time.  It’s not that I don’t value them anymore. It’s just that the mystical value that made them so special at first always seems to disappear.  The crush you remember having on that cute boy in middle school, followed by the excitement you felt when he first planted that shy peck on your lips… all of it seems to fade as time moves you past it.  Even if the relationship endured, the kisses he now places on your lips still don’t compare to the magic of the first time.

Is it just a function of the human condition to become less impressed with something the longer you spend time with it?  Things change over time. People change over time. If you become too accustomed to certain things, maybe you render yourself incapable of seeing the beauty in them anymore.  Is that a reflection of our psychology, or is it a side effect of the speed with which the modern world moves around us?  Maybe, just maybe, that’s the reason for all the jaded adults in this world.  Perhaps it was to blame for the bored teachers, the lifeless professionals, the dull businessmen whose everyday affairs have turned bleak and grey.  For the—

“Miss Bachman!  Are you listening to me?”

I jolted upright in my chair and snapped out of my thoughts.  I looked up to find Mr. Stannis, my science teacher, shooting daggers at me with his eyes.  His arms were crossed over his chest, and the meter-long ruler he held in his fist towered over his head like some general’s baton.  I could hear the sounds of shifting chairs and bodies as nearly everyone in the room began directing their attention to me.  Quickly, I scavenged my brain for what Mr. Stannis had been talking about.  “Yes, you were saying how the atomic structure of elements we learned about sophomore year had been incorrectly simplified, and that electrons actually exist in
clouds
of possibility surrounds the nucleus of each atom – and, therefore, how we can never know where an electron actually is, only where it
might
be.”

A look of surprise flashed across Mr. Stannis’s face before being quickly suppressed.  “Yes.  Err… That’s right.  Well done.  Just don’t let me catch you daydreaming in class again, Tracy.  This wasn’t the first time this week.”

“Yes, Mr. Stannis.  I’m sorry.  It won’t happen again.”

“See that it doesn’t.”  My teacher nodded curtly, and then slapped his ruler against the blackboard with such force that everybody in class jumped.  As he resumed his lecture, I looked around sheepishly. Thankfully, nobody was focused on me. 

I didn’t zone out because Mr. Stannis was a bad teacher, or that I found science class boring.  In fact, the rigor with which science was taught at Oliver Academy would have impressed most university professors.  The real reason I wasn’t focused was that, lately, I hadn’t been finding much rest outside of class.

The blame for that lay solely on my shoulders.  As I was thinking about earlier, many things get stale over time, but others… others can seemingly forever retain their ability to dazzle and amaze you.  Things like the crystals.

Since the incident in the caves with Liz and Chris, I had grown inordinately fascinated by the crystals.  Ever since then, I’ve been working extremely hard to try to understand just how they work.  What is the nature of the power they give us?  Where did it come from, and how did it truly originate?  What is the limit of what they could do?  Questions like that invaded my mind like a virus, and demanded to be answered.  The consequence was that I was skimping on a lot of sleep.

The way I felt about the crystals shifted dramatically in the aftermath of Liz’s kidnapping.  Whereas before I had thought of them as something frightening, unknown, and dangerous, I now found them to be nothing short of fascinating.  They represented an extraordinary puzzle for me to solve.  The power they had granted me for those few sacred moments in the caves had allowed me to save not only Liz’s life but also my own.  And Madison’s and Eve’s and Ashley’s, all of whom could have gotten seriously hurt had I not been able to stop Chris.  He transformed into a whole other person down there – a madman.  Thinking about
that
still leaves me shaken.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

A lot has happened since the events of that transformative night in the caves.  But in a way, almost nothing has changed.  I know that sounds contradictory, but it’s not.  Let me start from the beginning.

It took about a week after Liz’s kidnapping for things to calm down and return to normal.  My parents, who had been flown out here by the school’s administrators,  stayed for just a few days.  Once they saw that I was fine –after no small amount of convincing on my part – they both returned home to their jobs.  The school itself did a fine job of covering up events of that night. While most of the students had an inkling that something suspicious had happened then, nobody knew exactly what—nobody but me and the rest of the girls.  We were all happy to keep it that way.  The surprise came when the headmaster of Oliver Academy – the same man I saw giving the speech during opening days – came to my sickroom the day I awoke.  He said he had made the visit because of his concern about my wellbeing. He made it clear that the wellbeing of every student in the school was of his interest.  But once the pleasantries had gotten out of the way, he offered me a
deal
. 

If word of what happened that night got out, he said, Oliver Academy would lose an enormous amount of prestige.  Parents would start questioning the safety of the school, the competence of its administrators, and all sorts of things adults always like to get in arms about.  His proposal went like this: If I agreed not to say anything, he promised the school would not investigate matters further.  Neither I nor any of the other girls would be punished or held responsible for the damages we caused.  None of it would go on our records.  Our standing in the school would remain unchanged.  It would be a complete cover up, but one that was mutually beneficial.  He emphasized that part in no uncertain terms by saying that this type of incident was unprecedented, and if official protocol were to be followed, the girls and I would find ourselves expelled permanently from the academy.

My original thought was that he was more worried about the damage that might come from a lawsuit if any of our parents got wind of what happened than maintaining the vaunted reputation of Oliver Academy.  But as far as I knew, it could be both.  In either case, I was glad to accept.  He could not possibly suspect the real truth of what happened down there. From my perspective, the less it was talked about the better.  The girls and I had our secrets to keep.  Sweetening the deal further was the headmaster’s assurance that all five of us were to be given “administrative pardons” for any work we felt we couldn’t do in the following month due to the
traumatic
nature of our experience. 

That was the clincher for us.  Eve, who I’ve come to know as something of a rebel, took the offer perhaps a bit more liberally than it was intended, and used the pardon to completely stop going to class for a month.  She was quiet about what she did in the meantime. But, whenever conversation turned to that, a glimmer of excitement shone in her eyes before being quickly repressed.  My suspicion was that she had started hooking up with a new guy, and being excused from class gave her more time to spend with him.  But nobody could get her to confirm that.

The rest of us returned to class before even a week had passed.  One of the oddest and least expected results in the aftermath of the incident was the strong friendship that blossomed between me and the girls.  Going through the frightening experience together seemed to strengthen our bonds. All of us became tighter than I could have ever expected.  In fact, I now felt like I had known Liz, Madison, Eve, and Ashley my whole life.  I guess sharing a common experience like that, with death lurking in the shadows, had a way of bringing even the bitterest of adversaries together.  On my part, I had come to value the friendship with the girls.

That was when my interest in the crystals was sparked. I realized that my stubborn refusal at the start to accept who I was and what I could do had caused infinitely more trouble than accepting things and learning to deal with them properly.  I came to realize that the crystals were not some malicious and scary manifestation of the supernatural, but rather something that I could come to understand and define with the right amount of study.  I
wanted to know exactly what they could do, what the limits of their power were, where they first came from, how they worked, and a million other things
.

That was what had been taking up so much of my free time in the weeks since finding Liz in the caves with Chris.  I had become voraciously engrossed by the crystals, the promise of what they could do, and the power they gave access to. 

One of the best things I discovered was that the more I exposed myself to them, the less desperate was the longing  when I was away from them.  In fact, I could proudly say that I had full control over my desire for them now.  This was not to say that the longing was gone entirely. It was just less apparent—like a fly buzzing in the background of my mind.

One of the worst things, on the other hand, was that since waking up in the clinic bed, I’d been unable to tap the crystals’ powers with anywhere near the same strength as I had in the caves.  It wasn’t that my ability was burned out, as Ashley’s may have been – none of us was certain that she’d ever get it back, but Liz continued to encourage her – and I could still tune myself to them, but the
manipulation
of the connections had become near impossible.  I could still sync my mind to the crystal, and feel the flow of power that it initiated.  It was just that, whenever I tried to manipulate anything with that power – to move some small object, to feel the world around me in its intimate detail, or do anything I had done before – my grip on the crystal just dissipated.  It was frustrating, because as far as I could tell, I was not doing anything different from before.  Unfortunately, none of the girls had any answers for me.

The only thing any of us could point to was the flare up that occurred when I used my crystal in the cave, close to the enormous crystal formation.  That must have been what affected my ability.  But none of us knew how long it was going to last.

There was also the matter of the triangulation that Liz and the others have been trying to achieve for so long.  Liz promised it would grant each of us greater power, to do things that might seem like magic.  It was the thing I rejected earlier because I assumed it was a ploy for Liz to gain control over the triangle.  But as I had grown to trust her, my cynicism disappeared. I saw she was genuinely interested in it because of the promise it held to enhance all our abilities – not just her own.

Unfortunately, even with my involvement, triangulation did not work.  Maybe it was because I had gotten weaker, or maybe it was because Liz had overestimated what was possible.  The failure was a disappointment, if only because forming the triangle successfully would have meant we’d have more knowledge of the crystals. 

Since then, I had settled into a more-or-less regular groove.  I never had gotten a complete understanding of exactly what happened in the caves, but that didn’t grate too badly on me.  I heard bits and pieces from Liz and the other girls that filled enough holes in my memory to keep me satisfied.

My days were now taken up with classes, schoolwork, and hanging out with the girls. My nights would be spent studying the crystals to try to understand their power.  I was determined to figure out just how they worked.  I wanted to know why, as Liz had told me, only females could access the power. Furthermore, I wanted to discover if it was a natural ability or something that could be learned.  I suspected it was the latter, although it was just an intuition.  In any case, the crystals remained extraordinary and commanded much of my attention.  Even if I studied them for a lifetime, I did not think I could hammer out all their secrets.   

 That was a very long-winded way of saying that things remained the same for mostly everybody, and changed somewhat for me.  The one thing that was decidedly different, however, was the distinct lack of parties that the student council used to host.  My suspicion was that the administration here somehow assumed the alcohol at those parties influenced events of the fateful night and simply put a stop to it.  Despite my friendship with the girls, and their position on the student council, I couldn’t get a clear answer from them.  They were all strangely mum about it.

A pen poked me in the back, and I twisted in my chair.  Rob was there, grinning widely from the desk behind me.  He motioned to the front of the room, as if to say I should be paying attention to Mr. Stannis and not him.  I rolled my eyes, but flashed him a smile as I turned away. 

Ah, Rob.  He and I were simply friends now.  In the few days it took me to recover after the episode in the caves, I had realized that there was no way for me to move forward with him without upsetting Liz.  And in any case, the feelings I held for Rob had likely been nothing more than puppy-dog infatuation.