Intrinsical (26 page)

Brent nodded. “Still, the lyrics fit our situation perfectly—you waited until I was asleep and crept into my embrace—” I put my hand over his mouth to stop his words.

“
I had a bad dream last night and . . .” I trailed off letting my mind explain the nightmare and my fear.

He was silent for a minute. “I’m sorry for teasing you. I— ”

“
I know.”

“
Interesting dream.”

“
Yeah, but it’s just a dream, right?”

Brent sat up straight, looking at me strangely. “What do you mean by that?”

I shook my head. “Nothing.”

“
I don’t believe you.”

I bit my lip, thinking about the dream and how it had frightened me. “I’ve had dreams like that before, ones that were scarily vivid. I think it scared me so much because it felt similar, like the dreams I had of me drowning. You know, before I drowned.”

I suddenly had Brent’s undivided attention and he leaned toward me. His brown eyes narrowed as he grabbed my hand. “You dreamed about drowning?” I nodded. “Was it similar to how you actually died?” I nodded again, not exactly sure where he was going with this. “Was your dress caught on the brick bag they use for the swim team?”

“
I couldn’t tell; is that what happened?”

Brent thought for a moment. “Yeah, Steve had to rip it free to pull you out.”

“
I didn’t know that.”

“
Tell me, Yara, the first time you had that dream, were you wearing your necklace?” I told him I was. “How about when you left your body?” I nodded again. “But not when you died?”

“
No, it didn’t go with my dress. Does that matter?”

Brent scratched his chin as he thought. “It might. Tell me about this new dream again.” With as much detail as I could, I explained everything to him.

“
But this dream is different, right? I mean I was with Cherie and I felt . . . alive.”

“
I’m not sure.” Brent pursed his lips, still mulling over this new information. “Is that the only time you’ve had dreams like that?”

I took a calming breath before I answered. “No. The week before my brother Kevin died, I . . . I saw it in a dream.” I plucked a blade of grass and watched it hover in the air before me. “I didn’t tell him about it; I had no idea it would come true. If I had, maybe he wouldn’t have gone to that stupid party with his loser friend. Maybe he wouldn’t have let his friend drive.”

It was impossible to miss the loud sound of Brent sucking in a lung full of air. “Oh, man.”

I let the blade of grass that I had shredded to pieces fall to the ground. “I never told anyone. I was afraid they’d blame me.”

Footsteps padded on the stone walkway as a man in a groundskeeper uniform crossed to the fountain and began cleaning out the leaves that had fallen into the water.

Brent slid himself closer to me and wrapped his arm around my shoulders. “Why didn’t you pay attention to your drowning dreams then?”

“
I thought it was a fluke. I hoped it was. I . . . I don’t know,” I admitted slowly. “I did try and be careful around water though.”

Brent chuckled. “Yes, that seemed to work well for you. Let’s pay attention to this one, then.”

“
You’re going to give me to your brother and let the mist have me?” I asked, shaking his arm off of me.

“
That’s not going to happen. Haven’t I already proved I wouldn’t do that?” He rolled his eyes at my stare. “The situation might be the same, but the difference will be in the details.”

A lawnmower rumbled to life and the grounds employee began guiding it across the grass. We climbed onto the ledges of the gazebo as stray pieces of grass floated through the air.

“
We fight, we lose?”

“
What happened to your undying optimism?” Brent asked, raising one eyebrow.

“
I traded it for your sense of reality.” I traced around the black scar on my shoulder with my fingertips. “How’s your ankle feeling?”

“
Changing the subject? Sure, I’ll stop talking about the important topic if you feel uncomfortable.” Brent stretched his legs out in front of him. “I’m much better. I dreamed too.”

“
What did you dream?” With amusement I noticed he blushed and protected his thoughts. “Aren’t you going to tell me?” He shook his head as he stood up and rolled his shoulders.

“
But you made me discuss mine in detail.”

“
I’ll tell you what, if I have a dream that might be that important, I promise to tell you all about it.” He flexed his muscles in several body builder poses. “My strength is back. Let’s start training again.” I groaned as he yanked me to me feet.

****

Later that night we walked toward the center of the school, wandering around while waiting to reenact my death. The moon shone brightly on the campus and even without my heightened senses I would have easily been able to see by its beams. It was chilly, cold enough that if I were still alive, my breath would have hung around my face in the air.

“
It’s a beautiful winter evening. All that’s missing is snow. I’m never going to see snow again.” I frowned at this realization.

Brent smiled at me mischievously and lifted his hands above his head, mouthing words I couldn’t hear and my mind didn’t understand. The temperature plummeted, and clouds formed, covering the bright moon. Within moments, tiny fluffs of white flitted to the ground around us.

I laughed in amazement, tilting my head back. I stretched out my arms and twirled in the falling snow. The small flakes gradually gave way to larger ones as the pace of them picked up, coming down in a flurry, until several inches of billowy white blanketed the ground.

“
How did you do that?” I asked, sticking my tongue out to catch the snowy flakes. They didn’t stop, but fell through me unimpeded.

“
It wasn’t hard. It’s the same basic technique I use to control the wind. It just took more time, energy, and concentration. I didn’t do it everywhere, just around the school.”

“
How are the weathermen going to explain that?”

Brent chuckled, reaching out his hand and letting a few flecks of snow fall through him. I took a deep breath and inhaled the chilly air. I was surprised to find I felt different. Something in me had changed. After a minute I realized, for the first time since I died, I felt content. Yes, there were things I longed to change, and people I wished to hold, but I could feel myself slowly moving past my life. It’s not that I was losing the memory of my loved ones, but I was coming to accept things as they were. There was a word to describe how I felt. Happy.

Brent turned to me in shock. “You’re happy.”

I stopped walking and bit my lip, turning to face him with a surprised grin. “I am. Or at least I really think I can be.” At that moment I noticed that the room that had once been mine was still dark, but only a little sadness squeezed my heart.

“
You can’t already be losing your happiness,” Brent said as he formed a perfectly round snowball. He took aim at me. “This is a happiness-rejuvenating snow ball,” he explained in a very serious tone. He threw it at me, but with a wave of my hand, I forced it to miss its mark.

“
Really?” My eyebrow arched in defiance as I created a snowball of my own. I tossed the snowball from hand to hand.

“
Now you’re going to want to be careful with that,” Brent warned with a wag of his finger. I ignored the warning and tossed it at him. It didn’t even come close to hitting him thanks to a deflection on his part. Soon the world was nothing but cold wet snow being flung between us. He managed to ”hit” me twice but I returned the favor three times. Having snow go through you is an interesting experience; it made me feel briefly like a rain cloud. When I was tired I collapsed on the wet ground, breathing heavily.

“
I haven’t laughed that much since I died,” I wheezed.

Brent plopped himself down beside me. “Me either.” He rested his head on his arms that were crossed above his head.

“
Thank you for making this possible. Imagine how surprised everyone will be in the morning.”

“
It was nothing.” Brent waved his hand across the sky and the snow began to slow.

I rolled toward Brent, resting my head on my hand. “Why do you always do that?”

“
What?”

“
Try to make it seem like this ability you have is no big deal?”

Brent stared up at the sky, watching the bright stars and moon. “I don’t know.”

I watched as with a flip of his fingers he began to roll a snowball. “Doesn’t matter. My ability wasn’t able to save us from dying.”

“
It saved us when the mist attacked.”

Brent smiled warmly as he sat up. “It did do that,” he admitted—but amended his statement, “but only with your help.”

Brent continued to make his snowball until it got so big that I would no longer be able to get my arms around it. “It’s so cool you had this ability with the elements while you were alive. I never got the chance to try.”

Brent nodded. “Yeah, and unlike everyone else, I could do all of it off campus as well.”

“
You mean all the body leaving and moving stuff was limited to campus?” I chewed on the inside of my cheek, thinking. “Are my abilities limited to here, too?”

Brent stretched his neck again rolling his head in a circle. “Maybe . . . probably.”

I looked around Pendrell with its sturdy trees, seasonal flowers, and brick buildings. It all seemed so normal, so unthreatening, but there must be something not right about it. I turned to Brent, curious. “What is it about Pendrell exactly that lets its students project?”

Brent laughed. “I was wondering if we were ever going to have this conversation.” I could hear him shuffling his thoughts, trying to organize them and decide where to start. “Well, Pendrell was founded by Christopher Pendrell,” he said. He seemed satisfied with his snowball and began to roll a new one. “He thought his sons needed to get into an east coast prep school to be able to get into the right college. He was devastated when they weren’t accepted. He set out to make Pendrell better than the schools that had snubbed them. He wanted the kids from his school to be smarter and more successful than any of his competitors. About this time his brother returned from a trip from South America with a plant called pankurem.”

“
That’s the same plant my necklace is made of,” I interjected. I could picture the plant perfectly, its tiny leaves growing in little clusters, their edges jagged. I had seen those leaves many times and I knew them well; each one of the amber beads on my necklace had been hand crafted to include a leaf within it. “Vovó uses that plant all of the time in her work.”

“
I know about it being in your necklace,” Brent said, still working on his second snowball.

“
You knew?” I thought back to when he had seen my necklace and how it had reacted to him.

Brent listened to my thoughts. “Yeah, that stuff responds to people like us. It’s supposed to keep spirits safe, and can protect us while we project. I never found any but when I saw your necklace I knew what it was. Like some part of me recognized it.” The corners

of his mouth sagged. “I thought it would keep you safe.”

“
Maybe it would have if I hadn’t been a slave to fashion.”

Brent tilted his head to the side considering before continuing. “Anyway, back to our story. His brother told him about the plant’s ability to help people reach their highest mental potential, helping them see connections they might have otherwise missed. Christopher was eager to learn more about the plant and invited a few people who knew about it to teach at the school. He planted it all around campus and started growing it in his sons’ rooms. He even put a small amount in their tea and food.”

“
Well, I am sorry to discredit that theory, but that is the same plant I had in my necklace and it didn’t seem to do me any good at all.”

“
Yara, please, I’m trying to tell you a story here.” Brent sighed. He examined the beach ball sized snowball, nodded, and began to make a third. I pretended to zip my lips and continued to listen. “So, not only did it help their grades, but it also had a side effect: they were able to leave their bodies. And they shared that secret with a select group of their friends. And thus began Pendrell’s secret society, the Clutch. Each class passed it on to the next group of students, until two boys died in a tragic fire. After that, some members tried to keep it going, but too many weird things started happening— guys getting hurt on their way to meetings, strange accidents when they met, just . . . weird things. Eventually things got too hard and they gave up. The society sort of petered out.”

“
So you’re telling me that we had a secret society at our school? Really? You weren’t kidding about that? One that never made it into any of Cherie’s stories?”