Scaredy Kat (12 page)

“Well, are we ready to go in?” Orin asked. His face was more or less expressionless, but to me he seemed amused. I felt my
cheeks go even redder.

“I’m ready,” Jac said eagerly.

“Me, too,” I said quietly. Anything to get my bright red face pointing in another direction. Yikes.

“Just one thing first,” Orin said.

I froze.
Please don’t let him comment about the hottie thing,
I prayed.

“Kat,” Orin said.

I’d been staring in the opposite direction to hide my face, but I had no choice but to turn toward him.

“Close your eyes for a minute.”

Okay, that was weird. But I did it.

“I want you to visualize the stream of energy inside you. It starts at your feet and rises through your body like a river
of light, moving all the time.”

I’d done basic energy meditations with my mother, so this wasn’t too far out of left field.

“Okay,” I said.

“Now imagine that energy is coming out of the top of your head, and flowing down around you before going back into your feet.
It’s completely encasing you in a bubble.”

“Okay,” I said after a moment. I wasn’t stringing him along. I could feel the energy rushing through me. It made a whooshing
feeling in my stomach, like I was on a roller coaster.

“This bubble will protect you, Kat. Nothing can penetrate it unless you invite it in. Everything else will stay outside of
the bubble. Nothing can approach you unless you specifically ask it to. Understand?”

I nodded.

“Let’s go then,” Orin said.

When we walked into the kitchen all was quiet, but I still felt creeped out by the memory of all those banging doors. I shivered
slightly and closed my eyes to see if I could sense the presence of anything in the room. Orin must have noticed what I was
doing.

“Don’t,” Orin said. “That’s as good as an invitation. This is only about Tank right now. Focus only on him, and the other
spirits will be kept out.”

I nodded.

“Okay. Let’s go upstairs.”

Orin went first. I followed, and Jac brought up the rear. The house was dead silent. No chairs scraping across the floor.
No rolling balls. No thuds. The only sound was the creak of the stairs as we ascended them.

When we reached the top of the stairs, I pushed past Orin and walked to the doorway of Tank’s room. I wasn’t afraid at all
at the moment. Tank never scared me, and Orin’s energy bubble made me feel safe. I peered into the room.

And there he was, in the same place I’d seen him before. He was sitting on the floor, his head resting on the wide windowsill
that faced my room. He looked like he was sleeping.

“Are we going in?” came Jac’s voice from behind me.

“What is it, Kat? Do you see him?” asked Orin, more quietly.

I walked inside and stepped to one side to make room for them to come in.

“He’s there,” I said softly, pointing toward the window.

“Where?” asked Jac.

“Try to talk to him,” said Orin.

I took several steps in Tank’s direction.

“Tank? Tank, it’s me, Kat. Remember? I live next door.”

I was close enough to him now to see that his eyes weren’t closed. His head rested on his arms, and he stared out the window.

I changed my tactic. Instead of speaking to Tank, I closed my eyes and imagined my satellite dish scanning the sky. I said
Tank’s name to myself, indicating that I was searching only for Tank’s spirit. I didn’t pick up anything. I could see Tank
clearly, right in front of me. But I sensed nothing. Or less than nothing. My tuner wasn’t picking up static—it was picking
up an overwhelming lack of anything. Like a black hole. He was there, but he wasn’t there.

“What’s going on?” Jac whispered. “Is there a ghost in here right now?”

“It’s not working,” I said, turning to Orin.

He was staring at the place by the window with an intense look of concentration.

“Do you see him?” I asked.

“Is that where the ghost is?” Jac asked eagerly. I shot her a look.

“No,” replied Orin. “But because you’ve told me he’s there, I can pick up some energy. Not something I would have noticed
on my own. But I know now that I’m picking up something from Tank. I’m just not able to work with it.”

Jac walked over to the painting of the sunburst and stared at it, transfixed. I was glad she was momentarily distracted.

“Kat,” Orin said suddenly. “Neither of us can interact with Tank on our own. But I think if we work together, it might make
a difference. Do you trust me?”

I nodded. For whatever reason, I did trust Orin implicitly. And my intuition had always been good.

“All right. I’m going to do some energy work right now, on both of us. I’m going to try to sync up our vibratory fields, and
at the same time I’m going to try to establish an energetic link between our fifth chakras.”

I wanted to ask him if it would hurt, but I just nodded. I watched Tank while Orin closed his eyes and began deep breathing.
I wondered what Tank was looking at through that window—or if he saw anything at all.

Then I closed my eyes, not because Orin told me to, but because I knew it would help. I could feel the energy shift almost
immediately. I saw waves and swirls of violet light. The whooshing feeling in my stomach intensified. I felt a spreading warmth
in my chest and throat, like a warm liquid was seeping over and through me.

This is amazing,
I thought.
Orin is the real deal.
I had never studied energy, but I rec-ognized what I was feeling. Orin was changing the level and type of energy in me. He
was activating something. My senses were heightened, and there were huge waves of energy passing through me.

“Kat?”

His voice sounded like it was coming from a million miles away.

I tried to say something back.

“We need to try and contact him now,” Orin said.

“How?” I murmured.

“Try speaking to him again.”

It was a huge effort just to open my eyes. I felt like I was in a deep sleep, and I was incredibly comfortable. The last thing
in the world I wanted to do was wake up. Somehow, I managed to open my eyes.

“Tank?” I said sleepily.

It could have been my imagination, but Tank seemed to startle at the sound of his name.

“Tank,” I repeated. “I’m here. I’m . . . I’m your friend. I’m here to help you. Do you see me, Tank?”

And he turned his face and looked directly at me.

“He’s looking at me,” I whispered to Orin.

“Tell him you can help him if he listens to you carefully.”

I repeated Orin’s words to Tank. His eyes widened slightly.

“Tell him that he’s been in an acci-dent, and that his body is in a coma. Tell him his consciousness has separated from his
body, and it needs to return. We’ll help him find his way back. It may help him to wake up.”

I did, masking my surprise. Could we really do that? Is that what Orin had been trying to do all along—wake Tank up?

Orin murmured the words and I repeated them to Tank.

“Envision a pillar of light in front of you. Reach out and put your hands into the pillar. Now step into the pillar. The light
is coming out from the top of your head. It runs through your body. It leaves your feet and continues into the earth. Bathe
in this light. Let it soak into every cell, every organ in your body. This is the light of divine healing. Accept the light.
Accept the healing.”

Tank’s face was upturned, his eyes wide and eager.

“Now tell Tank to look down at his midsection. He will see a silver cord of light coming out of him.”

I told Tank this. Though I saw no cord, Tank’s hands flew to something near his ribs. His hands wrapped around something invisible.

Orin continued to whisper instructions.

“Now, Tank, follow this cord. This is the cord that connects you to your physical body. When you reach the end of the cord,
you will have come home to your physical self. When you are in your body, recall the divine healing light again. This will
seal your life force back into your physical form.”

Tank was reaching out and pulling his hands in toward his chest one at a time. It was as if he was holding a rope and guiding
something at the end of it closer in. He pulled and pulled, like a fisherman hauling in a net. Then suddenly he stopped. He
looked surprised, and confused. He turned and looked straight at me. I nodded encouragement.

“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s okay, Tank.”

He cocked his head to one side like a puppy, then turned back toward the cord.

And then he disappeared.

“Are you sure your phone is charged?” Jac asked for the third time.

We were at our old table at the Bean Factory. We each had an extra tall Mocha-Cho. Jac also had a brick-sized cake-like concoction
called a Chocolate Rocket Loaf. It looked like a Twinkie on steroids.

Orin had gone to the hospital to check on Tank. He was supposed to call when he had news. We had also told him where he could
find us, if he needed to. As we were leaving the van Hecht house (Jac somewhat reluctantly, because she had witnessed nothing
supernatural at all), Orin explained that the van Hechts had hired him a year ago. Tank’s mother had gone to a healing convention
and met Orin there. She was skeptical of the whole “healer” thing, but she was also desperate.

Tank had recovered from his injuries, and his body and brain were strong and healthy. No doctor could offer any advice or
measure of hope as to whether or not Tank would ever wake up. Unwilling to give up, they turned to Orin for help. He had visited
Tank frequently, working with him in the hospital room, but he had found, as I did, that there was a disconnect. Tank’s body
was there, but the energy work did nothing. Then, after dreaming about the sunburst painting, Orin had started biking past
the van Hecht house, sensing Tank was strongly connected there. And that’s when I came into the picture.

“He’s really cute, Kat. Seriously.”

I glanced up at Jac, part startled, part embarrassed.

“What? Oh man, Kat. Are you crushing on the hottie healer?”

I made an explosive sound of irritation.

“What?” Jac repeated, a little too innocently.

“Drop it, okay?” I muttered.

Jac watched me carefully, but she didn’t say anything else for a while.

I slurped sulkily on my Mocha-Cho.

“I’m sorry,” Jac said finally. “I meant that as a joke. I mean, I thought it would be funny. Maybe it isn’t funny.”

I looked up at her. The teasing air had left her. She did look sorry.

“I’m not crushing on him,” I said. “Not really. I don’t know, maybe a tiny bit. I mean, obviously he’s really cute. But he’s
also . . . you know, he’s the real deal. What he did back there in the van Hecht’s house—that energy stuff—it was really something.”

“Yeah,” Jac said, a tad dreamily. “So is it because of your mom?”

I studied Jac for a moment. She took a huge bite of the Chocolate Rocket Loaf. It looked like she unhinged her jaw to open
her mouth wide enough.

“Since my dad left a couple years ago, it’s been just us,” I said.

Jac knew the basic facts behind my father’s departure. She nodded, chewed, and waited for me to continue. She had a little
smudge of chocolate in each corner of her mouth.

“When there are three of you, then suddenly there are two of you, you can get really tight with a person. You know, he didn’t
just leave her, and he didn’t just leave me. He left both of us. We had all this solidarity, right? Like we’d show him. We’d
be happier, just the two of us on our own, than we had been with him in the picture.”

Jac nodded again.

“I’m not saying I want it to stay that way forever. I’m not saying I don’t ever want my mom to meet somebody, or be happy.
I’m not.”

I stabbed at my Mocha-Cho with the straw.

“I’m just not sure I’m ready for it now, I guess. I don’t know at what point in time I would be happy if my mother found some
guy she wanted to date. Definitely it’s okay in theory. I’m just not ready for it today. Not today. Not tomorrow. That’s all
I know.”

The straw made a squeaking noise as I continued poking at the bottom of the Mocha-Cho cup.

“And it’s always been fine because it’s never been a reality. And then Orin comes along, and he knows so much. He’s intuitive,
and he’s got this gift. And okay. Yeah. He’s gorgeous. And he offers to teach me stuff about working with energy that would
really help me deal with seeing spirits.”

Jac broke the rest of the Chocolate Rocket Loaf into two pieces, then four. Her eyes never left mine.

“But I’m resisting it. Because then he might be around. And you know . . . he’s a healer, she’s a medium. They’re already
friends. Why wouldn’t they be into each other? I just don’t think I could handle that. But then I think, man, I’m so selfish!
Who am I to keep them apart just because it’s what I want?”

Jac pushed a hunk of chocolate loaf in my direction.

“Okay, Kat, wait a second. I can totally understand your feeling weird about the possibility that one day your mom might date
somebody, even Orin. Especially Orin. It’s fine for you to feel that way. It’s normal. She’s your mom!

“You think she doesn’t have weird feelings about
you
dating a boy someday? I guarantee you she does, even if she wants you to be happy and even if she wants you to have a boyfriend.”

I took a bite of the chocolate loaf. It was sublimely delicious.

“But then you say, ‘Who am I to keep them apart,’ and I have to say whoa! Slow down, Kat.”

“What?”

“For starters, you’re not keeping anybody apart. Nothing has happened. At least, as of now. And if it does, it does. That’s
basically between your mom and Orin. And from what I know of your mom, she’d never jump into anything without running it by
you. But either way, you’re not keeping anybody apart. You’re just a person, having feelings. Lighten your load there, Voodoo
Mama.”

I sighed. Jac made a lot of sense.

“What, are you taking some kind of correspondence therapy course?” I asked, smiling. “Why are you so smart all of a sudden?”