Scintillate (2 page)

Janelle made a drive-by visit, a Tasmanian devil with control issues and impeccable nails, dropping off folders of schoolwork, neatly grouped by color and stacked by due date. She had already arranged a makeup date for my missed math test. She exhausted me, but I appreciated her efforts. I was happy when Dad had finally remarried five years ago. He deserved to have a life, and I had hoped it’d take his focus off me so I could have one, too. That hadn’t exactly panned out.

Just when I began to sink back into my pillows, the door swung open again, and I couldn’t have been more surprised by who entered. Of course, I knew of Finn Doyle. The whole school knew of the intriguing new student from Ireland. Despite the fact that he was from the place of my birth, and that I’d cultivated a robust obsession with Ireland since my dad moved us to the States when I was little, I’d never tried to get to know him.

Finn Doyle had unfortunate taste in friends.

He was one of
them
. The banal, popular crowd I found so irritating. I nicknamed them the VIPs. (Vapid. Irritating. Populars.)

I gaped at Finn in his striped volunteer apron as he neared my bed, while trying to ignore the cloud of colors surrounding him. It wasn’t unpleasant, though. Kind of like the sun was setting over his shoulders.

“A
guy
candy striper?”

“That’s surprisingly discriminatory. The family friend I’m staying with, who since birth has been
male
, works here as a lab tech. And I do believe your doctor is a woman. I’m willing to bet the world’s ready to accept a guy candy striper,” Finn said in his thick Irish accent. He followed through with a wide, teasing smile.

There was something so focused about him as he spoke to me, it was unsettling. I scowled, getting on my own nerves for allowing Finn Doyle to make me self-conscious. I did my best to avoid the VIPs at all times. They were like soul sandpaper. Some of my humanity rubbed off with each interaction.

It didn’t matter that Finn had been in the States as a foreign-exchange student for only a couple months. They’d snatched him up and adopted him the minute he landed. Gorgeous guy from Ireland with impossibly adorable accent equaled immediate
in
with the VIPs.

“I’ll have you know a guy can deliver flowers as well as a girl can,” Finn continued. “Perhaps better.” He gave a slight bow and whipped a bouquet of daisies from behind his back. My dad always gave me daisies. “More flourish and technique.”

An insufferably amused smile curled the corners of his full lips. I noted a dimple on his left cheek and added it to the list of his irksome qualities. I looked away from him, out the window, anywhere else.

“I’ve seen you around school before,” he said thoughtfully. “You seem different somehow, up close.”

Did he have to point it out? “I’ve been
sick.
” I was sure he heard the word “moron” at the end of my sentence, even if I didn’t say it.

“Right. Well, I imagine being in the hospital would make anyone cross. Or is this your normal disposition?” he asked, setting the flowers on the bedside table and arranging a few stems to his liking.

I glanced sideways at him. “Yes.”

Finn leaned in and adjusted my pillow. He was so close I could see the faintest hint of a tattoo reaching up from his chest to his neck. I had an intense, irrational desire to know what the tattoo was, and it was all I could do to fight the forceful urge to pull his T-shirt collar down for a better look.

Finn smiled a pirate’s smile, rogue and full of mischief. His gaze flitted from my hand back to my eyes, and I realized I
had
grabbed Finn’s T-shirt and still had it wound tightly in my fist.

Startled and flushing, I released him. The impulse had been powerful, overwhelming, but how could it make me act without any awareness or control? It was disturbing. I drew the sheet up to my chin, wishing I could sink into myself and disappear like a TV fading to black.

Clearly, the fever had fried a few brain cells, but still I recognized his tattoo—three interconnected spirals spreading like the traces of fingertips over the left side of Finn’s chest, teasing up to his collarbone.

I’d seen the triple spiral before. It was a symbol carved into the megalithic stones of Newgrange, one of the world’s oldest prehistoric sites atop a grassy hill in Ireland—older even than Stonehenge or the Great Pyramids. Though the symbol of the three spirals had been hijacked by Celts, Wiccans, and even Christianity over time, no one had a clue as to the original meaning of the carving. I had a picture of it in my Ireland scrapbook.

I longed to ask him about it, to feed my hunger for all things Irish, but I couldn’t hoist myself over the wall of pride I’d already erected. Not to mention swimming through the moat of embarrassment after grabbing his shirt like an idiot. “Sorry,” I murmured.

“Cross is okay,” Finn said, low and husky in a way that underscored his words. “There’s not a sailor on the planet who doesn’t love the challenge of a good storm.” I could see the smile in his eyes and how he fought to keep it from his lips.

We eyed each other. A deeper gaze than anyone besides my father had ever dared to hold with me. It was unnerving, but I was determined not to be the first to break it. The VIPs could
smell
weakness. I might be the quiet type, but I was not in the mood to be toyed with.

Finn studied me a moment more. “Your eyes remind me of home,” he finally said, and walked out.

Two

A

s quickly as the illness came, it disappeared. Well, almost. An MRI, a neurologist, and an eye doctor could find no medical reason for the visual “anomaly.” They even tested to rule out a stroke. I was finally discharged and sent home, which would’ve been a relief if my eyes weren’t still funkadelic, projecting ghostly colors around everyone.

I begged Dad to take the scenic route home from the hospital, winding on West Cliff Drive, past the Santa Cruz boardwalk and beach. I gazed out the window at the blue-gray Pacific. It always struck me there was a whole universe under that live expanse of water, so much more than hinted at by the surface.

Kind of like people.

I steadied the vase of daisies between my knees as we rounded another curve. “Thanks for the flowers, Dad.”

His brow scrunched up into a series of thin lines. “I didn’t send flowers.”

“Oh,” I said, thinking suddenly of the boy who delivered them. I pushed the thought of Finn Doyle out of my head. “Probably Janelle,” I speculated aloud, but found myself fantasizing that my real mother had sent them. It was a secret game I’d always played with myself. She was somewhere close by, watching over me. She knew when I was sick. When I was little, she had watched me at the park as Dad pushed me on the swings. Did her legs twitch to run to me when I fell? Did her fingers ache to wipe my tears when I cried? My mother was a constant spectral presence—and not just for me. I could see Dad’s hyperawareness when we were out in public, glancing around a little too much, always looking over his shoulder.

Maybe he played the same game.

Before I could censor it, the question fell from my lips. “Do you think Mom could be nearby?”

Dad squeezed the steering wheel a bit harder. “No. She’s nowhere nearby.”

His certainty irritated me. “How do you know? Do you know where she is?” The words dropped from my lips like petals. Fragile. Easily crushed. I held my breath.

His eyes met mine. Couldn’t he see the hope there? But his next words were cold, hard. And final. Petals crushed under his heel.

“I know she’s gone.”

A lump formed in my throat and wouldn’t go away no matter how many times I swallowed. We were quiet the rest of the way home.

“Don’t you find it disturbing they can declare me healthy when I’m seeing all these weird colors around people?” I asked Dad as we got out of the car. He supported my arm as we walked from the driveway to the house. I didn’t need it but let him help me anyway.

“You had a very high fever, Cora. A fever like that can have serious repercussions, but you’ve been cleared by your doctor. I’m sure it’ll resolve in short order.”

I snatched my arm away. “Nice, dismissive way to talk about my possible
brain
damage
.”

“Let’s see how it goes. If you’re still…seeing things after a few days, then we can take you to another specialist.”

“But, Dad, it seems like it’s getting worse, not better.”

He halted on the brick walkway. “Stop being melodramatic, Cora. You’re fine!”

It was so uncharacteristic of my father to speak that way, I almost laughed. But his anger was startling, made even more so by the muddy red color that erupted from him like a solar flare. I watched it, mesmerized, then pointed at him. “Red.”

Dad flung open the front door. “You’d better go to your room and lie down.”

I stepped past him and walked inside to the squeal of “Welcome home!” from Janelle. I marched under a homemade banner and clouds of balloons and went straight to my room, slamming the door. Hot anger flowed through my body in a rapid current, heating me uncomfortably. I wiped my sweaty palms on my pants.

Some people were intent on acting like lower life forms devoid of sensitivity. I was in eleventh grade. I got that every day in school. What I didn’t understand was why my own dad was doing it. He completely dismissed me, treated my concern like a trivial performance. I wouldn’t lie about something like this. I was scared something was truly wrong with me, permanently damaged. Who was I supposed to talk to about it, if not him?

I rolled onto my bed and stared out the window, watching the blue sky turn milky in the fading daylight. When the room grew too dark, I flipped on the lamp next to the bed. As I pulled my hand back, a streamer of light followed behind like the afterglow of a sparkler.

I held my hand up and stared. A bright silver hand-shaped halo pulsed around my skin as if it were fiery, splintering metal. When I moved my hand, the light moved with it. Wiggling my fingers did not make it disappear. Swooshing it from side to side only made the streamer effect stronger. Awe and worry crashed inside me.

There was a light knock at the door. I stuffed my hand under my leg as Janelle burst in with a bed tray. “Dinner! I thought you might like some real food after that hospital stuff. You don’t even want to
know
the things they’ve found in hospital food. I saw this documentary once, on
60 Minutes
. They found like eight different kinds of hair—”

“Thanks, Janelle,” I muttered, completely losing my appetite.

She touched my forehead, her expression concerned. “Some homecoming, huh?” Her head bobbed as if it would incite me to agree. “Your dad is just tense. He was
so
worried about you! I’ve never seen him that distressed. You’ll both be right as rain in the morning.”

What if I’m not right as rain? What if my brain is permanently fried? What if I still see the jagged, forest-green color stretching out of your perfectly coiffed head?

“I’m sure we will be,” I said. “Thanks for the dinner. I’ll eat a bit before I go to sleep. I think I’ll go to bed early so I’m rested for school.”

“Oh, Cora. I don’t think you ought to jump right into school tomorrow. Why don’t you give it a couple of days? I’ve already contacted your teachers. You were practically at death’s door.”

“You didn’t need to do that. Really, I’m fine. It’s the last month of school, and I already missed one test.” I attempted a smile, but it fell flat on my lips. “With finals coming up, I don’t want to get any more behind than I already am.” I wanted life to get back to normal, but as I looked at my hand again—pulsing with brilliant silver—I knew in my gut my train had jumped the tracks.

Three

M

y stomach fluttered nervously as I got dressed for school and saw how pronounced the silver light was around my entire body. With or without clothes, I glowed. I sparked. I looked freaking flammable. The shiny light was a part of me, moved with me, flared out from my torso when my anxiety erupted.

Something was definitely wrong with me, and I wanted to know what. The fever had to have affected my brain, and it was getting worse.

Exhibit A: the patrons in the busy Starbucks all had bodies shrouded in misty blankets of color. I stood in line before school and tried to gawk inconspicuously. Not an easy thing to do. I was sure that anyone who really looked at me would know I was an agitated mess. Good thing people don’t
really
look at each other.

I fixated on the woman in front of me who, if you counted the misty blue-white fog around her, had a personal space boundary of about three feet, nearly touching my abdomen. I took a tiny step back.

It would be one thing if my eyes projected the light consistently, but no two people glowed exactly the same. I shifted from one leg to the other, eager to order my coffee and wait outside for my cousin, Mari. Preferably at a table where I could close my eyes for a couple of minutes and turn this off. I had to get my wits about me before school. Janelle might have had a point about not rushing it.

The room suddenly grew cold.

Icy air spread across my back.

My eyes blinked heavily as my energy plunged. People faded in and out of focus, and I swayed on my feet, my legs rubbery. A heaviness spread through me, as though an iron anchor had been cast inside my body. I rolled my gaze over my shoulder, that simple movement causing my stomach to lurch. Behind me, the same dark eyes that had stared coldly in the hospital stared at me again. The man, who was shrouded in a solid cloak of white light, stood a few feet away, and an invisible rope of taut energy stretched between us. It was as though he were tugging on it, pulling me out of myself. I felt the same weightlessness, the same sense of bleeding invisibly as I had in the hospital. But when I opened my mouth to cry out, I was unable to make any sound. Feeling a snap of release, I pitched forward, and the man walked out of the building into the bright morning.

My heart thumped as I waved off people’s offers to call someone for me and stumbled out into the morning sun. I looked up and down the street for the man before collapsing into a metal patio chair. Breathing deeply, I willed myself to calm down and think rationally. What in the hell was that? I had thought, maybe, the hospital incident had been a delusion brought on by fever, delirium. But that was the same man, affecting me in the same terrifying way. I was sure of it. The same man who had frightened me by whispering about fire and sparks.

He never touched me. So why did I feel as if I’d been severely violated?

Mari smiled as she marched toward me, her pace exact, like she had gone through boot camp as a toddler. I watched shimmering gold light dance off her olive shoulders and wondered if it was the screwy vision thing or her shiny shirt reflecting in the sun. Mari had a sequin addiction. All attempts at intervention were unsuccessful.

She looked at me from behind the curtain of her short black bob. “Why are you staring at me with crazy eyes?”

I blinked. “Uh, because only you could pull off combat boots with a sequined tank.”

“Thanks. Seriously though, your mouth is talking fashion,” Mari said, leveling her gaze at me, “but you look like you were just visited by a clown carrying a doll, with slasher music playing.”

“
Shhhh
, it’s only seven a.m., and I’ve already had more bizarre than I can handle,” I answered in a quivering voice.

“Okay, let’s get our caffeine, and you can tell me all about it while we walk to school. Dun’s waiting for us. Are you okay to go to school? You look like hammered crap.”

“Thanks.” Part of me wanted to go home and crawl in bed. But aside from seeing colors around everyone and the abrupt blanket of fatigue covering me since I saw that man, my body was fine. My psyche was a mess. Maybe school would be a good distraction. I was spooked, and didn’t want to be alone.

We sipped our lattes while walking. Mari’s lips tipped up in an amused grin when I told her about meeting Finn in the hospital. “Finn Doyle delivered flowers to you? That’s almost worth getting deathly ill for.”

“I know, right?” I inwardly cringed at the thought of seeing him at school. I was baffled by my behavior. Mostly, the part where I had lost all control of my faculties and clutched his shirt like a thug in a dark alley. The only thing worse than doing that was not knowing why. It had been uncontrollable.

“So, how you doin’?” Mari asked.

“Better. But they ran more tests because my vision is…fuzzy.”

“Well, your fever was so high, you probably nuked your brain. I bet there’s a mushroom cloud of intelligence around your head.”

“That’s the problem, though. There seems to be a mushroom cloud around
everyone’s
head.” In fact, the light surrounding Mari’s entire upper body appeared to expand and contract when she breathed. I rubbed my eyes again and sighed.

“You’ll be okay,
prima
. Not to change the subject, but I’m changing the subject. School’s almost over. You think your dad will finally let you come to Chile with me this summer? Plans are in the works already.”

“Yeah, right. I think we’re lucky he lets me go to public school with you. If he had his way, I’d still be homeschooled, I’d never leave the house, and if I did, I’d be bound in Bubble Wrap and have an armed escort.”

“To need an escort, you’d have to actually
go
places.”

I glared at her. “I go places.”

“Uh-huh.” Mari linked her arm through mine, and we walked around to the front of the school where our best friend, Dun, sat on the retaining wall in front of the flower beds. The ends of his long black hair lifted with the light breeze, as though invisible fingers caressed the silky threads.

“No guy should be allowed to have prettier hair than chicks,” Mari said, waving him over. She could always be counted on to speak her mind, and she usually said what I was thinking but was too shy to say. Nobody seemed to get offended when she threw her curveballs of truth at them. Maybe it was all in the pitch.

In the last year, the Good-Looks Fairy had paid Dun a visit and granted him another foot of height so he towered over us at six feet, with broad shoulders and a fierce Apache-warrior look. He didn’t seem to realize he had changed, which only made him cuter.

The day Dun became my friend, I was thirteen and I’d discovered him crying into his knees against a tree outside my house. He was bloody and bruised from being beaten up by Mike Hahmer, then just a mini-VIP. Mike had tried to cut off Dun’s long black braid.

It sucks to say it, but Dun was ripe for picking on back then. Raggedy clothes that were always too small and smelled faintly of old lunch meat. He was Native American, and the boy had actually worn moccasins. Some people are not enlightened enough to deal with moccasins.

I remembered Dun sniffling pitifully and saying, “He said he was ‘scalping’ me.” Mike hadn’t finished the job. The braid dangled like a broken tail, cut halfway through. I convinced Dun to come in. Mari showed up, and the three of us powwowed about the half-shorn braid. We declared that he should obviously have a Mohawk because he was Apache and because it was very badass. From that day forward, Dun walked a bit taller. And nobody messed with him. Not that anyone would mess with Dun with Mari around. People could sense the undertow of danger in her. She was the only girl in a family with four brothers—that was practically prep school to be a lethal female assassin.

“Oh, and brace yourself,” Mari whispered to me. “Dun’s gonna grill you about Chile, too. He’s serious about going. His grandma said if he can pay for it, he can go. I’m donating airline miles to the cause.”

“You want him to go
that
badly?”

“Obviously.” Mari gave me a sideways glance. “I want you to come that badly, too. But money’s not your problem.”

It was so wrong that Dun might get to meet my own grandmother before I did, but there was no point in griping, yet again, about my dad’s militant overprotectiveness. I’d never get to go to Chile
or
Ireland, no matter how many times I asked. My chains didn’t reach that far.

Dun kissed my cheek, then Mari’s. “How are my girls?”

I swear I inhaled a palpable hit of happy when Dun touched me. I would also swear he was glowing a bright, sunny yellow. My mouth dropped open in astonishment that the color matched the bright mood. “I was worried about you. Mari says you’re seeing double or something. Am I doubly handsome this morning?” He grinned.

I glanced around at the throng of students passing in all directions, swirls of colors trailing after them like their own personal clouds. The colors had substance, too, like fabric. There were endless variations, prismatic and ever-changing. I felt light-headed.

Dun eyed me with concern. “You okay?”

“I-I don’t know. Don’t make fun of me, but I’m seeing colors around everyone. It’s overwhelming, like walking through a kaleidoscope.” I looked down at my shoes. “Strange things are happening… It’s scary,” I admitted in a microscopic voice. “I think something is seriously wrong with me, and my dad is totally blowing it off.”

And something about my mother. What happened to my mother?

“Well,” Mari said, her brown eyes taking a thoughtful skyward slant that meant she was thinking, which could be dangerous. “Let’s whomp on this with some research.”

I eyed her skeptically. “No offense, but if the doctors don’t have a clue, how are
we
supposed to come up with the answer?”

“Aren’t there a ton of sites, like, what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-me dot com?” Dun asked.

Mari smacked him in the back of the head.

“My dad made me swear I wouldn’t look it up online. He says misinformation will only make me paranoid, that I should deal only in facts.”

“Your dad never said
I
couldn’t look it up,” Mari pointed out. “Hey! We should e-mail Grandma. Mami Tulke’s the authority on all things bizarre.”

“Great,” I said, with absolutely zero confidence that my little Chilean grandmother was going to be able to diagnose this strange ailment. “She’ll probably advise me to sleep with a lizard skin under my pillow or something.”

Mari knocked Dun’s shoulder and motioned to me with her head. “Speaking of Mami Tulke, guilt trip. Now.”

“Oh, yes.” Dun held up one finger and cleared his throat. “Rule number one of the Articles of Friendship states we do all things of a fun and adventurous nature together. Rule number two states that if you cannot adhere to rule number one, you’d better have a damn good reason.”

“I love how many rules we have, yet there never seem to be more than two,” I said.

“Mission statement. We are a non-club club with rules that are not rules,” Mari said as if that cleared everything up.

“I think you two are forgetting that I don’t have any decision-making clout here. My dad will never let me go. It’ll kill me to watch you guys fly off into the sunset without me.”

Mari elbowed me hard in the ribs. “Yo, Finn Doyle is staring at you, hard.”

“No, he’s not,” I said, forcing myself to keep looking straight ahead. “Why would he be?”

Dun leaned in to Mari. “I think something
is
wrong with her eyes,” he murmured. “Cora, you don’t see what everyone else sees.”

I dared a glance in Finn’s direction, and our eyes met and held. The air around him pulsed with a subtle golden-pink glow that radiated from him in smooth waves. I blinked and tore my eyes from Finn’s. Dun spoke the truth, all right. I was definitely seeing things differently than everyone else.