The Athena Effect (3 page)

Everyone on the bus seemed to go to great lengths to be disconnected from one another. They all wore plugs in their ears, and stared into the tiny screens of electronic devices that had them completely absorbed.

Cal was overwhelmed by the colors coming from the other passengers, people of more different shapes and sizes than she’d ever imagined existed. She was surprised by how many of them seemed to be in real distress; just as she had feared, the outside world was proving to be a frightening place. Cal was beginning to feel very small and insignificant when the bus finally pulled into the station.

There was no one there to meet her and she was frightened, pacing around the bus terminal anxiously. She must have looked lost, because she instantly attracted the attention of a man who offered to help, asking if she needed something to eat, or a place to stay. When she looked into his eyes she recoiled in shock, because his kind voice and offer was completely incongruous with his predatory greenish yellow aura.

“No… No thank you,” she told the deceitful man, backing away. She bent to check the hunting knife she wore strapped to her ankle, shouldered her bag, and left the station to wait outside. Her parents were right; the world was clearly very dangerous, full of predators of the human type. She was coiled with tension, and ready to fight.

She found a bench out front and settled down, holding her bag protectively across her lap. Her baggy clothes and worn out sneakers helped her to fit right in with the homeless population of the bus station, and thankfully, no-one tried to talk to her again. She pulled a baseball cap down low on her forehead and pulled out a book, pretending to read with her head down.

A motorcycle pulled up to the curb, and two dark haired young men climbed off. She squeezed her eyes shut. The sound reminded her of her parents, and her eyes burned as she fought back tears.

She was afraid that if she allowed herself to start crying again, she might not ever be able to stop.

“Thanks for the ride, bro,” she heard one of them say. “I’ll call you when I get to town.”

“Just hurry back… alright?”

“When are you gonna come along with me? What should I tell him?”

“I have nothing to say to him.”

She heard a heavy sigh, “Hey Cal…. Take good care of Rufus, okay?”

Her eyes snapped open at the sound of her name.

“Sure thing,” the other man answered, flashing a wide grin. The two shook hands, leaning in for a one armed hug with a few backslaps. One of them headed towards the bus station, turning back to call out, “Take care, little bro.”

She watched the one named Cal as he sauntered back to his bike. It was a bigger, more powerful looking motorcycle than her father’s; she’d never seen one that looked like it before. She tried not to stare, but she’d never seen anyone who looked like him before either.

He was tall, taller than her father, clad in dirty blue jeans and a black leather jacket that fit snug across his broad shoulders. His hair was dark, like his eyes, which were fringed with black lashes that made them stand out even from a distance. She’d never seen a really good-looking man before, and she watched him, fascinated.
 

He walked with a confident swagger that belied the anxious chartreuse color he was radiating. Like everyone else at the bus station, he was troubled. He reached into his pocket for a pair of mirrored sunglasses, slipping them on to hide his arresting eyes. She watched him straddle the bike gracefully, without putting on a helmet. He revved the engine and sped away, going much too fast.

Beautiful idiot, she thought.

A small economy car pulled up in front of the station and stopped with a screech. Cal looked up to see a woman with short brown hair checking her face in the rear-view mirror. She wore a black vest over a white shirt, and she climbed out and smoothed her skirt, looking flustered in a tangerine sort of way.

She scanned the crowd in front of the bus station, and when their eyes finally met she hurried over, asking, “Are you David’s kid?”

Cal nodded, thinking that the woman looked younger than she’d imagined. She stood up and held out her hand politely, “I’m Cal.”

“Sorry I’m late– I just got off work. You can call me Angie. You sure have his hair, don’t you?” she pumped Cal’s hand, smiling apologetically, “Nice to meet you.”

“It’s nice to meet you too,” Cal said politely, “Thank you for letting me stay with you.”

“Well… I’m double-parked… So let’s get going. Is that all of your stuff?” She looked at the battered green duffel bag suspiciously.

Cal nodded, slinging the bag over her shoulder and following along behind her. They drove off in an uncomfortable silence. She could tell that Angie was uncertain; yellow with curiosity, but far from happy about the situation she found herself in. People couldn’t help the colors they gave off, making Cal a walking lie detector.

“I was sure surprised to hear about David,” Angie finally said. “We were adopted at the same time, but I was only a baby and David was nearly six years old. I suppose he never really felt like part of the family, because he changed his name back when he was a teenager.”

Cal was surprised, because her father never spoke of his childhood at all.

“When our parents divorced we just kinda drifted away from each other. He got himself a scholarship and I stayed with my mom until she passed. Last I heard he went missing from college. Some professor even came around looking for him…
Way
back when I was in high school. To tell you the truth, when I didn’t hear from him, I just assumed he was already dead or something.”

Cal looked down, wincing. The car came to a stop at the light and Angie frowned, turning to face her passenger.

“Didn’t he ever mention that he had a sister?”

Cal shook her head no, blinking back tears, “Sorry.”

Angie’s voice softened, “I’m sorry too.” She patted Cal’s knee, “I know how it is to lose your parents when you’re still young.”

They drove through a bigger city than Cal had ever seen, passing through vast suburban neighborhoods with row upon row of matching houses. Angie pointed out the low buildings and sports fields of the area’s high school, and they looked mammoth to Cal’s inexperienced eyes.

“This is where you’ll be going to school. There’s a couple months left, and you might as well get into the routine. You might even need to go to summer school if you’re not up to speed. You’re a junior this year? Right?”

“I guess so,” Cal replied nervously.

Her aunt started chattering about the restaurant she waited tables at, explaining that she’d been called in unexpectedly to cater a luncheon. “That’s why I was late,” she explained, “I’ve been picking up extra shifts and it seems like I’m working all the time these days.”

They pulled up in front of a modern looking condominium complex.

“This is the place,” Angie said, climbing out and leading Cal down a cement walkway. They stopped at a door decorated with a wreath of plastic eggs, and Angie fumbled for a key to open it.

When they stepped inside Cal looked around, surprised by the house and its furnishings. The Sherriff’s place had impressed her with the sheer amount of things in it, but her aunt’s home was even more shocking to her. Everything looked so new and store-bought, and in such abundance. It stood in sharp contrast to the homespun furniture and random items that her parents had haphazardly accumulated in the past seventeen years.

Cal peered up the carpeted stairs that led to the second floor to see a man standing at the top, looking down at her. He was tall and wide, with a balding head and a neatly trimmed beard.

“Phil!” Angie called up to him, “Come down and meet my niece.”

The man didn’t even try to hide the celery-green annoyance he was radiating as he descended. He was clearly not happy to see her.

Angie took his arm proudly, “Cal, this is my partner Phil.”

Cal nodded politely, “It’s nice to meet you…What kind of business are you two in?”

They looked at each other and laughed, confusing her.

“He’s my boyfriend,” Angie said, “He just moved in with me too.”

Cal’s cheeks flushed pink, “Oh… Pardon me.”

“Come on,” Angie laughed again, climbing the stairs, “I’ll show you your room.”

She was taken to a room stuffed with boxes, with an inflatable mattress tucked in the corner. She’d never been in an upstairs room before, and she looked out the window to see the identical buildings of the complex repeated in a row, like an M.C. Escher drawing she’d seen in one of her art books.

“Sorry about the mess. Phil says he’ll get his stuff moved out of here as soon as he can.”

Cal set her duffel bag down, flipping the switch that turned the overhead light on and off with a smile. Now she could read anytime she wanted to. “It’s fine.”

That night she stayed awake a long time, re-reading a childhood favorite until she could barely keep her eyes open. She got up silently to get a drink of water from the bathroom down the hall. It shared a wall with her aunt’s bedroom, and she could hear Phil and Angie’s voices echoing through the heater vent as clearly as if she was in the room with them.

Phil was complaining, “I still can’t believe I have to give up my office space. I should have kept my own place.”

“Don’t say that,” Angie replied. “It’ll only be until she turns eighteen. I’m sure we’ll figure out something to do with her by then.”

“When’s that?”

“In October.”

He groaned, “When I agreed to move in I thought it would just be the two of us.”

“I know, I know. But what was I supposed to say? I’m her only family.”

“Yeah, well… as long as she doesn’t try and drag a bunch of punk teenagers over here at all hours.”

She could hear Angie laugh at the thought, “I seriously doubt it… She seems pretty shy. Apparently my brother and his wife were some kind of weird hermits or something.”

“She does seem a little strange,” he said.

“Yeah,” Angie agreed, adding, “Did you get a load of her eyes?”

Cal looked at herself in the mirror and frowned.

~

The following week consisted of jumping through various bureaucratic hoops and government red-tape to try and get Cal enrolled in school. Since she’d been born at home, and not in a hospital, she officially didn’t exist in the eyes of the state of California. The problem was only compounded by the fact that her aunt had a different last name than her.

“I’m Jenkins, she’s Mackenzie!” Angie screamed into the phone after being left on hold for the umpteenth time. She finally hung up in frustration, “What a pain in the ass!”

“I’m sorry,” Cal said, feeling completely helpless.

Angie looked Cal over with a skeptical eye, “You
really
need to get some clothes for school.”

“I have clothes,” Cal said.

“Trust me honey,” Angie said, “It’s time for some new ones.”

Cal looked down, “But I don’t have any money.”

“I’m kinda broke right now too, but once Phil gets a job things will be easier. Maybe this summer I can get you work at the restaurant. You could start out hostessing or something.”

“What’s hostessing?” asked Cal.

“It’s when you show people where to sit down in the restaurant.”

Cal looked confused, “They
pay
people to do that?”

Angie laughed; she was getting used to her niece and all of her strange questions. She had to patiently explain how to do the simplest of things, whether it was showing Cal how to work the washing machine, or teaching her
not
to put metal into the microwave. The girl needed to learn everything from scratch, as if she were a little kid, making Angie feel almost motherly.

Always a free spirit, Angie had never married or settled down, and everyone seemed to think she was flaky. Having Cal around made her feel like she was finally a grown-up. She started thinking that maybe it wasn’t too late to start a family after all… Phil might even marry her if they had a baby. She smiled to herself imagining it.

As for Cal, it was as though she had walked through the wardrobe and ended up in Narnia. Everything was new and strange to her, and she was always a bundle of nerves from the unfamiliar noises. Cars whooshed by on the road, electronics buzzed and hummed, and the non-stop sound of sports blared from Phil’s television set.

After a few days she started to relax a little, settling into the rhythm of her new home.
 
Angie worked nights as a waitress at a downtown steakhouse, getting in late and sleeping-in most mornings. Cal did her best to keep out of Phil’s way, staying in her room when her aunt wasn’t around.

After a couple of awkward visits with a counselor, Cal was finally enrolled in school, and she was nervous about going in on her first day. She’d never had any friends her own age, and couldn’t imagine what she would talk about with other students. She got up early, laying out a simple dress her mother had sewn, paired with some hand-me-down shoes the Sherriff had brought by on one of his visits. She went to go take a long, hot shower.

Her favorite part of living with her aunt was definitely the bathroom. She’d grown up taking quick baths with water boiled on a wood-burning stove, so having hot water at the turn of a knob was an almost unimaginable luxury. Standing under the warming rain was pure heavenly bliss, and it helped Cal miss her quiet life in the wilderness a little bit less.