The Bloom Series Box Set: Bloom & Fade (3 page)

T
he afternoon that he accidentally killed the lizard had been
a particularly hard one for Colton. His mother had abandoned
him—and her husband—nine years earlier to the day. Neither of them
had heard from her since. Most of the time Colton was able to push
thoughts of her out of his mind, but for some reason, on the
“anniversary” of her departure, he couldn’t help but dwell on how
happy he used to be when she was around.

Colton shuddered as he walked the
streets, remembering the day he discovered his unique
ability.

His father came home drunk from work
and continued drinking until he passed out on the couch, shouting
insults to Colton and his long-absent, unfaithful mother the entire
time. Shortly after his father’s final rant and subsequent
blackout, Colton decided to go out onto the back porch to get some
fresh air.

He found the lizard as he slid open
the sliding glass door. It didn’t try to escape when Colton reached
out and gently scooped it off the glass. It sat there in his palm,
staring up at him sideways with one eye. Colton stepped out of the
house and walked over to the nearest bush to set down the lizard,
but before he got there, the reptile twitched and rolled over onto
its back. He watched as the lizard’s skin shrank until it was
nothing more than a thin brown layer stretched over a tiny
skeleton. It looked as if it had been baking in the sun for
weeks.

Colton shuddered with disgust and
threw the dead lizard into the bushes before he went back inside to
wash his hands.

It happened only two or three times
over the following few months, and usually with something small,
like a fresh vegetable or piece of fruit. Until the incident with
Mr. Laretti’s produce stand, Colton had found that he was able to
somewhat control the ability. It didn’t always work, but over the
past weeks he had failed less and less often.

He only used fresh produce—no more
lizards. The freshness of the object mattered, Colton had
discovered. A can of sliced peaches was useless, but a fresh peach
from Mr. Laretti worked just as well as the apple.

Colton didn’t understand the process,
but he was getting used to it. The warmth he felt afterward calmed
him down, even after the most stressful of days.

There was already a long line of
homeless men and women wrapped around the edge of the shelter when
Colton arrived. He squeezed inside and hurried over to the long row
of tables at the back of the room.

A strong odor of cooked vegetables and
unwashed clothes hung thick in the air. He grabbed an apron hanging
off a hook on the wall and put it on. The latex gloves from the
“large” box barely fit his hands, but every volunteer had to wear
them. He struggled to pull them down over his fingers as he walked
over to the end of the long line of tables.

The volunteers dipped big ladles into
huge pots of steaming soup. On the other side of the table, the
unceasing line of homeless shuffled past with bowls in hand. Every
other volunteer would drop a chunk of stale bread into the
soup.

Colton took his spot at the end of the
line and started handing out bread. The volunteer next to him was
Sue Wallace, who ran the kitchen.

“
Nice to see you again,
Mr. Ross. New haircut?”

“
Yes. Thanks. Sorry I’m
late.”

The elderly woman smiled and the skin
at the outside corner of each eye bunched up into a hundred tiny
lines. “Honey, the phrase ‘better late than never’ means more at
this place than anywhere else I can think of.” She winked at him as
she poured some soup into a bowl. “Your haircut looks good, by the
way. A little short, but still. You get those nice, dark curls when
it’s longer. You really need to let it grow.”

Colton felt as if he was being
lectured by an aging family member. He smiled and added a chunk of
bread to another outstretched soup bowl. He nodded politely at each
person who came through the line. Most of them seemed surprisingly
healthy—Colton had noticed that the men and women who frequented
that kitchen were either healthy or sickly in cycles. After a short
period of declining health, old faces would never return and new
faces would appear in the crowd.

Maybe he wouldn’t have to use his
talent that day, after all. He was starting to think he had
destroyed the apple for nothing.

The front door to the building was
closed a few minutes later, signifying the end of lunch. The people
still in line within the building would be allowed to stay, but
everyone outside had to start looking elsewhere for
food.

“
Sweetie,” said Sue. She
tapped Colton’s arm and pointed to the old man standing on the
other side of the table. He had dark circles under his eyes and his
skin clung tightly to his bones.

“
Oh, sorry,” said Colton.
He placed a piece of bread into the man’s bowl, then watched as he
walked away and sat at a table, alone. The man coughed loudly into
his sleeve and had to catch his breath before he could start
eating. His breath wheezed as if his throat had all but closed. He
ate slowly, raising the soup spoon to his lips with a shaking hand
and spilling most of its contents on the way to his
mouth.

“
That’s Henry,” whispered
Sue. “I don’t think he’ll be around much longer.”

Colton waited until the last person in
line received their bread, then he took off his apron and threw
away his gloves. He walked over and sat at the table next to
Henry.

“
Hello,” said
Colton.

Henry looked up at him over his empty
soup spoon right before he put it in his mouth. He pulled it out
slowly and returned it to the bowl, starting the pointless process
all over again.

“
My name’s Colton.” He
extended his open hand. The homeless man looked at him
suspiciously. “It’s okay, Henry. Shake my hand.”

Henry slowly set his spoon down in the
soup bowl and reached out his shaking arm. Colton grasped his hand
firmly.

Ever since he had first discovered
what he could do with his ability, Colton had been searching for a
way to put it to good use. His desire to make even the smallest
difference in the world had originally led him to the homeless
shelter, where he spent his time trying to help as many of the
helpless as he could. The happiness he felt afterward briefly muted
the sadness from his own past.

Colton felt the warmth in his own palm
move to the tips of his fingers and flow outward, toward Henry. He
let the energy he had taken from the fruit at the produce stand
move into the homeless man—it felt like someone was pulling a
strand of yarn from the tip of each finger. There was far more
inside of him than Colton was used to transferring, and the results
were immediate. The dark circles on Henry’s face lightened and his
arm stopped shaking. His breathing cleared and deepened. A tear
rolled down his cheek.

When Colton had no more to give, he
stood up from the table.

“
Very nice to meet you,”
he said.

5

“
S
he is an excellent student, Mrs. Kincaid. We just don’t
understand why she continues to act out in such a manner.
This
is
Scottsdale, after all—not Mesa or Casa Grande, for goodness
sake! Children here just don’t act this way.”

Principal Rivera sat behind her desk,
hands clasped together atop a manila folder that contained Haven’s
school file. She looked at Haven’s mother as if she expected a
simple, all-encompassing answer.

“
I don’t understand it
either, nor does my husband. Up until we received your call, we
never knew that Haven was causing any kind of trouble
whatsoever.”

“
Well,” said Principal
Rivera with a sigh, “her grades are still exemplary, and if there
had been any kind of drop in her performance, I would think there
was more to worry about…”

Haven let the voices drone away into
the background. She turned in her chair and looked just past the
office door to where her little brother Noah sat playing with a
small toy car. He was pretending his legs were ramps and launching
the car off one thigh and making it land with a screeching sound
effect from his mouth on the other. Their mother had taken half a
day off of work at the hospital to come to school for the meeting
and picked up Noah from daycare on the way.

Haven turned back to Principal
Rivera.

“…
don’t think we have
anything to worry about, really. Haven has indicated to me how
bored she is in her current classes, which might be a reason for
her recent impulsive behavior.”

“
Well,” said her mother,
“she
does
have a
short attention span when it comes to things she isn’t interested
in.”

No kidding,
thought Haven.

Principal Rivera smiled. “Which is why
I’ve starting looking into our Advanced Placement courses. I know
we are already a few months into the school year and it goes
against protocol to change a student’s schedule, but I’m sure the
teachers would be more than willing to make an exception in Haven’s
case. I think she would do quite well with the added challenge
offered by college-level classes.”

“
That sounds like just the
thing!” said Haven’s mother. She turned and addressed Haven for the
first time during the entire meeting. “I know we talked about this
and you wanted to take it easy at your new school, but what do you
say to a little extra challenge?”

Haven barely tried to hide her
sarcasm. “Sounds like just the thing.”

“
Excellent,” said
Principal Rivera. “I’ll speak with the teachers and get the ball
rolling. Unless you have any other questions, I say we let Haven
get back to lunch so you can go enjoy the rest of your
day.”

They shook hands and Haven followed
her mother and Noah out of the office building.

“
There, now,” said her
mother, “that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

Haven had already started to pull away
for fear one of her friends would see her talking to a strange
lady. “Yeah, it was great, Mom. I’ll see you when I get
home.”

“
Bye, Haven!” said Noah.
He waved his toy car in the air in farewell. Haven’s mother held
his hand and steered him toward the parking lot.

“
Bye, Noah,” said Haven
quietly.

She smiled as he continued to wave his
car in the air long after he said goodbye. Her smile quickly faded
when she thought about the meeting and how it made her feel like
everyone was talking about her as if she barely existed. A lot of
times it seemed like her parents regarded her more as a way to
gauge their own progress than as someone who might actually have a
problem with the way everything was going in her life.

Haven walked around the corner of the
administration building and headed toward the cafeteria.

George Walker High School in
Scottsdale, Arizona, had no interior hallways. The buildings stood
separated by plots of green grass and long concrete sidewalks.
Students milled about the commons area; some eating, most simply
socializing. They formed loose clusters in the bright midday
sunshine, sitting or lying on the grass; laughing, kissing,
playing.

Haven followed a sidewalk past the
library and walked into the cafeteria. She smelled fried food and
disinfectant. The room rumbled with the sound of a hundred students
talking, laughing, shouting, and moving all at the same
time.

Haven felt a tug on the back of her
hair and spun around.

“
How’d the meeting go,
troublemaker?” Kayla put her hands on her hips and shook her head
as if she were ashamed. Her short black hair bounced lightly
against her cheeks.

“
Shoot me now,” said
Haven.

“
That bad,
huh?”

They each grabbed a food tray and
walked over to the lunch line to see what was available.

“
Probably. I sort of zoned
out in the middle. They want me to take Advanced Placement
classes.”

“
Ew!” said Kayla. “You
can’t switch
now,
we’re almost out of this dump! Besides, only nerds take
college classes in high school.” She spooned a huge portion of
white macaroni and cheese onto her tray.

“
And people who want to
actually
succeed
a little bit in life, maybe?” Haven dropped a much smaller
helping onto her own tray. She took two pieces of cornbread from a
plate at the next window.

“
Well, you know my plan:
marry quick and marry rich. I don’t even care what either of ‘em
looks like!” Kayla slapped her thigh and fake-laughed at her own
joke, which she had told more times than Haven could
count.

The girls had met while working at an
ice cream shop downtown during the summer right after Haven first
moved to Scottsdale. Her parents told her that it was okay for her
to focus on school and worry about getting a job later, but Haven
enjoyed the small amount of money—and freedom—that working at the
ice cream shop provided. The job also helped to take her mind off
the fact that she would probably never see any of her friends
again.