Bright Star (19 page)

*

“Why do you call me Point?” the woman who had once been Frankie Monnish asked. She smoothed her hands down over her body. She felt new. Ten years younger. She looked it, too. She didn’t know why. Was it the Shift? Was it the fact that she did not have to carry the burden of her disease anymore? Even though Bright Star had told her this transformation was only temporary, she couldn’t count this as anything less than a miracle. Even though Bright Star had told her of Rush and had vehemently contradicted her when she suggested it, Point knew the blue-eyed woman had been the one to save her.

Bright Star did not answer the question. Instead, she shook her head as if she’d been preoccupied by something. She took a deep, cleansing breath then opened the wooden box drawer by the refrigerator, the one with worn polish and a dark brass knob. Inside was a knife. It had a yellow clear plastic handle and a glinting blade. At Bright Star’s nod, Point came over to stand next to her. Bright Star waited. Then she removed the knife and went to sit at the kitchen table.

They sat at the table that way for hours. There had been long, stretching silent moments. There had been moments when Point had been compelled to confide in Bright Star in a way she had never confided in anyone. And of course, Bright Star had taken moments to speak reverently of Rush. There was always the knife nestled there in her lap.

She could already feel this change inside of her. She knew that Bright Star’s Shift had started it, but she didn’t know what was propelling it forward faster than the speed of light. This was a transformation from skeptic into believer? From fatalistic despair to overwhelming hope, to the knowledge that she had received a confirmation she didn’t even comprehend. Where did these answers come from, the answers that explained so much of her life? The one hundred percent confidence with which Bright Star could tell her that all would be well if she only chose this path. All would be well. Everything in her life would be good if only she surrendered herself to this new truth. Point was willing, and Point believed.

She swallowed, then gave a reassuring look to Bright Star. She didn’t want to appear more nervous or afraid than Bright Star expected. She wanted to ignore the quivering in her stomach. She wanted Bright Star to know that she believed. But there was the pain. Point had never been one to tolerate much pain. As a child, she had screamed for hours until her throat went raw and her muscles ached from skinning her knee after she took a tumble from a bike. She’d never in life ridden a bike since. She couldn’t take the pain. She kept telling herself this was worth it. Besides, she kept telling herself she was going to die anyway. What did this matter? What did this one little cut matter? She swallowed again. She didn’t know if she could do it.

In the end, she couldn’t. “Bright Star,” Point pleaded, “please don’t hate me. Please don’t send me away. I believe! I do! Just don’t send me away.”

“Why would I hate you or send you away?” the smaller woman inquired.

“I don’t know if… Can you do it for me?”

Bright Star scooted back and away from Point, shaking her head. She pressed a hand over her heart and her mouth opened. No words came out. She just kept shaking her head.

“Please,” Point begged.

“No!” Bright Star piped abruptly. “I couldn’t. He may see it is as my doing, not your willing sacrifice, not your faith. No. I can’t.”

“But…”

“I can’t, Point,” she reiterated with a firm tone.

For a moment, the older woman just sat at the table with the knife in hand. Then, in a quavering voice she asked, “Will it hurt?”

Bright Star didn’t say anything. “It will. I know from time and time again that it will hurt. But, I have grown to welcome the pain. It is my sacrifice, my appreciation for a gift that always reaps a reward that is incomprehensible to one who has not experienced it. There are no words to describe how you will feel, the good that you will be doing, the global importance of this one assignment.”

“It will hurt,” Point nodded, pressing the tip of the knife to her finger and twirled it. She focused on the tiny spot of crimson, the pain. That tiny discomfort could be reasoned away when she concentrated. It wouldn’t be like that if she were dying. But, a wry and bitter smirk settled on her lips, she had already been dying before she was saved. She sat up quickly and started to suggest—

Bright Star abruptly interrupted her. “If you are not conscious when he saves you, you won’t feel your rebirth. You won’t know it like I know it. It will be there, but you won’t recognize it for what it is. You won’t believe in it. It won’t be like last time.”

“I believe—”

“You won’t believe in it,” Bright Star insisted. “You must experience the destruction of your rebellion and pride, then the revolution within as you are—”

“Rebuilt,” Point finished.

“Reborn,” Bright Star corrected. Then after studying Point’s face, she sighed doggedly. “You don’t have to do it. There is another way. We have a mutual friend, you and I. You will have your time later.” She patted Point on the back of her hand supportively.

The Cleric

Thaddeus Okwenuba stayed home from work on Thursday. He told Katie Ann, his boss’s administrative assistant he was sick. She’d giggled at him and said something fatuous about playing hooky. Of course, he’d probably never told a more obvious lie. He smiled to himself wryly. Thad rarely missed work because he was physically ill. There were plenty enough other times when he had to miss for other reasons, so he couldn’t waste the days. He never even called in sick. He was proud to announce to anybody in the firm that he had contaminated the office with the flu every year for the past six. Nope, his last hospital stay had been in a locked cell about 175 feet below ground. Now
that
had taken him off work a couple months ago, but the episode had been the only one in almost three years, and it had—luckily—happened during a planned two weeks of vacation. He really wanted his deposit from that cruise back.

True enough, Thad had lied to Katie Ann, but he hadn’t known what else to say. He had been at a complete and total loss. Was he supposed to tell her that he couldn’t come to work because Frankie wasn’t there? Nope, he couldn’t say that. After all, he did have his pride. Everybody in that building knew Frankie Monnish was not interested. The other problem was that no one else seemed to be worried about Frankie’s absence in the least. He’d made mention of her absence and Katie Ann had just raised one eyebrow as if he was only worried because of his futile and obvious crush. Granted, she’d told them all that she was going to take some time off, and as the boss she had that right. However, Frankie had planned time off more instances than Thad could count, but she had never, not once, actually stayed out of the office.

He saw her last at the investors’ meeting. Frankie had seen them all off at the hotel three nights before. She’d left a message at the hotel telling them that she was going out of town for a few days, and later, she’d left word with Katie Ann about her impromptu vacation. Rather than be concerned, they—idiots all of them—thought this was good. Katie Ann speculated that Frankie’s doctor had recommended she get away from the stress for a while. The fact she had even seen a doctor caused Thad to have mild palpitations. But he knew a doctor’s recommendation would not have stopped her from coming in, either. Not with the new money they’d generated. She’d be all over planning its disbursement. Other people might have seen the investment as a time to celebrate and relax before getting down to business. Frankie saw it as the most important time for strategic planning. Frankie
did not
take time off work. According to Katie Ann, their fearless leader wasn’t expected back into the office until that following Monday. Thaddeus knew he wouldn’t return to work before that day.

So why did he sense something was terribly wrong? That something was completely out of whack in the cosmos? In truth, he didn’t know how staying home from work was going to help unless he went out searching for her. But he wouldn’t do that, either. No matter what was wrong, Frankie would not appreciate him seeking her out like some love-starved kid with the excuse of verifying her well-being. Instead, she would smile at him and patronize him the way that always seemed to get him hard. What the hell kind of reaction was that? Frankie was probably fine. Frankie was always fine. Thad desperately needed to believe that Frankie was fine. He really didn’t know what he’d do if she wasn’t. Really. No…
really
. He didn’t know what he’d do, because he’d always been a bit… erratic. He made a fist, then opened his hand and looked at his palm. There was a small, oval-shaped indention in the middle. He exhaled heavily.

Around six in the evening, already dark outside, Thaddeus considered the project waiting for him at work. Last week, yesterday even, it had seemed important. It didn’t anymore. There was something happening, something coming soon that made work unimportant. He didn’t know what that something was, but it was near, and it had something to do with Frankie Monnish. He knew it because every time he thought of her, his palm started to itch and he could feel his hair stand on end, his body grow hot and his hearing become hypersensitive. It was like electricity everywhere, assaulting every one of his senses. It was a feeling he rarely felt, but when he did, it usually foreshadowed catastrophic events in his life. It was a feeling he had told Sandoval he never got without that damn rock. And it had been true, until Frankie left. It was the hum of High Energy.

He needed to know where she was. Since the day he’d met her, he’d needed to be near her. He’d accepted a middle of the road offer with her company right out of his PhD program for that reason alone. There had been plenty of companies that would have paid more, but he stayed. Thaddeus had stayed with the company and made every move possible to get into her department. He’d been working at a desk in the same lab with her for the past eighteen months.

Schroedinger’s cat told him that he wouldn’t be at his desk that next day. He either would, or he wouldn’t. He wasn’t there then, but tomorrow… He wouldn’t be there. His quantum state would cease to be a mixture. He smiled at that thought. Stupid physics experiment. It wasn’t Schroedinger’s cat, an experiment that naively challenged fate; it was intuition, plain and simple. He’d learned long ago not to deny his intuition when it was this strong.

The center of his palm began to itch again. It always did when he felt the call of High Energy. He craved the small, smooth rock the way heroin addicts craved their next fix. He had never been considered a strong Shifter. Actually, he wasn’t even sure if they considered him a Shifter at all, since he had such little control over his High Energy. What had he seen on that orientation film? It had mentioned human focal points, or some such nonsense. But those were only people who could harness High Energy to be used by others. That wasn’t exactly his situation. He could use it, he just couldn’t control it. And he couldn’t use it without that damn rock. God, how he hated that thing even as his hand flexed again and he desired it almost more than he did the woman he loved.

Thad had never exhibited any predisposition towards High Energy until he was about fifteen, when he found the rock while hiking on a class field trip. In retrospect, it had been the worst day of his life. The defining moment that changed him into the man he was. Just like that, he had found the rock, and attacked. He hadn’t had a moment to process what was happening to him or to even get a grip on what he was feeling. No. The High Energy exploded through him, through veins and pores, it raged through him. The elemental reaction blinded him, deafened him, choked him, then burst from him in a brutal force that took control over everything. Violence spawned from rage greater than he had ever felt before in life. His body seemed to recall every slight, every moment in which he had felt cowardice stifle his words and actions. Every time in life when he watched something he wanted go to someone else flashed in his mind. Every time when he had been ignored, forgotten, or discounted, every time he’d felt someone take a look at him and come to the wrong conclusion, everything fueled his primal fury.

He didn’t kill Matthew. Matthew told him afterward that he wished Thad had. He would never be able to walk or see properly again. He would never be able to function independently again.

Thaddeus hadn’t even gotten into trouble, although he didn’t find that out until later. It took six grown men to wrestle his small, wiry body to the ground and sedate him. When he came to, his mother was peering at him and silently weeping as she held his hand in hers. His wrists had been pinned down at his sides by chrome fastenings with a company name embedded in them in white enamel. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember the name of the manufacturer and couldn’t figure out why it even mattered to him.