Manifest (10 page)

“What? The snowstorms? With all due respect, it’s not September, Mr. Kramer,” Sasha says.

She is shaken up. I can see it in her hazel eyes, but she would never admit it. Actually she covers it pretty well with her wisecracks.

“No. But when usually doesn’t matter. It comes when it wants, stays as long as it feels like and leaves something behind every time.”

“What does?” My voice sounds really quiet but in this silence I’m sure everybody hears me.

Again the light flickers and I feel like we should be sitting around the campfire listening to horror stories that will surely keep us all from sleeping tonight. But we’re not. We’re in Jake’s bedroom and his grandfather is acting like he has something to tell us.

I wish he’d get on with it.

“The Power,” he says finally.

And I swear the heat I’ve been feeling since I got here has swirled up my body and wrapped around my neck, all ready to choke the life out of me. At the same time, Jake curses, grabbing his arm. Right where the mark is. I instantly look at Sasha, who is now sitting up on the bed, rocking back and forth.

“It gets stronger when you’re together. It feeds from each of you all at the same time. And it will grow.”

Suddenly Mr. Kramer’s voice doesn’t sound like an old
person. It’s still kind of crackly but it’s not shaky anymore. It’s slow, deliberate, clear.

“We each have the Power?” Sasha asks with a smirk.

Mr. Kramer nods. “It came with your birth.”

“We’re not born on the same day,” Jake says.

“But around the same time, I suspect.”

I’m already nodding when Sasha answers, “We’re born in July, the last week in July. Jake was born the first of August.”

“Your mamas, they were all here that night of the storm.”

The windows rattle again and I’m seriously thinking of getting the hell out of here. As much as I want to know why I can see and talk to dead people, this is really starting to freak me out.

“The wind started just like that. About two weeks before the storm actually hit. But when it did, it was a doozy.”

“Okay, so it snowed when our mothers were here. What does that have to do with us?”

“I didn’t say it snowed,” he answers sternly. “I said the wind started two weeks before. Then the rain came. It was a lot of rain, a lot of wind. The newsman finally said he thought it was a hurricane.”

“Okay, a hurricane in September isn’t out of the ordinary,” Jake is muttering.

“I didn’t say it was in September,” Mr. Kramer argues.

I am trying to keep this all straight in my mind, trying to figure out what he is attempting to tell us. I wish he’d just get on with it and stop all this beating around the bush. Somehow, though, I don’t think he can help it. “But you said that it snows in Lincoln in September.”

Mr. Kramer waves a hand. “That was something else. Has nothing to do with this.”

Yeah, he might be more out of touch than I originally thought.

“It was November, the day before Thanksgiving, when the rain and wind started real bad. The newspeople didn’t know what was going on. Then the river started rising and some smart guy says he thinks it’s a hurricane.”

“In November?” I ask, nervous that this conversation is starting to feel like I’ve had it before. With Franklin, who likes to know things about the weather.

“Yuuup, it was the strangest thing. We had us a full-on hurricane in November. I tell you, houses were blowing around like toys. Cars floating in the river, wind howling so loud you thought it was talking right in your ear.”

And his voice goes to a whisper as he says that. If these were theatrics, Mr. Kramer deserved an Oscar for technical work.

“That’s when it came.”

“When what came?”

“The Power,” he says and his eyes get so wide I can actually see them through the thick lenses he wears.

We all get quiet again.

“It came with that storm and that’s how you got it.”

“But we weren’t even born yet,” Sasha says.

Jake looks at her, then he looks at me and then the heat I was feeling in my whole body suddenly shifts to my neck. I put my hands back there because it feels like there’s fire inside my skin about to burn right through.

Jake hisses again, this time adding a long curse behind it. He’s reaching for his arm and my gaze falls to his mark.

I figure it’s got to be burning just like mine.

And then it glows.

I don’t think I’m imagining it this time. Jake’s
M
is now green.

Sasha lets loose the girliest, shriekiest scream I’ve ever heard as she lifts her shirt.

And you got it, her mark is glowing, too, like a pink neon light just above her hip bone.

I jump up out of my chair, lifting my hair and turning to show them.

“Wow,” I hear Jake whisper.

“It’s blue,” Sasha says.

Mr. Kramer sighs. “The Power. Together. Again.”

Jake stands first, stopping in the middle of the floor, his bicep flexing as the
M
glows a fluorescent green. Sasha gets up from the bed, her shirt still pulled up.

“God, it’s burning like a bee sting!”

I presume my blue
M
is glowing brighter as I’m now closer to them.

“Great,” I speak up first. “We’re a trio of weirdos with glowing skin and freaky powers.”

“No,” Jake says quietly, “Not weirdos. We’re misfits.”

“That’s right!” Mr. Kramer yells and we all turn to him expecting an explanation. Instead he says, “It’s time for
Jeopardy.
”

Okay, so where that comment came from I have no clue. Neither does Sasha, I can tell by the strange way she looks from Mr. Kramer to me then to Jake, who just shrugs as if this happens all the time.

Mr. Kramer starts to leave Jake’s room, but as he does something falls from his pocket. An old, raggedy book that Jake immediately bends down and picks up.

As he turns back to face us I’m not thinking about the book or
Jeopardy
or even the old man in the doorway. I’m thinking about this power and how my life’s probably never going to be the same.

Nov. 17, 1932

This has been one crazy couple of months and it all started with the storms. Hurricane season came right on time, just like the weatherman predicted. But nobody said how hard the storms would hit us. Seems like we stayed locked in the house praying more than doing anything else. Except we must have taken a few minutes to do something else.

Today I found out I was expecting a baby. Me and Joseph’s first baby. I hope it’s a boy.

From the diary of
Eleanor Jean Kramer

It
is Jake’s great-grandmother’s diary. It makes perfect sense that he will be the one to keep it, to read it and to share whatever knowledge it might hold about this so-called Power his grandfather talked about.

So it looks like we are now officially on a mission. First, to help Ricky figure out what really happened and then to figure out why the three of us have these powers and what Jake’s grandfather meant about them growing.

The clock at the bottom of my computer screen says 2:15 a.m. I should be in bed, fast asleep like the other citizens of boring old Lincoln. Instead I’m sitting in my dark room with only the glow from the computer screen. I inhale deeply and my fingers move across the keyboard again. I’ve searched all the powers we have, medium, teleportation, superstrength, they all seem pretty valid—as far as supernatural powers go. There are lots more powers but they don’t concern me right now. If the powers themselves are proven both by literature and by experience then they have to come from somewhere. Jake’s grandfather said it was the weather. Strong storms that hit Lincoln at odd times.

So I type in “strange weather patterns.”

Lots of hits, woo hoo!

I search hurricanes first since that was the type of storm that we were supposedly conceived during. Then I key in the year Eleanor Jean Kramer conceived because something tells me that has a lot to do with what is going on now.

Eleven storms in seven months. None of them said they made landfall in Lincoln. Mr. Kramer seemed to believe that conception had taken place in Lincoln. Yet, Mrs. Kramer, his mother, had conceived sometime during the storms of 1932. She could have been anywhere the storms hit. And if she was, that means other women in those places
could have conceived, as well. Only I don’t know for sure if Eleanor Kramer had a baby with powers. I so badly want to read the rest of that diary. Giving Jake the courtesy is killing me.

Beep. Beep.

The chirping startles me and I jump in my chair. Frowning, I realize it is just the instant messaging notifier on my computer.

I click the smiley-face icon and wait while the message appears in the small box.

It is Jake. Yeah, I know the screen name is laughable considering the owner. We’d exchanged cell phone numbers and ChicTeen chat room screen names before leaving Jake’s house. Still I read the message again, further intrigued by Eleanor Kramer and what else she’d written in that diary.

Drumming my fingers on my desk, I wait for a reply, thoughts of witches burning at the stake on my mind.

Sasha is so dramatic.

I can just see Jake frowning, looking at me and Sasha and wondering why we are on the computer at this time of night in the first place. But then again, he is online, too.

Anyway, we do have school tomorrow so I guess I should at least get into bed and try to sleep. Witches and hurricanes will certainly be there for us to investigate in the morning. I close down the windows with the weather research and am about to close out of ChicTeen when another IM pops up.

For seconds I just stare at the screen trying to remember if I know who “number1” is. I figured when Jake said he was registered that Sasha would be, too. This would be a way we could talk without anyone overhearing us and without running up our cell phone bills—for those who didn’t have unlimited texting like me.

Then it hits me. It’s this goofball again. I don’t know who it is. I’d thought about it some more after the first message the other night. But if they’re saying they’ll see me tomorrow I guess it’s someone here in Lincoln. In the profiles section you can put where you live. I know about putting too much of your personal info on the Net so at first I just had NYC. Then when I moved here I changed it to CT. Hoping that was vague enough. Apparently not. Still, I am convinced that whoever this “number1” is they don’t really know who I am. I’m not exactly popular at Settlemans High.

With a shrug I just type “OK” real quick then exit out of the chat room and close down my computer. Climbing into bed feels like a monumentous task. I guess because so much happened today.

I’d seen three ghosts—Ricky, Trina and crying girl. Ricky, I’m not afraid of. Trina, I can tell is going to be a pain in the butt. But crying girl, she still has me wondering what I am really getting myself into. I wonder if she’ll come back, call to me like Ricky had or just tell me what she wants. She didn’t act like she wanted my help, but the feeling we shared said she probably needed it.