Rising (24 page)

“What about her?” he asked pointing at
me.
 
“Does she have one?”

“
She
is sitting right here, Jeremy.
 
You can
ask me directly.”

What the heck?
 
Was I invisible or something?

“Okay, what can you do?” he asked me.

“I can see auras, which usually
correlates to people’s personalities or feelings.”

“Really?” he asked, a sly smile coming
to his lips.
 
“What color is mi—?”

“Red,” I answered before he could
finish, “sometimes hot pink.”

“What!
 
You’re lying.
 
Hot pink?
 
No way,” he protested.

I didn’t bat an eye.
 
I could see the wheels spinning, trying to
determine if I was joking or not.

“Really?” he asked more quietly.
 
“Hot pink?”

“Yeah, but most the time it’s
reddish-orange, like now.”

“Whoa, that is
sooooo
wicked.
 
I bet I look cool.”

He was laughing to himself or by himself,
I don’t know.
 
Jeremy was a weird one.

“So,” said Gabe, “spill it.
 
What about you?”

He suddenly got a thoughtful look on
his face, eyeing Gabe carefully.
 
Gabe
was quite a bit bigger than him and although I don’t think Gabe would pin him
down and beat it out of him, it didn’t look like Jeremy was going to take the
chance.
 
He jumped out of the Jeep.

“I can’t explain it in words, but I can
show you,” he said gesturing to the back of the abandoned gas station.

We filed out behind him and
followed.
 
The building had been empty
for years.
 
The panes of glass had been
long shattered and broken.
 
There was a
rusted ice machine sitting uselessly under the tin awning and graffiti painted
up and down along the wooden siding.
 
The
back door was left ajar with its window panes intact except for one diagonal
crack.
 
Jeremy stopped about twenty feet
away from the building, and grinned at both of us.

“You ready?” he asked.

We nodded, wondering what in the world
he was about to do.
 
Then the crazy boy
starts fumbling with his iPod until he finally found whatever song he was
looking for.
 

“This’ll do,” he mumbled to himself.

He plugged his earphones back in and
started humming with the music.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said,
wondering why we were getting a serenade.

Gabe wasn’t bothered at all.
 
He had that expression of concentration that
made him look way older than he was.
 
So,
away Jeremy went singing along to his iPod.
 
At least this was a song I actually recognized, “Toxicity” by System of
a Down.

“I didn’t know you listened to anything
written in the past two decades,” I said, noting the bitter sarcasm in my
voice.

Jeremy didn’t hear me.
 
He was completely in the zone, having a good
old time in his little world, revving up for the chorus.

“What is he doing?” I asked Gabe who
put a hand out to quiet me.

“Don’t you feel it?” he asked me.

Then, I did feel it.
 
A low rumbling hum was building, coming from
Jeremy.

“Somewhere between the sacred silence
and sleep,” he was singing, and I have to admit sounding pretty good, too.

Like an amplifier turned all the way
up, there was a humming sensation coming from Jeremy.
 
His reddish-orange aura vibrated around him
then the pitch of his voice grew heavy and loud with the chorus.

“Disorder, disorder,
dis-oooorrderrrrr
. . . .”

As he sang the last word, I could see a
ripple of blurry, transparent sound waves streaking toward the abandoned
building.
 
The door shook on its hinges,
rattling fiercely, then all at once every pane shattered.
 
Shards of glass blasted outward.
 
I blocked my eyes.
 
Gabe suddenly pulled me protectively behind
him.
 
Only a few pieces hit us, but did
no harm.
 
Jeremy had stopped singing and
was grinning from ear to ear.

“Awesome, huh?”

Gabe had that half-smile and was
nodding in agreement.
 
“Pretty cool.
 
How long have you been able to do this?”

“It started not that long ago
actually.
 
I’ve been getting stronger and
stronger.
 
It works best when I’m
rockin
’ to Metallica.”

“How did it start?” I asked.

“I think the first time I noticed it
was one Saturday a few weeks ago,” said Jeremy thoughtfully.
 
“My parents were out doing errands and I was
sitting at the kitchen table, listening to Motley
Crue
while I ate Frosted Flakes.”

“Are you ever without your iPod?” Gabe
asked.

“No,” he said emphatically, “anyway, I
started doing Tommy Lee’s drum solo on the table with my spoon and was singing
along with one of Vince Neal’s high notes then my bowl of cereal just
exploded.
 
I was pissed at first because
milk splattered all over me and my iPod, which is very precious to me,
ya
know.”

I suddenly got a vision of Jeremy
cowering in a cave like
Gollom
from
Lord of the Rings,
stroking his iPod and
whispering ‘My precious.’
 
I had to
restrain myself from giggling, because he was so dang serious about that thing.

“Then,” he continued, “I realized what
I’d done.
 
I thought maybe it was just a
freak accident, because I’d seen on TV how some opera singers can break glass,
ya
know.
 
And I knew
I was pretty good.
 
Then, something
inside me sort of changed.
 
Sometimes
when I’d start really getting into a song that was awesome and intense, I’d
feel something in me kind of spark,
ya
know.”

“How do you mean exactly?” asked Gabe.

“I don’t know how to explain it.
 
It would just start from the pit of my
stomach then come out the more I sang.
 
That’s when I noticed I could shatter not only glass but plastic,
too.
 
I had this cool plastic model of
Darth Vader in my room—”

“Darth Vader?” I asked, raising my
eyebrows.

“Yeah,” he rambled on, “and it happened
again.
 
Plastic is a lot harder than
glass, so I realized that it wasn’t just an accident.
 
I had some kind of cool super power.”

“But,” I interrupted, “I don’t see how
breaking glass or plastic is going to help us against these creatures.
 
No offense, Jeremy, but I just wish we knew
what all of this meant.”

“That’s why we’re going to see Homer on
Canebrake Island tomorrow,” said Gabe.
 
“I don’t know why, but I think he’ll know more than any of us.
 
Mrs. Fairfax said that he’s been having
visions since the 70s.
 
That’s longer
than we’ve been alive.
 
Hopefully, he’s
not just some crazy hermit and he can give us some answers.”

My iPhone started buzzing in my
pocket.
 
I realized I hadn’t taken it off
vibrate yet.
 
I glanced at the front to
see my cousin’s purple hair and “shoot me” expression that she gave me when I
snapped this pic.

“It’s Jessie,” I said, answering it.

“Jessie?” asked Jeremy with a funny
look on his face.

“Hey,” she said, “listen, I was
wondering if you were going to the game tonight.”

“Yeah, I mean, I’m not really friends
with Mark, but Gabe promised him we’d all go.”

“Oh, are you riding with Gabe?” she
asked.
 
“Because if not I was wondering
if you wanted to ride with me.
 
Mom gave
me her Durango.
 
I just felt like getting
out of the house tonight.”

“Sure,” I said, “um, how about 6:30?”

“Cool.
 
I’ll see you then.”

I stuffed my phone back into my jeans.

“That’s funny.
 
Jessie wants to go out tonight,” I said.
 
“I didn’t think she liked football games.”

“She’s hard to predict,” said Gabe,
“none of us have been able to figure her out.”

“Well, she wants me to ride with her,”
I said, looking at Gabe.

“That’s fine,” he said, “it gives me
time to talk to Ben.
 
He’s a part of all
this, I’m sure, but I don’t think he knows it.”

Somehow, that didn’t surprise me.
 
I adored Ben.
 
His fun-loving outlook on life could be infectious, but he was so
daffy.
 
He rarely had a clue what was
going on around him.
 

“Excuse me, guys,” said Jeremy,
clearing his throat and sounding timid which was definitely not Jeremy, “um, I
was wondering if I could go along with y’all tonight.”

“You go to football games?” I asked, a
little too surprisingly.

“No, not really, but I wouldn’t mind
going if your friend Jessie is going,” he said, looking at me pleadingly.

“She’s my cousin,” I said, grinning
because I finally got it.
 
“Sure, you can
come.”

“We’ll pick you up,” said Gabe,
clapping Jeremy on the back and smiling at him with a shake of the head as if
to say ‘good luck.’

We both knew Jessie wasn’t easily
impressed by anyone.
 
I laughed to
myself, wondering how she’d react to the attentions of Jeremy—the Darth Vader-
lovin
’, heavy metal
bangin
’, air-
guitarin
’, glass-
breakin
’,
wicked-awesome dork.

***

I was waiting on the sofa for Jessie,
while Dad was studying a bunch of his papers on the kitchen table.
 
The six o’clock news was droning on about
Hurricane Lucy spinning in its place out in the center of the Gulf of
Mexico.
 
An interview of a local from New
Orleans in the 9
^th
ward popped up on the screen.

“Nobody’s
tellin
’
us
nothin
’ about what to do,” said the haggard-looking
woman standing in the front of her weathered house.
 
“I can’t afford to pick up and ‘
vacuate
unless I have to, and nobody knows what to do.
 
I tell
ya
, they
better
figga
it out or it’ll be too late.”

The male anchor then turned to the
camera with a serious doomsday look on his face.

“You heard it here in the 9
^th
ward, where tragedy has struck before and just may again.
 
The question is: will it be too late or will
we have a devastating repeat of history here in New Orleans?”

“God, I hate it when they do that,” I
said.

“What’s that,
hon
?”
asked Dad.

“They make everything sound so
end-of-the-world.
 
The newscasters only
add to the fear and hysteria,” I said, feeling heat flush up my neck.

What I didn’t want to admit to myself
was that it just might be the end of the world.
 
Who could tell what was going to happen?

“Don’t worry about it, Clara.
 
They’ve been very prepared for these kinds of
things in recent years.
 
The newscasters
are doing their job, trying to get ratings.”

“Yeah, well starting a panic doesn’t
seem like a very good job.”

Dad didn’t respond.
 
He was absorbed back in his papers on the
table. He had that furrowed frown pressed into his face.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, picking up
Misty and scratching her head.

“I just can’t figure out what’s going
on here.
 
My green algae samples in the
lab and in the field are all producing oxygen now.
 
It’s strange that they all are.
 
There shouldn’t be large amounts of sulfur in
the environment that would cause this, but I’ve observed and tested them several
times this week.
 
It keeps coming out the
same.”

“Well, don’t you look pretty,” said
Mom, swishing into the room in a brown suede skirt and cream-colored top.

I had decided to dress up a little more
tonight; at least, what I considered dressing up. I was wearing dark blue,
skinny jeans, a slim-fitting, red American Eagle shirt to show my BCHS spirit
and I flat-ironed my hair, which made it fall to the center of my back.
 
I even put on dark eye-liner, black mascara,
and a bronzy lipstick, which I rarely bothered to do during the school week.