Seers (9 page)

“Do I have something on my face?” he asks playfully, and his eyes lock mine. He peers into me and hangs onto each word. No attitude. No anger. Maybe just a little flirty… .

“No. Your face is fine.” I meet his eyes. I hang on to my words. No attitude. No anger. Definitely flirty.
I’ll play your game. I’ll meet your bet and raise you.

I don’t know when the rest of the group stopped watching the Piazza and started watching us, but now I can feel Eri and Frances and Daisy and Patrick’s eyes. They are looking from us back to one another and back to us. It’s Eri who interrupts our staring match.

“Well, guys, I need a stretcher to wheel me outta here. These pancakes were crazy good but are sitting in my stomach like lead bricks. Shall we go?”

Daisy chirps, “Go? Sure, I’m ready. I think that hot jogger is waiting for me over there!”

She giggles and points toward the center of the Piazza. Tuie’s outdoor seating, sectioned off with low wrought-iron fencing, offers a perfect view of the Piazza’s best selling point, an open-area plaza with a projection screen that often shows old movies or Phillies games. The plaza is complete with an Astroturfed sunning area and more benches than I’ve ever seen filled.

“I love that setup. You ever hang out there, Leesie?” Frances asks as she takes in the scene.

“Yeah, Frans. She goes there all the time. In her string bikini. You don’t have any tan lines, do you, Leesie?”

“You have problems, Pat,” Eri chides, but she chuckles as she leans across the table to punch him in the arm.

“Can we check it out?” Daisy asks.

“He’s gone, babe. The shape he was in? He’s a 5K away by now,” Patrick says, continuing to tease.

“Can we walk it? Just for a little while?”

This time it’s Eri who asks. She looks from one member of the group to the other, but her eyes rest on Luke to answer.

“If it won’t keep Frances from the time machine she’s building in her basement, I guess we can stay a little longer,” Luke jokes. A full stomach has relaxed him.

“I’m up for it. We’re not keeping you, are we, Leesie?” Frances says.

Her words settle into me the way a mother bird settles into her nest. I am a fragile egg. I hope one day to know what the security of true friendship feels like. But under the downy warmth of her words, which tell me that she wants to be here, that her only worry is that
I
am not tiring of
them
, I am one step closer to being tough enough to crack my own shell.

I collect myself and look from one eager face to the next. All I can say is “Not at all. Let’s go!”

In the plaza Patrick continues his teasing, Daisy and Frances continue their guy scouting, and Eri walks close to me with Luke on her other side. The conversation is easy, and we laugh often. As Patrick was the star of the afternoon, they allow me to shine in the evening as they ask questions about the shops and restaurants we pass.

Finally the conversation slows, and I catch Frances checking her phone for the time. Patrick is the one who initiates their exit.

“Thank you, guys, for being here for me today. Thanks, Leesie, for a great time. But school calls. Even the best of nights must end, I guess.”

I walk them back to the free lot and give them directions to the highway. Despite the time and Patrick’s reminder of school, no one seems in a real hurry to get on the road. Frances leans against my truck.

“I’m glad you came today,” she says. “You made coming to the city more fun.”

She has the cutest little face, which houses the smartest, sharpest eyes.

“I’m glad I came, too. I had to experience Patrick’s wonderment for myself,” I respond playfully. Patrick eats it up and gives me a light punch in the arm. Daisy laughs and pushes Patrick back in mock defense of me. Eri and Luke are watching with amused but serious looks on their faces. Eri reaches for the door handle.

“We really have to go,” she says. “We all have things to do when we get home.”

“Yes. And we all need to prepare for tomorrow,” Luke adds.

No one questions his statement. Everyone just refocuses and begins to pile into their respective cars. No one wonders exactly what he means by what he said. Am I the only one?

He means homework,
right
? We need to prepare for tomorrow by doing our homework,
right
? Why does he have the power to make me feel like a ping-pong ball, so light and easy to send flying in one direction and another? I watch him watch me as he pulls away. Everyone else waves, smiles, beeps. He watches.

And apparently he prepares for the next day.
Okay. I guess I will, too.

As I unlock my front door, I can’t believe how glad I am to be alone. I fumble around a little before my fingers find the switch and the front light goes on. The soft glow is enough to light almost the entire apartment, which is hardly a feat, considering how small it is. My apartment is above a storefront and warehouse Tobias owns. The deli occupies the front downstairs, and Tobias occupies the back. He transformed the warehouse into three small rooms: a workroom to house his computers and research equipment; a conference room where he meets with local and visiting Seers; and a third massive space I have never been in. Tobias presents information on a need-to-know basis, so I guess when I need to know, I’ll be shown that room.

My apartment is nondescript in decorating style since I haven’t decided what my style is. And since I don’t have heirlooms or family photos, it’s kind of plain, but I like it. Its grays and browns, hardwood and creams. Neutral and calm. And tonight? Quiet. And protecting me, allowing me to go into my own head and hit replay on a day full of sideways glances and loaded statements that I need to think through and figure out.

I close the door behind me, don’t bother to turn any other lights on, and cross the living room to a club chair I set under the window in the eat-in area of the kitchen. It made more sense to have a comfy chair in this space than a dining table. Who’s coming to dine with me? No one. So instead, I do my homework, eat, write in my journal, everything, in this chair under the window. If I could sleep in a curled position, I’d never leave it.

I plop down, ease my feet out of my shoes, and pull my knees to my chest. As I gaze out the window at the city lights and at the way the skyline attacks the blackened canvas dwarfing the stars, I think about the power it takes to illuminate the city. And then I think about my kind of power. Power of the mind. I am good at overthinking. Analyzing. Knowing more about a person than he knows about himself. I use facial cues, hand gestures, sighs, the raising of a brow … anything. I am used to being ridiculously good at it. Better than regular people. Better than every other Seer.

I realized how good I am on my first mission for Tobias. The missing-girl mission.

When Tobias gave me the background information for the mission, he said that the aunt was guarded and that no other Seer had been able to penetrate a layer to gain access to the desired information: where the child was, why, and who was responsible.

When a being is guarded, it means that for some reason, he or she is able to keep a Seer out. This can be because the being has built a defense against being Navigated and that his or her brain can actually defend itself against a Seer. More often, though, the being is wounded. Mentally sick. Dark. Abused. Dangerous. This clouds and blends the layers, making it impossible for most Seers to decipher where they are and where the desired information is. The layers in this case are more like a maze. Instead of traveling down, Seers must twist and turn with confusing angles and sharp peaks. Most Seers cannot get in or cannot proceed. Tobias wanted to give me a try.

I had only been with Tobias a couple of weeks. Tobias said my first mission would be an easy one. One that would gauge my powers and rate me as a Seer. When I was prepped for the mission, though, it seemed anything but easy.

The little girl was seven. A red shock of curly hair blanketed her head and shoulders. Blue eyes. Freckles, of course. Chubby cheeks. A crooked, teeth-missing smile. Basically one of the cutest kid pictures I had ever seen. And she had been missing for six days. The family had reason to suspect that the child’s aunt had something to do with the disappearance. Why? She was off. She would go away for a day. No one would know where she was. When the family questioned the aunt, she’d swear she had been home all day, cleaning. The worst of it was that the family didn’t think the aunt was lying. They thought she had lapsed into another state of consciousness, that something had snapped. They feared she was bipolar or schizophrenic. They had been seeking help for her when the girl went missing. A cousin of the little girl was a Seer; he was the one who had attempted and failed the first Navigation, and he had contacted Tobias for help.

I started at the aunt’s daughter’s school. The aunt’s daughter, Maggie, was, by strategy, in most of my classes. All I had to do was befriend her and gain access to her house to get to the aunt.

I watched Maggie that first day. She was a little shy. She played with her hair when she was unsure of herself or of what to say. She crossed and uncrossed her legs a lot. She wiggled her right foot from side to side when her right leg was crossed over her left, but when she switched legs and her left was crossed over her right, she didn’t wiggle her left foot at all. She seemed to be more at ease when the left leg was crossed. When the right foot was wiggling, she seemed to be agitated or bored. When she was annoyed, she flared her nostrils. When she was concentrating, she furrowed her brow. So a furrowed brow for Maggie was okay; she was just interested. A furrowed brow with flared nostrils? Back off. She used her mouth to communicate nonverbally. She smirked a lot. She smirked when she found something amusing, but at someone else’s expense. The teacher had accidentally gotten a pen mark on her own face at some point during class. Maggie smirked. So if I saw her smirking at me, I would be rushing to the nearest mirror. She bit her lower lip. This seemed to be when she looked at any boy she thought was cute. She pursed her lips. This mainly occurred when she was called on to answer a question or participate in class. So I guess she pursed whenever she felt pressured to speak. She sucked her teeth. She licked her top lip. I watched these cues. I memorized these cues. By the time we had our first conversation, she was comfortable around me at once because I knew when to engage.

“Hi. I’m Leesie. I’m new. Do you mind if I sit here?” I gestured to the seat next to hers. “I sat in the back yesterday and had a hard time seeing.”

“Sure.” Her right foot wiggled. “No one usually sits there.”

Of course I knew that. The seat had remained empty the day before.

She uncrossed and recrossed with the left leg. Her foot was still.

“How do you like it here so far?” she asked. No flaring. She wasn’t annoyed. No pursing. She wanted to speak. Good.

“I like it okay. Have you always gone here?”

A slight purse. Too loaded a question. I hadn’t thought that through. What if she had moved a lot? Or wished she could get away?

“I guess I ask that question because I’ve moved around a lot myself,” I added quickly.

“Oh. Right. That makes sense. Yeah, I’ve never moved before. I’m Maggie, by the way.” She leaned toward me and began to fill me in on the teacher. Doesn’t give too much homework, tests come directly from lectures and not from the textbook, so take good notes, etc.

Maggie had been a loner, which made sense, considering what she confided in me before she invited me over. It took a few weeks to secure an invite. Before I was to come for dinner, she warned me about her mother, telling me not to be surprised if she said or did something crazy. I reassured Maggie. I played the role of a wounded teen affected by the instability of constantly relocating. One wounded soul who understood another.

I remember sitting across from the aunt at the dinner table. Her light-brown eyes were shifty. Her body language was erratic. She was definitely guarded.

She looked up to ask me how I liked my new school. Everything about the woman shouted unpredictability. I couldn’t risk her taking off. I focused on her left eye and went in.

Usually it feels like I am swimming through salt water. There’s a thickness to the water but I can move freely through it. This felt colder than usual. And I’d say it was thicker than usual, but it varied. There was an inconsistency to her brain that was immediately alarming. I knew why the other Seer couldn’t go in.

I sloshed back and forth and rolled in spirals as I attempted to travel down. Was this the way down? Where was I? Was that a layer over there? How had I ended up going sideways? I started looking for clues. In an unguarded brain the layers are defined by a gel-like ribbon. It reminds me of a finish line at the end of a race that you have to break through.

In a guarded brain it’s not defined. The only thing I had to go on was the change in consistency in thickness and the temperature changes. I decided to go on temperature. I would follow the cold.

It was colder on my left side than my right, so I turned my head to the left and propelled myself in that direction. The cold enveloped me to my waist before what felt like ice chips began to sting my face. Was this another layer? I must be deeper down. Because the little girl had only been missing a few weeks, I didn’t want to go deep. I just wanted to be in. I strained through murky grayish-brown to See the scene in front of me. The view was from a bridge. A low cement bridge. A neighborhood bridge. A small lake. A blue car. Parked just over the bridge at the water’s edge. Two figures in the water. One tall. One small. And red-haired. A little girl flailing her arms at her sides, kicking her legs wildly. The girl was struggling to raise her head, a head that was being held down under the water by the taller, older figure. The aunt was drowning the girl.