The 6th Power (21 page)

And as simple as that, the lights turned back on.

“You know, you’re a pretty good dancer.”

I would have laughed. I would have howled. I would have flown a loop-da-loop for joy, but I needed to focus, so I settled for a smile. “You’re not so bad yourself.”

She raised her head and looked around us. I spared a glance as well, seeing that her memory of Coralberry was back. The birds flew by us. Fluffy white clouds decorate the sky. I looked at Hannah, thought about the cells in her skull dividing and restoring, and the indentation de-indented.

Hannah blinked several times, as if getting used to her eyes working again, and smiled at me. “So, whatcha doing?”

“Right now? Repairing your left knee cap.”

“You are such a show-off,” she said, and this time I couldn’t help laughing, mostly out of relief.

“We’re flying again? Did I miss something?”

I hesitated for a moment, not sure how much I should share. We were having a nice moment, she was still recovering, and I really didn’t want to bother her with the psychotic exploits of my brother. But everyone else in Coralberry knew what had happened to her, so I figured that Hannah deserved to know, too. Still keeping the healing program running, I brought up the underlying psychic program and accessed my own memories of the last day.

“Hold on,” I told her, and started the download.

Hannah’s eyes closed as she took it all in, her arms tightening around my neck. While she absorbed everything, I tracked down a nasty infection that was building up around some pins that the doctors had sunk into her legs. When I had it cornered, I sent in a squad of white-blood cell assassins to wipe it out.

“Whoa,” she said. “Wow. Uh, I’m going to need a moment.”

“Take all the time you need.” I was checking my work, making sure that all of the bone shards were back in place and fused up. I thought about wiping out the bruises, but decided against it. Hannah’s doctors were going to be freaked out as it was.

She opened her eyes and said, “It wasn’t your fault, you know?”

I frowned at her, but didn’t reply.

“It’s like I told you on the water tower. I chose to get involved. Chet chose to come after me. You can’t control what other people chose to do. Right?”

“Right,” I said.

Hannah smirked at me, then waved her arms around. “Look at me! I’m flying! I’m not dead! That’s because of you! Do you honestly think I have any regrets about getting involved in your weirdness this week?”

I chuckled, not completely letting the guilt run away.

We floated there for a bit, smiling at each other. Hannah’s psychic form looked just like she normally looked, which I took as a good sign.

“Do you still wear those ducky pajamas?” she asked.

It took a while to get my psychic mouth to work. “How do you know about those? Oh, right. The picture of me that the twins hung up on the bulletin board at school.”

Hannah shook her head. “No, I’d forgotten about that, but when you sent over those memories, apparently some other stuff came through with it. Sorry! I wasn’t snooping!”

Groan.

“Besides, I think they’re cute,” she said with a giggle.

“Big talk from a girl who still sleeps with a stuffed unicorn.”

“Hey! There will be no trash talk about Sir Reginald! Understand?”

“Perfectly,” I said, trying to hide a grin

“How did you know about him, anyway?”

“Well, when I was, uh, fixing your brain, some, uh, memories came through.”

“I guess I can’t be angry at you for that.”

I nodded, cleared my throat and said, “I should probably go.”

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I’ve been here for who-knows-how-long. My parents will probably think I’ve slipped into a coma or something.”

“But… don’t you think you’re forgetting something?”

I looked her over. “Oh, sorry! A broken bone? Leaking blood vessel? What?”

“Not me. You.”

I hit her with my most clever perplexed look.

“You know, your injuries?” she said. “Your spine? Shouldn’t we do something about it?”

Strange, the things you forget about when you get busy saving someone’s life. “Right. Yeah, I don’t think I can get it to work on me.”

“Why not? Can’t you just think about Wolverine or someone and, you know, heal up?”

I sighed. “Maybe. I’m not sure. I’d have to wrap my head around it, see if I can change powers again. I think that I was only able to do it this time because I wanted to save you. That kind of gave me the push. When I think about trying to heal myself, my brain puts on the brakes and starts thinking that it’s impossible.”

“Oh,” Hannah said, closing her eyes.

“I mean, that’s okay! It’s going to be okay. I probably just need some rest and some time to figure it out. I know healing is possible, since you’re still with me, so that should help me to do it for myself. I just… need some time.”

Hannah nodded, her eyes still closed. For a minute, I thought that she was crying, but instead she shuddered and looked at me.

Her eyes were glowing. Glowing gold.

“Yeah, we could wait until you figure it out,” she said, “or I could use your memories and figure it all out for myself.” The golden glow intensified, and when she took my hand, it spread into me.

“You don’t mind, do you?” Hannah said, smiling.

Slowly, I returned the smile. “Oh, I guess not.”

Chapter 27

I
t was Wednesday again. The fourth week of summer vacation. I was standing in the field behind my house, watching the sun rise.

Yeah. Standing.

Ever since I’d gotten released from the hospital two weeks before, I’d made a habit of getting up early and getting out of the house. Kind of odd behavior for a vacation, sacrificing sleep like that, but I had a lot of thinking to do and nobody bothered me out in the field.

Though, to be honest, I wasn’t getting bothered in the house, either.

Chet was gone. Physically and mentally. After Dad drug him off of me, he just shut down. Staring off into space, drooling, the whole bit. They obviously couldn’t throw him in jail, him being a whacked-out minor, so he was in a facility in Westertonville. The family went and visited him on weekends. Robert and I stayed in the car with Kiki. Didn’t think it would be a good idea for Chet to see either of us.

If my brother did get better, he’d be facing criminal charges. Everyone in town knew that Chet Holland had set the comic book shop on fire and that he had tried to kill Hannah, but a psychic impression is not exactly evidence you can present in court. Still, all of the deputies in town got the same mental flash, so it didn’t take long for them to find some physical evidence, security camera footage, et cetera, and it all tied Chet to the crimes. Plus there was also the small matter of him trying to kill me. Mustn’t forget about that.

Chet was probably a lot better off staying in the hospital, drooling away. Maybe he realized that, too. The thought had crossed my mind that his blank slate was all an act. The only way to know for sure, though, was to go back in his head, and I wasn’t about to do that any time soon.

Mom’s been crying at the drop of a hat, but on the bright side, Dad was spending more time around the house and he was looking for a job in Hartford. He’d started asking Robert and I about our feelings and our interests and everything, like he was worried that we’d turn out to be psychos, too. It was kind of weird, but it was also kind of nice.

Robert had been keeping up with the soap and the hair products, was spending most of his time with his girlfriend, and was even known to occasionally speak to us in complete sentences. Mom had started getting on his case about his room being a mess, but not too severely. Maybe, deep down, she realized that the messy bedroom was Robert’s declaration of independence.

Mom did drop the hammer on me, though. Once I was up and around and all of the amazement over my recovery had worn off, she’d read me the riot act about climbing the tree in our backyard. I’d wanted to protest, to tell her that I hadn’t actually fallen out of the tree, but the truth about my injuries certainly wouldn’t have made her freak out any less. She grounded me and ordered me to clean out the garage. I didn’t mind, though. I needed the time to think. It surprised me, however, when Robert volunteered to help.

We certainly weren’t buddies, but we’d nod at each other when we met in the hallway, and I didn’t feel like I needed to be on guard all of the time. Which was a pretty amazing feeling.

We’d been working away in the garage for about a half hour when Robert cleared his throat and asked, “Uh, about all that weird stuff that happened a few weeks back?”

I shoved a pile of old
Good Housekeeping
magazines in a garbage bag, stood up and looked at him. “It’s pretty much over.”

“Good.”

“Yeah.”

And we went back to work. Who says guys can’t have a meaningful conversation? When we were just about finished up, Robert handed me an large cardboard cylinder that I’d gotten for Christmas a long time ago.

I chuckled. “Don’t think I need Lincoln Logs anymore.” I started to put the container in a garbage bag, but Robert laid a hand on my arm.

“Open it,” he said, a strange look on his face, before turning and leaving the garage. I frowned, a bit worried that he’d stashed a firecracker in there, but I shook my head and pried off the plastic lid.

Inside were comic books. Dozens and dozens of comic books. Every single issue I’d purchased from Mr. Magellan’s shop over the years, every issue that I’d assumed had been destroyed. Robert had saved them all. I sat down on the floor and spent a long time looking at each of them, getting acquainted with old friends.

Since then, I’d been using the comic books to try to get the magic to work, but I hadn’t had a lot of success. I could read about Green Lantern using his ring to create a shield around his body, but without the perfect memory, without the perfect understanding of how it all worked, I couldn’t recreate it. I tried doing some simple stuff. A few heroes and bad guys control light, so I’d tried to make my hands glow, but all I got was a faint glimmer and a blinding headache. I’d been a little more successful at recreating some of the powers I’d had while taking Mr. Magellan’s pills, probably because those memories were still with me, though not as sharp. Dad had made goulash a few nights ago, and though no one else seemed to like it, mine tasted enough like a bacon cheeseburger for me to get it down.

I figured that I needed to start with the basics, so I worked on just improving my memory. I tried to get all of my chores done every day, and I practiced my multiplication tables while I worked. I even checked out a couple of books from the library on eidetic memory. Mom saw me studying and was impressed enough that she decided I didn’t need a tutor after all, that we’d wait and see how things went when school started. Somehow, I thought that if I didn’t have to worry about Chet on a daily basis, I might stand a chance of doing better at my school work. Just a hunch.

Still, I was just shooting in the dark, hoping I could figure things out. I really wished I had a sensei or a Jedi master. There’d been no sign of Mr. Magellan since that day at the hospital. His house was empty. The shop was gone, of course. Now that I’d had a chance to think about it, I wondered how the old man had recovered so quickly from the smoke he’d inhaled during the fire. It probably had something to do with his discipline, which made me wonder why he’d needed rescuing in the first place. Was he faking it? Was it a test, to see if I’d do the right thing, to see if I was willing to make the sacrifice? I also wondered if he had made it back home. The people who had sent him here had worried about the door between his world and ours swinging both ways. Was that possible? If so, what might come back through?

Like I said, I’d had a lot to think about.

Fortunately, I’d finally have someone to talk to about everything. Hannah had been stuck in the hospital another week while the doctors confirmed that she no longer needed the hardware on her leg and tried to figure out why that was the case. Her mom had kept her home for another week after that, just to make sure that she didn’t suddenly fall apart. I’d exchanged some emails with Hannah during that time, but we agreed to save the heavy stuff until we could talk face-to-face.

So on that Wednesday morning, I was waiting for my friend and looking at the sunrise. It was pretty impressive. The sky looked like it was on fire, as if the earth was now rotating around Krypton’s red sun and the solar radiation was…

Wow, I am such a geek.

“Red sky at morning, sailors take warning,” said a voice behind me.

My smile about split my face, though I tried to keep it out of my voice. “The weatherman didn’t say anything about rain this morning.”

Hannah snorted. “You going to believe a meteorologist or are you going to believe the girl who rebuilt your spinal cord?”

I turned to her and opened my arms. The hug lasted for a long time.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Yup,” I said. “You?”

“Getting there. I think my mom has about stopped freaking out. She and the step-dad have been yelling a lot. I don’t think we’ll be in the house for too much longer.”

I supposed that was a good thing, but… “Where will you go?”

“Mom suggested going back to California.”

Oh.

Hannah smiled. “But I told her I didn’t want to.”

I tried not to giggle. “No? How come?”

“Well, genius, in case you haven’t noticed, we’ve been talking to each other and neither one of us has been using our mouths to do it.” She finally broke the hug and looked at me. Her thoughts entered into my mind as if she was whispering in my ear. “How in the world can I move away from something like that?”

Mr. Magellan’s people accessed the memory discipline by perfectly remembering the stories that they told around the fire each night. I accessed it by perfectly remembering the stories I’d been reading ever since I’d first walked into Mr. Magellan’s shop. But now there was a new story. A story about two kids who were pushed together by a villain, and how they ended up saving each other over and over again. I knew this story perfectly. I was still living this story. As I thought about what we’d gone through and what Hannah and I had done together, the magic warmed me through to the bone. As it went, the warmth wiped out my worries about Chet and my parents and my memory and about what I’d be asked to give up next, if I kept following the path of the memory discipline. Through the link I shared with Hannah, I knew that she felt the warmth as well, burning away doubt and fear, letting her finally think about her own future with something like hope.