The Color of Courage (11 page)

“That
is
a big deal!” Mom kissed both of Sarah’s cheeks and hugged her hard. “I’m so proud of you. Of course, I always knew it would happen. You have such a wonderful career.”

I chose not to take that as a dig at me, even if she glanced at me out of the corner of her eye.

“Dinner’s ready. Let’s sit and tell the others!” Mom bustled about getting the food to the table, and I went to collect the rabble. Becca was on the phone in her room and motioned with a finger that she’d just be a moment. Not holding my breath, I went and found my three brothers in the basement. They were quite a group. Steven and Spike were built like linebackers. Broad shoulders, narrow hips, fat heads. Actually, that was just a sister’s opinion. Steven was a geographer and spent a lot of time in the field. Spike kept his physique less naturally, but then, it was easier to meet girls in the gym than in a ravine. Jeff was a big contrast. He was taller than all of us, with almost no muscle mass. He had a kind face and lighter hair than his brothers, and seemed to be excelling in his premed program.

“You had it last, Spike,” he said now, bending over the pool table to line up a bank shot. “It’s my turn.”

“Hell it is,” Steven grumbled from behind his soda can. “I haven’t had the car in three weeks.”

Spike smacked him in the back of the legs with his cue, laughing. “It’s not our fault you didn’t need it for two weeks in a row. Wallflower.”

I smiled at their banter. They’d always been like this, and the unchanged décor of the rec room helped me slip into nostalgia.

It had been difficult for me, at first, to adapt to each new child in the house. I’d been extra sensitive, empathically, until I was nearly eleven and learned how to tune in or out. But I’d only been two when Sarah was born, four with Steven, five with Becca. I couldn’t understand the sharpness of their emotions, or why they felt them so intensely. They were much simpler than the ebbs and flows of my parents’, who figured out when I was a baby that they needed to be calm around me or I reacted negatively. They still didn’t realize why until Steven was born and I could tell them exactly what he needed.

I had been, apparently, baffled by Sarah, concerned by Steven, and extremely impatient with Becca. Jeff came along when I’d gained the wisdom of first grade, so I turned bossy and expectant. I think I honed a lot of my reading skill on him and the toddlers who embraced him wholeheartedly. Spike was a happy baby, calm and easygoing, and it was such relief to be near him.

The upshot was that I owed a hell of a lot of who I was to these kids.

Mom’s voice drifted to me, calling Becca to the table. I stepped down into the rec room, catching their attention. “Dinner, fools.”

They dropped their pool cues and pounded past me with various pats and smacks.

“Geez, you guys act like you’re still ten,” I griped.

“Not me.” Spike scooped me up and tossed me over his shoulder to carry me up the stairs. “I’m responsible and mature.”

“Compared to them, maybe. Compared to an adult, not so much.” I laughed when he set me on my feet. My hair had fallen all over my face, so I pushed it back. Seeing his grin, I felt a stab of loss. He wasn’t going to be here much longer.

“Why the Army, kiddo?”

“You don’t have to ask me that, Dale.” He looked a little saddened that I had. “You of all people.”

“I guess I just need to hear it. I’m—” Did I want to admit it, even to Spike, the only Charm who’d keep it to himself? “I’m finding reason to question my own decisions,” I said.

“And since we’re so alike, you want me to remind you why you made them?”

“Where are you two?” Mom yelled from the dining room. “Dinner’s getting cold!”

He didn’t move. “I’m joining the Army because it’s the best way I have to give something to this world.”

“Is it, really? I mean, there are ways other than putting yourself on the front lines. Going to war over politics and other people’s values.”

He hesitated, glancing toward the dining room, where we could hear the commotion of dishing up. If we didn’t hurry, there’d be nothing left.

“We can talk later,” I said.

He shook his head. “I have to leave right after dinner. Come upstairs a minute.” He grabbed my hand and dragged me to his room, closing and locking the door behind us.

“What the hell? Spike, what is it?” My heart started pounding and my mind raced, trying to guess what he was about to tell me.

“I want to show you something.” He looked around the room, then started moving stuff on his desk. “A gun would be better, but Mom would freak.” Clothes started flying as he dug through a pile on the floor. “An explosive would be more impressive, but, again, Mom.” He finally came up with a stun gun and handed it to me. “Shock me.”

I stared at him. “What?”

“Here.” He showed me how to turn it on and pressed the trigger on the side. Electricity arced between the leads. “Press it before you get to my arm.”

“Why do you have a stun gun?” I asked, not moving.

“For God’s sake, Daley, just do it before someone comes up here!”

“But—”

“Now!”

I jumped, pressing the button hard and shoving it at his biceps. The blue electricity crackled and popped. I cringed, but when I got a few inches from his skin, the energy leapt sideways and dissipated. My finger let off the trigger and I stared.

“You have . . . a . . . a force field?” My voice sounded weak. I’d always thought I was alone in the family. They’d always treated me like I was, though they didn’t always realize it.

“Not exactly.” He removed the stun gun from my slack fingers and hid it back under the pile of clothes. “I diffuse energy. It’s involuntary. I don’t think about it. So it’s got to be in my electrical system or something.”

My mind raced. “The wire in the puddle? When you were born.”

He nodded. “That’s what I think.”

The night he was born, Dad was so frantic on the way to the hospital that he got them stuck in standing water that was deeper than it appeared. A wire, knocked loose during the storm that afternoon, dangled into the puddle. A passing pickup truck—what my mother asserts was our family’s one true miracle—managed to connect a chain to the bumper without electrocuting the driver or my parents, and dragged them free. But the metal hook had touched water, and my mother said a charge went through her feet and up into her body. Everyone insisted it was impossible, but she swore it happened.

I heard her call up the stairs, sounding angry. But I couldn’t go down yet. “It works on anything?”

“Yep.”

I threw a punch. He flinched, but my hand just . . . stopped, inches from his face. There was no impact, more like I’d pushed my hand into something thick and it lost momentum until it stopped moving.

“That was closer than the stun gun.”

“Uh, yeah.” He laughed a little. “The less energy there is, the closer it comes. The more there is, the further away the diffusion occurs.”

“Fascinating.” I couldn’t help myself. I touched his arm. It felt normal. He looked down at me tolerantly. “You could join HQ,” I said eagerly, forgetting for a moment why that might be a very bad idea. “It doesn’t have to be Army.”

“It does, Dale.” He shook his head, slowly. “It stops bullets, electricity, physical blows. And if someone is close enough to me, it protects them, too. I’m an ideal soldier, and that’s where I belong.”

I hated it, but I knew he was right. He’d been the most decisive person I knew, his whole life, with no regrets or second-guessing. No one would change his mind.

“You should tell Mom.” I looped my arm around his and started to lead him out. “It would make things a lot easier for everyone.”

“I can’t.” He shook his head again when I frowned, and stopped me before I opened the door. “She wouldn’t understand. You know that.”

I couldn’t say more, because not only did she bang on the door right then, I knew the rest of the dinner would prove him right.

She eyed us suspiciously when we came out into the hall, our arms still entwined.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you two were canoodling up here. Come on. I’m going to be royally pissed if you don’t get your asses down to dinner right now.”

She already was, or she wouldn’t be saying “asses.” So we followed. I decided I couldn’t let my baby brother be more noble than me. I’d just face what HQ had to face, and overcome it however we could.

My conviction lasted barely five minutes. That was when my mother started in.

Chapter 11

“Daley, dear, tell us about the heroism that nearly killed you.”

I pretended the jab hadn’t struck and related the events of the jumper and the building collapse. Maybe it was unfair, but I provided details I would normally have kept to myself. The knife. The man’s determination to take me with him. How I’d run to the back of the cavern we’d dug in the rubble, even though the damage above us showed signs of coming down. I received satisfying gasps and murmurs, though my mother grew paler and paler. By the end, I was ashamed for retaliating. She was only this way because she cared about me.

She set down her fork and took a deep breath, looking at her plate. “Daley, why? Why must you keep doing this?”

I put my own fork down, no longer interested in the lasagna. “I’ve explained why, Mom.”

“But look.” She waved her hands at my siblings. “Becca’s going to teach history. Jeff will be a doctor. And Steven has a nice, safe job with National Geographic. Why can’t you be like them? Why do you have to put so much stress on my heart?” She pressed her hand to her sternum.

“That building came down six blocks from me, Mom.” Steven shrugged. “If it had been my building, I would have been glad Daley was there to help. They got almost everyone out. People who would have died without HQ.”

“Pah. Daley had little to do with it. She’s an empath, not Wonder Woman. She has no protection.”

“I do! I have my suit—”

“Fat lot of good that would have done if that jumper hauled you off the ledge.” She was getting more agitated. No one was eating anymore. “You’re the only child in this family with a death wish. I don’t know if it’s more to punish me, or yourself.” She choked on the last few words. “Excuse me.” She stood and hurried to the kitchen.

Her words echoed in the silence. Becca looked at Spike, who had an odd kind of grin on his face. Dad’s eyebrows were practically touching his nose, but he didn’t apologize for Mom. He didn’t defend her, either, which was probably the best position for him to take.

I knew she wanted me to follow her. After all this time, I didn’t understand how she could keep throwing this in my face. She didn’t always do it, only when something happened with HQ that was dangerous. Usually I endured it. But knowing that someone was trying to crush us, and feeling ambivalent about how to personally handle that, turned Mom’s histrionics into unneeded pressure.

“I’ll be right back.” I tossed my napkin on the table, rose, and stalked to the kitchen. Mom stood at the counter, her back to me, her head down. She straightened a little when she heard the door swing, and sniffed with a hand to her mouth.

“Cut it out, Mom. You’re not that good an actress.”

She spun, her mouth open, her eyes wide. “Wha-at?”

“You’re putting it on to try to make me feel guilty. It won’t work. Sit.” I pointed to the stools around the island, and she sat. I took a seat opposite her, where she couldn’t touch me and had to work harder to avoid meeting my gaze.

“I didn’t attempt suicide, Mother, to hurt you.”

She jerked. She’d always done a verbal dance around the incident, like saying it straight out made it worse.

“And I don’t have a death wish. I work for HQ for the same reasons Spike wants to join the Army. You have no problem with him. So what’s your problem with me?”

“Spike never . . . he doesn’t want . . . he . . .” She kind of moaned, and this time real tears welled in her eyes.

“Are you transferring your fears for him onto me?” That seemed the height of unfairness. She shook her head, but I could see her fear. That meant it wasn’t for me.

“Mom.” I stretched my arms across the butcher block, not really reaching for her, but to support the weight I couldn’t seem to carry. “I don’t know how to convince you.”

“Daley, you tried to stab yourself in the chest!”

“I was ten! I didn’t understand what I had, that I was unique. I thought everyone felt like me, and that I was the only one who couldn’t handle it. We had seven people in this house who bombarded me with their emotions every single day. It
hurt
.”

“And you still blame me for that! So you make me watch you on the news, risking your life, and when I haven’t heard from you I watch not knowing if I’m about to see you die!” She slid off her stool and stood, shaking. “I didn’t know! And I don’t understand why you can’t forgive me.” She broke down into sobs. The weight on me didn’t disappear, but settled over a wider area, making it easier to carry.

“Oh, Mom.” I crossed the kitchen and put my arms around her. “I’m not punishing you. I don’t blame you. I didn’t blame you then.” I sighed. “I can’t fix this for you. You have to forgive yourself.”

She just kept crying, and I kept holding her. Eventually, she subsided with a sigh and hugged me harder.

“Thank you, sweetie.”

“I’m not sure what you’re thanking me for.”

Her mouth trembled as she tried to smile. She patted my shoulders. “You just . . . said the right thing, that’s all.” With another pat, she left the room.

I stood for a minute, battling the memories she’d dredged up. It had been sixteen years, and she’d never admitted to the guilt she’d just revealed, however indirectly. If I’d known, maybe I could have helped absolve her sooner.

My ringing phone made me jump. I didn’t mind the excuse to delay going back into the dining room, so I answered it without looking.

“How bad is it?”

“Adam.” I closed my eyes. He sounded exhausted, his voice tight with pain, but the sound of it made every muscle in my body relax. “How do you always know?”

He chuckled. “Because it always happens. I thought it might be worse with the recent events and that you might be needing to vent right about now.”

I leaned against the island and wrapped my free arm around myself. “You thought right. We had a blow-up.” I told him what had happened, hesitating only briefly over the word suicide. I hadn’t told anyone but Summer about it before.

“The truth is,” I said when Adam didn’t sound disgusted or disappointed by my revelation, “she had nothing to do with the cause
or
the healing. I was bombarded, and the crush of both positive and negative emotions overwhelmed me.” I turned and eyed the block of knives on the counter. “It seemed like it was centered in my chest, so I took a butcher knife and tried to carve it out.” I lifted the knife—not the same one, but remarkably similar—from the block. Adam didn’t gasp, but his indrawn breath was audible.

“God, Daley, you poor kid.”

“I didn’t want to die, just end the pain. I was terrible at it, too.” I smiled and watched the light glint off the blade, then shoved it back into the wood. “I hardly even cut the skin, never mind got past the bone.”

“What happened?”

“Best I can tell, the physical pain of the first scratch jarred me so much I put up an instinctive shield. It blocked out everything external and allowed me to focus on my wound.” I pressed the heel of my hand to my breastbone. “I was so shocked and relieved, I saw my own colors for the first time.”

“What did they look like?”

I smiled again. “Brilliant. Vibrant. And chaotic. After that, I could build the block on my own. It was kind of like when you’re trying for months to whistle, and then it suddenly happens, and after that, because you felt it work the first time, you know how to do it every time after that. I practiced constantly until the blocks became default, and I could see what people felt without being touched by it.” I had honed those blocks and analysis over the years, and looking back, I realized I could be proud of what I’d accomplished.

“I never really thought about all that,” Adam said when I stopped talking. “Never bothered to wonder how it had been for you as a kid. You’re amazing, you know that?”

My face heated and I was glad he was on the phone and not here in front of me. “I am not. But thank you. I take it your abilities weren’t so hard to assimilate?”

“Not at all. It was one of those situations that just was. I never knew anything different.”

“Still, you had to overcome that,” I pointed out. “Not a lot of people like you would have the compassion and awareness of others that you have.”

I could hear his smile over the line. “Thank you.”

“No, thank you.” I meant it, in a lot of ways. “I feel a lot better now.”

“I’d better let you get back to your family, then.”

I realized the dining room was still silent. Shit. They were waiting for me, probably heard my fight with Mom, and maybe even my phone call. “Yeah, I’d better go.” But I didn’t want to disconnect from Adam. “Are you doing okay? You still sound worn out.” I didn’t expect him to be honest. He tried just as hard to keep from burdening any of us as he did bearing the burden of responsibility.

“I’m fine. Actually took a pain pill an hour ago.”

“Liar.”

“Hey!”

“If you had, you’d be sleeping right now.”

“I’m not far from it.”

An image of Adam stretched out beneath satin sheets flashed through my head, and a new kind of heat reddened my skin. “Goodnight, Adam.”

“Night, Daley. See you tomorrow.”

I hung up and took a deep breath. The images returned, this time slow and languorous, unreeling behind my eyelids. He’d be tender and loving, focused on my pleasure, but what really made me catch my breath was the idea of making him lose control. Adam
never
lost control. If I could be the cause of it? Putting all my attention on him, forcing him to let go and fly? My pulse went out of control just considering it.

I shivered and shoved that all down deep before pushing slowly through the door to find everyone watching me. Mom wasn’t in the room. To a person, they were blank. Not a stray emotion to be read, which meant they were fully focused on me.

Great.

“Sorry I took so long. That was Adam.” I sat again and sipped from my water glass. “He—”

“We didn’t mean it!” Becca blurted. “I’m so sorry, Daley. I never knew it was all our fault.”

Steven rubbed her back reassuringly. “She knows we didn’t mean it, Beck. But I’m sorry, too. I didn’t know how hard it was.”

“You guys were kids! Still are kids, actually.” I managed a grin. “I never blamed you, either. Come on, Mom’s finally getting off her guilt train. Don’t you guys start boarding it!”

“I remember,” Sarah murmured. “The rest of you probably don’t remember everything. But I remember how frightened Mom was, and the blood all over Dad’s shirt. You were in the hospital for days.”

“Not for the knife wound,” I explained. “That needed stitching, but it was pretty superficial. They put me in the psych ward.”

“Was it horrible?” Becca’s eyes were as wide as E.T.’s.

“No. I was lucky. The juvenile psychiatrist had worked with super-kids before, though he didn’t tell me about them. He knew how to help me. I saw him for a few weeks afterward, but it was like going to the gym. I didn’t have emotional issues to work through, but had to practice shields and control.”

“That’s probably why you’re so good at working with teenagers now,” Dad said.

“No, I’m good at working with teenagers—and kids and adults—because I don’t have to guess at what they’re feeling.” Except my family. And my boyfriend, when I had one. But that wasn’t really the point I was trying to make.

“Okay, yes. But you could do only that. It would still be helping people, and you’d be safe.”

I bit the inside of my cheek so I didn’t yell at them. Suddenly, everything became clear. They were selfish to want me to restrict the use of my gifts, even if it was because they thought I’d be safer. And it would be selfish of
me
to withhold them from where I could do the most good. Finding those people in the rubble had saved huge amounts of time and saved lives. And I had potential for more. Calming the guy in the restaurant might have saved those lives, too, or at least that relationship. And if not, if it had only saved the hostess further embarrassment, it was worth it.

I didn’t have to voice the argument for it to have an effect. Not on my father, but on myself. The entire time I’d been with HQ a tiny voice inside told me I was the mascot, only a very small part of the team. They didn’t need me.

Now I could see that that wasn’t true. I couldn’t say the voice wouldn’t rise again, but it fell silent for now. I was more confident, stronger. And, in turn, more able to face my mother’s guilt and my family’s regret.

Dad dragged Mom out of the bedroom, and we talked for an hour. Spike stayed, but was the most silent. I figured the others, if they even noticed, would attribute it to his being too young to remember anything. I knew the truth, though, and thought maybe he was rethinking his decision to keep his ability hidden. I was surprised he’d been able to so long. Jeff was known to fight with his fists. Becca and Steven had the scars to prove it. But maybe being the baby had spared Spike that.

I got a text message from Kirby around nine-thirty.

Fnd soe. Cm whn u can, or call. B @ HQ 2 mdnt.

I hated her text shorthand, but I figured out that she’d found something, I assumed about CASE, and she wanted me to come to HQ or call her. She’d be there late.

“I need to go.” I made the rounds with hugs and kisses and apologies and thanks. Sarah reminded me about the family picnic in three weeks, and I grimaced. “Just as long as it won’t be like this. I don’t want to do heart-to-hearts with all thirteen cousins.”

Dad stood at the door, keys in hand.

“Just take me to the Metro,” I told him. “It’s late, it’s Friday night, the drunks and crazies will be out.”

He humphed. “Good reason
not
to leave you at the train.”

“What do you think I do all the time? It will be fine. I have mace.”

“You don’t live close enough to the station.” He held the car door for me. I waited until he went around and got in before continuing the argument.

“I’m going to HQ. That’s half a block from the Metro. I’ll be fine. I have a kubaton, too.”

“Okay, okay.” He started the car. “The Metro.”

I called Kirby from the train, before it went underground, to let her know I was on my way. She sounded very excited but refused to tell me why. I hoped it was big enough to form a plan of action around.