Excerpt
From the First in Jessica's Second Trilogy

       One Small Thing

 

Being with Him
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BEING WITH HIM
Published in February 2008, Kensington Books.

 

They are here among us…

Far from home, gifted with special abilities, hunted for their powers. And they are desperate to find their other, the one who completes them…before it’s too late…


SOMETIMES, TIME REALLY DOES STAND STILL

Mila Adams has always known she was different. It’s not just that she’s a Mission District bohemian artist in rarefied San Francisco society. No, it’s that for as long as she can remember, she has had the ability to shift time, and who would believe that? Certainly not the obnoxious blind dates her mother keeps foisting off on her. Mila can’t help feeling there’s someone out there for her, a soul mate who might understand her unique ability. And when she looks into the dark eyes of financial whiz Garrick McClellan, time feels as if it has opened up on its own—and this time, Mila has nothing to do with it.

Any man would lust after a beauty like Mila, but the moment Garrick touches her—feels her shifting time just as he can—he recognizes her as his partner in power. Their connection is immediate, passionate, raw, and beyond anything either has ever experienced. But who are they? What is this gift that joins them so intensely? Are there others like them? And why do they feel that time is running out?

One Small Thing


    
 In her dream, she isn’t alone.  Not ever.  Not in all the times she’s conjured it up from her subconscious.  Always in the darkness, there are the other children, so many of them, their voices echoing in the small strange place that holds them. 

     Two of the children are somehow related to her, belong to her, are connected to her by blood or heart or time.  She looks at them—turning her left and then right--but even in the dream, she blinks, unable to see them clearly, as if her eyes are filled with glue, cloudy and sticky.  Are the children blond like her?  Do they have dark eyes?  Do they have long thin limbs?  Do they always wonder who they really are?

     She thinks she can see one of them—a boy—looking at her, saying something, his voice and face so serious and kind.  She knows that she trusts him completely, but she can never hear his words, his voice a young, soft warble in the darkness.  And she isn’t really sure that she’s hearing his voice as much as feeling it inside her head, her body.  She knows he is talking with her, but is his mouth moving?  Is hers when she tries to reply?

     This dream confuses her.  She doesn’t know where they are or who they are or where they are going.  She knows they are moving because she feels the vibrations from some large engine, but it as if she is almost anesthetized, amnesiatic, drugged.  She can’t figure out anything.  How old is he?  How old is she?  Of course in the waking world, she isn’t a child, but in her dream, she forever is, trapped in time and place.  Maybe she is about two or three.  Maybe one.  Maybe four.  She’s not sure exactly, but as she sits with the other children, she looks down at her body and sees little girl legs, little girl arms, and strange little girl clothes, skirt and top a light shade of orange.  But no matter the clothes or her size, she knows this is her body, her life, her experience, even though she is now twenty-eight, grown, a single woman with no siblings, an only child.  Always the only child.

     But in the dream, she doesn’t know where she is because it is dark and closed in and crowded.  She is sitting, her back against something hard.  This dark is a place she only sees in the dream.  But it is not scary.  It is a place where she is surrounded by the children and by adults, who talk in soft whispers.  Everyone in the dark place is like her, can do the strange things she does.  Can do the things she has to hide in her real life  And even though there might be something outside the dark place that is bad and wrong—and she thinks there is—they are all protected.  And as they sit and wait and watch, they are traveling, going somewhere she thinks will be better.

     For an instant in the dream, she can almost see the bad people and the bad things they do.  She lifts her small hands to her eyes, knowing she doesn’t want to see what she can remember, but the thin, wispy, bad bodies of the people slip into her thoughts.  There are horrible, red, wet things that happen because of the bad people.  This is why she and the other children and the adults are in the dark place, running away.  The shape and sound of the thing the bad people do is lonely and black and hollow and empty, and the adults are trying to keep this from the children.  But all the children know.  All the children understand.  All the children try to forget.

     The boy next to her talks.  The bodies of the other child presses close.  The three of them are holding hands, shoulders together, small legs touching. The adults that are their adults aren’t there, but for now, in this dream, that’s okay because at least the three of them are together.  They are still together.  

     The other children around them hold hands, too, talk in soft sad tones.  Some cry, and others comfort them.  Now and then, there is laughter. Sometimes, someone giggles. They love each other.  They all love each other. 

     And somehow in the dream she knows this:  there is another child in the dark place who is hers.  Not in the same way of the two next to her, but in a way that is different, matched.  She looks into the dark place, but she can’t see him, can’t see anything really.  She knows he’s here, though.  She can almost hear him think, can almost feel his mind in hers.  And she feels his energy, the opposite of hers.  Her magic in the mirror, backward.

     As the place seems to shift, dip, move, adults come and lean over them, smile, wipe the children’s eyes and their own, hug them over and over again.  The dark place rumbles, and the dream goes on and on in a gummy, sad sameness until it begins to break apart, turn gray and grainy, slowly slides out of view.

     No, she cries out.  Don’t leave me here.  Don’t leave me again! Please come back.  Please tell me how to find you!  I’m lost now.  I don’t know where to go.

     But the dream pulls away like a rolled up carpet, and she turns on her side, falling into a dreamless sleep.

 
ONE

     Garrick McClellan stood at the end of the enormous museum gallery, holding a double scotch and wishing that he were at home.  Or at work.  Or at a bar.  Or anywhere but this party.  The room smelled like boiled shrimp, bad champagne, and acrylic paint, and he had been stuck listening to the perpetually giddy Meredith Stone talk about Aruba for going on fifteen minutes.  Aruba this, Aruba that.  Now and then as she spoke, she put one slim tanned hand on his arm, and the very act made Garrick want to growl.

     Get the hell off me, he thought, but, of course, Meredith didn’t hear his thoughts.  No one did, even though he heard theirs loud and clear, 24/7, turning them off just to save his sanity.  And he knew, from experience, how important sanity was, how useful it was when trying to deal with others.

     “The Mirabelle simply the best resort there,” Meredith said, smiling at Garrick as she did, her teeth so bleached he wondered if she’d mind if he put on his sunglasses to block the almost blue glare. 

     “We must go then,” said a woman to Meredith’s right, a San Francisco socialite Garrick had been introduced to many times but whose name he always forgot.  “The sun would do wonders for me this time of year.”

     “There’s no where else this season,” Meredith said, but her thoughts were not on Mirabelle, the warm aqua colored water, the scuba diving, or the frothy pina coladas served up at the beach front bar.  No, not a thought there.  Garrick could hear Meredith’s sex channel loud and clear.  Keeping her eyes averted, she was thinking about what she perceived as Garrick’s enormous bulge in his tuxedo trousers.

     God, she thought, talking about in-room Jacuzzis at the same time.  Get me a room alone with him. At Mirabelle or the Holiday Inn Express on Harrison.  I don’t care.

     Garrick pushed back his coat, smiling, wanting her to get an extra glimpse of his solid, strong, 6’2” frame, but then, with a sigh, he let the jacket fall forward.  It wasn’t fair to take advantage.  He’d made a pact with himself, but he smiled, knowing that it wasn’t just Meredith who had admired him in that way.  But he shouldn’t be around her or any woman.  Nothing good ever came of it.   Nor would it ever.

     “Maybe you should go back to Aruba soon,” Garrick said, moving away from Meredith and her greedy hands.  He winked, giving everyone, including Meredith, the notion that he was kidding. “If you took another trip next week, I know it would do me wonders.  Ladies.  Gentlemen.”

     He bowed slightly, pulled away from the group and strode off.  If it wasn’t for the donation his company made to the museum’s fund, he wouldn’t be here at all.  But he was the one person the museum requested.  Garrick McClellan, top producer for the largest finance firm in the city, Calder Wilken Brodden, to present the five million dollar check to purchase additional future collections.  He could see the headline in the Datebook section of the San Francisco Chronicle now.  And as if to corroborate, he heard a sharp, “Mr. McClellan.”

     Turning, he faced a man with a camera and then there was a click and a flash. 

     “Great.  Thanks.  Love the show,” the photographer said, striding away to find another society victim.

     Garrick put his drink glass down on a small table and pushed his blonde hair back from his forehead.  He leaned against a wall and shook his head.  Some show.  Modern art.  This stuff looked like crap.  Stripes and boxes and what looked like spills.  Blobs of color.  One painting was just blue.  A blue box.  Another piece was a shovel hung from the ceiling and a bucket.  Both painted white.  Garrick almost laughed when he listened to some woman say “It’s the negative space that makes this piece so arresting.”

     Arresting, Garrick thought.  Someone should arrest the artist.  Get the forty thousand dollars back they paid out, too.

     He picked up his glass and downed the last of his scotch.  He had to make nice, as he always did.  He’d learned long ago that no one wanted someone different around to make a scene, to say something weird, to act “inappropriately.”  Who said what was true, who acted crazy, unless, of course, it meant that someone was an artist hanging shovels and painting buckets.  But there wasn’t space, negative or otherwise, for a person who didn’t fit in. 

     “Garrick, love, come see the new collection with me,” Meredith said, back at his side, her hand like a snake’s head on his arm.  She smiled up at him, and Garrick realized there wasn’t anything really wrong with Meredith except for her preoccupation with money and travel and upward mobility.  That and marrying a man she perceived could help her maintain all the above.  She was pretty in a rich skinny tanning booth way, her hair long and dark, her eyes while slightly flat in affect, wide and blue and pretty.  “It was just unveiled last week.”

     Garrick sighed, started to walk with Meredith, when his phone vibrated in his coat pocket.

     “I’ll catch up with you,” he said, and she winked at him this time, walking away slowly enough so that he could notice the flip of her skirt, the roundness of her ass, the intensely worked out curve of her calves. 

     Maybe, he thought as he took out his phone and clicked it on, she wouldn’t be so bad for a night or two.  And with his power, he could make the night last a long time.  He and Meredith could have sex over and over for what would seem like days.  Now that would be better than a vacation in Aruba.  Much, much better.

     He looked down at the number flashing on his phone and almost put it back in his pocket.  It was his Aunt Linda calling for about the eighth time that day, the first seven calls he’d let slide into voice mail, never listening to any of them.  What was worse was that he’d blown her off two weeks ago, calling at the last minute to avoid a Sunday brunch at her house, where he knew there would be at least one single woman.

     But maybe talking to his aunt would keep him away from Meredith Stone, her round ass, and the emptiness that would follow any night with Meredith or any woman.

     “Linda,” Garrick said, turning to look at a painting composed of swirls and bell shapes and what looked like little fat angels.  “How are you?”

     “Don’t Linda me.  And where’s the ‘Aunt’ part anyway?”

    “Hi, Aunt Linda,” Garrick said, feeling slightly silly at 28 using the appellation.

     “Oh, stop it and listen to me.  I have been calling you all day!” she said, annoyed her voice high pitched and slightly nervous sounding.  “You never answer when I call.  You watch it go into voice mail, don’t you?  And then you don’t listen.  I never knew you were such a bad nephew.”

     Garrick put a finger in his glass and swirled the ice.  “I’ve been busy.  And now I’m at SF MOMA at a charity event.”

     “Then this is perfect,” she said.  “What a coincidence.  How amazing!”

     He rolled his eyes, looking around him for a waiter who could get him a refill.  Or a bottle.  Something to ease the pain of having to talk with his Linda.  He could see a mile off where this conversation was headed.

     “What’s perfect?  What’s amazing?”

     “Her paintings are there.  Right now!”

     A waiter passed by, and Garrick waved him down with his free hand, taking a glass of red wine.  Maybe he’d have a headache tomorrow morning from mixing drinks, but it would be better than the pain in the head he’d have now without it.

     “Who is she, Linda? I have no idea what you are talking about.”

     “Mila Adams.  The girl I fixed you up with.  She’s an artist, and her work is showing right now in a special collection of local artists.”

     From across the large room, Meredith waved to him, turning slowly so he could get a perfect look at her form which was indeed pretty dammed perfect.  Garrick took a bit sip of wine, listening to Linda go on.

     “And it’s just so amazing that you are in the same building with her paintings as we speak.”

     “Linda, it’s not that amazing.  I’m here once a week for something.”

     “You are so cynical.  I don’t know why you are that way, Garrick.”

     Garrick breathed in, turning around to look at another painting hanging behind him, this one orange and pink with a black lined border, the horizon on it flat and almost tasting of sorbet.

     He sighed.  His parents had kept his childhood problems between them and the doctors, and Linda had never heard the stories about hospitals and tests and procedures.  She hadn’t a clue what made him the way he was, so Garrick couldn’t be mad at her.  He couldn’t hang up on her for not understanding, for kidding him when she really didn’t know that his very life had made him this way.  The way he was made him this way.  What he could do made him this way.  And he couldn’t tell anyone ever again.  He would never trust another person with his story.  He’d learned that, at least.

     “So who are we talking about again?” Garrick took another sip.

     “I told you.  Mila Adams.”

     Garrick almost spit up his drink, wiping his chin and putting his glass down.  “You mean of the Paul Adams family?  Judge Adams?  I told you, Linda.  No more society girls.  No more trust fund babies.  No more debutantes.”

     “But I promise!  She’s not a debutante.  Pretty, of course.  But no debutants.  Well, okay, she was a debutant.  But she’s not the white glove kind of girl.  Certainly not now.  In fact, Mila Adams has really sort of taken a turn, you know.  An artistic turn.  She was in the stock market for a while, but now she takes classes and paints.  She’s not like those girls you’ve complained about to me before.  She’s unique.  She’s an in-div-id-u-al.  Just go look at her artwork.  I did.  It’s really quite, well, unique.”

     Garrick tried to conjure forth Judge Adams’ daughter, but all that came to him was a swath of blonde hair and a shy smile, a downward look, quick steps away from the group.  Not tall but not short, a nice form, long legs.  Maybe a better body than Meredith over there, who was still flitting and turning so he could watch her show.

     When had he met Mila Adams?  Or had he?  It was likely he was remembering a photo taken by the same jerk who’d just accosted him.

     “I told you the last time, I don’t want to do another set up.  I can meet plenty of girls on my own,” Garrick said.  And it was true.  He had no problem meeting women.  He just didn’t want to stay with them.  He didn’t want to let them see anything that would mark him as different.  As weird.  As not right.  All of his relationships ended before he even thought of them as relationships, just before who he was became noticeable.

     “None of them can stop smiling,” Garrick went on.  “And they wear dresses that aren’t really dresses but carefully placed scarves.  Not that I don’t like a good flesh exposure now and again.  But did they forget about imagination?”

     “I know, I know.  It’s the style, dear.  But I’ve known Mila since she was in grammar

school, and she’s like you somehow.  Really, you two look remarkably alike.  Blond hair and all.  Those dark, mysterious eyes with all their secrets.”

     “I thought you said she was an in-div-id-u-al,” Garrick said, a laugh in his voice.

     “Oh, stop it.  Say you will come.  Say you will have dinner at the Adams’ with me. Tell me you’ll come to dinner next Saturday night.  It will be nice.  I promise!  And if you don’t like her, well, no one will say it’s my fault.  Everyone will say you are too hard to please.”

     Meredith did another turn, sashaying across the marble floor, her dress floating around her knees in a black cloud.  She smiled, and Garrick grew impatient with his aunt.  But Linda was all he had left now that his parents had moved to London, and he had to have something besides work to connect him to life.  Linda was family.  She really was there for him—on holidays that without her prodding and insistence that he come over for a prime rib roast, he would either stare out his condo window all night long with a few drinks or go out partying with his friend Jim, and find himself at four in the morning hung over in some woman’s bed.

     And if he was here at this ridiculous art show for a company who owed him more than he owed it, why wasn’t he willing to do something to please his only relative?  The only person who truly seemed to want his happiness.

     “Fine,” he said, nodding at Meredith and smiling.  He could bail out on the party at the DeYoung Museum he’d already r.s.v.p’d to, claiming an emergency family situation.  And in a way, he wouldn’t be lying.  “Next Saturday.”

     “Oh, this will be so wonderful.  I’ll call Adair and Paul right now.  And go look at Mila’s work.  Right now!  It will be lovely to talk about at dinner.”

     “Goodbye, Linda,” Garrick said, irritable suddenly and hot under his tux collar.  He’d helped out his aunt but now he was going to be saddled with Mila Adams and her princess ways.

     He yanked at his tie and took one last sip of his wine, looking around for the waiter for another and then giving up.  Garrick took the lack of wine as a sign.  He’d go look at the art so he could woo for one night the shy daughter of Judge Paul Adams, the debutante turned stock broker turned artist.  But after looking at all the horrid ugliness of Mila Adams work, he would ignore Meredith’s annoying voice and conversation and take her home and sleep with her, for one or two or three nights, as many as he wanted, knowing that she would only remember one.  Even if it wouldn’t be perfect.  Even if he’d probably never sleep with her again.

     “Never mind this section,” Meredith said, pulling hard on Garrick’s arm.  “It’s just the local artists, my love.  Nothing of consequence.”

     Figures, he thought, looking down the long broad wall of canvases, a couple of sculptures on daises on the floor space.  From just a glance, he could tell there were squiggles and blobs and fat angels everywhere.  He was ready to take Meredith to her place, but he’d promised Linda.

     “Do you think you could find me some wine?” he asked.  “No, make it a scotch.  Could you do that for me, Meredith?”

     Garrick smiled, watched her face change expression, going from fake confidence to hope.

     “Of course.  I’ll be right back,” she said.  Then finding her flirty bearings, she added, “Don’t disappear in an artistic frenzy.”

     “That will never happen,” he said.  “But the company wants me to look at the entire exhibit.”

     Turning so that her hair swirled around her, Meredith disappeared into the crowd.  Garrick took in a breath and began to make his way down the first wall.  And the art was just as he expected.  Not art.  Wires forming large spindly balls, swirls and twirls of strange color combinations, white canvasses probably teaming with negative space, and then—he stopped walking, his exhale stuck on his tongue.

     What was that?  What does it mean? he thought, his body a map of shivers.

     There on the canvas in front of him was the usual mélange of color and shape he’d seen all night in some fashion, but this one was different.  He understood it.  He knew it.  What was that in the middle?  Purple, round, dark, the shape of something Garrick had always known.  He turned back to see if Meredith were coming, but she’d never made it past the first group on her way to the bar.  Sweaty and hot, Garrick moved closer to the painting, which wasn’t a painting as much as it was a creation of paints and fabric.  Purples and blues and a swirl of black in the middle.  He didn’t know how to say it but he’d been there.  He’d been inside this painting, felt all of this color and sensation.

     Home, he thought.  Home.

     Shaking his head, he closed his eyes, unwilling to feel this need, this desire.  To feel anything so strongly again.  He knew he should turn now and walk away.  Go back to his usual routine.  Go to Meredith and take her by the arm and hop into the limo.  Uncork a bottle of Dom. But he couldn’t.  He knew that, too.

     Taking in a large breath, Garrick opened his eyes.  Moving closer to the wall, he looked at the tag, knowing somehow what he would read:  The Ride.  Mila Adams.  2008.  Acrylic, linen, pencil, and cotton.

     He looked up at the painting again, hit again by the vivid colors, the circular motion of the paint that told him about movement.  He thought he could almost hear voices, the sounds of children.  He felt the darkness creep over, the black paint telling him a story he could almost remember.

     Run, the story told him.  Hide.

     Staggering back, Garrick put his hand on his mouth, trying not to call out to something, someone.  For a moment, he couldn’t blink, couldn’t swallow, couldn’t move a muscle.  All he heard was his heart beating against his ribs, blood banging in his ears.

     It was too much.  He couldn’t look at any more.  He wouldn’t feel like this again.  He wouldn’t go back to the agony of his teenaged years, knowing that there was something so different about himself and wanting to share it with his parents.  With a doctor.  With anyone.  No one listened.  No one cared, and he wouldn’t do it again.  Not ever, and without saying goodbye to Meredith, he rushed out of the gallery, the museum, and into the San Francisco night.

     “The least you could have done was say goodbye,” Meredith’s voice was saying into the answering machine.  “I didn’t think you were such an ass.”

     And then there was a click, her voice only a thin echo in the room and then there was silence.

     Garrick sat at his desk, the computer on, the screen bright.  He didn’t have to be with Meredith to read her thoughts this time.  He heard her hurt through the telephone wires, felt her upset, and he wanted to care, but his mind was fixated on Mila Adams and her painting, so purple, so familiar.

     Meredith was right.  He was an ass.

     He clicked on the search engine and typed in Mila’s name.  When 300 entries popped up, he thought to shut the computer down and go to bed, dealing with the hangover he would have in the morning.  He looked at the bottle of scotch he’d opened when he came home, the full glass he’d splashed full still unsipped.

     Mila Adams.  Garrick clicked on the first entry, an old site, something from Smith Barney.  And there was a black and white photo of Mila.

     Our newest junior partner, the blurb said.  Head of corporate stock option sales.  Stanford M.B.A. graduate with three years corporate experience . . .

     But Garrick barely read the blurb, focusing on the photo.  He was glad it wasn’t in color because she seemed far away, slightly grainy, stiff, formal.  She was pretty.  Linda had been right about that.  Long hair, dark eyes, shy natural smile.  If he stared at the photo long enough, he felt that he would understand everything about her.  Or he would understand that he already did.  That was it!  He knew her.  And he knew her in a way he didn’t want to.  From the dark time.  From the dreams and visions.  A face from the days and nights in hospital beds drugged up so he would forget what he’d remembered.  A face . . .

     Garrick sat back, picked up his glass.  The phone rang again, and he threw the full glass at the phone, the scotch a flume of amber, the glass hitting the phone, knocking it off the stand but unable to start Meredith’s now tearful voice.

     “Garrick, I can’t believe you haven’t called back.  I’ve called your house.  I’ve called your cell.  I—I—“ and then she hung up.

     Garrick stood up quickly, looking out at the city lights below him, a fan of yellow and gold, the bay a dark blanket hugging Angel Island.  No matter how successful he became, no matter the women he had, the houses he bought, the trips he took, Garrick would never be able to forget the first time it happened.  The first time he moved time backward.  He relaxed and then suddenly he was back five minutes, an hour, a day, time he had to live through to get to a new, fresh moment.

     How old had he been?  Five?  Six?  He’d run into his parents’ room, probably for the third time that night.  But they only remembered the time that was happening now.

     “It’s just a bad dream,” his mother had said.  “That’s all.  A very bad dream.  You thought you went back in time, but it was just a little nap.  You can’t move time.  No one can.  Hush, now.”

     “No,” Garrick had cried.  “I’ve already seen this.  I’ve already been here tonight.  I’m scared, Momma.  I don’t know what to do.  I thought about not liking to sleep in my room alone and then I was here.  Just like now.  It keeps coming back.”

     His parents turned on the light, watching him sob, looking at each other over his tiny, heaving body.  Finally, he’d fallen asleep, too tired to move time back, unable to think himself into the path because he was unconscious.

     But then in dreams, there was the purple, the twirl, the movement, the cries of children.  The dream that Mila Adams has somehow managed to paint.

     Garrick turned from the window, sitting down again at the computer, his hands on his thighs, his long legs stretched out.

     Mila Adams.  Who was she?  How could she do this to him?  How dare she?  How was she able to knock him out of his world, this ordinary world he’d worked so hard to craft?  Who was she to make him think about those years?  To make him feel it all over again?

     He turned to the computer, looking at her face for a moment before clicking to another site.  This one about art, the photo of the very painting that had been in the gallery tonight.  No! he thought.  No more.

     So he clicked and clicked until the computer was off, gone, her image and the painting swallowed up into air.

     God dammit, he thought.  He’d worked too hard to get here, alone and happy in his high-rise.  He’d gone through his parents’ disbelief, their growing horror at what Garrick insisted he could do, the outrage that he seemed to know their thoughts.  He had known everything they were thinking, from before he could remember.  He just couldn’t tell them.  And all the fighting.  One night his father  threw a coffee cup against the kitchen wall, after one more “blasted rerun” of the same backward time story.  Even his mother seemed to pull away, regarding her boy, her son, with fear.  Maybe with loathing.

     But they had been good, caring parents, wanting to take care of their boy.  As a teenager, Garrick started living backward in the past, coming up to where he’d started, and flipping back into time.  When he was twelve, maybe thirteen, he faced doctors in hospital rooms who took extensive notes when he said, “I can move time backward.  All I have to do is close my eyes, let myself relax and be still, and then it’s some time before.  Sometimes five minutes, sometimes a month.  I can’t figure out how to control it.  I can’t make it stop.  I don’t know if people jump back with me or it’s just me by myself.  I’m scared.”

     The doctors shook their heads, wrote down more notes, sighed and gave sympathetic nods to Garrick’s parents, who sat against the wall on a stiff bench, their arms crossed.

     Finally, when he couldn’t sleep at night, his teeth chattering out of fear that he’d let himself slip back in time again, he found himself in a cold, harshly lit hospital room, nothing but a bed and a chair pushed against a flat white wall, his body laced tight in a straightjacket.  Then there was the last time, the time that made him commit to saying nothing, to being like everyone else, to not saying another word to his parents.  That night, he found himself on a stretcher, being wheeled into a room with machines, electrical machines. 

     Even now, he could still feel the taste of electricity and heat in his mouth, the whiz of energy in his chest, the sad emptiness of his mind.

     A month later, he was in a new school, sitting at the head of the class, listening to a lecture about westward expansion.  After all this time not caring about anything but his dreams and thoughts, he realized that girls liked the way he looked, thought he was “cute,” but he kept his eyes on the teacher.  He didn’t want to notice anyone else’s gaze, needing to talk about history.  He was the one raising his hand, answering his teacher’s questions.  He was the one making the funny comments, his every sentence followed by laughter.

     Sometimes during a lull in the conversation, after a test, just before the bell would ring, he would grip his desk, wanting to blurt out the truth, how he wished to move back time every so often, wanting to do over what he already lived, to fix the mistakes he’d made.

     But Garrick ignored these feelings and impulses, went off to college, partied with his fraternity brothers, made his parents proud of his perfect grades.  Never again did his father raise his voice to Garrick.  There were no more thrown mugs or plates or dishes.  No more hospital stays.  No more machines.  And eventually, when it seemed that Garrick was truly all right, his parents left the city, settling in first Paris and then London, a good place for Garrick to visit but not necessarily stay.  Everyone in their corners, safe until the bell rang for another round.  But Garrick had vowed there would never be another round. 

     It was late, the sky beginning to turn a soft luminous indigo, the sun a thought forming behind Mt. Diablo in the east.  This morning, he would go to work just like any other day.  He would forget about the purple swirl of memory that Mila Adams gave him through her painting.  He would forget about her dark eyes and her shy smile.  He would forget about the past and his power to move time backward.  He would do his job.  He would go out after work with his friend Jim, and maybe after a drink or two, he would call Meredith and apologize for his very rude, evil behavior. 

     As for the Saturday date with the Adams, well, he wouldn’t let his aunt down, not again, but he wouldn’t let some dilettante deb rock his entire world, knock him on the path he so carefully, painstakingly put himself on.  So when he went to the Adams’ house, he would be cool, cold, clear, and barely there at all.  Locked down tight, his thoughts tamped.  He wouldn’t listen for anything but for the sound of dinner ending, the pushing back of chairs, the clearing of silverware.  He would be polite.  He would be cordial.  But he wouldn’t look to Mila for any answers about himself.  He wouldn’t look to her for anything.


Flower

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