Auracle. Part 20

"What is with him?" Jason asks as he watches Rei suspiciously over his shoulder.

"He thinks I'm his little sister," Taylor sighs.

"But you're not, right?" Jason is confused.

Even Taylor smirks. "No, Jason. I'm not."

As soon as they're out of sight, I materialize just long enough to let Rei know I'll follow her. Three people do a double take in Rei's direction.

Jason takes her to the nearest McDonald's, which is seven miles away. They sit next to each other in a booth, and he practically inhales a large order of everything while Taylor picks at his fries and sips a small diet soda. He does nothing to discourage her foot from roaming up and down his leg.

He seems to be forgetting how terrifying I truly am.

Thanks to a large root beer, nature calls. "I'll be right back," he says, and he leans in and gives her a sloppy, double cheesy kiss right on the lips. Ack!

I'm waiting for him when he comes through the door of the men's room, his hand on his fly, ready for action. I swear all I did was smile at him, and d.a.m.n! I wish I had a camera! The look on his face when he sees me is priceless, and then I crack up laughing because now Seth and Jason have something in common! Wetness blooms around the front of his pants.

He doesn't even let her know he's leaving; he just bolts out the side door. After about five minutes, Taylor asks one of the staff to check the men's room. When she realizes his car is missing from the parking lot, her face turns a shade of magenta I didn't realize I was capable of.

She dials her cell phone fast and her words fly like bullets. "Cori? It's Anna. Can you pick me up? Jason Trent is the biggest..."

For once, I agree with Taylor Gleason completely.

CHAPTER 30.

Rei is stressed out. In addition to everything that's going on, he's got a research paper due tomorrow. There are books spread out all over his bed, but when I materialize in his room, I find him pacing back and forth instead of reading.

As soon as he sees me, he practically pounces. "Are you okay? Where are they? I've been kicking myself for not following them!"

She's fine. He took her to McDonald's. I surprised him in the men's room and I scared him so bad, he wet his pants. He left without her and Cori had to pick her up.

Rei's shoulders relax. "Okay. Well that's one good thing that happened today."

It's Wednesday. Aren't you supposed to be at your aikido cla.s.s?

"Yeah, but I have to get this paper in by tomorrow since I'll be in court on Friday. Want to help me?"

Sure.

"Will you search history of the U.S. election process and print out a few that look good?"

While they're printing, I give him the highlights of Taylor's deposition, and Rei looks up from reading and nods from time to time. I conveniently leave out the part when I materialized in front of the district attorney. He's stressed enough as it is.

His headache is back. As soon as I see him knead the center of his forehead with his thumb while he reads the printouts, I reach out and let whatever energy I have transfer from my fingertips to his temples.

He smiles without taking his eyes off the paper he's reading. "Do you know what you're doing?"

I'm trying to help you get rid of your headache.

"You did. It's gone." He looks up at me and his smile is sweet, but weary. "It went away as soon as you touched me. You did it a few other times before today, but I wasn't sure if you were doing it on purpose." He holds his hand up toward me, palm out like he wants to high-five me and I match my hand to his, each of my fingers mirroring his. He considers our hands. "You feel like you're purring. Do I feel like that to you?"

I nod.

"You know, my mom had to take cla.s.ses to learn how to do Reiki. How did you figure this out?"

I shrug.

"I think my mom should let you work on some of her clients."

I stretch one hand out to reach the keyboard from the bed. Your mom won't even let me teach a kids' yoga cla.s.s.

"Hey..." Rei looks from me to the keyboard, then back to me. "I didn't know you could reach that far. Is that something new you can do?"

In all the excitement yesterday, I forgot to show Rei my new trick. I nod.

"Cool. And she didn't let you teach the kids' cla.s.s because she's obsessive about yoga fundamentals and she knew you'd focus on fun stuff. But this is different. Trust me, you can get rid of a headache a lot faster than my mom does," he admits.

I raise my eyebrows, but this confession pleases me more than he could ever know.

"It's true," he insists. "I know I tease you about being magical, mystical, Auracle girl, but so much of this metaphysical stuff just comes naturally to you, Anna. It's like a gift."

I wish I had a camera, because Rei has this look of tender admiration on his face, and I want to remember it forever. I look at our hands, flesh and spirit, still touching. I don't want to disappoint him, but I think he should know the truth.

I don't know if I'll be able to do any of this when I get my body back.

I don't even know if I'll get my body back.

I don't type that, but Rei must know what I'm thinking. "We'll get her out of you," he promises. "Whatever it takes, we will get her out of you, Anna. And when you're back where you belong, I'm going to give my mother one h.e.l.l of a headache so you can show her what you've got."

I have to laugh at that. Rei has already given Yumi more headaches this week than he has in his entire life. And as much as I would like to hang out and listen to Rei say nice things about me, he still has to finish this stupid project, so I offer to help. Two hours later and I'm still confused about why the electoral vote trumps the popular vote and what the founding fathers were drinking when they came up with the idea for the Electoral College. Finally, I make an excuse that I need to check on Taylor. Considering I have a project due in history that's similar to Rei's, maybe I'll get lucky and find Taylor doing something useful, like my homework.

Things are quiet at my house. My mom is out for a real estate banquet tonight, and my father slumps in his chair, the blue glow from the television reflecting an eerie green off the whites of his eyes. He raises the gla.s.s to his mouth and drinks, swallows, scratches places best left unmentioned, and returns the gla.s.s to the watermark etched onto the cheap wooden table over the course of hundreds of days and nights just like this one.

My bedroom is no longer familiar. Everything on my bureau is gone, replaced with Taylor's stuff. The big yellow Pikachu pillow Rei gave me for my tenth birthday is nowhere to be found, and there's a new comforter on my bed that's a sorry shade of lavender. She looks so at home sitting on my bed, reading an article from a fashion magazine, an open bag of chips and a nearly empty bottle of vodka beside her.

That is not helping me in my quest to avoid becoming an alcoholic. I hover in the corner, invisible, and watch her flip pages languidly and suck down vodka. When she drains the last mouthful, the f-word flies out of her mouth along with a huff of annoyance.

She contemplates the door for a while before she reluctantly stands. The selection of clothes in my closet is alien to me, but she immediately reaches for a short, silky leopard print robe. She slides her arms into the sleeves, ties the belt loosely around her waist, and flips her hair out of the collar before she opens the bedroom door and slithers out toward the kitchen.

My father acknowledges nothing but his gla.s.s and the television. Taylor steals into the kitchen, watching him suspiciously as she tiptoes past. Under the kitchen sink, there are cleaning supplies and extra bottles of my father's liquor, courtesy of Mom, the Enabler. She decided years ago that life was much easier in the Rogan home if there were always a few extra bottles of "daddy's juice," so she buys it by the case. Taylor opens the cabinet below the sink quietly, but gla.s.s clinks against gla.s.s as she lifts out a bottle of whiskey.

There is nothing in this world my father is responsible for, except those bottles. I've heard a mother will wake up instantly from a deep sleep at the sound of her baby's whimper, so maybe my father does have some paternal instinct after all, just not where I'm concerned. He snaps to attention and turns slowly toward Taylor, but there is no place to hide in my tiny house.

I watch her shoulders droop as she carefully closes the cabinet door and hides the bottle behind her. Now my father struggles to his feet, holding the arm of the recliner for support as he squints into the kitchen.

"Wha's tha' in your han'?" Under the fluorescent kitchen light, his skin is the color of an overripe banana and his nose looks like a strawberry. All the blond in his hair has faded and thinned, so it looks like a fine layer of greasy mold covering his head.

He staggers toward Taylor, scrutinizing her. When was the last time he really looked at me? When I was born? When I was a toddler? Just before he knocked me into the counter? He's all but ignored me for so long, and now that I finally have his attention, it breaks my heart that it's Taylor he sees.

"You can't have tha'." His jaw is slack; his breathing is shallow. "Gimme tha'." He grasps for her arm, his fist closing on air.

Taylor's back and the bottle are flush against the cabinet, as if she could push herself through them and escape. She is surrounded by murky blue. Until now, my father has been nothing more than a pa.s.sive, pathetic object that lives in a chair. I don't think she's ever seen him in a standing position. There's a scream building somewhere in that open mouth of hers.

Run! I silently will her. RUN! I know from experience he won't chase her; he can't chase her, but she just stands there, paralyzed.

"I sh'aid, gimme tha'!" My father makes one more lunge toward the arm holding the bottle, but he stumbles against the counter and falls onto his knees. He grabs a handful of her slippery robe to pull himself up.

The bottle comes up much too fast, and my father's reflexes are much too slow. Along with a shrill scream, there come the sounds of smashing gla.s.s, a m.u.f.fled yelp, and finally, a dull thud as my father hits the floor. The acrid smell of alcohol fills the room, and blood spreads quickly from my father's head into the pool of amber liquid in long, red ribbons. Taylor and I both shoot out of the kitchen like cannonb.a.l.l.s.

I'm faster.

Rei is still working on his paper when I slam against the chair and type frantically on the keyboard.

Call 911: Taylor broke a bottle over my father's head and he's bleeding badly.

Rei swears softly, grabs the phone, and starts pressing b.u.t.tons.

Downstairs, the doorbell rings incessantly, until Robert emerges from the master bedroom to answer it. Taylor is crying and babbling something that Robert can't make any sense of. Behind her, a trail of red smears lead up the walkway and onto the porch. As soon as she hears my voice, Yumi hurries out of their bedroom, still pulling on her bathrobe.

"Anna? What happened?" She wraps one arm around Taylor, pries the broken bottle neck out of her hand, and hands it to Robert with a knowing look.

Rei is up and out of his bedroom door. The commotion woke Saya, and Rei corrals her with one arm as she wanders out of her bedroom, rubbing her eyes with her fists. He whispers something to her and lifts her up, and she clings to him like a tired little monkey as he carries her back to her room, rubbing her back.

Yumi steers Taylor over to the couch. "Anna, honey, your foot is bleeding. Let me take a look at it. Robert, get me some paper towels and the first aid kit, please."

I swoop back to my house to find my father still crumpled on the floor, moaning. It's hard to tell just how much blood he's lost since it's mixed with the whiskey, but blood still seems to be oozing from a deep ragged gash down his forehead, through his eyebrow and dangerously close to his left eye.

A siren wails in the distance, then pulses of blinding red and white light burst through the living room window. The door was left wide open in Taylor's hasty departure, and warm night air and mosquitoes meander through it. Rei appears at the door like a shadow as the paramedics hoist my father onto the stretcher. He follows them out and watches them load the stretcher into the ambulance, then talks to one of the paramedics briefly before they slam the doors shut and pull out of the driveway. The lights and siren slash through darkness and then it's silent once again.

Once they're gone, I follow Rei back into the house. Everything around us feels sticky and thick, and it has nothing to do with the humid night air. It's my father and Taylor, all the anger and drama of tonight, so much negativity has sucked away most of the existing light and left only this dark density. I'm not strong enough to reach through this heaviness to pull the energy I need to materialize, and Rei can't feel me beside him, even when I touch his hand. He's busy surveying the mess in the kitchen-broken gla.s.s, blood, and booze. I wish I could tell him to go home and leave the mess, but he wouldn't listen anyway. He picks up the bigger pieces of gla.s.s carefully, drops them into the trash can by the back door, and uses almost an entire roll of paper towels to blot up the liquid mess. In the garage, he finds a bucket. He mops quickly and methodically, leaving behind the telltale chlorine fumes that tell you he is eliminating something far too foul for regular floor cleaner to handle. He locks the door as he leaves.

At Rei's house, Taylor wears a h.e.l.lo Kitty Band-Aid on the bottom of her foot, and a sliver of gla.s.s sits on a b.l.o.o.d.y paper towel on the side table. She has curled herself into a ball in the corner of the couch, and she's still crying softly. Robert went back to bed, but Yumi is on the couch beside her, trying unsuccessfully to find out what happened. Rei comes through the door hesitantly and turns off the light over the kitchen table before he turns the chair halfway around and straddles it, resting his arms on the back of the chair, facing the couch.

"Is Steve okay?" Yumi asks at once.

"I don't know," Rei says truthfully. "It looks like he lost a lot of blood. They're taking him to Burlington Memorial."

"She won't tell me a thing." Yumi pats Taylor's shoulder and stands up. "Anna, honey, Rei's here now. Why don't you tell him what happened while I call your mother."

Taylor only sniffs and curls up tighter.

As soon as Yumi is out of earshot, Rei sits next to Taylor on the couch. "Are you okay?"

"What do you care?" she mumbles.

"I care." He lowers his voice. "Just because I don't want you to unb.u.t.ton my pants doesn't mean I don't care."

"You just want her back."

"It's her body; of course I want her to get it back. But that doesn't mean I don't care what happens to you."

Taylor peeks up with tear-drenched eyes. "If I leave here, I'll be dead, and so will she. I've already told you, I don't know how to get out."

"Well, maybe I can help you."

"How can you possibly help me?"

"I don't know yet, but I can figure something out if you're willing to try."

She takes a deep, shaky breath. "I have another idea."

"What's that?"

"I stay where I am, and you give me another chance."

"What kind of chance?" Rei asks suspiciously.

"A chance to ... I don't know, try again." She uncurls herself a little and turns toward Rei, and the blues surrounding her lighten. "You said Seth and I had nothing in common, but you and I do, Rei. We both know how it feels when parents push, when all they care about is grades and what looks good on our college applications. They don't care what we have to give up." She wipes a fresh tear away on the sleeve of her robe. "I know your mom rides you hard, Rei. Kids hear her talking about you at the store. Everyone knows what colleges you're applying to and what you plan to major in."

Well, no, not everyone. Rei still hasn't told me where he wants to go to college. I'm not sure he knows himself.

"That coffin was just a formality." Taylor leans closer to him. "My parents stuck me in a box a long time ago. I was expected to get into Yale, graduate with honors, and go to law school. My father used to hint around that I could be a Supreme Court justice, if I wanted to. But not if I had a baby." She wipes her eyes with the heels of her hands. "As if I actually wanted to be on the Supreme Court."

"I'm sorry," Rei says.

"I'm sorry, too." Her voice drops to a whisper. "I just want someone to ... understand me, you know?"

Rei nods dutifully. He looks like he just wants this night to be over.

"If you gave me another chance, I could prove to you I'm not this terrible person you think I am. I wouldn't rush you this time." Rei shifts away from her slightly. "And I wouldn't testify against Seth," she adds quickly.

"So what are you saying?" he asks. "Seth will go free, but Anna's stuck where she is."

"Rei, I'm scared," she whispers. "That light people claim to see when they die? There was no light. Not for me." Two more tears drop. "If I leave here, I don't know where I'll end up. Please?" She laces her fingers through his, almost shyly, and looks up into his eyes. "At least think about it."

Rei looks down at their hands linked together.

"Ahem." Both Rei and Taylor jump a little, and even I didn't hear Yumi's quiet feet walk down the hall. "Rei, can I talk to you?"

"Sure," Rei disengages his hand from Taylor's and follows Yumi down the hall into the office. She closes the door quietly.