I'm in the waiting area next to Eli's hospital room, propping my feet on the corner radiator so I can write on my knees. The nurses chat, around the corner, down the hall and people swish by in scrubs.
I gave my mom the lone chair in Eli's room. It's like a Spartan lazy boy recliner, but it should still help her get a decently restful night sleep next to Eli. He was shaken up, but not hurt. Not much anyway. "What a miracle!" a nurse exclaimed. "Falling that far and barely a bruise." My mom nodded. She was trying to play the relieved parent even as her mind was weighted with another concern.
Me.
We've feared the day I would be caught. I always thought my skills would spray out uncontrollably. Like with the frog.
I've learned to maintain a calm mind, though. Most mornings and evenings, I sit next to Lake Anna with my legs crossed. My palms on my knees, I take in the smell of the water swirling about me. Everything is peaceful there, nothing seems to matter. It's just me and the water and the wind and the dirt. Even on weekend nights, when boats pass and guys holler to me, beer cans dangling from their fingertips, I can smile. Simple jerks, thinking harassing a teenage girl is going to get them any. They can't penetrate my peace.
That is my communion with myself. That is how I keep control of my mind.
Even so, I've been afraid I might accidentally and dramatically move something with my mind in front of a bunch of people and that they would realize what I did, what I can do. I never thought I'd do it on purpose. I never thought I'd say afterward that I would do it all over again.
But what would I do if I lost Eli? He would never run and jump on my bed while I was writing (more than one of my journal entries has a sharp jagged lightning-like burst of ink across the page from these occurrences). He would never have the droplets of water lingering on his eyelashes after a swim in the lake. Like little sparkles until they evaporated. And he would never make my mom a flower out of Legos for her to hold after a breakup.
I have no regrets.
I need to stop, rewind, and start from the beginning.
We were at the county fair. For the first hour or so I was just bummed David wasn't there yet. (He had baseball practice.) Now I wonder if, instead of looking around for David, I should have spent more time just enjoying hanging out with Eli.
No, I'm a good big sister. I cheated for him.
I saw Eli looking at the pirate Lego set lingering above the milk bottle toss. My mom was fixed on a man with a gap in his teeth who had guessed she was eight years younger and twelve pounds thinner than she was. He had stopped trying to convince everyone else to "step right up." His smile was directed at her as the lights from the Ferris wheel passed over his face. She put her hand on her hip and slanted her head in that way. Her hunting posture.
I had to be quick, before she caught on and tried to stop me. "Come on." I nudged Eli.
"Let's get the one with the pirates," he said as we walked over.
"I will." I handed six dollars to the man working the game.
"Such confidence! You really think you'll be able to knock over ten bottles with just one ball?" He looked to Eli, his eyes hooking prey. "You must have a very talented babysitter."
As most strangers do, he assumed Eli and I weren't related. With my almost milk-colored skin and unenthusiastic, limp hair next to his milk chocolate and fun, fuzzy curls, we hardly look like the siblings we are. "Sister, actually. We share a mom." I bent down to get cheek to cheek with Eli. "See, the eyes? The noses?"
"Oh, yeah, I guess I see now." He handed me a roughed-up, dirty softball.
I stood back, rubbing my thumb along the stitching of the ball and assessing the pyramid of bottles. I needed to make it look realistic. I remembered hearing somewhere the trick was knocking out the bottom row. Don't get distracted by the bottles on top. I brought my arm back and let the ball escape from my hold. My vision slightly weakened, as it always does when I use telekinesis, but my mind moved quickly, noting the ball hit a side bottle, so it wouldn't topple on its own. I concentrated and willed the other bottom bottles to jiggle and fall at the same time. As I did, I felt, from six feet away, that the weights to all the seemingly identical bottles were different. The game had been rigged.
Fortunately for Eli, I was rigged too. The Lego set was ours.
I didn't see my mom come up behind me, but the milk bottle guy pointed. "Oh, I see it now. The eyes and noses." He looked pleased with himself as he took in our faces. We share eyes so pale that they look dull on me, okay on my mom's tanner skin, and absolutely striking on Eli. And then there are the matching noses, probably all a little too small for each of our faces. "Your daughter has quite an arm on her," he said to my mom.
My mom gave me a look, clearly wondering if it wasn't the arm on me but the mind in me he was really referring to.
"Yes, she does," my mom said in her fake voice.
She took my arm and led me away. She breathed in pinched the bridge of her nose. I hate it when she's upset with me. But I guess I don't hate it enough to avoid doing things that upset her.
"It's okay mom, really, he didn't suspect anything."
"You can't just do that sh*t anywhere," she sighed. "You never know what could get you noticed."
Thankfully, David walked toward us. He wore a new green T-shirt I had helped him pick out.
"That looks awesome," I said.
"Thanks." He touched the fabric, and then the scar above his eyebrow. Even though he tells me he likes it, that it makes him look rugged, my insides slip and slide with guilt when he rubs it. "Come on, I've been thinking about cotton candy all day," he said. The concession booth, with bags of pink dangling all around it, was nearby, next to the guess-your-weight station.
"Good idea," my mom said. I could tell she was a little eager to have another excuse to talk to the gap-toothed guy. Actually, he wasn't bad looking. The gap even worked for him; it looked endearing. She patted my back. I knew I no longer had to feel the weight of her disappointment. It's nice to have a mom that forgives easily. Or gets distracted easily.
Once my mom was deep in conversation about how, exactly, carnival estimation science worked, David and I took our pink puffs to a bench at the back of a makeshift amphitheater. Eli found one of his friends, a kid named Shawn. They climbed the tree behind us to get a better look at the clowns who were tripping over big shoes, pulling never-ending handkerchiefs out of trick pockets, and doing other equally inane things.
"I wouldn't want to wake up with that in my room," David said, pointing to our right at a large Styrofoam clown. It was next to the tree Eli and Shawn were scaling. We are both a little freaked out by clowns and this one had an eerie, too-cheery expression and large, unnerving eyes. Plus it was just so big.
"Hey, Denali!" the shout made me whip my head around, and I saw something even more unnerving than clowns-Cindy and her boyfriend, Jason, leading their pack, the kids who are beautiful and athletic and know where to get pot and how to put condoms on. Not just on bananas. "Denali, come here, we need to explain to you what a 'beard' is." Jason called, his eyes glinting. He looked back to his group and said in a faux whisper, "Someone has got to tell her, it's the only decent thing to do."
David looked at the ground, his hands tense on his knees. Sometimes I really hate high school. Did I say sometimes? I mean all times.
Of course I know David is gay. On a walk in the woods two years ago, he said he wanted to tell me something. He mumbled and stumbled and sweated, digging his finger nails into his skin until I finally had to grab his hands. I ran my thumbs along the indentations from his nails. They looked like little waves on his palm. I told him he could tell me anything. We'd always be friends.
I wish I could say I had been ready to face some crazy, unforeseen secret about David and still love him wholly and completely, no matter what clandestine part of himself he revealed. But, honestly, I knew what was coming. Most people know, or at least suspect. But until he's ready to come out, I technically am the only one at school who "knows." I've tried to tell David if he just owned it things would be easier. Or maybe they wouldn't, but at least he'd be himself. I wish I had that option.
"Do you think we could just leave tonight?" I whispered with familiar exasperation. "Have them mail us our diplomas?" David smiled, but only slightly. My fantasies of ditching everything, of having fruitful but distant email and phone relationships with my family, of never having to feel the scared and fiery tingle that comes from Jason's rants or Cindy's stares, didn't soothe David. He's great, but sometimes he lacks imagination. I was drafting a biting retort in my head (or at least trying to) when Shawn's shouts sprinkled down on us. Followed by Eli's small voice. "It's okay, I got it."
I turned back toward the big clown and the tree. Eli was hanging from a branch about forty feet from the ground. The hard, bare, dirt ground. We got to our feet and turned as the rest of the crowd did too, watching Eli try to lift himself back on the branch, first just by pulling and then by swinging his leg over. Shawn was too far away to do anything, even if he could have.
It happened so quickly; Eli's right hand slipped and he was barely hanging on with his left. I didn't want to think about what a fall like that could do to his body. Or his head.
I had to keep breathing and think. The large scary clown stood in the background, taunting me. That's when I got my idea. A split of a moment later Eli lost his grip. I sensed his body falling, but I can't move living things with my mind. I'm not sure why but it has always been that way. Instead, I sensed the clown, quickly raising my hand toward it to help me focus, and made it topple over and fall to the ground right where Eli was about to land. It worked, sort of. Eli dropped, his arms out, falling on the clown's back as though he was about to get a piggy-back ride. His head hit the back of the clown's head, hard. But the Styrofoam was much more forgiving than the ground would have been.
As my vision started to clear, I realized Eli was going to be okay. He started getting up on his own as my mom rushed to him, along with others. Surprised faces surrounded me. Incredulous murmurs tinkled in the air. The clown had fallen at the exact right moment. There was no wind. No one was standing near the clown. I didn't care. I didn't want Eli to get hurt. I care about Eli's life much more than being realistic.
My breath still caught as I thought this is it, this is what will expose me. I was scared, but I also felt a sliver of something unexpected: relief.
The fear and relief never took hold though. The incredulous murmurs turned to shouts. "It was a miracle!"
A miracle.
And in some ways maybe it was.
It was a miracle I got away with it.
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