Eliot said, “You can’t be a superhero if you’re afraid of heights.”
“I’m not a superhero, I’m just a freak with a parlor trick,” she replied.
He laughed. “We all are. It’s how you use the trick that matters. Trust me, it’ll be okay.”
He even looked like a superhero, standing above her, legs straddling the railing, with the haze-lit city skyline as a backdrop, his smile blazing under his mask and helmet. I wonder if I should ask him to prom … Maybe if she asked him to kiss her. For luck, right?
With that distracting thought, she took a deep breath and grasped the hand he reached out to her. Instead of looking down again, she stayed focused on the plastic shell of his mask. His grip around her middle was tight, and she tried not to cling to him too hard.
“Hold on,” he said and then dropped. Just stepped off the ledge. Anna squeezed her eyes shut and clamped her jaw to keep from screaming.
He bounced once, and in spite of herself she looked—he’d pushed off from the side of the building, changing direction and slowing down. They swooped toward the building across the street, and Eliot shoved off from that one as well, aiming them downward, until he landed with a controlled jolt. At the last moment, he lifted her up in both arms, holding her completely off the ground. She was pretty sure she would have smashed into the pavement otherwise. He straightened from his shock-absorbing crouch and set her on her feet.
“See? I told you it’d be okay.”
“That was … that was really cool. Thanks.” Her smile at him felt ridiculous, silly, but she couldn’t help it. She really wished her heart would stop flipping over like that.
And then she stood on her toes and kissed him, just briefly, on the cheek. For luck, after the fact. It might have been the most impulsive thing she’d ever done in her life, and she instantly regretted it. In a novel or movie, he’d kiss her back, of course. Get a steamy look in his eyes and sweep her off her feet with those strong arms. Instead, he looked back at her with a kind of bafflement. Her cheeks burned.
“I’m sorry … I just … I’m happy to be alive, I guess…”
His grin was crooked. “You’re pretty cute, Rose,” he said, in the same way he’d describe a kitten dressed up in doll clothes.
The end of the night was a letdown. Marching off in a huff would have made her feel even more childish than she already did, but her feet dragged on the way back to his car, and once they were driving, she didn’t want to take her mask off. First time for that. But the mask hid the blushing. Eventually she did, and he was already back in his mundane clothes, and they were just two normal people out for a drive again. The world somehow seemed plainer.
“Can I drive you home?”
“Back to campus is fine, I still have time to catch the last bus.” She almost apologized again for kissing him, but if he wasn’t going to say anything, neither was she.
“You don’t want to give anything away, do you?” he asked.
“Not really, no.”
By the time Eliot pulled back into the student parking lot, it was later than she thought—she’d be cutting it close for the bus, so she didn’t have much time to stand around and chat. Thank God.
She grabbed her bag and climbed from the car. “Thanks for your help.”
“Let me know what else you find out, okay?” he said.
She almost said no, that she had just about vowed to never speak to him again, But—
“I’ll e-mail you, I promise,” he said.
Nodding, she turned and jogged to the bus stop a couple of blocks away. Caught it just as it was pulling away, yelled at the driver to stop, and he actually did. Which was good, because if she’d missed the bus she’d have been tempted to go back and ask Eliot for a ride home. Never mind that she still wasn’t ready to give that much of her identity away. What was left of her dignity wouldn’t have survived.
The next morning before leaving on her trip, her mother dutifully hugged them, told them to be good, and sent them off to school. She seemed awfully sappy about the whole thing, in a way she hadn’t since they were little. She was supposed to catch her flight while they were at school.
But she didn’t go anywhere.
When they got back home, Mom was still there, in one of the penthouse’s guest rooms. Obviously hiding out and not gone at all. The compass’s pressure in Anna’s mind didn’t lie. If she’d canceled her trip, she would have just been in her office or bedroom. But she was hiding.
Something really weird was going on.
Dad was at his office on one of the building’s lower floors—keeping up the pretense that everything was normal, which meant he was in on the deception. He’d pretty much have to be. Anna waited in the living room for him to come home. She had homework, reading for English and math worksheets and all the usual crap, but she couldn’t focus on any of it. She sat in an armchair and looked out the vast living room window to the cityscape beyond. West Plaza was still, after some forty years, one of the tallest buildings in Commerce City, and from this vantage the whole city spread out like a 3-D map. The tangle of downtown architecture, the silver line of the harbor marking out the edges. From here, she should have felt above the chaos. Instead, she imagined it rising up to swallow her.
The presences she’d cataloged in her own psyche were growing. She could find her family, Uncle Robbie, and all her friends laid out like glowing spots on that map. Eliot was at the university; she was thinking about him a lot more than she probably ought to be. She couldn’t really help it. His presence was a warm, comforting glow. A fuzzy blanket in her mind. The thought embarrassed her. Even Ms. Baker, Mayor Edleston, Judge Roland, and Captain Paulson had begun to intrude on her awareness. Once she found people, imprinted on them, they never really left her.
She wondered: If one of the people she knew so well that she always knew where they were, if one of them died, what would happen? Would she feel it? Would she still be able to find them? She was scared to find out. She’d had such an easy life, she realized, that no one she cared about had ever died.
The thought gave her a chill, and she pulled her knees to her chest and hugged herself.
She knew when her father left his office and mentally followed him to the elevator, where he keyed himself to the penthouse and rode up to the private top floor. When the elevator doors slipped open and he strode through the foyer, she was waiting.
He wasn’t at all surprised to see her there, of course. Nothing she did would ever surprise him, and the thought made her suddenly angry. They regarded each other a moment, and for once she didn’t try to cloud her mind with thoughts of music or flat colors. Let him see her confusion. Let him try to calm her down.
“Where’s Mom?” she said.
Not a flicker of emotion from him. Not surprise, not chagrin from lying, not anything. Like he was some kind of mutant statue. Anna wondered how far she’d have to push him to get a reaction from him.
“She told you, she’s traveling.”
“No, she isn’t. She hasn’t gone anywhere.”
Her father raised an eyebrow, tilted his head. “How do you know?”
Oh, yes, how indeed … “I just know. Why are you guys lying, that’s what I want to know.”
“Anna, is there something you’d like to talk about?” So inhumanly calm. Though the lines around his eyes seemed more creased than usual.
If she kept pestering him, she’d never have to answer questions about herself. “Just tell me why you and Mom are lying.”
“I can’t tell you. I’m sorry.”