Kaleb Nation - Harken

But that was years away. For now, my skills were just a gift; when it came to people like Mrs. Milo or Mr. Sharpe, sometimes I wished I’d unwrapped this one in secret.

I tossed the phone onto my bed and scooped up my clothes. A shower sounded perfect.

“Girlfriend?” my sister asked in the hall.

“Mistress,” I replied, swinging into the bathroom.

“It’s not a mistress if you don’t already have a girlfriend!” she hollered at me through the door. I pulled the shower knob to wash her voice away.

The water stung the gash on my arm but the pain was becoming easier to ignore. I hadn’t noticed the rolls of sweat pouring down my back until the cloud of steam hit me from the shower. I choked at the door, struggling for air that didn’t reek of old and damp metal. Even under the shower, I sweat faster than the water washed me off.

“This heat is killing me!” I shouted through the wall. Arleta is in the San Fernando Valley, which by some measurements is the hottest place in all of California. But my mom was on an electrical bill craze. Her patients never showed until 11 AM, so the air stayed off until 30 minutes to the hour—long after I’d left.

Mrs. Milo had effectively distracted me from my nightmare, but for some reason it hadn’t departed entirely. I tried to scrub it out of my mind with fervent scratches of shampoo onto my scalp, realizing that I hadn’t showered the night before and there were still bits of leaves attached to me. I happily washed it all down the drain.

I dried my hair, a mess of brown that was just a shade lighter than my eyes, but the room’s humidity made it fall flat again.

“This is all very attractive,” I grumbled, trying to brush it in the mirror. My hand stopped.

The mirror reflected my single birthmark: a circle of black going around the third finger from my thumb on my right hand, almost like a ring tattoo. In fact, as I thought back to the dream, it was far too much like a ring for my comfort. The doctor had said years ago that the pigment in that part of my finger was different for some reason, but not to worry. I never thought much about it before. It was strange how my dream had changed it into something else entirely.

I decided not to think about it. I’d been hung up on the previous night for far too long already.

In my haste, the shirt I had grabbed was a stomach-turning cacophony of orange and red. But it masked my tall and skinny frame, so I pulled it on and hurried down the stairs.

“Humans have invented devices that reduce the sun’s effects upon temperature,” I told my mom irritably, falling to sit across from Alli at the table—it was cheap and old, like almost everything else in the house, and the whole town. Downstairs stank of my mom’s herbal concoctions, some liquefied in plastic bottles on shelves, some dangling as plants from string in the window. Each threw off its own prickly smell, and these mixed together into an odor more sickening than whatever they supposedly cured.

“You’ll be out of here in five minutes,” my mom said, dropping one of her organic toaster pastries in front of me. “I’ll turn it on later. Nobody’s in here all morning. It’s a money sucker.”

“Funny how the patients get the mercy of air and your own family doesn’t,” I grumbled. My mom was officially known as a homeopath, which despite phonetic similarities is not a gay serial killer. It meant she worked with some type of natural medicine and herbs—I didn’t understand it, but whatever it was, people with far too much money drove in to see her.

I bit down on my food. It scalded my tongue so I spit it out. My mom smirked in a you-deserved-it way. Revenge for crashing the car… I actually hoped it was that. If she got it out now there was less chance of her blowing up again later, and all of the night before might gently fade away.

“I’m going to Meg’s birthday on Saturday,” my sister proclaimed. She stuffed her mouth with toast.

“Is that the costume party?” my mom asked. “I don’t have anything for you.”

“I’ve still got stuff from Halloween.” Alli shrugged.

“Zombie again? Aren’t you sick of zombies?” I said.

“You’ll be the only zombie in a house of mermaids and princesses,” my mom agreed.

“Then I’ll be a zombie, and eat the princesses for snacks,” Alli ended it.

There was no arguing with that. I dropped my dishes into the sink as I left for school.

Every house on Hogan Lane was built of wood and brick in shanty designs entrenched in the 1980s, unmowed square yards protected by iron fences. Towering mountains partially encircled the city like a wall hidden behind treetops. Our house had a white metal gate around it with brick supports and decorative spikes at the top, which was a very polite and middle-class-American way of telling burglars they were unwelcome. I had to click the lock to get through, and then stopped in my tracks when I reached the curb.

No car , I remembered. The car that had been parked outside my house for almost half a year was probably being pulped into a baby-food consistency at that very moment. I was like a king dethroned. So I walked.

Hunter High was a behemoth of beige and tan brick with rectangular blue windows and red and black flags hanging from the corners. It bore a sweeping glass entrance that made it look a little more like a space museum than a school. From the outside, it was one of those pleasant little places that old donors adored, with its own football team, a basketball team, a volleyball team, a wrestling team, and even a chess club.

But like peeling away at an onion, there were only a few layers between the outside and a more depressing core. Bars were behind the glass windows and metal detectors sat stoically inside the doorway, a groggy officer standing watch as I walked in. The only decoration on the white walls was a solid red stripe in the center, going all the way down, around the corner, and continuing on throughout the entire institution. If suddenly there were a shortage of students and funding, my school would make a fine prison.

I got to my first class and sat in my usual spot three chairs back and three from the wall. I could see everyone as they came in. I was accustomed to them avoiding my gaze—they didn’t know what I’d do if I got a good look. Could I read their secrets? Would I suck out their souls? The rumors about me had grown far from my actual intuition. In a way, I was both revered, and feared.

The reminders of how different I was came so constantly that I almost didn’t notice them anymore. A girl walked in to the classroom and, by accident, looked straight at me, and upon our eyes meeting she got enough shock to reveal a Glimpse. It was ironic how that worked. I read fear, disgust, and a little intrigue… but not in a good way, in the way that someone looked through the glass in a zoo at an anaconda.

Strangely enough, that didn’t bother me, nor did it bother me that the seats surrounding my chair were the last to be filled. This was all usual. Why should I care, really? They’d all end up coming to me one day or another, meeting in an abandoned hall or beside the school, eyes watching in case their friends saw them near me. Hands full of money. Desperation in their eyes. And I’d just smile and do my job for them anyway.

Mr. Candas wheeled in an ancient television, its black and brown case sporting dials so old that the dust wedged between them had probably been there since before I was born. He was a short man of Indian descent, from Chicago, always wearing a sporty blazer over his jeans, never a tie. He loathed the principal with all his heart, but that was between his Glimpse and me.

“Who followed the earthquake in Japan yesterday?” he asked loudly, positive hope lurking in his voice. A few people raised wearied hands, though half of them were probably lying to get on his good side. My hand stayed down; I’d been busy, as usual.