Chapter 2:

I returned home in a sweat. Not from the two mile bike ride either. Tossing my new textbooks on the landing, I went back to the florist to get some peat, mulch and look over Bordo’s rose selection. Oh, and I needed to get grass seed and fertilizer. Two more trips were needed since my car’s trunk wasn’t very big and I didn’t want to mess up the interior with poorly bagged dirt.

Upon returning home, I sadly buried Dusty. He was a dumb, but good dog. Dad got him for me right after mom died and his stupid big feet kept tripping over his ears. Dad would sometimes roll Oreo’s across the kitchen floor for him to chase and pounce on when he was a puppy. I wiped my eyes with my sleeve and kept digging.

The fish tank’s contents were dumped in the sewer on the street. Nothing was alive in there to hurt anything and I needed to consider hard if I could afford to restart a new ecosystem or just throw a few pretty fish inside and let them be. Finding healthy fish and plants wouldn’t be an issue anymore, nor keeping them that way.

After an early lunch, I began digging dead dirt. Stopping at a foot down and following the dead zone encircling the base of the front corner of the house, I removed the now useless soil and dead plants so that I could refill the area with new base and plants. It wasn’t like I didn’t have time. This was an early summer vacation for me. Probably a permanent one too.

...

Cheryl brought the contents of my locker and along with questions that I really didn’t feel like answering but it’s hard to plead that I was busy when she was willing to help me spread the new topsoil around. I told her as much as I was comfortable with.

“Your face is all cleared up and you do glow a little sometimes. Can you do that to me too?” Now, Cheryl and I never really hung out in the same circles since dad left. I hadn’t been inside her house since then either. And her asking anything and even speaking more than a word or two between us was not the norm. She was cute and had a bunch of girlfriends that were over a lot. The Moores had a six-foot wooden fence around their yard to wall off their in-ground pool, which I hadn’t even been in five years.

The short thin brunette had a single zit on the side of her nose under her sunglasses but I didn’t see anything else wrong until I looked with my sight. Cheryl had a blackness forming inside her small, left breast. Which was A-cup, at best, under her tight violet shirt and padded bra. And something else even uglier lower in her stomach.

“I think so. I haven’t done this before so you might want to sit down.” She did. Cheryl looked less nervous than I felt, much less. I sat down in front of her, cross-legged, mirroring my first patient. Knees almost touching. I accepted her small hands in mine, hoping that the trial and errors from today sank in. Just like the flowers from earlier, I funneled the tiniest amount of power into her hands letting it work its way through her system. I saw my energy flow up her arms and into her chest and spread out from there. Her energy accepted mine, or was it mine accepting hers? I wasn’t sure.

“I feel warm, so warm...” she said drowsily. I tried to ignore my blush as my energy flowed through her veins, spreading throughout her body. Using my Power on the girl before me was embarrassing. My Power inside of her had feelings. I felt like I was touching her all over from the inside, out. The pimple popped and oozed out the puss quickly, healing the blemish on her nose which cleared up completely in a matter of seconds once my energy reached her head, leaving only a dried pus spot on her face.

Her body was a vacuum that needed my energy to live. I couldn’t explain it in any other way but that. My energy began pooling in two blackened places once it had spread out to all of her extremities, one in her left breast and the other in her lower abdomen, her womb I thought. Basic anatomy, I was okay with. Specific locations in girls, not really.

The dark energy in her breast was surrounded and attacked, my brilliant white lighting broke apart the dark masses pulsing in her breast dimming the darkness until it was dull and gray, then headed south to the now sleeping girl’s lower abdomen. Whatever it was, took about ten more minutes to heal. Whatever it was that ailed Cheryl was something very scary to me.

She had to have known.

Known she was... I couldn’t even say that word to myself

Once the purple and gray mass in Cheryl’s lower body had dissipated, I brought my focus to the external. Still holding hands, I noticed that she had slumped forward across her lap in what looked like an uncomfortable position. Carefully laying the thin girl on her side, I went inside for lemonade for the both of us. I knew she would be hungry when she woke. I also was feeling that she would not wake soon...

Healing Cheryl was much easier than I expected. By a lot. It wasn’t so much that I told the energy where to go, it seemed to have a mind of its own and knew where it was most needed and what to do when it got there. Like the flowers from before and the plum tree, my healing energies sought out the sickness in her body.

... but now she is asleep on my lawn. What do I do now?...

I was afraid to touch her or wake her up when I returned with the lemonade. My cute neighbor was snoring lightly, and cutely, and had curled up on her side, pillowing on her hands which added to the cuteness factor, since her hands were dirty, she smudged her face with the black peat remnants. I suddenly Knew sleeping beauty wasn’t going to awake anytime soon. Sooo, I lifted her up and carried her to her house. I was quite surprised at the ease of straightening while holding the petite girl in my arms, she weighed half of what I expected ... either that or I got significantly stronger ... or both.

Mrs. Moore came to the door when I tapped the bottom of the screen door with my boots. She, like her daughter, was a diminutive woman and nice, but like the rest of the people around here didn’t say much to me at all. I knew that on more than one occasion that the divorced lady had kept on eye on me, not from any malice but out of concern or curiosity. Not sure which.

The brown-haired, brown-eyed mother of the girl in my arms searched my face for any signs of distress after just glancing at her daughter. Seeing nothing that she needed to involve the police over, Cheryl’s mom invited me in and directed me to take the petite sleeping girl to her room upstairs.

When I mentioned my dirty gardening boots, she brushed my concern aside saying, “That’s what vacuums are for.” I followed orders, carrying the too light burden up the stairs and into her very pink and cream room. After laying her on the bed and gently rolling the sleeping girl on her right side, kinda like the position she curled into on my lawn, I followed Mrs. Moore to the glider on the porch and sat next to her at her suggestion.

“Want to tell me what is going on Nathan?” It didn’t sound much like a request.

“Cheryl had to bring my things from school today. I got kicked out.”

“Why would they do that? You are an A student.” She knew.

“Agency Law.” I replied in disgust. There would be only one that could apply to someone like me and everyone knew what it was. She nodded as if that was the expected response.

“That doesn’t explain why my daughter was asleep in your arms.” Mrs. Moore half turned with a raised eyebrow at me. Making me blush furiously. Thankfully, Cheryl was fully clothed so I didn’t have to explain my way out of a worse mess.

“She was helping me plant a new rosebush, and must have noticed I changed. She asked if I could Heal her too. I thought she meant her zits but when I started, I noticed that she had a black mass in her chest and something was wrong with her abdomen too. I’m not sure what it was, but I ended up healing both, and the zit too.” I shrugged self-consciously.

Mrs. Moore took a sharp breath at my recounting. She went from comfortably amused, to scared. I think. Reading people’s energy wasn’t easy, nor did I have a guide. “This ‘black mass’ in her chest, is it gone?”

“Yes Ma’am, it’s all cleared up.”

“The other wasn’t her abdomen was it?”

I shrugged. “Maybe a little lower.”

“Was it her uterus?”

“Probably, I need to do more studying on anatomy.”

She held her hand to her mouth. “Oh my God. Are you sure?”

I never did like it when people questioned what I said on something I was sure of. “Yes, Mrs. Moore, I am sure. If you don’t believe me, take her to her doctor and get a mammogram, ultrasound or whatever it is.” I stood to leave but Mrs. Moore grabbed my hand and hugged me hard, looking up into my face and thanking me as sincerely as I have ever been thanked for anything in my life. More than anything...

Ashamed for getting irritated, I shrugged and mumbled that it was okay. While being hugged, a new, dark-blue Crown Vic pulled up in my driveway. We both turned to see who came to visit me. I hadn’t had any new visitors in years.

I groaned realizing that it was the government again. Out stepped a pretty woman, six or seven years older than me with short brown hair, wearing khaki pants, a light blue polo and white Keds. The athletic brunette with short hair, carried a briefcase in her right hand and a small tan purse slung over her left shoulder. After a quick glance around the dug up yard she walked up to my front door and rang the bell.

The aura of health was second only to mine of anyone I saw today.

“Looks like the Feds came to get you. Is there anything I can do?”

“No thanks, Mrs. Moore, I have it. Let Cheryl sleep for now. If she doesn’t wake in the morning, come get me, please. I have to go.” Following my words, I, unhappily, walked across the lawn home. Disregarding the Fed on my porch, I returned to filling the holes in my yard.

My visitor must have heard me and followed the sounds of activity to the compost mound behind the shed where I dumped the lifeless soil for mixing with last year’s compost. The Fed was 5’6 and athletically slim like a cheerleader with a very pretty face. A lot prettier than Cheryl. Not model gorgeous just very pretty with collar length brown hair, brown eyes, lightly tanned and a natural aura of good health. Probably early twenties, 23 or so, it was hard for me to tell.

“Hi Nathan, I’m Jessica Dubois. May I speak to you for a bit?” A pleasant voice that was asking permission, not demanding, did help smooth my ruffled feathers.

“Why?”

“I thought you might prefer to read up on the status of your father in a more comfortable location. All of the information that we have on him is in here.” She offered up a new, thin leather briefcase.

That got to me. I had been trying to get any information on dad from those bastards since they took him away. “Yeah, let’s go inside,” I said angrily, knowing that they wanted something and she was the pretty package to get me to do whatever it was that they wanted. Though I did remember to use my Sight on her as I held the door for her and pointed to the family room off the kitchen. I removed my boots and Viewed her. She was in perfect health. No surprise there, I had seen that earlier.
Miss Dubois paused by the bathroom in the hall and asked if she could use it and handed me the briefcase. While she was occupied, I sat the case down, washed up, poured two glasses of lemonade and went into the family room. I sat in my usual chair after placing her glass on the table next to the couch.

Inside the case was a single manila folder. The twenty page report was closer to a timetable of events than any report I had heard of. The first section was Dad’s spectrographic analysis. Not that I understood anything except the part that said he and his clothes were 100% iron. Each month for the last three and a half years, he had been examined and scanned. At the six month’s exam, .016% iron-oxygen was discovered on his extremities. The left ear and the collar of his shirt had the highest concentrations of the invading element. Each month after, the number had increased by .002% iron-oxygen. No other change had been found.

Great, dad was rusting.

He was also slightly heavier than when he first was weighed. Enough to account for the extra oxygen that had been bonded to his outer layer. Or dust. The few extra grams could have been either. The report had no conclusions drawn, just the facts listed.

“Nathan, do you understand what that report isn’t saying?” The Fed had snuck up behind me when I was adsorbed in the fucking report.

“What isn’t it saying?” I mocked. Dad was dead. I knew that.

“There are no brain waves, no heartbeat. No energy signatures. No blood. Your father died three years ago.” She reported calmly and compassionately. Or tried to ... I started to think she was acting? I wasn’t sure.

“No, he didn’t. If he were dead, I would have a death certificate,” I replied indifferently. That was an old wound, but damned if I would reveal it to the Fed across from me.

“In order to use Powers or any ability, you need have brain waves. Without brain waves no one can achieve Power activation. There is no coming back for him or the others like him, Nathan.”

I didn’t want to hear that or any of her platitudes. “Prove he is dead. You can’t or won’t. So why don’t you just leave.”

“I can’t do that Nathan. I’ve been assigned to be your liaison for the next few years.” My new stalker patiently informed me.

“Fine then do it from outside. I want to be alone.” Her presence left from the room and went elsewhere. Tears fell silently as I admitted that she was right. I knew he was dead. They knew he was dead, but the Feds still taunted me.

After washing my face, I preheated the oven and returned outside. When I got there, I found that the last bags of peat had been dumped in the holes and the emptied bags had been removed and placed into the large contractor’s garbage bag. I wasn’t about to thank a Fed for anything, even if she had saved me an hour of work. I raked and stomped on the fresh ground a couple times before cutting a hole with the spade for the new rose bush. Stomping, watering and raking the area over the rest of the scattered dirt that I wasn’t a hundred percent successful in removing earlier kept my mind off of the woman who was mirroring my actions in a different part of the yard.

I carried the stuffed garbage bags to the trash bin, so that the raccoons didn’t rip them apart looking for food. I washed up outside, removed my boots and threw a chicken breast in the oven for dinner. The baked potato I would nuke when the timer went off and cook it for the last ten minutes alongside the chicken in the oven.