CHAPTER 5

Not long after Chet’s invasion of Phillip Wise’s house, Hannah discovered her power.

It was a late August afternoon, the misery of summer’s peak fading. Cool ocean breezes wafted and palmettos swayed. Sitting in a lawn chair, Hannah’s mom wrote in a spiral notebook. And Hannah, pointing her arms in a V, kicked and glided in the YMCA swimming pool. She and her mom spent a lot of weekends here lately, which was great when the place wasn’t teeming with kids.

But there was a deeper reason they were spending less time at home. Her mom never wrote in the apartment. For whatever reason, she was keeping the whole thing secret from Hannah’s dad.

That was okay, Hannah figured. After all, Daddy had secrets, too, and she could tell his were worse, because they were hurting Mommy, whose writing was frantic—pressing the ballpoint hard into the paper, her mouth drawn in a pained scowl. The act didn’t seem to bring her much joy.

Just short of the shallow end’s edge, Hannah collided with someone crossing her path. Her face emerged from the water and she took a deep breath, and that’s when she realized the obstacle was a boy.

“I’m sowwy,” the boy said.

She recognized him from school—a stupid kid who frequently made loud and unfunny jokes during class, who more than once had farted proudly to disrupt Ms. Gelson’s lesson. But recognition didn’t register on his droopy face. No surprise there.

Ignoring the brat, she scanned the pool. Too crowded now. More beach towels and longue chairs, more mothers reading paperbacks, and way too many children splashing and making noise. Their high-pitched squeals set her nerves on edge, and a headache began blossoming.

“Hey,” the boy said, “you wanna pway?”

Hannah shook her head, then glanced in her mom’s direction. “I have to get back to my mom,” she said. “So, yeah, maybe later.”

“Okay,” the boy said, beaming.

Straightening her one-piece suit, Hannah climbed the pool steps. Without running—she didn’t want to break the rules and get yelled at by the lifeguard—she moved fast toward her destination. Without looking up, her mom kept writing, and Hannah didn’t want to disrupt her straightaway. She snatched her SpongeBob Squarepants beach towel and wrapped it around her body, then sat in the chair beside her mom.

After a respectful silence, Hannah said, “What are you writing about anyway?”

“Huh?” She looked up from her notebook, as if coming out of a deep sleep. “I’m sorry, what’s that, sweetie?”

“I asked, what are you writing?”

“Oh, nothing. Just trying to put my English degree to work. Might as well, considering how much student loan debt I racked up getting it.”

Hannah didn’t understand but nodded anyway. “Is it a story?”

“Yes, sweetie, Mommy’s writing a story.”

“I love stories. Can I read it?”

Her mom smiled, resting the pen and notebook at her side, then grabbed a towel and started drying Hannah’s head. “You’re still soaking wet, honey. When are you going to learn how to dry yourself off?”

“The sun dries me, Mommy. It feels good. So, can I read your story now?”

“Someday,” she said, “but you’re too young to read what I’m writing now.”

“Are you writing bad stuff?”

“No, sweetie, nothing bad. Just…not the kind of things you should be reading at your age.”

Her head finally dry to her mom’s apparent satisfaction, Hannah stood and said, “I’m thirsty.”

“The water fountain’s right over there. Go get a drink.”

Disgusting, Hannah thought. She never drank from the fountains at school and doing it here seemed worse. She thought about all the snot-nosed brats, their faces pressed to the nozzle. And, even though something cool to drink would help her headache, she would rather take her chances with dehydration than germs.

“Can I please have a Coke?”

Her mom had already returned to her notebook. Without looking up, she said, “Didn’t bring any money, Han. Besides, you shouldn’t be drinking all that sugar right now. Go use the water fountain. That’s what it’s there for.”

Hannah pressed her palms into her sides and sighed. “I thought Daddy said we didn’t need to worry about money anymore.”

Her mom dropped the notebook on her stomach and glowered, her eyes narrowing to pinpricks of anger. “Let’s get something straight, your precious daddy’s a piece of shit. Do you understand that?”

Hannah felt tears pricking her eyes, but she fought them back as she swallowed the dry lump in her throat. Again, she didn’t fully comprehend what her mom was saying; only that she was in pain.

Her mom heaved a sigh of disapproval and went back to writing, her pen flying faster, more desperately than ever, and Hannah meandered in the general direction of the dreaded water fountain.

It angered her mom when she talked about Dad; that much was clear. She promised herself she wouldn’t do it again. She didn’t want to make trouble.

Approaching the fountain, Hannah looked up. The same boy who’d collided with her earlier pressed his face into the spigot and sucked greedily.

She hated him. Hated all kids. The way they piled into the back of their family SUVs and minivans. Their stupid, carefree expressions. Did these children wake to the sounds of their parents shouting at each other? She doubted it. She also doubted they ever worried about money or wore clothes from garage sales or slept on sheets that hadn’t been washed for weeks. Why were these brats all so defiant when they clearly had it so good? Spoiled rotten. All of them.

She stopped and glared at the boy, and that’s when it happened.

Her attention, as if directed by a force beyond her control, became the water fountain. The YMCA pool area vanished, replaced by deep black nothingness. In this dark place, only she and the fountain remained, and she could see inside it. In that moment, terrified and hopeless, she lost control of her emotions and fell to her knees, aware of the unforgiving concrete upon impact, even though she couldn’t see it. She sobbed. But even in her anguish, she couldn’t look away from the rusty pipes that normally hid beneath the fountain’s gray shell.

Hot, she thought. Burn! Burn burn burn burn…

Pipes rattled and she heard a high-pitched whine. Bowing her head, now able to look away, she squeezed her eyes shut. She felt her mom’s hand on her back a moment after she heard the boy scream. She looked up and saw others rushing to the child’s aid. His face had turned a horrible red, his lips blistered and bleeding. He wailed in evident agony.

“Oh my God,” her mom said. “What happened?” She helped Hannah up, but her attention remained on the boy. The pool had grown silent. Onlookers gasped. The boy’s screaming intensified.

“Someone call 911,” the previously listless lifeguard shouted, dropping from her perch and running toward the injured child.

Hannah felt herself lifted into her mom’s arms, then she was turned away from the unfolding spectacle.

“I’m sorry you had to see that, sweetie,” her mom whispered.

“That’s okay, Mommy.”

“And I’m sorry I said those things about your daddy. That was wrong of me.”

“That’s okay, Mommy.”

“Come on, let’s go home and get some Band-Aids on your knees, then we’ll get you a Coke, okay?”

“Okay.”

That evening, her dad still at work, Hannah sat on the edge of her bed and played Tetris on an old Game Boy (one of her many garage sale finds) while her mom took a nap in the living room. The video game was a poor diversion from the shame that plagued her. The boy’s blistered lips, his tortured wailing, flashed through her mind as she apathetically guided shapes into empty spaces on the screen. But amidst her dark reverie, a larger question loomed.

How did I do that?

No doubt lingered; she had been the cause of the boy’s injuries.

A long rectangle appeared at the top of the Nintendo’s screen, but she didn’t push buttons to move the shape. Instead, she was struck by an idea that she wasted no time testing.

The pixelated rectangle hung in limbo. And again, she found the dark place. Soon, the game snapped back into play, and the piece fell. Using her mind, she concentrated on the proper moves, and the machine responded. Closing her eyes, she felt as if her body was lifted from the bed. Then she blinked and was back in her room.

She’d long sensed she was different from other kids, but she hadn’t expected anything so amazing. With a growing desire to explore her abilities, she walked to the window and peered through the Venetian blinds. The parking lot outside her room was routinely trafficked by people and stray cats, and tonight was no different. She concentrated on a thin man getting out of his car. But she didn’t find the dark place. The man started toward his apartment, and Hannah concentrated harder on him. Still, she couldn’t find her dark place.

Then, just like before with the water fountain, her attention was forced to the man’s car, and everything else disappeared from view. Her mind’s eye tunneled through the hatchback, and her focus was pulled to the shifter on the floorboard. Although she didn’t understand the mechanics of manual transmission, instinct told her to move the stick.

With a faint pop—how did I hear that?—the shifter moved.

She blinked, fast returning to reality, then watched the Honda roll backward.

“What the fuck?” she heard the man shout.

But the incline wasn’t steep, and the car didn’t roll far. Just enough to scare the man, who scrambled back to the driver’s seat to right the wrong.

Objects, she realized. She controlled objects, not people…at least not directly.

Hannah plunked down on the bed and curled up. With her head hanging over the mattress’s edge, she stared at a red stain in the carpet. She recalled the night she’d knocked a glass of Kool-Aid from the nightstand, and how mad her dad had been.

“For fuck’s sake, you little piggy, how many times do I have to tell you not to eat or drink in your fucking bedroom!?”

For a moment, she considered removing the stain with her talent. Maybe she could also erase the memory of her father’s cruel words. But that didn’t seem likely, and she quickly dismissed the notion. How would she explain removing a stain her mom had spent hours scrubbing? She couldn’t. She needed to be careful.

Although only six, she was acutely aware of how much darkness existed in the world. Curiosity had led her to watch a lot of cable news during many of her mom’s long naps. The evil she found on so many of the reports defied explanation in her young mind.

Maybe, she thought, her newfound powers weren’t that strange. Perhaps everyone wielded similar magic, something they never revealed to others. While that idea helped rationalize tsunamis and hurricanes and other “Acts of God,” it only made the shivers running up and down Hannah’s spine worsen.

Or maybe it wasn’t so bad. After all, her mom and dad had secrets. Secrets seemed a way of life in the grown-up world. Now she had one, too.

A secret she planned to keep.