Miracle - Chapter 20: Chapter 20

"Lock the door, Connor. Go."
I stumbled over to the bedroom door, the bent fork and Maddy's nail file in one hand, my phone held to my ear in the other. I had to set the phone down in order to open the door slightly.
The low rumble of conversation and the sour musk of weed came wafting down the hallway. I slipped the bent tines of the fork into the opening on the strike plate, then carefully closed the door so that the fork was trapped between the door's edge and the jamb. Then I slid the nail file between the two center tines, until it was firmly jammed across both the door and the painted trim.
I tested it gently. The file prevented the door from opening, while the bent part of the fork held the file in place across the door. In order to get in now, that man would have to apply enough force to straighten the tines out. Which wasn't impossible, probably, but would at least buy me extra time to get out the window.
I backed away, picking my phone up. "It works. We did it." I felt better already, but even as relief settled through me, so did indignation. I decided to think my reprimand to him, because I wasn't sure I could say it without yelling. You have a lot of explaining to do, you bastard! It's one thing to be spying on me from trees and shadows and all these weird smartwatch features. But spying from inside my head? Isn't that like... possession?"
"No, that's different. Only angels can enter a body and control it. I'm just... a visitor."
More like an invader! I never invited you.
"I know. I'm sorry."
He could have made excuses. Like, 'it was the only way,' or 'I wanted to tell you sooner.' But he didn't.
Is it true you can only do it while I have the watch on?
"It requires physical contact. The watch has a sensor plate. When it's touching your skin, it communicates with another plate in my phone housing. If I'm holding my phone, I can jump across to you."
I considered this. That's how you knew about the dog that was chasing me. And when I was holding hands with Pete.
"Yes."
Then I thought about some of the other things I'd done while I'd been wearing the watch, and fiery embarrassment flooded my whole system. Oh God, was that why he'd been so specific about forbidding masturbation? Oh God. I'd only thought the watch had a microphone. Maybe GPS satellite surveillance, like Google Earth, but that wouldn't let him see what I was doing indoors. But if he'd been inside my head the whole time, then...
My hands came up to cover my face. How, uh, often do you...
"Only when your vitals spike," he replied, a little too quickly. "And only long enough to make sure you're not in danger."
We were both awkwardly quiet, which made me all the more certain he'd seen at least some of what he shouldn't.
How did you bend the fork? I finally asked. Did you really use my mind to do it?
"No. I looked through your eyes, and felt it with your fingers, so I could modify it from here."
Wow. But wait, if he had access to all my senses when he was... visiting, that meant he would have felt it when I'd been—oh, sweet Jesus, no.
Can you read my mind while you're in here, too?
"No. I still only hear what you want me to."
That was good news, at least. If he'd seen what I was fantasizing in those moments, I might just die of humiliation.
I would have stood there paralyzed with shame for the rest of the night, if floorboards hadn't started squeaking in the hall. The indistinct voices of my Mom and Zeke got louder as they approached. I backed up toward my desk, then pushed the bowl of mac and cheese aside so I could climb up onto it. "Ezra, they're coming."
"Breathe," he said, though he sounded as tense as I felt. "Remember the plan. Are you by the window?" He could have just hopped inside my head to find out, but maybe he figured he'd violated my privacy enough for now.
Yeah. I hadn't unhooked the screen yet though, so I did that as quietly as I could.
A rattle came from the door as it thudded against the nail file. I gasped, shoving the screen so that it crashed into the grass under my window.
My stomach clenched as the doorknob turned. I heard my mom laughing.
"You're one sick motherfucker, Zeke. Stop playin' around and get in here."
The footsteps moved next door, into her room. Her bedroom door slammed hard enough to shake my bunk bed frame a little, and then there was more laughter and resumed moaning from the other side of the wall.
I took a breath and closed my eyes, letting a wave of dizziness pass. "It's okay," I whispered into the phone. "They just went into her room."
"Connor, I really don't like this. I'm coming to get you."
Don't. They're both baked to hell, they're gonna fall asleep soon. The lock worked. As soon as they're out cold, I'll get to the bathroom for a bucket of water, soap, and some towels. I can keep myself wiped down all night, and, I grabbed the bottle of formula and brought it closer, I have enough blocker to take care of things in the morning.
"Then I'm staying on the phone with you until he leaves."
All night? Don't you have to sleep?
"This is more important."
I didn't know what to say to that. I was grateful for his presence, even if I knew it was just because he didn't want to lose his fifteen-year investment in my development. I was finally getting ripe, or whatever his people called it, and that meant I could start helping him test his Elioud cure. I was the perfect test subject, because I couldn't have Nephilim babies so they wouldn't care if he cured me. Of course he wouldn't want to lose me now.
Very slowly, I inched off the top of my desk and got my feet back on the floor. It occurred to me that I should put shoes on. If I'd had to make a run for it across the field just now, I wouldn't have gotten far in socks. There were snakes out there.
Shuddering, I went over to my closet and pulled my sneakers on.
When there had been steady, sonorous snoring from my mom's room for a good five minutes—and I knew my mom's snore well enough to be sure the second one wasn't hers—I carefully removed the makeshift fork lock and crept into the bathroom.
I'd planned it all out in my head beforehand and worked fast, grabbing my scrub bucket from under the sink. It was too big to fit under the sink faucet, but the tub would make insane noise if I turned it on. So I set the bucket on the floor, plugged the sink and started it running, and grabbed the length of plastic tubing that I used to clean the fish tank in Mom's room. Once the tube was immersed in the sink and full of water, I stoppered one end with my thumb and pulled it out, releasing it down into the bucket. The vacuum effect sucked the water silently out of the sink, and the bucket filled.
When I had enough, I withdrew the tube and drained the sink. Grabbed a towel and a washcloth from the hanging bar, and the bottle of body wash from the tub. Gathered it all up and tiptoed back to my room, replacing the fork and file.
As Ezra had suggested, I set the washing supplies on my desk and pulled my shirt off. I wasn't especially experienced at giving myself a sponge bath, and got a lot of water sloshed around, but when I was done every part of me had been fully soaped and rinsed, including my hair. I wrapped the towel turban-style on my head, put my shoes back on, and picked up my phone.
"All clean," I said, breathing a little fast from the exertion.
True to his word, he was still on the line. "Good boy. Keep wiping down every hour."
You weren't watching while I was doing all that, right?
"No. I didn't think you'd want me to."
You were right. From now on, don't come into my head without asking first.
"I can't promise that. What if you're in trouble?"
I'll ask for your help then.
"You might not be able to. But how about this—if you want privacy for a while, tell me. Then when I see the spike, I won't worry."
Oh, hell no. When that's the case, I'm taking the fucking watch off.
"Please don't. You have my word, Connor, I'll stay out as much as I can. But if you forget to put it back on, or something happens to it, I might not be able to find you." He paused. "If I hadn't run into Madison on the road that night in the desert, I might not have made it to you in time."
That's right, Tyler had taken my watch after they'd tied me to the fence. Had Ezra been there when they were kicking me? Or for the excruciating ride in the back of the truck? At least he hadn't been there for the snake part, though.
Then... what if I put a paper towel or something between my skin and the sensor?
"Yes," Ezra said, and he sounded relieved at the suggestion. "That would work."
I settled onto Maddy's bunk. You really don't have to stay on the phone with me all night. It's going to get boring. I can always pray if I need you.
"Yes, but you can't hear me. I have something to teach you."
Huh?
"You've figured out that heightened emotions make the pheromones worse, right? I'm going to teach you to meditate through them."
Wait, all emotions? I thought it was just the bad ones.
"It's anything that elevates your heart rate and breathing. You expel pheromones with both your breath and your sweat glands. So exercise will do it, and so does intense emotion or arousal."
I hadn't gotten that far in my research, I guess.
"Close your eyes," he said. I obeyed. "Now, breathe in slowly through your nose, and count to seven."
One, two, three... This was basically just like what I did when I was counting seconds.
He had me blow the air out to the count of five, and repeat the process. Just when I was starting to think this was nothing more than measured breathing, he told me to start visualizing myself standing at the center of a blue circle. As I inhaled, the circle swelled outward, and retreated on the exhale. Each breath stretched the circle a little farther. The goal was to gradually get it big enough that when I inhaled, the edges disappeared out of sight.
At first it was kind of frustrating. It was my imaginary circle, I should be able to make it do what I wanted, shouldn't I? But the more I tried to push it bigger, the less it moved. The only time it seemed to grow was when I let it happen a teeny bit at a time.
Ezra's voice remained a gentle, soothing drone in my ear. After an immeasurable amount of time breathing my circle out and in, finally I took a breath and the edges vanished.
I did it! I turned in triumph to Ezra, who was now standing by my side at the circle's center. He nodded down at me.
"Very good. Open your eyes now, but keep it going."
And I did. It was a strange feeling, because my awareness was equally inside that circle next to Ezra, and sitting patiently in my sister's bottom bunk, listening to the sounds of the house and the night creatures outside. Every so often, Ezra would pat me on the shoulder, and I walked over to my desk to wash myself off. I usually lost the circle then, so when I sat back down it took me a while to get it going again.
At last, I heard my mom and her overnight guest starting to stir next door. I stood up with a remarkable lack of panic, bathed myself one more time, and put the formula on. Then I got into jeans and a clean t-shirt, combed my hair into a ponytail, and picked up the phone.
"They're up," I said to Ezra.
"Okay. Stay in your room until they leave."
But my door rattled against the nail file, followed by my mom shouting from the hall. "Connor, get your butt out here for breakfast."
"I have to go," I told Ezra, and hung up the phone before he could argue. I pulled the file out of the fork lock and opened the door to see Mom huffing. "Morning."
"What's wrong with your door?" she demanded, eyeing it with suspicion.
"Oh, uh, it's been jamming lately. I'll fix it today."
She gave a disinterested huh and stepped aside, pointing at the kitchen. "Make pancakes. I don't gotta be at work 'til ten and I'm starved."
As I followed her finger obediently, I caught a glimpse of Zeke shuffling around in her room. Unsure whether he was clothed, I didn't try to look closely.
I hustled around the kitchen, mixing batter and then pouring pancake after pancake into our cast iron frying pan. It wasn't the ideal set up, but we didn't own a griddle. A zing of nerves went through me when Zeke came down the hall, but I remembered the blue circle breathing and started it up while I cooked.
Thankfully Zeke didn't pay much attention to me, gobbling down about seven pancakes and then making some excuse to Mom and heading for the front door. She didn't see him out. I heard a motorcycle roar in the driveway—now that's what a normal motorcycle sounded like—and then he was gone.
I sent Ezra a little prayer to let him know the coast was clear. He thumped the watch in acknowledgment.
After Mom finished eating I cleaned everything up while she had a cigarette on the porch. I switched my wet laundry from the washer to the dryer, and went back to my room to clean up the sponge bath supplies.
I waited until I heard Mom shout down the hall, "Goin' to work!" followed by the sound of her car leaving. Then I pulled my clean sheets out of the dryer, remade my bunk, crawled up into it and fell asleep.
🧬🧬🧬
That night Mom came home alone. She was in an unusually good mood, which meant she ate dinner with me in the living room while we watched television. She even told me a little about her day—a customer won two hundred dollars from a scratch ticket Mom sold her, and was so excited that she gave Mom twenty dollars of it on the spot.
Friday the 13th came on, and we stayed up late to watch it together. I think Mom had forgotten that it was Maddy who loved horror movies, not me, but I was so flattered to be asked that I sat through the whole thing with her. I made us popcorn, and even pulled out one of the bags of sugar cookies to share. Before we went to bed, Mom said she wanted to sleep in the next morning, since her Saturday shift wasn't until two in the afternoon. I promised to stay quiet after I got up.
Because I'd spent most of the day sleeping after that all-nighter with Ezra, it was about two in the morning by the time I went to sleep. And that meant I was still sleeping at eleven, when my phone rang. I fished it out from under my pillow and put it to my ear without bothering to open my eyes. "Hello?"
"Sorry to wake you." It was Ezra's voice, and my eyes popped open.
"Is something wrong?"
"The batch of formula should be done in a few hours, and then I'll bring it to you."
"You're coming today?" I asked, my pulse quickening.
"Tonight, but I might get there late. Around ten."
"That's fine," I told him happily. It was a relief, and not just because of what we'd been through on Thursday night. I was starting to grow stir-crazy from being stuck in the house for so long. "Can you stay for a little bit? I have something to give you." I hoped he wasn't planning to drop the formula off and leave.
"Yes, I'll take it back."
It? I puzzled over that until I realized he was talking about the textbook. "Oh, I didn't mean... Can't I keep that a little longer?"
"No."
I sighed. I'd read it all the way through more than once already, but there was so much information I kept noticing new things. If I had to give it back tonight that didn't give me much more time.
But I wouldn't argue, because the book had a lot to say about how harsh his people were with their rules. I think it was meant to make the Elioud feel reassured, because under Nephilim law Elioud were protected and revered practically to the point of worship. They had more legal rights than the Nephilim themselves, and the text was emphatic about how well they could expect to be treated—and the consequences faced by any Nephilim who broke the law.
Some of which were pretty vicious.
It wasn't much of a stretch to realize that if Ezra's people found out how much he'd told me, how frequently he'd defied his Reservation to help me, bad things would happen. So if he wanted the book back, I would give it to him. I wasn't supposed to have it to begin with.
"Okay," I said. "Will you call me when you get here?"
"Yes. Stay in today." He hung up before I could reply. I wondered if something was going on at his job, he was even more sparse with words than usual.
I lowered the phone and stretched. It was Saturday. Mom was working the evening shift, but then she'd have two days off. She'd probably want to spend them at the dive bar she and her friends hung out at. But maybe, if her good mood stuck around, I could talk her into going to a movie? I was looking forward to getting out of the house, once Ezra dropped the refill off.
Unfortunately, when Mom got up, her chill from last night was a thing of the past. I had just gotten out of the shower and was rubbing a towel over my head when she banged on the door. "Get the fuck out, I gotta shit!"
I opened the door and she greeted me by yanking me out of her way. "Agh, I'll be so glad when I get my damn house back to myself!"
I backed into the hallway as she slammed the door shut. We only had one bathroom. It was frequently a point of contention, and I tried to make sure I wasn't hogging it all the time, especially since the women of the family seemed to need more time in there.
Mom's tempers were volatile, I knew that. So I tried not to let her pissiness bother me. I headed back to my room and got dressed, telling myself that the disappointed ache in my chest was silly... just as silly as it had been to let myself feel hopeful because she'd been nice to me for one night. Nothing was different. While she might grudgingly tolerate me most of the time, and even occasionally enjoy my company, ultimately I was more a nuisance and burden than anything else.
Man, I really missed Maddy.
But the day got worse. Once I was dressed I went into the kitchen to make breakfast—well, lunch, because it was a little after noon. But I ended up burning the bacon while I was trying to get Mom's eggs just right. A cloud of pungent smoke rose from the overheated pan, filling the kitchen until I was coughing.
While I was trying to move the smoking skillet off the heat, a sharp sting across the backs of my thighs made me cry out. The skillet dropped and hot grease went flying, mostly over my hand and forearm, and then onto the floor and across the front of the oven.
"Stupid piece of shit kid, you're stinkin' up the whole house!" Mom shouted, and whacked me again. Since I was half doubled over with the searing burns on my arm, I barely felt the belt snap across my lower back. Her second and third strikes landed across my butt, though, and those I felt.
"You tryin' to burn the house down? Huh?"
"I'm sorry, Mom," I managed to gasp, though it came out something like a sob because everything hurt so much. The grease was still burning my skin, I had to get it off. And now the eggs on the stove were smoking too. "I'll clean it up."
"You sure as fuck will!" But at least she'd stopped belting me, which meant I could make a lunge for the dish towel by the sink.
I wiped as much of the grease off as I could, biting the inside of my lip to keep from whining. The eggs were still burning, so I shut off the rest of the stove burners, then flung the water on in the sink and immersed my arm. There was a splotch of red on the side of my hand that streaked up my forearm and burst into lighter spatters. It all hurt, but my hand was the worst. It made the sting of my thighs and butt negligible in comparison.
Mom stood behind me and made a disgusted noise. "Jesus, I don't know what I did to get cursed with such a useless brat. I'm going to work, and this house had better not smell like a hog on fire by the time I get home, you hear?"
She raised her arm again and I flinched, but this time she just threw the belt at my feet. "Waste of money, waste of food... waste of air, is what you are." She was in her work uniform, and had put her hair back, but it was already coming loose from the exertion of punishing me. She puffed angrily through pursed lips, sending a stray chunk of her bangs flying, and stalked out of the kitchen. The front door banged, and her car peeled out of the driveway.
I bent over the sink and kept my hand under the water, because it was the only relief to be had. No one was here, there was no reason to hold back the tears that swam in my vision, but I choked them down anyway.
This was how she was. The tiniest things set her off sometimes. I knew Mom was an unhappy person. The universe hadn't exactly dealt her a good hand, and she'd made some crappy life choices to boot. Now she was living day to day, looking for escape in the moment because the big picture was too nihilistic. Maybe she'd had some disappointment this morning that had put her into a downward mood swing. A bad dream, a bad text, a bad hair day.
Or maybe she'd just remembered what a disappointment I was.
On my unburned arm, the smartwatch's outer rings had all turned yellow. The outer one was pulsing, which I guess meant that I was injured. And the innermost one was still green, though kind of a sickly shade. I guess the watch was telling Ezra I wasn't in mortal danger, but that I was feeling shitty all the same.
He was probably in my head right now. Looking through my eyes and feeling the various pains in my body. He had so much going on already, he really didn't need to be taking this on too.
I'm fine, I thought to him bitterly, and turned my wrist under the water to make sure he'd see it. Okay? I can handle it, so stay out.
Maybe he wasn't listening, though. There was no response, not even a tap on the wrist. Probably just as well.
I wanted my sister.
When the burns finally subsided to a sharp throb, I shut off the water. The patch of injured skin was puckering already, which meant it was going to blister. In the bathroom I took some painkillers, spread aloe vera gel as gingerly as I could over the hot pink mess of my hand, and wrapped the whole thing in gauze and an Ace bandage.
Bright welts striped the backs of my thighs. I didn't bother treating those, they'd be gone in a day or two. Once my hand was taken care of I shuffled listlessly into the kitchen, slid a rubber glove over my bandage, and cleaned up.
Afterward, I retreated back to my room and got my phone from my bunk to see if Maddy had called yet. The screen lit, and my stomach turned over.
Four missed calls, all from Mom. That couldn't be good.
I hit redial, and she picked up on the first ring. "About fucking time," she snarled in my ear. "You ignoring my calls now? If you think that whuppin' this morning was bad, just you wait 'til I get home."
"I'm sorry, Mom, I was cleaning the—"
"Thanks to you I got pulled over on the way to work. And you had me so pissed off that I left my wallet at home. Now I have a fucking fifty dollar ticket."
Oh, shit. Shit.
"You're gonna bring me my wallet, now."
My blood turned to ice. "Right now?" The formula was basically gone. I couldn't leave the house like this, it was way too dangerous.
"Did I stutter, dumbass? This goddamn second. Or I'll make what I gave you this morning feel like a fucking tickle." The line went dead.
I was in deep, deep trouble.