Astrid awoke to brilliant sunshine streaming in through her bedroom window. Everything was blurry with the halo of white light that was steadily burning her retinas. It was quite a shock after the darkness of the previous nights dream and it took her quite a few minutes to clear her vision. She sat up in the bed and began thinking about the dream that was now giving her such an unsettling feeling. She slept soundly and she wasn’t afraid in the dream, but that was the very thing that unsettled her about it. She should have been afraid. She should have been paralyzed with fear and instead she was…nothing. She felt absolutely nothing. All she could remember was watching someone trapped inside of some dark room, a shape that she assumed was a man walking inside that room and the feeling that she should have been afraid or running, but she couldn’t. All Astrid felt was hollow, empty and the girl she was watching was obviously longing for one thing; the person whose name she kept saying quietly over and over again. She whispered it almost like a prayer. Nothing else ever happened. There was only darkness, the faint echo of fear and a name.
“Dammit!“ Why couldn’t she remember it!? She must have heard it in her head a thousand times during the night, but here in her sunny bedroom, the name was impossible to recall. Astrid got up feeling irritated with herself, stomped to the window and roughly pulled the deep red curtains closed. She walked briskly to the bathroom thinking a nice, hot shower might revive her senses a little better. She took nothing with her. Why should she? There was no one besides herself in the house and there were plenty of towels in the bathroom since she’d done laundry the day before. Astrid turned the knobs, making the water as hot as she could stand it without scalding herself. Realizing she was still wearing her clothes from the night before, she thought about Alex, vaguely remembered falling asleep with her head in his lap and wondered when he had put her in her bed and gone. She would have liked to have told him goodbye. Oh well, she thought and quickly undressed. Once inside the shower, she almost instantly felt better. The water was hot and soothing and she could feel her aggravation slowly trailing away. She enjoyed the water for a while longer before washing up and by the time she was done, her mood had improved greatly. She decided to try and stop dwelling on the dream. After all, she had plenty to dwell on already and none of it would make her feel any better. Why add anymore questions to an already overwhelming pile?
She stepped out of the shower feeling completely refreshed as she watched the steam rise from her wet skin. She was reaching for a towel when she thought she heard a knock at the door and she paused to listen more intently. Another knock. “Coming!” Astrid grabbed a black towel from the top shelf of the rack, wrapped it around her body and tucked it securely up under her arm. On her way through the living room to the door, she glanced at the clock above the T.V. to find that it was only eight o’clock in the morning. She must have gotten up a little after seven and already she had company. Astrid reached the door and opened it just a crack to see who could be visiting at this time in the morning when Alex pushed the door back on her and walked in like he was on some kind of mission. “Rise and shine, sleepy head. Rise and shine,” he called vigorously, without looking at her as he strode in. He marched straight back to the kitchen with two brown paper bags in his hands. He sat them both on the counter before he turned to tease her some more and stopped dead. He expected to see a sleepy eyed Astrid with bed head. Instead, Astrid was standing there dripping water in the doorway, wearing nothing but her black towel and an amused expression, being unintentionally seductive. She was looking up at him with one eyebrow cocked and a half smirk while Alex stared at her trying to will himself to stay in the kitchen rather than what he really wanted to do. It took him a few seconds to close the fantasy box and he had to restart his brain, but he finally realized she was waiting on an explanation.
“Uh, sorry,” he said, not really sounding the slightest bit apologetic. He literally shook his head briefly from side to side in an effort to clear it again and chuckled at himself. “I see the whole ‘rise and shine’ routine was unnecessary. I guess you want to know what the hell I’m up to?” Astrid’s smirk spread into a coy smile. “That would be nice. Please elaborate.” She put a special emphasis on the last two words, purposely making them sound breathy and exaggerating her facial expressions in a very Marilyn-Monroe kind of way. This wasn’t something she usually did, but the shower lifted her mood considerably and Alex always brightened her day so she was feeling quite cheerful at the time. “Okay,” Alex exhaled theatrically. “Just so you know, you really shouldn’t do that while you’re dripping wet and all you’re wearing is a towel. It’s not fair and it’s not nice,” he said seriously. Astrid started to retort, but Alex cut her off. “Now, if you will go get dressed and meet me back in the kitchen, you and I are cooking breakfast. You need to use the stove before the thing rusts shut.” “So, you came over here at eight in the morning because you’re concerned about my appliances dieing from lack of use?” Astrid questioned dubiously. “Absolutely. And if you keep standing there like that, the counter is going to be the first surface in this kitchen that gets put to use.” She was slightly shocked that he was being so forward. It wasn’t his usual behavior, but then again, she didn’t usually answer the door in a towel either. She decided she liked this bold confidence of his. “Yes, sir,“ she said sprightly. Astrid turned sharply in the other direction to saunter back to her bedroom hoping Alex hadn’t noticed that second of temptation she knew must have passed across her face. Half way to her bedroom she called back, “Oh and Alex- the counter gets plenty of use already.” Put that in your juice box and suck it, she thought.
She wasn’t quite ready for their physical relationship to progress, but that didn’t mean she didn’t still have the desire from time to time and it also didn’t mean she couldn’t tease him a tiny bit until they got there. Plus, she wasn’t just teasing him--the counter really did get plenty of use. In fact, it was the only thing in the kitchen she used on a daily basis besides the microwave. You have to put the mail somewhere, right? Astrid got to her room, shut the door and turned to her closet to find something to wear. She chose a comfortable pair of dark jeans that just happened to hug her body perfectly and a green racerback tank top to accentuate her eyes. She left her feet bare, brushed her hair before it could dry into a crumpled mess and went to the bathroom to brush her teeth. She felt content knowing that Alex was there and they would likely spend the day together. What a relief it was to know she wouldn’t be wasting her day away uselessly pining over lost memories. Strangely though, it was also a little sad. She felt almost like her day would be wasted if she didn’t try to remember, but she fought that feeling off quickly telling herself she was being ridiculous. Being with Alex was far more enjoyable and more constructive than sitting in a pile of paper and feeling sorry for herself.
“So what’s with the enthusiasm for cooking lately? You can’t be that disappointed in my poorly stocked cabinets,” Astrid called as she made her way from her bedroom back to the kitchen. “’Poorly stocked’ is an understatement and the enthusiasm isn’t really for the cooking,” he replied as he turned from his place at the counter-where he was preparing the ingredients-to face Astrid who had just entered the room. He took one look at her and pulled her by her waist into his arms. “I just wanted to see you bend over to put something in the oven or stretch to reach the sugar. I’m not crazy enough to actually let you cook anything. You might set the house on fire,” he said casually. Astrid pushed him away from her and imagined grabbing the first thing she could reach on the counter to chuck it at him-which happened to be canned biscuits-but decided against it because she didn‘t want to accidentally hurt him. “You chauvinist ass!” she exclaimed comically.
As soon as she said it, the biscuits flew off the counter and zoomed toward Alex, narrowly missing his left ear and only because he happened to move to the other side at precisely the right time. Oops. The biscuits slammed against the opposite wall causing the can to burst and little bits of dough to stick to the surrounding area. The rest of the dough flopped out of the can in one whole piece and fell to the floor in a thick, goopy mess. Alex turned from Astrid to the biscuits on the floor and back to Astrid again with wide eyes trying to comprehend what had just happened. He looked freaked. Astrid didn’t know what to say. Would it be silly if she claimed to have a ghost? She started to open her mouth, but couldn’t find the words and so she closed it again. “Well,” Alex said astonished. Astrid gulped and looked away. “Well,” she imitated Alex. This was it. One of the things she hadn’t wanted Alex to find out about yet, at least not this way. But, the cat’s out of the bag now. She might as well suck it up and take whatever comes. She lifted her head, readying herself for insult or rejection, but as the seconds slowly passed, her courage started to ebb away. She was getting nervous. Alex was still amazed and he was looking at Astrid as if he had never seen her before. Like he didn’t know what she was and was having a hard time figuring it out. Her nervousness was beginning to evolve into fear. She just wanted him to say something. It felt like forever that they stood there in the kitchen looking at each other, never speaking. Finally, after a painfully long hesitation Alex said “Remind me never to piss you off.” His voice was a little shaky, but he sounded oddly, happy. Thrilled actually.
Astrid didn’t really understand his reaction, but as long as he was taking it so well, she wasn’t going to argue. “I really didn’t mean to,” she said apologetically. The words came out in a rush. “It just happens sometimes when I’m…over-excited. If it’s too sudden sometimes things will…well, you saw. I’m really, really sorry, Alex.” “Grab that other can of biscuits, will ya? With your hand this time. ‘Kay, Jean Grey?” Astrid relaxed. He was teasing her; always a good sign. She rolled her eyes and concentrated. “I’ll show you Jean Grey,“ she muttered quietly. She wasn’t sure if he heard her or not. The other can of biscuits rose out of one of the brown bags Alex had come in with and floated slowly and evenly to hover beside Alex while he whisked a bowl of eggs. He looked at it slowly and deliberately as he cut his eyes at Astrid and a wide grin spread across his face. He grabbed the can silently, enjoying Astrid’s bold reactions. She had exactly the one he’d hoped for. Astrid thought his reaction was completely unnatural. It was like he knew she could do this all along, but was just waiting for her to slip up. No normal person reacted this coolly to things that were not supposed to exist, but then again- this was Alex, The Eternal Optimist. “This doesn’t freak you out?” she asked, truly curious. Maybe he was just acting. He took his time, considering how to word his answer. “I would be lying if I said I wasn’t really surprised, but for the most part, no. It doesn’t freak me out. I think it’s pretty cool, actually. I am curious about it though. If you don’t want to tell me…” He let his sentence trail off, leaving Astrid free to decide whether or not she wanted to explain her talent to him. She didn’t really think it was a talent, per se, because she wasn’t very good at it yet, but she was slowly getting better. If she was really free to use it around Alex, she was sure she could get a lot better. He relaxed her and that would make it easier to concentrate not to mention that everything she did with Alex was always more fun.
She didn’t want to get ahead of herself yet, though. She couldn’t even explain it to herself, much less Alex. Astrid had no idea where it came from and finding out she was telekinetic was a big enough shock for him for one day. She didn’t want to overload him with talk about her missing life or confess how many things she’d already lied to him about, but Astrid was determined not to lie about this, too. “I honestly don’t know where it came from so there’s really nothing to explain.” That was mostly the truth. For a second Astrid thought Alex looked disappointed, but he quickly pulled his expression together into one of polite interest. “Have you ever wondered where it came from? Do you have any theories?” “I have some theories. Nothing I can prove.” Astrid said it before she thought about it and realized she might be getting dangerously close to telling Alex things she wasn’t ready to tell him yet. She changed the subject. “Can we just forget about this for now? We’re supposed to be cooking.” “Almost being decapitated by a can of flying biscuits is not something I’m likely to forget,” Alex said with a smile, but he let it go.
He was scrambling the eggs while Astrid fried up some bacon. When she was done, she put the biscuits in the oven and could have sworn she heard Alex muttering something behind her about “lethal weapons.” She had a feeling she was never going to live the incident down, but she actually didn’t mind. She was glad that it was out in the open now and Alex seemed so laid-back and accepting about it. She never got to talk about this part of herself with anyone and now she could-if she wanted to. All she had to do was open her mouth. She already received the proof she needed to tell her that Alex wouldn’t judge her, at least not about her telekinesis. Thinking of this, she felt a swell of love for him so overwhelming that she almost told him right then and there in her kitchen. It was swiftly stifled by a wave of panic. I cannot do this. After that thought, it was like Astrid’s brain halted for a moment and in that one short second she had an epiphany. Why? Why couldn’t she do it? Because she was scared that Alex would disappear like everything else. That’s what she told herself. But so what? Was Astrid really that much of a coward? If Alex was going to break her heart, he could have done it right after she mind launched some Pillsbury Grand’s at his head. Since he didn’t, there was only one thing that could mean. Astrid didn’t want to count her chickens before they hatched so she hit the pause button on her epiphany.
“The sausage is done,” Alex called from the stove. “Be there in a sec.“ While she was thinking, Astrid had wandered over to the far wall to clean up her mess. She threw the debris in the trash, washed her hands and then she and Alex sat down at her seldom used dining room table to have breakfast together. It was good. Astrid had forgotten what home cooked food tasted like. It was simple, but it was really nice. They were uncharacteristically quiet during their meal, but it was not uncomfortable. Astrid figured they both just had a lot on their minds. Alex definitely looked to be a little deeper in thought than usual. As it turned out, he was. “Hey, do you want to go somewhere?” Alex asked so abruptly that his words ran together. Taken a bit by surprise Astrid took a second to answer. “Sure. Now?” Alex nodded. “I’ll go get my shoes,” she told him as she got up from the table carrying both their plates to the sink. She washed them quickly and put them up to dry. She didn’t want to have to contend with that when she came back from wherever it was they were going. In between cooking and teasing one another, Astrid had been cleaning the dishes they used to cook with so there wasn’t that much left to do. She thought about trying to make one of the plates wash itself, but she had broken enough dishes attempting this before and she wanted to hurry anyway. She was wondering where Alex wanted to take her and a little nervous about the way he was acting. Suddenly, his silence didn’t seem so casual.
She dried her hands, ran to get her shoes from the spot in the living room where she had left them the night before and sat down on the couch to put them on. “Where are we going?” she asked Alex, curiously. He had gotten up from the table and moved to the entry-way to wait for Astrid by the door. “Uh uh. Not telling” was all Alex replied looking slightly mischievous, but still more reserved than Astrid was used to. Astrid grabbed her keys, locked the door and they set out in Alex‘s big black jeep. When Alex started it up, Astrid recognized the song that was playing and thought it was ironic. She listened to it for a few minutes, singing the words inside her head and noticed Alex turned out of her driveway away from town. Alex was as mute during the drive as he was at breakfast. She tried to be patient, hoping Alex would either tell her where he was taking her or confess what was bothering him, but the silence was killing her.
“Alex, is something wrong?” she asked. He glanced at her, gave her a look that was clearly inquiring. “You aren’t normally this quiet. If it’s that thing that happened…we can just forget about it, okay?” He seemed to handle it so well before, but maybe he really was just acting. Maybe he‘d had time to think about it and decided it wasn‘t so cool after all. “What? In the kitchen? No. It’s not that.” He paused there and looked like he was debating something. “Well…,” he continued, “it is that, actually, but it’s not what you think. And I know you don’t want to talk about it so we don’t have to. I was just thinking is all.” Astrid actually would have liked to talk about it, but she didn‘t want to end up giving away too much information. She hoped this wasn’t a dangerous question, but her curiosity got the better of her and she had to ask, “About what?” Astrid expected him to hesitate and say it was nothing, but he answered her immediately. “How you hid that for so long. I’m just wondering why you didn’t slip up before now. I mean I can get why you might not have wanted to tell me, even though I wish you had. I could have lost an ear,” he answered with a smile. He wasn’t angry with her and he didn’t want her to misinterpret his words that way. He only wanted to be honest with her. Alex hoped his openness would encourage her to open up as well.
“I don’t really know. If I had to guess, I would say that it’s probably because I’m not very good at it. I can never tell when it’s really going to work and when it’s not. Sometimes if there’s enough emotion behind a thought it just happens too fast for me to do anything about it.” “I didn’t really make you mad, did I?” Alex asked, amused at the thought that he might have unintentionally sparked some kind of angry response from her brain. Astrid smiled. “No, I was outraged!” she clarified, facetiously. She continued in a more serious tone, “but, only for a second and I knew you were joking. I just saw myself grabbing the first thing I could reach and throwing it at your head in that one little second and suddenly it was happening.” “So, it’s driven by your emotions?” “Not entirely,” she responded. “My emotions just make it more potent, I guess.” She said this like a question, not being sure of how to say it or if she had the right words. “I can’t explain it very well, but they’re linked. Let’s just say that if I were really angry at you, you’d have a pretty big hole in your head right now,” she laughed, mildly embarrassed.
“Usually, I can’t do much more than fold laundry unless there’s some emotional force fueling the action.” “You do your laundry with telekinesis?” Alex asked, eyebrows raised. She nodded and added, “Light stuff is easy and it doesn’t really require much concentration. I can’t do the dishes that well though, so I end up doing all those by hand.” “Can you do both at the same time. Like washing the dishes by hand and folding your towels the other way or do you have to keep your eyes on whatever you‘re doing?” Alex seemed really curious and impressed so Astrid was happy to answer even though it seemed crazy that they were even talking about such a thing. Her household chores and her telekinesis were two things she never thought she‘d be discussing with Alex; it was an oddly casual conversation. “I don’t always have to keep eye contact with stuff like towels. Just as long as I can see what I’m doing in my head, but if I try to do too much at once it gets difficult. I can wash dishes by hand and do laundry telekinetically for a while before it gets too hard to concentrate on both. I can move small things easily enough and if I put a huge amount of effort into it, I can even move my end tables around without really having to see them, but that’s only because I know my house so well. If I wasn’t so familiar with the layout, I wouldn’t be able to do it at all and even then it gets exhausting pretty quickly.“ She was giving him a very comprehensive response. Alex enjoyed it. He couldn’t usually get her to talk about herself so much. “Everything else, I have to keep eye contact with or I’ll lose it and that’s assuming I can move it in the first place. I don’t have much time to practice with it,” she told him matter-of-factly.
Alex understood that. Even though she spent a good bit of time alone, she still had work and other obligations. He could just see the reactions if she ran around town making her camera float in front of her. Astrid was a photographer for their small town newspaper and she often went around photographing the town residents, special events and the occasional car accident. She was also asked to take pictures for people planning to publish a photo with a wedding or birth announcement as well as photographing children’s birthday parties and the like. One of the advantages of being one of two photographers in the whole town was that she almost always had work. The only reason she didn’t have anything to do now was because Carmella Stewart, the other photographer, had asked Astrid if she could take that weeks’ shoots because she desperately needed the money. She had two kids to feed and Carmella had switched with her before when she needed it so Astrid didn’t have a problem with it. Since everybody knew everybody, no one else had a problem with the switch offs either.
Astrid thought she got mighty lucky to have this time off to spend with Alex. It was turning out to be quite an interesting week. Two days into her vacation, she had a flashback, then she got to see Alex unexpectedly and had a creepy dream. Today, Alex narrowly avoided beheading with a can of biscuits of all things and now they were riding down the road to some mystery location talking about her telekinesis. It was a bigger relief than she could have imagined to be able to talk freely about it. “Is that what you would have been doing this week if I wasn’t bugging the hell out of you? Practicing?” Alex asked. Astrid shrugged. No. “Maybe.”
“We’re here,” he announced. They were just coming out of a curve with a thick border of trees on either side and she could see that they were on top of some kind of small mountain. She hadn’t even realized they were driving up hill. She always thought of mountains as gigantic pieces of rock that you had to climb, but they stayed on the road the whole time twisting and turning through the trees. They had been riding for nearly an hour before they came to a stop and she was able to get out and get a better look. Alex parked in a circular parking lot surrounded by picnic tables. To the left there was a formation of rocks with some kind of memorial on it. She walked closer to look at it and instead she found that she could see the whole town below her from where she was standing. The sky was a light blue generously scattered with puffy white clouds, the trees were beautiful basking in the sun and the green grass was swaying lightly with the breeze. She regretted not having her camera and said as much to Alex before he leisurely placed the strap of a bag over her shoulder. “I knew you’d want it so I grabbed it while you were getting your shoes,” he explained. “Thanks.” Astrid was really touched by his thoughtfulness.
“So, how did you find out about this place?” she asked him as she was pulling her camera from her bag. “I used to come here a lot as a teenager. There’s a trail over there,” he pointed to a position behind them, beyond the farthest set of picnic tables. “I liked to walk it sometimes when I needed to think.” “Where does it go?” Astrid wondered while she focused on the view below her with the camera. “It’s a long trail. The end of it comes out on a dock overlooking the river.” Astrid took a few more shots of the scenery and asked if he’d be willing to walk the trail with her. It was a great opportunity for pictures. “Sure,” he replied, absolutely cheerful about the idea. It was the whole reason he brought her there in the first place. On the way back by the jeep, Alex grabbed a few bottles of water that he kept in the back. They were warm, but at least they‘d have something to drink on the trail.
They walked for hours, talking all the time while Astrid clicked away with her camera. She got some nice pictures of the different plants and one really cute one of a chipmunk that she just happened to catch sitting on a fallen log. She took some of Alex that were bound to be even more hilarious when she got the chance to review them later and she even did something completely unprofessional and stretched her hand out in front of her face to get a shot of herself and Alex together. They talked about their friends, jobs, life. Alex talked about his family a little. It was mostly normal conversation. They touched a bit on the telekinesis again when Alex bet her that he could throw a rock farther than she could throw one with her mind. She won the bet, but Alex insisted that she cheated. He had thrown a normal sized rock, but since he never officially specified what size the rocks should be, she made a pebble fly out from in front of his shoe and it landed several meters farther away than his had. He was determined to get out of holding up his end of the bet so he offered every argument he could possibly think of and made Astrid roll her eyes and laugh more times than she could count. Suffice it to say that it was a wonderful day.
They finally reached the beginning of the wooden dock and started to settle down. Alex got quiet and contemplative again and Astrid followed suit. Once they reached the end of the dock, Astrid became amazed by the beautiful view. There was a body of clear water gliding over the protruding rocks, some of which were covered with a thick, fuzzy, green moss. She could see the warm, brown sand and the tiny multi-colored pebbles just under the surface of the smoothly flowing water. The sound of it was like a lullaby; soothing and peaceful. The trees on the far side cast a beautiful reflection in the water and she knew she had to take a picture of these gorgeous surroundings. She stepped to the edge of the dock and rested her body against the railing. Alex was standing in the farthest corner with his back up against the rail already, staring thoughtfully at the view. She decided to quickly snap a picture of him while he wasn’t looking. Then, without taking her eye away from the viewfinder, she turned her body until it was facing the magnificent scenery in front of her. She adjusted her lens until everything was in its sharpest focus, finger poised over the shutter button.
She froze. Her vision was trembling. She felt like an insect that had been trapped in a jar by a three year old who was now shaking it vigorously from side to side. The images blurred by in shades of black and gray and she felt as if her eyes would cross with the effort of straining to discern what she was seeing, but of course, that couldn’t happen because it was all in her head. She experienced a jolt of déjà vu while her camera was steady, framing a scene she’d unknowingly encountered hundreds of times. It took only seconds and then it passed. She snapped the picture. For the second time in her life.
_______________________________
CONTINUE TO CHAPTER FOUR??
No comments:
Post a Comment