After school on Monday I was waiting for Sky by Tina's car. When I saw her, I smiled and waved in welcome. She stared while Tina gaped at me.
"Hi, Tina, how's it going?" I greeted politely. Tina looked at Sky with a quirked eyebrow.
"Fine, Zed. You?"
"Great. Sky, ready to go home?" I held out my spare motorbike helmet.
"Tina's giving me a lift." objected Sky.
"I'm sure she won't mind if I do that. I want to make sure Sky gets home, OK, Tina?" I looked at her expectantly. She looked like it was totally not 'OK'.
"I said I'd take Sky home." She disagreed stubbornly. I had to give her points for loyalty.
"Please?" I held the helmet out to Sky hopefully.
Zed Benedict saying 'please'. Icicles are forming in hell. I got a flash of one of her many superhero fantasies, her riding out of school on the back of a bike. And there was longing there too. I had so won this one, even if it was only lucky that Sky had an unusual sense of awesome.
"Sky?" Tina turned to Sky worriedly.
"It's OK. Thanks, Tina. I'll go with Zed." She took the helmet and I grinned in triumph.
"If you're sure," Tina pulled her hair in an uncomfortable gesture. I felt Sky's doubt, but she ignored it. She wanted to fulfil her fantasy.
"See you tomorrow." She waved instead.
"Yeah," Tina said disbelievingly and walked off to her car. I led Sky to my bike, ignoring the stares we were attracting.
"I've never ridden one of these before." She admitted guiltily.
"The secret is to hold on tight." I whispered back with a grin. I sat on first and felt sky sitting close behind me, looping her arms round my waist and her legs brushing my hips. I felt a thrill and blushed in my helmet. Now I knew I was taking things too quickly. I started the bike quickly before I could get too excited, and we were off, the wind ripping past our faces gracelessly. When I sped up on the hill, her grip tightened and I briefly touched her hand with mine. A reassuring touch, reminding her I was still here.
"Doing OK back there?" I yelled over the wind.
"Fine." She yelled back.
"Want to go a bit further? I can take you up into the mountains. There's about thirty minutes of light left."
"Maybe just a little way." Of course, that had been my plan all along, to take her to my secret hiding place, the place no one has ever been before. I wanted her to see it. Her house was a blur as we passed it. When we finally got there, I couldn't imagine a more perfect moment; the sun was bathing everything it touched in golden light, and made everything look in the midst of summer instead of deep winter. I helped Sky dismount. Patches of frost glittered on leaves and it crunched underfoot.
"So, Sky, how was your day?" That was a safe question, right? Maybe even a good question. A normal question.
She seemed bemused and mistrusting of my normal question, but politeness won out, and she answered anyway.
"Fine. I did a little composing at lunchtime."
"I saw you at the piano."
"You didn't come in?" and there it was. That little sentence gave me hope. There was hope for me. I laughed and held up my hands.
"I'm being careful. Very, very careful with you. You're a scary girl."
"Me?" she gasped disbelievingly.
"Think about it. You rip me up in the parking lot in front of my friends, save my best penalty kick, chuck me out of your apple tree – yeah, you're terrifying." I said logically, but with a smile.
"I like the sound of that." she smiled. SuperSky. I grinned.
He hasn't guessed my thoughts, has he?
"But what scares me the most is that there's so much riding on our relationship and you don't even know it." She huffed out a sigh.
"OK, Zed, try and explain it to me again. I'll listen this time." She nodded seriously. Where to start?
"I guess you don't know anything about savants?" I asked hopefully.
"I know more about soccer." She shrugged, and I laughed.
"I'll just give you a little information now then, just to get us started. Let's sit here for a moment." I lifted her so she could sit on a fallen tree trunk and leaned beside it so our eyes were level. My eyes drifted over her dainty features; big eyes, soft lips, delicate cheekbones, cute little button nose.
"Sure you want to hear?" I checked "'Cause if I tell you, I've got to ask you to keep it a secret for the sake of the rest of my family."
"Who would I tell?" she sounded breathless with anticipation.
"I dunno. The National Enquirer maybe. Oprah. A congressional committee."
"Er, no, no, and definitely no." She laughed, counting them off on her fingers.
"OK then." I smiled and brushed a stray strand of hair off her forehead "Savants: I'm one. All my family are, but I've got a heavy dose being the seventh son. My mom's a seventh child too."
"And that makes it worse?"
"Yeah, there's a multiplier effect. Savants have this gift; it's like an extra shift in a car, makes us go a little but faster and further than normal people."
"Right. OK." I rubbed my hand on her knee and continued.
"It means we can talk telepathically to each other. With people who don't have the savant gene, they would feel an impression, an impulse, not hear the voice. That's what I thought would happen when I spoke to you on the soccer pitch. I was pretty surprised when you understood me – blown away, in fact."
"Because?"
"Because it meant you are a telepath too. And when a soulfinder speaks telepathically to her partner, it's like all the lights are coming on in a building. You lit me up like Vegas."
"I see." She still didn't believe me – she was fighting it. I rested my head against hers. She tried to go back, but I held her head to mine gently.
"No, you don't. There's more."
"I thought there might me." When my skin touched hers, she seemed to relax. Another good sign.
"When's your birthday?"
What possible relevance did that have? "Um. . . first of March. Why?" That didn't make sense. I shook my head.
"That's not right."
"It's the day of my adoption." She's adopted! Suddenly, everything made sense.
"Ah, I see. That's why." I flicked my hands over her shoulder and then clasped her hands in mine, resting them on her lap. We sat in silence as I looked into her mind, searching for something. I saw dark things – her past. She was quickly aware of me.
"Yeah, that's me," I smiled "I'm just checking."
"No," she shook her head "I'm imagining this." I sighed a long sigh.
"I'm just checking my facts. I can't make a mistake about something like a soulfinder." I moved away, physically and mentally "I understand. You've come from a dark place, haven't you?" she was dumbstruck with my blunt words.
"You don't know who your biological parents are?"
"No." He's finding out too much. Letting people close hurts – this has to stop.
"So you never knew that you had a gift."
"Well, that's because I don't. I'm ordinary. No extra shifts in here." She tapped her head.
"Not that you've found." I contradicted "But they're there. You see, Sky, when a savant is born, his or her counterpart also arrives about the same time somewhere on the earth. It could be next door, or maybe thousands of miles away." I linked my fingers with hers "You have half our gifts, I the other. Together we make a whole. Together we are much more powerful." Sky rolled her eyes.
"It sounds sweet, a nice fairy tale, but it can't possibly be true."
"Not sweet. Think about it: the chances of meeting your other half are tiny. Most of us are doomed to knowing there's something better out there but we can't discover it. My parents are two of the lucky ones; they have each other thanks to a wise man of my dad's people with a gift for finding. None of my brothers have yet located their partner and each of them struggles with it. It's a killer, knowing that things could be so much more. That's why I rushed. I was a starving man facing a banquet."
"And if they never meet their soulfinder?"
"It can go many ways – despair, anger, acceptance." We both know which I had opted for "It gets worse as the years tick by. It hadn't really begun to worry me yet. I'm incredibly lucky to escape all that angst." And every second I spent with Sky I thanked what Gods there were that we were together. I was not going to mess this up. I could feel Sky was still struggling with the notion, so reverted to her old standby: humour.
"Seems simple to me. Can't they run a savant match-making service on facebook or something? Problem solved." I smiled wryly.
"Like we haven't thought of that. But it's not about your birthday exactly, but when you were conceived – that gives a lot of variation nine months on. Think how many people were born on or around your birthday. Then factor in premature babies, the ones overdue. You'd be trawling though thousands. Savants are rare – there's only one in every ten thousand or so. And not every savant lives in a country like ours with computers at home. Or even speaks the same language."
"Yeah, I see that." Sort of, if I'm going to buy this whole thing, which I'm not. I took her chin in my hand, looking at her, thirstily drinking in her face. My soulfinder. I still couldn't believe it.
"But against the odds, I've discovered you. On a soccer pitch of all places. Sky Bright from Richmond, England."
This is so strange "What does all this mean?"
"It means that's it for us. For life."
"Joking?" I shook my head "But I'm only here for, like, a year."
"Just a year?"
"That's the plan."
"And you do what then? Go back to England?" she shrugged. This was a problem – but I wasn't letting her go that easily. I'd make her see the truth, and then she'd fall just as much in love with me as I was with her, and then she's stay. Or I'd follow her to England. Hell, I'd swim all the way to England just to be with Sky.
"I don't know." She replied, and I could feel her uneasiness – she was finally feeling something "It depends on Sally and Simon. It's going to be hard because I'll have done a year here and the course is completely different back in the UK. I don't want to start all over again." But I miss England. The admission in her head was all I needed. I wouldn't keep her here – I'd follow her to Richmond, if that's what she wanted.
Now there was something I never thought I'd say.
"Then we'll find a way for you to stay. Or I'll follow you to England."
"You will?" she asked hopefully, aware that my fingers were once again tangled in hers.
"Hell, yeah. This is serious." I squeezed her fingers to back my words up "So she doesn't run for the hills."
"Meaning?" I lifted one of her hands and put it in my jacket pocket, keeping my fingers locked around hers as I leaned beside her, wishing I could just keep this feeling in my pocket and take it out when I needed it.
"I thought you might be a bit wary of me at first, until you got used to me. The nice me, not the jerk me." I said, remembering her former thoughts comparing Zed Benedict: 'Soulfinder' and Zed Benedict: Wolfman. Which to trust?
"Wary?" she said warily – oh, the irony.
"Wolfman, remember? You've got me down on the dark side; I saw that in your thoughts."
He knows about Wolfman? Kill me now, why don't you?
"No way, it's cute." She gave a strangled groan of humiliation and I chuckled.
He's enjoying my embarrassment – the rat!
"I know I can be a bit hard to talk to sometimes – like when we met at the ghost town. I'm going through. . ." I shook my head, trying to find the right words "it's tough right now. And sometimes, I just get overwhelmed. Too much weighing on me." My words know no lies. Sky still wasn't sold on the soulfinder stuff, but she had to face the telepathy as true. This much, at least, she knew. Well, it was a start.
"You're not making this up? You do something, don't you?" she was thinking of my knowledge of what she was going to say before she was going to say it – she was sharp, this girl.
"I do a lot of things. I'd like to do some things with you, Sky, if you want to." That's it, give her a choice – always give her a choice "I was wrong to rush in claiming you as my soulfinder – you need to arrive at the same place with me. After all, we've the rest of our lives to get this right." She swallowed. Hard.
Tina had told you this would happen, she chastised herself, they'll tell you you're made for them. It's what all the evil guys did to lure in those poor saps in the stories, wasn't it? But Zed. . . he looks so. . . hopeful "What kind of things?" I ran my free hand down her arm, clasping my other hand in hers.
"Go for a ride."
"We've just been doing that." and then she smiled shyly. My world exploded in joy and delight. She had smiled. Smiled! It was only a small smile, but it was enough to send my heart to my throat. What would it be like when she smiled properly? When she grinned? Did she have a toothy grin? A gentle grin? A slow grin or a fast grin? Did it make her face crinkle up? Did it bring out unseen dimples? And what about her laugh? Did it tinkle like bells? Ring and stall like a hyena? Was it a silent laughter or a loud, infectious giggle? Did she snort while she laughed? Had she ever laughed until her belly hurt and she couldn't breathe? Could I make her laugh like that?
"Then we've ticked the first box already." I grinned "Next we might go out to the movies in Aspen, or risk the diner in Wrickenridge and have everyone stare at us all evening."
"The movies sound nice." That was another yes. Yes!
"With me?"
"I might risk it." She said, looking down "Once. But I still don't like you much." Her thoughts said different – she was coming round, slowly, but surely.
"Understood." I said instead, looking at her seriously, but I couldn't wipe the smile from my eyes.
"And this soulfinder stuff – I don't believe it. It leaves no room for choice, like some cosmic arranged marriage." She wrinkled her nose and I grimaced.
"We'll leave that aside for the moment then. One step. Go out with me?" I sensed her conflict. Which was real: Soulfinder Zed or Wolfman Zed?
"Ok," she finally gave in "I'll give you a chance." I lifted her fingers to my mouth and gave them a playful nip.
"Then it's a date." A date with Sky – and it'd not even midnight.