Breeze Corinth (Book 1): Sky Shatter (18 page)

“You come from a family of industrialists? Your father must be in charge of a powerful cartel.”

“No, not really. My father runs a scrap metal yard.”

“Oh!” Sally exclaimed, and then realized she said it a little too forcefully. “Well, I bet it must be a very successful one. So tell me about the rest of your family, what are they like?”

“My mother died in an accident when I was little. I have no other family left.” He quickly shifted the gears of the conversation. “What’s Greenbrier like?”

Sally beamed. “It’s a really great school and so beautiful. The architecture is just divine. So much nicer than this place.” She let out a long, dramatic sigh and stopped painting, then looked up to the sky and closed her eyes. “I can see the trees turning a leafy green after a long cold winter. Spring has arrived and the flowers are blooming. The birds are coming out and singing as so many of them are flying home after wintering in the southern lands.” She opened her eyes and looked at the strips of paint on the wall and sighed again, then put the brush back into the pan. As she examined her stained hands she felt something roll down her cheek. She wiped it away and found it to be wet. It took her a moment to realize she was crying.

A hand touched her shoulder. It was Breeze comforting her as he handed her a towel.

She sniffed. “I feel so lonely here and I don’t know why. To make matters worse, I feel like I’ve been here for a very long time and life is slipping away. And when I dream, I dream that nothing will ever be the same again.”

Breeze listened as he opened more cans of paint. He mixed them into clean pans and stirred, producing a variety of colors. “I get the same feeling you do, but it happened much earlier. In fact, I can look back and say it hit me the moment I walked out my door and turned to see my father was not there to wave me goodbye,” he said while laying out new brushes for her to use.

“We’re supposed to be here just for the summer. That’s all I know.” Sally reached for a brush and began painting fresh strips on the wall.

“Can you tell me more about Ray?” As soon as he spoke, he regretted it. He realized he should have kept the conversation focused on her.

“Oh, well, he is from a military family. His father is a general, or something like that, in the Territorial Army. His family is pretty wealthy. And powerful. Ray’s father is always talking about running for president of our territory. Whatever. Politics is so boring. And Ray, well, I guess he just wants to follow in his footsteps. You know, be like daddy, or something like that,” she said and reached for another brush.

“So, how did you meet him? I guess you know each other from school and stuff—”

“Oh, no. We live next door to each other. My father and his are good friends. Partners in crime, I guess. They always talk about expanding into the Bad Lands and making it a safe place for settlers to occupy the lands.”

Breeze gritted his teeth. “So, you two are a couple? That’s cool. I’m not really seeing anyone back home. Well, there is this one girl, but you know, nothing serious.” He wondered if she knew he was lying.

“Ray and I? Together? Well, let’s just say he thinks so. He can be so possessive. No, I just see him as a friend. A childhood friend really. I mean, we grew up together and we live next door to each other. He lives in a big house like me and our parents are friends and all. In the summers, my parents would always throw these really extravagant pool parties and Ray would be there shooing the boys away from me. He’s so cute. In the winter months when the leaves would fall from the trees and fill up the empty pool, we would sit on the bench next to it and talk. He’s a really good friend, but—” she said with a shrug as she mixed another batch of paint.

Breeze felt a surge of confidence as he puffed up his chest. “So, that was some demonstration session we had the other day, huh?”

“I know! Mine was so weird. I guess Oslo programmed the computer for us to have some sort of adversary. I ended up dealing with a crazy lady in a white dress. I floated up and stared in her face. Nobody is supposed to see me when I project if I don’t want them to, but somehow she could. I was so scared when she grabbed me by the throat and threw me across the courtyard.” Her eyes narrowed. “I wonder how she could do that if she was just a simulation, or a hologram?”

Breeze shook his head. “I don’t know. My session was pretty weird. I—”

”—there is no way she could have possibly seen me or touch me! How weird is that?” Sally obliviously continued. “You know, the day we all met at the cove, I was worried because I couldn’t see you when you swam out by yourself. Ray and I were on the rock island and as I looked across the cove to find you, I saw a lady in white who stepped onto the beach for a moment, then disappeared. She seems like the one I saw during my demo session. I wonder if she’s an instructor or something.”

Breeze stood with his putty knife in hand. He was shocked to hear her express concern for him, but also of her seeing a mysterious woman. Memories of the girl he saw underwater that same day came to mind. He wanted to tell Sally more of his encounter with her, but decided against it. “Was there something about the woman in white that seemed familiar? Maybe she was also projecting, or maybe Oslo has some sort of a scanning machine that can pluck ideas out of our minds and materialize them and stuff. That’s why it felt so real when she grabbed and threw you,” he said.

Her eyes were transfixed on him as she listened intently.

He continued. “I saw someone too, you know. Maybe she was an instructor also, but she seemed really young, like our age. She…,” he trailed off as she looked away from him.

“This gift of mine is something I’ve known about ever since I was a little girl,” Sally spoke while absent-mindedly stroking her hair. “They say these powers don’t manifest themselves until we get older, but somehow I was always proficient despite how young I was and I always seemed to know exactly what to do with them. When I would dream at night, I would later realize I was projecting. Even if I had a daydream, I ended up slipping out of my body and would wander about, yet I could turn around and see that my body was perfectly still, and I would always have a link, like a trail of light that I could follow back to it.”

Breeze listened as he set up a ladder. He climbed up, gripping the side of it with one hand while lifting the bucket of putty and the trowel with the other. He reached the top of the steps and placed the bucket onto a tray that protruded from the top of the ladder.

Sally shaded her eyes from the bright sun as she looked up at him. “Why don’t you just hover? I mean, you’re a flier, so why not take advantage of your power?”

“Yeah, well, I’m not much of a flier. I mean, I’m not that good at it. I try, you know, but I’m not like you Sally. I just can’t turn it on. You saw me in the dome. I was a disaster. It took me forever to just get my feet off the ground. I have to concentrate really hard and I can’t deal with any distractions.”

“I’m sorry about teasing you and saying mean things. I just…” she hesitated and twirled her paint brush as flecks of paint splattered all over the wall. “I just get so irritated. I used to be much nicer, or at least I think so. Coming here just seems to bring out the worse in me.”

“It’s fine Sally. Look, you need to understand the differences between you, me and Ray.”

“I wonder where he could be,” she mused.

He pretended not to hear her. “You come from a place where paranormal skills are valued. Heck, your school teaches the paranormal. I come from a place where the paranormal is not really spoken of, or even believed. We build flying machines, that’s it. Toss in the fact that my father doesn’t even want me to practice at all and I would have to sneak out at night and pretty much teach myself. Let’s just say that the desert has a lot of craters spread out across it from me losing control and plowing into the ground. But I never get hurt, at least not much. My father always takes his tractor out the next morning to fill them in, though he doesn’t say anything to me about it. It’s funny, he’s always looking up at the sky with a worried look like he’s afraid someone is going to see them.” He was sanding the wall as he spoke and stopped to feel the smoothness of the surface. He shook his head and resumed.

“I didn’t know any of this Breeze. I’m sorry.” She twirled her brush, never noticing she was splattering her clothes.

“Don’t be. It’s not your fault. We come from different worlds. Like I said, my city is all about aerocraft. People don’t believe in the paranormal. If a man flies, it’s inside a machine. You sometimes hear stories from the older folk about aerocraft being sabotaged or destroyed in the old days and that some shadow group used to attack and burn cities. They keep prattling on about how there once was a time when Earth was filled with brilliant cities and amazing technologies. They even talk about men who could fly into space. Imagine that!”

Sally’s face was pale. “We hear the same stories, too. There is always talk about how life was so much better in the past. I don’t believe it. And I never heard of anyone building spacecraft, have you?”

Breeze shrugged. “There are builders in Conception who are really secretive about what they create. Rumors are always floating around about somebody building a ship that can fly into lower space, just above the atmosphere, but nobody has ever seen one. Then there is always something weird going on in the Bad Lands. You always hear stories about flying creatures swooping around in the sky, or monsters walking around in the forest.” He paused. “I have seen things.”

Breeze made his way down the ladder and to the pile of supplies. He picked out a new bucket of putty and pried open the lid. “Sometimes when I would fly at night, I would see lighted orbs hovering in the distance, usually over a mountain ridge along the western side of my town. They just sit there, then zip away faster than anything I’ve ever seen and I don’t know of any aerocraft that can move like that. Sometimes I would notice the balls of light hovering close to me, as if they were watching me. I would get real spooked and fall out of the sky. As time went by, I got used to them and I would always feel that they were encouraging me in a strange way. I would fly toward them and follow them around. It was weird, because they would take my mind off my anxieties about flying and I could actually concentrate.” He went back up the ladder and resumed patching the wall. “Eventually, I would find myself flying further and further from home. I would follow these orbs west over the mountains until we reached the salted lake that lies on the other side of the range. Hardly anyone goes there because it’s considered to be part of the Bad Lands. You hear talk about gigantic birds flying around there and that their wings make a sound like rolling thunder. Whatever, sounds stupid. One night I followed a formation of orbs across the lake. It was the first time I ever did that and man, that lake is bigger than I thought! The moonlight lit the way and we came upon a huge open plain that was pure white. You could barely see the mountains off in the distance and suddenly out of nowhere, there’s this mountain all by itself. The orbs dropped into the mountain and I tried to follow them but I couldn’t. Something stopped me like a command I couldn’t hear, but I could feel and telling me to keep my distance. I found a hill where I could land…well, crash into, and from there I could watch them. I’m telling you Sally, I would see all sorts of weird craft come out of this mountain. Some of it was really cool. Others were just creepy and weird. Ever since that night I would fly back there just so I could watch the lights and…”

He realized he was rambling. He looked down at her and was stunned to see Sally smiling.

“I think you come from an amazing place. I didn’t realize it was so interesting,” she said.

Breeze shrugged. “Yeah, well, I guess so.”

“You’re such a nice guy. I’m so happy we can be friends,” she gushed.

Breeze felt his heart sink like a brick. “That’s great of you to say.” He immediately wanted to kick himself as soon as he said it.

Sally began humming a tune and resumed painting samples on the wall.

Breeze glumly climbed higher up the ladder. He stopped and placed the bucket of putty on the step above and looked up at the sky. He wanted to fly as the urge to impress her overwhelmed his senses.

He stared at the clouds and focused his concentration. It wasn’t until he looked down did he realize he was floating above the dormitory. He looked for Sally when he heard the grumble of an engine.

It was Ray driving the scissor lift machine. He was fumbling with the controls and grinding the gears as he careened around a corner. He was out of control, and was heading straight for Sally.

She waved at him excitedly, oblivious to the danger.

Breeze felt a surge of jealousy that made him lose his concentration. He flailed wildly with his arms as he plummeted to the ground and crashed into the pans full of paint, splattering it all over her.

Ray brought the scissor lift to a halt and nonchalantly stepped out.

Breeze lay on the ground, refusing to move even an inch. He could hear Ray laughing hysterically as he felt paint ooze all over him. He looked over at Sally and saw that she was covered head to toe with paint. She held out her hands and looked down at her clothes, then turned to look at her wall of paint samples. They were completely ruined. She looked at Breeze in horror, and then ran away.

Ray chuckled and knelt down on one knee next to Breeze. “Well my boy, let me guess, an attempt to impress the girl ended in disaster. Right?”

Breeze glared at him. He wanted to say something smart, but couldn’t think of anything.

Ray slapped his thighs and stood up. He took a look at the wall Breeze was patching and nodded. “Breeze, you really need to listen. Sally and I come from a different world. Very different. Manual labor is not really our thing. We have other people do stuff like this for us. For you, yes, you’re in your element here. And yeah, this project gave you an opportunity to shine for Sally, but, you never really had a chance with her. And now? Well, probably never.”

Breeze continued to lay still. He knew he should get up and defend himself, but couldn’t find the will. Lying there was all he wanted to do.