Outview (19 page)

“Tanya is a double-Scorpio and my best
friend on the planet. Anything I know, she knows,” Rose assured me.

Tanya’s large, soft brown eyes seemed to
have only three settings: surprise, amusement, and mockery. She was harmless.

“Do you remember Spencer Copeland?” I asked
Aunt Rose.

“Sure, course it’s been forever ago, twenty
years since I heard his name. He and your dad were inseparable, and their other
friend, Lee, I kind of had a crush on, but was in the good part of my second
marriage so I let it alone.”

“Spencer said he knew you during a lifetime
at Mesa Verde.”

“Did he now, well, that’s very sweet. Ask
him to come by for some lemonade next time you see him, will you, Nate? Now
that I think of it, maybe
he
was the one I had a crush on.”

I told them about the healing lessons and
my long night in the woods but left out the mountain lion, World War II, the
slave trader, and the deer. “And then there’s this,” I said, pointing to the
crystal ball.

“What?’ Kyle asked.

“Watch.” I stared at it. The ball started
rolling in its stand and then floated above the table. No one moved.  It
traveled quickly in a circle around Rose and then fell gently into Linh’s
hands.

“Oh, Nate!” Rose cried.

“Amazing!” Tanya laughed.

“You’re Harry Potter!” Linh shouted.

“I guess this settles it. You’re not crazy,
Nate. The rest of us are,” Kyle joked.

They were staring at me. “How long have you
been able to do that?” Rose asked.

“Since yesterday.”

“It’s telekinesis,” Rose said.

“Sort of, but Spencer says it’s more
complex. It’s called Gogen.”

Doing it for them made it real, and I sat there
as amazed as they were, wondering what it meant, imagining all the
possibilities, and remembering Spencer’s warnings about ego.

“Aunt Rose, can you tell me about the wind
noise?”

“It’s the ancients,” she said. “They’re
opening the channel. They wish to speak to you.”

“Do you hear it?”

“Not since I was younger.”

“I’ve got a million questions.”

“There is so much to discuss, so many
things to show you. When you come next Saturday, we’ll spend the day getting
into things. I promise.”

Kyle said we had better get going soon
since we were going to stop at Mountain View to see Dustin again and then still
make it back by a decent hour.

“We’ve got to get him out,” I said. “There
has to be a way to use my gifts to get him out.”

“Nate, even before you showed up the other
day, I’ve thought about every way possible to get Dusty out of there. And the
only option that doesn’t bring a world of trouble with it is to get your mother
to do it.”

“She won’t.”

“It’s easy for her. All it takes is the
stroke of a pen. She’ll listen to you,” Rose said.

“Just raise her car up in the air and
she’ll rethink the whole position,” Kyle suggested as we said goodbye to Rose
and Tanya.

Dustin came through the same door as he did
just two days earlier but was quite different. His words slurred and eyes
glazed. “Are you okay?” I asked.

“This is your brain on drugs.”

“We’ll get you out this week, one way or
another.”

“Is there a plan?”

“Yes, but you don’t want to know it.”

“I have to get back to Mount Shasta. Can
you take me?”

“What do you need to do there?” I asked,
concerned.

“Show you something. You won’t believe me
if I tell you. I need to show you.”

“You’d be surprised by what I can believe.”

“I just need to show you,” he repeated, agitated.

“Okay, we’ll go.”

“When?”

“Let’s get you out first.”

“Get me out first, good idea. Did you see
Rose?”

“I did. She said to give you a kiss for
her.”

“I’d have died long ago without that
woman.” For a moment he looked like I remembered him when we were kids,
innocent yet brave.

27

It was a two-hour drive home to Ashland, straight
down I-5. We’d hit Ashland about five thirty and meet Amber at the Station for
dinner. We stopped on the shoulder for about fifteen minutes after two National
Guard military vehicles came up behind us. Kyle barely got the Subaru off the
road; soldiers were his greatest fear. After a brief meditation, and a fresh
cigarette in his mouth, he silently pulled back into traffic.

“You two are such a part of all this, I
can’t imagine not having you with me. School is going to feel so weird
tomorrow,” I said.

“What are you going to do, Nate?” Linh
asked. “The people looking for you, won’t they still be there?”

“Spencer didn’t even want you coming back
to Ashland.”

“What am I going to do? Live at Tea Leaf
Beach? I’ve got to convince my mom to get Dustin out. It’s the most important
thing in the world to me.”

“Are you sure you don’t
want
to run
into these guys? Do you think that your new powers can somehow make you immune
to their tactics?” Kyle asked.

“No, really, that’s not it.”

“Maybe you’ll get all cocky and start
looking for a showdown with your father’s killer to avenge his death.”

“I won’t! That would scare the hell out of
me. Don’t worry.”

“We
are
worried, Nate,” Linh began.
“None of us knows what to expect back home.”

The Station was busy for a Sunday night,
probably because the “concert” playing on all the big screens was a U2 show
from the mid-eighties.

Josh, wearing an electric green T-shirt, waved
me over. “Hey, welcome home. Your mom had to run to Sacramento for a used
restaurant equipment auction we just heard about yesterday. You know we’re
redoing part of the kitchen. It’s going to be so much better. Let me show you.”

“Yeah, Josh, how about another time? I
really need to use a phone, and we’re starving.”

“Oh sure, use your mom’s office. Anyway,
she’ll be back around three tomorrow.”

“Thanks.” I headed to her office and called
Amber.

I looked suspiciously around the room as I
made my way to our table.

“We got you a David Gray and some fries,”
Linh said.

“Perfect, thanks. Amber’s on her way. My
mom’s in Sacramento until tomorrow afternoon, so I guess the Dustin talk will
have to wait until then.”

Mostly we just watched the concert and
waved to a few people from school. Kyle asked what Spencer said about the stuff
from Dad’s desk, but with everything that happened at the beach I totally
forgot about it. I would do it at our next meeting on Friday.

Amber slid into the booth next to me. Even
here, with so many college students, heads actually turned when she came into
the room. Everyone noticed her sparkling beauty, but she never flaunted her
looks. It was more about energy for her, as if she was always seeking the magic
she believed existed in every moment. She was as passionate about New Age and
metaphysics as Kyle was about philosophy and quantum physics. I sat there for a
minute while the others talked. I’d read an article that described her mother
as alluring and magnetic on the screen, attributes that Amber inherited, but
where did she get her sensitivity? Not from the parents I saw profiled in the
tabloids.

“Can I crash at your place tonight? They’re
watching my house.”

“If you promise to tell me everything that
happened this weekend,” she said.

“I’ll give it a shot, but that’ll make for
a long night.”

“Who needs sleep?”

“It’s a scaaandal,” Kyle chimed.

Amber must have seen me tense up as we
pulled up to her house and found its front door open and a strange car in the driveway.
“Don’t worry, it’s just my sister’s boyfriend. They’re heading back to San
Francisco.”

“Hi Rod,” Amber said as we passed him.

He smiled and nodded, then tossed a couple
of bags in his backseat.

“Bridge, you remember Nate?” Amber said to
her sister in the front hall.

“Sure, Nate, hi. How’s Dustin?” Bridgette
Mayes wasn’t quite as beautiful as her younger sister, but by any other measure,
she was gorgeous. She’d been crazy about Dustin, and his breakdown hit her
hard. As far as I knew she hadn’t seen or talked to him since. Other than
looks, I never understood what he saw in her. Where Amber was engaging and sincere,
Bridgette was more like a cardboard cutout that talked in sound bites.

“He’s hanging in there,” I said.

“Good to hear. Okay, we’re out of here,
Amber. I’ll call you tomorrow. Now you two don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“So anything goes then?”

“Pretty much.” She was laughing as the door
closed.

Amber let me grab a shower, which I
desperately needed. After talking more about Lightyear, Spencer, and the
weekend, we read to each other out of her growing New Age library. She was in
awe of how, while I was reading something to her, I was absorbing the entire
volume at the same time.

“We took our textbooks on the road trip,
and not only did I memorize all of mine but Kyle’s and Linh’s, too!” I said.

Around ten my exhaustion was winning, and
Amber set me up in the guest room. “The doors are all locked and I even set the
code on the driveway gate so it can’t be opened except from the house. No one
from Lightyear has a clue you’re here, so rest well,” Amber said.

The Outview was long and tragic. I tried to
turn away from the death, but like the slave trader episode, things got uglier.
I was a kid fighting and stealing food from other children during the Black Plague
of Europe in the mid 1300s. Death, disease, hunger, and violence were everywhere.

“Nate! It’s okay. You’re okay.” Amber was
there. “You’re at my house in Ashland. You’re safe.”

“Oh man, it was awful,” I said trembling.

“Come on,” she took my hand and led me to
her room.

“What?” I asked standing next to her bed.
The blue light of a digital clock announced 3:18.

“Get in. You’re sleeping with me.” Before I
could argue she got under the covers and pulled me beside her, hugging against
my back, a leg between mine with her arms wrapped around my shoulder and waist.
I had on only a pair of sweatpants, she was wearing the lightest sleep-shorts
and matching spaghetti-strap top.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she
whispered.

“No. I want to forget about it. I want to
forget all my past lives.”

Amber felt like sunshine when you come out
of a cold lake. The Outviews, Lightyear, and everything else vanished in her
softness as she pressed into me. Neither of us spoke, but I knew she was awake,
her warm breath somewhere around my neck. I could turn and kiss her easily. I
thought about it. In fact, that’s almost all I could think about, which was a
glorious change, liberation from the hauntings of my mind. That’s probably the
only reason I didn’t make a move. I was afraid to stop the wonderful pause from
my crazy world. Amber was protecting me. And out of my ordeal somehow I learned
that the purity of her gesture was better than any sex.

The next thing I knew it was 5:51. Amber
was still asleep, one arm across my waist. We needed to get moving, but I
didn’t want this to end, didn’t want to go back into the world. Today I needed
to convince Mom to get Dustin out. I had more confidence since the night in the
woods and my time with Spencer, but I decided not to tell her about my powers
or Dad’s murder yet. That would certainly confuse the issue of bringing Dustin
home. I couldn’t see her until after school and that was assuming the Lightyear
guys didn’t get me first. By 5:59 the stress destroyed the soft mood Amber had created
in the night.

“Amber,” I said gently. “We should get up.”

“All right. Are you okay?” she said, sleepily.

“Yeah. Thanks for last night.”

“De nada.”

“Hey, how come you don’t have a boyfriend?”
I asked. It was almost a minute before she answered, and I thought my question
offended her.

“Because no one really knows the real me.”
We were quiet and then she asked, “How come you don’t have a girlfriend.”

“Because
I
don’t even know the real
me, and handling one more thing right now would be impossible.”

28

Tuesday, September 23

We drove by school twice and decided
everything looked okay. Spencer’s warning that these people would kill a whole
school full of kids kept me alert. “I’ll be fine,” I said, but I wasn’t really sure.

Pop quiz in Algebra II. The groans around
the room normally would have included me, but it was enjoyable, and the test in
chemistry was fun. The only problem was not finishing too early. Vising changed
my whole outlook on school. I was excited about English class, where I knew Mr.
James would call on me because he was sure I hadn’t read the assigned book,
Catcher
in the Rye
.