The Field (11 page)

“Thanks,” I say, somewhat mollified. “Since Brett's a senior and he didn't start last year, I think Swenson is giving him an extra shot, which I guess in theory I support, but not so much when it involves me.”

“Sitting on the bench sucks. At least playing is the reward for working our asses off in practice all week.” He stops the car in front of my house. “Adios amigo.”

“See you.” I get out and slam the door shut. I feel sort of off kilter, like something isn't right with the Universe. I'm so used to being pretty much in sync with Will—I mean, he's been my best friend since grade school—but lately, I don't know what to expect from him. This thing with his dad must be really messing him up.

I
HADN'T PLANNED
to say anything about what happened at the plant to my parents, but at dinner that night Marcie blew that idea for me.

“So, I heard you threw Will to the ground on the field trip to the coal plant today,” she says smugly, taking a bite of food and chewing slowly while she watches for my reaction.

“Where'd you hear that?” I ask calmly. But I'm wondering how she could possibly know about it.

“The sister of one of the girls in my algebra class was on the field trip. She sent her a text.”
Figures
.

“What happened?” asks my mom, alarmed. “Were you fighting?”

“No, it wasn't like that at all,” I say, glaring at Marcie. “Will was just walking in the parking lot and I thought I saw a truck coming, so I pulled him out of the way. I just pulled him a little
too hard and we both fell onto the pavement. It wasn't a big deal.”

“Oh.” My mom looks relieved. “Are you both okay then?”

“Yeah, we're fine. Just some scrapes from where we fell to the ground.” I hold up my arms and show them the raw patches. “I don't know why Marcie even brought it up.”

“Gross. Do you mind? I'm eating.” Marcie makes a face.

“Okay. That's enough. We don't need any bickering at the table,” my mom says. She's big on having family dinners every night. I'm sure she read in one of her parenting books that it's important for kids to have family time at the dinner table, which I guess is true, but it's not like we're the Brady Bunch, or anything. “I'm glad both you're both okay. I'd hate to think what could have happened if you hadn't been there.”

“Did Will's dad show you around?” my dad asks.

“No. He was going to come out and talk with us, but he was on an important call and couldn't get away.”

“Hmm … ”

“You mean he didn't even come out to see if Will was alright?” says my Mom.

“I guess the call was really important.” I shrug. I wonder if they know anything about what's going on. It's not like they're friends with the Asplunths, but they do know them. I don't think they'd bring it up at the table with Marcie and Drew around.

“Thanks for dinner, Mom, I'm going upstairs to study.” I grab my plate and glass and leave them on the counter for my dad to clean up. My parents aren't big traditionalists in most things, but my mom cooks and my dad does the dishes. I'm not sure he can even make anything more challenging than frozen pizza, which is what he makes when Mom's not home to cook.
On my way out of the kitchen, I get four ibuprofen tablets. My shoulder is starting to throb.

I have a paper due on
A Farewell to Arms
, so I work on that for a while and then do some reading for my other classes. It was a rough day, and I'm beat, so I only last about an hour before I have to go to bed. I crawl under the comforter and am out almost instantly. In the dead of night I'm awakened by another nightmare, and this one's different. No violent explosion, but it's worse, because this time it's about Will.

It's a morphed version of what happened at the plant. What makes it a nightmare is that I know Will is in danger; I can see the truck running him down, but I can't move. I can't save him. His face is turned towards me, eyes wide with terror, but my legs feel like concrete, rooted to the ground. The really terrible thing, though, as if that's not terrible enough, is that I feel like I should be able to do something, like I know what to do, but I can't quite remember how. I watch helplessly as the truck careens toward Will and, just before the sickening impact, Will screams and I wake up.

I
CAN'T HELP
thinking about the nightmare when Will picks me up the next day for the remote viewing session with Dr. Auberge. I mean, it's probably normal to have dreams like that after something dramatic and really stressful happens. Isn't that what dreams are supposed to do? Help you sort things out? Still, it creeps me out to think of the look on Will's face with the truck bearing down on him. I glance over at him as we cross the parking lot to the physics lab. The evening light catches him from behind and shines through his blond hair, giving him a golden halo. Which is creepy in a way, too.

I'm brought out of my thoughts by Will asking me where we're meeting up with Renee.

“She said she'd be at the lab with Stephen.”

“Okay, that's cool,” he says. “I can't stay the whole time. I've got a Spanish test tomorrow that I haven't studied for. So, are you guys going out now, or what?”

“We haven't really talked about it—it's only been a week. It's weird. You know how sometimes when you meet someone for the first time you feel a connection with them right away, like you already know them? That's how I feel with her. Like I've
known her forever, and like I'm just getting to know her for the first time.”

“Dude, that doesn't make any sense.” We're at the door and Will reaches to open it with one hand and pats me on the back with the other. “She's got you totally whipped already.”

“Yeah, I guess.” I don't try to explain. I'm not really sure why I even thought Will would understand. He just doesn't think about things that way.

We're supposed to meet Stephen and Renee in the office at the back of the lab. When we get there, he and Renee are sitting across from each other at the desk deep in conversation. Renee jumps up and comes over to us as we walk in the door. She kisses me on the cheek to say hello, which ignites a warm glow inside me that starts in my chest and radiates out, enveloping my entire body. I reach for her hand. I think in France people normally greet each other very warmly, so maybe this is just a typical hello, but I find myself feeling very happy about French customs.

“Alright. Are you ready to do some more remote viewing?” Stephen stands up and rubs his hands together, which makes him look like a mad scientist plotting our demise. He isn't wearing a lab coat tonight, and his long, knobby arms stick out absurdly from his t-shirt. “Since you two seem to know each other,” he looks at me and Renee, “why don't you take Eric to room B and I'll get Will started. It's the same set up as before. Fifteen slides, one minute to transmit and one minute to record your impressions. Any questions?” We shake our heads. “Okay, follow me.”

Will and Stephen leave the room and take a right down the hall. I follow Renee to the rooms on the left of the corridor. Room B looks pretty much identical to the room I was in before.
Desk, chair, computer monitor. I sit down in the chair while Renee turns on the monitor and logs onto the system. She's leaning across me and I smell the lemon scent of her hair and feel the warmth of her body. I reach up and put my hand on her shoulder. She turns her head and smiles at me.

When she's done at the computer, it displays a blank, blue screen. “You're all set to go. I'll be back for you in half an hour.”

The session goes pretty much the same as before. I watch the blue screen and try to focus on receiving images for the first minute, then input my impressions during the second minute. Like last time, it goes pretty fast, and I'm surprised when the last screen pops up saying S
ESSION
C
OMPLETE.

When Renee comes in the room to get me, I'm stretching my arms over my head and moving my neck around to get out the kinks. I'm basically always sore. Another goalkeeper hazard.

“Want a shoulder massage? I'm particularly good at it,” she asks, putting her hands on my shoulders. Her touch is strong and firm. I can feel my muscles unknotting.

“That feels great. Your fingers are really strong.” I'm actually surprised.

“It's from sculpting and throwing pots on the wheel. Wet clay is really heavy.”

“I'd like to see your work sometime.”

“I'd love to show you. I have some paintings that I'm working on at school that you can see, but I didn't bring any of my finished pottery over from France. They're too heavy and bulky. You can come by the art studio, though.” She kneads my shoulders a minute more. “Enough massage for now. They'll be waiting for us.” Reluctantly, I get up and follow her out.

Stephen and Will are already back in the office when we get there.

“I don't think I have time to do another session,” Will says. “Stephen says he can tell us how we did, and then I've gotta go.”

“Okay, sure,” I say, although I'd like to stay longer.

Stephen sits down at the desk with the computer and starts typing. After a minute he sits back and says, “High scores again. You even improved a couple of percentage points.” Then he looks up at Renee and me. “Are you two together, as in ‘a couple'? Because if you are, we could do some more sessions with the two of you since we have the lab time.”

I look at Renee, not sure how to respond to this. I'd like us to be a couple, but like I told Will, we haven't talked about it. It'd also be cool to do the remote viewing with her. She's looking at me with her eyebrows raised questioningly and a wicked little smile on her lips. I nod to her and smile back.

“Yes,” she says confidently.
Gotta love that in a girl
. “We can stay.”

“Great. I'm outta here,” Will says.

Stephen leans back in his chair and puts his feet up on the desk. He motions for us to sit down in the two chairs on the other side. “I'd like to try something a little different. Eric is showing some good enhanced consciousness abilities, so I think we could do a more advanced type of remote viewing. It's basically the same idea of connecting consciousness at a distance, but in this case Eric, you'll be trying to see in your mind's eye what Renee is seeing through her eyes. What's in the room around her. In the most successful sessions, the remote viewer can actually feel like they are in the room with their viewing partner.”

“Sure. Sounds cool,” I say, but I'm thinking about what Stephen said about my showing strong enhanced consciousness abilities. It makes me feel uncomfortable, self-conscious.

“Okay, great. Wait here for a minute while I get Renee set up. We have moveable props in the subject room that we change out for each session.” While they're gone I wonder what it even means to have ‘enhanced consciousness' and look at the titles of the books in the shelves around the small office. There are a lot of beat-up science textbooks, mostly physics, but also some chemistry, biology and astronomy and several mechanical and electrical engineering books. Mixed in randomly with the textbooks are novels and other books—Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, Carl Jung, David Bohm and Ray Bradbury. Science fiction and science writers with a different perspective, maybe not what you would expect to see in a university lab.

Stephen takes me to the same room as before, but this time, instead of entering my observations into the computer, I'm supposed to say out loud what my impressions are and the microphone in the computer will record me. Afterwards, they'll analyze the recording to see how well I did. Stephen will also be able to hear what I say as we go along.

“Most people say they get the best impressions when they close their eyes and we dim the lights in the room. But don't get too comfortable. We don't want you to fall asleep. It's happened before,” Stephen says. “The computer will make a pinging sound when the session begins. Ready?”

“Yes.”

After he leaves I lean back in the chair, which aside from the computer, is the nicest thing in the room. It's one of those high backed, padded executive office chairs. I close my eyes and wait for the ping. When it comes, I feel pretty odd talking out loud to myself and knowing that Stephen is listening, and maybe Dr. Auberge will listen to the recording later. But I ramble on anyway. I try to focus on Renee. Her face and hair and citrus scent.
Her hazel/green eyes and musical bracelets. I try to imagine where she might be or what might be around her. I see her sitting in a cloth-covered chair, like a living room chair, and I can't tell if I am totally making it up or if I'm getting something. The colors on the backs of my eyelids are different shades of blue from indigo to royal to pale powder blue. Then a field of blue. Little dots of blue. Now a yellow sun growing larger and exploding into smaller suns with flickering, pointed tongues of fire rippling all around them. I'm also getting random thoughts about things like having to mow the lawn and when my next paper is due in language arts and how my shoulder is aching, but I try to push them aside and focus my mind on Renee. Actually, it all seems pretty random. It's not like I can really picture anything for certain or tell the difference between my own chaotic thoughts and actual impressions I might be getting from Renee.

The computer pings again, announcing the end of the session. When Stephen comes to get me, I'm feeling pretty discouraged, but he's really hyped up.

“That was a great session!” he says, bursting through the door. Renee is behind him.

“Really? 'Cause I felt like I was just rambling incoherently about nonsense.”

“Come with me.” He grabs me by the wrist and drags me down the hall to what I presume is the room Renee was in. “Look.” Stephen steps aside so I can go in first.