After showing his accomplishment to Hannah, Mia, and David, he indulged their request to undo their own adornments. Mia hugged Zack with gushing relief. The bracelet had been a wasp on her wrist for days now. She thought it would never go away.
When Amanda learned about Zack’s stunt, she pulled him aside in the hallway.
“That was reckless. You could have overshot and hurt someone. You don’t know what your time stuff does to living creatures.”
The next morning, he found out. Quint interrupted Zack’s lab session to release a tiny brown mouse on the table. It had glassy white eyes, a chestnut-size lump on his left side, and several battle scratches.
“This poor fellow’s at the end of his road,” Quint told Zack. “See if you can fix that.”
All throughout dinner that night, the cartoonist remained uncharacteristically quiet. While the others conversed, he stared ahead in vacant consternation.
Mia touched his arm. “You okay?”
“Yeah. I . . .” He stammered a moment, then let out an incredulous chuckle. “I reversed a mouse today. The thing was old and dying. And then suddenly it wasn’t. Quint says I sent it all the way back to adolescence.”
The others eyed him through deadpan faces, waiting for a smirk or some other indicator he was kidding. He stared in wide-eyed wonder at his hands.
“Jesus Christ.”
While David and Zack discussed the philosophical implications of his ability, Mia envisioned his next bombshell announcement. Today Zack rejuvenated a live rodent. Tomorrow he could be resurrecting a dead one. Hannah couldn’t help but wonder if his skill worked the other way. Could he turn a young mouse into an old one? Could he do it to a human? Would he?
It was Amanda’s thoughts that concerned Zack the most. She remained silent for the rest of the meal, and stone-faced throughout the evening movie.
At bedtime, she approached her room and noticed Zack watching her from his doorway.
“What?”
“You’ve been quiet since I mentioned my mouse trick. Did it upset you?”
“A little,” she admitted.
“You want to talk about it?”
She crossed her arms, bathing him in the same inscrutable look that had bugged him for hours.
“No. I’ll work it out.” She opened her door, then eyed him one last time. “Good night.”
Amanda skipped her hygiene and prayers and went straight to bed, her jade eyes dancing in restless bother. She’d devoted half her life to God and medicine and now suddenly this mordant atheist could heal with a flick of a finger. And what came out of her hands?
She rolled on her back and cast a contemptuous glare at her creator. Apparently, among His other faults, the Lord had Zack’s sense of humor.
—
The sisters weren’t eager to face their paranormal afflictions.
For their first two weeks in Terra Vista, Hannah and Amanda lived in quiet hope that the churning forces inside them would simply go away—a one-time outbreak, like chicken pox.
Fearing that anger was the catalyst of her unholy white weirdness, Amanda kept an iron lid on her temper. She sat calmly through her daily scientist interviews, answering all questions with clenched-jaw amenity. She held her tongue when Hannah voiced her growing attraction to David, and held her scream when David spoke glowingly of Esis. She ignored all the puns, cracks, and antics of Zack Trillinger, a man who irked her even when he was being nice.
Though the restraint nearly burned her an ulcer, Amanda’s perseverance paid off in exactly the way she hoped. For fourteen days, her hands remained blessedly pink and normal.
On August 7, illness and sibling disharmony eroded the walls of her composure. The sisters were the first and worst victims of the invading virus. They spent the afternoon laid up in their room. By nightfall, their foul moods turned on each other.
“I’m just saying he’s sixteen, Hannah. It’s not healthy.”
“Would you shut up about that? I told you we’re not doing anything. We’re just taking walks together. Jesus.”
“Well, you need to be careful. You don’t always make the best decisions when you’re grieving.”
Hannah covered her face. “Oh my God.”
“What? Am I wrong? Do you not remember—”
“No, Amanda, you’re absolutely right. I make cruel and awful decisions. Like, you remember how I dropped my married name an hour after my husband died? Oh wait. That was you.”
Amanda raised her head from the pillow. “I can’t believe you said that. I honestly can’t believe you just said that.”
“Yeah, well, here’s a cross and some nails. Have fun up there.”
After an hour of livid silence, Amanda fell into fevered dreams. She replayed her final moments with Derek in the waiting room—the frost on his nose, the bitter rage in his voice. I’m actually glad we’re going to different places. What does that say about you?
A thunderous crash jerked her awake. Coughing in dust, Amanda turned on the lamp and found half the room covered in broken plaster. The outer shell of the ceiling had rained down on them, leaving a rug-size patch of dangling wires and cracked wooden beams.