Free Spiritdell Book 1 by Dalya Moon

vision, though, right? I've been doing a lot of situps.”
    “I wasn't looking at your abs. I wasn't looking at your anything! ”
    “Your loss,” he says. “This is shaping up to be a strange summer so far.”
    “True. And apparently my power's still working,” I say.
    He gingerly touches his red eye, wincing. “Zan, did you ever wonder why or how you got this power?”
    My voice casual, I say, “All the time.” James doesn't know this, but the truth is I have a pretty good idea about how I got my power, and it has everything to do with my father. My insides quiver at the thought, so I push the memory away.
    “I'm sure you weren't given this gift just so you could be picky about girls,” James says. “Maybe you have some sort of purpose in life, like saving mankind and all that.”
    He pushes me over on the squeaky pull-out bed and steals a pillow.
    “Save mankind from what?” I ask as he commandeers the softest spot on the bed.
    “Save mankind from an asteroid,” he offers. “Or from ... ourselves?”
    “Trans-fats,” I counter.
    “Whaling.”
    “High-fructose corn syrup,” I say as I switch off the light.
    “Movie theater popcorn,” he says.
    “It's like a heart attack in a cute paper box,” I agree.
    “Movie sequels.”
    “And prequels.”
    “The diamond trade.”
    “Global warming,” I say.
    “Candies that look good but taste like soap.”
    “Sharting,” I say, laughing.
    “I think you get sharting from eating soap candies, so if you get rid of one, it solves the other.”
    “Good point,” I say. “What about gift cards? You get them for Christmas and it's mentally taxing trying to remember which ones you have and how much cash is on them. Gran gets me twenty different ones because she's a big believer in not spending it all in once place.”
    “Sounds like a nightmare,” he says. “Gift cards. Yup, pure evil. But what about poverty, or terrorism, or Mad Cow Disease. You never hear about Mad Cow Disease these days. Do you think it's been eradicated and nobody told us?”
    “Oh, yeah, I took care of that last week. I stuck a lady's finger in my belly button and got the recipe for a vaccine. I didn't tell you?” I chuckle for a moment, staring at the moon-lit shadows on the cabin's log ceiling.
    Is a spider climbing down from the ceiling toward my face, or is that moving dark spot a trick of my mind? If you stare too long in the dark, you can begin to hallucinate, albeit mildly. Your brain's trying to make sense of what little information it can get, and tries fitting meaning to the tiniest patterns.
    James, who I thought was asleep, suddenly asks, “Do you sometimes wish you never had your power? Or you lost it?”
    “I don't know. It's a part of me. Would I still be me? Can you ever recover from losing the only thing that makes you special and unique?”
    “Don't say that about my friend. You're plenty special.”
    “We should get some sleep,” I say. “If you're too tired to make it to your room, could you at least turn your face away from me? You've got that girl's ashtray smell all over you. You reek like a sun-dried tomato.”
    “Totally worth it,” he says.
    “How about your eye? Does it hurt?”
    “Yes. Still totally worth it.”
    “Guys do strange things to be with girls, don't they?”
    “You just summed up all of human history,” he says.
    James is a pretty smart guy sometimes.
    * * *
    We were planning to stay past dinner on the second day at the lake, but between the black eye on James and the bad mood on Julie, nobody's feeling like sticking around. The vegan hot dogs we have for breakfast aren't improving the overall atmosphere.
    I stir up the orange juice and think—again—about Austin. My next move should be to go to the coffee shop where she works. No, too intense. I'd love to phone, but that would mean trying to get her phone number through Julie, who's staring at me when she thinks I'm not looking, then quickly turning away to avoid eye contact.