Free The Evensong by Lindsay Payton Page B

that direction. Omar stood there, now in a plain t-shirt and pajama pants, his hair a damp tousle.
    “You know, I closed the door for a reason,” I said as he slowly walked in.
    “What, I can’t worry about you?” he asked, pausing at the foot of my bed.
    “There is nothing to worry about!” I blurted out. “What are you, Rene?”
    He just looked at me in surprise. “Wow, I didn’t think you were that pissed off. I think it’s you that’s Rene.”
    “Please leave,” I replied, looking back to the window.
    “You didn’t get sick again, did you?”
    “No, I didn’t, I was just hanging out with someone.”
    Omar paused, and I knew what he was thinking before he said it. “That someone being swamp guy?”
    “Sure, swamp guy,” I replied, exasperated with correcting people.
    “I don’t want to bug, but—”
    “Then don’t.”
    He sighed and twisted the knob at the end of the bedpost. “He doesn’t seem like the greatest type of person to be hanging out with.”
    “And you base your judgment on what? The things you see in public, like him walking around?” I asked, imagining Omar peeking around the bookshelves in the library.
    “Yeah, I do,” he replied defensively. “You can tell a lot about a person based on the things they read.”
    This was his reason for most things. So-and-so had checked out this certain book, so that must mean that they are into those sorts of things.
    “So what kind of stuff has he been checking out?” I asked, mocking intense interest as I sat up and looked at him with wide eyes.
    He gave me a hard look before he replied, “Stuff like things we don’t talk about.”
    I stared at him vaguely, and then had to hold back a laugh. “Stuff? That we don’t talk about? Thanks for being so specific.”
    He lost his patience then. He threw his hands up in defeat and turned away, going towards the door. I didn’t stop him; I took a second to laugh to myself as he slammed the door behind him.
    A few days later, I was sitting across from Rene at the kitchen table, struggling through the lesson I had missed earlier. After letting my frustrations die down, I had gotten over the worst of my anger towards Rene, though I still thought her new rule was stupid; I still wasn’t allowed to see Linden, but who’s to say I’d follow through with that?
    “Let’s try this one now,” Rene said after flipping through one of her books for a few minutes. “This will be a bit of a stretch, but it will be good practice.”
    She slid the book towards me, and I briefly read over the exercise. It was all about projecting, though it would be a guided projection. I’d had many guided projections before when I was just learning, but this one was supposed to be a little harder since Rene would be mixing up location.
    “Sound reasonable?” she asked when I had finished reading.
    “Reasonable,” I replied, giving her the book.
    “Okay—and we’ll stay here at the table to do it, all right?”
    I hesitated at that one. Usually I was in a more comfortable position rather than sitting in a wooden chair in the kitchen. But if she was up to the challenge, then I guess I was, too.
    I folded my arms on the tabletop in front of me and tried to slouch down a little more while Rene read over a few things. When I was ready, I rested my head on my arms, taking a deep breath.
    “Okay, shoot,” I said.
    “All right. Eyes closed?” Rene paused and went on. “I’ll give you a few minutes to do your normal routine, but wait over the house until I give you instruction.”
    I was hardly listening anymore as I started. There was a brief feeling of my body relaxing, and then I was above the roof, watching the trees blowing next to the house and waiting to hear something from Rene.
    Her voice was like the faintest whisper in my ear, but I heard her when she spoke, and she told me to go in the direction of Meryl’s house. So I started the simple exercise, going through various places in town until Rene