Intrinsical - Lani Woodland [79]
“Really?” My eyebrow arched in defiance as I created a snowball of my own. I tossed the snowball from hand to hand.
“Now you’re going to want to be careful with that,” Brent warned with a wag of his finger. I ignored the warning and tossed it at him. It didn’t even come close to hitting him thanks to a deflection on his part. Soon the world was nothing but cold wet snow being flung between us. He managed to ”hit” me twice but I returned the favor three times. Having snow go through you is an interesting experience; it made me feel briefly like a rain cloud. When I was tired I collapsed on the wet ground, breathing heavily.
“I haven’t laughed that much since I died,” I wheezed.
Brent plopped himself down beside me. “Me either.” He rested his head on his arms that were crossed above his head.
“Thank you for making this possible. Imagine how surprised everyone will be in the morning.”
“It was nothing.” Brent waved his hand across the sky and the snow began to slow.
I rolled toward Brent, resting my head on my hand. “Why do you always do that?”
“What?”
“Try to make it seem like this ability you have is no big deal?”
Brent stared up at the sky, watching the bright stars and moon. “I don’t know.”
I watched as with a flip of his fingers he began to roll a snowball. “Doesn’t matter. My ability wasn’t able to save us from dying.”
“It saved us when the mist attacked.”
Brent smiled warmly as he sat up. “It did do that,” he admitted—but amended his statement, “but only with your help.”
Brent continued to make his snowball until it got so big that I would no longer be able to get my arms around it. “It’s so cool you had this ability with the elements while you were alive. I never got the chance to try.”
Brent nodded. “Yeah, and unlike everyone else, I could do all of it off campus as well.”
“You mean all the body leaving and moving stuff was limited to campus?” I chewed on the inside of my cheek, thinking. “Are my abilities limited to here, too?”
Brent stretched his neck again rolling his head in a circle. “Maybe . . . probably.”
I looked around Pendrell with its sturdy trees, seasonal flowers, and brick buildings. It all seemed so normal, so unthreatening, but there must be something not right about it. I turned to Brent, curious. “What is it about Pendrell exactly that lets its students project?”
Brent laughed. “I was wondering if we were ever going to have this conversation.” I could hear him shuffling his thoughts, trying to organize them and decide where to start. “Well, Pendrell was founded by Christopher Pendrell,” he said. He seemed satisfied with his snowball and began to roll a new one. “He thought his sons needed to get into an east coast prep school to be able to get into the right college. He was devastated when they weren’t accepted. He set out to make Pendrell better than the schools that had snubbed them. He wanted the kids from his school to be smarter and more successful than any of his competitors. About this time his brother returned from a trip from South America with a plant called pankurem.”
“That’s the same plant my necklace is made of,” I interjected. I could picture the plant perfectly, its tiny leaves growing in little clusters, their edges jagged. I had seen those leaves many times and I knew them well; each one of the amber beads on my necklace had been hand crafted to include a leaf within it. “Vovó uses that plant all of the time in her work.”
“I know about it being in your necklace,” Brent said, still working on his second snowball.
“You knew?” I thought back to when he had seen my necklace and how it had reacted to him.
Brent listened to my thoughts. “Yeah, that stuff responds to people like us. It’s supposed to keep spirits safe, and can protect us while we project. I never found any but when I saw your necklace I knew what it was. Like some part of me recognized it.” The corners
of his mouth sagged. “I thought it would keep you safe.”
“Maybe it would have if I hadn’t been a slave to fashion.”
Brent tilted his head to the side considering before continuing. “Anyway,