Intrinsical - Lani Woodland [80]
“Well, I am sorry to discredit that theory, but that is the same plant I had in my necklace and it didn’t seem to do me any good at all.”
“Yara, please, I’m trying to tell you a story here.” Brent sighed. He examined the beach ball sized snowball, nodded, and began to make a third. I pretended to zip my lips and continued to listen. “So, not only did it help their grades, but it also had a side effect: they were able to leave their bodies. And they shared that secret with a select group of their friends. And thus began Pendrell’s secret society, the Clutch. Each class passed it on to the next group of students, until two boys died in a tragic fire. After that, some members tried to keep it going, but too many weird things started happening— guys getting hurt on their way to meetings, strange accidents when they met, just . . . weird things. Eventually things got too hard and they gave up. The society sort of petered out.”
“So you’re telling me that we had a secret society at our school? Really? You weren’t kidding about that? One that never made it into any of Cherie’s stories?”
“It was a secret,” Brent pointed out, exasperated.
“It must have been hard not to be able to project after they left the school.”
Brent confirmed this with a nod. “Every New Year they would all gather in the pool house and celebrate together. You see, once you could do it, you could always do it when you were here. The only problem was that you couldn’t do it when you anywhere else. Well, most of them couldn’t,” he added with a sheepish grin.
I tapped my lips with my finger, thinking. “Even if you had enough of the plant?”
“Yes— believe me, they tried everything,” Brent said. His third snowball was now also complete, around the size of a basketball.
“How does Thomas fit into all this?”
“I’m pretty sure he was Clutch and probably behind all the weird stuff after the fire. I don’t have any details on what scared them so badly though.”
“So how do you know all this?”
Brent shrugged. “I read it Neal’s journals.”
“How did he know?”
“Well, my grandpa was a member, but it had disbanded before my dad came along. And he couldn’t find anyone else interested and could only barely project himself.”
“So, genetics plays a role?”
“Seems that way. All the bushes on campus died years before dad started school here. He thought maybe that was why he had a hard time doing it . . . and he was afraid any of the plant left in the soil would have faded even more by the time Neal came along. I think my dad had hopes of Neal starting the Clutch again. He was worried not having the plant would make it impossible.”
“But how did we leave our bodies without the plant?”
“Well, my grandpa had a different theory: that the plant wasn’t really necessary to project, it just made it easier. He was convinced the plant’s most important purpose was to protect the body from harm while the spirit was gone. Once I read that in Neal’s journals, I started practicing it at home.”
“Wow.” I was once again impressed at his power.
He shook his head in annoyance. “It’s dangerous to leave your body. I was stupid. Not to mention, you did it with one lousy paragraph from a book. Believe me, I’m much more impressed by that. You didn’t spend hours sweating for nothing in your bedroom and accomplishing nothing but body odor.”
I laughed at the mental image. “It wasn’t me. It was my necklace and the step by step instructions from Thomas.”
“Maybe.” Brent piled his three snowballs on top of each other. “A snowman,” he said.
“I figured that out all by myself.” I spotted two thin branches I thought would work for the snowman’s arms and I commanded them over toward the