Goddess Boot Camp
Page 45

Great, I finally do something useful with my powers, and I can’t even enjoy it. I’m too busy worrying about my world crumbling around me.
“I didn’t hear you come home,” Stella says when I stumble out of my room two tear-filled hours later.
I barely glance at her before continuing to the kitchen. All my crying has left me severely dehydrated and I need liquid like nobody’s business. Taking a dirty glass from the sink, I fill it with tap water and chug. I don’t even have the energy to twist the cap off a Gatorade.
“What happened to you?”
I flick Stella a glance over my glass. Her generally superior look gradually fades as I just stare at her.
When I finish the last drop in my glass, I set it in the sink and start to leave the kitchen. Stella steps in front of me. She grabs my shoulders with both hands, dips down to look in my eyes, and announces, “You autoported.”
“What?”
“Autoported,” she repeats. “You shimmered yourself home, didn’t you?”
“How can you tell?” Then I remember she can read minds. “Never mind.”
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “Your mind’s too much of a mess for me to read right now. You have a residual glow in your eyes. That only happens when someone has recently autoported.”
I shrug. I’m in no mood to be analyzed or critiqued or judged or whatever she’s trying to do right now.
“I know you’re hurting,” she says, her voice soft with understanding, “but autoportation is the most advanced of all dynamotheos powers. We need to figure out how this happened.”
“Stella, I—”
She squeezes my shoulders. “I wouldn’t ask you to do this right now unless I thought it was really important.”
Her pale gray eyes are steely with resolve. Clearly, I’m not escaping this session. “Just let me splash some water on my face.”
Stella nods and lets me go freshen up.
When I get back, she’s in the dining room with a bunch of papers spread out over the table. She glances up when I walk in.
“Feeling better?”
“A little,” I answer honestly.
“Good,” she says, “because I need you to tell me everything about the situation that led to your autoportation.”
As I sink into the chair opposite hers, I meet her eyes straight on. I don’t really want to tell her what just happened—we may be friendly at the moment, but that doesn’t mean I’m about to share personal details of my love life. But, the truth is, I’m a little freaked out by the whole autoportation thing. It’s not like I controlled it. I didn’t even see it coming.
What if I accidentally autoport myself to the Gobi Desert? Or the bottom of the ocean? Or the middle of a Mary-Kay convention? I shudder at the thought of all the makeup and pep.
Considering the risks of not understanding what happened, it’s far less frightening to tell Stella the truth.
“Well, I went for a run,” I begin. “To clear my head . . .”
For the next thirty minutes, I spill every last detail of the last few days, everything from the instant I turned Damian into a surfer dude up until I autoported back to my room. I even trash on Adara and her boyfriend-stealing games, despite the fact that she and Stella are friends.
Stella doesn’t say a word. Just scribbles notes in a pink spiral-bound while I babble on. And on. And on.
“All I could think of was being away from there and then . . .” I gesture toward my room. “I was.”
Finished, I take a deep breath and slump back against my chair.
Wow. I feel a lot better just getting that off my chest.
“I’d like to try an experiment,” Stella finally says. She places her pen in the center of the table. “Simple telekinesis. Pick this up.”
When I start to reach for it, she says, “No. Not with your hands.”
Okay. Concentrating all my energy on the pen, I try to move it toward me. Instead of sliding in my direction, though, it spins in circles for several seconds before flying off the table and heading point first into the nearest wall.
“I know what your problem is,” she announces.
“Great.” I’m glad someone does. “Tell me.”
“You were trying to move the pen.”
“Well, duh.” I hold her gaze to keep from rolling my eyes—she is trying to help me, after all. “That’s what you told me to do.”
“The approach is all wrong.” She pushes back from the table and retrieves the pen from the wall. “You were thinking about moving the pen—which you did—when you need to think about having the pen in your hand.”
I shake my head. “I don’t get it.”
Stella replaces the pen on the table. “Focus your thoughts on the pen being in your hand already. Imagine it there. Believe it is already in your—”
While she is talking, I try what she suggests. I picture the pen in my hand, like I can already feel the cool plastic in my palm. And then, while Stella is still talking and I’m still skeptically expecting the pen to zip into the living room, I feel a gentle weight in my hand.
When I glance down, Stella’s pen is lying across my palm.
“I did it,” I say, stunned. Looking up at her, I repeat, “Omigods, I did it!”
She takes her pen back and starts scribbling more notes.
“Does that mean I’m cured?”
Glancing up, gray eyes sparkling, she says, “Not yet.” Before I can slump in defeat, she adds, “But it’s a start.”