Gone

The lights of Perdido Beach looked eerily normal from up here. Many houses still had lights on. The sparse streetlights were lit. The yellow McDonald’s sign was brilliant. A breeze stirred carrying the smell of French fries and pine needles, salt spray and seaweed.
    Two sleeping bags had been laid out in the snug enclosure. A pair of binoculars and a kid’s walkie-talkie lay next to a paper grocery bag.
    “I packed you some food and batteries for L. P.’s game in that bag. I don’t think the walkie-talkie works very well, but I have the other one. You can see almost everything from up here.”
    It was a tight space. Little Pete immediately sat down in a dusty corner. Astrid and Sam stood awkwardly close together, crowded by the bell.
    “Did you leave me a gun?”
    He shook his head. “No.”
    “You’re asking everyone else to do terrible things. You’re just asking me to watch.”
    “There’s a difference.”
    “Is there? What?”
    “Well…I need you for your brains. I need you to observe.”
    “That’s lame,” she said.
    He nodded. “Yeah. Well. You haven’t been trained to shoot. You’d probably end up shooting yourself in the foot.”
    “Ah,” she said, not convinced.
    “Listen, I know this is crazy, but maybe you should think about Quinn’s idea, you know, of getting L. P. to zap you to Hawaii. Or whatever. He has the power. In case things don’t work out…”
    “I don’t want him to zap me away somewhere,” Astrid said. “I don’t really think it would work, for one. And for two…”
    “Yeah?”
    “And for two, I don’t want to leave you.”
    He laid his palm gently against her cheek, and she closed her eyes and leaned into him. “Astrid, I’m the one who’s going to be leaving. You know that.”
    “No. I don’t know that. I’ve prayed for it not to happen. I’ve asked Mary to intercede.”
    “Mary Terrafino?”
    “No, duh.” Astrid laughed. “You are such a heathen. Mary. The Virgin Mary.”
    “Oh. Her.”
    “I know you don’t really believe in God much, but I do. I think He knows we’re here. I think He hears our prayers.”
    “You think this is all some master plan of God’s? The FAYZ and all?”
    “No. I believe in free will. I think we make our own decisions and carry out our own actions. And our actions have consequences. The world is what we make it. But I think sometimes we can ask God to help us and He will. Sometimes I think He looks down and says, ‘Wow, look what those idiots are up to now: I guess I better help them along a little.’”
    “I’ll gladly accept the help,” Sam said.
    “Just the same, I wish I had a gun.”
    Sam shook his head. “I hurt my stepfather. I hurt Drake. I may have killed Drake. I don’t know. And I don’t know what’s going to happen next. But here’s what I do know: When I hurt someone it makes a mark on me. Like a scar or something. It’s like…” He searched for words, and she wrapped her arms tight around him. “It’s like my knee, where Drake shot me? That’s all healed up, thanks to Lana, like it never happened. But me burning Drake? That’s inside me, in my head, and Lana didn’t heal that.”
    “If there’s a fight, others will feel that hurt.”
    “You’re not others.”
    “No?”
    “No.”
    “Why?”
    “Because I love you.”
    Astrid was silent for so long, Sam thought he must have upset her. Yet she never loosened her hold on him, never pulled away but kept her face buried in his neck. He felt her warm tears on his skin. And at last she said, “I love you, too.”
    He sighed with relief. “Well, we got past that.”
    But she didn’t join in the nervous laughter. “I have something to tell you, Sam.”
    “A secret?”
    “I wasn’t sure of it, so I didn’t say anything. It’s hard to separate it from IQ. Intuition is usually just the name we give to heightened but normal perception that takes place below the level of conscious thought.”
    “Uh-huh,” he said, using his dumb-guy voice.
    “For a long time I wasn’t sure it was anything other than normal intuition.”
    “The power,” he said. “I was wondering if you knew. Diana said you were a two bar. I kind of didn’t want to, you know, force you to think about it.”
    “I suspected. But it’s weird. I touch a person’s hand and I sometimes see what looks in my mind like a streak of fire across the sky.”
    He held her out at arm’s length, the better to see her face. “A streak?”
    She shrugged. “Weird, huh?