Have you ever had one of those moments where you realized, with absolute clarity, that you were 100%, without a doubt, undeniably a complete and utter moron?
I did. Right there in the back of the car.
Not even twenty-four hours after my father’s disappearance, and there I was in the back of the car with the very people he had warned me of. I mean, what in the world is wrong with me? Am I really that stupid? A cute guy with blue eyes, a great smile, and adorable dimples - did I mention the dimples? Cause yeah, dimples - comes along and I just follow along like an obedient little puppy?
I tried to tell myself I was just there to get answers. I did, after all, have so many questions. And these did seem to be the only people that might know something. When the table flipped in my kitchen Nick was surprised, but not to the degree that I’d been. In fact, he seemed to take it in stride, like objects flying around was basically an everyday occurrence for him. It made it even more likely that he knew some things that I didn’t.
Still, with all the chaos and uncertainty of the last day, it wasn’t like me to just wander off with strangers. And as much as I tried to assure myself I was following along to get answers, a voice in the back of my mind told me I’d have been much less likely to have gotten in the car if Nick looked less like a Roman god.
We drove for maybe twenty minutes in silence into the older section of downtown before reaching an area that had certainly seen better days. We pulled into the alley of a square, brick building. There was no sign on the front and curtains had been pulled closed in all the windows. It was the kind of building that you would drive by and wonder what, if anything, went on in there - and then quickly forget it even existed.
Jazmin parked in the back and hopped out of the car. I took a minute before getting out of the car to send Bethany a quick text, “I’ll explain later. I just want you to know where I am.” And I tapped the key to share my location with her. I might be an idiot, but I’m not a complete moron.
I got out of the car and followed Jazmin and Nick through a rusted metal door into the building.
The instant I walked through the door I was engulfed in a world of noise. Music was blaring so loud I was surprised I hadn’t heard it in the car, and dozens of voices were shouting to be heard over the music. Jazmin walked on ahead, down the dark hallway, and into the light of a room up ahead. Nick must have noticed my hesitation. He turned and gave me his huge, teasing smile. “It’s ok. We won’t bite.”
I felt myself begin to flush under his gaze, beginning in my neck and rising up through my cheeks. “Uh .. who are all these people?”
Something that could have been sympathy crossed his face and he put a hand on my arm. I felt my face flush even more and my stomach started flipping somersaults - he was just so damn pretty - that is until he spoke. That look of sympathy vanished quickly and was replaced with a cocky little smirk. “You’ll be ok. You don’t have to be afraid little girl.”
Then my face really turned red, and this time it wasn’t me swooning at his childish charms. I swatted his hand away, stuck out my chin, and said, “If you call me ‘little girl’ one more time I’m going to punch you in the throat!” I balled up my fist and shook it at him, trying my best to look more intimidating than petulant.
Nick just laughed, a deep, carefree laugh, and held up his hands. “Ok. Ok.” He nodded his head toward the open doorway. “Come on. We will walk in together.”
I was fuming and flustered by how quickly his demeanor changed. I knew I needed to go in that room, and while I hated to admit it, I didn’t want to go in there alone. As annoying as he was, I at least knew his name and that gave me a tiny bit of comfort. But, I didn’t want to admit that to Nick, so I shouldered past him and walked through the doorway.
The instant I walked into the large room every single head towards me and every voice trailed off into silence. It was like one of those old western movies where the rogue cowboy walks into the bar, except where the music was still bumping.
There must have been twenty or thirty people in the room, sitting at long, white, plastic tables or circled up in chairs or sitting on the floor. They all looked to be fairly young, maybe a few years older than me and they all seemed to come from different walks of life.
There was a group of five or six wearing all black with brightly colored hair and spiked, metal jewelry. Another group all wore t-shirts, sports shorts and sliders with socks. Several people were huddled up in the corner playing some kind of card game and a few others were sitting still with books splayed open on their laps.
“Great. Now I’m the new girl walking into the cafeteria in a new school,” I thought. All my bravado and irritation vanished and I suddenly felt very alone. All those old high school insecurities resurfaced. What if no one likes me? What if they won’t talk to me? What if I trip and land face-first into someone’s plate of mashed potatoes - something that definitely didn’t happen in my sophomore year.
I felt Nick step up behind me, not touching me, but close enough that I could feel his presence. And as frustrated as I was with him still, I was suddenly acutely grateful to have him there and to not be completely alone.
Someone from the back of the room shouted, “Theo, kill the music,” and a moment later the room became completely silent. A tall, severe-looking boy with a mop of light blonde hair and a narrow, angular face stood from one of the tables.
“Nick, who the hell is this? And what is she doing here?” The accusation was clear in his tone, and while he spoke to Nick, he never took his eyes off me.
“Calm down, Dietrich,” Nick said from behind me. “It doesn’t concern you. Just mind your own business.”
Dietrich took several steps toward us, his eyes narrowed and the muscles in his jaw clenched tightly. Ok, so this guy definitely didn’t like me - or maybe he didn’t like Nick.
“You don’t tell me what to do, Nick,” he spewed vehemently. “You’re not the boss around here. And you can’t just bring some random chic to the Night Club.”
Again I felt my temper rise. I mean, what was up with all the misogynic assholes in this place? I took an unconscious step toward Dietrich and pointed a finger in his face in my best schoolmarm impression. “Some chic? Who the …”
I felt Nick’s large hand rest on my shoulder. Usually, once my attitude kicks in and my mouth starts moving it takes an act of God to get me to shut up, but something about the strength of Nick’s grip and the cool, warning tone in his deep voice made me bite my tongue. “Back away, Dietrich. This doesn’t concern you. Just go sit down and mind your own business.”
Two girls and a boy that had been sitting with Dietrich stood, showing unspoken support for their friend. Nick gently, but firmly pulled me by my arm behind him, placing his body between me and Dietrich.
Several other people stood up and backed away from the two men squaring off. And suddenly I was at the part of the western where the rogue cowboy has a shootout with the evil cowboy in a black hat and thin mustache. But now I was cast as the damsel in distress and I didn’t like the idea of some white-hatted cowboy riding in to fight my battle.
I started to push past Nick and tell Dietrich exactly where he could stick his “some chic” but out of the corner of my eye, I noticed him making a strange motion with his hands. He flared his fingers out straight and wide like his tendons had locked in place. It was an intentional movement that carried the same sense of aggression as balling your hand into a fist. I looked down and saw Nick had also straightened his fingers to the point of rigidity, but he also had an almost casual, relaxed look to him - a slight wiggling of his fingers like he was gently tapping the keys of a piano.
“This isn’t going to go the way you think it is, Dietrich,” Nick said, his voice cool, almost disinterested. “You raise your hands and things are going to get bad for you real quick.”
A sneer crossed Dietrich’s face. “I’m not one of your little sycophants, Nick. I’m not scared of you.”
Both boys jumped when a stern voice boomed from the back corner of the room. “As well you shouldn’t be, Dietrich. No one in this room should be afraid of anyone else, as we are all on the same team. Are we not?”
The tension between the two vanished instantly and both boys turned to face the woman who had just spoken. She was a short, squat woman with short, silvery hair and deep laugh lines crinkling her face. She wore a long, simple black dress and a grey sweater that she held tight around her stomach. She stood in a doorway at the back of the room and stared at the two boys with hard, serious eyes through the thin, metal-framed glasses perched on her nose.
“Nick? Dietrich? What is going on here?” She asked.
“Nothing, Mrs. Gleason,” Nick said sheepishly.
Dietrich was still fuming, He waved a hand at me and said, “Nick brought her. Are we just inviting strangers here now?”
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Mrs. Gleason walked over to us, Jazmin following behind - she must have gone straight in to tell Mrs. Gleason that I was there. “I asked Jazmin and Nick to collect her and bring her here. And while you are correct that we do not typically invite strangers into our safe place, I felt it was necessary in this case. Is that acceptable to you, Mr. James?”
Dietrich lowered his eyes and mumbled, “Yes mam.” From the boy's response, as well as Nick’s, it was obvious that whoever Mrs. Gleason was, she commanded a great deal of respect.
“Good,” She said flatly. Then she turned her measuring gaze to me. “Now, am I correct in assuming that you are Delilah?”
“Uh, yeah …” I said with my usual grace and charm.
She gave me a gentle, reserved smile and said, “I am Christina Gleason. Jazmin told me a little of what happened when they went pick you up.” She shot Nick a reproachful glance. “I apologize for how things were communicated to you. It was not my intention to frighten you or make you feel threatened.”
As she spoke Nick sat against the table beside me and Jazmin moved around to lean against the wall to my back. I felt the eyes of everyone in the room on me and my heart began to race with the uncomfortable realization that I was the center of attention. I couldn’t tell for sure if Nick and Jazmin were staying close to offer support or if they were trying to block any possible escape, and I felt an uncomfortable mixture of assurance and unease.
“Why did you want me brought here in the first place?” I asked.
Mrs. Gleason sighed. “That is a very complicated question indeed. The truth of the matter is we are not entirely sure. We believe that your life is in danger. There are certain … people that have taken an interest in you, the very people that attacked you in the park last night, I believe. We are not sure why they have targeted you, but you can be sure it is not for any good.
“I had you brought here first to protect you, and secondly to try to ascertain exactly what has brought you to their attention. We intend, Delilah, to stop whatever vile thing they have planned.”
I couldn’t help but scoff a little. It was all too outrageous. “So what? There’s some secret, sinister organization that you are sworn to defeat and I am somehow conveniently caught in the middle of some age-long war?”
The lines in the corner of her eyes deepened as she grimaced at me. “Not to put too fine a point on it, Delilah, but yes. That is correct.”
My brain swam for a moment, lost in the absurdity of what my life had become. None of it made sense, and I wasn’t quite naive enough to just accept whatever this lady had to say - even if I was naive enough to have come there in the first place. I crossed my arms over my chest and returned her cold gaze. “And who exactly are these people? And who exactly are you people? Jazmin said you’re called the ‘Pushers’?”
Mrs. Gleason nodded. “That is correct. Although I would be very curious to hear where you heard that word before.”
I quickly decided I didn’t want to mention that my father had left me a note warning me about the very people I was currently stuck in a room with. “I heard someone say it in the park last night.”
She pursed her lips so tight they nearly disappeared altogether. “I see.”
“So?” I prodded. “Who are you people? What does being a ‘Pusher’ mean? And no offense, but how do I know it wasn’t one of you who attacked me last night as some kind of trick to convince me to come here.”
“Those are very valid questions, Mrs. Delilah. And to be honest, it shows a great deal of wisdom to be suspicious of the events that have transpired.” She gave me an appreciative smile and I felt like I had somehow passed a kind of secret test. “I promise I will answer your questions as best I can, but first will you answer a question for me?”
“Uh, ok?”
“What happened with the table?”
I stared at her blankly for way too long. I glanced at Nick hoping for some kind of clue as to what she was talking about. I looked down at the table he was sitting on, but there didn’t seem to be anything special about it.
“At your house,” Jazmin said quietly. “The table flipped over at your house.”
“Ohh,” I said, feeling foolish. There were just so many loose threads dangling around and I was having trouble keeping up with it all. “I don’t know. It just flipped over, I guess. I must have hit it just right.”
“From what I understand, it was more than just the table.” Mrs. Gleason said, glancing at Jazmin. “Apparently a picture frame was knocked off the wall and some chairs moved around?”
“Well yeah …”
“I felt it too,” Nick added. “The silverware and china in the cabinet behind you rattled, then I felt something bump me … up and backwards.”
“The silverware rattled and then you felt it?” Mrs. Gleason asked, putting special emphasis on “then”. “Not at the same time?”
“Right,” Nick said confidently. “One then the other.”
I looked back and forth between the two of them. “So? The table knocked things around a little. I mean, it felt weird at the time, but it was just a freak thing. Right?”
“I don’t believe so,” Mrs. Gleason answered. “Has anything ever happened like that before? Is it something you’ve done before? Or maybe one of your parents?”
A pang of loss shot through my heart at the mention of my parents and I had to quickly push it away and focus on figuring out what the heck this lady was trying to get at. “Uh, no. I guess not. Why?”
“Do you think she pushed?” Jazmin asked
Mrs. Gleason stared at me quizzically. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “It’s not like any push I’ve ever heard of.”
I felt my fuse begin to burn again. I was so tired, and tired of being on edge, and tired of not knowing what was going on, and tired of people talking about me like I wasn’t even there, and just tired of being tired. “Ok, that’s enough! You said you would answer my questions if I answered yours! You said you’d tell me who you are and why someone would come after me!” I turned and glared at Nick. “And you said she would tell me what happened to my dad!”
“Your dad?” Mrs. Gleason asked. “What happened to your dad?”
I clamped my mouth shut and glared at her. I was done answering questions and not getting any answers in return. It took a moment or two, but she finally understood my meaning and nodded her head in acquiescence. I may be young, and foolish and completely lost, but I can out-stubborn the best of them.
“Very well. You are right. I hope you will understand just how much trust we are putting in you while knowing so little about you. And I hope you will choose to honor that trust. But I understand that I cannot expect you to open up to me if I am not willing to show you transparency of the same kind.” Turning to the crowd sitting behind her she made a wave of her hand and said, “If you please.”
Every single person in the room stood up and moved toward the sides of the room, leaving a clear alley between Mrs. Gleason and the back of the room. Turning back to me she looked me in the eye and said, “For as long as recorded history has existed there has been a small portion of humans that are … different. We don’t know when exactly it started, and we do not know what caused it, but some of us have an ability. We call it ‘pushing’.”
She gave a short nod to Nick, who stood and faced the far wall. He raised his right hand straight in front of him with his fingers wide and rigid. I saw the muscles in his back and arm spasm and an instant later a cup that had been sitting on one of the far tables flew across the room and crashed into the back wall, splashing water all over the place.
A voice from somewhere in the room groaned, “Aww man, that was my cup!” and the whole room burst into laughter. I stood there with my mouth hanging open, trying to process what I’d just seen, but every other person in the room acted like it was nothing. It was just another party trick, one they had seen a hundred times.
I glanced at Mrs. Gleason, trying to see if there was a hint of amusement on her face - any sign that it was just some weird prank to be put on Youtube or something. But she just stared at me cooly, quietly waiting for my reaction.
Nick must have seen the skepticism on my face. He said, “You think it's a trick. Don’t you? Here. Watch.”
He held out his hand, palm out and fingers rigid, just like before. His muscles jerked tight against his shirt three times and three more cups went hurling against the wall.
“I assure you, Mrs. Delilah,” Mrs. Gleason said, “it is no trick. Every person in this room has the power to push, just as Nick has done. Each has varying degrees of strength and precision to their ability, but they have it nonetheless.
“It is a secret our people have kept for hundreds, if not thousands of years. We do not know where the ability comes from, or why it works. The one thing we do know is that it has always been passed down through some genetic anomaly.”
There was a subtle significance to what she’d said and I scrambled to make the words make sense. “You said ‘genetic’?”
“Indeed. In every record of our kind, it has passed from parent to child. Not every child receives the ability, just like not every child of blue-eyed parents has blue eyes. But not once in our recorded history has the ability spontaneously appeared.”
“So …” I hesitated, putting the pieces together. “You’re saying my parents were Pushers?”
She nodded. “Not necessarily both of them, but one or the other was. So I’d like to ask you again, are you sure you have never seen them do something like this? Maybe something odd out of the corner of your eye that you wrote off as being impossible?”
“Uh, no, never. I’m sure. Although,” I continued, “my mother passed away when I was born. I guess it's possible she was a Pusher and my father didn’t know … or knew and didn’t tell me. It seems like there are a lot of things he didn’t tell me, to be honest.”
This caught Mrs. Gleason’s attention. She cocked an eyebrow. “You mentioned something about your father a minute ago?”
“Yeah, I …” I took a deep breath. There were just too many angles appearing at the same time and I couldn’t wrap my brain around them all. I didn’t trust these people enough to tell them everything, especially in a huge crowd like that. But, I had to say something. The whole reason I’d come in the first place was to get information about my dad. “He went missing yesterday. He left a note and said he had to go and didn't know how long he would be gone. He said … he said I could be in danger if I told anyone.”
Mrs. Gleason narrowed her eyes at me as if she was trying to see inside my very soul. “Really? He left the same day you were attacked? That is curious indeed.” She paused and her eyes lost focus for a minute as if she were trying to put the puzzle together in her mind herself. “Who is your father, Delilah? What’s his name?”
“Thomas. Thomas Waverly,” I said.
The color drained from her face. She stared at me speechless for several long seconds and then looked me up and down slowly as if seeing me for the first time. “You’re Tom’s daughter?” She said in a near whisper. “And he’s missing?”
My heart instantly started racing and my palms began to sweat. “Yes! You know my dad?” My voice was high and squeaky in my excitement.
“I did,” she said with a sigh. “I used to know your father. I knew your mother too, though not as well.”
“Really? Were they … I mean, Is he…”
“Your father is a Pusher. In his day he was one of the best I’d ever seen.” There was a mourning in her voice, a quiet note of deep sadness. I wasn’t sure, but I thought I saw the gleam of a tear in her eye.
“And my mother?” I asked.
“No. Not your mother.” She took another deep breath as if she knew the words would be painful crossing her lips. “Your mother was a Curser.”