Hell's Hollow by Summer Stone Page B

of the car without shoes, pulled off his tank top and jumped into the river in his shorts, splashing everything in the vicinity. There was no one else around. We had the place to ourselves.
    I took the towels and stretched out in the sun on a big flat rock, staring up at the blue of the sky. Luke hopped out of the water and sat dripping next to me.
    “So what’s the real deal?” he asked. “Why’s Mom flipping a shit all of a sudden?”
    I squirmed. But this was Luke. If there was anyone I could talk to it was him. I wasn’t sure how to start. “I’m just trying to make sense of things, to understand how to avoid ending up in Meadowland. Last time we visited, I think Gran was trying to tell me that I should use my … sensitivity. That it’s not using it that makes us lose it.”
    “You do realize she’s nuts, right?”
    I swatted him. “You hardly ever visit them. You don’t know. Sometimes she seems totally out of it, but other times, I don’t know, she makes sense. I admit it’s not always in the most straightforward way, but if you pay attention.”
    “What does Mom think?”
    “She thinks they’re both crazy and the sensitivity is what made them that way. She wants me to avoid healing like the plague. She doesn’t get it, though. She doesn’t understand the pull it has. It’s like, I don’t know, if Mom said you could never date a girl ever again for the rest of your life. Don’t you think that would be hard?”
    “Impossible,” he agreed.
    “See?” I said, relieved that he was getting it. “So I’ve been experimenting just the tiniest bit… only it hasn’t exactly been working out.”
    “Meaning?” He slapped at a mosquito.
    I looked away. “I tried lowering my shield in town and I passed out, or I might have had some kind of seizure or something.”
    “Seriously? No wonder she freaked.”
    “How else am I supposed to figure this out if I don’t try? It’s not like anybody is going to teach me what to do!” The hummingbirds zipped from bush to bush.
    “Okay, okay, what else happened?”
    I hesitated. I couldn’t admit to full-out disobedience. But this was Luke. He wasn’t exactly an angel. “There was this chipmunk.”
    He giggled.
    “What?”
    “Sorry, nothing, go on,” he said. “There was a chipmunk…”
    “It was dying. I know I’m supposed to let nature do its thing or whatever, but, Za…” I stopped short. I almost mentioned Zach! “That! That chipmunk — you know it was really cute and tiny and anyway, I tried to heal it, and… instead I killed it.”
    He knocked his elbow against mine. “What do you mean you killed it? You said it was already dying.”
    “Yeah, but I revived it. Only then it died.” I hated remembering how it looked, so pathetic.
    “Maybe you healed it, only it wasn’t enough for it to last.”
    I shook my head. “It died really suddenly, like it was super strong and healthy for a minute, like crazy good, and then it had a heart attack or something and croaked.”
    “Maybe you just need some practice. There must be somebody who knows how to do it right, who can help you figure it out.”
    He wasn’t mad. He didn’t think I was crazy for trying it. “You think so?”
    “You can’t be the only weirdo healer in the whole world. Look it up online or something.”
    He made it sound so sane, so reasonable. If it was online it had to be real, right?
    I thought about the book Astrid had loaned me. Just because it had it all wrong didn’t mean there might not be information out there that would help. “Mom has forbidden me to even try this stuff.”
    “She’s only trying to protect you.”
    “I know that. Don’t you think I know that! Maybe I don’t want to be protected.” I was so sick of her deciding everything in my life.
    “Yeah, I get that. So what are you going to do?” he asked.
    I shrugged. “Disobey. It’s the only thing I can do. Lives depend on it, I mean, you know, I need to figure it out — for myself. I have to