The Gifting (Book 1 in The Gifting Series) Read online

  Chapter Ten

  Hypnosis

  Leela is not big on hiking. She doesn’t like the bugs or the dirt or really, anything outdoors. But the day is uneventful and my physics homework is a particularly heinous shade of dreadful and I find it impossible to get warm inside my big, drafty house, all of which makes the towering forest bordering my neighborhood irresistible. A variety of songs play from the iPod stand on my desk as I gaze longingly out my bedroom window and Leela digs in my oversized closet, making various outfits out of my hodgepodge ensemble of clothes. I have no idea how she does it, but everything she puts together—even items that don’t seem like they should match at all—looks impressively fashionable.

  I remove my pencil from my mouth. “Want to go exploring in the woods?”

  Leela sticks her head out of my closet, eying me with a doubtful brow. “The woods?”

  “Yeah. It’ll be fun.”

  She comes out with a sequined top I never ever wear, looking at it longingly. “I wish we were the same size. You have amazing clothes.”

  Too bad I don’t wear half of them.

  “My mom thinks I should go on this new cleansing diet she read about in her latest issue of Health magazine. Maybe if I tried it I could fit into this top …”

  I scrunch my nose. Leela’s mom is skinny and overdone. I always get the impression she’s overcompensating for something and I hate the way she constantly comments on Leela’s weight. “I think you look great how you are.”

  Leela’s cheeks redden and she slips back inside my closet.

  I sit up in bed. “Whadaya say?”

  “About what?”

  “The woods.”

  Leela comes back out again, this time without any clothes in hand. “I’ve heard rumors that the woods in Forest Grove are home to Sasquatch.”

  “You mean like … Bigfoot?”

  She nods, her expression solemn.

  I can’t help myself. I laugh and swing my legs over my bed. “All right, that settles it. Now we have to go.”

  “I’m serious, Tess. People have disappeared in those woods.”

  “We won’t disappear, I promise. I’ve been in them at least a dozen times and haven’t yet vanished. Now come on, let’s go hunting for a big, hairy, imaginary man-thing.”

  Leela cracks a smile, which means I’ve won. I close my physics book with a thump, hurry out into the hallway, nearly plowing into Pete, who asks where we’re going. I can tell Leela wants to stay and talk, but I give him a vague out and hurry down the steps, throw on my sneakers and a jacket, and lead the way outside.

  It’s damp. The sky overhead is thick with rain, but nothing falls. Leela talks about school and her siblings and this hot actor on a television show she watches as I stare at the dark windows of Luka’s house and wonder what he’s up to. The foliage underfoot is dense and green and wet and soaks a bit through my shoes.

  “This is gross,” Leela says, lifting her feet extra high into the air, as if this will stop the seepage.

  I swipe a large stick off the ground and lead the way into the trees.

  “Bobbi’s having a Halloween party next Friday,” Leela says a bit breathlessly, trying to keep up behind me. “She has one every year, but I’ve never gone before. Wanna go?”

  I use my walking stick to bat aside a low-hanging branch and bite the inside of my cheek. Me and costumes? We don’t get along so well.

  “C’mon, it’ll be fun. We can be the poor little kittens who lost their mittens.”

  I continue further up the path, my steps silent and quick, the gap between Leela and me widening. She stumbles over a root, but catches herself before falling. I stop and wait for her. “Aren’t there three of those?”

  “We can make Kiara come.” Kiara is Leela’s younger sister. A freshman and just as talkative as my friend. “She’ll love it. We can dress up as cats and go around asking people if they’ve seen our mittens.”

  A crow caws from a branch right over Leela’s head. She screams and ducks.

  I laugh.

  “Not funny,” she says, putting her hand against her chest. “That scared me half to death.”

  I look up at the towering redwoods that climb into the gray sky overhead and use my stick to poke at a few nearby bushes. “I don’t see any Yeti babies in here.”

  “You joke, but I’m not kidding. There have been bona fide reports.” As if to prove her braveness, she takes a few steps ahead of me. “So what do you think?”

  “About Bigfoot?”

  “No, the party.”

  The idea is not appealing. Parties are about as high up on my list of favorite things to do as football games. But I’ve learned that when it comes to Leela, the stronger I object to something, the more determined she becomes to convince me otherwise. It’s best if I don’t say anything.

  “Maybe Pete can come.”

  “Yeah. Maybe.”

  Twigs snap beneath our feet. I let Leela walk a couple bumbling steps ahead of me when a loud hiss stops me cold. Not more than ten paces up the path, there is a snake—a large, coiled, red-eyed snake. “Leela, stop!”

  She freezes.

  The snake slithers closer and stops right in front of my friend. I stumble backward, my heart lurching.

  “What? Tess, you’re freaking me out.”

  With paralyzed vocal chords, all I can do is point. She whips around, following the direction of my finger, but she doesn’t move. Why doesn’t she move? Has fear frozen her too? Is she going to stand there while the snake sinks its fangs into her? What if it’s poisonous? The thing is huge.

  Leela’s shoulders relax and she turns back around with a smirk. “Ha, ha. Very funny. You saw Bigfoot.”

  “Snake,” I manage to rasp.

  “Oh my gosh! Where?” Leela’s voice is shrill as she jumps over to me and clutches at the shoulder of my sweatshirt. “This is exactly why I don’t like coming outside. Where is it?”

  “Right in front of us!”

  Leela jerks around, looking to the right, the left, behind her, and then straight ahead, at the hissing, fanged serpent poised to strike. “Okay, you’re freaking me out. I don’t see anything.”

  How can she not see it? It’s right in front of us, slowly slithering forward with those blood-red eyes. My heart beats against my eardrums. The snake rears back and I do the only thing I am capable of doing. I grip the stick in my hand and swing at the serpent with every ounce of strength inside of me.

  “Tess!” Leela grabs my arm.

  I wheel around. “Run!”

  She stares at me with eyes rounder than I’ve ever seen. My attention flies back to the path, toward the snake I just whacked. Only nothing is there but another stick—slightly larger than the one I wield in my hand.

  A stick.

  I search the forest floor, unable to believe the snake is really gone. “Where is it?”

  “Where is what?”

  I do a full three-sixty. No way did a simple swing of my stick make that snake dart away. But when I come full circle, there’s nothing. It can’t be possible. Seconds earlier, a large frightening snake had been ready to sink its teeth into me and my friend. But all that’s there now …

  Leela lets go of my sleeve. “Jeez, Tess, you never told me you were such a good actor.”

  “I wasn’t acting. I …” I blink several times, dumbfounded. “You really didn’t see it?”

  She shakes her head slowly.

  Dread fills the empty space my fear left behind. And for the first time in several weeks, the word psychosis flashes in my mind. Seeing things other people don’t see. Is that what just happened? Before Leela’s concern turns into suspicion, I let out an uneasy laugh. “I thought that stick was a snake.”

  “Wow. You must really be afraid of them.” Leela looks at the inanimate stick on the ground. It doesn’t resemble a snake at all.

  I’m suddenly very tired. Very cold.

  “So why in the world do you like being outside so much?”

&n
bsp; “I don’t know.” I drop the walking stick and shove my hands into the front pocket of my hoodie. “Do you mind if we go home?”

  “You don’t have to ask me twice.”

  We head back to the house, quiet at first, but then Leela starts talking about the pet snake one of her brothers had in junior high. Apparently, it got loose in the house once and her mom hyperventilated.

  I have a hard time listening. Because that was no aura. I have no migraine. I either saw a huge, hissing snake that Leela somehow didn’t see, or I just had a hallucination.

  The next day at school, Leela acts like nothing weird happened. Apparently, freaking out because a stick looks like a snake isn’t all that unreasonable to her. She seems to have forgotten about the episode altogether. But I cannot. The scene is stuck on repeat in my mind. Over and over again through all eight periods, until the bell finally rings and I am released to go to my sixth appointment with Dr. Roth at the Edward Brooks Facility.

  I sit in the red, cushy seat and jiggle my leg.

  “Everything okay?” he asks.

  My leg continues its frantic jiggling as I replay—for the millionth time—what happened in the woods. Dr. Roth waits patiently. Finally, I stop my fidgeting and sit up straighter in the chair. “What would you say if you had a client who swore she saw a snake, but it turned out to be a stick?”

  “That seems like an easy enough mistake to make. Sticks look a lot like snakes sometimes.”

  “What if that client told you she saw the stick slithering and hissing with fangs and red eyes and was about to strike her and one of her friends?”

  He steeples his fingers beneath his chin. “You’re positive it wasn’t a snake?”

  I nod.

  Pushing his glasses up his nose, he leans forward. With each passing appointment, his interest in me has slowly waned. Now, however, I see a tenuous pulse of intrigue flicker to life in his eyes—like the twitch of a dying man’s finger. This latest bit of news has resuscitated his interest.

  “Does having hallucinations make me crazy?” I ask.

  He raises one of his eyebrows. “Are you sure you didn’t fall asleep?”

  I don’t miss the tone of sarcasm in his voice. He’s referencing the séance, of course. Something we haven’t discussed since our first meeting. Dr. Roth clearly doesn’t believe my nightmare theory any more than I do. “For people who suffer with psychosis …”

  “Psychosis?”

  “It’s just what came to mind.” I grip the armrests on either side and pin my gaze on his framed degrees. I really don’t want to watch the flicker of interest in his eyes turn into a flame, but I have to know more. I have to know what is happening to me. “Do they usually … are people with psychosis … are they aware of having it? Do they know what’s happening to them?”

  He doesn’t answer. He simply sits there studying me until I’m boiling in my own frustration and my leg has resumed its jiggling.

  “I’d like to try something with you, Tess,” he finally says.

  “What?”

  “Hypnosis.”

  I scratch my patch of eczema. “Hypnosis?”

  He gives a single, confident nod. “I think it will help.”

  But Dr. Roth is wrong. Hypnosis doesn’t help at all.