Ill Wind Page 0,34

a pure, delicate blue.

Something about-about-experiment at school-

Oh, God, I couldn't breathe. No, that's not right, I was breathing, but there just wasn't anything there to breathe. Nothing but my own carbon dioxide.

I remembered, as suddenly and clearly as if it were happening in front of me, that I'd done this before. Not as the subject. As the experimenter.

I'd done this to a lab rat. Removed all the oxygen from the air surrounding him and made it a clear poisonous shell around him, so no matter where he ran, no matter how he tried to get away-

I hadn't killed the rat. I'd popped the bubble once I'd mastered the technique, and the rat-white, with a pink nose, funny how you remember those things- had scurried off unharmed.

But whoever was practicing on me wasn't popping the bubble.

Focus, dammit!

My brain was starting to send out hysterical flashes, distress signals. Flashes of color across my eyes. A strangely realistic memory of my mother reaching down for me, giant-size in my perspective. Delilah spinning on the road. Lewis, lying on the ground, blood dripping down his face, reaching out for the last key to his power.

I realized I had stopped breathing and couldn't seem to make myself start again.

Something wrong. What was it?

Clear as a bell, I heard my mother say, I wish this didn't have to happen. She sounded so disappointed in me.

Yorenson. Disappointed. Standing at the head of the class, listening to my wrong answer. Really, Joanne, you know this. You know how to do this.

Couldn't remember. It was dark. Very dark. Warm in there, in the night, but no stars, no moon.

No. Hallway. Something at the end. I was moving toward it without any sensation of moving, there was light, and light and-

I was sitting in a creaking wooden school chair, and the room smelled faintly of Pine-Sol and chalk, and Yorenson pulled at his tweed jacket like a fussy girl and asked me a question that I didn't understand, and I felt panic rising like storm surge along the coast. I had to get this right, had to. He looked at me in disappointment and turned back to the blackboard. He drew an air molecule, chalk squeaking.

I was the only one in the room. Staying after class. Remedial weather theory. No, that wasn't right, I had never-

Pay attention, he said, without turning around. Squeaking chalk. This takes delicacy, my dear.

On the board. The answer was on the board. All I had to do was-was-

Crystal sparkles around the edge of Yorenson's blackboard, eating. Darkness all around, eating the answer.

No.

I reached out with my hand, and the chemical structure on the board became reds and blues and yellows, three-dimensional, spinning, and I plucked away one thing that shouldn't be there-a yellow grape in the wrong place on the stem-and stuck a blue one in its place.

Again. Faster. Reaching for thousands of spinning models, millions, billions, and it wasn't my hand that was reaching, it was my mind, it was me.

Yorenson turned from the blackboard and put the chalk down and smiled at me.

Breathe, he said. Don't forget to breathe.

-and suddenly there was sweet, sweet air in my lungs, and the noise, my God, the noise was terrific, people shouting, feet running, voices, some kind of alarm going off in a store, the hyperactive beat of music in the distance, sweet, sweet chaos.

I swept in breath after breath after breath and listened to my pounding heart and thought, I hated that goddamn class.

Someone was cushioning my head. I blinked and focused and saw that it was David. He looked deathly pale, and I could feel his hands trembling. For some reason his glasses were off, and his face looked different. Stronger. His eyes glittered with flecks of copper.

"Hi," I whispered. He started to say something, but didn't.

Somebody slapped an oxygen mask I didn't need over my face.

Funny how a near death experience can make you hungry. I sat in the food court with David and gulped down a heroic meal of beef kebab, saffron rice, samosas, and some kind of designer water without bubbles or aftertaste. David still looked spooked. He hadn't said a word to me during the hysteria of the paramedic visit, or the argument over whether or not I was brain-damaged enough to go to the hospital. . . hadn't, in