Brian and Hailey had lived together for seven months and flowing ripples still stirred the air surrounding her. Brian remained enthralled. Before, he had respected his lovers, behaved kindly, but kept a decent emotional distance. After a punishing childhood exacted by a brutish father, Brian sought relief on level ground. This wasn’t difficult. Until this past year, his limited life had not required him to ascend heights or investigate valleys.
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Yet he would do anything for Trevor, then and now. Steadying his brother whenever he slipped was Brian’s primary, if covert, accomplishment. He had studied hard to break away from his miserable home, and when he did, Trevor soon followed. When Trevor’s fun-loving personality beguiled people, Brian felt happier and prouder than he imagined—no matter how often it happened.
And when eighteen-year-old Trevor had run off to Jamaica for five years, Brian had grieved until he could not stand it. The grief never truly let up. So that last year, when Trevor phoned from an Asheville bar, needing a job and a place to stay, Brian had panicked, his mind braced for incalculable pain.
Instead, though, his brother had nimbly created for Brian a life so rewarding he had never thought to wish for it. Trevor the prophet and unintended cult figure, and the fun-loving (but Hailey said lonely) lover amazed his brother.
Without this new found certainty, Brian might not have abandoned all restraint with Hailey. But Trevor had assured him she would never stray or betray him—no need to hold back.
And Trevor? What good was worrying? For all Brian’s anxiety, the here-then-gone alluring trickster escaped harm, while Brian knocked himself out establishing the Arts Consortium.
Thirty-five students were enrolled for the summer; forty for the fall. Brian had signed Barry Barton to start a theatre department and Chester Thompson to take over the dance program.
Hailey still painted with Hollis Clarke but after performing at the winter festival she had discovered dance mattered more. During the day, she was as busy as Brian.
She appeared luminous and boundless. Yet she suffered frequent nightmares, waking clammy and frightened. “I watch powerless as evil clouds engulf Trevor.”
Brian acknowledged that Trevor was fending off hordes of seekers. “But Angelina’s hired ’round-the-clock gatekeepers.”
“You know what I think?” Hailey peered straight into Brian’s eyes, not joking. “Trevor’s fixed it so you cannot worry about him. Some kind of trickery.”
Brian nodded. “Possibly.” Premonitions of Trevor’s injuries used to be his one psychic skill. The absence of anxiety, so liberating at first, had progressed to a prickly numbness. “Except Trevor hasn’t fallen lately. Nothing’s hit him on the head, even though Royce has started the main school building.”
“If he’s not hiding something, why won’t he come to dinner?”
“I don’t know, Hailey. He just says he cannot. Without explanation.”
“Starting this week, we’re both going to the Saturday concerts. Thank goodness he’s not doing Fridays.”
“Maybe Trevor’s studying for his finals,” Brian said. “His teachers have both pulled me aside to say he has perfect test scores.”
“Wonder if he checks his answers inside those astonishing bursts of light.”
“Hailey, you know it doesn’t work like that.”
“He told me one way he can sometimes see ahead is by starting at the beginning. And every night I dream that he’s in danger. Evil beings come for him out of nowhere.”
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