The Hex Breaker's Eyes (2 page)

“You just say
the word and I’ll get you one of those GPS units so you can find
your way around. I think they’re mostly for cars but I bet they
have a walking home function.”

“I was looking
at the streetlights,” I say.

Dad cranes his
head to look down the street. “A lot of ‘em are out, eh? Pretty
stupid to have the timers all set like that.” He shivers. “Get in
the house.”

Upstairs in my
room, I have a cheap cellular phone, a TV with 65 channels and
dozens of books, all of which should keep a girl my age busy for
years, but none of which have a chance of catching my interest
tonight after what I saw on the walk home. Not only did she glow,
which could be chalked up to good-old-fashioned
Mindee’s-gone-crazy, but the aura was turning off the lights.

Maybe the
lights were on some kind of timer like Dad said, and maybe the
speed of her walking was timed just perfectly so that they always
went out just as she got close. But what were the odds that that
would happen on the same night that I spontaneously started seeing
an imaginary aura around this same girl?

As Tamara said,
‘what’s more likely?’

I turn off my
lamp and my computer, and the only thing that glows is my alarm
clock. I was most definitely not seeing things.

That girl had
an aura. An aura that was affecting real streetlights, not just
things I dreamed up. What does that mean?

It means I’m
not crazy.

I managed to
get to sleep, and woke up this morning feeling exactly as I do most
mornings. No headache or glowy spots in front of my eyes; nothing
unusual. With a night of sleep behind me, I feel a little bit
removed from last night’s events. I’m not about to ignore the fact
that that girl was glowing in the dark, but I’m not freaking out
that I might have gone insane in quite the same way that I was last
night. I’m also, I guess, slightly less worried that the glowing
aura thing was switching off the streetlights. Not going to ignore
it, but maybe it was just a strange coincidence with the
timers.

I dress in some
jeans and a big black hoodie; put my hair in a pair of pigtails
since I haven’t worn it that way in a few weeks, and try to cover
up my pimples up as best as I can. I almost forget my necklace, but
just as I’m about to leave the my room I realize it’s not on, and I
turn back. It’s actually my mom’s necklace, a silver chain with
small heart-shaped charm that my Dad bought back when they were
dating. I keep her wedding band looped over it, so it rests up
against the heart. I clip it around my neck as I head
downstairs.

My dad drives
me and my little brother to school each morning. Devon goes to the
elementary school, which is called Blue Ribbon Public School, and I
go to the high school, Wilfred Laurier Secondary School. The
schools are across the street from each other, right at the centre
of town, on Maple Street a block from Main. Devon piles out and
rushes right to the basketball courts on the school’s left side. I
have to cross the road to get my school, and head inside.

I’m opening my
locker, wondering where my friends are, when I see her. The girl
from last night, brown hair, designer clothes, pretty,
and
glowing. Even in the unrelenting fluorescents of the hallway, I can
see the yellow light that circles her. I try not to stare, but I
basically end up watching her like a hawk. She’s walking toward me,
her whole body lit up like yellow Christmas, and I can see that the
aura is still shifting and changing. In fact, now that I’m up close
I can see that there’s a long, narrow blob of light coming out of
her chest. A tentacle of light.

The tentacle
shoots out in front of her, bends to the floor, and loops back at
her. It wraps around her left foot like a snake and the aura gets
brighter there every time the light loops over itself.

“Whatcha doin?”
Tam says from behind me. Her locker’s next to mine, and I’m
probably in her way. I can’t really respond, since I’m so busy
staring at the boa constrictor of light that’s wrapping around the
girl’s foot. Tam grabs my shoulder and shakes me. I turn to face
her. She’s trying to put her jacket away, and her boyfriend Ryan is
behind her, smiling a ‘good morning’ face at me. They’re a strange
couple. Tam’s as sarcastic and pessimistic as anyone I’ve ever met,
and Ryan’s always smiling and optimistic. Tam’s petite and pale,
Ryan’s tall, broad and mocha. Sometimes opposites attract—like
magnets, or chocolate and peanut butter—but these two are so oddly
matched it’s more like seeing magnets dipped in chocolate.

“Earth to Min?
Are you there?” she says.

“That girl’s
still glowing,” I say

“What?”

“Her left
foot’s glowing the most.”

Tam looks
worried. “Stop and logically consider this. People don’t glow.”

“Who-what-logic-huh?” asks Ryan.

“Mindee,” Tam
answers, “She thinks people glow in the dark. Brain cancer for
sure.”

I shake my head
a little. “I don’t just think it, I see it. And it’s not
‘
people
’, just her.”

“Who?” Ryan
asks, still baffled.

There’s a loud
sound of someone tumbling, of books scattered across the floor,
followed by the mocking applause and cheers of every idiot in the
hallway. I turn to see the pretty brown-haired girl picking herself
up off the floor. She’s wearing another pair of those tall high
heels, and it looks like one of those big heels has snapped right
off, crashing her to the floor. She gets up on her knees and starts
scooping up her books. Nobody helps. They’re too busy sarcastically
applauding and insulting her. Ahh, high school.

“Did you say it
was her left foot?” Ryan asks.

As the girl
finishes stacking her books in a manageable pile, she takes the
broken shoes off and puts them on top of the pile before she gets
up. The heel that broke was on her left shoe.

“For brain
cancer delusions,” Ryan says, “picking that particular foot on that
that particular girl on this particular morning is pretty freakin’
accurate. That’s some dandy tumor. I would high-five that
tumor.”

“Yeah,” says
Tam, who seems to be having a very hard time processing things.
She’s actually slack-jawed. As the glowy girl goes back to her
locker, probably to change into her gym shoes, Tam finally turns
back to face me. She looks me in the eye, and takes on her most
serious voice.

“Min,” she
says, “You’re officially weird.”

I don’t have
any classes with Tamara and Ryan, so we didn’t get to talk about
the morning’s strangeness until lunch in fourth period. We are in
our typical lunchtime spot—sitting on the floor in the hallway by
our lockers—when Tam brings it up again.

“So you knew
that something was going to happen? Like a psychic?” she asks.

Marlene
Leonardson, who is my chemistry lab partner, is sitting with us
today. Marlene often joins us for lunch, but sometimes she goes off
with the kids from the anime club and they play strange dice games
in an empty classroom. I wish that she had done that today so I
wouldn’t have word of my insanity spread to more people. Tam and
Marlie have class together in the morning, so I guess Tam told her
everything. Oh, and FYI: Marlie is a wee bit strange. She owns a
sword.

“It’s
definitely psychic,” Marlie says. “They say precognition comes on
in adolescence.”

“That’s mutant
powers,” says Ryan, talking through his mouthful of sandwich. “In
the X-Men.”

“No, I’m
serious. If you can see things that predict the future, that’s
psychic.”

“I’m not
psychic,” I mutter, my face down, staring at my crackers and cheese
slices. Some older kids walk by, and I feel myself shrinking,
pulling in my shoulders, tucking my chin down. I just don’t want
them to overhear. Thank God, nobody calls me psychic while the
seniors are in earshot. I’d never live it down.

“So what was it
like? Like a flash, a vision of the future? Or like premature déjà
vu?” Marlene’s still asking a lot of questions. A few years ago,
some of the worst human beings ever to walk through Blue Ribbon
Public School made creative use of the word ‘schizophrenic’ in
order to drive me to tears for their amusement. So now just hearing
someone say the words “premature déjà vu” while talking about my
brain turns my stomach and makes my eyes dart around the hallway.
God, this sucks.

“No, she said
that girl was glowing in the dark last night, and this morning her
foot was glowing,” Tam clarifies. I feel my face going flush just
talking about this with another person. Pretty soon the whole
school will think I’m a freak, and then someone will blame me for
tripping the girl, and then I’ll just curl up and die. OK, that was
too dramatic. But seriously, they can’t talk about something
else?

“Ooh, visions
of glowing. I’ve never read about that one,” says Marlene. “I’ll
look it up. It’s gotta be in one of my books.”

I stuff another
cracker-cheese-cracker stack into my mouth in hopes of not
answering another question. No such luck. Ryan wonders, “Like God’s
highlighter, singling out an important person? Maybe you’re a
prophet like Joan of Arc or something.”

I’m not real
religious, and I very definitely don’t want to label myself as
blessed or anything like that, so I just scrunch up my face in
disgust and keep chewing on the crackers. I shouldn’t have put the
whole thing in my mouth, it’s too dry. I won’t be able to talk for
a little while, but that’s OK. I eventually choke it down, sip my
water, and try to change the subject. “Marlene, you get the project
on argon all typed out? I brought the plastic cover thing for
it.”

She nods, but
clearly nobody wants to talk about chemistry class.

“Anyone know
her?” Marlene asks. “I mean, I’ve seen her around, but I don’t know
many of the seniors.”

“Is she a
senior?” Ryan asks.

“What does it
matter?” I say. “Like I’m gonna walk up to her and be all like,
‘hey, I’m a sophomore you don’t know and P.S. you glow yellow and
the yellow stuff made you trip?’”

Marlene is
writing something in one of her binders. “Yellow?” she asks.

“What?”

“I gotta know.
I know some cool paranormal websites, I’ll look up visions of glowy
yellow people. Did the yellow thing actually reach and grab her?
Might be demonic possession.”

“Guys, just
stop. I don’t know why we have to talk about this.”

Ryan stands up
and looks down on the rest of us. “We
have
to look it up.
Because if this sort of thing really happens, then you’re not a
crazy person with a brain tumor. And if this girl really is lit up
with God’s highlighter, shouldn’t someone ask why? Shouldn’t
you?”

I look down to
my lunch again, since my lunch doesn’t have three sets of eyeballs
looking at me with a mix of worry and disapproval.

“Mindee,” he
says, “whatever’s happening, if you’re the only one who can see it,
then doesn’t that make it your responsibility? You can’t make us do
all the work.”

“What work?” I
mutter.

Tam says, “Let
Marlie look into the whole psychic side of it, and you and I will
figure out what’s up with the girl. I mean, it can’t be hard to
figure out who she is. We can just look at last year’s
yearbook.”

“OK, we can
look at a yearbook,” I say.

Tam gets up and
Ryan puts his arm around her shoulder. “And then, we can spy on her
and learn all her dirty secrets,” Tam says with a mischievous
grin.

“No!” I whine,
“leave the poor girl alone.”

“Ok,” says Tam.
“But we’re going to the library to find a yearbook.” Ryan stoops
down to pick up his Tupperware containers and stuffs them into his
backpack while they head for the stairs.

“Wait up,”
shouts Marlene. “I’m coming too.” She stuffs her lunch bag into her
backpack, and then pulls out the printed chemistry paper and hands
it to me. She stands up and runs after the other two. “You can look
it over and make sure it’s right,” she says over her shoulder.

The three of
them head for the stairs, leaving me alone on the floor with
crackers, cheese, and the eighteenth element of the periodic table.
I tuck my head down and finish eating, ignoring Marlene’s report. I
don’t have to double-check her work. Marlene’s always right.

Marlene thinks
that I saw the future when I singled out the girl’s left foot, and
she won’t let it go. It’s been a full day since the girl tripped in
the hallway, and if the bags under her eyes are any indication,
Marlie’s been on all of her favourite occult websites non-stop ever
since. Since she’ll never stop obsessing over it, we caved in and
let her drag us out here after school, to the Bayview Mobile Home
Garden, to talk to a psychic.