The Adventures of Flash Jackson by William Kowalski Page A

didn’t.
    â€œHow come you’re home so soon?” I asked.
    â€œWhat are you talking about?” she said. “I’ve been gone for three hours!”
    Well, I got a bit of a chill then, I don’t mind telling you. Mother went to the curtains and threw them back, and sure enough it was dusk. When I sat down it had been broad daylight. I looked at the candle, and it was out. Just a smoking little stump.
    â€œOh, my,” I said.
    â€œHaley,” said Mother. “What are you doing?”
    â€œLooking for Frankie,” I said.
    We stayed like that, staring at each other for the longest time. It was like I had been sharpened, and I could see more now—I mean more of her . I looked into her eyes and read things I hadn’t seen before. I could read her feelings, but more than her feelings—like her thoughts were words in my head. And I knew she couldn’t add it all up, poor old Mudder Dearest. It just didn’t make sense. Here was me, likely as not the most outrageous undaughterly daughter our family had seen in five hundred years, or even five thousand, and yet I was taking right along after my grandmother, and doing it in secret so nobody would know. She just didn’t know what to make of it.
    Finally she said, “What did you see?”
    No harm in telling her , I thought.
    â€œSunflowers,” I said.
    â€œThat’s it?”
    I nodded.
    â€œPut that stuff away,” she said.
    â€œExcuse me,” I said, “but I seem to have a broken leg. How ’bout a little help, here?”
    But Mother wouldn’t budge.
    â€œIt’s the rules,” she said. “You have to put the things away yourself. Nobody else is allowed to touch them until after. It breaks the…” She didn’t finish that.
    â€œBreaks the what?” I said.
    She didn’t say anything.
    â€œBreaks the what? ” I repeated.
    â€œThe spell,” she said.
    We sat there for a while longer. That strange, old-fashioned word floated between us, echoing. Spell.
    â€œI think you did that when you walked in the door,” I said.
    â€œPut it away ,” she said. “Now.”
    I hadn’t heard that tone from her in a long time, and suddenly I remembered: She was the one who used to swat me on the bum when I was ornery, and that was the voice she used when she did it. Dad never could bring himself to spank me. So I hopped up and put everything away, and she just stood there and watched me, and when I was done she said, “You knew what you were doing?”
    â€œNot really,” I said. “I just kind of figured it out.”
    â€œDid your grandmother teach you any of that?”
    â€œNo,” I said.
    â€œThen how did you know what to do?”
    â€œI was born with it,” I said. “I’m a natural.”
    â€œHow do you know what you were born with?” she said. “That’s not for you to say. That’s for others older than you to—”
    â€œWho else,” I said, feeling a little hot under the collar, “could possibly know what I was born with except me?”
    â€œI’m just a little surprised, Haley,” she said. “Surprised…and scared.”
    â€œScared of what?” I asked. “There’s nothing to be scared of.”
    â€œHaley, you have to know what you’re doing,” she said. “You can’t just sail into this like you do everything else, acting so damned arrogant and thinking you know everything when you don’t . You’re still a child , Haley.”
    â€œHow do you know so much about it?” I asked.
    She looked at me like I was an idiot. “Haley,” she said. “You believe you got this from your grandmother, right?”
    â€œYes,” I said.
    â€œWell, you didn’t,” she said.
    â€œWhaddaya mean?”
    â€œThink about it,” she said. “It had to pass through me to get to you.”
    â€œCome