The Affected: Dancing Wind Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Three

Things were going just fine at home during the last few days of spring break.  Betty was thrilled with her new boyfriend and Stanford was just wild about Betty. 

Spring definitely sprung that week.   We had finished planting our garden and the peach trees I had planted were already a foot high.  They would be ready to transplant in a couple weeks it looked like.

My experiments were set up and differences were beginning to show.  Of course the seeds I had not touched were not showing yet but the ones I had were.  Since I would not be doing anything until the next Saturday; keeping to my one week theme, not much else I could do.  They would be watered regularly by our watering system we had in the greenhouses.  Aunt Becca and Kassie would keep an eye on them and let me know if anything drastic happened. 

Kassie said she would skype with me several times during the week for updates.

However, when I got back to school, I found that one of my professors was no longer there and that a Dr. Lois Rambles has replaced her.  This was in my Plant morphology course. 

She was interesting and reminded me of the stereotypical grandma figure.   You know, the kind that would spoil her grandkids rotten but not take any sass from anyone.  That type that could give you a cookie even when mom and dad said no?  I would have loved to have a grandma like that! 

Anyways the trouble came and my life changed when Dr. Rambles caught me in the proto-room.  I didn’t even know she had access, let alone WANT to be there.   It started out fine since I had gloves on and was simply setting up one of the experiments for Dr. Ross.  Just some simple milkweed he was going to plant in the Butterfly garden.  He was trying to see which of two different species were preferred by a certain species of butterfly. 

First of all, Dr. Rambles startled me when she asked about the gloves.

“Dani, why are you wearing gloves?” she asked with that left eyebrow of her arched and derned if I wasn’t compelled to tell the truth.

“I don’t want to touch the seeds.” 

“Why not?” she asked with that arched brow still giving that “LOOK”.

I felt like she was just pulling the truth right out of me.   I tried OH so hard to keep my mouth shut but I could not for the life of me and I began to get desperate since I did not want my last ability known by anyone else.

“because I don’t want to skew the results…”  I was getting physically ill and did not want her to ask any more questions so I ran for the bathroom and threw up my lunch. 

She followed me in there. 

“Are you ok?” she asked me.

“I’ll be fine, just leave please.  I don’t like being sick in front of people.”  What else could I say? Hey your questions are making me sick? And I don’t know why!

“Well Dani, I will leave but I actually came to let you know that someone named Selman is waiting to talk to you outside.”

I literally moaned out loud as I came out of the stall and washed my mouth out at the sink. 

“I take it she is not your favorite person?”

“You have no idea.  I want nothing to do with her, she just wants to use me.”

And again with that arched brow “what do you mean?”

“Look, you’ll probably hear about it anyways since there are video’s on line but I have certain abilities.  I’m one of the Affected.  And Selman wants me to go to her lab and be studied.  I want nothing to do with her.  I just want to live my life the best I can.”

Then came the question that changed everything…

“What are your abilities?”

OH how I wanted to run away, just anywhere to get away from her but it was like my feet were frozen to the floor and she just stood there pinning me to that spot with THAT LOOK!!!

I started feeling sick again but the words were just pulled out of my mouth.

“I can talk to animals…” I groaned out. “and fly…” I was in some serious pain but she just kept staring at me with THAT LOOK!

“And …and…  I … can… ohhhhhhhhhhhh, I’m gonna be sick again…” and so I was.

All over her feet.