Resonance - J. B. Everett (best novels to read for students TXT) 📗

evidence. The rest of the world might not know what he knew in his gut. It was here and he was standing on top of it.

 

So he lowered himself to his knees and hunched-over again, and began wounding the earth beneath him, just a little more.

 

“Botulism, botulism, and botulism” had been Jordan’s guess on the caseload that morning. Yesterday they had arrived at two in the afternoon, squinting in the bright sun, and trying to look like they hadn’t slept sideways on his couch, Eddie’s file dangling from their sleep slackened fingertips.

 

So the guess hadn’t been very exuberant. It hadn’t been creative. And it sure as hell hadn’t been right.

 

Jordan figured one of these days he had to hit. But then he began the worrying: Would he die of boredom writing reports about food poisoning while he never figured out what happened to Eddie?

 

And why the hell did old man Landerly have to pick this week of all weeks to leave town? He was barely able to get around the office some days, so what was he doing climbing on a 747 and hitting the beach? Just when he was needed, too.

 

He hadn’t said anything, but Jillian’s voice cut into his thoughts, so accurate that for a moment he wasn’t sure that she was actually speaking, “He’ll be back in a few days. Eddie’s file won’t change in that time.”

 

He did look up to nod and force a small half-smile as thanks for her concern. Today she was well put together, her dark hair drawn back away from her face in a tight clip. Her usual look for the office. Her clothing was getting more casual, and she was questioning him less and less as she worked. She churned out files like she was writing emails to friends. And she didn’t question why his pace had ground to a near halt.

 

A few blinks and he tried to clear his head. A quick scan down to the bottom of the front page showed that it was not, in fact, anything like botulism. He had a clear cut case of Legionnaire’s Disease in his hot little hands and he had stared at it blankly for half an hour.

 

Something pestered him while he began to slowly type, tabbing across the open fields on the computer screen, inputting bits of information here and there. And …

 

Jilly was watching him. Her keys didn’t click, they had stopped some time ago, and that’s what was bothering him. Just as his eyes lifted to meet her gaze, she spoke up. “Let’s go get lunch. My treat.”

 

He shook his head. “I’m not keeping up, I’m just going to eat out of the vending machines. I just need to get back into the groove of things.” Why he wasn’t already in the groove of it, after a full day back, was beyond him though.

 

“No you won’t-”

 

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, doll.” But even though he had refused verbally, Jillian was walking around the large desk, shedding her labcoat and dropping it onto a hook on the old curly coatstand shoved into the corner of the room. But the cubby of an office was so small it was all in arms reach.

 

“You need chicken nuggets.” Her smile got wider. “You’re frustrated because you lost someone you’ve been trained to save, and not only weren’t you there, you still can’t figure out what went wrong. And I can’t figure it out for you. And to make matters worse, Landerly is suddenly out of town, so you can’t get answers from the one person who might be able to provide them. But I can buy you chicken nuggets and I can help take up the slack a little so you can figure things out.”

 

With a small shrug she dismissed her own generosity for nothing.

 

She had his hand in hers, although he was unsure when it had gotten there. And suddenly it seemed like a rather intimate gesture. When added in to the fact that she had just put to words what was eating at him, he couldn’t stop the curl of his fingers around the heat she offered with just her hand. He couldn’t stop the first smile he had formed all day, and he let her lean her full weight back as she made the motions of pulling him up from his seat.

 

They didn’t speak on the way over, and he let her order for him, not surprised that she knew exactly what he wanted; they’d been here at least six times in the past month and he hadn’t varied his order at all. So he tried not to dwell on Eddie. And three empty sauce containers later, he asked her, “So what did you find in the reports today? Botulism?”

 

She shook her head, knowing that she had blasted his predictions all to hell. “Salmonella-”

 

Her voice kept his mind from wandering too far astray, “Then there were the three old people in the

 

nursing home. Some sort of vague guess at a staph infection. It killed them but there was no real conclusive evidence-”

 

He looked up because her voice had just trailed off. Jilly’s mouth hung in a small open ‘o’, her blue eyes focused somewhere beyond his shoulder. The gears working in her brain were visible and he waited her out.

 

The tension he hadn’t realized he was carrying tightening in his muscles every second. But he didn’t push her to voice her reasoning.

 

Briefly it flashed across his thoughts again that he hadn’t been hired to be the brilliant theorist. And if she was both the workhorse and the genius then perhaps he was just window dressing. Her lip turned in, and just as he had leaned all the way forward, waiting on edge for whatever she was going to announce, she looked at him and spoke. “Jordan, we have to go back and double check that file.”

Chapter 4

Becky sank into her wooden swivel chair, with her head cradled in her hands. Warden hadn’t let up on her regular load because of the frogs. Never mind that investigating animal oddities was what the Biodiversity lab was set up to do. Never mind that she had stayed and kept the paper with the university. Warden seemed to begrudge her the find because it had been hers. Angry birds here, creepy frogs there, it was all too much.

 

But—

 

Her head snapped up. Maybe …

 

Maybe there was a connection between the screwed up frogs and the screwed up birds. She worked on it for the rest of the day, trying to come up with some sort of link. Then drove most of the way home until her little Jetta sputtered and died on her. She trudged the last mile, and arrived weary in her soul, brain, and body.

 

From where she threw open the front door, Becky could see that her mother was in the kitchen and Brandon and Melanie were playing with two frogs loose on the living room carpet. “Those better not be my frogs.” It was meant to be a threat but she didn’t really have the energy to back it.

 

“They are, but I’m supervising.” The voice sounded so much like her Dad’s that her head snapped up.

 

“Aaron!” She felt the smile spread across her face as she launched herself into his arms. Only two years older, Aaron had been her god since the day she was born. In her early teens, she had suffered through the indignities of having to share him with her friends. And later with having to share him with the town. Knoxville was like every other southern town. There were three religions: ‘Baptist,’ ‘Football,’ and ‘Other,’ in order of their likelihood of gaining you a spot in heaven. And Aaron had led the town to a state championship.

 

“Hey, Becky.” His hair was blonde and short but his eyes were green moss just like hers.

 

“Long time, no see.”

 

“What are you doing here?”

 

“Just drove up for the weekend. And come to find out you’ve got yourself some weird little frogs.” He looked over her shoulder, his eyes snapping wide. “Hey! Melanie! I told you two hands!”

 

That made Becky jerk her head around. Only to see Melanie roll her eyes and hold the frog out at arm’s length wrapped in the short fingers of her right hand. She shook the frog slightly for emphasis as she spoke.

 

“This is how you’re supposed to hold them - with only one hand. Back fingers hold their legs down. Top finger and thumb hold their arms out, and they can’t get away!”

 

She rotated the frog to upside-down and back upright. It waved its hands but didn’t accomplish much else.

 

“Tell him, Becky.”

 

Forced to display a small smile to Aaron, she conceded. “She’s right.” But then she turned back to her sister and with two hands slipped the frog from Melanie’s grip into her own identical hold. “But you aren’t supposed to flip them around like that.”

 

“Whatever, they’re so creepy anyway. I was just getting a lexan.” With that the reprimand was dismissed and the little girl wandered off to get the plastic container. In a moment she held it up for Becky to slide the frog down in, head first, then snapped the container back closed.

 

Becky started when her mother spoke suddenly from directly behind them, and turned to find the woman using the same emphasizing hand gestures her younger daughter had just moments before, only with a spatula not a frog. “We’re really looking into sending her to that gifted school out in Cedar Bluff. They just opened that new Magnet Program out there.”

 

“NO!” It was earshattering and they all turned to stare at Melanie who had gone red in the face in the space of a breath. “I won’t go! I don’t want to ride the short bus! ”

 

Becky shook her head, far more used to their little sister’s antics than Aaron ever would be. He had moved away to college the first chance he had gotten, his status of ‘Golden Boy’ eating at him in a way even Becky had never understood. He had been out of the house before Melanie came along and had never really gotten to see her full-fledged personality.

 

Letting herself sink down into one of the dining room chairs, Becky toed off her thick sneakersand let the feeling of relief soak into her feet. She leaned back and almost closed her eyes before she realized that Brandon was standing right beside her, clear tupper in hand, the frog inside pointed toward the window.

 

Becky raised her eyebrows; too worn out to voice her question, she let it show on her face.

 

“Melanie got too mad to tell you what we discovered. Watch.” Brandon walked over to the refrigerator.

 

Becky tilted her head to see, but expected nothing other than the appearance of a moldy ham sandwich. He placed the lexan flush against the fridge and waited.

 

Slowly, the frog turned to face the old white unit. When he pulled the container away, the little fellow reoriented to his original direction. He put it back and the frog turned again to face the fridge. Waving his hands like some demented magician, Brandon declared it “Cool, huh?” Then gave his theory. “I think he’s hungry see… Melanie says that’s not it, but she’ll see. Can I give him pizza?”

 

“No!” But