Page 28 of Power of the Mind
“That’s so cool. Ever readJessica Jones?”
“Who?”
“She’s a Marvel PI superhero. So kickass. And yo, she’s hot as shit. Has her own show now. Krysten Ritter plays her. You know her, right? I’m totally in love. She’s killer. Solid ten out of ten. I’d do her. So, like, are you guys like her?”
“Not quite.”
“Well, yeah, I guess. I mean, you’re dudes.” Mackie chuckled.
“And not from the pages of a comic book.”
“True.”
I didn’t look at Diem. He struggled to connect with adults on a good day. I could imagine the level of self-restraint required when dealing with teenagers. Diem was of the opinion that all teenagers—he didn’t discriminate—had no brains.
The restaurant wasn’t crowded. By the time the kid had ordered three enormous slices of pizza and a jumbo-size Mountain Dew and collapsed in the booth across from us, Diem couldn’t seem to erase the venomous look from his face. Mackie didn’t seem to notice.
“I can’t believe someone finally believes me,” the kid said as he folded one of the slices in half and jammed a huge portion into his mouth. Grease ran down his chin as he chewed and talked at the same time.
“I know it looked like suicide, but it wasn’t. Nuh-uh. No way. I told the cops Amber was murdered, but no one listened. Even my mom wouldn’t listen, and she saw the same changes I saw. Amber and I were tight, yo. She told me stuff she didn’t tell no one. It’s like, I knew she was getting all frustrated about the constant migraines and how Dr. Henley wasn’t helping to fix them, but she wasn’t, like, ready to kill herself over them. Nuh-uh. It wasn’t like that.”
Mackie swallowed a mass of chewed dough and cheese he’d been moving around his mouth and slurped from his oversized drink. After an obnoxious belch, he stuffed another ungodly amount of pizza into his mouth before resuming his story.
“So, like, Amber decided to seek outside help for the migraines. She read about herbal treatments online and talked to some lady at a natural health remedies store or something like that. She tried yoga and meditation. She went to a hypnotist because I guess they can fix migraines sometimes. She tried acupuncture, and oh”—bits of pizza sprayed onto the table—“she also got that piercing thing that’s supposed to help.” He motioned to his ear. “What’s it called?”
“A daith piercing?”
“That’s it.” Mackie shook his head. “Didn’t work. Looked cool though. When Amber told me she was going to see some psychic chick—” Mackie flinched and slapped a hand to his mouth,swallowing with what seemed to be pain. “Sorry. I bit my tongue. Fuck that hurts.”
“Maybe stop talking with your mouth so fucking full,” Diem snapped.
I elbowed him in the ribs. “Hush. My case. Don’t ruin it.”
He growled under his breath and sat back with his arms crossed over his barrel chest.
Mackie seemed to notice Diem for the first time—how he’d missed the six-and-a-half-foot menacing brick wall was beyond me.
Mackie put the remainder of his slice down and licked grease from his thumb and pointer finger. “Sorry. That was so not cool, yo. My mom yells at me for that all the time. Anyhow, where was I?”
“The psychic healer.”
“Right. So, the healer chick was the worst of them, in my opinion. Amber said the woman told her she could stop her migraines, but it would take time. She said Amber would need to go to all these sessions so she could cleanse her aura of a lingering spirit that was inside her brain or some shit.”
Mackie shivered and twirled a finger around his ear, “Crazy, right? I told Amber it was BS, but she kept throwing money at the woman. That’s when I realized her migraines must have been awful if she was putting her trust in that weirdo. Well, like, two weeks later, Amber started acting strange, and I asked her what was wrong. She said nothing, but it wasn’t nothing. She always had a blank look on her face, so I asked if her head hurt. Amber said her migraines were better now. But, yo, she wasn’t all there. She was, like, a motherfreaking zombie. I know my sister, and something was way wrong.”
Mackie picked up the half-eaten slice he’d discarded and was about to stuff it into his mouth when he seemed to rememberDiem’s annoyance. He glanced at my partner in crime and put the slice down.
“So, after a few days when she was still acting allVillage of the Damned, I said, ‘Yo, Am,’ I called her that sometimes. I said, ‘Yo, Am, are you sure that chick took the spirit out and didn’t put one back in because you look possessed.’ Amber kinda laughed and brushed it off. But even her laugh was wrong.”
Mackie leaned over the table and lowered his voice, “I’m telling you. Amber was not okay. She was listless and distant. She would walk around the house like she was in a trance. It was not depression. I don’t care what my mom says, and what does Dr. Henley know? He saw her, like, three times in a year. It was that woman. Things changed when Amber started seeing that woman. But no one listens to me. Then, boom! I come home from school one day, and Amber’s dead. No way it was suicide. I’m telling you, that psychic who was supposed to take the bad juju out of Amber’s brain put something in it instead.”
I didn’t need to look at Diem to know he was exercising all his self-control so he didn’t inject his opinion into the conversation.
Mackie seemed to be done talking. The teen shifted his attention between us and pointed at his pizza. “Is it okay if I eat now? I don’t want it to get cold, and I’m starving.”
“Go ahead.”
As Mackie stuffed ungodly amounts of pizza down his gullet, I considered what to do with the information. I had to admit, the whole notion of mind control was less believable in person than when I’d researched it endlessly. No wonder Diem had been so aggressively against investigating. He must think I was a joke to bring this to him.