Read Online The Star Group by Christopher Pike - Free Book Online Page A

water.”
    “But why didn't you just wipe it off?”
    Gale grimaced. “I wanted to, but she was crying so hard. I was afraid of wiping off her skin.” She paused. “But I should have done something. Do you know a day doesn't go by that I don't think of that night? Sometimes, lying here in the dark, it's all I can think of. Pretty sick, huh?”
    “No. It means you're compassionate.”
    “Am I? When she was screaming in pain, I kept thinking that I was glad it was her who had been standing next to the battery and not me. Does that make me cool?”
    “It was an accident. There was nothing you could do.”
    She studied me. “But you were questioning me. I don’t know if you really believe there was nothing I could do.”
    “I do. I believe you.”
    She smiled slightly. “But you don't know if you love me.”
    “Do you love me?”I asked.
    Her smile stayed small, guarded. “I'd like to. But I worry.”
    “You worry about what?”
    She frowned. “Time.”
    “That we don't have enough of it?”
    “Yeah. I guess that's it.”
    “But we’re young. God, we just graduated from high school. We have all the time in the world, Gale, why are you talking this way?”
    She lay back down, but with her back to me.
    Her voice, when she answered, sounded as if it came from a distance.
    “I don't know why, but I feel we're all cursed.”
    J wanted to ask her to explain.
    More, I wanted to know why I suddenly felt the same way.
     
     
    CHAPTER NINE
     
    THE NEXT AFTERNOON, SATURDAY, I SAT alone in my living room and thought of Gale. I couldn't think of anything else. My parents were at the movies, so I had the house to myself. I felt I could be content to sit there all afternoon and replay the events of the previous day. It was the most exotic videotape ever made, my laser disc memory of our final day at school. Even Shena's attempted suicide and Gale's late night bout of melancholy did little to upset the sweet tape that continued to loop through my brain.
    I felt like I was in love.
    Then I experienced a surge of the strange energy. The magnet, where had I put it? I stood and went into my bedroom and brought it and the large page of letters out. I tried to steady the string before I began. I wondered what Mentor would think of last night.
    “Do you want to talk?”
    Yes. It swung clockwise.
    “Do you want to do what we did yesterday?”
    Yes and no .
    “Spell out what you want to say,” I said.
    The words were spelled slowly but deliberately.
    Get a tape recover. You will now speak for me directly.
    I felt nervous. “Do you think I am ready?”
    It will take some practice. You will feel as if you are speaking your own thoughts and not mine. This will be partly true, since I will be using your nervous system to communicate. But relax and have no fear – you will not go into a trance. You will be in control at all times, yet, at the same time, you must let go in order for the process to occur. To help you do this I want you to sit comfortably with the rape recorder on, and take long slow deep breaths for ten minutes. Breathe through your nose. Do not hyperventilate, just breathe easily. At the end of this time sit quietly and you will feel an urge to speak. Just go with this urge and don't care if what you say makes sense. It may not at first. But soon you will slip into a flow and you will feel great peace descend. Then, when you have a question you can ask it aloud and I will answer it in your voice. Once again, have no fear. It is only fear that can block the process. When you are with me, you are with yourself. In a manner of speaking, you will be home.
    I considered for a moment. I could already feel a sense of peace. It gave me faith. There was a sweetness to Mentor's energy that I could not define.
    “OK,” I said.
    I had a small cassette player in my room. After finding a ninety-minute blank tape, I popped it in and rested the attached microphone. It was working fine. Returning to the living room, I sat in my