8PM - DANCE CLASS
I smile as I check the time, happy to discover that I’ll be seeing her again in just an hour. I reply to some emails and time flies. It feels like only a minute has passed before I sense someone in my doorway.
Julia’s dressed in tight-fitting workout clothes. I don’t mean to scan her from head to toe but my eyes seem to have their own plans.
She glances down at her outfit. “I wasn’t sure if … I know we didn’t get a chance to talk more … but just in case.”
It hits me then that she still thinks I’m ready to call off the whole thing. And of course she does. I was just about to deliver that exact news when Jared walked into her office a lifetime ago. But so much has changed since then.
“Are you ready to dance?” I ask.
She sucks in her lips and fights a smile. “Only if you’re sure. I don’t want you to regret anything.”
I could never regret a moment with her.
As we walk to the lab, I tell her how the tests all ran without fail today and Jared thinks we are ready to start building.
“I’m so glad,” she says as we enter the top-secret testing area. “Is that why you’re still okay with helping me?”
“I always wanted to help you. But now I think it’s you that’s helping us,” I say.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not exactly sure yet. Jared gave me an idea and the tests are speaking for themselves. If you’re still okay with it, I’m going to run some experiments.”
She sets down her bag and smiles at me, but her face seems wary. “Just tell me what you want me to do.”
“Just dance like before. I’m going to use the Lite-Brite solar cells to track what sort of light you are putting off first. I think we can use it to see the amount of power you output.”
As she puts on her tap shoes, a thrill shoots through me. I’m excited to see and hear her dance as she’s meant to. She seems excited too. Her healthy glow has continued from Friday and I’m more convinced than ever that she is meant to be expending her power rather than locking it down. We just need to think of a way for her to do it safely.
She does some warm-up stretches that I definitely do not watch. Especially not when she bends over and presses her palms flat to the floor. I do not watch as she lifts one leg behind her, arching her back as she bends it back to stretch her thigh muscles.
“So, what was the big breakthrough you had earlier?” she asks.
My hands are typing and when I look at the screen it’s just a bunch of nonsense. I clear my throat. “When Jared called you Jules. I thought of joules, the standard unit of energy.”
She nods, stretching one arm across her chest. And then the other. She’s breathtaking. Literally. My lungs burn when I remember to blow out a slow breath. She’s the most hypnotizing when she’s happy like this and in her element. What might it be like to be the person in her life that makes her feel like this every day?
She stares back. A slow grin lifts the side of her mouth. “Joules?” she prompts.
I shake my head to clear it. “Right. So. All energy must come from somewhere and go somewhere. I’m assuming even within the realm of uncharted power, these rules of the universe still apply. We should assume that they do. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”
She nods, following along with my rambling easily.
“We need to understand what form of energy you’re working with, where it is coming from and where it’s going. It seems to me you display different forms of energy from all over the electromagnetic spectrum. Maybe even some that we can’t see with our own eyes.”
“I can do that too. I forgot to mention”—she doesn’t quite look at me as she puts her hair up, making me think she didn’t forgot at all—“I can sort of see in the dark. Like how a baby monitor looks.”
“Infrared!” I shout, before reminding myself to stay calm.
“I’m going to measure the types of energy you emit with these cameras to track your heat signature. See where you fall on the electromagnetic chart.”
Another thought occurs to me. “You said you keep a plant in the room with you. As a sort of canary in the mineshaft?”
“I always wanted to get through a routine without it dying. I haven’t been able to yet,” she says with obvious guilt.
“Okay, this supports my multiple energy-types theory.”
