AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Yes, that was it,” Mrs. Olson said, passing down a plate to Sam. “I must’ve done all right, I suppose. They took me on. Gave me—”
“Vitamins,” Sam and Ling interjected.
“That’s right!”
“What in the Sam Hill is Project Buffalo?” Mr. Olson asked.
The Diviners explained Project Buffalo to Mr. and Mrs. Olson, how the Department of the Paranormal had instigated a eugenics project aimed at raising a generation of enhanced humans, a so-called super race of powerful Americans they might use to defend the nation someday.
“Mostly they experimented on immigrants, Jews, Negroes, Catholics, Chinese,” Sam said. “People they thought of as expendable.”
“We’re just Americans,” Mrs. Olson said.
Ling bristled. We’re all Americans, she wanted to say. She cleared her throat. “After everything that went wrong during the war, they decided that letting us have those powers was too great a risk. They started experimenting on us. Or killing us. Those who hadn’t died from the effects of the serum already.”
“Killing?” Mrs. Olson repeated.
“Yes,” Theta said.
“Oh my word. They told us it was just about having healthy babies.” Mrs. Olson teared up. “Do you suppose that’s what happened to our Sarah Beth? That she was… hurt… somehow by what they did?”
“We don’t know that,” Theta said. “But it sounds like they abandoned you.”
“They sure did,” Mr. Olson said bitterly. “We wrote to ’em, told ’em about Sarah Beth’s fits and visions and whatnot. They were no help at all. Finally, we got a letter saying the whole department had been shut down. And that was that.”
“For a while, she didn’t seem troubled all that often. A fit here or there. But they started up again last year,” Mrs. Olson said.
“We took her to see Dr. McCormick. He told us there wasn’t anything that could be done except put her in an institution. So we just brought her home. We do the best we can.”
Project Buffalo seemed to have saved its cruelties for Sarah Beth Olson, who, it seemed, might not make it to her next birthday.
Mrs. Olson’s eyes filled with tears. “I’ll get the cake,” she said, hurrying to the kitchen and leaving the others to eat in silence.
“They’re down here.” Sarah Beth took off her shoes and scooted under the broken latticework of the aging porch. Isaiah could hear the kittens mewling, and it excited him
. He’d always wanted a pet of his own, but Aunt Octavia had forbidden it. “The last thing I need around here is one more thing to look after,” she’d say, not mean, just sounding tired. Isaiah hoped he might get to keep one of these kittens, if he showed he could take good care of them.
There, in the soft dirt beneath the porch, Isaiah fell in love for the first time. A gray-and-orange mama cat, fluffy as could be, nursed seven babies. They were so tiny, Isaiah thought they looked more like big mice than cats. They were working hard to open their eyes, which were blue.
“Can I hold one?” he asked.
Sarah Beth nodded.
Carefully, Isaiah scooped up one of the kittens and nestled it close to his chest. It was mostly gray with some orange spots. The kitten mewled weakly, the softest little cry, and nuzzled close to Isaiah. “It likes me!” Isaiah said, and it seemed to him he’d never felt so much joy over something so small. “See?”
But Sarah Beth didn’t seem impressed. “Come on,” she said, getting on her hands and knees to scoot back under the break in the porch. “I want to show you my favorite place on the farm.”
Isaiah was sad to leave the kittens so soon. “I’ll come back and see you every day,” he promised as he placed his new friend near its mother. He crawled back out from under the porch and brushed himself off.
Sarah Beth was marching over to the old oak with its tire swing. Isaiah marveled at the gigantic tree. It was even more majestic than it had appeared in his visions. Sarah Beth lifted her skirt and stuck her legs in through the tire. “Push me? Then I’ll push you.”
Isaiah gave Sarah Beth a push. “Higher,” she called, and Isaiah obliged.
“What do you call your power?” Sarah Beth asked Isaiah as she swung gently back and forth, kicking her legs.
“Call it?” Isaiah made a face. “It doesn’t have a name.”
“I call mine moon glow, ’cause it’s like sharing a secret with the dark.”
