Read 20 Years Later for Free Online Page B

Zane found himself on the sofa, a blanket wrapped around him, and a mug of his mother’s tea in his hand. Miri watched him stare into space, her forehead furrowed with deep lines of concern.
    â€œDrink the tea, Zane, you’ve had a shock.”
    He sipped at it obediently and looked up at her. “Mum, I think something weird is happening to me.”
    â€œIt’s just shock, it’ll pass.”
    â€œNo, I don’t mean that, I mean … the Gardner earlier today, something weird happened and I don’t know what to make of it.”
    Miri perched on the sofa next to him and rubbed his back slowly, reassuringly. “Why don’t you describe how it felt to me and we’ll see if we can work it out together,” she said gently.
    Zane searched for the right place to start. Miri watched his hands shaking the mug, threatening to send the hot liquid spilling over the edge. She wrapped the blanket tighter around him as the shivering started again. “Sip the tea,” she whispered and he did so.
    â€œToday, the Gardner … I know they’re horrible. I know they hurt and kill the Boys, but I couldn’t stop myself from trying to help him. Even before I saw him, I sort of knew he was down on the ground and in pain.” Miri listened intently, stroking his hair like she did when he was small and had woken from a night terror. “I … could
really
see him, like normal but clearer, but then I had the urge to touch his skin, so I did and then it was like I could really see him. It was like he had a kind of blue glow around him that was fading, and I could see the blood rushingout of that stab wound, and how his lungs were filling with blood and how his heart was starting to give up.” The words rushed out of him in a torrent, his eyes fixed on the floor in front of him as if he were seeing it all happen in front of him again. “Even though I knew he was a bad person, I couldn’t stand that he was in pain, and I wanted the wound to close and … and … it started to. In front of my eyes, and I knew I was doing it. I knew it. But it was too late, and he died, and when he did, it was like putting my hands in snow, and I felt cold. It was just horrible.”
    Miri was silent for a few moments. She cleared her throat quietly and then said “It’s hard to see a person die for the first time. It’s natural for you to feel odd at the moment.”
    â€œNo, Mum, I feel normal now, just a bit wobbly. What I’m saying is that I felt odd
then
.” He sipped more tea. “Do you see inside the Boys when you bandage up their cuts?”
    Stunned by such an odd question, at first Miri simply shook her head. “No … never,” she eventually said. Zane was disappointed, lost, and in the moments of silence that followed, she composed herself. “Zane, you’re a bright, imaginative boy. I think that you’re really talented at helping and healing people, and when you’re there with someone that is hurt, you really feel what they do. You empathise with them.”
    â€œWhat does empathise mean?”
    â€œIt means that you put yourself in their place and know how they feel so much that you begin to feel it a little bit yourself too. I think that you’re so good at that, that you begin to think you’re seeing into them. You know enough about the human body to be able to imagine these things very clearly. I don’t think you’re odd.” Miri paused as she thought about this and then said more firmly, “No, you’re not odd at all, just very involved. That’s all.”
    Zane let the confidence in his mother’s voicesoothe him.
    â€œFinish your tea,” she said, “and I’ll make us some lunch.”
    And with that, Miri went into the kitchen. As she peeled vegetables, the deepest part of her mind took what Zane had confided in her, threw a dark cloak over it, and like a magician worked