Hannah's Touch by Laura Langston Page A

filled with color. “You have no right.”
    â€œAnd you have no right to walk in here drunk and ruin it for the rest of us. Now get out of my way.” I shoved past him harder than I needed to.
    He pitched sideways. Automatically, I reached out and grabbed his arm to stop the fall. As soon as I touched him, it happened. My anger surged, bringing the power with it. It rose and filled me, stretching me beyond the class, beyond the school, back to the size I’d been after the bee sting. I felt Logan. I felt the presence. I felt the hum.
    And I knew what I was supposed to do. I knew why the weirdness was happening, and I knew what Logan wanted. I knew my purpose.
    I was supposed to heal Tom Shields.
    No freakin’ way.
    I dropped my hand, let him go. The heat and power and fullness raced out of me so fast I felt cold and empty and small.
    And when Tom fell to the floor, I turned and walked away.

Chapter Ten
    Cruel? I don’t think so.
    The guy was drunk. I didn’t want to help him. Besides, as far as I could tell, the only help Tom needed was somebody to tie his hands behind his back so he wouldn’t drink so much.
    I didn’t realize until later how sick he was.
    â€œApparently the pain in his leg has been getting worse for weeks, and he’s been self-medicating with booze,” Marie said when she called that night. I was sitting in my window seat with Bounce on my lap and the radio playing softly in the background. “His mom kept trying to get him to the doctor, but he wouldn’t go. Turns out he’s got some kind of raging infection around the steel pins. They’ve got him on iv antibiotics. According to his sister’s MySpace page, he could lose his leg.”
    â€œThat sucks.” It did. I was still choked that Tom had come to foods drunk, and I’d never forgive him for daring Logan to race, but losing a leg was ugly. Shame wormed through me.
    I shouldn’t have shoved him.
    Help Tom.
    Logan was inside my head.
    â€œI wonder if I should go see him.”
    I didn’t want to. I still had trouble believing that I could heal people, that healing existed at all. And for sure I didn’t want to heal Tom Shields.
    â€œMe and Lexi might go see him tomorrow afternoon but, um, I think his family would, you know, rather it was just the two of us.”
    There was an awkward pause. Marie didn’t want me there. I didn’t want me there.
    She changed the subject. “I’m praying for him,” she said. “You can too. Anybody can do that.”
    Even me. Somebody who didn’t go to church. Somebody who heard voices, who felt a presence, who thought her dead boyfriend was sending her messages.
    â€œRight.”
    â€œDid you call Pastor Rick?”
    â€œNot yet.”
    Another awkward pause. Then Marie said, “By the way, Drummond says we can do the meal over next week, just the three of us.” I heard a familiar song drift out from the radio. “And we won’t lose any marks,” she added.
    â€œThat’s good.”
    It was Van Morrison singing “I’ll Be Your Lover Too.” I stopped breathing. How random was that?
    â€œFor sure,” Marie said. “It’s one thing to be grateful for in this whole mess.”
    Grateful. I clicked off and tossed the phone down beside me. The familiar lyrics filled my bedroom . “I come…to be the one…who’s always standing next to you.” My eyes blurred; a lump the size of Manhattan closed my throat.
    It was our song. Logan’s and mine. We hadn’t picked it (trust me, we would have picked something better), it picked us. It followed us around and kept popping up everywhere we went. The only reason we noticed was that our fathers both loved Van Morrison.
    I buried my face in the pillow and began to weep. “ Yes, I will ,” Van Morrison sang. “ Yes, I will .”
    â€œNo, I won’t!” I lifted my head and yelled at