What if…?
Shit. He was going to have to spill more humiliation and painful memories out for everyone to see. Let Todd tell it. Shaney closed his eyes and then opened them, nodding at Todd who understood.
“The Wood Shop Incident of 2009,” Todd announced ominously.
Mr. Anderson let out a strangled gasped, and Hudson turned a questioning gaze on Todd.
“Isn’t there some sort of gag order on that one?” Shaney mumbled, already feeling his humiliation level rising. Soon he’d be swimming in it.
Todd pulled up a chair from the kitchen table and sat dramatically, ready to divulge the tale—though, nightmare was more like it.
“We were in eleventh grade, in the wood shop, working on a shed for the school’s maintenance department. We were at the finishing stage: sanding, trim, shingles. I was working on window trim and Shaney was going to sand.” Todd’s relaxed posture stiffened, and a grim expression suffused his face. Shaney braced for the onslaught of horrifying memories. “Shaney grabbed the hand sander, one of those industrial ones, about a foot long and heavy as a bitch. He put the sander down on the workbench and plugged it in. The thing was on and it took off like a shot off the bench. Things kind of get fuzzy after that.”
Not fuzzy for Shaney. His stomach twisted, his heart took flight, and cold sweat covered the back of his neck, as every detailed moment ran through his mind like still-frames of a movie. That five-pound sander had shot off the workbench and crashed into the side of the table sander, which was running. Jimmy Sawyer, who was about to set a piece of 2x4 onto the sanding belt, startled and dropped the piece of wood. As it hit the moving belt, the board kicked backwards at speeds rivaling a major league pitch.
In horrific, slow motion, Shaney had watched helplessly as the board sped straight at Brad Jasper’s head. Miraculously, it veered away and slammed into the electric panel in the wall at the last second. In a shower of sparks, the power was cut to the entire shop, but there was one last act. When that board fell, the piece of wood had knocked against the air hose of the pneumatic nail gun that lay on the bench next to Shaney. The nail gun had fallen to the floor and in an angry fit, had spit a shower of nails into the air. Three of those four-inch nails had imbedded into Shaney’s thigh. Luckily, no one else had been hurt.
Shaney rubbed at the phantom pain in his leg. As he came back from the memory of his nightmare, there was a stifling silence in the air. Five pairs of eyes focused on Shaney. Everyone, except for Caleb, had gaping mouths and raised eyebrows. Even Maximus joined in the shock. Mr. Anderson was amazingly still. Caleb wore that concentrated, creepy calm—probably cooking up something painful for Shaney. A flush of red crept up Shaney’s neck when he realized he’d spoken the memory aloud. Man, this must be what those ants felt like underneath that magnifying glass in that Antz movie—at least Shaney didn’t catch fire.
Shaney shrugged, waiting for a response from anyone.
Nothing.
“It was my fault. I didn’t make sure the sander was off,” he confessed.
Immediately, Hudson shook his head. “Those sanders won’t run in the ‘on’ position without pressing the safety button. If you drop the sander or it gets away from you, it shuts off immediately. It’s a safety feature.”
Shaney had known that, but he figured he must have done something wrong. Even after the collision with the table sander, the hand sander had worked properly, safety button and all.
Todd stood up, stark confusion on his face. “You never told me all of that. And Hudson’s right. The sander shouldn’t have worked, but even if we ignore that, there’s the part about the board veering away from Brad...What does that mean?”
Shaney gave a lopsided shrug. “Nothing. Just a curve ball kind of thing.”
Caleb was the one to shake his head now. “It’s quite possible that incident, and many others like it, are connected to your ability to affect energy. Even in its dormancy, it’s possible that energy was able to surface, if only momentarily. Again, this is all new. The ultimate goal of your creation was to produce a human capable of controlling energy by using the mind. You’re far from possessing that skill. I imagine it will take years to reach that level—if it’s even possible at all. Even the fact that you yourself are a creation of two men, not conceived and gestated, is mind-boggling. Hyrum was close to sharing this astounding scientific feat, but he died before I could access that information. Anyhow, having access to that innate energy, even if not consciously, would no doubt give you the ability to influence objects in your immediate vicinity.”