“Go away,” I moaned, with my legs wrapped tightly around his waist. Tears mingled with warm kisses that tasted like love, staining our lips.
“I don’t care if you go,” I said against his mouth. Then, the truth I couldn’t hold back any longer. “I love you.”
“I’m not the same person since I met you. You’ve affected me forever.”
“You’re so mean. It was cruel to tell me you love me and then tell me you’re leaving.”
“I’m so sorry.” His words were spoken in a choked voice against my collarbone, but my heart recognized the truth. The empty promise of us. “I have to do this now, but someday things may be different—”
I shook my head solemnly and whispered into his hair, “There is no someday. People leave me, Finn. They don’t come back.”
Twenty
I had a phone number and an e-mail I knew we would rarely, if ever, use. I had one text that said Finn would miss me, that he felt weaker with every mile away from me. His last text had simply said, “Good-bye.”
Two long weeks without him.
In that time, I delved into my research about silver auras and ended the school year with plans to go search for my mother as soon as I could. My head was busy, but my traitorous heart replayed memories of clove-scented kisses and the limitless depth of Finn’s gaze. How he ensnared everything in me when he was near. I had my own light, but Finn returned it to me, magnified. His eyes were a mirror for everything beautiful in me, things I didn’t see in myself until he reflected them back. With Finn, I was my truest self, a girl who knew what she wanted and went after it. I liked her. I vowed not to let her go, even if he had.
My father barely let me out of his or Janelle’s sight. The final week of the school year was miserable, amplified by the fact that I could barely concentrate on final exams. As soon as the last test was over, I walked numbly through the throng of kids with excited, summer-is-finally-here balloon colors around their bodies. I just wanted to be alone.
If I walked long enough and hard enough, I might be able to expel the ache in my chest. Maybe I’d get distracted by a vine exploding with purple flowers, clambering up a stone wall. I’d notice how the stray cat darting across the street had markings identical to a leopard. Marvel at the surprising beauty of a child’s pair of red patent-leather shoes clipped to a clothesline, collecting sprinkler-water in the toes. Maybe, if I kept my mind busy with these things, I could stop myself from thinking of the boy who took my heart to a moss-covered island five thousand miles away.
Ireland was a thief.
Eventually, I sat down on a bench in the park. Water immediately seeped into my jeans, pressing cold against my skin. Perfect. I leaned forward on my thighs and watched an ant heft a comparatively huge crumb, struggling to get where it needed to go. I had a sudden, mean impulse to put my foot down in front of it, to halt its progress the way my father always did with me.
A camera flash burst in my peripheral vision. Maybe it was a birthday party in the park pavilion, or a student taking close-ups of the miniature roses around the fountain. But when I looked up, I saw the pulsing, flashing white aura of the man who had stalked me. My breath stilled.
He was in close conversation with a woman wearing sneakers and a tracksuit. I shivered but stared, almost defiantly. The alarm ringing through my body was a welcome cloak over my heartache. I watched him, bent on understanding what he was, why he affected me so badly. His eyes met mine and a half smirk played on his mouth. He tore his gaze from mine, reluctantly it seemed, to refocus on the runner. Her small dog yanked frantically against its leash.
I couldn’t take my eyes off the man’s aura. It was so unusual, so startlingly void of the color that radiated from everyone else. It was beautiful and strange, like the albino redwood. It captivated me yet my blood ran cold with fear. What was he? Was I witnessing the heavenly aura of an angel on earth? Is that why I saw him in the hospital when I was on death’s door? When Mrs. Oberman died? If so, why did he keep appearing to me? If he was the messenger of my death, would running make any difference? Wouldn’t Death be able to find me anywhere?
The woman’s hands waved animatedly, gesticulating as if pointing directions to a lost tourist. The man listened and nodded. The cloud of his aura reached out to her like an embrace. In response, her aura narrowed to a point in front of her chest and beamed toward him.
So slowly, like the taffy-pullers at the boardwalk, the man dragged her aura into his own. His eyes closed briefly. He sighed with a rapturous look of content as his own light brightened and enlarged.
One of the woman’s hands reached up instinctively to cover her heart, right over the leak she couldn’t see but could surely feel. It did nothing to stop the flow of energy leaving her body. She swayed a bit. He didn’t reach out to steady her, though she was obviously struggling. She reached toward him.
He took a step back. His hands stayed tucked stubbornly in his armpits.
I jumped to my feet. I wanted to run to her, help her. I wanted to run away and save myself. But my legs wouldn’t react to either thought. I was inexplicably frozen in place. I could only watch the terrible beckoning of her energy into his.
His gaze moved to mine and held. The sounds around me faded, the warble of pigeons, the squeals of kids jumping in puddles, everything receded so all I could hear was my heart beating hard in my ears. I felt a tug at my own chest, and an infusion of energy when our auras collided that I knew instinctively was coming from the woman.
It was as though he had shared a bite from his fork.
I shuddered with revulsion. Her terror coated my skin like oil.
He smiled.
The dog growled.
The woman stumbled.
I watched in horror as he siphoned her energy, her very soul, into his own. Her aura dimmed, then finally snapped from her like a rubber band. The white shroud around him burst like a solar flare as she fell to the ground.
The air around her went still.
A breath, held forever.
He stepped toward me, a shadow of a man obscured by his own white light. I held out my hands as if to stop him, but he kept coming closer, closing the distance between us in a few steps. The sensation I had while lying in the hospital helpless, of being pulled from myself, came rushing back to me.
“Stay away from me,” I shouted, panic making my voice shaky. I’d just watched a woman die. I didn’t want to die. “I’m not ready!” My own silver aura popped and sparked wildly. It burned coming out of me.
His eyes longingly devoured my aura. “I’ve waited too long for this,” he said, so low I barely heard him. “It’s folly to deny myself. We can search for another like you. Ready or not…”
My chest jerked violently again as he greedily tugged my light from me. I couldn’t breathe or move. My entire body grew weak and numb so that I couldn’t feel my hands or feet. This couldn’t be happening. My vision faded in and out. A fiery hole burned in my chest, burned my heartache to ashes, and spread throughout my body. Would the world forget I existed when the wind scattered me to the stars?
His ravaging halted seconds later when someone ran up to us, asking if we knew the woman on the ground, if we knew what had happened to her. The man’s eyes turned angry, but he covered it with a quick look of alarm. “Oh, good Lord. We should call an ambulance!”
Dizzy, swirling, I faltered. She didn’t need a freaking ambulance! She was already dead. He towered over me, radiating stolen light. This man with the white aura, he was no angel. You killed her, I wanted to say, tried to say, but my voice was gone.