“Ha! That’s because teenagers are exploding with new energy.” Her arms waved in the air. “Y’all are a bunch of out-of-control aura-bombs discharging around each other.” She laughed. I liked the sound of it—spicy and soaked with joy.
I asked to see the display of Kirlian photography. We walked to the back corner of the store where there was a large gallery with dozens of pictures of plants and people, their auras captured beautifully on film. The sight of all those people, all those colors, was amazing confirmation of what I’d been seeing.
“There’s something missing here,” I ventured, the sense of unease about myself becoming a familiar gnaw. “None of these pictures show an aura like my own.”
“Indeed? What does your aura look like?”
“I don’t have any of these colors, not even white. My aura is nothing but silver.”
Faye glanced away from me for a moment, thoughtful. Her eyes had the faraway look of reaching for a memory. She gazed back at me with an intensity that made me flinch.
“Tell me.”
“In this business you hear many tales over the years, scraps of legends and myths. Many attributed to places in the British Isles, like Ireland and Wales, some from civilizations much older even than the Druids or Celts. But if you’re right and your aura is pure silver…” She riffled through her bookshelves. The chaotic way she did it—pulling out one book, setting it on the floor, running to a different shelf, fanning quickly through the pages of another book, disappearing into the back of the store—made my skin prickle.
“What are you looking for?” I asked, standing over her as she sat on the floor, her skirt in a puddle around her, with two books open on her lap.
Faye looked up at me. “Something’s playing hide-and-seek in my memory. If I could find it—”
My voice shook. “You’re kind of freaking me out. Find what?”
She stood and fingered a long gray dread like a pet snake. “What they call people like you.” She covered her lips with two fingers, then her eyes darted back to me. “I’ve read about it, or heard about it. I can’t remember which. But I do remember this—silver ones are very rare. Almost mythological. So rare they’re thought to be wiped from the earth.”
Wiped? I didn’t like the sound of that.
She paused a moment, possibly weighing whether to continue, and then spoke softly. “I feel a strong impulse to tell you this, so I’m going to follow it. If I’m right, well then, honey, don’t go telling folks about your silver aura. It’s a risk you shouldn’t take, no matter how much you trust someone. Evil wears many masks, and there are those who want nothing more than to find someone like you.”
Six
After tossing around in my bed all night, I finally dragged myself up and got dressed in the half light of sunrise with nagging questions plaguing me. I had gone to Say Chi’s for answers but left with more questions.
People wanting nothing more than to find someone like me?
Why would anyone care if my aura was silver? Yet again, I was reminded of the man and his strange words at the hospital as he faded from view. A mighty flame follows a tiny spark.
I was the spark.
That much I could see with my own eyes.
But who was he?
Bumps sprang up on my arms. Fear and uneasiness had become a coat I couldn’t remove. I rode my bike home so fast last night, I nearly got hit by a car. I was unable to sleep through my worry, knowing everything in my life had changed but not why.
After scanning the book about seeing and reading auras and finding nothing on silver people, I sat at my desk and fired up my computer. For the first time I could remember, I outright disobeyed my father by getting online and searching “seeing colors around people” and “auras.” Silver was rarely mentioned in color charts. When it was, the description of seeing some silver in a person’s aura was pretty benign. No, I didn’t have a lot of money. No, I wasn’t pregnant. God. I yawned and scoured the pages with weary eyes for any reference to the ominous stories Faye mentioned about people with silver auras but found nothing.
Maybe I was the only one, the last of a mysterious tribe of freaks.
Maybe we had been wiped from the earth.
Chills rolled over me, raising the hairs on my arms. I bit my lip and decided to forge ahead and put my query in a public forum on a site where people had online discussions about seeing auras. Perhaps they knew about scary people with all-white auras, too. I didn’t see the harm in simply asking about colors. Maybe someone else out there had seen someone silver like me or was someone silver like me.
Maybe I wasn’t alone.
Halfway through typing my question, my bedroom door swung open. My dad’s eyes went to the computer screen before they landed accusingly on me as he crossed the room. His face darkened when he read what I’d typed. “What are you doing? You know how I feel about this, Cora,” he said, stabbing at the power button on the computer. My question on the screen blipped to blackness.
“What are you afraid of, Dad? How can looking up information about auras possibly harm me?”
“It’s not information, honey. It’s misinformation.”
“Says the man who watches Edmund Nustber on TV.”
He sighed in frustration, causing his aura to expand to dirty brown overlaid on yellow. “For entertainment,” he said. “Not for facts.”
I folded my arms. “Well, this is my entertainment.” He started to shake his head no, to open his mouth and toss another prohibitive statement at me, but I’d had enough. I glared at him. “The more you tell me not to open a box, the more I want to.”
Later, swerving through the halls at school, I told Mari and Dun what had happened at Say Chi’s. “I’m convinced I’m seeing auras.”
“Can you see your own?” Dun asked.
“Yeah. But mine is completely different than everyone else’s. I’ve only got one color. Mine is silver.” A quick jolt of worry coursed through me. Faye had said not to tell anyone about my aura. Mari shot me a dubious look. “Truly, I look like a giant sparkler. It flares out really far from my body, too. And there’s nothing online about it.”
Mari looked interested albeit skeptical. Though, skepticism was a regular look for her. “Still, isn’t it cool to be able to see people like that?” she asked.
“No. It’s disturbing, like watching everyone walk around naked.”
Dun snickered. “I could get with that.”
Mari yanked at the sleeve of my hoodie and hooked her arm in mine. “You’re going to have lunch with us today,” she informed me. When I gave her “the eyebrow,” she said, “Well, you hid out in the secret garden yesterday. Time to practice your social skills.”
“Hid? Why does everyone keep saying that?”
“Everyone?”
“Never mind. I like the greenhouse. This is not breaking news.”
Dun leaned close. “In breaking news, I may or may not have spotted someone who may or may not have resembled Mr. McIrish in the greenhouse yesterday.”
“Nuh-uh!” Mari squealed, mouth agape. “Finn went in there to see you?”
I scowled. “Why is that so unbelievable?”
“Insecure much?”
“Repeat after me,” Dun said. “Whale. Oil. Beef. Hooked.”
Mari and I stared at him.
“C’mon. Do it.”
We rolled our eyes and said the words.
“Say it again. Faster.”
We did. Repeatedly. “Whaleoilbeefhooked.”
I laughed, finally hearing the joke.
“Now I’ve taught you how to talk Irish,” he said with a stupid grin. I liked Dun’s aura, which was almost always a happy gold/white color, like the edge of a cloud with the sun behind it. Mari’s outline was a bit more complex. She also radiated a happy blush, but she was mercurial, ever changing.