I grab Lila’s hand. I hold on tight.
And now the noise in my head increases.
We shared a life before, back when she visited me with the first doorway card. This is different. I know it’s different. That time, the life we’d shared in a span of moments was like looking at a scrapbook. Pages blowing from beginning to end, twenty years wrapped up in one small package.
This.
This is different.
This feels real.
More real than life on the secret island. Much more real than that.
She is looking at me. She is holding my hand. I want to smooth the crease between her brows. I want to tell her everything will be all right.
It hurts.
I don’t know what I expected love to feel like, but not this. Not this weight in my chest and this tightness, this thickness in my throat. What has Sinclair done? It’s as if he’s dumped every possible emotion into this experience, then amplified them by a thousand. This is too much.
I can hear the sound of our daughter’s flute. I can feel the wobble of our son’s bicycle as I cling to the seat, afraid for him.
“Let go! Let go, Dad!” Alastair shouts. And I let him go. And he pedals away, down a street lined with perfect trees, bathed in a perfect sunset. I run after him, because how will he stop? What will happen when he stops? Who will be there to catch him?
And as I run, I hear the flute. And as I run, I hear Lila singing in the kitchen. I hear the clatter of silverware, and I know she’s setting the table. For us. For her family.
My son doesn’t fall.
He stops and waits for me to catch up, a grin on his face. And now I see that he’s older. Much older. Probably in high school. We’re both on bikes, and he’s waiting for me. His father. And I can feel our connection. How he’s a part of me, but separate. A good son. A kind person. Waiting for me. Smiling.
A car is heading in our direction. It stops in the middle of the road. My daughter is driving, Lila is on the passenger side. She puts down the window and I drop the bike and hurry to the car. I lean in and I kiss her.
She draws back, surprised. A smile blossoms. “What was that for?” she asks.
“I just felt like it.”
She places a palm against my face, and I can smell the soap from the bathroom sink on her skin. Vanilla and oranges. She mouths the words: “I love you.”
And I can feel our perfect life. Our perfect love. Yes, we fought. What couple hasn’t? And we struggled, but even the struggles seemed wonderful. The tiny apartment. The business that collapsed. The night classes. Rushing to the hospital after her water broke. The birth of our son. Our daughter.
The laughter at the dinner table.
The car pulls away, mother and daughter waving. “See you at the house!” Lila shouts, her arm out the window.
I want the day to stop. I want time to stop.
A sound intrudes. The ring of a cash register. I’m still holding Lila’s hand. Too tightly. She’s trying to pull away, and I just cling to her all the tighter. But her hand finally slips from mine… and I tumble. Back. To the café and the hard floor, the people bending over me, and Lila, my love. Our life together dissolves, but the pain of love remains. Now the girl’s eyes no longer hold deep recognition, just concern. Concern for a boy who’s fainted on the floor of her café. But I sense that she somehow remembers. Not consciously, but there is something in her eyes. Puzzlement. Slight recognition.
The pain in my chest is such a weight. Such an incredible weight. We just shared twenty years in the span of minutes.
“I’m okay,” I manage to croak. I stagger to my feet, and I’m surprised to see that my body is once again that of a young man. I’m the age of my son on that day when he paused in the street to wait for me. A son who doesn’t exist. A life that never happened.
I let out a sob and I run. I crash into the door, shoving it open. I run down sidewalks, the world a blur. I have to tell Sinclair that this is bad. This is awful. This is terrible.
But to say so would be to say that life is awful. To say so would be to say that love is awful. I experienced life. I experienced love.
People stare at me. A woman steps back, a hand to her mouth, her eyes wide. And then she kind of reaches for me, and I understand that she’s a mother. And I’m a hurt child.
I keep running.
Far, far away.
Away from Lila. Away from the staring people. And suddenly I’m on the street. The street where I pushed my son on his bicycle. The street where Lila and our daughter stopped in the car. And oh, my God. There is the house. The house where we lived. It actually exists. This is too much.
The front door opens. I half-expect an older version of myself to step out, but it’s not me. It’s a man. A middle-aged man, but not me. He walks to his car—and he drives away.
I run.
To the city limits. I recall Sinclair’s warning, but I don’t care. I keep running. When I reach the edge of town, I feel a change. The air becomes thick and my legs feel heavy, but I keep going and the light begins to dim. The air is like water or heavy oil or tar. I can’t see, but I can hear. A flute. A song from my life, from the world Sinclair made. And then my lungs quit working. And my legs quit working. And I slip into nothingness.
Chapter 5
Gabriel
Let me tell you a bit about Sinclair.
He looks my age. Sixteen. But he’s been around maybe two hundred years. What, you might ask, is the big advantage to living a long time? You continue to learn.
Especially for someone like Sinclair, who has a brain that’s unbelievable. He’s like Tesla or something. And instead of getting old and feeble and being unable to follow his inventions to the end, Sinclair just keeps plugging away. People don’t think about that. They don’t think about what vampires have to offer the world, especially genius vampires.
So I feel bad telling Sinclair that his experiment was an awful and terrible and horrible and awful and horrible idea. Because he’s worked on it forty years. And he’s so excited to get my feedback, and to hear all about it. And he’s also happy to know that I walked through the edge of town and returned without melting my brain.
But my heart. God, my heart.
“You made it too real,” I tell him.
Sinclair is leaning over my bed, and his eyes are full of excitement. He’s just bubbling over with excitement. His dark hair is tied back, and his glasses are smudged. “It has to be real,” he says, laughter in his voice. And by God, he just has no idea. No idea how awful this is.
“It’s too real,” I say again.
“The idea is to experience life and love and family. That’s what it’s all about. It has to be real.”
I shake my head. He guides a cup of water to my hand and I take a few sips, pass it back to him, then let my head drop to the pillow. “My heart is breaking,” I whisper. “It’s breaking.”
“You’ll get over it,” he tells me, talking as if he knows about love.
“I don’t think I will. I don’t think a person can get over something like this. To have loved them. My family. And now she’s out there, with no memory of me. And our children. I can’t bear to think that they never really existed. Did they?” I press the heels of my hands to my eyes, then look up. “Did they? I’m so confused.”
“No, they never lived.” He grabs a stool with wheels and pulls it close while perching on it. He’s thinking.
“What if I can make you forget? That would be easy. Just a little tweak to the memory center of your brain. I can hit it with my eyes closed. The sweet spot. I’ll just erase your little vacation. Your little trip to paradise.” And now he’s getting excited again. And I’m thinking he really needs to go over there himself so he’ll understand, so this will be more than just a game to him.
“Erase my children?” I say. “I can’t believe you even suggested that.”
He doesn’t get it. I can see it in his face. But Sinclair is all about solving problems. “Will you
still be my beta tester? I can send you over again. I can send you over as many times as you want.”
It’s tempting. God, how tempting. But I think about Lila. I think about how she kind of knew me, kind of recognized me. What would more visits do to her? And me. What about me? How many times could my heart break?
“No. That’s a bad idea,” I say. “A really bad idea.”
Sinclair looks disappointed. He fumbles in his lab coat for a cigarette. He lights it with a Zippo lighter, snapping the metal closed with a satisfied click. I’ve seen this display hundreds of times, and I still don’t know if it’s affectation or habit.
“But I wouldn’t mind going back sometimes,” I say. “To see her. Not talk to her. Not marry her. Nothing like that. Just see her. From a distance.”
Sinclair blows a cloud of smoke at the ceiling. “I can do that,” he says. But I can tell he’s disappointed. I’m his beta tester.
Chapter 6
Lila
“Don’t touch me!” The pale boy shouts and jumps back, arms held high. “You can’t touch me!”
“Who are you? Are you from the future? Are you from another planet?”
I ask this because he’s come into the café so many times now. For months and months. He always orders the same thing, a chocolate-chip cookie and a latte. And he sits in the corner and pretends to write, but whenever I look up I see him watching me. And yet he never does anything but order his cookie and his latte. So today I followed him out of the café. I ran after him, stopping him before he’d gone a block.
And now he laughs at me—at my comment about the future, I suppose. It is silly of me, but I feel I know him. Why do I feel I know him?
“I’m not from the future,” he says. The sun is bright, and his brown eyes look like they have glitter in them. “I’m not from another planet, but I can’t explain where I’m from.”
“Do you live around here?” I ask, all the while aware that I’ve left the café, and that I need to go back. For a moment I lost track of where I was—a little town in Louisiana. And the season—fall.
“Yes.”
“Nearby?”
“Yes.” He suddenly looks sad. “I won’t be coming back to the café,” he says, as if he’s just now, at this very minute, come to that decision.
Now I am sad. I don’t know why, but I will miss him. I’m sorry I ran after him. I’m sorry I scared him away.
“Forget about me,” he tells me.
What an odd thing to say. As if we’ve had a relationship. “I’ve known you before, haven’t I?” I ask.
“You weren’t supposed to remember. Sinclair said you wouldn’t remember.”
“Remember what?” The very word remember causes a click deep in my brain, and I find myself grasping for a faint dream that slips away before I can see the edge of it.
“Nothing.” His voice kind of breaks.
I lean a bit closer. “Touch me.”
“I can’t.”
“You want to.” I can tell. I lift my arm. I stretch my fingers toward him, a temptation. He does the same, until our fingertips are inches apart. I feel a spark jump between them, and for a moment I smell moss and river water. I hear a flute playing in the distance.
His fingers curl into a fist, and his arm drops to his side. “Be happy,” he tells me. And then he turns and runs.
* * *
Over the years, I catch glimpses of the pale boy. Always, it seems, at some important event in my life. And always watching me from afar. His strange presence no longer alarms me, as unexplainable as it is.
And today, in fact, his presence in the back pew of the church brings me a sense of comfort. And even though the distance of the church separates us, and even though my husband-to-be stands in front of me, I can feel the softness of the pale boy’s hair against my cheek, and I can smell soil and brackish water. I can taste red wine that hints of cork and moss.
And suddenly I imagine the pale boy standing in a road, and I’m inside a car, someone I love beside me, behind the wheel. A young girl. The pale boy is older, but still beautiful.
I’ve known him. Somewhere. Somehow. He loved me, and I loved him. And we stood at an altar together just like this.
Just like this. I’m so confused. For a moment, I forget about a man named Walter who is looking at me with expectant and puzzled eyes, a ring between his fingers. He is suddenly much less important than the pale boy.
A waking dream.
How can a dream seem more real than real life? How can a dream hurt in this way? How can a dream bring with it so much love?
The minister makes a small sound in his throat. He asks me again if I take the man across from me to be my lawfully wedded husband.
“I do,” I whisper. How can I stop the ceremony? How can I say I love someone else? A pale boy from a dream?
The minister pronounces us husband and wife, and when we turn to face the congregation, I scan the crowd with something like panic, looking for him. The pale boy. The man on the bike. The man in the road. The man who leaned in the car and whispered that he loved me.
“See you at home,” I’d said, waving as the car pulled away. See you at home. And then I remember him on the floor of the café where I’d worked… how many years ago? Ten? Holding my hand so tightly. Holding my hand as if he never wanted to let go.
* * *
Years pass, and I continue to see him. He is there when both my son and daughter are born. Both times I awaken to find him standing in my hospital room. One blink, and he is gone. He is there as I grow old, and he is there at my husband’s funeral, held in the same church where we were married. And he is there at the very end.
“I know you,” I whisper from my bed as I feel life slipping away. He doesn’t look any different. But I am old. My daughter has gone downstairs to get a cup of coffee, and my son is asleep in another room.
“Yes,” the pale boy says.
“You love me,” I tell him.
“Yes.”
“You’ve loved me for a long time.”
He nods, presses his lips together, and bows his head.
“I used to think it was a recurring dream, but I finally realized that somehow we shared a life.”
He looks up, stricken. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. How many people get the chance to live more than one life? You gave me a gift. And love. Who can be sorry about love? Maybe love is the only thing that never really dies.”
Chapter 7
Gabriel
My feet are heavy as I move down the sidewalk. I’m heading for the coffee shop because I promised Sinclair I would go there one more time. He’s been after me for months, and I keep putting him off. And he just keeps bugging me. Me, a grieving man.
But I’m his beta tester.
The bell above the door rings and I move reluctantly toward the counter. A young girl turns around. Her hair is bright blue, and her wrists are wrapped in black leather bracelets. She’s wearing a purple skirt with black tights and black boots. She smiles at me and asks if she can take my order.
Lila.
Her hair is a different color, and her clothes are different (I must tell Sinclair about the changing hair and clothing), but it’s Lila.
I think I answer, because she nods and jots something down on a pad of paper. And before I know it, I’m reaching into my pocket. I’m pulling out a business card.
Sinclair has perfected the cards, three different cards for three different types of journeys. The card I pass to her is a fairly close replication of the original, the one that brought her to me all those visits ago. I don’t know how Sinclair has done it, and I understand that this is a repeat of that very first day. He’s somehow bent time. He’s somehow brought her back so that I can relive this day, as often as I dare.
“For the jar,” I tell her, motioning to the glass fishbowl.
She smiles and takes the card. She holds it in both hands, and she stares at the fire. She turns it over, and the magic happens.
Thank you, Sinclair.
I watch as she drags the boat to shore. I watch as she fumbles in the dark. And I know I will never tire of this moment, this day, even if I relive it a thousand and one times. I step out of the shadows and say, “You came.”
A Word From Anne Frasier
“Made of Stars” began at a timed writing party. We set the timer for an hour. With no previous thought as to what I would write, I let the story unfold and surprised myself by writing the first chapter of “Made of Stars,” which I called “The Pale Boy.” At that time I considered it complete. I put it online and people loved it, so at the next timed writing party (a year later) I continued with the story and ended up with “Made of Stars.”
About the Author
Anne Frasier (a.k.a. Theresa Weir) is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of twenty-five books and numerous short stories that have spanned the genres of suspense, mystery, thriller, romantic suspense, paranormal, fantasy, and memoir. During her award-winning career, she’s written for Penguin Putnam, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins Publishers, Bantam Books/Random House, Silhouette Books, Grand Central Publishing/Hachette, and Amazon’s Thomas & Mercer. Her titles have been printed in both hardcover and paperback and translated into twenty languages.
Her first memoir, The Orchard (Theresa Weir), was a 2011 Oprah Magazine Fall Pick, Number Two on the Indie Next list, a featured B+ review in Entertainment Weekly, and a Librarians’ Best Books of 2011. Her second memoir (The Man Who Left), which she self-published, hit the New York Times bestseller list. Other self-published titles include Girl with the Cat Tattoo (Theresa Weir) and Geek with the Cat Tattoo from her acclaimed Cool Cats series. These stories are romances told partially from a cat’s point of view.
From the Indie Side Page 15