by Lisa Voisin
“No, I didn’t.”
“You did! Saw a woman flying across the sky when you were four.”
I couldn’t remember any of it. If I was some kind of freak with an overactive imagination, shouldn’t I be the first to know? “No fair. I was a kid.”
“Swore it was an angel watching over us,” Bill said with a chuckle. “Mom took you in for tests, and not eye tests, either.”
I remembered being taken to a brightly-lit office full of furniture that was as small as me. Mom talked with a gray-haired man while I explored a box full of dolls and toy cars, waiting. Eventually, I sat at a table covered in big sheets of colored paper. The man came over and sat on the carpet beside me and told me he was a special kind of doctor. He handed me the biggest box of crayons I’d ever seen and invited me to draw pictures for him. I don’t think I ever went back.
I contemplated telling Bill about the strange shadows, the flashes of light, the image of the loom—everything. Maybe I was seeing things again. But I changed my mind when he said, “Turns out you were fine. Well, fine enough for a freak.”
“I’m not a freak. Take that back!”
Bill laughed. I kicked him, but not nearly as hard as I wanted to.
“How about you?” he asked. “Any guys on the horizon?”
My thoughts jumped to Michael, the way he’d turned up to help me in the woods and then gave me the brush-off later, acting like a total stranger. Bill might have had some great advice to offer, but we didn’t have that kind of relationship and I wasn’t about to start one with him. “If there are, I can’t see them.”
He shrugged, adjusting his glasses. “Several guys have checked you out since we got here. They think you’re with me, though, so they leave you alone. And from the looks of them, that’s a good thing.”
“Eww! You’re my brother.”
“You let me know if you need me to take care of them for you.”
“Take care of them? You’re a comp-sci geek, Bill, not a mercenary.”
“You’d be surprised what a good hacker can do.”
Bill’s weekend visit ended much sooner than I would’ve liked. For a few brief days, we were a family again, and it wasn’t just Mom and me. After dinner that night, Mom and I drove him to the airport and I found myself missing him before he even left. By the time we said goodbye at the airport gate, both Mom and I were in tears.
***
On Wednesday afternoon, we had the team and club fair, so our afternoon classes were cut. Though it wasn’t mandatory, Mr. Bidwell, head of the Language Club, suggested so strongly that we be there that I half-expected him to take attendance, but he didn’t. When the bell rang, I noticed Michael slip out to the parking lot and drive away in a shiny new white Volkswagen GTI. It was a rainy day, so instead of being outside, all the booths lined the cafeteria. Each club—sports teams, multicultural clubs, and cancer awareness groups, to name a few—had its own table. In the middle of it all was the Environment Club, where Heather was working. She had an extra seat beside her so I sat down, propping my almost-healed foot on a box under the table.
“You’re helping?” Heather asked cheerfully.
“I said I would.”
“Right. I forgot with—you know,” she said and gestured at my ankle.
“Hello, Mia.”
I looked up at Heather’s math tutor smiling at me. A year younger than us, he’d skipped a grade and was at the top of our class.
“Hi,” I said, wishing I could remember his name. The caption on his black T-shirt read This is my clone.
Heather tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Hey, Farouk.”
Farouk. That was it. He leaned on the table in front of us and his dark, curly hair fell into his eyes. I remembered him being a lot shorter last year.
Farouk signed one of our petitions for using recyclable containers in the cafeteria, then turned to me. “How’d you hurt your ankle?”
“You didn’t read the gossip column?” Heather asked. I hoped she was joking.
He shook his head.
I didn’t want to relive the drama of it, so I let Heather tell the story. Fortunately, she didn’t play Michael up too much—unlike the article itself.
Farouk picked up a flyer for the city’s recycling program and curled it around his fingers. “Michael Fontaine. I heard he had an accident or something,” he said.
“We heard that too,” Heather chimed in.
“He nearly died,” I said a little too defensively.
“Hmm, a near-death experience?” When I nodded, his face lit up. “I saw that in a movie once. This girl dies and when she comes back, she’s all weird and different.”
“What movie?” I asked.
He put down the mangled flyer. “I don’t remember. It was old. I saw it on TV a few months ago.”
“You don’t believe movies are real, too, do you?” Heather asked, crinkling her nose.
“No,” he said, “but some people who have near-death experiences do change.”
“Change how?” I asked, leaning forward. Catching myself, I pulled back, embarrassed by how much the subject of Michael Fontaine interested me, especially since it was so one-sided.
“Sometimes the person is so different when they come back that other people think they’re possessed.”
“Possessed?” Heather leaned back and crossed her arms. Math genius or not, Farouk’s credibility was at stake if he believed in anything too “out there.” “You mean by a ghost or something?”
Before we could talk further, a crowd of freshmen swarmed our booth and asked us a bunch of questions. Farouk helped us hand out flyers while Heather chatted and I passed around the petition. Who knew we’d be so popular?
I tried to keep my thoughts from wandering, but failed. Was he saying that Michael had been possessed? It was almost too strange to consider. Everyone said he was different now, and there was something about him that was almost otherworldly, something you’d expect from a person who’d cheated death. But possessed? Maybe not.
When the crowd finally thinned out, Farouk was gone but I did see Michael down the hall whispering in Fiona’s ear. A shot of jealousy coursed through my veins. Of course he’d be into her. She was tall, willowy, pretty, and she knew how to get a guy’s attention. But before I could see any more, someone asked me a question about recycling for a second time, distracting me. When I looked again, Michael was gone.
As Fiona visited a few tables, I wondered what she was doing here. Didn’t she have a dentist appointment? Wasn’t that why she couldn’t work the booth? Or did she have something set up with Michael instead? Eventually, she came over.
“Hey, guys,” she said.
“I thought you had a dentist appointment,” I blurted.
“I’m heading out now,” she replied. “Believe me, I’d rather be here.”
“I bet,” I said, my voice dripping sarcasm.
“What’s with you?” Heather asked me. “If you don’t want to be here, I can handle it on my own.”
“I saw you talking to Michael,” I said to Fiona, ignoring Heather.
“What? When?” She did a great job of looking puzzled. Obviously she was up to something.
“Don’t pretend to deny it. I saw him talking to you at your locker not two minutes ago.”
Heather was calm. “Mia, I saw her too. She was alone.”
“Seriously, Mia. What’s gotten into you?” asked Fiona. “I haven’t seen him all day.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
There was nothing else to say, other than “Sorry.” I didn’t get the sense she was lying to me, and yet I was sure I saw him. If she was telling the truth, perhaps I was imagining things. It wasn’t the first time I saw things that nobody else did: shadows, flashes of light, images of a strange primitive place. Maybe something was really wrong with me.
Chapter Seven
About a week or so later, on a perfectly ordinary cloudy day, another new guy arrived at our school. Heather, F
iona, Jesse, and I were hanging around outside before our first class when a loud, vintage-looking motorbike pulled into the school parking lot.
“Who’s that?” Fiona asked, perking up at the sight of its leather-clad rider.
“Is that…?” Jesse sat up, surprisingly animated for first thing in the morning. “Oh my God, it is!”
“You know him, Jess?” Heather asked. Sipping her coffee from a travel mug, she linked her arm through his.
“No, but he’s riding a 1988 Norton Rotary Classic.” When we weren’t impressed, he added, “It’s a collector’s bike. They only made 100 of them. You know how hard they are to get?”
“I think Fiona was asking who, not what,” said Heather.
By the time he parked and dismounted his bike, a few of us had stopped to see who the new guy was: teacher, student, or substitute? When he took off his helmet, I guessed him to be about our age. Everything about this guy exuded sexy, from his long lean body decked out in tight leather riding gear to his almost-shoulder-length brown hair and twinkling brown eyes.
A few sophomore girls stood closest to him in the parking lot and he gave them a perfect smile, flustering them into an eruption of giggles and blushes. Everyone was looking at him and he didn’t seem to care. In fact, he smiled at all of us equally, as though he enjoyed the attention.
As he walked toward our group, Jesse called out to him. “Dude, that’s an awesome ride.”
He scanned each of us, but when his gaze landed on me, the corners of his mouth turned into a half-grin. “Thanks.” His voice was deep and a little gravelly, appealingly so.
“You gotta tell me how you got it.”
He motioned to his leather riding gear and winked. “It came with the outfit.”
He then entered the school, leaving an awestruck Jesse and a practically drooling Fiona in his wake.
His arrival set the school on fire. By mid-day, we all knew his name: Damiel Lucas. Everyone was talking about him.
Damiel was in my English class, and it was intense to watch him and Michael interact, or rather not interact. They never spoke, but Michael’s back went up the second Damiel entered the room, his eyes tightening like fists. But Damiel just gave him a wolfish grin as though it were a game of some sort—one I didn’t understand the rules of but really wanted to.
By the end of the day, practically everyone at school had flocked to Damiel at some point. He was dark and interesting and, unlike Michael, he had no past. Try as they might, no one could dig up any gossip about him. We didn’t even know where he came from, and people seemed to like it that way. He brought a sense of mystery and adventure that was sorely missing to the senior class, not to mention the school itself.
“He’s so hawt,” I heard one girl say to two of her closest friends in the hall.
***
Those same girls, juniors, stood in a cluster outside their classroom before the bell rang the next morning.
“Bet he’s a great kisser,” said one of the girls with a little sigh. The three of them giggled.
“So totally badass,” said another, flipping her pale blond hair. She had porcelain skin and eyes that were almost cobalt blue. I couldn’t help but think she and Damiel would look good together. “Think he’s seeing anyone?”
“Hey, Tricia, get in line!” said the first girl. “He’s mine.”
I walked past them on my way to class. Was I the only girl in school who didn’t swoon at the thought of Damiel? Girls flocked to him. Every day he had a different one on his arm. Blonde, brunette, tall or short, it didn’t matter. He petted and charmed each of them, working one girl into a frenzy before moving on to the next. He had a certain appeal, I guess, but all I could think about was Michael.
I still couldn’t figure out what happened between him and me the day of the hike. I thought we’d connected, that he cared—until he read Elaine’s article. We hadn’t spoken since. Occasionally he would give me a look I didn’t understand. Deep and intense, as though he really knew me. Sometimes I even thought he might come over so we could talk, but then he’d hesitate and walk away.
I hadn’t seen any other strange anomalies lately—no shadowy dogs or flickering lights. But whatever it was that I’d seen nagged at the back of my mind like a chore I’d forgotten to do. I had to know if there was some kind of explanation, and asking Michael wasn’t an option. So, during a free period after lunch on Friday, I decided to do some research. Not knowing where to begin, I tried the school library. But it didn't exactly have books on the subjects of shadowy dogs or flashing lights, and I was hardly going to ask the librarian for help.
I didn’t even know how to describe what I saw. It might have been easier if I could name them, or if there were a pattern to what I was seeing. At first the lights appeared when Michael was carrying me, but it wasn’t consistent. The other day, when I was out with Bill, the lights flickered at the café.
I decided to try the Internet and did a search for “seeing flashing lights,” which actually produced results. I found lots of information on eye problems and detached retinas. All of it was too scary to consider. I vowed if I started seeing the lights again, I would go to the doctor.
I was in the middle of looking up “seeing shadows” when Damiel slid up behind me.
“Homework?” he said.
Startled, I instinctively closed the web page I was looking at.
If he’d seen what I’d been reading, he didn’t let on. His voice was as smooth and rich as black satin. “You’re Mia, aren’t you?”
I nodded, flattered he knew my name.
“I’m Damiel. I don’t think we’ve formally met.” He offered me his hand with an elaborate flourish. I shook it. “What do you normally do for fun around here on a Friday night?”
“Nothing,” I said, then cringed inwardly. With both Heather and Fiona dating, my social life was pretty much non-existent these days. But that wasn’t something he needed to know.
He pulled up a chair beside me and leaned in close. “How about we make our own fun then? Go for a ride?”
I looked down at the keyboard. Having him so close made me hold my breath, a little freaked out. “I don’t know.”
He leaned back but reached his hand out on the desk so it rested hardly an inch from mine. Eyebrows raised, mouth open, he paused dramatically before he spoke, as though making sure he had my attention. “You know, I once heard this myth about the afterlife…”
“The afterlife?” I shifted in my seat and pulled my hand away, not wanting to give him the wrong idea.
“Yeah. You believe in one, don’t you? Heaven? Hell? Reincarnation? Or do you think when you die it’s all over?”
“I–I don’t know,” I stammered. Many ancient cultures did believe in an afterlife, but I wasn’t sure what I believed. “I wasn’t raised religious or anything.” My mind flashed back to Farouk’s comment about Michael’s near-death experience, the idea of Michael coming back different. What did it mean?
“Well, some cultures used to believe, at the time of death, that instead of being judged on how well you abstained from the pleasures of life…” He leaned in closer. “…you would be judged by how well you enjoyed them.” With a smile that could boil glaciers, he ran a finger up my arm from elbow to shoulder. It left a path that tingled all the way down to my toes.
“Interesting,” I said, surprised by how fast this was going. No one had ever touched me that way before. All the blood rushed from my head, leaving me dizzy and more than a little scared of him. “W–where did you hear this?”
“Read it somewhere.” He shrugged. “In order to honor the gods, they believed you should live your life to the fullest.”
“They did?” I asked, trying to recover from the swooning his touch had brought in me, the way it clouded my thoughts. I was reminded of a show I’d seen on TV about sharks. There’s a way of hypnotizing them called “tonic immobility.” Some sharks use it for mating, where the male would roll the female onto her back and she would be paralyzed
in a serotonin-induced euphoric state. On the show, when people learned how to do it to them, the sharks would seek them out so that they could experience this bliss, sinking deep into the water until the human could hold on no longer.
In that moment, I knew exactly how those sharks felt.
“So how about you, Mia?” he asked, a slow, seductive smile forming on his lips. “Do you live your life to the fullest?”
I thought of Michael, how much I’d hoped he’d talk to me, and now here was Damiel offering me pleasures I’d only fantasized about. Despite my feelings for Michael, a voice in my head said Of course not. Show me how! All hotness aside, ten minutes ago he was just another guy at school, and now that he was asking me out I was enthralled by him. How did he do it?
Across the library, Michael was leaning against one of the stacks with his arms crossed, as beautiful and unattainable as ever, his mouth set into a hard line. Why was he watching me now when he seemed to care too little on regular days? Was he judging me for flirting with Damiel when he hardly spoke to me himself?
My mouth dried up and I swallowed hard, not sure what to say next.
“Relax,” Damiel said, startling me. “I won’t do anything unless you want me to.”
I laughed. It was more of a nervous trill that rang out through the quiet library. The librarian at the desk put her finger to her lips in admonishment.
When I looked back to where Michael had been standing, he was gone. I was so flustered I hadn’t seen him leave.
Despite the fact that Damiel seemed interested in me, I wished Michael was the one asking me out. But that would never happen. My attraction for Michael was pathetically one-sided. It took a crisis for him to even come near me and I half wanted to put myself into some kind of crisis to be near him again.
“Tell me something?” I asked, keeping my voice low.
Damiel gave me a suggestive smile that made my face heat up. “Sure.”
“What’s with you and Michael?”
His smile wavered slightly. “Why do you ask?”
“Something about the way the two of you look at each other—”