Auracle

by Gina Rosati

  Okay, so everything is not fine. I don’t answer him right away because I’d like just a few more seconds of blissful denial, but Rei is right. I was a little too busy to notice, but I doubt the light appeared this time because I didn’t die and Taylor was already dead. She’s obviously still stuck in this dimension and she could be hovering in the corner of the room right this minute for all we know.

  “Anna?”

  “Yeah, I heard you. Even if she’s not here now, I’m sure she’ll show up at some point.” I tell him as he pulls the last earring out of my ear. Oh! It feels so good to scratch without all that hardware in there.

  “Careful, you don’t want to make it bleed.” Rei takes both of my hands and sandwiches them between his. I try to wriggle my hands free, but he’s got me in one of his ninja finger locks. “So I know you sometimes pop out during dreams, but is there any way you can control that? I mean, what if she gets back into you?”

  “Those are two very good questions. And I wish I had…”

  My mom hurries in without knocking, twinkling with cheeriness. As soon as Rei stands up to greet her, I scratch my ear quick. My mom looks surprised to see the pile of earrings sitting on the tray.

  “What are you doing?” she looks from me to Rei.

  I have about four seconds to figure out how I’m going to spin this past week. The only logical thing that comes to mind is to just pretend I remember nothing after I fell off my desk chair.

  “I’m trying to figure out why I’m in the hospital,” I blurt out. “The last thing I remember is falling off my desk chair and now I’m in the hospital with my ears all pierced. What happened?” Rei grins at me behind my mother’s back.

  “Oh, honey,” she hurries over to the bed to hug me. “I missed you!” This revelation surprises me after all the fun my mom had at the mall with Taylor and everything they have in common. “I was so worried about you, sweetheart. You were not at all yourself. You don’t remember piercing your ears?”

  “No.”

  “Do you remember getting a tattoo?”

  “Tattoo! When did I get a tattoo!” I don’t dare glance at Rei because I won’t be able to keep a straight face.

  “Oh, baby,” my mom hesitates. “Do you remember hitting Daddy with a bottle?”

  “I did what? Why would I do that? Is he okay?”

  “Well,” her eyes fill with tears. “They ran some tests on him when they first brought him in, and it’s probably a good thing you … did what you did, honey, because they found out his liver is badly damaged. If he kept drinking at the rate he was going, the doctor says he might not have lived much longer.”

  Oh. I might not be crazy about the guy, but I don’t wish him dead. “But he’ll be okay now?”

  She sniffles. “Well, it’s strange. When they changed his bandage this morning, they noticed the gash on his head is healing much faster than they expected. They took more blood this morning, so we’ll have to wait for the results to come back to see if his liver counts show any improvement.”

  I think of last night and the energy I shared with my father. This is the same energy I use to get rid of Rei’s headaches, but even though Rei claims I’m better than aspirin, it’s not something I can see or measure. Could I have had something to do with my father’s surprisingly fast healing? While my brain considers this possibility, my mouth goes on autopilot. “So when can he come home?”

  “He’s got a long road ahead of him, honey. It will be a while before they let him come home, but when he does, we need to be supportive.”

  I hate to suggest this, because the thought of a big kumbaya with my parents and a therapist just makes me cringe, but I think it’s time to admit my family has some serious issues to deal with. “Maybe we all should go in for some family counseling.”

  “I think that’s a good idea, honey.”

  * * *

  At about six thirty, after Rei has all but played airplane with me to get me to eat my dinner, Yumi, Robert, and Saya show up. As soon as hellos are exchanged, my mom makes an excuse to go visit my father, but something was off in the way my mother and Yumi greeted each other. There’s some underlying tension there I can feel, but I can’t quite figure it out. I look at Rei, but he doesn’t seem to notice it.

  Saya bounces on the bed and plays with the buttons that make the bed go up and down while Yumi and Robert murmur little sympathies about my allergic reaction. When she thinks I’m not looking, I notice Yumi looks at me suspiciously, which makes me wonder how much she knows, whether or not she saw Rei and Taylor kissing in the driveway. Eventually, Robert redirects Saya over to the box of rubber gloves attached to the wall. He shows her how to blow them up and release them so they make a loud obnoxious noise as they sail around the room … and out into the hallway. Saya, Robert, and I find this much more entertaining than Yumi, Rei, or the nurse who marches in and tells everyone that visiting hours are over, even though it’s only quarter to eight.

  As the nurse hustles them out, Rei reaches over and tickles my bare foot. “Remember what I said about popping out.”

  Well, that just ruined any chance I might have to sleep tonight. The doctor admitted me for a night of observation, but what if Taylor spends more time watching me than the nurses? If I slip out during a dream and Taylor gets back into me, not only will she testify against Seth, but I’m sure she’ll blame Rei for her allergic reaction. I can’t let that happen. Fortunately, it’s easy to stay awake in this strange bed with all the quiet beeps and dings I hear coming from the hall, and every few hours, a perky nurse comes in to stick a thermometer in my mouth.

  * * *

  By the time my mom and Rei take me home the next morning, the swelling in my face has gone down almost completely. I cannot wait to get these acrylic nails off, but first I want to change my clothes because my mom brought me one of Taylor’s shirts and those stupid red thong underwear to wear home from the hospital.

  Inside my closet and my dresser drawers, all I can find is Taylor’s stuff.

  “Mom!” I holler. “Where are all my clothes?” Especially my normal underwear and my favorite hiking boots that cost me six weeks’ worth of pay.

  “You packed them up in trash bags and told me to get rid of them,” my mom calls back from the linen closet where she’s looking for nail polish remover with acetone in it.

  “No, no, no! Please tell me you didn’t throw them out!”

  “They’re still in the garage.”

  “Yes!”

  Rei squeezes the back of my neck. “I’ll get them,” he offers.

  While he’s doing that, I use my arm to sweep all of Taylor’s makeup off my dresser and into the trash. Her expensive iPod Touch is sitting there, too, along with a bunch of her jewelry, and I wonder what I’m going to do with that now. Oh, crap! And where’s that box of condoms? I need to get rid of those before my mom finds them!

  “Here you go,” Rei plunks two bulging plastic trash bags on the floor.

  “Bless you!” I rip open a bag and hug an armful of my clothes, even though they smell like garage.

  After I’ve changed into white cotton bikini underwear, jeans, a T-shirt, and one of Rei’s hand-me-down hoodies, Rei and I sit at the kitchen table while I soak my fingers in a bowl filled with nail polish remover. I want to talk to Rei about Seth and what I’ll tell the district attorney, because as far as I know, I still have to testify, but my mom parks herself at the table with us, so we limit the conversation to how much acetone stinks and the headaches we are both getting from it.

  “So, Rei,” my mom says in the same aspartame voice she uses when she’s trying to sell someone a house with a radon mitigation system, “your mom and I were talking and she’s a little concerned that you and Anna might be … dating.”

  I would scrape his chin up off the table, except both my hands are busy right now.

  “Not that I have a problem with you two dating because I’ve always thought you two would make a cute couple,” she points out.

  �
�Mom!”

  “I wasn’t sure if you’d remember or not, honey, so I thought I’d bring it up.”

  “Mom!”

  “Because Rei, your mom saw you two kissing in the driveway the other…”

  “MOM!” How do I make this woman stop talking? “Don’t worry about it! We’re not dating.”

  “Anna, honey, Yumi is just concerned about Rei’s hectic schedule and she wants to make sure he’s not distracted while he’s applying to colleges. I’m sure you understand that.”

  I turn to Rei. “Am I distracting you?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, then. Let’s declaw me and go for a walk.”

  It’s a sunny, warm day and everything is green. I love green. It’s my favorite color.

  “How’s your head?” I ask as we walk down the path between our houses toward the woods.

  “It’s fine.”

  “Still hurts, huh?”

  “A little,” he admits.

  “Okay, let’s see if I can still do this.” I close my eyes and stand very still, pulling energy from around me. The trees seem happy to share with me; I tap into the sunlight and I discover I can still access the good stuff from space. It’s not as easy to absorb it with this wall of flesh around me, but soon, I feel it tingling all over. I concentrate the tingle to my fingers. With both hands, I reach up and feel around Rei’s face for his temples. I feel him smile under my fingertips.

  I purge a little at a time, until he says, “You did it.”

  I open my eyes. “Is your headache gone?”

  “Gone. I’m telling you, Anna. We have to tell my mom you figured this out.”

  “I don’t want to think about your mom right now,” I start walking again. “Where shall we go?”

  “Where else?” Rei asks. “The falls.”

  The falls is the last place I want to go right now, and I think Rei knows that, but Rei is a face your fears kind of guy, and he’s right. I can’t start avoiding the falls just because of what happened. I can’t let Taylor have that kind of power over me.

  “We need to figure out what you’re going to tell the district attorney now that Taylor’s gone,” Rei points out as we walk down the path. Oddly, I can still see a faint blue glow around the trees, and when Rei moves into the sunlight, I can make out a soft orange hue surrounding him, too.

  “How about I just tell him the truth?” I’m only half kidding. If nothing else, they’d just think I was bonkers, and I don’t think they put crazy people on the witness stand.

  “How about we just lock you up now and throw away the key?”

  “Hey, other people astrally project and write books about it and nobody locks them up. So did I tell you I let the district attorney see me when he was questioning Taylor?”

  Three seconds to impact … two … one …

  I love that face Rei makes when his eyes get all big and his mouth gapes like a fish. It’s so adorable. “You what?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Anna. Why? Why?”

  “Look at it this way. It’s not like he can tell anyone; they’d think he was crazy. And if I tell him the truth, he just may believe me now that he’s seen me. Either way, they’ve lost their star witness, so they have no choice but to let Seth go.”

  “Yeah, well, in theory that should work, but you know nothing is ever simple.”

  “Oh, ye of little faith.”

  “Anna,” he reaches over and takes my hand. “We really need to decide this before you do anything … impulsive.”

  “Impulsive?” I squeeze his hand before I let it go. “You mean, like, stupid.”

  “No, I mean impulsive. We have to think about Seth.”

  “I am thinking about Seth.”

  By the time we reach the ledge, the rush of water is loud in my ears. I step up and close my eyes. I need to return to the falls one sense at a time.

  “You okay?” Rei asks as he steps up behind me. His hand gravitates to that place at the back of my neck reserved only for him.

  I nod. I’m fine. I just need to do this slowly. When I open my eyes, the first thing I notice is the graffiti. Some of our local juvenile delinquents have decided to pay their condolences to Taylor by spray painting huge red letters on the boulders that border the falls. “You know…” I begin in exasperation. “What jerks!” I walk toward the edge to see just how much damage they’ve done, and Rei is on my heels. When I still have three steps to go before I run out of rock, he hooks his arm around my waist.

  “Close enough.”

  “Rei, I just want to…”

  “Close enough,” he says firmly. He wraps his other arm around my waist, pulls me right up against him and rests his chin on top of my head. “So what do you think?”

  Think? How does he expect me to think with him holding me so close? I feel like I’m caramelizing here.

  “Anna?”

  “Hmm? Oh. Why are we here again?”

  “To see if you can think of anything to tell the district attorney.”

  “Oh, right.”

  I look around, reliving the events of last week. I give Rei a play-by-play of what happened where, and the closer I get to the part when Taylor falls over the edge, the tighter Rei holds me to him. I think he’s afraid some small part of me will slip over the edge, too, now that I’m back here to face what’s happened.

  My lack of sleep is beginning to catch up with me, so I lean my head back against his shoulder and point to a spot on my right. “And this is where Seth was standing when Taylor slipped.”

  Rei says something so quietly, I can’t hear him over the thundering of the falls.

  “What?” I twist my head to look up at him and he leans down like he’s about to repeat himself, but now that he’s moved his head, the sun is right in my eyes so I squeeze them shut to block the light just as something soft brushes against my lips.

  Um … not that I have anything to compare it to, but that felt suspiciously like a kiss.

  I let the sensation linger for a moment before I open my eyes. He’s staring at me with an intensity that turns my knees to jelly.

  “Did you just … was that…” I stumble over this simple question because what if I’m wrong? What if he was just brushing away a mosquito or something? How stupid would I feel if I asked if he kissed me and the answer was no?

  “I’m sorry,” he’s quick to apologize. “I just … I didn’t mean…”

  I turn within the circle of Rei’s arms to face him, but what startles me is the sight of another face, murky and menacing, hovering right behind him.

  Taylor.

  CHAPTER 36

  It makes sense that without a human body to contain our energy, size is no longer relevant. I had only recently figured out I could stretch my energy far enough to knock pencils off desks or type on Rei’s keyboard, but it never occurred to me I could stretch twenty feet tall when I was out of my body. It looks like a cool trick that I’d love to try if I ever do leave my body again, but now that Taylor’s towering over Rei, it’s just plain scary.

  “What the…” Rei looks up in alarm and wraps me like a burrito in his arms just as a whirlwind of grit and leaves spins up around us.

  “You’re the one who killed me this time!” she yells. “I hope you rot in hell, Rei Ellis!” Her voice sounds like she’s talking through a paper towel tube, but I’m surprised I can hear her at all since Rei could never hear me when I was out of my body.

  Rei braces himself to keep us from blowing over. How is she this strong? She is spawning some serious wind here, and the sand stings my skin and buries itself in my hair. Just as quickly as it started, it stops. I look up cautiously, but she’s gone.

  “Could you hear her?” I ask Rei, who is carefully brushing sand away from his eyes.

  “No, could you?”

  “Her voice was distorted, but yes. That’s strange.”

  “So what?” He is starting to recover from the shock of a super-sized Taylor and he’s understandably pissed off. “Is s
he going to haunt us for the rest of our lives?”

  “Not if I can help it. Come on, let’s go back.”

  * * *

  My mom waves a pink sticky note at me when we get back to my house. “The district attorney called to see how you’re feeling.”

  I would find that very considerate if I didn’t know what a hurry he was in to prosecute Seth. “Okay. Does he want me to call him back or something? I mean, it’s Saturday. Don’t these people have a life?” I take the paper from my mom.

  “Yes, I told him you’d call him when you get back.”

  Rei and I never decided what I would say, except that the truth was not an option. Now we have to make a decision quickly.

  “You don’t remember anything that happened,” Rei points out for my mother’s benefit. “It seems like you lost your memory when you hit your head the first time and the allergic reaction triggered your memory to come back. How would you even remember what you were going to testify?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “So maybe your mom can ask your doctor for a note or something.”

  “Oh, I can do that,” my mom assures us.

  I call the district attorney at what turns out to be his cell phone, and he is less than pleased with this information. “What do you mean, you can’t remember anything about last week?” he asks.

  I repeat my spiel about my many medical woes from the past week, but he’s not letting me off the hook so easily. “All right,” he says, “bring your doctor’s note to the judge on Monday morning before nine. I will meet you there, and I want a statement from you right after.”

  No pressure there.

  Not more than five minutes after I hang up my phone, Rei’s mom calls his phone to remind him he’s helping with inventory at the store all day tomorrow, plus he still has to do his laundry and other fun stuff tonight. I’m actually glad because I am tired, that curl-up-right-where-you-are-and-nap kind of tired. I’m still afraid I might pop out during a dream, but I know I get grouchy when I’m overtired and Rei’s taken enough abuse today.