Auracle. Part 22

Rei, that's not something they teach you when you learn how to use an epi. You're taught to act quickly, that every second counts. You are NOT taught to play chicken and see how long you can go before you die. How am I supposed to know how long to wait?

"Why are you still mad? I think this might work."

Well, I think you and Seth will end up in neighboring cells in a maximum security prison. It's too risky for you.

Rei scoffs in the face of danger. "I'm more worried about you. As long as I use the epi in time, you'll be okay, won't you?"

Not necessarily.

"What do you mean, 'not necessarily,'" he asks warily. "I thought the epi was your safety net."

I mean, not necessarily. I need to get to a hospital in case I have a second reaction. Plus I've only ever had that one reaction. I have no idea if another one will be more or less severe. It's a gamble for both of us. I vote we just clock her on the head.

"Can I use the keyboard?"

Sure. Just make sure you hold it with both hands when you hit her with it.

"Very funny."

I glide away, and he sits and Googles "anaphylaxis." I give him a sour look and wave.

"Why are you leaving? Are you still mad?"

I have no idea what I feel right now. Mad? Confused? Frustrated? Scared? All of the above? Yeah, that sounds about right.

I'm going to check on my father. I'll see you later.

Despite the many st.i.tches in his head, my father is not in nearly as much pain right now as he will be when he learns my mom has poured his entire stash down the drain. His head is bandaged like a mummy's, and there's an IV taped firmly to the back of his hand. He is probably heavily sedated, although I suspect he's still quite drunk, as well.

I've always known him to have a dense gray aura, but now it's nearly black. I've spent so many years trying not to look at him, hoping that maybe if I ignore him he'll just go away. Well, now he's gone, for a little while, anyway. I suppose if I vacuum out the deepest crevices of my brain, there are memories of the man who supposedly kissed my toes and blew raspberries on my belly. But what's the point of remembering? Then I'll just have to mourn the loss of what's gone. It's easier this way.

But I can't help feeling a tiny bit of compa.s.sion for this broken man. I can't gather any energy in here, it's too heavy, so I go out under the starry sky and soak up what I can. I carry it back to him and release it, bit by bit, until the black fades to gray and the gray fades to blue.

Even though helping my father made me feel a little better, I'm not quite ready to go back to Rei's right now. He's overwhelming me with his obsessive need to save me and Seth, and a small, hopeless part of me wonders ... what if? What if Rei is wrong? What if I never get back into my body? What if Rei does something stupid, tries to pa.s.s off a candy bar to Taylor and she survives, only to point a finger at Rei as the culprit who tried to kill her? What if Seth is convicted of Taylor's murder and spends the rest of his life in prison? Even if we do get Taylor out of me, how do we keep her from haunting us for the rest of our lives? How did this one twisted girl get so much power over us?

And what the h.e.l.l am I going to do about it?

CHAPTER 33.

Rei is still sleeping when I cruise in at seven the next morning. Is he sick? I poke at him for a minute, which does nothing, so I bombard him with energy until he opens his eyes and stares at me.

"What?" he asks groggily.

The computer is still on. I have a feeling he stayed up late into the night surfing the internet.

You're late for school.

He lifts his head up to read my message, and then he lies back down and closes his eyes. "I'm not going to school today. I'm going to finish my paper. Then, I don't know, maybe I'll hike up to Red Rocks or something. I need to get away from everything for a while to think."

Hiking? There's one day left until the trial and he's going hiking?

Okay, bye.

He opens his eyes once he hears the click of the keys and reads. "Where are you going?"

You need to get away from everything.

"Not from you!"

Oh. I watch him yawn and stretch. His hair is all tousled; his eyes are still soft and sleepy; and he does look very adorable, even though I'm still kind of mad at him. He sits up and the sheet slides down to his waist. Okay, I forgive him.

"What did you do for the rest of the night?" he asks as he pulls his shorts on over the green plaid boxers he slept in.

Same thing I've done just about every other night since I got locked out. I watch Taylor sleep and hope she slips out during a dream. Do I snore?

"Well, as boring as that sounds, it's good thinking on your part. And no, you don't snore. Why?"

Because Taylor snores, so I wonder if I snore, too.

"I've never noticed you snoring. And even if you do snore, so what? I'll be right back."

This truancy is very un-Rei-like. I hear the toilet flush, the water run, and Rei's quiet footsteps coming back down the hall.

Are you skipping school because you want to avoid Taylor?

He sits on the bed and combs his hair back with his fingers as he reads my message. "That's part of it. I just don't want to talk to anyone at school about the trial, and I know people will ask me questions. Plus things were so hectic last night, I never finished this paper," he admits.

He doesn't have much left to finish on his paper, and then he invites me to go hiking with him. It's a relatively short drive to South Burlington, and from the parking lot, it's only about two and a half miles until we reach the top of Red Rocks. He's quiet on the way up the trail. I'm not sure if this is because he doesn't want to look like a crazy person, talking to himself, or if he feels the difference in vibration now that we are so close to the lake.

Water is a good conductor, not just for electricity, but for other kinds of energy, too. I've spent a lot of time on the beaches of Indonesia and Australia, where day is parallel to our night, because I love the erratic vibration of the ocean. The quiet hum of the lake is soothing after this crazy week. Even the trees are at peace, surrounded by a shimmery blue.

The view is incredible from the top, eighty feet high overlooking Lake Champlain. Kids come here all the time to cliff jump into the deep water below-in fact Rei and Seth were here last summer, but Rei didn't tell me until after they got back. You have to wear old sneakers when you jump unless you either want to swim all the way up to the sandy beach or risk shredding your feet on freshwater mussels that live on the rocks along the sh.o.r.e. Rei is wearing his good hiking boots today.

He sits on the edge of the cliff, one leg dangling over. Except for a few boats motoring around the lake, no one is around, so I materialize beside him and we sit in companionable silence. Every now and then he tells me something random, like how the red quartzite rocks below us got their color from thousands of years of underwater oxidation during the Cambria period, and that he once dreamed he fell into an ice-covered lake and how the sun looked shining through the ice and water above him as he ran out of oxygen.

He puts his hand out toward mine and when I line up my fingertips with his, he finally confesses he's afraid Taylor will keep me forever. He's sitting six inches away from an eighty foot drop, and Taylor is what he fears.

I would have loved to stay and watch the sunset with Rei, but he has to pick up his parents and Saya from the store when it closes. I get to Rei's house before he does, and I can see the day was for nothing. Taylor sits on her front steps, wearing a pale blue cotton sundress I've never seen before. Her eyes are trained on Rei's driveway. As soon as they park and his family walks into the house, she runs barefoot through the path between our houses. She looks so different from me. With her hair down and only a touch of makeup, she looks like a delicate fairy skimming over the gra.s.s, and for a moment, I'm jealous that she looks better in my body than I do. It must be the dress.

"Hi, Rei."

"Hey, Taylor." Rei has the hatchback open and he's reaching for his backpack.

"You weren't in school today."

"Nope." He shrugs the nearly empty backpack onto one shoulder and slams the hatch.

"Where were you?"

"Hiking."

"Oh. You were gone all day. You must be exhausted."

"Not so much."

"Did you think about what we talked about last night?"

"Yes, I did," Rei says very seriously. "I thought about it all day, Taylor."

She steps up closer and stands on tiptoes so she can look into his eyes. "And?" Rei doesn't say anything for a minute. He just looks at her with a torn look on his face. Just when I think I may have to poke him to get him moving again, he lets the backpack slide off his shoulder and he leans down to kiss her.

Okay, that was unexpected.

It's a good kiss, though, much better than the one on the porch. I stare at him in shock and awe for a moment and then it hits me: an unexpected wave of jealousy crashes into me. This was his idea. He wants to kiss her! His color blushes pink, a few shades lighter than Taylor's. Ugh! I should give him some privacy and leave, I know, but I can't seem to tear myself away. It's like I'm experiencing this vicariously, imagining his hands come up and brush gently around my neck instead of hers, his fingers slide up into my hair, his thumbs circle the soft spot where her pulse counts out what were once my heartbeats, one by one.

And then something else hits me....

What was the name of that pressure point?

She's all into the kiss, up on her toes like a ballerina, her hands making their way up his arms and around his shoulders, and she's breathing so heavily, I doubt she'd notice the lack of oxygen if he were to ...

Squeeze.

Thirty seconds. That's all he said it should take. Part of me wants him to do this, to press down on that soft, vulnerable pulse point until she pa.s.ses out from the lack of oxygen to her brain, and then maybe, just maybe, I can yank her out while she is unconscious. The other part of me, the part of me that wants no harm to come to Rei, wants him to stop. What if she accuses him of trying to strangle her? What if he likes kissing her? What if he likes kissing her?

I'm so close to them I can see her tongue slide past his lips and the creases on the joints of his thumbs grow more p.r.o.nounced as he presses slowly into the soft flesh of her neck.

Just a little longer.

Suddenly, he stops. He stops pressing. He stops kissing her. He lets go of her and reaches down to pick up the backpack.

"I can't do it," he says, almost apologetically.

Her breath is ragged and I can see the vibration of her heartbeat pounding through the thin dress.

"What? Why?"

He pauses. "How can I sell out one friend for another, Taylor? I couldn't live with that."

"What? So you'll just let Seth down?"

Rei shrugs. "He's already down. They'll get up together or I'll go down with them."

That's not why he stopped. I'm sure what he told her is true, but I can tell he's hiding something else behind that poker face of his.

As she absently rubs her neck, her expression morphs from disbelief into something sad and wistful and wanting.

"Rei?"

Rei swings the backpack over one shoulder and shrugs as if he didn't hear her. "I'll see you tomorrow," he says, and he heads toward the house without looking back.

As I watch her watch him slip away from her, one more thing hits me: whatever Taylor is feeling for Rei has gone beyond l.u.s.t, beyond need, beyond her desire to own a man like others would own a pet. She is not chasing after him with threats or ultimatums, she just watches him walk away with tears in her eyes. She sincerely likes him.

Only when he shuts his front door behind him do the tears finally spill over, and she turns and slowly makes her way back to my house.

I'm waiting for her in my room, and the computer is powered up and ready to go when she gets there.

h.e.l.lo, Taylor, I materialize as I type and the click of the keyboard startles her.

"Oh. It's you." She bites her bottom lip. "I suppose you've come to gloat because Rei wants nothing to do with me."

It's not you. It's his mother. She doesn't think I'm good enough for Rei.

"Well, no offense, but ... never mind." Taylor pulls out the new desk chair my mom bought for her and sits down. "Why doesn't she think you're good enough for Rei?"

Look around you. Alcoholism can be hereditary. And I'm not exactly the brightest star in the sky when it comes to school. I don't think these are traits she wants pa.s.sed down to her grandchildren.

This seems to make her melancholy, and the colors around her deepen. "But I looked through all your photo alb.u.ms. You and Rei have this whole history together. How can his mother just throw you under the bus like that?"

Because Rei is her baby boy and I'm just the girl next door. And it's not like she's thrown me under a bus-she's been really good to me all my life. You know what it's like to live here with my father. Can you imagine what my life would have been like if I hadn't had Rei and his family next door?

"Your father scares the s.h.i.t out of me!"

I know. He scares me, too. But you didn't have to hit him with that bottle. You could have easily outrun him. And you shouldn't be drinking unless you want to end up like him someday.

She gives me a dirty look. "What do you want, Anna? I found all your travel brochures and stuff you downloaded. Why don't you go someplace exotic and leave me alone?"

What do YOU want, Taylor?

"What difference does it make what I want? I never get what I want." She takes a deep breath and unleashes her frustrations. "I wanted to go out with Dylan, and he dumped me as soon as he found out I was pregnant. I wanted to have my baby, but my parents wouldn't let me. I did not want to move to Vermont, that's for sure. I don't want to go to Yale. I don't want to become a lawyer. I wanted to go out with Seth, but we all know how that worked out. Jason Trent is a total a.s.s. And who knows what's up with Rei. What difference does it make what I want? I never get what I want."

Well, you wanted my body and you have that.

"Anna, no offense, but I did not want this body. I needed a body. It was here, and now I'm stuck in it."