by Cynthia Hand
“I missed you, too.”
I curl my arms around his neck and kiss him, and everything goes away but this moment, his lips on mine, seeking, his hands in my hair, drawing me in, our bodies together on the bed, realigning to get closer, his fingers on the buttons of my shirt.
I can’t let him die.
“You’re so warm,” he murmurs.
I feel warm. I feel like I could burst into flame, simultaneously light and heavy, and time is slowing down, like I am seeing everything frame by frame. Tucker’s face hovering above my own, a tiny mole just below his ear that I never noticed before, the shadows we’re making on the ceiling, the dimple appearing in his cheek as he smiles, the way his heartbeat is speeding up, his breath. And I can feel what he’s feeling too, on the edges of my mind: love, the way he thrills to the feel of my skin under his hands, my smell filling his head—
“Clara,” he says, breathing hard as he pulls away.
“It’s okay,” I say then, drawing his head down to mine again, pressing my cheek to his, our lips not quite touching, our breath on each other’s faces. “I know you have your ideas about this, and I think that’s sweet, but. . what if this is all the happiness we get? What if this is our chance, before everything changes? What if this is it? Shouldn’t we just. . live?” This time when we kiss, it’s different. There’s an urgency that wasn’t there before. He pauses to pull his shirt over his head, revealing all that golden brown skin, his rodeo/farm/work hard-physical-labor-all-his-life muscles. He’s beautiful, I think, so crazy beautiful it almost hurts to look at him, and I close my eyes and lift my arms over my head and let him take my shirt off too. The cool air hits my skin, and I shiver, I quake, and Tucker runs his calloused fingertips gently along the top of my shoulder, strumming over my bra strap, across the line of my collarbone and up my neck, ending below my chin where he tips my head up to kiss me again.
This is really going to happen, I think. Me and Tucker. Right now.
My heart is beating so fast, skimming more than beating, like a hummingbird’s wings in my chest, my breath coming in shudders like I’m cold, like I’m scared, but I’m neither. I love him. I love him, I love him — the words have a pulse of their own.
Suddenly he freezes.
“What?” I whisper.
“You’re glowing.” He sits up abruptly.
I am. It’s very faint, not full glory by any stretch of the imagination, but as I spread my fingers and examine the back of my hand I see that my skin is very definitely glowing.
“No, your hair,” he says.
My hair. I immediately grab at it with both hands. It’s shining, all right, beaming. A sparkly shiny sunbeam in the dark of Tucker’s room. I’m a human lamp.
Tucker isn’t looking at me.
“It’s nothing. Angela calls it comae caelestis. Sign of a heavenly being. It’s why Mom made me dye my hair last year.” I’m babbling now.
“Can you. . turn it off?” he says. “I’m sorry, but when I look at it, I feel. . dizzy, like I’m going to fall over or pass out or something.” He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes.
“Also a little nauseated.”
Great to know I have that kind of effect on a guy.
“I can try,” I say, and it turns out not to be too hard to shut it off. Just seeing the strained expression on Tucker’s face does the trick.
I swear I hear Tucker breathe a sigh of relief.
“Sorry about that,” I say again.
He looks at me, swallows hard, tries to regain his composure. “Don’t be sorry. It’s part of who you are. You shouldn’t have to apologize for who you are. It’s pretty, really. Awe inspiring.
Fall down on your knees and worship, all that.”
“But it makes you want to puke.”
“Just a little.”
I lean over to kiss his still adorably bare shoulder. “So. My light’s out. Where were we?” He shakes his head, scratches at the back of his neck the way he does when he’s uncomfortable. Coughs.
I sit there awkwardly for a moment. “Okay,” I say. “I guess I should. .”
“Don’t leave.” He catches my hand before I can stand up. “Stay.” I let him draw me back down into the bed. He lies behind me, spoons me, rests his hand on my hip and breathes steadily onto the back of my neck. I try to relax. I listen to the ticking of the clock on his nightstand. What if I can never find a way to control the glow? What if every time I feel happy in that particular way, I light up? I’ll light up, he’ll get queasy, and then— freakus interruptus.
There’s a bleak thought. It’s like my own special form of birth control. The full body glow.
And then I think, He’s going to die without ever having made love to a woman.
“It doesn’t matter,” Tucker whispers. He moves his hand up and takes mine, squeezes it.
Oh. My. God. Did I just say that aloud?
“What doesn’t matter?” I ask.
“Whether or not we can. . you know,” he says. It’s crazy that he can’t read minds but still he knows almost exactly what I’m thinking. “I still love you.”
“I still love you, too,” I answer, then turn and snuggle my face into the side of his neck, wrap my arms around him, and that’s where I stay until he falls asleep.
I wake up when somebody opens the curtains, and here’s what I see: Mr. Avery, in overalls, with his back to me, looking out the window where the sun is just cresting the barn.
“Rise and shine, son,” he says. “Cows won’t milk themselves.” Then he turns. Sees me. His mouth falls open. My mouth is already open, my breath lodged in the back of my throat, like if I don’t breathe he somehow won’t know I’m here. So we stare at each other like a couple of beached fish.
Outside a rooster crows.
Tucker mumbles something. Turns over, pulling the blanket off me.
I yank the blanket back up to cover my bra. Thank God I’m still wearing my jeans, otherwise it would look really bad.
It still looks really bad.
Really bad.
“Um,” I say, but my brain is like a block of ice. I can’t chip words out of it. I reach over and shake Tucker. Hard. Harder when he doesn’t respond right away.
“It can’t be six thirty already,” he groans.
“Oh, I think it can,” I manage.
Suddenly he jolts upright. Now all three of us are staring at each other like fish. Then Mr.
Avery closes his mouth so quickly I hear the click of his teeth coming together, turns, and walks out of the room. He shuts the door firmly behind him. We listen to his footsteps march down the stairs, down the hall toward the kitchen. We hear Mrs. Avery say, “Oh good, here’s your coffee, dear. . ” Then nothing. He’s not talking loudly enough for us to hear.
I grab my shirt and tug it over my head, hunt around for my shoes in a panic.
Tucker does something I’ve almost never heard him do.
He swears.
“Do you want me to stay and try to explain?” I ask.
“No,” he says. “Oh no, no, don’t do that. You should just. . go.” I open the window, turn back. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”
“I’m not sorry.” He swings his legs out of bed, stands up, and crosses over to me, gives me a quick but tender kiss on the mouth, holds my face in his hands, and looks into my eyes.
“Okay? I’m not sorry. It was worth it. I’ll take the heat.”
“Okay.”
“It’s been nice knowing you, Clara,” he says.
“Huh?” My brain is still a bit shell-shocked.
“Say a prayer for me, will you?” He gives me a shaky grin. “Because I’m pretty sure my parents are going to kill me.”
When I get home it only gets worse. My bedroom window is locked.
Awesome.
I slip in the back door (thankfully not locked) and close the door gently behind me.
Mom works late nights. She sleeps in a lot, these days. There’s a chance she didn’t
notice.
But my window’s locked.
Jeffrey’s drinking a glass of orange juice at the counter.
“Oh man,” he says when he sees me. “You are so busted.”
“What should I do?” I ask.
“You should have a really good excuse. And maybe you should cry — girls do that, right?
And possibly be gravely injured. If she has to fix you, she might go easier on you.”
“Thanks,” I say. “You’re so helpful.”
“Oh, and Clara,” he says as I’m tiptoeing upstairs, “you might want to turn your shirt so it’s not on backward.”
I’m amazed I make it all the way up to my room without being pulled over. I put on fresh clothes, wash my face, and comb out my hair, and I start thinking everything’s going to be fine, no worries. But then I come out of the bathroom and see Mom sitting in my desk chair.
She looks like one pissed-off mama.
For a minute, a minute that feels like eternity, she doesn’t say anything. She stares at me with her arms crossed over her chest.
“So,” she says finally, her voice like drips of ice. “Tucker’s mother called a few minutes ago. She asked me if I knew where my daughter was, because last time she checked you were in her son’s bed.”
“I’m so sorry,” I stammer. “I went over to the Lazy Dog to see Tucker, and I fell asleep.” Her hands clench into fists. “Clara—” She stops herself, takes a deep breath. “I’m not going to do this,” she says. “I can’t.”
“Nothing happened,” I say.
She scoffs. Gives me a look that tells me not to insult her intelligence.
“Okay, something almost happened.” Maybe if I go with the truth, she’ll see it as a sign of good faith, I rationalize. “But nothing did. Happen, I mean. I fell asleep. That’s it.”
“Oh, that makes me feel so much better,” she says sarcastically. “Something almost happened, but didn’t. Great. Wonderful. I’m so relieved.” She suddenly shakes her head. “I don’t want to hear about last night. We’re done with this, young lady. If I have to nail your window shut, you are staying here, in your own bed, in your own house, every night. Do you understand me?”
“Furthermore,” she continues, when I don’t answer, “you and Tucker are no longer to see each other on a one-on-one basis.”
I whip around. “What?”
“You’re not to be alone with him.”
All my breath leaves me in a rush. “For how long?”
“I don’t know. Until I figure out what to do with you. I think I’m being very generous with you, considering what you’ve done.”
“What I’ve done? This isn’t the year 1900, Mom.”
“Believe me, I know,” she says.
I try to meet her gaze. “Mom, I have to keep seeing Tucker.” She sighs. “Are you really going to make me say the my-house-my-rules thing?” she says in a weary voice, rubbing at her eyes like she doesn’t have the time or the energy right now to deal with me.
My chin lifts. “Are you really going to make me move out just so I can do what I want with my own life? Because I will.”
It’s a bluff. I don’t have anywhere to go, any money, any place to be but here.
“If that’s what it takes,” she says softly.
That does it. My eyes fill with humiliating tears. I know she has a right to be mad, but I don’t care. I start screaming all the stuff I’ve been wanting to say for months: Why do you have to be this way? Why don’t you care about Tucker? Can’t you see how good we are together?
Okay, so you don’t care about Tucker, but don’t you care about my happiness?
She lets me yell. I throw my tantrum while she looks down at the floor with an almost embarrassed expression and waits for me to finish. Then, after I’m done, she says, “I love you, Clara. And I do care about Tucker, as much as I know you won’t believe that. I do care about your happiness. But I care about your safety first. That has always been my first priority.”
“This isn’t about my safety,” I say bitterly. “This is about you getting to control my life.
How am I not safe around Tucker? Seriously, how?”
“Because you’re not the only thing out there in the night!” she exclaims. “When I woke up and you weren’t here. . ” Her eyes close. Her jaw tightens. “You will stay in this house. And you will see Tucker, under supervision, when I think it’s allowable for you to do so.” She gets up to leave.
“But he’s dying,” I blurt out.
She stops, her hand on the doorknob. “What?”
“I’ve been having a dream — a vision, I think — of Aspen Hill Cemetery. It’s a funeral.
And Tucker’s never there, Mom.”
“Sweetie,” Mom says. “Just because he’s not there doesn’t mean—”
“Nothing else makes sense,” I say. “If it was someone else who died, Tucker would be there. He’d be there for me. Nothing could keep him away. That’s who he is. He’d be there.” She makes a noise in the back of her throat and crosses over to me. I let her hug me, breathing in her perfume, trying to take comfort in her warmth, her solid, steady presence, but I can’t. She doesn’t seem that warm to me right now, or solid, or strong.
“I won’t let it happen,” I whisper. I pull away. “What I need to know is how I can stop it, only I don’t know how it’s going to happen so I don’t know what to do. Tucker’s going to die!”
“Yes, he is,” she says matter-of-factly. “He’s mortal, Clara. He will die. More than a hundred people on this earth die every minute, and someday he will be one of them.”
“But it’s Tucker, Mom.”
I’m on the verge of tears again.
“You really love him,” she muses.
“I really love him.”
“And he loves you.”
“He does. I know he does. I’ve felt it.”
She takes my hand. “Then nothing can ever truly separate you, not even death. Love binds you,” she says. “Clara. . I need to tell you—”
But I can’t let her talk me into placidly accepting Tucker’s death. So I say, “Love didn’t exactly bind you and Dad together, did it?”
She sighs.
I’m sorry I said it. I try to think of some way to make her understand. “What I mean is, sometimes people do get separated, Mom. For good. I don’t want that to happen to me and Tucker.”
“You stubborn, stubborn girl,” she says under her breath. She gets up and goes to my door.
Stops. Turns back toward me. “Have you told him?”
“What?”
“About the dream, or what you think it means,” she says. “Because ultimately, you don’t know what it means, Clara. It’s not fair to put that on him unless you know for sure. It can be a terrible thing to know you’re going to die.”
“I thought you said that we’re all going to die.”
“Yes. Sooner or later,” she says.
“No,” I admit. “I haven’t told him.”
“Good. Don’t.” She tries to smile but doesn’t quite manage it. “Have a good day at school.
Be home before dinner. We have more to talk about. There’s more I want to say.”
“Fine.”
After she goes I throw myself down on my bed, suddenly exhausted.
Sooner or later, she said. And she would know, I guess. At her age, most of the people she’s known have grown old and died. Like the thing with the San Francisco earthquake. There was a news story she cut out of the paper a few months ago about how the last survivor of the earthquake had died. Which makes her the last true survivor.
She’s right. Sooner or later Tucker is going to die.
Later, I think. I need to make sure it’s later.
Angela catches me by the cafeteria door at lunchtime.
“Angel Club,” she whispers. “Right after school, don’t be late.”
“Oh come on.” I am so not in the mood for Angela’s endless Q and A, her intensity, her wild theories. I’m tired.
“I’ve got other stuff too, you know.”
“We have a new development.”
“How new? We just spent the weekend together.”
“It’s important, okay!” she screeches, which totally startles me. Angela’s not a screecher.
I look at her more closely. She looks worn out, dark and puffy around the eyes, frazzled.
“All right, I’ll be there,” I agree quickly. “I can’t stay super late, but I’ll definitely be there, okay?”
