My self-imposed silence was kind of half-assed. The no-touching rule, I followed that religiously. But I still talked, a little. The old me knew how to commit to things. But because the new me didn�t, because I wasn�t that brave now, my life kept hobbling along. I did keep to myself. Mom made me see therapists and psychologists. They talked a lot about post-traumatic stress disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. But I knew that was garbage. I knew I had to keep myself quarantined, distanced.

Once in a while, I could still feel it in me. Starting to heat up right there under my sternum, churning in my ribs, wanting to come out.

Mom and Dad never bought it. When we moved down to our summer home for good, Mom fell in with our old friends Sarah Rawlings and her daughter, Mia-Joy. I wanted to keep away from them, from everyone. But I learned pretty quickly that if I could put on the facade of normal�even the tiniest bit�with the Rawlingses, Mom would let up on the counselors and shrinks. And Mia-Joy didn�t need to ask me a zillion nosy questions. She didn�t mind that I didn�t talk much, or that I never touched other people. In fact, Mia-Joy barely seemed to notice. It just gave her more time to talk, which is exactly what she�d been doing since I could remember.

But after Sophie, after everything, Mom felt a calling to come work with New Orleans Congregational, and Dad decided that post-Katrina New Orleans would be a boon for his construction company. The second big oil spill kept New Orleans in the news, and people wanted to rebuild the city even more, Dad said. People needed a new start here. Mom and Dad agreed; Dad would build their strip malls, and Mom would rebuild their shaken faith. So we left our old life in Chicago.

That�s how they sold it to me. And Mom told me, in a hushed voice, her eyes crinkling in that worried way at the corners, that we would start over too. We needed to. Sophie was gone.

I just nodded.

I wasn�t even doing that today while Mia-Joy went on talking at breakneck speed as we sat behind the counter, peeling shrimp in the twinkling-clean white-tiled kitchen of the Rawlings Crawdaddy Shack. Mia-Joy�s mother stood at the large steel stovetop, her hair a mass of russet curls like Mia-Joy�s. She stirred the gumbo pots, the lunch rush less than an hour away. Mia-Joy�s ancient-looking Granny Lucy sat in her rocking chair next to the screen door, chewing on her black licorice, eyes closed as always. But just when you had forgotten she was even around, she would jump into the conversation and remind us that she was still here and, yes, she did know everything. The late-July air hung hot and damp against my skin, and the kitchen smelled of sweet onions, red peppers, and fresh bread pudding.

�My daddy doesn�t seem to want me to go, but Mama doesn�t mind,� Mia-Joy explained. The shrimp were slippery in my hands, and they made my mouth water. Seafood in the bayou was a different experience. The buttery crab legs. Red beans and rice with paprika shrimp. In Chicago, in my regular life, seafood had tasted more�� Midwestern�� stale�� bland. It was out of its element.

Much like me.

But Mia-Joy was New Orleans in every sense of the word, even if she was itching to get out. French Creole, with a father who fished on a shrimp boat, a brother who headlined at a jazz club on Bourbon Street, and a granny who taught her the finer points of twenty-first-century voodoo. When Raymond Kanzler stood Mia-Joy up for the Turn-About last year, Granny Lucy had told her, �You give that boy a headache he ain�t never gonna forget. Just turn his picture upside down. Keep it that way for a week.� Mia-Joy did it too. But she was already on to another boy, another adventure. She was sparkling, alive, colorful, just like New Orleans itself.

�You mind your grades, Mia-Joy,� her mama said, keeping her back toward us, her attention on her stove. �Then we�ll talk about your summer in New York.�

�What did I tell you?� Mia-Joy squealed at me, popping one of the boiled shrimp into her mouth. She would go to New York after our senior year. She would model. I didn�t doubt that. I smiled back at her. Forte. Allegretto. These were my musical descriptors of Mia-Joy. Loud. Up-tempo.

I pictured a mash-up of my old life and my new one right then. Mia-Joy hanging out with Annaliese and Cody from back home. Mia-Joy cackling with laughter when we pulled pranks on the swim team. No, scratch that. Mia-Joy would never be able to keep any secrets, would never be able to keep a straight face. Mia-Joy was a lot of things, but subtle was not one of them.

�Corrine, you�re scratching your palm, ch�rie,� Granny Lucy called over.

I looked down and she was right. I wondered what she was going to tell me that meant: Was I going to kiss a fool? Inherit a windfall? But the old fishing lures hanging on the restaurant door clinked and clanked as it opened�G-sharp, E, C, E. I didn�t catch what Granny Lucy said. Sounded something like �catching an old train.�

A middle-aged couple walked in, heads together, laughing. He made me sweat just looking at him, a bushy beard and a sport jacket in this heat. She was a tiny woman, but her shoes made this great little slap-clap noise on the tile floor, and when I looked I saw that she had on ridiculously high heels, bright red. I caught a look at her face then�quickly, because I didn�t like to make eye contact anymore�and I realized that it was Sylvia Smith, the professor from Tulane.

She had curly red hair, moved like a bird. You couldn�t mistake her.

A flush crept up into my neck and ears. Mom had made me meet her during those first few weeks when I had been nothing more than a hot mess. Mom had probably envisioned things getting better, me eventually taking lessons again, needing a tutor here.

I slunk down into myself. But it didn�t matter. Professor Smith would have no reason to remember me. I had refused to play the violin for her, refused to even speak. Mom had apologized like crazy, and we had never spoken of it since.

�Where y�at!� Mrs. Rawlings called, her voice booming throughout the little restaurant.

�Mornin�,� Professor Smith answered. Mrs. Rawlings met her at the counter, and they began to small-talk. The bearded man chuckled and his ample belly jiggled. I couldn�t tell if Mrs. Rawlings knew Professor Smith or if they were just doing that whole Southern-friendly thing. I still couldn�t tell the difference.

�She stayed,� Mia-Joy said, elbowing me in the ribs, nodding toward Professor Smith. �During Katrina. People say she saved like three different neighbors. Tracked down insulin for this one old lady who was in a wheelchair.�

I nodded. This was how it was now. People in the French Quarter defined themselves by Katrina. I knew what that was like�to define yourself through some kind of catastrophe, through loss. I kept my eyes cast down, working at peeling shrimp, but my gaze kept wandering back to those red high heels. She had stayed here. Weathered the broken levees and destruction and somehow lived through it to wear red high heels again. That was something.

The door jangled, and I immediately felt weird. Bothered. I didn�t really know why. The heat? Thinking of my violin?

I stole a look at the door. Beat-up old black Converse gym shoes and frayed, too-long jeans. I told myself not to even look up. No interaction.

But then I noticed rain clattering against the window. The sound. Shoosh, whoosh, shoosh. It wasn�t just a midday summer drizzle but more like a sheet of slanting rain, right here in the middle of this sunny New Orleans afternoon. The sky was blue, the clouds cottony white, and yet it rained, beating a rhythm on the restaurant windows.

Something about that didn�t sit right with me�the sunshine along with the rain. That should have been my first clue.

But I shrugged it off. That was just how New Orleans was�unpredictable in every way.

The new customer was still stomping his Converses on the welcome mat, and when I glanced at him I caught his silhouette. He shook his dark wet hair free of the rain, and I thought I was prepared. Okay, tall, dark stranger. He�ll be hot. Big deal.

He squared his shoulders and looked at the menu board, up through his dark lashes, and I could not make myself look away. I always looked away. I tried to seem invisible to people. Keep the circle small, I told myself. Fewer people in the circle, fewer people to hurt, fewer people to hurt you.

But I was glued. He had a messy mop of dark hair, wavy and untamed, defying gravity as it swirled up and away from his forehead. As he spoke his hellos, he had that drawl, that deep Southern twang to his vowels that turned his speech into music to my Midwestern ears. �Good mawnin�,� he said, and his voice was low, just above a mumble. Legato. Slow and smooth.

His eyes were the brightest blue, and his eyelashes were ridiculous, like fringe. They should�ve looked silly on a boy. But they didn�t. They worked against the square, rugged cut of his cheekbones, his jaw. The corners of his mouth turned up in a friendly way, but when he spotted Mia-Joy and me staring up from our pot of shrimp, he truly smiled. Big shiny white teeth twinkling like the tiles of Mrs. Rawlings�s kitchen.

His smile made him look younger. Did he go to Liberty? I expected his eyes to be meeting Mia-Joy�s beauty, taking in her long legs, her icy-green eyes, her caramel skin, but I was wrong. He looked straight at me, a half-smiling, half-startled expression, but only for a moment. Then his face changed, softened. He nodded a hello, like he knew me.

I felt a little fizzle at the base of my neck and all over my scalp then, like someone had touched me after rubbing socked feet over a shag carpet. Static electricity. The little hairs on my arms stood up, and a current vibrated right through me, settled in the back of my molars, like chewing on tinfoil. Yuck.

For a beat, I held his gaze. I held this note between us a tad too long, which was so much farther beyond my usual boundaries. I felt shaken and naked. I averted my eyes, caught my reflection in the window: my long dark hair, my pale skin. My swimmer�s body had dwindled now into a ghost of its old self.

I turned away, and I lost hold of the big stainless-steel shrimp pot, dropping it clean out of my lap. The clank of the steel on the tile shocked me back into reality.

�Fluckity fluck,� I swore under my breath, Mia-Joy�s favorite faux curse. I bent down to pick up the shrimp. Mrs. Rawlings snapped my behind with a dish towel. �I am so sorry,� I said, feeling the blush of the moment climb up my neck and onto my Irish-white face, my paler-than-pale cheeks and earlobes.

I heard the customer asking if he could help, but Mrs. Rawlings refused, instead taking his order for crawfish jambalaya. I did not look back up. I cleaned my mess silently, cursing myself, throwing away the shrimp, costing the Rawlingses at least thirty dollars in product.

I made myself think of Sophie. A reminder. Because that�s what I had to remember. That�s who I was. And I had to interact as little as possible. Or else my bad luck, my mojo, whatever���it would creep out again. Get its roots in somewhere. Like kudzu, squashing the life out of everything beautiful around it.

The telephone woke me late that night, but I didn�t answer it. Instead I tiptoed to my doorway and listened to my mother�s end of the conversation. The concern in her voice freaked me a little, but I reminded myself that she was a minister. She often got phone calls in the middle of the night. I stood in the doorway, watching the concern in the knit of my mother�s brow.

�Oh, honey,� Mom said to the person on the other end of the phone. Something in her voice struck me as more personal this time.

I waited until she hung up, then walked across the hall to her room. �Who is it?� I asked.

�Mia-Joy�s grandmother.�

�Granny Lucy?� I whispered.

She nodded, and my stomach dropped. I reminded myself that Granny Lucy was ninety years old. She was actually Mia-Joy�s great-grandmother. She�d had a stroke last fall, and she had not been in the best health for months now. But Granny Lucy had just been in the kitchen with me today. With Mia-Joy and her mom. Today. You�re scratching your palm, ch�rie.

Mom sat on her bed, already pulling on a pair of jeans. Her paperback was open on the quilt, a box of Triscuits and spray cheese on her nightstand, her bedroom TV muted on the home and garden channel. Mom always was a night owl, like me. Sophie had been too.

Mom sighed. �Sarah doesn�t know where Mia-Joy is. And they really think this might be it for Granny Lucy.� She shook her head.

I averted my eyes. It was Saturday night. I knew Mia-Joy was at the cemetary.

�You�re going to Sarah�s?� I asked.

Mom sat for a moment like she was in a trance, thinking. �I am,� she said. She got up, quickly changed into a clean shirt. �You don�t mind, do you, honey?�

I shook my head, watching her find her purse, locate one shoe under her bed, all the while trying to decide. Should I tell her where Mia-Joy is?

Mia-Joy will get in trouble. But she�ll be so sad if she doesn�t get to say goodbye. But she�s prepared for this. She�s known goodbye was coming. But I could give her this last chance.

I followed Mom downstairs and latched the dead bolt behind her, then sat down at the kitchen table, still waffling.

I got up and took my phone off the counter. I thought briefly of my other teenage life in Chicago, before everything, when I had carried my cell everywhere, texted constantly, a state of never-ending interaction.

I called Mia-Joy. This in itself was something I rarely did, but it seemed safer than going to get her myself.

�This is Mia-Joy. Leave me a message.�

�Call me if you get this,� I said, my voice shaking. I hung up, put the phone back on the counter. I stared at it, willing her to call me right back. I waited, listening to my own shallow breaths. It didn�t buzz.

If I went for Mia-Joy, would it somehow circle back and harm her? Or someone else, because I got too involved?

Then something hit me. Granny Lucy had been there today in the Rawlingses� kitchen. Had she touched me when I passed out?

I ran my hands through my hair, feeling my breath catch in my throat. �Oh Jesus,� I said under my breath. Had I done this? Had I caused this to happen to Granny Lucy? I tried to remember back to before I passed out, back to the tarot cards. Had I noticed it in my chest? Had it been there at that moment? Alive? Swirling?

I swallowed hard. I listened for the phone to buzz, for Mia-Joy to call me right back. But she didn�t. I concentrated on the sound of my breathing in the still kitchen for what seemed like a long time, thinking of Granny Lucy, of Mia-Joy, their quick retorts to one another, their easy relationship. I thought of the finality of death. How it snuck up on us, like we somehow believed that death and loss were things that other people had to deal with.

I thought of Sophie, of my guilt. I pictured Granny Lucy�s hand on my shoulder or touching my cheek when I was passed out. Could she have possibly touched my hand? Held mine in hers, palm to palm?

Oh God. No, that couldn�t be. No. But maybe. Just like Sophie.

Love. Death. Water.

I thought about Sophie, that gap between her teeth. She had begged me to take her to see that air show. I remembered exactly how the air smelled that morning on the shore of Lake Michigan, crisp and earthy. I didn�t want to remember.

I pushed against it. I didn�t want to go there. But the proverbial door had been opened, really, ever since Mrs. Rawlings had done my cards. I sank into my kitchen chair, my head in my hands.

Every moment, I spent so much energy pushing away the memory of that day.

But it was always there. Hovering. Owning me. Defining my every action and inaction.

Part of me felt like I was falling, plunging back into that memory.

It had been windy.

Sophie loved airplanes, and I smiled when I thought about her goggles. She had bought this old green-tinged pair of lab goggles at a garage sale. They were way too big for her, fastened onto her head with an old shoelace. She was trying to look like a pilot, I guessed. I pictured us that day, that final day, and I could see myself making peanut butter sandwiches at the counter to take with us for a picnic afterward, and she was bouncing around the kitchen wearing those goggles. They pushed her nose up in a funny way, made it look kind of piggish.

I laughed out loud, put my head in my hands, and then the first tears came. I rubbed them with the back of my hand, and I shook my head against them. I had to remember.

Sissy, she called me. �Sissy.� I said it out loud, and my voice broke, and I sobbed. �Sissy,� I said again, and it was like we were there, on the beach after the air show.

The wind blows through my hair, wraps it around my face, some goes in my mouth. She laughs that silly belly chuckle that she has when something is really tickling her funny bone. She crouches down, her feet in a tidal pool. She pokes at something with a stick, a reed she has found on our walk.

�This mudpuppy just cannot get up the side of this hole, no matter how many times it tries.� She laughs some more and I watch her. I am not always the patient, indulgent big sister that can appreciate Sophie like this, but I can today. I do now.

Her goggles slip farther down her nose, but she doesn�t notice. I see now that she has the salamander dangling from the stick. The sky darkens over and the wind picks up.

A storm is coming.

�Let�s go see �em, Corrine.�

I lead the way to the rocky north shore, to the place I heard has all the good rocks, the Petoskey stones, fossilized coral that Sophie is dying to see. When we get there, I realize that the terrain of this beach will be hard for Sophie; it is tough even for me. The sky has blown into a pewter-gray cloud, and I consider telling Sophie we need to turn around.

I don�t.

We hold hands for a while. I help her with her footing. The beach is at a steep angle, covered in sharp, jutting rocks. Large rocks. Each step is treacherous, a possible twisted ankle, skinned knee, but after ten minutes or so Sophie is confident. She lets go of my hand and begins to crouch down between rocks, moving on all fours.

We get near the shore, and the rocks are smaller here, more varied. Even I can see the riches in the surfaces that gleam up at us. �Agate!� she squeals, picking up a particularly sparkly one. She is amazed, mouth agape. She reaches out, touches another one, and I giggle. She is so happy. And I think, I love this kid. We are not perfect siblings. We are not always tethered so closely. I often complain about toting her to and from Girl Scouts, or babysitting on a Saturday night, or having to hear her and Mitchy Rogers make fart noises at the dinner table. But I think it right then: I love this kid.

The rain begins. Just a smattering of raindrops, but big fat ones. I don�t think about how these raindrops will make the walk back to the sand beach more dangerous. It doesn�t even occur to me. Oh, how I have second-guessed so many of these details.

Sophie spends a lot of time pocketing small stones near the shore. �I think this is a Petoskey!� she says, showing me a tiny stone with peach-colored spiraled ridges. I nod enthusiastically, but I can�t tell what it is. The wind is pushing the waves higher onto the beach, so we have to leave via the large rocks just as we came, and when we start back, she leads. She stands erect, no crouching over. She knows the weather is turning, I�m sure, so she hurries.

I watch her slip like it is in slow motion. She�s way ahead of me.

Mom�s gonna kill me, I think, picturing Sophie bloodying her knees. Maybe even stitches. But before that thought is even fully formed, I see that it is worse than this. She�s going so fast across the rocks, and she hops�two-footed. She lands, slipping. She hops again, and one foot slips. She yelps. Her feet slip out from under her and her head falls backward. It is an awkward, painful-looking fall, with too much momentum, too much force slamming the back of her head onto the rocks.

After the six or eight steps it takes me to get beside her, I see she is unconscious, and her body seizes, trembles, and jerks, the whites of her eyes showing, her limbs working so unnaturally.

The sight of Sophie, the blood on the rock under her head, the ugly movements of this seizure, it wrecks me. I panic.

�Oh God, oh God,� I say, scanning my brain, trying to think but coming up with nothing. Something about her tongue. Where�s my cell phone?

The wind blows hard then off the lake, and the air changes, a change in pressure, a change that registers on my skin. The hairs on my arms stand up and then��

Black. I don�t remember anything that happens. I lose time.

But when I come to�later, much later�I am lying awkwardly on the rocks, Sophie nearly on top of me, both of my hands on her face, one on either cheek. It is raining hard now, thunder clapping and rolling right above us. The waves roll in, slapping us with cold lake water. It is later, much later, and I am dazed.

What happened?

We are both soaked to the bone, and it is cold. My teeth chatter, and I begin to cry when I see that Sophie�s teeth are chattering too. She is okay! She opens her eyes, and they register me next to her. I�m so happy. I�m so relieved.

�Sissy,� she whispers.

Sophie sits up. I sit up too, but my head feels woozy, too big, and the air around me gets that crackle in it again. My skin begins to feel heightened, stretched differently on my body.

A burning begins in my chest, an unnatural sensation. It�s prickly and growing�electrical yet not really. I bring my hands to my chest and take a deep breath. Everything in my vision turns a little bit lighter, tinged with blue.

I turn to Sophie, ready to say something, ask her if she feels something. She is shaking. And I think: shock.

But I see her eyes roll back again. Another seizure?

Without thinking, I reach toward my baby sister and I place my hand on her cheek, a comforting gesture, a big-sisterly gesture, a loving gesture.

I see blue�that very specific indigo blue�all around me. All of a sudden, everything is bathed in it. Sophie�s face, the rocks below us, the cloudy sky, my hands. And the current, the charge running through me, it surges. No, it explodes inside me, inside my chest, down and out each of my limbs, inside my head and out my eyes, through every cell.

Then the surge grows bigger even, louder. Crescendo. Everything vibrates around us. And I am blind.

Everything goes white. I can feel Sophie fall away from my hand. I worry about her head hitting the rocks again, but I can�t see. I somehow grab her with both arms, and I get her, hold her. I feel her body shiver, shake, and then it goes limp. And I can�t see her, and it�s still surging through me, and I pass out.

I�m awoken by a paramedic in the back of an ambulance. I know before anyone even tells me. Sophie is dead. I feel it. I did it.

I shook my head and brought myself back to here, now. Back to my kitchen. And Mia-Joy�s last chance to say goodbye to Granny Lucy. It took several deep breaths to uncurl my fists, to stop gritting my teeth.

I pushed away the thoughts that I had done the same to Granny Lucy as I had to Sophie. I shook my head against the idea. I hadn�t felt it in the Rawlingses� kitchen, not before I passed out, not when I regained consciousness. I hadn�t felt it stirring or churning in my chest.

Panic danced at the edges of my consciousness, for Mia-Joy, for her family. Because I knew what it was like not being able to say goodbye.

I had to go. I made my decision. You cannot hug Mia-Joy, cannot touch her, even if she cries. Even if she reaches for you, desperate in her time of need.

I ran upstairs, pulled on some shorts and a T-shirt, threw my hair in a ponytail, and took off for the Lurie Cemetery.

It was a short walk of about ten minutes to Lurie. I had gone there tons of times, even once to do a s�ance with Mia-Joy when we were around twelve, but that had been during the daylight. It was dark tonight. The air, thick and muggy yet considerably cooler than earlier, held the now-familiar scents of magnolias and salt water. Once in a while, the breeze would bring a few sad notes from a saxophone playing at the Mint Julep, the only jazz club within walking distance of my house.

The streets in my neighborhood were not completely dead, just quiet, with occasional laughter floating from the restaurants near the cemetery. An old, wrinkled banjo player sat on a street corner, although at the moment, he wasn�t playing anything except for the timely tune of his snoring, his head lolled against the nylon back of his old lawn chair, his banjo resting hopeful on his knee. A group of teenagers passed by him, laughing and talking, oblivious to him and me.

I walked by quietly, hoping not to wake him. I took these sites in around me with quick sideways glances, careful not to meet anyone�s eyes. It was habit now. I didn�t even have to think about it. It had required a lot of practice at the beginning, right after Sophie, because I had not come by it naturally.

At the corner of Manderly and Lurie, a young couple strolled arm in arm toward me from the bank of caf�s across from the cemetery. I heard laughing and the clink of glasses coming from the veranda of the nearest bar.

I crossed the street, tried to look invisible, and stole around the side of the wrought-iron entryway to the cemetery. I eyed the mausoleums and monuments, the architecture of the white crypts, the gargoyle statuary, the intricate wrought-iron crosses.

Recently, I had been here to sketch, by myself, of course. But it wasn�t much of a secret that Liberty kids would be here on a Saturday night in the summer. Even I had heard about it.

I opened the wrought-iron gate and it creaked only slightly, although I was aware of how much creepier the place seemed at night. A stone gargoyle startled me as I turned the first corner toward the crypt of Madame Vallion. I knew that�s where they met. I knew there would be beer, probably the cheap kind in quart bottles, probably someone with a joint. Mia-Joy was, of course, in love. And Jules Jackson hung here, so Mia-Joy would be here, batting her eyelashes, trying to get his attention, and, of course, succeeding.

I got a little turned around near the stone crypt with the graffiti-style portrait of Jesus, but I figured it out pretty quickly. I was calming down now. I realized that I was much more comfortable with all these dead people, all these resting souls, than the idea of having to interact with real people, alive people.

I walked along quietly and heard the first murmurs and laughter in the distance. A firecracker shot off and nearly knocked me over with surprise, but once I realized what it was, I headed toward the low bass of party music, the people, specifically Mia-Joy.

And now that I was nearing her, I realized that I needed to figure out what to say. I knew that it wasn�t an unexpected thing for a ninety-year-old woman to die, but I also knew what was about to happen for Mia-Joy. I was delivering that moment you forever divide your memories between�the before and the after.

I pictured Mia-Joy�s face as I scuffed my feet against the gravel on the walkway. I thought of all the little ways she had helped me in the past year. At school, how she had let me eat at her lunch table without any of the pressure to talk or fit in. How she stuck up for me once in a while to keep the kids from really laying into me. I didn�t often witness her doing it, but I knew she�my association as her friend�was what kept them at bay.

Back in Chicago, I�d sat at the cool table. I had the upper-classman boyfriend. The right kind of clothes. The newest cell phone. I would�ve probably teased the new me too. At the very least I wouldn�t have stuck up for the new me, the damaged me. I didn�t like that truth, but there it was.

I had learned so much since then. Or unlearned it.

Mia-Joy existed above all the high school bullshit. She sat at the cool table, yeah. She got the cutest guys. But she had friends, like Yo-Yo Craig and Ella Stanley and me, who maybe didn�t fit the norm. Along with her lip gloss, her obsession with boys, and her too-short skirts, Mia-Joy had her own mind.

And her loyalty never wavered. That day on the quad when Chrissy Jones had brought the�

That�s when I nearly bumped right into him. The stranger from the Crawdaddy Shack. I turned the corner at the Montaigne Mausoleum, the largest one, with the white gables and turrets. I turned it with my head down and my thoughts on Mia-Joy, and there he was, coming right at me. If he hadn�t said hello, I would�ve smacked right into him.

I looked up, startled. The shadows of the cemetery kept me from seeing his face completely, but there was no mistaking that hair, his slim, broad-shouldered silhouette, the drawl in his greeting.

�Hi,� I said, my voice surprising me.

A few yards down the path, I saw shadows move and separate. A group of kids turned toward us. Someone spotted me, and I heard the voices, the calls for Mia-Joy. The group parted, and I watched Mia-Joy come through it, walking toward me quickly.

The stranger stepped aside, and Mia-Joy picked up her pace. �Corrine?� And then she was there, right in front of me. �It�s Granny?� she said. I nodded. She turned to a girl behind her, Mary Louise from physics. Mia-Joy said a few words to her, then began to walk, retracing the path I had just taken. �Is she gone?� she asked, turning, her stance rigid as I hurried to follow her. �Tell me I�m not too late. I never should have come out here tonight. I should�ve known better. Tell me she isn�t gone yet, Corrine.�

�Not yet,� I said, picking up my pace to catch up with her.

�Thank you, God,� Mia-Joy said under her breath, and started running. I let her go. I had done my part.

I stopped for a second before I realized that he was right behind me. The other kids, they had gone back, had lost interest. But this stranger, here he was, a few feet behind me.

When I turned around, I stole a quick glance at his face. We were under the far reaches of a nearby streetlight, so I could see the line of his jaw, the curve of his brow. But mostly I averted my eyes. Why I didn�t just ignore him and keep on my way, I couldn�t really say, but tonight had been full of firsts.

He reached out his hand then, like he wanted me to shake it, and I instinctively took a step back.

�I�m Rennick Lane,� he said, and waited, but then he let his hand drop back to his side. When I didn�t answer he said, �You�re Corrine. Mia-Joy told me.�

I nodded, stole another glance at his face. Big teeth, rabbity. But in a good way. �It�s nice to meet you,� I said, surprising myself once again.

�I think maybe it�s you,� he said.

�Me?� I said. He took a step closer to me, and I could smell cologne. No, deodorant maybe? Or laundry detergent, something fresh. And then it happened again, the hairs on the back of my neck prickled.

I backed away.

�Mia-Joy�s pump. You�re electrical.�

�What are you talking about?� I said. I knew Mia-Joy had an insulin pump. But what did I have to do with that?

�I heard her telling that other girl. How it�s messed up. Tell her to go back to shots. See if it fixes itself.�

I studied him for a second. Those eyes. They were so direct and unflinching. �You tell her,� I said, suddenly annoyed. I was leaving now.

That was enough. All I could take. I turned on my heel and walked away quickly, agitated. On the way home, I consoled myself with the thought that I had helped Mia-Joy. I had hopefully given her a few last moments with Granny Lucy.

I was electrical? I didn�t know anything about Mia-Joy�s pump. I pushed it from my mind. I had enough to think about, feel responsible for. Could I possibly be the cause of�?

No. I couldn�t go there.

Granny Lucy had suffered a massive stroke. She was still alive that next morning. But it didn�t look good. I heard Mozart in my mind again at this news. Concerto No. 2. The harps and flute joining in the first sonata. It had always sounded like hope to me.

�And Sarah�s worried about Mia-Joy,� Mom said as she clicked away on her laptop, trying to eat a bowl of cereal, answer her email, and talk to me, all before making it out the door before eight a.m. �She had another incident with her blood sugar.�

I stood by the counter waiting for my toast to pop up. Frozen.

Although I told myself not to, I had spent most of the night dissecting Rennick�s comment about Mia-Joy and her insulin pump.

Mom closed her laptop, put it into her bag, took her dish to the sink. �I really have to go.� She stopped and looked at me, slowed herself down. �I love you, Corrine,� she said, and blew me a kiss.

She turned and left out the back door.

My toast popped up, startling me. I left it in the toaster. What am I doing here? Am I just going to wait around until I know for sure I hurt someone else?

I tried to shake the thought out of my head. I sat down and took a few deep breaths, my pulse pounding in my temples. Had I caused this with Granny Lucy? Had she touched me?

Was I hurting Mia-Joy somehow? Her pump?

Or�and this thought hit me like a lightning bolt�did it work in other ways that I hadn�t even let myself consider? Was it cumulative? Was I like some kind of radioactive bomb, and people around me only had a certain threshold?

My God. I couldn�t even face this possibility head-on.

Or was it something else? Was it connection�emotional, mental, or something else entirely?

Electrical?

Did it come off of me in waves somehow?

And hadn�t I slacked? Hadn�t I let myself become intertwined with the Rawlingses in a way that I would never have considered six months ago?

I had been careful, so careful for months. Nearly six months. Long enough for the shock of it to wear off a little bit, long enough to lull me into thinking that maybe I was just exaggerating this whole thing, or imagining it.

But here I was.

In that moment, I had no doubt that my interaction, my presence, had caused all of this somehow. A=B. Occam�s razor, right? The simplest answer was the truth.

�No!� I said, looking around the kitchen for something to take my anger out on. I ripped the toaster cord from the wall, picked the whole thing up, and threw it at the fridge as hard as I could, giving a little shriek as I did it.

I picked up my phone, texted Mia-Joy quickly, trying not to think too much. Could Rennick be right? I couldn�t risk it. Your pump is messed up? Switch to shots. I typed.

I ran upstairs, reached under my bed. I touched my violin case, felt the fine layer of dust on the top. Part of me needed to play right now. I sat back on my heels, considering, and let out a sigh. It had been so long. Would I be terrible? Would I even recognize myself in the music anymore? I thought inexplicably about the old yellow sponge.

When I had first started playing by ear, with the Suzuki method in first grade, Mrs. Smelzer had given us each a sponge to use as a shoulder rest. I had loved cutting that sponge into just the right shape, using a rubber band to hold it on to my oily, dilapidated rental violin. I thought of the shape of it under my chin, the tension of the strings under my fingers, the vibration of the bow against my hand, the smell of the rosin. Why haven�t I played since Sophie? I wondered. Could I really answer that? Because it seems selfish to feel happy without her.

�Happy,� I said out loud to my empty room, and my voice sounded brittle and alone. I grabbed my sketchpad off the bed and opened it to my most recent drawing. Mr. Lazette�s nearly finished portrait stared up at me. Grizzled and round-faced, he looked a little bit like Santa Claus, but with a more serious mouth.

There was something final in his stare. I didn�t like the way he looked, like he was saying goodbye. Was he next? Was he going to die?

Because of me? Some thin thread of connection?

I had to cut my strings. To absolutely everyone.

I plopped myself onto my bed, pictured myself leaving, running off to some remote place. There would always be people. But I had an iron will, didn�t I? Hadn�t Dad always teased me about that since I was a little girl? How I had sat at the dinner table with my mouth clamped shut well into the night, determined not to eat my peas. Dad had given in eventually, with me nodding off, sitting with my arms crossed, a determined scowl on my face. I didn�t give in. Not me. Never me.

I felt a pang of guilt when I thought about the petty fights with Annaliese or Cody back in Chicago, the squabbles with Sophie over whose CDs were whose, over stupid things. I never caved. I was stubborn and childish.

I could keep people away from me. I could quarantine myself. If all it took was willpower I could do it.

I faked a stomachache that day and the next, and I holed up in my room. When Mom came in with the news of Granny Lucy�s death, that finality, I took it like a punch in the gut.

I struggled for my breath for a few seconds, and Mom moved toward me like she was going to comfort me somehow. �No,� I said forcefully. I sat up, scooted away from her. �No,� I repeated ferociously. Logically I knew that Granny Lucy�s death might have had nothing to do with me. I knew that. She was old and sick.

But���I wasn�t sure. And what was I going to do? Just keep on going until I was sure I killed somebody off? Like Mia-Joy?

Mom left me alone. I had a stomachache, a real one, for the next two days. Again, I didn�t leave my room.

�I�m not going,� I said.

�You�re going to Lucy�s funeral,� Dad answered back through gritted teeth. �This bullshit has gone on long enough.�

I agree, I thought wearily. �I�m not going, Dad.�

�And if I make you?�

Fear flashed across my face. Dad grabbing me, throwing me over his shoulder. There wasn�t much that would scare me more than Mom or Dad deliberately grabbing my hand, forcing physical contact. Dad must�ve seen the fear.

�Corrine.� Dad wavered. He was a big guy, a forceful-looking man with a square frame and a personality that got things done, but I knew he didn�t want to scare me. It wasn�t in his nature. �Corrine,� he said again.

Mom spoke up, her calm demeanor breaking. �Corrine, you loved Lucy. This is just a���crime. Let her stay, Paul,� she said to Dad.

�Leslie,� he started, but Mom turned then, burying her face in his shoulder, and my stomach churned. Dad gave me a hard look. I thought of how the funeral itself would be a reminder of Sophie�s, how Mom would have to relive it. And I gave in. I didn�t want to be that bullheaded kid. I would do this for my parents, and then that was it.

�Okay, I�ll go,� I said. �Give me a minute.�

I dragged myself up to my room and fell into bed, exhausted. I closed my eyes and the room spun. The world spun out of control around me. I concentrated on my breathing, slow, steady. My body ached, my nerve endings frayed and raw. I stripped down to my bra and underwear and lay on top of my covers. I was hot, too hot. My mind wanted to puzzle through everything that had happened, but my body wouldn�t let me. The exhaustion was ridiculous. My head felt heavy and fuzzy, full of cotton.

I fell asleep quickly. And I slept hard, dreaming of an indigo light, glowing, pulsating, coming for me in waves, each one getting closer. Ready to swallow me whole.

I woke sweaty and alarmed just as the indigo light reached me in my dream. I sat up with that airless feeling in my throat, as if I had just screamed. I took a few deep breaths and calmed myself down, noticing that the sun slanting into my room had the half-lit pink look of twilight. I watched the shadows of the pear tree dance on my bedroom ceiling. Their movements made me think of Gershwin and old Fred Astaire movies, the beautiful dancing sequences. Black and white. Rhythmic. Soothing. Mezzo piano. Quiet.

I pressed the palms of my hands together in front of my face as I sat there and tried to remember what it felt like to just touch someone that way, palm to palm. Did it always carry so much heat? Back in my before-life? When I gave high fives? When I held hands with Cody through the vintage horror movies on Friday nights at the Casablanca Theater? When I held on to Sophie so I wouldn�t lose her at the mall?

That crawdad had to have been alive to start with, just unconscious, asleep, something. I was ninety-nine percent sure.

But I had felt something. I couldn�t discount it. That same kind of current, that same kind of buzzing beneath my skin, around my skin, enveloping me when I held that crawdad.

Who was he? This Rennick Lane? What did he know? And was there any possible way that he was right? That I had this power to resuscitate something recently dead?

It was a ridiculous question. Sophie.

I hadn�t resuscitated Sophie. I hadn�t helped her. I hadn�t done anything but ensure that she died, that she ceased to live. She would no longer thumb wrestle with my dad, plead for a dog, play video games with all the lights off, or beg me to read her the first Harry Potter one more time.

�But you have the best Hagrid voice!� she would tell me, giving me those puppy-dog eyes. And when that wouldn�t work, she would whistle through her teeth for me, that lonely little gap in her front teeth. It always made me laugh.

I threw my legs over the side of the bed, pulled on some clothes. The twitching movement of the crawdad in my palm seemed too near, too recent and real. I needed a reality check�something I had avoided for too long.

I went into my parents� room and got out the album. When we moved here, Mom had set right to changing Sophie�s room into her home office so we wouldn�t have to be reminded by her favorite stuffed green lizard lying alone on her bedspread, her empty window seat, her glittery sunglasses sitting on her dresser. The room was empty of Sophie�s stuff now; it held a computer, a really cool glass-topped desk. A treadmill. None of us ever went in there anyway.

But my parents did look at the Sophie album. It had all of our favorite pictures of her through the years, through her nine years. Only nine years.

I never looked at it.

But I had seen Mom looking at it. Lots of times. Just a few weeks ago, I heard a racket in her room, stuff being thrown around, a loud crash, and when I got to the door, the Sophie album was open on her bed. Mom sat with her hands in her face, her sobs shaking her shoulders, Dad picking up the remains of an antique crystal candlestick off the floor. One of her favorite flea market finds.

The pain in my rib cage, the weight of the guilt I was carrying, was astonishing. As I pulled the maroon photo album off the bookshelf, it was like I couldn�t get a big enough breath into my lungs, not enough air in there along with all the guilt. But I needed to see. I needed to remember, to know what my hands had done.

I knew there was never any intent. God no.

But it is what it is. That�s what Granddad always used to say. I had spent the past six months of my life trying to swallow that bitter pill, and now this guy with the hair was going to come out of nowhere and�grab my hand, for God�s sake! He deserved worse than what I gave him.

I sat on the floor cross-legged and opened the photo album. There she was. Her school photo from last year. The way her curls popped up in the back, that crazy cowlick. Oh God, how it hurt to look at her.

Handel�s Messiah. I hummed the hallelujah chorus. She had loved for me to play it last Christmas on the piano.

I fought the tears. Her blue eyes, all hopeful and ready for the world. That short nose, the freckles. Her gap-toothed smile.

I turned the page. Sophie as a baby, sitting in the laundry basket chewing on the rawhide that belonged to Granddad�s dog. Sophie swinging in the baby swing. Sophie eating her first ice cream cone. Sophie on the Canal Street ferry.

And here we both were, arms around each other, Sharpie mustaches that we drew on our faces�I had been trying to cheer her up after she broke her wrist falling out of the Sandbergs� hayloft.

Jesus, it hurt to look at these. I closed the album, leaned my head back on the bed.

When I was finished, I put the album back and went to my room. I took out my sketchpad and found my pastels. I picked the indigo pastel. It was like new, unused. I never consciously decided not to use it, but now that I looked at it, it was the exact right shade of blue. Just this side of dark blue, with a hint of violet. Just the right deepness to it. Like the ocean on a postcard kind of day. Or the sky when there�s a rainbow.

Or the color of the powerful, flashing, crackling force of light that surrounds both you and your baby sister on the beach when you try to save her life, and you tell her, �Sophie, I got you, I got you,� and you hold her close, and you see the way her face relaxes, like she knows that you�ll save her, that it is going to be okay.

And you assume that blue is there when you lose time right then. You don�t know what happens. But you are sure that blue is there.

That same blue of the waves, lapping at you both on the shore when you come to, and she�s next to you�is she breathing?

And you reach out with your hand�

No. I shook my head, bumping it against the mattress behind me. I am not thinking about this again.

I was suddenly enraged, furious with Rennick �Mr. Crawdad Magic Trick� Lane. Did he think that he could gain some friends by telling them crazy stories about me? Was he trying to impress some voodoo-happy pals of his? Had he done that to me on some dare? Trying to get me to wig out so that he and his friends could laugh about it with some quart beers down at the cemetery later on?

I knew that I would go find Rennick tomorrow morning. I knew that I was going to give him a piece of my mind. I also knew that, no matter how mad I was, I didn�t want to entangle him in my curse. But who knew what he might do next time?

I was going to put him in his place. Then maybe I�d just keep going and leave here.

I shook my head. No. I knew I couldn�t run. It wouldn�t do any good. I couldn�t get away from this. I couldn�t get away from me. I would just end up hurting other people. Someone else�s loved ones. Someone else�s Sophie.

I stayed in my room. Isolation.

But I also Googled things. Weird things like physio-electricity. Reanimation of crustaceans. I didn�t believe Rennick. But part of me wanted to.

I didn�t find any answers. Not even any leads. But he had me thinking.

It was late, and I sat on my bed eating cucumbers and ketchup�Sophie�s favorite.

I had absentmindedly sketched several pictures of Mia-Joy while I sat on my bed watching TV. But I hadn�t gotten her eyes exactly right. They flitted from one thing to another so quickly. She lived her life in eighth notes, bouncing here and there, staccato. And I hadn�t captured it.

I heard a click-clack then. I cocked my head, tried to figure out where it had come from.

Click.

I stared at the window. It sounded like it came from there. Click-clack. There it was. Someone had thrown something at my bedroom window. I froze for a second. What? I didn�t know if I should go see who it was or just ignore it.

Maybe because I had just been looking at her picture, I thought of Mia-Joy. Maybe she needed me. Was there something I could do for her�from a distance? I hesitated. I felt guilty that I hadn�t talked to her since Granny Lucy�s death.

Another rock. Click-clack.

I walked over to the window, peered into my backyard, which was bathed in only a small triangle of light from the nearby streetlamp. I saw a figure there. It looked larger than Mia-Joy. I squinted.

The figure waved, then beckoned. Before I realized who it was, I had this sense that I was watching one of the old black-and-white movies I loved. The streetlamp, the swoop of his gravity-defying hair, the line of his profile. He was the hero, the suave leading man. Lithe and broad-shouldered. Moving with confidence. Fred Astaire. I blinked and brought myself back to where I was, to who really stood down there in my yard.

It was him. Rennick. I stepped back and sat on my bed.

Son of a gun, I thought. Did he come for another kick in the nuts?

I wanted to be mad at him. I wanted to think he had pulled some big prank on me. But really, I was hoping there was some truth to what he had told me. Shown me.

But maybe his buddies were waiting in the bushes, ready to scare the shit out of the freaky Corrine Harlowe, who couldn�t shake anyone�s hand or give a high five. Or usually meet anyone�s eye. I knew about the snickers, the theories all the kids at school had about me. Germophobe. OCD. Schizo.

Rennick.

But there was a part of me that was curious. Could he know something? It was just so hard to trust myself, my judgments, anything.

I stopped still on my bed for a moment, reaching for my blue nail polish. What if I could control it somehow? Tame it. Not just be at its mercy. It was a singular thought. And because everything always seemed so out of my control, so beyond me, I hadn�t ever seriously considered it. Until that moment.

What if I learned to control it? What if the crawdad was not a fluke? Was that plausible? What if I could own this thing?

I thought of Mom�s quivering chin when she had broken the news about Granny Lucy�s death. The way she had come into my room later that night and asked if I thought I needed to see Dr. Claude again. �Because, Corrine,� she had said, �he can go through the medical reports again. Explain how Sophie died from cardiac arrest, likely brought on by the head injury. I mean, I thought we were getting somewhere.� She had waited for me to respond. I was surprised that I was so transparent, that she knew what I was thinking, but then again, that was Mom.

My silence answered her. She liked to believe we were getting somewhere.

�You didn�t have anything to do with Lucy,� she had said. �Corrine, I lost Sophie, and ever since, I lose you a little bit more every day. Your father and I can�t watch you do this!� Her voice had broken, and she had reached for me, without thinking, I�m sure.

I had recoiled, but I added, �I�ll see Dr. Claude.� I would do anything to keep that hopeless look off of her face.

Maybe even see what this Rennick knew.

In my before-life, before Sophie died, I had loved goals, challenges, winning. I tackled Beethoven�s Ninth for contests when everyone said it was suicide. I chose Faulkner off the English list when everyone else veered toward Stephen King or Joyce Carol Oates. When Coach told me I had a better chance to go to state in the free or even the medley, I chose the butterfly. It was the hardest for me as a swimmer. I came in second. I did get a first at contest for Beethoven that year, though. But I never did understand Faulkner. I traded him in halfway through the semester for Stephen King and read six of his books over spring break last year.

Tame it. Control it. It sounded impossible. But didn�t all of this?

I held the bottle of nail polish in my hand, frozen on my bed with this newfound possibility. I felt lighter as I painted my nails and listened to Rennick�s pebbles bounce off my window. The guy did not give up easily.

I tiptoed out of my room, unsure whether I was going out there to ask him some questions or to yell at him to just leave me alone. But either way, I was going out there. My mother�s bedroom door sat open. She lay sprawled on her bed, asleep, papers on her chest, her reading glasses still on. Dad slept next to her, snoring loudly.

I slipped down the stairs and through the kitchen, to the back door. The front door often creaked, and I was glad that I had remembered.

I unlocked the dead bolt, so quietly, remembering last year with Cody. When Annaliese and I had snuck out of my old house, toilet-papered Cody�s whole front yard on his eighteenth birthday.

I froze when the screen door opened with the requisite snap. But I didn�t hear anything from above. I turned the knob and walked out. I let my breath out on the back stoop as I closed the door behind me.

I turned around, and sure enough I heard a footstep near the brush that lined the back of our property, by the garden Mom had planted in Sophie�s memory. I waited. Closer footsteps, the silhouette of someone near the lilacs.

The air took on an expectant, loaded quality, and I knew he was there. I felt it. And in that moment, I doubted my reasons for coming out here altogether. Did he know anything? Had it all been just a prank? I wavered, unsure. My feelings were so untrustworthy these days.

He appeared out of the shadows. �Hey,� he said.

�You can�t be around me,� I said.

�Listen,� he said, �I know you don�t want to talk to me. I know you�re mad at me. And I shouldn�t have done that with the crawdad. It probably just scared you even more, shell-shocked as you are. But you have got to listen to me before��

�Just tell me what you want to tell me,� I said, and I tried to ignore it, but it was there, inside, deep inside like a pilot light switching on, heating up.

He started to say something, then stopped himself, rubbed at his chin, raked his hand through his hair in a funny motion. My eyes adjusted to the dark now, and I noticed his teeth, how they overlapped a little in the front. An imperfection.

�Two minutes,� I said impatiently, feeling the heat swirl and grow.

�You listen to me,� he said gruffly, pointing at me. �I�m going to knock on that door and wake up your parents, tell them I found you ready to hop a train, if you don�t give me a few minutes here.� He looked at me hard, threatening me, although I could see the apology in the shake of his head. But it was what it was.

I knew he would knock on the door, so I just gritted my teeth. �Tell me what you know.�

I met his eyes briefly. The moon was low in the sky, a tiny crescent, a thumbnail, as Sophie used to say. It was an inky night, with very little light, especially in the back of my house, next to the hydrangeas and the electric meter. And, of course, right beneath the window of my parents� bedroom.

I listened to the hum of the crickets and toads as Rennick gathered himself. He rubbed his hand across his forehead nervously, and he started to say something twice but stopped himself again. I softened toward him for a second when I realized exactly why he seemed so different from anyone else in New Orleans. It was because he treated me normally. Like people did back in Chicago, back before everything. Easy. Normal. Everyday.

Here in New Orleans, I was not a real person. I was a freak, a weirdo. No one treated me like Corrine. I was a story. The sideways glances. The whispers. I deserved it.

Finally, Rennick pulled a couple of rolled-up papers from his back pocket and handed them to me. I took them reluctantly, carefully.

�Just read them,� he said. �I looked into a few things. It�s hard to know where to start, Corrine.� He looked at me for a moment; the headlights from a passing car flashed in his eyes, and I could see concern there, tenderness.

It hit me, deep under my ribs in a weird way, and my breath caught in my throat. I shook my head. In that moment, in that flash of human interaction, all that I had been missing in the months of my emotional and near-physical quarantine hit me out of the blue. Why he�this near stranger�would wait out here for me, or why he cared, I had no idea. But it was odd and disconcerting how much it meant to me, here in my darkest hour.

�I�m sorry,� I told him. �You shouldn�t be around me.� The skin on my scalp tightened, itched. The hairs on my arms stood up. The air around us thickened, and the buzz in my molars came back. My hand went to my jaw, and I pressed my fingers against it.

He hadn�t seemed to notice. �Just promise me you�ll read this, and know that��

A spark jumped then from the electric meter, scaring us both.

�That�s part of it,� Rennick said, excited, pointing toward the meter. �Corrine, you��

I held my hand up to quiet him. I heard something. Footfalls in the long, dew-wet grass. The swish of Mom�s robe against it.

Mom appeared around the corner of the house, coming out from the front. Mom. In her blue polka-dot pajamas, her white terry-cloth robe.

She cleared her throat. �Corrine?� she said, low, questioning.

�Mom, I just came out��

Her mouth was a grim line. She looked worried. Did she think maybe I was leaving? Running away?

�Is this the boy who was throwing rocks earlier?� Her voice sounded flat, unimpressed.

�I�m sorry, ma�am. I apologize.� He looked at me hard. �Corrine��� I waited for him to say more, but he didn�t.

�Mom, I�ll be in in a minute,� I said. She nodded, gave us our privacy.

�I never meant to scare you off,� Rennick said. �I�m sorry about before.�

�I�m sorry about the knee,� I said.

He gave me a quick nod and was already through the lilac hedge when I called out to him. �Thanks.�

Later that night, I lay on my bed, sharpening my sketching pencil. I thought of Mia-Joy. I glanced at my phone on the nightstand. I knew I should call her. A memory hit me, clear as day. Sixth-grade summer. Mia-Joy had been all limbs and teeth, so skinny. Bossy and loud, with frizzy hair. But then something had happened the year of seventh grade, because when I came back that next summer, Mia-Joy had blossomed, grown into herself. She�d become a swan. So then she was tall, thin, striking. Bossy and loud. Still herself. But what I most admired, and didn�t realize until later, was that she hadn�t really changed. Not inside. She had become the most beautiful teenager, the most beautiful girl most of us had ever seen in real life, and she didn�t change.

She was obsessed with modeling, sure. She forced me to make audition tapes of her for every last reality TV modeling show in the world. But she still laughed that same loud bark of a laugh. She still kept the same friends.

At that moment, I looked up from my pencil and sighed. I realized how much I liked and admired Mia-Joy. How much I missed her. She never shut up. She watched only reality TV. She talked more and louder than anyone. She read only fashion magazines and apologized for nothing. God, she was fun.

She reminded me of Annaliese. Just a more brash, real version of Annaliese, without the ridiculous collection of cowboy boots and love of all things country-western. I had a sudden flash of Annaliese and me doing the line dance at the sophomore spring fling. She had worn that belt buckle with the bull horns. Oh God. I smiled and flopped back onto my pillow. It made my throat tighten a little bit. I thought of the old comics that Annaliese and I had been drawing right before the day with Sophie. Thinly veiled comics about our teachers at school. Poking fun at Mr. Vergara with his skinny jeans. Mrs. Temperance and her �80s perm. I laughed out loud.

It sounded so sad as it echoed off the walls of my room.

It hurt to remember how easy things used to be. I had been on a trajectory. My life was going in the right direction. It was clean and uncomplicated. How I missed it. How much I had taken for granted.

I flashed back to the memory of Cody telling me how my hair was the exact shade of a Hershey�s Kiss. I used to love that. I would tell people that story. I thought it was so cute. Now, when I thought of that, of Cody and me together, I wanted to punch him. Just punch him right in the jaw. I knew it wasn�t fair. But it all just seemed so���innocent, so self-indulgent. Our stupid surface romance. I wanted to scream at my former self: You don�t even know what�s important! You have no handle on things! Wake up! I cringed when I thought of how our biggest fight had been over how he hadn�t texted me when he told me he would one night. Not over anything actually important, like when he became frustrated with me when I tried to talk to him about music, about deeper things, about dreams and the future, about life and what it meant to me.

I thought of the concert when I had first played Requiem. It was my debut with the Chicago Junior Symphony. When I got offstage, Cody had met me with one red rose, and he looked all handsome and preppy in his khakis and collared shirt. �What did you think?� I asked, still a little out of breath and existing on that other plane, the one where I didn�t just play music, I played emotion, life, possibility.

�Great,� he said, kissing me on the cheek. He bounced on his heels. He checked his cell phone. I still had goose bumps, feeling the magic of the music, right there, coursing under my skin. �We can still meet up with everybody downtown if we hurry.� He yanked on my elbow.

�Oh,� I said, �yeah.� I forced a smile and hurried out with my friends.

Because I knew he was just being Cody. He was popular and hot. A good prank partner. For his senior prom, we won king and queen, and we went up to the podium wearing those goofy glasses with the big noses and mustaches. We dressed up as Fred and Daphne from Scooby-Doo for Halloween. We sailed on the weekends on Lake Michigan with his parents. We went to all the fun parties. He made me cooler, more popular, and, fluck, he was fun.

But he didn�t get me. I knew that even then, and it made me feel shallow.

I shook the memories away. Annaliese had tried after Sophie. She had tried. Cody had given up easily. And I had not been surprised. I had pushed them both away. I had pushed everyone away.

I grabbed my phone, finally working up the courage to call Mia-Joy. When she answered, I broke down. �I�m so sorry, Mia-Joy.�

�I know, Corrine. It�s okay.�

�I�m sorry I couldn�t speak to you at the funeral or that I��

�Really. It�s okay.� And Mia-Joy sounded so fine. She sounded honest and forgiving. She always was.

�At the cemetery, we shared stories about her. Celebrated her life,� Mia-Joy said. �I missed you there. You would�ve liked it, I think.�

�Celebrated her life,� I repeated. And I tried to hold on to that phrase.

Mia-Joy told me some of the funny stories that people shared about Granny Lucy when she was younger, teaching high school typing, how she used to slap kids� knuckles with a ruler if they weren�t paying attention. How she used to wear her hair in cornrows, enough beads at the ends of them to make music every time she turned her head. I laughed with Mia-Joy and let her talk. She went on and on, and I listened, glad that I could at least do that for her.

�I should go,� she said after a long while, sighing into the phone. �It�s super late.�

But I had one more thing I wanted to ask. �Mia-Joy, tell me what you know about Rennick Lane. Are you guys friends?�

�Why?�

�He knows things about me,� I said.

�Corrine, he�s Ren from the Pen. From school.�

I backtracked in my mind a little bit. Liberty was a big place, and it was true that I had gotten in the habit of purposely not looking into people�s faces, but I heard things. Rennick Lane was Ren from the Pen? The kid that everyone talked about last fall when he came to our school? That seemed crazy.

�Penton Charter?� I asked.

�Got kicked out. Had to go to public school. It�s no big secret.�

�And what was it for?� I had heard things. And I could conjure the memory of Rennick�s silhouette now. Always alone, that movie-star rebel look about him. Leather jacket in the winter. Jeans and a T-shirt. Too cool.

�I don�t know. Nobody really does, Corrine. Fighting, I heard. But he doesn�t really seem the type, does he?�

�I don�t know,� I answered.

�He seems like he knows you. Acts like it. I thought you knew him.�

�I thought you knew him.�

�I�ll tell you what. I watched him stick up for that boy with Down syndrome, Jarvis, you know who I�m talking about?�

�I do.�

�Kids were being awful to him in the cafeteria. That one greasy kid, Pollack? He actually shoved pudding in Jarvis�s face. It was ugly. Rennick took that douchebag by the collar and made him apologize to Jarvis. It was something.�

�Yeah?� I said, feeling something for Rennick now. Pride?

�He eats with Jarvis once in a while now. He seems nice enough. I don�t like to believe the gossip.�

�Me either,� I said, thinking of what kids probably said about me, what I knew they said about me. �Thanks.�

�Corrine?�

�What?�

�No one, and I mean no one, thinks that the death of a ninety-year-old lady is your fault.�

I swallowed hard. �Thanks,� I said, and hung up quickly before Mia-Joy could hear the tears in my voice.

I woke up and my hands were itchy in that way they sometimes got. They couldn�t sit still, tapping out invisible rhythms on my palms or air-playing some invisible fiddle. Normally, I could practice the nerves out of my hands. I would grab my violin, and within the first few minutes I would just settle in, become completely still, aside from the motion of my bow on the strings and the flutter of my fingers from one string to another. In those moments, I felt so bold and sure about my place in the world.

I missed the violin. I missed feeling good about myself.

I didn�t even get out of my pajamas, just clicked in the next tape from Mom. My hands needed something to do.

This was a new lady. Room 232, the tape said. Lila Twopenny. Her voice shook, like older people�s sometimes do, but I could quickly tell that although Mrs. Twopenny was at the end of her days, she still had her mind. She spoke articulately about dancing in a ballet company, working as a bit actress in seven films. And as she got going, her voice trilled like a songbird.

She talked about her husband, Dodge, and her children, all girls. One named Nancy who died as an infant. Two other girls, Clara and Ruth. Twins.

I drew the delicate line of her nose, the upturn at the end, the high-arched eyebrows.

�Ruth had the touch,� Mrs. Twopenny said. My ears perked up, as well as the hairs on the back of my neck.

I held my pencil still, very still. And then I hit REWIND, listened to that line one more time. �Ruth had the touch.�

�Yes?� This was my mom�s voice on the tape, interviewing. Soothing, a little bit sleepy.

�She had what they said was a healer�s hand. That�s what we called it back then. We didn�t have any science to explain it away. Plus it made it easier for us all to believe in miracles like that.�

Mom had perked up now. �What miracles, Lila? Can you tell me?�

Mrs. Twopenny cleared her throat, and I heard objects scuffling around on a table�getting a drink of water maybe? �I reckon Ruth knew at a young age. It hit her around twelve, I would say. She would heal right quick when she got scratched climbing the old oak down by the pond. But the first time I really stopped and paid attention was when Clara broke her wrist falling off of Dodge�s old white mare, Lucky. I pressed them bones in my own hand, could darn near feel the separation of the big bone in her wrist.� Mrs. Twopenny paused here, and I could picture her showing my mother where on the arm it occurred. I realized I was clamping down on my own wrist, feeling the bones, guessing whether it was the one near the thumb or the pinky.

�We lived in Georgia at the time and rode all the way into Macon to get that bone set by a doctor who knew what he was doing. At the time, I thought it just so sweet that Ruth held Clara�s hand, her wrist, with this serious-type expression on her face the whole way. It was right bumpy. A long ride in the back of our truck. Anyways, we got to the hospital and Clara�s wrist was completely healed. Those medical doctors done looked at me and Dodge like we was crazy.�

�Huh,� Mom said. No one spoke for a long moment. Finally, Mom asked what I was thinking. �Were there other times?� Her voice was respectful, not necessarily believing.

�Oh sure,� Mrs. Twopenny said. I was thinking of the crawdad. Of Rennick. �Ruth couldn�t always fix things. Didn�t know exactly how it all worked, could only do it when she saw blue, never did quite know what that meant but��� Mrs. Twopenny�s voice got very small now.

My mouth fell open. I dropped the pencil. She saw blue.

�Our old reverend called her a witch,� she whispered.

Mom said something. Something about how God works in mysterious ways, but I didn�t hear it.

I rewound the tape, listened to it again, and then I let it play out. Mrs. Twopenny talked at length about her daughters, her life, and it was interesting, but no more talk of the touch. I couldn�t believe what I was hearing. Saw blue. The touch.

And then, near the end of the tape, she talked about her grandsons. Two of them.

Cale and Rennick.

I dreamt of my mother. She crept through St. Louis No. 1 cemetery, dwarfed by the aboveground tombs and crumbling mausoleums. She seemed to be looking for someone. The gravel on the pathway crunched beneath her feet as she slipped between two crypts. When I looked, though, the ground wasn�t covered in gravel. Instead there were thousands of honey-gold chips of rosin. It smelled like orchestra practice back in junior high. I watched my mother, who was now crying, as she crunched the rosin beneath her feet, looking all around, calling my name. I tried to answer her, but no words came. I sat high on my perch at the top of a granite mausoleum, and when I couldn�t take the sound of her voice anymore, the sound of her desperation when she called my name, I flapped my wings and flew away, realizing only then that I was a nameless, voiceless blackbird.

I awoke in the darkness, in my own room, under my own covers. I sensed someone in the chair next to me, a hand stroking my hair, and the touch was comforting, so comforting. But then, like being sucked into a tunnel, I remembered it all. Who I was. What had happened. Who I killed.

I felt instantly gutted. Hollowed out. What kind of monster was I?

I looked up at Dad.

He wasn�t even angry, just relieved to see me awake. A tender smile, and this hurt more. I sat up in my bed, scooted out of his reach, hung my head.

�I killed her,� I said.

�Sweetheart,� he said. And he waited for me to look up. I didn�t. I couldn�t.

His voice was soft and patient. And I thought of him picking me up from canoe camp. I had let Annaliese talk me into going when we were eleven. But I had been homesick and called for my parents to pick me up on the second night there. Dad hadn�t been mad. He hadn�t scolded me for the wasted money. When I had apologized, all he had said was, �Your mom and I are always here.�

Now he put his hand under my chin, tilted my face up to his, and I let him. I blinked back the tears, held myself together.

�Sweetheart, Mrs. Twopenny is fine,� he said. �She�s asking for you.�

For a minute, I couldn�t process what he was saying. �I was there. I saw���

He shook his head. �Corrine, I swear on your granddad�s name. She just passed out is all, and all the contraptions had some kind of electrical surge, went haywire, and���well, you thought���Hell, Mom thought so too. But she�s fine.�

�Dad, I don�t know if I can believe you.�

He looked at me like I had slapped him in the face. �Honey, have I ever lied to you?�

�She�s really okay?� I said. I tried to consider what this might mean for me, for everything. I had not killed Mrs. Twopenny. She had survived the blue light. She had survived me. And in that moment, I knew I had to go back. I had to ask more questions. I had to find out more about Ruth, what Mrs. Twopenny could tell me.

�Do you want to go see her?� Dad asked.

�I do,� I said.

And then Dad put his hands on my shoulders and said, �That�s my girl.� And for some reason, that just did it, it broke the dam. I collapsed into Dad then. He hugged me close, hard. And I let him, leaned into him, let him share my weight. I had missed him.

�Dad, thank you for catching me. Why were you there? At Chartrain?�

I looked up at him, and he looked at me, confused for a second. �That wasn�t me, hon. That was that friend of yours. Rennick. Mrs. Twopenny�s grandson.�

And for the first time in a long time, there was a lightness inside my chest, inside my heart. The possibility that all was not lost. That I was not doomed. What was this kernel of feeling? Could it be hope?

Chartrain had a cat, a little tiger-striped cat with an attitude. It roamed freely, and when I got to Mrs. Twopenny�s room the following day, the cat was curled into a ball at the foot of her bed. Mrs. Twopenny was snoring lightly.

I had heard of animals, even animals that lived in old folks� homes like this, that could sense death and would often sit or keep company with a patient for hours or even days before the medical staff knew that death was imminent. So the sight of the cat kind of creeped me out. Maybe Mrs. Twopenny was still going to die from my handshake of doom.

The cat woke up lazily and saw me standing in Mrs. Twopenny�s room, gave me half a glance, and jumped off the bed, sauntering slowly out to the hallway. A nurse came in and checked a few things on Mrs. Twopenny�s monitor. �You�re kind of famous around here,� he said.

�Yeah,� I answered, feeling a blush creep up my neck. I averted my eyes. I could sense him watching me as he wrote some abbreviated nurse�s code on the whiteboard. And I had this weird feeling then, a twist in my gut. Because what had happened yesterday was crazy and miraculous. But it was mine. Even though I didn�t feel like I had control of it. It was on my shoulders�for better or for worse. For the moment it was a good thing.

But already, even though I hardly believed in my ability, there was a part of my mathlete brain worrying about malpractice insurance, trying to figure out how exactly I was going to live with this gift. Like, should I save all sick kids first, and old people last? Like some kind of supersensory triage? And how would I make those decisions? Fluck. Already I was wearing myself out with the logistics. Would I stay in New Orleans, or would I take my act on the road? I was already picturing circus sideshow banners with a caricature of me and my pointy chin smiling out at the customers. Or maybe I should just keep it all secretive so I wouldn�t get too famous. Work out of Mia-Joy�s basement or something. This was how a logical girl�s brain worked in a very illogical situation. Not exactly A=B, but A=I�m screwed.

Although much less screwed than if I were the angel of death.

Mom came in then with her cup of coffee and traded hellos with the nurse, and Mrs. Twopenny was startled by the voices. She bolted upright in bed. It made me nervous.

But she greeted me�and my mom�with such exuberance, I put my nerves about everything in the back of my mind. Mrs. Twopenny swung her legs over the side of the bed completely unassisted. She got up and hugged both of us, squeezing me tight with those same frail-looking arms and petite hands. She had color high in her wrinkled cheeks, her hair pulled back in a silver chignon at her neck.

I let her hug me, but I pulled back quickly. No field of energy drew us together today, but I was alert around her, my senses heightened a bit.

�Lordy! You are like my daughter Ruthie! I already called my Clara. She is coming down from Atlanta. She is going to want to meet y�all.�

She beamed at us, and although I had relaxed my silence rule and bent my touching rules, I wasn�t sure what to say now. I was unable to take credit here, unable to explain it, and frankly I couldn�t really swallow it. The whole healer thing.

�Miss Corrine, you realize you done fixed me?� Mrs. Twopenny said.

I looked at Mom.

�It�s a miracle,� Mom said, putting her arm around my shoulders slowly, as if asking permission. I let her and she pulled me close. Do I know this is safe now? I told myself it was. I wasn�t feeling any of the warning signs.

�It is a miracle!� Mrs. Twopenny said, sitting daintily on the edge of her bed, her hands clasped under her chin like a child. �That�s exactly what Clara said.� She turned to me then.

I didn�t know how to start. I had a lot of questions. First and foremost, could I ever expect to control this?

�What about your daughter Ruth?� Mom asked, sitting down in a visitor�s chair and pointing toward the rocker for me. I took a seat and listened.

�Ruthie, she�s gone.� Mrs. Twopenny did not look up.

�She passed away?� I asked, but I knew this from Rennick.

�And she was the one with the touch?� Mom asked.

Mrs. Twopenny nodded.

�Mrs. Twopenny,� I started hesitantly, �can you tell me how your daughter dealt with this? I mean, how did she control it?�

Mrs. Twopenny nodded again, brought her finger to her temple in a gesture that said she was thinking. �Couldn�t always bring it around. Ruthie would sometimes get so frustrated. It wouldn�t always come. And even if it did, it sometimes wouldn�t work. Too far gone, Ruthie would say. Too much for me. But we kept it a quiet secret. It didn�t set easily with some folks, you know.� Mrs. Twopenny lowered her voice. �Ruthie tried. She really tried. Until the end.�

Mom and I just nodded. It seemed both too much information and nothing at all. I wanted to ask how Ruth had died, but it seemed too private a moment for Mrs. Twopenny, who had yet to look back up at us.

�Does Clara also have the touch?� I asked.

�No, she does not, but she has her own gift. They tell me that is how it is with twins a lot of the time, with this supersensory business.� Mrs. Twopenny had finally looked back up at us, now that the topic had turned away from Ruth.

Mrs. Twopenny rang the nurse�s button on her bed rail, and Mom and I looked at each other. �Are you worn out, Lila?� Mom asked. �We can leave.�

Mrs. Twopenny shook her head. A nurse�s voice broke over the intercom. �Lila, can we help you?�

�Yes,� she answered, looking at us pointedly. �My grandson is wandering around out there by the vending machines. Can you send him in?�

�Certainly.� The intercom clicked, and Mrs. Twopenny leaned toward us conspiratorially.

�Rennick has the same gift as Clara. I reckon it is hard to describe to y�all, but he�ll do a fine job.�

Mom gave me a look then. Of the why-haven�t-you-told-me-this variety.

Rennick came in and nodded hello, stood near Mrs. Twopenny, wearing his uniform of jeans and a T-shirt. The atmosphere in the room changed. It became thicker, closer.

Mrs. Twopenny noticed it and looked from Rennick to me as she introduced everyone.

�We know each other,� Rennick said to her.

Mom smiled. �Yes, pebbles at the window.�

�I was hoping, Renny, that you could explain the colors.�

�Well,� he said, eyeing me with a sheepish grin.

�They were asking about your Aunt Clara, and it sounds a tad loony coming from an old lady who happened to just cheat death.� Mrs. Twopenny giggled.

And it was contagious. I chuckled too, and Mom joined in. Rennick watched me closely, a smile on his face. But his eyes were serious.

He answered Mrs. Twopenny�s question. �I see auras around people.�

I glanced away from his gaze; so this explained the wall in the garage. I caught Mom nodding. She had taken in a lot in the past twenty-four hours. We all had. And if we were going to open the door to one miracle, could we shut it on another? Laugh at it? Discredit it? No, we were all joining the crazy party here.

I looked back at Rennick and nodded, hoping he�d go on.

�Specific colors mean specific things on people. Emotions. Character traits. Physical characteristics. There�s a lot of science to it. I�ve read a lot about it, studied. But it�s also an art.�� He became suddenly self-conscious, rubbing his palm across his jawline, giving an apologetic smile.

�What does blue mean?� I asked him, wondering why he had told me he saw the blue and whether it linked to the indigo lens in my episodes.

�Depends.� He gave me a look, considered.

�Rennick believes there�s a magic in electricity we are only learning about now.� Mrs. Twopenny�s eyes twinkled, and I saw in that look how much she admired him. Rennick cleared his throat, looked away nervously.

At that moment, we heard voices in the hallway, great, boisterous exclamations, and like a whirlwind a dark-haired, very pretty older woman blew into the room, along with a camera crew, a guy holding one of those boom mikes, and two other people, who both carried clipboards and looked somewhat official.

The dark-haired woman had already perched herself on the bed with Mrs. Twopenny and started talking a mile a minute. �Well, good day. Mrs. Twopenny, yes?� the woman said, but didn�t allow Mrs. Twopenny to answer. �They told me it was a ninety-year-old woman I�d be interviewing, but my goodness, do you look young.� Mrs. Twopenny clearly fell for the flattery, raising her hand to her cheek in mock humility. �Would you mind being on camera? Channel Thirteen News?�

The woman paused now, and I put it together just as Mrs. Twopenny gasped. �You are Myrna Sawyer!�

More fake humility. �That I am!�

�My Clara is on TV too,� Mrs. Twopenny explained.

There were too many people vying for too little space in the room now. The boom mike poked me right in the face, so I took a step toward Rennick, hoping to slip out the door. Mom eyed me over the head of the red-haired assistant with the cell phone to her ear. There were too many people here, and the other assistant�s clipboard hit me on the arm. Although my rules were relaxing, and I knew I was going to be starting a new kind of normal, this was too much.

My skin tightened and the hairs on my neck prickled. I couldn�t breathe. I needed room to breathe.

Myrna Sawyer popped off the bed as she spied me maneuvering past Rennick toward the door. �You, young lady,� she said, jumping in front of the door before I could get there. �Are you the young lady? Are you the one?�

I couldn�t breathe right, my temples thumped with each beat of my pulse. �I need to�� I tried to look over the head of the cameraman, who now had his camera pointed in my face. I tried to signal my mother.

I shook my head, reached for the doorknob. Then Myrna Sawyer reached out, grabbing my forearm. I supposed she wanted to guide me back into the room. But I got a shock when she touched me. Maybe it was just a regular, everyday, static-electric shock, but it scared me.

I jumped away from her like a startled animal. Myrna reared back, offended.

�She doesn�t want to talk,� Rennick said, just this side of polite. He stepped in front of me, opened the door for me. He followed me out.

I stalked into the waiting area, my arms crossed against my chest, my shoulders hunched. �I�m scared,� I said.

�I know,� Rennick said. �It gets better.�

�Yeah?�

Mom came out of the room now, and a man in a suit met her just outside the door. They stood talking, their faces serious. We were out of earshot. �Who is that?� I asked Rennick. Mom took out her cell phone and looked at it.

�I don�t know.� We watched their conversation and waited.

Mom was shaking her head as she came toward us. �I guess this place is swarming with news reporters. That was a bigwig here at the nursing home. And Dad just texted me. There are reporters at the house too.� Mom rubbed her knuckles across her lip.

�Corrine�s a real hero, front-page news,� Rennick said. But none of us smiled.

�I can�t talk about this yet,� I said. Mom nodded.

Rennick rubbed his jaw. �I can help,� he said.

�What are you thinking?� Mom asked.

�Corrine could come to my house for the day. There won�t be any paparazzi there.� He seemed a bit bashful, looking up through his eyelashes. And although I had been wondering about his motives, it came to me in a flash. I mean, why did he want to help me? But it just hit me�could Rennick Lane possibly like me? Was it that simple?

It was a comforting thought. So very normal. So very high school. So much like my old life. But no, I knew that Rennick had his own reasons. Totally.

I smiled as he explained to Mom where he lived. Forty-eight hours ago, I wouldn�t have dreamed of going to Rennick Lane�s house for the day. But today was a new day in many ways. And it was tempting to think he could give me more insight into what I was going through.

I pushed away the idea that this was Ren from the Pen. The things I had heard at school, they didn�t jell with the boy in front of me here.

Mom turned toward me. �What do you think, Corrine? It�s up to you. We could just hole up at home. Dad could make sure the reporters let us in the door at least.�

�I want to go with Rennick,� I said. �I think we have a lot to talk about.� This was me jumping in, giving it my whole self. Swimming the butterfly. I wanted to figure this thing out. And I felt myself slide back a little, back to my old self. Back into that comfortable place where I knew right from wrong, where I followed my instincts, where I acted with certainty and confidence. What was that word? Mrs. Smelser had taught me all about it when I had been learning that last piece by Chopin. A continuous, unbroken slide from one note to another. Glissando.

My decision.

Mom nodded. �I�m sure that�s true.� She gave me a look, eyebrows raised.

�Really, I want to go,� I reassured her. Mom blew me a kiss then, and I surprised her by grabbing her hand and squeezing it. I think I surprised myself too.

�You better hurry,� she said, glancing toward the door of Mrs. Twopenny�s room. �And Mr. Huskins said to use the cafeteria kitchen door.� I was kind of shocked that Mom was letting me go with Rennick, not really knowing him. It seemed out of character, but as I turned to follow Rennick toward the elevator, Mom called, �Tell your grandfather I�ll bring those seeds I promised him next week.�

And then it all came together for me. Duh. Mom knew his family. Figured. And this made me feel a little better too.

We walked toward the front entrance of Chartrain, and I kept looking over my shoulder, expecting a camera flash or something. I took account of my body, the way my skin felt, the normal, everyday feeling in my chest. It seemed almost difficult to recall the faraway feeling of the indigo flame under my ribs.

We neared the front desk, avoiding Holly, who was on today, and I peeked out the front window. Sure enough, there were two news vans, and at least a dozen people in front on the sidewalk.

We turned, facing each other for a second in an odd, what-do-we-do-now kind of way, and Rennick just laughed, easy and low. �Let�s go through the back,� he said. He stuck out his elbow for me to lock my arm through.

I hesitated just for a second and was actually about to loop my arm through his when he thought better of it. �Oh, sorry,� he said, dropping his arm.

We walked side by side toward the cafeteria. I lengthened my steps to keep up with him. �I�m parked in the back lot, so that works,� he said.

�Why do you care about me? Why did you try so hard to help me?� The words came falling out of me just as we hit the cafeteria.

I stopped, waited for him to answer. He looked back, a serious expression on his face, but one corner of his mouth rose into the slightest of smiles. �Your aura.�

I waited, but he didn�t say anything else.

�What about my aura?�

He smiled fully then, a little bit embarrassed�flirting? Was he flirting? I smiled too, and my stomach did this flip-flop. God, he was hot. That tousled hair. And he liked my aura.

�I can tell a lot about people from the colors, and I�m usually�no, always�right.�

I told myself to settle down. How could I go from so abnormal right back to total high school girl in the amount of time it took to notice the ridiculous length of his eyelashes, the deep indigo of his eyes? I swallowed hard, rolled my eyes at myself. I started walking toward the kitchen again, and he fell in step beside me.

�I have a lot of questions,� I said.

We reached the kitchen, where Rennick said hello to a few people. Then he pushed the back door open, toward the alley. We stepped outside and looked at each other.

�I really should say thank you. I mean, I don�t know what is going on exactly, but the possibility that I am not the Grim Reaper herself is pretty explosive. I can�t thank you enough for trying to help me.�

�Of course I had to help you, Corrine. You saved my grandmother,� he said, shielding his eyes from the sun. He pointed toward the gravel lot on the left. �And you�ve got this inexplicable power, this sixth sense going on. We extrasensory loners gotta somehow look out for each other.�

Oh, so that was it. I was part of some sliver of society with this gift or something. Of course that was it. Weird kinship. He had a duty to reach out a helping hand. I shook my head a little as I followed him to the car. Of course. I was silly for thinking it was something else. Something more personal.

As Rennick chivalrously opened the passenger door for me, I actually swallowed a laugh. I wasn�t twenty-four hours back into the regular world. Not twenty-four hours back into interaction, talking, relating with others, and already I had fallen into the worst trap for a seventeen-year-old girl: a cute guy with a killer smile.

He drove like a grandpa, five miles under the speed limit, and he never took his eyes off the road. It made me want to make a joke about it. I almost did, but he was so earnest, sitting at the wheel of his dirty, beat-up Jeep, old country music playing on the radio.

�You know Mia-Joy?� I had nearly forgotten how to make conversation.

�Some,� he said. �Interesting aura.�

I wondered at this. But I plunged into a different subject. �You go to Liberty.�

He nodded. Nothing else. I rubbed my knuckles on my lip, thought about all that had happened, where I was, who I was with. �You went to Penton Charter.�

�I had to leave and come live with my grandfather. Help him out.�

�That�s nice of you.�

His expression changed a little, darkened. �Plus, I needed a change.�

I could tell he didn�t want to talk about it. There was something behind his face I couldn�t quite read. I let it go. I looked out the window, leaned my forehead on the cool glass. It felt too weird to talk, to let myself look at him, to not temper all of my movements and interactions. I couldn�t exactly remember how to be normal. How did I used to hold my hands before? How did I tilt my head? Was I staring too much?

�We�ve lived like bachelors for a while,� he said as he pulled into the driveway, as if this explained many things: the house, the boat propped up on his porch, him. He stopped the car.

�We�re here.� He got out of the Jeep, and Bouncer came bounding out from the nearby tree line. His front paws were on Rennick�s shoulders in a heartbeat, and then he put his chin to the ground, looking up at me with those big brown eyes.

�He wants you to pet him,� Rennick said.

I bent down next to the dog. His tail beat harder against the ground. His eyes were so humanlike. I reached out my hand. My hand. Was I really going back to a normal life? Was what happened with Lila Twopenny enough to prove anything?

I reached my hand out and placed it on Bouncer�s forehead.

I was going to try.

His fur was smooth and glossy. I scratched his ears, his neck, and Bouncer rolled over on his back, put his paws in the air.

�Oh, you�ve made a friend,� Rennick said, and I rubbed the dog�s belly.

�You sure he�s not a bear?� I said. �He�s totally big enough.�

�And he�s just a pup.�

�Really?� Bouncer was following us up the porch now.

�Yeah.� Rennick laughed, his eyes crinkling into half-moons. �Dodge found him out near the gravel quarry. Someone had neglected him, hit him, I think. He was mean, snarling, if you can imagine it. Bit my grandfather on the hand. Bit me too. More than once.�

�Jeez,� I said. �Is that where you got that scar, the one on your elbow?� I had seen it when he was driving, a messy white zigzag of flesh from elbow to wrist.

�Yeah,� he answered. �And this one.� He pointed to his eyebrow, and I could see small, jagged lines.

�Were you scared of him?�

Rennick shook his head, put his key in the front door. �He just needed to learn kindness from someone.�

I followed after Rennick and Bouncer, turning that phrase over in my mind, loving the frank way Rennick had said it. As if it had been so obvious. Kindness. The answer.

We walked immediately into a family room with polished wood floors and an old woodstove. The walls were cluttered with maps, some framed, some held up with thumbtacks; some were recent aerial images with crisp colors, others black-and-white, smudged, older than old. I walked directly toward a plain wood frame holding a dog-eared, yellowed, gorgeous map.

When I got closer, I could see that it was topographical, mapping the land, the rivers, the streams, and the swamp areas of this little wedge of the Gulf Coast. It was hand-drawn, intricate, handsome. And it inexplicably reminded me of Rennick himself.

�It�s from the eighteen hundreds.�

�Yeah?� I asked.

�Not too long after the Louisiana Purchase and everything. It�s French.�

I noticed then that the key and the compass rose were in French, which made the map seem all the more elegant. I found the French Quarter; it was marked, and there were several named parishes, all written in a romantic curlicue script.

I followed Rennick into the kitchen and sat down at the farmhouse table. The kitchen had white cabinets, white everything, very homey but spare and simple. There was no microwave, no dishwasher.

�We kind of live like pioneers,� he said, chuckling. �Been just me and Dodge for a while. But Lila�ll soon��� His voice trailed off.

I chewed on my thumbnail, didn�t meet his eyes. I didn�t want to take credit. It didn�t seem real.

�You must be hungry,� he said finally. He pulled out an old iron skillet.

I suddenly realized I was. �Starving, actually.�

�Omelet or grilled cheese? That�s about all there is on the menu del Rennick.� He cast a smile over his shoulder at me, and I thought I saw his hand shaking a little when he placed the frying pan on the stove.

�Grilled cheese, and thank you,� I said.

�I�m hungry too. I just figured��

�No, I mean, thank you for getting me out of Chartrain today. For trying so hard to help me the other day. For��

He stopped what he was doing, turned and looked at me. �You don�t have to thank me, Corrine.�

I shook my head. I got up, leaned on the counter. �Rennick,� I said, and saw the left corner of his mouth go up in a nearly imperceptible grin when I said his name. �Why, though? Why did you try so hard to help me when I was nothing but a bitch to you? I mean, did you just know I could help your grandmother or��

�No, I didn�t even think of that.� He didn�t look at me. He stared down at the floor between us, scuffed the heel of his shoe back and forth for a second. And it hit me at that second how much Rennick reminded me of this shy kid Lester Meechum that I went to grade school with. I wondered at that. Could Rennick Lane be nothing more than the shy, smart, nerdy kid in the class, stuck in the body of a rebel with the hair of some kind of emo lead singer? This idea seemed right. And I was beginning to realize that Rennick didn�t even know how he came off. Did he still see himself as that nerdy kid? A boy with a microscope and test tubes in his bedroom?

�Why did you help me?� I repeated.

�Can�t a guy just like your aura?� He didn�t look at me, but he smiled. My mouth turned up as well. The air between us prickled again, and the tension against my skin changed, the air against me���tightened. Rennick�s head snapped up.

�Do you feel that?� I said. Bold. More like the old Corrine than ever.

Rennick nodded.

�What is it?�

�A charge. Electric. Physio-electric.�

�I only feel that with some people. Between me and certain people. Or only before���before an event like Mrs. Twopenny.� I was really putting my cards on the table. For just a moment, I realized that I was here in this backwoods house with some guy I hardly knew, telling him my darkest, deepest secrets and doubts. I tried not to stand outside of myself and see it like that. Because it seemed like the first time in a long, long time that I might be getting back to some kind of normal, and I didn�t want that to end.

Rennick went to the fridge and took out bread, cheese, and butter. �I feel it too, sometimes. I know what you mean. I think���I think it ties into body chemistry, electrical impulses in the body. That�s how a lot of what you do and what I see works. I think that�s how it all works. Proving it is another story.�

He turned toward the stove. I sat at the table again, and when he passed by the sink window with the sun streaming through, the light hit him; for a split second I saw a rainbow of colors around him, enveloping him, lots of reds and oranges. It left as soon as I noticed it. I blinked a few times and rubbed my eyes. I almost said something. I started to, but I stopped myself. Had I just seen his aura?

No. I dismissed it. A trick of the light.

�Rennick, I have a zillion questions.�

�Well, that�s a relief. Just ask. I want you to.� He flipped the toasted bread with a spatula. �I just don�t know how to get started. I don�t want to scare you away.� And although he wasn�t turned completely toward me, I could see in his face that he meant it. His brow was furrowed, his jaw tight. He was nervous.

I sighed. �Tell me exactly what you see.�

�Colors. Halos of color. Sometimes colors that seem like they are radiating off of people�s skin, their whole bodies, like an outline.�

�So what exactly is interesting about Mia-Joy�s?� I asked.

�Jagged, ripped hole in her aura.�

I watched him finish toasting the sandwiches. Had I been in Chicago, I would�ve laughed right here. Thrown my head back and laughed at the whole situation. But I was not in Chicago.

Rennick went to the fridge, got a jar of pickles, a pitcher of tea. He put the grilled cheese on plates, scooped out a couple of pickles from the jar, and brought the food to the table. �Grilled cheese and pickles. Gotta love �em.�

�So, a hole in an aura, does that usually mean���what?�

�There is no manual,� he said, taking a seat next to me, handing me a glass of ice-cold tea. �But I�ve seen similar things with some people. It usually isn�t good.� He looked at me hard.

I swallowed. �Her diabetes? She�s okay, though. Her mother said that it smoothed out since she switched to shots.�

He nodded.

�You�re not telling me the whole thing here.�

�I think she�s not okay. Mia-Joy will have a setback, if I�m right. And then we�ll have to, you know, figure out a way for you to��� He let his voice trail off, and I realized then what he meant. He looked at me like maybe he had said too much.

�So you�re sure that I�m a healer?� I said, taking a bite of my sandwich.

�Aren�t you?�

I shrugged.

�My grandmother�ll tell you stories about my mom, about the people she healed, the lives she saved. But she�ll tell you too that Mom only really remembered the few that she couldn�t help, the ones she couldn�t heal.�

I sat silently looking out the window at the garage. Thinking of the beauty it held. Thinking of Sophie.

�Your sister,� he said, setting down his sandwich. �I know what you�re carrying around.�

We sat in silence, and I heard the clock above the kitchen sink ticking quietly. Bouncer came and rested his head on Rennick�s lap. Rennick gave him a pickle. �The monster eats pickles, for God�s sake.� He shook his head and laughed like it was the funniest thing he�d ever heard. The timbre of his laugh. It was a beautiful note, G-sharp, then F-sharp.

�Go lie down,� he told the dog, and the dog did.

I swallowed hard. �Sophie���It was the same as with Mrs. Two�I mean, your grandmother, the whole thing. It just didn�t end up the same, you know? How can I ever���I mean, who knows if I might save somebody or kill them?� I shook my head, put my hand out for Bouncer, clicked my tongue. He came over and let me scratch him behind the ears. I needed something else to do, to look at, besides the well of concern in Rennick�s eyes.

Rennick shook his head. �I don�t think��

I couldn�t hear his excuses right then. I didn�t want to. I changed the subject. �Tell me about your mother. Her power.�

He didn�t like this, and there was something there, in the way he held his jaw, guarded. �She could only summon it about half the time she wanted, Grandma said.�

At that moment, the front door opened. An older man with a shaggy beard and salt-and-pepper hair came in. When I saw his hat, I realized it was the man who had been sleeping in the recliner in Mrs. Twopenny�s room. Of course. Dodge.

�Hey-o,� he called. He walked into the kitchen with heavy footfalls, whistling loudly.

�Dodge,� Rennick said, standing up from the table. �This is Corrine.�

Dodge stood up straighter, put a hand to his old fishing hat in greeting. He looked kind of like a quarter note standing there. �The famous Corrine. How can I ever��� His voice trailed off. He held his hands to his heart in a gesture that was at once so genuine and so heartbreaking, I had to look away. �Thank you, my dear.� He walked toward me, put out his hand. I considered it. Then I offered my own. He held it between both of his for a beat, then kissed the back of it. He looked at Rennick, winked as he let go of my hand. �Prettier than you even said.�

�Dodge,� Rennick admonished him.

I tried not to blush, however impossible that was. Dodge�s eyes held mine, and I saw a bit of Rennick in his grizzled gray face. The same dark blue eyes. I smiled. How could I possibly be standing in this man�s house? A man whose wife I had just saved from imminent death? A man who accepted that fact with no question?

I didn�t know which seemed more impossible.

�You want a sandwich?� Rennick asked, gesturing toward the stove.

�No sirree,� Dodge said, pulling out my chair for me at the table. Rennick would not meet my gaze, and I saw the little boy inside him again. He didn�t blush, but he laughed to himself, head down.

Dodge crouched down to nuzzle Bouncer. �Got myself some pickled herring.�

�Fabulous,� Rennick said, wrinkling his nose.

�Son, just go on out to the lake, sit on the swing if you can�t handle the smell of it. Take the rest of your lunches. You can have some privacy.�

�You mind, Dodge?�

Dodge shook his head.

Rennick grabbed his plate and motioned to me. He avoided my eyes, held the back door open for me. �This okay, Corrine?�

I nodded. �Nice to meet you,� I told Dodge, grabbing my food.

�My pleasure,� Dodge said, giving me a wink. Bouncer stayed with Rennick�s grandfather, and we went out the back door toward the lake. It was gorgeous back there. I hadn�t fully appreciated the wildflowers when I had been there yesterday. The scents. The scenery.

I took in the big vegetable garden too. I spied ripe purple eggplant. The frilly edges of coriander. No wonder Mr. Twopenny and my mother knew each other. Mom would love these gardens.

Rennick and I sat down on the big old swing that hung from the magnolia-covered arbor. It faced the lake, which was murky and swampy, yet serene and beautiful in its own way. The muddy green tones of the water reflected in the way the sun played on the waves, the grasses and bulrushes swaying in the breeze on the water�s edge, the throaty, buzzing croaks of the locusts and frogs echoing in the distance.

�So how long have you lived here with your grandfather?�

I picked the crust off my sandwich, pushed my feet on the ground to move the swing a bit. Rennick smelled like his clothes had been dried on a line outside on the first day of spring. And the shape of his jaw just kept drawing my eyes. Chiseled, that was a good word for it.

�I moved here last summer.� He looked at me from the corner of his eye and added, �I didn�t get kicked out of Penton.� He wolfed down the last half of his sandwich. I did the same and became very interested in my iced tea, trying not to ask but hoping he would elaborate.

He didn�t. I held my tongue for a quarter rest, tried to wait out a whole note. I wanted to hear more. A crow swooped down and cawed near the water�s edge, picked up something in its mouth. I had to fill the silence.

�Do you think the newspapers, the reporters, will give up after today?� I asked.

�No.�

I hadn�t expected this answer. Rennick turned to me. �Things have been going on in New Orleans.�

�What do you mean?�

�More people like us.� I gave him a look. �People with extrasensory powers. Sixth sense of some kind. Clusters of us.�

Bouncer came storming out of the back door, Dodge following. He walked hurriedly, a hitch in his step, and spoke in a low whisper. �Some reporters at the door a minute ago. Told �em you weren�t here.�

�Should we take a walk?� Rennick looked at me seriously.

�Maybe if I just answer a few questions,� I offered.

�No,� Rennick said. �Bad idea.�

�Take a walk,� Dodge whispered, grabbing Rennick by the shoulder for a moment in such a serious way that it unnerved me. I wondered again how Ruth had died. And how she had lived too, with this secret, with people�s judgments. With all her own doubts?

I followed Rennick, and I got that feeling again that I could see myself from the outside, going off into the woods with someone I hardly knew.

But Rennick motioned for me to follow him, and I felt that tenuous string between us. Some kind of real connection. I wasn�t ready to break it. I wasn�t sure I totally trusted him and everything he said, but he hadn�t steered me wrong yet.

I went with my gut instinct. My heart knew this guy in some weird and cosmic sense.

I went with Rennick, not deep into the woods, just along the edge, and I was a little bit scared about everything. A little bit chilly in the shadowy canopy of the trees. A little bit excited about how every few steps Rennick would turn around and check on me with an easy smile.

My senses came alive as we hiked through the little patch of forest that backed up to Rennick�s grandfather�s property, the sprawling live oaks, the pungent pine trees, the swampy masses of kudzu. It felt good to hike, to walk and feel my body move and not to hold it in, not to cross my arms and hold my limbs close. I found a sliver of freedom out there in the shade of the forest, and I felt the blood pumping through my veins, my heart working. And I liked it.

We quickly came to a little shack, really only three ramshackle walls with a slanted aluminum roof. Rennick said it was a hunting blind, his grandfather�s, although I had never even heard of one before.

�Dodge and I camp out here and hunt for deer and turkey.�

I tried to picture Rennick as a hunter. It didn�t seem to work. But I reminded myself that I didn�t really know this guy. At all. He sat down on the floor of the hunting blind, rested his back on the inside wall, and patted the ground next to him. �We only shoot what we can eat. Nothing more,� he said, as if he had been reading my mind.

�Before, you said that you knew someone like me, long ago. Were you speaking of your mother? Or��

�Someone else too. Dell was his name.�

�Dell.� I sat down next to him, my shoulder grazing his. �Could he just heal anyone? Anything? Did he ever hurt when he didn�t mean to?�

�We were kids, Corrine. I think Dell didn�t quite know what he had. It�s only looking back that I sort of put the pieces together.�

�Could I talk to him?�

Rennick shook his head, his eyes dark. �You don�t remember me, do you?� he asked, looking up at me through his lashes. He looked almost apologetic.

�Should I remember you?�

�We met once a long time ago.� He didn�t look at me now but instead drew in the dirt with a stick�his initials, a compass rose, squiggles.

I thought hard. Rennick Lane? Wouldn�t I have remembered meeting this guy? This part nerd/part dreamboat/part meddlesome Scooby-Doo kid who showed up right in the middle of trouble? �I don�t remember. Where? When?�

�Summer. We were probably nine or ten. Lake Pontchartrain.�

It hit me then. �You were the boy with the sparklers?� I looked at him wide-eyed, my jaw dropped. He nodded, didn�t quite meet my eye. I couldn�t believe it. I remembered that night. Of course I remembered that night.

I tried to reconcile this cool, easy young man with the awkward kid I had met on that Fourth of July.

He had worn thick black-rimmed glasses and had the kind of hair that lots of ten-year-old boys have: unwashed, untamed, too long in parts, too short in others. His ears stuck out from his head, and he was all hands and feet and teeth. Gangly. He had been an absolute nerd, no question.

So, I had been right about that. And for some reason, I liked that.

My family and I�Sophie had been just three or four years old then�were having a campfire on the shore with a big gang of my parents� friends and their kids. It was a Fourth of July tradition. Rennick�or the kid I knew now as Rennick�sort of hung around the outside of our little group, on the fringe, for a long time that night. He was digging a lot near the waves, near the rocks, I remembered that.

An older boy, Rory Kelleher, started picking on Rennick. Calling him names. Looking back, I think that Rory kid was trying to impress these two blond girls in bikini tops and cutoff jeans.

The whole thing went on through the evening, with Rennick moving along the shore, digging with a stick, Mia-Joy and I playing kick the can with some friends, and the older group of kids and Rory doing nothing, like only fourteen-year-olds can. And this Rory kid kept yelling over to Rennick once in a while. Calling him a nerd and a dork.

It wasn�t anything too horrible, but even at nine I knew what a moron that Rory kid was. I remembered clearly that I was building a hill of sand for the tin can to sit on, and I was going over the circle of sharps in my head as I did it. And I saw Rory filling up a water balloon from a canteen. He called over to the nerdy boy, to Rennick, �Hey, kid! Come show me what you found down there digging!�

Rennick looked up all eager, glasses cocked at a ridiculous angle. The girls around Rory giggled with delight, and I just couldn�t stomach it. I stood up and shouted real loud, �Rory Kelleher, would you just shut up, you fat bully? Go bust that water balloon on your own head!�

I got busy playing kick the can then, but I could feel Rory�s stare on me, the whispers of those older girls. I also heard a few snickers from some of my playmates. But what really made me smile was the sound of the little boy�s laugh. Just one yelp, one guffaw, right from the belly, had gotten out too quickly for him to edit.

The timbre of that laugh. It hadn�t grown to G-sharp yet, but in my memory I could hear the hint of it.

That had been Rennick.

And it had been Rennick who had stood rapt, twenty, maybe thirty feet away, still and at attention when I played the violin around the campfire that night. I had been impressed with that. Because so many people didn�t care, so many of the kids ran around, screaming, playing, ignoring me. And that was fine. But that kid�Rennick�he listened intently. And when I chose my second song to play, I picked Canon in D. For him. I thought he would like it. A lot of action.

When it was dark and the teenagers had found better things to do down the beach at their own fire, my mom began making s�mores for us, and she told me to politely go offer that left-out kid one of them. That�s what she said, I remembered that: �that left-out kid.�

�He seems like he wants to join you guys,� Mom had told me. �Invite him to play with you.�

So I did. He waved over his brother, an older, tough-looking kid with the shaggiest dishwater-blond hair. They both had dirt on their faces, and I had no idea where their parents were, but these kids were more than happy to join us in a game of flashlight tag. I remembered that Rennick came walking up, and he didn�t look at me but said, �It�s so true when you play your violin.�

I always remembered that, till this day. I knew what he meant.

But what happened after that game of tag was what he probably remembered most. Rennick brought out some sparklers. My dad�s friend Mr. Parker lit a few with his cigarette lighter, and the rest of us kids lit our sparklers off each other�s. Well, Rennick�s brother�s hair caught a spark. The wind had been just right. I was spinning in circles with my sparkler, my feet squishing against the now-cool sand, and I was watching my sparkler leave a trail of rainbow lights. And then from the corner of my eye, I saw his hair just light up, a big poof of a flame, yellow and orange and bright and fast.

His hands went to his head, but it was like he didn�t quite know what was happening. I acted fast. I dropped my sparkler, ran the few feet to him, and tackled him onto the sand, rolled his head in it.

When I was sure the flames were out, I got up. By now, he was crying, shaking, his long hair singed on the right side. Our parents had formed a circle, someone called 911. The rest of the memory was a blur.

I shook my head, brought myself back to reality. I saw the grown-up Rennick doodling in the dirt. He had written his brother�s name in it, Cale. I remembered it now. I had thought it seemed like such a funny name back then. I didn�t think I had even learned Rennick�s name that night, but he had thanked me over and over, his father too.

�Your dad was an Army guy,� I said, remembering his stern manner, a close-cropped crew cut.

Rennick stopped drawing, looking at me very seriously. �You saved Cale.�

�I can�t believe that was you,� I said, but even as I said it, I could see the familiar hints of that boy in this young man: the way he held his brow, kind of led with his eyes�the curiosity there, a sort of indifference toward the periphery.

�How is your brother? Your dad? Where are they?�

�Dad is in the Air Force. Cale joined the Army right after school. Last year.�

�He graduated from Penton?�

He gave me a funny look then, incredulous. �Cale didn�t get kicked out of Penton either,� he said.

I gave him a hard look. �So why are there all these rumors about you?� I said, knowing I was walking the line.

�Well, rumors are not truth.� His voice was tinged with hurt.

And now I was backpedaling. �Rennick, I��

�People talk. Don�t believe everything you hear, Corrine. I�m just different. People like to���I don�t know.�

�No, tell me.� I knew I was on shaky ground here. But I had to ask. I had to know. I had been through too much bullshit to just talk around everything forever and ever.

Rennick rubbed at his chin, and he looked up at me through his lashes. He laughed, not a funny laugh, but an I-can�t-believe-I�m-going-to-tell-her-this laugh. �You know,� he said, giving me a smile, �you aren�t the only one who knows how to keep people at arm�s length. I have a little practice in the self-preservation mode myself.�

�So tell me why.� I was pressing, I knew it. But what else could I do?

�Let�s turn the tables, Corrine Harlowe. Why should I trust you with my secrets?�

�You sought me out. This is on you.�

�True enough,� he said, smiling. �But what if I like this dangerous, handsome-rebel approach? Why should I get rid of that so soon?� He arched his eyebrow and my stomach flip-flopped.

�It seems to work for you at school. But (a), you aren�t a stranger because we met on that beach. And (b), no one said anything about handsome.� I raised my eyebrow right back.

The laugh. Golden. Ringing through the trees. �You are a tough one.� He considered for a moment. �I didn�t really know my mom. She died when I was a baby.� He looked at me like he didn�t know if he was going to go on.

�I�m sorry,� I said.

�I was stillborn. Born dead. She saved me, though, with the touch.�

�You�re kidding. Whoa.� It was all I could say. I marveled at this nugget of information. One little sentence. But so much history. He must�ve been able to see it on my face, the gravity of his revelation.

�I know,� he said, nodding.

The wind blew through the trees around us, and I tried to think about what it would be like to be him, to know so much but really so little about this thing around us. To be surrounded by it, defined by it.

I cleared my throat. �So how does it relate to school? Not that it isn�t noteworthy or��

�Let�s just say that Cale never forgave me for her death.�

�Why? But that doesn�t make sense.�

�Neither does blaming yourself for Lucy Rawlings�s death. Or Sophie�s.� He wasn�t joking with me now. There was no harshness or sarcasm. Just a tender, soft note in his voice.

�It�s not the same. It�s not that simple.�

�I know. It never is.�

Off in the distance, I heard a three-note whistle, and Rennick got up from the ground, dusting off the seat of his jeans. �It�s Dodge�s whistle. They must be gone now.�

He held out his hand to help me up, which I took, but when my hand touched his, my scalp tingled, itched. Again my skin tightened, the air around us charged, and I quickly drew my hand away, got up from the ground on my own.

I followed him silently. I wanted to ask more questions, but I felt it there, heating up and coming to life behind my sternum. So I hung back, walked behind him, tried to digest all that I had learned. I did know Rennick Lane, my heart did know him.

We walked slowly back toward his house, silent. If the walk out into the woods had been filled with a sense of beauty and freedom, the walk back for me was a blur. All I could see were my feet. My flip-flops, one in front of the other.

About halfway to the house, Bouncer met us in the woods, tail wagging and tongue lolling. He passed Rennick right up and came and nuzzled my leg. I chose a perfectly sized stick from the underbrush and we played fetch all the way home.

When we were in clear view of the house, I could see the new smoky pink and purple formations of sunset light refracting off of the lake. I stopped in my tracks, scratching a panting Bouncer under his muzzle. �It�s beautiful here.�

�Promise me you�ll be careful, Corrine,� Rennick said. He stood in front of me, did not turn around, but I could see this line to his shoulders, the fear, the resolve in it, and it made me wonder about his story a little more.

�How should I be careful?� I said, my voice barely above a whisper.

�Just be careful. Keep yourself safe. And don�t worry too much about what they print in the papers about you.�

�Okay,� I said. He had me worried. I was still coming to terms with the idea of this power itself; now to have to top that off with fear that my power might not be looked on favorably���I didn�t know what to think. My head was spinning. My insides felt oddly hollow and brittle, like I could snap.

�Let�s get out of here, do something fun,� he said, finally turning around.

�Okay,� I said. Rennick opened the back door. He ushered Bouncer into the house and called out to Dodge to let him know we were leaving.

�Doesn�t it seem a little unreal to you that we met all that time ago?� I still couldn�t believe the coincidence.

�It doesn�t seem so crazy.� Rennick led us toward his Jeep.

�Why not?�

�Your aura is pulling me in.�

�Oh, really?� I smiled in spite of myself.

�Your aura loves me already,� he said, opening the passenger door, and he gave me a smile, his one-dimpled smile, and winked.

I let out a laugh as I took my seat, and I tried to ignore the way my stomach flip-flopped at his words. Rennick got in beside me and started the Jeep. �Where are we going?� I asked, glad to be anywhere but home. I needed something to do while my mind worked on everything. Could this all be real? Me? My powers? Rennick? I couldn�t take it all in, and I caught myself thinking about Chicago. If I had been in Chicago, if I had been swimming laps at Chaney Pool, walking home from there at dusk, on our Midwestern streets, under our Midwestern streetlights, I would�ve laughed at all this stuff. Sixth sense. We Midwesterners were too practical for that.

�You�ll see,� Rennick answered. �It�s why I moved here. With Dodge.�

He drove us into the city, through the French Quarter and out toward the wharf. And I had to admit to myself that everything, the touch, all of it seemed more plausible here. This city of ghost stories, birthplace of American voodoo. Even the way the air felt on your skin in the Crescent City. It was all a little bit left of center. Things felt different here, with just a hint of the mystical, the magical, the impossible.

�You know, I thought about you for a long time after that night, after that July Fourth,� Rennick said. Goose bumps trailed up and down my arms.

�You did?�

�I saw your aura even then. It was unmistakable. I mean, I didn�t know what I was looking at exactly. I know more now.�

�What do you know about me?� I said, my voice quiet, waiting.

He held the steering wheel tight, looking straight ahead. I saw him draw in a deep breath. �I know you�re brave. I know you�re generous and kind. You saved a young kid�s life that night on the beach. You�re whip-smart and stubborn. Decisive. And I remember you have a laugh like a sleigh bell.�

I thought of my mom. I always thought her laugh sounded like a jingle bell. �Haven�t I laughed since you re-met me?�

�Not truly.�

Well, considering the string of events since I had re-encountered Rennick Lane, that was understandable.

�Do you still play the violin?�

�Yes. No. I did.�

He nodded. �Corrine,� he said, and there was a seriousness to his face now. �Thank you. For saving Lila. You�ll never know what that does for Dodge.�

And there it was, this tangible thing between us, this knowledge and certainty that I had brought his grandmother virtually back to life.

I saved Lila Twopenny. I said that sentence to myself. But who I saw in my mind was Sophie. Beautiful Sophie.

Rennick pulled us into a small marina. Three boats�two large bay boats and one small motorboat�were docked, and there was a small storefront, with hand-printed signs for bait and ice. A larger sign, weatherworn and charming, declared in bold blue and yellow letters: CRESCENT CHARTERS.

�This is Dodge�s outfit. Been running it for sixty years. Dad was going to make him shut it down. He couldn�t keep up with stuff. The hard labor end of things.�

�Does he fish for shrimp or something, sell them in town?�

�No, it�s a charter company. He takes people out who want the real N�awlins Angling Experience, ya know?� Rennick put on his best drawl when he said this and I nodded a little. �You�d be surprised. Businesses, vacationers, Northerners, they come down here, and they want the experience of fishing in the marshes. They�ve heard the stories about how big the redfish can get. They want to see alligators. So they rent out a little slice of bayou life.�

�They pay Dodge to take them out on his boat?�

�Yeah, and they can drink beer, enjoy themselves, fish with someone who knows what they�re doing, who does all the real work of it. It�s a real load of shit. Hell, I even gut and clean their catch for them at the end for a fee. You�d be surprised how much people will pay when they don�t want to deal with a little mess.�

�So you came to help out Dodge? That�s awfully nice of you.�

Rennick got an embarrassed look on his face, his eyes cast down. �That�s not entirely true. I mean, yes, Dodge had a heart attack last spring, then Lila went into the home. It got real bad, real quick, but when Dad said that Dodge couldn�t keep the charter going, it was just going to kill him. I could see it. I mean, I�m not exaggerating. It would do him in. So I volunteered.�

I quelled the urge to reach out and grab Rennick�s hand as we walked across the gravel parking lot. We were nearly to the bait shack. �You showed him kindness,� I said, almost in a whisper.

Rennick stopped, turned toward me. �Corrine, it makes me sound like a saint. But the truth is, Dodge gets me. I needed a change. It worked both ways. My father and I don�t relate.� He didn�t continue.

I didn�t know what to say, so I didn�t say anything.

�The stories at school make me sound better, cooler. Sorry to disappoint.� He said this with a laugh, but I could hear a bit of a real question in there.

�Don�t say that. Don�t even think that,� I said. �Bad boys are highly overrated.� Even as I said it, I realized that this hinted at something between us. Was I overstepping the boundaries?

At first, Rennick didn�t seem to notice. He only took keys out of his pocket and laughed. But I saw something lighten in the way he held his shoulders, no longer in defense. And then the soft upturn at the corners of his mouth. He liked that I had said it. Had he been hiding behind this bad-boy story?

The pieces of his real story. His reasons for coming here. I wanted to know the whole story, but I didn�t want to pry. I could tell the feelings here, they ran deep. This meant a lot to him, and my reaction did too. While I watched Rennick fumble for the right key to the bait shop, I realized this was a moment I would revisit many, many times. An important moment. Something very much at the core of Rennick had just been approached. And I wanted to do right by that, to hold it with me, keep it in my heart. Even more than the pictures on the wall of his garage, this was him.

My heart knows him. The words hit me out of nowhere again when Rennick opened the bait shop door. I pushed them away. But they stayed there, on the outskirts of my thoughts. Where was that phrase from, anyway?

Rennick flipped on the lights. �Why don�t you fill up a cooler?� he said. �Grab a few Cokes and stuff. I�ll get the rods and night crawlers.�

�We�re going fishing?�

He turned around then, caught me with a dazzling smile. �Nobody will be looking for you out on the water.� I must�ve looked unsure. �Is that okay, Corrine?�

I nodded. I was so grateful for the distraction. For everything. And for the chance to be completely alone with Rennick for a few more hours. But was it a sin in a port city like this to admit that you�d never been fishing before?

We took the small motorboat a few miles down the coastline to a marshy inlet where Rennick said we could catch redfish or just sit and be. I liked the way he tilted his face up to the sky when he said that. I liked the intimacy it insinuated.

The sun was at its fiery noon peak in the sky. So I wore a sloppy white old-man fishing hat from the bait shop to protect my pale skin, and I was happy for the cover it gave me. I could glance out from under it and watch Rennick as he steered the boat, and then as he set up our gear. He moved deftly. Confidently. He felt at home here.

When he killed the motor, he sat still for a long time, and then he pointed out an egret on the shore. It was a beautiful white bird, tall and fragile-looking.

�Dodge swears that an egret once flew down and stole the hat right off his head while he was fishing. He swears it was because he can sit still and be more patient than any other fisherman in the world. I think he was asleep.� Rennick laughed, his eyes crinkling up in that adorable way, and the sound of it echoed in the mangrove trees around us. The egret stretched its wings into a broad expanse, and once again settled into position.

Rennick reached for the fishing poles. He handed me one, made of some sort of extremely light metal with a large shiny reel on the end. I wasn�t a moron, I could figure out what was supposed to be done here. But how exactly did one get the line out into the water?

Now Rennick was opening up his own little cooler, much like the one I had packed full of Cokes and water. �Dug these up myself in the backyard with Bouncer.� He opened up a little Styrofoam container that was packed full of black dirt and fat writhing worms.

Not wanting to look like an amateur, I picked one right up, let it slide around in my hand for a moment, dangled it in front of my face, watching it squirm, trying not to worry about the worm, trying not to think of the crawdad, everything.

�I need to put a hook on the end of your line first,� Rennick said. He bent down to his tackle box, rocking the boat a little bit, and looked up at me from under the fringe of his lashes. �You ever been fishing, Corrine?�

�In theory.�

It was a stupid answer, I realized this immediately. I just meant that I had seen people do it. But Rennick began to howl with laughter. �In theory?� He held on to his stomach, and he laughed, and the boat rocked on the water in time with his guffaws. I threw my worm at him, and it hit him right on the cheek and then dropped to the bottom of the boat. Rennick swatted at it, then laughed some more. I wanted to dissolve into a puddle of liquid dorkiness right there.

When I couldn�t help it anymore, I began to laugh with him, and that�s when I reached over the edge of the boat and splashed him, just a friendly little splash. And then he did the same to me.

The water felt cool and clean on this hot day. After a few rounds of splashing, Rennick stood up in the rocking boat and secured our fishing poles. He pulled his shirt above his head, still laughing. I tried not to gawk. I tried. But oh, his torso, it was beautiful. Thin and ropy. Defined muscles. His abs tanned and golden from the sun. �Stand up,� he told me.

�No way,� I told him.

�Don�t make me carry you,� he threatened. �You started this.� He pointed at me, smiling. And that�s when he flipped his sandals off and just jumped in. I stood up and watched him over the side, the boat rolling with the motion of his jump.

�It feels so good,� he said, surfacing, shaking his hair. �Here, give me a hand up.�

I didn�t even hesitate. I offered him my hand to help him into the boat, and just as it was sinking in that I had offered my hand, I realized that Rennick had me. He didn�t want into the boat.

And he pulled me in. I laughed just as I realized how gullible I was, and then I was tumbling headfirst into the water.

It slid over my skin, crisp and cold, and it was clean, practically clear blue. I stayed under longer than I needed to, just to feel it against me, and opened my eyes. I could see him across from me, and his eyes were open too. I smiled. He smiled.

And that�s when it clicked on.

It scared me, startled me. So when Rennick reached for my hand again, I didn�t grab on. I shook my head and swam away, feeling the water move around me, feeling each one of my old swimmer�s strokes cutting into the force of the water.

He caught up to me quickly, and when I stopped swimming we broke the surface. I treaded water, and I could see we were a good distance from the boat. �Let�s race,� I told him.

It had been months since I�d trained, but I told myself it was like riding a bike. He squinted in a challenge, and then we both dove under. But I was off like a shot. I had always been good right out of the gate. Always took my lead that way.

When I slapped the bow of the boat with my hand, Rennick was right on my heels, but I had beat him. Fair and square.

I gave him my best triumphant smile.

�I am not slow,� he said, disbelieving, shaking the water from his hair.

�I�m just faster,� I told him, gloating.

�You are full of surprises,� he said. He had a bead of water right at the tip of his nose, and I wanted so badly to touch it, wipe it away. But I didn�t.

Rennick pulled himself up onto the rope ladder ahead of me, and when he offered me his hand, I didn�t take it. Just a quick shake of my head. If he noticed, he didn�t say anything.

We spent the rest of the afternoon and into the twilight with Rennick teaching me how to cast the line, how to bait with ballyhoo, how to take a hook out of a caught fish. It was all exciting and fun, and quite high up there on my list of favorite distractions. My favorite being Rennick with his shirt off. Second being his eyelashes.

I loved watching him cast the line, maneuvering the pole just so as he reeled in a catch. The muscles in his arms flexed, and he held his mouth in this perfect pout of concentration. It was obviously all so second nature to him. He threw back all of the fish we caught, dismissing them as not big enough. He got a little self-conscious while he was throwing back the last one, a pretty large sunfish. He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye.

What was it that he thought he was apologizing for? Could he really feel as though I would judge him for not being macho enough or something? I tried to picture what kind of home life could have nurtured that in him. I pictured a young Rennick, my Fourth of July Rennick, and my heart hurt for him. And I was just so thankful for Dodge. For what he meant to Rennick.

I caught my first fish, a catfish the size of a snow boot. �This is the ugliest thing I�ve ever seen!� I said, staring at the nasty thing, its glassy eyes staring right back at me. It was slippery and wet, with thick, slimy whiskers. It bucked in my hands, still moving its mouth, looking for water.

Rennick took it from me, unhooked it, held it in both of his hands, and, of course, shoved it close to my face, making smooching noises. �He just wants one kiss, Corrine.� The catfish whiskers tickled my cheek, and I laughed, pushing it away. Rennick tossed it back in the water with a laugh.

As the afternoon wore on and the sun became too much, Rennick turned the motor on and steered us into a thick shady patch near the shore. We sat in the quiet little hideout of kudzu and mangrove trees, eating weird little snacks that Rennick had packed, like corn nuts and celery stalks that had seen better days.

It was a fun afternoon. A beautiful day of distraction. Even when the motor wouldn�t start when we were ready to call it a day, Rennick just grabbed the two oars from the cargo space and started to row. I offered over and over to help him, but he wouldn�t hear of it. And I tried not to wallow in the romance of the gesture�but I did. I stared at Rennick�s silhouette against the pink sunset on the water. I watched him through the haze of twilight, with the heady, sleepy feeling of a long day in the sun.

But really, in the forefront of my mind all day was the big question: Was I going to trust that my hands carried the power to heal rather than the power to kill? Did I really believe it?

And that question had been there when Rennick�s hands held on to my fishing pole, showing me how to keep just the right tension, how to slowly reel in my line. His hands were close to mine, only a sliver away, a breath. But he didn�t touch me. Didn�t push. Didn�t ask. Not yet.

In my heart, I thanked him for not bringing it up yet. He knew it was there. Between us. Around us. But I had to ignore it for a while. I had to. Because these were questions that just had to simmer.

My phone buzzed in my pocket as we walked back to the Jeep. �It�s my mom,� I told him.

�I can take you back,� he said, but then shot me a look, raised his eyebrows. �But I�m good to stay out.�

�Yeah?� I said. Were we feeling each other out?

�Yeah,� he said, smiling as he opened the passenger door for me.

�I�m hungry,� I said.

�Where would you like to go?�

�Anywhere with air-conditioning.�

The tapping on my window woke me in the morning. The new light of the day was just starting to eke into the room, all purple and blue in the slants between the pear tree branches. In my dream, Seth Krane was knocking repeatedly at my front door, but when I woke, I knew the sound immediately. Pebbles at the window.

I patted at my hair as I leaned my forehead onto the cool glass of the window, my hand already opening in a wave. There he was, a duffel bag slung over his shoulder, a box in his hands, his face full of something. Purpose.

I threw my blue fuzzy robe around myself and found Mom and Dad in the kitchen drinking coffee, Dad dressed for work and Mom looking a lot like me.

�He could�ve just knocked,� Dad said with a smirk. �What�s all the stuff? Is he planning on moving in?�

�Very funny,� I answered. �I don�t really know.�

I opened the back door and stepped out onto the stoop. The morning was really something, cool for New Orleans, with dew-wet grass and birdsong in the air. I could�ve just let him into the kitchen, but there was a part of me that wanted him and his visit all to myself.

Even with so much on my plate, and even with my morning breath, my tangled hair, my ratty old bunny slippers, I couldn�t help how I reacted to him. But there was something about him this morning, Rennick in all of his glory. Oh God, the shape of his shoulders through his T-shirt, the corners of his mouth as they turned up just as he raised his head to see me, the plane of his jaw. His hair was disheveled and he had on faded jeans, a tattered T-shirt. He was in full science-geek mode.

�Hi,� I said.

�We have to figure this thing out. Ourselves. You�ll believe it wholeheartedly. You�ll own it.�

I loved the way that sounded. Own it. �Then I can go find Seth Krane.�

�So you�re accepting this?� he asked.

�I am,� I said, grabbing the box from him. �What are we going to do?�

�Make a Leyden jar, for starters.� We moved toward the back door.

�We gotta have some rules,� I said. �I call the shots. If it gets too much. If I feel it getting���out of control, you have to listen to me and leave.� I had my hand on the doorknob and looked back at Rennick.

He nodded. Did some kind of crossing-his-heart, Boy Scout salute. He wanted me to smile, but I couldn�t. My mind�s eye kept flashing to Sophie�s little face. The goggles, the rocks in her hand, the empty look of her death on the Lake Michigan shore.

���Cause I believe it, but I�m still scared. Of hurting someone,� I added, averting my eyes. �Seth Krane. Anyone. You.�

�You�re scared to move on from this.�

I rubbed my knuckles on my lips, opened the back door. I nodded just once. There was some truth in that. I couldn�t deny it.

I expected Mom and Dad to be in the kitchen, all greetings and raised eyebrows, but I heard Dad�s truck pulling out of the garage, and so I assumed Mom was upstairs. I was getting privacy. They probably had talked about this. What had Mom called my friendship with Rennick, my attempt to help Seth Krane? Good for the soul.

I didn�t know about that. But I had to do something.

�One more rule,� I said, unloading the box onto the kitchen table. I turned to look at Rennick, who was pulling all kinds of stuff out of his gym bag. Lengths of wire. A roll of tinfoil. A small cooler.

He looked up from under the fringe of his lashes. �Anything.�

�I can�t touch anyone yet. I just can�t do that for���

�Got it,� he said, and continued to unload stuff onto the kitchen table. I watched him for longer than necessary. Did I imagine that he swallowed hard against that comment? Did he care about this? Me not touching him? What was I to him? Who was he to me?

I pushed these thoughts away.

He pointed to the glass jar on the kitchen table, the roll of tinfoil, a bottle of carpenter�s glue. �I already spoke with your parents. I hope that was okay. I just wanted them to know what we were doing.�

�What are we doing?� Oh Jesus, this sounded like a loaded question.

And something�embarrassment?�quickly flashed across Rennick�s face. �Only changing the world.� He gave me his most mischievous smile, and my mouth turned up.

He took this as encouragement. �We are going to plunge into this. Do some real work on this. Scientific stuff. Tests. My kind of thing.�

�I�m in, but��

�You know, we could contact the Tulane lab, include the doctors working on��

�No!�

Mom came in then to fill her coffee cup. �I can make pancakes?� she offered.

�No thanks,� I said.

�Sure,� Rennick answered at the same time. The two of them chuckled. He gave me a wink. �Moms love me,� he said.

I rolled my eyes. �Of course they do.�

�You need to eat too, Corrine,� Mom said as she began to take ingredients out of the cupboard.

�If you say so.�

�So what are you going to make here?� she asked, eyeing the glass jar.

�A Leyden jar,� Rennick answered. �It�s part of our scientific approach.� He smiled easily at my mom.

I didn�t share in the smile. I did, however, resist�over and over again�the urge to close the space between Rennick and me, to sniff the scent of him, the sheets-dried-outside-on-the-first-day-of-spring smell that seemed to emanate from him. I wanted to kiss him for showing up this morning with all of this. For his plan of action. For his dedication.

And I wanted to kiss him for other reasons too. Just draw him near, run my hands through that ridiculous rock star hair, lick the stubble on his chin.

I absolutely loved him for showing up this morning, for coming back and trying.

I took the scissors from Rennick and began to cut the tinfoil as he instructed. �Just glue it all around the jar,� he told me. �It�s like an early battery.�

It felt right to be doing this in my kitchen, working at something tangible. This was good, productive, and maybe a little dangerous.

When we were finished with the Leyden jar�and the pancakes�he opened a cooler.

�I don�t want to,� I said.

�Corrine, they�re crawdads. We�re not using lab chimps.�

I looked up at the ceiling, took a deep breath. �I�ve read as much as I could online. There isn�t much.�

�I know.� He sat across from me. �But let�s get serious. The first step is that you have to control it. Whatever it is, you have to own it. Maybe summon it.�

I tried not to balk at this. Summon it. �Can you summon the power to see auras?�

He seemed to consider the idea. �Yeah. I see them always. But sometimes I want to see them more clearly. Focus. Anyway, that�s what you are going to do. Try and bring that feeling�whatever it is�back.�

�I have always spent so much time and energy praying for that feeling to stay away.� My voice sounded puny.

�You are in control,� he said, and looked at me sternly. �You gotta believe that, Corrine.�

I bit my lip.

�We can stop anytime.�

But could I?

He took out a small crayfish. Placed it on the coffee table, atop a paper plate. �He�s fresh. Hasn�t been dead long. Less than an hour probably. What can you do?�

Rennick sat back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, and smiled, watching me.

I closed my eyes and focused on the symptoms, the things that usually preceded the indigo lens. I thought about the churning in my chest, the engine of power flickering to life under my ribs, and I concentrated.

Nothing.

�It�s probably going to take a while,� Rennick said.

I tried. I really tried. For the better part of an hour, I tried to get myself into some kind of Zen state, some kind of meditation mode that might bring about the power so that I might possibly dream about harnessing it. But nothing. Zilch.

Truth be told, it was difficult to concentrate with Rennick�s eyes on me. It was difficult to do anything except focus on not touching him.

I vowed to myself to try to summon it on my own. Alone. Later.

We played backgammon instead. Rennick won. Of course he won. All three games. When he was packing up his dead bugs and crayfish, he grabbed a sketchbook from his box of goodies and tossed it across the coffee table at me. He made it seem nonchalant, but I caught the look out of the corner of his eye. �For you,� he said. �You can look at them later. I have to go help Dodge out at the dock.�

�Thanks,� I said, knowing that �thanks� didn�t really cover it. He was letting me in, even as I kept my proverbial distance.

�And Mia-Joy is coming with us tomorrow.�

�She is?�

�She is. I saw her at the Shack. She wants in.�

�Of course she does. God forbid I do anything exciting that Mia-Joy might not be a part of.�

Rennick chuckled.

�I�m sorry,� I said, and headed for the stairs, because right then, right when I wasn�t concentrating on it, it had switched on inside my rib cage. Just a little spark, but it caught me off guard. And I felt open, scared. Not in charge. I balked. I had to get away.

Mom left the next morning to register me for classes and buy my books for senior year. It took a little schmoozing, but she gave in. I told her I didn�t want to have to face the possible reporters, answer questions, stuff like that.

I was glad she was doing this errand for me, but what I really wanted was to be alone and have the house to myself.

I almost had qualms about it, because she probably wouldn�t technically approve of my plans, at least the part about me doing them alone. In fact, she�d probably freak. But I knew what I had to do to make peace with this situation, and I didn�t want anyone�Mom or Dad or even Rennick�to try to micromanage it. I had one more experiment, one more test that just had to be done. Logic or no logic.

I took out my old bike from the garden shed and circled around the back alley to avoid the lone news van that wouldn�t give up and leave my street. I rode over to Garden District Pets, which was way too close to Mom�s church for my liking, but it was the only pet store anywhere near me. So I just tried to keep a low profile and get the supplies I needed.

I bungee-tied the cooler to the back of my bike and pedaled home, feeling all sorts of scientific.

At home, I got myself set up in the kitchen. I took out the first fish, using Mom�s slotted spoon. This made me laugh a little bit. Was there room in the scientific method for slotted spoons? I knew I wasn�t trying to publish an article in Scientific American or get myself into MIT. I wasn�t being very scientific, but that was okay. Because this was for me. For my conscience.

The fish was a dingy white with orange spots.

I laid him on the dish towel, and I thought about things, terrible things�about Sophie dying in my arms, the vacant look in Mom�s eyes for so many weeks after, the sound of the handfuls of dirt being thrown onto Sophie�s casket. Sophie in the earth. Sophie gone. I thought of my guilt, the excruciating hollow core inside me when I thought of my dear little sister. I thought of all these horrible things, and my face crumpled, but I didn�t let myself cry. I watched that fish intently, and I held myself close, arms wrapped around myself, waiting. I watched that damn fish. But what I really saw was myself on those first few nights after Sophie�s death, nearly catatonic with what had occurred on the beach. I was back in the hospital, confused, grief-stricken, crazy with guilt. I waited until the fish�s mouth quit trying, just until then.

I tried to channel the awfulness in me, the despair. I thought of all the inexplicable, horrible, life-altering moments that we have to bear. All the things that human hearts have to carry, and we just wonder, why? Why? Why can�t love be enough?

My senses heightened. The drip-drop of the kitchen faucet, the striations in the fish�s scales, the feel of the wood grain underneath my hands as I gripped the table�s edge. All of it crystal clear. I decided it was time to summon it, but the heat was already there. Blossoming. An inferno inside me. Stronger than ever before. I closed my eyes, focused on my purpose, and when I opened them the kitchen was blue. I grabbed for the tiny little fish�not quite dead but almost, from what I could tell�and I held it in my palms, pressed it there, feeling the surge blow through my limbs. And I thought: Kill him. Take his life.

�Prove it!� I yelled.

He wiggled. I opened my palms, and there he was, that mouth moving again, fins flailing anew. Like he was back, had gotten a breath. Back to life.

I dropped him back into the saucepan full of water. Grabbed another with the slotted spoon. Completely alive this time. I focused my energy. �Take the life out of it,� I said to the empty walls of my kitchen.

Nothing happened. I waited. The churning was there, the flowing, pulsating power of the touch was in me, through me, around me.

�Die, you stupid shit!� I screamed.

I threw him back into the water, disappointed. So disappointed. I had finally gotten the nerve to try this, to prove it to myself. And nothing! I tried again and again, more fish. And nothing. I could not kill.

I grabbed the old fern on the windowsill. From what I could tell, I gave it the shock of its lifetime. The surge ran through me, out my fingertips. If anything, the leaves seemed to perk up, the stems seemed to stand a little taller, happier.

�What in the hell?�

I left the fish in the cooler on the counter, and I got on my bike and pedaled back to the pet shop. I had to do it before I lost my nerve. So I rode as fast as I could. The Garden District passed by me through an indigo lens. I blinked it back and watched the blue disappear gradually as I biked, like it was draining from my vision.

I didn�t want to have to do what I had to do, but there was no way out. I could think of nothing better.

The clerk with too many piercings gave me the skunk eye, and I knew that I must look like some kind of wild-eyed freak, but it was what it was.

When I got home, sweaty and crazy-haired, I placed the cardboard box on the table and pulled out the first small white mouse. �Forgive me,� I said to his little pink nose. Mia-Joy would argue that I didn�t really want to hurt the mouse, so of course it wouldn�t work. But I knew that logic didn�t matter. I never wanted to hurt Sophie either.

So I summoned it.

It came alive and forceful, from zero to eighty in my chest, out of nowhere. I cupped the mouse in my hands, his fur soft and warm against my palms. I knew now, after so much recent practice, how to help the surge through my body, sort of focus it with my muscles into my hands. I focused, and I pictured myself draining the life from this warm-blooded creature. I pictured Sophie in my arms on that rocky beach, that empty patch of time that I could never quite recall, and I tried to kill that mouse.

For so many reasons, I tried to kill that mouse.

And I fell to my knees with the exertion of it. I tried and tried, pushing and forcing the surge from my core. The mouse bit me then, and I let him go. He scampered away, underneath the table, his beady eyes staring me down. �You�re alive, you son of a bitch!� I yelled at him.

But then I thought of the missing variable.

Hadn�t it been raining when I hurt Sophie? Water conducted electricity, right? Leyden jars. I pulled myself up from the floor, taking care not to step on the mouse. The blue lens was still in front of my eyes. I walked to the kitchen sink and turned on the faucet. I grabbed the sprayer and just sprayed myself down until I was soaked, until I was standing in the middle of a huge puddle on our kitchen tiles. Then I took the rubber band from my hair and, with a few tries, rigged it onto the sprayer so it would keep spraying on its own. I balanced it against the faucet, backed away, and stood in an arc of kitchen sink rain.

My flip-flops slapped against the water as I went to get another mouse from the box. He looked pretty much the same as the first one, save for a tiny gray spot over his left eye. �Sorry, buddy,� I told him, and then I enclosed him in my hands.

I walked to the perfect spot in the kitchen puddle, let the water fall on me, around me.

The power revved like an engine, and I waited. I controlled it somehow, didn�t let it course out to my limbs until I thought it had reached its maximum potential. I was getting better at this. I concentrated, let the power work itself into a frenzy, and then I let it go, let it do its work. I focused. �Kill this thing!�

It shuddered through me. Harder, more forcefully than ever, racking my body, clanking my teeth together, making a terrible noise. I waited, let it play itself out.

But when I opened my hands, there was the mouse. Alive. Up on his hind legs, peering at me.

With that, I collapsed onto the kitchen floor, an exhausted heap. When finally I opened my eyes, I saw that the blue was gone. And the next thing I knew, my mother walked into the kitchen and screamed bloody murder. �A mouse!�

I held my head up, followed her gaze. There it was, the gray-spotted one, standing on its hind legs on the kitchen tile just inside the back door, looking as healthy as ever.

�Corrine, are you okay?� Mom bustled toward me, ignoring the spraying water, the mouse forgotten.

I collapsed again, exhausted. �I�m sorry,� I said. And I think that�s when she called 911.

I woke up with a start, knotted and tangled in my sheets. I could feel the tension in my throat, the one-note sound of it echoing in my ears. I must�ve just screamed.

I rubbed at the back of my neck, where there were new balls of stress in my muscles. Every part of me seemed to be sweating. I threw the sheets off, just as Dad knocked on the door. He came in, a look of concern knitting his brow.

They hadn�t been mad about my sneaking out of the hospital or my trip to the Kranes�, and I had sort of left out the detail about the pool, but still, I had thought they would be ecstatic, knowing I had saved Seth, knowing what I could now do.

I mean, their words were the right ones. It wasn�t that. But the worry lines on Mom�s forehead, the way she rubbed her knuckles across her lips, said otherwise. But I had been exhausted and had excused myself to bed. I hadn�t been up to hashing it out.

Dad settled his large frame into my desk chair, the back of his bed head standing up straight like a silver cock�s comb.

�So this touch is real, huh?� He scratched at his stubble and looked toward me with a mix of emotions on his face. Concern? Fear? For me or of me? Both?

I just nodded. I really wanted to take a cold shower, I was so hot. And drink a huge glass of water. Ice water.

�Corrine, we�re with you on this. It�s going to get huge, though, I think.� He held my gaze for a long moment. �Are you prepared for that?�

�No,� I said. �But I still have to do it.�

�You don�t have to,� he answered, and his voice was serious. He leaned forward. �We can leave, just disappear, if you need to, Corrine. If you don�t want this���if you want another choice.�

I nodded. I tried to picture that. It seemed an over-reaction, a parent�s worry. For me, I finally felt like I was on the right track, finally getting somewhere, moving forward, and I could�ve explained all this, but my throat was sandpaper. I had to get a drink, so when Dad got up and ruffled my hair awkwardly, I didn�t stop him. I didn�t explain that I had high hopes for my touch, that I thought Sophie would want me to make up for her death, to help others, to reach out. I just let him leave, and I quickly went into my bathroom, started the shower on cold, and drank for a long time, straight out of the showerhead.

Mom was jittery and talking constantly as I sat down with coffee. �Dad left already to check on the Kranes, see if he could get them to downplay what happened. Keep it quieter.

�I have to go to Chartrain today,� she said, tossing me a granola bar from the cupboard. �You look flushed.�

I shrugged. �Who do you think I should help first?�

Mom stopped washing her mug in the sink, turned slowly. �I don�t think we can do it that way, can we?� There was a little sense of panic in her voice. �I mean, we can�t seek people out, babe. If they seek you out, okay. But I just don�t know���

�Okay,� I said. I had been thinking about this, and it did seem to make sense. �We don�t want anyone suing us or anything,� I chuckled. But Mom�s back straightened, and she stood very still for a moment.

She turned to me. �Dad is checking with his lawyers today. I mean, I don�t know, Corrine. Who do we talk to about this? Especially if we don�t want your life to, well��� She shook the thought away with a wave of her hand. �I would feel better if you would let me know when and where you were going to do this, so that I don�t have to worry that you�re off somewhere, needing me, or needing���I don�t know. Is there anything you need when it happens?�

�Water. I get hot.� I stood up, walked to where my mom was standing. She looked older to me, so scared. I hugged her. It had been a long time. Such a very long time. I just hugged her close. She grabbed my hand between hers, held it there. �Corrine,� she said, and she smiled. Then her expression changed.

�Do you have a fever?� She pressed her hand to my forehead. I shook my head. Mom held my gaze. �You feel all right?�

�Yeah.�

�And what are you doing today?�

�Hanging out with Rennick and Mia-Joy. We might go to the carnival over in Woodmere. Might be far enough away that people don�t know me.�

�Be careful.� Mom cupped my face in her hands. �I�ve missed you.� And she pulled me to her again. �Take your phone.�

And then she left for work, and I felt so very normal, so very seventeen again. I swallowed back the lump in my throat, pushed back the urge to pore over the pictures of Sophie upstairs. This was me. The new me.

Mom shook me awake in the early morning. �Let�s get you out of here.� I didn�t know exactly why she wanted us to leave, but it wasn�t too hard to deduce. She smiled at me while I threw on some clothes, but it was painted on. Obviously, people were done with just leaving messages. People were showing up on the doorstep.

As we drove into the French Quarter, I told myself to stay calm and plead my case logically. �You know, Mom, I want to help these people. It�s okay.�

�Our home,� Mom said in a dark tone, �needs to be a safe place for you. For us. We will not let you think that every time the doorbell rings someone is going to be begging you, pleading with you. You have to have some say in this, Corrine.�

�But, Mom�� I began to argue. She cut me off.

�You may not think so right now, but twelve hours from now. Twelve days. You�ll be glad we set some parameters.�

I pulled down the sun visor and looked at myself in the mirror. My face surprised me. I looked healthy, pink-cheeked; my unwashed hair even had a sheen to it. I raked a brush through it and tied it back at the nape of my neck. I considered what Mom was saying.

�I can see your point,� I said. �Where are we going, though?�

�The Shack. Sarah said we could hide out upstairs.�

We rode in silence for a few moments, then Mom continued. �Dad�s lawyers are putting together kind of a contract, something people will need to sign. To cover us. Also, his legal team has contracted someone to make a website, an eight-hundred number.� Mom glanced at me, her mouth a hard line. �I want you to help these people too, Corrine. I just want you to be at the helm, okay?�

I nodded and thought about yesterday at the carnival. Mom hadn�t been there. She couldn�t know how some things, especially this particular thing, were not going to be orderly, controlled, or even logical. I knew that somewhere deep down. This was who I was now, and although it seemed scary and a little bit out of control, I welcomed it. It was better to step into this life than to keep going with my old one.

If nothing else, it gave me something to do, something beyond good. It gave me something to occupy my thoughts other than the way the air had smelled charged and alive on those rocks with my little sister. If it kept me from picturing her eyes rolling back in her head, well, then it was a good thing.

The Crawdaddy Shack opened at seven, but there were already a few people out front when I came biking up. �Morning,� I greeted them.

�Good morning, Corrine,� one middle-aged man answered. The rest sort of chimed in.

None of these patrons had any requests for me, so I went into the kitchen when Mrs. Rawlings opened up, and she was all up in my business from the get-go. �You are not going to make me a party to this when you know good and well your parents are taking issue with you setting up shop here.�

I ignored her as much as I could. I greeted Casey and grabbed a deep-fried donut from the cooling tray, poured myself some coffee. But Sarah Rawlings did not suffer being ignored.

�Girl, you better look at me when I�m talking to you.�

I turned around, looked into her face. �I have to do this,� I answered.

To my surprise, Mrs. Rawlings looked more empathetic than I had expected. �You got till noon. Then I am kicking you out.�

�Thank you,� I said.

�Granny Lucy used to help a lot of folks. You girls, you laugh at the old tinctures she used to put together. The spells. But there was something to them. She had herself a way, Corrine. She kept it on the down low.� She eyed me. �You�ll learn.�

I heard Mia-Joy�s barking laughter from out front, and then she was calling for me.

The little restaurant was filled again, and there was already a small crowd around the bistro table from yesterday, front and center. �This woman here, she�s got lupus and lymphoma,� Mia-Joy whispered to me.

�Ma�am,� I said in greeting, sitting down at the table. One look at this poor woman�s face and I knew I was right to come back here this morning. She still had all her hair, but her cheeks were sunken, her skin sallow, her fingernails yellow. She looked seventy-five if a day, so when she began speaking, no wonder the flames erupted inside me.

�I�m only forty-four,� she began, and I fought against a gasp. �I don�t have insurance. I didn�t get any treatment, and I know I�m almost at the end of it here. My children don�t know that, but I know it,� she said. And the matter-of-factness in her voice leveled me.

I gripped her skeletal hands and let it rise, brewing and growing, swelling into one powerful wave. The woman�s eyes, they had a flat look to them, of things borne, endured. I wanted to help her. I let the current reach its frenzied peak. And when I focused the flame, when I directed it into this woman, something happened. It left me in a different way, not in a smooth current but in jolts. I couldn�t see anything different. It was all still indigo blue, but it felt different, spastic and uneven.

The woman jerked, fell to the ground, and seized with ugly convulsions. Like she was being electrocuted. Just like in the movies. Horrible jerky movements.

I broke the connection, let her hand go. I held my hands out in front of me, watched them for a moment before I bent down next to the poor woman at my feet. Was it my imagination, or could I see little sparks of something crackling off the tips of my fingers, flaming indigo?

I heard the gasps from the other customers. I saw Mia-Joy running toward her, and I heard Mrs. Rawlings screaming for 911, but none of this really registered. It was like it was all happening far away from me.

�What was wrong with her again?� This was a paramedic in his blue uniform. He was right next to me, kneeling. How he got there so quick, I didn�t know.

�I have the touch?� I told him.

�We know about you,� he said. �But what is her ailment?� He was listening for breaths as he spoke to me.

I racked my brain. I could sense that I should know this, that I did know this less than five minutes ago. It was there, on the very edge of my brain, but I couldn�t grasp it. What was wrong with her? What was I fixing?

�She has lymphoma and systemic lupus,� Mia-Joy answered, eyeballing me and pushing me down into my chair. I sat there, watching the events unfold around me. The saving of this woman�s life. The sideways glances from the other patrons. The clucking of Sarah�s tongue as she brought me a glass of ice water.

Then all of a sudden it was like I lost some time, because Rennick was next to me but I didn�t know when or how he had gotten there. I looked around and saw that the woman and the paramedics were gone.

�It was akin to a mild electric shock. She just passed out,� he was saying in a soothing voice, over and over. Like a repeat sign at the end of a measure.

He reached for my hand. I yanked it back.

�You should be glad about this,� I snapped. �Now it�s all gone to shit. They can just move me back to Chicago. Everyone can forget about it all.� I got up so quickly that I knocked my chair backward.

�Corrine!�

I didn�t turn around. I stalked out to my bike and rode home. Confused. Hot. Frayed. Guilty.

I retreated to my room. It was like I didn�t know anything anymore. I played Angry Chipmunks on my iPad and listened to music through my earbuds as loud as I could stand it, and I forced myself, tried desperately at least, not to think.

Mom and Dad tried to talk to me. Mrs. Abernathy was fine. Rennick had been right, it was only a moderate electric shock. She had not been cured, but she was getting treatment, thanks to the donations Mia-Joy had been collecting. And thanks to a handful of generous doctors on her case. But I hadn�t saved her.

I had expected a quiet relief on Mom�s face or in Dad�s demeanor, because maybe people would leave me alone now after such a public failure. But no, there was none of that. They were my parents, after all. It made me feel guilty for thinking that they could so easily be appeased by the situation when they knew it made me miserable.

The next morning was Sunday. Dad went with Mom to her church, and I stayed holed up in my room. When the doorbell rang, I looked out my window and saw Rennick�s Jeep.

I waffled for a long minute, but eventually I let him in, and we stood in the foyer awkwardly. He looked at me with those eyes, those eyelashes, and I wanted to cross the distance between us. I wanted to throw my arms around his neck. But I didn�t trust myself. My hands. My body. What lived underneath my ribs? I didn�t want to hurt him.

Was I back here? Really? Had I ever left?

�How are you?� he said as he moved into the living room. I backed away from him, but still he stood only a foot away from me.

I shifted from one foot to the other. I tried to hold it together, I really did. But a couple of tears slipped down my cheeks. I wiped them away quickly with the back of my hand. I looked up at him, shook my head. My lip trembled.

�Baby,� he said. He moved forward to pull me toward him, but I backed away.

�I can�t.�

�Corrine.� And when I looked back up at him, I saw there were tears in his eyes too, his face, his beautiful face, a study in pain. �Baby, let me hold you.�

I shook my head.

�Okay,� he said, and settled on the couch. I sat down across from him on the loveseat. �You didn�t hurt Mrs. Abernathy.�

�It�s too risky. All of it.�

�Corrine, how can I make you see it like I see it?� He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. �Listen, you know with auras? We�re not all one color, right?�

I nodded.

�There�re all kinds of colors in there. Some traits are positive, some negative. Some a mixture. But the overall auras themselves, they are just��

�Beautiful.�

�No.� He shook his head. �No, they are real. They are life. Us. It�s all we got.�

�I don�t know,� I said.

�None of us have total control of anything. Not you, not me, not anybody. And we�re all taking risks, every day. Nothing�s promised.�

He came over to the loveseat then, sat down next to me. I let the tears fall down my cheeks, and I thought about what he said. He brushed his hand through my hair, and the hairs on the nape of my neck rose. It was like the first touch ever, so real to me, exaggerated for some reason.

�I�m taking a risk right now,� he said. �But it�s worth it.�

�The risk of being electrocuted?� I said.

�No, Corrine, the risk that you won�t love me back.�

My heart swelled at the word, and I turned to him, my eyes meeting his. His beautiful face, his gorgeous eyes, watching me, seeing me, only me, the real me, searching me for what? An answer to the unasked question?

I swallowed against the dryness in my throat. And then I answered him. �I will.� I wanted to sound brave, but it came out small.

He leaned forward, kissed my eyebrow, kissed away my tears, and then his lips were on mine, and we were kissing. His mouth against mine, our connection. Soft, gentle. Questioning. And I let it happen, and I wanted it, I wanted him.

�Touch me,� he whispered. �Put your hands on me, Corrine.�

�I can�t,� I said. And I pulled away, a promise unfulfilled. He sighed, raking his hand through his hair. After a few moments, he stood up; he left me something, a piece of paper, on the coffee table, but he left wordlessly.

It was more than just my heart knowing him. My heart loved him.

I took the paper upstairs to my room, unfolded it. It was a beautiful chalk drawing: an aura, a version of the one aura that had most populated his garage. His favorite subject. The colors were rich and jewel-toned, like the leaves of a Chicago autumn, maroon and orange, purple and gold, bright red and indigo. I flipped it over and he had signed it in bright blue ink.

My name and the date. I had been right. This was me.

My heart ached because I couldn�t agree with this rendering, this beauty. I felt weak and paralyzed with the complications of this touch. I was not worthy of this power. Of Rennick�s attention, his admiration. His love. He had used that word. Love.

I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I made myself really look. When would I quit hating myself?

When would it be enough?

I thought of Paganini�s La Campanella. The power of it. The strong start. Right from the first measure. So sure of itself. I thought of how Mrs. Smelser had first assigned me this piece on the violin back in sixth grade. As I had been waiting for the student ahead of me to finish, I sat down at the piano in the school hallway and began to play it, but different. Not allegro. I slowed it down. Ritard. Gave it more of a nocturne flair. Just playing around with it.

I had really lost myself in the playing of it. Transforming it. And when I finally opened my eyes, I flushed at seeing Mrs. Smelser and her other student standing beside the piano. I had apologized, explaining to her that I knew that wasn�t how it went, that I was just messing around. I insisted on playing it for her on my violin. The correct way.

�Corrine, don�t forget this, though,� she told me afterward, sticking her pencil into her messy silver curls. �Music isn�t static. Don�t ever apologize for making something beautiful. Don�t be scared of what you alone can add.�

I left Rennick�s drawing on my desk and knelt down, looked under my bed, and took out my violin. I tuned each string, turning the knobs at the scroll just enough. I applied the rosin to my bow, tightened it to exactly the right amount of tension. I brought the violin to my chin, rested it in the familiar little nook of my collarbone.

I played Canon in D. My fingers remembered the notes, and my soul remembered the music. I played for a long time. Sousa. Mozart. Piece after piece. Not for any reason other than I needed to play. I needed to remember what it was like to be my real self.

I was still playing when I heard my cell phone ring for the fifth time in a row. I gave up, put my violin down on the bed, and reached for the phone. Mrs. Rawlings�s phone number.

�Hello?�

�I�m at the hospital with Mia-Joy,� Sarah said calmly. �It is not an emergency, but please come. We will explain.�

She hung up. Obviously her phone call had been planned specifically so that I would not freak out, but what I was actually doing was freaking out. �Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,� I repeated, pacing around my bedroom before I could make a cohesive plan. And, of course, in the back of my head I had more guilt. Hadn�t Rennick predicted this? The rip in her aura? And hadn�t I just let it all go?

I didn�t have a car. Mom and Dad turned off their cells at church. Biking out to the hospital would take at least an hour.

Rennick.

I called his cell and he answered on the first ring. He was in my driveway within ten minutes, and I was in his car, trying to explain the situation.

He clenched his jaw. �We�ll get there in time,� he said, driving faster than I�d ever seen. I knew what he meant. No matter what was going on, I could fix her. I could heal Mia-Joy.

My stomach clenched. How was I supposed to use this thing when I didn�t have control, really?

I tried to remind myself of the mouse, of how sure I had seemed after that. It didn�t help.

I called my mom and checked in, and Rennick said that he wanted to take me home for lunch. Lila and Dodge were antiquing up north, and Rennick turned a little flushed when he said we could be alone.

We talked about Mia-Joy on the way over to his house. He explained how Mr. and Mrs. Rawlings blamed themselves, how he blamed himself for not speaking up about the rip in the aura. I took my part of the blame too.

�I think she�s going to be fine now, though,� I told him.

�Yeah? And what if she hadn�t been?� He eyed me from the driver�s side.

�I don�t know,� I told him. �I don�t know yet.�

�I don�t think you need to be afraid of it.� He said this quietly, and he reached his hand over toward me, laid it on the seat between us. An invitation. �Either way, Corrine, I am here.�

I thought about all the advice and expounding Mia-Joy had just given me in her hospital room, and I realized that it had affected me.

I didn�t know exactly why or how, but it had me thinking. And, yes, I was scared. But I could move on, push forward. Rennick and me. The touch. They were both scary. They were both out of my control, but they were not tied to each other. They didn�t have to be.

I had no warning signs now.

I reached across the seat of the Jeep and grabbed Rennick�s hand. He clasped onto mine tightly and let out a sigh, as if he had been waiting for this. Just this. Only this. Could he really want me, just me? With or without the indigo touch? And if so, did I deserve it? After everything? After Sophie?

�Thank you,� I said, and leaned my head on his shoulder.

�For what?�

�Kindness.�

We pulled into the driveway, and he steered us back toward his garage. His hand never left mine, and I trailed behind him. He opened the old sliding barnlike doors, and there they were. His paintings. Auras, dozens of them. Beautiful combinations of colors, a kaleidoscope of stripes melting into hazy fogs, pastel clouds meeting a storm of jewel tones. There were many auras here, all beautiful in their own way, but I saw the one everywhere�mine�repeated in many different perspectives.

As I spun around, Rennick let my hand go finally, and there was one painting my eyes were repeatedly drawn to, the only one of its kind. It was a dark and haunting mixture of blues and reds. And even as I was asking the question, I knew the answer. �Whose?�

�Mine. Before I met you.�

I processed this. �So auras are in flux.� I realized that this only made sense, but I had never really thought about it.

�Don�t sound so surprised. Life is flux. Life is change.�

�And whose aura is the one?� I asked. �Painted and repainted?�

�You know it�s yours,� he said, and wrapped his arms around my waist.

�Exactly what changed in your aura when you met me?� I asked, except his lips were on my shoulder now, running up and down my neck, his hands pressing on the small of my back. �Mmmm,� I moaned.

�Hope is in there now. Pink,� he murmured. �Purple,� he added, and he picked me up then, just swept me up with one arm under my legs and walked us toward the sofa in the back corner. He gently laid me down.

�Purple,� I repeated, my whole body nearly about to explode. Purple. Love. Did Rennick really love me? Hadn�t he just about said as much? Why did my mind act so surprised? My heart already knew this. My heart had known it for a long time.

Rennick braced himself above me, and he hovered there, kissing my collarbone, his lips brushing that spot under my ear. �Corrine,� he murmured, his eyelashes tickling my earlobe.

�Purple?� I asked again, teasing.

�Listen.� He smiled. �I wouldn�t be too cocky here. Your aura has purple in it as well.� The flush rose in my cheeks. Rennick sat up and pulled his T-shirt over his head. I sat up, breathless, my heart pounding.

I kissed him, and he kissed me back deeply. I tasted his lips, his stubbly chin, his jaw, his ear. �I want to put my hands on you,� I whispered.

And he shivered against me. �Corrine, I�� He pulled away a little bit. But I wouldn�t let him. I pushed him back onto the sofa and lay on top of him, pressing my body into him, kissing him, letting him know I wanted this.

I sat up and picked up his left hand. I kissed his roughened palm. I placed his hand over my heart, and then I used my fingers to trace every muscle on his torso, his ribs, his abs, his delicious abs. Our eyes locked. I pressed my palms flat on his chest and kissed his neck, his Adam�s apple, ran my hands through that hair. Kissed those ridiculous eyelashes. He pulled me to him and sat up. He repositioned me in his lap, and I crossed my legs around him.

His hands were on my back, under my tank top, palms flat to my body, and we were so close, so close, and he pulled me to him, closer, closer, and it felt so good, I could hardly contain myself. I threw my head back, sighed, and his lips were on my neck again.

I reached down to pull off my tank, and Rennick froze. �Corrine,� he said, �we don�t have��

�I want to,� I said, and I meant it. �I trust you. Us. This moment.�

His face twisted up, like he was going to protest. He raked a hand through his hair. He pulled me close, kissed me hard. But then he pushed me away. �Corrine, wait.�

�Rennick, I want to��

He traced his fingers over my lips then, onto my cheek, my chin. �I love your chin. That little point.� He kissed me again softly. Sighed. Pulled away.

�What is it?� I asked.

�It�s just everything. Us. It doesn�t have to be such a grand gesture. Huge decision. It�s not like either we can�t touch at all or we completely do it. I mean, don�t get me wrong, I want���I would love to��� He raked his hand through his hair again.

And I resisted the urge to be hurt by this, to slink inward. I tried to really hear him.

�I mean, it doesn�t have to be all or nothing. I want you, Corrine. But I want you always���a million yeses, every day. Forever.� He swallowed hard, and I could see that he was scared of how honest he was being. �It doesn�t have to be one huge yes. It can be us. Together. Over and over. Every day. I want that. Not just one big decision to prove something.�

I thought I understood what he was saying.

I nodded, tried to internalize this. I kind of got it. And I thought of Mia-Joy. It�s not like we get to perfect and then we�re done. Isn�t that what she had said?

I could do this. I believed in the power of decision. And I could decide yes to Rennick, over and over. Again and again. A million yeses. I liked that. My heart swelled and floated when I stepped out of my own insecurities enough to really hear what he was professing to me.

Him and me. Every day. Forever.

Inside my head I was listening to Beethoven�s Romance in F Major. The flurry of crescendoing excitement. I looked at the guy in front of me. The well of emotion in his eyes. The sweet, heartbreaking wrinkle of concern between them. �Thank you,� I said, wanting to kiss that sweet, beautiful spot on Rennick�s front teeth, right where they overlapped. My Rennick. We held each other�s gaze then for a long moment and he changed then. Became gentler, slower, more in charge, made us savor it. Poco a poco.

And later when he held me close to him, his arms wrapped around me, I pressed my palms to his face, brought his lips to mine. It was still Beethoven in my head, but now Ode to Joy.

�I love you, Rennick.�

His eyes softened then. He buried his face in my neck, and he whispered it. Dolce. �I love you too, Corrine.�

I was listening to Beethoven cranked up high on my iPad, and I knew that I was sketching Rennick�s face, I knew that. But I was in that zone. I wasn�t really thinking about it. The square jaw, the little scar in his eyebrow, the lashes over those dark blue eyes.

It took me a while to get the fwoof of his hair lifting off of his forehead, but I did it, and then I was finished with the pencil sketch. I began to add some color. My mind was back at Rennick�s garage, though: the feel of his skin beneath my hands, his lips on my collarbone.

At the same moment that Mom came bursting into my bedroom, I realized what I was doing and dropped my pastel.

�What in the world?� I said, yanking the earbuds out of my ears. I could see in Mom�s face that something was very wrong.

�It�s Rennick!� I screamed, taking one last look at my sketch. His eyes were not right; they were flat, unseeing, but it wasn�t just that. I had colored his face, shadowed it, with white and with blue. He looked���gone.

Lifeless.

�Tell me in the car.�

Mom flew, going well above the speed limit, out to the wharf, to Crescent Charters. As soon as we pulled into the gravel parking lot, I jumped out of the car before it had even stopped. I could see the knot of people standing on the small dock, their heads bent in reverence, their shoulders slumped, their voices silent.

I ran. I had to get there. I had that feeling again that I could see these things, and they registered, yet they were so very far away. I heard the slapping of my running feet against the wet boards of the dock, and that brought me back into myself a little, but when I saw his face, ashen white, with blue eyelids, his chest not rising or falling, that shocked me back into myself in a moment, in a flash. In that second, my world focused into a pinpoint on those beautiful eyelashes, holding drops of seawater.

My mother had explained it on the way to the wharf. He had been fishing. Dodge had been short of breath, but they had become stuck in the weeds, the cattails, out near the swampy edge of Egret Inlet. Rennick got nervous, surely thinking of another heart attack for Dodge. He dove in to dig out the propeller from the seaweed or whatever, instead of just rowing. Dodge didn�t know how it happened. But Bouncer began acting weird, whining as they waited in the boat, his tail between his legs.

And Rennick never came back up.

He had drowned. My Rennick. He was gone. How long had he been without a breath? He would not be that fucking cricket. Never.

I watched the paramedics do their rescue breathing, the pressure on his chest. How long had they been at it? Were they still hopeful? I gave them five seconds. Six.

The sharp jut of his Adam�s apple. The black-oil color of his hair. The unseeing eyes. I couldn�t wait any longer.

I pushed through them. Risks. Guilt. Perfection. Control. None of it mattered. Only he mattered. Some things had to be charged at, saved, worked for, again and again, if need be.

All this talk, all these issues, none of it really mattered. Because Rennick was gone, and I had this power. A=B.

I knelt down next to his body, spied Dodge�s face above me filled with panic. Bouncer was at my heels, nudging me closer to Rennick with his snout. Mom had joined us, but these things didn�t matter. I only had to think his name, all he had come to mean to me, all that he was, and there it was. The indigo lens in front of my vision. The crackling spark of life inside my ribs. Like an explosion of heat from the heart of me.

I held on to his hands, both of them in mine. They were cold, so cold. I placed them over my heart, held them against me with my palms. And I couldn�t help it, I was bawling.

He had believed in me when I hadn�t even believed in myself. He had saved me.

�Please, please. Rennick, please,� I said between gasps.

And then it was there at its height, plateaued and waiting for direction. And I let it go, I let it move freely, surging and charging into my beloved Rennick.

And in that moment, time stopped. It�s like I was there, but I wasn�t.

I hold Sophie�s body in my lap, cupping her face in my hands, the blue surges through me, in her. It brings her back. I saved her, I think. Here it is. I remember it now. The part I could never quite account for. The lost time. �I got you, Sophie. I got you.�

She smiles at me, shivers. �You saved me,� she says, lisping her s through that gap in her teeth.

�Did I?� I say, flummoxed, holding on to her face. I am exhausted, and we lie back on the rocks. Her eyes close as she lays her head on my chest.

I awake to her teeth chattering along with mine. It�s darker, colder. And I see that Sophie is pale again. Why had we not left? Walked back? I remember the surge of electricity through me, the exhaustion.

Sophie�s eyes roll back in her head then, her body jerks. Not again! But then things change, the power pricks back up inside me, and I reach for her, to cup her face again, to fix her.

But the wrong thing happens. The white light explodes around me, in me.

The lightning.

One lone bolt of lightning emerges from the atmosphere around us, blinding us, a terrifying and powerful glow around us, bathing us in current, jolting us, electrifying us. I absorb it and I don�t. Not enough. Sophie doesn�t recover.

I smell the ozone in the air. The crisp Lake Michigan air. It is just a storm.

I saved her. Lightning killed her.

I woke back up to where I was now. Here in my life without Sophie. Holding Rennick�s hands to my heart. The physio-electric life churned through me, out of me, into Rennick. I shuddered with exhaustion.

For all my power: I could heal, I could fix Lila Twopenny, I could maybe save Rennick, but I still wasn�t all-powerful. I still was not in charge. I couldn�t fix Mia-Joy. I couldn�t control lightning. I couldn�t do a lot of things.

It was good and it was bad. I was just a human Leyden jar.

�Please,� I said out loud, and I could feel the surges rack my shoulders, press against my ribs, exit my hands.

And then I snapped my eyes open because I could feel the current change, plunge from deeper inside of me. This was when I would normally stop, what I had come to recognize as the time to let go. But Rennick was not back yet. I couldn�t give up.

It pulled from inside me, deeper in my core, and I pushed it, willed it out of me.

Rennick coughed once. And then he was still. I wanted to pull back, but I couldn�t. Rennick needed me. Needed the blue.

I had it. He needed it. I gave it all.

And then it went black.

I watched Rennick gasp, cough, and wretch. Beautiful, gorgeous, life-affirming coughs. He vomited water and green stuff. He doubled over and coughed some more, and my heart swelled. Rennick. Alive. He turned on his side and curled his knees to his chest, coughed again.

By now I realized that I was watching this from an odd angle. I was above him, far above him. I could see him, but I couldn�t hear the noise that his coughs made. I reached out to him, but I could not see my own arm. I was air. I was wind. I was space. I was nothing and everything. I somehow hovered above it all, outside of myself.

This alarmed me, but not much, because Rennick was okay. He sat up now, the scary pallor of his face only a memory.

He turned his attention to the small knot of people to his left. They were surrounding someone. Rennick got to his feet quickly, swayed, then pushed his way into the center.

It was me. I was down there, lying on the dock, and it was my turn to be ashen. Empty. I had used myself up. Just as I had promised not to do. And if I had been careless before with my power�arrogant, even�well, I was so sorry now. I struggled against nothing and everything trying to get myself back into my body, back down there, back with Rennick.

When I had so much and so many had so little, I should be hanging on to my life, tooth and nail. I realized this now.

One of the paramedics performed rescue breathing on my body, but Rennick pushed him aside, and the medic let him. Did the medic think it was useless? I watched Rennick in a panicked state. He cleared my airway. He pressed on my lifeless body. It was so white. And it looked so small from up here. Again I tried to push myself nearer, but���nothing. If anything, I floated farther away, up higher.

I struggled more from my vantage point to move, to get there. But it was all in vain, because I was nothing. I was gone from myself.

Rennick pinched my nose, breathed into my mouth. A sad and desperate last kiss. I struggled, but it was useless. Then he began to press on my chest, three even compressions just like they teach you in CPR class. But something changed. I could feel them, the pressure on my sternum, on my rib cage, right there, right at the source of all of this. And with the pressure came the spark.

My vision tunneled and it all turned indigo, a blinding indigo flash, and then all was silent. For what seemed like a very long time. All I knew was the indigo. I was surrounded by it, bathing in it, tasting it, hearing only it.

Then it was his face, just his face so close to mine. And I wondered, was this heaven? But then, no, I saw salt water dripping from his hair, like it was happening in slow motion. A bead dropped from his forelock onto his eyelashes, then onto my face.

The first breath burned hot in my throat. He moved his mouth, but I couldn�t hear him yet. He smiled that smile. I reached up a shaking hand, and with one finger I touched that spot, those teeth, that overlap, and he was saying something over and over. And gradually a din, a little rustle of sound, then his voice. And it was in my ear. �Don�t leave me. Don�t leave me.�

I threw my arms around his neck, pulled myself up to him, and he held me against him, cradled me in his arms, in his lap.

After a long time, I opened my eyes, and he pulled back to look at me, the sun glinting off of his hair. A crash of thunder jarred me back into myself.

�I used myself up,� I said.

�I know.� He didn�t seem mad, didn�t seem anything but relieved. He kissed the tip of my chin, each of my eyelids, my nose.

�Guess I�ll have to keep you around.� My voice was a scratchy whisper. �You�re getting good at this lifesaving thing,� I said.

He laughed then, a glorious, booming sound. And when he kissed me, the sky broke into another boom of thunder, and rain began to sheet down on us, the sun still high in the sky.

�Thank you,� I whispered.

�I have a present for you,� Rennick said, holding out his hand as we stood by Sophie�s headstone. In his palm was a delicate silver chain, but instead of a charm there was the most magnificent rock, a tiny polished yet uncarved blue stone, sparkling in the September Chicago sun.

�Rennick�� I said, my heart fluttering in my chest.

�I found it on the shore of Pontchartrain. That Fourth of July. It�s quartz.� He smiled. I picked it up and admired the way the sunlight hit the surface of the rock.

�It�s the most perfect color.� It was just this side of purple, just that side of blue. Indigo. I rolled it around in my fingers. �Thank you.� And I thought about something. �What does indigo in an aura mean?�

�We don�t want to inflate your ego or anything,� Rennick joked. �Wisdom,� he said, eyeing me. �Bravery.�

I flushed. I couldn�t hear this about myself. �Could you put it on me?� His fingers graced that spot on the back of my neck and I shivered. �When we first met, you said you knew I was stubborn and generous���kind. Which color of the aura goes with those?�

�I didn�t know any of that from your aura,� Rennick said, finishing with the necklace.

�No?�

�That�s just from watching you, seeing how you operate.� He smiled, squinted at me playfully. I thought of that first day I met him, that first time I looked in those eyes. The day at the Crawdaddy Shack, the sun shining along with the rain. And then again that day on the dock, when we saved each other.

I saw now that this was what life was. I looked down at Sophie�s granite headstone. And I looked up again at Rennick. The sun along with the rain.

And it made me think of what Mom had said when I told her and Dad about the lightning.

�It�s the price we pay for love, honey. It hurts this much because we love so much,� she had told me, holding on to my hand. �We are not in control of things. Ever. We only have that illusion. The death of a loved one shatters that.�

The lightning had killed Sophie, stopped her heart, and shattered me. There had been no other signs, no burns, nothing on Sophie�s body, but that was how lightning worked. It was haphazard. Random. Messy. Like so many things in life. In a way, it seemed worse, not better, to know that I had had nothing to do with it. Worse because it was just so arbitrary. Unpredictable.

But I had nodded at Mom. �The thing we learn, though, is that we still have to keep going. Even though it could happen again. To me. To someone else.�

Mom added, �We love anyway. Even with death around every corner. That�s hope. That�s faith.�

And wasn�t that the biggest decision of them all? Behind everything in life? Wrapped up in every step of our journey? Every chance we took? Faith. The question and the answer.

A million yeses.

I fingered the blue stone. �Thank you,� I told Rennick, feeling the blush rise in my neck. �For the necklace, for visiting Sophie�s grave with me, for so many things.�

�You�re welcome,� he said, and he tipped my chin toward him.

I stood on my tiptoes, kissed him on the lips. He smiled. And the look on his face, it was���something. The tender, hopeful gaze of his eyes. What was it? Pride?

And in that instant, I knew. It was love.

I pressed my face into the hollow of his collarbone and inhaled his laundry-fresh scent. So this is what it feels like.

I bent down on my knees then, did what I came here to do. I said a prayer for Sophie, for her soul, for where she was; to God, or to that power greater than us, than me, than the touch, greater even than lightning. �I love you, Sophie,� I said.

I opened my case, withdrew my violin in the chilly September sun. I stood up and played for Sophie, Mozart�s Laudate Dominum, which I couldn�t bring myself to play at her funeral. It spoke of love and loss, sadness and grief, but also hope and remembrance. Tranquillo. I played it all, my eyes closed. And I felt it all, with every note, with every push and pull of my bow, the symphony of emotions I held so close for Sophie, for all she meant to me, for all I wanted to tell her.

And when I finished, I opened my eyes, and I saw Rennick, his eyes closed too. He was feeling too. He knew what it all meant. He didn�t live only on the surface.

�It�s your voice,� he said. �That violin is your voice.�

I nodded. Because for so long, I had been silent. And I had so much to say. To everyone. To Sophie.

I sat on the grass, tracing Sophie�s name on her simple marble headstone. I spoke to her in my mind, told her I was sorry, told her I loved her, told her goodbye. I pictured her then, not on the rocks of that beach, but on Christmas morning, her curls a mess. Learning to ride her bike without training wheels. The elation on her face when she succeeded. Sophie living. Sophie jumping in. Sophie being happy.

This was what I held on to. It was just a storm.

And when I was ready, Rennick stuck out his hand to help me up from the ground, and I grabbed it, my palm thrust against his. And there it was again, that human touch, that spark, that simple kindness, a helping hand when you really needed one.

Just like I had needed it so long ago, when Rennick first placed the crawdad in my palm. He didn�t have to care. He could have ignored my colors. He could have ignored me. He could have given up on hope. Given up on faith in the face of so many everyday deaths: apathy, fear, pride.

Sometimes that touch, that squeeze of a hand, that arm around the shoulders, it tells us that we are not in this alone. And for me, Rennick made all the difference.

We were in this together. I knew that.

We�d figure out what to do with the burning coil beneath my ribs, that power, always ready, always there. I would use it, I knew that, to help others. One day at a time. There was no big master plan that needed to be made. Not just one decision. But rather a million little decisions made each day, over and over. A million yeses.

This was my life. In flux. Always. The aura of my life being painted and repainted daily, unfolding itself as a thing of beauty in the process. With me working and learning and hoping, so that each stroke, each color, each decision might add a little more beauty, a little more peace, a little more hope. Adding up to a piece of wonder.

I took in a deep breath of the cool autumn air and held it there in my lungs.

The possibilities now seemed endless.

And I was caught off guard by my optimism, here, in the moment. How impossible it had seemed such a short time ago, to be on the other side of the paralyzing grief of losing my sister.

But here I was. Here we were. It wasn�t the size of the circle; it was who was in it.

And that made all the difference.

So many thanks to those who�ve made such a big difference to me as a writer and to this story: Chuck and Judy Simonich, Caryn Wiseman, Chelsea Eberly, Suzy Capozzi, and the entire team at Random House Books for Young Readers.

To my circle�my colorful, lively, brilliant circle�I love you all so dearly. Thank you for your constant humor and inspiration: Cooper, Clarke, Maddie, Alex, Rebecca, Hannah, Jonah, Jacob, Henry, and, of course, Jack, Maia, and Zoe.

Last but not least, for Greg, a million yeses.

GINA LINKO has a graduate degree in creative writing from DePaul University and lives outside Chicago with her husband and three children. She teaches college English part-time, but her real passion is sitting down to an empty screen and asking herself, �What if �?�