“Don’t look at her,” Christian says. “Don’t think about her, or the past, or anything else.”
“All right . . .”
“Just be here,” he says softly. His eyes are gorgeous under the stage lights, amber flecks shooting out sparks. “Be in the present.”
Let go of everything else, he urges in my mind. Just be here. With me.
I stare at him, allow myself to focus on his face in a way I typically avoid, tracing the angles of his cheekbones, the lines of his mouth, the sweep of his dark eyelashes and the curve of his brow, the shape of the shoulders that I memorized so long ago. I don’t think. I let myself look at him. Then the heat from our joined hands moves up my body, settles into my chest as I let myself fall into his eyes.
I feel what he feels. Certainty, always so much certainty with Christian, no matter what he said about the absence-of-certainty thing before. He knows himself. He knows what he wants. I see myself from his point of view, understand my beauty through his eyes, my hair a messy golden halo around my face, the contrast of pale skin and pink lips and cheeks so striking, the stormy luminous eyes that right now seem blue, like a deep pool of blue you could slip into. It’s like he’s laughing inside, so pleased with himself, because I am glowing, the light in me pushing through, we’re glowing together, light breaking at where our hands come together, his own hair starting to shine now, a radiance rising around us.
He wants to tell me something. He wants to open himself up completely, let me see everything, let me know everything about him, rules be damned. . . . Suddenly we’re walking together in the cemetery, the sun warm on our backs, and he’s holding my hand, leading me. I feel so strong in this moment, strong and alive and full of energy.
“Holy Mary, Mother of God!” screams a voice.
Christian and I spring back from each other. The light around us dissipates. For a moment I’m completely blinded in the sudden transition from light to dark, but as my eyes adjust, I see Angela’s mom standing in the aisle staring at us. She brings a hand up to her mouth, her face ashen. Angela jumps up and goes to her, barely getting to her in time to catch her as she falls to her knees.
“Mom, it’s okay,” Angela says, tugging her back to her feet. “They were just trying something.”
“None of that in here,” Anna whispers, her dark eyes boring into me with such intensity it makes me avoid looking at her. “None of that in here, I told you.”
“We won’t. I promise. You need to go upstairs and lie down,” Angela says.
Anna nods, and Angela puts an arm around her shoulders and practically drags her out of the theater. We listen to their footsteps on the stairs leading to their apartment, Anna still talking, Angela trying to soothe her. The creak of the door. Then silence.
Christian and I glance at each other, then away.
“Well, it worked,” I say, just to say something. “We did it.”
“Yes, we did,” Christian says. He wipes at the sheen of sweat on his forehead.
“You were going to tell me something,” I say.
He frowns. “Now who’s reading minds?”
“It was my empathy. I could feel what you felt. You wanted to tell me something.” This totally freaks him out, for some reason. He jumps down to the floor, goes to the table where he left his homework, and starts to gather it up. I follow him and put my hand on his shoulder. He stiffens. I feel like I should apologize for something, for reading him the way I did, or for bringing it up when Angela is so close and might hear.
“Christian, I . . .”
Angela bursts back into the room, her face wild with excitement.
“Holy awesome! I can’t believe how bright it was, I mean, wow. Did you see my mom?
She, like, dropped. Her face was all pasty. I’ve never seen her like that. She’s okay now, though.
I gave her some water, and she just, like, shook it off. She’s fine.”
“Glory terrifies humans,” I remind her, trying to remain serious, but it’s hard not to get swept up by her enthusiasm. It was awesome. And it’s like the magic’s still in the air, floating around with the motes of dust and absorbed by the velvet curtains. I don’t want to let it go.
“Yeah, I think we’ve learned that’s true, haven’t we? Let’s do it again. Try it with me, this time,” Angela insists to Christian.
“I don’t think I could.”
“Come on, I want to learn. Pretty please!” she begs.
He drops his head, sighs, giving in. “All right. We can try.” This ought to be good. I sit in Angela’s chair as the two of them march back up to the stage, take hands, concentrate.
“Be in the present,” Christian says again. “That’s the key. Not the present, like what you’re thinking about now, but apart from your thoughts. This is going to be hard for you, because you overthink everything. Just remember that you are not your thoughts.”
“Okay, Sensei, let’s go,” she cracks.
They both close their eyes. I lean forward, watching, waiting for the glow to start, trying to contain my envy that it’s Angela up there and not me. But nothing happens. They just stand there like they’re suspended in time.
“None of that in here!” comes a voice from the lobby. Anna must be afraid to come in.
Angela and Christian drop hands, open their eyes. For a minute Angela looks disappointed, but then a mischievous smile spreads across her face.
“That was so hot,” she says. She turns to look at me with one eyebrow arched. “Right, Clara?”
“Uh—”
“I think you wanted to tell me something, too,” she purrs to Christian, totally faking and he knows it. I remember how she told me once that she and Christian played spin the bottle in ninth grade and she thought kissing him was like kissing a brother.
“Oh yes,” he replies without inflection, “that was pretty hot, Ange. You’re like my dream girl. I always wanted to tell you that.”
“None of that in here!” Anna Zerbino calls again.
We all bust up laughing.
A loud noise wakes me in the middle of the night. For a minute I lie in bed, listening, not sure what’s happening. I feel like I’ve just woken up from a bad dream. I glance at the alarm clock. It’s four in the morning. The house is absolutely quiet. I close my eyes.
Something crashes. I sit up in bed. The best weapon I can come up with this time is a can of hair spray, like that will do any good if Samjeeza’s here.