Let It Be

Chapter 16

We talked every day after that, and hung out whenever not at school or at our respective sport practices. I spent a lot less time with the volleyball team, Mina and Dylan and the people who had been nice to me ever since I moved in. Sam spent a lot of time with me at the Scott's house, often helping me make dinner for the boys. Birdie and the boys became well acquainted with Sam. Nate still worshipped him and Sam was very good-natured about it.

"I like Sam when he's being himself," Birdie told me one day in late November as we stapled twinkle lights to the front of the house. "Sometimes he wears a barrier, doesn't he? As if he wants to stay away from the world for some reason. But then there are times, especially lately, where he is just open and completely being himself with no restrictions. And he's a nice guy. He's quiet, but seems sincere about what he says and does."

"He just has a habit to be wary of people before he really gets to know them," I explained, knowing I could never tell her about the immortal thing. I was still getting used to it.

"You know what I think?" she said, her eyes shining with the prospect of gossip. "I think something happened when he was younger, some sort of tragic betrayal of trust."

I could practically feel it when something else clicked into place in my mind. Birdie was spot on: Sam had been hurt by someone he trusted. He had had his relationship with Eleanor, which I now realized was more serious than I had first perceived. His years spent with Eleanor didn't start when he was fifteen like logic had expressed: he had been old and mature. Just how old, I still had no idea. He had been an adult, and they had been seriously talking about a future together before she left him. How long they were together before she revealed that she had played him, I couldn't guess, but I could assume it was more than a couple of months.

But the main reason he put up his barrier, as Birdie had called it, was because he wanted to protect people from him.

"Something like that," I agreed.

"It's too bad. He's a really nice guy."

I helped hold the last string of lights for Birdie to staple. "I like him a lot."

Birdie's eyes went wide with excitement. "How much do you like him?" she probed.

I just rolled my eyes. "It's not like that, and you know it. Besides, Sam can barely handle friendship, as you just said. Do you really think he could handle an actual relationship, a romantic relationship?"

"That's true," Birdie sighed. "But I still like him."

"Hey, you watch it, or I'm telling Brandon," I teased.

"Tell him what?"

"That you have a crush on Sam Durand."

That earned me a playful smack.

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The next few weeks after my honorary initiation into the immortal world, I got to explore the world of auras-- the sort of thin, colored veil that surrounded everyone as individuals. The things that I had previously referred to as "color-clouds," having lacked a better expression. Sam said it was a perk from my being exposed to the stream water, that I could see them.

It was strange at first, but the more I was exposed to it, the more beautiful it became. The world, people, were so full of color. Auras weren't gaudy like I had imagined them to be along with fantasy books and such, but light and unobtrusive. They were like the iridescent, faint colors of sunshine on a body of water, soft and sort of changing depending on how the light struck them.