I have three secrets.
1. I'm in the witness protection program. I witnessed my mother's murder when I was eight years old, and now the murderer is after me.
2. I can read minds. Or not "read" them... not exactly. But I can feel them. Every emotion h...
It is dark when I wake up. I have no idea where I am; my mind searches blindly for an aura, but I come up with nothing. I don't move a muscle so as not to prematurely signal to my captor that I am awake before I have properly formulated an escape plan, but I try to gather what I do know without moving. The surface I am lying upon is hard and flat, and my shoulder is in some amount of pain from being pressed on. This is not my pillow either; whatever is beneath my head is soft but hard at the same time, and it is rising up and down and has a steady beat coming from within it. A bomb? No. A person. And whoever it is is still asleep. My captor? Or a fellow captive?
I close my eyes because I can't see anything anyway, and I draw my mind back in. Sometimes, if I'm extremely focused, I can feel a person's dream aura. I make the sleeping body beneath me my focal point, and I try to find a color. If there's not one, then the body isn't dreaming, but I do get the smallest tint of one.
White.
Eli.
Everything comes flooding back to the forefronts of my mind then, all at once. The prom, Kei's dress, the star roof, the gray, Mom's necklace, Theresa's shoes, Eli's calming words and long arms around me. I sit straight up and reach in the direction where I remember the lantern to be, but the light is gone from it, the battery all used up. I stand and push the roof hatch — probably blown closed by the wind — up and out, hoping the stars will provide some light. They do, but only enough to make out a sleeping figure, a pair of bare feet, a twist of black hair.
I shake his shoulders. "Eli," I whisper, until I realize we're outside and I can use my outside voice. "Eli, wake up. We fell asleep."
He snorts once and rolls over, pushes himself up with his arms and holds himself there for a moment in push-up position. He turns and smirks when he sees me. "Well, hey there, A.G. Good of you to stay the night," he says in a 1920s Wall Street businessman accent, if that's even possible. "I hate when I give these self-righteous broads the night of their life only to wake up in the morning to find them sneaking out in their underwear."
I am in no mood for jokes. It is God-knows-how-early in the morning and I have been unforgivably irresponsible. I have to get home; I have to get home to my father.
"What time is it?" he asks as he crawls to the door to pull it up, revealing the stairs that will provide my escape from this claustrophobic nightmare.
"I don't know. Late."
"Or early."
"I don't care. I've got to get home."
"Chill, wáqe wa'ú," he says as I start down the ladder.
"No, don't tell me to chill!" I all but yell, accusing him of something that he isn't entirely to blame for. "I can't believe you let us fall asleep!"
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He follows after me. "There was a beautiful girl laying with her head on my chest in a treehouse under the stars. That's, like, cinematically romantic. What was I supposed to do? The guys would've never forgiven me!"
