was like to stand close to him.
Every time I walked past the white house I went up to the door and looked in the windows. Everything was locked-down, shuttered, and silent. “It’s like it never happened,” I said to Josh, “except I can’t shake this conviction that it did, it really did, and Haiden is real. He’s not just a figment of my overheated imagination.”
I touched Josh’s hand. I remembered the blood-ceremony we did when we were kids, how serious we were. I laced my fingers through his and confessed, “I really want to see him again, but how can I even make that happen? I don’t know anything about him.”
And it was as if Josh’s voice spoke inside my head:
That night I lit the candle and did the meditation exercise exactly as Haiden had shown me. I did it every day in the week following. On Saturday morning I woke up to the feeling of that invisible hand on my rib, gently tugging.
I knew where it wanted me to go, and who would be waiting for me there.
6
Haiden said, “Now I need to teach you how to see.”
When Haiden opened the door, the little dog ran into his arms again, and he picked her up and rubbed her behind the ears. It was as if they’d known each other forever. He smiled at me, and my heart did a quick little salsa in my chest. I wasn’t sure I could talk without stammering, so I just smiled and followed him into the sunken room with the table and the bowl of fruit.
We did the candle meditation exercise again. Haiden made a gesture with his hand and suddenly the room went dark, even though afternoon sunshine should have been leaking around the edges of the blinds. I said, “Do you use ... I mean is this...” I couldn’t believe I was even asking this. I took a breath and tried again. “This is about magic, right? You’re teaching me magic?”
“You could maybe call it that,” he said. He tipped his head at me, and his eyes crinkled at the corners. It was a look that made me feel warm inside. I had the feeling, again, that I had met him before. “I’m teaching you to see what most people can’t. Give me your hand.”
He had elegant hands with long tapered fingers. His skin was smooth and cool. “I want you to do this...” He swept my hand through the air. “...and I want you to clear your mind and concentrate on what you see.”
After about fifteen minutes of this, I said, “I don’t see anything.”
“Try again. Keep trying.”
“But this is stupid!”
“Sasha,” he said, “you have to be patient. I know it doesn’t feel like you’re getting anywhere, but your brain...” He touched my temple. “...is making new connections, laying down new neural circuitry. But it takes a bit of time and practice, practice, practice.”
“But what am I supposed to be looking for?”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “You’ll see.”
When I shot him a dubious look, he added, “You will.”
Then Paloma and I were on the street again, blinking in sudden light. I checked my watch. I had been with Haiden for what felt like hours, but only two minutes had passed.
7
I may not have known what I was looking for, but I looked for it that night and every night following. All I saw was my hand waving through the air. Maybe I was crazy. Every day I walked Paloma past the abandoned white house and knocked on the door and looked in the windows.
Haiden was nowhere around.
Then one afternoon when I was visiting Josh, I moved my hand across his. I saw golden trails of light stream from my fingertips, hover in the air for several seconds, then fade. My breath stopped.
I swept my hand through the air and the same golden light traced the passage of my fingers. I couldn’t believe it. “Look at that, Josh,” I cried out, “look at that!” Josh slept on, lost in his coma, as I played the light above him.
8
“It’s astral energy,” Haiden explained to me when I saw him at the house one day later.
“Astral energy?”
“Every living thing generates it. And once you can see that, you can see...” He thought for a moment, then said, “Watch.”
He closed his eyes and let his head hang. I had the urge to reach out and brush the dark hair from his forehead. As I watched, he seemed to ... divide. A second version of Haiden slipped out from the first, until it was standing beside him in the same pose, arms limp, head hanging. A feeling like cold electricity passed through me, and I could feel the prickling of goose bumps rising from my skin.
I couldn’t speak. The second version of Haiden had a shimmer to its body, reminding me of the surface of a sunlit lake.
It lifted its head and opened its eyes.
Then it was gone.
The real Haiden said, “You saw that, didn’t you?” There was a kind of urgency in his tone, as if nothing could be more important. “You saw that very clearly?”
My throat felt dry. I ran my tongue across my lips and said, “What ... what was that? What did you do?”
“That was my astral projection. My soul projection.”
“You looked like your own ghost.”
“Ghosts are a slightly different form of energy,” Haiden said, and I didn’t know what to say to that. I had never believed in ghosts, but the whole world was now slanting and tilting around me. If, in that moment, a portal opened in midair and a unicorn came dancing through it, I would not have been surprised. “Astral projection is the art of sending your soul from your body.”
“Will I be able to do that? Will you teach—”
“No,” Haiden said sharply, cutting the air with his hand. “It’s dangerous. Your body is left empty and vulnerable, and your soul could get lost and not be able to find its way back. The only time your soul should ever leave your body is when you die.”
“But you did it,” I said.
“Only for a moment. And I am...” Haiden smiled a little, turning his hands palms up. “I’m not a regular guy.”
I took a breath. “Then what are you?”
Haiden blinked a little, as if the question had taken him by surprise.
“There’s something different about you,” I said. Stating the obvious.
“There’s something different about you, too,” Haiden said. “That’s why I’m here. That’s why
“Do you do this all the time? I mean, do you just appear in random places and teach things like ... astral energy ... to teenage girls with dachshunds?”
“I don’t just appear in ‘random places.’ I came here specifically for you.”
“Why?”
