it’s open?”
He glanced briefly at the dark window on the second floor. “Trust me. I’ve been inside already.”
The living room was plain but clean. There was a photograph of Pope Paul VI on the wall above the television set, but no books anywhere.
The unmistakable odour of boiled cabbage clung to the cheap curtains, indeed had seeped into every porous surface in the living room. Morgan hated boiled cabbage, especially the way it smelled when it was cooking. At that moment, however, it reminded her of her neighbourhood in Toronto, and she just felt homesick.
Sitting next to her on the plastic-covered sofa, Finn said shyly, “Morgan, can I ask you a question?”
Her voice was gentle, but teasing “That’s one question already, Finnegan.”
“My mom called me that,” he said.
“What was the question you wanted to ask me?”
He hesitated. “Have you ever… well, have you ever, you know… like, had a… a…”
“A boyfriend? Is that what you’re asking? If I’ve ever had a boyfriend?”
Mutely, Finn nodded his head.
“Have you ever had a girlfriend, Finn?”
He shook his head. “Nope.”
“Why not?” She took his hand lightly in hers, finding it ice cold. “Have you ever liked a girl before?”
“Only you,” he said, looking down. “Never before. Nobody else.”
She brought his hand up to her face and laid it there. He leaned forward clumsily to kiss her on the lips but missed, landing the kiss on her chin instead. Morgan inclined her head and kissed him tentatively on the lips.
Blood thundered in Morgan’s ears and her face flamed. “Finn, just so you know, I never… well, I’ve never had a… a boyfriend, either.”
Finn pulled away as though burned. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m such a jerk. Why would a girl like you want to kiss somebody as ugly as me? I’m sorry,” he said again. “I’m so stupid.”
Morgan sat very still, as thought considering. Then she unbuttoned the top button of her cardigan. Then the second. Finn watched, his eyes wide.
“Finn?” In the dark living room, Morgan’s voice sounded alien, even to her-thicker, fuller, almost a woman’s voice now.
Outside, the wind picked up, blowing thick fistfuls of snow at the windows. Morgan shrugged the sweater off her shoulders, letting it fall behind her on the sofa.
“What?” Finn breathed.
“You’re not ugly. You were never ugly.”
“I’m not?”
“No,” Morgan said, reaching for him. “You’re really not. You’re really beautiful to me, Finnegan.” She hesitated, then said, “Finn?”
“What?”
“Do you promise-
“I promise, Morgan,” Finn said. “Cross my heart.”
They held each other close, naked in the makeshift bed of ottoman cushions and crocheted afghan blankets on the floor of the immaculate, chaste house that smelled like boiled cabbage and carpet deodorizer, under the photograph of Pope Paul VI.
Morgan had asked Finn if he wanted to go upstairs, but he seemed to panic at the thought, insisting instead they stay in the living room. When she asked him why, he shook his head and said, “Here is good. Here is fine.”
Later, in her arms, Finn’s icy body didn’t warm, but neither did Morgan’s body catch the cold from Finn’s and chill in sympathetic response. They tempered each other, explored each other’s bodies with their hands and mouths, wondering at the bevy of sensations aroused as each touched the other in places they’d never been touched before.
“Morgan,” Finn whispered in her ear when they were finished. “Would you stay with me?”
“We’re leaving in the morning,” she murmured. “I can’t stay here.”
“No,” he said. His voice was ineffably sad. “I mean, just for a little bit longer. Just for tonight. I just don’t want to be alone.”
Morgan leaned up on her elbow and looked at him quizzically. “What do you mean? Of course I’ll stay with you tonight. Why? I mean, what else would I do?”
“Just a bit longer,” Finn said, gazing out the living room window at the lightening eastern sky.
Morgan realized she must have dozed off, because when she opened her eyes, Finn was kneeling at her side, shaking her arm with nearly violent desperation.
“Morgan,” Finn said urgently. “Wake up. I need to ask you something.”
“What?” she muttered, still mostly asleep. “What is it? Are you OK?”
“Morgan, would you do something for me if I asked you to?”
“Sure,” Morgan said. “What?” Then her eyes opened wide and she focused. The scream caught in her throat, becoming a sharp gasp instead.
Finn was sweating blood-literally. It covered him like a delicate, dark red mist, a ruby dew that made his skin shimmer when he moved. He wasn’t bleeding, exactly-instead, the blood was a fine, thin, glowing roseate spray that was becoming more opaque by the second.
“Finn,
“It doesn’t hurt, Morgan, I promise it doesn’t. Not yet.”
“Finn! What’s happening to you?”
“Morgan, do you love me?”
“Yes! Yes! I love you! Now tell me what’s happening!?”
“I need you to help me, Morgan,” Finn said, his voice breaking. “I can’t do this by myself. You have to help me. Please?” He looked towards the window where the sky was now bright enough for her to see everything in the room. Then back at Morgan with pleading eyes. “Do you understand?”
Morgan started to cry. “No, Finn, please. I can’t,” she sobbed. “Don’t ask me to do
“Listen to me,” Finn said gently. “I want to find Sadie. I want to be with my dog again. I miss her. I want to be somewhere else-I want to be in the place I was in before all this happened. I want to go home. A lot of bad things happen in Parr’s Landing, but it isn’t all bad. Nothing is
“What do I have to do?”
Morgan thought she had never seen a more loving or radiant smile in her life. Finn pointed to the door. “Just walk with me. Out there. Out into the sunlight. Where Sadie is. And if I can’t do it, push me.”
Mutely, she nodded, white-faced.
When they reached the door, Finn turned to her and hugged her. “I love you, Morgan,” he whispered. “Thank you.”
Then Morgan opened the front door and walked Finn into the dawn.
In the end, dying a second time proved different than anything Finn had ever imagined it might be.
For one thing, the pain that his small, shrieking body felt as the sunlight ignited a holocaust under his skin-an incandescence that boiled his blood and set alight his bones from the inside, charring them to ash in seconds-was surprisingly brief, even momentary. Such, it seemed, was the nature of the soul-even a soul like Finn’s that had been severed from its natural life and forced into rebirth in an unnatural one.
Rising above his body as it writhed and burned on the ground, Finn saw, not without pain and shame, that Morgan was screaming, as well. He’d hurt her, after all-the one person whom he wanted most to spare any pain.
The bare skin of her arms, where she’d held him as he’d tried to duck back inside the house at the moment the
