Indigo

It was a fun afternoon. A beautiful day of distraction. Even when the motor wouldn’t start when we were ready to call it a day, Rennick just grabbed the two oars from the cargo space and started to row. I offered over and over to help him, but he wouldn’t hear of it. And I tried not to wallow in the romance of the gesture—but I did. I stared at Rennick’s silhouette against the pink sunset on the water. I watched him through the haze of twilight, with the heady, sleepy feeling of a long day in the sun.

But really, in the forefront of my mind all day was the big question: Was I going to trust that my hands carried the power to heal rather than the power to kill? Did I really believe it?

And that question had been there when Rennick’s hands held on to my fishing pole, showing me how to keep just the right tension, how to slowly reel in my line. His hands were close to mine, only a sliver away, a breath. But he didn’t touch me. Didn’t push. Didn’t ask. Not yet.

In my heart, I thanked him for not bringing it up yet. He knew it was there. Between us. Around us. But I had to ignore it for a while. I had to. Because these were questions that just had to simmer.

My phone buzzed in my pocket as we walked back to the Jeep. “It’s my mom,” I told him.

“I can take you back,” he said, but then shot me a look, raised his eyebrows. “But I’m good to stay out.”

“Yeah?” I said. Were we feeling each other out?

“Yeah,” he said, smiling as he opened the passenger door for me.

“I’m hungry,” I said.

“Where would you like to go?”

“Anywhere with air-conditioning.”

The restaurant looked a little questionable from the outside, a bit tattered, weather-beaten, but when we got inside, it was charming, with candlelit tables and quiet music, not fancy, just nice. Clammy Joe’s, the place was called. Rennick filled in for people here once in a while, when he wasn’t busy with Dodge. The staff greeted him by name, and the pretty blond hostess gave me a smile when she showed us to our booth.

The place smelled of seafood—fresh and succulent seafood, like the Rawlingses’ place. My stomach growled. We sat in a corner booth. A cup of crayons was on the table so you could draw on the brown paper tablecloth. In the middle of the paper, a circle was cut out, exposing a hole in the table about six inches wide. Rennick saw me eyeing it.

“It’s the garbage can,” he explained. I gave him a funny look. “For all the shells. You really are from Chicago,” he joked. He smiled warmly at me, and I settled in. The place gave off a homey vibe. I couldn’t really explain it, but in that second, when I looked up at Rennick again, I saw his aura in the dim light—that’s what it had to be—and I saw the reds, the oranges, and purple, a thick wavy line of purple, especially near his head.

“What is it?” he asked, looking up from his menu. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Nothing,” I said, checking out the menu. “What does purple mean in an aura?”

“Feeling. Connection. Love, maybe. Why?”

“No reason,” I said, and blushed. The heat rose in my neck, into my earlobes. Rennick. Purple. I tried not to think about what he was seeing in my aura. “So how long’ve you been helping out here?”

“A year or so. Since I moved in with Dodge.” He paused. “Thanks for spending the day with me.”

I nodded, smiled. “Thank you.” He watched me as we talked, his eyes never looking away from me. He studied me and it made me feel self-conscious and pained but also wonderful and worthy. I realized this was why I hadn’t known who Rennick was at the Shack that first day he looked at me; it was because he never looked at anyone. Never really looked. Not at school. Not here in the restaurant. No one. His focus was only on what was in front of him, and at school that was usually the worn paperback in his hand or the sketchpad on his lap. He never looked at people. Except for me.

I held on to this truth, and I watched it. The pretty hostess with fresh silverware. No eye contact. The people laughing one booth over. Nothing.

But here he was just staring at me. I realized I was mimicking his body language. My elbows were on the table, me leaning toward him over the hole in the middle.

I watched the way his mouth moved, always with a curve up at the ends. The shadows from the lone candle on the table played on his face and lit his deep blue eyes. He was an optimist, the swift, purposeful way he talked with his hands. His demeanor, it gave him away. And I could see that in how he moved, how he dealt with people, his easy nature.

“It must be easy to make friends, to see people for what they really are. The auras.” It came out sounding flippant.

He recoiled a little, sat back in his seat. “I bet it’s harder because of the auras.”

“Really?” I couldn’t figure that one out. “How can that be?”

He shook his head, leaned in toward me. “I don’t want to sound …” He searched for the right word, rubbed his palm across his jaw. “I don’t want to sound judgmental, but there are very few people who seem … interesting.”

“Is that so? What’s wrong with most people?” I leaned in even closer.

“There are lots of problems,” Rennick started, ticking them off on one hand. “Green. Lots of green. Jealousy. Self-involvement. And yellow. Things. Too much worry about things, material stuff, wealth. Half the time all I see is a bunch of green and yellow. And then there’s the other problem.”

“What’s that?” I said, mesmerized by the way he spoke, the lines of his face, the slope of his nose, the shadow of a beard on his jawline.

“The absence of aura.”

“Why? How?”

“My theory is, because too many people live on the surface, never delve in deep. I think it goes along with yellow. The yellow fades to nothing. Materials matter and then … people aren’t really living anymore. No aura.”

He sat up straight then, looked the tiniest bit embarrassed. I noticed that Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, or at least a Muzak version of it, was playing over the restaurant speakers. I had always loved this song. It sounded so difficult, so bitter, with the notes trying to eke out just a little hope.

I took all this in as our waiter came up. “Good evening, miss,” he said. “Rennick, the usual?”

“Nah, I’ll have the crab legs, Tim,” Rennick told him. “Caesar salad.”

“Scallops,” I said. I wanted to order the crab legs too, but I had a feeling Rennick was going to want to pay, and they were expensive.

“And to drink?” the waiter asked.

“I’ll have a Coke,” I answered. I had missed this. Being out. Living. The thrill of a date. I had missed all of these normal things, although tonight didn’t feel completely normal. I had never, ever known—or even really dreamed about—the instant attraction toward another person, both physically and emotionally, like I felt with Rennick. He was the bass to my treble clef, and even as I thought of that stupid, cheesy analogy, part of me wanted to poke myself in the eye with my fork—but I liked it anyway. It made sense.

“Root beer,” Rennick answered.

When the waiter left, I said, “I could stay here all night.” I hadn’t even meant to say it, but it was true. And I smiled then, deciding to be brave. “So what colors are in my aura? What made it interesting to you?”

Rennick squinted, leaned away from me. “I’ll sound like a stalker.”

“I’m glad you stalked me,” I said.

“Your aura is really beautiful. I mean …” He rubbed at his jaw. “Sometimes it’s more about the intensity than the specific colors. Yours is just powerful.” I rolled my eyes. “No,” he insisted, “that’s the truth. For a long time, I stopped … expecting more. Kinda was losing hope in people. I had lost it in myself.” His voice was serious, his face gone dark.

“Tell me.”

He waved the moment away, laughed nervously. “I watched you, in school. Around.”

“Around?” I said. “So tell me. How do you explain our supersenses?”

“The pineal gland,” he said.

“What’s that?” I hadn’t been expecting a real answer.

“A tiny section of our brains, shaped like a pinecone, deep in the brain stem. Controls all kinds of stuff, but