Indigo

something crackling off the tips of my fingers, flaming indigo?

I heard the gasps from the other customers. I saw Mia-Joy running toward her, and I heard Mrs. Rawlings screaming for 911, but none of this really registered. It was like it was all happening far away from me.

“What was wrong with her again?” This was a paramedic in his blue uniform. He was right next to me, kneeling. How he got there so quick, I didn’t know.

“I have the touch?” I told him.

“We know about you,” he said. “But what is her ailment?” He was listening for breaths as he spoke to me.

I racked my brain. I could sense that I should know this, that I did know this less than five minutes ago. It was there, on the very edge of my brain, but I couldn’t grasp it. What was wrong with her? What was I fixing?

“She has lymphoma and systemic lupus,” Mia-Joy answered, eyeballing me and pushing me down into my chair. I sat there, watching the events unfold around me. The saving of this woman’s life. The sideways glances from the other patrons. The clucking of Sarah’s tongue as she brought me a glass of ice water.

Then all of a sudden it was like I lost some time, because Rennick was next to me but I didn’t know when or how he had gotten there. I looked around and saw that the woman and the paramedics were gone.

“It was akin to a mild electric shock. She just passed out,” he was saying in a soothing voice, over and over. Like a repeat sign at the end of a measure.

He reached for my hand. I yanked it back.

“You should be glad about this,” I snapped. “Now it’s all gone to shit. They can just move me back to Chicago. Everyone can forget about it all.” I got up so quickly that I knocked my chair backward.

“Corrine!”

I didn’t turn around. I stalked out to my bike and rode home. Confused. Hot. Frayed. Guilty.

I retreated to my room. It was like I didn’t know anything anymore. I played Angry Chipmunks on my iPad and listened to music through my earbuds as loud as I could stand it, and I forced myself, tried desperately at least, not to think.

Mom and Dad tried to talk to me. Mrs. Abernathy was fine. Rennick had been right, it was only a moderate electric shock. She had not been cured, but she was getting treatment, thanks to the donations Mia-Joy had been collecting. And thanks to a handful of generous doctors on her case. But I hadn’t saved her.

I had expected a quiet relief on Mom’s face or in Dad’s demeanor, because maybe people would leave me alone now after such a public failure. But no, there was none of that. They were my parents, after all. It made me feel guilty for thinking that they could so easily be appeased by the situation when they knew it made me miserable.

The next morning was Sunday. Dad went with Mom to her church, and I stayed holed up in my room. When the doorbell rang, I looked out my window and saw Rennick’s Jeep.

I waffled for a long minute, but eventually I let him in, and we stood in the foyer awkwardly. He looked at me with those eyes, those eyelashes, and I wanted to cross the distance between us. I wanted to throw my arms around his neck. But I didn’t trust myself. My hands. My body. What lived underneath my ribs? I didn’t want to hurt him.

Was I back here? Really? Had I ever left?

“How are you?” he said as he moved into the living room. I backed away from him, but still he stood only a foot away from me.

I shifted from one foot to the other. I tried to hold it together, I really did. But a couple of tears slipped down my cheeks. I wiped them away quickly with the back of my hand. I looked up at him, shook my head. My lip trembled.

“Baby,” he said. He moved forward to pull me toward him, but I backed away.

“I can’t.”

“Corrine.” And when I looked back up at him, I saw there were tears in his eyes too, his face, his beautiful face, a study in pain. “Baby, let me hold you.”

I shook my head.

“Okay,” he said, and settled on the couch. I sat down across from him on the loveseat. “You didn’t hurt Mrs. Abernathy.”

“It’s too risky. All of it.”

“Corrine, how can I make you see it like I see it?” He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “Listen, you know with auras? We’re not all one color, right?”

I nodded.

“There’re all kinds of colors in there. Some traits are positive, some negative. Some a mixture. But the overall auras themselves, they are just—”

“Beautiful.”

“No.” He shook his head. “No, they are real. They are life. Us. It’s all we got.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“None of us have total control of anything. Not you, not me, not anybody. And we’re all taking risks, every day. Nothing’s promised.”

He came over to the loveseat then, sat down next to me. I let the tears fall down my cheeks, and I thought about what he said. He brushed his hand through my hair, and the hairs on the nape of my neck rose. It was like the first touch ever, so real to me, exaggerated for some reason.

“I’m taking a risk right now,” he said. “But it’s worth it.”

“The risk of being electrocuted?” I said.

“No, Corrine, the risk that you won’t love me back.”

My heart swelled at the word, and I turned to him, my eyes meeting his. His beautiful face, his gorgeous eyes, watching me, seeing me, only me, the real me, searching me for what? An answer to the unasked question?

I swallowed against the dryness in my throat. And then I answered him. “I will.” I wanted to sound brave, but it came out small.

He leaned forward, kissed my eyebrow, kissed away my tears, and then his lips were on mine, and we were kissing. His mouth against mine, our connection. Soft, gentle. Questioning. And I let it happen, and I wanted it, I wanted him.

“Touch me,” he whispered. “Put your hands on me, Corrine.”

“I can’t,” I said. And I pulled away, a promise unfulfilled. He sighed, raking his hand through his hair. After a few moments, he stood up; he left me something, a piece of paper, on the coffee table, but he left wordlessly.

It was more than just my heart knowing him. My heart loved him.

I took the paper upstairs to my room, unfolded it. It was a beautiful chalk drawing: an aura, a version of the one aura that had most populated his garage. His favorite subject. The colors were rich and jewel-toned, like the leaves of a Chicago autumn, maroon and orange, purple and gold, bright red and indigo. I flipped it over and he had signed it in bright blue ink.

My name and the date. I had been right. This was me.

My heart ached because I couldn’t agree with this rendering, this beauty. I felt weak and paralyzed with the complications of this touch. I was not worthy of this power. Of Rennick’s attention, his admiration. His love. He had used that word. Love.

I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I made myself really look. When would I quit hating myself?

When would it be enough?

I thought of Paganini’s La Campanella. The power of it. The strong start. Right from the first measure. So sure of itself. I thought of how Mrs. Smelser had first assigned me this piece on the violin back in sixth grade. As I had been waiting for the student ahead of me to finish, I sat down at the piano in the school hallway and began to play it, but different. Not allegro. I slowed it down. Ritard. Gave it more of a nocturne flair. Just playing around with it.

I had really lost myself in the playing of it. Transforming it. And when I finally opened my eyes, I flushed at seeing Mrs. Smelser and her other student standing beside the piano. I had apologized, explaining to her that I