gust of wind. On the other side, she felt his mounting sadness, and she couldn’t bear to feel it. Before she knew what she was doing, the words began to spill out of her. “I don’t want to do anything wrong, and I’m afraid you’ll —you’ll see something in me that you hate or that will make you hate me, like that night at Eric’s party. I can’t control what I’m thinking of, and I don’t know how to deal with the fact that you can see it. I really—I really like you.” She felt as if her face were on fire, but she kept going. “I don’t want you to hate me, and yeah, I really suck at feelings and stuff. You should ask Julian! Ask anyone. I just—I wish we could be normal, you know? Like not have to do these interviews and explain everything, even though I know it’s important. Nobody gets it except for us. Humans don’t understand the Imria, the Imria don’t understand humans, and nobody understands us. We’re stuck in the middle, and we have to explain it to everyone. I know that. But I suck at talking about this stuff, and I —” She ran a hand through her hair, unable to stop talking. “I wish we could be normal and go out without being followed, and I don’t know, I wish we could make out in your car or something instead of being so
He laced his fingers through hers. She felt his heartbeat through his skin, a regular percussion that echoed her own.
“You can close yourself off, can’t you?” he said. “Try it.”
“You mean—”
“We can be normal for five minutes. I’ll try it too.”
She sensed him folding away his consciousness, as if he were closing the panels of a puzzle box one by one. She tried to do the same thing. She focused on her own heartbeat as Eres Tilhar had taught her; she centered on her own inhalation and exhalation. She closed off the third eye that opened every time David touched her, and he bent down, letting go of her hand so he could cup her face, and kissed her. His lower lip slid across hers, slightly dry. Even though she had kissed him before, she had never kissed him without being able to sense his internal self, and he felt so different now. Separate. A physical form she did not understand. She felt inordinately clumsy, and she wondered if being divorced from his consciousness made her a bad kisser.
Had she ever noticed that he was several inches taller than her? She had to stand on her tiptoes, stretching her arms up to slip them around his neck. His upper back felt strangely unfamiliar beneath her hands, a landscape of muscle she didn’t know. He pulled her closer, his hands on her waist, and she arched her back to fit against him. The heat that built inside her came slower than it had when she could also sense him, but it was unmistakable: a glowing flame that began to lick at her belly. He turned her, pushing her against the door, and in an awkward dance she moved her arms, whispering “Let me—” And she circled her arms around his waist.
Cracks broke in her consciousness—and in his. She saw brief flashes of what he was feeling: her hair tangled in his fingers; the taste of her mouth. She shuddered as the walls of her conscious self began to crumble, and she tried to hold them up at the same time that she wanted to drink in his emotions. It didn’t work.
And then David was pulling away from her even as she tried to drag him closer. He planted his hands on the door on either side of her head and pushed back.
“I don’t think that was even five minutes,” he said, breathless.
She lifted her hand to her mouth; her lips felt bruised. David’s eyes were dark, his mouth red from kissing her. She felt weak. She felt exhilarated. “Three minutes maybe.”
He laughed shortly and took a step back. She reached out, hooking a finger on his belt loop. “David.”
He looked down at her hand, but she didn’t let go. “Yeah,” he said, his voice rough.
“I’m sorry.”
He glanced up, puzzled. “Why?”
“Because I’m a dork,” she whispered. “Because I can’t say anything I really want to say, and I just want you to know it’s because I want you to like me.”
The expression on his face softened. “I do like you. Didn’t you notice?”
She was embarrassed. “Maybe.”
“Well, you better start noticing,” he said, but his tone was gentle. He reached behind her, and she thought he was going to kiss her again, but he was only going for the door handle. “We should go back before Julian get suspicious.”
“He’s already suspicious.”
David laughed, and for the first time all day, Reese felt like things were probably going to be all right.
After school on Monday, David and Reese told Mr. Hernandez that yes, the Imria could use their abilities to sense what humans were thinking. He didn’t seem to put much stock in Eres Tilhar’s statements about ethics. “Have you gotten photos of the adaptation chamber yet?” he asked.
“We haven’t been able to find the adaptation chamber,” Reese said.
“We’ll get them in time,” David assured him.
They had to leave right afterward to get to David’s soccer game—the first of the fall season. It was a home game, and because the opposing team was their biggest rival, Reese knew there would be a decent turnout, but she hadn’t expected that having David on the team would draw so many spectators. The stands were completely filled, and Reese huddled with Madison and Julian and Bri, hoping nobody would realize she was there. David didn’t even start—he’d missed too many practices that summer—but when he was substituted in midway through the second half, photographers fanned out along the sidelines and Reese felt the crowd focus on him. Their attention was so strong that she suspected David could feel it too, even out on the field. He didn’t score, and sometimes she saw him turning his back to the crowd as if he were trying to shut them out.
Kennedy won 3–2, and afterward David was surrounded by press. When his coach finally extricated him, Reese saw him retreat to the locker room, white-faced. That was when the photographers noticed her, waiting near the entrance to the high school with her friends. Cameras flashed as rapidly as strobe lights, and she held up her hand to shield her eyes, but they didn’t relent. Madison put an arm around her and said, “Let’s go inside.” As Julian pulled open the door, Bri shouted at the photographers, “Leave them alone!”
Inside, the hallways echoed with distant sounds from the boys’ locker room. Reese ducked into a shadowy recess between a trophy case and the door to the computer lab. “Thanks,” she said to Madison.
“They’re so annoying,” Madison grumbled. “Did you know they’ve started trying to get
“Did they? I’m sorry,” Reese said.
Madison shrugged. “Whatever. I told them I wasn’t talking.”
Julian leaned against the trophy case. “Once they took a photo of me flipping them off. I saw it on the Hub— it got five thousand likes in ten minutes.”
Reese laughed weakly. “You guys… thanks.”
“I don’t know how you deal with it,” Bri said. “They are relentless.”
“Come on,” Madison said. “It’s boring here. Let’s go wait by the boys’ locker room.”
Julian groaned.
“Shut up, you know you want to, Julian,” Madison said.
“Yeah, but I don’t,” Bri objected.
“You’re coming!” Madison insisted, and grabbed Bri’s arm to drag her down the hall.
When the soccer team emerged from the locker room, they absorbed Reese and her friends into their big herd of soapy-smelling boys and shouted jokes, shielding her and David from the photographers waiting outside the school. They descended on a taqueria two blocks away and took up all the tables, and as Reese waited for her burrito to be made she watched David laughing with his teammates, and Bri and Julian arguing over some obscure plot point on
There was something magical about it: this warm September night, the yellow-and-green flags fluttering from the ceiling, the salsa burning hot on her tongue, the Mexican Coke a rush of sugary sweetness.
CHAPTER 23
