because Molly burst out laughing.
“Relax, hon, you can trust Taylah — maybe she can help you out.”
“You got a sex question, I’m your girl,” Taylah assured me. I was skeptical. I trusted Molly, but her friends all had big mouths and little discretion.
“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s not important.”
“You want my advice?” Taylah asked, not seeming to care whether her advice was wanted or not. “Don’t do it with someone you love.”
“What?” I stared at her. She had just thrown my entire system of beliefs into chaos with a few simple words. “Don’t you mean exactly the opposite?”
“Oh, Tay, don’t tell her that,” Molly said.
“Seriously”—Taylah wagged a finger at me—“if you lose it to someone you really love, it all goes to hell.”
“But why?”
“Because when it ends, you’ve given away something really special and you can’t get it back. If you give it to someone you don’t care about — it won’t hurt so much.”
“What if it doesn’t end?” I asked, feeling a sickly lump rise in my throat.
“Trust me, Beth,” said Taylah earnestly. “Everything ends.”
As I listened, I felt a sudden, overwhelming urge to be as far away from them as possible.
“Bethie, don’t pay any attention to her,” Molly said as I pushed back my chair and stood up. “Now look, you’ve upset her.”
“I’m not upset,” I lied, trying to keep my voice level. “I have a meeting. I’ll see you guys later — thanks for the advice, Taylah.”
I picked up my pace as soon as I was outside the cafeteria. I needed to find Xavier. I needed him to hold me so that I could breathe again and his smell and touch would wash away the violent waves of nausea erupting inside me. I found him at his locker about to head to water-polo practice and skidded into him in my haste for reassurance.
“It’s not going to end, is it?” I buried my face in his chest. “Promise me you won’t let it end.”
“Whoa, Beth, what’s wrong?” Xavier detached me firmly but gently and made me look at him. “What’s happened?
“Nothing,” I said with an unsteady voice. “It’s just that Taylah said…”
“Beth,” Xavier sighed, “when are you going to stop listening to those girls?”
“She said everything ends,” I whispered and felt Xavier’s arms tense around me and knew the thought was just as painful to him. “But I couldn’t stand it if that happened to us. Everything would fall apart; there wouldn’t be anything to live for. If we end, I end.
“Don’t talk like that,” Xavier said. “I’m here and so are you. Nobody is going anywhere.”
“And you won’t ever leave me?”
“Not so long as I’m living.”
“How do I know that’s true?”
“Because when I look at you, I see my whole world. I’m not about to walk away; I wouldn’t have anything left.”
“But why did you choose me?” I asked. I knew the answer, I knew how much he loved me, but I needed to hear him say it.
“Because you bring me closer to God and to myself,” Xavier said. “When I’m around you, I understand things I never thought I’d understand and my feelings for you seem to override everything. The world could fall apart around me, and it wouldn’t matter if I had you.”
“Do you want to hear something crazy?” I whispered. “Sometimes, at night, I think I can feel your soul next to me.”
“That’s not so crazy.” Xavier smiled.
“Let’s create a place,” I said, as I pressed against him. “A place that’s just ours; a place we can always find each other if things ever go wrong.”
“Like under the cliffs off Shipwreck Coast?”
“No, I mean a place inside our heads,” I said. “That we can visit if we’re ever lost or apart, or just need to make contact with each other. It’s the one place nobody else will ever know how to find.”
“I like that,” said Xavier. “Why don’t we call it the White Place?”
“That’s perfect.”
23
R.I.P
According to the belief system of most humans, there are only two dimensions, the dimension of the living and that of the dead. But what they don’t realize is that there are many more. Every day people on earth exist parallel to other beings; close enough to touch but invisible to the untrained eye. Some are called the Rainbow People, immortals who can travel between worlds and are made up of nothing but wisdom and understanding. People catch glimpses of them sometimes, shooting between realms. They appear as a streak of glittering white- gold light or the faint glow of a rainbow hanging in the air. Most humans think they’re witnessing a trick of the light. Only very few can sense a divine presence. I liked to think Xavier was one of those few.
I found Xavier in the cafeteria, slid in beside him, and nibbled from the container of nachos he offered me. When he shifted position in his chair, his thigh brushed against mine and sent a tingling heat through my body. I couldn’t enjoy it for long as the sound of raised voices reached us from the counter. Two boys in their early teens were arguing over their place in line.
“Man, you just pushed in front of me!”
“Whatever, I’ve been here the whole time.”
“That’s bull! Ask anyone!”
With no teacher in sight, their disagreement escalated to the point of shoving and name calling. Some junior girls just behind them started to look worried when one of the boys seized the other in a headlock.
Xavier sprang to his feet to intervene but sat down again when someone beat him to it. It was Lachlan Merton, a boy with bleached blond hair who was permanently plugged into his iPod and hadn’t handed in a single homework assignment all year. He was usually impervious to everything going on around him. Now he was pushing his way between the two boys and hauling them off each other. We couldn’t hear what he said, but the boys reluctantly parted and even complied with his directive to shake hands.
Xavier and I exchanged looks. “Lachlan Merton behaving responsibly — now that’s a first,” remarked Xavier.
It occurred to me that what we’d witnessed was a prime example of the subtle shift in thinking at Bryce Hamilton. I immediately thought of how pleased Ivy and Gabriel would be to hear their efforts were paying off. Of course there were needier communities in the world than Venus Cove, but they weren’t part of our mission. Other watchers had been assigned there. I was secretly glad I hadn’t been sent to a part of the world ravaged by war, poverty, or natural disaster. The images of those places on the news were confronting enough. I tried to avoid the news as it often led to feelings of despair. I couldn’t watch footage of children suffering from starvation and illness caused from lack of clean water. When I thought about the things humans could turn a blind eye to, it made me want to cry. What made one person more or less deserving than another? No one should be hungry or lonely or wishing for life to end. Although I prayed for divine intervention, sometimes the thought just made me angry.
When I talked to Gabriel about it, he said I wasn’t ready to understand right now, but that one day I would. “Address the things you can address,” was his advice.
The next morning the three of us set off to Fairhaven, the local nursing home. I’d visited Alice there once or twice as promised, but my visits had dropped off as I tended to devote most of my free time to Xavier. Gabriel and Ivy were regular visitors there, however, and made sure to take Phantom along with them. According to them, he
