Pieces of Hope (19 page)

I froze
in the corner, stopping just short of pushing myself through the wall. Despite
my embarrassment, I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving him. Aside from that,
his intrusion had left in a weakened state and I wasn’t sure I had the strength
to leave.
 

Ethan
glanced hurriedly at the watch on his arm, gave an irritated look, and walked
over to a large dresser. He yanked out a pair of socks. His shoes were visible
at the end of the bed. He slipped them on while still standing, knotting them
quickly. Then his eyes brightened with a sudden thought. “See me tonight,” he
urged. “I’ll make it up to you!” He blew me a kiss before he ran out the door.
“Tonight,” he repeated. “I’ll be waiting!”

I slid
down the wall, acutely aware that something was wrong. In the brief instant the
two of us had connected, I hadn’t felt anything emanating from Ethan.

Nothing.

How was
it that I could sense everyone else’s emotions . . .

Feel
their desires, their innermost longings, their pain . . .

But not
from the one person I most wished I could?

11
Realizations

After
three unsuccessful attempts to peel back a portion of the wall—thinking that a
visit to
Amora
might lift my spirits—I gave up on a
shortcut and imagined myself back at Liberty Station. Several young people,
speaking in foreign tongues, were awaiting their turns at the revolving door
when I arrived. I stood behind a boy in a cottony-white turban and a
black-haired girl with dark, enchanting eyes. As I watched them, I asked myself
if Ethan and I made an equally stunning couple, or if the idea of this was
laughable. Perhaps he outshone me here as easily as he did in the living realm.

It
wasn’t a sad thought, I realized, just a realistic one. With all the joy
surrounding me at the Station, it was difficult to sustain a bad mood of any
kind for more than seconds at a time. This place was like chocolate cake for
the soul.
 

In the
bustling café, I spotted
Creesie
at our usual corner
booth.
Rin
and Charlotte sat across from her, and all
three of them seemed spellbound by a tall, teenaged boy who knelt beside the
table. Golden-haired and animated—I questioned if he could speak if his hands
were tied behind his back—he had them grabbing their sides in hysterical
laughter. Every once in a while,
Creesie
would cry, “
Oo-hoo
!” or “Oh, no!” and the golden-haired boy would
continue as she rapped her hand on the table.

I broke
into a grin at the sight of her. Making my way through the crowded café, I slid
into the booth beside Charlotte,
noticing that neither she nor
Rin
were dressed in
their usual prom-wear. I raised an eyebrow at their attire; their bright T-shirts
mimicked mine. We could have passed for triplets.
  

I waited
as they wiped their eyes and regained control of themselves.

“Imitation
is the sincerest form of flattery,”
Rin
said,
flashing a set of perfect teeth from the other side of Charlotte, who smiled
shyly at the table.
  

“They
heard all about your recent adventure with Ethan and thought it was a good
idea,”
Creesie
explained, pressing her soft waves
back into place. “Time passes so swiftly here that we often forget about simple
human pleasures. Even I decided to try it.”

Only now
did it register that
Creesie
looked different, too.
She’d slipped into a pink floral halter dress, straight out of the fifties—her
era of choice—and the bright color made her dark skin glisten more than usual.

 
“Maybe you’ll start a trend at the Station,” Charlotte beamed. “Long
after you’ve gone, we’ll still be up to our ears in fashion.”

Rin
stopped sipping her Coke, the straw still at her lips.
“That’s the best idea I’ve heard in ages. I’ll start spreading the word.” She
closed her eyes. That’s when it dawned on me that she had already begun.
Telepathy certainly had its advantages.
 

A slow
song ended on the jukebox and a bluesy one followed it. I tapped my foot
beneath the table, bobbing my head a little as well. Without my asking, Charlotte said, “If you
want to hear something, all you have to do is think it.”
 

“Of
course,”
Rin
broke in. “You’ll have to wait your
turn. Who knows how many thousands are in front of your request?”

“Still,
it doesn’t hurt to try,” Charlotte
encouraged. “We’ll think it with you . . . a song from the forties, right? I’ve
heard the tune, but I don’t remember the—”

“Charlotte—!” I exclaimed
in shock.

“We
weren’t listening. I promise.” She pointed a telltale finger at
Creesie
.

“I might
have mentioned a few things . . . nothing special, no real details,”
Creesie
fudged, gazing at me with her owl-like eyes. “We
were waiting for you to fill us in.”

Creesie
scooted over, making way for the golden-haired boy
to sit beside her. Cat appeared at the table then. Five plates of pecan pie
with big dollops of whipped cream on top balanced easily on her arms. With my
mouth watering, I dove in for an oversized bite before
Creesie
introduced her guest.

“Where
are my manners?” she suddenly announced, as though she had forgotten the boy
was there. “Hope, this is my dear old friend, Gustav
Vallerius
.”

I
grinned politely at him, my mouth still full.
    

In a
German accent, he joked, “Old? Look who’s talking.” To me, he said, “You, young
lady, should call me Gus. All my friends do.” His eyes were a clear pale blue.
The color reminded me of the sky overlooking Heaven’s Peak. And, of course,
that made me think of Ethan. “Are you enjoying your stay?” Gustav asked
earnestly.

I
swallowed before speaking. It was beyond delicious.

 
“What’s not to love?” I finally said, my
thoughts returning to Ethan.

As I dug
in for another bite,
Creesie
told Gus, “Hope’s just
returned from another visit, a delightful little shortcut.” Her eyes lit up
unexpectedly. “Something you also have a little experience with, I’m guessing .
. .”

Gus
chuckled freely. It was a delightful, intoxicating sound.

Looking
back at me, he said, “I don’t hear enough great stories these days. Would you
like to tell us about your visit?”

I
groaned internally. Was it possible to keep some thoughts to myself? Even for a
little while? With so many eager faces awaiting a response, I couldn’t just
announce what was troubling me. There seemed only one logical explanation for
it. One unthinkable one. Ethan didn’t feel the same way about me that I did for
him.

Creesie
either noticed my hesitation, or she was listening.
I wasn’t sure which.

“He does
have a beautiful soul,” she prompted. “That doesn’t happen every day.”

And just
like that, as if someone had taken a giant eraser and erased it all from my
mind, I could only think of how lucky I was to have ever met Ethan. That
chocolate-cake-for-the-soul thing was having its usual uplifting effect.
   

The
words spilled out before I could stop them. I rambled on in a breathless rush,
“You should see him! He—he glows!” I pictured him then, his broad shoulders,
effortless smile. “I’ve never seen anything like it. He’s . . . he’s . . .” I
broke off. The only word that came to mind was not one I was about to say out
loud. Especially here.
 

“Angelic?”
Charlotte
finished for me as
Creesie
snickered at her pie.

“Yes, I
suppose that’s one way of putting it,” I muttered under my breath. “I wish you
could have seen the way he looked at me. As if I were the only person in the
world that mattered . . .”

Stepping
out of my reverie, I noticed their mutually inclined heads.

“I’m
sure,” I mumbled, red-faced, realizing what they were doing, and attempting to
stem the flow of thoughts, “I’m sure that happens to everyone on visits.”

I heard
four distinctly separate voices mumbling disagreements in my head.

“Did you
say he was glowing?” The words bubbled right out of Charlotte. Gazing at me dreamily, she asked,
“Can you show us?”

The pale
violet shade was burning in my mind.

“That’s
gorgeous,”
Rin
breathed. “I can see it.”

“It’s
his aura,”
Creesie
said, continuing her trend for her
nonexistent explanations.

“His
aura?” I asked, suddenly intrigued.

“The
color of one’s soul,”
Creesie
replied. “Strong
emotions tend to make it more visible. The greater the intensity, the easier it
is to see.”

“Does
the color have meaning?” I wondered aloud.

“Oh,
heavens yes! That’s very telling. If you think about what colors are generally
associated with—yellow is a happy color, red is angry, blue is peaceful—it will
give you a general idea. Those are very basic, of course. But it does give
clues as to the type of life a person has lived. The clearer the color, the
freer the soul . . . Muddier shades indicate a problem of some sort—a troubled
soul, if you will.”

“And
violet?” I asked, unable to stop myself. “What about violet?”

“Throughout
history, purple has often been associated with royalty. In our world, it
usually indicates an advanced being. At the very least, a pure soul.”

Pure, I
could see that in Ethan. “What do you mean by ‘advanced?’” I asked.

“Gifted.
Talented. But not in human ways, in
our
ways.”
Creesie
lifted a forkful of pecan pie to her
mouth.
   

“Gifted?”
I prompted as she chewed thoughtfully, hoping she didn’t take the rest of the
day to answer. She rested her fork on her plate, reached for her coffee cup,
and as she leaned back against the booth, I urged her on with my eyes.

“Oh, the
living don’t always view them as such . . . gifts, I mean.”
Creesie
looked deeply into her cup as if it contained the answers to life. “But that
should never diminish wonderful they are. More times than not, they show up in
ways that most folks think of as odd. Or even, frightening.”

She gave
me a long, probing look, causing me to think of several strange incidents of my
own, premonitions, mostly—when I had scared the stuffing out of Claire. Grandpa
Valenti’s
death,
Gigi’s
husband, for one. I had known before anyone else had.
  

“Exactly,”
Creesie
said, hearing my thoughts. “A person might
sense something is going to happen before it actually does . . . or, in rarer
cases, they’re aware that there’s a lot more going on in the world than what
they can see with their eyes—”

“Ooh!” Charlotte cut in. “What
about Ethan? Does he sense you near him, Hope? Did he know you were with him in
his room?”

A chill
ran through me as I recalled our last visit—me crouched in the corner and Ethan
inches away.
I—feel—you.
 
And then the worst—I’d felt nothing in
return. I tried desperately not to think about it. And, of course, that
definitely made me think about it.

“That’s
not all bad,”
Rin
mused wickedly. “Spying could be
tons of fun.” I could almost see her tucking that idea away to be used at a
later date.
 

I
purposely kept my face blank, questioning whether I could lie to them.

“Has
something happened, Hope?” Too late. The way
Creesie
asked it, I knew she had already heard it.

I sighed
in frustration. It was such a losing battle. Who didn’t know that when you told
yourself not to think about something, you automatically did? Of course, that
became even more impossible when everyone around you could peer into your
thoughts.
   

“I’m
sure you already know the answer to that,” I snipped, feeling as exposed as I
had back in Ethan’s room a short while ago.
  

“I might
have listened in . . . a little,”
Creesie
admitted
reluctantly, though I didn’t believe her about the
little
part. I would have bet she knew every last detail, even
those I hadn’t wanted to admit to myself. “Believe me, it’s nothing to worry
about. Just because you can’t feel Ethan’s love for you doesn’t mean it doesn’t
exist. At certain moments,
I
can feel it. It’s quite intoxicating.”

I choked
on my soda. It spluttered into the air, dribbled down my sweater.

Charlotte’s eyes
glistened as she whispered, “Sometimes we can feel it, too.”

My eyes
flew open so wide that I half-expected them to fall out of my head.

 
“Don’t worry, Hope,” Charlotte consoled, hearing my fears. “It’s
only because of our connection with you that we’re able to feel it so deeply.”

I was
suddenly, ridiculously envious of
Creesie
, Charlotte,
and
Rin
. They could feel how Ethan felt about me—but
I could not? If I could have seen myself through their eyes, I was sure my aura
was glowing pond-scum green.

 
“The connection begins from the moment we
speak,”
Rin
tried to explain, though I wasn’t really
listening. “And from that very first instant, nothing on earth can break that
bond. It’s an incredible way to find someone, virtually anywhere you can
imagine.”
 

“And, as
you already know,” Charlotte
chimed in, “we’re also tied to each other’s feelings and thoughts. Isn’t that
wonderful? There are no secrets here. It’s like we’re one big, happy family!”