said Aaron. “She’s only seventeen.”
“Yeah, but we were both born on March thirtieth.”
Aaron spat into the water, cleansing the salty taste from his mouth. “Then it sounds like we got a problem, Clive, because I also was born on March thirtieth.”
Clive faced him abruptly, sinking his face into shadow so only the glint of his pale, unblinking eyes shone in the darkness. As a passing swell tugged at Aaron’s feet and weakened his grip on the buoy, he wondered if he could defend himself if Clive tried to kill him right now.
“I’m only going to tell you this one more time,” said Clive finally. “Don’t go near her again.”
“Or else what?” said Aaron.
“Tell me you have a smarter question.”
“Yeah, one. What’s in your pocket?”
To Aaron’s surprise, Clive actually reached into the water and pulled it out. Aaron thought the bright object was, in fact, a glow stick, until he leaned closer.
It was a glass vial, rounded at both ends so it was completely sealed. Inside, a glowing red liquid crawled along the glass.
“Do you know what this is?” said Clive, smirking, his face now fully illuminated.
“Plasma?”
“This is what drips out when you cut a hole in your clairvoyant channel.”
Aaron felt a wave of cold, separate from the ocean. “Is it yours?”
Clive shook his head. “Whosever it is, they’re sorely missing it right now. Want to hold it?”
Aaron took the vial from Clive, but when the glass touched his skin, the sudden stabbing at the back of his scalp nearly made him drop it, like something trying to exit his head through too small a hole. The red fluid scurried inside of the vial, forming tendrils, as if searching for cracks. And Aaron had the impression that the vial was somehow filling up, glowing brighter and brighter, too bright to look at—
“Hey, how’d you do that?” said Clive.
“Hold on,” said Aaron, now mesmerized by the luminous substance. The glass, he noticed, was stamped with some sort of ID code.
“Give it back—” Clive lunged for the vial.
Aaron held it out of reach, straining to make out the letters, but Clive caught his wrist. The impact splayed Aaron’s fingers wide open, and in slow motion, the vial flew from Aaron’s palm, bounced off the buoy, and plopped into the water.
***
“Shit!” Clive plunged his arm in, but the vial slipped through his fingers, briefly lighting their toes on its way to the bottom.
Clive dived. And Aaron had no choice but to dive in after him. About eight feet down, blind and out of breath, Aaron clamped his arm around Clive’s ankle and took a bare heel to the forehead. He held on, though, righted himself, and thrust down hard. With sheer will, he hauled Clive out of the ocean and forced him against the buoy.
“Let it go!” Aaron yelled. “It was my fault.”
“You idiot,” Clive gasped, “you stupid idiot! Now we’ll never find it.”
“Then it’s lost,” he said. “It could be thirty feet to the bottom. What was that thing, anyway?”
They both looked down as they caught their breath, and their last glimpse of the vial was a fuzzy dot, no brighter than the reflection of a star, before it was gone.
“My father’s going to kill me for this,” said Clive.
Aaron let go of him and lowered himself into the water. “Come on, let’s go back. It’s freezing out here.”
When Aaron made it back to the beach, he was relieved to find that most of Corona Blanca had gone home, and the few smoking weed by the bonfire’s dying embers had forgotten about his and Clive’s race to the buoy.
Aaron reached his shoes, still disconcerted by what he’d seen in the vial and determined that he would have nothing to do with Clive Selavio, his vial, or Amber Lilian ever again, Clive’s half or not. No point in trying to see her if the guy was that protective. Besides, Aaron and Amber’s birthday was only a month away. Then they would know.
There was something in his shoe, wedged down by the toe. Aaron pulled out a bright, powder blue smartphone.
Amber’s cell phone. Damn.
***
When Amber pulled in front of Dominic Brees’s gate to drop off Clive, she felt his body go tense—as it usually did when she was doing everything wrong.
“So you’re making me walk up the driveway?” said Clive, and Amber barely heard the vulnerability beneath his irritation. He was getting better at hiding it now when she pushed him away, which made her nervous.
“Can you just go?” she said. “I’m really tired.”
“You sure