see. “Will you check it for me?”
Her hair was crusted with flakes of blood, and Aaron was afraid to look. But the scab was small. It was her half who had the hole drilled through the back of his head.
“It looks fine,” he said.
“I can’t feel him anymore. I think our channel broke,” she whimpered.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not supposed to be here.” Her teeth chattered.
“Emma—” Aaron pulled her into his arms to keep her warm. She was lighter than he remembered, and he lifted her right off the seat. Her skin was cold and sticky against him. She smelled like disinfectant. “Emma, tell me what happened?” he said.
“I woke up earlier . . . I didn’t know where I was—” her eyes froze on the vial, which Aaron had dropped in the center tray, and she trailed off.
Aaron looked down too. Miraculously, the vial was full now, glowing. The dazzling red fluid lit their faces, blinded them.
“But . . . but it was just empty,” he said.
The vial’s crimson reflection swam in Emma’s tear-filled eyes. “Can I hold it?” she said.
He held it out to her, and she lifted it off his palm. Her eyes tracked the red fluid as it scurried from one end to the other, trying to get to her.
Then she handed it back to him, and tears dripped into her lap. “Will you hold it, Aaron? Please.”
“What . . . why?” he said.
“Because you’re warm.”
Aaron stared at her as the words sank in. Suddenly, he understood. The significance of what he was seeing, what she meant. The vial held clairvoyance drained from her own half. She was holding what was left of it, still pulsing, in the palm of her hand. The part of her that belonged inside her half—trapped forever inside a cold glass vial.
***
Dr. Selavio had done this to her.
He had cut the other end of her clairvoyant channel out of her half. Now all she could feel inside her was the hole. The vial had been underwater for a month, and as long as it remained sealed, she was trapped, unable to die. This was Dr. Selavio’s “cure” for half death.
Emma watched him, transfixed by the clairvoyance in his hand. Aaron didn’t wait a second longer. He stumbled from his car and flung the vial to the road. It popped and bounced to the curb, leaving a red streak. He followed it, crunched the glass under his foot, and ground it into powder. The glowing fluid pooled and evaporated.
In the silence afterwards, Aaron heard blood jolting through his ears. He climbed back into his Mazda next to Emma, who looked like she was about to throw up.
“Why’d you break it?” she said.
“I set you free,” he said. “Now go find your half.”
Aaron drove her back to her parents’ house, let himself in, and carried her up to her bed. She was already asleep. By sunrise, she would be gone.
On the drive home, Aaron pieced together the facts, his mind a storm. Clearly, the vial alone hadn’t kept her alive. The headache, the bleeding from her head, the coma . . . Until yesterday, her symptoms exactly matched those of half death. Yesterday, though, she woke up.
Yesterday. The very same day Aaron recovered the vial. It wasn’t a coincidence. He recalled when he first handled the vial out at the buoy, how it brightened and appeared to fill up in his hands.
Aaron jammed the stick into third, and his Mazda screamed onto the deserted freeway. Emma’s half died that night, yet she didn’t keel over in class until weeks later. He also remembered the words of her father when Buff and Aaron visited her. How when she first felt her half go missing, something kept her going.
That something was Aaron, when he touched the vial right before it sank. Yesterday, he touched the vial again—and once again prolonged her death. Both times, he kept her alive
And he thought he knew why.
In the case of normal half death, her clairvoyance should have leaked through her half’s dead body into oblivion via their channel. But Emma’s channel was severed. She no longer had a half. Neither did Aaron. He and Emma were two loose ends, pulling at each other like magnets. Thus her channel had been rerouted to Aaron’s, temporarily plugging the leak and waking her from a coma. If not for the scar tissue blocking Aaron’s channel, they would have snapped together and become each other’s halves.
Even if it didn’t make them true halves,