Touched - By Cyn Balog Page 0,62

day.”

“He wasn’t Touched then. My grandmother did it for him last spring.” She stared at me. “If you don’t believe me, I can show you his signature in the book.”

“No, hey, I do,” I said. After all, it made total sense why he changed seemingly overnight. “What Touch did he get?”

“Physical perfection,” she answered, seeming bored. “Well, outwardly, he’s perfect. But as you know, a lot of those Touches have a catch. His has a really bad one.”

Suddenly the wind picked up, just as a thought caught in my brain. “Let me guess. He’s rotting from the inside.”

She nodded and smiled at me, but it was an empty smile. “It’s just sad. I want to warn him, but what do I say? ‘Hi, my grandmother made you perfect on the outside, but you’re also filled with a hundred tumors and won’t live to see Christmas.’ ”

“If I was him, I’d want to know. You have to tell him.”

She nodded and rubbed her temple with her free hand. “I know. I keep trying to. But it’s so terrible. Grandma tells me to stay away from the Touched, but I feel bad for him.”

Another group of tourists wandered by, and one, a girl of about thirteen or fourteen, looked at me and giggled. I realized my mouth was hanging open wide enough to probably spot my tonsils and clamped it shut. Wow. Evan Spitzer, my former-best friend. Dying. Hadn’t seen that one coming. Maybe if we still traveled in the same circles, I would have. Maybe I would have noticed something about him, something that would have hinted at the havoc being wreaked inside his flawless body. I thought of him racing down the boardwalk the other day, pumping his arms and legs, the picture of physical health. Of perfection.

Suddenly it seemed like we had a lot in common. We could have started our own Dead Before Next Year club. Except … “It was his choice,” I said.

“No. He chose something else. Not this.”

“So, you were trying to explain it to him?”

“Yeah, that and … well, you know how when I touch you, you said you feel normal? Well, I thought maybe I could touch him and heal his tumors.”

“Oh, sure you were,” I said. “So did it work?”

She shrugged. “I have no idea. I touched his cheek, like, pretending to wipe something off it, but I couldn’t feel anything. Anyway, he thought I was coming on to him. He was all over me. We didn’t even make it two blocks. I wanted to help him, not be his newest conquest. So I told him to pull over and let me out.”

“So, you do feel guilty. For things your grandmother did.”

“I guess I do. A little. Otherwise, why would I be hanging out with you?” She grinned.

“Funny.”

She motioned across the street. Some of the artists were already beginning to pack up their wares and leave. “What’s going on there?”

“Arts and crafts show.”

“Oh. Cool. Let’s go,” she said, tugging the sleeve of my T-shirt. She was already halfway across Central when I tossed the empty iced-tea bottle away and hurried to follow her. “Is this like an annual thing?”

“Yep. Every Labor Day weekend.”

“Oh, cool,” she repeated, then walked a few steps, wrinkling her nose. “You are right. People do paint that lighthouse a lot. Do you come to this thing every year?”

I shook my head. Actually, the last time I’d come, I begged Nan to get me a beanbag frog. It was the only thing there that a seven-year-old would want, the only thing that wasn’t a reproduction of that lighthouse. I loved that frog, took it everywhere with me. But a couple of weeks later there were weevils in my bed, and Nan inspected the frog and told me she had to throw it out. I begged her not to, but then she showed me a little black bug popping out of the seam. She wrapped the frog in two plastic bags and stuck it in the trash. Sometimes I wonder if that really happened, or if it was just part of a future that might have happened, but anyway, I never went to the festival again after that. It was just another reminder of how everything good in my life was always laced with bad.

Taryn said, “Oh, well, it’s cool. Anyway, I’ve got to go. I’ve got to … Listen.” She bit her lip and suddenly I knew what she was going to ask me. She was afraid to, but I