Under the Light - By Laura Whitcomb Page 0,8

universe?”

That didn’t sound good. Too much like purgatory. I felt a ripple of fear spread through me. Maybe it felt like hell because it was hell.

“It’s the same world as before,” I insisted, trying to convince myself. “Just the outside edge. My house is the same. All the street signs have the same names.” It was scaring me, the idea that he might be right, that we were in some kind of limbo. “Didn’t you see your house and family after you left your body?”

I could see the tension of his own story behind his eyes, but he didn’t share it. “Sorta like there’s safety glass between us and everything else,” he said. To test the rules, he reached out and took my hand. I jumped but didn’t pull away. The warmth of his fingers fascinated me. But I wasn’t sure if I was feeling his hand or the energy of his hand. Or the heat of his thinking of my hand in his.

He let go. “No wall between us, though.”

My blush throbbed hot like a bad sunburn even though I technically had no skin. “I didn’t say you could touch me.”

“Sorry . . .” He paused. “What’s your name?”

The idea of telling him my name and where I lived and what made me leave my body, the idea of explaining about my parents, made my stomach go cold. Again, no organs. Why could I still feel emotions forming in those parts of me I’d left behind?

“I forgot,” he said. “No questions about the past.” He smiled. “So if this isn’t your field, why do you come here?”

To find you, stupid, I thought. Before I landed in the field, I’d been racing toward something I couldn’t name—a boy I couldn’t name. If he hadn’t felt the same force I had, throwing us at each other, maybe that wasn’t real.

I felt deflated, but I told him the truth. “I was rushing toward something—you, I guess. I only stopped here because that’s where I found myself when I passed you going the other way.”

He thought for a moment. “I thought I saw my shadow on the ground. That never happened before. Like the shadow of a bird on the ground before it lands, only the shadow wasn’t bigger than me and it wasn’t getting smaller when I got closer.” He looked uncertain. “I guess that was you.”

A chill fluttered up what would’ve been my neck.

“You’re the only other ghost I’ve seen,” he told me.

“I’m not a ghost.” Odd that he hadn’t seen one single other person out of body. “Where do you usually hang around?”

“Sand dunes and caves. The ocean. The mountains.”

He didn’t travel populated areas—maybe he was a beginner. “How long have you been out of body?”

“I don’t count sunsets,” he said. “I chase them sometimes. Think I could ever make time go backwards?”

He was so immature. “No.”

“But if I flew so fast toward the sunset that I passed it, wouldn’t it be up in the sky again? Would I be hours back?” He studied my face and throat. “Let’s say I flew three hours backwards. Why can’t I fly ten times faster and get to yesterday?”

“Go ahead.” I smirked at him. “I’ll wait here.”

He grinned and flew away so quickly that I could hardly make out the blur of his black shirt, like a faint storm cloud against the sky. Then nothing, as if he’d never been there at all.

The wind still shifted the grass and there was the distant cry of a crow somewhere, the tick of a beetle, but otherwise silence.

I did not miss him. How could I? Our two conversations still totaled less than ten minutes. It was ridiculous. But the idea of leaving our field depressed me. I couldn’t imagine a single inspiring place to visit.

Irritating as he was, I wanted him to come back, but there were no stars out yet for making wishes. It was almost sunset, though. How many hours had passed?

Like a sneak attack, he rushed at me from the side and threw his arms around me, sending me into the grass. He rolled away laughing. The tingle of his touch vibrated up and down and all through me, cold and warm at the same time.

“Did it work?” He sat up. “Do you remember me or is it yesterday?”

I acted without thinking. I sped away, wanting to get back at him. I went to a cliff I’d been to many times. It was twilight there already, and the forest below was dim—only