From the Indie Side (20 page)

I’m the beta tester.

In that place created by Sinclair, I live
life in what seems like real time. And right now, I plan to court
the most beautiful girl. And it’s not just her beauty. It’s not
just her dark hair and her blue eyes and her pale skin. Those
things are important. I won’t lie. But it’s her heart. And her
humor. Her kindness. She makes me laugh. And when I laugh in her
world, the sound almost scares me. When I laugh in that real place,
I can feel the air escape my lungs, and I can feel the blood rush
through my veins.

Oh, and when I touch her…

Oh, my God. When I touch her. Just a brush
when she hands me my drink.

How can I describe this?

I think at first you must understand that
life on the island is muted. Because of the layer of protection
that surrounds us, muffles us. And not only externally, but
internally too. We are smothered in an invisible blanket. We are
the hollow sound of a barking dog on a humid night. We are the
hollow sound of a far-off train coming from another realm. When I
touch the wooden banister in my house, my fingertips feel numb. And
when I lift a glass of wine to my lips (yes, I drink wine!), it
tastes like diluted grape juice.

Sinclair promises to eventually address these
problems.

“I must focus on keeping our island stable,”
he tells me. “These taste and tactile issues aren’t important.”

But I know it bothers him. I know it
frustrates him.

But the gateway world… It’s almost as if
everything I haven’t felt during my island existence is suddenly
poured into the gateway world. Life, emotions, smells… They’re all
amplified.

I wonder if this is what it feels like to be
born. Maybe you’re in this world, this safe, warm, quiet world, and
then suddenly you aren’t. Suddenly air is moving across your body,
and you can hear your heart beating, and you can feel the blood
circulating.

Her hair.

Her hair smells so good.

Like oranges and vanilla.

Right now I’m standing in the coffee shop
where she works. And she’s watching me as if she knows me. And she
does
know me. I’ve been coming here for a while, but last
week I gave her the first gateway card Sinclair made. That card
brought her to me, to the secret island. But now I hand her the new
card. One that Sinclair tells me will be even better.

One that is supposed to firmly embed
me
in
her
world.

This has not been tested.

I am the first.

“I don’t know if it will work,” Sinclair told
me when he handed the card to me. Unlike the last one, which
contained an image of our island, this one has the coffee shop on
one side, and a map of the town on the other.

“Don’t step outside the city limits,”
Sinclair warned me. “I have no idea what will happen if you do
that.”

But the truth is, he doesn’t know what will
happen if I
don’t
step outside the city limits either.

I’m his beta tester. I’ve volunteered.

“You might not make it back.” That’s another
thing Sinclair told me. “Or you might come back at some unfortunate
time. Or you might come back half-formed. Or you might come back
with no memory of the girl in the café. Or you might come back with
a fried brain.”

But when a man, a boy, a teenager, wants to
experience love… real love… he is willing to risk everything.
Because isn’t that what love is all about?

So now I’m holding the card, my arm extended,
waiting for her to take it.

“You’re shaking,” she says.

And when those words reach my ears, I hear a
melody. I look around to see if anybody else heard it. People are
hunched over laptops, people are staring at their iPhones.

Her voice is like a song. I want to tell her
that, but I don’t.

You’re shaking.

I know I should respond to her observation,
but I can’t think of any explanation, any kind of reply. I’m
shaking because I want her to take the card. Everything hinges upon
her taking the card.

I swallow and kind of wave it a little.

The espresso machine is roaring, and I smell
more than her hair. I smell her skin and the cotton of her T-shirt.
Beyond that, the scent of dark coffee, of hazelnuts, and maybe even
a chocolate-chip cookie.

I’ve eaten cookies here. They taste
wonderful.

She takes the card. Oh, God. She takes the
card.

The roar of the espresso machine becomes a
roar in my head. The room shifts under my feet, and my insides feel
as if they are being sucked through my skin. I imagine my heart
outside my body, and I think I mumble something about wearing my
heart on my sleeve.

And then I hear this
wong, wong, wong
inside my head, and the room spins and turns black. I grab for the
counter. But instead, my hand brushes the hand of the girl. Sparks
shoot between us, reminding me that we are all made of stars. The
human and the not-so-human. This girl named Lila. And me.

The human lets out a gasp of alarm. I’ve
shocked her. I’ll bet Sinclair doesn’t know about that. I will have
to tell him that he might want to tweak some things.

And then I hit the floor. And hit my
head.

Out cold.

The pale boy is back.

Not only back, but he’s just passed out on
the floor of the coffee shop.

I didn’t think he could get any paler, but
apparently he can. His brows are bold and black against his white
skin. And his lips. They’re blue. Is he just passed out? I hope he
isn’t dead. I’m afraid to touch him because of the shock he gave
me, but maybe if I touch him again… Maybe it would be like a
defibrillator.

Someone jostles me from behind. “I’m a
doctor.”

Another person. “I’m a nurse.”

I get out of the way. As the doctor and nurse
bend over the boy, he begins to stir. His eyelids flutter, and the
blue tinge leaves his lips, but his skin is still deathly pale.

“What’s your name, son?” the doctor asks. “Do
you know your name?”

“I’m not sure…” The boy frowns. “Gabriel.
It’s Gabriel.”

I just know him as the pale boy.

“Where are you from?” the doctor asks. I
remember these as typical questions taught in CPR class.

“The secret island,” the boy answers. Of this
he seems sure.

“Secret Island?” the nurse asks.

I don’t know why, but I interrupt. “He’s an
exchange student.”

“An exchange student from Secret Island?”
This from the nurse again, who doesn’t seem convinced of
anything.

I struggle to produce an answer, with no idea
why I’m making things up. “It’s an island off the coast of…
of…”

“Iceland?” The boy’s input is a question and
a statement.

“That explains his pallor,” someone in the
crowd says.

“And his weird hair,” a kid chimes in.

“And weird clothes.” Another kid.

His clothes
are
a little strange. Kind
of casual Victorian. And his hair… not so strange, but long, and as
pale as his face. Not something you see in the average
teenager.

I think about the card he gave me last time
he was in the café. I took the card home with me. I don’t know why.
Now he’s here again. And he’s looking at me with the most wonderful
eyes. Brown, but not a boring brown. So brown they’re almost
black.

He reaches up to me, and I reach back,
unafraid.

As I lie on the floor staring up at the girl,
I recall Sinclair’s instructions. “Physical contact,” he’d told
me.

I grab Lila’s hand. I hold on tight.

And now the noise in my head increases.

We shared a life before, back when she
visited me with the first doorway card. This is different. I know
it’s different. That time, the life we’d shared in a span of
moments was like looking at a scrapbook. Pages blowing from
beginning to end, twenty years wrapped up in one small package.

This.

This is different.

This feels real.

More real than life on the secret island.
Much more real than that.

She is looking at me. She is holding my hand.
I want to smooth the crease between her brows. I want to tell her
everything will be all right.

It hurts.

I don’t know what I expected love to feel
like, but not this. Not this weight in my chest and this tightness,
this thickness in my throat. What has Sinclair done? It’s as if
he’s dumped every possible emotion into this experience, then
amplified them by a thousand. This is too much.

I can hear the sound of our daughter’s flute.
I can feel the wobble of our son’s bicycle as I cling to the seat,
afraid for him.

“Let go! Let go, Dad!” Alastair shouts. And I
let him go. And he pedals away, down a street lined with perfect
trees, bathed in a perfect sunset. I run after him, because how
will he stop? What will happen when he stops? Who will be there to
catch him?

And as I run, I hear the flute. And as I run,
I hear Lila singing in the kitchen. I hear the clatter of
silverware, and I know she’s setting the table. For us. For her
family.

My son doesn’t fall.

He stops and waits for me to catch up, a grin
on his face. And now I see that he’s older. Much older. Probably in
high school. We’re both on bikes, and he’s waiting for me. His
father. And I can feel our connection. How he’s a part of me, but
separate. A good son. A kind person. Waiting for me. Smiling.

A car is heading in our direction. It stops
in the middle of the road. My daughter is driving, Lila is on the
passenger side. She puts down the window and I drop the bike and
hurry to the car. I lean in and I kiss her.

She draws back, surprised. A smile blossoms.
“What was that for?” she asks.

“I just felt like it.”

She places a palm against my face, and I can
smell the soap from the bathroom sink on her skin. Vanilla and
oranges. She mouths the words: “I love you.”

And I can feel our perfect life. Our perfect
love. Yes, we fought. What couple hasn’t? And we struggled, but
even the struggles seemed wonderful. The tiny apartment. The
business that collapsed. The night classes. Rushing to the hospital
after her water broke. The birth of our son. Our daughter.

The laughter at the dinner table.

The car pulls away, mother and daughter
waving. “See you at the house!” Lila shouts, her arm out the
window.

I want the day to stop. I want time to
stop.

A sound intrudes. The ring of a cash
register. I’m still holding Lila’s hand. Too tightly. She’s trying
to pull away, and I just cling to her all the tighter. But her hand
finally slips from mine… and I tumble. Back. To the café and the
hard floor, the people bending over me, and Lila, my love. Our life
together dissolves, but the pain of love remains. Now the girl’s
eyes no longer hold deep recognition, just concern. Concern for a
boy who’s fainted on the floor of her café. But I sense that she
somehow remembers. Not consciously, but there is something in her
eyes. Puzzlement. Slight recognition.

The pain in my chest is such a weight. Such
an incredible weight. We just shared twenty years in the span of
minutes.

“I’m okay,” I manage to croak. I stagger to
my feet, and I’m surprised to see that my body is once again that
of a young man. I’m the age of my son on that day when he paused in
the street to wait for me. A son who doesn’t exist. A life that
never happened.

I let out a sob and I run. I crash into the
door, shoving it open. I run down sidewalks, the world a blur. I
have to tell Sinclair that this is bad. This is awful. This is
terrible.

But to say so would be to say that life is
awful. To say so would be to say that love is awful. I experienced
life. I experienced love.

People stare at me. A woman steps back, a
hand to her mouth, her eyes wide. And then she kind of reaches for
me, and I understand that she’s a mother. And I’m a hurt child.

I keep running.

Far, far away.

Away from Lila. Away from the staring people.
And suddenly I’m on the street. The street where I pushed my son on
his bicycle. The street where Lila and our daughter stopped in the
car. And oh, my God. There is the house. The house where we lived.
It actually exists. This is too much.

The front door opens. I half-expect an older
version of myself to step out, but it’s not me. It’s a man. A
middle-aged man, but not me. He walks to his car—and he drives
away.

I run.

To the city limits. I recall Sinclair’s
warning, but I don’t care. I keep running. When I reach the edge of
town, I feel a change. The air becomes thick and my legs feel
heavy, but I keep going and the light begins to dim. The air is
like water or heavy oil or tar. I can’t see, but I can hear. A
flute. A song from my life, from the world Sinclair made. And then
my lungs quit working. And my legs quit working. And I slip into
nothingness.

Let me tell you a bit about Sinclair.

He looks my age. Sixteen. But he’s been
around maybe two hundred years. What, you might ask, is the big
advantage to living a long time?
You continue to learn.

Especially for someone like Sinclair, who has
a brain that’s unbelievable. He’s like Tesla or something. And
instead of getting old and feeble and being unable to follow his
inventions to the end, Sinclair just keeps plugging away. People
don’t think about that. They don’t think about what vampires have
to offer the world, especially genius vampires.

So I feel bad telling Sinclair that his
experiment was an awful and terrible and horrible and awful and
horrible idea. Because he’s worked on it forty years. And he’s so
excited to get my feedback, and to hear all about it. And he’s also
happy to know that I walked through the edge of town and returned
without melting my brain.