The Reborn (The Day Eight Series Part 1) (2 page)

One day, Ezra made an inquiry of her caretakers with her usual straightforward demeanor. “Where are my mom and my dad?”

“It’s complicated,” they told her.

“I like complicated things,” she said.

They nodded. “You did have a mother and a father, but they are no longer part of this world. They are still part of you, and you are stronger for it.”

“Will I ever see them?” she said.

“No. What has left the world does not return.”

“Thank you for telling me.” Ezra accepted it. She had asked out of curiosity, not longing.

As Ezra grew up, she began to grasp the intricacies of life in ways that normal children could not, and she seemed to have an inherent understanding of the world around her.

One day shortly after her ninth birthday, Ezra lazed in the park with her only two friends, Michael and Liz. They looked for shapes in the clouds between giggling bouts of rubbing dandelions on each other, staining one another’s arms and faces.

Then Ezra stiffened. Her face turned grave, a sight that would have given any parent the shivers.

“We should move,” she said.

“Why?” asked Mike, already standing up, brushing off his pants.

“Don’t you feel it?” asked Ezra, closing her eyes briefly.

“I don’t feel anything except the grass,” said Liz, sweeping her foot back and forth through the annual ryegrass.

Ezra pointed to the shady tree towering above them.

“You don’t feel it? It feels hollow. The poor thing’s weak. It’s breaking.”

The others shook their heads and laughed, thinking she was playing a game. But when Ezra began running away, they followed.

Upon reaching the top of a gentle, sunny hill a few hundred feet away, Ezra sat down facing the tree. Michael and Liz plopped beside her and followed her gaze, staring intently at the mighty sycamore. Waiting.

And then, it happened. A gale erupted from the west, wildly stirring branches. With a thunderous crack, a massive bough that bore nearly a third of the tree’s weight splintered and tore from the trunk, crashing to the ground where they had been lying just moments before.

“See?” said Ezra, matter-of-factly. “Poor thing.”

~

As they entered their pre-teens, Mike and Liz became used to Ezra’s premonitions, episodes reminiscent of the sycamore, although she insisted she was not seeing the future.

“I just know how things are right now,” she said, “I can feel them.”

Michael loved to play guessing games with her. He’d hide something behind his back, and if Ezra concentrated, she could usually tell him which hand it was in.

“It’s in your left hand,” she declared.

“Yup again,” said Mike.

“And you lied. It’s a button in your hand, not a quarter,” she said, without ever seeing his fists.

“How do you do that?” he said for the hundredth time, shaking his head.

“I told you, I just know. Kind of like you just know that an apple is green or red when you look at it… except I can look at it even if I can’t see it with my eyes. I don’t know how.”

Sometimes Michael would catch butterflies, cupping them in his hands, careful not to harm them. On one occasion, he brought one of his catches to Ezra.

“If you can tell me what color it is, I’ll let you see it,” he coaxed.

Ezra smiled. “It’s black and has sharp fangs!” she said, teasing.

“I know you know what it is, c’mon!”

“All right, it’s iridescent aqua with yellow and red wing tips, and it’s scared that you’re keeping it in the dark, so let go, before it sucks your blood!” Ezra clawed at his neck with fang-shaped fingers.

Michael laughed and opened his hands, letting the butterfly climb onto Ezra’s nose.

“There, much better,” he said. “It suits you.”

She wrinkled her face, “Thanks! I feel like it’s part of me. I can tell it likes me.”

“Everything likes you, Ezra,” he said.

~

In the coming years, Ezra, Liz, and Michael grew so close that they rarely sought the company of others, despite having some new faces around.

Ezra and Liz were now fifteen, and Michael sixteen. One night they sat on the fallen bough of the old tree and studied the stars in the clear night sky.

“That group, right there, that
must
be Orion,” said Liz, pointing to a vibrant chain of stars boxed in by three bright blue ones and another with a reddish hue.

“I’m telling you,” said Ezra, “it’s not. See that part that looks like his belt? You see how it’s got a bit of a curve upward in it? That doesn’t match the photos in the book. And it’s only supposed to have three stars, not four.”

“But it’s so
close
,” said Liz. “Are you sure those photos were right?”

“It doesn’t matter if they’re right,” said Ezra. “Pleiades, the Dippers, Cassiopeia, Lyra… there’s a reason we’ve never found any of them, Liz. We just don’t get those constellations here.”

Liz turned and lay back, resting her head on Michael’s thigh. He reflexively ran his hand through her hair. She gazed up at him.

“What do you think, Mikey?” said Liz. “Do you see it?”

Ezra slid off the bough in time to hide her hard scowl. “Ersatz,” she muttered, nearly inaudible. Ezra reached in her pocket and broke a small piece of chocolate off a bar between her fingers and slipped it in her mouth, letting it dissolve on her tongue. She focused on the delicious, bitter taste.

“Nah, Ezra’s right,” Michael said, which made Ezra smile to herself. “I’ve never seen any from the book. I just make up my own. Right there, that group of stars that looks like an ‘R’? Do you see it? That’s you brushing your hair.”

“Oh yeah, I do see it!” Liz said, giddy.

“And just to the right, the four in a row that splits in two at the end? That’s me lying in the grass with my arms behind my head.”

Ezra looked up and smiled when she recognized the constellation Michael described of himself.

“And just a bit further to the right, there’s a set of stars over a hazy patch of sky that forms a ‘T’ – see it? – and it’s got a cluster of reddish stars like a diamond over it with one in the very center?”

“Yeah?”

“That’s Ezra. She’s standing on the other side of a window, looking out through it, down to Earth. She’s watching over all of us.”

“I don’t really see that one,” Liz sighed.

Ezra took great selfish pleasure at being on Michael’s other side in the sky, immortalized in the cosmos.

She circled the tree under the guise of hunting fireflies, preoccupied. “Liz, we only have ten minutes to curfew, we need to head home.”

“I’m going to stick around here,” said Michael, “since I’ve got an extra hour on you both. I love being sixteen. Who knows, maybe I’ll see a supernova.”

“Uh, you go ahead, Ezra, I’ll catch up,” waved Liz.

“I’ll wait.” Ezra laid her sweater out on the ground like a blanket with dramatic movements.

“Fine, here I come,” Liz said with a huff, pushing herself off the branch.

The girls waved bye to Michael and marched off through the thicket. When they reached their street, they reciprocated goodnights and forced smiles, the tension between them not entirely forgotten along the path home.

Ezra paused on her doorstep and watched as Liz, illuminated by her porch light a few houses down, stepped inside. Liz slammed the door, its brass knocker clanking with an air of finality.

Ezra turned and stared in the direction where Michael lay right now – she could feel him there. She only had two minutes. None of them had ever been late. She’d never even entertained the thought. But tonight, she felt different – felt a welling-up of an emotion she couldn’t quite identify, and it ate at her.

She took a step forward, the toes of her sandals hanging over the edge of the doorstep, hesitating. Suspended.

Then, without looking back, Ezra began running. She ran with such speed that the air moving past her felt soft, like a cushion, and she was hyper-aware of it as it flowed over the contours of her face and neck and howled past her ears. Her sandals flipped off and her bare feet hurt on the rough path, but it didn’t matter.

She brimmed with excitement; for once in her life she didn’t know what to expect. She crashed out of the thicket and leaves from the disturbed underbrush fluttered to the ground. Michael jumped, nearly losing his balance on the bough.

“Oh, Ezra! You scared me!”

Ezra panted, catching her breath. Michael glanced at his watch.

“Hey… hey! You’re late! It’s three minutes past curfew! I can’t believe it… you’ve got to get back! Now!”

“I’m not going back. I’m skipping.”

“What? You can’t be serious,” said Michael.

“I said I’m ignoring curfew. I want to stay out here with you. I’ll go back in an hour when you do.”

Michael stuttered. “B-but… what’s going to happen? You don’t know what they’ll do. Nobody’s ever missed curfew before. They say we mustn’t! It’s important, Ezra!”

“I don’t know what’s going to happen. But… I want to find out.”

“What if they take you away?”

“That’s crazy.”

“But what if they do? Remember when that kid Donegan broke someone’s nose in a fight? They called for him to return, and after he went back inside, nobody ever saw him again?”

“Yeah, I know. And those rumors about him getting fed to alligators are ridiculous. They probably just transferred him. I’m not going to hurt anybody, Michael. You know that. It’s just that I would rather… I’d rather spend time here with you than back there, in bed. I’m not even tired.”

Michael looked away. “I just… I don’t know what I’d do if one day…”

Ezra reached up and grabbed Michael’s hand, pulling him down from his seat. She stared into his dark eyes, outlined by a soft complexion lit only by the moon.

“I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be here forever, I promise.”

She felt her skin tingle as she pulled him close to her and gently nuzzled him. He yielded in her arms, melting at her soft touch. Eyes closed, Ezra leaned forward, and they kissed.

Rapture.

At that moment, Ezra, Michael, and their kiss were the only things that existed in the universe. She had known nothing more wonderful than this moment. He caressed Ezra’s cheek, held her delicate face in his hand as if she were a snow angel ready to melt in dawn’s light.

Paradise.

She was aware of her racing heartbeat, pounding against Michael’s chest. She felt powerful warmth radiating from his torso, his neck, his face to hers. She could feel his mind, could feel that this was his first kiss, too, that he was lost in it, too.

Bliss.

Their kiss was the sensation of all sensations. He was all she wanted. She ran her hands through his hair. Ezra pulled Michael closer, pressing their bodies into a hug of the purest emotions.

Ecstasy.

It wasn’t enough. She wanted to be closer to Michael, to experience his very being, closer than physical space would allow. Ezra’s arms wrapped around him, she wanted to hold on forever. She looked deep within his eyes and hugged him.

Love.

And then, he vanished.

~

Ezra fell forward; her arms flailed at emptiness.

She hit the ground and gasped. Lying there, she slowly propped herself up on one arm and brushed hair from her face, bits of leaves tangled in it. She looked around.

“Michael…? Michael!”

She expected to see him sitting on the ground, or perhaps back up on the bough. Had he slipped out from under her arms? Was she holding him too tightly?

Ezra stood and jogged around their meeting place, calling his name. No answer. His shirt lay quietly on the ground, heaped amongst the grass.

And then, as her ordinary senses began to return after being lost in the elation of kissing Michael, she felt it. Something was wrong. She could feel him, just as she could feel the weakness of the tree so long ago. He was right there, but she could not see him.

She stepped back, felt his presence move back as well. She stepped back again, expecting to see him or feel him where she stood. Again, he moved back with her. Michael was… he was occupying the same space as her.

Ezra’s face contorted into an expression of terror.
Is he… is Michael… inside me?

“No… no… this can’t be real.”

Slowly, she could feel his thoughts trickling into her mind. And then briefly she could think nothing else, she experienced nothing else – thinking only his thoughts, using only his brain. It felt like waking from a coma and remembering… everything. For a moment, she
was
Michael. Then, slowly, the valve shut off and her own thoughts returned.

Little by little, the tide washed back until his thoughts came in unison with her own. They were one. For an instant, Ezra and Michael felt their unity. They were one and the same. It was the ultimate embrace – the only way soul mates should exist.