The Reaping of Norah Bentley by Eva Truesdale

onto the sidewalk, into the street, back onto the sidewalk and over into the grass, walking circles and doubling back like I had no real destination in mind; and in a way I didn’t. If Helen hadn’t called me by now, it meant she’d gone to bed without checking my room. She didn’t know I was gone, so she couldn’t fuss, and it didn’t really matter when I got home. I could have gone anywhere as long as I was back in my room by morning, before she saw my empty bed. And I thought about it too, thought about going to Luke’s, maybe throwing some rocks on his window. I thought about going back to the park and sitting by that fountain some more. I thought about hopping a bus and just riding around in circles for a few hours.
     
    But mostly I thought about running away. Not making circles, but a straight line straight out of here. The road in front of me was no longer that dead river it had seemed before; now it was more like a glittering, silver path, and I got this idea in my head that if I just followed it, if I just ran far and fast enough, then I could get away from all of this.
     
    I was getting ready to take off in a sprint when a shadow overtook mine on the sidewalk. I straightened up and, without turning around, I asked,
     
    “Why did you piss him off like that?”
     
    Eli’s sudden appearance hadn’t startled me. There was a strange, complete calmness I was beginning to notice every time he was near, and so I could sense him coming; it started with the silence in my head and from there it spread through my arms and legs, until all the tension in them had dissolved. Or at least, that’s how it had been before. Now, with the memory of how close he’d been earlier, of his breath on my cheek…now I could feel my body fighting like it had in the park, confused about whether it should go through with the desperate sprint its muscles had been stretching for, or if it should turn and embrace Eli’s warmth, his comfort.
     
    I ended up staying. But I didn’t exactly embrace Eli; I just turned to face him, my balance unsteady and my skin prickling with the realization of just how close he was.
     
    “I’m sorry,” he said.
     
    “You’re sorry?”
     
    He nodded, and sank down onto the curb. “I told you,” he said. “It makes people do crazy things.”
     
    I sat down beside him. “What are you talking about?”
     
    “Jealousy. Or love. Take your pick—or maybe it’s both? You can’t have one without the other, I suppose.” He spoke halfway to himself, like he was still trying to sort out his own thoughts even as he said them.
     
    “…Blame it on whatever you want,” I said, leaning back and supporting myself on my palms. The flagstone was cold underneath me, and the loose pebbles on the sidewalk dug into my skin. “The fact is, Luke is pissed at me and I have no idea how I’m going to fix it.”
     
    Eli looked thoughtful for a minute, staring straight ahead. “Maybe you shouldn’t?”
     
    “Excuse me?”
     
    “I don’t know. There’s something strange about that boy...the fact that he can see me, for one thing. It’s not normal. I don’t know what it is with him, exactly, but I can’t help thinking it’s better if you keep your distance.”
     
    “I feel like I just had this conversation,” I said dryly.
     
    Eli followed my example and leaned back against the sidewalk, turned and looked me in the eyes. “But you weren’t listening then, I take it? Seeing as how you didn’t try to run away from me, even though that’s what Luke would have wanted?”
     
    “I can’t run away from you,” I reminded him. “There’s that whole craziness in my head thing that happens whenever you’re gone.”
     
    “Right.” He was quiet for a few seconds and then: “And if you could run away?”
     
    The abruptness of the question caught me a little off-guard. I lifted my hand and studied the red grooves the sidewalk cracks had imprinted in my palm, scraped free the little pebble