Auracle (3 page)

“Hey!” He shields the iPod from me. “Don’t look. It’s a surprise.” He pulls one earbud out of his ear and reaches around me to push it into my ear. “Okay, listen to this intro.” He presses play and balances the iPod on my knee. A melody of complicated but beautiful guitar notes drift into my ear as Rei slowly picks at the strings of his air guitar.

“That’s nice,” I say four beats too soon. The delicate music dies abruptly, and blaring metal guitar music and hoarse, undecipherable words rip through my head. I knew it! I yank the earbud out as Rei wails on the imaginary guitar strings, grinning at me.

“Nice, huh!” he says a little louder than necessary.

I snatch the iPod and spin the volume all the way down. Speed metal, power metal, thrash metal—I can’t tell them apart. They all suck as far as I’m concerned, but Rei loves this stuff.

“I feel like my brain exploded and it’s leaking out my ears,” I inform him.

“It’s probably just earwax.”

“It is not.” I nudge his shin with my knee.

He laughs and shakes his head when I offer him the iPod back. “You can drive.”

I flip over to the playlist Rei keeps on his iPod especially for me and choose something quiet and acoustic. Rei strums his air guitar docilely beside me for the rest of the ride home.

*   *   *

My favorite part of Rei’s house is the whitewashed porch swing hanging from the farmer’s porch. We drop our backpacks and shoes off inside the front door and settle on the swing, listening to music while we wait for Rei’s seven-year-old sister to get home. Saya bounces off the bus promptly at three o’clock. Other than the doctor and nurses, I was the fourth person to hold Saya after she was born. Looking down at the tiny miracle in my arms, I laid claim to her as the little sister destiny neglected to send me, so it’s no surprise she runs into my arms for the first hug, then scrambles across onto Rei’s lap.

Saya makes a face at Rei. “Is Seth coming over today?” I stifle a laugh. I’m not the only one who doesn’t like to share Rei with Seth.

“No, he has to work.” He says this matter-of-factly, but I hear that little ping of disappointment in his voice again. He stands up and flips Saya onto his left shoulder, prompting a happy little squeal. “Let’s go get you a snack.”

Saya hops up and down like a sparrow, waiting for Rei to peel a carrot with the green feathery leaves still attached. As soon as he rinses it off, he holds it up and asks, “Are you going to tickle me and Anna with this—do I have to cut the top off?”

“I won’t. I promise.”

“The eggs in the dish are hard-boiled if you want one,” Rei tells me as I look through the fridge, but I don’t want an egg. I want sugarsugarsugar. In the freezer, I find homemade ice pops that Yumi made out of green tea, lemon juice, and honey, which will have to do. As soon as Saya finishes crunching through her carrot, we head out to the porch and sit on the swing, sucking on our ice pops. Rei and I kick our bare feet lightly against the wooden floor to keep the swing in motion.

The breeze tickles the wind chimes and a house finch sings along. I close my eyes and listen to the harmony while sweet and sour melts on my tongue and the faint scent of cherry blossoms drifts by.

We swing backward.

We swing forward.

I still feel like I could run a marathon from all the energy I absorbed at the volcano, but it’s under control. Saya is fidgety, though, and the swing jostles as she hops off. Even with my eyes shut, I can feel a familiar vibration when Rei slides his hand along the back of the swing to fill the space where Saya was. Every person’s energy flows in a vibration that’s as unique as their fingerprints. When Rei started meditating a couple of years ago, his vibration changed and grew stronger, calmer, more … comforting. I absorb what I can, let it mingle with the volcano energy still simmering within me and tuck it all away for later when I’m home, where I’ll need it most.

I open my eyes in time to watch Saya disappear into the house, only to reappear a minute later with a bottle of bubble solution. “I wanna go to the falls,” she pouts, and no human with half a soul could resist those blue moon eyes.

Rei and I both roll up our jeans. We head down the wooded trail barefoot, which feels nice on a warm day like today, but is actually pretty stupid because here in Vermont, we’re still dealing with mud season. Saya loves the mud. She loves the way it squishes underfoot, the rude noises it makes when she moves her foot just so, the half-hidden worms that try unsuccessfully to avoid her grabby fingers. Rei and I are not nearly as excited to trek through all this mud, but as Rei points out, it’s easier to wash mud off bare feet than out of the tread of our sneakers.

As we make our way through the woods, the constant, gentle whisper that lulls us to sleep each night amplifies into the sound of liquid thunder. Byers Falls is not that tall, maybe fifty feet from top to bottom, and maybe seventy-five feet long before the river flattens out again, but it’s rocky and it’s fast, especially at this time of year with all the spring runoff coming in from the mountains and ski resorts. Yumi and Robert drilled several lectures into our heads before they trusted us at the falls without them. The flat granite ledge at the top is big enough for about ten adults to stand on without crowding each other. Saya knows the rule. She scrambles up onto the ledge and lets Rei hang on tight to her hand.

Years of exploring through the woods and over boulders have given Rei and me the coordination of mountain goats, but we are still careful as we walk to within a few feet of the edge where it’s still dry. The water is especially wild today, and the sunlight casts rainbows in the mist. Everything within a foot of the edge is glossy wet.

“Careful!” Rei warns me. I sit down, leaving plenty of space between us for Saya. She has stopped bouncing for once and sits carefully, then hastily unscrews the bubble cap so she can get down to business. She gets a huge kick out of blowing bubbles into the falls and watching them pop in the strong mist. I stretch my legs out in front of me over the ledge, letting the mist wash away the mud from my feet.

“Yuck! Whose idea was it to come down here with bare feet?” I ask. Rei and I both look at Saya, who giggles and blows another round of doomed bubbles.

Rei lies on his back with one arm supporting his head and the other arm wrapped around Saya’s waist, staring up at the sky. I lie back, too, and close my eyes.

Life is good. The sunlight is warm; the breeze is cool; Saya’s silky black hair is soft against my fingers. Even the icy mist that numbs my feet and the stiffness creeping up my back from the unforgiving ledge beneath us is real and good. As much as I love to astrally project, some things are just better with a body. Despite my date with a can of soup later tonight, I embrace this moment, and I feel happy.

My little nirvana is interrupted by a spastic guitar solo blaring from the pocket of Rei’s jeans. “Grab her, would you?” Rei waits for me to reach for Saya, then he retrieves his cell phone and shades his eyes from the sunlight to check the caller ID before he answers it. “Hey.” He rolls onto his side and mouths “Seth” to me. “Uh-huh. Okay. I don’t know. Hold on.” He pulls the phone away from his ear and looks at me hopefully. “Seth got out early. Will you watch Saya so we can go for a quick run?”

“No!” Saya says adamantly.

“Yes,” I correct her.

“Thanks!” he whispers to me, and adrenaline is already fueling his smile. “Anna said she’ll watch Saya, but we’re at the falls right now. I can meet you at my house in about ten minutes.”

As soon as he pockets his phone, Rei stands carefully and picks up Saya, putting her down on the other side of him, a safe distance from the falls. He keeps one hand on her shoulder and reaches his other hand down for me, but I’m already halfway up. Oh, what the heck. I let him be a man and pull me the rest of the way.

“Come on, monkey,” he swings Saya up onto his shoulders. “This will keep your feet clean.” I know the real reason he’s giving Saya a shoulder ride is that he’s in a hurry and would rather not wait for Saya to examine every rock and bug along the way. He holds on to Saya’s ankle with one hand and tweaks a lock of my hair with his free hand.

“
Arigato
.”

Seth’s rusty little car is already parked in Rei’s driveway by the time we get back.

“Be right back,” Rei tells Seth, and we head to the backyard to hose off our muddy feet. Even though Saya’s feet are clean, she tags along to play in the water. By the time I’ve negotiated the hose away from her, Rei has already changed into his running clothes and they are gone.

*   *   *

While the guys are out running, Saya and I entertain ourselves. First, we leave the green carrot top under a bush for any hungry bunnies that should happen to pass through. Next, I spot Saya on her back kickovers until she gets tired and wants me to demonstrate a round off to a back tuck. And another, and another … until finally, and only because I was dizzy from flipping, we play Barbies.

Dolls are one of the few unpleasant things about playing with Saya. Growing up with Rei, I wasn’t a big fan of dolls. My mom respected this, but my grandmother insisted on buying me a baby doll for my birthday one year. Rei and I agreed it was creepy looking, so we decided to play funeral and buried it in the woods.

Saya brings four partially dressed Barbies out to the front porch and rations them out, three for her and one for me. My Barbie is having an atrocious hair day. After an interminable time spent chatting with Saya’s dolls about clothes, makeup, and which lucky Barbie will be asked to the prom by Ken, I’m relieved to see Rei and Seth turn the corner into the driveway, walking to cool down. They’ve both stripped off their T-shirts and they’re using them to wipe the sweat off their faces and necks. Seth blots his armpits, too, for good measure.

I start to laugh because sometimes Seth just cracks me up, and I look to see if Rei is laughing, too, but now he’s walking with his arms swinging down by his sides, his T-shirt dangling from his hand, and I notice for the first time that Rei is all … wow!

Really,
really
, wow! When did all this
wow
happen?

It doesn’t feel like that long ago when we were just two skinny little kids running through the sprinkler in our underwear, right here in Rei’s yard. Now I look out over this same green grass, and I still feel like the same skinny little Anna, but Rei is now this buff, bronze, glistening
guy
!

How did I miss this?

I knew they started lifting weights in the fall. There’s a room over Rei’s garage that can only be accessed through Rei’s bedroom, so his parents let him turn it into a weight room. I was invited to the premiere weight lifting session, but every time they benched any significant weight, they both had such strained, constipated looks on their faces, I couldn’t help laughing. I think I may have taken a few pictures with my phone, too. Needless to say, I was not invited back. All winter long, I saw them wearing mostly jeans and sweatshirts, and not even the gym shorts and T-shirts they wear in P.E. class showed the extent of their progress.

Seth stops to tie his running shoe, but Rei keeps walking across the grass, laughing when he sees the Barbie dolls and the torture I’ve been put through. Seth stands up and takes a few running steps, and then jumps up to glomp Rei to the ground. Somehow Rei knows; maybe he feels the vibration of Seth’s footsteps, because he stops short and braces himself, catching Seth’s weight evenly against his back. He wraps his arm up and around Seth’s neck and shoulder, leans forward abruptly and flips him over onto the grass. As Seth lands flat on his back, a quiet curse escapes with the rest of the air in his lungs.

Rei bends over him, grinning. “I thought I told you not to do that.” He reaches his hand down to help him up, but even from here, I see a mischievous look in Seth’s eye. Rei laughs. “You don’t want to try that, either.”

Seth considers this for a second, then allows himself to be pulled to a stand and swears again, earning him a dirty look. Rei’s entire swear vocabulary consists of damn, hell, and a few Japanese words he won’t translate for me. He gives Seth a light, open-handed smack to the forehead.

“And watch your mouth in front of the girls.”

They stroll toward the front walk, familiar faces superimposed onto the smooth, chiseled bodies of Abercrombie models, although Seth’s winter white skin pales in comparison to Rei’s golden glow.

That foolish grin is back on my face.

“Excuse me,” I call out to them. “Who are you people and what have you done with Rei and Seth?”

Rei raises his eyebrows at me, but I can tell he’s pleased I’ve noticed the outcome of all their hard work.

Saya scrambles up the steps and leans heavily on my shoulders. “Eww! You guys smell stinky!” she complains as the essence of Seth wafts past us on his way inside the house in search of a drink of water.

“Come here, Ironman,” I wave Rei over but he just stands there.

“You’re sure? I thought I was stinky.”

“You are!” Saya insists. “You smell like a boiled fish head!”

“No, that’s Seth,” I tell her. “Barbie hasn’t melted yet, so I think Rei is okay.” I wink at him and pat the step next to me. “Sure I’m sure. Park it!”

Rei rolls his eyes, but he sits.

“Wow,” I say as I poke at his new and improved bicep. “Very impressive! So that’s what you guys have been doing all winter up in your secret lair?”

Rei wipes his upper lip with his damp T-shirt to hide a small grin. “That’s what we’ve been doing.”

“Oh, what’s that?” I hold Barbie up to my ear and pretend to listen. “Medusa Barbie thinks you’re hot. She says she’s going to dump Ken for you.”

This comment goes completely over Saya’s head, but Rei laughs. “Oh boy.”

Seth lets the screen door slam loudly behind him and produces a loud, wet burp to further announce his presence. “Oh boy what?” he asks.

“Medusa Barbie’s dumping Ken for Rei ’cause he’s so ripped.”

“Hey, I’m ripped, too!” To prove this point, he strikes a muscle man pose and flexes his pecs, one at a time.

Saya is silly with giggles now.