“Maybe you don’t get them from me because I’m some sort of stunted three-year-old,” he suggests.
He’s already heading out of the room to the sanctuary. I follow him to the front of the church and he picks up a hymnal from one of the seats.
I shake my head. “That won’t work.”
“Why not?”
“It’s too generic. Like a shopping cart or a doorknob. Too many different people hold it for too short a time. Plus, it’s paper.”
“Oh.” Like that makes perfect sense. I see a square of white fabric on the floor near the communion rail. I pick it up and find it’s a crisp white handkerchief. Here we go.
He watches me closely. I’m not sure what I look like when a fractal strikes. I’ve never sat and looked in a mirror while I had one, and I’m too distracted by the colors and patterns and feelings anyway. But I don’t think there are any outward physical signs, except for when a bad one makes me sweaty and nauseated. It’s too late to worry about appearances now because the fractal is already sweeping over me. It’s not a horrible one. I can still think, still talk.
“It belongs to a woman,” I say. “An older woman —”
He cuts me off. “How do you know?”
“Well, it’s a handkerchief, and no one younger than sixty carries a handkerchief.”
“How do you know it’s a woman?”
I refocus. “I don’t know. The colors are … muted? Like, mauve and light blue? They’re not young colors, not masculine colors.”
“You see colors?”
“Usually.”
“What else?” He leans against the communion rail and crosses his arms.
“She’s divorced? Or widowed, I think? The patterns are … I don’t know … slanted? Sad? Lonely.”
He’s watching me closely, maybe believing. Maybe not.
“But there’s something more recent. Some kind of a health issue.”
“How do you know?”
I shake my head. I struggle to verbalize it. “The patterns are … growing? Spreading? Like an oil spill in water.” Now I know. “Cancer. She’s got cancer.”
He hasn’t taken his eyes off me.
“I think I know who it is,” I say sadly. “It’s Mrs. Larkin.”
“Mrs. Larkin?”
“Ellen Larkin. It’s hers. I didn’t know she was sick. I wonder if my dad knows.” I’m talking more to myself, now, feeling raw and helpless, as I often do afterward.
He takes the handkerchief from my hands and unfolds it. There’s a monogram on the corner: HL.
“Herb Larkin. That was her husband.”
Zenn is floored. Without any proof, he still believes me. Maybe that’s why I really brought him here: to a place of belief without proof.
“You’re psychic,” he says.
I shake my head. “No.”
“Kinda.”
“I can’t see the future. Or even the past, exactly. I just … feel all the feelings.”
“That’s … wow.”
I feel a little vulnerable and embarrassed, like I just read him a poem I wrote in fifth grade. But he doesn’t seem to be too freaked out. He reaches for the bottom edge of my hoodie and tugs me closer.
“You don’t know how good it is. To be able to … touch someone.” My voice cracks a little. “I mean, without all that noise. I guess that’s why I’m feeling so —”
“Overwhelmed,” he finishes for me.
“Yeah.”
“I can imagine.” He studies me and then looks down at my hands. “Well,” he says, his voice lighter, “I’m glad to help out any way I can.” There’s that flirtatious tone again.
I gather up a handful of his T-shirt and pull myself closer to him. He rests one hand on my waist.
“You don’t get these fractals when other people touch you?” he asks. His mouth is now close to my temple, his breath loosening something inside me.
I shake my head. “Well,” I say, my voice kind of sticking in my throat. “Not fractals. But I didn’t realize I didn’t get them from you right away because …”
His head dips and his mouth is by my ear.
“Because …?” he says. His breath against my skin makes me shiver.
“Because when I touch you … or you touch me … something just as crazy goes on in my brain.”
“Oh, yeah?” His fingers press lightly against my lower back, pulling me even closer.
I nod.
“Mine, too,” he says.
Well. That about does it for me. He presses his lips against my jaw and now we communicate with our hands and our mouths and our warm, moist breath.
I slide my hands down his back on top of his shirt and feel the slope where his spine runs in the valley of his rib cage, the surprisingly hard angles of muscle and bone that lead down to his hips.
I feel greedy. I want to touch everything: his hair, his skin, his muscles, his bones, his soul if that’s possible. All these years I’ve kept my hands carefully tucked away and until now I don’t think I ever truly realized what I was missing. The velvet of his earlobe, the slight roughness of his cheek, the tender skin on his neck, the firm solidness of everything else. Good lord, it’s so much. And I haven’t even ventured under his clothes.
His kiss is soft and searching and gentle, except when it builds and crests and breaks like a wave, and then it becomes more urgent and less gentle. I feel like I can’t get close enough to him. I want less space between us. No space between us.
So, this is how teenagers get caught up, forget birth control, and end up pregnant. I always thought that practicality would win out and that no matter what the situation, cooler heads would prevail, especially in my case. But that was before I’d ever kissed … well, anyone. Now that Zenn’s mouth is on the sensitive skin just under my ear, now that his lean, warm body is pressed up against me, now that my hands can enjoy the topography of his chest … now I see what all the fuss is about.
Our breathing speeds up, our bodies press more tightly. My hands grip his shoulders with a recklessness I didn’t know I had in me —
Bong, bong, bong …
We both startle when the church bells ring.
Bong, bong, bong …
I realize he is still leaning against the communion rail so that our heights are more even and I’m literally wedged between his legs. In the middle of my church sanctuary. Wow. I take a step backward and he straightens up, reaching out to adjust a fabric banner that got shifted in our frenzy.
Bong, bong, bong!
“Wow,” he says, as if realizing for the first time where we are. “We are going straight to hell, aren’t we?”
I laugh, but something vaguely Cinderella-ish about the clock striking reminds me that this is all an illusion. Even though my powerful attraction to him can eclipse our strange shared history, that may not be the case for him. It’s not fair to either of us to let this go further without telling him what I know.
I will tell him now, while we are feeling close and vulnerable, in the peaceful and forgiving quiet of the church. Another reason I may have brought him here.