Dark and Shallow Lies(53)

It scares me, not being able to remember her.

“You know the magic way Elora laughed?” I ask, and Zale turns to look at me. His ice-fire eyes burn so bright in the almost-dark. “What if I forget that someday?”

Zale lets go of my hand, and I miss that electric connection. But then he slips his arm around my shoulders and pulls me against him. I’m not expecting that, and the tingle makes my heart beat faster.

“Tell me something you want to remember,” he says. “About Elora.”

I have no idea where to start, so I pick the first memory that pops into my head.

“When we were in eighth grade, we both picked out the very same dress for our schools’ homecoming dances. Me up in Little Rock, and her down here. And we never even knew it until we exchanged pictures that next summer. And there we were dressed just alike. The same shoes, even.” Zale smiles, and I go on. “That sort of thing happened all the time. We’d give each other the same book for our birthdays. Send each other the same card for Christmas.”

“Tell me something else,” Zale says, and he holds me a little closer.

“When we were seven, we made up our own language. Just for the two of us. We spoke it most of a full year. Created a written alphabet and everything.” I laugh out loud, for the very first time all summer, and it feels good. But strange. “Everybody said it was annoying, us talking gibberish all the time. Only it wasn’t gibberish to us. We knew exactly what we were saying.”

I like thinking about how much fun Elora and I always had together.

Instead of how much I miss her.

Or how she died.

I look up at Zale, and he’s just watching me. “There’s magic in your laugh, too, Grey. You know that, right?”

“No.” I shake my head. “Elora was the special one.”

“That’s exactly what she told me about you,” he says, and the thought of that stuns me. “She said you fed off each other’s light.”

Two flames lit from the same match.

Zale tightens his arm around me again. That constant hum is making me feel a little drunk. So I lay my head against his shoulder. Just to see what happens. I almost laugh again when that tingle moves across my scalp, like fingers through my hair. I can’t help wondering what it would be like to kiss him, the way I kissed Hart. How would that buzz feel against my lips?

Frissons.

The good kind.

“I wish I could put into words what it’s like,” I say. “Being that in tune with another person. Never having to explain what you’re thinking or feeling, or what you need, because the other person just knows you inside out. Being able to have a whole conversation without saying a single word.” I sigh and settle in closer to Zale, let myself lean deeper into the throbbing ache of Elora’s absence. I don’t push the hurt away. I just let it come. “That feeling of having half your soul walking around inside someone else’s body. It’s the most powerful thing in the world, that connection.”

I want him to understand that kind of love.

And that kind of unfathomable loss.

“You don’t have to tell me,” he says. “I know.” I look back up at him, confused. “I had a twin, too. A brother.” He takes a deep breath, like someone about to dive deep underwater. “His name was Aeron.”

Was.

For a second, I can’t think. I don’t know what to say.

Then it all makes sense.

“There were twelve of us,” I whisper.

And Zale nods.

I should have known it.

Twelve is the number of completion. The closing of a circle. The end of the cycle.

Twelve months in a year.

Twelve hours in a day.

Twelve tribes of Israel.

Twelve-bar blues.

Twelve babies born one long-ago Louisiana summer.

I have so many questions, but I wait. Quiet. My head feels fuzzy. Strange. Like when you wake up from a nap and you can’t quite get your bearings.

“It was early mornin’ when the cabin caught fire. Barely gettin’ to be light out. My daddy was off huntin’. But my mama and me – and Aeron – we were all there. Asleep. And it burned hot. Fast. The whole thing went in a flash.”

The wind picks up, and I hear it moaning through the Spanish moss.

“My mama woke up and grabbed me. But she couldn’t get to Aeron. He was scared. Wouldn’t come out. Huddled up in the corner. Behind a wall of fire. And the whole place was ablaze. Mama knew that if she didn’t get me outta dere, she’d lose us both.”

Thunder rolls, and lightning brightens the sky in a quick burst. Like the fast flicking of a light switch. I shiver against Zale, and I feel the electric current of his memory. It surges through him and flows right into me. I suck in my breath from the shock of it.

The pain.

“So we ran and hid. Didn’t have anything left. Didn’t know what to do. Couldn’t get back to the cabin to find –” He hesitates. “We never even knew if anybody was decent enough to bury him.”

The misery in his voice is enough to break my heart.

It hits me hard how every single one of us – everyone in the whole wide world – is walking around with missing pieces.

I’m not the only one with holes.

“And then we hid out there for a while, but my daddy never came lookin’ for us. So mama knew dat meant he was dead, too. And it was just the two of us from then on out.”