Once Again (23 page)

Where was he going with all this?

“And I want you to know that I do think of
you that way.” He walked closer, angled his head. “I mean, in
that
way.”

My heart went wild, and I wondered if he
could hear it. The look on his face melted everything inside me,
turning my brain to mush.

But he wasn’t finished.

“Sometimes I look at you and I forget all
about strange dreams and visions and past lives, and all I can
think about is how pretty you look and how lucky I am and how proud
I am that you want to be with me. Sometimes all I want is to be a
normal eighteen year-old guy who’s crazy about his girlfriend.”

Ohmigosh. Wow.

And yet, at the same time my heart soared
with elation, I wondered if he
could
be that normal eighteen
year-old. I wondered if he
could
feel about me the way a guy
felt about his girlfriend under regular circumstances.

But for however long he
wanted
to, I’d
oblige.

“Do you think,” he began, moving to stand
right in front of me, “that for a few minutes, we can just be Luke
and Layla, happy to be together?”

I nodded, knowing that I’d take any
opportunity to make a memory with him. If the time came that
memories were all I had, I aimed to have plenty.

With hands so gentle and so soft, he framed
my face, tracing his thumbs beneath my eyes with a kind reverence
that stole my breath.

I was undone.

His lips lowered to mine and my eyes
fluttered shut, just like I’d seen in the movies. A delicious
swirling commenced in my stomach as I felt the press of his mouth.
Somehow my arms wound their way around his neck, though I could not
recall giving them the order. One of his hands slid to the small of
my back and pulled my body flush against his.

For several long moments we stood like that,
in the middle of his room, lost in the kind of kisses I’d thought
only happened in fantasies. Time seemed suspended, as if what had
been and what was yet to come didn’t exist. There was no hurry, no
urgency, no pressure for more than this. Just us, Luke and Layla,
two kids who’d managed to find happiness in the midst of teen angst
and drama.

And for those moments, I could almost put my
doubts aside. Almost.

Gwen’s key in the front door broke the spell,
but not before Luke pressed his forehead to mine and smiled.

All I could do was smile back, so lost in
love I would gladly drown.

***

We settled once again at the kitchen table.
It still amazed me that Luke, Gwen, and I could discuss the
reincarnation issues over dinner without fear of indigestion or
choking. It now seemed as normal as anything else, and I couldn’t
decide whether that was good or bad.

“So something weird happened at practice
today,” Luke said.

I paused and looked over at him.

“We were running the trail down through the
neighborhood where Emerson house is. I was running the old road
that winds with the creek, and it was like all of a sudden I
could’ve run as fast as I wanted to.”

“You’ve always run fast, Luke,” Gwen
said.

“But I mean, I had to hold back. I was giving
the run a hundred percent already, but all of a sudden I had more
inside me, like I could’ve taken off and gone faster than a human
should be able to. I had to force myself to run normal.”

“Has that ever happened before?” I asked.

“Once last week, but I just thought it was my
mind playing tricks on me. But today...” He let his voice trail
off.

“It’s
The Gifting
,” I said, grabbing
the book from the edge of the table and flipping it open to the
pages I’d marked.

Gwen took the book and read the passage out
loud. Luke just stared, wide-eyed, like he couldn’t believe it.

“So, you think I’ve been gifted with a
supernatural ability?”

“It’s not so hard to believe,” I said. “We’re
already experiencing visions and dreams about some past tragedy.
Why shouldn’t we get to have super-powers too?”

Luke smiled. “Guess you’re right.”

“Besides, I think I’ve discovered what my
gift is.”

“You’re reading the mind of the bad guy?” Luke’s words sounded half
question, half exclamation.

“Not really mind-reading,” I said. “It’s more
like random thoughts just drop into my consciousness.”

“Either way, it’s a tremendous insight,” Gwen
put in.

“And now we’ve pretty much got confirmation
that this person is after you, and wants me out of the way.” Luke
cleared the plates from the table and loaded them into the
dishwasher.

“I think we have to assume this somehow
parallels what you’ve seen in the dreams and visions,” Gwen said.
“That whatever befell these two people was the result of someone’s
intense jealousy.”

Luke leaned against the counter and shoved
his hands through his hair, letting out a huge, frustrated sigh.
“Should we expect to be abducted and murdered, too?”

My breath caught in my throat with a sharp
pain that radiated into my chest. Was it possible?

“I don’t want to even think that,” Gwen said,
pulling me to her side with one arm and grabbing Luke’s hand with
the other. “The pranks you’ve experienced so far have been rather
juvenile, even though the tampering with Layla’s car could’ve been
dangerous. Perhaps if the villain of this scenario has been
reincarnated in a teenager, his vengeance will also assume
adolescent form.”

“We’ve thought all along that Kara was behind
the stunts,” Luke said.

Gwen nodded. “She’d be a likely suspect, if
the thoughts Layla’s been reading didn’t indicate a male.”

“It’s possible Kara’s being used,” I
suggested, looking at Lucas. “Everyone at school knows your history
with her, and everyone is aware of her jealousy. She’d be an easy
tool for our culprit.”

“Miller’s behavior makes him suspect,” Luke
said. “And the fact that Lance also asked you out creates
suspicion. He always turns things into a competition, like he’s got
to be better than me all the time. Both of them run in the same
circles as Kara.”

“Which would make it easier to get her on
board with the plan.”

The phone rang, and Gwen went down the hall
to her office to answer it. By the sound of her voice it must’ve
been someone she was glad to hear from.

With her chatting happily down the hall,
Lucas turned to me.

“I have another theory,” he said once Gwen
was gone. “About something we saw in the dream the night of the
storm.”

My muscles tightened as I remembered what
we’d seen that night. “What is it?”

“I think Lillian died in childbirth.”

All the breath left my lungs and my chest
burned. At first my mind resisted the idea. The grief was too
great. But after a moment I saw the logic, as images from the dream
floated across my mind.

“She was alone when we saw her,” Luke said.
“Like she was hiding. If she realized she was pregnant, it makes
sense that she’d try to get away from whoever had taken her. She
was by herself in that abandoned shack. It didn’t hit me right off
the bat, but when I thought about it later,” he stopped, took a
deep breath. “The way she was moving, the sounds she was making, it
made me wonder.”

He paused again. I still said nothing, too
dumbfounded to put words together.

“I don’t know much about childbirth,
obviously,” he said, then swallowed hard. “But the blood on the
floor underneath her...” his voice trailed off.

“I know,” I whispered, finally finding my
voice. “I think you’re right.”

“I googled some things about childbirth
complications,” he went on. “There are a number of things that can
happen that would cause a woman to hemorrhage like that, especially
if she hasn’t had proper prenatal care.”

“I don’t even know how to feel about this,” I
said. “I mean, it’s awful. The most terrible thing I can imagine.
But since I’ve obviously never been pregnant, I don’t have any sort
of frame of reference for this kind of loss.”

“Me either.” He came over and kissed my
cheek. “I wonder if by reincarnating into younger versions of
themselves, they might have been trying to make it easier on us.
Not that we don’t have a lot at stake, but at least there’s not a
pregnancy to worry about.”

I thought back to the night of the dream,
when physical closeness exploded between us. Keeping our heads
level in the midst of a hormone overload suddenly took on more
meaning.

The thought of suffering that kind of loss
devastated me, even though I had no knowledge of it. I grieved for
Lillian, for what she must’ve endured in that shack all alone.

For the first time since the dreams began, I
knew what I had to do. It was time to not just endure what she
showed me. It was time to embrace it. Embrace her.

Embrace
them.

“We’ve got to ask them again, Luke,” I
whispered. “We have to ask them to show us what happened.”

Driving through town on our way to my house, we noticed The Pizza
Place was packed with cars. Luke pulled his Bronco into the parking
lot.

Luke looked over at me and smiled. I
shrugged. Why not.

“Might as well go in and say hi,” he said,
shutting off the ignition. “We deserve a bit of fun before we try
to have a conversation with our past selves.”

His caramel-smooth voice held a hint of
levity as he said
past selves
. I liked that. No sense in
being über-serious about it every single moment.

The inside of the restaurant revealed all the
major players from Sky Cove Senior High. Apparently the lack of a
home football game tonight hadn’t kept kids away from the weekly
gathering at The Pizza Place.

Luke’s cross country buddies, Corey and Will,
sat in the far corner of the dining room with a couple of other
runners and, to my surprise, Marsha and Jessie. I smiled at the
possibility of a potential romance. I’d seen Jessie eyeing Will,
and Corey had been flirting inconspicuously with Marsha. The
perpetual texters from Lit class huddled together over their cell
phones at another table. A group of cheerleaders, Kara included,
glared at us with disapproval from their booth, and in the center
of the room, where they could attract the most attention, sat
Lance, Miller, and a few other “upper crust” boys. Someone at the
center table held a cell phone, blasting a ring tone that was the
same death-metal, headache inducing music that blared from my radio
the day someone messed with my car. I made a mental note.

Kara’s stare didn’t let up, and Lance popped
up from his seat and walked toward us.

“Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea,” Luke
said.

I almost agreed, until I saw Marsha and
Jessie waving at us while Corey and Will grabbed two empty
chairs.

I needed to be able to stand my ground, even
if it was only in my own mind, and rise above the pettiness.

“Don’t worry about them,” I answered.

“Hey guys.” Lance turned on the swagger as he
reached us.

“Hi Lance,” I said. Luke just nodded.

“Can I buy you a Coke, Layla?” Lance
asked.

Good grief. How big of a moron was this guy?
Rumors were flying at school that Luke and I were an item, and
though we hadn’t confirmed it, I’d just walked into the restaurant
with him. And Lance was hitting on me. In front of Luke. Geez.

Part of me wondered if it was some weird,
convoluted way of making fun of me. A kind of
get-the-new-girl-interested-then-drop-her-like-a-piece-of-trash
ploy.

Whatever. Either way, he was wasting his
time.

“Lance,” Luke began, much calmer than I
would’ve expected. “I know I haven’t been exactly clear about this
at school, and that’s my fault. But I’m fixing it right now.” He
slipped his arm around my waist and pulled me flush against his
side. “She’s with me.” He shot his eyes toward Kara, who’d yet to
break her stare. “And vice versa.”

Lance’s eyes narrowed, and he nodded in what
appeared to be acceptance. Luke took my hand as we walked toward
the table with our friends.

“Risky,” I whispered, “if what we believe
about the villain is true.” Though honestly, I didn’t care. My
heart was giddy.

Luke just smiled. “Maybe I don’t care. I’m
tired of pretending. If whoever he is wants me out of the way, then
bring it.” He squeezed my hand and brushed a soft kiss across my
cheek. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Silence filled the house at midnight and seemed almost deafening in
the darkness. My parents had finally fallen asleep, and the
neighborhood traffic had slowed to almost nothing. Earlier, I
scrolled through the library of music on my iPod, searching for
something appropriate, but finally decided the silence was
better.

I pulled my chair over to the window, and sat
facing the direction of Emerson House. Though I couldn’t see it, I
imagined that looking toward it would connect me to them. Closing
my eyes, I called to mind the faces of the man and woman from my
dreams. My face. Luke’s face. Lillian and Leo. The scenes played in
my mind, and I let the images come. Even the frightening ones. They
were all pieces to a puzzle that Luke and I had to solve.

Questions formed in my mind, faster than I
could process them. There was so much we needed to know.

“Please show us what we need to know,” I
whispered in the darkness. “Help us find the truth.”

***

It was like a picture album. Images.
Still-shots. Flipping through my consciousness one at a time. The
two of us smiling, laughing. Together in our home. Simple, everyday
things, like cooking, talking. Faces of others who were a part of
my life. Unfamiliar, yet not unpleasant.

After a moment, I realized it was
chronological. The picture album that was playing in my dream
actually told the story of their life together.