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We made it to class before the second bell rang.

I thought that I’d successfully put off Beatriz’s question
about Friday, but at lunch, she proved me wrong.

“What are you doing after school?  I thought I’d go to the
mall and do some shopping.  Want to come with?”

“Morik is picking me up.”  Shopping would be fun now that I
actually had money, but I wasn’t about to go back on plans I’d already made
with Morik.

“Perfect.  We can ask him about the party on Friday and
shopping tonight at the same time.”

I shook my head at her in disbelief and she just flashed me
a triumphant grin.  Beatriz, the little engine that could.

*    *    *    *

Morik, leaning against his motorcycle while he waited,
didn’t seem too surprised to see Beatriz at my side when I approached him. 
“Hello, Beatriz.  What can I do for you?”

“Christmas is this weekend and I asked Tessa to keep me
company while I hit the mall to catch some of the last minute deals.  Thought
she might have some last minute shopping of her own to do.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” he agreed with Beatriz, but
he noted, “The mall’s too far for a ride on this.”

“I have a ride for both of us.  What time do you need to be
home, Tess?” Beatriz wanted to know.

She reminded me that I’d promised my mom that I’d let her
know who I was with and when I’d be home.  Morik guessed my thoughts because he
assured me, “I’ll let Aunt Danielle know where you’re at.”

Beatriz and I agreed that she’d have me home by seven.  She
walked away to find our ride giving me a minute with Morik.

“Are you sure you’re okay with this?”

“Yes.  I’ll see you at your house at seven.”  He smiled
easily and his eyes gave nothing away until a car pulled up next to us with
Beatriz in the passenger seat.  Morik flicked his gaze at the driver and
nodded.  When he looked back at me, I saw tiny slivers of orange barely
discernible behind his yellow driving glasses.  He casually reached into his
pocket and changed to his sunglasses.

“Not too late to change your mind,” I said quietly after
looking back and spotting Brad in the driver’s seat.

His eyes gave nothing away hidden behind his sunglasses when
he insisted again that I go.  He took my school bag for me to drop off at the
house.  I climbed in the back of the car and waved to him as Brad pulled away.

“Glad she could talk you into going.  It saves me from
having to wait outside of dressing rooms to give opinions,” Brad joked.

Beatriz chatted about school, the upcoming party, vacation
and the holiday during the thirty-minute drive and the ten minutes it took to
find a place to park.

People bundled against the chill rushed into and out of the
stores.  The happy melody of a Christmas song poured from the mall when Brad
held the door open for us.  Garland and lights decorated the main entrance,
which opened to the food court.  The smells enticed me, causing my stomach to
growl quietly.

Facing us, Brad warned us to stick together as if we were
toddlers and then said to meet back in the food court in two hours.  Beatriz
didn’t need any further prompting.  She turned and led me to the first of many
department stores.

Shopping with Beatriz was exactly what he said it’d be.  I
stood outside of the dressing room most of the time while she tried on various
things.  She did have a knack for finding amazing deals.  Despite my family’s
no purchased gift rule, I bought a new top for my Aunt Grace.  And further bending
the gift rule, I shopped for the materials I would need to make several pairs
of earrings for everyone from a craft store.

The checkout line moved slowly like every other store we’d
visited.  While we waited, I watched the flow of people passing the store’s
window.  Safe from the cold, they moved slower in the mall, many of them
clogging the mall’s main artery.  The checkout line moved forward and I turned
away from the view.

From the corner of my eye, I thought I caught a glimpse of
Brian but when I looked back, I didn’t see anyone who looked remotely like
him.  My imagination was playing tricks on me.  Probably because I still
wondered about Clavin.  I’d thought to have heard something by now, either from
Clavin himself or the police.  I didn’t want to reach out to him if he felt
better.  Hearing from me might cause a setback.  But calling Brian might be an
option.  I decided to give it a few more days.

After checking out, with relief, I followed Beatriz to the
food court.  Brad waved to us from a table he’d already claimed.  A mound of
bags took up the chair next to him.  Beatriz piled our bags with his and then
pulled me into the lines for the restaurants lining the food court.  First, we
hit all the samples.  Gotta love samples.  Then we selected one of the Chinese
places.  With a pile of food for five dollars, we headed back to the table to
take our turn watching the bags so Brad could order.

Brad teased Beatriz while we ate saying he’d gotten her an
amazing gift and wanted to know which of her bags contained his gift.  Since
I’d been with her, I knew she hadn’t gotten him anything.  She ate quickly and
then insisted she still had twenty minutes she could shop before we needed to
leave.  Since Brad didn’t want to be standing on the wrong side of a dressing
room door, he insisted I go with Beatriz.

Full and laden with bags, I followed her as she made a
beeline for a high-end store.  She led me unerringly to the beauty department
where she started talking to a sales associate and sniffing cologne samples.  I
made the mistake of looking at a display case.  Another sales associate swooped
in and start asking me questions about the man I needed to buy for.  I thought
of Morik, but said I wasn’t interested in anything.  My modest budget couldn’t
handle this kind of store.  Plus, he smelled good the way he was.  But it did
get me thinking about what I should get him.

After selecting cologne, we met up with Brad again and made
our way out to the car.  The sun had set.  I paused by the trunk to look up at
the stars as they stowed their bags, but disappointed by the light pollution,
didn’t linger in the cold.

Pulling from the parking lot, I caught a flash of glowing green,
but lost it before I could catch a glimpse of Morik.

They dropped me off just a few minutes before seven.  Morik
opened the door for me before I reached it and I wondered how his jumping from
place to place worked.  Mom, Aunt Grace and Gran sat on the couch in the living
room looking marginally relaxed.  I kept the bags behind me and hid them in my
room while mom smiled at me knowingly.

We all watched a movie together.  Afterward, Morik talked to
my mom with ease regarding the movie’s plot and inaccuracies.  Observing her as
she responded to him, I could see her effort to make and maintain eye contact. 
He still made her nervous.  I couldn’t believe it’d only been a few days since
he showed himself to me.

*    *    *    *

After school on Tuesday, Morik watched me work on the
earrings I planned to give as gifts.  When we arrived home finding only Aunt
Danielle, she’d informed us that Gran went to the neighbors again.

After swearing Aunt Danielle to secrecy, I spread out the
materials on the kitchen table.  The crystals resting in groups on the wood
surface glittered in the afternoon light.  I eyed them critically trying to
decide how I wanted the finished product to look.  Not too long or wide.  Not
too much crystal.

I started two small piles arranging them in a pattern and
using metal beads to break up the crystal.  When I reached to remove a crystal
from each pile, Morik caught my hand stopping me.  He reached under our joined
hands and shuffled the existing pile.  After his story about the shell combs, I
wasn’t surprised when his arrangement looked amazing.

“Thanks,” I said turning to smile at him.

Still leaning close to eye what he’d done, when I turned,
scant inches separated us.  His attention remained focused on the table, his
hand wrapped around mine, forgotten.  The shifting silver pools of his gaze
swirled with green and brown and his lips curved in a satisfied line.  Not
quite a smile.

Seeing his lips, I couldn’t look away.  I’d never looked at
a boy as closely as I looked at Morik.  Why?  I think deep down I’d always
known I couldn’t choose a boy knowing it would ultimately be the cause of his
premature death.  But looking at Morik, I began to wonder things.  Such as,
what it would be like to be kissed.  I’d wondered about it before, but not too seriously. 
It’d always been associated with choosing, which had been a bigger focus.  If
what Morik said was true, kissing wasn’t choosing.  My heart and mind had to
agree to the choice.  I’d already decided it should be Morik.  Since I didn’t
have visions with Morik, no glimpses of my future to sway my heart, maybe a
kiss would help.

He pulled his eyes from the beads when I didn’t immediately
look away.  I noticed his shift in attention right away and started to blush. 
Chickening out, I turned my gaze to the table and then mentally scolded myself
for not having the guts to steal a kiss.  Maybe it would have been great.  My
stomach might have even done that crazy flip thing it did like when we were on
the motorcycle and I’d touched his skin.  At the thought, my stomach did the
funny little flip again and my cheeks heated further.  I needed to stop
thinking about kissing and touching.  Hard to do when he still held my hand.  I
tried taking it back, but he didn’t release it.  Instead, he slowly pulled it
closer to him forcing me to turn toward him again.

Knowing my face glowed bright red, I hesitantly met his
gaze, hoping he couldn’t read minds as well as see in the dark and hear really
well.  In those few moments when I’d looked away, his eyes had gone through a
drastic change.  The silver was completely gone, engulfed by a black void.  The
now black irises set against the brown yellow of his sclera sent a shiver
trailing down my spine.  He looked intimidating like that.

“Never fear me,” he whispered noting the shiver.  He leaned
close touching his forehead to mine, closing his eyes.  “Tell me.  Please. 
What were you thinking just before when you were looking at me?”  He didn’t
move, waiting for my answer.

I closed my eyes as well trying to hide from my
embarrassment and his question.  Despite the quiet of the room, I was certain
we held Aunt Danielle’s undivided attention.

“Can we talk about this later?” I begged in a whisper
opening my eyes to glance quickly at Aunt Danielle.  She sat in her chair
watching us with unabashed amusement.

Morik caught my look and pulled back from me, still holding
my hand, to address Aunt Danielle.  “We’ll be back in a moment.  She is safe.”

One moment we sat in my kitchen at the table, the next we stood
in an unfamiliar living room.  The abrupt change, to go from sitting to
standing without feeling my legs move, left me slightly dizzy.

“Now tell me,” he coaxed wrapping an arm around me to steady
me.

I looked around the room.  Large and open, it connected to a
kitchen on one side and an open stairway on the other.  Everything looked neat
and new.

“What just happened?  Where are we?”

“My home.  I apologize for taking you here without asking. 
I thought you didn’t want to speak in front of your aunt.”

His voice usually deep and smooth
now had a roughness to it, almost a growl.  I focused on his eyes.  They
remained black and the ochre from his sclera seemed to be blending with it.  It
was a new color combination and I wasn’t sure how to interpret it.  I felt
fairly certain brown meant he was happy or at least content while orange and
red were anger or upset colors.  Was Ochre then the middle ground between the
two color groups?  What the heck did that mean?  He was neutral?

“Are you mad at me?” I asked hesitantly. 
I wasn’t afraid of him even when his eyes unnerved me a little, but I didn’t
like the idea of him being mad at me either.

“No, Tessa.  You are frustrating
me.”  He let go of me only to gently cup my head in his large hands.  “Stop
stalling and tell me what was going through this precious head of yours.”

“I wasn’t stalling,” I said before I could stop myself. 
More ochre pooled into his black irises.  “Okay, okay…”

My face, which had cooled slightly during my confusion,
flared scarlet again.  Four days wasn’t enough time to really know someone, I
thought in a panic.  Why had I even thought about kissing?  Because I’d made up
my mind to think of him as my choice.  As my choice, wouldn’t it be natural to
wonder?

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes not wanting to see how
my next words would affect his eyes.  “I was wondering what kissing would be
like.”  I swallowed hard and added in a whisper, “With you.”

For a moment, nothing happened.  His hands remained warm
cupped along my jaw touching just below my ear and curving around the back of
my neck.  It made me feel small.  While I waited, his fingers twitched slightly
before stilling again.

Opening my eyes, I was surprised to see him locked in
place.  The ochre, which had intruded in the black swirling in his irises, had
disappeared.  Pure black once again claimed his irises.  He looked slightly
shocked and I had the horrible sinking feeling I’d misunderstood the whole situation.

“Morik, it’s no big deal.  I’m not asking you to kiss me.  I
was just ...”

He slowly moved his thumb, over my bottom lip silencing me. 
His gaze followed his thumbs, back and forth movements.

“There are rules.”  His voice had dropped on octave, rumbling
in his chest.  “Because my abilities put humans at a disadvantage, nature
created a few basic laws I can’t break, unless through an agreement.”

“Like a deal?”

“Yes.  A part of a deal.  One of the rules is that I can’t
interact with humans, unless they call on me.  The deal with Belinda’s father
gave me a loophole to get around that rule.  Another rule is that I can’t touch
humans.  The original deal allows me to protect you, but not touch you.”  He
removed his hands after a final touch.  “The deal with you allows me to touch
you since you touched me.”  He ran his fingers through his hair and then
continued.  “The rules are meant to protect you from my kind.  To negate the
natural advantages I might have.”