His mouth molds around mine in the sweetest way and all is well in the world for the sweetest of seconds.

And then his lips still against mine and part slightly, and the world explodes into shades of red. I'm reminded of that one Taylor Swift song about the colors and how she was only partially right about them.

He releases my wrists from their confinements, and his hands find my waist instead. He pulls me to him and kisses me back with a fervor that makes my stomach do cartwheels and my brain lose oxygen and that I can hardly believe is from Eli himself. He takes a few steps forward and I a few backward and my back is pressed against the bricks and I cannot complain about anything bad that has happened in my life because all of it has brought me to this moment.

I feel colors.

Colors...?

A rainbow, but not the smudged together one of the cafeteria at lunch. These colors all have a definite beginning and end. First there's olive green, but when I kiss back because I have to see more colors it turns to lavender and then orange and then yellow. He tugs at my waist and I feel plum lust and a hint of red passion and as I rest my palms against his beating chest I feel more yellow, lots more yellow.

And then he pulls away.

I am completely speechless. I can't even remember if I enjoyed it or not because all I can fathom is the hidden rainbow. Initially, he's grinning, but he quickly flips it upside down and takes a small step back. "I'm sorry," he says.

The guilty look on his face makes my stomach drop a second time, but not in a good way. He's sorry?

"I'm sorry if you didn't want that. I mean, I'm sorry I sprung it on you. But I've only got a few weeks left, and I just... I had to know."

I search for my voice and find it in the deepest, darkest part of me. I pull it up and out and set it back within my throat. I find the words I want to say. "Know what?" If I'd kiss back? If I could finally feel all the colors you possess?

"What it would feel like," he answers simply, his aura white as normal.

🦎

The burgers are bland and tasteless compared to Eli's kiss, the auras of his family as we chat contentedly dull and desaturated in comparison to the ones that exploded from Eli's mind in technicolor, the game of Clue blurred and monotonous compared to the sharpness of my senses as his fingers skimmed my lower back.

I lose the game and not on purpose. My mind is elsewhere, forty-five minutes ago, outside in the side yard. All I can think about is finishing this game so Eli and I can make an excuse to go upstairs so I can kiss him some more and feel those colors that made me feel more alive than I've felt since the night I first laid eyes on my monster.

Upon the game's completion, I mention to Eli that I'm having trouble with my math homework and if he wouldn't mind helping me out. He gives me a confused look, and I think for a second that I should be proud that he doesn't believe that I'd be struggling in math. I give him an innocent look and then his eyes go wide as he realizes what I mean.

"Y-yeah. Homework," he stammers out, and I hope it's not enough to make Theresa suspicious. Her aura doesn't convey such.

And when we finally make it to his room, I sit down on the bed without him having to ask me if I want to this time; I sit down on the bed as if it is an action I perform often. He sits next to me and pushes out a forceful exhale.

"So, that was some game, huh?"

I am in no mood for small talk. I scoot to him and wait, too ashamed of myself to start down this path, but hoping he will read my mind and start down it for me. Because once we step foot across this borderline and into the unknown territory of the other side — the border between friends and more-than-friends — there is no going back. My eyes involuntarily scoop from his eyes down to his lips, and that's when he takes the initiative. His fingers rise to my chin and he simultaneously leans down to me and pulls my face up to his slowly, so slowly, giving me ample time to recoil. But I don't.

I know I am being selfish. I know I am using him. But I also know that he likes me and wants to kiss me. And so I don't care.

We kiss for what seems like hours but what, in reality, is probably only minutes. I lose not only track of time, but my entire sense of physical being as the colors pop and leap from his brain to mine. I only exist in this moment, in these colors, in Elijah Whitney's aura.

When he touches me some place new — my cheek, my arm, my waist — I feel a new aura. When he pulls away to breathe or look at me and then comes back in for another round, I feel a new aura. When I finally put my hands on him — his hair, his shoulders, his chest — I feel a new aura. And each one is more prominent than the last. These colors make every other aura I've ever felt seem minute and mediocre. It's like... I'm not only feeling the colors of Eli, but I'm feeling his emotions myself. And it is addicting.

I am upset that I've only just now discovered this with but three weeks left to enjoy it and experiment with it, but I also feel guilty for even wanting to experiment with my friend's emotions in the first place. However, the fact that I feel guilty about being dishonest with my friend is outweighed by the justification that when he remembers in a few weeks from now, or a few years, or when he's old and gray, the girl he knew for a short period of time in high school, he'll remember our kisses, and he will be happy.

🦎

I fall asleep smiling, and I wake up smiling, and I try my very hardest to mask my yellowness because there are bigger and badder things going on in my world besides me kissing boys. Boy. Just the one.

I brush my hair back into a ponytail and wipe the stupid grin from my face before I meet Dad in the kitchen for my morning bowl of plain oatmeal and his morning mug of dark elixir.

I say it as if it is any ordinary thing. "Do you know anyone named Ian?"

He shakes his head, and it is an ordinary motion.

"Really? Because it's been in the top one hundred most popular name for boys for the past four decades."

I don't know if he'd heard a word I said but suddenly it's as if he remembers who we are and where we are and who I am and what I can do and where Mom is and why she isn't here. His eyes widen as his head pops up to look at me. "Why?!" And there it is. The alarm I know so well. "Did somebody contact you?!"

"No, nothing like that," I answer quickly. "I just had a dream."

His posture visibly relaxes, but his aura doesn't. "Another nightmare?"

"I'm not sure," I say truthfully. "I don't think so. I didn't wake up scared. Just... confused."

"Why do I feel like I'm about to hear another one of your theories?" he says lightly, but to no avail. The tension is still prevalent in his aura. He sets his mug down atop the table. "Tell me what happened."

I tell him about the hospital room, my unresponsive body and the machine it's plugged up to, the nurse, the doctor, Mom, a man named Ian. I leave out the part where he'd called her "love". That is an unnecessary detail that will only contribute to my father's constant paranoia.

He listens intently, but I can tell by his lack of olive that he doesn't believe it's a warning. He thinks Ian is a figment of my imagination. But he has to be real. He has to be... He's the only clue I've got to ending this nightmare that is my reality.

"What was the name of the doctor that saw me when I broke my arm?"

Dad thinks for a moment, looks up to the ceiling, squints. "Dr. Dunlap, was it?"

"Okay, yeah, but what was his first name."

"She was a woman. Johanna, I think."

I try to think of any other doctors I've ever met. Thankfully — and I credit this in part to both my tolerance for multiple continental United States climates and my learned hesitance towards the human population — I've never come down with anything more serious than the common cold or infection. When I do get sick, we go to the after hours clinic nearest wherever city we're currently located in. I know I wouldn't remember any of those doctor's names who'd prescribed me antibiotics and gave me steroid shots in the bum, so I don't assume Dad would either.

I wind up tight and throw back as far as I can, reaching for any possible explanation. "What about the doctor that delivered me?"

My dad furrows his brows, stares at his nearly empty mug, and then looks at me. "I feel like I should know the answer to that." He thinks for another moment, trying to remember. "Garcia!" he exclaims with a smile. "Doctor Garcia."

"First name?" I try.

He only shrugs as he lifts the mug back up to his mouth.

If Dad can't find me Ian, well then, I'll just have to find him myself. And I know just where to start. With Mom.

🦎

I see him first in the common area before first period. He lights up when he sees me, stands from his perch atop the bench we frequent. Then I think he realizes that he's being very obvious, so he relaxes against the nearby beam. "Hey," he says coolly.

"Hey, yourself," I say.

"How was your evening?" The fire behind his eyes I'd only seen for the first time yesterday is there again today and it makes me feel a certain way.

I shrug. "Eh. Pretty uneventful." But the grin atop my lips forms easily.

I feel his warm fingers take mine, and I look down to verify with my eyes. I like they way our hands look together. Dark and light, the sun and the moon. I step a little closer so that our display of affection will be shielded from any of the wandering eyes of the public.

Excluding the eyes of our companions, however.

"Whoa-ho-ho! What've we got here?" comes from Jules. I'm trying to decipher just why he sounds so excited by reading his aura, but his actions answer that for me. He turns to Reggie, who's seated next to him on the bench and listening to music via a pair of earbuds. Jules nudges him in the arm and Reggie pauses the music on his phone and frees an ear, the bud hanging carelessly from the wire. He looks at Jules, annoyed. Jules simply gestures to our hands, smirking, and Reggie follows Jules's pointing finger with his eyes. He then rolls them and sighs, to which Jules chuckles. Reggie lifts off the bench just enough to reach into his back pocket. He pulls out his wallet and pulls out a tenner. Jules snatches it from him, his smirk now blossomed into a full-on smile. "Thank you very much," he says while pocketing the cash, and Reggie takes that as his cue to re-bud his ear and restart his music.

I look to Eli questioningly, but Eli only shrugs.

I feel a jealous aura, and I learn that it's coming from Sampson. "Are you guys serious?" he asks, his tone conveying frustration.

"What?" Eli asks as if everything happening is ordinary.

"She's got two weeks left of school. After that, you'll never see her again."

My heart begins to race. How could Sam possibly know that I'm leaving after graduation? Did Eli tell my secret? I begin to pull my hand away. He feels me do this, and he tightens his grip so that I can't.

"You don't know that," Eli says, his voice calm. "She applied to UNL. It's not that far."

Sampson scoffs and directs his next words to me. "Did you tell him that you'll stay together? Keep it long distance? That you'll come home on the weekends?" His aura turns black, and I feel the emotional depth behind his words. He is hurting.

"Dude, lay off her," Dex tries softly, but Sampson doesn't listen.

"No, she should know," he tells Dex, but his gaze never leaves mine. "When you go to college, whether its Harvard or York friggin' Community, there's gonna be guys there. Lots of guys. College guys. And suddenly some stupid little two year romance with a boy still in high school won't matter. So you might as well break it off now before you meet Mr. Polo Shirt, Khaki Shorts, and Crew Socks."

So I gather that Sam loved someone. Loved them for two years. And they graduated and went off to college and met someone new. And he's still here, a junior in high school, with not the opportunity nor the means to go and win back his lost love.

"I'm sorry, Sam," I say. And I'm going to say more; I'm going to say that he's right and I am leaving and pretending that I'm not leaving won't change the fact that I am. But I don't say either of these things, because Eli speaks first.

"I get it, but it's not even like that."

"It's not?" Jules. Gray aura — confused.

"Nah." Eli. White aura.

"Then what's with the PDA?" Sampson. Teal aura — skeptical.

Dex looks at me, and Jules looks at me, and Sampson looks at me, and Reggie has his earbuds in and is oblivious to this whole awful conversation. I look to Eli, because I have no answer.

He rescues me, my knight in rusted armor. "I'm holding her hand because I like her, and she's letting me hold her hand because she feels sorry for me."

After a moment of doubt from all three boys, I nod. And then Dex bursts into laughter. And so does Eli. And even Sam chuckles a little. Jules harrumphs and nudges Reggie again, pulling the ten dollar bill from his pocket and handing it back over. Eli squeezes my fingers, and I allow myself to smile.

🦎

I hope and pray and plead to whomever is listening that Eli won't bring up what he'd said later, opening the floor for a discussion that I really don't feel like having. For the majority of the day, my hopes and prayers and pleadings were answered. It's not until we're walking to the parking lot that he says the words I'd hoped and prayed and pleaded that he wouldn't.

"So, what I said at lunch..."

"Don't worry about it," I say quickly. "What they don't know won't hurt them." I insinuate that there is, perhaps, more going on between us than just me feeling sorry for him, because I'd rather not have to make that decision out loud.

"But it might hurt me," he says, and it feels like a bullet shot straight through my chest because he doesn't know that I could like him — in another life, I really could! — and how badly I want to.

"What do you want me to say?" I ask. I look at the facts. Facts are concrete, certain, unchangeable. Much more trustworthy than emotions. "Sam's right. I'm leaving. And I'm not coming back."

"I know," he says quietly, dropping his eyes to his feet as he walks. "But even if you weren't..."

No...

"Would you...?"

Please don't...

"...Wanna be with me?"

My walking slows until I am at a complete stand-still. I don't want to say this. I don't want to do this. I didn't want to say it last night, and I don't want to say it now. Last night seems days, weeks, worlds away. A distant memory. An almost. An almost-could've-been-great, an almost-got-it-right.

"Eli. You're my best friend," I say to Eli. "The best friend I ever had, actually," I say to the ground. "But the thing I've learned from moving around a lot is that there's no point in dwelling on what might've been. Everything in my life is temporary."

It's a moment before he speaks. "I don't wanna be just your temporary."

There is so much sadness in his voice that I make myself look up at him. "You're not my temporary," I say. "You're my almost."

He smiles a little at this, and I know I have won the battle, but that he'll continue to fight the war until I'm gone. We start our trek again, and it isn't long before we reach the lot. We stop in the breezeway like we always do before we part ways.

"Thank you," he says. But before I can ask what for, he tells me. "For letting me pretend. To get it out of my system. So that when you're gone, I won't be so hung up on you, you know, daydreaming up scenarios in which you come back."

I envision him driving by my empty house, or maybe a new family lives there now, and stopping and remembering for a few moments before continuing on to his house for game night, which will never truly be the same for a long while, nor will the park at the reservation. There isn't much I have left untainted in my wake. It will likely be difficult for him to play Texas Hold 'Em again or sit at that certain table in the cafeteria again, the empty seat across from him filled by the ghost of a memory. And I'm again reminded why it is that I choose to remain alone in the first place.

"I think this way, with an almost crammed into a tiny little three-week hole... This way I might can trick my brain into moving on."

I give him a small, yellowless smile. A mostly dark blue smile.

A whistle comes from across the lot, and in it hear more than just impatience. I look to Sampson, and he's got his arms folded across his puffed-out chest and his feet planted atop the asphalt a few feet apart from each other — a power stance, one of masculinity and intimidation. It unnerves me, and I wish I had a way to show him that I'm not the girl he thinks I am. Well... I sort of am... but not in the way he thinks.

And then... I realize that I do have a way to show him.

I turn back to Eli. "You're welcome," I say. I make a quick sweep of the perimeter with my eyes to ensure that no one is looking but the one that I want to see. I raise myself up on my toes and Eli watches me with nervous eyes as I come closer and closer in his vision. I plant the lightest kiss atop his lips, almost like a whisper. I feel the slightest tint of relief from my subject. But my target's aura is so loud that I can also feel it, even from here. It is a reddish shade of anger, and when I look his way again his eyes are their ordinary shade of blue, but also very, very green.

__________

SHE CAN FEEL HIS AURA. WHEN THEY KISS. WHAT THE FRIG DOES THAT EVEN MEAN!!!!!!!????? And I'm sorry this is a day late but I hope you can forgive me because hashtag WALL PUSH.

So I didn't even realize when we hit 2k reads, and now we're over 2.5k! Y'all.

IN MORE IMPORTANT NEWS, LILIANA MADE ME A TRAILER. SHE. MADE. ME. A. TRAILER. AND IT'S LIKE REALLY SUSPENSEFUL AND HAS A LOT OF VIOLENCE AND I CAN'T PROMISE THAT CHAMELEON WILL BE AS EXCITING AS THAT. BUT SHE HAS NOW PRESENTED ME WITH A CHALLENGE TO WRITE SOME THINGS THAT I'M HESITANT TO WRITE BECAUSE MY KNOWLEDGE ON FIGHTING AND GUNS AND STUFF IS NOT VERY VAST. But dadfriggingummit my friend is awesome because I know how many separate movie clips she put into this and how long it took her and I am SO. PLEASED.