When I enter room 37 D, it is empty. It is much like any other office — a computer, a printer, a multi-line telephone, a multi-drawer file cabinet, a pencil cup, a stapler, a hole punch, a box of paper and binder clips, a box of tissues. Two chairs sit across from a long metal desk. I take a seat in one. A brass name plate stares at me. DR. JOSEPH I. TALBOT-LILLEY. I notice that there are no framed photographs of his family atop his desk or anywhere else in the office. Perhaps they serve as his screensaver instead. I think that I'll go over and take a look at the idle computer screen, maybe give the mouse a shake. But the door opens, and then I am not alone.

The man from my dreams steps into the office. He freezes just inside the door, looking at me like he hadn't been expecting me. His aura is again anxious. I stare back at him for a few moments, my gaze intrusive and unwavering.

He speaks. "Thank you for your discretion back there."

"Yours, as well."

He straightens up, clears his throat. Walks around his desk. Sets his clipboard down atop it. Sits. Folds his hands in his lap. All business. "Allow me to explain myself. Although, you should be warned, it may not make much sense to you."

"Try me," I say.

He takes a deep breath, and I sense that what he's about to tell me, he hasn't told many others. I can only hope that it means something to me.

"For the past twenty years-ish, I've been able to know things. Things I shouldn't know, or wouldn't know. But it's not like I'm pulling information out of thin air — it's more like I'm remembering it. Like it's always been housed inside of me, somewhere down deep, and I'm just bringing it up to the surface."

And he was right. This doesn't make much sense to me. But I've definitely heard crazier — I've felt crazier.

"Sometimes I have visions of memories that I don't remember living, people I don't remember meeting. For some reason I know things about real estate? Like I feel like I could probably take the licensing exam and make a decent percentage. I know the endings of movies I've never seen; I get the sense I've danced to songs I've never heard. I know that I'll like or dislike like certain foods before I've even tried them. And I've no idea why, or where this information comes from, or how it's triggered." He takes another breath, signaling the end of his speech.

"That's it?" I ask.

"That's it."

"So you just... remembered my name," I say, trying to make some sort of sense of it all.

He nods. "Crazy as it sounds, yes."

I choose my argument carefully. "But I don't even go by that name. No one knows that name except me and my dad."

"I don't know how I knew it, Aspen. I just did."

"Alyssa," I correct him. "Please."

"Joseph," he says. "Please." He rubs at his temples.

"What about Delia Brooks?" I ask. I hold no mercy for his headache. "You just remembered her, too?"

He looks down at his lap, and his aura tugs at me, and I can feel that there's more that he's not telling me.

"Tell me," I plead.

"Delia is your mother?"

I nod eagerly, encouraging him to go on. I hadn't told him that.

"I think I knew her."

My head is swimming. He knew her? My dreams had originally planted this theory in my mind, but I could only hope it to be true. And now that he has confirmed it... I feel like I need to sit down although I am already sitting. How can it be that this random emergency medicine doctor in Nowhere, Nebraska knew my mother?!

"You knew her?"

"I think... I don't know... I think I may have loved her."

I lean over myself, suddenly dizzy. I remember once reading that if I put my head between my knees, it'll balance out my equilibrium. Or was that to combat nauseousness? Either way, I'm feeling both. Like I'm carsick. Like the world is spinning too fast, tilted too far. He'd called her "love" in my dream. He'd loved my mother.

He'd loved her.

"Sometimes it's like... I've lived this whole other life... in this parallel universe, or something. I know that's impossible. I'm a doctor. We prefer hard facts and straight lines and find no comfort in gray area. We've built our careers on science and explainable phenomena. But I have no other explanation."

One of the words he'd just spoken reminds me of another question I have for him, of course. I look up at him, gripping on to both arms of the chair as if I'll fall out if I don't. "Did you ever know a man who could alter your perception of reality? Like, make you see things that weren't really there? Give you visions, maybe? Dreams?"

He thinks for a minute, I suppose letting it sink in to both lifelines, both realities. "No," he says finally. "Nothing like that."

I'd expected to be disappointed, sure, but what I didn't plan on is the relief I'd feel. I realize that Ian has sort of a fatherly way about him, and I'm glad he's never met my monster.

"I take it that you have?" he asks me.

I don't look him in the eyes as I tell him, because feeling the hurt in his aura will be enough. "He killed my mom."

But his aura isn't hurt. It's... angry, sort of? Startled? Embarrassed? It's a confusing mixture. He stands violently, throwing his chair back from underneath him. It rolls into the wall. His eyes are dark and terrifying. He starts yelling. "No! No, no, no! He promised she'd be okay! He promised! I would've never agreed if I'd thought he'd..." And then he seems to come to his senses. He looks at me, and I am tensed up in my seat, leaning away from him, looking at him as if he is the monster. All the color drains from his face. His eyes swipe to the door and then back. He flattens out his already flat tie. I hold my breath.

He speaks calmly. "I think you'd better get going."

Now I stand. "What?! No! Clearly you knew Gray! If we just keep digging, maybe we can find more answers!"

His adams apple rises and falls. "I cannot offer you any more of my time today."

He walks around me to the door marked 37 D and opens it up, ensuring that I won't say anything further that I would deem private. I don't go to the door.

I can speak calmly, too. "You know. You know something. You know why she died, and you won't tell me. Why?"

"I'm sorry. I don't have any more answers for you." But he doesn't feel sorry. His aura has gone completely cold, completely numb. Blurred.

I don't know what memory he saw, but it was something important enough or horrible enough to either make Ian revert inside his shell or Joseph to force him there. I walk to the opened door, but I do not exit through it. Instead I stand tall and proud and look Ian right in the eyes. There is no one in the hallway at this time, so I speak freely. Quietly, but freely. "That man who killed Delia? He has followed me every day since, making my life a living nightmare. I've never known a life where I wasn't constantly on the run. If you know something — anything — that could help me, and you don't tell me, and I end up dead next week? You'll feel responsible for my murder."

A nurse pushing a cart turns into the hallway, and I know how this is going to end.

"Have a good evening, Alyssa."

The door shuts in my face.

🦎

          "Aspen, wake up. We're home."

I peel my eyes open and look out of the window to see the house with the red door. I wish I could sleep forever.

Upon my returning to Kei's room, I had found that Sol had arrived, looking both physically and emotionally drained and still clad in his work uniform. Eli had informed me that his parents were going to stay the night and that we were going to take Sol's truck home. Which was for the best, I'd decided, as it was eight o'clock and Dad would be expecting me home in an hour.

Once we were alone in the car, I'd immediately felt queasy again. I curled up in a ball, pulling my legs to my chest, and leaned my head against the door. I'd fallen asleep before we'd even turned onto the interstate.

Eli turns the truck off, but he doesn't get out. I know what he's waiting for: his explanation. The one I promised him. But I am at a loss for words. There is so much to explain, yet I don't know where to start.

He chooses a starting point for me. "Did you meet the person?" he asks. "On the fourth floor?"

"Yes," I say.

"Who was it?"

"It was Kei's doctor."

His brows furrow. "Dr. Lilley?"

I nod.

"What does he have to do with any of this?"

I close my eyes, try to recall what information Eli does and doesn't know to try and make this easier. "Remember Saturday when I thought you were Gray?"

"Yeah..."

"And you said I kept saying the name Ian?"

He nods.

"That was Ian."

"You've met him before?"

I shake my head. "No. The first time I saw him was in a dream. And then I found him on Google. And then he walked into the room, and it was him, and he knew my name. Not Alyssa. My real name."

"What? How is that possible?"

I tell Eli everything that Ian had told me, beginning with his weird ability, a possible parallel universe-like life, and that he remembered my mother. So far, Eli has given me no indication of him doubting me, so he nods throughout the story as if this is all an ordinary truth.

"Wow. That's so weird."

I take note that he'd only called it "weird" and not "impossible". "And then I asked him about Gray."

"He knew him, too?"

"Not at first. But I think when I told him that my mom died at his hand, it triggered something, or opened something... He started yelling that he'd promised she'd be okay and that he would've never gone through with it had he known Mom would die."

His eyes go wide as saucers. "Gone through with what?"

"I wish I knew. After that, he kind of shut down. He refused to tell me anything else, and he made me leave."

Eli leans back against his seat. "Dude," he breathes. "This is insane."

"Welcome to the party that is my life, Elijah Rivers." I smirk a bit, and I hope he doesn't see the horror behind it through the shadows that cover my face.

"So what are we gonna do?" he asks. "About Dr. Lilley?"

The fact that he says "we" instead of "you" is not lost on me. "I don't know," I hear myself say, and I sound defeated.

He reaches over the center console and places a hand gingerly atop my knee. "We'll figure out something," he says.

"There's not enough time left. If only I would've known about Ian a month ago..."

"Well have you told your dad any of this?" he tries. "Maybe if he knew how close you were to some answers he'd push the flight back a week or two."

"Are you crazy?" I ask, and I look at him like he is crazy. "If Dad even knew that Kei was in the hospital tonight, we'd be on the next flight out. Without even knowing that it had anything to do with me."

He rubs his thumb over my knee cap, a comforting motion. "It had nothing to do with you, Aspen."

"Oh, but it did!" I laugh, and there is no humor in it. Maybe I'm losing my mind. "When your mom brought me in there, before Ian came in, Kei told me who she thought she saw in the road. And it wasn't a homeless man."

His mouth forms a silent little 'O' shape, and I know what he is asking. Who?

"She thought it was me, Eli."

"That's impossible," he says and brushes the thought away with a flick of his wrist through the air, finally using the one word I'd been glad that he didn't but knew that he should. "Maybe the person just looked like you."

"She was so sure it was me, Eli. And maybe it was. Maybe Gray was putting images in her head just like he does to me. The only thing that doesn't make sense is why he would want to lead me to that hospital, to lead me to Ian."

Eli retracts his hand from atop mine. "Wait a second. You think my sister's accident and injuries were merely a stunt to lead you to her doctor?!"

I cannot feel the hurt in his aura, but I can hear the hurt in his voice. "I know it sounds incredibly selfish, but it's the only thing that makes sense." I repeat to him the mantra that has been getting me through the past couple of weeks: "Nothing in my life is ever coincidence."

"Well I think this part is," he says, and the hurt is still audible. "Just a really weird coincidence."

I don't correct him. I do not wish to hurt him further.

Things get quiet, then, and I'm thinking the worst may be over. I pull my phone out of my pocket and click the lock screen button so the screen lights up along with the time: 8:29 pm. Just enough time to make it home without Dad suspecting a thing.

"I gotta get home," I say and move my hand to the door handle. Eli is quick to press the lock button. This doesn't exactly trap me in. I pull the handle and the door opens easily.

"Wait," he says when I've got one foot out the door. "What about the thing that you said in the waiting room?"

In light of everything that had happened since then, I'd all but forgotten about my little irresponsible revelation. "What did I say?" I ask as innocently as possible.

"Don't do that to me, Aspen," he warns. "You said you could read minds."

"Oh, that," I say sheepishly. "I don't know why I said that. I panicked; I made it up." I feel for sure that my own aura is that of black guilt as soon as the words leave my mouth.

He looks at me like a father who knows good and well that his child didn't eat his green beans because he saw them in the trash can, but the child tells him that he ate them. "Nobody just makes up something like that, Aspen. Don't start lying to me now."

Sighing, I open my messages in my phone. There are only two contacts with whom I have ongoing messages; there are only two contacts in my entire phone. I click on Dad's. I text him saying that we're finishing up some math homework and that I'll be home soon.

It is dark and the street is empty and most of the homes have retired within themselves for the evening. Still, talking about such trivial and personal matters out in the open frightens me for reasons known too well to me.

"Let's not do this here."

🦎

          We settle into the trees, the color map on the floor just as we'd left it. The night is quieter than usual, and I think that if I still my own breathing enough that I'll be able to hear Eli's. I slide the paper closer to him with the toe of my shoe.

I jump in. There's no time like the present. "The colors represent auras. Every emotion is tainted a specific color. An aura."

He jumps in after me. "Like Robert Plutchik's psychoevolutionary theory of emotion?"

I recall what he refers to and I almost laugh at the fact that he knows it by its exact name. My father compared my auras to those once, but they were hardly similar. I shake my head. "Not exactly. He was a little off."

"How do you know his aren't right, and" — he picks up the paper — "yours aren't the ones that are off?"

"Because I've felt them, and I know," I sigh. "Unless he can do what I can do and just never told anybody."

Eli looks at me hard. "What can you do?"

Take a breath. Look at my friend. Open my mouth to speak. I am sorry for the burden you are about to bear.

"Every thought has an emotion attached. And every emotion is tinged a certain color. And I can see..." I trail off, again shaking my head. No, that isn't right. It's more than that. "I can sense those colors."

"I don't understand," he says softly, setting the paper back down.

You know what he needs to hear. You know how to make him understand. "You already know," I remind him. "I've already told you."

I wait for him to say it, try to detect whether he believes me or not from the way he says it. "That you can read minds?" His tone is true neutral. Depending on what I tell him next, it could tip him one way or the other.

I play it safe. "Kind of."

"What do you mean, kind of?"

"I mean that I can't hear actual thoughts, actual sentences or words. But I can feel the emotions one feels."

"Like an empath."

"Kind of."

"A telepathic empath?"

"I suppose so."

He doesn't speak for a good ten seconds. He closes his eyes; he's shaking his head. And when he does speak, it is not in a language I understand. He says several words whose meanings I can only infer: "Ethégoⁿzhiwáthe... Ábasi... Wíⁿkʰegáxe?"

"You don't believe me," I translate.

Eyes shoot open, brows furrowed. "You can read minds."

"Yes."

"You're telling the truth?" he tries, cautious.

"Yes," I breathe. "It's the only truth I've ever known."

He nods, but the action seems as though it is for himself. "Okay."

I feel my entire being perk up. "Okay?"

Looks me dead in the eyes. "If you say so, then so it is."

"But surely you know it's not possible..." Leave it to me to try and talk him out of believing me when he'd done so so easily.

"Who's to say what is and isn't possible?"

Of course. This is a boy who believes in a God he cannot see; how could I ever doubt that he'd believe in a power he does not himself helm? I look at him, and I can almost see the gears ticking in his head, the teeth meeting together and apart, the wires ignited — buzzing and alert.

"Tell me again."

So I tell him again. He listens intently as I attempt to describe the things I can do, the things I can feel; he eagerly eats it all up.

"You can feel the colors?" he decides. "When someone thinks something. You can feel the color of the thought?"

"Kind of," I repeat, willing him to understand. Willing this conversation to be over and my revelation to be a thing of the past. "The color of the emotion of the thought."

He is silent again, his concentrating gaze burning a hole in the color map. I let him process, let him take it all in.

"Is this related to what happened?"

I know what he means to ask, a question I, myself, have often wondered: Is my ability the reason Gray wants me so badly? And the answer is simply, "I don't know."

"How does it work? Do you, like, turn it on and off?"

"I wish," I huff.

"So you just feel everyone's colors all the time?"

"Yep."

He looks up suddenly, a jerking motion, his eyes twinkling with both mischief and awe, one word on the tip of his tongue, on the edge of his lips. He breathes it out, barely above a whisper:

"Chameleon."

__________

It's still Thursday on my side of the world. Better late than never, right? That last paragraph is one of my favorite parts. I'm so glad I can finally share it with you.

I know I promised I'd post the color map with this chapter, but I also said I'd only do that if Liliana didn't make me anything cooler. Which she did. (Also, I've still a few emotions that are without color, so that's what I'm dealing with right now.)

Everyone have a happy and safe Labor Day weekend!

Glossary:
ethégoⁿzhiwáthe - unthinkable; unreasonable
ábasi - false; untrue
wíⁿkʰegáxe - to believe someone; to feel someone has told the truth