I can remember the first time I saw someone's final words appear. My little sister, Iris, was playing with one of her friends from school. Gia, the other little one, was having a snack with Iris when it happened. I don't know if Iris can still remember that day. She was only six. Then again, I was only ten and I can remember. It has a way of burning itself into you.

"Jasmine, can we have more cookies?" Iris had asked, hands folded and back straight in the picture of innocence. It was an act for the most part, as she was a terror when she wanted to be, but I got her the cookies anyway.

Gia smiled a toothy grin when I passed her a chocolate one as well, and Iris frowned, not putting up a fuss but making her annoyance clear. I just rolled my eyes, ignoring her. She would need to learn to share even her favorite things eventually. Might as well start now.

Little Gia signed "thank you" and waved her hands like she was brushing Iris' frowns away. Her arm was still extended from her sign when her face went pale and she lurched forward, clutching her arm against herself desperately. Iris screamed louder than Gia did, her voice fully developed and not touched by deafness.

I froze for longer than I would like to say, Gia curled into a ball on her chair with tears streaming down her cheeks. I knew what was happening, sort of. At the very least, I knew that something bad had happened. It was Iris that finally called for Mom, who scooped Gia up and brought her to the couch to lay her down.

After a little bit of Iris prancing around off to one side, hands floundering around and words whirling into sentences that I didn't have the time to pay attention to, Mom sent her off.

"Go get Gia's mother and bring her here right now. Tell her that Gia's words are here," Mom said, pushing Iris towards the front door and giving her a stern glance when Iris started to argue. "Not the time, Iris."

The only thing I could think of was the chocolate cookie on the table, broken in two by Gia's flinching before. Taking the cookie in one hand and sneaking over to where Gia was laying on the couch, I pulled my sister's friend into my lap, letting her curl up again like she had before. I tapped the rest of Gia's cookie against her arm that wasn't trapped against her chest.

It took a few moments for Gia to peer up at me, not moving her knees from where they cradled her head and her arm. She still looked panicked, eyes wide and shivers running through her body every few seconds.

"You want your cookie, Gia? You will be fine," I signed, having to set the cookie down on my knee to do so.

Gia shook her head and sobbed, roughly signing with her good arm, "No. It hurts."

"Can I see?" I asked, stroking one hand through Gia's hair after I finished.

I don't know what I was expecting to see when Gia let her knees drop slowly to the couch, untucking her chin and using her good arm to tentatively twist the other outward. Maybe I thought she had cut herself, but that's not right at all. I had seen the final words before, just not right as they appeared. They were painted across the inside of some teenaged forearms, a few unlucky babies, and most of the elderly.

Love you, too.

I curled Gia back up into a ball for her, hugging her little form against my chest and hiding the words back against Gia. I kind of hoped they might go away if I ignored them, and so did Gia, and everyone else too. Gia didn't move until Mom came rushing back into the room from the kitchen, holding onto an ice pack, a towel, and a packet of antibiotic medicine.

She tapped Gia on the arm, persistently trying to get the girl's attention until she finally turned her head to the side to look up at Mom.

'This will make you feel better,' Mom signed. Gia shook her head fervently, shoving her face back into its nestling spot between herself and me.

"Jasmine, I need you to get her to show me her arm. I need to put this cream and the ice on it," Mom said, showing me each of the items as she talked about them. Gia just clung to me tighter.

I sighed and poked at Gia's side until she looked at me. "Can I? I will be nice and careful." I held out my pinkie finger for a pinkie promise and Gia looked around before nodding and accepting the pinkie promise.

I have no clue why Gia liked me so much, because kids didn't tend to get along with me. Honestly, they still don't on the whole. But she still uncurled her arm again and let me hold it gently, following Mom's spoken instructions while Gia followed her signed ones.

"Put the cream on the towel and then wrap it around her arm," Mom said, pausing a moment to get Gia's attention.

'Good job, Gia. Just hold still," she signed.

"Now set the bag of ice across the towel just to the side of where the words are. Don't touch the words or it will hurt her."

I was careful not to touch the words.

Just as I finished, Gia's mom walked in to the sight of her daughter hiding in the arms of a girl not even old enough to go to junior high. She walked up to Gia and started to open her arms to pick her up before apparently deciding against it and collapsing onto the couch next to me instead.

"What does it say?" she asked, eyes watering and gaze trained at the ceiling. I knew what she wants to know, even though she didn't phrase it very clearly.

"Love you, too."

I don't know why it hit me then, all of a sudden, and not any sooner, but it did. I whimpered, holding onto the little girl in my lap as if she were my lifeline. It felt like she definitely was.

"What are they? Why do the words come?" I asked, looking down at my own arm. It was blank, and it had always been blank. I knew that the words showed up all of a sudden, like Gia's. I hadn't known what the process was like, but I knew they appeared, and I knew that people cried for whoever had them.

Mom came in as I asked, and she exchanged a glance with Gia's mother, their silent conversation ending in Mom answering. "They mean that someone special has died, Jasmine. Gia got her words because someone who would have been good for her passed away."

"Who?"

Mom shook her head and so did Gia's mother, shaking the couch ever so slightly and prompting Gia to look up. Her lip wavered again at the sight of her mom and she almost burst into tears again, the waterworks stopped only by Mom, who swept in to grab her from me and deposit her on her own mom's lap.

"We don't know exactly who, just that they're gone now. The words were the last ones that they said," Mom told me, and that was the first time that I really knew what it all meant. Sure, before I had seen the words and knew something was happening there, but I didn't really get it.

"How come Gia's friend died? She's just a baby," I said, looking at where Gia was finally starting to straighten up from the ball she had retreated into.

"Who're you calling a baby, baby?"

I turned around and saw Iris glaring at me from the other side of the couch. I don't think she heard the first part, or she probably wouldn't have been as bratty and irritated. So, basically, she was acting exactly like normal.

"Doesn't matter, Iris," I told her.

If she started freaking out, then it would be far worse than Gia's little whimpers, prompted by her poking at her own arm. Though she didn't take the towel off of her arm, Gia kept tapping at the place where the injury would be.

Iris gasped and hurried over to Gia's side, poking her friend's shoulder before signing, "You okay? Was Jasmine mean?"

"I wasn't mean to anyone," I signed back at my sister. I don't even know why I signed it instead of said it, because Gia wasn't saying attention to me anyway, but I did. Stupid sister.

"Jasmine, Iris, how about you two go to your rooms for a bit? Mrs. Fisher is going to take Gia back to her house for a bit. I'm sure she can come back and play another time," Mom told us.

I hurried up to my room as soon as possible, because allowing Iris to tag along after me and getting stuck with playing with her did not sound like a fun time. I don't know if Iris followed after, but I know she didn't come to my room. She also didn't stop at the vent in the hallway that led down to the front entrance.

According to Dad, it was rude and counted as eavesdropping to listen through the vent, but since Dad wasn't watching at the moment, I made a pitstop. I could hear Gia's mom and Mom talking when I pressed my ear against the vent. I didn't know sign language for lack of my own hearing, but little Gia's.

"I'm so sorry, Xiana. I know that won't change anything, but I am so sorry."

That was Mom's voice.

"Thousands of children live through the same thing every year. Gia will be fine, Destiny. I'll take care of her."

Mom sighed. She didn't sound annoyed, like when Iris and I would try to pull something. She just sounded sad. "I know, I do. I just feel terrible. Her soulmate is gone already, and she isn't even old enough to have met them."

"Don't act so condescending. Not everyone ends up with their match, and that's life. Jordan might not even be your match, and yet you're happy with him. Gia will be fine," Gia's mother said. I really, really hoped that she was right.

The front door closed a minute later, and I rushed into my room. If Mom came upstairs and found me with an ear pressed to the ventilation, I would be in deep trouble. I laid down on my bed and closed my eyes, opening them a moment later to look down at my own bare arm.

There wasn't a trace of anything more than a few clusters of freckles, not a word there. Instead, it was a blank slate. I traced a finger across the skin, scratching at the slight raise of one of my freckles. I couldn't help it—now I kept waiting for something to happen like what had happened to Gia.

After a half hour sitting in silence, I gave up on that and sighed, content that I would be left alone for the minute. Instead, I closed my eyes again and let my arm lay alone, listening for anything that wasn't the little voice in my head that kept repeating one word.

I had heard people say it before, but it had never really been something I cared about. Now, thinking about how those little words stuck to Gia's arm would mean she couldn't ever have one... It kept swimming around my head, keeping me awake deep into the night.

Soulmates.