Aurea

Some are born searching for what has always been searching for them.

—On the Nature of Destiny, Elder Theron Graves

The trick to surviving mid-July in this corner of suburbia is knowing where to find the only patch of shade in three square miles. I had staked my claim under the linden at the far edge of the park, the leaves broad enough to absorb a nuclear blast and still cast a circle of cool over the heat-shimmered grass. Calla was sprawled on the blanket next to me, book open against her knee, but she hadn’t turned the page in so long I’d started to suspect she was reading it through osmosis.

The charcoal on my fingers felt sticky in the humidity, which should have been illegal. Every time I lifted my hand the black dust left another print on my thighs or the off-white canvas of my Converse, but it was too late to care. The sketchbook was propped against my bent knee, turned to the same unfinished figure I’d drawn eighteen times in the last two weeks. Always the same body—broad-shouldered, leaning like he owned gravity, hands in his pockets. Never a face. If you’d asked me why, I’d have lied and said it was a style choice. It wasn’t. I could draw anyone’s face, had been sketching since I could hold a pencil, but every time I tried to fill in the lines above his jaw my brain glitched and left it blank. Some people dream in color. I dreamt in absence.

The quiet was a relief. We hadn’t had much of it lately. The park was near empty—just us, two old women arguing over a chessboard at the picnic tables, and a toddler shrieking like a banshee on the far swings. I kept my eyes fixed on the page, pretending I couldn’t feel Calla watching me over the top of her book.

“You’re doing the Thing again,” she said, finally. No movement in her voice. She was so good at this—throwing the verbal grenade and then waiting, just long enough for the shrapnel to land.

I pressed my thumb along the edge of the charcoal stick, feathering the darkness where the neck shaded into the hollow of the chest. “Which Thing?”

She shifted, the blanket tugging at her bare legs. “The Thing where you get that look and you’re not here, you’re somewhere two planets to the left. What is it this time? Existential dread? Spicy family trauma? Or just the classic—”

“I don’t do ‘existential’ until after four.” The line was automatic. I meant it as a joke but it came out flatter than intended. The sweat on my upper lip was real enough to taste.

Calla set her book facedown. There was a blade of grass pressed between the pages, probably a memory from last summer she hadn’t bothered to remove. “Let me see.”

I should have ignored her. “It’s nothing. Just practice.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Is this the same guy from last week? The one with the world’s most tragic posture and no face?”

“Don’t psychoanalyze my muse.” I tried to pivot to a different drawing, but the sketchbook was too fat to make it look casual. Calla had already caught the full glimpse.

She reached over. Her nails were painted a shade of green that looked radioactive against the black and white of my art. She traced a finger over the edge of the page without touching it. “You’ve drawn him what, a dozen times?”

“Eighteen.” It slipped out before I could tamp it down.

She grinned. “Of course you counted. Has he told you his name yet?”

I snapped the sketchbook shut with a little more force than intended. “He’s fictional.”

Calla’s legs crossed at the ankles, her foot bobbing. “You should give him a name. He’s haunting your ass and it’s kind of hot.”

“He looks like a parking ticket in human form. I doubt he does hot.”

She leaned in, lowering her voice. “You should draw him naked, then we’ll know for sure.”

A laugh tried to escape my throat and got stuck halfway. I settled for shaking my head and scrubbing the worst of the charcoal off my palms. “Your fixation on my drawing nudes is getting weird, even for you.”

“I support the arts.” Calla’s teeth flashed, white against the line of her sunburnt lip. “Also, it’s summer and you need a hobby that isn’t… this.” She gestured at the faceless figure, the negative space of his features. “Doesn’t it freak you out? Drawing him over and over?”

I shrugged. “It’s just a guy. Not like he’s gonna crawl out of the paper and murder me in my sleep.” I realized, too late, that was exactly the kind of thing you didn’t say around someone who binge-watched true crime at one a.m.

“Bet he’d be a cuddler,” she deadpanned. “All that angst and nowhere to put it.”

A bead of sweat slid down my spine. I dug my toes into the scratchy grass, which felt exactly as alive and in need of a shower as I did. “Why are you like this.”

She rolled onto her stomach, chin propped on her knuckles. “You know what your problem is?”

“No, but I sense you’re about to tell me.”

“You have this black hole in your soul that attracts only things that are dead inside. Men, houseplants, possibly snack foods.”

I flicked a balled-up scrap of eraser at her. It bounced off her elbow. “So what does that say about you?”

Calla’s smile went sideways, like a seam unpicked. “Oh, I’ve been dead inside since birth. It’s why we get along.”

The silence that followed was so comfortable I almost relaxed into it. I let my eyes close, just for a moment, the afterimage of the blank-faced figure burning against my eyelids. The linden leaves shivered above us, dappling the inside of my arms with moving shadow. Someone’s phone vibrated, not mine, the buzz brief and irrelevant.

It should have been peaceful. It almost was.

I opened my eyes and found her watching me again, the careful kind of watching that didn’t want to be caught.

She was the only person in my life who noticed things before I did. Sometimes I wanted to ask what she saw when she looked at me, but mostly I preferred not to know.

Eighteen times, and I still hadn’t drawn the face.

I was starting to wonder if I ever would.

Calla’s foot nudged mine. “You know your birthday is Friday.”

I didn’t look up from the page. “I thought we were ignoring that.”

The last time she’d organized anything for my birthday it involved a glitter bomb and a piñata full of dried ramen. My mother had never forgiven her. We were still finding glitter in the carpet three months later — in the grout, in the dog’s fur, in a bowl of cereal nobody could explain. The next year we agreed to a moratorium on “festivities.” I thought the truce was still in effect.

She rolled onto her back, arms flopped over her head, staring up at the linden canopy like the answer to something was written there.

“You’re turning eighteen. That’s like… statistically significant.”

“I’m also statistically likely to die before thirty, given the way you drive. Why not celebrate that?”

She grinned, rolling her head sideways. “We’re not talking about me. Focus, El.”

"Yeah, and in three days you'll be legally responsible for your own actions. Which means whatever happens Friday is entirely on you."

"That's either very freeing or extremely threatening depending on your tone."

"Both," she said cheerfully.

Calla stretched out, letting her hands flop over her head. She always took up more space than she technically had. “We should do something. For your birthday, I mean.”

I waved a hand at the sky. “We’re already outside. That’s three more activities than last year.”

“This doesn’t count.” She snorted. “You’re hiding and calling it a personality.”

I pretended to be deeply offended. “I have several personalities. This is just the Tuesday one.”

She looked back at the linden canopy like the plan she was about to hatch might be printed on the undersides of the leaves.

I braced myself. “You’ve got that face.”

She ignored me. “There’s this new club downtown, Obsidian. It’s eighteen-plus now. No fake IDs, no lines, and the bouncer is obsessed with my boots.”

“The one with the paint stripper cocktails?” I’d heard stories. Also, “club” in our town usually meant sticky floors and lighting that made everyone look like a dehydrated vampire. “You know I hate crowds.”

"They have a mezzanine," Calla said, like this was some kind of architectural sedative. "And private booths."

"A private booth in a crowded club is still a crowded club."

“God, you’re such an old man.” She shifted, facing me fully. The sincerity in her voice was a rare mineral. “You’ll be eighteen. You should do something reckless. Or at least marginally irresponsible.”

I considered saying no. I even shaped my mouth for it.

Instead: “What would we even do there? Stand in a corner and rate people’s dance moves?”

"We could dance. Or you could dance and I could watch. Or we could just drink shitty cocktails and talk about everyone else's outfits."

"We're eighteen, Calla. Not twenty-one."

She waved a hand. "Details."

"That's literally the main detail."

"I know people."

I stared at her. "You know people at a club that's been open for three weeks."

"I know a person. One very specific person who owes me a favor and has access to the bar."

There was absolutely no version of this that ended well. "I have nothing to wear."

"You have plenty to wear. You just refuse to."

I squinted at her. "Is this because you want to go, or because you think I need exposure therapy?"

"Yes," she said, and the smile softened. "But also, it's your birthday. I want you to actually enjoy it this time. Not just survive it."

Last year I’d spent the night with her and two pints of Cherry Garcia, watching conspiracy documentaries until neither of us could keep our eyes open. She knew I didn’t do parties, or crowds, or being the center of anything. She also knew that getting me to agree to anything social required the patience of someone who genuinely didn’t mind asking twenty times.

She nudged my ankle with hers. “Come on. We’ll get there early, get the best booth, and if you hate it, I’ll bail you out. I’ll even give you the safe word.”

“What’s the safe word?”

She grinned. “Chicken parmesan.”

I barked a laugh, unguarded and too loud for the park, which only made her grin wider. “Fine. But if I die, I’m haunting you. No more sleep for you, ever.”

“Worth it.” Her phone buzzed and she checked it, thumb flicking fast across the glass. “Besides, you owe me. I still have glitter in my sheets.”

I flopped back onto the blanket, letting the linden shadows paint stripes across my face. “I can’t believe you’re making me go to Obsidian.”

“You’ll survive,” she said, stretching out next to me, not quite touching but close enough to share the shade. “And if you don’t, I’ll steal a Basquiat for your memorial.”

She closed her eyes and let the silence return, as effortless as breathing. I followed her lead, letting my own pulse settle, the sunlight honey-thick and drowsy above us.

The truth was, it didn’t matter where we went or what we did. Every memory worth keeping was shaped by her presence—her gravity, her refusal to let the world shrink any smaller than it already was.

Three days, and then adulthood.

God help us both.

I closed my eyes, just for a second. The heat pressed down through the linden leaves, dappling warm and cool across my face in slow rotation, and Calla’s breathing had gone quiet and even beside me. My pulse settled. The sketchbook was still warm under my palm.

A dizzy pulse, a twitch behind my ribs. Then the ground gave out.

The park was gone. Calla was gone. Instead: gravel underfoot, slick and uncertain, like it had just rained though the sky was bone dry. I was standing, but I didn’t remember standing. My hands were cold. There was no moon. No stars. The darkness overhead was so thick it felt like it had mass, a smothering presence that dared you to breathe.

Wind dragged at my hair. It smelled like rain and something metallic, sharp and electric, a blood-prick on the tongue.

A voice drifted from behind me, slow and deliberate. “Hello, Little Blackwood.”

I whipped around, but there was no one. Nothing but the blank road stretching away in both directions. The only color was the jaundiced smear of a streetlamp a hundred yards off, flickering like it was fighting for its life.

Nobody calls me that. Ever.

Panic tried to crawl up my throat, but my voice wouldn’t work. The air was too thick. I pressed my fingernails into my palms, hard enough that the half-moons filled with cold. My pulse was wrong—too slow, too strong, thudding in my ears in a way that felt like an echo. I wanted to run, but my legs weren’t interested.

Something moved at the edge of my vision.

A tree line, thin and dark, had appeared on both sides of the road, trunks like needles, bark so black it ate the light. The trees were wrong—branchless until the top, pressed together so tightly they looked like prison bars. I knew these trees. They’d been in every nightmare since December.

The voice again, closer: “You’ve been searching. You just didn’t know what for.”

I wanted to answer, but my mouth was full of iron. I tried to force the words out, but they caught on my teeth. The cold was inside me now, worming up my legs, through my spine, chewing at the base of my skull.

The trees pulsed, shivering with a wind I couldn’t feel.

I scraped my voice together and tried again. “Who are you?”

A breath on the back of my neck, so real it raised the hair on my arms. “Wake up.”

The world folded, like a page creasing in a book, and I was falling—

—but not before I saw a pair of eyes open in the trees.

Red, like heated metal, blinking once and gone.

Wake up, the voice repeated, but it was my own this time.

The last thing I saw before the dark came back was the outline of a man on the road, broad-shouldered, hands in his pockets. No face.

Then the world snapped shut like a trap.

I came back to the world hard, every muscle seizing at once. I must have jerked, because Calla’s hands were on my shoulders, pinning me to the earth.

“El? Elowen.” Her face hovered over mine, eyes wild, hair a frizzed halo from the humidity. She shook me harder than necessary.

I tried to sit up. The world spun, heat and vertigo colliding. I sucked in air, mouth dry and metallic, but at least it was air.

She let go, but not all the way. “Jesus, you scared the shit out of me. You weren’t— you weren’t breathing. You just—” Her voice cracked, thin and ugly with relief.

I braced myself on the blanket. My clothes clung to me, skin slick with cold sweat despite the temperature. My hands were shaking. “How long—”

“Like a minute? Maybe more?” She reached for her water bottle, unscrewed the lid, and pushed it into my hands. “You passed out. You were just… gone.”

I drank. It tasted like dust and copper.

Calla dropped to her knees beside me, legs folding under the blanket. “Are you—do I need to call someone? Your mom?”

I shook my head, not trusting words. My brain was still full of the cold, the voice, the trees.

She wiped at her eyes with the heel of her hand, almost angry at herself for it. “Don’t do that again, okay?”

I couldn’t promise that. Not even as a joke.

My pulse had gone unsteady, thudding in weird, delayed sync with the world. The linden leaves moved overhead, dappled sunlight flashing between. Same park, same blanket, same everything, but nothing felt real. The wrongness clung to me like a wet shirt.

Calla packed up in silence, rolling the blanket with one hand while her other kept checking to see if I was still there. I got to my feet, slower than I wanted, and let her steer me toward the parking lot. My legs felt wrong, too heavy, like I was walking through water that wasn’t there.

Neither of us spoke on the walk to her car. It was the best kind of silence—the kind that didn’t ask for explanation.

The moment the doors shut, Calla turned the AC to max. I hugged myself.

She looked at me sideways. “When you’re ready to talk about it, you can.”

I nodded, but I wasn’t sure I’d ever be ready.

She pulled out of the lot, tires crunching over the sun-bleached gravel. I watched the world slide by the window, each tree and parked car and strip mall sign exactly where it was supposed to be. A normal Tuesday. Nothing to see here.