The Alchemy of Forever

hear someone shout Kailey’s name. I turn around and spot a familiar silhouette behind me: Noah is out walking his dog. As they approach, Harker growls at me again, but this time I kneel in front of him and rub his ears.
    “It’s okay, Harker,” I murmur, feeling the silky fur. After a minute the dog calms down. It appears we have a temporary truce.
    “I don’t know why he keeps doing that,” says Noah. I catch his gaze, his eyes as blue as the Caribbean Sea.
    “He’s just protecting you.” I stand, and we fall in step, meandering down the street. I take a breath. There is something I want to know. “Why do you run off to bio without me every morning?” I don’t look at him, instead watching the trees, the way the last long-limbed reaches of sun are lighting them up against the sky.
    I am surprised when he laughs. The sound is warm. “Kailey, you’ve made it pretty clear that our friendship only exists outside of school. I’m not the one ignoring you.”
    I look down awkwardly. I’m getting a fuller picture of who Kailey was. And she was . . . complicated. Imaginative and artistic, with plenty of friends who cared for her. But also somewhat manipulative, if she really did forbid her friends from talking to her brother. And now this.
    “Sorry,” I mumble.
    Noah pulls a small digital camera from his pocket and points it at me. “What are you doing?” I ask.
    “Recording this moment for posterity.” He grins and takes a photo. “I can’t remember the last time Kailey Morgan issued an apology.”
    We pass a house with open casement windows, taking in the cool breeze. Inside, someone is playing the piano. Noah stops, his head cocked. “I love this song.”
    “It’s the second movement of the Pathetique sonata,” I answer reflexively. Beethoven is one of my favorite composers.
    He looks at me wonderingly. “There’s definitely something different about you. Don’t get me wrong—I like it.”
    I stiffen as the song continues, the notes uneven on the soft wind—the kind that only comes after a storm. Noah’s still looking at me. For some reason I think of Cyrus’s icy blue eyes. Noah’s are nothing like that.
    “Let’s walk,” I say, keeping a space between us as we continue down the street. Our shadows stretch out in front of us in the orange light, an optical trick making the distance between us appear very small.
    We pass an antiques shop, and Noah stops to peer in the window. It’s absolutely packed with objects—old books, teacups, musical instruments. A small handwritten sign in the corner of the window captures my eye: HELP WANTED . I pause, thinking.
    “Do you think they’d hire me?” I ask Noah.
    He looks at me curiously. “What happened to ‘I’d rather be poor and have time to paint’? Besides, what do you know about antiques?”
    This makes me laugh. “I know a lot about antiques, for your information.”
    “What’s so funny about that?” he asks.
    I shrug. “Inside joke.”
    Harker whimpers and pulls on his chain. “He wants to run,” Noah explains, with an apologetic tone.
    “We should run, then. Running is fun. You should use your body to its full potential while you’re young.” I know it isn’t the kind of thing Kailey would say, but I don’t care.
    Noah’s long hair falls into his eyes, and he pushes it back behind an ear. “You keep saying the weirdest things.” He smiles. “But I like weird. Let’s go.”
    The three of us race down the street, and I easily take the lead. It does feel good to run, to feel alive, to crunch through fallen leaves on the wet sidewalk, to splash through puddles and soak the legs of my jeans.
    When we reach our houses we stop, gasping for breath and laughing.
    “Kailey?” Mrs. Morgan appears at the door. “Where have you been?”
    I look apologetically at Noah. “Uh, I should head inside.”
    “See you,” he says, waving to Mrs. Morgan.
    As I head up the front walk, I glance back at Noah, bending down to pet Harker, and am struck suddenly by how alive, perfectly alive, and human he is. He is both his spirit and his body, bound by the silver cord. Cyrus says it’s a physical phenomenon, that modern chemistry just hasn’t figured out how to quantify it yet, but I don’t believe him. I may be immortal, but Noah is the magical one.

seventeen
     
    Having spent a few days with the Morgans, I know what it’s okay to talk about: Bryan’s upcoming football game, my homework, Mr. Morgan’s job as a librarian. I