Towering

But this time, when I went to pull him up, he pulled down on my arm so I tumbled beside him. He took me in his arms, kissing me.
    “I’ve never met a girl like you. You’re so brave. And when I see things through your eyes, they’re wonderful.”
    “They are.” I kissed him back. I felt a warmth rising from within me. “I feel the same way. I think I’ve been waiting for you, always.”
    “Then come with me,” he said. “Please. We can find help.”
    I wanted to. I really wanted to. And yet, I couldn’t leave Mama. I imagined her finding me gone. But more than that, I knew there was a reason I had to stay.
    “I can’t go,” I said.
    “Because of Mama?”
    “Yes, but more than that. Because of who I am. I know there is something I have to do.”
    “How can you possibly know that?”
    I wasn’t sure I should tell him. Yet my feet were frozen, his eyes were bright green in the snowy light, and I heard my voice saying, “Come to my tower, and I’ll show you.”

Wyatt
    It was easier to reach her tower, having done it once before. We embraced once again when she reached the top, and I was newly amazed that she was real. Real. Not some crazy dream I had in the delirium of the cold. She was real and warm, and for once in my life, I had earned the right to her, earned the right to kiss her.
    And that feeling made me brave enough to speak when we finally parted. “Rachel, did you ever think that maybe it is me you are meant for? I was the one who heard you singing. It was impossible. No one else heard it from miles away, but I heard you because I was meant to find you. I was meant to rescue you.”
    “I know you were meant to find me.” She gazed deep into my eyes in that way of hers. “Though, if I recall, it was I who rescued you. But there is something more. Meeting you is merely a piece in the puzzle. I believe I am . . . unusual.”
    I looked at her. She was so beautiful, unearthly beautiful, beautiful in a way that sort of put her out of my league. And, thinking about it, her singing was pretty incredible too—not to mention making that rope out of her hair. Who did that? I said, “Of course you’re unusual.”
    She shook her head. “Not merely in the ways you are thinking. Let me show you.”
    Before I could say anything else, she walked to the bed and drew a pair of scissors out from beneath the mattress. She held up one finger, opened a blade, and quickly sliced it, hard, so it started to bleed.
    I clutched my own finger. “Man, why’d you do that?” I knew a girl at school who was a cutter. I never understood it until Tyler died. Then, I sort of did, the way sometimes, when you hurt one part of yourself, it relieves another. Still, I’d never tried it.
    I stared at Rachel. Her blue eyes filled with tears as she gazed at the drop of blood welling on her fingertip. She held her other hand up, silencing me, telling me to stay away. The tears flowed from her eyes, and I longed to hold her, longed to comfort her. Yet, I also longed to shake her for hurting herself. I didn’t want anyone to harm her.
    Then, she held her finger to her tearstained cheek. For a second, the blood mixed with the tears. She withdrew her finger and held it toward me.
    “Look,” she said.
    I did, though it pained me. But her finger no longer bled. In fact, I couldn’t see a cut, not the slightest scar. It was healed perfectly, as if she had never cut it.
    “Can normal people do that?” she asked.
    I gaped at her, speechless. Did she mean what I thought she did?
    “My tears . . . they heal. Can you do that? Can other people?”
    I shook my head.
    “I didn’t think so. I was uncertain, but in books, people need bandages when they are hurt. I don’t.”
    “Does it only work on yourself?” I asked. “Or can you heal others too?”
    “I don’t know.” The air in the room felt strangely still, as if there wasn’t enough of it. “I don’t know others, except Mama.”
    “You know me.”
    She held up the scissors. “Shall I cut you then? I thought you might scream like a baby when I cut myself just now.”
    “You don’t have to.” I held up my hand, rough and scratched from clutching at the branches and ice the other day. On the cheek she hadn’t touched, a tear still glistened. “May I?”
    She nodded.
    I brushed the tear away with my wounded palm. Her face was so soft, so wild and strange. I wanted to kiss her again, but first, I pulled my hand away and looked at it.
    It was perfectly