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No one saw Seb’s other self as he glided noiselessly from room to room. He saw immediately that this orphanage was one of the few that weren’t too bad – it was clean, if depressingly bare. And the auras of the children and teenagers looked healthy enough, once he found them all sitting in a dining room eating their dinners with the staff; they showed signs of boredom, rather than abuse. Circling overhead, Seb scanned them, noting all the colours. A dull blue, a flicker of lively pink, a gentle green. None had even a hint of silver, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything; he’d been shifting his own aura since he was a child. As he focused on each one, he opened his senses, checking out the feel of the energy – listening almost. His whole being craned with anticipation as he touched each person’s energy with his own. They were all completely human.
He checked again, just to make sure, but his heart had gone out of it. Then he forced himself to explore the other rooms, though he knew already that he wouldn’t find anyone else in them, and he didn’t.
She wasn’t here, either.
The disappointment tightened his throat like someone was standing on it. Opening his eyes, Seb brought his other self out of the orphanage and lay motionless, still gazing down at the stark building below.
She. He snorted slightly. He didn’t even know if there were any others of his kind, much less what sex they might be. Yet somehow he’d always known it was a girl around his own age he was looking for. He could feel her so strongly. Even though he had no idea of her name or what she looked like, he knew her. For as long as he could remember, Seb had had a sense of the girl’s spirit; who she was. He thought he could almost hear her laugh sometimes; catch glimpses of her smile. Not being able to actually see her, or touch her, was a constant ache inside of him.
Roughly, Seb pushed his hair back with both hands. Why wasn’t he used to the disappointment of not finding her by now? How many cities had he searched? How many orphanages and schools; how many miles spent walking how many streets? Suddenly he felt tired – so tired. Somehow this latest failure felt like the last straw.
It’s never going to happen, thought Seb. I’ve only imagined her all these years, because I wanted so much for it to be true.
Rolling over onto his back, he watched his angel self as it soared in the night sky, snowy wings outspread. For once, the sensation of flight didn’t soothe him. He’d been searching for his half-angel girl for so long – first, for years on the streets of Mexico City after he’d run away from the orphanage, checking out every aura he passed. Then, when he was eleven, he’d been thrown into a young offenders’ facility; he’d broken out at thirteen and soon after had started his quest in earnest, travelling up and down the country, searching every town, every city and village. Everywhere, for almost five years now, without encountering a single other aura like his own. Without once catching even a hint of her energy, except in his thoughts.
Above, Seb felt a cool wind whispering past his wings; the evening was quiet and peaceful. Enough, he told himself. The thought seemed to float into his mind of its own accord, but the moment it did he knew that it was true.
He couldn’t do this any more; couldn’t take the never-ending disappointment. If he’d never seen another like himself in all these years, in a country as populated as Mexico, then it was time he finally faced the truth – there were no others. No half-angel girl was going to miraculously appear to ease his loneliness, no matter how strongly he thought he sensed her. She didn’t exist. She’d only been a figment of his imagination all this time; a beautiful phantom. By some bitter joke of nature he was alone – the only one of his kind – and it was time to just accept that and try to get on with the rest of his life, whatever that might bring.
The decision felt right. It also felt like something had just been ripped out of his chest, leaving a jagged hole that would never be filled. Seb lay on the soft grass, gazing upwards as his angel self flew, so effortlessly agile against the stars. And he knew that what he’d been thinking wasn’t quite true – as long as he had this other part of himself, he would never be completely alone.
It only felt that way.
THE SCISSORS WERE COLD AGAINST my neck.
I stood in the bathroom of our motel room with my eyes shut, trying not to notice how much I hated the sound of each metallic snip, or the odd, awful feeling of lightness that was slowly spreading its way across my head. Even though I knew how much we needed to do this – of course I did; it had been my idea in the first place – that didn’t mean I had to enjoy it. Alex wasn’t enjoying it much, either. In fact, he probably hated this part most of all. But when I’d brought up the idea earlier that afternoon, he admitted he’d been thinking the same thing – and now the scissors didn’t hesitate as he worked them. If I hadn’t suggested this, he would have.
It was weird, though. . . both of us so eager to do something that neither of us actually wanted.
I heard Alex put the scissors down on the bathroom counter. “Okay, I think I’m done. ” He sounded uncertain. Dreading what I was about to see, I opened my eyes and stared at myself in the mirror.
My once-long hair was now short. Very short. I don’t even know how to describe it. Sort of a pixie cut, maybe, if the pixies had gone berserk with the scissors. And more than that, it was no longer blonde – it was a deep reddish-gold that made me think of autumn and bonfires. I’d thought it might go better with my skin tone than brown, but now. . . I swallowed. In the mirror, my green eyes were wide and unsure.
I looked nothing like myself.
Alex was staring, too. “Wow,” he said. “That. . . makes a big difference. ”
I wanted to blurt out, You still think I’m beautiful, right? I bit the words back. “Still being beautiful” was not the point – not that I’d ever really thought I was, anyway; it was Alex who thought that. But the important thing now was just staying alive. In the bedroom, I could still hear the newscast that had been playing non-stop ever since we’d turned on the TV: “Police are searching urgently for the pair for questioning. . . Again, if you see them, do not approach them yourself, but call our special hotline. . . They are suspected to be armed and dangerous. . . ”
I knew without looking that they were showing my sophomore school photo again – and that it was probably on every Church of Angels website in the world by now. So to be honest, changing my most noticeable feature hadn’t exactly been a tough decision. At least no one knew what Alex looked like. There was a police sketch, but it was laughably wrong: the security guard who’d been at the cathedral had remembered him as being about ten years older and fifty pounds heavier than he really was, bulging with muscle like a football player.
I couldn’t take my eyes off the girl in the mirror. It was like a stranger had stolen my face. I reached for the red eyebrow pencil I’d asked Alex to buy and traced it over my eyebrows. The effect was much more dramatic than I would have expected. Before, I barely even noticed my eyebrows when I looked at myself. Now they seemed to jump right out at me.
This was me, now.
Feeling oddly shaken, I put down the pencil and ran my fingers through what was left of my hair. Half of it spiked up, the other half flopped down. Someone, somewhere, might pay good money for a haircut like this – like the type of runway model who’d wear a garbage-bag dress held together with safety pins, maybe.