Tainted by A. E. Rought

getting cold. Shoulders hunched, hands stuffed into my pockets, I walk to the headstone nearly as white as the snow, and engraved with:
    Close your sweet eyes
    Because life is a lie
    Find happiness in dreams
    The powdery white swishes away from my hand when I clear the name and date.
    “Hi, Mom,” I whisper. “I miss you.”
    “I feel funny being at your mom’s grave.” Em says.
    “We can leave,” I offer. We can hike up and down every row, if it helps her.
    “No. It’s OK,” she says. “I’m OK.” I don’t think she is. I don’t know if she ever will be again. The revival process amps up everything in her, like it does me. Will her senses be heightened? Will she suffer the same rollercoaster highs and lows the formula and charge give me?
    Em comes closer, wraps her hand around mine. Such a simple gesture, so complicated now. “Elle is a pretty name,” she says. “But, that epitaph…”
    A knot tightens in my chest. Memories, some fractured, some whole, rush up; Mom reading me lullabies when I got sick in junior high, many in foreign languages. I took her collection to the hospital, and read those lullabies to her every night as she lay dying.
    “It’s part of a Romanian lullaby,” I say. “One of her favorites.”
    “It’s so sad.”
    And that’s all the patience Emma seems to have. She doesn’t know how to channel the energy yet. She turns and drifts toward the newer section of the cemetery, the grand sculptures, large tombs, and a familiar family mausoleum.
    “Daniel’s not here,” she says. “He never was.”
    “I know–” I start, but she breaks in with, “No, you don’t. I saw him, Alex. I. Saw. Him.” She stops at the large tomb with the porch, and paces along the side. “Daniel was there when I was…” she won’t say “dead”, and neither will I. “He wasn’t fully there. He was wispy, pieces missing, but it was him.
    “It wasn’t my time, he told me. We waded through this graveyard, but it was half-flooded.” She stops, stoops down and digs in the snow beside a pillar. When she stands again, she has a black screwtop bottle cap in her hand. “It was weird how insubstantial he was, like there and not there. He kept telling me I was there by accident, and that he wanted to lead me home.” Em stops and tosses the bottle top to me. “I think he knew you were bringing me back here.
    “Then, suddenly Daniel was gone. I was terrified I would get lost on my way back to you.”
    Back to me? Why is it so hard to believe? “I just couldn’t imagine life without you.” Such a pathetic purpose and the only one I had.
    “You don’t have to.” She starts pacing again, snow wafting from her pale hair as she walks. “But I don’t think I can hide what’s happened. God, I’m all zingy inside, and I can’t focus. Mom will go ballistic if I start failing. She’ll drag me to the doctor’s and want to put me on hyper meds.”
    “You’ll adjust,” I promise. “We’ll figure out a way. And if we can’t, you can be homeschooled. There’re online courses.”
    Off in the black night of the neighborhood, a church bell rings, and then farther off another.
    “1 o’clock,” Emma says. She comes closer, shifting from fidgety and pacing to striding to me. She runs her hands up my arms, fingers across my cheeks and into my hair. I can still hardly believe she wants me as the monster I’ve become, but when our lips touch, it’s electric. “Merry Christmas, Alex.”
    Both of our lives have been shoved forever off normal courses and are woven even tighter together now. I’m not alone anymore.
    “Happy Christmas, Emergizer.”

CHAPTER TEN
    Jason’s lie is brilliant. A text shortly after midnight told me he reported the accident, saying I rescued Emma and she was too upset to leave me. The police and insurance companies will need a formal report, of course. Paul, like my father wanting things swept under the rug, offered to help expedite things with a little of Ascension