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Chapter 13

“Okay, so how do I make myself solid?” AJ asked eagerly.

“Okay, first of all, you can’t just make your whole body solid. You’ll only be able to do small parts at a time, like your hands, to start out with. It takes up a lot of energy, and if you try to do too much, you’ll black out,” Lindy said.

“Black out? But I’m already dead! Why would I need all this energy; why can’t I just do it?”

Lindy shrugged. “I dunno. Guess it’d be too simple. Angels have to have energy, just like mortals. We can’t eat, so we can’t get that energy from food like we did when we were alive.”

“So where do we get it from?”

“The golden mist,” said Lindy.

AJ stared at her. “The golden mist,” he repeated. “What’s the golden mist?”

“Well… it’s sort of hard to describe. When you use up too much energy, the golden mist appears and sort of circles around you. Then everything around you fades as the golden mist envelopes you, and you black out and go into a deep sleep-like state. When you wake up, you’re re-energized.”

“Oh… so basically all we have to do is go to sleep to get energy?”

“Well… yeah, I guess…”

“You could’ve just said that then.”

Lindy gave him a look. “It’s not quite the same as mortal sleep,” she snapped. “Sometimes you’re out for days or even weeks at a time, depending on how low you are on energy. When you first start using your powers, you’ll run out of energy fast and go into the golden mist often. But as time goes by, you’ll have to re-energize less and less.”

AJ shrugged. “Whatever. Just show me how to make my hands solid.”

Lindy smiled exasperatedly. “You just don’t quit, do you?”

AJ grinned. “Nope.”

“Alright, fine,” said Lindy. “Hold out your hand and look at it. Focus on your fingertips. Stare just at your fingertips; ignore everything else around you. Stare at them and imagine they’re solid. Concentrate hard. Will them into being solid.”

Doubtfully, AJ held out his hand and looked at the ends of his fingers. Turn solid, he thought to himself. Come on, turn solid. But another voice in the back of his head was saying, This is stupid. This can’t work; this is stupid.

“You’re not concentrating,” Lindy said. “Come on, focus on them. Concentrate, AJ.”

AJ shut his eyes for a moment, then opened them again. He forced himself to look only at his fingertips. Shoving the skepticism from his mind, he imagined with all his might that his fingers were solid, that he was able to touch things without his fingers slipping through them. For a moment, nothing happened. But then, a strange sensation came to his fingertips. It was a burning, tingling feeling, an uncomfortable feeling. AJ began to grow light-headed. Suddenly, he retracted his hand, letting it fall limply at his side. The tingling feeling went away.

“What was that?” AJ demanded Lindy. “My fingers, they felt like they were going to fall off!”

“You broke your concentration! It was working!” Lindy cried. “Look, it’s always uncomfortable the first time, but it gets easier as you get used to it. It won’t require so much energy and concentration eventually. Try it again.”

AJ didn’t really want to experience that feeling again, but he did want to be able to touch things, like Lindy could. So, dutifully, he held out his hand again and concentrated as hard as he could on making his fingers solid. The tingling feeling came back, but AJ tried to ignore it and focus. He felt light-headed and weak, but he refused to back down. The tingling feeling grew more and more intense until finally, just when AJ thought he could stand it no more, it went away. His fingers felt… different, somehow. Denser, heavier.

Scarcely believing it had worked, AJ bent down and reached for the Backstreet Boys book Lindy had left lying on the floor. Gingerly, he stuck out his index finger and gave it a poke, expecting his finger to sink right through it as it had done with the elevator button. But to his surprise, his now-solid finger just bumped against the book and did not go through. He ran his finger across the page, feeling the smooth glossy paper against his fingertip.

“It worked!” he cried excitedly to Lindy. “I can touch it! I can feel it!”

Growing more ambitious, AJ took hold of the cover and slammed the book shut. Then he grabbed the book by its spine and lifted it up. He could feel the energy seeping out of him, but he was too happy to care. A whole world of possibilities had opened up to him now that he could use his hands.

“Good job,” said Lindy with a smile. “You better put that down and de-solidify your fingers now though. You’ve wasted too much energy.”

AJ did not want to de-solidify his fingers now. But he was still feeling light-headed and weaker than before, and he knew she was right. “How do I make them go back to how they were?” he asked.

“It’s kind of the same process. Just concentrate on making them go back to normal. It’s much easier than trying to solidify them.”

AJ nodded, holding out his hand again. Regrettably, he forced himself to imagine them how they were, non-solid and completely useless. He felt a very slight tingling again, but it was nothing compared to the first two times. Then, very quickly, the dense feeling in his fingers went away, as did his light-headedness, and he knew it had worked.

“So what else can I do?” he asked Lindy.

“Nothing right now,” Lindy replied. “You have to take a break, conserve some energy. We’ll move on to Lesson 2 later.”

***

“Have a good night, Bean!”

“Thanks, you too, Eddie,” Bianca said to one of her co-workers, as she slowly left the book store. Although she was tired from working all day, she wouldn’t have minded staying a couple more hours, until closing. It would be better than going home to her house, AJ’s house, the empty, lonely mansion she had once loved. She hated that house now. It had become hers when AJ died, but she didn’t want it. It was not the same without AJ in it. She was ready to put it up for sale and use the money to buy herself a more modest little house, a place that was right for a newly single woman to live alone.

Bianca climbed slowly into her car and turned on the ignition. With a sigh, she pulled out of the Barnes and Noble parking lot and turned onto the highway. But she did not head home. Instead, she turned onto one of the nearly-empty back roads and just drove, hardly paying attention to where her car was taking her.

Her attention was brought back to reality with a sudden bump and then a flapping sound. The car jerked to the right, and Bianca grabbed the wheel, struggling to keep it on the road. When she had control, she slowed down and pulled over to the side of the road. With a heavy sigh, she climbed out of the car, already knowing she had a flat tire. When she went around to the right side of the car, sure enough, the front wheel was already half-deflated.

“Great,” Bianca muttered to herself. She knew how to change a tire, but had no jack in the car with her. The road was deserted, and there were no gas stations in sight. She was going to have to call someone for help, something she hated to do. She was independent; she hated relying on other people for things.

“God damn tire,” Bianca cursed, giving the sagging tire a kick before she went back around to the driver’s side and climbed into the car. She shut her door and locked it, then retrieved her purse from the passenger seat and got her cell phone out. She turned it on and stared at the screen for a moment, unsure of who to call. If it had been a normal night, she would have just called AJ, and he would have come to get her. But it was not a normal night. AJ was dead, and nothing for her would ever be normal again.

Bianca went through the list of phone numbers she had entered in the cell phone’s memory and found the second-best person. “Please be home,” she whispered, putting the phone to her ear. While it rang, she squinted nervously out the windshield. She didn’t particularly like being stuck on the side of a dark, empty road at night by herself, especially when there was a serial killer on the loose.

“Hello,” a voice on the other line suddenly answered, causing Bianca to jump.

“Howie?” she said breathlessly.

“Yeah, who is this?”

“It’s Bianca,” she replied.

“Oh, hey, Bean, what’s up?” Howie asked kindly.

“I was on my way home from work, and I got a flat,” Bianca told him. “I don’t have a jack, and I’m on one of the back roads. No gas station or anything around. Do you think you could come pick me up?”

“Oh, sure!” said Howie. Bianca did her best to tell him where she was, and he promised to be there as soon as he could. They hung up, and Bianca settled back in her seat to wait.

***