' Where are you going?'
' Somewhere.' I respond shortly.
I can just see Angel rolling her eyes now.
'Seriously, where are you going?'
I look away from the sun, it looks like it's ready to set, and spot my favorite patch of trees. Tilting my wings, I fly upward a good 50 feet.
Looking down at the tops of the redwoods, I take a deep breath before snapping my wings closed and nosediving straight. It was exhilirating, the cool wind whistling in my ears, the feeling of your heart nestled deep in the pit of your stomach. I loved it, and once I saw that I was getting closer to the trees, I snapped my wings back out, and proceeded to bob and weave through the trees.
I stopped my aerial gymnastics when I started to get tired. I flew to one of the redwoods closest to me and nestled my self into one of its long branches. I rested my head against the trunk, trying to catch my breath. Strange how you can get winded from flying.
'Nudge?'
'Yea?'
'Are you at the woods?'
Damn her...
'Alright, come on out Angel.'
I hear someone land on the ground beneath my tree.
'Angel, what did I tell you about following me?'
'I didn't...he did.'
HE? No, no, no. Not now, not here. I prepare to fly to another tree five feet behind me when I hear him.
"I wouldn't do that Nudge."
I stiffen.
"If you keep moving, I'll just keep following."
"Why are you here?"
"I followed you, ya know."
"Yes, otherwise YOU wouldn't be HERE when I wanted to be ALONE." I wince at how biting my words sound, but he shouldn't be here. I ran for a reason.
"No, when we were home. I followed you to your room...I heard what you said.
I stiffen even more than I had before. I felt like every bone in my body had locked into place.
"Did you listen?" My voice is void of any emotion.
"Yeah."
"Everything?"
"Are you gonna come down from the tree so we can talk?" He asks, irritated.
Good, maybe if I deny him enough, he'll leave.
"We've talked this much while I was in this tree. What difference does it make to you anyways?"
"Well, what I have to say would mean a lot more to me if I could see you."
No. A touch would be it, my undoing. I'd unravel, fall apart. I'd break open again and again like a Russian nesting doll, until the most vulnerable part of myself showed. I couldn't and I wouldn't do it. No matter how many times I've cried in front of Iggy. The times I've cried because of him were a lot more times in comparison.
"No." I whisper.
He's going to leave now. Leave me and pretend this never happened. He's going to avoid me for awhile, or never speak to me again. I'll be alone. Maybe I'll grow up to be a cat lady...
"Why?"
Stubborn. I forgot he could be so STUBBORN. That he would ask me "why?" hadn't come up in my marvelous mind.
"Why what?"
"Why won't you let me see you?" he asks softly.
"Because...because...I'm too lazy and tired to get down from this tree."
LEAVE! LEAVE,LEAVE, LEAVE, LEAVE!
'Hey Nudge? There's something else I forgot to tell you...'
Friggin' great, now the mindreader I call my sister has forgotten to tell me something.
I wrenched a tree branch off the tree and started to break it. Imagining it as my heart when Iggy either left finally, or rejected me and ignored me for the rest of our lives.
Snap!
Silence.
Snap!
Wind rustles the leaves.
Snap!
The sun is halfway past the horizon.
Snap!
Tears are forming in my eyes again, fat droplets of idiocy and resentment.
Snap!
Something lands behind me with a thud.
"Thanks."
I pause mid-snap.
How did he...he followed the noise probably.
"How did you get up here?"
He's silent.
"I thought you'd left Jeff." Yes, use his real name that should get him to leave.
"I'm not leaving until you and I talk."
I shrug.
I feel the branch I'm sitting on move under Iggy's weight. It was probably a bad idea to move forward on the branch.
"Max is going to be worried sick."
"I told her I was going to bring you home."
Damn him.
"Fine, talk." I huff.
"Can you hand me the branch you're holding? Please?" his voice is smooth and soft.
I hand it back to him.
"Thanks."
Iggy takes the branch from my hand and starts snapping it himself.
Here my crush was, my best friend. Breaking my heart, well my heart in stick...branch form.
Just like he was going to do in real life. Again.
"Soo...you know how I could only see colors?" Iggy starts.
Wait, COULD? As in past tense?
"What do you mean could? Can't you still see only colors? Well feel them anyways?"
"Well...umm you know when we watched the movie Daredevil?"
I nod.
"Well you know how he can see only when there's a noise?"
I nod again.
"That's why I asked you for the stick...I can see through sound...like a bat."
'Angel..is that what you forgot to tell me?'
'Yes, but I needed to tell you about what you can do actually.' came Angel's reply.
"So is that all you needed to tell me because if you were here just for that then you can leave Ig."
"Actually there was something else."
'Nudge tell Iggy to wait a minute I need to talk to you NOW!'
"Iggy, Angel needs to talk to me. Can you wait a minute?"
"Sure." he mumbled.
'Start talking Little Mindreader.'
'Ok, well Iggy isn't the only one that has a new power. You have a new power too.'
GREEAATTT...
'WHAT!'
'Yes, you actually are an empath. Remember that file you'd nicked from Jeb?'
'You mean the one Max took back when she found out?' I groused.
I'm still a little sore about that...
'Yes. Well I snuck in her room a couple weeks ago and looked up a few things. You have the power of empathy. So far, from what I've read it's only through touch.'
'I know that Angel. If I touch something I feel that person's emotions.'
'No, I mean you can touch the person and feel their emotions.'
Wait a minute.
I thought back to a few weeks ago, Angel had come to me asking if I could help her test something out. She asked me to hold her hand and tell her what I felt.
'So when I told you that I felt apprehension and curiousity...they were your emotions...not mine?'
'Yeah.'
'Iggy?'
"Ok Angel." Iggy says.
"Nudge, I heard what you said...about being in love and how you thought that l would be different, that I wouldn't break your heart. You were hoping that I could see past the age difference and you're persona..." he stopped.
The tears were pooling in my eyes again. No.
"I thought it would be best for me to tell you how I feel." he takes a deep breath. "Nudge...I-I love you."
I gasp. No, no, NO!
"Iggy." I choke, a few tears spilling from my eyes.
"Nudge." and that was it.
I have to try it out.
"Iggy...give me your hand please." I held my hand out, palm upwards.
He places his hand in mine, lacing our fingers together.
Another tear escapes my eye.
Closing my eyes, I concentrate, which is a little hard because my head usually goes a mile a minute. Hard to concentrate when that happens ya know?
Suddenly, an overwhelming feeling of love and...nervousness overcomes me. I think I even feel a little sadness...some fear. But the LOVE, it wasn't friendship, brotherly love. It was share my life, give my life for you love and it was hitting me in waves.
I open my eyes and slide my hand, with much struggling, out of his.
"What was that for?" he asks.
"Turns out I really am an empath. I needed your hand to read your emotions."
"Angel told you?"
"Uh huh." I nod.
"Yea, she helped me work out my power."
"Ah."
"Can I try something Nudge?"
"Uh huh."
He snaps the branch three times quickly. Wrapping an arm around my waist, he pulls me backwards into his chest, placing his chin on my shoulder, his mouth now perfectly positioned next to my ear. His breath tickles the few strands of hair that have escaped from my ponytail.
"Nudge?"
"Yes." My voice cracks.
He places a hand on my cheek and turns my head towards him.
"I am IN LOVE with you." and then his lips descend upon my own.
He moves his hand down to the back of my neck and holds it there.
His lips are soft but firm and , oddly enough, I can still taste the cheesecake.
I don't know how long we stayed like that, but when I realized what we were doing, the floodgates opened.
Tears are cascading down my cheeks and I pull back abruptly.
"We can't."
Iggy looks confused.
"What?"
"There's a 3 year age difference between us. We can't." and with that, I wrench myself from his grasp and kicked off the branch. Flying away at top speed, I could here Iggy yelling behind me.
"WAIT!" He grabs hold of my wrist.
"Let go Iggy."
"Not until you listen to what I have to say."
"Why should I? I'm a little girl and you're a 16-year old boy with a better grasp of love than me."
"Is that what this is about? You really think I meant what I said back there? Nudge, I was mad because I thought you were horrified at the thought of our friendship being your definition of love. When you said I was blind...Nudge...I was hurt. I wanted to hurt you too. It was stupid of me but I wasn't thinking straight. I have insecurities too Nudge. You brought up mine, so I retaliated. But Nudge, that doesn't mean that it was true. I love you. That hasn't changed, not since I was 14 and you were 11, and definitely not now. I don't care about your age. I care about you. So what if we're three years apart? You've got the same amount of maturity as most 16 year-olds and you're smarter than most of them anyways, even without being an avian-human hybrid."
"But...the others-"
Sighing, Iggy pulls a manila folder from the inside of his jacket and hands it to me.
"Here, read this." He instructs.
"What...why?"
"Read it, Nudge."
Frowning, I open the folder to find the papers I'd stolen from Jeb a few years back. Max found out I had it and took it away from me. I haven't seen it since, until today of course.
Name: Monique
Blood type: O-
Ethnicity: African/African American
Birthdate: 04/12/1997
"04/12/1997? If what this paper is saying is true then that makes me-"
"That makes you 15 years old Nudge." Iggy cuts in. "The reason you haven't seen this file until now is because Max wanted to have it verified and until now, it hadn't been but Dr. Martinez managed to do so through a little data tracking. You did a fine job teaching her the basics."
And suddenly, the mini lessons I had been giving Dr. Martinez for the first six months after we had officially shut down the School made sense.
I had been training her in how to hack into the School's files so that she could verify the information I now had before me.
"So. I'm not too young for you?"
Iggy tugs on my wrist and I fall into his arms.
"No, you're just perfect, even more perfect actually, because you were already perfect in my eyes before this." Iggy whispers lovingly into my ear.