"Hey."
Erin had snuck up behind me while I was looking at Fang's picture.
"Where is he? I've seen him before, but he's not here now, is he?"
"It's a long story."
"I'll listen."
So I told her everything, beginning to end, even the part about the note Fang had left. When I was finished, we both had tears in our eyes.
"I'm sorry Max. It's hard to lose someone like that. I know. They had a sort of school at the Institute for all of the more human recombinants, and there was a boy in us older kids class that was part lion. His name was Leon, and I thought for sure he was the one. You might think: cat + bird = bad combination, but he was perfect. Sweet, smart, funny, handsome. We had only been going out a week though, when his expiration date showed up."
The dreaded expiration date.
"I cried so bad. Even Eric could feel it. After that, Leon and I spent every minute together that we could. And then, at 11:59 on his expiration date, he just dissolved into a gold mist. I've got pictures of the two of us, you want to see them?"
She dug into her bag and pulled out a photo album with Erin and Leon embossed on the cover. She flipped it open to the first page and pointed to one of the pictures. In it was her beside a boy that I immediately deduced was Leon. She was right, he was definitely part lion. If the shaggy mane of hair wasn't a giveaway, the tail certainly was.
"This was taken a few days before his date appeared."
She showed me a few more pages of pictures, then there was one blank page, after which the pictured started again, but these were full of forced smiles.
"The blank page is the divider between the happy pictures and the post-date-appearing ones."
There were tons of pictures. The very last one, though, was of Erin and Leon, red-eyed from crying, Erin holding up her watch to the camera. It said 11:58.
"That's the very last picture of him. Seconds before he was gone." She started crying; big, silent tears.
I'm normally not a sentimental person, but Erin was more like me than I had thought. So I did something I rarely did.
I put my wing around her and hugged her.
I barely knew the kid, but she had been through more than anyone I knew. Maybe even me.
"It's okay, Erin. It's okay."