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If his heart could still beat, Sean knew that it would be ramming itself against his ribs like a caged animal. A myriad of emotions threatened to overcome him: sadness, relief, but most of all fear. It clawed at his mind relentlessly as he reached towards his brother’s shoulder. One movement, just a simple touch, and he could change everything. For better or worse was still to be determined.

He was a metre away. Now half a metre. N
ow bare millimetres
.
He focused, feeling the familiar surge of power and strength shooting through his fingertips. It felt like having a pulse in his hand, as though his hand was a living entity while the rest of him remained cold. He let the feeling of power take over, hoping it would give him the courage to just stretch a little further…

But he couldn’t. His hand froze, as if there was an invisible barrier separating his fingers from the smooth leather of his brother’s jacket. Then he retracted his hand and let the power dissolve, the mental strain he felt immediately disappearing. In the end, he was a coward. The fear had taken over at the last second. He realised he just
couldn’t do it.
He convinced himself that it was because he didn’t want Hayden to be involved, that he didn’t want his brother to be hurt because of him.
Lie. The truth was that he just didn’t trust Hayden enough, he didn’t trust
anyone
enough, and that was the real reason why he had always been alone.

Sean left before he could change his mind, more conflicted than ever. Seeing his brother only made it worse.
He made it back to the house in less than fifteen minutes, having run all the way as he couldn’t physically tire out.
There were advantages to not having a body.
It was da
rk by now as
school had finished hours ago. Only two lights were on in the house, the living room one and his bedroom. He walked through the door, to see his mother pacing the hall with a distraught look on her face. He noticed her hands were trembling and there were tear stains streaked down her cheeks. He stopped for a moment
and his gaze softened as he watched her. He had never given her much credit as a mother, but when it came down to it she really did care.

When he practically fell through the door to his bedroom, it was to the smell of alcohol and the sight of Drew sitting with his head cradled in his hands.

“Have you been
drinking
?” was Sean’s first instinctive question, wrinkling his nose in disgust.

Drew looked up, and there were shadows in his eyes that Sean recognised but couldn’t pinpoint. “No,” came the slightly slurred reply. “Well, a little. But I’m not drunk.”

Sean crossed over to the bed. “You’d better not be,” he hissed. “Then again, if you die from liver disease, I guess you can just steal someone else’s body again. Right?
”

The vacant expression on Drew’s face lifted a little, the haze in his eyes dissipating. “Did you find Hayden?”

“Yes.
He’s been at the library, resea
rching for two days straight
.”

“Well, at least he wasn’t kidnapped. What was he researching?”

“Souls, spirits, the afterlife, you get the idea.”

Drew ran a hand across his face tiredly.
“I thought he w
ould figure something out soon,” he admitted, voice hoarse. “
How much does he know?”

“I’m not
sure,” Sean muttered
. “
But you’d be surprised, how accurate some of those old superstitions are.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing.” The word came out rushed, panicked.

“He s
uspects us,” Drew said, completely overlooking Sean’s lie which he was grateful for.
“I think
he’s suspected for a while now;
it’s only a matter of tim
e until he finds out
. He’s too smart for his own good.” And then he started to laugh. B
ut it wasn’t open, cheerful laughter. It was giddy, almost hysterical, a hollow sound that exuded an aura of panic.

“What’s so funny?” Sean demanded.

Drew shook his head, quietening. “Nothing.”

“You really are drunk, aren’t you?”

“No, I just needed a reason to
laugh, while I still can. This is where the game starts to get complicated, Sean
.”

“
Game?
” Sean repeated in disbelief. “Is that all this is to you? Are all of our lives – mine, Ali’s, Hayden’s – just pieces you can move around to suit your own needs?”

“Everything’
s a game, Sean. Life, death; there’s always a winner and a loser in the end.”
Drew stood up abruptly, swayed, almost fell over, and then caught himself on the bed. “I’m going
downstairs to
tell your mother that Hayden’s safe so she doesn’t call the police.”
He almost made it to the door until he doubled back. Sean realised that he had forgotten his contact lenses, and his eyes shone their natural dark colour.

“You’re being even more reckless than usual,” Sean commented airily, watching Drew as he pushed the blue lenses in. “It’s as if you want someone to find out.”

“Of course I don’t.”

“Then why did you take them out in the first place?”

Drew shrugged. “They were hurting, that’s all.” He tossed the spare lenses into a beside drawer, flinging it shut. Then he stumbled out of the room, closing the door
behind him and throwing everything into darkness. Sean didn’t mind, he liked the dark by now. But even so, he was glad that he wouldn’t have to go through the nights alone for much longer. He was fading faster and faster, and using up his energy making par
ts of himself solid only sped up the process
. Would he even be around for another week? He wondered if after he faded out, Drew would just continue living his life. Maybe he would go to university, leave home, eventually fall in love with Ali and get married to
her and have children. Strangely t
he idea did not make him angry anymore, just exhausted.

Fifteen
minutes became half an hour, before
Drew
returned to the room. He collapsed onto the bed and closed his eyes.
He looked like he was in pain. “Hayden just got back,” he declared suddenly.
“He’s downstairs rig
ht now, getting a lecture. H
e refused to look at me the whole time.”

Sean stayed mute
, unsure what to say.
He was tempted to tell Drew what he had almost done in the library; that he had almost exposed their secret to his brother, but at the last moment he couldn’t go through with it.
But in the end he didn’t say anything, for the same reason. He was a coward. And if he admitted it out loud, it would only solidify his weakness, turn that taunting voice in his head into something real.

“
W
hat happened
to make you drink?”
he asked finally, to break the silence more than anything.

“I doubt you’ll be happy to
hear it,” Drew muttered to the ceiling
.
“You’ll have one of your hissy fits again, and I’ll have to deal with it.”

“Sit up and look at me,” Sean ordered, exasperated.
“And then I want you to tell me what you did.”

Drew
did so reluctantly, but those
shadows were still in his eyes, clear
even behind the contact lenses.
Then he coughed and croaked: “You’ll
probably hate me for it
.”

“And since when have you ever cared about that?”

Drew brushed aside the question. “Do you really want to know?”

“Yes.”

He steeled himself, as if he was about to reveal some
thing horrifying
. “
I kissed Ali
today
.”

The tension in the room sky rocketed. It was deathly quiet, a quiet that rang loudly of shock and disbelief. Sean opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again.
He had
not
been expecti
ng that. His mind struggled to comprehend
, but the news just wasn’t sink
ing in. He tried to speak. “Huh?” w
as a
ll he managed on his first try, the words sticking to the roof of his mouth like gum.
His second attempt was more successful.
“Why?”

“I don’t know,” Drew
ran
a hand angrily throug
h his hair. “I didn’t plan to. I never even thought about it, about
her
I mean
. I just…she was there, and she was leaning in to brush something off my shou
lder and I just did it. It
came so naturally
.
I don’t get it.
”

“What
was it like?”

“Nice, I guess,” Drew looked sheepish. “I don’t really know how to describe it.”

Sean
blinked dazedly,
letting
the n
ew revelation settle in his mind the way silt settled at the bottom of rivers
, still completely thrown.
“So what now?” he asked quietly. “Are you going to tell me that you love her, that as soon as I’m gone you two can
just go ahead and live some happy life together without me there to bother you?”

“That’s not what I want,” Drew denied.

Sean ignored him. “Do you love her?”

“I told you I don’t wan
t-
”

“I said
do you love her
? Now answer my bloody question.”

Drew
paused, to collect his thoughts.
“I don’t know right now
, but maybe if I had more time I would.”

“Well, now you have a whole damn lifetime.”

“Are you really that angry?”

“
Y
es
,
I’m
that
angry.”

“Why?”
Sean faltered, and his anger slowly faded. He couldn’t answer t
hat question. Really Drew had done nothing wrong. He had not hurt her, and Sean had no claim over Ali. They were only friends,
she wasn’t and had never been
his girlfriend. So why was he angry? “Maybe you’re jealous,” Drew supplied with a smirk.

That was definitely not a possibility. “No way in hell.”

“The closest you’ll ever get to hell is where you are right now, Sean.”

“I’m not jealous, you bastard.”

“Then, since you forced me to answer, tell me do
you
love
her
?”

Sean didn’t like that question. He really hated it. He always
used to think of love
as
a stupid, overrated thing
that teenage girls made out to be a
lot bigger than it really was
.
Sometimes he wondered though, if he did love Ali. Not that blinding, heat-of-the-moment sort of love, but more of a quiet and unseen thing between them that no one else understood. Maybe even he didn’t understand it.

“I
don’t know
either
,” he
admitted
at last, honestly
. “I just know that I’m angry, and I have no idea why.”

“I’m sorry,” Drew said. “I just…
it’s been so long since I could
touch anything that I wanted to know what it was like, to be that close
to someone again
.”

Sean’
s anger
subsided at those words, and his
glare
softened. Dr
ew was vulnerable and
intoxicated at the moment; as much as he wanted to be angry at him, the anger slipped away as quickly as it came
. And, on some level, he understood what Drew meant. The need to be close to someone after being unable to feel
for so long
. “This still doesn’t expla
in why you went drinking,” he muttered.

“That’s a stupid question.
W
hy else do people drink? To make it go away.”
There was something else, Sean knew. Some secret meaning behind those words that he couldn’t grasp, another side he couldn’t see.

“Make what go away?”
he asked cautiously.

“Reality.”

“You won this game, Drew. You’re alive, you got everything you wanted. Why would you want to make it go away?”

“Not yet.”

“What?”

“I haven’t won yet.”

“I’m nearly gone,” Sean stated
blandly. “I know that you can see it too: I’m weaker than before, more translucent. I’m fading fas
ter and faster, and as soon as I disappear you win.
”