MADE OF STARS — CHAPTER TWO

Made of Stars( Want to read the first chapter? Go here: Chapter One )Want to purchase Made of Stars?  Find the links below Chapter One  .

Chapter TwoGabrielI will never get old. I will never die. These are the things I know. Before the clan created the secret island, we had to worry about being killed by our own kind and by the true humans, but now that we have our secret world, we are finally safe. But love.What about love?I will always be a sixteen-year-old boy. And yes, most people, when asked what part of their life they would like to relive, or what age they would like to be if only they could go back—they say sixteen. Most people say sixteen. At sixteen, there is so much promise. At sixteen, we are on the precipice of our lives. We don't know what those lives will hold, but excitement thrums in our veins. For the unknown. For the magic of the future. And like the true humans, we want to meet someone special. We on the secret island don't consider ourselves vampires. The V word isn't allowed here.  Vampires are simply immortals who went rogue. Psychopaths. Sociopaths. Immortals eat food, for God's sake. (Although I have to confess, food on the island is about as tasty as sawdust.) This is the tragedy of our existence. We fall in love, but we never age. We don't have children. We don't watch those children grow. We don’t grow old with someone. These are life experiences that we cannot have.And so the clan set out to change this. Sinclair, the genius behind our secret island, came up with a formula.  It involves matter and anti-matter and black holes and time shifts and gates and maybe a bit of magic. I don't know.  Sometimes I wonder if he just hypnotizes me and makes me think he's created the place where I can live a normal life. Where I can grow old and have children.But I don't care. Because in that place—whether it's real or whether it's something Sinclair has planted in my head—it seems real. It seems real times a hundred. And in that place of magic created by Sinclair… in that place, my love lives and breathes…and works in a coffee shop.And like a man with an illness, like a man with an addiction, I count the moments and breaths until I can go back there again. Until I can see her again.Of course there's always the worry, the terrible fear that it won't work this time. That the gate won't open. That I won't be able to cross into her world. Or worse, that I will go through the gate and I will walk down a street that seems too perfect, and she won't be there. She won't be where she was when I last visited.I'm the beta tester.In that place created by Sinclair, I live life in what seems like real time.  And right now, I plan to court the most beautiful girl. And it's not just her beauty. It's not just her dark hair and her blue eyes and her pale skin. Those things are important. I won't lie. But it's her heart. And her humor.  Her kindness.  She makes me laugh. And when I laugh in her world, the sound almost scares me.  When I laugh in that real place, I can feel the air escape my lungs, and I can feel the blood rush through my veins.Oh, and when I touch her…Oh, my God. When I touch her. Just a brush when she hands me my drink.How can I describe this? I think at first you must understand that life on the island is muted. Because of the layer of protection that surrounds us, muffles us. And not only externally, but internally too. We are smothered in an invisible blanket.  We are the hollow sound of a barking dog on a humid night. We are the hollow sound of a far-off train coming from another realm. When I touch the wooden banister in my house, my fingertips feel numb. And when I lift a glass of wine to my lips (Yes, I drink wine!), it tastes like diluted grape juice. Sinclair promises to eventually address these problems. "I must focus on keeping our island stable," he tells me. "These taste and tactile issues aren't important."But I know it bothers him. I know it frustrates him.But the gateway world…  It's almost as if everything I haven't felt during my island existence is suddenly poured into the gateway world. Life, emotions, smells…are all amplified. I wonder if this is what it feels like to be born. Maybe you are in this world, this safe, warm, quiet world, and then suddenly you aren't. Suddenly air is moving across your body, and you can hear your heart beating, and you can feel the blood circulating. Her hair.Her hair smells so good.Like oranges and vanilla. Right now I'm standing in the coffee shop where she works. And she's watching me as if she knows me. And she does know me.  I've been coming here for a while, but last week I gave her the first gateway card Sinclair made. That card brought her to me, to the secret island.  But now I hand her the new card. One that Sinclair tells me will be even better.One that is supposed to firmly embed me in her world.This has not been tested.I am the first."I don't know if it will work," Sinclair told me when he handed the card to me. Unlike the last one, which contained an image of our island, this one has the coffee shop on one side, and a map of the town on the other. "Don't step outside the city limits," Sinclair warned me. "I have no idea what will happen if you do that."But the truth is, he doesn't know what will happen if I don't step outside the city limits. I'm his beta tester. I've volunteered."You might not make it back."  That's another thing Sinclair told me. "Or you might come back at some unfortunate time. Or you might come back half-formed. Or you might come back with no memory of the girl in the café. Or you might come back with a fried brain."But when a man, a boy, a teenager, wants to experience love… Real love… He is willing to risk everything. Because isn't that what love is all about? So now I'm holding the card, my arm extended, waiting for her to take it."You're shaking," she says.And when those words reach my ears, I hear a melody.  I look around to see if anybody else heard it. People are hunched over laptops, people are staring at their iPhones. Her voice is like a song. I want to tell her that, but I don't. You're shaking. I know I should respond to her observation, but I can't think of any explanation, any kind of reply.  I'm shaking because I want her to take the card.  Everything hinges upon her taking the card. I swallow and kind of wave it a little.The espresso machine is roaring, and I smell more than her hair. I smell her skin and the cotton of her T-shirt. Beyond that, the scent of dark coffee, of hazelnuts, and maybe even a chocolate-chip cookie.I've eaten cookies here. They taste wonderful.She takes the card. Oh, God. She takes the card.The roar of the espresso machine becomes a roar in my head. The room shifts under my feet, and my insides feel as if they are being sucked through my skin. I imagine my heart outside my body, and I think I mumble something about wearing my heart on my sleeve.And then I hear this wong, wong, wong inside my head, and the room spins and turns black. I grab for the counter. But instead, my hand brushes the hand of the girl.  Sparks shoot between us, reminding me that we are all made of stars. The human and the not-so-human.  This girl named Lila.  And me. The human lets out a gasp of alarm. I've shocked her.  I'll bet Sinclair doesn't know about that. I will have to tell him that he might want to tweak some things.And then I hit the floor. And hit my head.Out cold.