As soon as she said it, my entire thinking realigned. Given a name, the resonance I was seeing from Josh suddenly made sense. Blue. Josh’s resonance was blue. I could see it in my mind so much clearer. Feeling more confident, I left the bright glow of Josh and Nakita to scan back a few hours earlier to the tangle of lines where I flashed forward at the track meet. I could feel Nakita’s presence beside me, and together we looked to where my past twined with another, the weight of it seeming to make a dip in the fabric. The aura with mine was a sort of sick greenish color with a flash of orange at its center. Beside it was a bluish yellow one, slightly smaller. Her brother?

It had to be, and I eagerly opened my eyes. Josh was staring at me, having crouched to put us eye to eye, and I grinned right back at him. I couldn’t decide, but there might have been a soft blue glow around him until the sun washed it out. Maybe I had a chance after all if I was really able to see auras.

“Was that her?” Nakita asked impatiently. “The greenish orange one?”

“You saw?” I said, relieved, and she nodded, smirking almost, as I let go of my amulet and the last visage of the time line vanished from my thoughts.

“Tammy has issues,” she said, suddenly a lot more interested in the kids filing into buses or getting into cars. “But most seventeen-year-olds do.”

Seventeen, same as me, or would be if I was alive. Josh stood, extending a hand to help me up. I took it, feeling a tingle between us. The glow about him seemed to strengthen, and I could see a red striation running through it, hovering even closer to his skin. It looked like it was fading, though, like a bruise. His near-death experience, maybe?

Nakita was holding the bars of the fence, her head gently resting between them as if she was in jail. I felt like I was one of the dead, spying on the living. Okay, technically I was, but being behind the graveyard fence only strengthened the emotion. Nakita’s eyes closed, and she breathed deeply. “There’s, like, twenty people the right age that have auras like that,” she said. “Let’s get closer.”