A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb

an apple from a drawer in the icebox. "It's a drawback to the flesh," he said, "having to eat."
       A drawback? I hadn't tasted an apple in 130 years. Truthfully, until that moment, I hadn't missed it. But now I listened to the crunch as James bit into one and saw the juice spray in a momentary mist. It was then that I noticed a rose-colored bruise on his cheekbone from his brother's hand. And a fainter gray one on his jaw that I hadn't noticed.
       Before I could reach over and touch the place, James turned. "We should get away from here." He locked the house and I fol lowed him across the lawn and down the pavement under a dark sky with one odd shaft of gold that slanted down to some unseen place in the distance. He took a leisurely pace, eating his apple.
       We passed the tiny park with the statue of the deer where the swings were decked with shouting children, and chatting women surrounded the picnic table. James turned left at the corner and crossed the street. He tossed his apple core into a pile of raked leaves and looked at me.
       "How fast can you travel?"
       It had never occurred to me to wonder. "How fast could you travel when you were Light?" I asked.
       "Race," he smiled, and suddenly he was running. He was laughing so hard when he saw me on the end of the block up ahead that he had to stop and rest with his hands on his knees. He walked the rest of the way to me and said, "Double or noth ing." He pointed to the baseball field a block farther and panted, "Top row of the bleachers, west end."
       The park was nothing more than a baseball field, but it was alive with activity—the bottom two rows of bleachers were full of parents, grandparents, young siblings, watching twenty little children in uniform play ball.
       James was sprinting toward them. I was so taken with the sight of his lean form as his clothes were pressed to him by the wind that I waited until the last moment to arrive before him. He scrambled to the top bleacher seat beside me, gasping for breath, his hair in his eyes.
       "You win," he said. I could tell that he delighted in the power of the human form. I tried to remember the feeling of running with my own legs under me but could feel only envy. He sat tak ing in the scene. The crowd on the lower benches took no notice of him. On the field, two men coached a tiny boy who struggled to lift a wooden bat that outweighed him.
       "Helen," he said, without turning to me. The sound of my name startled me. "I can't explain how it feels to be able to ask you questions no one would understand but us."
       "I know."
       "The trouble is," he said, and a wave of pain came over me, turning my heart to wood. He was ending our connection, I could feel it, the sound of tragedy. "The trouble is," he said, choosing words carefully, "I find that my feelings for you are changing." Although the people sitting below could not hear him, he low ered his voice. "It's hard to have you with me but not be able to take your hand or kiss you."
       This froze me, not just my voice but all thoughts.
       He looked down, his expression dark. "I would never turn you away, since I was the one who invited you, but I might have been wrong. I don't know ..."
       It was bewildering, the thrill that he loved me together with the fear of his saying goodbye. I fought to recapture my voice.
       "This probably seems absurd to you," he said. "I'm sure your feelings for me are not of this nature."
       "I can't lie to you," I said. "I do care for you. But I'm older than you."
       "You forget, I'm not a boy," he told me. "I'm only in a boy's body."
       This was difficult to remember—James was so young at heart. Now he looked me in the eyes.
       "I would court you with a passion, if things were different. You'd never get me off your porch swing."
       I laughed at this, but I was still feeling hurt. I sensed that he was preparing to leave me. I remembered this feeling from be fore I was Light. A