After Eli by Rebecca Rupp

good-bye. Like my dad said, people judge you by your friends.
    But something was changing all the same.
    “Do you know how you can tell what a person’s truly like?” Isabelle said.
    I said no and Walter said the Myers-Briggs Personality Test.
    “No, darlings, it’s by their auras,” Isabelle said. “I learned to read them last year from this very spiritual woman, a holistic theologist, who teaches courses online. Your aura is the manifestation of your true nature. It’s why you see halos on angels and saints. Halos are really just very intense auras. On ordinary people, they’re smaller and paler.”
    I could tell from Walter’s conflicted expression that he didn’t believe a word of this but didn’t want to contradict Isabelle.
    “Come in the house for a minute and I’ll read yours,” Isabelle said. “You have to stand up against a plain white wall.”
    The old Sowers house was really grand. The front hall had a marble floor laid out in squares, like a black-and-white checkerboard, and a huge curving staircase like something out of
Gone With the Wind
that went up to a landing with a big gold-framed mirror and then split into two staircases, one going right and the other left. Some of the spindles were broken out of the banister, and the red carpet was shabby, but you could still imagine what it must have been like at the old Sowers parties, with men in fancy suits with striped pants and women all glittering in diamonds and satin gowns.
    Off to one side there was a little parlor, where Isabelle’s parents were sitting on a couch with the stuffing coming out, drinking something out of teacups and watching a news program on this very small television set. She introduced us and we all said hi. Isabelle’s father was more athletic looking than I would have expected from a professor, and Isabelle’s mother looked a little bit like Isabelle, but tireder, which was probably due to living with the twins.
    Then Isabelle showed us the room where her father was writing his monograph, which had a big mahogany desk with a computer on it and piles of books and papers, and the room where her mother did her interpretive paintings. The paintings were propped up around the walls and were all in shades of purple and orange and looked like no cows that I’d ever seen.
    “It’s a series. She’s calling it
Atomic Moo,
” Isabelle said. “She’s going to have a show next winter in New York.”
    Which, though I did not say so to Isabelle, is the only place you could show cube-shaped orange cows without everybody laughing themselves sick. People in New York don’t know beans about cows.
    Then she took us out to the kitchen, which had an old iron coal stove the size of a steam locomotive, with a new microwave perched on top of it, and then through to the butler’s pantry, which was mostly empty except for a couple of soup tureens big enough for baby baths.
    “This is the only room in the house that has a plain white wall,” Isabelle said. “Stand over there. This will take a minute.”
    So Walter and I stood against the plain white wall, and Isabelle took a few steps back, took a deep breath, and squinted at us.
    She looked so beautiful standing there, and I thought that if Isabelle had an aura, it would probably be all silver and glowing like moonbeams and new snow.
    She stared and stared until I started to fidget. Then she said, “There!”
    “What?” I said.
    “Yours is royal blue, Walter,” Isabelle said. “That means you have a strong balanced existence and you’re transmitting a lot of good energy.”
    Walter said “Umf” in a noncommittal sort of way that managed to sound pleased and skeptical at the same time.
    My aura wasn’t blue. It was yellowish brown.
    “What does that mean?” I said.
    “It means that your life is in difficulty,” Isabelle said. “Your psyche is suffused with pain and anger.”
    Great,
I thought. I felt like I’d flunked another math test. I could feel that aura hanging