Post 8

He tossed and turned the rest of the night, never seeming to get fully back to sleep. He finally gave up when the sun was shining through the window on him. He vaguely remembered putting the shade up the night before, and covered his head with his arm. It did him very little good, though, and so he decided to just get up. It was a good thing, too. He looked at the clock and had just enough time to throw on clothes and a little extra deodorant before Laura showed up. He grabbed a baseball cap to cover up his bed head and ran downstairs. Just in time, too. Laura was just walking up the driveway. He tried to play it cool, but he could see through the window that she looked great. She had done her make-up and her hair, of course, but her clothes were nicer than usual. Without wandering away from the door, he looked quickly to see if his parents were there, but the house was empty. Where could everyone be? Of course! It’s Sunday. They’re at church! Peter guessed that Laura came from church, too. Why else would she be dressed so well for just hanging out?

Peter opened the door as she got up to it, her arm poised to push the doorbell. “Hey there,” he said. The suddenness with which the door opened startled her, he noticed.

“Are you ready to go?” she asked haltingly as she saw how he looked.

“Yep! I just need to grab my house key,” he answered, reaching next to the door where the key hooks were. Laura didn’t come in, so Peter stepped right out, closed and locked the door, and started walking to the car. He took a few steps before he noticed she wasn’t walking next to him. He turned to look back and saw that she was still standing on the step, arms akimbo. He looked at her with a puzzled expression on his face.

“Are you sure you’re my boyfriend? Because I don’t remember getting a kiss here.”

Peter sheepishly walked back to her and kissed her, then held her close. Her embrace felt right to him. He turned again to walk to her car, this time holding her hand. She accompanied him.

Laura drove them to the upscale mall on the south end of town and parked in the lot near the sushi restaurant she liked. Peter had been quiet during the drive, and she didn’t press him. He looked pretty bad. When they got there and she turned the car off, Peter jumped. He had fallen asleep on the ride over. “Hey, sleepyhead. Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked as he rubbed his eyes.

“Definitely. I’ve been kindof out of sorts, I guess.”

He yawned and stretched before standing up, and they went into the restaurant. It was pretty quiet still, with only a few tables occupied. The tables didn’t offer much privacy, but the hostess sat them right in the corner where nobody was near them. She left them menus and took their drink orders. They studied the menus trying to figure out what they wanted when Peter’s vision blurred again. It seemed like all the light from outside was shining through the windows right at him, even though they weren’t sitting in direct sunlight. He rubbed his eyes again, trying to clear them, which only made it worse. Then, just as quickly as the episode came on, his vision returned to normal. He wasn’t sure when, but the waitress or someone had dropped off two glasses of water and some paper-covered chop sticks on napkins. At least, Peter didn’t remember seeing them when they sat down.

“Wow, Pete, you’ve got really dark circles under your eyes,” Laura said as Peter was looking at the items on the table.

He looked across and saw the concern on her face. Her menu was forgotten on the table. Then a thought occurred to him. “Wait, you can see that?” he asked her.

“See what? You look like you haven’t slept in days.”

“So, when you say ‘dark circles under my eyes,’ you’re talking about regular dark circles, then?”

She wasn’t sure how to respond, and slowly nodded. “Y-y-yeah, what else would I mean?”

He sighed, and thought about it for a moment, and finally said, “Well, I guess the best thing to do would be to just tell you. I--"

Just then, the waitress stopped by at the table. “Do you know what you want for lunch?” she asked cheerily. Peter was partially thankful for the timely interruption, but would rather have just started telling the story to Laura.

Laura ordered their standard sushi lunch with green tea. Peter hadn’t even really looked at the menu yet, so he just copied her order. “But give me a Coke instead of tea. And a glass of water, please.” He wasn’t sure if he was feeling nauseous or if that was just a side effect of the problem with his vision, but Coke tended to settle his stomach.

The waitress took the menus and left them alone again. Laura waited patiently, knowing that she didn’t have to prompt him again. He wasn’t sure where to begin. He could start with the beginning, being the squirrel in her yard, but that was a sensitive topic for her. She liked animals, even the squirrels in their yard. So he decided to talk instead about Aura Man.

“Yesterday when I was at the airport waiting for Dan to show up, I saw a guy walking through the terminal, and he had a strange aura around him,” he began.

“Do you mean ‘aura’ like ‘colors around him’ or...?” she asked.

“Well, sort of, but not exactly. There wasn’t much color to it. It was like, you know how there’s a definite...” He struggled for the word. “...a definite border between your arm and the air around your arm?” He held his arm up and traced the contour. “Like this, a sharp line. Well, this guy I saw looked like that, only the line was a little blurrier, like he didn’t quite fit in his own skin or something.” Laura furrowed her brow, struggling to understand what Peter was describing.

Peter tried a different approach. He dipped his fingers into the ice water in his glass and rubbed them on his arm. “Do you see how where my arm is wet, it’s harder to tell where the skin ends and the water starts? The water distorts my arm just a little.” She nodded. “That’s what this guy was like, only instead of it being water, it was, well, I don’t know what it was, but it was all over his body, and around his head, and I remember seeing a couple times when there was something over his head. I know that seems impossible...”

“No, it doesn’t, really,” she said. “I’ve heard of people having auras and that there are people who can see them. Maybe you’re one of those.”

“I’m not sure that’s what it is, though. Like I said, it doesn’t have a color. If anything, it’s ever so slightly gray if it has any color at all. But it is definitely distorting,” he finished.

“Do you see anybody here that has anything like that?” she asked.

Peter looked around the restaurant. There was a couple against the wall behind him, a trio sitting at a table on the other side of the restaurant, and one person at the sushi bar. There was the sushi chef, the hostess, and two waitresses that he could see. There were also people occasionally walking past outside the window. He studied each of them as closely as he could without being caught staring at them, but didn’t see anything like Aura Man on any of them. “No, nobody here,” he concluded as he returned his attention to Laura.

“What about me?” she asked, and sat up straighter in her chair.

Peter looked at her unabashedly, since she invited him to look. After a moment, he said, “No, nothing on you, either. I don’t know...” His voice trailed off, and he stared out the window at the nearby highway. His attention returned to the table as the waitress brought their lunches out. The conversation continued as they ate. “So, this guy with the aura just happened to go to the same baggage claim as us, and I was able to get close to him.”

“He didn’t think you were weird staring at him?”

“No, he was facing the other way the whole time. That’s part of the problem. I was standing behind him, trying to figure out what was going on, and trust me, nobody else noticed a thing. I was starting to think I was crazy.” He took a sip of Coke. “Well, then all of a sudden, he whips around, slings his duffel bag over his shoulder and plows right into me. It was then that I started feeling weird.”

He went on to explain the feeling of electricity running through him, the headache and the blurry vision. “It sounds to me,” she said, “like you got a concussion or something from when he ran into you.”

“I don’t think that’s it,” Peter said. “Remember how surprised I was that you saw dark circles under my eyes?” Laura nodded. “I could’ve sworn you were trying to tell me that you could see some sort of aura coming out of my face or something.” Laura giggled at the thought. “I’m serious!” Peter insisted. “And that’s the part I didn’t tell you about. Last night, I woke up in the middle of the night. I went to open the window or something. I’m not sure what I was doing, to be honest. But I saw my reflection in the window of my bedroom, and I swear to God, it looked like my face melted partway off!”

Laura was obviously not sure what to make of this. She was concerned, she was uncertain, and more than a little freaked out. “So what did it look like?”

“I’m not sure. I mean, I only saw it for a moment and it scared me enough that I stepped back. When I looked in the mirror and felt my face, everything seemed fine.”

“Are you sure you didn’t catch something from this Aura Man?” she asked.

“If I did, then I would have certainly given it to you, don’t you think?” He reached out and pulled her hand to his face and kissed it. At first, Laura resisted, but after the kiss, she squeezed his hand warmly.

“Did you Google it? Your symptoms, I mean.”

“I haven’t had a chance to yet, but I will when I get home,” he answered.

“Why don’t we do that after lunch? Let’s see what turns up. If nothing else, you might find someone else with the same thing going on for them.”

They finished their sushi and drinks, went Dutch on the tab, and drove back to Peter’s house to see what the internet could tell them.