‘I told you it sounded insane,’ Lorelai said.
‘It does.’ Joanie nodded, staring off into the distance, her brow creased with concentration. ‘So, hang on… I need more info. How does it work?’
‘The details are a little fuzzy. I’ve only kissed two peoplein my life, and I’ve vowed never to kiss anyone again so it’s uncharted territory.’
‘Never?’ Joanie gasped. Lorelai nodded. ‘Why?’
‘If you knew what it was like, you wouldn’t be asking me that.’
‘So, you have absolutely no idea how it works and yet you’re willing to change the rest of your life based on the very little you know?’
‘Again—’ Lorelai inhaled deeply, trying to vanquish the morbid images from her mind ‘—if you’d seen what I have seen, I guarantee you’d be unwilling to engage with whatever this is, too.’
‘Tell me, then,’ Joanie said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Tell me,’ Joanie said again, simply. ‘Tell me what it’s like. It’s one thing telling me what your secret is but it’s still lonely having to bear the burden on your own. You’re the one who has to live with it so it’s never going to be the same for me. But you can still tell me about it. You don’t have to go through it alone anymore.’
Whatever reaction Lorelai had been expecting, it hadn’t been this. Joanie had accepted her secret as truth, without question. How could that be?
‘You’re taking this all very well,’ Lorelai said, fighting the urge to cry from the tremendous waves of relief crashing down on her.
Joanie laughed and shrugged. ‘Do I think you’re the sort of person to make something like that up? No. Am I going to be a little bit sceptical until I get cold, hard proof of your witchy powers? Maybe. Do I absolutely love the idea that my friend is a superhero? Yes. Yes, I do.’
Lorelai glanced at her bookshelves. She’d never likened herself to a character in a movie or a book. She felt too troubled by her secret to compare it to the powers of the heroes in movies who always saved the day. How could Lorelai think of herself as a hero if all her ‘superpower’ did was bring about death? If anything, she was the villain of the piece.
‘Also,’ Joanie said, interrupting Lorelai’s train of thought, ‘I’m still waiting for my letter to Hogwarts, I still check the back of my wardrobe just in case Narnia has appeared and if ever I happen to see a white rabbit, I will follow it just in case it leads me to Wonderland. This is like… the next best thing.’
Lorelai smiled and for that she was grateful to Joanie. Whenever things felt foggy, Joanie was good at shining a light and making everything brighter.
‘All I know is that whatever I see comes true. The guys I kissed when I was younger are both dead now.’
‘I’m so sorry. That’s really awful.’ Joanie put a hand on her shoulder.
‘But… what scares me the most is… it might be me,’ Lorelai said.
‘What do you mean?’
She took a short sharp breath and began to explain before she could talk herself out of getting into it too deeply. ‘I’ve always wondered… well, what if they might not have died if I hadn’t kissed them? What if my kiss was the thing that sealed their fate?’ It took Joanie a few moments for that to sink in.
‘Oh…’ Joanie said quietly.
‘Yeah. Oh.’
‘And that’s why you’ve not kissed anyone? Because you thinkyou’re causing their deaths instead of just… witnessing them prematurely?’
Lorelai could feel herself squirming against the questions, but she knew it was because it felt so alien to her to be sharing anything in this way. The actual act of sharing, though, was blissful. It was as if she’d been hibernating and was feeling the sun on her face for the first time.
‘It’s twofold, I guess. It’s partly for my sake because if I’m kissing someone, I like them enough to not want to watch them die.’
‘I wouldn’t want to see anyone die, whether I know them or not,’ Joanie said. ‘That’s not something I think I’d ever get over.’
Lorelai nodded, knowing exactly what she meant. ‘But also, if itismy fault that those boys died, then how could I knowingly inflict that on anyone else?’ She hadn’t realised she’d been hoping Joanie might have an alternative theory until she’d nodded in reluctant agreement, and the disappointment washed over Lorelai.
‘That’s a sensible thing to do but surely you can’t sacrifice your happiness for something that may or may not be true. You need to find out exactly how it works andthendecide what to do from there.’
‘Potentially killing someone is a bit of a big risk to take.’ Lorelai couldn’t believe she was having an actual conversation about this with another person. It felt… good.
