AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Uh-huh,” Alma said.
“Energy can’t be created or destroyed, but it can be transformed from one kind of energy to another. And as matter—all those atoms—is converted into energy, some mass goes missing. That’s Einstein’s theory of relativity, E equals MC squared.”
“Oh, sure. Everybody knows that.”
“What if the Department of Paranormal’s experiment during the war produced some incredible new form of energy? If the soldiers were the mass, what happened to them?” Ling mused. Some theory was fighting to take shape, but she wasn’t there yet.
“And here I thought you might say, ‘I was thinking about you, Alma. What a delightful companion you are.’”
“Sorry. I’m boring you.”
Alma swung around on the piano bench to face Ling. “You’re not boring me. I just don’t understand a lick of it. And I don’t want to know about ghosts. I only want them to go back. They frighten me. They don’t scare you?”
“They didn’t used to,” Ling said. She’d drawn comfort from them and their messages. It had made her feel that her ancestors were looking on after death. She liked that. Liked the idea that whatever she was would live on in some fashion. That death was not final. It had given her a sense of a beautiful, ordered universe. But now she’d angered the ghosts. The ancestors weren’t speaking to her. And she was beginning to wonder if hunting ghosts was a mistake.
“Let’s talk about something else,” Ling said. She wasn’t good at this.
Alma bit her lip and looked up at Ling through her lashes. “Well. Let’s see what happens when our atoms collide.” With that, Alma leaned forward boldly and kissed Ling softly on the lips.
Heat spread across Ling’s cheeks.
Alma smiled seductively. “I do believe you’re blushing, Miss Chan.”
“Yes,” Ling whispered. “I am
.”
Alma leaned in for another kiss. Ling pulled back. Alma looked confused.
How to explain that the blush wasn’t passion, but embarrassment and discomfort? The truth was that Ling didn’t feel what most people seemed to feel. She rarely felt truly aroused beyond the theoretical. The idea of kissing was just that—an idea. Not unwelcome, but it didn’t seem to reach into her depths. At least, it hadn’t yet. Alma was beautiful and sensual and warm. Ling liked her so much. She was attracted to the idea of Alma, to her spirit and wit. She wanted to be around Alma. But she didn’t know if she wanted to pet with Alma, and if she truly didn’t want to make love to Alma—fizzy, alive, gorgeous Alma—then it was the proof to Ling’s hypothesis that she simply didn’t have the sexual drive that most people did.
“Is it me?” Alma asked, straightening her spine.
“No! No,” Ling said.
“Is it because I’m a girl?”
Was it? Ling’s mother would have a conniption fit if she even suspected. She’d drag Ling to confession and probably never let her out of the house again. But Ling lived in the scientific world. She’d long since stopped believing what her mother believed. And Ling knew deep down that her attraction was not to boys. Her time with Wai-Mae in the dream world had awakened that part of her. Being around Alma had proven it beyond all doubt. “No. It isn’t because we’re girls,” Ling said shyly.
“Then what is it?”
In her lap, Ling clasped her hands tightly. She didn’t like sharing herself. Holding herself in check often felt like her only weapon for navigating the unforgiving, intrusive world. If you told people about yourself, what was to stop them from using those private hurts and joys against you sometime? Once you let people in, you were vulnerable. Nothing frightened Ling more than that—not ghosts with teeth or Shadow Men or the man in the stovepipe hat. But she owed Alma truth, she knew.
“I feel very deeply. Even romantically. But those feelings live inside my heart and my head. I can’t translate them to the rest of me.” Ling said “the rest of me” quickly and quietly. “I don’t know if I want to be touched in that way. I don’t know if my love is a physical love.”
Alma was disappointed, Ling could tell. She didn’t really understand. Few people did. Sex sold everything. It was in every advertisement, song, and Hollywood movie. Who was the freak who didn’t want to make love?
“Oh, Lord, Ling.” Alma let her breath out in a long exhale.
“I’m sorry,” Ling said, ashamed.
“Don’t be,” Alma said. She snorted, gave a weary smile and a shrug. “C’est la vie. I gotta stop falling for these girls who don’t fall for me, though.”
“I didn’t say that!”
“Now I am confused.”
“Can we… take it slowly?” Ling asked.
