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chair scraping across the tiled floor – and I moved away, the current running between us interrupted.
    “I have to go,” I said, flustered.
    He nodded and looked down at his running shoes again. I didn’t have to go, but this was all I could think of to say. The moment had overwhelmed me and I needed to leave before it became too much for me.
    I stumbled past a couple of chairs, back into the main part of the classroom. No one was there. I swear I’d heard something. Not only was there no one, but I now felt like a different person. The spell had been broken, dropped on the floor and stomped on. Reality hit me like a cold shower. I heard Cruz get up from his chair behind the half-wall and knew that I had to get out of there.
    I ran out of the language lab and into the hallway. In fact, I think I probably sprinted all the way out of the building. I wasn’t sure what had come over me, but as the chill late-afternoon air hit me, I shook my head and blinked. I had exited through the side entrance into the almost-empty parking lot and looked around trying to get my bearings. A light caught my eye. Two, in fact – the brake lights of a sedan leaving the lot. My thoughts instantly jumped to Aranara. But as the car turned into the street I could see that it wasn ’t her father’s prowling limo. In fact it was a silver SUV. And a streetlight caught the person in the passenger seat before it joined the traffic flow. It was Noon. How could I be so sure? Because he turned and looked at me, his gaze piercing through the night and burying itself in my consciousness, even from a hundred yards away.
    I stopped in my tracks. Was this a coincidence? There was literally no one else around. My mind turned back to Cruz. Already the feeling that I’d had in the language lab felt like a foreign country. The boys back in Lancaster were drab at best. I’d kissed one or two in third grade but it was nothing like this. Nothing like the brain-numbing surge of hormones that I’d felt a few minutes ago. I guessed that that was the explanation – the out-of-body experience I’d had was all down to chemicals, right? I mean, I suppose love must be real, but Mom had brought me up to apply logic and scientific analysis to any unexpected situation. So that’s exactly what I did. I hardly even knew Cruz, but did that matter? Love is blind, and that’s how I felt when I was kissing him. I don’t even know what I was seeing while my eyes were closed and our lips were pressed together. Stars? Sparks? All the colors of the rainbow? It just sounded soooo cheesy, and as I pulled my fall jacket around me, I couldn’t help but wonder whether the whole thing was just a dream.
    I marched swiftly into the street from the parking lot with my head down against the cold October wind and the brown leaves blowing around my ankles. Maybe I was over-thinking the whole thing? Maybe I should just go with it. What was the problem here anyway? Kissing a good-looking boy was what girls my age should be doing, right? But that wasn’t the issue. It was something else, and as I walked home an unpleasant sensation kept bugging me: I knew deep down inside that during those few minutes I was with Cruz in the language lab, I wasn’t myself. I literally wasn’t myself. Something, or someone, had been directing my thoughts and actions. And when I’d seen Noon in that SUV, there had a been a flash of insight. Somehow I knew that he was involved. My logical side kicked in. I decided then and there that I had to confront him and find out what was going on.
     
    * * * * *
     
    When I got back home, Mom was freaking out. Flash had vanished. Of course I knew where he’d gone, but for Mom it was completely inexplicable. One thing for sure – there was no way I was going to tell her about the secret tunnel.
    “He must have scooted out when we left this morning,” I ventured, hoping she would buy it.
    “But we would have seen him!”
    “I dunno, we were in a bit of a