Free Fade by Kailin Gow

goodbye.”
    I expect Jack to tell me that it wasn’t worth it. That I’ve been selfish and stupid and a dozen other things. I know all of it. Yet somehow, Jack doesn’t say it. He just looks hurt.
    “You passed my test. I thought I could trust you. Let my guard down with you, Celes. Let myself feel…” he turns away.
    “What, Jack? What did you feel?” I ask, reaching out a hand to touch him, but suddenly I’m scared. Do I really want to hear the rest of it?
    “I care for you, Celes,” Jack says, turning back to me and stroking my hair. It’s something he’s done a lot with me in public, but here, it feels like a much more personal thing. “Probably more than I should. More than is safe.”
    The idea that it might not be safe to care for someone seems like a sad one. In an ideal world, Jack would just be free to feel… whatever he feels. But I know that this isn’t an ideal world. Can he really keep me safe if his feelings are tangled up? And what do I feel about it? I don’t know what to think. I’ve been playing the role of Jack’s girlfriend for only a few weeks, but that’s still long enough that I’m not sure what’s real and what’s fiction anymore. How many of the things that I’m suddenly feeling are my feelings, and how many of them are Celeste Channings?
    I don’t know, but right then, I do know that I want to kiss Jack. I want to do it for so many reasons. Because it feels like the right thing to do. Because we’re so close already that it will hardly take anything to cover those last few inches. Because Jack looks like he wants to as well, so badly that it’s almost hard not to. And because I know that, if I do, I’ll know. I’ll finally know whether it’s an act. Whether Jack really does feel anything beyond what his role requires. Whether I feel it too. Here, with no one to watch, I’ll know. I start to cover that last little space.
    Then Grayson knocks on the window, and I remember that there is someone there to watch, and it’s the one person I really can’t kiss Jack in front of. Grayson’s looking down at us with an expression that is hard to read. He moves back from the car, but I know that Jack and I will have to get out now to talk to him.
    I steel myself for that. What am I going to tell him?
    “What happens now?” I ask Jack, with a look Grayson’s way. Jack knows what I mean.
    “He’s in this now, Celes. There’s no going back. He’ll have to Fade.”

ELEVEN
     
     
     
     
     
     
    W e get out of the car and Grayson’s waiting for us. What Jack has just said weighs heavily on me as we step closer to him, because I know what Fading means better than anyone. I know what he will have to give up. As Grayson looks at Jack, though, I know that we have a more immediate problem than that.
    “Who’s this?” Grayson asks, and I can hear the hostility in his voice.
    “This is Jack, Grayson,” I try to explain. “He’s a Fader.”
    “What’s one of those?”
    Jack answers. “I’m one of the people who helped Celes to disappear, and now it’s my job to keep her safe. There are some pretty serious people after her.”
    Grayson nods tightly, and I can’t tell whether it’s the situation, or simply the fact that Jack used the short version of my name. “I saw,” he says, then seems to think. “So this means that Celes’s disappearance… her family…”
    I nod. “All down to Jack and his friends. It was the only way for me to be safe, Grayson. I’m sorry.”
    Grayson nods, and there’s a look on his face that’s hard to read. There’s a touch of relief, but it mostly looks like… hope?
    “So when you broke up with me, that was just-”
    I move in close to him, wrapping my arms around his neck so that we’re pressed together. “It wasn’t me, Grayson. It was just so I could disappear.”
    “So you still care about me?”
    I answer that with a kiss. I have far more to give it than our brief touch of lips in the car, and Grayson responds so