Free Impossibility of Tomorrow by Avery Williams

his eyes when he mentions his father. It’s like a wayward cloud on an otherwise sunny day.
    “He’s not doing well, is he.” I say it like a statement, not a question. Noah meets my eye and shakes his head. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” I add, but I hope he will.
    “No . . . I want to talk to you. I’m just not sure it’s that interesting. He’s a drunk, my mom’s gone, and I’m stuck there.” His jaw tightens. I don’t say anything, hoping he’ll continue. “I think he wishes she’d taken me with her. So there’d be no one around to make him feel guilty. I know he blames me. He always tells me never to have kids because they ruin your life. Nice thing to say to your son, right?” His eyes are full of pain, shimmering in the candlelight that moves over them like moonlight on a lake.
    “Where did she go? Your mom?” No matter how much she hated her husband, I find it hard to understand why she’d leave her son behind.
    “She’s in Arizona with my grandparents. When she left, she said she was just going to stay with them for a while. She said she didn’t want to take me out of school. She said she’d call me every day.” He takes a sip of his tea. “I haven’t heard from her once. She’s not coming back. I’m not stupid.”
    “You never know,” I offer weakly.
    “No, I do know. And I don’t care. Things weren’t much better when she was here. But it doesn’t matter to me what they do. Next month I’ll be seventeen. And that means I only have one more year before I can do whatever I want. I can leave, I can travel—” He stops talking abruptly as the waitress interrupts to take our order. Noah lists several dishes, but I’m not listening.
    Noah and I have another year of high school—but what then? He wants to leave. We could go together. But how long could that last? How long before he finds out I’m not human?
    I don’t want to think about the future anymore. All I want is for this moment, right now, to last forever. I want it always to be the November that I fell in love with Noah.
    The waitress leaves. “Where would you go?” I ask. “If you could travel.”
    He smiles and looks out the window. He has a farawaylook in his eyes, like he can see coastlines in other countries, like he’s memorized every map. “I don’t know,” he admits. “It’s a big world. I’ve always wanted to see the northern lights.”
    I desperately want to tell him about their colors, their shifting electromagnetic dance. I watched them with Charlotte from the middle of a volcanic hot spring, its steam billowing in a similar shape to the aurora borealis, our long hair trailing in the water like Nordic mermaids.
    “I’d like to see them with you,” I say instead.
    “Mr. Shaw used to talk about all the places he’d been. That guy was really well-traveled for being so young.”
    “He was certainly . . . interesting,” I say diplomatically.
    He reaches across the table and takes my hand. I feel my skin come alive under his touch, a feathery sensation that climbs up my arm to my chest. “ You’re interesting.”
    “Oh, yeah?” I reply.
    “Yeah.” He lets go of my hand and reaches for my face, tucks a loose lock of hair behind my ear. “You know, honestly—this is going to sound really weird—but I always kind of assumed you liked girls.”
    “Why? Because I wasn’t obsessed with you? So typical,” I say smoothly, though his comment makes me wonder. I know so little about who Kailey was.
    He laughs. “No, I’m not that egotistical. It’s just that, well,you always had tons of guys asking you out. And you turned every single one down. I figured you must have some reason. And, you know, you’re kind of a private person.”
    I take a sip of tea, considering. It was certainly possible. I’d had the impression that she was hiding something from her family. Could this explain where she was going the night that she died?
    “Well, the last time I checked, I