Chaz:

I have a theory that we all carry a secret pain. Like a tattoo that you got back when you were a teenager, you hide it away beneath layers of baggy clothes and you only show it to someone you really trust, someone you know won’t laugh because they probably have one too.

I don’t tell very many people about my tattoo.

It started out like a beautiful drawing, a black intertwined gothic outline of two young people in love, with similar beliefs and goals. We were working on it together, filling in the hollow spaces with color. I wasn’t going to hide this one away. I was going to wear it on my forearm, with my sleeve rolled up so everyone could see.

I wanted the whole world to know how much I loved Jeannie. We were going to get married, do the whole family routine; as soon as we got married we were going to use Dad’s death cert and have a kid.

“What do you want?”

Jeannie and I stood on a hill, overlooking the Loire Valley, a sinuous river somewhere down below, winding its way through the castle-dotted landscape. This was the storybook phase of my life, when every thought still had a happy ending and I still believed that I was the master of my own fate. I was twenty-three and had just finished studying music at Juilliard. Next month I was going to start basic training to become a Babysitter. My first courses would involve advanced weapons training, hostage rescue and counterterrorism, but I was trying not to think about it.

Because that was next month.

She turned to face me, her curly dark hair blowing in the wind. The afternoon sky held the fragrance of lavender, the colors of a Monet painting.

“What do you want?” she asked again.

I’ve heard that question countless times throughout my life, and it’s always sounded like an accusation. I mean, what could I possibly want that I didn’t already have?

“Besides you?” I asked. She didn’t smile. It’s always been hard for me to understand women. They seem to come wrapped in mystery, like layers of fine gauze. You think you can see through it, that you finally understand, but then you discover that you’ve only peeled away another layer and there are about a thousand more left.

I realized later that there was a subtext here. That she was really asking something else. She crossed her arms and tilted her head. I was taking too long to figure out the secret meaning of life.

“I want what everybody else wants,” I said finally, deciding to tell the truth.

She shook her head. “No. Everybody else wants what you have.”

“I mean, I want the right to choose.”

“Choose what?”

This was where the subtext got as loud as a roaring lion, just seconds before it snaps off your head. But I still didn’t realize it.

“Life,” I said. “Death. What I do for a living. I never signed up for any of this, Jeannie. It just got dumped in my lap.”

“Nobody’s forcing you to stay at Fresh Start. Your family can’t make you…they can’t keep you from—”

Suddenly I could hear the words within the words. One more layer of invisible gauze peeled off like a snakeskin and blew away on the wind.

“They can’t force me to be a One-Timer, is that what you’re saying?” I asked. She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to, but for the first time I realized that her eyes were the color of gunmetal, a cool liquid gray. “You’re right. No one can make me choose death over life, although I’ve been preached to enough over the years.” I didn’t want to look at her anymore, didn’t want to see eyes the color of my future. “I thought we both decided that one life was enough.”

“That was what you decided.”

“Look, I just want to live the best life I can,” I confessed, my back to her, my words soaring like birds over this valley of forgotten French kings. “And then when it’s all over, I want to die and leave all this behind. I want to see my father again. I want to step through that door into heaven and I don’t ever want to come back.”

She was quiet. For a moment I thought she was gone, that she had headed back down the grassy knoll toward our rented car. But when I turned around, she was still there, and the wind had turned cold.

She gave me a half smile. “I just wanted to make sure,” she said. “I mean, if we’re getting married, it’s important, isn’t it? That we understand what we each believe.”

Her words felt like a balm as I took her in my arms. I had revealed my secret heart, something I don’t do very often, and I felt a moment of complete peace. Maybe we disagreed about this small thing called resurrection, but we could still make it work. Somehow.

Together we headed back down, through mossy meadows.

It was probably the last chance I would have at a normal life and I didn’t even realize that it was already gone. There was no way either of us could know that the rest of her life would be measured in hours. A slippery mountain road lurked up ahead with her name on it, written in blood.

Within twenty-four hours her body would shudder to a stop and she would jump.

She already had her next life preplanned.

And it didn’t include me.

There was a time when I thought that she’d look me up, at least to say hi or “Guess what, I never really loved you.” But no. She just disappeared in the vast ethos of Stringers.

Like everything else in my One-Timer life.

Gone, but not forgotten.