A Need So Beautiful by Suzanne Young Page B

steady.
    “Don’t be scared.” He holds up his palms, his expression full of compassion. But I am scared. I’m terrified. “I’m going to help you through this.”
    “Through what?” I demand. “What’s wrong with me?”
    “Wrong with you?” He laughs to himself, though his eyes are shining with tears. “That’s the thing, sweetheart. This isn’t wrong—even if it feels that way right now.”
    I’m offended that he’d even say that. I push my shirt off my shoulder, exposing the golden area. “Look at me!” I yell, but a new worry grips me. Doctors don’t make house calls like this. “Wait. Are you here because I’m dying? Oh God. Am I dying?” I cover my mouth with my hand. I start to cry until I notice the tears brim over his eyes and run down his cheeks. He looks away from me, wiping harshly at them.
    “Please don’t,” he says, his voice cracking. “Don’t cry, Charlotte. You must be strong right now. This is going to be very difficult and you have to be strong.”
    Dozens of diseases run through my mind. Cancer, MS, leprosy. “Please,” I whisper. “Help me.”
    “I’m trying.”
    We sit quietly for a second, both sniffling. Then Monroe clears his throat and picks up his medical journal, placing it back in his jacket pocket. He pulls out a bottle of pills and shakes two into his hand. He tosses them into his mouth and swallows them dry. After he puts the bottle away, he turns to me, his face solid and serious. “There’s nothing wrong with you,” he says. “At least, not in the way that you think.”
    I’m partly relieved, but I know it can’t be true. “I don’t understand,” I say. “It’s not just the gold under my skin. I’m compelled to talk to people I’ve never met. Know things about them. It’s creepy.”
    “You’re helping them,” he says.
    “You know about that?” My heart rate explodes. Does Monroe know about everything? How can he know? “Are you like me?” I’m suddenly hopeful, but then Monroe shakes his head.
    “No, sweetheart. I’m not. You . . . you’re so much more.”
    I want to start crying again. My head is killing me and my legs are so sore I want to curl up and die. But I hold the tears back as Monroe watches me. “Stop being so cryptic and tell me what’s wrong with me,” I plead.
    He presses his lips together. “I’ll tell you what I can. But I’m confused about something—how, after all this time, you still don’t know what you are. Has the answer never come to you?”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I murmur.
    He leans forward on the couch, putting his elbows on his knees. “Usually by now you would have known. Felt the answer in your heart, maybe?” He looks away as if considering the thought. “Unless . . . you wouldn’t believe?” Monroe seems content with talking to himself but I’m completely lost in the conversation. I can’t figure out what he knows about the Need.
    “Monroe, please. I don’t understand. Do you know what this is or not?”
    “I do,” he says softly. “And I knew the minute I treated you nearly ten years ago. I saw that you were different when I X-rayed your arm.”
    “Wait,” I say. “Is it cancer?” Mercy’s mother died of breast cancer a few years ago and it was awful. Traumatizing. I nearly crumble at the idea of Mercy having to go through something similar with me. In fact, when I was a kid, Monroe used to test my blood for all sorts of things. He said my bones were weak. Is this why?
    “No, no,” Monroe says. “You’re not sick.”
    “Then what did you see in my bones?”
    He smiles to himself. “I wasn’t sure I’d recognize it again—I thought I’d lost the sight. But when your X-ray came back, it showed the break—the light seeping from it. And I knew you.” He pauses. “Not you exactly. But your kind.”
    A hot streak of terror races through me. “My kind ? What the hell does that mean?”
    “It’s okay,” Monroe soothes. “You’re not