The music went from loud to soft and the blob of people around me suddenly paired off into innumerable couples and I stood in the center alone.

I quickly gave up as I looked around and began to back up out of the crowd.

But then he came out of nowhere.

"Will you dance with me?" he asked me.
"Yes!" I answered.
Because how many times does the one person I'm completely enamored by come up and ask me to dance with him? How many times does that happen? How many times does the one person I'm completely falling for start falling, too?

I liked his long blonde hair and his blue eyes. I liked the way I hadn't had a clue as to where he was from. I liked his accents--completely American when speaking English and completely Israeli when speaking Hebrew.

I liked the way he held me in time and how we swayed in time with the music.

"I'm sorry," he said in the middle of one song. "I sweat too much."
"It's ok. It's only 120 degrees in here," I answered.

And we kept dancing.

For some reason, they played two slow songs in a row and it felt like an eternity that didn't last long enough. Then the music ended and the couples broke apart and scattered their separate ways.

"I don't want to leave tomorrow," I said to him outside.
He shrugged.
"It's good to go home eventually."
"Good-night, ---," I said.
"Laila tov, Aurora," he said to me.

The next morning I couldn't stop hugging him good-bye.
He laughed at me.
"It's not like you'll never see me again. I'll be back in a few years."
"That's forever from now!" I said.
"Aaah. Keep smiling. Forever isn't that long."
I hugged him one last time and watched him walk on the bus.

Through the day, I imagined him walking through the airport and stepping on the plane and going back home to Israel.

I was supposed to send him a birthday present, Dracula, by Bram Stoker because we had an ongoing joke about how he was a vampire and I was the Northern Lights.

So now I don't hesitate to tell my friends that I love them. Because I didn't tell him and I never sent his present because by the time I was ready I'd learned that Time is never on your side and people are snatched away in a moment without any warning whatsoever.

Since the war started last week his face has been flashing before my eyes constantly. I can't get away from it. I can't talk about it. I can't do anything. I dream about him, though, like I've dreamed about him since he died.

Sorry. He didn't just die. He was murdered.

He was murdered for nothing like everyone else.

Because stubborn people can't share. Because people are animals. Because people aren't human, they're savages and they love to kill themselves and anything that remotely resembles life and joy.

He was murdered.

And the last thing he ever saw is something I can only imagine. Because maybe he was looking out the window at the countryside of the Galil. Or maybe he was talking to a friend. Or maybe he was looking inward and remembering his dreams or looking forward to the day he wouldn't end up living. But mostly when I imagine, I imagine fire. Fire because I know it was the last thing he ever felt even if he didn't see it. Fire because that's what happens during a suicide bombing.

He talks to me all the time in my dreams, so maybe ghosts are just our imagination or maybe they really are the imprint of someone who used to be. Maybe he really does exist somehow, which means he really does think of me, really does visit me, really does love me, too.

He's the reason I'm terrified of anything real. That's the secret. The people I love the most, the people I admit to loving the most are the first ones stolen away. So I don't admit outright, even to myself, because I can't. Because I don't want them to die.

I don't want them to die.

Unfortunately, the rest of humanity wants everyone to die because people are never good. They're beasts. And beasts are selfish and care for nothing except the survival instinct and thrive on the inherent hatred of every other living creature known to them.

I'm sorry I'm one of them. But I try as best as I can not to be.

And I still don't want them to die.

It's funny, though, because even though it hurts in the morning when I wake up and realize that he's not really alive, I want those dreams again and again. Because I still love him. I still miss him. I still think of him every day.

And I love it when his face flashes in front of me and I get caught up in it for a moment and believe it's not a dream.