But now … I turned again in a slow circle, an uncomfortable feeling of uncertainty in the pit of my stomach. It was almost like walking into the wrong house.
Then, from the kitchen in back, I heard the familiar clank of bottles, and relaxed.
“I know it’s difficult, but you’re doing the right thing,” said a soothing female voice that drifted out from the kitchen.
That was not my mother. I frowned and walked to the kitchen.
At the table, my mother sat with her back to the doorway, and across from her was a black woman I’d never seen before. Her hair was cropped close to her head, emphasizing the lines of her face and her beautiful dangly hammered-silver earrings. They were too big for my tastes, but she pulled them off. Her skin was gorgeous, though lines by her eyes suggested she was older than she looked, maybe even my mother’s age.
As I watched, she reached over to squeeze my mom’s hand. Balled-up tissues were strewn across the tabletop, scattered between two coffee cups. My mother’s ever-present tumbler was nowhere to be seen. What was this?
I stepped farther in the room and caught the sharp scent of alcohol. Empty vodka bottles, probably the very ones I’d manipulated yesterday, now stood lined up on the counter, like good little soldiers. In the sink, my mother’s emergency backup supplies—gin, tequila, and rum—gurgled out of their tipped-upside-down bottles and down the drain, forming a potent brew. The cabinet under the sink, where she’d hidden her extra stash of bottles, stood open, and I could see nothing in there now but cleaning supplies.
A horrible suspicion formed in the back of my mind, and I turned to face my mother. She looked twenty years older with no makeup to hide the dark circles under her eyes. When she picked up her coffee cup, her hand shook so much, the coffee, still steaming, sloshed over the edge. Neither she nor her visitor seemed to notice, or they were ignoring it.
My mother cleared her throat. “I want to thank you for coming over. I wasn’t sure I could …” She gestured weakly in the general direction of the sink.
The other woman smiled, revealing bright white teeth with a tiny gap in the front. “Cherie, that’s what sponsors are for, to help you through.”
No drink in her hand, alcohol bottles emptying into the sink, and … a sponsor?
“Holy shit,” I said. “I die and now you quit drinking?”
A burst of fury, white and pure, exploded soundlessly behind my eyes. I felt like I couldn’t breathe, hatred boiling up into my lungs. “Now you decide to be a grown-up?”
My mother shook her head. “It’s my fault, Angela. The …accident.” Her voice broke and she grabbed for a discarded tissue.
“You’re damn right!” I shouted.
“How?” Angela asked. “Were you driving the bus? Did you force your daughter out into the road?”
“No, but …” She hesitated.
“Might as well have.” I spun away from them and raked my arm through the bottles on the counter, intending to smash them all to the floor. Just one tipped over … and it didn’t even crack. My mother and Angela looked up, but neither of them seemed alarmed or even very startled.
Dammit. I reached out to try again and realized my arm was gone from the elbow down. Not flickering, not faded, but gone. No, no, no.
I stormed to my mother’s side. “What is the matter with you?” I demanded, a fine tremor of rage running through my body. “I was coming here to forgive you. And what, you’ve decided that you wasted enough time, wasted MY LIFE, and now it’s time to pull things back together? Fuck you.”
After that, my disappearing began in earnest. I could feel all that negative energy Killian had gone on about building inside me, dying to be released. In seconds, both arms and legs were gone, and I could feel that cold line, the one that divided “not here” and “here,” creeping up my body.
“I feel like she must hate me,” my mother whispered.
“You’re right!” I yelled, before my mouth could disappear.
“No.” Angela shook her head. “I’m sure, wherever she is, she knows you loved her and she forgives you for the mistakes you made.”
“Shut up, Angela. You don’t know me.” At least, that’s what I would have said, if I could’ve. The room had grown misty and vague. I could no longer see much beyond my mother and Angela, and even they were beginning to blur around the edges. So, this was it. I wouldn’t make it back to Will, then. My eyes burned with tears.
My mother gave a tight smile. “You don’t know Alona.” Her smile faded. “The worst part is, even if she did forgive me, I don’t deserve it.”
I froze, what little was left of me.
“Cherie—” Angela began.
“No, listen. That morning, Monday morning, I was supposed to meet Russ at the lawyer’s office. But I waited, I deliberately did not get up, did not get dressed, because I thought Russ would come. I just wanted to talk …” She broke off into a sob. “I never dreamed he would pull her out of school.”
“Did you tell her you’re sorry?” Angela asked quietly. She shook her head. “It’s too late. She’s—” “It’s never too late.”
She hesitated, then looked down at her hands folded on the table with the tissue clutched in between them. “Alona, my baby …” Her throat worked but no sound emerged. She swallowed hard and took a deep breath. “I am so, so sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen. I just wanted everything to be the way it used to be, and I … I messed up. Now, it can’t even be the way it was with just you and me.” Her gaze traveled around the room, and for a second, it landed on me. Her eyes are the same shade of green as mine. It was like staring into some twisted mirror and seeing what I would have looked like in twenty years … under the weight of grief and guilt. “I am so sorry.”
I wanted to keep fighting, keep shouting, but looking at her, something tight inside me eased. My anger just slipped away, like a heavy weight I couldn’t be bothered to hold on to. Through a hazy glow, I saw Angela reach over and give my mother a tight one-armed hug.
“It’s going to be okay,” she said.
Delicious warmth spread across my skin. Huh, maybe Angela was right. It felt like I was floating in the most perfect pool on the most perfect summer day. Something about that … I frowned. It seemed familiar, as if I’d experienced it before or heard someone talking about it… .
I looked up slowly, feeling almost drugged with this sudden sense of peace, and noticed the golden hue of the light surrounding me. My happily sluggish brain put the pieces together. This was it, finally! The light had come for me, and it was just as Will had described it. Will!
“Wait.” I forced myself to focus long enough to push the words out. “Wait, I can’t just leave him. He needs …”
The light intensified, absorbing everything, including whatever thought I’d been trying to convey, into a big, white, happy glow of nothingness.
“Joonie, what are you doing?” I fought to keep my voice steady.
“You know, it took me a while to figure this out.” She pushed Lily’s chair farther in and then turned and closed the door. “I always knew you were different. I just figured it was plain old crazy, like your dad and everything.” She sounded way too cheerful, eerily so. “Then that night, the first night they let us visit Lily in the hospital, you remember?” She continued without waiting for an answer. “Your mom had left, and you fell asleep in the chair. I decided to try the Ouija board. I thought maybe I could talk to her that way, you know, tell her to wake up.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “But something else happened instead, didn’t it?”
Gus. That was the first time I’d seen it.
“I called to her and she came, didn’t she?” she asked. “You saw her.”
Alarm bells rang in my head. Maybe Alona had been right about Joonie after all. “J,” I said as gently as possible, “I’m glad you came to visit, but my mom’s working on getting me discharged so—”
“Oh, no.” She shook her head. “Can’t have that. Not yet.” She darted around Lily’
s wheelchair to grab one of the visitor chairs. She dragged it across the room and angled it under the door handle, wedging the door shut. “That’s better.”
She turned to face me again with a scary smile. “You can see them, can’t you? Ghosts, spirits, whatever. That’s why you’re always trying not to hear things, why you’ve always got your head down, so you don’t react to them.”
Oh, not good. I tried to redirect her attention. “Joonie, what are you doing with Lily? Is she supposed to be out of her room?” She seemed to be doing okay from what I could tell. She didn’t need a respirator to breathe, but I wasn’t sure how long she could be away from her IV. It was hard to see her this way, her eyes dull, face slack. She was empty.
Joonie waved her hand dismissively. “Her body is fine. They left her all by herself in the basement to wait for an MRI.”
That explained how Joonie had gotten Lily here, though not why she’d brought her to my room.
“You know, I tried doing this the easy way,” she said reproachfully. She pushed Lily’s chair closer, her eyes bright and her cheeks pink like she had a fever. “I tried to get you to come to the hospital. And yesterday, in the cafeteria, I know she was there with you.”
“No.” I shook my head. “She wasn’t.”
She frowned at me. “Nobody goes down into the first tier to pretend to make a call, Will.”
“It wasn’t her,” I insisted. “She’s not here.”
But Joonie continued like she hadn’t heard me. “I told her to talk to you, to ask you to help. We just need you to do a little favor, Will. That’s all.”
“What do you want?” The nurse’s call button was well out of my reach in these restraints, and I guessed that shouting for help probably wouldn’t get me very far, not with whatever evaluation Miller had on file for me.
“It’s easy. I want you help me put Lily’s soul back into her body.”
I stared at her. Apparently, the part of regular Joonie was being played by Twilight Zone Joonie tonight. “Are you crazy? I can’t—”
She shook her head fiercely. “Don’t tell me you can’t do it. Don’t lie!” Her face turned a violent red. “You’ve been lying this whole time.”
How long could it possibly take to discharge one patient?My mom would be back here any minute, right? She’d notice the door was stuck and call someone for help. The safest thing to do was probably just keep pretending this was normal. Sure. “What are you talking about?”
She tilted her head back with a harsh laugh. “Oh, like you don’t know.”
“Um, actually ...” I shrugged, or did the best I could with my current restrictions.
“Fine. You want to make me say it. All right.” She nodded and just kept nodding, like her head was loose on its axis. “I found Lily, she was my friend first.”
“Okay,” I said slowly. “So far, I’m with you.”
“But she preferred you,” she snapped.
Baffled, I tried to follow her line of thinking. “Nothing ever happened between Lily and me. You know that. We were just friends, all of us.”
“No.” She shook her head. “Not just friends, not all of us.” She looked at me, as if willing me to understand.
Suddenly, it clicked. The way Lily’s presence used to make Joonie light up. How angry and hurt she’d been after their big fight last summer. How completely devastated she’d been after the accident, even though they hadn’t even spoken in months. Alona’s hints about Joonie having a crush.
“Oh, Joon. I didn’t know. I didn’t know you and Lily were …” I trailed off awkwardly. Sometimes my gift, my curse, whatever you want to call it forced me to live mostly in another world, trying not to see, hear, or feel certain things. Evidently I’d done my share of not seeing in this world, too.
“We weren’t,” she said wearily.
“Then I don’t understand.” Maybe it was just me and my repeated head injuries, but I still couldn’t figure it out.
Joonie came around the side of the wheelchair to lean against my bed and stare at Lily. I resisted the urge to scoot my lower body, at least, away from her. She was freaking me out a little.
“I kissed her once,” she said. “Did you know that?”
Obviously not.
“Last summer.” She smiled at the memory.
“Before the fight.” About boys. That’s what Joonie had said. They’d fought about boys. I closed my eyes at my own stupidity. Sure, they’d fought about boys, as in, Lily liked them and Joonie didn’t.
“What happened?” I asked, though now I could sort of guess.
“She ended it, fast. I thought she was going to run, but she didn’t. She just kind of looked at me and said, ‘I wondered.’ Then she proceeded to take my hand and tell me that while she cared about me very much, she didn’t feel that way.” Joonie rolled her eyes, and tears slipped down her cheeks, making dark streaks on her face. “Probably the nicest way anyone could have ever told me no, but I …” Her voice trembled.
“You panicked.”
She nodded.
That I understood. Keeping a secret for so long, it starts to feel like a vital part of you. You get so used to living with it that way, the idea of being exposed feels life-threatening.
“I … I said all kinds of awful things to her. Accused her of being a tease, leading me on, which she hadn’t. I told her to stay away from me and you, or … or I’d tell everyone she kissed me, that she’d forced me.”
For Lily, one who aspired to be included, dreamed of walking amongst the first-tier elite, Joonie’s threat would have been enough.
She looked at me, her eyes pleading for understanding. “I was just so scared. It’s hard enough at home already, and if people at school found out, word would spread, and you know someone would eventually tell my dad.”
Her father hated her dyed hair, torn clothes, and piercings. I was afraid to think of what he’d do if he found out her alternative choices extended beyond her look. He was more of an Old Testament kind of preacher.
“That night was my fault,” Joonie said. “If I hadn’t pushed her away …”
I shook my head. “No, J, listen. She tried to call me that night.”
“She did?” She sounded surprised.
“She didn’t leave a message, but she tried. I had my headphones on, so I didn’t hear it ring. She still counted us as her friends, enough to call when she needed someone. I didn’t tell you because I knew you blamed yourself for the fight. I was afraid you’d think that her calling me meant she felt like she couldn’t call you. I didn’t want you thinking you were somehow responsible. It’s not your fault. She called. She ...” I broke off when Joonie started to laugh, a harsh and horrible sound, full of anguish and sharp edges.
“Look at you, so earnest and innocent.” She smiled bitterly. “She called me, too, Will. Twice. I talked to her.”
I stared at her, the world as I knew it shifting and falling around me. “What?”
“Ben Rogers used her and threw her away, just like he always does, and her little teen-princess pals didn’t want anything to do with her anymore.” Joonie shook her head in disgust. “So she called me and I … I told her she got what she deserved.” Her voice broke, and her shoulders shook in a silent sob.
I shook my head in stunned disbelief. “And the second time she called?” I forced myself to ask.
“I hung up on her.”
“Joonie,” I breathed.
“I figure that was right about when she started crying so hard she couldn’t see and lost control over her car,” she said flatly.
“Oh, my God.”
She knelt down next to Lily. “So you see why we have to do this. I need to take it back. I need to undo it.”
“Joonie.” I pulled against the restraints, trying to sit up. “You can’t. She’s gone. Really and truly gone.”
She sighed. “I thought you might say that.” She reached for the Ouija board resting across Lily’s legs. The second her hands touched the planchette, shadows fli
ckered and swirled to life in the corner of the room behind her. Gloomy Gus.Crap. I’d never seen a ghost respond so promptly. It was … weird.
“I know you’re lying,” she said, her tone devoid of any emotion. “I’ve seen what happens to you when I call to her on the other side. She’s angry with me for what I said and with you for helping me.”
“She’s not angry. It’s not her. It’s …” In truth, I didn’t know what it was. This close, with Joonie right here in front of me, I could see a thin wisp of smoke leading from Joonie to the growing monstrosity that was Gus. Like a leash or …a pipeline.
I froze. Energy is just energy until it finds me. That’s what I’d told Alona. If Joonie, in her efforts to communicate with Lily, was sending out massive amounts of negative energy—all that guilt, grief, and shame flowing from her, oozing from her every cell—what was to say my presence wouldn’t cause it to manifest in the same way as a ghost? The door—or rather the call, to use the analogy I started with Alona—went both ways. It was usually energy from the dead side using me to take form, but why couldn’t intense energy, focused through a Ouija board, from the living side do the same thing? That would explain Gus’s lack of personality (other than angry) and why I’d never seen a ghost like it before. It wasn’t a ghost at all.
“I’ll call her,” Joonie said. “You just help me get her back where she belongs.”
How was I supposed to do that? Even if we could somehow reach Lily, which we couldn’t, it wasn’t like stuffing an unwieldy pillow back in its case. There has to be a connection between body and soul. But wisely, for once in my life, I kept my mouth shut. “Okay, I can help you. I need my hands, though.” To get the hell out of here.
She cocked her head to one side and gave me an evaluating look. “No. I don’t think so.”
“You want me to help, I need my hands.”
She frowned, and Gus expanded, spreading out from his corner with tendrils headed straight for me. “No, you’ll only try to run.”