“Maybe she'll make it through this," he said.
Anna shook her head, and then lifted her eyes. "I’ve been here before, Dad. She's going to die in that room."
Andrew scoffed. He didn't like to have the last bit of hope taken away from him by his own daughter. "That's just something you feel. We don't know that. We don't know anything yet."
"I do. I know. I’ve been here before."
Andrew had to control himself to not yell at her. "No, you haven't. You just think you have."
"No. I have been here. I have sat here, and I know that soon a nurse will come through that door. She'll smile at me because she feels sorry for me, then grab those magazines over there and leave."
Andrew scoffed again. Of all the times she could have chosen, Anna had to choose this one to start talking nonsense again. He thought she had been getting better, but apparently not.
Or maybe it's something she does when life gets tough? An escape from reality? It's been seen before. There was that article on Facebook that you read, remember?
Andrew nodded. Yes, that had to be the explanation.
Andrew put his hand on Anna's shoulder just as the door opened and a nurse stepped in. Andrew held his breath as she walked across the room, smiled compassionately at Anna, grabbed the magazines, and left.
Andrew couldn't speak for several minutes. His heart was pounding in his chest.
It was just a coincidence; you know it was. It has to be.
"See?" she said.
"What you experienced is a déjà vu, we all have them from time to time. It's French and means 'already seen.' It's a feeling of familiarity like you’ve already lived through a moment. There are several neurological explanations as to why the brain tricks you into believing you have already seen something before. It's perfectly normal."
Anna looked up at her father. "Nanna says déjà vu is memories from other versions of yourself in other universes, while Alter vu are memories from altered world-lines."
Andrew looked at his daughter, wondering when his mother could possibly have told her that in the short period they knew each other before she died. He shook the thought, thinking this wasn't the time to try and change things. Now all they could do was wait. Still, his daughter’s insight and predictions made his hands shiver in fear that maybe she was right, maybe this was the end. He had been preparing himself for this moment over the past weeks but realized it was more like having a child. You read all these books and talked to others who had gone through the same thing, read articles and told yourself what it would be like, but then when you held that child in your hands, you were still completely overwhelmed and nothing that followed in the years after could prepare you for it.
Nothing really could prepare you for losing your loved ones, could it?
Chapter 49
Fort Lauderdale, April 2010
Anna was running down the hallway. Like she had done twice before, she ran as fast as she could, her heart thumping in her chest, leaving her dad behind, the hallway seeming to keep going endlessly.
They had told them they could see her now. Anna had run ahead, knowing the way from the other times she had been through this. The dread was still there, but parts of her were happy that she knew what awaited her, that she was sort of prepared.
"Anna, wait for me," her dad yelled, but she didn't slow down for him. She knew where to stop. She knew what room her mother was in and stopped right in front of the door. She put her hand on it and hesitated one second, remembering what she had seen before behind this same door, before she pushed it open. This time was a little different than the others, though, because the monitors weren't shut off, they were turned on, and tubes were in her mother's mouth, helping her breathe. Her mother's eyes were closed and there were no flies in her eyeballs.
Anna breathed a sigh of relief. They had said that she was still alive, they had managed to get her heart to beat again, but Anna hadn't believed them. She had expected to find her dead, like the two other times. But that was the thing about traveling through other worlds, it was never quite the same twice, even if it was similar.
Anna walked to her mother's bed, put her hand on her mother's chest, and listened to her heavy breathing. The door opened behind her and her father came up and put a hand on her back while sobbing loudly.
"She's still alive, Dad," Anna said and looked up at him.
He nodded, covering his mouth, his eyes strained in sadness. He took Julia's hand in his and held it. It was lifeless and fell down flat when he let go. He then reached out and touched her cheek. He kissed her forehead like he often did.
Anna was crying but stopped when she spotted the blackbird. It was sitting outside the window, pecking at the glass. She got off the bed, walked to it, and looked at it closely. It lifted its head and she saw it again.
Him. Inside the blackness of the eye. He was looking back out at her. She recoiled, thinking of the day she had spoken with him on the road at the reservation. Where did he come from? She had ended up running away from him, while still hearing his laughter in her head, even long after she couldn't see him anymore. She had wondered how he was able to do that to her, how he was able to talk to her in her head like that, and even more how she was able to do the same herself.
Anna pulled the curtain shut, then returned to her mother's bed. Anna kissed her mother on the other cheek, then whispered:
"Fly, Hachi, Fly."
As she whispered the words, the monitors started screaming. That was how it felt when all the alarms went off at once and the room was filled with people in uniforms. Anna screamed when they removed her from her mother's chest and soon they were outside the door, while loud voices emerged from inside the room.
"We're losing her, we're losing her!"
Meanwhile, Anna's dad whimpered and cried out, asking why, falling to his knees. Anna grabbed his hand in hers and held it tight till everything behind the door went silent. Andrew and Anna's eyes met. There was no need to speak. It was over. Time had run out, there was no second shot.
She was gone.
Chapter 50
Hollywood Reservation, April 2010
"Mooom!"
She woke herself up screaming. Her heart was thundering in her chest, the blood rushing through her body so loudly she could have sworn she could hear it.
"Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom!" she kept yelling over and over again. The door to her room opened and Igoshi hurried inside, followed closely by a sleepy Lucas, rubbing his eyes, asking:
"What's happening? Why is Anna screaming?"
"Mom! Mom! Mom!" she continued, almost out of breath.
Igoshi grabbed her in her arms and let her scream out until she had no more voice. Then she shushed her and wiped her forehead clean from tears and sweat with her hand, but soon after more sweat sprang out.
"I lost her, Igoshi. I lost her," Anna finally said when she had calmed down and it was only her body that was shaking. "I lost her. I can't believe I lost her again."
"Shh," Igoshi said. "Shh, it's okay."
"No, no, no. It's not okay, Nanna. I can't find her. I don't know where to look for her. I don't…"
"Stop it. You have to stop it," Igoshi said.
Anna felt Lucas crawl up on her bed and sit on her legs. It hurt, but she didn't care. Everything hurt right now.
"I don't know what to do, Nanna."
Igoshi looked into her eyes. She stroked her gently across her hair. "You move on. It's what you do when you lose someone. You are sad for a little while, maybe even a very long time, then you start to live with it. The feeling becomes a companion and it will never leave you, you will always miss her, but you have to live on. Besides, your father will need you now. More than ever, he needs his daughter with him."
Anna, still shaking, took in a deep breath. Then she shook her head. "I'll keep looking for her. I have to, Nanna."
Nanna sighed, then stroked her face and removed a tear. "Let's go to the kitchen and have some tea, hm?"
Anna no
dded. She would like that. It was still dark out and the clock said five in the morning, but there was no way Anna was going back to sleep again. She wasn't ready to face her dad's sadness also, in the midst of her own. Not yet.
"Why don't you ever want me to travel to other worlds?" Anna said when they were sitting in the kitchen. Nanna had made some Jasmine herbal tea and it felt soothing to drink. She had stopped crying and only a sniffle now and then exposed the fact that she was sad. Inside, she felt like everything was broken, like her body had stopped working, simply quit.
Nanna gave her a wry smile. "You noticed that, did you?"
"You always tell me to stay in these two worlds and not go anywhere else," Anna said. "It's pretty obvious."
Nanna sighed and sat across from her at the table. Lucas had gone back to bed, but they both knew he was just playing with his cars on the floor in his room.
"Well, I might as well tell you at some point. I don't like you traveling to places where I can't be there for you. Where neither your parents or I can be there."
Anna slurped her tea. "How do you know that you won't be there? You're the one who told me the parallel worlds are very similar to the ones we know, except for little differences."
Nanna nodded. "I know. And it might be that you could find me or even your parents somewhere, but so far, you haven't. When you were younger, you traveled a lot more until I told you to stop. You never found any of us out there. And, frankly, it scares me to think of you all alone out there. What if you can't find your way back? It happens from time to time. You could get stuck. And then there is…well…" Nanna stopped talking and sipped her tea.
"What, Nanna? Tell me. I’m old enough."
Nanna gave her a look telling her she didn't believe she was old enough.
"Tell me, Nanna."
She exhaled. "Well, there are people, out there who want to hurt you. I don't want them to get to you."
"What kind of people?" Anna asked, looking perplexed at her grandmother. Igoshi got up from her chair, then walked to the cabinet and pulled out some cookies that she placed in front of Anna. Anna picked one up and started to eat, still waiting for her answer.
"Well…Just like we know how to travel, there are also others who know how to do what we do and know how to navigate it. Some of them are just looking for a little girl like you to use."
"Use?" Anna dipped her cookie in the tea and ate it. "What do you mean?"
Igoshi reached over and grabbed Anna's hand. "You're very strong, Anna, but you are also very young. If the wrong people get their hands on you, you're an easy target because you're so young. I want to protect you from that. Let's just leave it at that, shall we? You want another cookie, hm?"
Anna nodded, biting her lip. She picked another cookie up from the plate and bit into it, remembering how her mother had asked if Nanna had ever mentioned anything dangerous. So far, Anna had been traveling for all of her life, but she had never thought that there might be anything dangerous out there, except for the dinosaurs in China. She thought about the man with the umbrella and was about to ask Nanna about him, if he was one of the dangerous people, but then she stopped herself. A couple of tears were running across Nanna's cheek.
"Are you sad, Nanna?" she asked.
"Yes, I am, my love."
"But why?"
"I loved your mother very dearly."
"You did?"
"Yes. Of course I did." Nanna poked Anna's nose. "She gave me you and she made my son very happy."
Anna nodded with a deep exhale. "So, I guess now you worry about him, don't you?"
Nanna chuckled, halfway choked in tears, then nodded. "Yes. Yes, I do."
"I do too," Anna said and crossed her arms in front of her chest. "He was very sad when I left him. I wonder if he'll get any sleep at all tonight. The doctor gave him pills to help him sleep, but he is all alone now. I don't like it."
"Neither do I," Nanna said, sounding determined. "I just hope he'll make the right choices in life. I would do anything to be able to go back to him, you know? To hug him, to comfort him, to guide him. But it's just not possible. Not anymore."
Anna shrugged. "Now I just have to be really careful not to die. We can't all leave him, you know."
Chapter 51
Hollywood Reservation, April 2010
She was sitting on the swing, hardly feeling the warm breeze touch her skin. Lucas was playing with his cars in the high grass of their backyard not far from her. One of their grown-up cousins had built them the new swing set just a few days ago, but Anna didn't feel much like swinging right now.
Nanna was in the kitchen. She could hear her singing like she always did when she was anxious about something. She would turn the radio up and sing along to it. Anna knew this song. It was Amy Winehouse singing a song about a place called rehab and how going there had changed her life and probably saved it. Anna didn't know where rehab was, but they talked about it even at the rez every now and then.
"Do you want to play cars with me?" Lucas asked.
He had walked up to her and stood with two cars in his hands, holding one out to her. "You can have the red one if you like."
Anna looked at him. "But you love the red one."
"Yeah, but you're sad," he said with a sniffle. He scratched his nose with the backside of his hand holding the red car. "You always liked to be the red car. I'll let you play with it if you like."
"No, thanks," Anna said. "I don't want to play."
“You can be the blue?"
Anna groaned. "I said I don't want to play."
“You never want to play anymore."
"Just leave me alone."
"You al-la-ways say that." He said it using too many L’s. Usually, it would make Anna laugh, but not today.
"Because I mean it. Now go."
Lucas cried and ran inside the house. Anna stared at her shoes for a long time, when suddenly a pair of black shoes appeared in the soil in front of hers. A pair of black grown-up shoes. She lifted her head, barely with enough air to gasp.
It was him. The guy with the umbrella. He was standing right in front of her, umbrella held up in the air.
Hello, little girl, he said, speaking in her head.
"What do you want from me?" she asked out loud, hoping her grandmother would hear her. The window was open, but the music was pretty loud. "Why do you keep coming here?"
I told you. I want your eyes.
"Why?"
To see. I need them to look into the world I have left.
"Like you did to that bird?" Anna asked.
Yes.
"How do you do that?"
That's my secret.
"Well, why don't you just use that bird again if it’s so important? You’ve done it before."
Because it’s not enough.
"Why do you need more?"
I just do. I need you. To help me.
“Are you crazy? I’m not going to let you inside my head. Uh-uh. No way. No way, mister."
It's not your choice to make.
The umbrella man reached out one hand and grabbed Anna by the throat. He squeezed tightly, so she could hardly breathe. All I need you to do is succumb to me. Let me inside of you. You ain't gonna like where this is going, little girl. You ain't gonna like it. But you will do as I say.
It felt like he was trying to get into her brain. The pressure on her head was immense. A major headache emerged. Anna tried to scream, but she couldn't. Her throat was hurting so badly, she was gasping for air. The man put more pressure on her throat.
That's it. Be scared. Just let me in.
"You…are…hurt-ing…me," Anna managed to groan between breaths. She felt so powerless, so weak. Fear of dying in this world suddenly struck her with the weight of a massive train. What if he killed her here, and she never got to see Nanna or Lucas again?
That's the point, little girl. The more you suffer, the more afraid you are, the easier it is for me.
Anna closed her eyes and mustered all sh
e had inside of her, all her willpower, then pushed him out of her brain with a loud scream.
GET OUT!
The sound in his mind was so overwhelming it caused him to fly backwards and land in the grass. Anna fell to the ground, wheezing and gasping, then started to crawl towards the house. She could hear her grandmother singing in the distance when she felt a hand grab her leg and start to pull her backward. She tried to scream, but a hand was quickly over her mouth and she was pressed to the ground by his heavy weight on top of her. Anna screamed and kicked, but nothing but muffled sounds emerged. He was sitting on her back, his heavy weight pressing her into the grass. She managed to get a punch in and hit him somewhere in the face. She must have hit one of the blisters because he roared in a loud scream and the weight was removed from her back. This was her chance to get up. While he was busy with the pain in his face, she got to her knees. As she was trying to get up, she was kicked in the side and all the air was blown out of her, then a hand slapped across her face and she landed sideways in the grass again, her head spinning, burning pain in her cheek. Dizzy and exhausted, gasping for breath, trying to muster a scream or just a word to make her grandmother know what was going on, she crawled for the door, when he once again tried to enter her mind.
LET.ME. IN.
She screamed back.
NEVER!
The man dropped his umbrella when he had to hold both hands to his head as she screamed inside of it. When Anna saw it, she continued to scream as loud as she could, inside of his mind.
NEVER! NEVER! NEVER!
The man tumbled backward, holding his hands to his head, stumbling over one of Lucas's buckets, and then falling into the swing set. Meanwhile, Anna managed to get to her feet and sprint towards the house.
Chapter 52
Hollywood Reservation, April 2010
Anna slammed the door behind her, then locked it. Panting and gasping for air, she slid to the floor, her back against the door. The music stopped in the kitchen and her grandmother came out to her.