Mayday

  I had so many questions. Did she ever believe me about Jude? Why did she blame me for so much? Was I precious to her?

  I wish I could remember what Mom said to me in that dream.

  Adele sprinted ahead; only in Lifeless’s unconsciousness was she faster. I gave chase, and around me daffodils, yellow and brilliant, exploded the grass with color.

  If only the dream ended there.

  I slowed and glanced up. The sun scorched, expanded. Adele seemed happy. As if it was her first romp through the subconscious. That was Adele. Naive. Trusting.

  Vulnerable.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Fear always springs from ignorance.”

  He obviously never met Adele.

  But I knew the dream’s course, and my jaw tightened.

  The sun. The flowers.

  The dream burned yellow. Alert, slow down, use caution.

  I shielded my eyes. Behind me, Dad’s voice whispered, “My Coraline, look after Addy when I’m gone.” I whipped around and lunged at the rustling. I crawled, blind and frantic. Though I never found him, Dad’s voice alone swelled my heart. Again, he called my name. More rustling, and I swept aside a swath of grass.

  A snake, coiled and black, slithered toward me.

  I jumped to my feet, lifted my heel to stomp. It spoke with Jude’s voice. “Where’s Adele?”

  “Run on, Addy!” I screamed. “Hide!” The snake slithered after my sister.

  I fell to my knees and hid my eyes.

  Red. The dream turned red.

  Wake up, Crow, wake up!

  I pinched myself, slapped myself, knowing that this would be a good time to exit, but Lifeless’s subconscious held me fast.

  Red lights flashed. Train-crossing lights. Fire-engine lights. Squad-car lights.

  Before me, my body lay limp and bloodied in a ditch. Thankfully, the nightmare was almost over.

  “Ambulances,” I whispered. “Time for you to come pick me up.” On cue, three sets of flashing lights rounded the curve and approached.

  I strolled to the bus-stop bench across the street, the best seat from which to watch me bleed. Here is, perhaps, where it all began, for the bench was different. The KROK rock 97.5 ad no longer covered its back.

  Where’s my KROK? I eased down, leaned back against a new ad: CROW INSURANCE: BECAUSE YOU RARELY GET A SECOND CHANCE.

  “Okay, who changed this bench?” I yelled, and slapped a hand over my mouth. That’s a new line! I’m seriously off grid.

  Sirens wailed in the distance. I stared down the street, wondering, Who are these people driving cars in Lifeless’s dream? Do they know they’re here? Do they drive in other people’s dreams—like a second job?

  Ambulance number one screamed to a stop. “First, the foggy one. Okay, that’s normal. We’re good.” I eased back.

  A thick cloud filled that vehicle. Nobody got out, nobody got in. It seemed excessive to spring for an extra ambulance, but hey, it wasn’t my dream. Well, not really.

  “Now the busy one.”

  The second pulled up, stuffed with the grim faces of EMTs. Latte Nurse hopped out, coffee in hand. She walked by the body in the road and sneaked into the Caribou Coffee shop. Probably to meet affair guy.

  “And last, the empty—”

  The third ambulance slowed to a stop. It’s empty. It’s always empty. For forty straight dreams, ambulance three drove itself.

  Not this time.

  A woman sat in the front seat and knitted. She glanced toward me, waved, and smiled.

  I didn’t wave back.

  Dream intruder. You probably repainted my bench.

  I glanced around. Everything else was in place. The man cross-country skiing to my left. The bum resting against the Wells Fargo Building exhaust grate on my right.

  “Hey, C.”

  Mel, one of my two best friends, sat down beside me, rubbing her arms. “I’m shivering out here.” She peeked at me. “How you doing?” Her plasticized beauty and paranoid tilt made each conversation an adventure, which made her interesting, and worth my time.

  I didn’t turn. Did she sound a little cheerier than normal? Mel belonged in the dream—she remembered her lines—but her tone was different this time. More superficial, more . . . Mel, as though she were here for her own benefit and not mine.

  Steam rose from a manhole and filled the street. Five construction guys walked lazily toward my death, stopped, and blocked my view. “Hey!” I called. “Move over!”

  They didn’t budge, and I turned to Mel. “Have you ever watched yourself die?”

  Mel exhaled. “No . . . But when you want something so badly and can’t get it . . . well, that feels a little like death, I suppose.”

  That was new . . . that little dark moment? Even the slightest change unsettled my mind.

  I craned my neck to watch a policeman rolling out yellow tape. “You know, I didn’t feel anything. It happened so fast.”

  “Living fast. That’s the story of your life. But you never deserved to end up in a vegetative state,” Mel said. “Basil told me you’d toe the line and then one day, you’d slip over. Maybe that’s what he saw in you. The whole living-on-the-edge thing.” She paused, and her voice dropped. “Really hard to compete with that.”

  “I never tried to mess things up for the two of you. I didn’t do anything to—”

  “No, you just were. That was enough.”

  We sat in silence.

  Mel shouldered me and pointed across the street. “Will’s sure a mess. You got him good.”

  I peeked at my crunched car. Will lay groaning, propped against the wheel well. “Yeah.” I glanced around. “Is Basil here? It’d be nice to see him again, you know?”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Mel snapped, then calmed. “No, he heard you were with Will in the car and didn’t want to come.” Mel paused and whispered, “Why’d you do it?”

  Why’d I do it? I suppose it’s the only question that really matters.

  I turned to face her. “The train wasn’t in the plan. Getting Will one hundred miles away from Addy was.” I paused for a moment. “You knew the danger my sister was in. You knew what Will was going to do to her. Everybody at school did, except for trusting Addy.” I clenched my jaw. “Nobody touches my sister.”

  That’s my last line. Here, Mel rises and walks away.

  But not this time. She didn’t move, and my words kept coming.

  “Have you ever sacrificed a life for something you had to prevent? Have you ever loved anyone that much?”

  Mel’s face blanched, and her eyes grew large. “I think I have.”

  I need to get out of this. Come on, Mel, you’re supposed to be gone.

  She offered a nervous chuckle. “You didn’t prevent anything, Crow.”

  Did you catch that? You don’t say that to a friend in her most unfortunate of moments. I didn’t put it together until later on. Even Lifeless knew it, dreamed it, deep down inside. But back to the dream.

  “Gotta go, the dream ends here.” I rose, stepped into the street, and waited for the tug, the tug that yanked me toward the middle ambulance. I’d hop in and ride toward consciousness and wake up beside Lifeless.

  Time passed. The tug never came.

  From inside the last ambulance, Dream Intruder gestured toward me with her knitting needle. I slowly approached and opened the passenger’s-side door.

  “Who—”

  Adele sobbed, and I glanced over my shoulder at the scene I knew so well. She hit the policeman who held her back from dying me. Even on this day. Even after I destroyed her Will, she fought to reach me. The intruder interrupted my thoughts.

  “Get in, child.”

  CHAPTER 4

  THE THOUGHTS OF C. RAINE

  Death, where is thy sting?

  The Apostle
Paul

  I SAW THE MATRIX. Remember the traitor scene when Morpheus gets captured? That black cat walked by Neo, twitched back, and then walked by again. Same cat. A glitch in the program. A blip in the Matrix. In the next scene, people started hitting the floor.

  An unpredictable woman in Lifeless’s predictable dream provided me with many very good reasons to stay out of the ambulance. The intruder was a glitch in the program. A blip in Lifeless’s matrix. Nonetheless, I obeyed her, climbed in, and shut the door behind me.

  Addy, here I address only you. Do you remember Grandpa’s smell? That combination of old person and Old Spice? It surrounded him, filled his house, and sent a message: relax, you’re with me. That scent filled this cab. It felt like home.

  I rubbed my thighs hard. Yeah, out of habit, but more for the feel of denim, which satisfied more deeply than ten minutes of popping bubble wrap. My hands didn’t stop there, but slid down onto cool leather, where famished nerves ate up the feel of the smooth seat. As I said before, sensation was light and air.

  The lady didn’t speak or glance my way. I did both, and salivated. She looked exactly like the woman who formed the Mrs. Butterworth syrup bottle. She was brown and content and ready to spill goodness all over your plate. That grandpa smell vanished, and the scent of pancakes swelled. Go figure.

  A question wormed inside my head.

  “I’m dead. Lifeless is dead. This is the end. Right?”

  Her lips tightened, and she set her hands in her lap. “S’pose that doctor of yours is tellin’ your mom it may be up to interpretation.” She turned her head and focused on my hands, rubbing as they were. “Truth is, no. You’ve never been more alive.”

  “I’m in a dream.”

  “True, but dreams is just life underestimated.” She nodded. “You did enter this dream the usual. The bigger question is how’d you like to leave it.”

  I said nothing, and she broke into a wide smile. “My name’s Sadie, honey. I want to help.”

  This yanked out a chuckle from way down deep. The scoff rubbed shoulders with a laugh and drifted out, filled with more sarcasm than I thought possible to own. I turned away, nodded out the window. “Based on the motionless girl, it’s a little late for that.”

  In front of us, reporters scurried back and forth, dragging their cameramen like heavily laden asses, trying to get the best shot of the reporters’ smiling faces and my bleeding one. The police shoved them aside, and went back to work with their yellow tape.

  “She ends up a stupid vegetable, which, after you set up some serious life support, is not a very high-maintenance condition. Believe me. You can’t help.” I exhaled hard. “I do appreciate it, though. So now do I get to know how you snuck into—”

  “Lady! Inside the vehicle. Open up.” A policeman rapped on Sadie’s door, and I jumped.

  Officer Dewey?

  Sadie winked at me and slowly lowered the window.

  • • •

  Basil Dewey, simultaneously my best friend and worst enemy, my most and my least, told precious few that his dad was a cop. “He works for the city of Minneapolis. Like a garbage man.” That’s what he’d say when pressed, but I knew the truth from the beginning.

  “It would ruin my reputation.” Basil swung his legs from the catwalk beneath the Mississippi River Bridge. Suspended one hundred feet up and with cars whizzing over our heads, it was an awesome fifth-grade hangout. He stretched forward and dropped a stone. Far below, it clanked off a barge deck. “It’s kind of true. I mean, Dad does deal with everyone else’s trash, you know? Besides, if your dad’s a policeman, it’s like being a preacher’s kid.”

  “Is that bad?” I tossed a stone toward the boat. Miss.

  “I don’t know, what do you think?”

  I drew my legs up close. “I think you have a great mom and a cool dad, and who cares what they do.”

  Here he paused, leaned over, and we bumped shoulders. “You know, if we were married, they could be your parents, too.”

  Yes, he said that.

  “You’re an idiot.” But those were just words. Already at ten, I couldn’t imagine life where he wasn’t.

  As years went by, Basil’s dad also kept his cophood hidden, relishing in his secret identity each time he broke up one of our parties. “Do your parents know where you are?” he’d ask Basil.

  “No sir,” Basil would reply. “And I’d appreciate your not telling them.”

  Dewey’s eyes twinkled, and then hardened. “I’ll need to take you in, son.” Basil always left our gatherings in cuffs. Dewey marched him to his squad and threw him in back. Unaware that Basil’s police escort ended at his own front door, our classmates ascribed to Basil hero status.

  The playful interchanges forever earned Officer Dewey my respect, a fact unchanged when Basil told me he’d later been tazed three times for consumption in the comfort of his own home.

  How I would have liked to see that. . . .

  • • •

  “I have no need of this ambulance,” Officer Dewey huffed. “Move ’er out.”

  “In time,” Sadie reached out and cradled the man’s cheek in her hand. Dewey pressed his head against it and closed his eyes. When next they opened, Dewey tipped his hat and marched away.

  “What did you do to him?” I quickly covered my cheeks, peeked at Sadie, and then dropped both my gaze and my hands. “He didn’t see me.” I had wanted him to so bad, even if it would have meant a good tazing. “I’m still nothing. It’s not real. I feel me, but I can’t feel any of this.” I reached toward her wool mittens. . . .

  Rough and scratchy to the touch. So were Sadie’s fingers. I stared at the woman with wide eyes.

  “Life feels good, don’t it?”

  “What do you know about my life?” I drew back my hand, held it up in front of her face. “Don’t answer. It doesn’t matter. Any minute this dream will end, and I’ll wake up beside Lifeless and—”

  “Shoot girl, you there right now.” Sadie pointed toward the ambulance’s dashboard, grabbed her needles, and started a slow knit.

  I leaned forward, squinted at the mounted display; the hospital room came into focus on the screen. The cheating scrub placed my mirror back in the bedside drawer, twisted off her wedding ring, and strutted out of the room. No question about who planned to pick her up.

  There lay Lifeless, her monitor beep steady, the all-done tone of a microwave. Adele stood reading aloud.

  “If you need volume, hit that bottom—”

  “I know where she is in the book,” I said. “I’ve read Plato’s Republic before. Adele does a good job. I mean, philosophy isn’t her thing— What is that?”

  Faint, like a whisper, a shadow slumped against the wall. Gnarled and disfigured, its eyes were closed, and I turned away.

  “Hard takin’ that first look, isn’t it, dear?”

  I shook my head. That thing was in my corner.

  “So, yes, Coraline, that be what you look like, your soul anyway.”

  I had no words. As mentioned, I’d spent plenty of time reading about souls, whether they exist, why they exist. I had never until that moment given thought to their appearance. Weeks before the crash, I came to the conclusion that the soul is the truest part of you. Knowing that was my working definition, you’ll understand the magnitude of her statement.

  I’d always been beautiful. But a beautiful shell with a hideous-looking soul? My hands shook because it fit. It was possible that the truest part of me was hideous. Sadie was messing with core definitions.

  Don’t screw with my core definitions.

  “No, that can’t be my soul. I’m right here.”

  “Yes, child, you are. But there’s much more to you than soul. This would be the part to understand: right here, right now, you are a soul-mind. Your body has a mind with choices, wishes, and dreams. Your soul does, too. But your so
ul-mind don’t come to be aware until your body’s mind falls asleep.” She shook her head at the gruesome thing on the screen. “Which you done. It usually takes another to show you the shape of your true self. That be one of the reasons I’m here. That poor thing is what you look like, all right. Quite a sight.

  “Anger sure can twist a soul.”

  I peeked in the rearview and stroked my face, the pretty one. “But I look like I used to, before.”

  “Yes’m. We do return folks to their physical form inside the vehicle.” She touched her own face and adjusted a slouching bonnet. “Aids the conversation.”

  “This is absolutely crazy.” I lifted the door handle, and paused.

  Dream’s end. I can’t watch.

  The final moments of the dream proceed as follows: Mom arrives on the scene and rushes toward Adele. There’s hugging and weeping, at least from sis. Mom’s face is stoic. Like she saw this every day. Like trains clip my car and knock life from my body on a regular basis.

  Like she expects this, wants this.

  There in the ambulance, filled with unexpected fury, I could not keep silent.

  “It’s me!” I lowered the window and stuck my head outside. “That thing is me! Cry, Mom, dammit!”

  Sadie’s hand landed soft and weighty on my shoulder. “You come to your crossroads, Coraline.” She set her knitting down on the seat and glanced at my mom. “There’s no figuring out some people. No makin’ sense of that mom of yours. But honey, best a person can ever do is understand themselves.” She checked her watch. “I need to make my rounds, so it’s come time to give you your choices.”

  “Choices,” I repeated, wiping my eyes with the palm of my hand.

  “Ever wondered why that first ambulance is foggy? You’ll find out someday. That be where your soul will end up. For good or ill. It’ll take you on to your future.” Sadie tapped her fingers on the dash. “I wish they’d tell me what was in there, but I don’t know. I do not know. Maybe someday.” She stared in silence, and then cleared her throat and pointed straight ahead. “You know where the second leads. Right back to the hospital room. Back to now.”

  “I get it. Future, present.” I shifted in my seat. “And you’re the Ghost of Christmas Past.”