“Why can’t I remember?”
With all the reassurance of a soothing mother, the doctor reached out and took my hand. “Sometimes our minds protect us from things that are too painful. I think the memories might come back to you, when and if you are ready.” My breathing still wouldn’t slow and I was afraid I would pass out. She slipped an oxygen mask over my mouth and pulled a chair over, sitting down as she slowly inhaled. “Breathe with me.” I nodded in understanding as I forced myself to follow her deep breaths. I had no idea how long it took, but finally I calmed.
“Is it okay if I do my check up on you now? Your family would like to see you.” She motioned behind her.
I lifted the mask away from my face. “They’re here?”
When she nodded, a smile that radiated from the depths of my soul spread across my face and warmed every inch of my being. It felt like an eternity since I had seen them. I endured her questions and poking and prodding until I was cleared for visitors.
Soon Melanie, my older sister, who must have driven hours from her college to reach me here, flanked by Cherie, and Steve, entered the room. I was surprised not to see Brent with them. The doctor gave me a knowing smile as she left. “It’s remarkable that you three triplets look nothing alike.”
My brow wrinkle in confusion and for a brief second I wondered how hard I had hit my head.
“They were only going to let family in,” Cherie explained as she sat beside me and curled herself into an upright ball. I nodded in understanding at my “siblings”. I felt the final tethers of anxiety subside. My memories would come back eventually, hopefully. All that mattered was that my loved ones surrounded me. The rest would work itself out.
Cherie’s eyes were red and swollen from crying. “You’re lucky you’re okay. I would never have forgiven you if you had died, Yara.”
I cleared my throat and flinched. “Was it really as serious as that?” The expressions on everyone’s faces was the only answer I needed.
“The paramedics said if Steve hadn’t given you CPR, they would have been too late,” Melanie said, taking my hand as she sat beside me. She rested her chin on the bed’s metal bars. Her free hand used a Kleenex to wipe away the moisture that still leaked from her eyes.
I tried to make eye contact with Steve, my hero. For a second I caught his gaze but he looked away. He seemed almost . . . haunted, leaning in the corner, his arms folded.
“It would seem that you brought me back from the dead.” When I said this, my heart beat hard against my ribs, as if recognizing the significance of my words more than my mind. “Thank you.”
Steve bowed majestically, seeming more like himself.
“ ‘Tis all in a day’s work, m’lady. Know ye any more dragons that need slaying?”
Melanie’s cell phone started vibrating in her purse. She checked the screen and smiled. “It’s Mom and Dad. I better take this. Mom has been calling every fifteen minutes since the school called her.” I watched her leave, guilt twinging inside of me for causing so much worry to my loved ones.
“Do you know what happened?” Cherie asked.
I shook my head, hoping to clear the fog in my memory. I could tell Cherie had tons of information to share but right as she opened her mouth the doctor came in.
“I’m sorry but I’m going to have to ask all of you to leave now. She needs her rest.”
“Doesn’t she get to come home with us?” Cherie pleaded with puppy dog eyes.
“No. We need to keep her a while longer for observation.”
Cherie, to my surprise, stood up without protest. She hugged me tightly. “Don’t worry,” she whispered, “we’ll find a way back in.”
That sounded more like the Cherie I knew. As my grogginess increased I heard the doctor begin to explain what had happened to me but I couldn’t understand her words as I drifted off to sleep.
****
I woke with a start and my body complained. I searched my memory to see if any further clue about my accident had resurfaced, but the smudged slate was still my only answer.
“Are you awake?”
I jumped in surprise.
A small chuckle escaped Steve’s throat. “Sorry to scare you.”
I turned to face him and stretched out my hand to loosen my aching muscles. My hands felt stiff and inflexible under all the bandages.
Steve answered my unasked question. “You scratched your hands pretty bad trying to free yourself before I got you out of the pool.”
“The pool?”
“You almost drowned, Yara,” Steve said, his blue eyes exhausted.
“I did?” A flickering vision of struggling underwater flashed in my head but vanished before it could fully form. I examined my frayed nails and for a second I remembered my hand making contact with something. Try as I might, there was nothing more, and instantly the image I had conjured was lost behind the fog in my brain. I groaned in frustration.
“And you saved me?”
Steve smiled into the right side of his mouth. “Yeah.”
“So you’re the man of my dreams, huh?”
Steve startled upright in his chair.
I reached out and grabbed his hand with a laugh. “I didn’t mean it that way. I kept having this creepy dream about drowning and in it a guy tried to save me. That must have been you.” He settled back into his chair. “Thank you, Steve. You have my best friend stamp of approval for dating Cherie.”
He hung his head down, the long evening taking its toll. “What were you thinking?” He asked, seeming uncomfortable. “Swimming in that dress. Alone. It was wound tight around the drain. You almost died. Do you know what that would have done to Cherie? I almost stopped doing CPR. I thought you were gone.” I could see his chin clench in defiance. “Yara, I almost gave up.”
Tears puddled along my eyelashes. “But you didn’t.”
“Yeah, but knowing how close I came will always haunt me.” He paused and he seemed to be deliberating something. “The whole thing was strange. I was with Cherie and I knew you were in trouble. I started coming toward you and then . . . it was like I was someone else or something until I was doing CPR. I can look back at myself doing those things, but I don’t . . .” he trailed off, raking his fingers through his dirty blond hair.
“How did you know I was in trouble?”
“You called me.” He eyed me carefully, judging my reaction.
“I called you?” I cocked my head to the side.
“In a way. I heard your voice clearly in my mind. At first I thought it was my imagination. Then you called to me again but this time you told me you were drowning. Somehow I even knew to have my pocket knife ready.”
“Wow.”
Steve nodded slowly and I could tell there was more. “The strange thing is, in my mind, you called me Brent.” He pulled on a loose thread of the chair’s mauve fabric, looping it around his finger. “I’ve been replaying it and I know that’s what I heard.”
Involuntarily, my hand raised to my mouth, covering it in surprise. “I don’t know what to say.”
“I guess it doesn’t matter.” Steve reclined deeper into his chair, unraveling the thread even more. “There’s something else. The cops ruled this an accident after talking to Brent and all of us . . . but I could have sworn when I first came in I saw a set of wet footprints leading away from the pool. Were you alone in there, Yara?”
The machine next to me beeped faster as my heart began to race. The room suddenly felt ten times smaller and a cold sweat broke out across my brow. “I . . . I can’t remember. I . . .”
“Calm down.” Steve placed a reassuring hand on mine. “I’m sorry to just throw that at you. Sometimes my tongue gets away from me.” Steve’s eyes crinkled warmly as he smiled. “I’m probably wrong. I wasn’t really paying attention— everything was happening so fast.” Steve exhaled slowly. “You didn’t die tonight; that’s all that matters.” Steve stood up from his chair and stretched out his long arms. “I’ll go tell Cherie you’re awake
.”
I stared after him, knowing I was missing something, not sure what it was and suddenly afraid to remember.
****
Considering how close I had come to an untimely death, it was surprising to see how stubbornly my normal, boring life reasserted itself. Apparently not even a hospital stay could stop the unceasing tide of homework. I was in the commons building, mentally cursing at the chart of all the homework I had to make up. I had staked out a table farthest from the wall-to-wall windows, to avoid distractions. My backpack was tossed onto the chair beside me, my feet were kicked up on the one directly across from me, and my textbooks and notes were strewn across the battered tabletop.
The rasp of a throat being cleared had me looking up to a sheepish Brent. He cracked his knuckles as he watched me. I hadn’t seen him in a few days, not since the night of my accident. He hadn’t called or checked up on me once. My eyes narrowed and my mouth tightened in a frown.
“Can I join you?”
“Can you spare the time?” I asked acidly.
“I deserve that.”
With a grunt of agreement I nodded, inviting him to sit, even removing my feet for him. He sat down and I noticed several long and painful-looking scratches on his face. His brown eyes, edged with bright green, were carefully studying me.
“What happened? Wrestle with a cat?”
He looked down with a nervous laugh. “Oh, I tried to sneak off campus and ended up crashing Coach Tait’s car. I got some cuts from the glass.”
“Did you end up in the E.R. too?”
Brent shook his head. “No, the nurse cleaned me up good enough.”
“You tried to steal Coach Tait’s car?” I whistled. “Wow, you must be in a ton of trouble.”
“That’s putting it mildly.” He cracked his knuckles again before continuing. “You’re probably wondering what I’m doing here.”
“Yeah,” I admitted.
“I wanted to apologize to you. I felt guilty about not seeing you in the hospital. Well, for that and leaving you alone at the pool that night. Maybe if I’d stayed . . .”
“Yeah,” I mumbled, running my eraser across my Language Arts notes.
“I was scared. I mean it isn’t every night you tell a girl you love her and she says it back. Then you spill grape juice on yourself like an idiot, leave to change your clothes, and come back to find out she almost drowned. And then steal a car to see her at the hospital but get in an accident, get put on probation, and then never get the chance to visit her . . .” Brent explained, his words tumbling out of his mouth. “If I hadn’t spilled my drink, then—”
My mouth gaped open. “What?”
“It’s my fault,” Brent explained.
“I don’t remember any of that, but it wasn’t your fault.” I said tapping my pencil against the table.
“You don’t remember any of it?”
I shook my head.
“Not even that I told you I loved you and you said it back?” He asked with a frown.
“I told you I loved you?”
Brent gave me a triumphant smile. “You did.”
“Sorry, I don’t remember,” I admitted quietly.
Brent’s face fell but his eyes had a gleam of joy in them. “Oh, what do you remember?”
I thought carefully, feeling an importance to his question I didn’t understand. “I . . . remember talking to you about your brother appearing at the party but that . . . that’s it.”
“Nothing else?”
“No,” I sighed sadly.
“Does that mean I won’t get another declaration of love?”
I laughed nervously. “Not right now.” I was still shocked I had forgotten such an important conversation, accident or no.
“I’ll try to keep my disappointment in check,” Brent grumbled under his breath.
For a second his brown eyes seemed to grow cold, the thin line of green around his iris thickening, and I tensed unexpectedly, but it was gone so quickly I was sure I had imagined it. My shoulder throbbed and I scratched at it, noticing a raised ridge on the skin. I let the collar of my shirt slip down, exposing my bare shoulder, and revealing a brutal black scar there. I could only assume it had happened in the pool, but it didn’t look that new.
I looked up at Brent and found him checking out my scar with intense eyes. I pulled my shirt back together and crossed my legs. Brent shook his head like he was trying to remember what he had been saying.
“I really think you should avoid astral projecting for a while. It’s too dangerous.”
“Dangerous? Life and death dangerous?” The words life and death seemed more ominous than they had just a few days ago. “Why?”
He leaned forward, bringing himself close to me as he whispered in my ear, “There’s something out there that worries me.”
“Okay— I’m an easy sell on being careful these days.”
Brent seemed satisfied with my answer and pulled out a notebook from his backpack. “You missed a very important lab while you were in the hospital. Coach Tait said he’d be willing to have you come after school and make it up.” He gave me a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes as he went over his notes with me.
****
“You know it’s cruel of our teachers to have you make up all of your missed assignments,” Cherie said, throwing herself dramatically on her bed. “How am I supposed to have any fun while you’re up to your eyeballs in homework?”
“Well, you have Steve.”
Cherie blushed. “Yes. I suppose I do. Still, it isn’t the same. You’ve been studying nonstop for days. I miss you.”
“I’m almost caught up.”
“I know.” She sat up on her bed and glanced at me for a minute. “Do you still not remember anything that happened?”
“No,” I answered, shaking my head. “I keep hoping it will come back. Every once in a while I think I remember something, but then it disappears.”
Cherie shrugged, disappointed. I closed my eyes once more trying to focus all of my collective power on remembering. Still nothing. Anger and frustration rose inside of me. It was building so strong that I felt for a moment that it might overpower me. I opened my eyes, stood up and began pacing around the confines of our small room. I stopped in front of my chest of drawers and directed my pent up anger at my mirror. I dropped my arm and pointed at my image. “Remember!” I commanded myself. I didn’t remember anything, but I did jump back as my mirror shattered.
Both Cherie and I screamed. I looked at the broken mirror and wondered if I had done that. What exactly happened to me when I almost drowned? Had I come back different? A chill ran down my spine. Maybe I really was better off not knowing.
Cherie grabbed me hard and spun me around. “What was that?”
“I have no idea.” My fingers and toes started tingling and I was afraid I was going to project. Breathing deeply, I slowed my heart.
“Did you throw something at it?” I shook my head and tried to break free of Cherie’s grasp. Her fingers closed even more firmly around my arm. “How did you do that?”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly.
Cherie looked at me like she didn’t know me. “I didn’t know Wakers could do that.”
“I’m not sure they can.”
“Then how did you do it? Can you do it again?”
I stared at the shards of glass sprinkling my chest of drawers and considered my answer. It reminded me of how Brent had manipulated the wind and moved things from a distance. He had told me that with practice I could do it too. But this had felt so controlled, like part of me knew what I was doing, like I had been doing for it a long time. “I’m not sure how I did it, but it didn’t feel like a fluke. I think I could do it again.”
The radio in the room suddenly snapped itself on so loud that Cherie and I both pressed our palms to our ears to protect them. The old song “Can’t Stop Dreaming of You” filled the room while Cherie grabbed for the volume knob. I watched her spin the dial but the song conti
nued, eardrum-busting loud. The crooner’s voice was clear and sweet.
You promised me undying love
That always you’d be mine,
But now you’re loving someone else
And leaving me behind.
I put my trust in you, my love,
But life’s not what it seems.
Your love for me I thought was real
Lived only in my dreams
I could almost feel the words inside me, calling to me like a siren’s song, begging me to listen. It brought back memories of Brent. But it was more than that. Wasn’t it? My mind replayed the words of the verse and my heart broke. The next verse though put a feeling of foreboding in my chest.
I wish that you could understand
And see, and know, and feel
He cannot love you as I do,
He cannot be as real.
I hope that you will listen, dear,
To the message that I send,
‘Cause if you choose to stay with him
He’ll only hurt you in the end.
When the verse ended, the radio snapped itself off. I knew instinctively the song was connected to my accident. There was some clandestine message in the lyrics I was meant to decipher. I had no idea how or why, but I suddenly knew that someone needed me.
The next afternoon, I picked up my backpack, intending to study at the library— but some sort of internal compass guided me toward the garden that Brent had taken me to the night of the dance. Despite only having been there once, my feet easily found the way.
I settled myself inside the gazebo, feeling at home, safe and loved, more than I had at any time since the night I had almost drowned. Ever since my accident I had felt lonely, like I had lost something that night, some part of me. Being here, that feeling shrank.