He says, “I want you to—” The video flickers out.
I stumble to the teeter-totter, but there’s no one there. Of course there’s no one there. I sit now where Alec sat looking at Lark. The virtual Alec and Lark. Ghosts.
I take a couple breaths. What just happened? When my heart stops racing, I message Dad.
Lark:
On my way back to see you.
Need anything, Dad?
Dad:
I need you to stop worrying.
Nada más.
I’m fine. Go home.
Reid:
Are you home?
Wanted to talk to you.
As usual, failed.
Lark:
Sitting at the play park—
the one where you cut your head yrs ago.
Super weird thing just happened.
Reid:
Am still at Iona’s.
Will meet you there.
Lark:
Good.
I lean back on the teeter-totter, which is hard along my spine. It creaks. I remember the day Reid cut his head open falling off the monkey bars when we were kids. I can picture us all: Nifty shrieking in this crazy high-pitched way that Iona teased him about for years. It’s only blood.
The evening is low and soft, and geese flock in a V-formation far above. I can hear faint honking. I imagine the flap of their wings, the connection between them that causes them to follow one another so perfectly. It makes me feel like the known world is only the edge of knowledge, that the depths are so much deeper than I can fathom. I remember being in Grade One or Two and feeling super smart about something. I honestly thought I knew all the answers that day. But the answers are harder to find as I get older. I don’t even know the right questions. Words to a song bubble into my mind. I reach for my cell to write, but another incoming message stops me.
He kisses me at the
base of my ear, and I’m melting,
helping him tug at my jeans.
Another video opens up. It’s of me and Alec kissing on the teeter-totter. It’s a looping video, very short, that replays again and again. From it, I hear myself sigh, as Alec slides his hand along my thigh.
The video flickers off.
Reid leans over me, his face framed against the growing night. “Uh, Lark, what’s wrong? I mean . . . everything okay?”
“I’m here, right?” I babble. “How could there be videos of me somewhere else? Well, not somewhere else, but here, with Alec? He’s . . . he’s in a coma. He’s not here.”
Reid flops next to me, hunches his knees up and slides off his shoes, so his bare feet dip into the sandy ground. “What do you mean?”
I’m so relieved that he’s taking me seriously that, for a second, I can’t speak. He waits.
My phone pings:
Alec is on top of me.
His face is close to mine . . .
the weight of him . . .
I hold the screen up to Reid and say, “This keeps happening. Remember at Lydia’s? I thought it was you sending me the messages.”
“Lark, there’s nothing on the screen.”
I let out a cry of frustration. “But there was. Oh God. What is happening?” The horrible thought comes to me that I’m going insane. Suddenly I can’t breathe. “I’ve got to get out of here. I just need a little space to think.”
“You’re leaving?”
“I’m really sorry,” I say. “I don’t even know what I’m doing. Maybe I’m just overtired, I don’t know.”
“Hold on, Lark, let me help you figure this out.”
I shake my head. “I’ll message you later.”
I pop into a corner store and pause against the drinks fridge to take a couple of breaths. I’m thinking about watching myself kiss Alec. Alec is in a coma. My head is spinning. And I just officially freaked out in front of Reid. Like, crazy-girl stuff. I mentally shake myself. Get a grip, Lark.
My gaze lands on a packet of chocolate-covered raisins. Mom used to love those. I’d forgotten, but we would bring them to the hospital, and she’d put one in her mouth and let it dissolve on her tongue. Sometimes they made her throw up, but she still kept popping them in slowly, one by one.
I walk closer to the rack of candy and find myself slipping the crinkly bag into my backpack. It’s larger than the other stuff I’ve stolen. The nail polish and the mascara were easy to disguise. I glance to see if there are cameras, still reassuring myself that I haven’t done anything wrong. I could easily explain. There is a camera, but it’s pointed toward the cash area, and the guy working the till is busy talking to a customer. I grab a second bag of chocolate-covered raisins and stuff them in my backpack with the first. Trembling, I take a couple of bags of chips from the shelf and walk over to pay for them. My mind calms, focusing. I smile at the guy, even flirt a little with my eyes. Part of me is asking myself what the hell I’m doing, but another part has this feeling of serenity, control.
I walk out smiling.
When I get back to the house, Lucy is sitting on the steps of the front porch, playing Candy Crush. She looks up from her phone and frowns.
“Uh, hey. Reid messaged saying you were losing it. I thought I’d stop by. What’s up?”
“You know what, Lucy? Why don’t we build up to my crazy. You tell me about you, then I’ll tell you about me, okay?” I say.
“Deal.” She cocks her head. “You know we were talking about me going away for a year? Well, it got me thinking. I’ve been doing a little research. What do you think about me starting in the UK, then Paris?”
“Oooh, Paris—gotta be done.”
“I’m actually excited about India too. I read about it, and I’d love to go to a yoga retreat where I don’t speak for eleven days. I know it’s a long time until I go, but just thinking about it rocks.”
“Eleven days? Not talking?” I give her a skeptical look.
She laughs.
I chuck her one of the bags of chocolate-covered raisins, which she catches. We sit together on the step. “That all sounds amazing. Tell me more. I could do with something other than me to focus on.”
“You doing okay?”
“Maybe?”
I have an overpowering sense of déjà vu. This has happened before—but no. It’s not something that’s happened before. It feels like it’s happening now . . . but that makes no sense. The sensation trickles through my body like a small river. Maybe all my weird feelings are some sort of déjà vu. Like, a super intense version. But would that explain the videos and the messages?
I say to Lucy, “Déjà vu. That’s a thing, right? The feeling that I’ve experienced something before?”
“Déjà vu is a thing. I think it’s because we’ve all lived a past life. I was totally an Egyptian princess.” Lucy gazes into the distance for a moment, then her eyes flick to me. “Why? Do you think you had a past life?”
A shudder goes through me. My surroundings start spinning.
We’re quiet for a moment, and then she says, “You want to talk about it?”
“No. I don’t know. It’s . . .” My voice trails off. I don’t know if I can handle too much flaky stuff right now. When my mom was dying, people used to say dumb stuff like, Think positive. That will help. Like it might. Or, You need to fight this. Like Mom wasn’t. Or, Have you tried eating more kale? Going to acupuncture? Reiki? Mom didn’t resent people for being kind, but sometimes the wrong words made everything worse.
“Talk, already,” she says.
“Okay,” I say. “I’m dealing with some weird stuff.”
“What sort of weird stuff?”
“It started with my phone. No. It started on the day that Alec nearly drowned.”
“Tell me.”
“I’ve been getting weird messages on my phone, and videos. Well, I think I’m getting them, but they always vanish. And I’m having . . . hallucinations. Really strange.”
“What do the messages say?”
“They talk about Alec. As if
he’s not in a coma. I wonder if I’m just wishing it were the case—maybe I’m imagining an alternative reality? Or maybe I’ve lived this whole life before? God, none of that makes sense at all.”
“You’re not exactly the sort of person to make this kind of thing up. Perhaps you’re super sensitive to whatever’s happening to you.”
“But what do you think that is?”
She flips her hair over her shoulder. “I have no idea. I just think the world is more mysterious than we can possibly imagine.”
“I think you’re right.”
In the quiet between us, I hear Suzanne’s agonized cry.
Day 29: Saturday, early
I glance at my Tak on the wall. Mom gave it to me on my tenth birthday—it was way too big for me then. It was a gift for the future. Now it reminds me of everything she and I missed out on together. I turn away from the damn thing and look instead at the items on my bedside table.
This week I’ve stolen a memory stick, a gift card worth ten bucks and a box of Tic Tacs. Just little things, but I do it every day now, and the urge to keep them has grown stronger—now I can’t bear to throw them away like I did the mascara. I make sure to choose a different store every time, and I select parts of the store where there are no cameras. I can’t even think about why I’m doing it. The bits and pieces are stacked next to the flowers that Annabelle’s family gave me. I haven’t yet thrown them away, although the water has long since evaporated and the petals are desiccated. I look at the calendar I’ve marked next to my bed. Alec’s birthday will be day forty-five of his coma. I check off another day. He has just over two weeks left to live.
I fling myself out of bed. I have to hurry to get to school. I’m going to be late again if I don’t hustle. I dress in a tunic and jeans with a blazer.
Dad was released from the hospital two days ago, but he’s still exhausted. I’m worried they let him come home too soon, just because he wanted it so badly. I tiptoe past his room so as not to wake him, but he calls me to him. His face is still the same ashen grey.
“Off to school?”
I nod, going into his room and sitting on his bed. “But I didn’t want to wake you.”
“I’m pretty tired actually.” As he says this, he begins to drift off but then starts and wakes up again. “Oh, did you read the letter?”
I shake my head. “The letter?”
“Look in the dressing table. Maybe it’s there.” His voice is weak.
“A letter from Mom? Was it for my birthday?”
He nods, but his eyes drift shut, as if sleep is secretly stealing him without him even realizing it.
I get up from the bed and go to his wooden dressing table—the one that belonged to my mother—over by the window. Anything important he keeps there. The dresser was from Grams, and it’s made of antique dark wood with curly flowers etched into it. It’s a girly object for a man’s bedroom, but there’s no point saying anything to Dad.
I say it softly anyway, “You don’t need to keep this, you know. It might be time to make it a bit more bacheloresque in here.”
His eyes spring open, and for a heartbeat, he sounds like his old self. “Bacheloresque is not a word. Despite that, it’s the last word I’ll have from my daughter on the matter.”
I pull a face. It’s the same anytime I try to suggest to him that it would be okay with me if he started dating. I truly think it would be. I’d like him to be with someone who loves him. But it’s not a conversation we have. I reach into the drawer and discover a pile of envelopes.
“What are all these?”
“You put them back, Nosy-pops.”
“I’m too old to be called Nosy-pops anymore. They’ve got my name on them.”
“Lark. I don’t want you to look at those.”
I have a flash of memories of when I was little. Mom laid out a treasure hunt for me around the house for each of my birthdays and clapped with delight when I worked out each clue. “I didn’t know there were so many still for me to read. Why have I only had two so far? Was there one for my seventeenth? I wondered at the time.”
“She wrote lots for you as an adult—one for your wedding, one for grad, other things. It was easier for her to write to you as an adult. Less painful.” He looks out the window, his eyes blurring with tears. “She used any and every spare minute she had left to write to you. Oh, she had so much to say to you.”
Sitting next to him on the bed, I remember my mother here in this room. Soft dark hair, a song, her lyrics.
He flips through the pile of letters I’ve handed him. “It’s not here. I took it to the cemetery in case you met me there. It was in my shirt pocket.”
“They cut that shirt off you, Dad, in the ER.”
He looks stricken. “I’m sorry. I should have given it to you earlier. I can try and remember what she wrote.” He yawns.
“Don’t worry about it, Dad. Sleep. Rest,” I say, though I ache to read words from my mom.
I hum to him and watch him fall asleep, my heart knotted. When I hear my phone, I hurry out of his room so it doesn’t wake him. It’s an email from the Edenville Star. They’re sending someone to review the show! I whoop, then clap my hand over my mouth.
In the kitchen, while I chug back some coffee and eat half a bagel, I message Reid.
Lark:
I’m sorry for being so moody
and for kinda avoiding you.
Wanted to be the first to tell you—
I got the Edenville Star to come for the show!
Reid:
Sweet. You rock!
And no problem.
I text the rest of the band the good news. I’ve been working hard to publicize the event, ramping up the word on social media and trying to get people from the local press to commit. Focusing on this keeps me sane. I flick through my cell to see if there are any more weird messages or videos, but there aren’t. There have been none since the message I tried to show Reid.
I zip up my knee-high boots and leave for school, pumped about the show.
In English we discuss Identical by Ellen Hopkins. It’s a great book that I read over the summer, knowing we were going to study it, but I’ve got Jacob Parks—otherwise known as God’s gift to the world—in my group. The lesson drags on. Iona, who’s also in my group, is raging at Jacob by the end. She has a blue lightning flash painted across one cheek, and I imagine it sizzling. She’s wearing a shiny lipstick that matches her red nails, with a tight black sweater, black pants, black over-the-knee boots. Her hair is a huge halo around her head, wild compared to her super-chic outfit.
When the bell rings, I grab her arm and drag her out of there, but I can’t stop her storming off to the principal to report Jacob’s sexist input. She turns and blows a kiss at me with her very red mouth.
Lucy finds me and tells me about her new Candy Crush level, and then we chat about the after-school babysitting job she got to fit around her shifts at D’Lish. I tell her about the Edenville Star and the songs I’ve been working on.
Later on, after math, Iona catches up to me as I leave the school.
“You calmed down?” I ask her.
“Don’t even get me started again.”
I pretend to cower.
She one-two punches the air. “Nifty messaged. You have a new song ready for tomorrow’s practice? And the Star is coming? You could have told me yourself.”
“Oh, sure, because you were so easy to talk to earlier.”
She sticks out her tongue. “Love the last song, by the way. And sweet news about the press. We rock. You rock.” She blows me another kiss.
I imagine the kiss flying toward me and landing on my cheek. Something in it makes me feel ready. I can do this. Seize the day. I message Reid.
Lark:
Gotta work in an hour.
Wanna come with me to Fields’ Studios?
We could drop in,
tell the receptionist about the show . . .
Reid:
Meet me in the par
king lot.
When we get to the studio, I pause at the glass doors. The frontage is almost all glass, and through the back, I glimpse the river. Fields’ Studios is about as good as it gets for hundreds of kilometres. They’ve got a great online presence and a cool radio show and a cult following all over the country. I look up and imagine myself recording here. Our school took a class trip here when we were in Grade Four, and I remember feeling like I’d come home. The technician let me be the kid who sang in the actual studio. Mom was so delighted. It thrilled me for years.
Reid says, “So the Martin Fields is the father of the girl you saved. And he gave you his card ages ago. And you kept that to yourself.” He narrows his eyes at me behind his glasses. “This is the sort of thing that you’ll get interviewed about one day.”
I pretend to be holding a mic. “Yeah. I worked for his family, hoping to meet him one day. But it was the day I saved his kid’s life when it all changed—” Even as I goof off, I think of Alec in his coma. What if I’d saved him instead?
The doors open automatically, and we’re met with air conditioning and the smell of cleaning products. Inside it’s crisp and shiny, with white walls and a huge red sign that reads FIELDS’ STUDIOS alongside posters of singers, most of them signed. The receptionist has about a million tattoos, even a tangled tree growing up her neck over her right cheek and scalp. Her white-blond hair is shaved on one side, and she’s gorgeous. Reid shuffles uncomfortably next to me, totally tongue-tied by the hot girl.
“I’m here to drop off an invite for Martin Fields.” I try to sound confident and not like a hopeful loser.
“He’s just in the back,” the gorgeous girl says. “Do you want to give it to him personally? I find that helps. He can’t always come to these things, but we might as well try, right?” She smiles conspiratorially with us.
If I ever do get interviewed about how I started out, she’s totally going to be in the story.
Reid says, “I dunno if we should disturb—”
I jab him in the ribs. “Could you, um, please tell him that Lark—”
At that moment a white door opens, and Martin comes in. He’s got large headphones on, but when he sees us, he takes them off and slides his cell into the pocket of his hoodie. The door shuts behind him.