I don’t even hesitate.
Lark:
Yes.
Alec:
xxx
The weather is growing colder by the day, now that we’re fully into October. We still have a while until the snow falls, but there’s a hint of what’s coming in the brisk wind. Alec waits for me in the play park. He has a bruise on his cheek, faded but obvious.
“What’s that?” I ask.
He gets up and wraps his arms around me.
“Alec, my God. Are you okay?”
“Can we just go climbing?”
“I’m your girlfriend, right?”
He nods.
“So talk to me.”
But he is silent. He holds my hand and won’t catch my eye.
We walk together quietly. At the back of the park is a disused house with signs around it saying not to go past the wire fencing. Alec squeezes through a large gap in the fence. After checking over each shoulder, I follow him.
“Is it safe?”
He ignores me and starts to climb.
I make sure my cell is tucked deep into my pocket, and then I climb after him. I call up, “Does the fear ever go away?”
He glances down. “Definitely. But then you just do something scarier . . . bwahahaha.”
At his teasing, the fear I’ve been feeling shifts up through my body and bursts out the top of my head, to be replaced by glee.
Quickly we reach the roof. He helps me stand. I’m here. Yet at the same time, I feel completely disconnected from myself, as if I’m both inside my own body and outside it. I haul myself back to reality. Right now, I’m standing at the top of a building. Alec is next to me, and we’re laughing about something. Though I have no idea what. I wobble, and he grabs me. He turns to me, his eyes serious.
“Thank you. For not asking a bunch of questions.”
I’m desperate for him to tell me what’s going on, and my guesses make me afraid for him. But I say, “I get it. When my mom was sick, I didn’t want to talk all the time. But holding it inside isn’t good, you know? I do want you to talk to me—at some point.”
“I will. I promise.”
We stand there for a long time. Up here, the air is cool, and there is so much sky.
His eyes focus on mine. “I know this comes out of nowhere,” he says. “I know I’ve been distant. But I have to tell you something.” He puts his hand under my shirt at the waist, his palm warm on my stomach. “I’ve never said this to a girl before . . . but I love you, Lark. I do.”
My insides vault. He loves me, he loves me. I have everything I want. Then a dark thought appears, a cloud on the horizon of my mind. I’ve been trying to believe Dolphin and to put it all aside, but now a possible parallel life suddenly frightens me. Is Alec with me in my parallel life? Does he love me like this?
Or is he the one in the coma instead of Annabelle?
I plunge from the heights of joy to fear.
“Are you going to say anything?” he asks.
“Sorry. I was just . . .”
His hurt expression stops me. I need to be in the moment. “I love you too,” I say.
We spend a long time kissing before we leave our spot close to the sun.
Dad is out at work for the day, so Alec and I go to my house. We hunt through the pantry, both of us starving. We find some frozen ground beef, so I defrost it in the microwave while I search through my mom’s old recipe book for a dessert. I settle on her favourite, blackstrap molasses cake. Alec hangs out, watching a movie.
“Lark, stop cooking,” he calls. “I’d be happy with a sandwich.”
“No, this is going to be good,” I say. “Worth the wait.” I let the words hang. I realize I’m ready.
“Oh, crap,” he says, looking at his phone. “I gotta go. My mom . . .”
“But I was going to feed you, and then seduce you.”
“I told you not to waste time on the feeding part.” He kisses me. “Sorry, I gotta go.”
“Is your mom okay?” I’m not surprised when he shrugs off my question. And I don’t probe, even though I want to.
“Save me some cake.”
We kiss goodbye. Then I stir the molasses with eggs, flour and sugar, remembering how mom used to do the same thing. I add ginger and cinnamon, and their spicy warmth fills the kitchen. As for the beef, Mom taught me to cook it for a long time, browning it for flavour, so I put it in a pan on the stovetop and begin the slow stir, thinking again about my alternate life. I miss Lucy—I bet she’d have interesting things to say about all this. It’s not that we’re not speaking. More that we’re just cool with each other. Polite. And I haven’t hung out with the band for ages.
To my surprise, tears spill from my eyes. I wipe them away. I stir the meat and add a little boiling water to help the browned edges blend. It smells good, rich and filling. I search for my cell. Hanging out with Alec, I forgot about it. I find it at the bottom of my pocket. There are hardly any messages, as if I’m slowly vanishing from my own life.
I reply to Nifty, who is asking if I’m coming to rehearsal, saying of course and asking how he is. He’s been in a bad mood since he broke up with Cole the other week, but I’m still surprised when he doesn’t respond. I check my work schedule online. I only have a Saturday night shift this entire week. Alec has messaged a couple of times since he left. I try to imagine him in a coma—what would life be like without him? I Google “comas.” Nothing I read is good. Annabelle might never recover. She could be in a coma for years, if the doctors don’t recommend ending her life support. My inner voice whispers, You should go and see Annabelle. Go now.
I push it away. I’m not doing that. It feels so wrong to torture a little girl and her mother just to find out answers, to find myself in my other life and see if I can figure this out. But how can I not try to see if I am living two lives? What if I go and find out something terrible—what if I go and find out it’s not real? Would that lift this feeling from me?
The oven beeps. I take out the cake, glad of the distraction from my own head. I pour tomatoes over the beef and put a lid on the casserole dish, and then I place the whole thing in the oven.
Dad:
I won’t be home for supper.
Lark:
I’m making Bolognese sauce.
I’ll leave it out.
Heat it up with some pasta.
xxx
Dad:
LU xxx
Lark:
Me too xoxo
I spend a while watching bad TV and eating. I glance over some of my old songs, trying to get ready for practice, realizing that I’m nervous about going. I reassure myself it’ll be fine, it’s only my band, but I’ve skipped a bunch of practices, and I know they’re mad that I’m not ready for the show.
If only there were some other way to figure out this parallel life stuff. My brain ticks through possibilities again. When I’ve seen Annabelle in the hospital, I’ve been able to see what may be my parallel life. I replay the same argument: it’s ghoulish to visit a kid in a coma to get something for myself. Maybe I don’t have to be with Annabelle physically—maybe just thinking about Annabelle will get me there. I focus on Annabelle’s image in my mind, her small body in the bed. I see her vividly in my head now. Her pale face. The beep of the heart monitors. But it’s not working. As if it would. Dolphin is probably right. None of this is real.
I sigh and give up. I resolve instead to work really hard tonight to write a song. At practice I’ll show them what I’ve got; that’ll get me back on an even keel with them. And I plan to fix things with Lucy too. But I’m exhausted at the prospect of trying to do any of this.
I lean back into the couch and close my eyes. I’ll do all of it later, after I’ve caught up on some sleep.
Day 41: too early
Since I slept through band practice three days ago, the band has been furious with me. So I told them there was no way I was doing their stupid show with them. It was just one practice. I hoped they might care even a littl
e bit that I was quitting, but if anything, they seemed relieved. Perhaps I was relieved too. But now none of them is talking to me. I don’t care. It’s becoming clearer and clearer that the only person who is there for me is Alec.
We spent yesterday evening hiking along the river trails. He taught me how to do a better wall jump. My hands are still sore from trying to pull myself up, but I’ve got a better technique now. We watched a bunch of stuff about parkour at his house afterwards, wishing his mom would leave, but she didn’t.
It’s time to go to school. I dress in my pastel jeans with the hole and a black T-shirt with a low back. I sling on a lacy sweater and spend a little time putting on mascara and giving myself smoky eyes.
I grab my longboard and take it outside. It’s raining lightly, the day grey and cool but refreshing. I wonder what she’s doing now. The other me. Is she getting on her longboard too? Is she going to visit Alec in the hospital, where he’s in a coma? I check my cell. No messages, nothing. I argue with myself yet again. I was wrong about all this. Perhaps Dolphin was right.
For the thousandth time, my inner voice tells me to go and see Annabelle. Prove this to myself once and for all. I have to stop waiting at the sidelines of my life. I have to figure this out.
You okay about Alec?
They turn off the life support
in four days, right?
. . . I just want to go and see him.
To say goodbye.
It’s the first message I’ve had for days. As it vanishes, I start to tremble. It feels like some sort of sick joke, but what if it’s true, and they’re really switching off his life support? Alec can’t die. Not in any life. No. I know what I have to do. I have to go and see Annabelle. I have to find the truth.
School goes by in a blur. Afterwards, I hurry to the hospital, listening on the way to some terrible pop playlist. I lean my board against a wall and enter through the main doors. The hallway is full of other people, wrapped up in their own lives, dealing with life and death.
Alec:
Where are you?
Can we talk?
Lark:
Not now.
Alec:
Playing hard to get? ;-)
Lark:
Come by later.
Alec:
B over at 7.
I realize I’ve already reached the third floor, when the elevator dings and the doors slide open. I pad toward Pediatrics to see Annabelle. The rest of my plan is kind of fuzzy.
I’m reaching to push open one of the double doors, when a sign pulls me up short.
VISITORS RESTRICTED
After a surge in respiratory illnesses, the health region is
restricting visitors to the Pediatric and Pediatric Intensive Care
Wards to PARENTS ONLY.
I read it over three times and slam the wall with my fist. Then I open one of the double doors and peek around to see if anyone has noticed me.
I get five steps along the hallway before a nurse approaches, frowning.
“Excuse me, who are you here to see?”
“Uh, um, Annabelle Fields.”
Politely but firmly, the nurse moves in front of me. “Did you see the sign?”
“Uh, no,” I lie.
“You’ll have to wait to visit. We have restrictions on visitors. You don’t want to make anyone sick, do you?”
There’s nothing for it. I shake my head and mumble an apology. Then I hurry away. My hand hurts from slamming it into the wall. I rub it all the way out of the hospital. After all that, I can’t see Annabelle?
I board home. Dad’s not there. I boil some water and eat a Pot Noodle in front of the TV. When the doorbell rings, I go to it gratefully.
“I’m so glad to see you,” I say, as Alec wraps me up in his arms. At least now I can forget about Annabelle. “Do you want to come to my room?”
He is kissing me and nodding at the same time. It feels so right. I don’t want him to stop. Not now. Not ever. I pull him upstairs.
“Are you ready?” He pulls off my black T-shirt.
I peel off my pastel jeans. “I’m ready.”
Dad calls from downstairs, “Lark, are you home?”
Alec groans as I pull my jeans back up. “This is never going to happen,” he says. “I should just go.”
“I’m up here, Dad,” I call back. I stick my tongue out at Alec.
We go downstairs to chat with Dad for a few moments and then outside, me with my longboard. Alec gets a call from a parkour friend, and I tell him I’ll meet him under the bridge in a while. It’s just occurred to me that perhaps there’s a way to get to Annabelle after all.
I longboard back to the hospital. I’ve worked out how to do this; I just need to make sure I don’t get caught. I slide my longboard into the bushes along the back wall of the hospital and spend a few minutes figuring out which window is Annabelle’s. The pathway is empty, and though there’s traffic going by, I’m going to guess that most people are too preoccupied with their own lives to notice me.
After checking no one is watching, I begin to climb. I’ve made it to the second floor when I see a couple walking below. They stop right beneath me, and the woman fumbles for her phone. She shows him something on the screen, while I press against the rough brick wall, hardly breathing. Finally they walk on, and I make it to the third floor, my muscles aching and shaky.
I shimmy along to the window I guessed to be Annabelle’s. Another child is in the bed. A small boy. My eyes fill with tears. What am I doing? I’m losing my mind. A nurse comes into the room, and I watch quietly and wait. After she leaves, the boy turns toward the door. I pass the window as quickly as I can and try the next one along. It’s another child, again not Annabelle but an older girl, chatting with her mom. I can’t go by their window. They’ll spot me. I duck out of sight, sweating and desperately trying to understand how to find Annabelle’s room. I look along the row of windows and count. It doesn’t help. I’m never going to find her. I shimmy back to the window where the boy is. I’m about to give up and go back down, when I think of how badly I need to understand this. So I keep going past the boy’s room to the next window in that direction.
This time I’ve got it right. It’s Annabelle. She lies there, still as the grave, and alone. Suzanne is out of the room—a lucky break.
But the window is closed. I wonder suddenly if it’s even possible to open the window, and my body begins to sweat—a prickly sweat. If I get caught here, if I fall, if I . . . I steady my breathing and fumble around with the window. To my surprise, it opens easily, and I slide in.
I hurry to Annabelle, and before I can think too much more about it, I sit by her and lightly touch her hand.
From where I stand, the window frames the sky, but as I look at it, the glass begins to crack. Tiny fracture lines spread like tree branches, and to my horror, they extend up into the white ceiling.
And water is seeping in. Rapidly it goes from a trickle to a flood, rising up from the floor; the walls are pushed outward by the force of it. I open my mouth, but water pours in, making me gag.
Soon I’m under water, fighting to keep my head above the surface, fighting for air. And there is the flickering screen, and through it the other Lark is there too, frantically struggling to keep her head above water. I knew. I knew. I knew.
I swim toward the screen, toward her. I feel like I might die, the effort is so immense. But then, with a ripping feeling through my entire body, as if my insides are being torn from me, I’m there.
I’m standing on my street, looking at myself. Oh my God.
She’s me. She’s wearing the same jeans, the same shirt, the same everything. Even the same makeup. But her hair only just reaches into a ponytail and is dyed red.
“Can you hear me?” I say to her. To myself.
“Oh my God. I can hear you,” she replies.
CHAPTER SIX
Day 32: after school
Lucy and I walk to work together on Tuesday. She looks like she’s we
aring a rainbow sheep—her second-hand wool coat is a multitude of colours. We chat about the show. I pull my coat around me to keep out the cool drizzle. I’m wearing one earbud and listening to “Werewolves of London” while we walk, drifting into my own thoughts in that comfortable way that happens between good friends.
Lucy twinkles at me. “So, you and Reid?”
“What?” Then I laugh. “Me and Reid? Come on, Lucy. That’s ridiculous.”
“You told me he asked you on a date at practice that one time.”
I push open the door to D’Lish. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure that was as friends.”
She gives me a funny smile. “If you say so.”
We’re enveloped in warmth and noise and the smell of coffee. “I say so.” I take off my coat and pass a cluster of people having a lively meeting.
As we enter the kitchen, she puts on her black apron. I hang my coat up, grab my apron and knot my hair into a braid.
Our manager glares at us. “Hurry up. I need someone on the counter.”
When her back is turned, I pull a face.
Lucy whispers, “You and Reid are totally making out.”
“I’m going to help at the front,” I say, shimmying past her. “You get the clear-up duties.”
She sticks her tongue out at me.
Nifty comes to meet us when we finish work. It’s almost midnight. He presses his face against the window like a puppy. When we open the door, he almost falls inside the café.
“Give me warmth,” he moans. He’s wearing super-skinny pants and a ripped tee with only a linen jacket. He vapes and dances foot to foot.
“Put some clothes on,” I say. “And get out of here with that. No smoking.” I close the door and lock it. “Seriously, Nifty, you need to wear more.”
Lucy, who is snuggled into her sheep coat, bleats, “Like me-e-e-e-e.”
“Indeed. Look at this fine example of warmth and fashion.” I gesture at her.
Nifty laughs.
“This, you poor fools, isn’t about fashion. It’s about respect for the planet. I’m reusing. Recycling,” Lucy says.