Unraveling

But there’s no pain. In fact, when I die—and I know I’m dying, I’m as certain as I’ve ever been about anything in my life—there’s an absence of pain, a lightness almost, as if all my worries about Jared getting enough to eat, making his water polo practices, getting good grades, adjusting to high school, about my dad working himself into the ground, getting enough sleep, spending enough time with Jared, about my mom taking her medicine on time, getting out of bed before three, not noticing I dumped the last of her gin down the drain—it all just escapes.

  And I’m dead.

  The clichéd whole-life-flashing-before-my-eyes moment doesn’t come either. Instead I see just one day. The most perfect day of my existence. Maybe the sight of it really is just my optic nerves firing as my body shuts down. But the feeling—that’s more than just my body’s physiological reaction. Because I can feel everything I felt that day.

  And there’s nothing clichéd about it at all.

  I see the heavy heat of the midday summer sun beat down on my mother, surrounding her like some sort of halo, her belly swollen and pregnant with Jared. Her dark olive skin gleams in the reflection of the sunlight off the sand, and a thick mess of black hair is piled in a loose bun on top of her head. She claps her hands and throws her head back, letting out wild, joyful laughter from her mouth.

  I hadn’t remembered she could look so beautiful—so alive.

  Our discarded attempt at re-creating Cinderella’s castle with sand slumps next to her, surrounded by bright pink buckets and shovels.

  Love blossoms in my chest—not just my love for her, but also her love for me—and the warm peace of the feeling wraps around me like a thick blanket.

  Then I see myself, a fearless three-year-old with a body board and fins, attacking the waves as if conquering them will allow me to make my mark on the world. I’m laughing and swimming. The spray of the saltwater stings my face, the roaring thunder of the swells mixing with my mother’s laughter filling my ears. The smell of the ocean and Coppertone SPF 45 in my nose.

  Excitement. Happiness. Peace. Perfection.

  23:23:56:49

  A shock of electricity rips into my chest and shoots through the rest of my body.

  My perfect day at the beach fades to black. And with the blackness comes the pain, roaring to life in my bones, my muscles, every fiber of my being.

  The electrical wave flies through me again, and this time my heartbeat answers. It pounds as if the strength of it can counteract the aching hollow emptiness it feels, as I’m ripped away from my memory.

  “Janelle,” someone whispers. “Janelle, stay with me.”

  Something about the voice is familiar—not necessarily the speaker, but the way it whispers my name. It reminds me of my dad and the way he used to say my name when I was little and he came home and kissed my forehead in the middle of the night. Or the way Jared used to say my name when Mom was on a rampage and he wanted me to read him Harry Potter to drown everything out.

  And something deep inside me aches to hear this voice say my name that way again.

  The blackness bleeds to white, so bright it glows. Heat floods my body, and I’m on fire. It feels like the light is burning me from the inside out.

  23:23:56:42

  Suddenly I’m somewhere else.

  My head is throbbing, like someone just took a sledgehammer to it. There’s water—freezing-cold water—all around me, and my arms and legs feel sluggish and hard to move. Panic threatens to overtake me as I sink deeper. I open my eyes, but the salt stings them and I can’t see. Even if I could swim, I don’t know which way is up. My insides burn because I want to breathe. I open my mouth because I have to—even though I know I’ll drown.

  It’s drown or let my lungs burst.

  Only I know this isn’t me, it’s not my memory—it’s someone else’s. I’m just somehow along for the ride. I know because ever since I was a little kid, I could practically swim better than I could walk.

  An arm wraps around me and pulls me to the surface and I see…

  Myself.

  I’m ten, wearing a pink flowered bathing suit because even though I hated pink that summer, my dad bought it for me, and he did the best he could. My wet hair, so dark it almost looks black, is swept off my face, and my chocolate-colored eyes are almost too big for my face. The sun is behind me, backlighting me—and I look like an angel.

  At least, that’s what this memory feels—that I’m an angel. Which is weird, because I can’t think of a single person who would think of me that way. Not even Jared, and he loves me.

  The white light rips through my body again.

  And again, I see myself—at school this time, in fifth grade, playing four-square on the playground with Kate and Alex and another boy, whose name I can’t remember now. I’m laughing, the waves of my hair bouncing up and down. And I feel … longing, like this memory wants nothing more than to join in. But for some reason it can’t.

  And again—in sixth grade, Alex and me walking my brother to school. I reach out and ruffle Jared’s hair. He swats at my hand, and I laugh.

  And again. Again. Again. And again.

  The scenes of my life play out in rapid succession, as if I’m an observer to my own life.

  Celebrating good grades. Perfect test scores. Reading books during recess. Swim meets and ocean swims. The breakup of my friendship with Kate. Debate competitions with Alex. Tutoring Jared and Chris in the library after school. Lifeguarding, walking on the beach with Nick.

  And the emotion I feel is undoubtedly love—heart aching, chest filling, so powerful it hurts, like these are memories of someone watching me, someone whose happiest moments are when he sees me smile, and someone who aches and feels powerless and heartbroken when he knows I’m sad. Someone who loves me.

  23:23:56:40

  Blackness again.

  “Stay with me,” the voice says. “Janelle, stay with me.”

  My eyes flutter open, and through blurred vision, I see a figure leaning over me. The sun is above, silhouetting him so I can’t make out any features. My whole body throbs with the rhythm of my pulse—each beat emphasizing the excruciating, ripping pain as it ebbs and flows through my body. My bones feel broken, I can barely breathe, and my heart pounds at express-train speed.

  I try to move, try to see the guy above me, but I can’t. Because I can’t control my arms. Or my legs. In fact, I can’t even feel my legs. For all I know, they’re just gone.

  “Hold on, Janelle. Hold on,” he whispers. Then, “I’m sorry. This will hurt.”

  He moves his hand, which I just now realize had been resting palm down on my heart. It moves up to my shoulder, the warmth of his bare hand against my bare skin oddly cooling, and as his hand passes over my collarbone, I feel bones move and snap, not like they’re breaking, but like they’re melding back together.

  “Ben!” someone shouts.

  His hand flows over my arm, then reaches underneath to my back, settling on my spine. As he touches me, everything in my whole being feels like it’s not just on fire, but like I’m seconds from spontaneous combustion.

  A flash of white again, brighter than looking at the sun—I can’t see anything—then this time I see myself as I must have looked only minutes ago. Wearing my red bathing suit and matching shorts. A dusting of sand sprinkled in patches on my olive skin. Running sneakers, no socks, my brown hair pulled into a messy ponytail. My cell phone to my ear, I pause, close my eyes, and pinch the bridge of my nose like I always do when I’m debating something. And then the truck is there as if it came from nowhere, and it’s hurtling toward me at breakneck speed.

  And then I can’t breathe.

  “Ben! We gotta go!”

  Cool lips lightly touch my forehead, and the pain subsides, fading to a dull ache all over my body. My vision returns, and a pair of dark brown eyes—so dark they’re almost black—hover above me. He smells like a mix of mint, sweat, and gasoline. “You’re going to be all right,” he says, the relief of the statement coming out in
a sort of sigh as he leans back.

  I try to focus, because I know I recognize him from somewhere.

  “You’re going to be all right,” he says again, only it’s not like he’s trying to convince me I’m okay—it’s more like he’s saying it to himself … out of relief. His smile widens as his hand reaches out and brushes a strand of hair from my face.

  Then, of all the people in the world, Elijah Palma, notorious bad boy and stoner extraordinaire, is suddenly in my face, grabbing the arm of the guy in front of me.

  That’s when recognition sets in. Those huge brown eyes, the wavy dark hair, the tortured half smile belong to another Eastview stoner. Ben Michaels. We’ve gone to school together since fifth grade. I’ve never spoken to him. Not even once.

  “Let’s go!” a third voice shouts, and this one I know. Reid Suitor, who’s been in my homeroom and a few of my classes since middle school. Kate had a crush on him in eighth grade, but he wasn’t interested.

  Elijah pulls Ben away from me, and as the two of them disappear from my line of sight, I struggle to sit up. My chest hurts with each breath I take, and my whole body feels bruised and broken. I can’t help but wonder if I just imagined everything—if the truck swerved to avoid me, if Ben pulled me out of the way, or if there was even a truck at all.

  But when I sit up, I see the pickup, crashed into an embankment, the front end smashed in. And in my right hand, I’m still holding my cell phone, only it’s been crushed to pieces.

  As if it had been run over. By a truck.

  I look up to the road toward Del Mar, and I see Reid, Elijah, and Ben riding bicycles up the hill. For some reason I want Ben to look back, but he doesn’t.

  Then suddenly people are everywhere. Surrounding me and saying my name. I recognize Elise and a parent of one of the baseball kids. And Kevin and Nick.

  I wonder how long I was dead. Because I know with absolute certainty that I was. Dead.

  And I also know with absolute certainty that somehow—even though it defies any logical explanation—Ben Michaels brought me back.

  23:23:22:29

  Someone called the paramedics, probably Steve. Even though I insisted I was fine, they loaded me up in the ambulance and sent me to Scripps Green, where they ushered me straight into an ER exam room.

  Nick is with me, sitting next to me, holding my hand and talking about some time when he was a little kid and he fell off his bike. His dad was trying to teach him to ride, but since his dad isn’t patient or good at teaching anything, Nick fell.

  I listen to him, to his story, and I try to focus on all the details—like the fact that it was a black-and-red Transformers bike his mom had bought custom-made down in Pacific Beach, and that his dad was really angry at him for falling and wanted him to get right back onto the bike. I know he’s just trying to help, so I swallow down the temptation to snort and say, You fell off your bike? I just got hit by a truck!

  It’s weird, though. As he talks, I feel off—like I’m spacing out. I can’t help but think of Ben Michaels hovering over me, his hands on my skin, the way he said my name. The unflinching certainty that I was dead and now I’m not—and it’s because of Ben. Somehow, he brought me back to life.

  Someone squeezes my hand, so I open my eyes—when did I close them?—and Nick smiles at me. He really is beautiful, but I honestly can’t remember how Nick even got here. Did he come in the ambulance with me? Or did he follow in his car?

  “Janelle?” Nick asks. “Janelle, are you okay?”

  He stands up and grips my hand too hard, and a wave of nausea rolls through me. He says something else, but I don’t hear him.

  A nurse leans over me and shines a flashlight in my eyes. She turns and says something to someone close to her—not Nick. I’m not sure where he went. The nausea turns to cramps, and I just want to curl my knees into my chest and lie alone in the dark. But when I try to do that, someone grips my legs.

  People yell at each other, and the whole room sounds fuzzy until I hear Alex. I can’t concentrate on who he’s talking to or what he’s saying, but I can tell by the cadence of his voice that it’s him. I want to ask when he got here and if my brother is okay. But my mouth doesn’t work, and his voice sounds farther and farther away.

  My muscles uncoil and relax again, but I’m struggling to catch my breath, almost wheezing.

  Something pinches my arm, and a steady warmth begins to spread through my body. Heaviness sets in. Hands let go of me, and I can’t hold myself up anymore. I slump down but fight to keep my eyes open. I wonder where Alex went.

  Only I must say that out loud, because then he’s standing over me. “Just relax. You had a seizure, but you’re fine.”

  “Alex.” I try to grab his arm, but my hand just flops around.

  Because he speaks my language, he says, “Jared’s fine. I took him to polo and called your dad.”

  And then he leans down so I can whisper in his ear. “At Torrey, the Jeep…”

  “What happened to your car?” Nick asks, his face hovering above me.

  Thankfully Alex hushes him and pushes him away as I close my eyes. “I’ll take care of it, don’t worry.”

  There was something I wanted to tell him. Something important.

  “Wait,” I whisper before he goes away. “Alex… I died.”

  “Shh,” he whispers back, and I picture him shaking his head. “You’re going to be fine, Janelle. You’re going to be fine.”

  The worst thing about coming back to life isn’t, believe it or not, how physically painful it is. Don’t get me wrong—even though all my bones seem to be working just fine, they feel like they were broken into tiny pieces. My body is stiff, it aches with a steady, throbbing consistency, and I’m having a hard time making it obey me the way it should.

  But worse is the hollowness.

  It makes sense, really. I just looked into the great expanse of nothingness, had a moment—no matter how quickly it passed—to think about what my seventeen years add up to, and the dominant emotion staring back at me now is regret.

  It’s not that I haven’t accomplished things. It’s not that the people I leave behind won’t remember me. It’s not even that I’m young and there was so much more I wanted to experience—so much more I wanted to do.

  It’s the realization that I was practically dead already.

  It’s that for the past I don’t know how many years, I’ve moved through life stuffed with straw, hollow and unfeeling. Day after day passed, and I went through the motions and focused on the mundane because the significant was too hard. I had conversations about schoolwork, weather, laundry, groceries, even sports, because things like quitting swimming, losing my best friend, getting drugged at a party, watching my mother’s mood swings slowly kill her, watching my father give up on her—on us—all threatened to unleash a floodgate.

  I go out with a guy who, when he’s being serious, is interesting and funny and sort of sweet. We get along well enough, too, but if I’m really honest with myself, I don’t see a future with him. I can’t even see us together when school starts, let alone see myself trying to date him long-distance or go visit him when he’s in college. And I know we just started dating, but isn’t that what I should be imagining if I was really into him—isn’t that part of the reason why people start dating? Yet I choose to date him rather than hold out for someone I could love. Why? Because his ex-girlfriend’s a bitch? Because he’s pretty? Because it feels good to be liked? Because I don’t want to date someone I really care about since it will hurt more when it ends? Since I’d have to try?

  How can I ever dare to meet my own eyes again? I can’t. Not even in dreams.

  That night, in a drug-induced sedation, I dream my brother is crying, and instead of my dad teasing Jared to “man up” like he always does, I hear his voice, even and soothing. I can’t quite catch what he’s saying at first. Then Jared sniffs, and my father says, Your sister’s so tough, it’s frightening. That girl will outlive us all.

  I d
ream about Ben Michaels hovering over me, somehow bringing me back from the dead.

  And I dream about a doctor and two nurses looking at my X-rays. They stand right near my bed, the X-rays up in the light box. One of the nurses leaves as the doctor points to something on the image.

  The doctor and remaining nurse whisper to each other.

  The nurse comes back, and she’s brought another doctor with her. The four of them gesture to the X-ray, their voices floating through the room.

  It looks like her backbone and spinal cord were completely severed and fused back together.

  An old injury, maybe?

  Maybe she had surgery?

  Nothing in her medical history.

  They sigh.

  It doesn’t … it doesn’t look like an old injury … and even if it was… I’m not sure how anyone would be able to walk after an injury like that.

  She’s lucky she isn’t paralyzed.

  Lucky? It’s a miracle she’s even alive.

  21:22:40:34

  The day I’m released from the hospital my dad takes me home.

  “She should rest,” Dr. Abrams tells him. “Stay off her feet, no physical exertion—”

  “You said she hasn’t had any more seizures after the first one,” my dad says.

  Dr. Abrams nods and explains why it’s important to keep an eye on me anyway.

  To anyone else, it would look like my dad is listening respectfully and absorbing the details. I know better. He tugs on his left ear, which means he’s annoyed and running low on patience. He asks specific questions that suggest more medical knowledge than he has, which means he’s shown my test results and chart to someone at the Bureau, probably a medical examiner.

  I don’t exactly care, though, that my dad has been giving everyone in the hospital a hard time. I’ve got more important things to focus on. Like what the hell Ben Michaels did to me. It’s just about all I’ve been able to think about since I woke up. I tried to have the conversation several times—where I said, “Alex, I died,” and he patted me like a two-year-old and basically said, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”