by Brian Rowe
She stared at me for ten seconds or longer. I waited for her to come in. But she just stood there.
What’s she waiting for? Won’t she say goodbye to me?
She shook her head and started walking in the other direction.
“Liesel… wait…”
But she was gone. For good.
I didn’t think I was going to survive the night. I could feel my body giving up. My heartbeat, faint but still with fleeting life, was my only sign of life.
The tiredness flowed through me like God above was saying, It’s time. I tried to fight it at first. But my eyelids started closing. And I couldn’t stop them.
I fell asleep sometime in the next five minutes.
And I didn’t know if I was going to wake up.
---
When my eyes opened again, it was dark and pouring rain outside. I didn’t know what time it was. I didn’t know if I was still alive.
I turned my head to the right to see that I was still in the hospital bed, still in the same clothes from the day before.
I’m still here.
Then I noticed what had woken me up. There was a gust of wind blowing at my face. I didn’t know if the air conditioner had become momentarily erratic or if a window had been left open, but this air was freezing.
I started breathing through my nose and kept from closing my eyes. I didn’t want to close them. I wanted to keep them open. I wanted to stay awake as long as possible.
But it was difficult to fight the sleepiness. I didn’t think I was going to be able to stay awake.
The wind started blowing harder and louder, like Reno’s first ever hurricane was headed my way.
What’s going on?
And then the hurricane leveled out, only to be replaced with an earthquake. My bed, which for the last week hadn’t budged an inch, started shaking.
The door blew open, and a bright, shining light engulfed the room. I felt like I had come face to face with the sun itself.
Is this the end?
Liesel appeared, dressed all in white, her luxurious red hair falling below her shoulders. She looked otherworldly, like an angel sent from Heaven above.
The bed moved more and more, faster and faster. Everything in the room—books, bags, framed photos—was bouncing off the table near my bed. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the floor beneath me caved through.
Liesel didn’t walk toward me—she glided toward me. One second she was near the door, and the next she was standing next to me.
“Liesel…”
“Shh…” was all she said as she put a finger over my lips. “Don’t make a sound.”
I looked into her eyes and tried not to scream. Her eyes weren’t human; they were two small swirls of cherry-red blackness.
She put her right hand on my chest and lifted her left hand up in the air. The bed shook so much I had to grip the sides to keep from falling off.
And then, the unthinkable happened.
Everything, including my bed, started levitating off the ground.
“Liesel,” I said, my eyes welling up with tears, “what are you doing?”
She didn’t respond. She kept staring up at the ceiling.
I moved my eyes up. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. A ball of white flame appeared above Liesel’s left hand.
“Oh my God.” I was in the presence of more than a girl with special powers. This was an act of something extraordinary.
The flame leapt from her hand and jumped toward my face. I looked away for a moment, scared and unsure of what was to come next.
I looked back up. The flame hovered above my head.
“Open your mouth, Cameron.”
She still wasn’t looking at me. I did what she said. I opened my mouth as wide as I could.
And the flame went inside, down my throat, into my aching body. I could feel it bouncing against my heart, my liver, my intestines. It hurt far worse than I was expecting. It felt like shrapnel was bouncing against every organ in my body.
At this point I didn’t know if Liesel was helping me live or helping me die.
“Liesel… please…”
I peered up to see the witch of a woman before me finally look into my eyes. Two tears fell down her cheeks simultaneously as she put her left hand on top of her right. She pressed against my chest as the white flame continued to run through my body.
And then, just when it looked like Liesel was about to say something, one of the framed photos from the corner started levitating toward me. I couldn’t make out what it was until it rose above me, barely a foot away.
It was my senior yearbook photo, me as a normal, healthy seventeen-year-old.
Liesel stared at me. I didn’t know what was happening.
Am I going to die?
“Cameron Martin…” she said, wind swirling around us, the bed shaking uncontrollably. Her voice sounded deeper, almost demonic. “Listen to me…”
She cleared her throat and started to sing.
“Happy birthday to you…”
I started breathing more heavily as I felt my bed continuing to levitate. Before I knew it, I was high up in the air, my head just inches away from Liesel’s.
“…happy birthday to you…”
Everything in the room kept rising toward the ceiling. It felt as if we were weightless, in a spaceship, speeding toward the center of the sun.
“…happy birthday dear Cameron…”
The bed kept rising. The ceiling was now just inches away from my face.
This is it. This is the end.
“…happy birthday to you.”
There was no loud punctuation to the end of the song or snapping of the fingers.
Instead, the bright, white light erupted from my mouth and completely engulfed the room. The sensation only lasted a few seconds, but it felt like a magical eternity.
Wow. Oh, wow.
Everything dropped to the floor. The noise was deafening, particularly my bed crashing against the ground, my body bouncing off two large pillows.
I didn’t feel pain. I didn’t feel anything. My whole body felt numb.
Liesel put her heads against my chest and started crying. “Don’t die, Cameron… please, don’t die…”
“Liesel…”
“Don’t leave me… Cameron…”
“Liesel… I don’t feel a thing…”
I looked at my hands. The skin was still rough and paper thin. I wasn’t any better. I was still old, still old and dying.
“Cameron… please…”
Liesel lay down beside me. She kissed me on my right cheek and placed her hands over my heart.
She continued to cry as she leaned over me, her tears falling down against my forehead and cheeks.
“I love you, Cameron Martin… I’m just going to keep saying it… I love you… I love you… I love you…”
One of her tears fell against my tongue.
“I love you, too,” I said.
I rested my head back against my pillows. My eyelids started closing. All I could see was that glorious bright light.
Goodbye… Goodbye…
Good—
30. Seventeen
“Cameron. Get up.”
I opened my eyes and looked up at the luminous young beauty towering over me. She was staring at me with great focus. She had a big smile on her face, one that I would remember for the rest of my life.
“Am I in Heaven?” I asked.
She shook her head and enunciated very carefully: “Nope. Not yet, anyway.”
She lifted my right hand, and I caught sight of it in the corner of my eye.
Oh my God.
The fingertips on my left hand quivered as they started caressing the skin of my right hand. The cracked, chapped skin was gone. My hand felt velvety smooth, and there was no pain as I flexed my wrists.
“Oh my God!”
I was so surprised by my silky, youthful hands that I accidentally fell off the bed, landing with a loud thud in front of L
iesel’s feet.
“Oww,” I said, feeling a sharp pain in my ribcage.
“Oh no! Cameron! Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I’m—”
I couldn’t finish the sentence. I’m fine. I’m fine. I kept repeating the phrase over and over in my head.
I stood up with little effort. I could’ve jumped from the ground up to my feet in one swoop if I had wanted to, like an Olympic gymnast starting a morning workout.
I looked down at my legs. Then I darted my eyes toward Liesel.
“Liesel?”
“Yes?” The enchanting smile on her face made me think she was going to break into song.
“There’s something very important we need to do right now.”
“Yeah?” she asked, even though she knew. “What’s that?”
I placed my hands on her shoulders and leaned into her. “We need to find a mirror.”
---
We must’ve sped through a dozen hallways, pushing past nurses and other patients, before I found the door to a girl’s bathroom.
“You can’t go in there!” Liesel shouted, giggling.
“Why?”
“It’s the ladies’ room!”
“I don’t care!”
I grabbed Liesel’s hands and dragged her inside.
“Hello!” I shouted. “Anybody in here?” There was no one.
I stepped up to a giant, wobbly mirror and rested my hands against the sides of it.
I kept my eyes closed for a moment. I was scared to open them. I could’ve stood there for another ten minutes, my eyes shut tight, a drumroll in the background becoming louder by the second.
“Cameron,” Liesel said. “Open your eyes.”
I opened them. I wanted to start screaming. I wanted to start jumping around the room. I wanted to hug and kiss and go to second base with the girl standing next to me. But all I could do in this moment was stare at my face in the mirror and watch as my eyes welled up with the biggest teardrops I had ever seen.
I didn’t look like my old self. I looked better than my old self. I was seventeen again, but with a radiance to my face I had never seen before. My hair was short and brown again, without a trace of that awful gray. The hair from my ears was gone, as were the wrinkles and lines all around my face. And those boyish dimples were back.
As the tears fell against my cheeks, I couldn’t help but smile so big the muscles around my jaw started aching. “It happened,” I said, leaning against the sink. “I can’t believe it happened. I’m alive.”
I let go of the mirror and turned around to hug Liesel. I expected a look of overwhelming joy on her face. Instead I was met with one of panic.
“Oh my God! Cameron!”
“What—” Before I knew what was happening, Liesel grabbed my left arm and pulled me against the bathroom door.
I turned around just in time to see the mirror fall awkwardly against the sink and shatter against the white hardwood floor. Pieces of glass shot in every direction, one piece landing right in front of my feet.
“Whoa,” we both said in unison.
“Uhh, Cameron?” Liesel asked, keeping a hold of my left arm like she was glued to it.
“Yeah?”
“I think that’s seven years bad luck.”
I turned back to the girl, the witch, the magician, the sorcerer. My girlfriend. And I laughed.
“Seven years? I’ll take it.”
After we cleaned up the glassy mess, we exited the bathroom and started running through the maze of hallways again, hand in hand, on our way back to my hospital bedroom.
We stopped right in front of it. I was out of breath. But I didn’t care. Just breathing made me the happiest man alive.
“Liesel?” I asked, running my hand through her hair.
“Yes?”
“How can I…”
She waited. “What?”
I didn’t even know where to begin. “How can I ever thank you?”
Liesel smiled. “I got you into this mess. All I did last night was get you out of it.”
“That’s not all you did last night,” I said, wrapping my arms around her waist. “You have a lot of explaining to do.”
She didn’t pull away from me. “I know. I have a lot of explaining to do to myself.”
I pulled her close and kissed her on both cheeks. “I have an idea. For the meantime, let’s just forget what brought us here, what’s happened these last few months. Let’s just focus on now, right now. Let’s just focus on… well… this…”
I pulled her chin toward mine. I could already feel her warm breath on my mouth, her lips a fly’s length away.
“Cameron?”
The scream scared me enough to jolt my body back against the wall, but the fear turned to joy as I turned around to see my mom walking toward me at the other end of the hallway.
“Cameron? Is it really you?”
“Mom!” I shouted.
My mom dropped all her stuff on the ground and started running toward me like a high school sprinter. My dad and Kimber noticed me seconds later and started charging toward me as well. I was a little frightened about how much hugging and kissing was about to come my way, but I erased the question from my mind when I realized that there was nothing in the world I wanted more.
My mom and dad ran up to me as fast as they could.
But the first person to hug me was Kimber.
“Welcome back,” she said.
31. Eighteen
It was so uncomfortable, standing there in the stuffy back room. My stomach growled, and I realized it had been nearly two hours since I had eaten something. She held my hand tight, and I tried to keep my emotions under control.
It’s time.
I took a deep breath and sensed a great hope in the giant auditorium. There was finally, for the first time in months, a promise of great things to come.
“Stand up straight,” Liesel said. “Don’t let your parents see you slouching.”
She stood right behind me, and I felt her kissing the back of my head.
“I’ll try my best,” I said, peering into the audience, trying to find my family.
I had been standing for only a minute or so, but I had been sitting inside Krueger Center, a huge auditorium on Reno’s college campus that plays host to concerts and sporting events, for most of the evening. We had to sit in our cap and gown while Principal Reeves, the valedictorian Michelle Calderone, and endless other over-achievers shared some pedestrian words about the graduating class. We finally lined up alphabetically by last name to receive our diplomas, and two individuals—Mr. Meschery and Mrs. Whiteley, both teachers at Caughlin Ranch High—began calling out names.
After a few minutes: “Wesley. Craven.”
I perked up and started cheering as I watched Wesley walk across the stage and accept his diploma, a look of relief on his face. His long, curly hair was dropping all the way past his shoulders.
“That little movie he made for you was pretty special,” Liesel said.
“It was,” I added. “Just when you think a person’s betrayed you, he can turn around and surprise you when you least expect it.”
She wrapped her arms around my mid-section.
I still can’t believe her last name is Maupin.
I leaned back against her and kissed her on her forehead as I heard the next name called.
“Ryan. Henderson.”
I was still in shock that after weeks of hateful pestering, Ryan had grown half a heart and reached out to me at that final championship game. I would never forget the surprising graciousness he showed me that night, and I managed a smile as I watched him accept his diploma.
I turned to the crowd to see two important figures in my life. Funny enough, they were sitting together. Mrs. Gordon caught me staring at her, and she waved back at me from afar. I wanted to turn away as if I hadn’t been looking at her, but I decided to wave back, anyway. She turned to her left and smiled at Coach Welch, of all people, with loving, puppy-dog e
yes. I could’ve sworn I saw their hands touch, but I darted my eyes away before any unwelcome, dirty thoughts entered my head.
“Charisma. Kellog.”
I hadn’t really thought about Charisma lately. After reacting so cruelly over my condition, ditching me instantly for Ryan, I didn’t want anything more to do with her.
Besides. I have a new girl in my life.
I started making my way up the steps to the main platform, and I realized I was just seconds away from the big moment. I looked back to see Liesel beaming, proud of me, completely in love with me. It still hurt my head to think that the best and worst events of the last three months were both manifested by her.
Let’s keep the girl happy, Cameron.
“Next to the stage, ” the male announcer shouted, seemingly enjoying a long, drawn-out pause, “Cameron Martin!”
I made my way up the last few steps and walked out onto the stage to see an audience of hundreds all giving me a standing ovation. The applause was so thunderous I thought the building would start crashing down on top of us.
My family stood in the center of the bleachers. I could see my little sister jumping up and down, my dad screaming at the top of his lungs, my mom waving to me with frantic hand gestures. These people were my everything.
They’re my family.
Mr. Meschery handed me my diploma, and I took my photo with Principal Reeves. He shook my hand, just like he did with every other student. But then he put his arms out and gave me a giant hug. Even more applause erupted behind me.
“Liesel. Maupin.”
I made my way to the bottom of the stairs to see my girlfriend accept her diploma. Many knew by now that I had started seeing her, but nobody knew that she was the reason I grew old, and that she was the person who ultimately saved my life. I didn’t want anyone else to know. Everything about her had to remain a secret.
No one can know her powers.
I waited for Liesel to come down the stairs. I took her hand, and we started walking to our original seats.
On my way back I spotted Aaron smiling at me, and I happily sported him a nod and a grin. A few seats behind him sat three other players from the basketball team. I gave them all high-fives.