“Right,” I say, feeling rather flushed in my cheeks and hoping she doesn’t notice. “So ‘Helena’ transforms into ‘Nefeta.’“
Helena flips through my diary and says, “Okay, I see “Nefeta” in here a bunch of times. Is my name always Nefeta?”
I shake my head. “No, it depends on where the name falls, whether it’s plus 5 or minus 5. Remember the algorithm resets every sentence, so in the middle of a sentence it might be ‘Bereha.’“
She flips through the diary some more and nods. “Okay, I see those here. And so Billy would be either…” She leans close again, her finger running along the paper. I try to soak as much of her in as I can. I feel excited by her presence and sick at the same time. I feel happy to have her near and am scared of what the future might bring. “‘Hifrs’ or… Wait, when you do minus five from ‘B’ what happens?”
I gently take her finger in my hand, which was pointing to the ‘B,’ and guide it to the ‘Z’ and then backwards from there. Her hand is warm and I feel even flusher than I have. “You just wrap around, so ‘B’, goes to ‘Z,’ ‘Y,’ ‘X,’ ‘W,’ and ends up ‘V.’“
She nods. If this nearness thing is affecting her, I can’t tell. Her brain seems fully engaged. “So that would be ‘Virf…’“ The ‘Y’ would wrap the other way?” she asks.
I nod.
“So it’s ‘Virff’… Oh, wow, two fs. ‘Billy turns into ‘Hifrs’ or ‘Virff.’“
“You go it.”
She leans fully back in the chair staring at the diary, her brow furrowed. “But… This ain’t easy to do. I mean… every word.”
“It takes some time,” I say. “I was slow at first, but I don’t have to think about it much now.”
She snorts. “Yeah, but you’re smart. I’m…”
“Smart, Helena, you’re smart.”
She shrugs, still looking at my diary. “I get Cs in school. I don’t read constantly like you.”
“That’s knowledge not intelligence,” I say. “You get Cs in school because you are busy keeping your household afloat. You could get As if you had the time.”
She looks at me, all shy like. It’s not an expression I’m used to seeing on her face. “You’re not bullshitting me, are you?”
I shake my head. “God, no. I don’t know many kids that could pull off what you do at your age. You work. You take care of your father. You help skinny kids try to solve murders.” She smiles at that. “You picked up my crazy diary encryption in five minutes. Believe me, I know you’re smart.”
“I don’t know…” she mumbles, shaking her head, still looking down at the diary.
“I can prove it,” I say, getting out of bed and moving towards my bookshelf. A wave of dizziness passes over me and Helena is there beside me holding my arm. “Just got up too fast,” I say, but she keeps a hold of me. I pull out my first diary, the one that I started this all with and hand it to her.
She looks confused. “What…”
“Read it. This starts the night before we met. I gave you a five-minute lesson, I bet after a day or so you won’t need to use that list of consonants, you’ll just be able to read it.”
She nods solemnly at me and holds my arm while I make my way back to bed.
“You’re smart, Helena. I know it, it’s time that you did too.”
She looks like she’s about to cry and I feel bad about it, my mind racing trying to figure out if I did something wrong. She doesn’t sit back down, but stands there holding my diary to her chest like it’s something precious.
“I better get to work,” she says, turning for the door.
I want to say something, find out if she’s okay, if I did something wrong. But before I can get a word out, she’s leaning down next to my bed and kisses me on the cheek through her mask. “Thank you, Wade.”
And then she is gone. It’s a long time before I can get to sleep.
38
Tuesday, July 26, 1977
This is not good. I was awake most of the night coughing, my mother attending to me each time. I feel bad about it. She’s not getting any rest either.
My dad comes in before he leaves for school, he’s got the “Aaron’s sick” pinched look on his face, a mask covering his nose and mouth. There’s something else in his eyes too, and I feel a spike of fear. I’m sure Mom has told him about our continued investigations of Lionel’s murder.
“Hey, pal,” he says, sitting on my bed. He’s got tan slacks and a long-sleeve dress shirt on.
“Hey, Dad.”
He purses his lips as he looks at me. I saw myself in the mirror a little bit ago. I look like hell.
“Doctor Rogers will be coming over shortly.”
I swallow hard, getting the gunk out of the back of my throat. I’m confused, why would Mom’s boyfriend be coming over?
“We think it’s better not to have you around other sick people if we can avoid it,” he says.
My mind is sluggish. Doctor Rogers is coming over to examine me. He’s the head of the ER as well as being my mom’s boyfriend.
“Are you okay with that?”
A coughing fit delays my reply. “Does it have to be him?”
“I know it’s confusing,” Dad says. “But he’s good at what he does, and because of his relationship with your mother, he’s willing to bend the rules a bit and do this.”
It makes sense. “I don’t have to like him, do I?”
My dad smiles broadly, even through the mask I can tell. “No, son. You certainly don’t have to.”
He leans down and kisses me on the forehead before standing up and saying, “I’ll be home just as soon as class is over.”
My father isn’t much of a kisser, and the mask was in the way. It just makes it clear that things aren’t good.
Doctor Rogers has warm hands and cool blue eyes. I’ve been examined a thousand times by doctors, he is efficient and direct. I thought I would feel awkward, but I’m really too sick to care that much. I am rapidly getting worse.
He feels the lymph nodes at my neck. He has me take my shirt off and listens to my heart from the front and then my lungs from the back. That’s when I notice his warms hands. It’s a small thing, but I really appreciate it. Cold hands on your sick body is no fun at all.
My mom stands in the doorway watching, fidgeting with a notebook gripped in her hand. It’s the “Aaron Notebook,” the one she keeps with my vitals, notes on how I feel, when I throw up, stuff like that. I think of it as the “puke journal.”
When Doctor Rogers pulls a mercury thermometer out of his bag and swabs it with an alcohol pad, my mom rushes up and shows him the notebook. I watch closely to see if there is anything out of the ordinary in their interaction, but it’s all business. He sticks the thermometer in my mouth and looks at the notebook, his index finger running down a line of figures.
He’s handsome, more so than my father, I think. You would probably say my father is “bookish.” Doctor Rogers is, on the other hand, athletic. He’s over forty with grey decorating the temples of his short black hair. His face is square and his body is obviously strong.
I manage to not cough while the thermometer is in my mouth, but after it’s out, I have a whopper, getting gobs of green out onto a tissue. There’s a box of tissues on my bed and a trashcan right next to it. My mom must empty the thing ten times a day.
When I can look around again, they’ve left the room. I hear them talking out in the hallway.
“I’d like to hear,” I croak, the mucus in my throat making it hard to talk. They seem to ignore me. “Hello!” I say as loud as I can, which is just a louder croak. I’ve never been comfortable with these conversations happening without me. But I’ve never said anything about it before. It feels good and it feels scary at the same time.
The talking stops and it’s quiet for a little bit. My mother then comes in, her arms wrapped around her chest, followed by Doctor Rogers. He glances at her and now I see it, the relationship there. It’s not the look a doctor would give t
he mother of any old patient. It’s a look filled with concern and a bit of trepidation.
“I was just telling your mother,” he says, “that you need hospitalization and IV antibiotics.”
I groan. I hate hospitals. God how I hate them. No privacy. No rest. Nothing to do but lie there and be sick.
Doctor Rogers comes and sits on the edge of my bed. He’s back to being a doctor, and I have to admit he has a good bedside manner. “Your body can’t fight this alone, Aaron.”
I nod and look at my mom who is studying her feet. I’m not all there, but I put it together, her look and his trepidation. “So what’s the argument about?” I ask.
My mother looks up, surprised, and then takes a deep breath and says, “I want to take you to the children’s hospital in Vegas. Doctor Rogers feels you need intervention now.”
I look at my mother and ask, “Do I get a say?”
She blinks, her eyebrows furrowing, her bare feet scraping at my blue shag carpet. “I… well—”
“I want to stay in Cedar,” I say, not waiting for her answer.
“Why?” she asks, her blue eyes finding mine. She looks so scared, it makes my stomach flutter.
“Because here I—” a coughing fit takes over and Doctor Rogers’s warm hand is on my back, his other one handing me tissues. Quite despite myself, I am starting to like him.
“—this is my home,” I choke out. “Friends. Family. Better.”
I don’t think I’m being very coherent. I want to tell her how if I’m here, my friends will visit, and that will help me get better. That if I’m here, it will be easier on my family. But it seems to be enough, my mom nods, giving Doctor Rogers a look that conveys a whole book of emotions. It’s not much of a look, really, a widening of her eyes, her head leaning forward, her lips parted as if to speak. But it says, “I’m counting on you to save my son.”
As Doctor Rogers wraps me in a blanket and lifts me up in his strong arms, I feel for the guy. If this doesn’t go well, my mother will never forgive him.
As we leave my room with its pitched roof and glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling, I close my eyes. I see a flash of light out of my peripheral vision and I know Lionel is back. That Lionel is with me. And I find comfort in that. If I am going to die, maybe he will be there to help me.
Part 5
A Boy and a Ghost
39
Sunday, July 31, 1977
I wake up in the ICU, the beep, beep of my heartbeat on the monitor pulling me from the inky depths. My eyes are sticky and I can’t open them. I have vague memories, of riding to the hospital in the backseat of Doctor Rogers’s car. Of a large nurse with round glasses and black hair. Of endless coughing. Of a long conversation with Lionel Malak. Of other ghosts gathered in a large group.
That brings me back. Lionel and I had a talk. Well, “talk” doesn’t really encompass the scope of it. It was an argument and I remember him yelling at me and… It’s not quite in focus, but something happened. A lot happened.
I try to speak, but there is something in my mouth and my throat hurts horribly. I’m intubated, not for the first time. My heart is thumping, I hear the beeps on the monitor speed up and I try to calm down. The tube is pushing air into my lungs, and I hate the feeling, so helpless and out of control.
I feel an IV in my left arm, so I slap my right hand on the bed, as I force my eyes open. The bright white of the fluorescents hurt, so I shut them again and bang my hand a second time. My head is elevated and I get a glimpse of a person in the room.
I feel a warm hand take mine. I crack my eyes open and try to focus, but I can’t see very well. Long dark hair and a round face.
“Just stay calm,” she says, her voice is anything but. “I’ll get someone.” I feel her hand letting go of mine and I squeeze it as hard as I can. It’s Helena. I don’t want her to leave.
“Okay, okay,” she says. “I’m here, Wade. I won’t leave you.” I give her hand another squeeze and feel tears leaking out of my eyes. Which, in this case, is good. I can see her a bit clearer. She’s got on a big long-sleeved T-shirt and sweats, her hair loosely pulled back, and she looks exhausted.
“Can I get some help in here?” she yells.
I want to tell her there’s a button to call the nurse, but that damn machine is still pumping air into my lungs like I’m some kind of blowup doll or something.
“Somebody!” she yells, louder, a hysterical edge to her voice.
I calm down some now that I know there will be help soon. I’m alive and Helena is here. That much, at least, is all good.
My mother rushes in, she’s a mess too. Her brown hair flat and lifeless, the dark circles under her eyes as big as I’ve ever seen them. She rushes over to me and Helena makes to let go of my hand, but I hold her even tighter.
“He won’t let go,” Helena says as Mom tries to stand where Helena is.
I see a look on my mother’s face. It’s hard to read, maybe one part jealousy and two parts hope.
“Just stay calm, Aaron,” she says, her lips devoid of their ever-present pink lipstick. It’s odd seeing her this way. “I’ll be right back with Doctor Rogers.”
I give her a nod.
Helena shifts her hand in mine, I think she’s just trying to get it more comfortable, I was probably squishing her fingers. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I’m not letting go.”
And there it is. Right there. That moment. The thing to live for. This fascinating and complicated woman (let’s face it, she’s not a girl) by my side, not letting go.
I give her hand a gentle squeeze, looking into the depths of those golden-brown eyes. She’s got a grimace of a smile on her face and—for her—looks like hell. But I don’t care what she looks like. I only care that she’s here, that she’s my friend.
I feel tears spilling out of my eyes and Helena follows suit. She brushes at her face with her right hand, only making it more obvious that she is crying. Her smile gets broader, but still has that grimacey crying look.
It’s strange, but right then I don’t want the moment to end. Not ever. Me and Helena, connection and hope. What more could I want except for the damn tube out of my throat?
40
Tuesday, July 26, 1977
(continued)
Things came back to me as I finished my time in the hospital. Strange things. Scary things. Lionel Malak and his band of ghosts. And yes, I’m a little out of order here with these entries, having jumped back from waking up five days ago. But it took time to remember it all, to get well enough so I understood what actually happened.
So indulge me as I flip back in time.
My little cold had settled into my lungs and my poor immune system couldn’t handle it. It went from a chest cold to bronchitis to pneumonia lickety-split.
Pneumonia boils down to an infection of the lungs that results in fluid building up. The lungs being an apparatus to breathe, you can imagine that fluid down there is really bad.
Nurse Iona, the one I mentioned earlier with glasses, black hair, and ample proportions, was on shift when I came in. She has this ease to her as she goes about doing her job. She moves slowly, but efficiently. It’s a slow/fast kind of thing.
She is an ER nurse—just like my mom—and looked familiar although I would not have been able to tell you her name. When I first got there, she helped me into the awful hospital gown in a little curtained-off area in the ER.
“Don’t be ashamed, sonny-boy. I seen plenty a white b-hind in my days here.” Iona is black, quite a rarity in Cedar City, Utah. She gave a husky laugh after that.
She gets me into the hospital bed, hooks me up to an IV, and leaves me there alone.
I’m not alone for long. I think my mom was trying to call my dad, but it gave me time to think. It is getting harder to breathe. I’ve had pneumonia before and know what that fluid in the lungs feels like. It’s a weight there that never goes away, a heavy weight on the chest, an impossibly phlegmy cough.
So I think about my famil
y and Billy and Lionel and most of all Helena. I still feel the sting of Tyson calling me a “pipsqueak”—and compared to him I am—but it came to me that I would gladly be called names daily by older, stronger, handsomer boys if I could just be well and have more time with Helena.
Just a friend. Fine. I don’t care. I just want to be in her presence. I just want to experience as much of her as I can.
“He’s in love,” a male voice says with a southern drawl. The voice is quiet and I can barely hear it, like someone had whispered from far away. I can hear the comings and goings out in the ER. The beep of monitors, the sound of footfalls on the boring white linoleum floor, the talking of doctors and nurses and families.
But this is different. The voice sounds far away, but it “feels” close.
“Can we help?” another male voice asks. This one is thin and reedy, a bit nasally.
“Not by ourselves,” the first voice says. “We need every last spirit we can get.”
“But… should we?” the second voice asks. “Is it our place?”
I push myself up in bed, looking around, trying to find the source of the voices, but I can’t see them. My face feels so hot from the fever, but also because I know they are talking about me. I hack up some more green goo, afraid that I might have missed what the voices were saying.
“Everyone should get a chance at love, Lionel,” the first voice says, and a chill passes up and down my spine. I know this voice. I had several interesting discussions with him in the graveyard. “Even you got a chance at that,” he adds.
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