Falling Under

by Gwen Hayes

  “Yes, you did. Your neck nearly snapped, you turned so fast, and he didn’t come in until after I tried to see what you were looking at. Are you turning into a psychic? Like Varnie said?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I mean, maybe sometimes, but I still can’t do readings.” She pressed her lips together in a firm line. “Every now and then, though, I feel something really strongly.” She shrugged. “It’s weird. I can’t control or direct it, and it isn’t a vision—just a feeling.”

  Mike didn’t stop at our table, but he waved and said, “Hey,” as he walked by.

  Ame’s shoulders slumped after he passed. I wished Donny wasn’t late for lunch. I was in no mood to cheer Amelia up, but that’s what friends did, so I kicked her foot under the table. “I’ll drink your bloody orange juice if you eat some of these Tater Tots.”

  We smiled at each other.

  Neither one of us meant it, though.

  About a week after I had gotten over my “flu,” I was going through my daily routine and, as usual, my hair wouldn’t cooperate. It occurred to me to just leave it down—and so I did.

  Nobody remarked on it at school, but Donny’s forehead creased when she first saw me. Father didn’t even mention it at supper, though I could tell he wanted to. He’d been measurably more careful with his comments since our discussion about my mother.

  And so the next day and every day after, my curls were free. No more headaches from bands too tight, no more escaping tendrils—just loose and slightly demented curls.

  Just to see what would happen, one morning I dug through my closet until I found a pair of jeans Donny had given me last year because she had accidentally bought ones labeled “short.” I wore them to school. Donny and Amelia raised their eyebrows at each other, but didn’t say anything to me.

  It was like that now.

  The three of us tiptoed over eggshells around one another. Since Haden had left, I’d kept all but the most superficial thoughts and feelings to myself. They seemed to understand I needed space, but at the same time, they telegraphed what they wanted to say to each other as if I couldn’t understand them.

  A few days later, I stopped doing my homework.

  It all seemed so pointless. I stopped playing the violin too. I just didn’t care about pleasing anyone at all anymore. If they didn’t like it, they could bugger off.

  One night, Father was running late, so Muriel stayed to eat supper with me. I conned her into ordering Chinese. We were getting ready to eat in the kitchen, as we always did when Father was gone.

  While she got the plates out, I began pulling the takeout containers from the bag. As I opened one, a movement caught my eye. I peered back into the white box and found a writhing mass of white worms looping around one another trying to get to the top.

  I shrieked and clapped one hand over my mouth while I dropped the worms with the other hand. Muriel ran to me as I staggered backwards.

  “What is it, Theia?” she cried.

  I choked back my gagging noises and simply pointed to the mess, just knowing they’d be crawling towards my shoes.

  “Pumpkin, what is wrong?” she asked again.

  Couldn’t she see? I looked at the floor. Nothing moved. There were no worms, only noodles.

  “That’s impossible.” I stooped lower. “They were moving. They were . . . worms or something and they were alive.”

  Muriel’s hand stroked my back. “Someone has been watching too many late-night movies.”

  “No,” I protested. “I swear. They weren’t . . . noodles. I saw them.”

  “Just a trick of the mind, Thei. I’ll get this cleaned up. Why don’t you go splash a little cool water on your face? You’ve had quite a scare.”

  I nodded, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the still noodles on the floor. I waited for them to move again, to prove that I wasn’t insane. The hair on the back of my neck rose and I felt like I was being watched. Then, just as suddenly, the feeling was gone.

  After the night with the noodles, I was hypervigilant. Everything made me wary. Out of the corner of my eye I kept seeing things move. Things that weren’t there. Many times, the songs on my iPhone would sound scratchy and I would almost be able to pick out voices—like when radio reception loses strength and you get two channels at once. I couldn’t hear what the voices were saying, but they gave me the chills all the same.

  I’d taken to sleeping with the light on, but sometimes that was worse. Now and again, shadows seemed to move in ways they weren’t meant to. Every day I became more paranoid and withdrawn.

  One day at school, Amelia touched my arm and we both recoiled from the electric shock it produced.

  “Sorry,” she said. “God, I’ve been doing that all the time lately. I can’t figure out what is going on. It’s like I’m a lightning rod or something. Everything I touch shocks me.”

  “Did your mom switch shampoo?” Donny asked. Donny placed a lot of importance on shampoo.

  “Um, no.” Ame said with a laugh.

  We’d decided to eat outside that day. The weather had been strange—alternating between showers and a warm sun—but it was sunny at lunch and we all craved the vitamin D therapy, as Donny called it.

  I wasn’t eating, though I stared at my lunch very hard, something I found myself doing often.

  “Where’s Gabe?” Amelia asked Donny.

  She shrugged. “How should I know?”

  It wasn’t until Donny looked at me quizzically that I realized I was staring at her. No—I was glaring at her. I replaced my angry face with a pleasant one quickly and looked back down at my lunch again. It’s just that it was hard, sometimes, not to be upset with her. Gabe treated her so well, and everyone knew she had feelings for him. It seemed so wasteful to me that she kept denying something that made her happy—or would make her happy if she’d stop being so stubborn about it. I missed Haden. One thousand times a day, I wished for him to come back. Gabe was right here, and she kept pushing him away.

  Mike strolled by, surprising us all when he actually stopped at our bench.

  “Hey,” he said. Like he always seemed to say.

  “Hey,” Amelia answered.

  I nodded a small greeting and Donny sort of waved, not looking up from texting. She was probably texting Gabe to find out where he was. Even though she didn’t care.

  “Ame, I wondered if you wanted to go over last night’s trig.”

  Mike didn’t include me; everyone in class knew my trig grade was falling because I’d stopped turning in the assignments. I needed to get it together. While a part of me was enjoying not living up to everyone’s preconceived notions of me, I really didn’t want to be the girl whose life fell apart because of a boy. It was so . . . cliché.

  It was also really, really easy to let happen.

  “Sure,” Ame replied. Her smile lit up her entire face, and I felt a guilty stab of envy.

  Then Mike looked at my burger. “Are you going to eat that?” he asked.

  I shook my head and handed him the whole tray, making excuses to everyone about needing to go do something. I didn’t stick around to explain—I just got up and walked away from my friends, something I was getting very good at doing.

  I should have seen it coming.

  “Where are we going?” I asked as Donny drove past the turn to my house.

  “We’re nabbing you,” answered Amelia.

  I rolled my eyes. I’d barely made it through the entire school day. I didn’t want to be nabbed; I wanted nothing more than to crawl under my covers and sleep. Just like I had every day lately. It seemed safer to sleep during daylight hours.

  She’d said she would give me a ride home.

  Not for the first time did I curse my father for not letting me get my license. Too dangerous, of course. And what did I need one for? Serendipity High was within walking distance of our house and the fresh air was “good for my constitution.” Donny’s parents actually bought her a car—an older Honda Accord—but she also had to
taxi her little brother to and from practice every day and take over the grocery shopping. It seemed fair to me. Everything about her parents seemed rational and fair. Their rules, though she often broke them, made sense. And her privileges, when she earned them, were more than just.

  If I wanted money for something, I had to ask and explain why. What did I need it for? Muriel packed my lunch in the evenings, Father’s shopper purchased all my clothes, and his decorator made small variances to my room two or three times a year to keep me from being bored with the design.

  He didn’t understand that I might like to have a bit of spending money that I didn’t need to account to him for. I’d have gladly done chores or even gotten a job—if he had let me.

  Ame also had her license, but no car. Which gave Donny a lot of power in our relationship. Which she certainly took advantage of, but didn’t usually abuse.

  “Look, you’ve been all Emo Barbie and we’re tired of it. We’re taking you to the beach.” Donny met my gaze in her rearview mirror. “And before you whine and say, ‘I don’t want to go to the beach,’ you should know I’m past caring.”

  “That’s very nice, Donnatella.” I sneered and folded my arms. “I’m glad you’ve found a way to make this all about you.”

  “You can be a bitch if you want to, but we’re still going to the fucking beach.”

  Amelia turned around to look at me from the passenger seat. “Please don’t fight, you guys. We’re just worried about you, Thei. You won’t talk to us anymore. Not since the day Haden stopped coming to school. We miss you.”

  I hugged myself and stared out the window. “Well, he’s gone. Talking about it won’t make him come back.”

  The trip to the coast took only ten minutes, but it seemed longer. Amelia peppered Donny with inane conversation to keep her off my back. I should have been more grateful. Instead, I just wished longingly for my bed.

  I don’t know why I pushed them away so hard, or why I actively sought out an argument with Donny. My heart ached, and it colored everything around me black. I wanted nothing because I couldn’t have the only thing I really wanted. And I guess part of me wanted nobody else to get what they wanted if I couldn’t.

  Some friend, right?

  “Get out of the car,” Donny told me.

  “I’m fine here. You guys go,” I answered.

  “Get. Out. Of. The. Car.”

  I drew my mouth into a grim line that hurt my jaw with its frozen force. I pushed out of her car and stomped ahead of them in the sand, not even closing the door behind me. The bitter spring wind whipped around me as I trudged to the line where the ocean met the land, and there I stood, wishing the water would just claim me and get this over with. What did drowning feel like? It couldn’t hurt more than my decimated heart did, could it? Would it hurt more than burning to ash like Haden did that first night?

  Donny and Amelia joined me at the water’s edge, bookending me between them. The tumultuous waves crashed over themselves; the tumbling repetition should have been ineffective, and yet that was how the coast was formed, how it was transformed. It was how I felt standing there—like I’d been battered endlessly by waves and it was changing me in nearly imperceptible ways. Though judging by the way I’d been treating my best friends, the imperceptibleness was questionable.

  Winter hadn’t completely let go yet, despite the earlier sunshine. The beach was still cold and unforgiving. I inhaled the briny air deeply, suddenly very glad to be there. The ocean always unlocked something in me, a fact Donny knew well. “I’m sorry. Both of you. I haven’t been myself and I’m ashamed of the way I’ve treated our friendship lately.”

  “We’re just so worried about you. You’ve been so un-Theiable lately.”

  I nodded. “Haden is gone for good. I know that I’ll never see him again, but I really love him and it hurts . . . it hurts to breathe.”

  They were on me in a second. There-thereing and it’snot-so-badding, holding me up and keeping me strong. Better yet, being strong for me.

  Ame pulled a lock of windblown hair from her mouth. “Theia, we didn’t get to know him very well, but he must love you too, right? I mean, he didn’t take anyone, did he?”

  I shook my head. I explained to them that he could still be in danger for angering his mother. That he seemed truly adamant that she would not be understanding. “I don’t know if he’s okay. I mean, if I knew he was happy or okay, I could get through this.”

  “Oh, God, I think you guys are starting to make me believe in all this crap,” Donny said. And we laughed.

  Huddled together, the three of us, it did feel significant. Our little circle against the world.

  I told them about my father. How we’d finally spoken about my mother, how it had hurt but felt good at the same time. I told them that the last time I went Under, I had to take my father’s sleeping pills.

  “That is so not cool,” Donny said as she pinched me. “We don’t let boy problems turn us into druggies—got it?” Her tone was light, but her message was stern beneath it.

  “I don’t think I can get back that way again. He’s done something so that I can’t go there anymore. Maybe . . .” I looked at Ame. She might know a way. She’d been studying so many metaphysical things.

  I was about to ask her opinion when a strange wind picked up. It wasn’t just bitter cold, it was malevolent and searching. We gasped and instinctively began to break away from our circle in the confusion, but Amelia’s face took on a stubborn expression and she squeezed us tighter, so Donny and I held on. The wind carried voices, whispers and hisses of words swirling around us, getting faster and faster. Donny grew pale looking towards the horizon. Amelia and I followed her gaze over the water and watched as the darkest clouds I’d ever seen gathered, turning the sky bruise-purple.

  A gale-force wind blew and the mottled clouds raced across the sky and straight towards us. It wasn’t just the color or the speed that scared us—there was a smell, a tinge of sulfur that accompanied their tumbling roll. Amelia yelled at us to hang on, and so we did, without thought of consequence.

  The wicked wind blew through us, trying to tear us apart, but also at work was another force. The pendant—my talisman—seemed to glow heat against my skin, and as it spread, the warmth buffeted the impact of the gathering storm. Rain fell like bullets from the sky but didn’t touch us. I looked up and noticed the black clouds were directly over us then, with a break in the center like a hole in a doughnut.

  The wind still stung at us, and lightning bolts landed sporadically around us, but somehow we knew we had to hold on. So we faced the freak storm, and it dissipated as quickly as it had come on. No theatrics. Just gone.

  “Well, that was weird,” Donny said dryly.

  “Thei,” Ame began, “I don’t think this is over yet. Whatever that was, I think it wanted you.”

  I shivered. Amelia was shaken, but she looked . . . in control, empowered.

  Donny watched Amelia very carefully too. “Ame, what the hell is going on?”

  She shrugged. “I’m not sure exactly, but I think it’s time I started really paying attention to my Hello Kitty tarot cards.”

  After returning from the beach, I had to wade through a painful supper in which Father and I both tried to make believe things were looser between us now. They may have been better, but it was hard to tell given the current climate of “let’s pretend.” Let’s pretend you didn’t want to abort me. Let’s pretend it doesn’t bother you that I’m wearing blue jeans and my hair wild. Let’s pretend we have a different relationship now that we understand each other.

  Once we’d run out of idle chatter, rehashing the inane details of our day that neither of us cared about, we returned to an uncomfortable silence. I couldn’t stop thinking about that storm, about Amelia’s warning. What had it meant?

  “Are you taking a chill?” Father asked. I must have looked confused, because he clarified his question with, “You just shivered.”

  “Oh,” I answered. “I’m s
ure I’m fine. Must have been a draft.”

  We went back to silence. What would supper have been like if my mother had lived? I’d bet we’d eat in the kitchen more often.

  “Father?” A punch of panic wouldn’t let me go any further. I’d simply meant to fill the silence with something, anything. But as my mouth formed his name, I realized I wanted to talk about something real.

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve been wearing one of my mother’s pendants for a while. I got it from the attic,” I confessed.

  The fork stopped in midair. He set it atop his plate carefully. “I see.”

  “Are you angry?”

  “No,” he assured me. “I should have thought to bring her jewelry down to you a while ago. She would want you to have it.” He cleared his throat. “I want you to have it.”

  I smiled at him. A real one. I felt . . . closer to him at that moment than I ever had.

  After our meal, I tried to play my violin. Father had dismissed my tutor without questioning why I didn’t want to play anymore after . . . well, after the night with the pills. But suddenly I wished I wanted to play again. I picked it up, the weight of it foreign and familiar at the same time. I re-haired my neglected bow carefully and then eased into a song. I didn’t feel it stir my soul. It was just notes and mechanics. Perfunctory practice. Boring.

  I put it down.

  I took a bath, long and hot. I tried not to think about anything, but my mind kept circling back to the beach. When Varnie had told me that something dark had attached to me, I assumed it was Haden.

  Whatever had been on the beach—it hadn’t felt like Haden. It had felt evil.

  The bathwater turned icy. How long had I been in it? It had felt so warm only a moment before, it seemed.

  I got ready for bed, still shivering from my bath and ignoring that I had a metric ton of schoolwork to catch up on. Then from across my bedroom, I saw it.

  A long-stemmed black rose lay on my pillow.

  Haden?