Not good. Not right.
You can’t go forward without going back.
She tried to calm down and breathe, focusing on the cooling sensation of the air coming in through her nostrils, the gentle swell of her belly as the breath made its way through her body, bringing love and calm and kindness.
It didn’t help. Her leg jerked a third time, as if an electrical current had traveled through it.
It hadn’t happened for months. But it was happening again now. Her teeth clamped. Her arms tensed. She knew what would come next.
Every time, her vision fuzzed and her ears rang. Intense fear flooded her. Her blood pressure plummeted. From the outside it looked like a panic attack, but it wasn’t. Panic attacks weren’t usually based on a real threat. Her attacks were more like shock, the response to something real.
They were always the same, varying only by degree, but Ruth had never had an attack in the bathtub. As her fingers grasped uselessly at the tub’s slippery edge, Ruth’s rear end slid forward and her feet rose higher, her shoulders and neck now submerged and her lips sputtering. The bathwater itself seemed to fizz and pop as her vision darkened at the edges.
Grab the tub.
How long could you last under water without drowning? She’d never lost consciousness completely, but she’d lost the ability to control her limbs beyond a stiff-armed flail. She’d slid off a couch once and another time fallen to her knees. But this time, she knew she was in danger. No one would find her. No one would haul her out and pump her lungs.
Grab the tub.
Ruth knew the image of Scott was coming and that when she saw it, her body would shut down. Her fear of water brought it on even faster: No, no, no. Don’t let the car drop. And then, as before, Scott.
He was in front of her. But this time, he looked different. He stood calmly with his hands on his waist, shirt cuffs rolled up, feet planted on short clipped grass with white lines—a sports field. He was staring off into the distance, peering through—she noticed only now—new glasses, the square-lensed ones she’d just seen this morning. She’d never noticed that detail in the vision before.
Then he squinted, starting to look worried. He lifted both his arms and waved them in the air, signaling to someone to either look his way or to stop. The vision had begun only seconds earlier, but now it would proceed as it always did, toward the end she didn’t want to witness.
“Don’t fight it,” Dr. Susan had told her.
But she had to fight it. She knew it was her responsibility to understand, to keep watching. But she couldn’t bear it. In that moment, when she thought her own life might end, Ruth couldn’t think of a single time when she’d sacrificed herself for anyone.
If she loved him, she would see more, she would bear more. This had always been the test. She had failed and would fail again, because she was selfish.
Ruth felt water enter her nose and she choked, coughing, hands scrambling again for the rounded tub edge. She fought for air. She didn’t want to see, but her inner eye remained open a moment longer. She saw his confused expression. His lips mouthing words that she couldn’t make out. His chin tucked into his chest as the impact sent his whole trunk backward and the color spread. Red.
She managed to squirm and roll to one side, knee pushing, shoulder against the tub bottom, left side of her body above the water surface, only her right ear submerged now as she took panicked, gasping breaths, alternating with coughs. She wouldn’t drown. She had air enough to breathe, air enough to scream.
“No!” she finally managed to shout.
Then he—it, that future day—was gone.
Ruth started to leave the bathroom—wet towels strewn everywhere, stripped-off jeans and sweatshirt left in a sopping pile on the floor—but then went back, riffling through her apothecary drawers for anything that would take the edge off. No luck, only the expired bottle of clozapine, taunting her. It wasn’t what she needed anyway.
I’m not psychotic.
She didn’t think she was suffering post-traumatic stress disorder, either. Pre-traumatic stress disorder, maybe. That was how it felt.
She got an ice pack and curled up on her couch, where she slept two hours and woke up feeling like Robinson Crusoe washed up on a beach, face planted hard against the sand, half-drowned.
Ruth looked at her phone: nothing from Scott, Joe or Sophie. Instead, sixteen new texts from Reece, who didn’t know the whole research project was over. She’d already told Nieman the journal was fake. She’d send it back by way of express mail first thing tomorrow.
Reece’s last message: Any news?
So I’ve made a mistake. Possibly.
With the journal?
With everything.
I’m a good listener.
It’s a long story.
My barista shift doesn’t start until 4.
I have a home inspector coming over.
That takes?
Two hours maybe. She paused. I just have to let him in. I don’t have to stay.
Meet up at the north entrance to Rovers Run.
That was the wooded path popular with dog walkers, beyond the school’s sport fields.
She was about to say it was too far; her knee and hip already hurt from all the moving of boxes she had done, plus the thrashing in the tub.
But Reece didn’t even wait for her reply.
Text me when you’re there.
16
Reece
"You can’t just leave without answering me,” Reece’s mom said as he yanked a jacket from the hook near the front door. She’d followed him into the hallway, still holding her cell phone, ready to call the therapist’s office and set their first family appointment since his “attempt.”
“I’ll think about it,” Reece said.
“That’s what you’ve been saying for a month.”
“I’m busy.”
“Not too busy for your hobbies.”
Hobbies? Was that what she thought his upcoming show was, a hobby? If she’d ever paid attention, she’d have realized it was the only thing that kept him moderately sane.
“Fine. Don’t come to the Rockets show, if that’s what you’re getting at. Skip it.”
“I didn’t say we wouldn’t come,” she said, following him onto the porch. “And Reece, this isn’t a zero-sum game. We’re on your team. You know that, right?”
“I know what’s best for me,” he said, without looking back.
He didn’t ask to borrow the car. The place he planned to meet Ruth wasn’t far to walk, and he didn’t want to owe his parents anything.
Talking wasn’t always the best idea, his mother should realize. If he opened his mouth at a family session, he was bound to say what he thought, which was: it was their fault, actually. Not their fault he’d cut himself—you could never blame that final step on anyone but your own fucked-up self—but their fault that he’d gotten so depressed. Last spring, they’d sabotaged him. To get into the senior-year performing-arts program, he had to audition. New Hampshire: yes, it was far, the timing was lousy and money was tight. But they could have taken him or let him go alone. Instead, they’d talked him into option B, the video audition.
The official program instructions said that video and live auditions were weighted equally. The unofficial chat groups run by prospective and admitted students told a different story.
He replayed his last argument with his father.
“How do you know?”
“Because I looked it up.”
“The application instructions don’t say there’s a problem with video.”
“Dad. I’m not a moron. Why don’t you ever believe me?”
“Show me where it says you’re penalized for sending in a video.”
“You have to read between the lines. No one ever comes out and says you can’t get in with video.
They say you have to make an impression. You have to prove to them it’s worth paying to fly or taking a crappy bus all night because you really want to go to their school. You have to give a shit.”
“We’re just worried you’re putting all your eggs in one basket.”
That was the heart of the matter. They’d never thought he might get in, but they said they didn’t think he could afford to waste a week of school, especially so close to midterms. Besides, they were too cheap, and on top of that, they were ridiculously, maddeningly allergic to any kind of risk.
Well, now they’d gotten a glimpse of how risky hopelessness could be . . .
Reece had gotten so worked up, striding fast while replaying the argument in his mind, that he arrived at Rovers Run five minutes early. When he saw Ruth walking slowly up the trail, he felt his whole body relax, yearning to hear something that would take his mind off this shit town of people with no imagination.
Don’t disappoint me, he thought.
“She thought she could skip or slide forward, like a stone across the pond,” Ruth told him. “The trauma of the train crash exaggerated something she’d already experienced. And her fury at the events in her past made her determined to control it.”
They were on the trail, not entirely alone, with strollers behind them and dog walkers ahead, out enjoying the brisk air and the bright-yellow blaze of aspen trees interspersed with the trail’s dark evergreens.
“This is good news. So why do you look worried?” Reece responded.
“Because I wrote Nieman last night and told him the journal was probably a fake. I didn’t think Annie would risk going to Europe in 1904.”
Reece waited for Ruth to say more, but she had the expression you saw on kids’ faces when they walked out of a test knowing they’d bombed it.
Reece took a deep breath. It was time. “There’s something else we need to discuss. I had a weird dream this summer.”
Ruth acted like she hadn’t heard him.
“You were in the dream,” he said, “talking to me. You told me to draw the infinity symbol on your arm. It felt like a premonition.”
“Wait. How could you have known then it was a premonition?”
“I’m not sure. Obviously, I’d never met you before, but you were there.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Oh, you mean when you didn’t even want to give me your phone number? That’s when I should have expected you to believe in my dream?”
When she paused, Reece assumed she was about to apologize.
Instead she said, “I have visions, too. They started two years ago. The most recent one”—she looked at her watch—“was two and a half hours ago.”
Then she told him about the ordeal in the bathtub, just around lunchtime. And about the car crash, when the visions of Mr. Webb had started. That part was definitely news.
“Wow,” Reece said. “You almost drowned today. You weren’t going to mention that first? Or the premonition, either?”
“I was updating you on the Annie research.”
“But maybe your violent vision of the near future matters more.”
“They’re separate issues,” she said, brow furrowed. “I think.”
“Okay, great. I’m glad you’re keeping everything neat and tidy. Do you separate all the foods on your plate, too?”
A golden retriever bounded over to them, friendly and slobbering. Ruth knelt down and let him push his furry head into her chest. When the owner called the dog away, she remained in the crouch, one knee down on the muddy trail. Reece realized he was supposed to do something. He hurried to her and grabbed her elbow to help her stand.
“Are you wearing pajama pants?”
“They’re the only dry pants I had left due to the . . . bathtub incident. Or at least, they were.” Her knees were soaked through. She groaned as he helped lift her to an upright position.
“Maybe you need to try harder in order to see the whole vision clearly,” Reece said. “I don’t know. Relax?”
“I take tranquilizers sometimes. But I haven’t lately. I haven’t taken any prescription meds for a while.”
He became uncomfortable as he watched her expression change. She’d noticed her Xanax was missing. But one confession was enough for today.
She rubbed her eyes. “As I’ve started to see more of it, it feels like I’m dying. My body shuts down.”
“But maybe only because you’re fighting it.”
“Reece, did you hear what I said? It feels like I’m dying.”
This was his chance, the perfect segue. “Okay, but I was telling you about my dream, remember? I was at Rockets practice with seven teammates. We were all in our purple shirts.”
How could he explain? That image of those seven people couldn’t have existed back when he’d had the dream in June, but it had become real. He had made it real.
“Go on,” she said.
“It was a good dream at first. Then it got confusing.”
Ruth pulled her phone out of her vest pocket. “Sorry, it’s the home inspector. I’ve got to answer this.”
Even the paranormal couldn’t compete with a text, evidently. Probably his fault for being so mush-mouthed.
When she’d finished texting, she asked, “In your dream, did you see . . . Mr. Webb?”
“No, but you were there trying to tell me something. To write the symbol on you. And some less clear directions, like ‘talk to me’ and ‘keep trying’ and ‘be patient with me.’ You said, ‘It didn’t work.’”
“What didn’t work?”
“I don’t know.”
“Think, Reece.”
“‘Don’t smoke.’”
“Don’t smoke?”
“You’re upset when you say it . . . or maybe you’re laughing? One of those stressed-out panic laughs. Look, I can’t explain everything, this isn’t like some movie premonition: ‘Go back in time and buy AT&T at twenty-eight dollars.’”
She didn’t smile.
“And?”
“I can’t hear or see all of it. Sometimes when I’m calm and focused, I try to replay it in my head, hoping I’ll remember more. Maybe if I weren’t on so many meds, I’d dream it again. They say you get a strong rebound effect that triggers dreams when you go off.”
“Meds?” she asked.
“Antidepressants.”
She nodded. Maybe she was still remembering that zinc comment he’d made. Or maybe she had noticed the missing Xanax.
“They work well for you?”
“Too early to tell. Anyway, the dream was a one-time thing. Like an NDE, near-death experience. Maybe that’s what you and Annie had, too.”
“Mine wasn’t a near-death experience,” Ruth said. “Those are supposed to be peaceful. Mine was terrifying.”
“Mine was peaceful—but only at first. I wanted to see it, to go toward it, like Annie wanted to get out of that train at the moment of collision. But I couldn’t make sense of it, because I didn’t know the people yet, or the situation.”
“But you just called it a near-death experience.”
“Yes.”
“That implies you were near death, or you thought you were.”
“Yes. This was when I tried to kill myself. Last summer.”
Ruth stopped in her tracks and took a step sideways away from Reece, but the path was narrow, bounded by shrubs and chest-high grasses on one side and a chain-link fence on the other.
“Oh.” Her voice had gone cold. “Your poor parents.”
“Well, I wasn’t thinking of them at the time.”
“Obviously.”
“They found you?”
“My dad, yeah.”
Reece waited for her to start walking again. Instead, she turned around and gestured that she was going back toward her house.
&n
bsp; “Hey, it was stupid, I know,” he said, stunned by her stony response. “But I had reasons.”
“Not good ones.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.” Her face was white, but her neck was flushing red. “I told you that my little sister died. I didn’t tell you how. What she did hurt people, and yes, I’m angry about that. And she’s not here, so—”
“So, you’re going to yell at me,” Reece said. But he lowered his voice, because he got it now. “Okay, I’m sorry. About your sister.”
Ruth was standing still on the trail, eyes closed. Her pajama pants, wet at the knees, sagged. The hair around her face was damp and sticking to her cheeks.
“I’m sorry, too. You’re helping me, I know. I haven’t always been the best at . . . receiving help.”
“Which you warned me about,” Reece said. “I mean, future you. Keep trying, et cetera.”
“That was smart of me. It’s just . . . any memory of my sister disorients me. I don’t mean just emotionally. I mean physically. Like, vertigo.”
“You were close.”
“That’s the problem—we weren’t. I think if we had been, she’d still be alive.”
“Sorry.” Reece looked at his feet.
“It’s strange,” she said, opening her eyes again. “Even with everything else happening, I keep obsessing over my sister. Knowing it’s too late to help her doesn’t change the fact that I still want to. It feels like a physical tug, pulling me back to the year she died. My brain keeps skittering back to these dark corners.”
“Maybe the corners matter,” Reece said.
Reece came forward and almost touched Ruth’s wrist, but he didn’t want to scare her. This time, he just gestured to her arm, which was hanging at her side—wrist turned toward him, the infinity loop visible, only slightly faded. Three days had passed. She could have chosen to scrub it off, but she hadn’t.
He wanted to tell her about the moment he’d started feeling woozy, looking down at the mess he’d made, the blood pouring from his arms and turning the electric-blue rug in his bedroom black. His most desperate thought had been: I’m so tired of myself. I’m tired of not mattering.
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