A Soul's Kiss

by Debra Chapoton

  He looks so uncomfortable with the attention he’s getting. There is something seriously wrong. With all the noise in the large room I can only make out a couple of phrases. Expressions of sympathy.

  Mrs. Brown gathers her things like she’s going to leave the student teacher to fend for herself today. I hope she doesn’t go too far away. Some of these jerks wouldn’t think twice about harassing Ms. Gardner to tears. Suddenly I feel overwhelmed by those possible tears, like I’m somehow connected spiritually to a whole range of emotions present in the room.

  The tardy bell rings and Mrs. Brown stands up. That’s all it takes for some of the kids to find their seats; others have to be herded, hushed, and hovered over. When Mrs. Brown is satisfied that everyone’s attention is focused she turns the reins over to Ms. Gardner and leaves with a final scowl at two boys in the front.

  Sometimes the bell also is a signal for me and Rashanda to go into the storage room at the back of the classroom. Since our seats flank the storage room door, we’re responsible for passing out the classroom set of grammar books that we use once or twice a week. It only takes a few seconds to grab a couple armloads of the tattered manuals and distribute them to our fellow classmates. Groans and grimaces follow. Hardly anyone likes to learn about fragments and participles and gerunds.

  “Today we’re going to cover the use of apostrophes,” Ms. Gardner says. I figure that’s my cue and I stand up. Without Rashanda I’m on my own. “Tyler, would you mind getting the books from the storage room?”

  Well, that’s nice. I’ll have some help and maybe I can find out what’s up with him.

  The classroom erupts into the customary whining and moaning as I slip into the dusty storage room. The long center table is covered with stacks of materials for the debate team instead of the grammar books. The shelves are crammed with thirty copies each of various novels, plays, and classics.

  Tyler shuffles in and looks at the table and then the shelves.

  “I don’t know where they are,” I say. “They’re usually on the table.”

  He gives a little hoarse grunt like he’s trying to clear his throat, but doesn’t say anything. He scans the bottom shelf. I do the same on the other side of the cramped room. If we take too long I don’t want to think of the teasing we’ll get when we come out, you know, like: What were you two doing in there? How long does it take to make a baby? Zip up, Dolan and worse, gross stuff either whispered or, because there’s a student teacher, yelled.

  “Ah, here they are,” Tyler breathes out the words like he’s talking to himself.

  “I’ll help,” I say, but he’s already piling the whole set against his chest. He rises from a squatting position and two books slip to the floor just as another kid, Jason Phillips, frames the doorway.

  Jason catches about a dozen more of the paperbacks as they flop out of Tyler’s grasp.

  “Got ’em,” Jason says. He waits while Tyler retrieves the ones from the floor. I stand there like an idiot, my eye throbbing again and a sudden thirst sticking my lips together.

  “I can help, too,” I say. My mouth is so dry that the words must sound like crackers on sandpaper. “It’s my job anyway.”

  They rudely ignore me and Jason says to Tyler, “Sorry about your stepbrother. I hope he makes it.”

  Tyler nods with his whole book-laden body; his freckles melt into another blush. I wish I knew what the problem was. I didn’t even know he had a stepbrother. What could have happened that’s making everyone be so sympathetic? Did he get killed in the military or something? I try to ask these questions, but my breath skips past my vocal cords and no sounds come out.

  I watch them leave. How stupid am I going to look coming out of a small dark room empty handed? I’m half tempted to stay in the storage room until Ms. Gardner starts talking and all eyes will be looking forward. I reach into my pocket for a breath mint, pop it into my mouth, and relieve the parched taste. I almost collide with Tyler as he comes back in to toss the extra copies on the table.

  “Oops,” I say as I jump out of his way. I smile and crush myself against the shelf with my hands flung out at my sides like I’m avoiding a steamroller. I have a sudden impulse to be funny, to say something to cheer Tyler up, but he doesn’t even look my way. I don’t blame him; I haven’t been as friendly to him in the past as I should have been.

  He touches the top book and mumbles my name, a signal, I suppose, that he hasn’t left a book on my desk. I still cannot speak. I pick up the book and follow him out, the corners of my mouth drooping to match his shoulders.

  Class is a bore yet speeds by in a flash. When Jason and Tyler get up to collect the books at the end of the hour I stay glued to my seat. I can’t seem to make myself move. Oh well, I’ll let the boys do it. I push the grammar book to the edge of my desk and watch Tyler frown as he stares at it. His lips form an o, but no sound comes out. His face reddens and he avoids my eyes, as if I’m not even here.

  When the bell rings, a couple kids linger to talk to Tyler so I join the tight group and listen.

  “So what happened, exactly?” one girl says. “I heard it was a really bad car accident.”

  “Yeah.” Tyler keeps his head down.

  “I didn’t even know Keith was your stepbrother,” another kid says.

  “Me neither,” I chime in, finally able to speak though my words sound distant, my voice hollow. I wonder which Keith they mean. I can think of three in our grade.

  Tyler looks my way, then up at the ceiling like he’s blinking back tears. He answers the kid, “Yeah, my mom and his dad got married when we were six and seven. I mostly just see him on weekends, but, you know, after ten years it’s like we’re brothers.”

  I reach my hand out to give him one of those consoling pats on the shoulder, but a girl swings her book bag up and around and bangs it against my chest. I feel more than a little embarrassed as I dance back a step. She doesn’t even say excuse me or anything. Instead she asks, “Is Keith in as bad a shape as the girl in our class?” She swings her head in the direction where Rashanda and I sit and my heart skips. I think she means Rashanda, but then she says, “Jessica, right? Jessica Mitchell?”

  That can’t be right. She must have Rashanda confused with me. I try to correct her, but again I am breathless and can’t form the words.

  I watch Tyler’s face scrunch into a red knot like he’s going to correct her, but then he shakes his head no and says, “Concussion, I guess. He should recover completely. But he broke his leg.”

  A concussion and a broken leg sound pretty serious to me, and yet it isn’t as bad as “the girl” in our class? I turn and stare at Rashanda’s seat. Kids from the next class period are wandering in and someone sits down in her seat. I bolt from the room and pat my pockets for my phone. It isn’t on me.

  I see Carrie, a girl in my social studies class, and call out, my lungs finally working, “Hey, Carrie, can I borrow your phone a sec?” She totally ignores me and walks around the corner.

  Then I see Kayla. She’s headed for Tyler who is being mobbed by a bunch of kids near the drinking fountain. She won’t ignore me, I’m sure. I come up behind her as another girl asks her if she knew that Keith Mullins was Tyler’s brother.

  I stop short. Huh? Keith Mullins? The senior who is friends with Michael Hoffman? The guy I was in a car with yesterday? I could have been in that accident!

  And then somebody else swings a book bag at my chest. On purpose.

  It’s like they can’t see me.

  I land on my back, the breath knocked out of me. I need a doctor with a set of those shock paddles.

  I feel like a flipped turtle flailing away to right itself, and nobody is coming to my aid. Not even chivalrous Tyler. Kayla is steps away and as soon as I get some air in my lungs I gasp a plea. “Kayla, hey.”

  “She can’t hear you,” someone says, kneeling down next to me. The voice is familiar. I can’t decide if I’ll be elated or deflated if it’s gorgeous Michael Hoffman coming to my assistance ag
ain. A hand takes mine and pulls me up. The bell rings and everyone scatters to class, a few of them, no doubt, facing detention for reaching the limit on tardies.

  “Thanks,” I say, brushing off my butt. I have that funny feeling like I’ve forgotten something. Where are my books? Did I remember to bring back the drama script? I pat my back pocket, uncertain. I need to go to my locker before next hour, but now it’s too late.

  “You’re welcome. How do you feel?”

  “Okay,” I say and finally look at the angular face of tall, dark, and handsome Keith Mullins. Keith Mullins! “Hey.”

  “Hey yourself.”

  Keith’s eyes flicker back and forth from my right eye to my left eye. One of his eyes is more dilated than the other. He has a bump on his forehead that his hair partially hides. We spend an uncomfortable moment evaluating one another, alone in the hallway.

  I remember something and say, “I heard you broke your leg.”

  “I did. It’s in a cast, slung up on some kind of contraption.”

  “What?” The tender tissue around my eye protests the scrunching I’m giving my forehead. “Huh? What are you doing here? Weren’t you in a car accident?”

  Tyler steps out of room 236 and crosses in front of us to head to the boys’ bathroom.

  “Tyler, look, it’s Keith.” He completely ignores me.

  “He can’t hear you,” Keith repeats, almost like a chorus. “Or see you. Us, I mean.”

  “Tyler!” He doesn’t even look back as the door swings shut. I stare hard at Keith. “What do you mean he can’t hear us or see us?”

  “Do you remember the accident, Jessica?” he asks.

  What accident? My head hurts so much for a moment that I think I’m going to puke.

  Tyler comes out of the restroom and walks by us again, closer this time. I hear him say my name like a prayer, “Jessica.”

  “What, Tyler?” I answer.

  Keith snorts. “He’s got such a crush on you,” he says. “I sure hope you don’t die.”

  “Gee, thanks, that’s nice.” When I turn back Keith is gone, the flap of the boys’ bathroom door my only clue. Tyler has vanished into his classroom, too, and I’m left wobbling in the middle of the hallway.

  Maybe I should go puke. I pull open the door to the girls’ washroom and walk in. I stop inches before passing the full length mirror on the side wall. What did Keith mean? Why can’t anyone see or hear me? I thought people were being mean or ignoring me today, starting with the bus driver. But if they can’t see me . . . I step forward and look at my reflection. Head to toe, there I am. I can see myself: yesterday’s clothes, yesterday’s black eye, crappy hair, five pounds to lose, a couple of pre-menstrual blemishes, no shoes. Huh? I close my eyes. It feels like I have shoes on. I open my eyes. Bare feet. Yuck, bare feet in a public bathroom. Have I been barefoot all day? Maybe I’m dreaming.

  The door opens and two girls file in. They walk between me and the mirror. The first girl, flaunting a style mix of Goth and Grunge, is already pulling a cigarette out of her purse. She ignores her own reflection as she passes, but I do not. I stare at the girl that trails her, dressed in sweet pink, soft bouncing curls framing a softer, yet identical, face. No reflection. I grip the edge of the sink behind me and hold my breath.

  The pretty girl turns her attention toward me and looks me in the eyes, only the second person to do that today. She reaches forward and taps the Goth girl’s head several times, but all the smoker does is bend down and check under each bathroom stall. Satisfied that she’s alone, she leans against the far wall and blows smoke at the ceiling. Except for one reflected and one un-reflected spirit, me and pretty girl, no one can see her.

  “Who are you?” I take a chance that one of them will hear me.

  “Nobody,” pretty girl replies. “I’m just a nobody.”

  “And Goth girl?” I tilt my head toward the cloud of smoke.

  “She’s me. She’s the new me. Amy. Amy Harper. Used to get good grades. Used to babysit little kids and help mom around the house and . . . be happy. We’re kind of disconnected now.”

  I stare at this girl, this spirit-Amy. No way. I can’t be listening to somebody’s soul talking. I must be hallucinating.

  “Amy. Hi, I’m Jessica Mitchell.” I forget about my shoeless feet and cross over to the smoking girl. “Hi!” I get no reaction. Nothing. The real flesh and blood Amy Harper can’t hear me. She unknowingly blows more smoke at my face and I choke and cough.

  I continue to choke and cough until Amy finishes her cigarette and leaves the restroom, her hazy soul a quick step behind, no wave to me or any indication that we’d spoken.

  I’m alone for a moment and then Keith is here, leaning against the first stall.

  “Sorry about disappearing,” he says.

  “What are you doing here? This is the girls’ restroom.” I speak fast and cough again.

  “Now you see me, now you don’t.” Keith laughs. “This is sort of fun, you know. Appearing, reappearing, floating above their heads.”

  The coughing fit returns and I can hardly manage the spasms that shake my body. Maybe somewhere there’s a me who’s coughing up blood.

  “You’ll be all right,” Keith says. “Just relax and go with the flow. They’re taking care of you.”

  “Huh?”

  “Come on, I’ll show you.” He takes my hand and leads me past the mirror where I can see how ragged I look and how pale Keith’s reflection appears. I’m vaguely relieved that we both have reflections.

  I can’t make heads or tails of his explanation as he leads me out of the school and to a mangled blue Ford. He opens the passenger door for me and I get in. Somehow he manages to open the driver’s door and squeeze himself behind the steering wheel. The dashboard is collapsed, the radio is hanging forward, and the windshield is a web of cracks. He peels out of the lot with all the recklessness of rage and immortality combined.

  “If I disappear on you again, don’t worry. Disappearing is a good thing . . . for me, anyway. It means I’m back in my body.” He chuckles while I ponder that one. Too strange. He pulls into a space in the emergency parking lot at the hospital, and says, “Follow me, Jess.”

  “Jessica,” I correct him. I hate Jessie or Jess and I thought everyone knew that. How could he know my address but not know that?

  Whoa. Slow down. I’m getting angry over nothing.

  But I can’t control this apprehension. I keep on his right side after we maneuver the revolving doors, pass the nurses’ station, and enter the ER. I don’t want to see bed pans, puke buckets, or blood vials. I don’t want to hear screams.

  But I hear them.

  And crying. And short, dry sobs.

  And then Keith is no longer on my left.

  I stand in front of one of those curtains that curve around a hospital bed, hiding the sight but not the sound of a sick or injured patient. I hear a groan. Anxious parental voices cry out Keith’s name, hopeful and soothing, yet guarded. I duck under the curtain and stand at the foot of Keith’s bed. At least I think it’s Keith. It looks like his hair. His face is bandaged and the parts I can see are swollen. His mom and dad are holding his hands and cooing his name. This must be Keith. The clothing he was wearing is in a clear plastic bag under his mom’s chair. Bloody. His leg is held aloft by some contraption.

  “Cool, huh?” he says. He stands next to me again, pointing at himself, or rather his body in the bed. “I’ve been in and out of consciousness for hours, popping back home or to school. Even went to church once.”

  I want to ask where Michael is, if he’s dying, too, because it certainly looks like Keith doesn’t have much time left in this world. Instead I say, “Hey, you’re barefoot, too.” He smiles and I ask the question that is burning hottest in my head: “How come you knew my address?” As soon as it’s out of my mouth I know it’s not the question I should be asking.

  His laugh is sweet, such a contrast to the weeping of his mother. His father, or it must be his stepfa
ther, keeps up a steady stream of soft words in his mom’s ear.

  “Tyler’s been talking about you for years. Had me drive him by your house. But he’s shy, you know. He’s just gonna keep his feelings to himself and never even ask you to—”

  “Ask me to what?” But Keith is gone again. The edge of the privacy curtain trembles. I stare at the bandaged head of the real Keith, listen to his mom’s whimpering, watch the blips and lines on the monitor he’s hooked up to. The heartbeat is steady now, but an irregular pattern is rolling off the screen and I know what that means—he has reappeared somewhere else.

  This is no dream. Maybe I have some special ability now that lets me see and hear spirits or souls or ghosts even.

  Or maybe I’m dead.

  The echo of screams from the car accident fade in and out. My head and chest hurt now, the nausea is back. I’m not going to wait for Keith to reappear. I need to search around right now. I have the sickest feeling that I’m going to find Michael in one of these hospital beds.

  Or myself.

  Then my breath escapes in a rush as I remember that I wanted to check on Rashanda. It was Rashanda that I was so concerned about before. Something happened to her. I’m sure of it.

  I duck under the curtain and scan the room. There are twenty numbered cubicles, most empty of patients, their curtains opened, all facing the long nurses’ station.

  I run to the counter and read the dry erase board that charts patients, doctors, nurses, medications, and procedures. I suck in too much sterile smelling air as soon as I read the name next to bed four. My name.

  Bed four.

  Back past Keith’s curtain.

  Seven. Six. Five. The curtain to bed four waves open as a nurse whooshes out with a metal tray filled with vials and bandages and silver instruments. I catch a glimpse of the patient and three visitors.

  My parents. And Rashanda. And me, in the bed.

  Rashanda

  Last Week

  I hate school. I told Jessica that last week as we were sitting cross-legged on the floor of my messy bedroom. I said I wasn’t looking forward to all the hoopla at the end of this month, homecoming week with all of its insanity: the pep assembly, class competitions, hall decorating, the parade, and especially the dance.