“Did you know it really was Julianne’s fault that your mother died?”
Laurel turns to look at me, and the expression on her face is pure hatred. “It’s not true.”
“Oh, it is true. She told me. She told me about how that day she just had to have graduated beakers for her science fair project. Your mom was in the middle of baking pies for the church bake sale, do you remember? She yelled at your mom until she agreed to drop everything and drive her to the store even though she was getting a migraine too. When they were in the car, Julianne wanted your mom’s cell phone, but do you remember she wouldn’t let anyone into her purse ever? Her rules, remember? Your mother tried to take her purse, but Julianne held on to it. She was so angry. She was crazed. That was the night you were going out with Trent Fisher who she had a crush on and everything that day was making her angry. She yanked the purse away. They were both tugging it when your mother swerved the car over the double yellow line and the tractor trailer coming the other way hit them.”
Laurel is sobbing big, silent tears. Her shoulders are shaking, and I’m perversely glad that I’m doing this. I have felt the pain and the guilt of this for years—the shame of the death of the person I loved most in the world being my fault. Her absence changed everything for Laurel and me. Our lives went to crap after that. I’d had to live with knowing it was all my fault.
The truck hit her side of the car and killed her on impact. I, miraculously, was not killed. The car swung around and came to rest facing the opposite direction on the shoulder. I had some cuts and bruises and a hell of a pain from the exploded air bag, but I was alive and my mother wasn’t. Because of me.
Laurel’s shoulders are heaving, and she’s hugging her arms around herself. I stand and look at her. I’m finished with my hateful memories.
Laurel takes in a jagged breath and eventually stops gulping for air. When she speaks her voice is raw. “How she must have suffered.”
Panic floods me and my head snaps back. “What? Your mother? No. They said—No. I don’t think so. Julianne said she was killed instantly.”
Laurel shakes her head. “No. Julianne. To have believed all these years that it was her fault. To really feel that enough to tell you the story like that, with all those details. I had no idea.” She wipes her tears. “I didn’t know her guilt ran this deep. How she must have suffered.” She gives a little nod. “It makes sense. We grew apart after that.” She tilts her head and looks at me like she’s decided to accept that I’m part of Julianne’s life. And now hers. She’s counting me as fully present.
“We’d been close when we were young. But then we grew apart after my mom died. I always thought it was my father’s fault. He got remarried so fast and was so distant from us—almost like he wanted to move on and make a new life and put the old one—including us—behind.” She walks over and takes Julianne’s hand in hers. “I never knew how deep the pain was that she was carrying.”
Her reaction overwhelms me. I should be grateful for her understanding and compassion, but I’m not. There’s a cauldron of acid bubbling over deep in my gut. It’s churning with memories of my mother and my involvement in the car accident that killed her. My jealousy and anger that killed her.
And I was in another car accident almost two months ago that almost killed me and sent me on a journey into other lives. I’m not even the same person anymore. I literally have not been myself since.
I bolt from the room, walking away as fast as I can until I’m running.
Chapter Thirty-One
I run all the way to the park. What I’m doing or where I’m going doesn’t even register with me. Instead, I block out my surroundings until the sounds of my shoes slapping on the concrete turn into dull thuds on soft grass and red Georgia soil.
Wheezing and struggling to pull in air, I take a seat on a wooden-slatted bench near a small pond and listen to my heart pound and my blood rush in my veins, bringing life-giving oxygen to this body that isn’t mine.
I miss my mom.
I let myself think about her, which is something I’ve been careful to avoid for years. It’s easier to pretend you never had something than knowing, admitting, feeling how much you’ve really lost. And how empty you are in its absence.
My mother was the heart and soul of our family. She was our light and joy. Every day with her was a new adventure. Ingenious and creative and blessed with boundless energy, she would turn a day cleaning the attic into an expedition to hidden worlds. Mopping the kitchen would become a defense against dragons or an alien invasion. Watching television would turn into a very real family picnic on the floor.
We only had one car so she’d have to take Laurel and me with her to drop Dad off at work at four thirty in the morning if she wanted to have the car that day. These would be the best mornings where Laurel and I would snuggle in the backseat together under our favorite blankets, and Mom would sneak in covert trips to the donut shop for Laurel’s favorite raspberry jelly donut and my favorite Boston cream.
Mom was my confidante, listening with love and crying her own tears for my heartbreak over Tristan Matthews when he professed love for Laurel and not me in tenth grade. Likewise she commiserated with my disappointment at not making first chair flute in orchestra, and then celebrated my triumph when I got my first poem published in our school’s literary magazine.
Not having her around these last years has been horrible. Like living in a world that’s not really the world I’m supposed to be living in. Like I should be able to wake up and have things set right. She’d still be here.
The week after she died I dreamed I was being punished. That because the accident was my fault my mom had been taken away for a while, but since I’d been good that week, she could come back now. I had that dream over and over again for years. And my mind—even asleep—always knew how long it had been. I’d been good for a year. Two years. Three.
In my dreams, she’d always look so happy and well when she came back. And things were wonderful, even better than before she died because I’d seen how hard it was to live life without her. But then I’d wake up and for a moment not realize it was a dream. When I remembered she was dead and my dream wasn’t real, it was like losing her all over again.
I still have that dream.
And what’s worse than all the things I miss about her are all the future memories she should’ve been making. She never knew what it was to be a grandmother. She missed Savannah and Jackson’s whole existences. She’ll never know their sweet smiles that look like hers and their blonde hair that’s so very Laurel. She’ll never know my children or future husband, if I even live to have them.
And so I mourn her, and I keep mourning her. Over and over again. For everything she won’t be here for, every moment when she would have made a difference.
I wipe the tears from my eyes and look around the park. It’s a bright, sunny day, overly warm for September, but I’ve only just noticed.
There’s a little girl—maybe four years old—running close to the edge of the pond after a gaggle of geese, and I lean forward, ready to spring if she should fall in. But her mother, and then her father, come into my view, running behind her.
The mother reaches her first and swings the little girl up into the air, her dark hair fanning out with a swoop. When they’ve swung full circle, the father plucks her from the mom’s arms and boosts her up onto his shoulders. All three of them are laughing, faces shining in the sun.
All at once, all three of them turn and look at me.
My breath catches and a cold dread creeps up my arms. I suddenly feel like I’m in an episode of Black Mirror or an old Twilight Zone or something.
I look behind me, but no, there’s no one there. It’s me they’re watching.
I feel like running away because I can’t make sense of this feeling of insubstantiality. The little family is far from threatening, but the way they’re regarding me is eerie, and I’m unsettled. But even as I’m deciding to leave, the mother leans up and says something to t
he father. He nods, and, with the little girl clinging to him with a hand on each of his ears as if steering him, he waves at me before turning and tromping them both in the direction of the playground.
I don’t know these people. Before I have time to process what the wave means, the mother is walking right toward me with determined strides. I put my hands on my knees and stand to leave.
“Evie, wait!” the woman calls, still a few yards away.
I stop. In my quiet reverie, I’d completely forgotten that I’m Evie. There’s nothing strange in this encounter. These are just people who knew Evie and think they know me. I blow out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.
I wait for her to approach, confident that I can impersonate Evie well enough for a two minute “how ya doin’?” conversation.
I put my hands on my hips and smile at the woman. Now that she’s closer I notice she looks like her daughter, with thick, dark hair and rosy apple cheeks.
“Hi,” I say in a friendly voice.
“Hi, Evie! Or should I say Julianne?”
A chill snakes down my spine, and I’m sure a look of horror crosses my face because the woman quickly flutters her hands at me. “Oh! I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to frighten you! Please forgive me.”
Her expression is genuinely pained, and this reassures me. I become less fearful for my—hopefully—immortal soul and more interested in how she knows my real name.
“I’m Laney. Sullivan. I just want to talk to you a minute. Should we sit?” she asks.
I nod, and she puts her hand on my elbow as we sit on the bench together. I’m surprised to find myself more comforted than fearful at this physical contact. Especially since I remain Evie.
I take a deep breath to calm my racing heart. Her mind is working behind her eyes. She’s looking at me and then at the pond, and I can tell she’s figuring out what to say to me. She’s another person who has run into the weirdness of this world of which I was, previous to my body jumping, blissfully unaware.
“I knew Evie. A little,” she says at last. “I hadn’t heard from her in more than a year and then a few months ago she showed up at my door asking me to deliver a letter to her, in this park, today—a day that was three months away.” She pulls an envelope from her pocket and holds it in her hands.
“You must have thought she was crazy,” I say, recovering a little.
She shakes her head. “No. I knew it must have been important. That’s why my husband took off work. We’ve been spending the day in the park, waiting for you.”
The feeling of insubstantiality, of the world being unreal and merely floating around me returns.
She continues. “You see, I know what Evie could do.”
“You do?”
She nods. “I’m alive because of her.” She looks off across the water of the pond, and I follow her gaze. A goose waddles toward the edge of the water. His companions follow with a flurry of partially extended wings.
She turns to me and tucks her leg up so she’s facing me. “Several years ago I was working with my dad on the farm—I grew up on our family’s farm in North Georgia—and I was working in the east field, near the highway. Dad was near the thresher, and I was in the back bundling the straw. All of a sudden, this black car that had been tearing down the highway screeched its brakes and came to a dead stop at the side of the road. My dad and I quit working and watched as this city girl in high heels came running down the hill from the highway and told me to get out of the way because the thresher was going to blow up.”
She scratches her nose and tilts her head at me like she’s checking to make sure I’m still paying attention.
“Well, neither one of us believed her—I know I didn’t—but it’s not every day a city girl sinks her heels three inches down into the hill of our land to come tell us something. So we both walked over to where she was, and my dad asked her to repeat what she’d said.
“She said we just needed to trust her and to take a break from the threshing for a minute.” She shakes her head and her eyes are far away, like she’s still seeing the day she’s telling me about.
“It wasn’t two minutes later, the entire thresher blew up. Scraps of metal were blown every which way. A large chunk of it rested right where I’d stood.”
A shiver runs through me, and the hairs on my arms rise.
“Afterwards, my father and I took her into the house and asked how she knew it was going to do that. She said she was just driving by and had a strong feeling. She said she knew she was going to throw up if she didn’t stop and tell us what she saw. My dad and I were very grateful that she did, I can tell you that.”
“And that’s how you met Evie?”
Laney nods.
“And you’ve remembered her all this time?”
“Well, no. I mean, that wasn’t the only time.” The wind blows her hair in her face and she pushes it away, tucking it behind her ear.
“A few years later I was in college at North Georgia, and I ran into her in the student store. She said there was someone she wanted me to meet who was in the next aisle. I walked one aisle over, and Andy was there.” She nods her head in the direction her husband and child had taken. “He looked up at me and smiled and the stack of books he was holding fell and when I was done helping him pick them up, Evie had already gone. I met Andy, all right, but he’d never met her before. She didn’t know him. I think she just wanted me to meet him. And I did. We went on our first date that night, and we’ve been together ever since.”
My mind is bubbling over. The effect Evie has had on this woman’s life is incredible. I believe it all—of course I do. And it’s only serving to make me feel guilty for occupying Evie’s body when she’s this amazing person who has used her powers for good, to help other people. In my opinion, Evie is some sort of superhero. How tragic that in recent times she’s hated her life and her gift enough to have spiraled down into a life of drugs and stealing and stripping. She could have made a fortune hiring herself out as a psychic. She actually was one.
“That’s amazing. Evie is the reason you met your husband.”
“She really was. I don’t think we’d ever have met otherwise. He was an engineering major, and I majored in dance.”
“Dance?”
She grins. “I never wanted to run the farm. Dance was the furthest thing away from farming I could think of.”
“Wow. So you and Evie kept in touch after that?”
She shakes her head. “No. Not really. It wasn’t until she saved all our lives last year that we exchanged email addresses.”
“Saved your lives?”
“Yeah. Andy and Lily and I were parking our car at the airport. We were going to go to Wisconsin to visit Andy’s mother. Evie pulled her car up and parked right next to us and told us not to go. We didn’t. The plane crashed. Three people died.”
“Whoa.” I feel like I can’t comprehend the enormity of this gift of Evie’s. The sheer impact of force she could—and did—have on the world. Mind-blowing.
Laney nods. “I feel bad for those three people. Real bad. But if it hadn’t been for Evie, I know in my heart it would have been six.”
“How did she know?”
“I’ve asked her that a lot those times I saw her. How she knew something was going to happen. She said the first time she was just driving by, and she felt a jolt go through her like a bolt of lightning. She stopped the car right then and there. That’s why she looked as shocked as we did when she came down the hill and ruined her good shoes. With meeting Andy, she seemed more light-hearted, like my own private Cupid granting my love wish. She told me that a lot of times once she’d seen something for somebody, it was hard to get them out of her mind. So I guess once she started seeing me and my dad, she was more sensitive to us and whatever was going to happen to us.”
She swallows. “I’ve been real glad this past year and a half that I was already on her mind, or else I don’t think she would’ve seen the plane crash and known to drive to the air
port and tell us not to get on the plane.”
“You’d think she could’ve just called you,” I say. Laney obviously believed wholeheartedly, after all. She would have obeyed.
She laughs. “I told her the same thing, but she shook her head and told me that’s not the way she’d seen it. Also she wanted to make sure with her own eyes that we didn’t get on that plane. Of course, I wouldn’t have. Andy might have tried to argue with me, but I guess he couldn’t with her right there and me trusting in her so much.”
I twirl a piece of my hair around my finger until the tip goes red. “What did Evie tell you about me?”
Laney draws both her legs up and hugs her knees to her. I wonder at her flexibility. I would probably pull a muscle if I sat like that. Although Evie could probably do it.
“She said she wouldn’t be herself. She said a nice woman who needed help named Julianne would be her.”
“And you believed her? Such a crazy story?”
“Of course I did. Every good thing in my life has happened because of Evie and her visions. If I hadn’t met her, I’d be dead and single.” She gives a little laugh, and I feel grateful that Evie did save her, that we’re talking together right now, like this. Laney feels like a port in a storm of craziness, and I want to hang here, with her, until the crazy subsides and things start to make sense.
“I’m glad you believed her, because it’s true.”
Laney nods.
“I think not many people would believe her. Or in this.” I raise my arms and gesture toward myself. “Well, my roommate does, but he’s all kinds of crazy. No one else would believe.”
“That’s been a problem all her life. Having this gift that people didn’t really want her to have.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense. Look at how she helped you.”
“It doesn’t make any sense. That’s the problem. It freaks people out. I think she wanted to help a lot of people but it often went badly.”
My heart is aching for Evie. No wonder she was torching her life when I showed up.
Body Jumping Page 20