Be Not Afraid

by Cecilia Galante

  The same look as before filled his eyes. “You think I’m lying?”

  “I don’t know.” I struggled to my feet. “Who cares? Come on. It’s like three in the morning. I have to get home before my dad gets up for work. He’ll kill me if he knows I snuck out of the house.”

  He didn’t move, just stayed there on the ground, looking up at me. If I’d been brave enough, I would have leaned down right then and there and kissed him on the lips. Anything to erase the stunned look on his face, the sting in his eyes. “Did you bring something?” I asked instead. “You know, for the bird? A box or a bag to put it in?”

  He blinked and then dropped his head, as if realizing the moment was over. “Yeah.” His voice drifted out under him. “In the car.”

  We walked in silence toward his Jeep, the chirp of crickets the only sound in the air. A million different apologies ran through my head: I’m sorry. I didn’t really mean it. Sometimes things come out before I have a chance to think how they might sound. I’m not good at this. I want you to like me. I want you to love me. I don’t want you to like me. I don’t want you to love me because that means I will have to love you back, and loving someone is too hard. It hurts too much.

  He opened the back door to the car and reached inside, pulling out an empty iPod box, white with a fitted lid.

  “That’s perfect.” My voice was just above a whisper.

  He opened the box, holding it in both hands as I deposited the bird inside. I watched as he closed the lid carefully, taking pains not to bump any part of the animal. “You know, Marin—” he started, but the buzz of my cell phone cut him off.

  I froze as my phone buzzed again. There was only one person in the world who would be calling me at this hour of the night. I pulled my phone out of my pocket. Dad. “Shit,” I said. “It’s my father.”

  “Don’t answer it,” Dominic said.

  “I have to.” I was already flipping the top up. “It’ll be worse if I don’t.” I pressed the phone to my ear. “Dad, listen. I know you’re mad, but I’m on my way home.”

  “Marin.” His voice was choking. “Where are you?”

  “Downtown. But I told you, I’m on my way—”

  “Turn around,” Dad said. “Meet me at the hospital. Nan fell in the bathroom about a half hour ago. They think she had a heart attack. The doctors aren’t sure if she’ll make it through the night.”

  Fifteen

  “You have to go faster.” I was up against the dashboard of Dominic’s Jeep, pressed so far into the front of it that I could have merged with the windshield. “Seriously, just go around that guy. There’s no one in front of him.”

  “Marin, I’m going as fast as I can. I don’t want to get either of us killed, all right?” Dominic glanced in his rearview mirror and then stepped down hard on the gas, swinging the Jeep around the car in front. He clenched his jaw and sped faster down the highway. “Three more minutes and we’ll be there. Just let me know if you see a cop.”

  I didn’t answer. I couldn’t be sure if I had heard him or if the words Dad had just told me—that Nan would be undergoing emergency surgery in less than twenty minutes—were real. I had the sensation of floating as he’d talked on the phone, as if some part of me had drifted away, and I could not, or would not, listen anymore. Maybe I was shutting down. Maybe everything had finally started to take its toll, just like it had with Cassie, and I was cracking up. For real.

  Dominic swung the car in front of the hospital, braking so hard that I bumped my head against the windshield. “Shit.” He touched my sleeve. “I’m sorry. Are you all right?”

  “I’m okay.” I opened the door and got out. “Thanks for bringing me.”

  “You’re welcome.” The door was almost closed when I heard him say my name.

  “I’ll be thinking of you.” Dominic was leaning over the seat, toward me. “Let me know how everything goes, okay?”

  I nodded and slammed the door.

  Dad was talking to a doctor dressed in blue scrubs when I raced down the hall, but he stepped away when he caught sight of me and caught me at the shoulders with both arms.

  “Can I see her?” I gasped. “Please. Just let me see her.”

  “Not yet.” Dad’s eyes were bloodshot, his hair mussed. “She’s being prepped for surgery right now. Dr. Andrews here was just going over everything with me.” He dropped his arms, pulling me to one side by the wrist. “Doctor, this is my daughter, Marin. Marin, Dr. Andrews is going to operate on Nan.”

  “Is she going to die?” I demanded.

  Dr. Andrews, who was a good head taller than Dad and had cropped gray hair, seemed unfazed by the question. “She’s an older woman,” he said. “And the blow was a big one. Honestly, it’s going to be touch and go for a few hours after the surgery, which will probably take most of the night. But we’ll take very good care of her. If she makes it through tonight, I think she’ll be over the worst of it.”

  His head was covered with a blue cap that creased sharply in the middle, and a gold chain peeked out from beneath his scrub top. I could make out a purple, kidney-shaped blob resting behind his right ear, as well as a smaller yellow one inside his mouth. “If?” I repeated.

  The doctor nodded. “The first twenty-four hours after heart surgery are the most crucial. We’ll know where things stand afterward.” He nodded at Dad and stuck out his hand. “I really have to go. They’re waiting.”

  I watched him leave, glancing at the blue paper covers over the tops of his shoes. They looked ridiculous, like clown feet. Nan’s doctor had clown feet. What if he wasn’t good enough at what he did? What if his hands shook or something slipped?

  I felt Dad’s hand on my shoulder, and for a moment, I wanted nothing more than to turn and sink against him, to let him take everything the way he once did, a long time ago. Except that I couldn’t. We weren’t the kind of people who did that sort of thing. We might never be that kind of people.

  “Where were you?” The tightness in his voice was unbearable.

  Nothing I said now, short of going to see a dying friend, would justify my absence from the house at this hour. There was no point in lying. “I had to go downtown.”

  “At two-thirty in the morning?”

  “I know it looks bad, but if you—”

  “It doesn’t look anything, Marin. It is bad.”

  I stared at the lines along the linoleum floor, the squares within the squares, the sea of tiny speckles that you wouldn’t even know were there unless you concentrated really hard. It was coming. Again. A wave out at sea, gathering strength as it rolled into shore. Pretty soon it would be another tidal wave. A tsunami, crushing everything in its wake. I could feel it.

  “If you think finding my mother bleeding from the head and clutching her chest in the middle of the night isn’t terrible enough, try calling your teenage daughter for help only to realize”—he stopped and glared at me to emphasize his point—“that she’s nowhere in the house.”

  “Bleeding from the head?” I repeated. “Why was her head bleeding?”

  “Because she cracked it on the sink when she fell down.” A pain shot through my chest, and I closed my eyes against it. Dad’s eyes narrowed into little slits. “Tell me, Marin, what was so interesting downtown that you felt you had to sneak out of the house without telling anyone?”

  What was I going to say? That I’d thought of something Dominic Jackson could use to help get some kind of spirit out of his sister? That I’d ridden my bike downtown and dug up a dead bird in the back parking lot of a bar? Seriously?

  “Nothing.” I stuck my foot out, toeing the tip of my shoe along the floor. “I just … we were talking. Just hanging out.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “Me and Lucy.”

  “You and Lucy.” He cocked his head. “All of a sudden, the two of you have a burning urge to see one another. And talk. At two-thirty in the morning.” He inhaled once through his nose, and I could feel the wave rising up inside him. Any moment now, it w
ould come flooding out, maybe drowning both of us this time. Well, I wouldn’t let it. I wouldn’t.

  “I made a mistake, Dad,” I said. “So don’t, okay? Just don’t.”

  He let me go, watched wordlessly as I walked down the narrow perimeter of hall, the soles of my red Keds making light peeling sounds against the floor. I stepped through the yawning doors that led outside and glanced around. The narrow ribbon of road in front of me was marked “EMERGENCY ONLY,” but it was cluttered with cars. A green Honda. A red SUV. Two silver Mercedes, their windows tinted as black as coal. Small bushes had been arranged on either side of the door, and a welcome mat in front spelled out the words FAIRFIELD GENERAL.

  God, I was at another hospital.

  The image of Nan falling, of cracking her head on the corner of that awful bathroom sink filled my head, and my legs gave way beneath me, buckling with such force that I almost fell over. Stumbling, I reached out at the last moment and caught myself on the edge of a bench. I sat down, willing the heaviness inside my head to lift.

  Nan.

  Oh, Nan.

  She’d been so tired this afternoon, so drained. I should have known, the way she’d been sagging there in the chair, waving at her damp skin with a kerchief. I should have known. How long had she been lying there in the bathroom bleeding, gasping for breath? Had she called for me? Marin! Marin, my angel, come help me! Why hadn’t I stayed in the house, instead of heading out to try to impress some stupid boy? I would have been with her, could have reached her before it even happened, kept her head in my lap as I called the ambulance on my cell phone.

  I brought my knees up to my chest, resting my forehead against them. The knocking inside my head felt like feet banging against the floor. Were things really supposed to be this hard? And if they were, could I get through it?

  My cell phone went off. A text from Lucy. Hey stranger! Where r u? Call me! I stared at the words for a moment, watching as they bled and swam together in a swirl of black. It was after three in the morning. What was she doing up? There was no way I could call her right now; I wouldn’t know where to begin, wouldn’t know how to stop. Still, I pulled the phone closer, began stabbing at it with my two thumbs. Can’t talk now, but need u to cover 4 me if my dad calls. More later. I clicked my phone shut and put it back in my pocket. She’d do it. I knew she would.

  “Marin?” I startled as I heard my name and then stood up as Father William hobbled toward me. “Am I interrupting?” He hesitated. “I don’t want to intrude.”

  “No, it’s okay.” I frowned. “Did my dad call you?”

  “He did indeed. May I?” I nodded as the priest indicated the seat next to me. He sat down with a sigh, the red spheres in his spine pulsing under his movements, and removed his hat. “I just talked to him inside,” he said, inching the brim between his fingers. “He told me she’s been taken into surgery.”

  “Yeah.” It hurt to talk. Especially about this. I looked at the green Honda parked across the street instead. The back windshield had one of those glow-in-the-dark stick-family stickers on it, complete with a mother, a father, three kids, two dogs, and a fish. The fish was last in line, jumping out of a little fishbowl, flanked by fat droplets of water. It was hard to imagine what kind of a stick-family bumper sticker Dad might put on the back of his truck. I doubted one that represented us accurately even existed.

  “She’ll be okay.” Father William rested both of his hands atop his cane, which he held between his splayed knees. He did not look at me. “She will. I know it.”

  “Uh-huh.” The annoyance in my voice was obvious. Adults loved to say stuff like this in these kinds of situations, as if they knew something us teenagers did not. But I was starting to get the feeling that they didn’t know either. They just hoped like we did and pretended they knew about everything else.

  “She will.” The priest took a handkerchief out of his back pocket and blotted his eyes. “She’s a trouper, that girl. Stronger than I’ll ever be. That’s for sure.”

  I watched him out of the corner of my eye and then looked down at my hands. Maybe he was afraid too. It was possible that he loved Nan in a way that I had no idea about, or maybe ever would. They’d been friends for over fifty years; he’d presided at her wedding, had baptized Dad, and had buried her husband, all before I was even born. Maybe the thought of losing Nan felt insurmountable, like it did for me. Maybe he needed to throw that pretend knowledge out there, say it aloud, just so someone could hear it.

  “I think she has a pretty good doctor,” I heard myself say. “He seemed okay to me, anyway. Aside from the clown shoes.”

  Father William laughed, a short, barking sound, and stuffed the handkerchief back in his pocket. We watched a few cars drift by, looking for parking, and move on again. A couple walked down the sidewalk, their arms around one another, heads touching. The woman cried softly while the man looked straight ahead, his face stoic and impassive. Next to me, Father William shifted. Out of the corner of my eye, I could make out the red spheres; they shimmered around the edges, as if lit from within.

  “Can I ask you something?” I said.

  “Of course.”

  “How did you hurt your back?”

  “Oh, it was a long time ago. When I was a child, actually. My little brother fell into our pool, and I dove in to get him.” He sighed, a weighted sound I could not place. “It was too shallow. I broke my neck, severed three of the disks in my spine. I was in the hospital for six months. I wasn’t supposed to walk again. Ever.”

  “But you did.”

  “Yes, I got better.” He shrugged. “Stronger. I tackled my rehabilitation program like nothing I’d ever done before. Total commitment.” He smiled. “Being sentenced to a wheelchair for the rest of my life didn’t sit well with me. I had things to do. Places to see.”

  “Wow.” I was impressed. “It still hurts, though, sometimes?”

  “Most of the time.” He turned to look at me. “Speaking of which, have you heard anything more about the epileptic girl? From your school?”

  I had to tell him. Someone else had to know in case Dominic’s crazy idea didn’t work, in case he got himself into even deeper trouble than he was already in. And a Catholic priest, who as far as I knew was the only person supposed to be doing any kind of ritual in the first place, was the ideal person to tell. “Not too much,” I started, then paused. “Father, can I ask you something else?”

  “Sure.”

  “Have you ever helped someone who had a spirit inside them?”

  He looked at me, a curious expression crossing his face. “You mean have I ever performed an exorcism?”

  “Yes.”

  “No. No, never. Only a very few priests are selected as exorcists in the Catholic Church. They’re sent to Rome to study the practice. Some of them are there for years. Exorcist priests are a rarity, even in this country. I don’t think we have more than nine of them living in the United States.”

  “But you’re a priest,” I said. “Couldn’t you do one if you had to? I mean, if it was an emergency or something?”

  He shook his head, rubbing one of his white eyebrows with the side of a finger. “I really don’t have any idea about that kind of thing, Marin. Like I said, you need special training. It’s a very, very delicate process. Not to mention dangerous.” He shifted in his seat, realigned his cane between his feet. “May I ask why you’re asking?”

  I held my breath for a moment, and then let it out. “I saw one,” I said.

  “You saw one what?”

  “A … a spirit, or something. I saw it. Inside Cassie, the girl they’re saying has epilepsy.”

  Father William’s face contorted, as if he had just tasted something rotten. “You saw a spirit?” he repeated. “Inside her?”

  I nodded.

  He opened his mouth and then shut it. “That’s impossible,” he said. “And I mean that with all due respect. But that’s completely impossible. You must have imagined what you saw. Or maybe you saw something else.
Some other part … of … of her illness. Her mental state. I’m sure things look completely bizarre right now, in the condition she’s in.”

  “I didn’t imagine it. I know what I saw.”

  “And what”—he paused—“what did you see?”

  “I saw blackness.”

  “Ah.” Father William nodded, as if playing along. “Blackness.”

  “I’ve been seeing pain in people’s bodies for almost a year now,” I said. “Shapes and colors of all different kinds, all different shades. And in all that time, I’ve never seen a black one. Ever. It’s so black that it’s almost impossible to describe. And it moves, Father. It moves around inside her head, down into her chest.”

  The priest’s face blanched. He stared at the sidewalk for a moment and then ran a hand over his eyes. “It must have been the epilepsy,” he said finally. “Have you ever had the chance to look at someone with epilepsy?”

  “Maybe.” I shrugged. “Half the time, I don’t know what kind of pain I’m seeing in people. I’ve seen a lot of different things.”

  “I’m sure that’s what it was, then.” The look on his face had become patronizing again. Maybe even with a bit of condescension mixed in.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “This is different. I’m telling you, it moved. Nothing I’ve ever seen inside a person has ever moved like that. It’s like … like this black ribbon that slides in and around her cells.…” I shook my head. “It’s crazy.”

  “I’m sure it’s the epilepsy.” Father William drew his fingers around his mouth.

  I was starting to get angry. “You’d believe me if you could see it,” I burst out. “It would scare the shit out of you.” I winced as the expletive came out of my mouth and hung my head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to swear.”

  “That’s all right.” He patted my back. “I understand how upsetting all of this has been for you. Really, I do. And now with Nan. It’s a lot. Things are going at full tilt here.”

  “But there’s other things,” I said. “Today, when I saw her, she talked in a weird voice that wasn’t hers. And her fingertips turned black. And then her eyes changed.”