Mirage

by Tracy Clark

  Tension tiptoes into the room when my mom “accidentally” dumps my dad’s drink in the sink, claiming she thought it was just melted ice. He pours another, a taller one this time. No ice.

  “The date’s been set for the mucky-mucks from the X Games,” he announces. “We’ve got three weeks to get the place in shape.” His drink sloshes as he motions toward me. “I’ll need you to come in and shoot some promotional emails out to people. That’s how you can help. We need a big push. If they do choose us, there’s going to be some initial cost involved.”

  “Tomorrow, then?” I ask, excited to get out of the house. Excited that he needs my help in some way.

  My mom’s head snaps up from the peas she’s shelling. “No skydiving.”

  “No question,” my dad answers.

  Now I feel two years old. “It didn’t even need to be said,” I say. “I’m not ready to go up yet anyway.” As with my dad’s “rules” speech, I’m being looked at like they don’t recognize me, and I have to look away, continuing with my job of dicing the chicken.

  My mom stops what she’s doing and puts her arms around my shoulders. “Soon enough, baby. We know what jumping means to you.” The blanket of love is once again around me. I tilt my head against her soothing arms. We could stay this way all night and I wouldn’t mind. I’ve been starving for it.

  A smoky shadow passes across the silver surface of the knife. I blink. I tell myself that it’s our movements. I look again and see nothing but the glint of polished metal with bits of chicken clinging to the serrated edge. A sigh escapes me.

  Softly, my mom kisses my cheek, and there’s another shadow in the shine, so fleeting, the quick flap of a bird’s wing, the flutter of eyelashes, there and then gone.

  Death . . .

  The voice calls to me, as if that’s my name. I shake my head. It’s not my name. My name is Ryan. My name is Ryan Poitier Sharpe. My name is Ryan.

  Death, she beckons again, and it occurs to me that perhaps she is telling me who she is.

  I tilt the knife sideways to peer into it. My own eyes shine back at me, but then she rises out of them, glaring. I swing my hand upward, wanting to shake her loose. I want to make her disappear. I want her gone. I want her to know I’ll fight her again. I’ll win again. I wave the knife, slash at the air.

  There’s a yelp in my ear, and my father is on his feet, coming at me. I pull my hand back, away from him. My grandmother’s head is tilted sideways, listening hard. Her fingers are over her mouth as she shoots to her feet, faster than I thought she could move. Avery’s mouth is moving, but I can’t hear her words through the ghost’s murmurs. Pain sears through my shoulder as my father twists my arm painfully to the side.

  Mine, Death whispers again, drawing my attention back to the knife that Nolan is trying to take from me. I’m scared for him, but I can’t look at him. My eyes are focused on the blade, eyes locked with hers, which are crinkling with humor.

  Death is smiling.

  Mine.

  “Do you hear her?” I scream. She’s so loud. They must hear her.

  From behind me, Ayida screams again. I crane my head to see her. Why are they looking at me like I’m the monster in this kitchen? Fingers pry mine open. The knife crashes onto the white floor​—​it’s splattered like scarlet poppies in a field of snow.

  A big, black boot smashes down on the knife. I wouldn’t pick it up anyway. Nolan watches me, one arm stretched out to keep me back as he slowly bends down and slides it out from under his boot. He doesn’t take his eyes from me as he asks Ayida, “Are you hurt bad?”

  “N-n-no,” she says through tears. “Small cut.”

  My head whips toward her at this. “You’re cut? Oh God. No. She cut you?”

  “She?” my father screams. His hands, still holding the knife, are on my upper arms. He shakes me so hard, my teeth rattle. I can smell the sharp tang of alcohol wafting from him. It takes me . . . somewhere else. “What the hell are you talking about? You cut your mother!”

  My body goes limp in his grasp, gravity pulling me to the floor so that my father is no longer shaking me; he’s holding me up. “Are you telling me I have a crazy kid now?” His voice climbs, and his question suspends from the ledge of a mountain.

  “Nolan, no!” Ayida pleads. She is upon us now; her hand, slippery with blood, grasps my arm, turning my bandages pale red. “She didn’t mean to.”

  My mother and I are both crying. I’d cover my face, but my father hasn’t let go of me. The pressure of his fingers feels like a pulsing vise around my arms. “I don’t know what’s happening to me,” I cry. “Help me.”

  The voice is there again. I can’t shut it out.

  It screams. Help me!

  Fourteen

  “IT IS NOT UNCOMMON for a latent psychological illness to surface after the use of hallucinogenic drugs. More common, however, is drug-induced psychosis.” Dr. Collier’s deep voice resonates, bouncing off the shiny tiles in the house. My parents called him immediately after I wigged out in the kitchen, and he rushed over.

  Nolan’s voice eclipses Dr. Collier’s. “Since she took it, she’s been seeing things, hearing things. If it walks like schizophrenia and talks like schizophrenia​—”

  Dr. Collier interrupts him. “It hasn’t been conclusively proven that taking LSD causes schizophrenia, and that’s a diagnosis that takes some time. The same neural pathways​—​like roads in our brains, if you will​—​are stimulated, making the symptoms remarkably similar. Additionally, if a patient already has a marked lack of self-identity, they may, through use of hallucinogenic drugs, invite other selves in, so to speak. It’s possible your daughter was already mentally unstable before taking the drug.”

  My mother speaks. “Ryan is the most self-identified person I know,” she says through a wry laugh. “But this all started after she took the LSD.”

  That’s not true.

  “So,” Dr. Collier says, “you saw no signs of instability, strange behavior, or mental distress in Ryan before the incident?”

  I lie on my bed and listen to the painful beat of silence hanging after the doctor’s question. Gran snores in a chair next to me, and Avery sits at my feet. She’s reluctantly been assigned to watch over me while my parents talk to Dr. Collier.

  “Is he suggesting that there was a mental illness lying in wait inside your brain?” Avery whispers, looking sideways at me like I suddenly make her nervous. “God. That’s like having a bomb in your head and not knowing when it’ll go off.”

  I shove Avery’s thigh with my big toe. “I’m not mentally ill.”

  “Looks like I didn’t wait long enough for things to settle down,” she mumbles. “I know you do a lot of things for attention, but this is over‑the‑top.”

  I bury my face back in my arms. I know what I’m seeing and hearing is real. The face that follows me around may show up in flat reflections, but she’s as three-dimensional as I am, as if I could reach in and touch her. I shudder. I have touched her. Every time she appears, she watches me with emotions pouring from her eyes like tears. Her eyes are angry, and I’m the nexus of her focus.

  I cheated Death. Now she won’t leave me alone.

  Why is she so persistent, though? She’ll have me eventually. She visits everyone at some point. Death always gets her way in the end.

  “How do you know you don’t have a mental illness? Do crazy people know they’re crazy?” Avery asks. “And I don’t mean to be rude, but you smell crazy. Like, when was the last time you showered?”

  “Shhh,” I hiss. “Don’t upset the crazy person. I’m trying to listen.”

  Dr. Collier is speaking again. “Is there any history of mental illness, such as paranoid schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, in the family? Addictions?”

  There is a heavy silence where I’m sure my mother’s eyes flick to my dad. Addictions. But post-traumatic stress disorder is a response to something awful happening. Nolan has seen the ravages of war, has had his body permanently disfigur
ed. I wouldn’t call that a latent psychological illness. I look over at Gran. Her mouth is slack, fingers twitching occasionally in her sleep. She’s old, not mentally ill.

  My disc is scratched, sure, but that’s my fault. I didn’t have to do what I did that night in the motor home. That was when things went very wrong.

  The doctor continues. “We cannot overlook the seriousness of tonight’s incident, for your safety and her own. A sedative can be administered for the night, but I’d advise an appointment with me first thing tomorrow. Ryan may require antipsychotic medication.”

  Tearful murmurs from my mother follow Dr. Collier’s pronouncement. My father’s voice is loud and clear. “I don’t care if you have to medicate her. Hell, I’m medicated. Whatever’s going on, fix it. This is the last goddamned thing we need right now. Control this shit, doc.”

  “Nolan!”

  Dr. Collier clears his throat, which he does a lot. “I am committed to doing that, Mr. Sharpe.”

  The adults come to my bedroom door. The way everyone moves toward me, like they’re trying to corner a stray cat, makes me want to scramble off the bed and curl into a ball or extend my claws. “The doctor’s going to give you something to help you sleep,” my mother says. My father hovers over me with a look of fierce determination.

  “No! You don’t understand. This isn’t my fault. I didn’t mean for this to happen. She was talking to me. I was trying to get away from her, from the eyes​—​the eyes in the knife,” I protest. The room goes silent. When I see the distrustful, wary look on their faces and my mother’s bandaged hand, I’m forced to remember that I’m the one who hurt her. She doesn’t deserve to be hurt. The spirit appeared, but I was the one holding the knife.

  My mom wipes her eyes with fingers that are smeared with dried blood. I relent and let the doctor pour the pills onto my palm.

  “I’ll stay with her until she falls asleep, Uncle Nolan.”

  Gran is woken up and led to the door but stops and turns her head my way. “I dreamed you were waiting for me when I die,” she says, her Caribbean accent even heavier with sleep. My mom bites her lip to keep from crying.

  Yes, die, girl, the malicious voice whispers to me. I’m waiting for you.

  I can’t react. Must hold still, even though I want to cover my ears and scream. I lie down and pull up the quilt that Gran’s mother made many years ago on the island. It wraps me in the blues and corals of the tropics. Palm trees, fish, and the cascarilla plants they farmed for shipment to Italy to flavor Campari all depict the life of the family. There’s something comforting about enfolding myself in what came before.

  Avery tries to make small talk as the sedative tugs at my grasp on consciousness. It pulls hard at me. Whether it’s taking me deeper into myself or away from myself, I don’t know. My hold is slipping, and that’s what scares me the most. I feel like I could float away.

  “Dom is one mopey, lovesick bastard,” Avery says. Her voice sounds far away. “He walks around the DZ with his sketchpad, drawing and scribbling. It’s sad. You’d better pull yourself together and get back. There’s a line of girls circling like sharks, who’d be more than happy to comfort him.”

  “Hmm,” I mumble. It takes effort to talk. “He’s hurting. Someone should comfort him.”

  “That’s crazy talk.” Her hand swoops to cover her mouth. “Are you saying you don’t care if someone moves in on him?”

  I can’t answer. I loved him more fiercely and openly than I’ve ever loved anyone besides JoeLo. I gave Dom all of me. He was my first. Why are all of our memories in my head but disconnected from my heart? Pictures scroll by, but I feel no attachment to them. Instead of heartache at being separated, I am emotionless.

  It’s like I’ve been born again, without a heart.

  The next morning, we drive in stony silence into town. My body feels a hundred pounds heavier. “You could cut the tension in here with a knife,” I say, and realize too late what a careless thing I’ve said.

  Nobody responds, but I can see Nolan’s jaw working like he’s chewing on a gristly piece of reply. I probably should keep my mouth shut.

  We continue our slow bounce down the road to see Dr. Collier for his assessment and also to see my regular doctor, who is going to remove the bandages today. Any sane person would be more worried about the permanent disfiguring scars on her face, but all I can think about is how I’m going to manage to seal the vault around my mind.

  What’s completely frightening about the questionnaire Dr. Collier hands me when I sit down in his office is that I could check off nearly everything on this list.

  Yes, I have hallucinations.

  Yes, I’ve been guilty of skipping showers or brushing my teeth, but not on purpose. I just . . . I forget, until someone remarks on my appearance or my teeth feel like wool.

  Yes, there are strange things going on that I can’t explain.

  Yes, there is someone else inside my head who no one else seems to hear.

  Yes, I often feel void of emotion.

  Yes. Yes. Yes.

  There’s no way I’m agreeing to any of this.

  I’m not crazy. I know I’m not, and there’s no way I can let them medicate me. Just the thought of medication causes the most severe case of nausea to rise from my stomach. My aversion to it feels phobic in intensity. Desperate. They can’t flatline me. They can’t turn me into the walking dead. Whatever they gave me last night has made me feel so untethered from my body that I fear I’ll plummet right out of it. It’s like I’m the rider on a horse with a loose saddle that keeps slipping sideways. I’m afraid it will take all the fight out of me, and I need my fight to combat her.

  In order to keep from being medicated anymore, I have to convince them that what my mom suggested was true. What I’m experiencing are flashbacks from the LSD, and I need time. I just need time.

  After the physical examination, the written test, and the doctor trying very hard not to look frustrated as I give him as little information as possible, I am led out into the excessively beige waiting area. I wonder if they purposely leave it colorless so as to not provoke emotions in people. The receptionist glances furtively in my direction every few seconds while shuffling papers as Dr. Collier talks to my parents privately. She’s acting like she’s not watching over me, but I know she is. Everyone is watching me.

  My parents come out of his office, ashen-faced and grim. My dad gives a tilt of his head that conveys his displeasure.

  “Well?” I whisper to my mother as we head to the next appointment right across the street.

  “Honestly, Ryan, I don’t know what you told him​—”

  “Or didn’t tell him,” my father interjects. They flank me as we walk: wingmen to the cuckoo bird.

  My mother roots around her purse for something, then answers while dabbing fuchsia lipstick on her generous lips without a mirror. “He says he can’t conclusively diagnose you at this point.”

  “You sound disappointed.”

  Ayida stops walking and whirls toward me. “I am not disappointed he didn’t diagnose you with bipolar disorder or paranoid schizophrenia or any other mental illness! I am disappointed you weren’t honest with him! I have no agenda but to see you well, to see you get back to yourself.”

  “You want that, don’t you?” Nolan asks me. His voice is uncharacteristically gentle as he opens the door to the medical facility.

  I enter, and my footsteps stutter on the gray carpet. It’s familiar. Too familiar, but I can’t say why. “I don’t want to go in here again. This place treats people like walking germs.”

  My mother scowls. “Baby, you’ve never been here before in your life.”

  My lips purse together. I could swear I’ve seen this place​—​though maybe it was in my bad dreams. The memory is dreamlike, hazy. Haven’t I previously shuffled down these long halls lined with enlarged glossy photographs of the desert? “You sure?” I ask. Walking the corridor is like being dipped in a vat of desolation. Every cell in my body r
ejects the idea of being here. I want to run.

  “I’m certain.” She points to the photographs. “You’d think they’d put up pictures of the beach or forests,” my mom comments with fake cheeriness. “We see enough of the desert as it is.”

  “Pictures of the beach would just be a tease,” I answer shakily, glancing at a black-and-white of a Joshua tree posing haughtily for the sun. I suck in my breath, seeing the spirit’s face flash at me from the thick, gnarled branches in the photograph.

  In the next picture​—​the sun setting behind the Sierra Nevada​—​her eyes pierce mine, her face as stony as the granite mountaintops. I force myself to keep walking.

  A still photograph of a menacing, coiled, tawny rattlesnake makes every hair on my body rise. I will myself to stare at it. How can she possibly harm me? But it looks as though venom drips from her open mouth. The sound of the fast quiver of a rattler morphs into her scream. My skin rolls with fear, with the sensation of shedding, like that snake.

  Do snakes feel fresh and vulnerable after they’ve discarded their old skin for new? How long does it take for the new skin to thicken so that sensations don’t feel like an assault? My spit tastes like sour, acidic venom.

  Photo after photo scrolls by, and there she is, in every frame. My heart pounds as if I’ve been running an endless hallway. The girl is determined, though. She tells me in a voice like the snarl of a leopard, I will haunt you forever.

  I keep my head down until I’m sitting in the waiting area. My mother asks if I’m okay. Words will betray me. They already have. I nod and sit on my bandaged hands to conceal their violent trembling. We’re ushered into the exam room. There are no mirrors, thank God.

  First the doctor removes the bandages from my arms and upper thighs. I crinkle my nose at the yeasty smell of the gauze. Is it supposed to smell like illness? My stomach rolls. Something about being in this room makes me feel like my blood is pulsing thick with a spreading disease.

  Then, slowly, she peels away the wide swath of cotton gauze on my cheek. The air hits it with cool breath. I feel exposed. My mother’s hand flings upward to her mouth, but Nolan seizes it and pulls it calmly to his side. She turns away from me and pretends to search for something in her purse.