Mirage

by Tracy Clark

  Thirty-One

  THE DESERT WIND is so hot, I feel like the devil is breathing on me. My body isn’t working right. It’s uncooperative. Slow movements, fumbling with buttons and zippers, struggling to clip my parachute chest strap. It’s built to snap together, but it’s like the clips are opposing magnets, resisting. Finally I force them together and get the pack secured. There’s a fleeting thought that I shouldn’t bother with a parachute. What’s the point? But then they wouldn’t let me on the plane, would they?

  I have to get on the plane. There are lots of ways to die, but this is so right, it’s poetic.

  The drop zone is a hive. People dart in and out, worker bees and drones ready for flight. Excitement is a thing you can feel here. It’s a sugary syrup over the beige of the Mojave. With the big-way and the site visit from the X Games people later in the afternoon, it’s the only day busy enough for me to get in the air without trouble. I’m just another drone. I’ll get on the plane, and when I jump, I’ll track my body as far away from the DZ as I can so they won’t see. They won’t have to find me. I’ll come to rest in the harsh, beautiful, unforgiving desert.

  Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.

  We all get on the airplane. My eyes meet the exhilarated eyes of a familiar guy. Only skydivers look exhilarated at eight a.m. He flicks a thumbs-up at me with maniacal happiness, and that’s when I see him in memory . . . Birthday Boy. I teased him one day, scared him for fun. Then I blew him a kiss as I fell out of the plane. I guess he came back for more.

  My father once said, You don’t become a part of the skydiving life. Skydiving becomes part of you. Some people do it once, to say they did. Others do it and realize they were living a half life before that and they’ll only feel alive on the edge.

  Half life. That best describes mine. It isn’t enough of a life.

  Birthday Boy looks at me quizzically, and I turn my head toward the wall of the plane, focus on the dots of rivets holding the aluminum panels together. “Scared?” he asks.

  “No,” I answer. “I’ve done this before.”

  Only I know we’re not talking about the same thing.

  The wind skims through the cabin; the air slapping our faces makes it real. I think I hear a song riding on its currents. It feels good to hum, to feel the vibration of my voice, so I do. But once I start, I can’t stop. This song rises from a deeper part of me than my self-control.

  My song.

  “Siren,” I say. “Of course you’re with me now.”

  I’ll never leave.

  “You don’t have to sing to me. I’m already yours.”

  My song! she yells in my head.

  Someone opens the jump door. The spotter signals the pilot, and the plane powers down. Everyone stands. I rise to my feet.

  Birthday Boy places a gentle hand on my arm. “You’re talking to yourself,” he says, then looks at me closer. “I recognize you. From my first jump. You seem . . . different.”

  We stare at each other. This stranger’s concern is a rope. I can’t afford to let him lasso me and reel me back in. “You okay? Maybe sit this one out?” he asks.

  I shake my head. “I’m all in.” My heart thuds wildly as I lumber behind the other jumpers toward the open door of the plane. The song pounds so loud in my head, it hurts. I can’t shut it out. Only one way to stop it. I’ll go to the silence again.

  Birthday Boy enters the doorway, poised to jump, but stops, holds himself from falling. Both arms are stretched out to each side of the open door. He looks back at me through his goggles with questions swarming his eyes. The wordless moment that passes between us is spoken in one of the most beautiful languages in human history.

  I force a smile through trembling lips and blow him a kiss, and he’s gone. Later I will be one of his regrets. He will wonder if he should have done more. That makes me sad.

  One by one, jumpers take to the sky like dandelion seeds swept away on their own wishes. I wonder about their wishes.

  I have the wish to die.

  Thirty-Two

  I HEARD MY SONG!

  Finally.

  Heard the strong, tender melody in the stillness of the void. It kept me anchored to my body. Carried me back to myself whenever I felt the urge to drift into the light. The urge was never stronger than when Gran took my hand in that dark place. I sang to her a lot. With her sad, now-seeing eyes, she beckoned me to come with her. “Walk with me toward the love,” she said.

  It was so tempting.

  But instead I chose to watch her go to another place so I could stay in the dark and bang on the glass of my own life.

  Watch, while someone else lived it.

  Now she wants to end it.

  I have to stop her.

  I have the wish to live.

  Thirty-Three

  THE BLASTING SOUND of wind and the drone of the engines fade the minute I step into the doorway. All I can hear is my raging heartbeat and the relentless song ringing in my temples. My toes hang off the edge of the opening. My jumpsuit presses to my shins and arms as I lean forward.

  Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.

  The earth is waiting to fold me back into itself.

  I smile as I roll and plummet through the air in a tumbling heap. I’m leaping into her arms. She finally wins.

  Hurtling through the air, I’m letting gravity wrap its hand around me and suck me down. Tracking away from the bare circle of the drop zone, I’m cloaked in a fear like I’ve never known. I’m trying to surrender. I’m letting go.

  We fought once and I lost. I won’t lose again. It’s on!

  Her fear and her surrender are the footholds I need.

  She may have my body, but I’ve got something she doesn’t​—​fearlessness.

  I am stronger than her fear. She’s willing to die, and she’s freaking terrified. That releases her hold on my body just enough to allow me back in.

  Barely.

  I’m no longer her specter. I’m her shadow, part of her, part of myself again.

  I can feel the warm wind on my lips, and it’s the most delicious taste.

  I want more.

  I want control of my body. I want to reclaim it. I want to dance on the currents again. I want to taste warm mint on Dom’s tongue, feel raucous laughter shake me as it does when Joe and I joke around, know again the spoonful of spiked sugar that is sex, the sensual chill of skinny-dipping in the reservoir, the sweetness of my mother’s hugs.

  I want my life back.

  And I’ll be goddamned if this bitch is going to take it forever.

  I don’t understand what’s happening. The voice that was singing in my head as I exited the plane is now pushing out of my mouth. I’m falling, and I’m humming a song.

  My song. I’ll choke her with it. I’m not just singing the music; I am the music: as physical yet ephemeral as a tune floating on the wind. Real, but existing as a cluster of vibrations, somehow getting stronger and stronger, pulsing with life, until I have the power to break through.

  The wind tries to stuff the tune back in my mouth. Ground rushes up to meet me, and I curl in on myself. I can do this. I can die. But I can’t go back in the womb without wrapping around myself, making myself smaller.

  She cannot roll into a ball. She’s making my body a dark, round stone. I try to push harder into the shell of me, assert my ownership, take control of my body so I can stabilize the fall, stop her from killing me.

  Again.

  This time it’ll be permanent.

  Please, no. If she takes my body, I’ll have no home to return to.

  I concentrate, visualize my spirit as a vapor seeping into every cell, every long strand of marrow, the tiniest corners of nerves. I push harder than I’ve ever pushed for anything.

  Let. Me. In!

  My fingers twitch uncontrollably against my chest strap. My hands fling away from my body. The air is trying to pull me apart​—​to prohibit my arms from crossing over my chest​—​to spread me wide like a bird. My body is making
spastic movements. My eyes spring open, and I see the one thing I don’t want to see: the multicolored patchwork of earth below growing larger. It won’t be long before impact.

  Death already has a hold of me now; I feel her, asserting her power, trying to take my body prematurely, like she can’t wait until I die. She wants to take me alive. I fight to tug my body back into a ball, but I’m like a spring that tries to uncoil to a safe position.

  Anger flows through me. My eyes are pinned open. She won’t let me close them and fall oblivious to the exact moment of impact. She wants to torture me, make me watch. Involuntarily, my body tracks back over the drop-zone area. She wants to make them watch too. Cruel.

  I force my eyes closed.

  I think I have her now. I’m in, partially directing my arms and legs, stretching my body into an arch, tracking away from the enormous, flat desert. It hurts, though. After weeks of expansive floating in spirit form, I feel gravity like an iron anvil strapped to every bone.

  She’s fighting my will, trying to curl up like the tandem jumpers who panic in freefall. Dom had to head-butt a guy once, knock him out cold, so that he wouldn’t keep grabbing Dom’s hands and kill them both. God, I’ve missed him so much . . .

  I’ve missed everyone. Everything.

  Rushing through me are anger and the heat of longing to live. I have to want to live more than she wants to die. But our altitude is so low, and I can’t seem to inhabit my body powerfully enough to pull the chute. Panic sets in, foreign and unwelcome.

  The spirit, the fucking thief, thinks she can freaking close her eyes and wait to bounce.

  Any second now, it will be over. Any second . . .

  I know something she doesn’t know. It’s the only thing keeping me from giving up as I hear screams from the drop zone below.

  I’ve been here before.

  I know how far I can fall before it’s too late.

  Relax, I tell myself. Wait for the release. This will be your freedom. I start to mumble a prayer. I don’t know where this prayer comes from, but it bubbles up like so many other disconnected memories. I try to mumble the prayer and wait to hit the ground, but that damn song is all that comes out.

  I’m screaming my song, and it’s my voice, my shaky voice. If I can’t get a firm grip on my body, make my arms and hands work right, if I can’t pull the ripcord in a matter of seconds, I’m going to die. I’m going to walk into that light.

  That’s going to piss me off so much.

  Oh God.

  Now.

  Oh God.

  Now.

  Thirty-Four

  PIERCING SCREAMS REVERBERATE, bouncing off the Sierra Nevada, bouncing off the needles of cacti, out into the desert and back​—​a boomerang of shrieks and pain. A final heartbreaking gust of wind, and multicolored strips of nylon flutter ineffectively.

  I fly out of my body on impact, sent hurtling through the air and the mirage-like veil that undulates between life and death. I am that one reckless balloon streaming toward the blue skies.

  Hovering above, I look across the desert at the gnarled and twisted shapes of the cacti. I look down at my gnarled and twisted body. Suddenly I am on the ground, just feet away from my physical self. I look so small . . .

  People are running, scurrying like ants toward my still form. Dad falls to his knees beside me. Love wafts from him in a kaleidoscope of colors as he bends over me. He’s still the first sergeant, shouting orders to people. Call an ambulance. Don’t touch her. My baby. My baby.

  I finally see his love. Like Gran, I can see so clearly now that I’m gone. I had to die to see it? This strikes me as incredibly sad.

  A timid voice carries across the sand to me. “Are . . . are you the Angel of Death?”

  I don’t know this girl, but she floats nearby, concern and confusion evident in her crystalline blue eyes. I’ve seen those eyes before. Her blond hair lifts and falls like she’s in water. She looks so sad, but she scares me too. I don’t want any spirits nearby, coaxing me into the light.

  I want to live. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.

  “You’re the one who’s been haunting me,” she says, wide-eyed. “You died and​—”

  “I’m not dead!”

  Maybe I am, I realize, looking at my broken body. My father’s mouth is locked over mine. He blows. Pumps his palms on my chest. Listens for breath. Cries. I wish I could feel his tears, which run down his cheeks and pink my dusty lips.

  I’m afraid to look at the crowd. I can’t bear to see Dom’s luminous spirit crushed. I can’t bear to see my mother’s wailing black grief. There’s no more wind. It’s like the world is holding its breath to see if I’ll make it. But, I realize sadly, the world is used to this. The comings and goings of humans is old news. What I’m feeling is the stillness of not being alive anymore.

  I was alive. This was my life.

  Anger and sadness are a hook knife ripping through my soul. The stronger my emotions, the more I’m pulled toward my physical form. She moves closer too, and when I look in her eyes, I realize with a gasp . . . it’s her. This skinny scrap of teenage girl is the spirit who stole my life from me. I remember the first time I looked into her eyes in the motor home.

  I turn away from my father and his resuscitation attempts. “What did you think you were doing?” I’m torn between flying through her and breaking her into a million points of light, or staying with myself, with Dad, as he cries and fights to save me. I desperately want to stay until I can’t stay any longer.

  “I​—​I was living my life.”

  “You were living my life!”

  The spirit moves between me and my body. She inclines her head and holds her hands up like an angelic statue. She looks like she’s thinking very hard about something, concentrating, before her eyes open wide. She looks at my body, looks down at her skin. “That’s not me. Oh, God. I remember now.”

  “What? What do you remember?”

  “I was sick. I . . . I had cancer.” There’s bite to that last word. “My parents denied me medical care after I was diagnosed. ‘God’s will,’ my father called it. If we prayed, if we were faithful enough, God would spare me. I tried to believe they were right. I was supposed to honor them, right? But I didn’t.” Her voice goes hard. “Secretly, I hated them. They wouldn’t give me the morphine. They wanted me to suffer. My father said my pain would purify me. They drove me out to nowhere in that motor home and let me die.”

  The girl looks out on the horizon, and I know her body is out there, somewhere.

  “I couldn’t leave, though. It wasn’t fair. I wanted to live. But I was stuck in this dark, lonely place.”

  I know that dark place. Her story is sad. It is.

  “Suddenly, there you were,” she continues, her words rushing out. “So beautifully alive. From that first moment I saw you, I somehow connected with you, followed you. I couldn’t stop watching you, but you were so arrogant about life. You didn’t seem to care whether you had it or not. I was angry that you had a choice and risked what I wanted more than anything. You flirted with death, dared it. When you came back to the motor home and fell into the glass, I somehow fell into you, into life again.”

  “How could you take my life?” I demand. “How dare you think you could be me?”

  Her eyes take on a helpless grief. “I thought I’d been given a second chance. You tossed your life at my feet!”

  The wails of sirens scream in the background. My dad hears them too. He looks up at the sky, looks at his watch.

  We’re running out of time.

  He hasn’t given up fighting for my life. I wonder how that makes her feel. It makes me feel gratitude. Hope. And it makes me very sad.

  She moves closer, inches from me. “There’s forgetfulness when you’re reborn. I had memories of my”​—​she pats her slender chest​—​“my real life. I see that now. But they were unclear. Like a dream. So confusing. I started journaling about it. I knew I’d come back from death, but I didn’t know why ev
erything felt so strange, unfamiliar. I had memories of two lives: foggy scraps of mine, from before . . . and the mirage of your life.” She taps her head. “I had all your memories. Only I couldn’t feel any attachment to them. I was numb. Everyone said I was crazy. I thought you were hunting me because I​—​you​—​were supposed to die the night of the LSD.” Her eyes go wide and she covers her mouth. “It was my house I ran to from the doctor’s office. It was my own dead body I saw in my mind. I was trying to remember myself.”

  She wore my body like a new dress, and screwed up my relationships, and tried to kill me. Or kill herself. It’s a mindfuck. But strangely, I find compassion rising within me for this girl who died because her parents didn’t fight for her.

  “No one will be waiting for me,” she says, sounding so alone. So scared.

  “Gran will.” Without a doubt, I know that Gran won’t let this girl journey alone. She won’t let either of us go alone into the light.

  We stand, silent for a moment.

  “I wasn’t haunting you, Rachel,” I say, remembering with sudden clarity her name from the back of the maroon Bible. Her eyes fly open as the name leaves my lips, and I know I’m right. “I was following you. I was desperately fighting for my own life!”

  I think back to the night of the LSD trip. “What I did was stupid,” I admit, regretfully. “I let you in. But I tried to get back. I clung to my body, to my life. I tried to let people know not to trust you.” I recall the kiss with Joe. How I pushed so hard for her to kiss him so he’d know she couldn’t possibly be me. But instead I only hurt him. I see that now. “You cut my hair off . . .” It seems like a stupid thing to say.

  The spirit ventures closer to me, but not in a threatening way: beseeching, her eyes seeking forgiveness. “I didn’t know it was you in the reflections. I thought it was a ghost trying to possess me. But the ghost had the same reflection I saw every day in the mirror. I didn’t know how to stop it, but I knew I was ruining my life.” She pauses, eyes to the ground. “Your life,” she corrects. “I couldn’t live like that. People were suffering. I realized that Gran was right: a life without integrity isn’t worth living at all.”