“I’m sorry. I’ll clean that up,” I say.
“Leave it.”
Standing, I look down at the article then back at her. “You were there. You were at the hospital when...”
Kari crosses her arms with a scowl etched onto her face. “When my best friend died? Yeah. I was there. And your being born on that day was no damn miracle. It was a curse.”
My skin grows cold at the seriousness in her voice. “What do you mean?”
She sighs but then pulls out a chair. “I think it's time you and I had a talk.”
Tobias
As soon as I’m inside, Mom kicks me up the stairs to put on my nebulizer. The second it's turned on she surrounds me with my ratty old blanket (which she does every time I get sick) and cocoons me in its warmth. Tonight, I don't object.
“Not a peep out of you for an hour.” Mom says, pulling up the rocker, guarding me.
“I’m okay, Mom!” I say through the mask trying to soothe her, but she’s not having it.
“Wanna make it two?” She raises her eyebrows up to the ceiling.
Shaking my head, I hunker down and let my medicine do its thing. As soon as the hour is up, however, I pull the mask down.
Mom's face is pinched tight. She's been rocking away, fretting this whole time, and now it looks like she's about to explode.
“That’s it!” she yells, getting up from the rocker. “You’re not leaving this house again!”
“Mom, I’m fine.” I try to sit up but she pushes my shoulder down.
She starts to pace the floor. The wood is worn where she steps. It's a path she's walked a million times worrying about me.
“This is not a discussion right now. I’m going to get someone to cover my shifts the rest of this week. After that... I don't know what's gonna happen. But you are not to step foot out of this house until you get cleared by a doctor. You hear me? Not one little toe!”
Her eyes have started to well up with tears, so I know she’s worried about me. I can’t even count the number of times she’s almost lost me, but she can't keep me inside. Not now. Not after, I’d found Jada.
“Ma, you know what the doctors are gonna say. They can't help me anymore. They've done everything they can. You just have to let me be happy with what time I have left.”
“Don't you talk like them,” her voice trembles. “You're getting stronger everyday. You'll show them.”
“If you keep me tied to this machine for the rest of my days, I won't want to live anymore.”
It hurt to say it, but she needed to know she couldn't keep me safe forever.
She sinks back into the chair. Tears fall from her eyes.
“When you didn’t come home after school with Hawk, and those dark clouds rolled in…” She starts to fan herself with her hands. “I kept watching the news, and they kept saying how bad the air quality was getting. How it came faster than they predicted...” Mom started pacing the floor in her white nurses’ shoes, evidently too stressed about me to change once she got home.
“I didn’t mean to worry you.” I hang my head, ashamed.
Mom sits down beside me and pats my pale arm with her dark hand. “Boy, you’ve been giving me gray hairs ever since the day I first held you.”
Her face softens a bit at the memory. From past stories, I know she was working as a nurse the night I was born and then later adopted me when my real parents couldn't afford my medical care.
“Mom, do you think Jada and Hawk are meant to be together?” I'm not sure why I ask her that. It just slips out.
Instead of seeing the pity that I expect to see in her eyes, I see anger.
“No.” She says. “No, I do not.”
That surprises me.
“Um, why not? I mean, it is strange how they found each other again after all this time... ”
Mom stands up again and walks to my door.
“Don't budge. I need to show you something.” She hovers in the doorway, as though she's not sure if she can walk through it.
Completely confused, I watch her leave my room and hear her go downstairs. I push myself up to sit upright and take another few inhalations of my mist.
When Mom finally returns, she's got something tucked in her arms. She hugs the maroon book close to her chest. Its edges are lined with dust and the pages have turned yellow. Sitting beside me, she opens the cover and strokes the back of her thumb along a photo that is set in inside cover.
“I'm not supposed to have this photo,” she says quietly, as though someone would hear her and rip it out of her hands. “You weren't mine at the time you see, so I shouldn't have been taking pictures of you, but I couldn't help myself.” Mom removes a yellowed envelope tucked deep inside of the album. She takes out a small picture that has been so carefully placed there. She hands me the photo like it's made out of glass.
In the picture are two babies, side by side. They are curled right up to each other practically hugging the clear plastic that separated them.
“The two of you together was like nothing I'd ever seen before and I don't know, I guess I wanted to remember how pure and innocent it was.”
“That's me?”
Mom nods. “And that's Jada.”
My mouth opens as I look at the pink balled up baby next to my blue bundle.
“That's Jada?” I whisper, unable to believe it. I had met her before, but I was just too young to remember it.
“She lost her mama during childbirth. It was so sad. Those few days in the nursery you two bonded together like super glue. Lord, would you wail if I took her away from you.” She laughed at the memory. “And she'd do the same if I took you from her.” Mom sighs and takes the picture back. She traces her finger over our faces once before gently putting it back.
When she closes the book, her face freezes like she's lost in thought. “The weeks after she left the nursery were the worst with you. I thought I was gonna lose you so many times. Your lungs were so weak as it was, and yet you'd scream your little head off missing her so much. It was only after I thought to wrap you up in the blanket she'd used that you managed to calm down.”
She turned around and started rubbing my shoulders through my quilt.
“This one right here actually.” Mom rubs the fabric of a small square of my quilt. The light pink square I always press my face to. Always.
“This was part of her baby blanket?” I ask.
She nods. “This one square is all I could save after the abuse you put it through.” She sits down next to me and leans her head on my shoulder. “That's why I always use this blanket when you’re sick. It seems to bring you back to life every time I think you're gonna leave me.” I can hear the tears in her eyes. “Oh, listen to me, you must think I'm some nut now,” she says, sitting herself upright.
“No, actually I don't. In fact, I think you might be right.”
It's Mom's turn to look confused.
“Jada is connected to me in some way. I don't know how to tell you this without you going all nuts on me but Jada's the one who saved me during my asthma attack. And the one before that.”
“I thought Ms. Philips found you on the road?” She grabs my hand. “Start from the beginning, boy. And don't you leave anything out. You hear me?”
One look at her face and I knew there would be no lying to her. Not after everything that's happened tonight.
Chapter 12
Jada
Kari stands hunched over the stove waiting for the tea water to boil. The way she slumps her back makes her seem frail, bent by some unseen burden. Somehow I know I've caused it; I just don't know how.
“What do you know about the day you were born?” Kari asks, clutching the tea pot.
My birth? Why does she want to know about that?
“You mean besides it being the worst day of my life?” I can't help but be sarcastic. She turns to look at me with a curious expression on her face. Of course she doesn't know about the tragedy that surrounded my birth, so I'm forced to say it. I wrap a h
and around my leather band and squeeze hard, letting the pain surge through me before I can blurt out the truth.
“My mom died giving birth to me, and my dad hates me because of it.”
Her reaction is typical. Her eyes grow wide; a small frown covers her face. I've made her uncomfortable. Good, maybe now we can drop the subject.
“Of course, that's all he would have told you. The rest probably seemed irrelevant after that.” She sighed and turned back to the stove.
“What are you talking about? The rest of what?”
With great care, Kari picks up the teapot and brings it over to the table where she pours the steaming dark tea into two waiting cups. After taking a sip, she points to the news clipping.
“You've read this?” She asks.
I nod.
“Then you know most of it. I lost my best friend and the boy she loved that night – not because she had a crazy ex, but because she had found her Twin Flame.”
Twin Flame. There was that phrase again. Mr. Harper mentioned it earlier this week too. What did finding soul mates have to do with anything? I consider saying as much but the way she looks, so deep in thought, I decide to just shut up and let her talk.
“For the record, I didn't believe in any of this crap when Naya told me about it either, but I was her friend so I listened. But then I witnessed it with my own eyes, the reality of it. I watched as my once timid friend, the one who always kept her eyes on the ground, turn into a crazed woman who was always searching for his eyes. Naya and Etash's love was the stuff they write books about. The kind of love no one really believes in, but wants to. They truly had found their other half in each other.
“And for a few brief moments they were happy. Hell, they'd even turned me into a believer; had me thinking that someone was meant for me in this shit hole. Then... it ended. It took me a long time to get over their deaths. At first I blamed Seth, the ex, but then one day I figured it out. It’s God. He doesn't want us to find love. He teases us with it; gives us tiny glimpses of it so we’ll waste our lives looking to find it again. We do everything we can to remember it; write books, songs, plays, poems but we can’t ever sustain it. Why? Because He doesn’t want us to. He doesn’t want to share His slice of Heaven until He needs to. God is selfish. Just like the rest of us.”
She picks up her tea again and takes a sip watching my reaction. I don't know what she wants from me. She just sounds like a bitter old woman who got burned in the love department. Serves her right for falling in love in the first place.
“After they died,” she goes on, “I felt numb. Depressed. I started wandering the halls of the hospital because I just couldn't go back to the dorms knowing that Naya wouldn't be coming back with me.”
I'm having a really hard time understanding what any of this had to do with me, but I keep my mouth shut and letter her speak.
“I was ready to scream at one point. But then I saw you.”
I blinked. “Me?”
She nodded sagely. “Somehow I had managed to walk up to the nursery wing. And there you were. Side by side with him.”
“Him who?”
She gave me a tormented smile. “Tobias, of course.”
“Looking at the two of you, so calm and clearly enamored with each other, I just knew. I knew my friends had been reborn in you both.”
I can't help but laugh.
“You think I'm your dead friend?”
Kari lets out an exasperated breath. She rubs her hands over her tired eyes. Her crow's feet barely visible, either from good genetics or a severe lack of smiling. I couldn't help but think it was the latter.
“Jada, I'm not going to sugar coat this. Stay away from Tobias, or you'll end up just like her!” She jabs her finger down at the image of her dead friend.
“You aren't making any sense!”
She walks over and holds onto my shoulders, and I do my best not to flinch. “I know this doesn't sound rational. You have no reason to listen to me. It's just a gut feeling I have. But I'm warning you that it’s the same feeling I had before my best friend was murdered. Something bad is going to happen if you keep things going with Tobias.” She lets out a deep breath in defeat. “I just don't know what.”
Kari's eyes plead with such sincerity that it’s hard not to believe her.
“Please, can you just let me know if he was okay when you dropped him off,” I beg.
“As long as you stay away from him, he will be.” There is no vindictiveness in her eyes, just pain. I start to turn away from her sad eyes when she stops me.
“Tell me, Jada. What are the odds that I end up living next door to you? What are the odds that you were drawn to Etash’s photo, the same way you’re drawn to Tobias? Your souls are connected. Just like theirs were. Before they were killed.” Her face is grim. “This isn’t all just a big coincidence, and you know it.”
I do my best to ignore the sense of dread that starts to pepper my skin. My gut tells me she's right, but my heart thinks only about Tobias. If I listened to her I'd have to stop seeing him. And that is something I don't want to risk.
An unmistakable holler comes from outside. It's the one sound that can turn my blood cold.
“Jeanne!” The voice is terrifying, even from inside. It's my dad. Calling out my mother's name. This is not good.
“I gotta go,” I say. My skin is no doubt ashen with panic.
“Who is that yelling out there?” Kari goes to the window and pulls back a worn lace curtain.
His voice booms across the night sky again. “Jeanne! You better get your ass back in this house!”
Kari looks at me, confusion on her face. “Who is Jeanne?”
“My mother,” I whisper, giving up the facade. “When he drinks, he sees her.” Shame rattles through me as I clutch my leather binding. Remember who you are.
Kari pulls the curtain closed then flicks off the light in the kitchen.
“What kind of drunk is he?” Kari asks me. I stare at her blank-faced. “Is he an angry drunk or will he just pass out?”
“Both.”
Kari puts her hands on my shoulders again. I hadn't realized I'd been shaking. She gives me a nod before she goes into the living room to dead bolt her door.
“You have no reason to be embarrassed,” she says. “He's sick, honey. There isn't anything you can do about it, except protect yourself when it happens.” She looks me in the eye. “Now do I have to dig out my BB gun or will he be okay out there on his own?”
We both listen in silence as he continues to yell.
“Jeanne? Why did you leave me again? Jeanne!”
I hate that I'm trembling so much. For all of my talk of being strong, he is the one person who can destroy the facade in a flash.
“I should go.” I swallow back some bile.
“Sorry, missy. You’re not going back to that house tonight.”
I sigh, not out of relief, but shame. “It’s better to go back now than wait until morning. Trust me.” I try to push past her, but her hands land firmly on my arms.
“Nope. No dice. You are not leaving this house.” She gives me a stern look. “I’ll use that BB gun on you if I need to.”
That makes me laugh in spite of my fear. It’s been years since he's been this bad. Moving back to town where she died only seemed to only egg on his demons.
“I'm serious. You're staying whether you like it or not.” She starts leading me down the hall and I actually let her. “I've got a spare room my sister uses sometimes. It's yours whenever you need it. You hear me?”
I nod at her because I can't speak. No one has ever been this nice to me.
She leaves me alone in the room after she gives me fresh sheets and an extra pillow from her room. When she closes the door behind me, I bury my head in the pillow and start to cry. With trembling fingers, I pull a quilt over my emotionally wrecked body and pray for sleep to take over. Outside I can only hear the sound of the last of the storm pass by. For now, that was enough. Tomorrow would bring a whol
e new storm, but right now, I had the night to gain my strength. I have a feeling I'm going to need it.
Tobias
I'm not sure how I thought Mom would take the news about Jada, but I certainly hadn't expected what I got: elation. She was positively tickled pink that we had 'found each other' again after all this time. On and on she went about the role fate had played in all of this. It was starting to creep me out. Here was my mom, who was overjoyed with our meeting, and Kari, who was shouting about the dire consequences of our connection. I didn't know what to think.
Eventually Mom shoves me off to bed, insisting that I still stay home tomorrow. I start to protest but realize I won't budge her tonight. She'll need to sleep on it. So, will I. But there is no way I'm staying home tomorrow. I need to see Jada. I need to know she's okay. Suddenly, her safety is more important than even breathing.
Relenting to a night of what is sure to be a fitful sleep, I wrap up in the quilt made up of Jada and smile. The image of her curled up, just like when we were infants, fills my thoughts. I can tell that she is sleeping. Safe. Somehow, I know this and that alone allows my body to do the same.
Chapter 13
Jada
I knew it was a dream, but I didn't want it to end. Tobias and I were in the woods. In our spot. It was raining. The cool drops seemed to sizzle against my skin. He was looking at me with that half-grin of his and I knew that he was about to kiss me. My heart thrummed with the anticipation of his lips against mine. Inching closer I felt his hand reach around my waist, closing what little gap there had been. His long, lean fingers pressed deep against my back, hungry for contact. My breath came in erratic bursts, desperate to taste him. Lightning flashed as he lowered his mouth to mine. When his lips finally crushed into mine, I realized something was wrong. His lips were hard. Cold. Possessive.
The hands that were once tender along my back now hurt. I could feel blood pooling under my flesh from his firm his grasp. I pushed back from him confused. Lightning flashed again.
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