Pieces of Hope

by Carter, Carolyn

  “The waiting . . . that’s the worst part.” He began to absently dig a trench in the sand with one of his bare feet. “In the evenings we get a slight reprieve when Clarence and Linda bring Derek and Tyler up to see you. Tyler has some crush on you. He makes a new card for you every day. They’re all signed with X’s and O’s, and read in giant letters, ‘GET WELL SOON!’ He’s not much of an artist, but he’s got a big heart.” His voice cracked. He cleared his throat a couple of times. “Yesterday, he told me a giant angel with black wings had come to him in a dream. He said the angel told him you’d be waking up soon.” There was a long pause. Ethan didn’t look up, nor did he stop digging. “Just this once, I wished the kid was right.”

  “But I am coming back,” I insisted, pleading for him to listen. “It’s just . . . I need to speak to my mother first.” Without giving away details, I hoped to make him understand, to ease his worries. But my task was made more difficult because I had several worries of my own—colossal-sized ones that refused to be ignored.

  “I just don’t know if you’ll have that choice,” he said. “And I don’t know if I can sit back and wait for you to—” He finally looked at me. I was terrified by what I saw there, the desperation. “You’ve put me in an impossible situation. I don’t know how much more I can take . . . I go to sleep with you every night and wake up every morning with the smell of you on my skin. And then all day long, I watch you lying there—dying.”

  There was an immeasurable pause. Then he slowly got to his feet and began to walk away. “Hang on,” I called, jumping up to follow. “Where are you going?”

  He turned momentarily, but with enormous difficulty, as if his limbs had turned to stone. His words, obscured by the wind, were not ones that needed repeating. His morose expression told me everything I didn’t want to know.

  Nevertheless, I’d heard them.

  As if they were the pealing sound of a giant bell struck too close to my head, the words echoed painfully in my ears. I stumbled backwards on my feet. Then another kind of pain radiated outward from the middle of my chest.

  “No, Ethan. You can’t mean it!” I cried, my voice fast and high. “You can’t mean it! You found me! You finally found me! We’ve searched for too long—”

  I looked for it, but it never came. There was no question in his eyes, no lingering uncertainty. And just like that, without a flicker, as though someone had snuffed out the light of a candle, Ethan and everything around me disappeared. His words haunted me. He hadn’t meant them. He simply couldn’t have . . .

  “I guess this is goodbye,” he said.

  21 Somebody Else’s Nightmare

  On the one hand, I knew what he’d said. And on the other, I knew what he must have meant. Surely, he wasn’t speaking of forever. It was probably one of those dot dot dot sentences. Something more like, I guess this is goodbye . . . until I cool off. Or possibly, I guess this is goodbye . . . until you remind me how much you love me.

  Yes, that had to be it. And I did plan to remind him. Soon.

  Daniel had been very accommodating, his mood as ebullient as a bottle of bubbles. He seemed happy that we were alone, not that he’d asked anything about Ethan or why I was sitting alone in the blackness calling Daniel’s name. And his joy had turned to jubilation when I said I wasn’t returning to the Station; again, no questions, for which I was a little too relieved.

  How could I explain that the mere thought of returning to the Station filled me with such apprehension (and a nervous kind of gut-wrenching guilt) that I actually feared going back? I kept imagining a game of twenty million questions from my friends. How had Ethan fallen from the cliff? Why was I alone here, with Daniel? And most importantly—why had I not returned to my body? Not a soul seemed to grasp the reason why except for Daniel, who felt his mother’s presence as easily as I felt Vivienne’s. I was tired of explaining it to people who refused to listen. Exhausted, really. Why did I feel so bone-numbing tired?

  I’d called out to Daniel only a few times before he came to get me, pulling me out of the darkness and into a decked-out version of his former green beater. It looked and smelled brand new, with an olive green hood and slick white interior.

  “The 1970 LeMans . . .” he began in a tone of admiration, and although I’d just been yanked from total darkness into the car that had sent me into a coma, it wasn’t the slightest bit odd or uncomfortable. “The last of the muscle cars. Want to take her for a spin?” Daniel patted the dashboard affectionately. I leaned back into the seat, purposely ignoring the seat belt. For once, I had no use for them.

  Daniel revved the engine several times. It roared to life like an animal that had been trapped in a cage all its life and was finally set free. There was some sort of funny gadget on the floor between the bucket seats that zipped to the right as he revved it. Pausing to give me a delighted smile, he then punched the accelerator to the floor.

  The road twisted in complete disarray before us. Hairpin turns that seemed to stretch on forever—ones that, in the living realm, would have been impossible to navigate—were nothing for us here. It was like being trapped inside a video game, one in which the cars never wrecked and the people couldn’t die. There were several times when we rode on two wheels; at other moments, we nearly crashed into one of the thousands of pines encroaching on the road, and yet not at any moment was I ever frightened. It was beyond amazing. I felt invincible.

  I did, however, become petrified when Daniel offered up an invitation. “Come with me to the living realm. It’s an adrenaline rush like you can’t imagine!” I looked into his face, eager as a child’s, and for the first time, believed he had totally lost his mind.

  “Are you crazy?” We kept on careening through the countryside, wheels crunching on the gravel road, dust flying for miles behind us, the massive engine roaring. “Not in a million years. Someone might walk through me!” It was the ickiest thing I could imagine.

  His sparkly eyes studied mine (more sky than storm today) and he wore a hint of a smile on his face. “Think of the places we haven’t seen and the places we’ve talked about going. I know how much you love it here, but it’s different there—without bodies, I mean. We’ll never get another opportunity like this one.” Daniel wasn’t looking at the road now, but that wasn’t what scared me. “Say you will, Hope. I promise to keep you safe. It’s so alive there!”

  Alive? That was just what I was afraid of. What if someone living walked through me? Someone consumed with rage or overwhelmed by grief? Someone with the power to incapacitate me? A shudder threatened to surface.

  “I’ll protect you,” Daniel assured me, hearing my thoughts.

  And I believed him. A little bit.

  We visited several museums, even a couple in the United States, but I adored the Osterreichische Galerie in Vienna. It resembled a flattened castle, stretching out for many city blocks, and at night it was brighter than the brightest stars. We saw several of Gustav Klimt’s paintings. He was one of my favorite artists, but the name brought to mind Gustav Vallerius—and Charlotte Gooding, Rin Suzuki, Creesie Brown, and Johnnie and Catherine McAllister. Even so, as I floated from painting to painting, safe above the heads of tourists (Daniel’s suggestion), I’d get lost in the beautiful golden colors Klimt was famous for—

  A raven-haired man and a ruby-haired girl clasped in a passionate embrace, his gold and black robe entwined around the two of them, shielding them from the ravages of the real world, her head tilted back in anticipation of The Kiss.

  —And when I immersed myself like that, I’d forget about everything else.

  I sometimes questioned this separation of body and soul, and the fact that I no longer heard my heartbeat. Then again, maybe I wasn’t paying close enough attention to notice it. But something about me was changing. I could feel it. I only hoped Ethan wasn’t right about the reasons why. My mother was nearer than she ever had been. That I didn’t question. What I didn’t understand was what was taking her so long to show herself to me? When sh
e finally did, would it be too late?

  After the museum excursion, Daniel was craving a little excitement so we travelled outside of Bangladesh to an area called the Sundarbans. I wanted to see the world’s largest mangrove forest, while Daniel had eyes for other things. It was ridiculously easy to get there. Under normal circumstances, we would have had a long plane flight, followed by a long car ride, and then a long trip by boat (almost ten hours, depending on the current—it flowed in two directions here). But for us, Daniel simply drew back a corner of the heavy velvety curtain and after stepping through it, we floated like morning mist across the muddy Ganges River.

  The mangrove forest was unlike anything I’d ever imagined. Swampy, and with tree roots that twisted like knotted pretzels above the ground—tall enough to walk under—and with enough wildlife to fill several zoos. After walking only a few hundred feet, we’d already spotted a dozen monkeys, two cheetahs, a handful of deer, and one open-mouthed salt-water crocodile that I almost stepped into just as he was devouring a python as big around as two of my fists.

  No way did I wish to add flesh-eating anything to my list of experiences. No way did I wish to know what it was like to devour live prey. Daniel, however, had other ideas.

  We’d first heard about the Sundarbans during senior year in Biology while studying the long-reaching effects of global warming. Rising waters were causing the Sundarbans to disappear, and it was predicted that in less than ninety years, all of this would be gone. My reasons for visiting bordered on the scientific (after all, I had plans to be a vet), but Daniel came to pay a visit of the closest kind with the regal Bengal tiger.

  “Hope,” Daniel asked unexpectedly, “do you think you could spend all of eternity with me?” We had been hanging out in the treetops for some time; he was waiting for one of the enormous tigers to pass beneath us. “I know how much you love me . . . now, but it’s a question I’ve been meaning to ask you since our, um, encounter.”

  I nearly fell off my tree branch. The way he looked at me let me know that he was referring to our soul-melding moment, and cold sweat broke out along my hairline. It took me a minute to speak. As gently as I could, I said, “I’m sorry, but I plan on going back, Daniel. I know I haven’t been clear, but my intention has always been to talk to my mother, then return to my body. My eternity isn’t in question at the moment. It’s a long ways off.”

  “But you’re not sure.” He was smiling at me as though he could see right into my head, and that’s when I realized—he could. From several branches above me, he slid down, planting a sweet kiss on my forehead in less time than it took to blink. I wanted to be infuriated, but unfortunately I wasn’t.

  “It’s the pain of . . . her dying.” The words wouldn’t form as I wished they would. There were things I wasn’t saying. “It causes me to hesitate every time . . . and that’s the only reason I’m still here. It has nothing to do with us.”

  “Okay,” he said agreeably. “If you say so.”

  Right then, he spotted his prey, and our conversation abruptly ended.

  From beneath the dense underbrush, the cat strolled leisurely, looking like a feline version of Daniel as he did—with nothing to fear and nowhere in particular to go. Every muscle in his body flexed and rippled as it walked. The cat had to weigh nearly four-hundred pounds, and yet there was such a delicate grace to him. His sandy brown fur had jaggedy black stripes that ran in circles around his body. And on his face, he wore what looked like a black and white mask. It made him seem approachable, almost cuddly.

  “I guess this is it, my love.” Daniel’s eyes were alight with an excitement I hadn’t seen before. “Try to keep yourself entertained. I’m going to be a while.”

  I knew what was about to happen, and I agreed to it only because it was an animal and not a human. I hoped it wouldn’t hurt the cat, and I assured myself it wouldn’t. At first, I wasn’t so certain, but Daniel could be very persuasive. Once he looked at me with that face, that smile, no way could I deny him. No was not a part of Daniel’s vocabulary. Nor did he seem to like it much in mine.

  Daniel waited until the ten-foot tiger entered the muddy water. With little effort, the tiger slid into the Ganges at the same moment that Daniel drifted down into the Banyan’s pretzel-like roots. When the tiger let out a low snarl of warning, baring a mouthful of razor-sharp teeth, Daniel leapt inside him. I gasped. It wasn’t merely the ease with which Daniel performed this task, but it raised a few questions as to how often—and from whom—he had acquired such a skill.

  To my surprise, the tiger didn’t put up any protest. Unlike the drowning boy in the river, unlike the scenario Creesie had shown me at the Station, the ferocious cat gave only a slight shake of its head. All possibilities considered, I thought it went fairly well. And when it looked at me, I saw that its topaz eyes had now turned smoky gray. As if in greeting, Daniel let out a menacing snarl, then continued across the Ganges river.

  That’s when I made my escape. I wasn’t sure it was going to work—I had never attempted to travel from the living realm into someone’s dreams (I’d only ever used the Station). But in theory, I thought it should work. It took me several dozen attempts before I was successful. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t pull back a shortcut. It wasn’t nearly as easy as it looked. I kept grabbing at air, getting nowhere, but I forced myself to concentrate—focusing on Ethan’s face, willing the curtain to part—and at last I made it happen.

  The first thing I noticed was Ethan sitting atop Heaven’s Peak, at the very edge of the pirate’s plank. The second thing I noticed was the air. Normally, it felt weightless, but tonight it was smothering, like breathing through cellophane.

  Only a few stars were alight in the night sky, but nonetheless, there was no missing him. He was gazing off into the swaying grasses of the meadow, looking distracted. Without any apparent reason for it, he spun around and turned his back to the ravine, and after hooking the heels of his climbing shoes onto a small ridge, he reclined back—headfirst. It looked familiar. While climbing Heaven’s Peak, I had arrogantly struck the same pose. But when Ethan did it, it terrified me.

  “Hey, Ethan, I’m here!” I tried to sound cheerful, not the least bit worried. But I wasn’t fooling anyone. Least of all, not myself. “Don’t go getting all crazy on me! You know I can do things here that you can’t.”

  He didn’t alter his position. It was as if he hadn’t heard me. The wind, I thought, it must be the wind. It was especially blustery. I watched his hair as it blew about in a recent gust, but oddly, it didn’t move my own.

  Something was very wrong.

  I crossed the fifty yards between us in an all-out run. Halfway across the distance, my head struck something granite-like, and I splattered backwards onto the dirt and stone. “OW! WHAT THE—” Holding my head, I knew—a moment of blinding clarity amidst the confusion. My head throbbed. I half-dragged, half-crawled back to where I thought I’d first struck my head. Tentatively, as if I thought it was going to burn my hand, I stretched out my fingers and touched something solid.

  Panicked now, I scrambled to my knees and touched everywhere that I could reach. Solid. Still solid. Squinting my eyes and turning them slightly out of focus in the dimming light, I looked beyond my hands as they pressed in mid-air and spotted it. There it was—the sheerest of curtains. Silvery pale. Flat. But solid as steel. It formed an impenetrable barrier between the two of us.

  He had meant what he said.

  I guess this is goodbye . . .

  I began to throw my full weight against the wall, time and again. This one seemed thicker than the one I’d encountered with Mrs. Gooding. Something warm and wet rolled down my face, blurring my vision, but I didn’t relent. I was determined to break through.

  “Ethan!” I wailed. “Ethan, let me in! I’ll never give up . . . you know that, don’t you? I love you! I’ll prove it to you!”

  I jumped up and ran fifty feet in the opposite direction, then bolted headfirst into the invisible wall. When I s
truck the solid mass, I wailed. I thought for sure I had knocked the head off my body and dislocated my shoulder. Thrashing about on the ground, cradling my sore shoulder, I cursed in frustration, wondering how this one thing—this wall—could be real. I tried imagining it away—nothing. This barrier was definitely thicker and stronger than Mrs. Gooding’s. Had Ethan anticipated my return? Why go to such extremes? Had something happened that I didn’t know about?

  I forced myself up, stepped back a hundred feet, and charged again. Once more, I flew backwards, this time landing on my hip. But I hadn’t time to rest, no time to nurse the pain. A dozen more times, several dozen more, I charged at that transparent, hateful wall. When at last I ached too much to run, I still refused to quit and began pummeling it with my fists.

  And yet, at no time did I manage to even crack it.

  Eventually, a painful squeezing started up in the middle of my chest and I realized the futility of trying any longer. Ethan would have made sure I couldn’t get around it. Words he had uttered to Brody at our first meeting floated into my throbbing head. I’m either all-in or all-out. I don’t spend much time in the middle. If he had made up his mind not to see me, I had no doubt he would make it happen. And no doubt it had something to do with Daniel, and my deception . . .

  Despite the guilt, I felt numb . . . as if my blood were Novocain. I lay still as death upon the cold hard ground, barely breathing in that thick air, and praying that in some part of his soul, he could hear me.

  “Dream me back to you, Ethan . . . please, dream me back.”

  Eventually, the stars began to fade, and so did Ethan. I stayed where I was. I couldn’t leave him, even with this barrier between us, yet I couldn’t bear to look away. In those final seconds before he disappeared, my heart nearly beat a hole in my chest as I watched him grip the edge of the bluff, freeing his shoes from the crevice that held them secure—