Forty-Four (44)

by Jools Sinclair

I smiled. My life was coming back to me.

  CHAPTER 19

  I decided not to mention the specifics of my memories to Jesse, especially about Amanda, until I was ready. It felt great to understand things, why Amanda had turned on me. But there were still mysteries, things I didn’t know. Like why weren’t they still hanging out? I hadn’t seen them together since I had come back to school. I felt stupid suddenly about how I had told him I loved him. No wonder it was too late. Of course it was. He was with Amanda.

  When I picked him up, I told Jesse about the great session with Dr. Krowe and that some memories came back. I was still flying high. I was so excited.

  “That’s awesomo, Craigers!” he said as we drove. “See, Doc Mortimer was right. It just takes time. You’ll have it all back soon.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “For the first time in a while, I believe that.”

  “You should go ahead and apply to a few colleges. Write an essay about your death experience, they’ll love that. You might be ready by September.”

  I smiled. College. I hadn’t even thought about that. That still seemed a ways off, being that I hadn’t even passed my last algebra test.

  “Well, one step at a time,” I said.

  “Right,” he said. “Seriously, that’s great.”

  “Let’s do something this weekend,” I said. Even with the new knowledge about Amanda, it was an old habit, hanging out with Jesse, and one I didn’t want to give up. I bit my bottom lip. Damn.

  “Name it, I’m there,” he said.

  “Well, only if you have time. I mean, if you have plans with other people, that’s okay. I’m totally cool with that.”

  I said it even though I really didn’t feel it inside. It was good to have the memory back about Amanda and Jesse, but I couldn’t stop these feelings I had for him. They were swelling up in me like a river after a storm.

  “Gotta be at night because I’ve got some serious burger serving to do up at the mountain all day Saturday and Sunday, plus I’ll need time for my free runs. Hey, you should come up! The mountain misses you!”

  “It’s doing fine without me,” I said.

  “I’m off by 3. I could sneak you on the lift. Why don’t you meet me?”

  “Not yet,” I said. I wasn’t ready to go up to the mountain. I missed snowboarding, but I didn’t have my balance back yet. And the last thing I wanted to do was watch a bunch of people doing something I loved so much.

  “How about a movie or something? When you get back.”

  “Sure,” he said. “Or even cosmic bowling and the arcade if nothing good is playing. Just let me know.”

  We pulled up to his house. It was nice to think about fun things for a change and not about lakes and visions and fires and killers.

  “So you actually like serving up burgers to a bunch of snow monkeys?”

  “It’s not so bad. They’re mostly friendly. Hey, good work today on your memory recovery,” Jesse said, giving me a high five. “And thanks for the ride. See you at school tomorrow.”

  “Glad to hear you say that,” I said. “You know, the part about you being at school and all.”

  “Yes, mom,” he said opening the car door. But then he stopped.

  Jesse’s dad stood in the doorway, watching us. It was strange that he was home. He was usually working at his garage from morning until night. He just stood there, staring, until I waved and then he headed over to the car.

  “Ah, jeez, now you’ve done it. He’ll talk your ear off and you’ll never get home,” he said.

  “I haven’t seen him in forever.”

  “I know,” Jesse said, watching his dad lumber down the front steps slowly. As always, he looked like he had just stepped off a concert tour with ZZ Top, with his flowing hair and long, gray beard that hung down his chest. But he looked older than the last time I’d seen him.

  “Things have been kind of rocky between us,” Jesse said. “We fight all the time. About my car. He refuses to fix it! He’s still angry and that makes me angry. That’s why I got the job. I need money for a new car. I don’t know what’s wrong with him, I wish he would just let it go and fix it for me.”

  Jesse waved at his dad, but he ignored him and walked over to my side of the Jeep. I unrolled the window. I hadn’t seen him since he had stopped by with flowers when I got home from the hospital.

  “Hey, Abby. How are you?” he said, giving me a pat on the shoulder.

  “Fine, Mr. Stone,” I said. “It’s so good to see you. How are you?”

  It really was great to see him. He had gotten thin, but he still radiated that familiar warmth that reminded me of summer and I realized how much I had missed him. As he talked about the weather and the snow, other memories flooded back, like the time when Jesse and I helped him down at his garage and he taught us about the different tools.

  “Well, I came home for a little lunch and I saw you out here and wanted to say hello. You know, I’ve been meaning to get over to see how you’ve been doing and all, just been so darn busy down at the shop.”

  “Oh, yeah. Don’t worry about it,” I said.

  “It’s sure good to see you up and around, Abby,” he said. “You know, I call your sister every once in a while.” He tugged at his beard. “To check on you, see how you’re doing. I hope she passes along my hellos.”

  I nodded, even though Kate hadn’t ever mentioned that he had called. But given the crazy hours she worked, she probably had forgotten. I looked over at Jesse, who was climbing out of the car.

  “Later, Craigers,” he said, heading up to the porch. Wow. Things really had gotten bad between them.

  “Well, it was good to see you, Mr. Stone. Really.”

  “Oh, yes, Abby. Please drop by again. Here or at the shop. I’d love to talk when you have more time.”

  “I will,” I said. “Bye.”

  I looked over at Jesse, who was waiting for his dad at the front steps. I hadn’t realized there had been so much tension between them and wondered if maybe that was why he was goofing off at school. Sure, I knew he was taking the Mt. Bachelor bus up to his job and needed rides around town, but he was always kind of joking about it.

  I had been an idiot. I only had known Jesse like most of my life, of course not having his car would be a huge deal.

  I texted him after I got home.

  “Take the Jeep whenever,” I wrote. “Anytime.”

  Jesse texted back a happy face. I grabbed my backpack and started my homework.

  CHAPTER 20

  As I was trying to do algebra, Kate called and told me that the authorities found the dead arsonist, not too far from the woods and the fire.

  “They say he suffocated, and they are thinking it’s murder,” Kate said. “Also, I did drop some hints about him setting the fire so they’ll check his clothes. He was a construction worker it turns out. Actually, we found out that he was one of the workers who built that house.”

  “Weird. Did he set it for revenge or something?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I have a call in now to the contractor. I’ll know more later.”

  “At least they think it’s murder,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Abby, be careful. Are all the doors locked?”

  I hadn’t thought too much about what Kate was implying. The killer hadn’t seen me in the visions, so I felt safe. But maybe I was wrong.

  “Yeah, everything’s locked up,” I said.

  “So he’s killed a homeless guy, a receptionist slash bartender, and now a construction worker,” she said. “Do you see any connection at all?”

  “No,” I said. “Not yet anyway. Maybe the opportunity just presented itself, like maybe he was just ready to kill and they wandered into his path.”

  “Yeah, except for Lana Chang. She was at home, in the bathtub,” Kate said.

  True. The other two would fit the random theory, but not Lana.

  “There must be a pattern, something we don’t see yet,” she said. “At least I’m getting stories in
the paper about it, Not the ones I would like to write, that there’s a serial killer in Bend. Boy, that would freak everybody out.”

  “It would,” I said. “But that’s what happening.”

  “It seems like the public has a right to know,” she said. “I’m trying to talk Tony into letting me write that story, at least question the possibility that the deaths are linked. But he says not yet. He’s reluctant to get everybody upset with circumstantial evidence. I wish I could tell him about your visions.”

  “Kate, no!”

  “Relax, I wouldn’t do that, Abby! Come on now. You know Tony. In a million years he would never believe it anyway, let alone run a story based on it. I was just thinking out loud. But I do wish I could get him to at least consider a story in that direction. We really should be warning people.”

  “Well, maybe the drug reports will help,” I said.

  “Yeah, that’s a point. Oh, and Abby, you were right about the fire. It was ruled officially an arson.”

  “Well, that’s good,” I said.

  She paused for a moment.

  “Any more?” she finally asked.

  “Any more what?”

  “Um, you know, memories. Any more come back today?” she asked.

  Kate had been nearly as thrilled as I was when I had told her about the Dr. Krowe session and the Amanda memories that had come back. Now, though, it seemed as like every time we spoke, she was bugging me for more.

  “No. Not yet. I’ll keep you posted though.”

  I hung up and blew off the rest of the equations. I was spending too much time on them and they were probably all wrong anyway. I headed over to the TV and found Fringe and settled in to watch.

  CHAPTER 21

  I sat at the end of the long cafeteria table eating my brown-bagged lunch. The girls at the other end ignored me like they always did. Jayde and Blaire said hello but rushed by to sit with another group. And Danielle, who I had known since kindergarten, made a beeline for the back as soon as she saw me.

  Jesse was making his way through the grub line, as he called it. He always ate in the cafeteria because for some freaky reason he thought the food was good. I had never once eaten food from school. It made my stomach turn looking at it.

  Amanda sat a few tables away and I was wondering if he would sit with her or sit with me. Now that I had those memories back, I really wanted to talk to her, even if I wasn’t sure what I’d say. “Sorry I’ve been hitting on your boyfriend all year, but do you think we can still be friends?” sounded pretty lame.

  I was also thinking about Dr. Mortimer. Kate said that we should tell him about my visions because we could trust him and being that he was a doctor, he might know something about near-death experiences. She had a point, but I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea. He had never asked me about being dead, about what I had seen on the other side. Dr. Mortimer was always just focused on my physical recovery.

  So I wasn’t sold on the plan to tell him everything, but Kate was looking for help, trying to figure things out, so I said okay. And it would be nice to get some insight from someone else. The police investigations seemed to be going nowhere.

  I took a bite from my sandwich. Jesse finally headed over with his tray, walking right past Amanda. She glared at him and then at me. I had been such an idiot for not figuring this out sooner.

  “This seat taken?” he said, smiling and looking at the empty benches around me. I tried not to take it personally anymore.

  “Well, it’s open, but you better hurry. The crowd is rushing over to get that seat.”

  He put down his lunch and we looked at the girls at the end of the table. They were talking loudly about some movie they had seen. I was relieved when kids were loud. That way I knew they weren’t talking about me.

  I wanted to ask Jesse about Amanda, but lost my nerve. I realized that I had never seen them together since I got back to school. It must have been a nasty breakup and I had that sinking feeling that I had been involved somehow.

  “So you’re still planning on talking to Dr. Mortimer tonight about those dreams?” Jesse asked.

  “Yep,” I said. “That’s the plan.”

  Lately Jesse had been more open about the visions. He was interested and asked about them now. He said he was still concerned that I was focusing too much on “those dreams,” but it wasn’t like I could just ignore them. I had seen those people killed.

  “I read Kate’s articles in the newspaper,” he said.

  Kate had been writing a lot of the stories, especially with the police thinking that the arsonist had been murdered. They had no leads, but at the very least the killer knew somebody was paying attention, that he couldn’t keep killing in secret.

  “That’s some weird stuff, Abby,” Jesse said. Loud laughter echoed throughout the cafeteria again and I shuddered as my stomach dropped.

  “So you never see him? The guy who is killing people in those dreams of yours?”

  “No. He’s always in the shadows,” I said. “But I can feel him. It’s a bad, dark feeling.”

  He stuffed his face with a corn dog drenched in ketchup.

  “That’s super creepy,” he said. “Be careful.”

  I finished my sandwich. Jesse stood up, picking up Tater Tots and throwing them in his mouth as he walked away. He never liked sitting for too long.

  “Later, Craigers. Gonna shoot some J’s with the guys. Let me know how it goes tonight.”

  He headed to the double doors, never even looking at Amanda.

  CHAPTER 22

  Since the last session with Dr. Krowe had gone so well, I decided that I would approach him about the paranormal world, in a subtle kind of way.

  “Do you know anything about people who have visions?”

  He looked at me over his glasses. It was bright outside and we were seated in the usual leather chairs.

  “Can you elaborate?” he asked as he wrote.

  “It’s for school. A project I’m working on. It’s a paper on the paranormal. Visions, ESP, psychic phenomenon, things like that. I’ve searched the Internet but there’s mostly junk. But I came across a woman who could predict earthquakes. She had these visions about them and then they happened. I was just wondering if there is anything, you know, based on research or something.”

  I had spent the previous night going from one stupid web site to another. Psychics, palm readers, tarot card experts all willing to help as long as I had a credit card to enter.

  “What class is this for?” he asked.

  “English. It’s a paper. We could pick any topic.”

  “And you chose paranormal activity. Hmmm…..” he said, rubbing his chin and writing some more. “That makes sense.”

  “It’s a pretty popular subject these days,” I said.

  “Pretty interesting too, I imagine, after drowning in the lake and dying,” he said, smiling.

  I sat back in the chair as if he had slapped me. It still hurt when people brought up my death and I wasn’t expecting it, even if there was no malice behind his words. I had too many experiences with freaks trying to “save” me over this past year.

  I took a breath.

  “Sorry, Abby, I didn’t mean anything by that. It’s only that if it were me, in your situation, I would be investigating all that kind of stuff too. Probably would have done it a lot sooner. You went through quite an amazing event. We don’t talk about it much, but I hope we can. It really is remarkable.”

  He tapped his pen against his teeth, something he did when he was thinking.

  “Well, I only asked because it’s for a paper I’m doing. For school, that’s all. I thought you would know something,” I said. It came out angry. I couldn’t help it.

  “Actually, there has been quite a lot of scholarly research done in that field during the past decade or so. A lot of academics take psychic phenomenon very seriously. And I’m not talking about those silly TV shows or one eight hundred numbers. I’m talking about studying real people having real parano
rmal experiences.”

  That made me feel a lot better. Maybe I wasn’t so crazy after all. Maybe these things were common, like Kate had said.

  “Of course, a lot of people don’t believe in any of it. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen,” he said.

  “What about you, Dr. Krowe? Do you believe that a person could have a vision or know that something is going to happen or see something happening in a dream?” I asked.

  He crossed his legs.

  “That’s complicated. First I would have to determine the psychological state of the person. I believe that a lot of the people who experience paranormal activity have underlying psychological conditions.”

  My chest tightened. In other words, he was saying that they were nut cases. Suddenly I wished I hadn’t started this conversation. I should have kept my big mouth shut. Jesse was right.

  He looked at me with dark eyes.

  “But if you are able to rule out any sort of psychology problem, I actually do believe that some of those things happen,” he said. “I mean, I think we’ve all been touched in some degree by strange phenomenon that can’t be explained.”

  He paused.

  “Abby, you’ve never spoken too much about your accident. Maybe it’s time.”

  I sat back again. My body tensed, but I had to be brave. I had to go forward. I wanted more of my memories back. And that last breakthrough happened when I was sitting in the same chair, so I figured I might as well open up a little more.

  “Would you like to talk a bit about it today? I mean, it’s probable that your interest in the paranormal is related. And perhaps it would be good to explore some of what happened, as well as some of your feelings about it.”

  I had done it. Pandora’s Box had been opened and nothing was going to close it back up.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “What do you remember about that day?”

  I thought for a moment. I hadn’t thought about that day in a very long, long time. I had pushed it down far in my mind.

  “Nothing, really,” I said. “Just waking up in the hospital. Everything was white and I was really sore. And scared. Kate was crying next to me. Later they told me that I had drowned in a lake and that I had died and they brought me back to life. That’s about it.”