The blue plastic slides were slick, like I’d expected. The seams were a little abrasive on my shoulder blades as I went down, but I loved the feeling of the ride. The weightlessness. I just jumped off at the top and rode the freedom all the way down.
While lying in bed that night, I could still feel the movement. As if the repetition had carved pathways into my brain … the twists, the turns, the speed. The moments that took my breath away, where I thought I might flip over the edge but then didn’t.
And … the mist in my face.
The sunlight had glinted off the water-slick plastic of the slide and made it difficult to see while I was riding down. My eyes were, as always, sensitive to the light. But I didn’t mind being sightless … then. Like I said, it was freeing somehow. Climbing the stairs and waiting in line for the next slide was almost excruciatingly boring, but the ride was worth it.
I must have been about a third of the way through my fifth or sixth ride down when the hallucination hit. Though I didn’t know what was happening at the time. I’d reached one of the flatter straightaways, where the sun created a blast of white starbursts off the shallow rushing water on which I rode. I squinted my eyes like crazy against this onslaught, but was afraid to close them completely. Some part of me was still sure I was going to go off the edge, though I knew that was probably impossible.
When I whipped around the next turn, my eyesight didn’t come back. All I could see was white light. The slide, the blue sky, and the other riders in the slides beside me were all gone in a wash of white.
I didn’t panic.
I was riding the high of the day, the thrill of the ride, and it happened so quickly I didn’t even think to freak out right away.
I could still feel the solid slide underneath me, the tiny bumps underneath my shoulder blades as I slid over the seams, and the mist in my face. So somehow I knew I was okay. My eyes were doing something weird — probably because of their light sensitivity — but it would be okay.
Then I saw the dark-haired man. The man who I’ve never seen out of a dark suit and crisp white dress shirt since — though that day, he was dressed head to toe in black, including his gloved hands. The man who would go on to star in my hallucinations for the next six years.
As I rode the water slide completely blind, in my mind I watched the man gaze reverently down at a crimson red stone necklace. It was displayed on a yellow-gold velvet pillow atop a pedestal. For years, I would fill sketchbook after sketchbook trying to capture the exact edges and shading of this amulet. The stone glowed softly. The chain was made of thick gold, and the links were individually etched with strange letters. I never managed to reproduce the markings in my drawings. Similar to how I never managed to read a book in a dream.
I had no sense of time or place — I never did in the delusions — but I wasn’t on the water slide anymore. Or my mind wasn’t, at least. I was in some sort of gallery, though I could only really see the area immediately around the dark-haired man. He lifted the amulet and placed it around his neck, then quickly skirted the velvet pillow-topped pedestal on which it had been displayed and made a beeline for a large, ornately carved gilded wooden door.
I caught a glimpse of thick stone walls as he exited into a hall. Tapestries, artwork, and a gold carpet that also looked like velvet ran the length of the corridor.
Someone shouted.
I tumbled off the edge of the slide into the end pool. I went under, completely disoriented, and accidentally swallowed water.
I remember thrashing, twisting in the water. I began to panic as I realized I couldn’t breathe.
In my mind, the dark-haired man spun around to see whoever had shouted at him. He smiled, his wicked look full of satisfaction and pride. Then he brushed his fingers across the crimson stone of the amulet and disappeared.
Someone crashed into me, slamming both feet into my head. I hadn’t properly cleared the area underneath the slide and the next rider landed on me.
Then I was being hauled out of the water and fussed over.
Once it was determined I would survive, I was yelled at for not following the safety guidelines, then banished to the bus for the rest of the trip.
None of that really mattered, though, because I still couldn’t figure out what I’d seen or what had happened to my eyesight.
Hours later at home, while setting the table for my foster mom, I made the biggest mistake of my life.
I told her.
I was safe, comfortable, and warm. My foster mom had made potato salad for dinner. We were going to have barbecued burgers.
And I told her what I’d seen.
She listened. Too closely, though I didn’t know that at the time. I just knew I’d had an odd experience, and that I had someone who cared about me to share it with.
She asked questions. The same questions many other people asked me many other times afterward. Turned out she was a nonpracticing psychologist, though, I didn’t piece that together in the moment.
I went to bed feeling less unsettled, less concerned about the incident. I dreamed of riding the slides. I dreamed of the dark-haired man. I woke up with an appointment scheduled to see the family doctor.
Many meetings and many doctors later, I was diagnosed with an unknown psychotic disorder. Not schizophrenia, because that manifested with auditory hallucinations. My voices presented themselves only in video.
It also wasn’t a brain tumor, and not epilepsy or any other seizure disorder — all of which were ruled out through multiple tests and MRIs.
I was crazy — pure and simple — according to the professionals. Well, they didn’t put it quite like that, but that’s what I heard and that’s what I lived with.
I didn’t stay at that particular foster home for long after that. Supposedly, my attitude changed. I withdrew and became unmanageable. I bounced around in a few emergency placements before the ministry got me into a home that specialized in troubled kids. I kept my head down and my mouth shut after that. But by then, I had a prescription, weekly shrink appointments, and a sheet on the fridge that I had to sign to prove I’d taken my meds. I wasn’t the only name on the list.
Everyone always knew what was wrong with me, even strangers, from the moment they walked into that kitchen and saw the list. The foster community was a small one in Vancouver. Too many kids in care, of course, but we all knew each other. The lifers, at least.
When the mist hit my face now, I didn’t think of the diagnosis or the pills. I thought about how the hallucination at the water slides was the only one that had ever manifested without pain, without the migraine, without the debilitating need to sleep and then draw afterward. I thought about how I hadn’t even been scared until I was underneath the water.
I hadn’t hated myself for being weak or broken. I’d felt clear and free that day.
Driving the Brave was a close second to the water slides — maybe even a better ride, because I got to stay dry, warm, and completely in control of my destination. No one was going to yank me out of the RV, label me, and then shove pills down my throat.
Happy nineteenth birthday to me.
CHAPTER FIVE
“What are you?” a deep male voice asked, tentatively. “A witch?”
I started. As far as I’d known, I was the only customer in the roadside diner. I looked up from contemplating the full mug of very hot coffee before me — then kept looking up at least six-foot-three-inches of lanky frame and broad shoulders.
His skin was the color of brown-sugar caramels. I stiffened my spine and squared my own shoulders in an attempt to fill more of the booth I was occupying. My immediate impulse — as when approached by any stranger after one of my ‘incidents’ — was to burrow farther into the powder-blue vinyl seat. I wasn’t a hundred-percent clear-headed yet.
“Did you just ask me if I was a witch?” I sneered at his square chin and chiseled jaw rather than look him in the eye.
Even through the haze that the hal
lucinations and pills always left behind, he was crazy-beautiful. I’d never seen anyone who looked like him — not even online, say in a romance novel meme or a movie.
Instead of crossing my arms protectively across my chest, I deliberately wrapped my hands around the coffee that I had no intention of drinking, but I figured would keep the waitress mollified while I decided whether to order a salad or veggie soup. My shrink had spoken a lot about confidence being rooted in body language … or some other garbage I usually only half listened to. But in this case, after midnight in an empty diner on the edge of I-5 and with no one actually knowing where I was or when to expect me back, I wasn’t interested in looking like some victim.
The guy shifted his feet. His hands were stuffed into the pockets of his worn jeans. His navy hoodie was soaking wet. He carried a large, overstuffed backpack slung over one shoulder like it weighed nothing.
The sky had opened up as I was walking to the diner. I’d sourced its location and hours of operation with the ever-helpful TripAdvisor app, after discovering its existence via Google. Despite knowing it was going to rain, I’d left the Brave in the rest stop parking lot. I’d straightened it so it was parked within the lines before I locked up. I didn’t want to draw attention. But I was too far gone in the grip of the clozapine to actually drive. Though I was wishing that I’d thought to buy a bike and strap it to the back of the motorhome.
Anyway, I’d walked the entire one-point-two miles to the diner, the last quarter of that distance in the rain. TripAdvisor had asserted that the place was open nightly until 2:00 a.m., and the chalkboard sign in the window confirmed it.
By the raindrops that still glistened from his cheekbones, the guy had gotten caught in the downpour for longer than I had. I felt a terribly weird impulse to pull my sleeves down over my hands and dry the rain from his face. I gripped my mug harder, as if to stop my hands from reaching for him without my permission.
“I … I …” He stumbled over the words. “I thought with the tattoos … and I scented …”
“Are you crazy?” I resisted the urge to tug the sleeves of my hoodie down over my arms for a completely different reason now. “Because I have enough crazy already going on in my head. I don’t need yours.”
He hunched his shoulders as if the rain was still pouring down on him. I felt bad for snapping at him. For dumping my issues at his feet and expecting him to just deal or walk away.
Yeah, I expected him to just walk away now.
He didn’t.
“No,” he said. “I’m not crazy.”
I risked a glance at his eyes. They were a startling blue-green — a deep aquamarine. I’d expected them to be brown by his skin tone. He was mixed race then, and more the gorgeous for it. Not that I could say the same … for some reason, whatever-kind-of-Asian-I-was mixed with whatever-kind-of-Caucasian-I-was didn’t come with the prettiest-bits-of-both-races results.
I returned my gaze to my coffee.
Silence stretched between us, but again he didn’t leave. I could actually hear water dripping off him. He was probably creating a pool at his feet. The waitress would come back from the kitchen and have a mess to mop up.
“Can I buy you a piece of pie?” he asked.
“Can you afford it?”
“Just.”
I nodded. I still needed to eat after all. “I like apple.”
“With ice cream?”
“No.”
He stepped to the long counter that divided the seating area from the kitchen, leaned past the powder-blue vinyl-topped stools bolted there, and called into the back through the half-open swing doors. “Um, hello?”
The waitress had served me coffee with minimal chatter immediately after I sat down. I appreciated the brief interaction, even though I’d come to the diner seeking human contact. She’d returned to texting and chatting quietly to whoever was in the kitchen. She was about the same age as me. I guess the graveyard shift fell to the youngest employee.
“Two pieces of apple pie, please,” he called. “One with ice cream.”
I heard her sigh. Then she poked her head out through the swing doors and saw him. She missed her apron pocket and dropped her phone on the floor instead. Yeah, even soaking wet and — judging by his worn clothing — downtrodden, he was that beautiful.
“Pie?” he asked again.
The waitress glanced toward me, still dumbstruck, and then nodded. I could feel her disbelief from where I sat, but she didn’t hold my interest for more than a second.
I studied him while his back was turned. He was wearing black-and-white Converse runners that looked vaguely new. His hair was clipped short against his head. I wondered if it would be curly if it was longer. It was even darker than mine, and I dyed mine as black as I could get it. His accent was southern-U.S. of some kind, but I didn’t know the distinct differences. He was in his early twenties at the most.
He turned back to the booth so quickly that he caught me looking at him.
I didn’t look away this time. I’d said the thing about being crazy and he hadn’t laughed like I was joking. He also hadn’t walked away.
He smiled at me. Not at the waitress, who was scrambling on the floor for her phone now. It was an easygoing, playful smile. My stomach … squirmed … or flipped … curled. I’d never felt anything like it.
“Sit then,” I said, more gruffly than I’d intended. But then I was covering for whatever was going on with my silly stomach.
He slid into the booth across from me, filling the other side as much as two smaller people would have.
I slid my coffee mug across the width of gray-speckled table. He pulled his hands out of his hoodie pockets, swallowed the mug with them, and lifted the still-warm coffee to his mouth.
He looked like he could crush the ceramic mug without even trying. But then maybe he’d be sorry about breaking it afterward.
He scared me stupid — stupid enough to offer him a seat and accept the pie.
“You’ve been walking … in the rain,” I said, aware I sounded like an idiot stating the utterly banal.
He nodded. “Couple of hours. Since the last Greyhound stop.”
I figured the bus ran anywhere and everywhere, as long as you were willing to wait for the next one. The only reason to get off and keep walking was because you’d run out of money. But I didn’t mention it. That was his business, not mine.
He started to pass the coffee back across the table, but I shook my head. “I don’t drink it.”
He smiled. His teeth were startling white against his mocha skin. “Just needed a reason to sit, huh?”
I shrugged. No need to explain I was cold. Cold in a way that made it seem I’d never be warm. Cold in my core, and afraid that if I stayed alone, I’d sleep. Sleeping directly after an episode was one thing. But waking and then sleeping again meant the hallucinations would haunt my dreams in a more visceral way.
The waitress dropped off two pieces of pie and two forks. She put the one with the ice cream in front of me, then lingered to fill my coffee mug, which was now in front of him. She deliberately placed her hand next to his as she leaned on the table. Her nails were lacquered carnation pink.
He didn’t take his eyes off me, nor did he lose the easy grin.
I didn’t look away from him either.
“Thank you,” he murmured.
“Yeah, okay,” the waitress said, her tone tinged with disappointment. She wandered back to set the coffee pot in the machine.
He reached over and switched the plates.
“Warm,” he said, pleased.
He took a bite, making sure to spear both ice cream and pie on his fork. Then he said, “I’m Beau.”
“Rochelle.”
I took a bite of the pie. It was warm. It was also too sweet and the crust was tough, but I could taste the apple. Apples always made me feel better somehow. More grounded.
“Is that French?” he asked.
“No,�
�� I answered. “Well, I’m not anyway.”
“My sister’s name is French,” he said as he took another bite. He was going to finish his entire piece in three huge mouthfuls. “Claudette. But she’s not, you know, like me.”
I had no idea what he meant. Maybe that his sister wasn’t mixed race?
“Isn’t your name French? Beau?” I realized what I was saying before I said it, but continued despite my embarrassment. “As in, good looking?”
He looked up at me without answering. I felt like I was missing something in his ‘not like me’ comment. I had no idea what it could be, though — or why it would hang between us so tangibly.
His gaze fell to my piece of pie, or maybe to my hands. I didn’t fiddle with my fork. He unnerved me, but it wasn’t at all unpleasant.
“No,” he said, with a definite shake of his head.
I’d forgotten what we were talking about.
Then he reached across the table and — barely touching me — turned my left hand over until the back rested on the table. With a touch so light that I felt only the shiver of its passing, he brushed his fingers across the black butterfly I had tattooed on the inside of my wrist.
“Rochelle,” he murmured. “Who are you?”
My stomach flipped again. This time the feeling was accompanied by a rush of what was unmistakably desire. This was a thing I had heard many a teenaged roommate gush about … endlessly. Though I’d never experienced the feeling myself, not even during my previous, brief sexual encounters.
I stared at the tattooed butterfly as he withdrew his hand. I was suddenly very pleased that I had chosen to keep it free of the barbed wire, which also started at my wrist and wound up my arm.
“You got somewhere to stay?” he asked.
“Always,” I answered, glad my voice wasn’t as shaky as my insides.
I took a second bite of my pie, already knowing I was going to invite him back to the Brave.
I See Me (Oracle Book 1) Page 6