by Hilary Duff
It works. He wakes up with a smile and pulls me onto the bed next to him.
The rest of the day is perfect. We’re constantly touching. We watch movies and TV shows and play board games and talk constantly about nothing deeper or more serious than what’s right in front of us. I love it. Everything feels so simple and light and right. Weirdly enough, it’s the most normal day of our entire relationship.
Still, something nags at me all day. I don’t want to say anything and risk killing the mood, but by dinnertime I can’t help it.
“Okay,” I say once the delivery guy leaves and we’re on the couch chowing on pizza, “I have to ask you something.”
“Yeah?”
“You really don’t remember anything about our past? About Olivia, Catherine, or any of the others?”
He shakes his head.
“But . . . you still . . .” I can’t bring myself to say the word I want to say. Not as a question. “ . . . care about me?”
I feel so weak and vulnerable as I look into his eyes, but the warmth there is endless. He holds out his hand, and I rest mine inside it.
“I don’t ‘care about’ you, Clea. I love you.”
I should leave it at that. I can see in his eyes it’s true. But I can’t.
“How? You’ve lost so much of what we had.”
“You’re wrong. I remember everything we’ve had.” He takes my pizza and sets it down along with his own, then climbs behind me and rubs my shoulders. His big, strong hands feel so good on me, and I can feel his breath against my neck. “The first time we met, you chased me down through a jungle. I’d have gotten away, but you fell and got hurt, so I tried to help you . . . and you yelled at me.”
I smile. “I thought you were stalking me.”
“And yet you still took me on. Very ballsy. I was impressed.”
“That’s what you love?”
“That’s what I found intriguing. I also remember you, me, Rayna, and Ben eating pizza in a crappy hotel near JFK. You wore purple sweatpants, your hair was in a ponytail, you had no makeup . . . and you were the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.”
“Hmm. When a man with memory loss says you’re the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen, I believe you have to take it with a grain of salt.”
“I believe you’re missing the point.”
“Also, I’m pretty sure I was wearing a little mascara.”
“I stand corrected.” Sage kisses my neck, and I tilt my head all the way to the side, surrendering to his touch.
“I remember the beach in Japan,” he says. “I remember kissing you five minutes before I thought I would die, and I remember thinking that if all I did in my lifetime was make you, Clea Raymond, happy—even for a little while—it was enough.”
I turn to face him and look into the eyes that have followed me forever. I wrap my arms around his waist and melt into him. Whatever he looks like on the outside, this is the man I want to be with for the rest of my life.
five
CLEA
The next week is a strange mix of wonderful and devastating. For the most part, spending time with Sage is everything I ever wanted. We stay in the house, but the hours we spend together are simple, easy, and fun. It’s like I’m falling in love with Sage all over again, a Sage who looks different, but who proves every day that he’s still my soulmate. And while he no longer has the memories of our past lifetimes together, every day we make new memories and grow even closer than before.
In so many ways I’m blissfully happy. There are just a few things that stand in the way.
The first, of course, is Rayna. I feel terrible that she doesn’t know the truth, and the closer Sage and I get, the more I feel like I’m betraying her. I try to reach her every day. I call, I e-mail, I text, I write her letters begging her to give me ten minutes to just talk to her. . . . I even knock on her door when I know Wanda’s out with the horses, but Rayna never responds. I’m so frustrated that I fantasize about dragging Sage to her doorstep and shocking her so badly she’ll have to listen, but I’d never actually do it. Much as I want to talk to her face-to-face, I know that if she keeps refusing to see me, I’ll have to write everything in a letter and send it to her. It’s not perfect, and if anyone else sees what I wrote they’ll think I’m certifiable, but it’s less unfair than letting her live with half the story.
Another problem is with Sage. The memory lapses keep getting worse. He doesn’t forget anything major, like who or where he is or who I am, but it’s a constant string of little things. He’ll restart a conversation that we just had an hour ago. Or he’ll suggest that we see a movie we just saw the day before. When I point that out, he snaps at me. Horrible diatribes, calling me names and accusing me of holding him captive in the house. That’s awful, but the anger never lasts long, so I focus on the good times and let the bad ones go. I write the memory lapses down in Ben’s steno book, toning down the angry outbursts. No need to freak him out.
Ben meant it when he said he’d help. Every day he spends hours either in Dad’s studio or in the Yale library going through the oldest books in their rare text archive, trying to find anything that might be relevant. When he’s at the house, he takes the steno pages and adds them to his own ever-growing notebook. That’s what he’s flipping through now, as he, Sage, and I eat Chinese takeout at the kitchen island. With Piri gone, we’re having a lot of takeout.
Sage has a spoonful of egg drop soup halfway to his mouth when he wheels on Ben. “Will you stop that? I’m not that interesting.”
I tense up. So far Sage hasn’t had an outburst in front of Ben. Is one coming now?
Ben stops scratching notes. “On the contrary, you’re a fascinating man.”
“You keep watching me. I feel like I’m in a zoo.”
“More like house arrest,” Ben says. I kick him under the table.
“Exactly,” Sage agrees. “How about we go out for a change.”
“We can’t,” I say. “What if someone sees you?”
“I’ll wear a hat. I’ll wear sunglasses. I’ll wear a trench coat. We’ll go far enough away that we won’t run into Rayna or her mom.”
I feel like he’s on the edge. I won’t push it by telling him the truth. It’s not about him seeing Rayna and Wanda; it’s about him having a memory lapse and running off with no way to get back to me, or slipping into a rage and doing who knows what. It’s just safer to stay here, where even if he tried to slip out, the alarm system would let me know.
“Much as I’d love to see you in Bad Secret Agent Chic,” Ben says, “I think I have an idea what’s going on. Why you’re having troubles after the soul transfer.”
“You do?” I ask.
Ben looks from me to Sage. “What do you know about organ donation?”
“Why?” Sage asks. “Are you planning to give up a kidney?”
“Not at the moment. But when someone gets a new organ, the body can reject it. It does reject it, almost always, unless the patient takes drugs that stop the rejection.”
“But Sage didn’t get a new organ,” I say.
“He didn’t get a new organ,” Ben says, “he got all new organs. And it almost didn’t happen. Think about how many things had to line up for it to work. He had to be stabbed in the heart, at midnight, with a specific dagger that would rip his soul from his body.”
“Funny,” Sage says, shifting uncomfortably, “it sounds so pleasant when you describe it.”
“Sorry. I’m just laying it out so you understand. Even after all that, the purpose of the dagger and the ceremony you went through was to drain the Elixir of Life from your body, and wrench your soul away from any kind of salvation. We heard all this from Magda, remember? Your soul was supposed to swirl around in eternal pain and agony until it dissolved into nothingness.”
“You’ve really never considered a career as a poet?” Sage asks. “Maybe a grief counselor?”
“I swear I have a point. The Elixir is gone. That worked. We know because of your cut.
You’re mortal now. What didn’t work is your soul getting wrenched away, and that’s because there happened to be a host body right there that had just lost its own soul.”
“Nico,” I say.
Ben nods. “That body was there and empty, but it’s not like it was planning to receive a new soul. It was dying. Sage’s arrival was a shock to the system. Like a body getting an organ transplant. Only for an organ transplant, doctors prepare the patient with antirejection medicine.”
“To suppress the immune system,” I say. My dad had been a surgeon, so I know a little about this. “The body doesn’t recognize the new organ as its own. It thinks it’s a threat, and attacks it.”
“Exactly,” Ben says. “But Nico’s body wasn’t prepped, so the same way it might try to reject a donated organ, it might be trying to reject the new soul.”
“That’s impossible,” I say. “An organ is concrete. You can hold it and measure it. A soul is . . . it’s ephemeral. You can’t pin it down. The body can’t attack it, because there is no ‘it’ to attack.”
Sage has been quiet, taking this in, but now he speaks in a measured voice. “Of course there is. The soul is its own entity. It has a life that goes beyond the body. The three of us should know that better than anyone.”
“Are you sure?” I ask Ben. “You really think that’s what’s causing the . . . everything?”
“I’m not positive. It’s not like there are medical journals on the topic. I’m extrapolating from stories and myths. But the symptoms are pretty consistent with everything he’s going through: the sickness, the hunger, the blank spots . . . Yeah, I really think that’s what’s happening.”
“So what can we do to change it?” I ask. “What’s the spiritual equivalent of organ rejection drugs?”
“I haven’t found one yet, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. So far I’ve just found the things that can go wrong with the transfer, but I’ll keep looking. I’ve found references to other texts, at other libraries. . . . I’ll find what we need.”
Sage watches as Ben pushes his steamed shrimp and mixed vegetables around his plate. When he speaks, his voice is soothing.
“You already have. You know what comes next. If we don’t find an antidote.”
“I don’t know anything for sure,” Ben tells his plate.
“But . . .”
“They’re old stories. And sometimes they’re allegories, so you can’t take them literally.”
“Ben!” I say. “Stop stalling. Just tell us. Please.”
Ben gives a long exhale, then speaks in a single breath. “The stories describe a descent into madness by the new body/soul combination, often including violence against himself and others . . . and ending in death.”
“His own death?” I ask, my voice tinny in my ear.
“The struggling soul rarely goes down alone. There are usually other victims. Sometimes just one . . . sometimes many.”
I feel like the air has been sucked out of the room, but Sage is calm. He leans back in his seat. “So now we know. How long do we have?”
“Not sure,” Ben says.
“Then here’s what we need to do, and I’m telling you both right now, because I won’t be in a position to say it later, and because we’ve gotten into trouble with this kind of thing before. I don’t want to be here if I’m a danger to the people around me. When things get bad, one of you needs to do something about it.”
“What are you saying?” I ask. “You think we’re going to kill you?”
Sage’s response is simple. “Do you love me?”
“What kind of a question is that? Of course I do! If I didn’t, I—”
“If you love me, you won’t let me become a monster.”
My mouth is open, ready to scream back at him, but instead I just shake my head. “I can’t.”
“So it’s up to you,” Sage says to Ben.
“I won’t. I can’t.” His voice cracks. “I already have blood on my hands. I can’t do it again.”
“Okay,” Sage says. “How about this: Lock me up. When it gets to the point where I can’t control myself, have me committed. Then I can’t hurt anyone.”
“That I can do,” Ben says.
“Good.” They shake on it like boys making a trade in a school yard, and my head all but explodes.
“Stop! What are you doing? This is your life we’re talking about!”
“Yes, it is,” Sage says, as if that puts a period on the argument.
“But Ben said he’s basing this stuff on stories that aren’t even real. He has no idea if this will happen.”
“And I have confidence you won’t put me in a padded cell and straitjacket unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
“You’re joking about this?”
“No, I’m not,” he says, so matter-of-fact that I want to smack him. He holds up his wrist. The bandages are gone now, but there’s still a thick scar from where the beer bottle sliced him open. “When I got this, you know what it meant to me?”
“That you could die?”
“No. That I could live. This proves the Elixir is gone. I don’t have eternal life. I don’t have anything anyone else wants. When I look at it, I know no one’s coming after us, and we can live like normal people. That’s what I want, Clea. I want to live with you, and grow old with you, and one day, a long, long, long time from now, I want to die with you, knowing our souls will be together for whatever comes next.”
“That’s what I want too,” I say.
“Then we’ll fight for it, and we’ll hold on tight to every second we have. But if we can’t have that future, if I can’t have the life I want, I refuse to take you down with me. That would be worse than dying.”
Tears fill my eyes, but I won’t give in. “It won’t happen. You won’t get any worse.”
“Ben?” he asks.
“I’ll take care of it,” Ben says quietly. “If it comes to that.”
Before Ben goes home, he and Sage exchange a very formal handshake, then I hug Ben tightly. “Find a cure,” I say in his ear. “We have to.”
“We will.”
Ben’s prognosis scares me, but I’m not convinced it’s inevitable. Old myths and stories aren’t always true. Nico’s body and Sage’s soul have gone through serious trauma, and it only makes sense that they both need time to heal. The memory lapses aren’t a sign of worse things to come, they’re bumps on the road to health.
Still, they make me think of my own memories of Sage’s and my history, and how they might fade. I don’t dream about my past lives anymore, and part of me mourns the loss of the women I used to be. I start writing down everything I remember about them, and I promise the memory of Olivia that one day, when Sage is healthy and Rayna knows the truth and has forgiven us, Sage and I will go to Italy and have the wedding she was promised, but never got to enjoy.
I also write about the way Sage used to look. At this point it’s his new face and body that I see when I close my eyes and think about him. His gestures, posture, and soulful eyes don’t look like they’re hanging out on someone else’s body anymore. They look like they belong.
I have the man I’ve always wanted, but I still wish I had some relic of the man he used to be.
Then I realize I could.
The next day I wait until Sage is asleep and call a store that usually doesn’t deliver, but they agree when I offer to pay double. I make sure Sage and I are upstairs when the guy arrives, and fly downstairs before he can catch up and see what I’m getting. I quickly pop the plastic bag from the store into a backpack, so Sage won’t know what it is right away.
He’s staring out the window when I come in. “Who was at the door?”
“Delivery. I have a surprise for you.”
He smiles wickedly. “Will I like it?”
“I think you’ll like it very much, but first I have to ask you a question. When you imagine yourself, do you see yourself in this body?”
Sage looks surprised, but he thinks it over. “T
he truth? No. Every time I look in the mirror I’m surprised . . . which is probably why I avoid looking in the mirror as much as I can.”
“Good.”
“Good?” Sage laughs. “Why? Did I spend too much time gazing at myself before?”
“No. It’s just . . . I want the chance to see what you see.” I plop down on the floor, open up the backpack, and pull out everything I’d had delivered from the art supply store: charcoal sticks and pencils, a pad of paper, kneaded erasers, and a foam brush. I lay each element out on the carpet, one by one.
“Draw yourself. The way you see yourself when you close your eyes.”
Sage is the most talented artist I’ve ever known, but he hasn’t drawn at all since he’s been back. I know he’ll be excited for the chance, and I eagerly watch his face for the smile I’m sure is coming . . . but instead he looks at me like I broke his heart.
“What’s wrong?” I ask. “Did I get the wrong stuff? The guy on the phone said charcoals are perfect for faces. Would paint have been better?”
Sage shakes his head. The muscles in his jaw clench and unclench, and he won’t meet my eyes. Panic swirls inside me.
“Sage, talk to me! What is it?”
I get up and sit next to him, but he shifts away so I can’t touch him.
“This is who I am, Clea,” he says through clenched teeth. “This face. This body. I thought you understood. I thought you were okay with that.”
“I do. I am. I know who you are, Sage. I just—”
Again I reach for him, but he leans back on his hands and turns away to stare out the window. His eyes look tortured.
“I’m sorry, Sage. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean . . .”
“You look at me, but you don’t see me at all.”
“That’s not true.”
“I’m like a substitute for a man who doesn’t exist anymore. Even if we get a lifetime together, you’ll always feel like there’s something missing. Always.”
“No! Sage, you’re wrong.” I rush to stash the art supplies in the backpack, desperate to turn back the clock and undo my mistake. “This was a stupid idea. I don’t know what I was thinking.”