by Hilary Duff
“I do,” Sage says.
He stalks out of the room. His legs are so long I need to trot to keep up with him. “What are you doing? Sage, talk to me!”
I reach out and grab his wrist, but he gives his arm a fierce twist to shake me off. I chase him through the house to the foyer, where he grabs my car keys from their hook.
“No! Sage, you can’t leave!”
I lunge and grab him tightly now, pulling back on his arm. “You can’t go out there! What if someone sees? What if—”
“Let me go!” He pushes the middle of my chest with his free arm, so hard that I sprawl backward, completely out of control, and slam into the wall. There’s a low shelf mounted there and my head slams hard, biting into its edge. I crumple to the floor, but I’m glad because Sage has never been this violent, and the sight of what he just did will shock him out of this. . . .
But he doesn’t even look at me, just stalks outside.
Thank God I was too excited about the art supplies to reset the alarm, I think. That would bring Wanda running. Maybe Rayna too.
I hear my car start up and squeal away.
Let him at least drive far, so no one Nico knows sees him, I think, then feel immediately guilty, because who knows what kind of trouble Sage could get into driving around in a rage? Forget that. . . . Just let him be safe.
I reach to the back of my head, and my fingers come back slicked with blood.
Shit.
I get to my feet slowly, and when I know I’m not light-headed, I stagger to the closet and grab a clean washcloth, which I fill with ice and press onto my cut. I stare at myself in the hall mirror and check my pupils to make sure they’re dilating normally. Everything seems fine—no concussion—so I lie down on the couch, the iced cloth keeping pressure on my head.
I should have known. How did I feel when I thought Sage looked at me and saw one of my other lives? I hated it. I felt rejected, like I was nothing but a fallback—the closest thing he could get to the woman he loved, but not her. And I felt that way even without Sage doing anything as stupid and callous as asking me to draw a picture of myself the way I was before.
I am a horrible human being.
I wince at my own thoughts. I sound like a battered girlfriend, making excuses and blaming myself.
This is different, though. Yes, a battered girlfriend would say that, too, but this really is. Sage would never hurt me if he was in his right mind. And okay, maybe that’s an excuse, but it’s not like he hurts me all the time. It happened once. Who says it’ll ever happen again? And if it does . . . it’s not like I’d make excuses for him forever.
Would I?
I can’t think about it. It’s such a mind knot. I’m not that girl who puts up with whatever her boyfriend dishes out because she knows he loves her. I would never be that girl.
But I’d also never turn away from Sage.
It doesn’t matter. What matters is that Sage is out there in the world and he’s not thinking clearly. He could do anything. He could get hurt. Any minute now, the police could knock on my door and tell me there’s been a horrible accident. What am I supposed to do, just sit here with ice on my head and wait for it to happen? Maybe I should take my mom’s car and try to find him.
Except I have no idea where he went. I don’t even know what direction he turned when he left the property. There’d be a one-in-a-million chance that I’d find him. Better for me to wait and be here when he comes back.
If he comes back.
He’ll come back. And when he does, we’ll get him well.
No, I’ll get him well now. I’ll do research. I have a different perspective from Ben; maybe I’ll find something he missed. I’m still bleeding a little, so instead of going to the computer, I pull out my cell phone and Google “mythology soul transfers.”
The search returns “about 21,300,000 results,” and none of the top hits have anything to do with Sage’s situation.
So much for my fresh perspective; the Internet is no help at all.
Now what?
All I can do is wait.
By sunset I’ve chewed every one of my fingernails down to the quick, and I’m pacing the house in a panic. When my cell phone rings with a stranger’s last name on the ID, I’m positive it’s someone who found Sage’s car wrapped around a tree and heard my number as Sage recited it with his last breath. . . .
“Hello?”
“Clea . . . it’s me.”
“Where are you? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, but . . . I don’t know where I am. I don’t know how I got here. I borrowed someone’s phone. Maybe she can tell you where I am. . . .”
At the word “her” I imagine some gorgeous siren taking advantage of the hot amnesiac wandering the streets, but the woman’s voice sounds at least eighty years old.
“Are you Clea?” she asks. “This young man seems to be lost.”
“I know. Can you tell me where you are?”
“He’s here at the diner. Wandered in looking sad and confused.”
“Yes. Which diner?”
“Attached to the bowling alley. It’s a slow night, no league play, otherwise I never would have had the time to chat with your young man. He ordered a piece of pie and some coffee, and the minute I served it up, I said to myself, ‘Enid, something with this boy isn’t quite right.’ ”
If I could reach through the phone and grab the information out of her, I would. I struggle not to scream and ask, “Please, just . . . Where is the diner? Can you give me the address?”
She does. Sage is in Rhode Island less than two hours away, so he wasn’t driving the entire time he was gone. I get the address and promise to get there as soon as I can.
“You do that,” Enid says. “And be sure to bring a couple dollars. He doesn’t have a wallet with him, and I mentioned he had some coffee and pie, right?”
“Yes, you did,” I say, grabbing a jacket and my mom’s car keys. “I’ll pay for it.”
I hang up before she can say anything else, then program the address into Mom’s navigation system. An hour and a half later, I pull up to Min’s Pins, a decrepit bowling alley with a half-lit neon sign. I can see into the attached glass-walled diner. The only one at the counter is Sage, his shoulders slouched over an untouched soup and sandwich. An octogenarian in a uniform that looks like a French maid outfit bustles between him and the three couples sitting in the booths. That must be Enid.
My car isn’t in the parking lot.
I run inside, and the look of despair on Sage’s face when he sees me breaks my heart. I take his face and kiss him, feel the stubble against my skin.
“Hi,” he says. “I’m so sorry.”
The lump on the back of my head throbs a little as I think about it. “You remember?”
He shakes his head sadly. “I don’t really know how I got here. I’m so sorry. And I love you. I just . . .”
He’s searching for the lost time, I can see it in his face. But it’s hopeless.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Let’s go home.”
I pull his hands into mine and rub my fingers over his knuckles until he slides off the stool and wraps an arm over my shoulders. “You deserve better than this, Clea.”
“Hey, lovebirds,” Enid calls. “The check?”
I pay it, then lead Sage outside.
“I’m guessing you don’t know where my car is?”
He shakes his head. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. I can report it stolen tomorrow. Someone will find it.”
We get into my mom’s car and start the long drive home. Neither of us says anything for a while. We just sit in the dark, the streetlights washing over us.
“I’m an ass,” he finally says.
The back of my head throbs as we go over a bump in the road. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
“You asked for a picture, I jumped down your throat. I guess I left the h
ouse after that?”
“You did. But it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have asked. It was stupid of me. I know you love to draw, and I was trying to be sweet, but I should have realized you’d get upset. I’m so sorry. This is all my fault.”
“No, it’s not. Of course you’re going to think about what I was before. It makes sense.”
“But I don’t. I mean, yes, I think about it, but I don’t wish for it. I don’t pine for it. I wanted the picture as a memory of what was. But when I think about what is, what I want for the rest of my life . . . I think about you, exactly the way you are right now.”
“You don’t wish things were different? You don’t miss the romance of a man who’d live forever and follow you lifetime after lifetime?”
I can’t believe it. He’s insecure, something I never thought I’d see in Sage. There hasn’t been one second I wished he was still immortal, but he’s afraid of it. I glance to the side and see it in his eyes, the way his face looks so boyish and vulnerable.
“Sage, I love you. You. I don’t care what you look like, and I don’t need you to be anything but who you are. I promise.”
I reach for his hand and squeeze it, then count the minutes until we get home and I can wrap myself around him. We kiss once we stop in the driveway, but I cut it short because I don’t want to be discovered. It’s torture to break away from him for even the few seconds it takes to get into the house. Once we’re inside, I throw myself back into his arms, but he gently pushes me away.
“There’s something I want to do. I just need a few minutes.”
I’m instantly afraid for him. He’d rather hurt himself than hurt me. But then I remember he doesn’t know he slammed me into a wall. Still . . .
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“I’m fine. I promise. I just need a little while, that’s all.”
What can I do but trust him?
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll take a shower.”
I spend a long time under the water, luxuriating in the hot stream against my skin. When I’m done, I wrap up in a thick terry robe and pad to my room . . . where I see a large piece of paper sitting on my comforter. I walk closer to check it out: It’s a beautiful charcoal, a picture of me and Sage—my Sage, the one I always knew. We’re curled up together at the beach . . . maybe the beach in Japan, but it doesn’t look quite like that. He’s stretched out on his side, I’m leaning against him. My camera’s in one hand, and I look out at the waves as if framing the perfect photograph in my mind.
Scrawled on the bottom of the picture are the words: It’s good to remember. I love you.
“Do you like it?”
I turn around and he’s there, just as much the man of my dreams as the one in the picture.
“I love it. And I love you.”
I walk into his arms and kiss him, and I’m so lost in the moment I don’t even know there’s anything else in this world until I hear the choking scream.
“NICO?”
The voice rings out like a gunshot, and Sage and I spring apart and turn to the door.
Oh my God.
It’s Rayna.
six
RAYNA
When I first heard about Nico, I thought I’d lie in bed and cry forever.
I didn’t.
At some point I stopped, but I don’t know when. I’m in a total fog. I don’t know if it’s been a minute or a week that I’ve been lying here.
Maybe not a week.
I think I fell asleep. There’s light coming in my window. My throat is dry, and it hurts to swallow. I’m still clutching at my pillows. I must have been squeezing them in my sleep. I have to concentrate to get my arms to relax away from them, and when I do, my muscles are so stiff they scream. My eyelids weigh a ton apiece, and my face moves like a starched collar.
I also have to pee, which I would have done before now if I’d really been in bed a week, so it’s probably been less than that. Maybe even less than a day.
I stare at my wall. I have seen every episode of Hoarders and I am not a hoarder . . . except on my walls. When I was three years old, my mom said my bedroom was mine and I could decorate it any way I wanted. “Within reason,” she said. She vetoed my seventh-birthday plan of turning it into a safari complete with real live elephants. I bet if I’d wanted horses, she’d have let me.
Since then, I’ve taped everything that interested me on my walls: articles, pictures, posters, movie stubs, small objects . . . everything. And I never take any of it down; I just add layers. It’s like living inside a scrapbook, or a Pinterest page. The newest stuff is the Nico section. To plan it out, I lay in bed and scoped out the wall from there so I’d be sure to mount everything at exact first-thing-in-the-morning eye level. It was a great idea at the time, but it sucks right now. I stare at every picture I snapped of him and us with my cell phone, the handkerchief he gave me when I sneezed (A handkerchief. Seriously. How cute is that?), and even an extra sugar cube from the pile he gave me to feed the horses. My mom thinks a sugar cube on the wall will bring ants, but I put enough tape on it that it’s basically laminated, so it’s all good.
My favorite of all the pictures is the one I printed out largest, an eight-by-ten of Nico in the door frame of the stables. I always laugh when I see it. His arm is cocked up, the forearm leaning against the jamb, and the pose and his muscular body make him look like a model, but with an entirely un-model-like dorky grin that I should absolutely not find sexy, but I can’t help it, I do.
He’s such an earnest goofball.
I don’t even realize I’m crying again until I feel the tears drip from my numb cheeks onto my arm, but then I can’t stop, and pretty soon I’m sobbing and coughing again, pulling the pillows back into my arms until at some point I fall back asleep.
Maybe I will stay in bed forever. Or at least a week. Maybe when you hurt this much, your body stops needing to do things like pee.
Maybe not. The next time I open my eyes it’s dark again outside, and I either have to move or wet myself. I waffle about it for a while, but since I can’t possibly stay bedridden on a wet mattress, I stagger out into the hall. Weird how one horrible day can turn around years of yoga. Not only am I no longer one with my body, it and I aren’t even speaking the same language. My limbs are glued in place, and my brain is detached and floating several feet away, trying to find any kind of path back to Nico.
Mom’s there when I get out of the bathroom. She’s dressed in her elasticized jeans and one of the mountainous button-down plaid cotton shirts she likes to wear over a scoop-necked tee when she works. She doesn’t say anything when she sees me, just wraps me in a huge hug that’s maybe a minute away from becoming Suffocation by Breast.
Dad must have called her cell to tell her I was awake. She smells like the stables. Like Nico. I start crying all over again.
“What happened, baby?” She coos the way she did when I was five and fell out of the climbing tree in our backyard. “Whatever it is, we’ll make it better, okay?”
“We can’t,” I croak.
“I can try,” she promises. “But you need to talk to me.”
I can’t say it. I cry until my body feels like it’s ripping apart, and I’m so grateful to Mom that she doesn’t try to coax it out of me anymore.
“Shhh, baby. Shhh. It’s okay. Everything is okay.”
She bends down and sweeps her arm under my knees, scooping me into a fireman’s carry like I’m a little girl again, and carries me to bed. I fall asleep while she’s rubbing my back, and when I wake up she’s there again, but her clothes have changed and the sun shines in my window, so I must have slept through the night.
There are tears in her eyes, and I bolt upright. “Mom?”
“Oh, baby, I’m so sorry.”
“Did Clea tell you?” I haven’t used my voice in a while. It’s raspy.
Mom shakes her head. “I don’t poke my head in when you girls fight. And she didn’t have to tell me. I went to his house.” She didn’t have to say his
name. She knew I’d know who she meant. “He didn’t show up for work, so I went by his apartment. I thought something happened between the two of you, and I was all set to yell at him for letting that get in the way of his job.” She gives a low, rueful laugh that turns into the littlest sob. “Some friends of his were there, packing his things to ship back to his mother.”
“Did they say what happened?” I whisper the question, not positive I want to know the details.
Mom shakes her head. “You know, Clea’s been calling a lot. Coming to the house, too. I told her to stop. I said you’d find her whenever you’re ready.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
“Baby, I don’t know what went on between the two of you, but it seems to me like now’s a really good time to have your best friend by your side.”
She means well, but she doesn’t get it. She can’t get it, and there’s no good way for me to explain it, so I just stay silent.
“Whatever you need,” Mom says. She stays in the room until I fall asleep again.
The next few days are surreal. I don’t go to school, but Mom takes care of it. She tells my high school there are “extenuating circumstances” and makes it clear that she’ll kick their butts if they give her a hard time about me missing as much time as I need, so they don’t. They probably don’t care that much, since it’s April of my senior year and the whole college application thing is a done deal. I already got acceptance letters from a couple of fallback schools, though I can’t imagine going anywhere beyond my bedroom and the bathroom, maybe ever. I wear the same yoga pants and soft baby tee until they practically jump off me and walk themselves to the laundry, at which point I put on the same outfit in another color. It doesn’t matter; I’m not leaving the house.
Clea calls a zillion times a day. And texts. And e-mails. I just ignore them. I ignore Ben, too. He calls a bunch and says it’s important, but I know it’s not. The only important thing is that Nico’s gone.
Mom got a call from Nico’s mother. I guess Nico really did ask his mom for his grandmother’s ring, because she had our information and apparently knows all about me. She called to tell my mom there’s going to be a funeral, back in Montana. I’m invited to the service, but I don’t want to go. I tell Mom I have no desire to see Nico’s body in a coffin.