Helen’s cheeks turn bright red as she listens. “I already hate this Mrs. Jacobs-lady.”
I shake my head. “I don’t. Maybe I needed her to do what she did. To open my eyes.”
“You don’t owe her anything.”
A tall, spindly blue flower rises through the steps and I catch the petals gently in my hand, admiring them. “You’re in good company hating her. My mother wants her banished from the town.”
“I bet. Your mother is a formidable woman. She is not to be messed with.”
I let go of the flower. “That’s the other thing. My mother and I are fighting constantly about the ways I’m changing. I’m just so tired, Helen, of being this person, performing Marlena the Saint all day, every day. The thought of a TV show following me around twenty-four seven. I can’t even . . . God, it would be horrible. Sometimes I feel like a machine that people use at will, that the whole town uses to generate itself.”
“Oh, Marlena,” Helen says carefully. “I don’t want you to feel that way.”
“My mother wishes I could still be ten years old,” I go on, “and tries to dress me like a little girl and says it’s to protect my reputation, but I don’t care about my reputation anymore. I want to be irreputable. Like not reputable at all. Disreputable.”
The serious look on Helen’s face evaporates, replaced by laughter. It makes me laugh with her, a laughter that feels good. “Yeah, I’m sure your mother wouldn’t like that,” she says, rolling her eyes. “No way. No boyfriends—or girlfriends—not for saints.” She seems thoughtful. “How about this for a title for their television special: Marlena Oliveira: The Ruining of a Former Saint.”
This makes me laugh even more. “Or: The Miracle Healer of New England: Depurified Before Your Very Own Eyes!”
“I’d watch either one of those shows,” Helen says.
My arm is wrapped around my middle from laughing so hard. “Maybe Angie will prove I’m a fake and then no one will want to do any television shows about me.”
Helen’s brow furrows. “But why would you want that? Without you, without your miracles, my life wouldn’t be my life.” She sounds slightly betrayed.
This is the last thing I want. “I’m sorry Helen. I promise that’s not what this is about. But sometimes, lately, my gift feels like a curse. I wouldn’t want to trade my visions. But I don’t want to be a business anymore, to be the center of an entire church.” I think of Guadalupe yesterday, and the desperation inside her son’s eyes. “I want a normal life. A television show would kill that.” I pick up a stone and grip it tightly in the center of my palm. “Sometimes I want to wish away this so-called gift.”
“But Marlena, can you even imagine life without your gift? It would be such a drastic change.”
“Sometimes I don’t care. Sometimes I just want to be free.”
Helen sighs. “You may not always feel that way. You may not like the life that comes afterward.”
“Yes,” I say, sure this is true. “Yes I will.”
“So you trust this Dr. Holbrook?” Helen asks after a long silence.
I nod. “I do.”
“All right. I’ll make an appointment to talk to her.”
I suddenly think about Helen meeting Finn. All thoughts of Finn make my heart flutter, and I smile.
“Marlena.” Helen draws out my name. “What else aren’t you telling me?”
Warmth creeps up my neck. “There might be a boy.” I try and keep my eyes on the ocean. “Dr. Holbrook has a grad assistant. I kind of might . . . like him.”
Helen drums her thighs. “You have a crush!”
I cover my eyes with my hands. “He’s so gorgeous. And tall. And perfect. His name is Finn.” I love the way his name sounds when I say it.
“How old is he?”
“Twenty-one.”
“An older crush!”
“Yes.” I slide my hands down my face and look at her over the tips of my fingers. “He doesn’t believe in me. He thinks I’m a fake.”
The playfulness in Helen’s eyes dims. “That doesn’t bother you?”
I shake my head. “If anything, it’s a relief.”
Helen stands up. “Okay then. Get dressed. We’re going out.”
I rise to my feet. “Where?”
“To Dr. Holbrook’s center so I can make an appointment in person, since I already came all the way out here. I may as well, right?”
“But—”
“Marlena! Because maybe Finn will be there and I want to check him out!”
“Oh!” I put my hand over my mouth.
“And afterward we’re going out to eat. I want all the gory details about this crush of yours. Then I can offer my expert advice.” Helen’s eyelashes flutter. “I am rather an expert in the romance and love department.”
“You really want to do all that stuff?”
Helen smiles and stands up from the step. “Of course I do. Friends are there for each other where romance is concerned.”
“I wouldn’t know.” I get up to join her.
Helen is already heading across the lawn toward the house. Her hair swings from side to side as she walks. “Well, now you do,” she calls back.
TWELVE
“What, exactly, did you tell my mother so I could spend the afternoon with you?” I ask from the passenger seat of Helen’s old, beat-up Volvo.
She shifts into gear when the stoplight turns green. “Just that I wanted to take you to lunch as an offering after the healing walk we’ll be going on.” The car speeds up. “I told her my legs have been bothering me.”
I look at Helen, at her long legs, the way her right foot moves easily between the gas pedal and the brake. “Have they?”
She laughs. “No, absolutely not.”
“So you just lied to my mother?”
“Yup,” Helen says with a shrug. “People lie to their parents all the time. Today, we’re giving you an education in normalcy. First, hugs while you’re crying. Next, your friend—because I am your friend—lies to your mother on your behalf, so we can get the hell out of your house for a few hours.” Helen reaches behind my seat and pulls a bright-green bag off the floor and plops it into my lap. “Now, you’re going to go through my stuff and pick out a real outfit to wear and not this nightgown thing”—Helen pinches the gauzy material at my shoulder—“because this just will not do, and also, one of the most typical things girls do in high school is go out of the house wearing what their mothers approve of, and immediately change clothes into something totally slutty once they’re with their friends.”
My jaw has fallen open as Helen goes through this list, her eyes still on the road, driving us past the town as naturally as José. “I’ve done that a couple of times now.”
“You’ve done what?”
“Gone out in an outfit my mother would never approve of, and on the way home changed back into one of my hateful nightgowns so she wouldn’t know.”
Helen smiles. “You’re getting more normal by the minute. And you don’t even have to stop being a healer, Marlena. You can be both, see?”
I ignore this comment. Helen means well, but it’s hard for anyone to understand what it’s like to be me. I think back to my outfit yesterday. “I haven’t worn anything slutty, though.”
“That part doesn’t matter. I was mostly kidding about the slutty part.”
“But,” I go on, “one time, the jeans were skinny jeans, and you could see my bra through the armholes of the tank top.”
“Just the right bit of slutty then.” Helen rounds the corner and heads down the road along the sea. “Perfectly normal where someone you have a crush on is concerned.”
A question has been brewing in me and I muster the courage to ask it, reminding myself that I can talk to Helen about anything. That she’s a friend. She says so herself. “In the vein of helping me be normal,” I start, then trail off when I see where we are.
“Tell me.”
“But we’re almost to Angie’s center.”
Helen pulls the car over and turns off the ignition. “We have time.” She grabs the bag from my lap and starts digging through it. “Besides, you need to change clothes. What if Finn is there when you go to see Dr. Holbrook?” She pulls out a green dress with spaghetti straps and a wide scoop neck. “Put this on and talk.”
My eyebrows arch. “Now?”
Helen turns away. “In the effort to not overwhelm you with so much normalcy, I won’t watch. Now say what you wanted to say.”
I unbutton the sleeves of my white cotton shift, trying as best I can to wiggle out of it in the passenger seat of the car. At least the road is deserted. “My question,” I begin, but again can’t manage to finish the sentence. I’m not used to having someone I can really talk to, especially about things that are slightly embarrassing.
“Marlena . . .”
I pull the sundress over my head and slide it down my body. Everything I’ve been wondering comes pouring out. “What’s it like to kiss someone? I mean, how do you even do it? How does it work? Like, is there a magic formula or something?” I wait for Helen’s laughter, for her to mock me.
But she doesn’t. “Such excellent questions. So you want to kiss Finn.”
My cheeks grow hot. I yank the hem of the sundress as far as it will go over my thighs. “He doesn’t think of me that way. But I wish I could kiss him. I’ve thought about it. Or tried to think about it. I don’t really have much experience to draw on. Or any,” I add, my eyes on my bare, knobby knees.
“If you really like him, and he likes you back, experience won’t matter,” Helen says. “You’ll find your way.”
The sound of the waves crashing comes through the windows and fills the silence. “I want him to like me so badly.”
Helen sighs. “I want him to like you, too.”
I shake my head slightly. “Why would he? I’m such a freak.”
“You are not. Don’t try and convince yourself of things that aren’t true.”
Helen sounds so sure of this, and I want to believe her. “The whole town thinks I’m a freak. The other kids my age talk about me like I am one. I hear Fatima and José discussing the gossip about me that goes around town.”
“They’re just jealous of what you can do,” Helen says.
“Right. Everyone must wish to live in total isolation, then draw crowds hoping for photos and begging for help on the weekends. It’s such a blast. Way better than going to homecoming and prom.”
Helen turns the key in the ignition and the car rumbles back to life. “Marlena, you perform miracles.” She glances in the side mirror and pulls onto the road. “You may not believe that people could be jealous. But trust me, to have the ability to change someone’s life, as you do over and over, is amazing. Something you can’t dismiss without at least a little admiration.”
I try and take in what Helen said. “You really believe in me.”
“Of course I do,” she responds, with the same confidence as earlier. “Don’t you?” she asks. It sounds almost like an afterthought, a question she doesn’t expect me to answer because the truth, at least to her, is so obvious.
So I let the question hang there, suspended on the sounds of the ocean as it rises and falls around us, beautiful and loud and unpredictable.
We get out of the car. Goose bumps rise along my arms and legs even though it’s hot outside. It seems like this heat isn’t ever going away. “This dress is so short.”
Helen appraises me. “Calm down. That dress is perfect for you.”
I try to ignore the strange feeling of air along the skin of my shins, my knees, my thighs. “If you say so.”
Helen heads to the door of the center. “Are you coming or what?”
“I’m right behind you.”
We head inside, Helen first, all confidence, like she’s been here before and knows exactly what she’s doing, where to go. She marches right up to Lexi, who I now know is studying neuroscience, like Finn, and who told me once while I was waiting for Angie that Angie has dozens of students competing for the chance to answer phones at the center. Just to be in Angie’s vicinity.
Helen explains to Lexi why she’s here and I wander down the hall, skin prickling with static, curious if Finn is around somewhere, if he might be sitting on the floor of Angie’s office sorting papers, like he often is. I enter the lab with the machines, the blinding sunlight pouring through the windows and giving everything an otherworldly glow. There’s something about the MRI machine that both calls and repels me. Today I am drawn to that big white tunnel. It looks like something you would see on a spaceship.
I put my hand out, nearly touching it, but not quite.
I wonder what it would be like to be inside it.
What would it discover about my brain? Anything useful? Would it show that my brain is as normal as the next person’s? Maybe I should just let Angie test me and be done with it. Maybe I would learn something important.
I lean closer, pressing my palm against the cold metal. A blinding shock goes through me and I retract my hand. The skin is an angry red, like I’ve just laid it against a hot iron skillet. I flex my fingers, then rub them, trying to soothe the burning.
Did I touch something I shouldn’t have?
Maybe I’m stupid, but I reach out and press my hand against the metal again. I want to know if the burning was real or my imagination playing tricks. At first, there is nothing more than the feeling of cold contact between me and the machine. One minute passes, then two, and the sunlight shifts, just enough so that it beams directly at me through the windows, thick rays of it, hot and blinding. I turn my face toward it and close my eyes, absorbing the warmth on my skin.
Images dance across the back of my eyelids. Glowing shapes, figures and objects surrounded by halos of light. There isn’t one color that dominates, but many. Pinks and pale blues and yellows, greens and a deep magenta; some hues are shades of gray and a black that nearly swallows the light and all other color. At first, I can’t tell what the figures are. Then, slowly, they become clear.
Minds. Brains.
I’m seeing into the brains of the people who’ve been inside this machine. The ways that certain pathways pulse with light and others are dark as night, as though they’ve died. I see growths with sinister tentacles reaching through every part of the mind, and tiny tumors, contained and compact. They flash faster, one after the other, bright and dizzying. I can’t pull myself away. It’s like the machine is playing a movie it produced only for me.
A loud rushing fills my ears and my entire body starts to tingle.
“Oh no,” I hear myself say.
Then everything, the noise, the flashes, goes blank.
“Marlena?”
It’s Helen’s voice, but it sounds far away.
“Are you okay?”
“Marlena.” This time, I recognize Angie.
I open my eyes. The two of them are peering down at me, worried looks on their faces. I am lying on the couch in Angie’s office, a blanket thrown over my body. Cool air is pouring into the room from the vent, despite Angie’s prohibition on air conditioning. My head is pounding. Spots shine across my eyes. “Hi,” I manage, but it comes out hoarse. I try and use my hands to stabilize myself so I can sit up.
“Don’t,” Angie says. “You should stay lying down.”
Helen shoves a bag of pretzels at me. “Eat these.”
I shake my head. “I’m fine.” I tug the blanket around my legs, though not because I am cold. My legs feel bare in this dress. Angie and Helen are skeptical. “Really,” I add. Then I gesture between the two women. “Angie, this is Helen, by the way.”
Helen crosses her arms. “This isn’t a joke. You passed out. You’re not fine.”
I look at Angie and try for a laugh. “Wow, I must have really scared you for you to put on the air conditioning.” No one else is smiling. I proceed to shed the blanket so I can stand up. I want to reassure everyone. At first I’m unsteady, but then the dizziness subsides. With my bare feet p
lanted on the soft rug, I am feeling stronger. “Really. It’s no big deal. That happens sometimes.”
“What happens?” Angie asks.
“I faint. You know.” But the two of them don’t seem to get it. “After I have visions? It started a year or two ago.”
“Is this part of what you meant when you said your gift might be changing?” Helen asks.
“Maybe?”
“You’ve never told me about this before,” Angie says. “Not so explicitly. You’ve talked of getting tired, but not of passing out.”
“Because it’s not that big a deal?”
“Wait—did you say you had a vision, Marlena?” Helen asks before Angie can say anything else. “What prompted it?”
I pull the blanket from the couch and drape it around my shoulders. Angie touches a panel on the wall and the vents stop working. “It was the MRI machine. I had my hand on it, and, I don’t know, I responded almost like it was a person in need of healing, except I started seeing all the people who’d ever been inside it, and what was going on in their brains. It was a lot to take in. So, eventually I passed out, I guess?” Angie is opening each of the windows in her office.
“I really wish you’d let me see inside your brain,” she says. “And not just because I’m curious about you. It worries me that you’re passing out.”
I wave her off. “This is just another day in the life of a healer. I swear.” Something occurs to me. “Um, where’s Finn? He wasn’t around to witness my dramatic collapse?”
Angie looks away suddenly. “No. He had somewhere to be this afternoon.”
As much as I want to see Finn, I’m relieved he wasn’t here to find me crumpled on the ground, skirt hiked who knows how high, my face slack.
Helen is staying at a safe distance. Like she’s afraid to touch me again, like my fainting and talk of visions reminded her of who I am. “You really are okay?”
The Healer Page 8