“Flu,” I said. Then he leaned back. “I probably am contagious,” I said. “Sorry.” I rested my head back against the seat and tried to clear my throat out.
“That’s not good for your grandmother is it.” A statement of fact. I shook my head slowly back and forth and then met his light blue eyes. They were so sincere. “I’m sorry, Cate,” he said.
My jaw flexed. Why did he keep coming back when I used him so badly?
“Jason, it’s me who should be sorry.”
“Because you don’t want to go out anymore? I should have respected that. I should have—”
Crap. It wasn’t fair. He deserved some kind of explanation for all my moodiness and bizarre requests. Some explanation for why I was so fixated on Michael.
And then I was confessing…partly.
“I saw Michael fall off the cliff, Jason.” He was totally taken off guard by that, and his tired eyes suddenly focused sharply on me. “Shawn took too much Ritalin, and he slipped, and Michael reached out to pull him back, but then he slid…God! It must have been fifty feet…and then he…he just free-fell another fifty…and when he slammed into the ground, he…” My voice cracked.
Jason reached for my hand, and I let him take it again and hold it and stroke it.
“Where were you?” he asked quietly.
“On the ledge under the cliff top at Lewis Woods. I watched him die, Jason. I watched…” My voice caught again.
“So…that’s why…” he said, almost to himself. Then my outrage crawled to the surface.
“And you know what else? It was Shawn who brought the Ritalin to the park that day. He stole it from the Gardiners medicine cabinet.” Jason looked up with the same look of disbelief he’d given me before. Yeah. Sure. Michael was the stoner. That’s what everyone thought.
“It’s true!” I cried, getting angrier. “I heard it from…someone who knows. And there was someone else involved, someone who knew enough to tell Shawn how much Ritalin to take, but Shawn tripled his dose when Michael refused. Whoever it was knows the truth, too. They could clear Michael’s name—”
I started coughing, huge phlegm-filled spasms. God, my chest ached.
“Cate, you have to let it…” His voice trailed off, and he was shaking again.
Shit. I was thinking only of myself again. Jason didn’t need the flu on top of whatever else he had.
“You should go home, Jason. Get some rest,” I said, pulling my hand away.
“I need to go, Cate,” he said, like he hadn’t heard me just say that. “I really don’t feel well…”
His hand was already putting the car in drive, and I quickly let myself out.
“I hope you feel better,” I said before slamming the door, but he barely glanced in my direction before taking off. Now I had someone else to worry about.
My fever finally broke later that day, and my body cleansed itself in a pajama-drenching sweat. I propped myself up in bed with a book in my hands and Maxwell curled up warmly at my side. He kept nibbling at my hand with his sharp teeth to remind me to pet his furry, orange-splattered head.
I heard my sisters conversing softly with my grandmother through the wall. She was giving them her best poker playing tips. I wasn’t allowed in. My self-imposed exile from her over the last few months seemed to have paid off though, because thankfully, she was still flu-free. With me getting better, I was beginning to think maybe she would stay that way.
But it wasn’t to be.
Her fever spiked at seven that night. Her life expectancy plunged from months to days.
There was a flurry of activity in the room next to mine. No, she didn’t want to go back to the hospital. The DNR was signed before Christmas. My mother begged her, but she was adamant.
My grandmother’s lungs were filling up with fluid.
And it was my fault.
I searched my mind in vain for something I could do for her, but there was nothing. I let the book fall to the floor, crumpled and forgotten, my thoughts snarled in a hopeless tangle of self-loathing, until my eyes came to rest on my Guardian Angel statue on my dresser at the foot of my bed.
She was chipped and dusty, scarred by years of being brushed aside, first by Barbie dolls and Disney Princesses, and later by flat irons and make up. I slid off the bed and picked her up. Her sapphire blue eyes were fairy-like and set wide apart. Her chocolate brown hair flipped playfully away from her face, and her gold-plated wings and halo shimmered in the lamplight. She was beautiful. A treasure.
And I didn’t deserve her.
So the next time my mom left Mina alone, I crept into the hallway and stole quietly into her room. She slept fitfully in the dim light, her breathing labored, her equipment buzzing and beeping all around her. I carefully set the statue down on the table next to her bed and then, just as quietly, slipped back into my own room.
I hid under my covers then, my sleep disturbed.
The nightmares were back.
Black creatures with flaming gold eyes.
Sinuous, like smoke curling off tongues of fire.
Beautiful. Terrible. Mesmerizing.
They had come to wait with me.
And they were laughing.
The next morning, I was released from quarantine, and I dressed in a black fleecy pullover and my softest faded jeans. I’d lost weight, and my jeans gapped around my waist and hung looser through the thighs. Standing in front of the refrigerator, my stomach was hollow. Nothing looked good. Not the cold waxy fruit in the crisper or the breakfast casserole a neighbor had dropped off. Yeah. We’d entered that stage of my grandmother’s illness. And the food kept coming. It poured in like a rising flood, trying to put out the flames of our fear and sorrow.
As my mother walked into the room, I shut the refrigerator door and grabbed a blueberry Pop Tart out of the cupboard. It was familiar and generic and carried no neighborly sympathy I didn’t deserve. She opened the refrigerator and stood in front of it, the light washing out her small face and creating shadows under her chin. Then she closed it, empty-handed too, and turned toward me.
“You look better today,” she said. Her eyes were guarded, her posture stiff. She’d spared me the humiliation of telling my dad about the missing flu shot, so it was just her and I who knew about the fatal choice I’d made. The sick secret hung between us, the repercussions still unknown. Would her mother die that much sooner because of me? The guilty poison in my soul sloshed and burned like unruly stomach acid. I needed to think. I needed to talk to someone. I needed Michael.
I shifted my weight back and forth uneasily between my feet. “Mom…” I tried to meet her eyes.
Don’t you dare lie to her again.
The voice in my head was so clear that I gasped and took a step back.
My mom eyed me worriedly.
I began again. “Mom? I need to get out of here for a while. Can I take the car for a few hours?” I took a bite of my Pop Tart. It tasted like sawdust. It stuck like glue to the roof of my mouth.
She walked over to the sink and looked out through the ice-glazed window. Everything outside was flat under a uniformly gray sky.
“Am I allowed to ask where you’re going?”
I forced the Pop Tart down. “It’s just a place I like to go to think…down in the park.” I bit my lip.
She turned around and leaned back against the counter, nodding. Then she glanced around the kitchen at all the foil-covered disposable pans full of food and said, “Be back in time for lunch.”
Permission granted, I fled.
My dad had the Demon so I drove the Honda out to Lewis Woods. It was freeing to know that I wasn’t sneaking around behind my mom’s back to see my best friend. I needed to see him like I needed to breathe.
I wanted to pour out my guilt and my fatigue into his heart, into his hands. I wanted to tell him the nightmares were back and that I was afraid. And I wanted him to tell me he loved me, and that he’d wait with me until the worst had passed. I wanted him to chase all my demons away
.
The snow was half-melted. It wilted into the trampled grass of the field in the collapsing footprints that led back to the mouth of the woods. I was sweating and lightheaded and congested by the time my feet crossed the forest boundary, and I really wanted to sit down—needed to sit down—but everything was wet and muddy and cold, so I waited for Michael on unsteady feet. I didn’t have to wait long.
His woodsy citrus fragrance soothed my chafed nose, but he didn’t appear right away. He swept around me, slowly, invisibly, stroking the back of my neck with his fingertips, and I closed my eyes and breathed him in, savoring the relief that came with his simple presence. But then my chest began to itch, and I tried desperately to hold in the cough that fought to burst out of my lungs. Hold it…hold it…
It was no good. I bent forward with my hands on my knees, coughing uncontrollably, bringing up another ghastly ball of phlegm. I grimaced and then swallowed it rather than spit it out into the muddy snow in front of him, but it wouldn’t matter, he’d know anyway.
“Shit, Catherine…” His voice flowed from thin air into my exposed ears, and when I finally stood back up, he was standing before me, his arms crossed over his chest, wincing at my weakness. He looked so strong, standing like that, with his fingers curving over his well-defined biceps and his broad back and shoulders held up tall.
“Go home,” he said. “What are you doing here? You’re still sick.”
“You should have seen me yesterday.” I rolled my eyes and forced a smile.
“Catherine…”
All of my ragged emotions were pressing hard for release. My chest trembled with the effort it took to chain them, while my mind searched for a place to begin.
“Michael, I need—”
“Just…stop,” he said, looking down at the ground and then darkly up through his lashes.
And I stopped. I did more than stop. I stopped the world from spinning. I stopped time from inching forward. I stopped believing the sun and the moon would remain in the sky.
There was something in his voice.
“You can’t save me,” he said quietly, pushing his foot uselessly through the dirty, slushy snow on the trail.
I was drowning, and he’d thrown me a lead pipe. Please no…
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I’m done.” He hugged his arms tighter against his chest. His jaw tensed, but he maintained eye contact.
“I won’t let you give up! I love you, Michael.”
His flinty gray eyes softened. I knew he wouldn’t. He couldn’t…
His deep sigh was a call to surrender. “I know, Catherine. I know you do.”
“You love me too,” I accused, lifting my chin stubbornly.
He looked away and then struggled to bring his focus back. His jaw twitched. Then he nodded roughly, self-consciously. He took a step toward me and cupped my face within his gentle, tingling hands, and his eyes softened even more as he sensed how sick I still was. “It doesn’t matter how I feel,” he said, “because I’m totally messing up everything that’s good in you. I can’t fix that. You know that—”
“NO! What about God? What about your faith? I know you believe! You can’t let go of all that now and just fade—”
“Fine! Maybe I do believe!” he interrupted sharply. “But He’s not here. Not for me anyway.” He dropped his hands and backed away.
“There’s a reason…” I had to believe that.
“I’m tired,” he went on plaintively. “It’s too hard! If I just let go…”
“What would the Gardiners say? They loved you, too.”
“They would respect my decision. They wouldn’t judge me.” He tilted his head accusingly, and his eyes glittered like hard steel. That stung, and he glanced away. When he looked back, the steel had melted. “How do you know that’s not what I’m supposed to do anyway? How do you know I’m not supposed to fade away? Maybe that’s like, just the way it goes.”
“Because,” I began. “Because you’ll see a light or someone will come for you when you’re ready.” It was true, wasn’t it?
“An Angel,” he said flatly, letting his bitterness infuse the word with ugly sarcasm.
I nodded, forcing a look of certainty onto my face.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
“Come home with me, then! Be with me always.” I backed up across the boundary and into the icy field, holding my hand out to him.
“I can’t.”
“Have you ever even tried?” I challenged. “Just try!” I took another step backward.
“You have no idea how many times I’ve tried to follow…” His voice broke, and then it resounded riotously off the trees that wanted to make him their own. “This is all there is for us!” He waved his hands at his ghostly body and then around at the forest, frustrated and angry. “I can’t do it anymore! I won’t…”
I held my hand out to him stubbornly, but he moved his hands to his hips and looked down at the ground again.
“Please?”
He looked up at me pityingly, but he stretched the flickering fingers of his left hand tentatively across the boundary anyway. Then he let his arm follow up to his elbow.
“See? All you needed was a little help.”
The pity in his eyes intensified, but I took another step backward, and he followed me all the way out, reaching for my outstretched hand. He overlapped my hand with his, and I pulled mine in, forcing him to lose contact or take a step closer. He chose the latter, and then he leaned forward and brushed his ethereal lips against my cheek, whispering softly, “The next time you come back, take our ring off the lightning tree and take it home with you. Remember me.”
Then, like a boulder that’s turned to sand by the winds of time, his edges turned brown and disintegrated.
I panicked. “No, Michael! Please don’t do this…”
But he closed his beautiful gray eyes, lifted his chin and gave in completely. His crumbling edges curled like dust devils back toward the forest, scattering musically among the trees. The invisible wind blew steadily, taking more and more of him away from me, until only his fingertips remained.
Finally, even they fell apart like the rest of him, falling back through my fingers into the wide-open maw of the forest.
“Go home to your family…Catherine…” His voice clung to me for a moment, then let go and was swallowed up as well.
A helpless fury grew in my motionless heart. I gasped in pain.
“How can you leave me when I need you the most?” I cried. I started walking away, but turned back around and shouted, “I would have walked through hellfire to save you!” I spun around a few times, desperate to reach him with my voice. Only silence echoed back.
“You can just go screw your nasty demon self! Do you hear me! So you think you’re being all noble and self-sacrificing? You’re just a damn coward!” A clump of melting snow fell from a branch to the ground behind me, and I turned toward it, startled. I was alone.
I wanted to give up, let the snow bury me, stay there forever, but I turned instead and started back toward the car. A voice inside me urged, keep moving. I focused all of my energy on that inner voice, but as soon as I slammed the car door on the outside world, the loss of him hit like a hard-packed fist. I’d failed him. I’d been too weak to save him. Oh God, no! Please no! This couldn’t be happening.
Go home to your family, Catherine.
I couldn’t go home. There was nothing left for me there.
The voice in my head passed me the only option left. Find Jason. He’ll know what to do. He always does.
I don’t remember driving to Jason’s. I only remember finding myself in front of his heavy, stained glass door, knowing he’d be home and knowing he wouldn’t turn me away. The door swung inward and the smell of cold marble and warm furniture polish wafted out of his cavernous foyer. Jason was standing in the doorway, barefoot, wearing his favorite black sweatpants and a soft blue flannel shirt whose cuffs hung loosely, unbuttoned, at
his wrists.
His dark circles had faded, and his eyes were clear again. He was just starting to smile in greeting when I threw myself like a wild pitch into his arms.
“Mina caught my flu, and she’s dying, and it’s my fault, and I didn’t get my shot because…because…” Jason tried to lift my face from his chest, but I wanted it buried there. “And Michael just…fell apart…he gave up…and…”
“Cate, what the hell are you talking about?” he cried. “Michael’s dead!”
I shook my head back and forth, rubbing my wet eyes and nose against the buttons of his shirt. He put his hands on either side of my face and lifted firmly until I was looking up at him.
“Come upstairs and lie down, okay? Everything’s going to be fine. I promise. I’ll help you get through this.” He slid my coat off my shoulders and then led me upstairs to his room, but I couldn’t lie down. The pain in my chest kept nudging my heart into unpredictable rhythms, and I paced back and forth in front of the window while Jason looked on nervously from the doorway.
You failed… you failed… you failed…
The refrain roared in my ears like the deepest winter blizzard.
“Cate…” he called, and when I didn’t answer, he pulled me over to his unmade bed and sat me down. He just held me while I shivered. “Shh,” he murmured. “I’m going to get you something to drink. Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
Alone again, I dragged one of Jason’s overstuffed suede pillows off his tangled sheets, hugged it tightly against my chest and stared out through the picture window at the frozen lake. The thick, snow-covered ice stretched out as far as my eyes could see under the bleak January sky. Just like Michael’s life and death, cold and bleak and lonely. And I couldn’t rescue him from that. Not from any of it.
Jason came back into the room carrying a mug filled with steaming hot tea. “I know you like your tea sweeter, but this will help calm you down. It’s chamomile,” he said. He was right. It was bitter, but the bitterness brought the real world back into focus. Oh God…what did I just tell him?
“Jason, I—”
“Shh…just drink.” He set more of his pillows up behind me against the headboard, and then he pulled the tan down comforter up and over me. I turned toward the lifeless lake, sipping the hot tea slowly, while he sat snugly against my back. When I’d drained the cup, Jason took it from me, set it on his antique mahogany nightstand and then crawled into bed behind me, curving his body against mine, encircling me with his arms, curling his fingers around my ribs.
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