Beyond (6 page)

One variety caught my eye. On the top of their tall green-blue stalks grew flowers with long, spiky petals of bright orange, yellow, deep blue and violet. Like God used every crayon in the box on them. And they had the perfect name. I was zooming in to take a close-up shot when a voice out of nowhere made me jump.

“Bird-of-paradise.”

Turning, I spotted Ryan coming around a corner in the jungle, pushing a wheelbarrow.

“They’re my favorite,” he said.

Ryan’s eyes were what grabbed me first. Aqua-green, they seemed to reflect the surrounding colors.

“You can see why they call them that.” He stopped beside me. “With the tip of the stalk pointing out like a beak, and the orange and yellow petals sticking up like feathers.”

I saw the bird in them. If I unfocused my eyes a little I could imagine those brightly colored wings taking flight.

“Not shy with their colors,” I said.

“In the wild they’re pollinated by sunbirds who perch on the flower’s beak so they can drink the nectar, getting their feet dusted with pollen.”

I noticed a change in the air right then, from the intoxicating floral overdose to something rank and rotten.

“What is that smell?” I asked.

“Oh, sorry. That’s me. My manure.” He gestured to the full wheelbarrow. “Well, it’s not
my
manure. It didn’t come from me.” He winced, hearing his words. “That didn’t sound right.”

I laughed. “No. Not really.”

He started blushing. I felt my own skin warming too, as I stood next to this hot guy in the hothouse.

“Well, whose manure is it?” I said, teasing him.

“Comes from sheep. They make the best. Very rich. High in nitrogen, potash and other nutrients. And I’m sure that’s more than you ever wanted to know about fertilizer. Why don’t I wheel this away and let the air clear.”

I watched him go, wishing he’d stay and tell me more—about sheep poo or anything else.

The bird-of-paradise became my favorite flower after
that. Ryan remembered too. There was a bunch waiting for me when I woke up in the hospital.

“What’s that smile for?” Mom asks now, shaking me from my memory.

I shrug. “Just … daydreaming.”

Of paradise.

Lexi lives with her mother and grandmother on the far side of town. It’s a little place that’s too small to hold all their tempers, so Lexi moved into the room above the garage. It’s not like they hate each other. There’s a crazy kind of love between them, but it’s flammable. One wrong spark and
boom!

Right now I’m sitting in front of the computer at Lexi’s desk, with her watching over my shoulder. She wants my review of the rough cut of her next short film.

It’s another one of her mood pieces. It’s called
Breaking Up
, and it stars a dead toad. In speeded up time-lapse footage we watch him decompose. There’s a fast-forward feeding frenzy of hungry bugs, picking him clean. This image is edited together with close-up shots of things breaking: bottles, icicles and lightbulbs. Finally we freeze on the skeletonized toad. The screen fades to black, and it says
NOT THE END
. Because now the bony toad reappears, and the whole thing goes in reverse. He gets uneaten. In rewind, it’s like the bugs are fixing him up and stitching his skin back together. While this is happening,
the bottles, bulbs and icicles unshatter. When everything is back in one piece again, the screen goes black and says
THE BEGINNING
.

“So, what do you think?” Lexi asks.

I reach for my can of Coke and take a sip, to stall for time. Lexi says you can’t always explain these mood pieces. They’re like video poems, you have to feel them. Right now I’m feeling slightly nauseous.

“I think it’s … hopeful,” I say. “In a weird way.”

“Hopeful how?”

“Well, everything gets fixed up, right? Like new again. It’s the closest you’ve ever come to a happy ending.”

“So you get it, then?” she asks.

I take another long sip. “Um. I think I do. Just so I’m clear on this—are you like the dead toad? Metaphorically, I mean. After your breakup with Max?”

Lexi nods. “You’re the only one in the world who gets me.”

“I guess one is better than none.”

I notice a photo on the wall showing her monstrously swollen foot after her spider bite. Next to it is another shot with the leeches stuck on her toes to heal them.

I used to think it was because of me that Lexi got into all this dark and morbid stuff. But really, she was like that before we even met. It’s what pulled her to me from the start, after hearing about my electrocution.

Her dad’s the one who got her started on moviemaking. He was always shooting home videos. Those old
movies, hours and hours of them, are all she has left of him. He took off when she was ten.

“But seriously,” I tell her now. “You’re a sick little monkey. You should be in therapy, not me.”

“Well, we can share bunk beds over at the asylum.” She smiles. “Speaking of crazy crap, has your shadow been behaving?”

“It hasn’t tried anything since I got nailed.” I hold my hand under the desk lamp, wiggling my fingers. Their shadows wiggle back, perfectly synchronized. “Maybe it’s gone, whatever it was. Maybe it’s over.”

Wishful thinking, but sometimes that’s all you’ve got.

These days my shadow only turns against me in my nightmares.

“Maybe,” Lexi says, resting her hand on my shoulder. “Hey, get up. I want to play you something. Max emailed me the music he did for my rain project.” She sees me shaking my head. “I know. I was going to hit Delete. And I’m not going to reply to him, or anything. But it can’t hurt to hear it. I don’t have to use it.”

“I just don’t want you relapsing after you’ve finally kicked your Max habit.”

I remember the months of boyfriend rehab I went through with her.

“I’m cured. Really.” Lexi sounds like she’s trying to convince herself.

“What’s your ‘rain project’ again?”

“It’s called
A Thousand Words for Rain
. You know how we have so many names for it here on the coast, for all its
moods. I’ve been shooting around town, on the beaches and trails.”

As she brings up a new file on the computer I wander around her room. The walls are covered with photos she took before she came to Edgewood. Lots of sunny beach shots, palm trees and endless blue skies.

Lexi grew up in San Diego—the opposite of here. Going from hot, bright Southern California to the cool gray Raincoast was a serious shock for her.

When her dad hit the road, Lexi and her mom had to move here to live with her gran.

“Give this a listen.” She turns up the volume.

Max’s music fills the room. Soft acoustic-guitar stuff, kind of dreamy. That guy can play. The strumming builds to a boom of drums.

“Thunder,” she calls over the music.

It goes quiet again with a whisper of brush on a snare drum, like drizzle gusting against a windowpane.

I can see why Lexi falls for the guys she does. Beautiful liars like Max. She hates it when I say this, but they’re clones of her dad.

“Does this make you think
rain
?” she asks.

I nod.

As the drums boom again, they’re echoed by real thunder outside. There’s always another storm coming.

I wake slowly, with the sound of my name echoing in my ears. Someone’s calling me. From far away.

Jane
.

No. Let me sleep. Five more minutes, Mom.

Jane
.

Whispered closer, tickling my ear. Not Mom’s voice. More like a guy’s.

Pulled from my doze, I try to open my eyes.

But they won’t open! Must be sticky with too much mascara gunk and sleep sand. I start rubbing and feel something weird.

What is this?

Under my fingertips it feels like I’ve got false eyelashes stuck on, gluing my eyes shut. But I never wear those.

I try to pull whatever it is off, but it won’t come loose.

It seems more like … thread?

Stitches!

As if my lids are sewn shut. No! I’m not thinking right. Still half-asleep.

Wake up!

I pluck at one thread, and it tugs the skin, stinging.

Get up! Go to the bathroom and wash this crap off!

I sit up in bed and my head cracks on something solid, just inches above me.

What’s that?

My hands fumble blindly, find a flat surface looming over me. That can’t be there. Where am I? I reach out, and my palms hit walls on both sides of me. Boxing me in. Like …

Like a coffin!

No. No! Get me out of here!

Must be dreaming.

I go to scream and wake up the house. But I can’t.

My lips won’t open either. Touching them, I feel more thread, more stitches. From one corner of my mouth to the other. So tight I have to breathe through my nose.

I scream anyway. It comes out smothered.

Shoving at the surface above, it won’t budge. I catch a sliver in my thumb with a sting that feels way too real.

A coffin. Made of wood.

Pounding my fists against the sides makes only a deadened thud. As if there’s earth packed against the outside.

Get me out! I’m not dead!

My screams die, muted, in my throat.

I claw at my mouth, straining the stitches, feeling skin tearing. I taste blood trickling into my mouth.

Jane
.

A voice. Right in my ear.

I’m not alone in this coffin. I breathe in the sickly sweet smell of flowers gone rotten.

Stay with me, Jane
.

I sense something reaching for me. A cold caress freezes the side of my neck. I pull away, but there’s no room.

Don’t touch me!

Stay with me
.

I pull away. No space to move. I try rolling over, turning my back to it.

As I turn, it feels like I’m falling. For a second. Then I crash hard.

My eyes fly open. It’s dark, but I can make out some things.

There’s my bed beside me, my desk in the corner. My room.

I lie on the floor, hyperventilating. My lungs feel starved for oxygen.

Must have fallen off the bed, rolling over to get away from that thing.

Crouching on my knees with the blankets pooled around me, I feel my lips with my fingers. No stitches. No blood. Nothing.

I crawl over to my desk and click on the lamp.

I’ve had that same wild nightmare a couple of times since I got nailed. But never so bad, so vivid. And before, I was always alone in the coffin. Now something else is locked in there with me.

I lean against the wall. Can’t get back in bed—can’t risk picking up where I left off.

I can blame Lexi for some of the details in these nightmares. She’s obsessed with horror flicks, filling my
head with this stuff. Like the way they sew the corpses’ eyelids shut to keep them from springing open during the funeral.

A full-body shiver runs through me. I can’t shake the freeze left from that touch.

The sickeningly sweet smell is still in my nose. What was that thing in the coffin? Bringing me dead flowers like a valentine.

Stay with me
, it said. Down in the dark.

“Go away,” I whisper to the empty room. “Leave me alone.”

But how do you break up with a nightmare?