Four Times Blessed (29 page)

              That was the first time.

             
When it was done, I didn’t think much about it. I just remembered it.

             
This time, I’m seventeen and I don’t look around during the two-minute wait. Two of the eighty-seven, so really it’s only eighty-five that the average person can stand. But I have four hours.

             
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

             
I just sit still and keep unclenching my hands. I’m freezing cold. I wish someone was here.

             
This time, when it starts, for a moment I think it won’t be so bad. But it is. I keep thinking there is no possible way the touches can’t get any harder. No hotter, no colder. The sounds can’t get any louder, the tastes and smells can’t get any stronger. But they do. Which is unbelievable.

             
It lasts for a while.

             
Far too long.

             
I hate it and I want it to stop.

             
I wish it would stop.

             
Why won’t it stop.

             
Why why why why why why why why.

             
Please stop.

             
Please stop.

             
It won’t.

             
I hate it. No.

             
The beautiful lady doesn’t come for me, although I want her. I wish for her, then I beg for her, then I hate her for leaving me here all alone. Then I tell myself to get over it because she wasn’t even real in the first place. With that, a cloud comes, and its edges are fluffy so it works just as well.

              I’m on the floor, my face in blood, vomit, and mucous. All that and more, is the evidence. That my insides and the outsides were so confused. It’s a strange feeling having everything back in its place again. I lay there. No reason to move. I feel the spinning of the earth, missing its tilt. And I’m so heavy.

              Dr. Preston comes in and picks me up off the floor, which is nice of him. I’m rigid in parts and limp in others, numb all over. I don’t want him to touch me anymore. I hate him. I can’t even shudder though, which is both vexing and alarming for about a moment.

             
He hands me off to someone else whose uniform buttons pluck me and again I wish they would stop. I’m too tired. They hose me down and dress my throbbing body. Oh there we go. Now I’m shuddering. They pierce me in the thigh.

             
“Crusa? Come on, it’s time to go,” Andrew says to me.

             
I don’t care.

             
When he pulls on my arms I go with him. I drag by his side, legs wonky and filled with gel.

             
He, Andrew, I recall, asks me what’s wrong. The words “I don’t know” form in my head, but then I get tired so I don’t say anything. I list against him. The floor is funny. I giggle, then stop. I’m tired.

             
It’s the outside. Holy, it’s frigid! I feel familiar arms and ancient breath. Being outside is better. Why don’t I always be outside? At some point, Andrew picks me up and carries me.

             
We turn a corner, and down the hill I see it. It makes my lungs hitch, tears prickle, lips tremble. The ocean.

             
I love the water.

             
One breath comes in and lights me. I chew my lip and tumble out of Andrew’s arms.

             
“Crusa? What are you doing?”

             
I’m running through the woods. To somewhere that’s on the tip of my tongue…

             
I fall but that’s ok. I crawl hungrily through the underbrush. Hungry hungry hungry me.

             
Andrew catches my ankle. I squeak.

             
“Stop it. Come on.” He sighs in a hocking snot kind of way. It’s disgusting. 

             
“No!” I scream, broken but full. I scamper on hands and knees. He tries to grab me so I scream again and doggie-paddle the air. My heel hits him and he drops me.

             
I yell so he knows I didn’t like that. My voice is rough and husky now, and it feels good. Like scratching at a scab. So I do it again.

             
Loud, hysterical, hellish yells with a calmness in between. I stop doing that when I run too much.

             
I hate my clothes because they won’t stop touching me. They won’t stop, all over me, they won’t stop…!!!!!

             
My mouth waters and my lips part, soft. Somewhere inside I know there are reasons this isn’t right, but I sail right by them. Easy. I wave.

             
I run. I can hear it under my feet, and I want it so, so much. There’s a thrilling, twinging in my breast and my weight is drunk. Air comes in tiny gasps, driven by the twanging rhythm. I feel the childlike presses on my chest. The dock blocks my view of the dropped black sea.

             
I know this place. I’m proud of that because I can’t remember anything else. I’m also proud that I beat the boy to the docks.

             
Live sinews wrap me from behind, throwing me back against Andrew. He’s yelling, spit lands on my ear and neck and the loud, gruff sound is too much. Too, too-o-o-o-o-o much. I squirm. I kick and whine. I want to go in the water.

             
I know he doesn’t want to hurt me, so in a flash of clarity that I know he doesn’t expect, I grab at him just like my instructors taught.

             
“Oof,” puffs on the back of my neck. I drop and sprint, giddy. He takes a few clomping footfalls on the squishy wood. He’ll get me.

             
His feet, they’re beside me- Oh. They got my wrist. My other wrist, I slither. Scratchiness grasps at slick me, I roll and at the same time I fall I’m free.

             
“Hey!”

             
My body is the earth, hot spinning. Won’t move. He doesn’t come touch me, though. I wait for it.

             
Still no. I pivot. Many men, hunching shades. I slink backwards. They stay well away.

             
I’m done wanting what I did.

              “Hey.” Easier now. The top hard layers of the word peeled off. “Crusa, angel love, can you see us? Andrew’s gone. It’s just us.”

             
I do see that.

             
Lium holds his hands up, palms to me. I watch him silently, poised to run.

             
Hale steps from behind him, it’s too loud, too brusque, and I spin towards the end of the dock.

             
“Wait,” Lium says, jagged surfaces covered in thick lemon glaze.

             
I lick my lips and turn back again. They’re both not moving, it’s for me, so I don’t either. It’s fair.

             
“Wait,” he repeats and the word is in my own mouth, I eat brown bread and honey.

             
I am waiting. He must notice this because he nods.

             
I have to rally several times before I can actually speak. My plan is to pretend I’m not crazy.

             
I wag my head, “I just wanted to swim,” I explain, concerned about the twinkling in my head.

             
Lium nods, his hands tell me to go easy. We watch each other, and I blink three well-spaced times before he finally does once, just as he goes to talk.

             
“It’s pretty cold for that,” he says, lifting his chin to the space at my back.

             
“I don’t mind.” I shake my head.

             
“I do. Why don’t you wait. Until tomorrow. I’ll go with you, then.” Bread, every air pocket saturated with that heavy dark honey. I don’t really want to swim so bad, so whatever, if it makes him happy.

             
I’m hit by a bolt of fabric. Hard, hollow, and scrunched. I try to wiggle free, annoyed at being caught so many times tonight. This never happens. But this time, the grip is irresistible, and I know it. I go slack.

             
“What, what! I won’t go in,” I try not to whine. But apparently Hale doesn’t trust me, which, for the record, I resent, because he won’t let go until Lium has his hands securely on me.

             
Close up, Lium looks like he’s deep in thought. I see ripples around the twin harvest moons that are his eyes. I hide behind him, from Hale. He tells everyone it’s ok, and Hale agrees, but they don’t stop that agreeing until I do too.

             
“We should take her home,” says Hale. Lium says yeah. He keeps trying to fish me out from behind his back. It’s a struggle that’s funny to me.

             
He says, “It’s pouring. I can’t bring her back yet.” He keeps talking.

             
What? I relax my taut senses. Huh. It is raining. There’s a drawn out flash of lightning during which I look down at myself and see my own skin. A thunder god claims the islands as his. I smell the black and blue hushes twisted with silver, on my tongue they’re burnt fish skin.

             
“Come on, we’ll wait it out inside. Let’s go, Crus,” Lium’s hand carefully, carefully finds mine. I’ve never seen him concentrate so hard. I follow, keeping as close as I can, as that feels best.

              A fluorescent light buzzes above my head. I wince.

             
The cabin of my uncle’s boat is tiny. Two rows of curtained windows, a narrow couch, an aisle. A step, a bathroom stall, and a rumpled bed stuffed in the bow.

             
Lium pulls down some clothes and gives them to me. More like sets them on my head in the miniature space, but I can’t figure them out so he has to wrestle them onto me. They’re huge. I flap my arms, and the sleeves flop. I’m hot.

             
I remember suddenly to say thanks, but nobody really says you’re welcome. I tell them I really need to sit. I could’ve definitely done this, at least, on my own, but they both go overboard in trying to assist me. I assume I look pretty bad.

             
I tell them I’m fine once, but I’m not really, I’m reeling and fluish on the drugs they gave me.

             
The counter to the sensory spray makes me ticklish, and boiling. Plus I think I got some buffering class drugs, strong ones. I’m having trouble remembering one moment to the next. But I keep forgetting to be disturbed by that, so in a way I’m grateful.

             
“Are you hurt anywhere?”

             
I frown. Lium is crouched in front of me. It makes him seem as if he takes up more space. Strange.

             
He asked me something. I forget.

             
“Can you tell me what happened, Crusa?”

             
I can’t.

             
He helps me lay down on the couch. He doesn’t ask me any more questions. The rain drums. I like music.

             
The boys take out a deck of old cards, I smell them. They play some game. I watch them, the flipping and the concentrating. I go curl up on Lium’s legs, which messes up his playing, but he carries on like it’s worth it.

             
I close my eyes, to the flipping and the drumming and the brothers’ voices. They debate whether they should wake me and give me something to drink. I say I’m awake. I’m not thirsty, but they won’t leave me alone, so I drink the cider.

             
“What’s that necklace? I always see you playing with it.”

             
“Hm?” I look down to see for myself, my hand playing with the pendant on my abdomen. I giggle and say, “Seaglass. My brother has one, too. My zizi says our mother made them for us, when we were babies, so people could tell us apart. At first, my eyes were blue and Milo’s were green. But then both of our eyes turned black and people kept thinking I was a boy and he was a girl.

             
“So, our mother went down to the beach one day and searched all around until she found two pieces of seaglass that matched the colors our eyes used to be.” I move my fingers so the boys can see the smoothed shard wrapped at the end of the chain. I love the color. Indigo, I call it, under a cloud of salty wear.