“I was dreaming about David Jellico’s circle of stones. . . .”
“What?”
“His circle of shells or stones.”
“How do you know about that?”
“I saw it.”
“Mally, I didn’t even know about that until, like, two weeks ago. What it is, is he has a graveyard for—”
“How did you know about it?”
“I, uh, dreamed about it,” Merry admitted.
“So you know what it is.”
“Not really,” Merry lied.
“You do too,” Mallory said evenly.
“Okay. It’s a graveyard. For animals. Cats.”
“And that’s not all,” said Mallory. “There was a girl with him. . . .”
“Dee—”
“Not Deirdre. I saw another girl. And something else, too. Another person. A really old woman. She doesn’t want him up there on the ridge.”
Merry rubbed her arms. “She lives there?”
“I don’t think she’s . . . alive. You know she’s dead, Mer.”
“Okay, good night,” Merry said, turning off the light. “You saw David Jellico with a ghost. Okay. Whatever.”
“He goes there. He’s going to go there . . . I don’t know. Soon. It’s just up from where I run. Just down the road from our camp.”
“Shut up,” said Meredith. “Laybite.”
“You’ll see her, too.”
“BS. I don’t see ghosties and freakies in my dreams.”
“You will.”
“Mallory,” Meredith said. “I hate to tell you this, but I think you’re semi-mentally ill. In a nice way. You’re talking like a crazy person.”
“And you think it’s just, like, temporary, because of the fire.” Mallory began to cry again. She didn’t give a damn if Merry heard.
“We both feel strange,” Merry said, getting up and sliding into bed next to Mallory, plumping her pillow at the foot of Mally’s bed. “I didn’t mean what I said.”
“It’s more than that. Maybe I am mentally ill. But I think it’s something else.”
“What, Ster?”
“Since the fire, I dream when . . . when I’m not asleep. And you don’t know it.”
Tears welled up in Merry’s eyes. “I . . . don’t. But I still hear you awake. I hear you when I listen for you. Mostly.”
“Do you know why you don’t see my dreams?”
“Not really.”
“Because we’re not the same anymore, Mer! Since before the fire . . .”
“We’re still the same, Mallory.”
“No, the scar on your hand. It’s not ugly. But we’re not—” She was about to say “the same person” when Meredith interrupted.
“We’re still the same person.”
“No! I feel all creepy, like I’m locked out of my own house.”
“Ster, why don’t I feel that way?”
“Maybe because you’re dumb!” Mallory shouted—so loudly that Tim Brynn called out something muffled about it being a school night. “Maybe because you don’t care about us the way I do.”
“That’s a sleaze thing to say! Why would you say that?”
“Maybe because it’s true!”
“Mally! Are you crazy? You’re my sister. You’re, for God’s sake, you’re my best friend.”
“Kim is your best friend. And Crystal and Sunny are your next best friends, and Alli and Erika after them! I don’t want to be your friend. Everything is ruined.”
Meredith knew that something Mallory was saying was entirely true. She decided to ignore it.
Instead, she struggled with what she had to find words for and finally blurted out, “You’re my heart!” She had heard her father say this once to her mother. It seemed to be what she meant. She didn’t know what else to say. And it didn’t seem enough.
“Well, I didn’t tell you everything. The girl I dreamed in the woods with David? It was you.”
Meredith tried to conceal her delight, but failed. “Was I older?”
“I couldn’t tell. You weren’t taller! But you were running around like a little wood fairy and he was chasing you. You’d have loved it. It was totally stupid,” Mallory said. “He’s stupid!”
“He is not!”
“You don’t know because you don’t feel what I feel!”
“I never did feel everything you felt!”
“There’s a difference between having different opinions and thoughts and really feeling what the other person feels, Merry. On big stuff . . .”
“I know.”
“Then why don’t you care?”
“Ster, it’s because . . .” Merry said slowly. “I don’t think we can fix it.”
Mallory sat up and threw her bolster, hard, at Merry’s head. Merry threw it back. She whispered, “Mally, why are you mad at me for this?”
“I’m not,” Mallory said, beginning to cry again. “I’m not mad at you! I’m just never going to feel normal again. And you will. I know it!”
“I won’t if you don’t.”
“You will,” Mallory insisted, “because you’ll try to. You’ll pretend you do until it’s almost the same as if you really do. You’ll just deny it.”
“Why wouldn’t I do that? I mean really, why? Why wouldn’t I want to feel like I did before? Why wouldn’t I want to be happy if I could? But I don’t think it’s going to go back, either. Truthfully. I don’t think I’m going to feel the same.”
Mally admitted, “Maybe you won’t. Ever.” She said then, “This wasn’t supposed to be part of growing up.”
“No,” said Meredith. “This is like a bad joke.”
But when she fell asleep, Merry dreamed of David, working in the same rock garden she’d seen in her hospital dream and the dream at Kim’s overnight.
Then, just before she woke, she dreamed of an old woman, with a sweet apple-doll face, and both hands out in front of her with the palms out, as if to hold Merry back. The woman shook her head firmly.
Merry woke up. Her head ached. She felt dizzy. She saw the old woman shake her head.
Once and again.
No.
Merry got up and jumped into the shower before it was hot.
She would not, would
not
, start having weird Mally posttraumatic flashback things.
She had to get up earlier now, to get dressed, even earlier than the usual hour before Mallory did—because her hands were still clumsy, especially with small things such as earrings. But when she came out of the shower, she saw that Mally was asleep. Not even up for her run.
She was fast asleep, and Meredith tried to jump into her twin’s thoughts. She couldn’t. She couldn’t follow Mallory there.
The old lady. The old lady was real, but who was she? She wasn’t at all frightening. If this was seeing a ghost . . .
Meredith wasn’t afraid of ghosts. For all she knew, her ancestors lived near her in this house. Sometimes she sensed presences, soft touches, the scent of lavender and lilies of the valley. She would not have been frightened of them if they came and sat on her bed. She had “seen” her mother’s lost car keys when she was small. She had “seen” Grandma dressing up to surprise Grandpa before Christmas dinner, so that when Merry came over, she knew where Grandma had dropped her earring. But she wasn’t even sure how she felt about life after death. It was something she’d never thought all the way through. Why not? She supposed that was what Mally would call “shallow.”
Well, now she would think. She would concentrate.
This old woman was supposed to have a message for Merry.
Stop.
But stop what?
Meredith glanced down at her sister. She reached out and touched the single pearl stud in Mally’s ear. Mally twitched, but didn’t waken.
Now
she
was upset! It never failed. Mally got into a thing . . . It was stupid to be so upset. After all, they were alive. The little kids were unhurt. Full function would return to Merry’s hand. The doctor predicted she’d have no nerve damage, just some stiffness she’d work out in physical therapy. The scar on her palm would last forever, but grow fainter each year. Maybe this . . . distance would go away, too.
But what Mallory had said was true: She and her sister would never again have the same handprint.
And Mally blamed herself for all of it. Merry knew that.
She tried to think of something pleasant. Like the smell of David’s leather jacket.
She went to the kitchen. Campbell was making pancakes.
“Why are you even up, Mom?” Merry asked. Campbell worked from five p.m. to five a.m., ten days straight, did an hour on the treadmill or outside, and hit the sack. At the end of the ten days, she got two straight weeks off. This was the end of the past ten days—Campbell’s hard-earned mini-vacation.
“I don’t know,” Campbell said honestly. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“You love to sleep.”
“So do you,” Campbell said.
“Well, I have stuff going on.”
“I heard Mallory yelling. What’s up?”
“We had a fight.”
“A regular fight?” Campbell asked.
“We don’t have regular fights anymore,” Merry admitted. “It’s all so . . . intense with her.” She asked, “Can I have some coffee?”
“No,” Campbell replied automatically.
“Maybe we should get separate rooms,” Merry said then.
“Now that would really work out,” Campbell replied, shaking her head. “Your dad would knock out a wall, and I’d kill myself painting, and then you’d both sleep in the same room anyhow.”
“Right now, I’d live in a different country,” Merry told her.
“So it was a serious and also abnormal fight.”
“I don’t know.”
“Does Mallory feel guilty about your hand?” Campbell asked.
“Yes.” Merry puffed out her lips. “Sort of. Were you eavesdropping on us?”
“No, you were screaming. Please. These walls are thick, but not that thick. So it’s more than just regular guilt,” Campbell went on, setting a short stack down in front of Meredith. Campbell’s sister, Amy, sent them syrup from Vermont, where Amy had a summerhouse. Merry knew she was inhaling carbs, but couldn’t resist. Campbell sat down with her and took a plate of three cakes, too. “She feels a debt. It’s a pretty common psychological thing. People get mad at someone when they owe them more than they can ever pay back.”
“You said it was posttraumatic stress before.”
“Maybe it was, before. Anyhow, do you want to talk about it?” she asked.
“You wouldn’t get it, Mom.”
“I wouldn’t get it as a twin, but I’d get it as a mother.”
“But not all of it.”
“Look, fine, then. All I’m saying is . . . my mother used to tell me nothing ever got worse by talking about it. You don’t have to.”
“What’s the point? You would never know how I feel.”
“That’s what Gwenny said.”
“What’s Grandma got to do with this?” Merry asked.
“Just, when you were born, she said there would be things about you I would never understand, even more than other mothers and kids. Maybe she would get it. She’s a twin.”
“She’s not a twin.”
“She is. Or was. Her twin sister died when they were kids your age.”
“Really?” Merry said, her eyes widening. “Grandma never said.”
“It still hurts her. That’s probably why. But you could still try to explain it,” Campbell said. “When someone is part of you, you don’t like to see her this way. When someone is part of your own body, you hurt for her.”
“Maybe you do get it,” Meredith said, glancing up. She had been slicing her pancakes into strips of eight, then cutting them into smaller strips of sixteen. “That is how we feel.”
Campbell said sadly, “Merry, I meant you and me. I meant Mally and you and me. That you girls are part of me.”
“Oh,” Meredith said. Now she had hurt her mom. “It’s not like we don’t love you, Mom.”
“I know that,” Campbell answered. “You’re wasting that food. I made it from scratch, not a mix. Why don’t you try eating a bite?” Merry did. It was cold. “So?” Campbell prompted her.
“Well, we dream the same things.”
“I know that. You used to sleepwalk and talk about them.”
“We did?”
“When you were two or three.”
“Now we don’t anymore.”
“Don’t sleepwalk?”
“Don’t have the same dreams at the same time.”
“Ah, well. Maybe it’s just a temporary thing. Does it bother you? Does Mally mind more than you?”
“She minds more than I do, but I would mind more if I let myself think about it,” Merry said. “It used to be like being in the same . . .
mmm
. . . airplane. Like, you could look out the windows and talk to other people, but you were always going the same place and you could always see where the other one was.”
“And now you can’t.”
“Not when we’re asleep.”
“But you
sleep
when you’re asleep,” Campbell said helplessly.
“Although I have to say, part of why I stayed up is that you look like you haven’t been sleeping that much.”
“Do I look gross?” Merry asked, nearly dropping her fork.
“No! Just tired.”
“You know the old joke. When people say you look good, they mean you lost weight. When they say you look tired, they mean you look like . . .”
“Like crap,” said Campbell. “I know the joke.”
Tim came into the kitchen, poured his coffee, kissed Merry’s and Campbell’s heads, and wandered out to the car.
“I never know how Dad gets to work when he’s basically still asleep,” Merry said.
“Me either. Thank God for seat belts,” Campbell said. “So this dreaming thing . . .”
“It’s not just dreaming now, but when we’re not—”
They both looked up, as if they’d heard a crash, an impact of silence. Mallory stood in the doorway, dressed for school, her face linen white, her eyes shadowy.
“Laybite,” she told Merry softly.
Merry got up.
“Mommy, Drew’s honking!” Meredith said, her face pinched with fear and anxiety.
“Girls, wait . . . I’ll drive you both in.”
“No, Mom. I have a test first hour,” Mallory said, and was out the door.
Merry shrugged and followed.
Campbell noticed that Merry had left her cheerleading bag, her prized green-and-white JV Ridgeline duffel, on the floor, for the first time since she had earned it, a year before. She stood up to run after her, but Drew was already passing their house on the way down the road toward school. Mallory sat in front, not speaking, staring straight ahead. Merry was in back, her head against the seat, her eyes closed.