Authors: Laura Whitcomb
I came close to the woman’s left shoulder and whispered in her ear. “Heal thyself.” She shuddered on the inside, just a little, enough to turn the darkness that was attached to her a lighter color of charcoal gray.
“I thought Pastor Bob would be here,” said Cathy. “Why isn’t he here?”
When the woman with the shadow hesitated, the others stared at her—she was apparently the one who was supposed to have all the answers.
Jenny stood up and the woman’s eyes flashed with fear.
Cathy stood too, holding a protective arm in front of her daughter. “Beverly Caine, I’m going to ask you a direct question and I expect an answer. Did you know Judy Morgan was fornicating with my husband?”
The others gasped.
The dark cloud behind Mrs. Caine disappeared except for one small black flame that came to rest behind her sorry eyes, perhaps in the part of the skull where the ego lived.
“So I guess lying and keeping secrets are not necessarily signs of demonic possession,” Jenny pointed out.
“Oh, my Lord,” one of the other women whispered.
“Jennifer Ann,” another of the ladies scolded, “you’re speaking to your elder.”
“Eudora Franck,” said Cathy, “Be quiet.”
I drew closer to Mrs. Franck. She was embarrassed and annoyed and it made her thoughts vulnerable for a second. I saw an image pop up and sent it to Jenny.
Her mother’s mother,
I called.
In the garden.
Apparently she heard me. “If I’m possessed because I believe in ghosts,” said Jenny, “then we should perform an exorcism on Mrs. Franck, too, because she told my mom that after her grandmother died she saw an apparition of her in the backyard, isn’t that right?”
Everyone looked at Mrs. Franck, who seemed mortified. “I did see her,” she confessed.
“And if you think a demon’s living inside me because I had sex outside of wedlock,” said Jenny, “then my father and Judy Morgan must be possessed too.”
Cathy sat down in astonishment. I felt a waver in the confidence of another of the women. I glided over to the head of the one wearing the pink striped sweater. Again I told Jenny what she was thinking.
“And Mrs. Lowe, too.” Jenny nodded at her. “You slept with your husband before you were married, right?”
“Cathy!” Mrs. Lowe gaped at her. “I told you that in confidence.”
“You told me a secret,” Cathy agreed, “but not the one about my husband sleeping with your next-door neighbor.”
“Jenny, sit yourself down. You are in my house,” Mrs. Caine snapped. “Show some respect and do as you’re told.”
The darkness began to form again behind her shoulder, like a hornet’s nest of shadow.
“Sit,” Mrs. Caine ordered.
“No,” said Jenny. Cathy stared at her daughter as if she had never heard her say the word before. “Why should I? You have no respect for me.”
The cloud of negativity behind Mrs. Caine’s shoulder fluttered, and I blew it away. As it flew off through the wall, it made one of the little angel figurines in the bookcase below wobble in a little dance of joy.
Jenny looked down at her mother. “Mom, let’s go.”
“We did not give you permission to leave,” said Mrs. Caine.
“And I didn’t give you permission to humiliate me,” said Jenny.
Cathy did nothing more than vaguely reach for her daughter. Her fingers lightly brushed Jenny’s sleeve as the girl walked out.
An argument broke out anew, but no one followed Jenny, not even her mother. I was the only one who watched her march away through the door and down the walkway. She picked up her pace and was soon running. She didn’t look back as if she feared being chased—she just
ran.
I worried that she would revel in her new freedom and leap from a curb without looking for traffic, but she made her way smoothly block after block, running not in the direction of home, just away.
I was still nervous for her. Where would she find a safe place to land? But when she was passing a store where a woman was just leaving and they collided, I felt as if something had shifted.
The woman was carrying a large bag of books and file folders. She was dressed in an Indian skirt and had her strangely matted hair pulled back in a bright beaded headband. As Jenny clipped her shoulder, they both stumbled. Jenny caught herself and the woman dropped her bag.
“Sorry!” Jenny helped her pick up two books that had slid nearly to the curb.
“Where are you flying off to so fast?” asked the woman.
“I don’t know,” said Jenny, handing her the books.
“You don’t know?” The woman smiled at her. “Are you lost?”
“No.” Jenny thought for a moment. “I’m just running.”
“Do I know you?” asked the woman.
“I don’t think so,” said Jenny.
The woman shrugged. “Well, be safe.”
Jenny nodded and turned to go, but the urge to run had subsided, it seemed, because she walked slowly toward the next corner.
I didn’t know this woman, but she must have known Jenny after all, because she watched her back for a second and then called, “Hey!”
Jenny turned back.
“Are you my Runaway?”
CHAPTER 29
T
HIS WOMAN WHO HAD ALMOST
thrown me to the ground was staring at me, fascinated, but I’m sure I didn’t know her. She wore hippie clothes and had a henna flower stenciled on the back of her hand. She wasn’t from church, obviously. She’d been walking out of Reflections, a bookstore my parents wouldn’t be caught dead in. No way she was one of the teachers from school. For a moment I thought she might be someone’s mom—she made me think of a lullaby. But I would definitely have remembered seeing this woman in the school parking lot—she wore dreadlocks under her headband. I couldn’t think where in the world we could have met, but she started walking toward me.
“Do you remember me?” she asked.
She smiled at me in such an open way, I stood still and waited for her.
“No?” She planted herself in front of me, her eyes tearing up. “Are you okay now?”
I nodded.
“You found your way home, did you?”
The rasp in her voice and the way she wrinkled her nose when she smiled were familiar.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” she asked again.
Like a forgotten dream opening up, I remembered watching her for hours from the top shelf of a bookcase. But that was crazy. “Did you sing to me?” I asked her.
Gayle’s arms flew open like wings and caught me up in her rough wool warmth. “My little bird,” she said.
Every second of my lost days came back as I clung to her. My first glance of my own soulless body, the cavernous museum rooms and running at the mirrors in ballet class and the view from a hundred-foot tree in the forest and the hiss of waves on the face of a midnight beach.
And finding myself in an empty field with a boy who could fly.
Gayle’s hug was a safe place to cry. “I remember,” I told her over and over. “I remember.”
She invited me to come in for tea, and I would have loved to sit in the back room of the shop with her and tell her my story, but I had to hurry.
I borrowed Gayle’s phone, but that same friend of the family answered.
“Billy’s not home,” said the man. “He’s at the hospital.”
My joy was ripped away at the idea that he might be hurt. “What happened?”
“An infection or a fever or something.”
I had the terrible feeling that I had remembered too late. “Which hospital?”
“St. Jude’s,” he said. “Who’s this?”
I was afraid this friend of the family would know that Billy had broken up with me, so I just hung up without answering. I returned the phone to Gayle and would’ve asked for a ride, but she only had a bicycle.
She did look up the address of the hospital and which bus to take. She even gave me enough quarters to get there and drove me to the stop on her handlebars. But when I arrived at the hospital, it didn’t look right. There was no emergency room entrance.
I ran to the front desk and said I had come to see Billy Blake. When the receptionist asked if I was a family member I lied. When she made me sign in, my hand was shaking as I wrote
Jenny Blake.
The line above it was scrawled with the words
Mitch and Billy Blake.
I was pointed in the right direction and kept repeating the room number in my head as if I’d forget it and be lost in a maze of corridors.
But when I got to the right room, the door stood open and Billy was not lying in a bed hooked up to antibiotics—he was standing with Mitch.
Their eyes were red. Mitch had his arm draped around Billy’s neck as they listened to the doctor. I moved a step closer and in the bed I saw a woman, sleeping or worse, with two nurses gently removing wires and tubes from her wrists and chest.
Billy had tracked the miraculous awakenings of coma patients across the globe, but it looked like his own mother would not be one of them. I stared at her lovely white hand on the blanket.
I was an outsider—I wanted to sneak away without a word, but Billy glanced over just then and caught sight of me. He looked more curious than angry, so I opened my mouth to speak. One of the nurses blocked the door as she wheeled out a rolling monitor and the other nurse closed the door, leaving me in the hall.
I backed into the corridor wall and leaned there. I wasn’t welcome, I knew that. But I had to wait for him. I went to the lobby and sat. I wished I had not sent Helen away—the waiting room was too quiet. I felt caved in, breathing in little reluctant hitches. I wanted someone to hold me up and convince me everything would be all right.
But then I remembered, I used to fly like a bird. And I’d escaped an exorcism—I could do anything. I sat up straight and waited.
Billy and Mitch came down the hall—I stood up and moved toward them with no idea what to say.
Mitch put a hand on Billy’s shoulder. “Not a good time,” he told me. But Billy came to meet me in the hall beside a little shelf with a courtesy phone.
“Is your mom okay?” I asked. My heart was beating so hard, I felt dizzy.
“No.” Billy put his hands in his pockets. “I thought it would kill me if she died,” he said, “but I feel sort of relieved. Is that sick?”
“No,” I told him. “Not at all.” My tongue was dry and my throat was tight. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, finally realizing I had invaded his family’s privacy.
I opened my mouth but couldn’t decide how to start.
“I can’t believe you’re speaking to me after yesterday,” he said.
There was nothing to do but jump right in. “I remember what happened while I was away from my body,” I said. “I remember landing in an open field.” I swallowed, but my throat was still stiff. “Do you remember that?”
“Do I remember what?” he asked.
“I saw you.” I whispered it, as if it was a secret. “You were there.” I searched his eyes for recognition. “We played a game to see if we could fly to the same place together. You made the stars move.”
“Jennifer?”
A chill came over me like a wave of icy water. My father was standing at the front desk with a single white rose in his hand. He walked calmly up to me and lay a heavy hand on the back of my neck. He handed Billy the flower and said, “I’m sorry for your loss.”
Billy took the rose, confused. “Thank you,” he muttered. As my father guided me toward the exit, Billy followed.
“Let her go,” Mitch told his brother.
“Say goodbye, dear,” my father told me.
But when I turned back to Billy, I didn’t say goodbye—I said, “Don’t you remember? You stopped time.”
Billy stood at the sliding glass doors like he was in a trance and watched us get into my father’s van. Before I closed my door I pointed to the sky and swept my hand across it. Billy let the rose fall from his hand, and Mitch picked it up.
“Put your seat belt on, please.” My father was trying to control his temper. I could tell by the way he clenched his jaw.
“How did you find me?” I asked.
“You’re not as clever as you think,” he said. “I called Billy’s house and a gentleman there told me you had called and where you’d gone.”
My father had gotten more information than I had—the idea that he had heard that Billy’s mother was dying and then bought a rose on the way to pick me up should have seemed touching, but it actually felt creepy.
“I would’ve come home,” I told him.
“I got us an earlier flight,” he said. “Your mother is finishing packing for you. We’ll drop by the house for the bags and so you can make your farewells.”
“We’re leaving now?” I asked.
“The sooner we get you away from here, the better.”
This morning I would have gone quietly. But after remembering what happened to me when I was out of body, everything had changed—it was a whole new world. How could it be flipping over again so soon? Billy’s mother died, he didn’t remember meeting me in the field, and I was being shipped away like a prisoner.
My mother was in the driveway, standing beside my suitcase and book bag. She was anxiously pacing in a short path and talking on her cell.
When we pulled in and parked, she hung up and ran to my door. She took me aside as my father put the suitcase in the back of the van and my book bag on the passenger seat. “Are you all right?” she whispered. “Why didn’t you wait for me?”
I was about to tell her that I was okay, but she said, “I’m sorry about what happened at the Caines’. But your father doesn’t need to know about that.” She smoothed my hair and checked my clothes.
“I don’t want to go with him,” I said.
“Last night you said you’d cooperate.” Worry lines darkened her brow. “It’s not forever.”
Her cell rang and she glanced at the number, silenced the call. My father was leaning on the hood now, his own cell pressed to his ear, smiling like a man in love, cooing to someone and not remembering or caring that we were watching.
“Just for a little while,” my mother whispered.
“Okay!” My father pocketed his phone. He was happy. “Time to go.”
I faced my mother and wanted her to drag me into the house, call the police, threaten my father, maybe throw something. But she just put her arm around my shoulder.