Veiled (14 page)

“This guy did. I could tell. And I’ve seen you around hot dudes before. This one though, you’re
into
him, this J.J. Abrams.”

“Fine,” I concede with a sigh. We both stop at an intersection, waiting for the light to change. I can hear the dull bass of the concert coming from the river, whatever band is playing at the moment. “I’m into him. I mean, in a way. He’s . . . stupidly good-looking. But that doesn’t mean he’s into me.” And what I really want to say is, there is no way he could even be into me because he’s not even human and he’s actually my protector and I’m sure that’s forbidden anyway since it distracts from the demon-slaying and all that.

“There you go again,” she mutters. “Forgetting that no guy would ever turn you down. Sometimes I think you don’t even own a mirror. You should take a look sometime, you weirdo. You’re hot.”

I ignore the compliments and want to remind her that I’m not quite ready for anything, not after my mom. I don’t want to go through again what I did with Dylan, even though it’s a tired excuse at this point. But before my brain even has a chance to decide on it, I’m struck with this cold, sharp sensation of hands traveling up my stomach, to my chest, where they close around my heart.

I gasp and Amy’s eyes are on me but my eyes are across the street.

There on the other side of the road stands a long, thin man, the one from my dreams. Black, nebulous, never-ending. A void that’s void of everything around it. It’s the eater of dreams, of life, of souls. It’s hungry. It vibrates with evil. My mouth tastes like pennies.

It extends a hand toward me and before I know it, my feet are being dragged against pavement as I’m pulled forward across the busy intersection, like he’s pulling a rope attached to my gut.

Only it isn’t so busy now. The traffic has stopped. The world has stopped.

“Ada,” I can hear Amy in my ear, shaking me and somehow this makes me come to a halt. I find my footing in the middle of the road, while the thin black man is still reaching for me, even though the vibrations, that churning hunger inside him, the magnetic pull of my body towards his like a star into a black hole, has stopped.

I turn around and I see myself back on the other side of the road. Frozen, mouth open, eyes wide in fear. Amy’s hand is on my arm, she’s staring at me in concern.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

And then the world explodes into blue stars and smoke and it’s spinning and suddenly I’m back where I was. No longer two people, just one and Amy’s grip on my arm is tight, her eyes filled with worry, while I teeter off-balance. The need to puke is strong.

“Are you okay? Talk to me?” she asks louder and I’m aware that other pedestrians are crossing the road, some bumping into me, some others glancing at me curiously. The lights are green.

I swallow and try to speak, looking back to see the man. He is gone.

“I’m fine,” I manage to say, taking in a deep breath as if I’ve been under water for minutes.

Amy slowly removes her hand and then sighs in frustration as the light turns red again. We missed our chance to cross.

I can’t share her frustration. I want to know what the fuck just happened. Jay said there were demons around me, things that were showing themselves to me, things I wasn’t seeing. But how did he make time pause like that, take me out of my body like he was shucking a peanut? If Amy hadn’t brought me out of it, what would have happened?

I look at her, my closest friend, and realize that what Jay said was right. I have to tell her, tell her now before it gets worse. I have to come clean, no matter how badly the truth might cost me.

“Amy,” I say slowly. My heart beats wildly though I’m not sure if it’s from the fright I just had or the fear that I might lose her, the only normal thing in my life. In the distance thunder rumbles and, even though the sun is still shining, I swear it’s dimmed, like a restaurant at the romantic hour. “I have to tell you something.”

She bites her lip, shooting me a quick, wary glance. “I thought you never would.”

My brows come together. “What do you mean?”

She exhales loudly, her attention going to everything but me. “I don’t know. It’s been pretty obvious that something is wrong with you. I mean, more than just your mother dying. It’s been two years Ada. We can’t tell if you’re holding onto sadness because you want to feel sad or there’s just something majorly wrong with you.”

Amy can be really blunt, so I try not to let her choice of words get to me, nor the fact that she said “we” which means it’s something she and Tom have discussed, possibly even Jessie.

“It’s . . . complicated,” I tell her. “And you’re not going to believe a word of it. I understand. I wouldn’t believe it and I still fucking don’t. But it’s the truth and it’s my truth.”

My truth. It sounded so fatalistic.

“Okay,” she says warily as the lights go green again and we cross.

As we walk, I wonder if our relationship is going to change from beyond this moment to the time we get to the festival. I wonder if I’ll ever hear “Hungry like the Wolf” the same way again.

I can feel the sweat building in my palms as I take in a deep breath. I have to do this like pulling off a Band-Aid.

“The truth is,” I say, keeping my eyes focused on the street ahead, not daring to look at her, “well, you know the movie
The Sixth Sense
? That’s my life. Minus Bruce Willis. But yeah, that’s pretty much my problem. I see dead people.”

I pause but still don’t look at her. To my surprise she hasn’t faltered in her strides beside me. Far-off thunder rumbles again, as if on cue.

I go on, quickly, the words bubbling up in my throat like champagne in a bottle. “It’s always been this way. At least it started with Perry. Three years ago she told me she started seeing ghosts. That the show she did with Dex was real. He saw them too. I thought they were nuts but at the same time, I believed her. She was like that at fifteen too, but I was too young to get it. I do now. Because I’m just like her. It took a while for it to happen to me though. And when I was fifteen, I started seeing things. My dead grandmother mainly. But demons too. It’s . . . been a learning experience since then. I’m not crazy though. I mean, I think I am sometimes but I’m not. It just is what it is.”

We stop at another intersection and I hear Amy suck in her breath. I dare to look at her and something inside me breaks. She’s staring at me like I have some sort of disease. It’s the look she used to give me when I was grieving, wild on drugs, doing anything to escape my head. But instead of the worry and pity, there’s an extra emotion there.

She thinks I’m lying.

I swallow hard, my throat raw and dry. “It gets worse, too.” I mean, fuck, I’ve gone this far. Let’s rip the lid off the can of worms. “When my mother died, she was possessed by a demon called Michael, even though that really wasn’t his name. He’d taken possession of Dex’s brother who knows when. That’s why we really all went to New York to begin with. His demon brother had taken Dex and we went to get him back, and all the while we were walking into a trap. In the end, the demon even possessed me until my mom overtook him.” I pause, not because I’m aware that I’m raving like a loon and attracting the looks of people walking past, but because the memories burn. I know how ridiculous it sounds the moment the words leave my lips but it doesn’t stop it from being an open wound. “My mother jumped in front of the train to save us all.”

Heavy silence falls between us, so much so that even the distant thunder and the bass of the concert, just two blocks away, is muffled, like someone has put a sheet over the city. The air grows hotter, thicker, while my skin seems to chill from the inside out.

I glance at Amy as we walk, my heart in my throat. She’s looking straight ahead, blinking slowly, not looking at me, not saying a word.

“I know it’s a lot to take in,” I coax her, wanting her to at least say something.

She nods, eyes darting around her like she’s already trying to distance herself from me.

I think we go an entire block in silence, every step I take I regret opening my mouth, wishing I hadn’t told the truth.

Finally we stop on the grass of the waterfront park, the crowd around us becoming thicker, the security lines forming by the gates. In the background a pop rock group is between songs, making remarks about the storm in the distance. I don’t have to look over my shoulder to know the clouds are darkening and coming right for us.

Amy sighs, a long and harsh exhale, and gives me a look I can’t read. Usually I can read everything on her expressive face, but not now. Not when I need to the most.

“Ada,” she says softly, almost like a whine. “I’m not sure what you want me to say.”

“That you
believe
me,” I implore. My voice is shaking and I’m surprised that so much is riding on her simple—or not so simple—belief in me.

She runs her hand over her face, as if lifting away a veil. “But I don’t,” she says bluntly. “I can’t. You’re . . . you’re either a terrible friend Ada or you need help. From a professional.”

Her words hurt more than I thought they would. Puncture wounds all around my heart. “But I’m telling the truth.”

“Then your truth is fucked up. Ghosts are real? Your mother died because she was possessed by a demon? Jesus Christ, at least try and have some respect for your mother’s death instead of making up a story.”

“It’s not a story!” I cry out. “It happened. I had to tell you everything, I had to be honest. It’s been killing me for years having the burden of all of this, to keep it all inside.”

“And what did you think I’d say when you told me?”

My mouth shuts, for a moment, lips clamped hard together until I can feel like blood run out of them. “I thought you’d believe me. Because you’re my best friend. You know I’d never lie to you, Amy.”

Her eyes narrow for a moment. “Never lie? Apparently you have been. You just said so yourself. All this time you’ve been thinking you’re seeing ghosts, that your whole damn family is haunted. You’ve kept this to yourself, away from us. Why tell me now?”

“Because I have to,” I manage to say, looking down at the concert tickets in my hand that I’ve absently taken out of my purse on the walk over. “What’s happened before, it’s only going to get worse. It is getting worse. And I’m going to need your support. I’m not asking you to do anything except just stay my friend and believe me.”

I search her eyes, begging for her to see my sincerity, to see the sanity I can only hope is there.

“Ada,” she says flatly and it’s then that I know it’s all over, and just like you know when your boyfriend is about to give you the “talk,” I know that our relationship has crashed and burned around me. “I am your friend. I always will be. But you’re asking too much of me. I don’t believe in ghosts. I don’t believe in the supernatural or demons. And I know that even though that’s what you think is going on, that it’s not. I’ll help you get the help you need but you have to help yourself first.”

I can’t even speak. She doesn’t understand. Not even close.

She thinks I’m fucking insane.

God, I wish I were.

I wish this whole thing was something that could be fixed with high doses of anti-psychotics and a short-term stay at the hospital. If only.

“So that’s it,” I say weakly. “You don’t believe me. You think I’m sick in the head.”

“Grief does funny things to a person,” she says.

“Oh what the fuck do you know about grief,” I snap. It’s like I’ve been bound by an elastic band, unbeknownst to me, and with one sharp, painful snap my worry and fear has been replaced with anger. Vicious, rolling anger. “You get to sit there with your boyfriend and look down on me, ‘Oh poor fucking Ada, going through so much shit, will she ever be better?’ I see your pity, I know you wish I could just get over it, become the person I was before. Well guess what? The person I was before was no better. I still saw the unexplainable. And you still would have called me insane.”

She’s staring at me with wide eyes and I realize I’ve never yelled at her before. In fact, we’ve never even had a fight. I always thought it was because we got along so well, that it was a testament to our relationship. Now I realize it’s because she never really knew me and I never really knew her.

I definitely didn’t expect this to go this way.

“Look,” she says when she finds her voice and it comes out hard. Any sympathy gone. “You don’t make things easy on anyone. You’re difficult even when you’re pretending to be normal. You live in some bubble where it’s just you and no one else. Maybe your clothes, maybe your blog, sometimes your family. But it’s just you and it’s always been you. You’ve been shutting all of us out for years.”

“Yeah because I was afraid to tell you the truth!” I’m yelling now, raising my arms. Thunder trumpets again. “And I had a right to be afraid! You think I belong in a mental institution!”

“Anyone would think that!” she yells back. A few people heading for the security lines give us a look, a guy sniggers at the impending catfight. “Ask anyone here!” She gestures to the crowd, to the stage where the band has started up playing again. “They’d all agree with me. Ada,” she grabs my arm, “you’re not well. And the sooner you come to terms with that, stop hiding from it, stop blaming it away, the sooner that everything will go back to normal.”