Mirage(53)

I don’t know this girl, but she floats nearby, concern and confusion evident in her crystalline blue eyes. I’ve seen those eyes before. Her blond hair lifts and falls like she’s in water. She looks so sad, but she scares me too. I don’t want any spirits nearby, coaxing me into the light.

I want to live. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.

“You’re the one who’s been haunting me,” she says, wide-eyed. “You died and?—”

“I’m not dead!”

Maybe I am, I realize, looking at my broken body. My father’s mouth is locked over mine. He blows. Pumps his palms on my chest. Listens for breath. Cries. I wish I could feel his tears, which run down his cheeks and pink my dusty lips.

I’m afraid to look at the crowd. I can’t bear to see Dom’s luminous spirit crushed. I can’t bear to see my mother’s wailing black grief. There’s no more wind. It’s like the world is holding its breath to see if I’ll make it. But, I realize sadly, the world is used to this. The comings and goings of humans is old news. What I’m feeling is the stillness of not being alive anymore.

I was alive. This was my life.

Anger and sadness are a hook knife ripping through my soul. The stronger my emotions, the more I’m pulled toward my physical form. She moves closer too, and when I look in her eyes, I realize with a gasp . . . it’s her. This skinny scrap of teenage girl is the spirit who stole my life from me. I remember the first time I looked into her eyes in the motor home.

I turn away from my father and his resuscitation attempts. “What did you think you were doing?” I’m torn between flying through her and breaking her into a million points of light, or staying with myself, with Dad, as he cries and fights to save me. I desperately want to stay until I can’t stay any longer.

“I?—?I was living my life.”

“You were living my life!”

The spirit moves between me and my body. She inclines her head and holds her hands up like an angelic statue. She looks like she’s thinking very hard about something, concentrating, before her eyes open wide. She looks at my body, looks down at her skin. “That’s not me. Oh, God. I remember now.”

“What? What do you remember?”

“I was sick. I . . . I had cancer.” There’s bite to that last word. “My parents denied me medical care after I was diagnosed. ‘God’s will,’ my father called it. If we prayed, if we were faithful enough, God would spare me. I tried to believe they were right. I was supposed to honor them, right? But I didn’t.” Her voice goes hard. “Secretly, I hated them. They wouldn’t give me the morphine. They wanted me to suffer. My father said my pain would purify me. They drove me out to nowhere in that motor home and let me die.”

The girl looks out on the horizon, and I know her body is out there, somewhere.

“I couldn’t leave, though. It wasn’t fair. I wanted to live. But I was stuck in this dark, lonely place.”

I know that dark place. Her story is sad. It is.

“Suddenly, there you were,” she continues, her words rushing out. “So beautifully alive. From that first moment I saw you, I somehow connected with you, followed you. I couldn’t stop watching you, but you were so arrogant about life. You didn’t seem to care whether you had it or not. I was angry that you had a choice and risked what I wanted more than anything. You flirted with death, dared it. When you came back to the motor home and fell into the glass, I somehow fell into you, into life again.”

“How could you take my life?” I demand. “How dare you think you could be me?”

Her eyes take on a helpless grief. “I thought I’d been given a second chance. You tossed your life at my feet!”

The wails of sirens scream in the background. My dad hears them too. He looks up at the sky, looks at his watch.

We’re running out of time.

He hasn’t given up fighting for my life. I wonder how that makes her feel. It makes me feel gratitude. Hope. And it makes me very sad.

She moves closer, inches from me. “There’s forgetfulness when you’re reborn. I had memories of my”?—?she pats her slender chest?—?“my real life. I see that now. But they were unclear. Like a dream. So confusing. I started journaling about it. I knew I’d come back from death, but I didn’t know why everything felt so strange, unfamiliar. I had memories of two lives: foggy scraps of mine, from before . . . and the mirage of your life.” She taps her head. “I had all your memories. Only I couldn’t feel any attachment to them. I was numb. Everyone said I was crazy. I thought you were hunting me because I?—?you?—?were supposed to die the night of the LSD.” Her eyes go wide and she covers her mouth. “It was my house I ran to from the doctor’s office. It was my own dead body I saw in my mind. I was trying to remember myself.”

She wore my body like a new dress, and screwed up my relationships, and tried to kill me. Or kill herself. It’s a mindf*ck. But strangely, I find compassion rising within me for this girl who died because her parents didn’t fight for her.

“No one will be waiting for me,” she says, sounding so alone. So scared.

“Gran will.” Without a doubt, I know that Gran won’t let this girl journey alone. She won’t let either of us go alone into the light.

We stand, silent for a moment.