When We Collided(16)

She gives me the eyebrows right back. “You don’t?”

Um, no, I do not. “So, what have you been in a past life?”

“It’s not what; it’s who,” she says. “I’ve been a dolphin and a ballerina, probably in the 1920s or so, and I used to be part of a pack of stratocumulus clouds. Those are the only ones I know for sure.”

Either this girl is certifiable or she’s saying this for my entertainment. But the craziest part is that I can imagine all those things. I can picture her above the waves in the slick body of a gray dolphin. I can imagine her in a tutu or floating above the stratosphere as a puff of cloud. I feel oddly out of touch with my own self, that I don’t know what I used to be. Or, apparently, who I used to be. “I must be new to the world.”

Vivi shakes her head vehemently. “No, no. I can always tell when this is someone’s first life. This is Bekah’s first life, for example, so you should cut her some slack because it’s really hard to figure things out without having some preexistence instincts.”

“So, who did I used to be?”

She tilts her head, and the curls on that side fall toward the ground. Her eyes are looking through me. She places her hands on my chest, palms warm. I tense up so any muscles there will be more pronounced.

“Hmm,” she says. “In your last life, you spent many years as a tree—oak, I think. Somewhere in the Great Plains. It’s why you feel deep roots in this life, here with your family. Your tree life was so long that you still have strong instincts to shelter little ones. You may not remember it, but your shoulders do.”

She slides her hands over my shoulders, but I know she means it to be clinical. An examination, like she’s diagnosing me with former lives. I’m not sure where to look, so close to her face. Skim milk skin, dark eyebrows. My mom used to watch all those old black-and-white films. I never understood them, but the first dirty dream I ever had was about Brigitte Bardot. No! Think about . . . cooking. Vegetables. Parsnip! Parsnips are hideous.

“Wow, the tree life is still so present for you.” Her laugh warbles in my ears. “It’s also why you can be a bit . . . immovable.”

I frown. Immovable? Does that mean boring? She touches the tip of my nose like I’m a small child. “The best part is that before you were a tree, you were a sea captain. And before that, an otter.”

“Why is that the best part?”

“Because it’s still in there!” she exclaims. Her fist knocks on my chest. “All of it. First you were an otter, the most playful creature in the world. And then you were born as a human boy for the first time, and you became a sea captain because the water called to you from your otter days. But it’s all still in there, Jonah. The tree stuff is more recent, but there’s an otter in there dying to make a Slip ’N Slide in your backyard and spend the whole day doing nothing else.”

Wow, that’s a lot of weird information. “Okay. When do you think I was a sea captain?”

She shrugs. “It’s hard to say specifically. Turn of the twentieth century or a little before, I think.”

“Maybe I sailed to New York City, where you were performing as a ballerina.”

Her air intake is sharp, almost a gasp, followed by a brilliant smile. “Yes! Maybe you watched me dance.”

To demonstrate, she backs away from me and lifts to her tiptoes. She moves her arms in graceful lines, then drops her limbs back to the ground, smiling. “I took lessons for a few years because I missed my former ballerina life so much that I needed to relive it a little.”

I play along, smiling. “Yeah. I’m sure I’ve seen you do that before.”

She steps toward me, delighted, and bubbling over with energy. “Maybe you came backstage after you saw me dance. Maybe I took you underground to my favorite Prohibition spots, and we drank bathtub gin together. Then maybe we got stupid drunk to jazz music and stumbled back out onto the cobblestone streets to my apartment and made love the whole night, sweaty because there was no air-conditioning back then. I bet if we smelled juniper, we’d remember pieces of that night; don’t you think so?”

Now, what in the hell do I say to that? Did she say make love? I’m not sure which is more confusing: that she’d use that phrase like someone’s mom or that she just casually suggested maybe we were doing it in another life? There can be only one response. “Maybe.”

“Well, I should get going,” she says. “Are you busy tomorrow morning? I’m off work.”

“Not busy. Just home with the other three.”

“Good. I’ll bring supplies.”

“For what?”

“A Slip ’N Slide.” She flashes me that strawberry smile. “God, Jonah, keep up.”





CHAPTER FIVE

Vivi

I don’t know if you’ve ever sprawled out in a wide-open field and stared up at the blue sky and felt the planet humming all around you, but that’s what my days feel like here. The world moves a few paces slower—so slowly that my movement feels like zipping, like crackling energy through the streets.

When I met Jonah Daniels yesterday, there was a magical shift in the trajectory of my summer. He’s the ring to my Frodo, the wardrobe to my Lucy Pevensie. His presence in my life sets me on my journey, and I can feel it, a vital mission pulsing in my bones. Here is a boy who needs me. That’s why I bought supplies at the hardware store and headed over to his house: because I knew he’d be surprised that I meant what I said.