PIERCING SCREAMS REVERBERATE, bouncing off the Sierra Nevada, bouncing off the needles of cacti, out into the desert and back—a boomerang of shrieks and pain. A final heartbreaking gust of wind, and multicolored strips of nylon flutter ineffectively.
I fly out of my body on impact, sent hurtling through the air and the mirage-like veil that undulates between life and death. I am that one reckless balloon streaming toward the blue skies.
Hovering above, I look across the desert at the gnarled and twisted shapes of the cacti. I look down at my gnarled and twisted body. Suddenly I am on the ground, just feet away from my physical self. I look so small . . .
People are running, scurrying like ants toward my still form. Dad falls to his knees beside me. Love wafts from him in a kaleidoscope of colors as he bends over me. He’s still the first sergeant, shouting orders to people. Call an ambulance. Don’t touch her. My baby. My baby.
I finally see his love. Like Gran, I can see so clearly now that I’m gone. I had to die to see it? This strikes me as incredibly sad.
A timid voice carries across the sand to me. “Are . . . are you the Angel of Death?”
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 mindfuck. 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.
“I wasn’t haunting you, Rachel,” I say, remembering with sudden clarity her name from the back of the maroon Bible. Her eyes fly open as the name leaves my lips, and I know I’m right. “I was following you. I was desperately fighting for my own life!”
I think back to the night of the LSD trip. “What I did was stupid,” I admit, regretfully. “I let you in. But I tried to get back. I clung to my body, to my life. I tried to let people know not to trust you.” I recall the kiss with Joe. How I pushed so hard for her to kiss him so he’d know she couldn’t possibly be me. But instead I only hurt him. I see that now. “You cut my hair off . . .” It seems like a stupid thing to say.
The spirit ventures closer to me, but not in a threatening way: beseeching, her eyes seeking forgiveness. “I didn’t know it was you in the reflections. I thought it was a ghost trying to possess me. But the ghost had the same reflection I saw every day in the mirror. I didn’t know how to stop it, but I knew I was ruining my life.” She pauses, eyes to the ground. “Your life,” she corrects. “I couldn’t live like that. People were suffering. I realized that Gran was right: a life without integrity isn’t worth living at all.”
“I would never give up on life. No matter how bad things were. Never!”
With those words I become a dark dandelion seed, furiously picked up and whipped in the wind.
Planted.