I knock on Dad’s hospital room door. He’s sleeping with his cell in his hand and a discarded book on his bedside table. I take a Thermos from my bag. In it is chicken soup. I even made the stock from the chicken thighs I got Lucy to buy for me. Egg noodles float with the carrots and finely chopped onions, just the way Mom used to make it. I put the Thermos on the side table and carefully sit next to him.
He yawns as he wakes. “You should go to band practice today.”
“I should be here.”
“No. Lark. You should be prepping for the show. Then I have something to look forward to. You know, if I ever get out of this hospital room.”
“At least you’re out of Intensive Care now.”
“I’m slowly going mad staring at these four walls.”
“These four walls are a lovely shade of bile. Not that you were staring at them. You were sleeping—you need the rest, Dad, while they figure out what happened.”
He pulls a face. “Okay, okay. But please go to band practice. And call Martin Fields. If we learn anything from this, it’s to seize the day.”
“Touché.”
“Cliché, actually.” He yawns again. His face greys a little, and he turns from me. He murmurs as he falls back into sleep. “Maybe I’ll eat later. Now get on out of here.”
As I leave, I hear someone call my name. Alec Sandcross’ mom is behind me.
“Lark—” she says again. Her voice is soft. She’s wearing a blue cashmere sweater, a designer scarf, and her hair is pulled back in a braid. Her lips are perfectly glossed, mascara and liner emphasizing her very pale, almost silver eyes. “Do you have a moment?”
“Of course.”
“I do hope your dad is feeling better. I’m sorry I was so . . . abrupt the other day.”
When you were crying and didn’t want me to see? “Don’t worry. This place does that to people.”
“It’s just—Could you tell me something?”
“Sure. What is it?”
She gazes at a spot I can’t see for so long that I wonder if she’s forgotten I’m there. Then she says, “What was Alec like?”
“We were only just starting to get to know each other, Mrs. Sandcross.” A small frown travels over her tight brow, so I add, “He’s smart. And interested in stuff. Always asking questions at school. I was happy he asked me to go to the lake. I was excited. We had lots to talk about. He seems dynamic, cool, um, I wish I knew him better. I’d still really like to visit him, you know. It felt like we would have . . . we could have a good thing. Maybe.”
“Was he happy?” Though her voice is soft, her silvery eyes are intense. I notice now that under the makeup, they still look tired. “I hope . . . I hope he was happy.”
“He was happy. Of course.”
Her gaze shifts to me. “I worry he has too much of his father in him, too much . . . I left him, you know. Alec’s father. I should have done it a long time ago. It might never have happened if Alec hadn’t been in here.” A tear slides down her cheek. “I really . . . hope he was happy.” Suddenly her cheeks flush. She closes herself up like an app that is crashing. “Goodness, listen to me. I’m . . . I’m terribly sorry to bother you.”
“He’ll get better,” I say. “He will.”
“No, that’s not what’s going to happen. The tests are pretty conclusive. We’re going to give it a little more time, but only until his birthday. Even if Scott and I can’t agree on anything else, we agree that our son can’t live like this.”
My heart aches for her. For her family. For myself. “Alec’s birthday? That’s soon.”
“Yes. Twenty-one more days . . . the doctors aren’t hopeful.” More tears threaten to fall.
I shiver. Twenty-one more days . . . that’s the time I had left with my mom from my birthday to her death. “Can I come and see him with you?”
“Not today.” Her gaze drifts away from me. “No, sorry. Not today.”
Back at the house, I hunt for the jeans I was wearing when Martin Fields gave me his card at D’Lish. I’m terrible at laundry, so I eventually locate them in a crumpled heap under my bed. I toy with my phone but cop out. I spend a couple of hours writing notes for songs, and I do some vocal warm-ups until it’s time to go to practice.
Reid arrives outside Iona’s parents’ garage just as I do. He asks about Dad. I tell him about today’s visit to the hospital and about what happened with Mrs. Sandcross afterwards, but I find it hard to articulate how sad it was. The great thing about Reid is that he gets it anyway.
“She must be messed up right now.”
“I think so. She kept asking if Alec was happy.”
“I hope you lied.”
“What does that mean?” I walk into the heated garage with him. The Darcys are on super loud. Nifty is dancing around the far side of the room.
“The guy had stuff going on,” Reid says over the music, leaning close so I can hear.
“What do you mean?”
Typically, Reid doesn’t answer.
“You’re just jealous Alec got to go on a date with me,” I tease, trying to get him to reply. Except it comes out just as Nifty stops the music.
“So go on a date with me.” His voice is loud in the silence.
Nifty cheers. And Iona, who I hadn’t even noticed, bangs a drum. “He finally asked her!”
Did he seriously just ask me on a date? “Where?” I ask, torturing him a little but also feeling my heart buzz.
“Stop it,” he says. Smiling. He adjusts his glasses. Again.
Both Iona and Nifty watch our conversation with way too much interest.
“Okay,” Reid says, “time to get to work, folks. Don’t we have a show to get ready for?”
Iona bangs the drum again. “Yes, we abso-fricking-lutely do.”
I try to talk to Reid when we finish our superb rehearsal, but he’s on his phone. I wave, less sure now that he did seriously ask me on a date, and head out on my longboard to get back to Dad, cutting through the park. It’s another clear day—as if winter is holding back, waiting to spiderweb frost all over the golden leaves and browning grasses—but dark is falling now. As I reach the play park, I hear my cell. I stop my board, check it and try to hold on to reality.
Because in a video on my cell, Alec Sandcross is sitting there. Right there in the play park. I rub my eyes, like, actually rub them, to make the mirage go away. Alec is in a coma. But there he is, sitting on the teeter-totter, one end pointing up to the evening sky. And in the film, on the other end of the teeter-totter, is me. Another me. But my hair is how it used to be, long and black.
I watch the two of them. On the screen, Alec fixes his gaze on the other me. Watching them makes my heart beat faster.
He says, “I want you to—” The video flickers out.
I stumble to the teeter-totter, but there’s no one there. Of course there’s no one there. I sit now where Alec sat looking at Lark. The virtual Alec and Lark. Ghosts.
I take a couple breaths. What just happened? When my heart stops racing, I message Dad.
Lark:
On my way back to see you.
Need anything, Dad?
Dad:
I need you to stop worrying.
Nada más.
I’m fine. Go home.
Reid:
Are you home?
Wanted to talk to you.
As usual, failed.
Lark:
Sitting at the play park—
the one where you cut your head yrs ago.
Super weird thing just happened.
Reid:
Am still at Iona’s.
Will meet you there.
Lark:
Good.
I lean back on the teeter-totter, which is hard along my spine. It creaks. I remember the day Reid cut his head open falling off the monkey bars when we were kids. I can picture us all: Nifty shrieking in this crazy high-pitched way that Iona teased him about for years. It’s only blood.
The evening is low and soft, and geese flock in a V-formation far above. I can hear faint honking. I imagine the flap of their wings, the connection between them that causes them to follow one another so perfectly. It makes me feel like the known world is only the edge of knowledge, that the depths are so much deeper than I can fathom. I remember being in Grade One or Two and feeling super smart about something. I honestly thought I knew all the answers that day. But the answers are harder to find as I get older. I don’t even know the right questions. Words to a song bubble into my mind. I reach for my cell to write, but another incoming message stops me.
He kisses me at the
base of my ear, and I’m melting,
helping him tug at my jeans.
Another video opens up. It’s of me and Alec kissing on the teeter-totter. It’s a looping video, very short, that replays again and again. From it, I hear myself sigh, as Alec slides his hand along my thigh.
The video flickers off.
Reid leans over me, his face framed against the growing night. “Uh, Lark, what’s wrong? I mean . . . everything okay?”
“I’m here, right?” I babble. “How could there be videos of me somewhere else? Well, not somewhere else, but here, with Alec? He’s . . . he’s in a coma. He’s not here.”
Reid flops next to me, hunches his knees up and slides off his shoes, so his bare feet dip into the sandy ground. “What do you mean?”
I’m so relieved that he’s taking me seriously that, for a second, I can’t speak. He waits.
My phone pings:
Alec is on top of me.
His face is close to mine . . .
the weight of him . . .
I hold the screen up to Reid and say, “This keeps happening. Remember at Lydia’s? I thought it was you sending me the messages.”
“Lark, there’s nothing on the screen.”
I let out a cry of frustration. “But there was. Oh God. What is happening?” The horrible thought comes to me that I’m going insane. Suddenly I can’t breathe. “I’ve got to get out of here. I just need a little space to think.”
“You’re leaving?”
“I’m really sorry,” I say. “I don’t even know what I’m doing. Maybe I’m just overtired, I don’t know.”
“Hold on, Lark, let me help you figure this out.”
I shake my head. “I’ll message you later.”
I pop into a corner store and pause against the drinks fridge to take a couple of breaths. I’m thinking about watching myself kiss Alec. Alec is in a coma. My head is spinning. And I just officially freaked out in front of Reid. Like, crazy-girl stuff. I mentally shake myself. Get a grip, Lark.
My gaze lands on a packet of chocolate-covered raisins. Mom used to love those. I’d forgotten, but we would bring them to the hospital, and she’d put one in her mouth and let it dissolve on her tongue. Sometimes they made her throw up, but she still kept popping them in slowly, one by one.
I walk closer to the rack of candy and find myself slipping the crinkly bag into my backpack. It’s larger than the other stuff I’ve stolen. The nail polish and the mascara were easy to disguise. I glance to see if there are cameras, still reassuring myself that I haven’t done anything wrong. I could easily explain. There is a camera, but it’s pointed toward the cash area, and the guy working the till is busy talking to a customer. I grab a second bag of chocolate-covered raisins and stuff them in my backpack with the first. Trembling, I take a couple of bags of chips from the shelf and walk over to pay for them. My mind calms, focusing. I smile at the guy, even flirt a little with my eyes. Part of me is asking myself what the hell I’m doing, but another part has this feeling of serenity, control.
I walk out smiling.
When I get back to the house, Lucy is sitting on the steps of the front porch, playing Candy Crush. She looks up from her phone and frowns.
“Uh, hey. Reid messaged saying you were losing it. I thought I’d stop by. What’s up?”
“You know what, Lucy? Why don’t we build up to my crazy. You tell me about you, then I’ll tell you about me, okay?” I say.
“Deal.” She cocks her head. “You know we were talking about me going away for a year? Well, it got me thinking. I’ve been doing a little research. What do you think about me starting in the UK, then Paris?”
“Oooh, Paris—gotta be done.”
“I’m actually excited about India too. I read about it, and I’d love to go to a yoga retreat where I don’t speak for eleven days. I know it’s a long time until I go, but just thinking about it rocks.”
“Eleven days? Not talking?” I give her a skeptical look.
She laughs.
I chuck her one of the bags of chocolate-covered raisins, which she catches. We sit together on the step. “That all sounds amazing. Tell me more. I could do with something other than me to focus on.”
“You doing okay?”
“Maybe?”
I have an overpowering sense of déjà vu. This has happened before—but no. It’s not something that’s happened before. It feels like it’s happening now . . . but that makes no sense. The sensation trickles through my body like a small river. Maybe all my weird feelings are some sort of déjà vu. Like, a super intense version. But would that explain the videos and the messages?
I say to Lucy, “Déjà vu. That’s a thing, right? The feeling that I’ve experienced something before?”
“Déjà vu is a thing. I think it’s because we’ve all lived a past life. I was totally an Egyptian princess.” Lucy gazes into the distance for a moment, then her eyes flick to me. “Why? Do you think you had a past life?”
A shudder goes through me. My surroundings start spinning.
We’re quiet for a moment, and then she says, “You want to talk about it?”
“No. I don’t know. It’s . . .” My voice trails off. I don’t know if I can handle too much flaky stuff right now. When my mom was dying, people used to say dumb stuff like, Think positive. That will help. Like it might. Or, You need to fight this. Like Mom wasn’t. Or, Have you tried eating more kale? Going to acupuncture? Reiki? Mom didn’t resent people for being kind, but sometimes the wrong words made everything worse.
“Talk, already,” she says.
“Okay,” I say. “I’m dealing with some weird stuff.”
“What sort of weird stuff?”
“It started with my phone. No. It started on the day that Alec nearly drowned.”
“Tell me.”
“I’ve been getting weird messages on my phone, and videos. Well, I think I’m getting them, but they always vanish. And I’m having . . . hallucinations. Really strange.”
“What do the messages say?”
“They talk about Alec. As if he’s not in a coma. I wonder if I’m just wishing it were the case—maybe I’m imagining an alternative reality? Or maybe I’ve lived this whole life before? God, none of that makes sense at all.”
“You’re not exactly the sort of person to make this kind of thing up. Perhaps you’re super sensitive to whatever’s happening to you.”
“But what do you think that is?”
She flips her hair over her shoulder. “I have no idea. I just think the world is more mysterious than we can possibly imagine.”
“I think you’re right.”
In the quiet between us, I hear Suzanne’s agonized cry.