Since I slept through band practice three days ago, the band has been furious with me. So I told them there was no way I was doing their stupid show with them. It was just one practice. I hoped they might care even a little bit that I was quitting, but if anything, they seemed relieved. Perhaps I was relieved too. But now none of them is talking to me. I don’t care. It’s becoming clearer and clearer that the only person who is there for me is Alec.
We spent yesterday evening hiking along the river trails. He taught me how to do a better wall jump. My hands are still sore from trying to pull myself up, but I’ve got a better technique now. We watched a bunch of stuff about parkour at his house afterwards, wishing his mom would leave, but she didn’t.
It’s time to go to school. I dress in my pastel jeans with the hole and a black T-shirt with a low back. I sling on a lacy sweater and spend a little time putting on mascara and giving myself smoky eyes.
I grab my longboard and take it outside. It’s raining lightly, the day grey and cool but refreshing. I wonder what she’s doing now. The other me. Is she getting on her longboard too? Is she going to visit Alec in the hospital, where he’s in a coma? I check my cell. No messages, nothing. I argue with myself yet again. I was wrong about all this. Perhaps Dolphin was right.
For the thousandth time, my inner voice tells me to go and see Annabelle. Prove this to myself once and for all. I have to stop waiting at the sidelines of my life. I have to figure this out.
You okay about Alec?
They turn off the life support
in four days, right?
. . . I just want to go and see him.
To say goodbye.
It’s the first message I’ve had for days. As it vanishes, I start to tremble. It feels like some sort of sick joke, but what if it’s true, and they’re really switching off his life support? Alec can’t die. Not in any life. No. I know what I have to do. I have to go and see Annabelle. I have to find the truth.
School goes by in a blur. Afterwards, I hurry to the hospital, listening on the way to some terrible pop playlist. I lean my board against a wall and enter through the main doors. The hallway is full of other people, wrapped up in their own lives, dealing with life and death.
Alec:
Where are you?
Can we talk?
Lark:
Not now.
Alec:
Playing hard to get? ;-)
Lark:
Come by later.
Alec:
B over at 7.
I realize I’ve already reached the third floor, when the elevator dings and the doors slide open. I pad toward Pediatrics to see Annabelle. The rest of my plan is kind of fuzzy.
I’m reaching to push open one of the double doors, when a sign pulls me up short.
VISITORS RESTRICTED
After a surge in respiratory illnesses, the health region is
restricting visitors to the Pediatric and Pediatric Intensive Care
Wards to PARENTS ONLY.
I read it over three times and slam the wall with my fist. Then I open one of the double doors and peek around to see if anyone has noticed me.
I get five steps along the hallway before a nurse approaches, frowning.
“Excuse me, who are you here to see?”
“Uh, um, Annabelle Fields.”
Politely but firmly, the nurse moves in front of me. “Did you see the sign?”
“Uh, no,” I lie.
“You’ll have to wait to visit. We have restrictions on visitors. You don’t want to make anyone sick, do you?”
There’s nothing for it. I shake my head and mumble an apology. Then I hurry away. My hand hurts from slamming it into the wall. I rub it all the way out of the hospital. After all that, I can’t see Annabelle?
I board home. Dad’s not there. I boil some water and eat a Pot Noodle in front of the TV. When the doorbell rings, I go to it gratefully.
“I’m so glad to see you,” I say, as Alec wraps me up in his arms. At least now I can forget about Annabelle. “Do you want to come to my room?”
He is kissing me and nodding at the same time. It feels so right. I don’t want him to stop. Not now. Not ever. I pull him upstairs.
“Are you ready?” He pulls off my black T-shirt.
I peel off my pastel jeans. “I’m ready.”
Dad calls from downstairs, “Lark, are you home?”
Alec groans as I pull my jeans back up. “This is never going to happen,” he says. “I should just go.”
“I’m up here, Dad,” I call back. I stick my tongue out at Alec.
We go downstairs to chat with Dad for a few moments and then outside, me with my longboard. Alec gets a call from a parkour friend, and I tell him I’ll meet him under the bridge in a while. It’s just occurred to me that perhaps there’s a way to get to Annabelle after all.
I longboard back to the hospital. I’ve worked out how to do this; I just need to make sure I don’t get caught. I slide my longboard into the bushes along the back wall of the hospital and spend a few minutes figuring out which window is Annabelle’s. The pathway is empty, and though there’s traffic going by, I’m going to guess that most people are too preoccupied with their own lives to notice me.
After checking no one is watching, I begin to climb. I’ve made it to the second floor when I see a couple walking below. They stop right beneath me, and the woman fumbles for her phone. She shows him something on the screen, while I press against the rough brick wall, hardly breathing. Finally they walk on, and I make it to the third floor, my muscles aching and shaky.
I shimmy along to the window I guessed to be Annabelle’s. Another child is in the bed. A small boy. My eyes fill with tears. What am I doing? I’m losing my mind. A nurse comes into the room, and I watch quietly and wait. After she leaves, the boy turns toward the door. I pass the window as quickly as I can and try the next one along. It’s another child, again not Annabelle but an older girl, chatting with her mom. I can’t go by their window. They’ll spot me. I duck out of sight, sweating and desperately trying to understand how to find Annabelle’s room. I look along the row of windows and count. It doesn’t help. I’m never going to find her. I shimmy back to the window where the boy is. I’m about to give up and go back down, when I think of how badly I need to understand this. So I keep going past the boy’s room to the next window in that direction.
This time I’ve got it right. It’s Annabelle. She lies there, still as the grave, and alone. Suzanne is out of the room—a lucky break.
But the window is closed. I wonder suddenly if it’s even possible to open the window, and my body begins to sweat—a prickly sweat. If I get caught here, if I fall, if I . . . I steady my breathing and fumble around with the window. To my surprise, it opens easily, and I slide in.
I hurry to Annabelle, and before I can think too much more about it, I sit by her and lightly touch her hand.
From where I stand, the window frames the sky, but as I look at it, the glass begins to crack. Tiny fracture lines spread like tree branches, and to my horror, they extend up into the white ceiling.
And water is seeping in. Rapidly it goes from a trickle to a flood, rising up from the floor; the walls are pushed outward by the force of it. I open my mouth, but water pours in, making me gag.
Soon I’m under water, fighting to keep my head above the surface, fighting for air. And there is the flickering screen, and through it the other Lark is there too, frantically struggling to keep her head above water. I knew. I knew. I knew.
I swim toward the screen, toward her. I feel like I might die, the effort is so immense. But then, with a ripping feeling through my entire body, as if my insides are being torn from me, I’m there.
I’m standing on my street, looking at myself. Oh my God.
She’s me. She’s wearing the same jeans, the same shirt, the same everything. Even the same makeup. But her hair only just reaches into a ponytail and is dyed red.
“Can you hear me?” I say to her. To myself.
“Oh my God. I can hear you,” she replies.