It’s hard to shake this heavy heart. Inez tells me she’s better and insists there’s no reason to feel guilty, that the miscarriage spell was her decision, but it’s hard to be here with Ray and not wonder if it’s wrong after she almost died. Ray tangles his legs with mine as we watch videos he took last week for a wedding. Electrician work brings in enough money for the bills, but sometimes he’ll pick up a videography job on the side. From a distance, he filmed the bride leaning in and planting a kiss on the groom’s ear while everybody else was busy dancing. If I inch closer to him, I can kiss his ear like that. But he palms his face to look at me, and a tingling sensation crawls up my spine before a second pair of eyes peeks at me from under his arm. They’re white; they don’t blink. I startle, slide back on his bed until I bump into the headboard.
The white eyes disappear, but Ray’s are wide.
“What’s wrong?” He sits up and looks around the room. “Did you see something?”
Did I? Or was I looking for something that’ll get us through this faster. After what happened with Inez, I’m anxious as hell to pull Jasmine from the other side and lock it up after her. But who knows what’s going to happen. Mili’s been panicking since Lindy shut her out days ago. She thinks we’re out of time.
Ray grabs my hand when I think about leaving to check in with her. To get myself together. “Tell me.”
I look at him good, feel the weight of reassurance in his touch. I could tell him—he’d listen—but what I like most about our relationship is how uncomplicated it is right now. I’d rather not risk tainting it with telling him I brought a spider back to life and damn near killed my friend and now I never feel safe. Not even as I lie here beside him. I’m not sure if he’s safe around me anymore either. If anyone is.
“Okay, it’s okay. You don’t have to tell me.” He brings my hand to his lips, kisses it. “I’m guessing it was my face that spooked you anyway.”
I laugh. “You’re irritating.”
“I try,” he says, then changes direction. “How’s your mom?”
“She’s okay,” I hurry to say, but it’s a lie.
This is the first time Ray and I have spent time together since Ma came home. I’ve been too nervous to leave her alone, since Dev senses how unhappy she is and hasn’t wanted to be around her. She might’ve been on drugs before, but at least she seemed happy when she was home. Yesterday, she said, “I don’t need a fucking babysitter, Natalie. Get your own life,” and cried between sips of a coffee. Today, I decided to give her space. She could be resting right now, watching what she wants to watch instead of pretending to be interested in what we like, or maybe she’s sniffing lines of cocaine on someone’s sink. The withdrawals are hitting. The elixir must not be in her system anymore.
“Well, I hope she’ll be okay,” I say, and clear my throat. “Can you play the video again?”
He moves to rest his head against my shoulder. “This one is boring.”
“You’re seeing it from your adventurous eye. Not your creative eye. The way you move seamlessly through the moments, woof.” The way I can look at it and not see shadows there, pay attention to it so I’m not searching his room for ghostly faces.
“Boring,” Ray says.
I’m not sure why, but I ask, “Do you feel that way about me?”
Ray lifts his head, and his brows knit. “You’re far from boring.”
I look at his corkboard on the wall. There are pictures of him with friends on white sand beaches, snowboarding and mountain climbing, and so many different sunsets. “You do this dope stuff in front of the camera. There’s nothing I do that’s even a little cool besides capturing the moments.” Except taking pictures of the dead and practicing necromancy, but both are more scary than cool.
“Pretty sure the time you swam in cold-ass water in the dark counts,” he says. “Not everyone’s interested in hanging off a mountain with a rope and some hooks. You can be fun in other ways. I like you just fine.”
“Really?”
“Really.” He reaches out to touch my fro. “But if you feel that way about yourself, maybe something in you is telling you to take risks. You wanna go mountain climbing?”
“Sounds like an easy way to fall to my death, or have a heart attack.”
Ray props his head up with a pillow. “How about starting with something less extreme? Call out of work and go dancing? Eat sushi?”
“A little more extreme, and something that won’t leave me broke. But, yes, I can try,” I say. I will, I decide. But another day. Maybe. Right now, I want to kiss Ray. So I do.
Back at home, I’m quick to call Inez first. She seems strange when she answers. She doesn’t speak about her brush with death or tell me not to talk about ghosts when I let her know about the white eyes in Ray’s room. “Just eyes? What about the rest of the face?” She laughs, then, “You should ask Mili. I’m still only seeing shadows, and not as much as before.”
When we hang up, I realize she sounded strange because she seems happy. I don’t know how to feel about it, but Inez isn’t the only one who seems happy today. Ma talks to me about the counselors in the program, the other people who need support, the ones who grew up in Prov. She knows someone from middle school who has been three years clean thanks to CODAC.
She even does the dishes while I clean the countertops.
“You look good today,” I say.
“Mmm. You know what might make me even better? The stuff you gave me in Butler.”
My insides twist. “I don’t think…”
She turns to me, grabs both my arms with wet hands. “Would you ask Miliani’s mom?”
I look down at where she’s got ahold of me. “No, Ma. I’m not going to ask again.”
“Oh.” She smacks her lips together and lets me go.
When she turns back to the sink, an uneasy feeling gets a grip on me. I wonder if her mood would’ve shifted to sweet if I told her I’d get more.