Dust to Dust

Three

I SIT UP IN bed with a start, sweat on my forehead. My eyes adjust to the dim light of the early morning, and my shades are drawn. My room is fine, neat and tidy. It was a dream. But my heart is racing and when I raise my hands in front of me, they’re shaking. Those voices sounded so real.

I hear a low crackling sound, like static from a radio, and I scan the room to find my old alarm clock in the corner—the one I used to have before I started using the alarm on my phone. I stand up and walk over to it. The numbers that tell the time are blinking and the radio is tuned between stations. That’s weird. I probably haven’t turned this thing on for years. I shut it off and open my laptop to see if there was a power surge or something.

There’s a blank page open on my screen—a Word document that hasn’t been written yet. I don’t remember starting anything.

No more pills. Clear your mind.

I look over my shoulder quickly, heart starting to race. No one’s there. Stay calm, Callie. Could someone be logged into my network somehow, like with a shared screen? The letters are in bold italics, strong and urgent.

What if it’s him?

Thatcher. I feel my mind start to spin, whirling with excited panic. Could he talk to me this way? Can he reach me across worlds? Is he real, and really here? And if he’s here . . . were they here? My “dear friends” from the other side? Whoever they were?

Glancing back at the window, I reach over to open the shade. Slowly, my hand shaking, I pull back the bottom corner. It’s there. I see it. A long, jagged crack.

I drop the shade quickly and slam my laptop closed, hurrying into the bathroom that’s attached to my room, where I turn on all the lights and run the faucet, splashing my face with water. Wake up wake up wake up.

I stare at myself in the mirror, wild-eyed and wet. These pills are turning me into a crazy person. Ghosts, poltergeists, another world. Maybe I’m hallucinating because of the meds.

I take a deep breath and dry my face, still flushed. My dark-blond curls are wild, so I pull them into a knotted bun.

I walk over to the window and throw up the shade. I wince. The crack is there, clear as day. I take a deep breath. It’s probably from a bird that hit the window or expansion from humidity or something, but I must have seen it and created a nightmare around it, complete with ominous voices.

I shake my head and pull on a sweater to deal with my father’s over-air-conditioning habit. It’s comforting, in a way, that my dad still keeps our house as cold as a morgue. Consistency is nice, even if it means I have to wear long sleeves inside at the end of summer.

I start to make my bed, pulling up the comforter and fluffing the pillow back into place. When I pick it up, for a moment, I catch a whiff of something familiar. Thatcher. He had a smell, like fresh-cut grass, and I inhale to find it there, in my pillowcase. God, I really am insane.

On my nightstand, the bottle of pills seems to stand out, like there’s a spotlight on it. If the pills are what’s making me so confused, what’s creating these crazy dreams, I don’t want to take them anymore. I don’t want to keep wondering what’s real and what isn’t. There’s too much uncertainty: Weirdness with Nick. The nightmares. Wisps of another world.

Enough of this.

I grab the painkiller bottle and go downstairs to the dining room, where my father is eating a sandwich. I tell him that I want to go see the doctor.

“No,” I say, placing the pills on the table in front of him. “I need to get off the meds.”

“It’s too soon,” Dad says immediately, not even considering my request. “Your body’s been through a great deal of trauma.”

I knew he’d object.

“I want my mind to be clear.” I hold on to the edge of a wooden dining room chair, my grip tight with determination.

“Clear of what?”

“I’ve been seeing more of those visions,” I say. And it’s not a lie. I have. I tried to talk to a bird yesterday, for goodness’ sake. Not to mention today’s radio and laptop incidents. And after last night, I’m more worried about why I’m so confused about Nick—and why I’m sniffing my sheets for a whiff of a boy who isn’t real. While the phantom pains I feel when I don’t take my pill on time are unpleasant, the phantom brain activity is worse.

“I see,” he says. “Are you still seeing a cloudy world filled with other souls?”

I nod, cringing inwardly at the description that I’d given him of the Prism, this world that lives and breathes in my head. It was more than that, though—it was glistening and calm and quiet, really wonderful at times. And if that place were the only thing that plagued my mind, I could deal with it. What I haven’t told my father is that it’s the person, the one who echoes inside me somehow. . . .

As I ease myself into a hard-backed chair, my father looks at me, concerned.

“You have to give yourself time to heal,” he says, his voice soft and strong all at once. And I know I’m not going to win this fight.

“I feel stronger,” I say, still trying. “I do.”

“There may be a lot of pain if you go off the pills.”

“I know,” I say. “I’m tough.”

“Yes, you are,” he says. “But I’m afraid the answer is still no. We need to work on the doctors’ time line—not yours.”

I frown at him as I offer a stiff nod. It’s useless to argue with a dad who gives orders for a living. Still, I need to show him I’m capable, so I shove the pills into my pocket and stand up to clear his plate.

“Leave it. Carla’s coming later,” says my father, who hasn’t put away a dish in . . . well, ever, as far as I know.

“I can manage,” I tell him with a grin. “Let Carla do the harder stuff—like laundry.”

“You’re getting better day by day, Callie,” Dad says, not trying to stop me from moving around for once. He unfolds the newspaper at the same time that he meets my gaze. “Don’t think I don’t notice.”

I put the dishes in the sink and raise my eyebrows at him expectantly.

“But you still need the medication,” he says, turning to the front page. “Just a little longer.”

My arms are starting to feel sturdy again—I’ve worked with weights in physical therapy, and my final appointment is later today.

While I’m definitely still weaker than usual, and these small prickles of pain do hit at unexpected times, I think I’m doing really well for someone who was lying flat on her back for almost two months.

I shake the pill bottle and pour myself a glass of water, the one I’m supposed to use to wash down my next dose right about now. Dad looks up at me, and I open the bottle slowly. Then I mime sticking a pill under my tongue and swallowing it, like a dutiful daughter.

His smile makes me feel guilty as I drop the pill into the drain and flush it with the remaining water in my glass. My father isn’t the only headstrong McPhee in this house.

I walk outside onto the porch. The book I was reading yesterday still rests on the yellow-and-white striped pillows in the swing.

Standing at the porch railing, I look out over the lawn. It’s vibrating with buzzing bees in the clover and ladybugs crawling on the wild strawberry leaves. There’s so much life all around me, and I want to grab it and hold it in my hands, feeling its movement, its pulse, its energy.

Your reverence for life is so beautiful.

I hear the voice. It’s not my own, but it’s clear as crystal. It’s his.

I spin around toward the house. No one’s there.

“Who said that?” I whisper.

No response. But he is here. It’s not a knowing, or even a feeling. It’s more . . . an impression. That’s the word. His soul is impressed into my space, and I can tell it’s near. Is it the trace of the last pill I took making me feel this way, or is it . . .

“Thatcher, if you’re real, you have to show me,” I whisper into the air. Maybe when I get further from my last pill, in a few hours, this will be over, these imaginings will be gone, and I’ll be back to normal. And that’s what I want, right? To be done with this dreamworld that makes me feel split in two?

Nick will have the old Callie back, someone who’s undistracted and uncomplicated—and fully in love with him. Dad will know my good sense has returned. I’m not a wacko who thinks there’s a ghost boy out there trying to reach me. I’ll stop whispering to myself, stop smelling sheets and being frightened by radio static and talking to birds.

But just in case . . . just in case he’s real, I want to give him a chance to reveal himself.

And I’m grateful and disappointed all at once.

I read for a little while, but eventually I head upstairs with a plan to stream the newest episodes of my favorite show. From the den, Dad calls, “Get some more rest, Callie. If you expect to go off the pills soon, you need to save your energy.”

I pause for a moment in my open door, and then I click it shut and lean against it, frozen.

Save your energy. I’ve heard that before. From him.

A chill works its way up my spine, and although I don’t feel pain, I do feel something. The hairs on my arm prick up, and I have that sense again of being . . . not alone. I cast a glance around the four corners of my room. Not an item out of place, not a shadow that moves. And still . . . something, or someone, is here.

Bzzzt.

My phone lights up with a text from a number I don’t recognize.

Callie, call me.

My breath quickens as I wonder if it’s possible; if he were able to contact me this way . . . would he?

My fingers are hitting Call before my brain catches up to them, and it’s ringing, ringing . . . click.

“Thatcher?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Green,” I say, cutting him off. “But I’ve already told someone at your paper that I’m not interested in doing a story.”

“But if we could just—” he tries again.

“I’m afraid I can’t talk,” I tell him. “Please don’t contact me again. Good-bye.”

I end the call abruptly and throw the phone down on my bed. Carson!

I head to the bathroom. I’m so angry with my best friend that I could scream. How can she think I’m ready to talk to the media about any of this? I can’t even get my own head straight.

And there’s another reason that I was so rude to the reporter on the phone. I thought the text might have been from Thatcher, and I’m shaking with anxiety.

I turn on the hot water, deciding that a shower will clear my head. As the room fills with steam, I look into the mirror. My eyes are watery and threatening to spill over with tears. The mirror is fogging up slowly, masking my sad face.

Suddenly, as if someone is holding a finger up to the glass, a message beings to appear.

N . . . o . . . m . . . o . . . r . . . e . . . p . . . i . . . l . . . l . . . s.

I feel a surge of happiness inside—he’s here.

As the message continues, I put my own hand up to the mirror, trying to feel the energy from his soul. I trace each letter as it’s spelled out, hoping I can touch something, some part of him.

I . . . n . . . e . . . e . . . d . . . y . . . o . . . u . . .

I gasp. But then the letters continue.

t . . . o . . . b . . . e . . . a . . . w . . . a . . . r . . . e.

I need you to be aware.

“Thatcher?” I whisper.

And then, without hesitation, comes the next word:

Y . . . e . . . s.

An audible gasp escapes my lips and I lean on the edge of the sink to keep my balance.

“Where are you? Can I see you?”

I grab the bottle of pills and pour them all into the toilet, flushing it before I can think twice.

I turn off the shower and step back into my room, where it’s as if everything is under water. I shake my head, trying to knock loose the memory I have of this room—this very room—in another universe. It was my sanctuary, my resting place, my haven, and a space where I was safe from . . . from what? I open my eyes quickly, suddenly afraid of what I’ll see. I haven’t had a pill since last night, and now the visions are coming faster and faster.

This is what I remember: Misty surroundings, quiet awe, a need for peace and order. Thatcher’s stormy blue eyes looking at me intensely, questioning my strong emotions as I came to terms with my presumed death, as I tried to understand all the things he told me in his soothing voice. It was soothing, wasn’t it? Even though at first it was . . . distant. Thatcher was my Guide, tasked with teaching me to haunt my loved ones and help them move on from my “death” through a connection that transcended both our worlds. He was patient with me, closed off at first but opening up little by little, until . . .

A rush of heat hits my face as I remember a kiss. The kiss. The one that did more than take my breath away—it took my soul somewhere.

I wasn’t really dead. I was alive. I am alive.

I grab my phone and take a photo of the nearly faded message on the bathroom mirror, and then I spray the glass with Windex and wipe it clean with a towel so Dad won’t see. “Thatcher, help me remember,” I whisper into the stillness of my room. But there’s no response, and talking to him out loud makes me feel crazy.

I think of something my first grade teacher told me after Mama died, a technique she taught. “If you can’t speak it, write it down.” I drew picture after picture of Mama, wrote simple words to her about my sadness, about missing her. It did help, a little. Maybe I can use that now.

I take my journal out of its spot in my nightstand, and I curl up on my bed with a green pen, scribbling furiously.

Thatcher,

I’m trying to remember things. The way you were teaching me to haunt. The way you were gentle with me, patient. And also how I could be stubborn, how you could be too. Sometimes you were quiet, other times you were stern. There was so much to you, so many layers for me to peel back. You were a challenge. I am, too. Is that why we were drawn to each other?

I’m afraid. I’m afraid that it was only me, that I wanted to be close to you and that you were just doing your job. But that isn’t true, is it?

Because I also remember your face when you looked at me, really looked at me. It was full of emotion—it glowed. Was it just reflecting my own feelings back at me, like a mirror, or did you feel it too? You must have felt it. Because I also remember how I burned when you touched me, like there was a light inside me that had never been switched on until you came.

My pen stills. Am I saying too much? I lean back in my bed, suddenly exhausted by the emotions that are coursing through me.

I’m alive again; I’ve got a second chance. But living my life means letting go of a world that was starting to become my new everything. Now that my system is getting free of the pills, I’m uncovering the truth: The Prism is real. Thatcher is real. And I think I’m in love with him.