Authors: Nova Ren Suma
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Social Issues, #Runaways, #Horror & Ghost Stories, #Visionary & Metaphysical
All I can see on her face is that any
possible thing in the world could happen
to her—her fate is completely unwritten.
That’s not me being psychic; that’s me
being kind and not corrupting her with
what I know.
There’s another knock on the door,
and then he’s here. He seems surprised
to find Rain in my room with me, also
disappointed he hasn’t found me alone.
But he still comes in; he still leans up
against the wall beside the bed.
There’s a difference in what Rain
believes about me, and what Jamie
believes. Rain
wants
to believe any
wild thing to the point that I could tell
her there is, right this very moment, a
shrunken shadow crawling on the ceiling
directly over her head, about to bound
down to her shoulders, about to come
and curse her future, and she’d believe it
because she wants to believe. But she
only wants the horror-movie shiver, so
delicious because it can be turned off
when the lights go up and the movie’s
over.
Jamie believes that
I
believe, and
that’s all that matters to him. He knows
what the doctors have said; my mom told
him. Besides, I can tell by the way he
looks at me sometimes, the unsaid
diagnosis scuttling beneath his lips. How
terrifying that must be for him, to not
know for sure what’s happening to me
yet.
“Oh hi, Jamie,” Rain says, blushing.
“I should go.”
She slips out and pulls the door
closed with her, so now it’s just Jamie
and me.
He edges closer until he’s beside the
bed. I move my book so he can climb up,
and he does, leaning against the pillows
propped up behind me so our shoulders
touch. “So glad you’re home,” he says.
He takes my bad arm and holds my hand.
“Me too,” is all I say. I don’t
apologize again about the arson charges;
he’s told me to stop bringing it up. I
don’t say how even though I’m home
from the hospital, that doesn’t mean I’m
cured. Because I’ll never be the way I
was before, and there’s a reason I know
this, there’s a reason I hold it like a
whisper in my ear, hearing it again and
again, even when I tell myself not to
listen. There’s a reason.
“How’re you feeling?” he asks, his
fingers laced in my fingers, his wrist
against my bad wrist.
“Tired,” I say. “It’s the meds. I don’t
know if they’re helping, except that they
make me tired. So tired I can’t even read
this book.”
He sits up straighter. “They’re
helping,”
he
says.
“They’re
not
helping?”
“Sure. They’ve helped a lot.” I turn to
the window.
“What’s out there?” he asks. “What
are you looking at?” Whenever I look at
anything, anything at all, he’s going to
ask me what I’m seeing. I need to get
used to it.
“Just that tree,” I say. And I
am
gazing
at the tree I have no memory of standing
so close to my house in the backyard, the
tree brushing its branches against my
window. How is it I never realized a
tree was right beside my bedroom
before? A whole tree?
I don’t want to say what else I’m
seeing.
“Did you find out about any others?” I
ask, changing the subject.
He hesitates. “You sure you want to
know?”
“Always.”
Jamie’s been helping me. My mom
keeps track of what sites I visit on the
computer, but he understands my need to
know what happened to them.
“Shyann Johnston,” he says, pulling a
printout from his backpack to show me.
“She made it home. See?”
I take in a breath, holding my mind
very still in fear of its reaction, as I read
the story he’s printed out about her.
Apparently she won a prize at the
senior-class science fair, and this is
dated just last month, which means she
couldn’t have frozen to death in a vacant
lot in Newark, she couldn’t have died.
It’s always a beautiful thing when a girl I
thought had found a tragic end turns out
to still be alive. I feel choked up about
it, in my throat, and I hold my hands
there, hovering, letting the relief sink in.
I felt the same when I learned about
Yoon-mi Hyun and Maura Morris, who
ran away to Canada and did make it up
there together before they got sent home.
Some girls don’t have such good ends.
Hailey Pippering’s remains were found
in a landfill during the time I was in the
hospital. And Kendra Howard was
pronounced deceased even though she
hasn’t washed ashore yet. The lake is
deep, and town officials say they may
never find her body.
Whenever I learn a bad thing about
one of the girls, it breaks me up some
more. Which might be why Jamie usually
only brings me the good stories, the
happy ends.
Besides, I won’t need his help soon.
I’ll have private access to a computer
again, and I’ll be able to take up the
searching. I’ll keep checking, with or
without him.
Silently, to myself, I’ve vowed to
check up on all the girls. Whether we
had a true connection or not doesn’t
much matter to me. These are real girls.
They’re important. The runaways, too,
even if the police don’t act like it. Even
if the girls’ families don’t care and don’t
go looking, I vow to. These girls matter.
I need to know what happened to every
last one of them.
“Thank you,” I tell Jamie. Knowing
about Shyann has lifted my spirits a
little, and I find myself turning to the
window again, almost smiling.
Jamie’s eyes follow mine, but he says
nothing. It’s best if he doesn’t ask what
I’m seeing out that window or what I’m
thinking.
Because I’m thinking how I know
what’s going to happen. I couldn’t see
Shyann’s true fate, not in the real world,
but mine is another story.
The therapist will stop asking me
questions about the lost girls, and I’ll
stop bringing them up. It’s safer that
way. Because even though the pills I
swallow have taken the girls from me,
it’s not like I’m alone. Not entirely.
There’s one girl who’s always here
and always will be. Even through the
Brillo Pad walls the meds create in my
mind—through which I can sometimes
only see her in the space of the tiniest,
fuzziest pinhole—she’s here. She stays
with me because she never felt at home
in that house next door.
We’ll grow up together, though Fiona
Burke will stay perpetually 17, with the
red dye never inching out of her dark
roots, the
FU
never fading from her
frayed jeans. She’ll wear the scowl she
always has; her mouth has grown into the
shape of it, even though she’s softened
on me and I can make her smile
sometimes.
That’s something I can be sure of. I
can see my life with Fiona cascading on
into the distance, and I’m not so sure
about my life with Jamie. We’re back
together, but I don’t know how long he’ll
end up staying.
Fiona will stay. She’ll be with me on
my first day back to school next week,
and she’ll keep me company during
summer school so I don’t have to repeat
the eleventh grade. Sometimes she’ll
whisper the wrong answers to me during
trig tests, but mostly she’ll sleep through
class, as she did when she was a student.
If there were a way to sever the
invisible ball-and-chain that connects
her to me, and me to her, she’d be the
first one there with the chain saw.
Fiona Burke will continue to be with
me next year. Hers will be the first face
I’ll see on the morning of my eighteenth
birthday, before I even look in the mirror
to confirm I can still see my own. She
won’t make a big deal of it, even though
my mom will bake up my favorite box-
mix cake and bring out the balloons. But
Fiona will be happy for me, to know I
survived. I’ll catch her staring at me, not
only with jealousy, because she knows
she’ll always have a place at the table
with me, even if my mom doesn’t see her
in the third chair and doesn’t set out an
extra piece of cake.
Fiona will join me at prom, meeting
me in the bathroom when I go in to touch
up my eyeliner, and she’ll try and fail to
keep quiet when Jamie tries to slow
dance with me after spilling the spiked
punch all over his rented tux.
She’ll be in the back row during my
graduation ceremony; when I cross the
stage she’ll be one among many who
will cheer my name.
We’ll spend years together, Fiona and
I, like childhood friends who grow old
side by side. Some might say that means
I’ll spend my life being haunted. Or that
I won’t ever be better because of her.
Either way, whatever the explanation, I
know I’ll forever hear her voice
thrumming through my head.
Still, I can’t blame her for staying
with me. She doesn’t have a life of her
own anymore; the only way she can live
is to walk alongside mine.
There will come a day, decades from
now, when I’m again in a bed much like
this one. I might have cancer, I might be
lucky and simply be dying of old age, I
can’t know that part of my fate yet. What
I do know is that I won’t be alone for it.
I’ll look across the room and there
will be the 17-year-old girl I’ve known
all my life. Not a wrinkle or a mark of
age on her. She’ll want to jump on the
bed. She’ll want to poke the home-care
aide with her needle and eat all my Jell-
O before I can get to it. She’ll simply be
trying to lift my mood before I go.
Because Fiona Burke will never grow
up and she won’t want me to, either.
This is what I don’t tell Jamie. He’s
looking out the window right now, and
he doesn’t even see her.
She heaves a sigh, stretches out her
arms, and cracks her knuckles, then
balances on the branch of the oak tree to
climb inside the room. She eyes the two
of us sitting on the bed together and stays
perched on the windowsill, not willing
to get any closer.
You’re not going to do it while I’m
here watching, are you?
Fiona says.
I feel my cheeks go hot and shake my
head.
Can’t we go out somewhere and have
some fun or something? God! I’m so
bored. You were in that hospital so
long, I thought I’d go INSANE,
she
says. She giggles a bit at the last word.
She enjoys using it around me.
“You sure you’re all right?” Jamie
says. “Do you want to get out of here, go
for a walk or something? Get a coffee?
Take a drive?”
“Maybe later,” I answer them both.
Fiona sighs again, loudly, letting me
know her deep discontent, but Jamie
leans forward and brushes my hair from
my face, and by the way he’s sitting, his
shoulders are blocking the view of Fiona
at the windowsill. “Hey,” he says, “we
don’t have to go anywhere. We can stay
right here.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Okay. Let’s do that.”
The vanity mirror over my dresser
reflects this scene back to me:
Jamie with his arm over my shoulders
and his other hand keeping ahold of my
hand. A lock of curly hair drops forward
into his face like he can’t ever stop it
from doing. Beside him is a girl with
choppy, dark hair with lighter roots
growing in, and her eyes are wide open,
and her cheeks are a little hollow,
though there’ll be couscous for dinner
later and she’ll eat two plates. She’s
wearing black and gray, like she does
most days, and the room she’s in is
brightly lit by the sun streaming through