A Soul's Kiss (17 page)

Jessica

I’m so excited. I have Michael all to myself. No Hannah for a while.

The tremors start in my legs, my real legs, and I begin to feel all goose-bumply. And strong. When Hannah opened all her mental doors, conceding I was here, it was like she went all shrinky-dink inside. I could take over at will. I’m not being mean or anything. We both feel bad that this is happening. I let her cry. It seems appropriate and when the nurse comes in it’s fitting that someone would be distraught over the terrible thing that has happened to me. I admit that a few of the tears are mine. Maybe half of them.

Oh my gosh, Hannah is having an accident. It’s one of my biggest fears—soaking through on my period. I don’t know what made her think she could go this long without using the restroom.

The nurse leaves the room and Michael says he’ll take me, that is, Hannah, home. I don’t want to look directly at Rashanda and see her disapproval. She knows me too well. But she’ll get a good laugh when Hannah turns and she sees the back of our jeans. It’s great that somebody else gets the humiliation and embarrassment. It’s like I get to conquer the fear without all the bad stuff.

“Don’t you have something to whisper to Jessica?” Rashanda asks. She’s talking to Hannah about my comatose body, but something in her tone makes me think she’s secretly messaging
me
.

I don’t take my eyes off Michael. “I’ll be back, Jessica,” I say to my other self lying so still in the bed. I’m getting a little too disconnected, literally and figuratively. I laugh at my pun and realize I’m laughing aloud. Perfect. It’s Hannah’s laugh, sour and unpleasant even to these ears.

Michael has Hannah’s hand and I savor his touch though it isn’t as warm as I expected, but I turn and immerse myself in the whole delightful idea of him.

“Hannah,” Rashanda calls. “I need to talk to you. Girl stuff.”

I make Hannah drop Michael’s hand, deciding he doesn’t need to be a part of the embarrassment after all.

“What?”

“In here,” she says, opening the door to the private bathroom.

As soon as we’re shut inside the small room, I give a little jump and squeal. “It’s me. It’s me, Rashanda. I’ve totally taken over Hannah.” I grin my biggest stupid smile. “Ask me anything only Jessica would know and I’ll prove it.”

“What do you always call me? Which, incidentally, I don’t like.”

“Silly quadroon and sorry, that was the last time.”

“Right, unless Hannah is listening and it’ll be on Facebook tomorrow.” Rashanda pauses and wiggles her finger at my pants. “You’ve leaked through. There’s a dark stain on your butt. Here,” she says, taking off her windbreaker. “There’s a hospital style pad in the cupboard. Don’t ask me how I know. When you come out you can tie this around your waist.” I can’t believe how accepting she is of this new state of things.

“Are you mad at me?”

“No, I just want you to wake up. Wake. Up. You know, like, really wake up and also wake up about Michael. He’s not for you. There are better options out there. Close by.”

I roll Hannah’s eyes at her. She puts her hand on the doorknob and I say, “Wait. I, uh, I can’t seem to get out of Hannah.”

“Why not?”

“I think there are two reasons. For one thing, with you and Tyler and Michael, I slipped in while you were sort of dreaming. With Hannah, she was fully awake. She wouldn’t acknowledge me for days.” I look down at our feet. It was nice to have the feeling of feet in shoes. “And two, I’m pretty sure Hannah wants me to stay.”

“But weren’t you here to try to get back into Jessica’s, uh,
your
body?”

“Yes, but . . .”

“What?” Rashanda starts cocking her head like she’s solving a complex equation. “Oh, no. You want to stay in Hannah, don’t you?”

“Rashanda,” I concentrate hard on keeping Hannah down, because what I’m going to say next might make her creep back, “we’re going to be Homecoming queen. I
have
to stay.”

Tyler

We had a little stare down, me and that a-hole Michael. I can’t understand what any girl, even Hannah, could see in him. Biggest phony in the school. In grade school he was a bully on the playground. He hadn’t changed a bit—he just fooled more people.

“What are
you
looking at, quitter?” The words snarled out of his mouth like he was playing a gangster part. Crap, if he called me quitter one more time I’d make him wish he hadn’t.

“To answer your earlier question,” I said as calmly as I could, “about what we’re all doing here—it should be obvious, even to an idiot, that we’re all concerned about Jessica. Remember Jessica? The girl you put in the hospital?”

“Hey, I wasn’t driving.”

Something about the way he said it made me think he was lying. Even though I was fairly certain that Keith would never let anyone else drive his brand new car, Michael’s response made me question that assumption.

“You were responsible,” I said, keeping my attention steady on his face. He didn’t deny it. He shifted his weight to his other foot and glanced at the bathroom door.

The door opened and Rashanda came out. I had a glimpse of Hannah fixing her hair in front of the mirror, changing the part with her fingers, and then the door closed and Rashanda leaned against it. She looked at me and gave me a tight-lipped nod, then took a breath and spoke to Michael.

“She’ll be out in a minute. Uh, she’s embarrassed. She’ll probably act funny. Be nice to her.” She stared at Michael and made the most un-Rashanda statement: “Be nice or you’ll
flippin’
wish you had.” I wondered how she suddenly got her nerve back around him. It made me smile.

Michael moved back an inch then drew himself up a little taller as Hannah came out. “Just a second,” he said to her. He came over to the hospital bed and leaned in close to Jessica’s ear. He whispered too low for me to hear, but her legs started quivering again and Hannah started bouncing on her toes, anxious or jealous or nervous, I couldn’t tell.

Or connected.

Crap.

Don’t go with him
, I almost said, moving away from Jessica’s bed and looking to Rashanda for help.

Rashanda stepped in my way and pulled me back toward the window. “It’s okay, let her leave.” I thought of last Thursday when I’d said nearly the same thing to her. Things didn’t work out too well then.

Hannah, or I guess it was Jessica now, left with that jerk. She had Rashanda’s jacket tied around her waist. The door closed softly behind them. I was split between running after Hannah and staying right there with Jessica. Split. Just like Jessica was split from her body.

“How long,” I asked Rashanda, “how long do you think Jessica can be split in two like this? Is it her soul? Her spirit? I don’t get it.”

Rashanda moved to the chair by Jessica’s head and sat down. “I don’t know. My grandmother says you have a body, a soul, and a spirit. The body is aware of the world, you know, like touching and smelling and seeing. The soul is aware of yourself. Thinking, I guess. And the spirit is aware of God. I think it’s her soul that’s separated from her body.”

Strange. I didn’t understand any of that. I thought if your soul left your body you were dead. I thought the soul and the spirit were the same thing. I wanted to hit something.

Rashanda leaned closer to Jessica’s head and whispered in her ear. She wasn’t as soft as Michael had been and I heard what I’d expect a friend to say. Words of hope. Distress. Support. And then her words fell lower and she begged her not to be Homecoming queen. Or maybe I heard that wrong.

“Well, we can go now, I suppose,” Rashanda leaned back. “Jessica is not coming back for awhile.”

“What?”

Rashanda had the saddest look in her eyes. “Jessica is going to be Hannah at least until after Homecoming. Who knows how long she can stay ‘out of body’ like this. Two more weeks may be fatal. Maybe she’s . . . gone . . . already.” She couldn’t mean dead. I watched the breathing machine go up and down.

“Why Homecoming?”

“Didn’t you see the lists this morning? Hannah and Michael are the obvious choices for king and queen. The rest of the ones on the ballot aren’t nearly so popular. Jessica can stay inside Hannah and live her dream fantasy.” Rashanda looked pissed.

I tipped my head toward the restroom. “What did you two say in there? Did she tell you all that?”

“Basically, yeah.”

“And you didn’t talk her out of it?”

“No point. She can be stubborn. And besides, she said she was stuck inside of Hannah and couldn’t get out like she did with us.”

I gripped the cold railing of the bed.

Rashanda kissed her fingers and pressed them to Jessica’s immobilized forehead and said she’d meet me in the hall if I wanted to stay and say goodbye.

I felt awkward to be alone with a sleeping Jessica. Her body was so still now. I put both my hands on one of hers and clasped it briefly. I had no right to hold her hand so I put my fingers back on the rail. I studied her face. Her skin was so smooth and white you’d never know she’d started the school year with an awesome tan. I had some things I wanted to explain to her before she woke, before a nurse came in, before her parents returned.

“Jessica.” The single word seemed too loud. I whispered then, “Jessica, I, um, I was going to ask you to Homecoming.” I glanced back at the door to make sure it was closed. I leaned over to her ear and told her more. Maybe, just maybe, if her spirit was still there and the physical hearing and all was still connected she would hear me. I might as well say it all, red-faced and white-knuckled. “Jessica,” oh, crap, “I love you.”

Jessica

Monday afternoon

Michael presses the down button for the elevator and looks at me, or rather Hannah, sideways. I run my fingers through her hair. I like being blonde. I smile at Michael. Or rather, grin. Probably a stupid I-know-something-you-don’t-know grin.

We step into the elevator and as soon as the doors close, I tell him, in Hannah’s softest voice, the good news.

“Guess what? I’m not pregnant.”

His face is blank. I suppose he’s never practiced a reaction to that kind of news. I laugh and press the lobby button. I don’t know how personal I can be as Hannah, but as the new Hannah I’m free to invent myself so I say, “I got my period.”

“So why would you have worried about getting pregnant? You said you were on the pill.”

“Oh yeah, never mind that I said that.” I try for a semi-giggle. Thankfully the elevator door opens and Michael steps out first. I take an instant to review Hannah’s personal memories. It isn’t like thumbing through a magazine, more like rewinding and fast forwarding. She never had a prescription for the pill. Her whole plan to trap Michael played out in my head like additional features on a DVD.

“Hold up. Wait.” I scoot up to Michael and take his hand. “I was just kidding. I had an accident. Thus the kindness of Rashanda.” I shake the flapping cuff of the windbreaker.

“Thus?” He drops my hand and goes through the revolving door first. I guess I’m
not
sounding very much like Hannah. I quickly replay some bland lunchroom chatter of theirs to get a feel for my part. I am understudying Hannah for the lead in the best high school drama ever, at least in my opinion, and I don’t want to blow it.

“Yeah,” I say, catching up to him. “Rashanda lent me her jacket to cover up the, uh, stain. Nice of her.” Then I add, “Such a little do-gooder, huh? A suck-up.” A twinge of disloyalty pricks my conscience and I can hear Rashanda’s gentle voice coaxing me to come back up to the hospital room.

We reach his car and split off to separate sides. I guess he isn’t in the habit of holding doors for Hannah. I’ve idealized him a bit, I suppose, but there’s nothing wrong with him being like every other teenaged guy. How many girls want a guy to put her on a pedestal anyway?

I buckle my seatbelt and smile at him. He smiles back and seems to hesitate a moment. “So, you all right, then?”

I nod and try to keep the butterflies down. He hasn’t buckled up yet and he’s leaning my way. A kiss is imminent. I lick my lips and let the adrenalin fuel the rush of anticipation. Michael Hoffman is going to kiss me. Me, not Hannah.

But he won’t know it’s not Hannah.

“What’s the matter?” he says, pulling back.

“Nothing. What’s the matter with
you
?” There, that sounds like Hannah.

“You’re acting weird,” is all he says.

“No, I’m not.” Just the right hint of bitchiness. I close my eyes and hope I look ready for that kiss. All I see in my imagination is Tyler’s face, though, and his voice saying
I love you.
As clear as if he were whispering it in my ear. Hannah laughs at me from wherever she is and my eyes, her eyes, spring open. Michael isn’t looking at us, me; he’s staring at the car next to us. His expression blisters with anger. Mrs. Clark might praise his emoting skills, but I’m confused by them. He starts the car and drives me home, well, to Hannah’s house. I hope there will be a goodbye kiss, but he never even looks at me when we pull up the driveway.

“See ya tomorrow,” he says.

I am totally confused about what he could be so angry about. What did I do? I reach for the door handle and try to come up with the right thing to say to bring back the nice Michael. “Okay, text me.” So lame. Hannah is no help at all. “See ya.” I shove the door closed.

I have some serious thinking and planning to do. I need to call my best friend.