Almost Alive (22 page)

“I promise.”
  I only struck such a bargain because I knew that no matter what we faced, I would always find the boy who was kind enough to take care of me when my parents didn’t care enough to understand me.  My friends had abandoned me, and I had made a mockery out of myself, but there would always be Julian.  Just as I would always have him, he would always have me.

He smiled.  “Remember that you said that.”

“I will, but it’s not gonna matter.  The both of us are going to be free after today.”  Optimism wasn’t my strong suit, but I smiled and made myself comfortable while I listened to tales from the bible on my way to get my soul back.

I tried to sleep for an hour, but I had no success at all.  If bible audio books couldn’t do it, then there was frankly just no hope.  I looked up at Julian and saw hope in his eyes.  I guess he was actually daring t
o believe the impossible, but there was still a pessimistic side to him.

I couldn’t leave him battling his thoughts for the next two hours.  That would be torturous.  I sat up and readjusted my pillow so I could get a better look at him. 
“What were you and Maria like before you killed yourself?”

“What do you mean?”

“You two were close, weren’t you?”

“Incredibly.”

“So you killed yourself anyway because your heart was broken?”  I didn’t mean to be judgmental, but I still thought he was a cruel idiot—I was no better—but I wasn’t close to anyone.  “Girls come and go, but family is forever.”

He sighed and drummed the steering wheel with his fingers for a little beat.  I don’t doubt that he hated to talk about it, but I appreciated that he was alwa
ys brave enough to do it anyway.  “When a spirit comes over you, it can magnify the simplest of feelings.  It can turn something like ‘your parents are working late so they can’t make it to your dance recital’ into ‘nobody loves me’.  I was in a bad place, and I couldn’t get the grief out of my head.  So many people fall prey to demons because they don’t know how to fight against them.  They don’t know that there’s anything to fight.  Even if they believe, they don’t know what to do.”

“Did you believe in demons or God before all this happened?”
  I sure didn’t.

“No, but Maria did.
”  He looked a bit concerned.  “She started exploring darker magic to get our mother back.”

“But she doesn’t believe you’re possessed?”
I asked surprised.  When I brought up Julian’s possession, she was quite coy, but I think she was trying to give me the impression that she believed Julian was crazy.

“I don’t know what she believes.  I can’t trust her.”
  He was supremely frustrated every time he had to mention her.  He tried to act like he was detached, but that wasn’t possible for someone like him.  His heart was bigger than he let on.

“Tell me a happy story about you and her.” 
I pleaded with a smile.

He cocked his brow. 
“Why?”

“I wanna know if there’s any good in her and if there is, I need to know how she used to be.  She’s gonna need to be saved too!”
  If Julian got rid of his demon, that didn’t execute Maria’s issues, and they’d still be apart.  That was unacceptable. 

Julian acted like it was so awful to talk about and rolled his eyes.  He probably had to shut good memories of her out in order to be so mean to her all the time.  He did eventually swallow his pride and conceded.  After all, what else was there to do?

“When my dad told Maria and me about my mother’s illness, she couldn’t deal.  She was only six, so she ran away.  Dad was afraid to let anyone know, because everyone thought he was an unfit parent anyway.  He didn’t want us taken away from him if Mom died.  He started driving around everywhere searching for her, and he left me at home to wait for her. 

“I was afraid
, and I felt powerless, until I heard the chirping of a bird.  I searched in the house and found Maria hiding in a box down in the basement.  She was taking care of a baby bird she had found with a broken wing.  She said that it was sick like momma.”

He became frustrated as he recalled the experience. 
“I wanted to yell at her for hiding.  We screamed all over the house for her, and she never came.  She said that she didn’t trust Dad to take care of us.  He always left, and she said that Mom was gonna leave us too.  We were abandoned like the baby bird.”

He paused and I assumed it was the end of the story and my mouth dropped.  I should have known that cynical freak couldn’t purposely feel good about
his witchy sister.  “That’s one of the saddest stories I’ve ever heard in my life!” 

“That’s because I’
m not finished,” he snipped. “I promised her that I would take care of her, and I promised that I would never abandon her.  She demanded that I proved it.

“The only way I could think
to do that was to fix the baby bird.  We weren’t supposed to leave, but we got on our bikes and pedaled to the closest vet and begged them to fix it.  I told them that it was mine.”

“Did you call your dad and tell him Maria was safe?”

“I did, and he was pretty mad at me.”  I don’t know what was so funny about it, but Julian laughed.  “He didn’t want to take the bird home.  He thought giving us what we wanted when we had misbehaved would be bad for us, but I begged him and told him it was the only way to make Maria happy.  Dad could be stubborn and insensitive, but he listened to me.

“We took the bird home and nursed it back to health.  Maria spent every minute she could with it.
”  Then I saw what I wanted from him.  He flashed back to a happier time when they were both innocent, and I saw his heart through his eyes.  “That bird was like her baby.  They would sing together.  She read it stories and kept it well fed.  She tried to think of a good name, but could never decide.  It was the only bright spot of hope during my mother’s illness, and my father struggling through trying to be a father.  But I always felt bad for the baby bird because no matter how happy it was, it was still a caged bird.

“O
ne day when I was walking home from school, I saw a family of birds in a tree.  The little birds were identical to the one we had found, right down to the exact same shade of blue. 

“I knew Maria
wouldn’t want to give the bird up, but it deserved to be free.  I told her about the family, and she didn’t care.  She said that the mother had abandoned her baby, and she didn’t deserve it.”

I felt my heart ache. 
“So what did you do?”

“I backed off for a while, but then I went to visit my mom in the hospital.  I was reminded how much I wanted my family reunited
, and I decided that I had to convince Maria.

“I took her to the tree and made her watch the family for a while.  The mother bird was pushing the baby birds out of the tree.  Maria thought it was so cruel, but then the baby bird
s learned to fly.  I think she realized how the baby bird broke its wing, but she still thought it was wrong.  I told her that sometimes you have to let go in order for your loved ones to return to you.”

“Did she understand?”
I asked.

“Not completely, but the next day, I saw her release her baby bird
, and it flew right home where it belonged.”  He smiled bittersweet.

“At least she could visit.”

“Not really,” he said sadly.  “It started getting cold, so they flew south for the winter.  Maria was heartbroken, but I explained to her that the mother was taking the risk to save them because if they couldn’t fly, they would freeze to death.”

“And did she finally understand?”

“She did.”  He chuckled joyously.  “And in the spring, there was a family of bluebirds in that same tree.  There was no way to tell if she saw her same bird, but she still finally gave her bird a name.”

“What?”

“Hope.”  He chuckled again, but I think his happiness was mixed in with a bit of hysteria and a lot of resentment and pain.  He wanted to believe in Maria and reunite as brother and sister, but it was difficult for him.  Magic was probably just as addictive to him as any other drug.  As long as she practiced, she was a threat.  But how could he forget such a wonderful little girl?

“When she was older, she admitted that she hated me some days for making her give up her bird.  But she also told me that she learned to under
stand that sometimes family do things that we don’t understand, but it doesn’t mean that they don’t love you.  She told me that she didn’t have a grudge against Dad for bailing.  He should be here, but he’s making good money for us to live off of.  He’s not maternal.  It’s all he knew to do.  She refused to feel abandoned because of Mom’s condition.  It was something she couldn’t help.  She doesn’t blame Dad for holding onto her, because he needs to believe in hope.  He loves Mom.  He can’t stand to see her the way that she is, but knowing that she’s safe and alive is enough to keep him going.”

Julian’s eyes started shinning.  “
And she even forgave me for committing suicide.  She said I that I was trying to find peace, and she understood that.  She said she wouldn’t hold a grudge that could disrupt that peace and she was going to do her best to help me find my hope again.”  Julian very carefully wiped his eyes with the tip of his index finger, so he wouldn’t damage any eyeliner.  He miraculously managed to open up to me and still look flawless at the same time.  I envied him greatly.

“That was the first time I was grateful to be alive again.”
 

It
was an incredibly sweet story, and I became even more determined to free Julian from his demon and his obligations.  He could never be Maria’s big brother as long as he was chasing down demonic forces.  He needed family, not vengeance.  Maria’s dedication to Julian was staggering, and I was even a little frightened to see what sort of lengths she would go to just to have him.  “Do you believe the rumors that she brought you back?”

“No.
”  He dismissed it quickly.  He was probably still refusing to believe that Maria had any real power.  “I figured that God wasn’t done with me yet.  At first, I thought I came back so Maria wouldn’t be alone.  I thought I could redeem the both of us.”

“You can,” I told him.  “When we’re free, we
’ll do it together.”

He smiled and put his eyes back on the road. 
“What about you?  Don’t you have anything positive to say about your parents?”

I shrugged and slumped further into my chair. 
“They did things with me when I was little.  We went to the beach and built sandcastles.  We had Thanksgiving together.  They took me ice skating in the park during winter, and we warmed each other by the fire when we came home.”  As nonchalant as I tried to be with those memories, the one with all of us by the fire did make me feel something.  There was a speck of happiness.  I guess I was happy with them as a child.  I was too young to really remember it that vividly and all I had left was the thought of it and how it must have been nice. 

“
They used to have a little bit more time, but they gave it up so they could fit in their affairs.  They forgot how to love each other and consequentially, forgot how to take care of me.”  I pouted and twiddled my thumbs.  I didn’t want to sound ungrateful to Julian.  At least I had parents.  Shouldn’t I have been grateful?  I should have, but I couldn’t wrap my mind around appreciating what I had when I felt nothing from it.  “I was left alone.”

“That must be hard.” 
He must have thought about his parents.  He should have called me out on how selfish I was, but he actually had puppy eyes for me.  “Were you ever happy?”

“What do you mean?”

              “Who were you before all of this happened?  Were you funny?  Were you a cheerleader in your past life?”  He laughed.  “Did you save kittens from tall trees?”

             
“Are you making fun of me?”  I nudged him in his side with my elbow as I laughed with him. 

             
“No.  I knew I had to change.  Eighty percent of my past life warrants soul suckage, so I’m different.  I have to embrace being alone, because no one else relates to me.”

             
“I guess that’s the price of sin,” I mumbled.

             
“No.  It’s the price of being called.  Sin gets you desires.  It gets you easy friends and pleasures that your flesh adores and would do anything to keep.  You don’t realize that there’s a price until you’ve already paid.”  He had a lot of experience to speak from.

             
“And what’s the price for being called?”

             
“Life.  But after it’s all over, heaven will be our reward.”

             
I didn’t know much about heaven.  On cartoons and movies, it’s a place where you get to see all your loved ones and be happy.  It’s pretty, and you become an angel and get to fly around.  That’s cool—I guess—but I knew that wasn’t true.  There was hell to weed out the unworthy, and it wasn’t as easy as good and evil.  I wasn’t evil, and I ended up in hell.  I didn’t know if I could make it in.  God was a lot stricter than I gave him credit for.  I just didn’t get the sense that he liked me at all.  “Do you really believe that?”