Miyu's Wish (6 page)

I stood at his back and began massaging his bare, thick shoulders, awaiting the words I needed to hear. But they didn’t come. I watched in horror as he slapped away my hands, then grabbed and squeezed them until I cried in pain. I stared at his face; it seemed older now, meaner, his eyes full of withering disdain. I felt myself melting, dissolving around his feet as he glared down at me scornfully.

“Keil,” he said snidely. “I would never date a wench like you.”

His words shattered me into a million fragments of glass, and I blew away like dust in a harsh wind. I felt myself being scattered across the earth, my anguish felt in every shard. But it wasn’t just me in those pieces of glass, but also that boy…

“Miyu! Miyu! Wake up! Wake up!”

I opened my eyes to the sight of Marlene bending over me. The room was still dark, and I could barely see her.

“Wha…what?” was all I could mutter.

“You were having a nightmare, I think,” Marlene said, dropping her voice to a whisper.

“Oh,” I replied dubiously, sitting up. The dream was already slipping away, but my skin prickled with goose bumps.

“Yeah, you kept moaning ‘Keil, Keil,’ or something like that,” came Janet’s voice. She had pushed up next to me.

“Who’s this Keil?” Marlene asked, already settling back into her bag. “Is it another boy you have the hots for?”

Tamara seemed to snort, but it could have been a snore.

“No,” I whispered warily. “I don’t even know a Keil.”

Marlene muttered something unintelligible as she lowered herself into her bag, apparently too tired to push the matter further.

Janet had also fallen back to sleep, and I stroked her wavy hair thoughtfully as if she were a cat.
Keil
, I puzzled to myself.
Why would I have been saying that?
I had no answers, but the name was repugnant somehow. And then the red-haired boy’s reflection flashed before me again.

Quivering, I sank deep into my bag and closed my eyes as hard as I could.

The sleepover ended with a nice breakfast of eggs and waffles, and then our respective guardians arrived to whisk us back to reality.

“Bye everyone,” I sang as I left with my aunt. “And thanks, Marlene! I had a great time.”

“We’ll do it again!” she promised.

“Maybe at your place next!” Janet laughed, giving me a long wave.

I looked at Aunt Mari.

“We’ll see,” she said, smiling softly.

We drove off, following the long road that connected Marlene’s magical abode to the rest of the world. Aunt Mari wanted to know everything about my night, but I only replied in brief, distracted bursts.

“You’ve been very contemplative lately,” she observed.

I looked at her, almost plaintively, and took a deep breath. “Auntie, who were my parents? Do you know what happened to them, why they left me behind?”

She hit the brakes, stopping hard at a stop sign. “Why the sudden interest in your parents?” she asked, giving me an odd
look. “You were abandoned at the orphanage as a baby, and no one saw them come or go. You know that.”

I gazed through my window, watching a young couple drive past. “Sometimes, I think I can remember them. But it’s not a memory so much as a feeling—the sense that I had actually known them.”

Aunt Mari looked perplexed. “Honey, you know that’s impossible. You were only about a year old when they dropped you off. You couldn’t possibly remember them in any form.”

I nodded, knowing she was probably right.

“But Auntie,” I continued quietly as we stopped again at a light. “Why did you adopt me?”

She smiled. “Because you were the most precious child I had ever seen.” She allowed her gaze to linger on me just a moment longer, but then abruptly reached for the radio. “Now how about we listen to some music and just relax for a while?”

A country song about trust and forbidden secrets boomed through the speakers, and she quickly turned to another station.

I sighed to myself as a used-car commercial began playing, recalling Marlene’s words.

If you were adopted, why do you call her ‘aunt’?

Chapter Nine

T
he Monday back to school was mostly uneventful. But even if alien invaders had landed and taken over the school, I wouldn’t have noticed—so consumed was I by that boy who seemed to have taken permanent residence in my mind. I recalled the Japanese cartoon, its two reincarnated protagonists assisting each other to prevent a future tragedy.
Was he someone I knew?

I dropped my forehead onto the Biology table and stared at my feet, remembering the worst of my dreams. I had seen myself as a monster, but then it had spoken, “Remember.” I shuddered.

“Something troubling you?” Clarence said from my right.

Obviously
, is what I wanted to say, but I bit my tongue. He didn’t deserve that. I lifted my head and looked at him. He was holding a jar of pond water in one hand and an eyedropper in the other, preparing to place a few dabs on a slide.

“No, I’m fine,” I said, my voice flat and regretful.

“I see,” he said. “Well, I’m a good listener if you ever want to talk.” He pushed his glasses farther up his nose and went back to preparing his specimen for the microscope.

I rested my head on the palm of my left hand as I watched him work. He genuinely enjoyed science, and I smiled as I watched him ogle the tiny critters now living on that slide. I could easily imagine him in a white lab coat someday, lost in his little world of the strange and invisible.

“I doubt you could help me anyway, unless you happen to be an expert in time travel or reincarnation,” I finally said, mildly annoyed he hadn’t pushed the subject further on his own. I then pursed my lips, expecting a mocking reaction, but he simply continued gazing into the microscope.

“I’ve watched enough science fiction to know something about time travel, but reincarnation is not really my thing.” He finally glanced at me. “Would you like to take a look?” He pushed the microscope over.

I pushed it back, my bottom lip jutting forward. “No, tell me about time travel!” I had spoken a little too loudly, and a few other students looked at me curiously. Fortunately, Marlene was oblivious from the front of the room.

I shrank back in my seat and repeated the question more softly. “Please, tell me what you know.”

He shifted over in his chair so he could face me. “I’m not even sure where I would begin,” he explained, removing his glasses thoughtfully. “Why the interest?”

“I’m not really sure,” I said, wanting to keep things vague. “I just sometimes feel like I have an almost clairvoyant sense about things.”

I looked at him apologetically, realizing—even with editing—how crazy I sounded. “I’m sorry,” I said with a despondent sigh. “Let’s just go back to the microscope.”

Clarence shrugged. “That’s not much to go on, but what you’re describing could be akin to déjà vu, which is a phenomenon that can be caused by a number of different factors.”

“Factors?”

He nodded. “Sure. For example, there may be something traumatic from your past that you have suppressed, and now, years later, it’s beginning to resurface. Oftentimes this happens through a recent event, or trigger, that suddenly occurs.” He sounded like a college professor.

“I see,” I said, mulling over his words. “So, I’m experiencing these…feelings…because something has recently happened to make me remember something else I chose to forget in the past?”

Clarence stroked his chin and shrugged. “Yeah, sounds about right. Sure.”

I looked around; no one seemed to be eavesdropping. I leaned in close and whispered: “But what if I’m receiving, say, visions of someone else, and I think this person might be sending me a message. Maybe a warning?”

He gave another shrug. “Oh, that’s easy to explain.”

“It is?” I said, hopping slightly in my seat.

“Indeed. You’re either psychic or crazy. But probably crazy.”

He smiled, trying to show he was just joking, but I glowered at him and then pushed away in my chair.

“Hey, I was just trying to be humorous,” he said, sounding irritatingly logical. “How else could I react to that? Come on, let’s take a look at these paramecia. They’re really pretty neat.”

“No thanks,” was all I said, laying my head down on the table again but facing the other way. I wasn’t really angry—it had just seemed like, for a moment, he was the one I could confide in.

We didn’t talk much for the rest of class, and I ignored him on the way out as I rejoined Marlene. But as I chatted with my friend, I realized I could never explain my problem to her either. Students bustled all about me, and yet I was completely alone.

As the week progressed, I found myself enjoying Art more and more. We had begun learning to paint, and the process of expressing my feelings through stroke and color proved very cathartic.

“Very…abstract,” my teacher, Mrs. Scribbs, said doubtfully as she beheld my first masterpiece. Perhaps to the untrained eye it did seem like a mess—a dark maelstrom of intertwining, swirling strokes without beginning or end.

“It’s the turmoil I sometimes feel…within myself,” I explained, not really sure how else to describe it. All I knew was that it had made me feel better.

“Well, it’s also a C,” she said dryly. “I suggest you stick to fruit for your next one.”

I frowned as she walked away.

“I like it,” said Lizzie, the bookworm from the first day of school. She was currently sitting on the floor by my easel, reading another book. “It contains a raw, primal quality that captivates the eye.”

“Um, thanks Liz,” I said glumly.

“But you sometimes really feel like this?” Mary Beth interjected, stepping away from her own piece and peering at my work. “I always imagined you as being pure sunshine and rainbows.”

“Why would you think that?” I asked, lifting the painting from the easel and placing it on an adjacent table. “I can get depressed like anyone else.”

She stared at me in her usual, intense way. “Because what problems could you have? You’re cute, likable, and able to charm anyone without even knowing you’re doing it.”

“That’s not true,” I said, glancing warily around the classroom. I caught the eyes of several guys and girls, and they immediately turned away. My cheeks burned red.

“She’s right,” Lizzie said, her nose still in her book. “Even your bra fiasco has already been forgiven. Not everyone would be so fortunate.”

This made me lurch backward into Mary, who pushed me forward again.

“Liz, lower your voice!” I hissed, grateful no one had heard her. “And I do have problems. I’m short and clumsy and timid…”

“And paradoxically,” Mary Beth said, returning to her own weird painting of a sleeping fish, “is why everyone likes you.”

I considered this. “So why do
you
like me?”

She gave me a thoughtful glance, tapping the end of her brush against her chin. “Because you’re genuine. You’re the real deal.”

“And,” Lizzie added, looking up from her book for the second time that day, “you actually talk to us.”

Genuine
, I thought to myself. I wasn’t so sure I was, considering I was haunted by an affliction I could never tell them about. But their words were strangely comforting all the same. I smiled at them appreciatively and then gazed at my blank canvas.

The subject of my next piece was taking form.

Chapter Ten

A
nother Saturday morning had arrived, and I greeted it with both a yawn and a stretch atop my covers, startling Oogles in the process. I calmly rubbed him on the head, settling him back down by my side. Like the rainbows dancing about my room, my mind pranced from one thought to the next.

Moving to the town of Fabares had been difficult; our previous hometown had been a lovely, sunny place, and the thought of leaving never occurred to me. But now here I was, thanks to a sudden company transfer my aunt had been forced to take. And though I was making friends and feeling better about my new home, I still felt troubled—as if my life could again change at any moment.

He
was largely to blame, of course—the boy who haunted my thoughts. His face would appear before me like a foreboding
omen, burning into my consciousness and flaying my mind until I wasn’t sure what to think anymore.