My Soul to Lose (2 page)

Maybe I should have tossed a penny in the fountain

too.

“Yeah. They might have something.” Emma

smiled, and we made our way quickly down the central

corridor. The tension in my neck eased with each step,

and I only realized I’d been grinding my teeth when

my jaw suddenly relaxed. By the time we stepped into

the cloud of perfumed air near at the Sears makeup

counter, the panic had completely receded into

memory.

It was over. I’d narrowly escaped complete terror

and utter humiliation.

A little giddy from relief, Emma and I glanced

through the dresses, then spent the next hour trying on

goofy, pastel-colored pants and flamboyant hats to

pass the time, while I kept my mental fingers crossed

that, when we left, the coast would be clear.

Metaphorically speaking.

Rachel Vincent / 9

“How you feelin’?” Emma tilted the brim of a neon

green hat and smoothed the long blond hair trailing

beneath it. She grinned and made a face at herself in

the mirror, but her eyes were serious. If I wasn’t ready

to go, she would hide out in the Sears granny section

with me for as long as it took.

Em didn’t truly understand about my panic

attacks—no one did. But she’d never pushed me to

explain, never tried to ditch me when things got weird,

and never once looked at me like I was a freak.

“I think I’m good,” I said, when I realized that no

traces remained of the shadowed horror I’d glimpsed

earlier. “Let’s go.”

The boutique Em wanted to hit first was upstairs,

so we left our hats and sherbet-colored pants in the

dressing room and laughed our way through Sears

until we found the in-store escalator.

“I’m gonna wait until everyone’s there—till the

dance floor’s totally packed—then I’ll press up really

close to him.” Clutching the rubber handrail, Emma

twisted to face me from the tread above, a mischievous

grin lighting up her eyes. “Then when he’s
really

happy to see me, I’ll yank his zipper, shove him back,

and start screaming. They’ll probably throw him out of

the dance. Hell, maybe they’ll expel him from school.”

“Or call the cops.” I frowned as we stepped off the

scrolling stairs and into the bed-and-bath department.

“They wouldn’t do that, would they?”

She shrugged. “Depends on who’s chaperoning. If

it’s Coach Tucker, Toby’s screwed. She’ll stomp his

10 / My Soul to Lose

balls into the ground before he even has a chance to

zip up.”

My frown deepened as I ran my hand across the

end of a display bed piled high with fancy pillows. I

was all for humiliating Toby, and I was certainly up

for wounding his pride. But as satisfying as the whole

thing sounded, getting him arrested hardly seemed like

a fitting consequence for dumping me the week before

homecoming. “Maybe we should rethink that last

part…”

“It was your idea.” Emma pouted.

“I know, but…” I froze, and my hand flew to my

neck as a familiar ache began at the base of my throat.

No.
Noooo!

I stumbled back against the bed, suddenly

swallowed whole by a morbid certainty so vicious I

could hardly draw my next breath. Terror washed over

me, a bitter wave of anguish. Of grief I couldn’t

understand, or even place.“Kaylee? Are you okay?”

Emma stepped in front of me, half blocking me from

the other shoppers’ sight, and lowered her voice

dramatically. “It’s happening again?”

I could only nod. My throat felt tight. Hot.

Something heavy coiled in my stomach and slithered

toward my throat. My skin crawled with the

movement. Any moment, that swelling screech would

demand freedom and I would fight to contain it.

One of us was going to lose.

Rachel Vincent / 11

Emma’s grip tightened on her purse and I

recognized the helpless fear in her eyes. They probably

reflected my own. “Should we go?”

I shook my head and forced out two last whispered

words. “Too late…”

My throat burned. My eyes watered. My head

swam with pain, with echoes of the shriek now trying

to claw its way out of me. If I didn’t let it, it would tear

me apart.

Nononono…! It can’t be. I don’t see it!

But there it was—across the aisle, surrounded by

rainbow-hued mountains of bath towels. A deep

shadow, like a cocoon of gloom.
Who is it?
But there

were too many people. I couldn’t see who swam in

that darkness, who wore shadows like a second skin.

I didn’t want to see.

I closed my eyes, and shapeless, boundless terror

closed in on me from all sides. Suffocating me. That

bitter grief was too hard to fight in the dark, so I forced

my eyes open again, but that did little good. The panic

was too strong this time. Darkness was too close. A

few steps to the left, and I could touch it. Could slide

my hand into that nest of shadows.

“Kaylee?”

I shook my head because if I opened my mouth—or

even unclenched my jaws—the scream would rip its

way free. I couldn’t force myself to meet Emma’s

eyes. I couldn’t tear my gaze from the shadows

coalescing around…someone.

Then the crowd shifted. Parted. And I saw.

12 / My Soul to Lose

No.

At first, my mind refused to translate the images

sent from my eyes. Refused to let me understand. But

that blissful ignorance was much too brief.

It was a kid. The one in the wheelchair, from the

food court. His thin arms lay in his lap, his feet all but

swallowed by a pair of bright blue sneakers. Dull

brown eyes peered from a pale, swollen face. His head

was bare. Bald. Shiny.

It was too much.

The shriek exploded from my gut and ripped my

mouth open on its way out. It felt like someone was

pulling barbed wire from my throat, then shoving it

through my ears, straight into my head.

Everyone around me froze. Then hands flew to

cover unprotected ears. Bodies whirled to face me.

Emma stumbled back, shocked. Scared. She’d never

heard it—I’d always avoided catastrophe with her

help.

“Kaylee?” Her lips moved, but I couldn’t hear her.

I couldn’t hear anything over my own screaming.

I shook my head. I wanted to tell her to go—that

she couldn’t help me. But I couldn’t even think

anymore. I could only shriek, tears pouring down my

face, my jaws open so wide they hurt. But I couldn’t

close them. Couldn’t make it stop. Couldn’t even dial

back the volume.

People moved all around me now. Mothers let go

of their ears to herd their kids away, foreheads

Rachel Vincent / 13

furrowed with the headache we all shared. Like a spear

through the brain.

Go…
I thought, silently begging the bald child’s

mother to push him away. But she stood frozen, both

horrified and somehow transfixed by my audio

onslaught.

Motion to my right drew my attention. Two men in

khaki uniforms ran toward me, one yelling into a twoway radio, his free hand over his other ear. I only

knew he was yelling because his face was flushed with

the effort.

The men pulled Emma out of the way, and she let

them. They tried to talk to me, but I couldn’t hear

them. Couldn’t make out more than a few words from

their silent lips.

“…stop…”

“…hurt?”

“… help…”

Terror and grief swirled inside me like a black

storm, drowning out everything else. Every thought.

Every possibility. Every hope.

And still I screamed.

One of the mall cops reached for me, and I

stumbled backward. I tripped on the base of the

display bed and went down on my butt. My jaw

snapped shut—a brief mercy. But my head still rang

with the echo of my shriek, and I couldn’t hear him.

And an instant later, the scream burst free again.

Surprised, the cop stepped back, speaking into his

walkie again. He was desperate. Terrified.

14 / My Soul to Lose

So was I.

Emma knelt next to me, hands over her ears. Her

purse lay forgotten on the ground. “Kaylee!” she

shouted, but made no sound I could hear. She reached

for her phone.

And as she dialed, color suddenly drained from the

world, like
The Wizard of Oz
in reverse. Emma went

gray. The cops went gray. The shoppers went gray.

And suddenly everyone stood in a swirling, twisting

colorless fog.

I sat in the fog.

Still screaming, I waved my hands near the ground,

trying to feel. Real fog was cold and damp, but this

was…insubstantial. I couldn’t feel it at all. Couldn’t

stir it. But I could see it. I could see things
in
it.

On my left, something twisted. Writhed. Something

too thick and vertical to be serpentine. It twisted

somehow
through
a shelf of towels, without ever

touching the shoppers pressed against them, as far

from me as they could get without leaving the

department.

Apparently I was enough of a freak show to justify

the pain of listening to me.

On my right, something scuttled through the mist

on the ground, where it was thickest. It scurried toward

me, and I leaped to my feet and dragged Emma away.

The cops jumped back, startled all over again.

Emma pulled free of my grip, her eyes wide in

terror. And that’s when I shut down. I couldn’t take

anymore, but I couldn’t make it stop. I couldn’t stop

Rachel Vincent / 15

the shrieking, or the pain, or the stares, or the fog, or

the eerie movement. And worst of all, I couldn’t stop

the certainty that that child—that poor little boy in the

wheelchair—was going to die.

Soon.

Dimly I realized I’d closed my eyes. Tried to block

it all out.

I reached out blindly, desperate to get out of the fog

I couldn’t feel. Could no longer see. My hands brushed

something soft and high. Something I no longer had

the word for. I scrambled up on it, crawling over

mounds of material.

I curled into a ball, clutching something plush to

my chest with one hand. Running my fingers over it

again and again. Clinging to the only physical reality

that still existed for me.

Hurt. I hurt. My neck hurt.

My fingers were wet. Sticky.

Something grabbed my arm. Held me down.

I thrashed. I screamed. I hurt.

Sharp pain bit into my leg, then fire exploded

beneath my skin. I blinked, and a familiar face came

into focus over me, gray in the fog.
Aunt Val.
Emma

stood behind my aunt, face streaked with mascarastained tears. Aunt Val said something I couldn’t hear.

And suddenly my eyes were heavy.

New panic flooded me. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t

make my eyes open. And still my vocal chords

strained. The world was closing in on me, dark and

16 / My Soul to Lose

narrow, with no sound but the harsh wail that still

poured from my abused throat.

A new darkness. Pure. No more gray.

And still I screamed…

***

My dreams were a jumble of violent chaos. Thrashing

limbs. Bruising grips. Churning shadows. And through

it all was that never-ending screech, now a hoarse echo

of its former strength, but no less painful.

***

Light shone through my closed eyelids; my world was

a red blur. The air felt wrong. Too cold. It smelled

wrong. Too clean.

My eyes flew open, but I had to blink several times

to make them focus. My tongue was so dry it felt like

sandpaper against my lips. My mouth tasted funny,

and every muscle in my body ached.

I tried to push myself up, but my arms wouldn’t

work.
Couldn’t
work. They were tied to something.

My pulse raced. I kicked, but my legs were bound too.

No!
Heart pounding, I pulled on my arms and legs,

then jerked them left to right, but couldn’t move more

than a few inches in any direction. I was strapped to

the bed by my wrists and ankles, and I couldn’t sit up.

Couldn’t turn over. Couldn’t prop myself up on my

elbows. Couldn’t even scratch my own nose.

Rachel Vincent / 17

“Help!” I cried, but my voice was only a hoarse

croak. No vowels or consonants involved. Blinking

again, I rolled my head to first one side, then the other,

trying to get my bearings.

The room was claustrophobically small. Empty,

other than me, the camera mounted in one corner, and

the high, hard mattress beneath me. The walls were

sterile, white cinder block. There were no windows in

my line of sight, and I couldn’t see the floor. But the

decor and the antiseptic smell were dead giveaways.

A hospital.
I was strapped to a hospital bed. All

alone.

It was like one of Emma’s video games, where the

character wakes up in a strange room with no memory

of how he got there. Except, in real life, there was no

chest in the corner holding the key to my chains and