Translucent (9 page)

Everyone,
needless to say, was shocked by
this.
The media went crazy over the 4—
year old who spoke like an adult, and Karena found herself being interviewed by people from all across the nation, and even beyond, as word about her ability spread.

She didn’t tell them the reason she was so smart, however. She didn’t tell them the story of her past 2 lives, and thus everyone assumed that she was merely an extraordinary case of a child prodigy. Scientists wanted to give her an MRI and study her brain to figure out what made her such a “genius,” and teachers wanted to persuade her to come to their school, though these were soon replaced by professors when the knowledge of her academic level was fully revealed. Although she may have somewhat of a disadvantage compared to other students in university, judging from her years
as a baby where she did not learn much
, or at least not properly at a school, and from her physi
cal incapability in this body,
she
nonetheless
found herself one of the most desired students to many colleges, local and far away.

In just a few months’ time, she found her life scarcely recognizable when compared to any of the previous ones, and that was exactly what she’d been hoping to achieve.

Shawn was delighted to see her popularity with the press and with everyone else, though he said he regretted not thinking of this idea earlier. He said that in his next life, which would be his 10
th
, he would most definitely sho
w off his abilities to everyone.

“And I’ll do it even sooner,” he
said. “As soon as I’
m reborn
as a 2—
year old
. That way people will be even more amazed to see a baby with the intelligence of an adult.”

Karena was glad that things were going the way they were, but in her gut she felt a deep sense of dread, like she was somehow digging herself deeper into a hole, rather than climbing her way out of it. There was always the Sandman on top of everything, hovering over it all, and he
continued to visit her in her dreams.

She could tell, despite his expressionless face, that he was annoyed.

2 years later…

Over time the media and pretty much everyone else lost interest with Karena, especially as she grew older.
She
eventually
became a university student at one of the many colleges that had wanted her to join two years ago
, choosing a local one so that she wouldn’t have to move away,
and was getting a feel of what it was like to be an adult for the first time, even though physically she was still 6 years old.
It was a strange expe
rience, that was for sure, and her life was far from the way any of her previous ones
had been, but it seemed that in time things were going to die down entirely and nothing would be different than before. She would start over again and it’d be the same cycle all over again.

The Sandman hadn’t done anything to her at all.
Despite all of her fear and anxiety, nothing particularly bad had happened to her as a result of this in all the two years’ time. She continued to have
bad
dreams, yes, and she could tell that the Sandman was rather annoyed in the dreams, like she could read his feelings through
h
is
inscrutable
face
somehow
, but other than that there was no sign that she’d stepped over the line. It seemed to her that she could do practically anything now and not have to worry about it.

Shawn hadn’t done much to change the course of his life significantly. There was the occasional thing here and there, such as getting a different degree in college or trying to do really well in high school, something that he hadn’t done in his past few lives, understandably, but other than that there were no real major changes.

“Why don’t you change something huge?” Karena asked. “It was your idea anyway, and I’m the only one who’s really followed through with it. Why don’t you?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t think of anything, really, that will change my life the way you changed yours. Besides, this is just a test, and since you already tested it, and nothing seemed to have happened, why should I do it again?”

Karena wasn’t sure she completely followed through with Shawn’s logic, but she accepted it anyway, since she trusted that he knew what was best, having lived for far longer than she had.
She usually accepted what he said, even if she didn’t entirely understand it herself.

But as time went by, Kar
ena grew weary of her situation, as she had before.
She became weary of going through the same old things for the third time, of knowing exactly what was going to happen next, of constantly being bore
d with everything, despite her having changed her life so much.
Nothing was ever
really
new to her, even more so than in her past life. She rarely learned someth
ing new, even though she was a university student, and life was dreadful.

At times like this when she felt like giving up, she had to put things in perspective and think about how much worse Shawn had it. If she was fed up now, how much more fed up wo
uld she be 6 lifetimes from now?
She could hardly even begin to imagine it.
But thinking about her future always made her feel hopeless, leaving her with almost nothing to think about. Thinking in the present made her feel bored, and the future made her hopeless.
There was nothing she could do but sit and wait this out.

Things were fine like this for a while, until, one day, the Sandman tried to stop her.

4 years later…

It was the night her parents had died last time, the night that she’d decided, 9 years ago, they weren’t going to die on again. The night that she was going to save her parents from the fire.

The obvious solution to this
problem
was to tell her parents what was going to happen. They respected her after all, and they would believe her when she told them not to go that night, even if they were slightly confused. They knew what had happened to her, though they d
id have a hard time believing her story
entirely.

She’d meant to tell them about this night months, years before, but for some reason she hadn’t been able to find the opportunity to bring it up
, except on that first day when she’d said that this time they’d be with her when she started over.
But tonight, on this night, she had to, otherwise things were going to be the exact same as the last two times, and she wouldn’t have that. She w
ouldn’t give in. She was going to defy the Sandman no matter what the cost.

Karena
approached them after getting home from her job that day. She had a job now,
too,
which was a bit strange for the other people working at the office, as they found it hard to take her completely seriously, especially since she left work earlier than everyone else so that the company wouldn’t be accused of child labor. Anyway, as soon as she walked in the door, she started rambling.

“You can’t go out on a date tonight,” she began. “I know you’re planning to, but you can’t. You see
…”

And then she stopped talking. Karena looked at her parents, confused. She hadn’t meant to stop talking, it had been entirely involuntary. She opened her mouth to say something, but for some strange reason she found that the words would simply not come out of her mouth, no matter how hard she tried. It was as if her vocal cords had been cut and she no longer had the physical ability to speak. In desperation, Karena felt her neck, just to make sure everything was okay, and, finding no incisions, she
desperately tried talking again, to no avail. Her mouth would open, but she couldn’t utter any sound, not even a click or a whistle. Frantically, she realized what she’d have to do and she began searching for something on which to write.

“Are you okay?” Christi asked. “What did you want to tell us?”

Karena held up her finger, trying to tell her mother to wait one moment as she searched for something to write with and something to write on. She ran over to the desk, disappointed to find no pencils or pens on top,
where they usually were,
and she began pulling open drawers to try to s
ee where they could possibly be.

“Karena,” Harold said. “Can you please just talk?”

Karena held up her finger again, this time with more emphasis, and she opened the next drawer, which contained nothing but pencil sharpeners. The next drawer contained only
staple removers,
and the next one contained
staplers, rulers, and tape
.
Karena grew increasingly frustrated. Hadn’t there been all the materials she needed just the day before?

Suddenly, in the mid
dle of opening the fourth drawer
, she felt a sudden wave of inexplicable exhaustion that made her so tired that she just about fell over onto the desk.
Head throbbing, she pushed
against the desk in
an attempt to right herself, but
found that her feet had somehow fallen asleep and provided no means for stability at all. She found herself wobbling, mute, as she leaned against the desk to keep her balance,
the
whole time her head
spinning from exhaustion, making it impossible to think about anything except for one burning question in her head.

What was going on?

“Karena! Answer me!” Christi urged. It is always frustrating when one is telli
ng you to tell you something when
you, for some reason, can’t tell them. Karena’s parents rushed over just as Karena let go of the desk, involuntarily, of course, and found herself falling with her eyes closed.

Her last thoughts before she waked up were of realization. It had been the Sandman.
He was trying to stop her from warning her parents.

Karena woke up in her bed, not remembering anything for a second, as usually happens when one falls asleep in a dire circumstance and has to remember where he or she is and what they need to do immediately. Fortunately for her, Karena regained her memory within a few seconds, and instantly turned to look at her alarm clock.

It
was 10:00. The building would be burning in 30 minutes, and it was at
least 20 minutes away by public transportation.

Surely, surely her paren
ts hadn’t left her here alone
after the way she’d been acting,
suddenly
having gone
mu
te and becoming dizzy and tired?
Surely they wouldn’t just leave for a date right after thei
r daughter passed out?

Karena ran downstairs, finding her exhaustion, luckily, to be gone. She went into the kitchen, the living room, the bathroom, and then ran back upstairs to their bedroom. They weren’t anywhere.

Her parents had gone out on the date. They were going to die, just like the previous two times.

Karena sunk down
on the bed
, furious with herself for not warning them months, years in
advance to avoid this. T
he Sandman wouldn’t have blocked her all the way back then like he had ju
st now, would he?
She could have saved them. She wouldn’t have had to spend the next five years of her life in an orphanage.

Sudde
nly, Karena realized
what a fool she was being. Sh
e could still save them. It would
be dangerous, yes, foolhardy, yes, but she had to do something. She wouldn’t
let
the Sandman win. Not like he had last time.

Karena sprang up from the bed and
tore through the doorway of her parents’ bedroom, before bolting down the stairs. She grabbed a couple dollars left on the counter by her mom, and ran out the door without anything but the money. The bus stop was nearby, only a few blocks away, and Karena sprinted the whole way. She hadn’t exercised much in this particular body, and so she found it rather difficult to do so. But she hardly even noticed her pain, so focused was she on getting to her parents.

When Karena was
about
a block away from the bus stop, she saw a bus pull in, and she could see that it was the bus she needed
to take. She picked up her pace
, lungs bursting for air, legs kicking faster than she’d ever remembered them having done before. It felt like a physical object was pushing her back from going faster, and she realized that it was the air resistance against her body.

Despite her exertion, the bus was gone by the time she got there. Without stopping, Karena
turned left
and began running after the bus as quickly as she possibly could, knowing that it was absolutely crucial for her to be on this bus, and not to have to wait 20 minutes for the next one. If she waited that long, her parents would be dead by the time she got there.

Karena flew across the sidewalk,
steering slightly to avoid pedestrians and any other obstacles that happened to be in her way. She could feel her body trying to resist the anaerobic respirat
ion
as her blood cells didn’t get enough air, but she ignored her body’s request and continued sprinting alongside the street. The bus was well ahead of her by now, and she could only hope and pray that it stopped at some red lights before getting to the stop, giving her a chance to catch up.
She ignored streetlights when she came to intersections, merely running right into the middle of the street and trying to avoid cars. She remembered the incident of getting hit by a car just before she’
d started this life,
and she didn’t want a repeat of that, but she knew she didn’t have time to wait for the light to turn green for her.
She had
as much chance of failing in her mission due to a pause at the light as she did from getting hit by a car, and so the risk was well worth it.

After what seemed like far too long, she saw the bus stop up ahead. The bus was still far ahead
of her
, but it had stopped at several lights and so was
closer than it would be if it had just kept going straight without halting. However, it was still far enough ahead for her to begin having doubts about whether or not she was going to make it on.
She picked up her pace, though she wouldn’t have even thought that possible with the pace she’d been travelling at before.
She felt like she was going
so unbelievably fast that she’d have a hard time stopping without tripping over herself, but she couldn’t worry about that now. Now she had to worry about actually getting there.

The bus was almost to the stop, and Karena was
still
far behind it. When it reached the stop, Karena could see that she was just as far from it as she’d been at the last stop, if not farther. Karena could only hope that there were lots of people that needed to get on and off the bus, though that didn’t seem likely, given the time and the location.

The doors opened and a couple of people stepped out. Karena
was closing in quickly. She was merely 20 meters away when the doors started to close and the bus began to raise up to start driving again.

“Waaaaaait!!!!!” Karena yelled at the top of her lungs, and
though a
few people gave her curious looks, the doors did not stop closing. Karena was nearly there when the doors shut completely.

She slammed against the glass with the full velocity she’d been running at. She was at the front of the bus, and
the bus driver inside saw her, a perplexed look on his face. Karena’s vision was slightly black at the edges from her collision with the glass, but she could see well enough to see that the doors were
opening and the bus driver was letting her inside.

Exhausted, bruised and practically limping, Karena made her way onto the bus. She walked up to the bus driver. “One child, please,” she said
in between deep breaths of air
, holding out money.

“What on earth happened to you?” the driver asked as he printed the ticket. “Why’d you come slamming into my bus just as I was getting ready to pull away?”

“It’s a long story,” Karena replied, and it was. She got the ticket and paid for it, and then sat down in a seat near the front. In 20 minutes she’d be there, and then the real challenge would begin. Catching the bus was only the beginning.