White is for Magic (21 page)

She turns toward me to place her hand on my shoulder. "You could try if you wanted to, Stacey.

If you really put

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your mind to it, you could train yourself to dream less, to not be able to sense some things. It may take a while, but it could help make your life a lot easier."

"I don't have a while."

"Why? What do you mean?"

"I mean I only have a few days before something horrible is going to happen to me."

"Horrible?"

I nod. "Like what happened
to
Maura, like what happened to Julia."

My mother clamps her eyes shut, like what I'm saying is no surprise and a complete surprise at the same time--like her worst fears are coming true. "Tell me," she says, her voice all brittle.

"What are you dreaming about?"

'Are you going to be all right?" I ask.

More nodding.

"Maybe we should talk tomorrow," I say.

"No." She blots at her eyes with the sleeve of her robe. "You were right when you said I came here because of your nightmares. And so maybe now I just need to put my own to rest."

I sit back down and wrap my arms around her shoulders. Her body is so small against mine, her arms like tiny bird wings, flapping nervously against my back.

"Let's just start from the beginning," she says, "and see what we can figure out."

I spend the next hour or so talking about my Maura and Veronica nightmares, how the Maura nightmares have been making me sick. I tell her about Jacob, how he came here from Colorado because he says he's been having night

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mares about me, how he gave me the crystal cluster rock, and how he thinks someone is going to try and strangle me. And then I segue into all the weird stuff I've been receiving.

"So, what you're telling me," she says, "is that the nightmares you were having about Maura four years ago are the same nightmares you're having about her now."

"Not exactly the same," I say. "The only part that's the same is the tool shed. When I was having nightmares about Maura four years ago, I could see her trapped in one."

'And that's where the police ended up finding her body," she says.

I nod. "But now, the nightmares are different. I mean, she's jumping rope, singing weird songs, I'm walking down a corridor in the basement of the school, throwing up all over the place . . .

Plus I'm dreaming about Veronica, too. Basically, I'm being haunted by dead people."

My mother shakes her head. "It isn't that easy. You need to remember your nightmares are trying to tell you something--every detail is important."

"So maybe my nightmares are trying to tell me that I'm still feeling guilty about Maura and Veronica."

"Maybe," my mother says, patting at my back. "But deep down you probably already know that's true. No matter how many people you're able to save or how many lives you're able to better, there will probably always be a part of you that will feel you could have done more. It's been that way with me, with Julia's death. I tell myself that it wasn't my fault. And I come here, hoping to make things better by helping you, but that still doesn't change the past... or the guilt."

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I swallow what she's trying to tell me, but I'm not sure how much I agree with it. I mean, I think there comes a time when you have to forgive yourself for any past wrongs or imperfections. And that helping others does make things better. It doesn't change the past; it doesn't even mask it.

But it can help change someone's future.

I rest my head against her shoulder. "So, if it isn't old ghosts haunting me, then what is it?"

"Well," she begins, "your dreams are based on past events. Even that letter you got, asking if you'll keep your promise, implies some promise made in the past."

"Yeah?"

"So maybe you need to go into your past to find the answers."

"Yeah, but my past with Maura couldn't be more different than my past with Veronica Leeman.

How do they connect?" I shake my head, wondering if Jacob was right when he said I'm having nightmares about Veronica because she represents death for me, because she represents what can happen if I don't figure all this stuff out.

"Why do you think you've been vomiting?" she asks.

I shrug, thinking how my nightmares last year made me wet the bed and how the bedwetting turned out to be a clue, my body's way of telling me something.

"In your nightmares, are you vomiting out of sickness, like a flu, or is it something else? A food allergy, maybe?"

"Just plain old sickness, I guess," I say, remembering how Jacob said he dreamed about me getting sick as well. But he

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2.35

said it was more like hangover-sickness, like from drinking too much or something.

"Can you think of some reason why that might be happening?" she asks.

I look away, not wanting to remember after so long of just trying to forget--trying to block out all the little details of Maura's death. She had been vomiting too, just minutes before she died.

"Miles Parker," I say.

The thought of him makes me squirm. I can still see his face--close-ups of him on the news going in and out of the courthouse. Reporters shoving their microphones in his face, asking him all sorts of questions about motive--why he took her in the first place, what his intentions were, why he would give a minor alcohol.

"What about him?" my mother asks.

I think back to the details of the trial. When he kidnapped Maura that day, he had picked her up in his car when she was walking home from school--a friendly face from the neighborhood. Only once she got inside the car, she couldn't get back out.

"He had been drinking," I say. "He offered her a 'special drink,' cherry brandy, which made her sick. They found her vomit in his car and on her clothing."

"So, maybe Maura is trying to tell you something," my mother says. "Maybe she's trying to communicate to you through your dreams, maybe to help you in some way."

"Yeah, but what is she trying to say?"

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"That's something only you can answer."

We spend the next hour or so hashing and rehashing all the details--until the growling of our stomachs interrupts us. We order room service--plates full of grilled cheeseand-tomato sandwiches, waffle-cut French fries, coleslaw, and butterscotch pudding for dessert. Considering I haven't eaten since this morning's indigestible cheese danish and the few bites of peanut butter pancakes at the diner, and since it's now approaching six, the mix of sugar, fat, and carbs is just what I need.

"You know," my mother says, polishing off what's left in her coffee cup, "I don't know if you remember this, but Gram used to always say that what happens in our past doesn't always stay in the past. It comes out in our present and future."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I lean back on the bed and stare up at the ceiling. "That every horrible tragedy in my life is going to just keep on repeating itself in the future?"

"Maybe when things don't get resolved in the past," she says, "life gives us a second chance to make things right."

"How is saving myself going to make things right for Maura and Veronica?"

"It isn't," she says. "But maybe saving yourself will make things right for
you."

I spend the next several moments staring up at the ceiling swirls, trying to decipher what all of this means--how saving myself might make things right for me, how the past can come back in our present and future, and why my nightmares are making me sick--what Maura might be trying to tell me, how she might even be trying to help me in some way.

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2.37

"You still wear Gram's ring," my mother says.

I hold up my hand and look at it--the bright, purpley amethyst stone full of both promise and protection.

"It suits you," she says.

I prop myself up on my elbows. "You really think so?"

She nods and smiles, and I can't help but smile back. It's like she's finally accepting me for who I am and what I believe. I wrap my arms around her and she hugs me back, her wings just a little bit stronger than before.

"I should go. Amber and Drea are probably worried about me."

"Why don't you just stay here tonight?"

"I don't know. Maybe I should get back--face my life, my future."

"Not without a good night's sleep," she says. "Maybe with a little rest, in some place where you feel safe, things will become clearer."

"Maybe," I say.

She touches a strand of my hair where I cut it, as though she can somehow sense my moonlit spell in the woods-- the offering I made to the earth in exchange for helping me to see more clearly

"I think if you want to see more clearly," she begins, "you should really spend some time thinking about the essential things, meditating on them. Only then will you be able to figure out what your past is trying to tell you, why it's come back into your present, and how it will affect your future."

I nod, thinking how now, for the first time ever, she reminds me so much of Gram, after years of thinking they were so completely different.

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I end up calling Amber to tell her where I am and that I'll be back first thing in the morning.

Amber tells me that Drea wants to talk, but I decline. It's not that I don't want to work things out with her, it's just that I need to do my best to focus on what's essential right now.

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thirty-J^vcn

It's extra chilly this morning, but the sun is so bright I decide to take a walk anyway. I head down an unfamiliar street lined with tall, barren trees. There are houses to the left and right--a small suburban neighborhood basically, complete with basketball hoops, minivans, and well-manicured shrubbery.

When I come to the end of the street, I take a left. I notice a grassy field and lots of parked cars. I walk a little farther

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and see that it's actually a cemetery. There's a crowd of people gathered in a circle around a casket. I feel drawn to it, to them, and feel this weird gnawing in my gut--the need to see whomever it is being lowered down into the ground.

The priest recites a prayer and sprinkles holy water over the casket. I look around at the individual faces. Right up front is a girl who looks just like Donna Tillings. I take a couple steps closer to get a better look. She's dressed all in black and wearing one of those mourning hats, the kind with the net that covers your face. She looks up in my direction and lifts the net so I can see her face. It
is
Donna. She bunches her lips together and then pulls something from her bag, a bouquet of wildflowers. I think she's going to drop them onto the casket, but instead she walks toward me, parting the sea of people in her way.

"I'm glad you came," she says, handing me the bouquet. She kisses me on the cheek and then takes my hand, leading me through the crowd, closer to the casket.

"Who died?" I whisper.

She turns to me, her pasty lips all bunched again, her face scrunched up like she doesn't understand my question.
"You
did," she says. She points down into the casket, the cover flipped open for everyone to see.

I blink my eyes, expecting to see Veronica Leeman, but instead I just see myself. My clothes are the same as the ones I'm wearing right now--black coat, pear-green sweater, baggy jeans, faux Doc Martens. And my hands are folded neatly over my belly, my amethyst ring staring up from my right hand.

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'Are you ready?" Donna asks, the rims of her eyes a dark ruby color against such pale skin.

I glance up at the others in the crowd. It seems everyone is waiting for me--Amber and Drea, Chad and Jacob, my mother, Keegan, Trish and Tobias, Cory and Emma; all the cafeteria ladies; Mrs. Halligan, dressed in a seventies blouse with zoo animals; even Mr. What's-his-face, sporting a custodial uniform and a pair of galoshes.

I take a deep breath and look beyond them. I can see someone approaching in the distance. It's Gram. And she's with Maura. They're holding hands like old friends--like they're waiting for me, too. In her other hand, Gram holds a white candle--the same one she gave me on my twelfth birthday. She stops and smiles at me. And Maura blows a giant orange bubble out from her lips.

I take a step toward them, but then Gram shakes her head and I stop. She nods toward the headstone, just to my right. I look at it, at my name etched into the sparkly pink marble. "Here lies Stacey Ann Brown," it reads. "Devoted friend, loving daughter." It has my date of birth engraved just below the inscription, and then today's date.

Today's date.

"Stacey, are you ready?" Donna repeats.

I look back at Gram, at Maura, and then at my mother, and shake my head. "No," I say. "Today is not my day to die."

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thirty~- jght

I wake up with a start, breathing hard, my heart practically pumping its way through my chest.

But I don't feel sick-- don't feel that burning urge in the pit of my stomach to lose it all over the place. I suspect it's because my nightmare wasn't completely focused on Maura this time. It was focused more on Veronica Leeman, on the obvious fear I have of ending up just like her.

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It's already light outside; I can see the narrow slivers of daylight through the half-shut blinds. My mother has already gotten up. Her side of the bed is empty and the bathroom door is wide open, the light flicked off.
So
where is she?

I get up as well. I wash my face, brush my teeth, and draw the window drapes wide open, all the while trying to orient myself in the new surroundings. But all I can really think about is the nightmare I just had.

How today is supposedly my day to die.

After a quick shower, I change back into my clothes and knot my hair up in a rubber band. My mother still isn't back yet. I go to make the bed and notice a note lying beside her pillow. It reads:

Dear Stacey,

You were still sleeping but I couldn't stay in bed. I've gone to the hotel gym, and then I'm going to find a bakery to get us some fresh croissants and coffee.