Echoes Between Us

by Katie McGarry

  I just need to get this done, drive off Lucy’s monster then make it upstairs before my migraine makes it to the point of no return—before Sawyer sees me at my rawest.

  The windows of the first floor are all open and the cool autumn wind rushes in. I shiver and the smoke of the sage stick blows into my face. My eyes burn and I wonder if that is the spirits I’m tossing out fighting back.

  I raise my hand and it shakes as I move the smoke from inside of Lucy’s room toward the window. “I wish you well someplace other than here. You are not welcome here anymore. It’s time for you to move on, and I am ordering you to leave.”

  Doing what I ask, Sawyer follows up behind me with a burning sage stick in hand. He mimics me, doing what I do, saying what I say, but his words are weighted with disbelief. I’m betting on sage being sage and my belief being enough to cast everything but my mom out.

  Lucy watches us from the doorway, a mixture of perplexed and curious. I hold the bundle of smoking sage to her. “This is your room, Lucy. You have more power over it than I do. Can you help drive the ghosts away?”

  She holds her hands behind her back as she walks in, but then takes the sage and does exactly what I tell her to do, saying exactly what I tell her to say and with each step she becomes emboldened, as if taking control of her world and circumstances.

  “Are the ghosts gone yet?” Lucy asks me.

  They should be. “Yes.” I leave the room and head to the kitchen to find the shell so I can put out the burning sage.

  Lucy follows behind me. “Where will the ghosts go?”

  “I believe they go to heaven,” I say. “If that’s where they decide to go.”

  “Why wouldn’t they want to go there?”

  “I don’t know, but God gave us free will. He’s not going to force us to go anywhere we don’t want. It’s up to us to make the choice.”

  “If the ghosts choose to go to heaven and can go to heaven, why don’t they go to heaven when they die instead of staying here?”

  In the kitchen, I grind the sage stick out into the shell. “I don’t know.”

  Lucy glances over her shoulder then does a conspiratorial lean into me. “Why did your mom stay?”

  I put the shell on the table and crouch in front of her. “I think my mom knew how badly my dad and I missed her so she stayed to make sure we are okay.”

  “Don’t you want her to go to heaven?” she whispers, and guilt rushes me. Shouldn’t I?

  Lucy angles in so close I can feel her body heat. “By doing this are we sending your mom away?”

  “She should be fine. I told her to hide on the third floor.”

  “But doesn’t smoke travel up? Isn’t that why we have to stay low to the floor if there’s a fire?”

  My heart skips several uncomfortable beats.

  The front door of the apartment opens and my forehead furrows, causing a slicing ache through my skull. I force myself to my feet and spot Sawyer walking through the foyer, waving the sage, muttering words. Then he turns up the stairs. The world tilts.

  “No,” I whisper as my heart pounds in my ears. “Mom.”

  I race for him, but I feel slow, like I’m stuck in wet sand and being pummeled by waves. Sweat beads along my forehead, along my chest, and my breathing becomes labored.

  “Sawyer!” I meant it as a yell, but it comes out just above a whisper and I grasp the railing as he starts waving the burning sage at my door. “Sawyer, stop!”

  A loud pop in the middle of the staircase. Loud enough that I jump. Loud enough that Sawyer spins, almost causing him to lose his balance.

  A glint of white blinds me, and I blink to find Mom sitting on the middle of the stairs. She inclines her head as she looks at me then at Sawyer. My mouth dries out as a combination of panic and hope spreads through me. Will he see her?

  He’s staring in that direction, so intently, but his eyes are moving, roaming, scanning and I deflate. I’d give close to anything if anyone else could see her because then I’d know for sure that I’m not dying.

  “The sage is hurting me.” Mom winces like she’s in pain. She flickers in front of me and my heart tears in two.

  “Put out the sage,” I say.

  “What?” Sawyer asks.

  “Put out the sage!” I yell. “Put it out! Put it out now!”

  Sawyer fumbles with the shell in his hand, but does what I ask. Mom continues to flicker and the blood drains from my face.

  “If you won’t tell your father…” Mom holds her head like she did when she was in pain with her tumor. Back then, it was fate’s fault she hurt, and now her pain is on me. “Will you tell Sawyer that your tumor is growing?”

  I shake my head and Sawyer’s eyes narrow in my direction as he must have caught the movement. “You okay?”

  “I raised you better than this, V,” Mom says. “I raised you better than to play with people’s hearts. Leo knew the truth and he made his choice.”

  “He knows,” I whisper, and my palms grow cold and clammy as Sawyer had to have heard me, regardless of how low I talked.

  Sawyer’s eyebrows pull together. “Veronica, what’s wrong?”

  “He knows you have a small tumor that causes migraines,” Mom pushes. There’s anger in her tone. Anger I don’t understand. “You’re not being honest with him, V. Tell him the truth or walk away from him now.”

  Sawyer’s eyes dart between me and Mom, but he doesn’t see her. He only sees me staring at her and I can’t force myself to look away.

  “Veronica.” Sawyer starts down the stairs slowly. One step at a time, as if he’s terrified of scaring me off. “Are you okay?”

  I grow hot all over, heat flashes in my blood and sweat rolls down my back. I’m roasting alive and my knees become weak as I start to feel dizzy.

  “Tell him, V!” Mom yells, and the entire world narrows as my vision becomes dim.

  “He’ll leave me if I do,” I mumble, but the words feel wrong coming out of my mouth. As if my tongue is too thick, as if my lips have gotten too big. Sawyer reaches Mom and smoke still rises into the air.

  I throw out my hand and scream, “Mom!”

  The smoke hits her and she flickers, her hand reaching out to me. I stumble up the stairs, try to grasp her, to pull her away, but as my hand is about to make contact with hers, she disappears and a sob tears through my body. “No! Mom!”

  A quickening, sinking sensation. The world beneath my feet bottoms out and I’m sucked into a blackness. My arms flail, searching for something to hold on to, and I smack something solid.

  “Veronica!” Sawyer shouts, and I grab on to him, not just his body, but his voice. I’m drowning. But somehow, like back in the river, if I cling to him I’ll be able to float. “Veronica, talk to me.”

  “Mom,” I whisper, and I’m somehow moving through the air. “We hurt Mom.”

  “I got you,” he says. “It’s okay, I have you.”

  I suck in a clean breath as if I’m breaking through to the surface of the water and when I open my eyes I can see again. I’m drenched in sweat, and I’m on cold sheets of a mattress close to the floor. It’s Sawyer’s bed. His room.

  He hovers over me, smoothing my hair back as if I’m a broken doll. His face is so white that I’m concerned he no longer has any blood.

  “Veronica?” he says again, and the fear in his voice breaks my heart.

  I have to clear my throat twice before I can talk, and even when I do, it’s barely a whisper. “I’m okay.”

  “You’re not okay. You zoned out on me, said all sorts of weird crap—words that didn’t even go together—and then collapsed to the ground. None of that is okay.”

  Blinding pain crashes through my skull. What is this? What’s happening? My migraines, even the worst ones, are never like this. My lower lip trembles as tears burn my eyes. Oh my God. Oh my God. Nausea causes my stomach to roil, and I roll away from Sawyer as I’m terrified I’m going to vomit on him.

  “Veronica, what is it?” Fear oozes fr
om Sawyer’s voice. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  Another sharp pain rips through my brain and I double over on the bed. I can’t talk, I can’t think, I can only hold my stomach as I dry heave. My head throbs so intensely, so loudly that it’s as if my heart is beating in my ears.

  “Veronica!” he shouts.

  “C-call … N-N-Nazareth.” The air rushes out of me with another punch of agony. “M-m-m-migraine.” My cell. He needs my cell. I reach for my pocket, attempt to take it out and it disappears from my hand. “Please, c-c-call.”

  “I will,” Sawyer says, close to me. “I’m calling now.”

  SAWYER

  Thursday October 3: Weight 116 ½ lb.

  Sat with Morris tonight, and I’m so ashamed of myself, Diary. I had the blues, or rather I have the blues and I let it all out on him, but he’s a peach. Was great to me.

  I shove Lucy’s choice of dolls and doll clothes into her backpack. My cell is pressed to my ear, and like it has time and time again, it rings. When I go into Mom’s voice mail again, I end the call with a mumbled curse. Sylvia said her mom is home tonight and she didn’t hear that anyone had any plans. Where the hell is my mom?

  “Mommy says not to use that word.” Lucy sits on her bed with her doll in her lap.

  “She’s right. I’m wrong. It’s not a word anyone should use. What else do you want to take?” I told Sylvia I needed help with Lucy, and she’s on her way to retrieve my sister until Mom returns home from wherever it is she ran off to without telling me.

  “Is V okay?” Lucy asks.

  I try to imagine what this all must look like in her eyes. Monsters, ghosts, burning sage, cleansing, Veronica crumbling in pain, me carrying her to my bed, Nazareth—the tattooed and black-framed-glasses giant—showing up and carrying Veronica to her apartment while telling me to keep Lucy away, and now me in this frantic pace to get Lucy taken care of so I can check on Veronica. It must feel like a bad dream.

  “She gets really bad headaches sometimes and they make her feel sick. She won’t feel good for a bit, but I’m sure she’ll feel better soon.” I hope that’s true. Veronica told me her headaches could be bad, but I never imagined anything could be like that. “It would probably cheer Veronica up if you made her a card.”

  “I can do that. We’re celebrating Christmas soon so I’ll put a tree on it.” Lucy twirls her fingers in her doll’s hair. “I think getting rid of the ghosts is what hurt V.”

  “It’s not.” Not sure how long Mom will be gone or what’s happening with Veronica, I shove PJs into the bag along with clothes for school tomorrow.

  “V liked her ghosts and they never hurt her. She loved them.” Her lower lips trembles. “It’s my fault she’s sick.”

  It’s not and I don’t want her to carry that burden. I drop the backpack to the floor and sit on Lucy’s bed. I hold out my arms and she clambers across the sheets and onto my lap. I hug her tight and kiss the top of her head. “It’s not your fault.”

  “If we hadn’t tried to get rid of the monster, V would be fine.”

  My heart rips open as I’m sure that’s how it appears to her. Consequence of an action. A plus B equals C. “Veronica has this thing in her brain that shouldn’t be there.” I search for the words to try to explain a tumor to a six-year-old.

  “But you don’t understand how much V loves her ghost.” Lucy’s voice becomes higher in pitch—frantic with tears and she pushes her head into my shoulder. “They talk all the time. V talks to her and she talks back. V said that having her there made her feel better.”

  “Veronica isn’t really talking to ghosts. They aren’t real.”

  “Maybe V isn’t sick. Maybe we broke her heart,” she continues like she didn’t hear me. My T-shirt starts to become wet with her tears. “V needs her ghost. That way she knows that she wasn’t truly gone.”

  Dammit, Veronica. She must have told Lucy about the EVPs. “The sounds Veronica had on the recorder aren’t real.”

  Lucy adamantly shakes her head. “No, they talk. V whispers to her when people are around so they don’t know she’s talking to her mom. She said no one would understand, and she’s right, no one understands when you see something no one else does. Just like they don’t understand my monster.”

  My entire body jolts and I gently push Lucy back so I can look her in the eye. “Did you say Veronica talks to her mom?”

  She convulses as sobs rack her body. “I promised I wouldn’t tell! I promised I wouldn’t tell!”

  I pull her close again, rubbing her back, shushing her, telling her it’s okay, but my mouth and my actions are disconnected from my brain. Her mom. Does Veronica actually think she sees her mom?

  “We shouldn’t have done it.” Lucy sobs. “Because the monster is my monster. It’s not V’s monster. I wanted to get rid of the monster, but I don’t think it will go away because it followed us here. I should have told her that the monster only follows me.”

  Another jolt, but this one angry … deadly. “What do you mean the monster followed you?”

  “At our old house. The monster was there, too. Right before we moved. It followed us.”

  “Sawyer?” Sylvia says from the doorway. “Your front door was open so I let myself in. Is everything okay?”

  Sunday October 6: I’m pretty mad tonight, Diary. I got the lecture of my young life from my esteemed friend Morris. Jiminy, I was surprised tho. Of course, I deserved it but then we do not always like to hear the truth.

  He made me feel about as big as . that. Listen, Diary, I don’t think he gives a snap about me. But gee, I’m not going to worry. If he doesn’t, he needn’t. I don’t see why he keeps coming over if he doesn’t like me. Temp 99.4. Got medicine.

  It’s like I’m walking in a dream. No, not a dream. A nightmare.

  The house.

  It feels wrong. Like the walls aren’t drywall and support beams, but instead flesh and blood. That I’m somehow not in a building, but a body that inhales, exhales and consumes. I feel swallowed up and digested, and I was more than willing to send my sister out the door with the prayer that she stay out.

  Ghosts.

  Monsters.

  Veronica collapsing in pain.

  My lungs twist as I climb the stairs. The door to Veronica’s part of the house is ajar. Her father isn’t home. She had said he had a load he had to take to Indiana, and he left early this morning. Even if I called him, there’s nothing he could do besides drive back. Even if he was here, what would he do?

  I consider walking in, but don’t. What did Veronica say about why she knocks? Because one should always be concerned about who they are letting into the house—it could be death.

  My brain niggles at me. She’s the one who wants to be invited in. My head falls back with the pain of realization. She believes she’s death.

  I knock. A gentle sound, but it echoes along the empty foyer. Kravitz opens the door a few more inches and he takes up that small space. Multicolored Mohawk and stone-cold eyes behind thick, black-rimmed glasses. A fighter’s build with a bored stance. “What?”

  “I’m here to see Veronica.”

  “She’s sleeping.”

  Good. “I still want to see her.”

  “She doesn’t need you.”

  He’s probably right. “I need to see her.” What do I say to him to help him understand I don’t mean her any harm? What do I say as I don’t understand a damn thing happening with Veronica at all? “How bad is her tumor?”

  His posture changes, like he took on some of the burden and pain weighing me down.

  “I care about her,” I continue in a low voice, “but what I saw today scared the hell out of me, and I need to understand what’s going on.”

  He glances away then rolls his neck like he’s frustrated. “If you’re worried about your project, she’ll be fine. Just give her a few days and she’ll be back to doing your work for you.”

  “I don’t care about the project. I care about her. I either get answers from you o
r I get answers from her dad.”

  “He’s on the road.”

  “He has a phone, and I have the number.”

  Nazareth opens the door the rest of the way and I enter. The room is bright with every possible light on, but it feels strained. As if it’s fighting against the darkness assaulting the windows and it’s on the losing end.

  Kravitz leaves the door open and sizes me up. “V’s not a joke.”

  “I agree. She’s not.”

  He doesn’t look like he believes me. “She’s my best friend. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for her. That includes kicking your ass.”

  My shoulders roll back—to brace for a punch, to throw the punch. I’m wound so tight that my fist hitting flesh might be the adrenaline release I need. “Rumor around school is that you’re some sort of pacifist.”

  “Thanks to my mom, most days I am, but I’ll flip on a dime if you mess with V.”

  “Right about now, I’m feeling the same way about you.”

  He almost smirks.

  “Where is she?”

  “In her room.”

  I step toward the stairs and he slides in front of me. “I don’t trust you.”

  “She does.”

  He doesn’t move, and I consider taking the swing. “Why do you assume the worst of me?”

  Kravitz pins me with a glare. “Do you know how many times V sat in front of you in school and listened as your friends talked about her?”

  “I never said anything.”

  “You’re right. You didn’t add anything, but you didn’t stop it, either. You laughed along. Just because you decide to not have a voice doesn’t make you innocent. She was in front of you all those years and she was invisible to you. At least her feelings were. You and your stupid friends assumed because V sees life differently and lives in her own way that she didn’t feel. But she was there and she does feel and your words tore her down. I know you two got something going on now, which means she’s forgiven you, but I haven’t. She’s got too big of a heart, and I’ll be damned if you tear it apart.”