A Soul's Kiss

by Debra Chapoton

  “You mean the one that teaches about how STDs get spread?”

  “Yeah. It’s like that with Jessica. She went into Michael’s head, then yours, then mine, then Hannah’s. So you must have some bits of Michael in your head. I know about Jessica, Michael, and you. And Hannah has pieces of all of us. Maybe we can convince her to help.”

  He was missing something: Jessica had visited me more than once and given me bits of him, too. I wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it—my best friend, Jessica, was an STD. Instead, I said, “But I don’t have any clue about Michael.”

  “You sure?”

  “I can’t think of anything.” But a flood of little things about Tyler rushed to crest over my uppermost thoughts: he liked animals, he wanted to be a fireman, he was an astronomy buff. How could I know that? Thank goodness I couldn’t blush because I realized that I knew some other things that I shouldn’t. I blurted out, “What do you know about me, Tyler? I mean, what did you learn from Jessica’s visit to your head?” Odd to say it that way.

  He smiled. “I’ve been thinking about that. Mostly I concentrated on stuff about Michael, but I realized she’d left me her own feelings about you and, I guess, your thoughts, too. Weird.”

  “And?”

  “Crap, I don’t know.” He blushed then. “Um, you like popcorn, but your stomach hurts when you eat it.”

  I gasped. I tried to remember the order of Jessica’s “invasions.” Did he know how I felt about that kiss? “You’re wasting gas. We should go.”

  Tyler

  Monday afternoon

  Rashanda gasped when I told her that I knew about her stomach problems. Crap. Too personal. I pulled out of her driveway and drove faster than I should have through town. We didn’t speak again until I reached the hospital parking lot and it started to sprinkle.

  “I’ll drop you,” I said and pulled under the covered entrance. Rashanda leaped out and hurried to the revolving doors. I parked in my usual spot. After coming here five straight days it seemed like a habit. Before I could get my door open, another car whizzed into the next spot. The other driver got out at the same time as I did. Glaring. Angry. It was Michael. He might have come to see Keith, but I doubted it. My fists were clenched. I matched his long strides toward the doors and let him go through first. I don’t think he saw Rashanda waiting off to the right, cowering in a chair, pulling her hair over her face. Michael went to the information desk and I blocked his view of her as quickly as I could, putting myself between him and her, but he didn’t look our way.

  “Come on,” I whispered to her. I took her hand and pulled her toward the stairs. “This’ll be quicker than the elevator.”

  “Is he here to see Jessica, do you think?”

  “Don’t know. How good of friends are they?” I dropped her hand and then realized how bold I was to touch her. My temperature escalated and not just because of that—I was worried that Michael was on his way to Jessica’s room and if she was alone I didn’t want to think of what he might have planned.

  “Hey,” Rashanda said, “he’s probably visiting your stepbrother. Even though Jessica has a crush on Michael I don’t think the feelings are mutual.”

  I reddened even more. I didn’t want to hear about Jessica’s crush, especially since I could feel it in a single irritating pixel of memory she left behind.

  Rashanda reached the landing to Jessica’s floor before me, but I snatched the door handle first and swung it wide. We both consciously slowed our pace once we were in the quiet hallway, forty feet from her room.

  I guess the adrenaline was pumping because my concept of time totally changed. All my senses were snapping to attention. I seemed to have a dozen thoughts to match every step I took. I felt like I was four people at once: me, Jessica, Rashanda, and Michael. I wondered if now I had their DNA coursing through my system. I was excited to see Jessica, but I was feeling Rashanda’s dread, Michael’s condescension, and Jessica’s gullibility.

  I glanced at Rashanda and was tempted to grab her hand again. Was that her best friend’s reaction or mine? I’m naturally shy around girls, but . . . crap . . . was I attracted to Rashanda now or was my head all messed up?

  We got closer to Jessica’s room and I knew the answer—my head was messed up. I was crazy about Jessica. I was going to have to make a deliberate effort to distance myself from Rashanda, and who knew how these bits of Michael in my head would make me react—especially if I was ever around Hannah.

  Jessica

  Monday afternoon

  I finally convinced Hannah to at least try putting her forehead against mine. There is a breathing tube down my throat and no chance of a Prince Charming kiss anyway. We pull one of the chairs up close to my head and first Hannah sits there and tries holding my hand. I struggle to burn my way up my own arm, but that doesn’t work. She raises herself up from the chair enough to hover above my face, puts each of her hands on either side of the pillow, and presses her skull to mine. I can’t imagine what it might look like from the doorway, but a nurse left a few moments ago and the door swung shut behind her so we don’t expect to be observed.

  “What are you doing?” Rashanda’s voice is the most forceful I’ve ever heard her. “Get away from her!” The soft whoosh of the door closing finishes her command.

  Hannah bumps her face on the breathing tube and loses her balance as I push myself to leave her body any way I can. She’s startled and tries to rise up, but I am determined and try to get closer to my head, my hands, my body. For a moment I have control of Hannah’s hands and grab at mine. This is the weirdest thing ever—to hold your own hands with someone else’s. It must be freaking Hannah out, too, because she answers Rashanda with a whine: “I can’t. I can’t let go.”

  A door in Hannah’s mind falls open and then another and another. Hannah’s sudden panic makes her drop her guard and what I see makes me gag. Hannah is a witch, with a capital B. I don’t want to fall into any of her memories right now, but one particular summer memory that includes Michael is pulling me in and making me release my ownership of Hannah’s limbs.

  With Rashanda in the room, perhaps I have a chance at this, if she can distract Hannah again.

  And then I hear Tyler’s voice.

  “Hannah,” he says, his tone concerned and gentle. “You believe me after all? Do you have Jessica?”

  I want to turn and look at Tyler, but Hannah keeps us facing away. I don’t know why I can’t just look around like I have other times, but I can’t and with all the open memories surrounding me I fall into that dark summer memory and start to hurt all over. I see pain, humiliation, Amy Harper, and Michael.

  Then I hear Tyler coaxing Hannah away from my pathetic little comatose body. I lose the grip on one hand, but join Hannah as she hoarsely answers Tyler: “She’s okay. I’m okay. Hi, hi Tyler. It’s me.” She turns her head and glares at them as she speaks my words. The looks on both Rashanda’s and Tyler’s faces are indescribable.

  “Let go of her, Hannah,” he says. He moves toward us and Hannah goes wild, waving her free hand but using the other one to squeeze my right hand, the one that’s hooked up to so many medical things. I lose the influence I had on her speech and actions. I can feel her grip on my real hand.

  “Leave me alone! Everybody leave me alone!”

  When I stop thinking of only myself for a moment, I realize how alarmed Hannah is and how disturbing it must be to experience this loss of control. Rashanda is two feet away. I could touch her. And Tyler, whose face is full of apprehension, stands frozen an arm’s length away.

  Tyler speaks again, moving closer by inches. “Calm down. We’ll work this out. We’ll get Jessica back in her body.” He smoothes his words even more. “Come on, Hannah, let go of her and sit down for a moment.”

  And then he touches her. Us. Me. His hand is on her elbow, sliding down to her wrist, her palm, tugging on her fingers. I can do this. I can get out. It’s just like at the cafeteria table only this time Tyler knows I’m here and wants to
help me. I blaze down her arm, ready to leap, when the monitor that’s connected to my sleeping body begins to beep and my legs, my legs on my real body, begin to quiver.

  Rashanda

  We all jumped. The noise from the monitor wasn’t particularly loud, but I knew from experience that there was a corresponding beep at the nurses’ station. I figured we had about a minute before we were all going to get thrown out of Jessica’s hospital room.

  Tyler dropped Hannah’s hand and she in turn dropped Jessica’s hand. She probably thought that she’d caused the beeping and maybe she had. The tremors in Jessica’s body were something I’d seen happen on Sunday, nothing unusual, the nurse had said, though Jessica’s parents were hopeful it meant she was waking up. Maybe this time it did mean that.

  “Crap. What do we do?”

  “The nurse will come,” I answered. Both Tyler and Hannah seemed spooked. I wondered what it had felt like for Hannah when Tyler touched her. My jealous bones trembled, but I kept my anger veiled.

  “Jessica’s gone. I don’t feel her.” Hannah sank into a chair.

  Tyler moved next to the bed and put his hands on Jessica’s legs. I thought that was awfully forward of him, and he must have realized that, too, because then his face changed color. He mumbled his favorite word, stuck his hands in his pockets, and backed away towards the window.

  “What do you mean she’s gone?” I asked.

  Hannah looked up at me. I was still standing pretty close and decided that I should move even closer to the bed. I put my right hand on my best friend’s knees. They stopped trembling.

  “I don’t hear her anymore.” Hannah’s eyes flicked to Tyler and back to me. “She was talking to me. Before. In my head. You know?”

  “Yeah, we both know. It’s kind of crazy. How did it happen to you? I mean, how did she get inside?”

  Hannah opened and closed her mouth. She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. She was just suddenly there.” Her mouth spasmed and she clamped a hand over her lips. Jessica wasn’t gone. Hannah was such a liar. Jessica had spoken aloud a few seconds ago, had said hi, Tyler, it’s me. She was gaining control inside Hannah. Did she have a puppet master’s control of Hannah? Oh my gosh, she must have been trying to get back into her own body when we entered. And we had stopped her!

  The monitor screeched louder.

  We all looked toward the door when it opened. No white smocked nurse yet. It was Michael Hoffman. I could barely swallow. When I had seen him stomping toward the hospital entrance earlier I’d tried to make myself invisible in a lobby chair. Tyler had followed him in and seen right away that I was petrified of Michael. My reaction was bizarre because I knew Michael was just a little bit afraid of me since I’d flipped him onto his back in the Quonset hut. I could handle myself pretty well thanks to tagging along with my older brothers to weekly martial arts classes. My fear of Michael now was because of something—some perplexing recollection—that Jessica must have donated to me on one of her dreamy visits to my head. This fear was totally alien and unexpected. I could not move or speak.

  Michael took in our little scene as if he had all the time in the world to decipher and evaluate what was going on. His face was stone-like and blank at first, then it melted into a shocked expression. That lasted only seconds before his eyebrows, eyes, and mouth twisted into fury then yanked back into an awkward resemblance of Tyler’s dependable strength. Michael’s peculiar ability to mirror people was creepy; he was some kind of shape-shifter or mime or psycho.

  I expected the tension to burst around us as the beeping on the monitor went up another notch. If the nurse didn’t arrive soon, the volume would ramp up several more decibels and who knew what that would do to our hostile group.

  The door swung open again and a nurse hustled to the monitor, giving us each, one by one, a scowl and head shake.

  Hannah began to sob and Tyler spoke. “Is she all right? Her legs were quivering a moment ago.”

  Tyler’s genuine concern earned him a smile from the nurse. “She’ll be all right.” She touched several sensors on the monitor and adjusted all the tubes and lines. She re-clamped the finger pulse oximeter as she asked us, “Just who are all of you? Family? Friends?”

  “I’m her best friend and these two were in the car accident with her.” My fear of Michael dissipated as I indicated for the nurse who we all were. “And Tyler is—” I didn’t quite know how to describe his relationship.

  “I see,” the nurse said, saving me from tripping Tyler’s blush button by saying just a friend or my friend or something worse like Jessica’s future boyfriend. Because that’s exactly what I pictured at that moment. Beyond a shadow of a doubt I knew that Jessica would drop her silly crush on Michael as soon as she woke up and remembered everything. She would see how devoted Tyler was. I wished I could peel off the layers of false feelings I had plastered myself with the last couple of days and go back to seeing Tyler as that nice kid we’ve known since grade school, Jessica’s Plan B for homecoming.

  The nurse finished checking Jessica. “Nice of you kids to visit, but it’s a little crowded in here. Why don’t you each whisper some encouragement in her ear and then let her rest.” She patted Hannah on the shoulder and added, “She’ll wake up soon, hon, don’t you worry.”

  For a brief second I pictured Jessica’s spirit jumping from Hannah to the nurse. I watched Hannah continue to cry as the nurse left the room. She turned the tears off when the door finished its slow swing.

  “So you want to tell me what you’re all doing?” Michael spoke, moving up next to Hannah and pulling her up to her feet.

  I didn’t expect Hannah to be so docile with Michael. She wiped her tears away, gave him the most sincere smile, and asked, “How’d you do on your calculus test?” The haughty skank was gone. I glanced over to Tyler. He tore his gaze off the real Jessica and I knew he saw in Hannah what I saw: Jessica had taken over.

  “Piece of cake. Come on, I’ll take you home.” He looked like he wanted to say something more—something to take us down a peg, but my glare and Tyler’s angry frown muzzled him.

  “Don’t you have something to whisper to Jessica?” I asked.

  I knew it wasn’t Hannah who was hearing me, and it wasn’t Hannah who tossed a promise over her shoulder to herself: “I’ll be back, Jessica.”

  I stood there shaking my head; she wouldn’t meet my eyes. I knew what she was doing and she wasn’t going to like being Hannah.

  Jessica

  I’m so excited. I have Michael all to myself. No Hannah for a while.

  The tremors start in my legs, my real legs, and I begin to feel all goose-bumply. And strong. When Hannah opened all her mental doors, conceding I was here, it was like she went all shrinky-dink inside. I could take over at will. I’m not being mean or anything. We both feel bad that this is happening. I let her cry. It seems appropriate and when the nurse comes in it’s fitting that someone would be distraught over the terrible thing that has happened to me. I admit that a few of the tears are mine. Maybe half of them.

  Oh my gosh, Hannah is having an accident. It’s one of my biggest fears—soaking through on my period. I don’t know what made her think she could go this long without using the restroom.

  The nurse leaves the room and Michael says he’ll take me, that is, Hannah, home. I don’t want to look directly at Rashanda and see her disapproval. She knows me too well. But she’ll get a good laugh when Hannah turns and she sees the back of our jeans. It’s great that somebody else gets the humiliation and embarrassment. It’s like I get to conquer the fear without all the bad stuff.

  “Don’t you have something to whisper to Jessica?” Rashanda asks. She’s talking to Hannah about my comatose body, but something in her tone makes me think she’s secretly messaging me.

  I don’t take my eyes off Michael. “I’ll be back, Jessica,” I say to my other self lying so still in the bed. I’m getting a little too disconnected, literally and figuratively. I laugh at my pun and realize I’
m laughing aloud. Perfect. It’s Hannah’s laugh, sour and unpleasant even to these ears.

  Michael has Hannah’s hand and I savor his touch though it isn’t as warm as I expected, but I turn and immerse myself in the whole delightful idea of him.

  “Hannah,” Rashanda calls. “I need to talk to you. Girl stuff.”

  I make Hannah drop Michael’s hand, deciding he doesn’t need to be a part of the embarrassment after all.

  “What?”

  “In here,” she says, opening the door to the private bathroom.

  As soon as we’re shut inside the small room, I give a little jump and squeal. “It’s me. It’s me, Rashanda. I’ve totally taken over Hannah.” I grin my biggest stupid smile. “Ask me anything only Jessica would know and I’ll prove it.”

  “What do you always call me? Which, incidentally, I don’t like.”

  “Silly quadroon and sorry, that was the last time.”

  “Right, unless Hannah is listening and it’ll be on Facebook tomorrow.” Rashanda pauses and wiggles her finger at my pants. “You’ve leaked through. There’s a dark stain on your butt. Here,” she says, taking off her windbreaker. “There’s a hospital style pad in the cupboard. Don’t ask me how I know. When you come out you can tie this around your waist.” I can’t believe how accepting she is of this new state of things.

  “Are you mad at me?”

  “No, I just want you to wake up. Wake. Up. You know, like, really wake up and also wake up about Michael. He’s not for you. There are better options out there. Close by.”

  I roll Hannah’s eyes at her. She puts her hand on the doorknob and I say, “Wait. I, uh, I can’t seem to get out of Hannah.”

  “Why not?”