A Soul's Kiss

by Debra Chapoton

  Michael

  Tuesday evening

  I had a mountain of homework and Hannah wanted me to come over. Just for a kiss, she said. Not motivation enough, sweetheart.

  Then I got to thinking. Girls were hard to figure out sometimes, but maybe she meant something more than a kiss. I could go for that.

  My parents were pretty lax with me now that I was a senior. Being the youngest son had its perks. The curfews, even on school nights, were pretty much non-existent.

  I drove without thinking much. I could go crazy if I thought about things. All the football plays I memorized. The music for band. The marching formations. The new play in drama class. Too many things crowded for space in my head. The accident wasn’t one of them. Until I passed the little shrine of remembrances piled on the side of the road. What was with people? It wasn’t as if anyone died. My headlights flashed over some silvery ribbons on teddy bears. Two seconds and I was past the site.

  Then I couldn’t think of anything but the accident. Stupid Keith. He wasn’t even one of my friends. Some of my buddies were asking me about that. Why would I be hanging out with him, they wanted to know.

  I hung a left onto Hannah’s street and slowed up. Some jerk was driving like a geezer, maybe looking for an address. The houses were easily identified, large numbers on mailboxes and front porches. Some even had their addresses engraved on large boulders positioned to protect their mailboxes from those rascal teens, like me and my friends, who liked to take out a random box after a football game loss.

  The jerk’s headlights and mine fanned over several yards decorated with tombstones, witches, and ghosts. Two weeks till Halloween. Less till Homecoming. You needed a costume for both. Stupid.

  I tailgated the human snail to Hannah’s house where he slowed even more. Every light was on in their house. I punched the steering wheel in frustration. Hannah’s whole family was home.

  The car ahead of me pulled close to the curb, expecting me to go around him. But he was where I wanted to park. What the—? My lights outlined a guy with a ball cap in the driver’s seat.

  He pressed his gas pedal and lurched away, letting me pull into the spot directly next to the stone path that led to Hannah’s front door.

  I got out and watched the jerk park again several houses down. Must be lost. Idiot.

  I didn’t give him another thought as I walked up the pumpkin lined path.

  “Hi, is Hannah home?”

  “Sure, come on in, Mike,” Hannah’s dad slurred his words and I didn’t correct him on my name. He reeked of smoke and booze. He turned and yelled for Hannah. I heard their TV, loud at the back of their house, competing with equally loud music coming from upstairs, and some pots and pans clattering in the kitchen. Hannah’s house always had more noise going on than my house. I didn’t like it.

  Hannah appeared at the top of the stairs and waved me up. “Come on to my room.”

  “Oh, no, no,” her dad put his hand on the banister, “that’s not such a good idea. You kids can go into the family room.” He swayed in that direction, slowing down his pronunciation of each word. “You come down, Hannie.”

  I studied the way she stomped down the steps, the expression on her face far from cheery. She reached the last step as her dad stumbled away down the hall and she spoke to his back, “We’ll be back in a little while, dad. Michael is gonna take me out for ice cream.” He didn’t respond and I raised my eyebrows at her.

  “Let’s get out of here,” she said, pulling a jacket from the closet. “Quick. If Hillary and Heather heard me say ice cream they’ll want to tag along.”

  I picked up one of the smaller pumpkins on the way down the walk. When I got to the driver’s side, the car that was parked up the street turned its lights on and started up. Peeping tom? Pervert? I launched the pumpkin at his taillights as he drove off. The pumpkin smashed a few feet short of my mark.

  “Why’d you do that?” Hannah’s voice was strangely cheerful.

  “Why’d I do what?” I buckled up and revved the engine. I gave her a quick glance, intending to peel out before she got her seat belt on, but something in her expression made me freeze. “What? The pumpkin? Was it your favorite one?” Her eyes shined in the dark like jack-o-lanterns, her mouth pressing out a grimace. She leaned toward me.

  “Hi, Michael.”

  That was one ditsy blonde. “What’s wrong with you, Hannah?”

  “Nothing.” She leaned back. “Where are we going?”

  “Uh, ice cream, remember? It was your idea.”

  She visibly shivered and pulled the belt across her tits. That gave me a better idea.

  We drove in silence all the way to the park. I felt her staring at me the whole time. Now she finally looked around at where we were parking, needle-bare pine boughs snapping off as they slapped the windshield. I swear she should be in drama class. The expressions she comes up with—she acted like she’d never been to our little make-out spot before. Cute innocence.

  “It’s probably too cold in the hut. We can stay in the car,” I said, cranking up the heater to give her some warmth before I turned the engine off.

  Anxious frown?

  Funny how she reminded me of coma-girl. I put my arm around her as another car crunched down the gravel road behind us.

  I turned the key off. The darkness hid Hannah’s face. The weirdest thought jumped to mind: what would it be like to kiss a girl in a coma?

  Tyler

  Tuesday evening

  I had an appointment to meet Dr. Clayton Winston an hour after his shift ended at seven. He was the anesthesiologist at the hospital who might be able to give me and Rashanda some information on out-of-body stuff.

  I was early so I drove past Hannah’s house a couple of times. Rashanda had texted me right at dinner time that Jessica was alive and well and still in Hannah’s body.

  When I saw Hannah in the sports wing after school there was not a trace of Jessica. I intended to visit her hospital room before the appointment, but when Rashanda let me know that Jessica had “aquatic control,” as she put it, I decided to see for myself.

  I was not stalking her.

  It should have been so easy. Just walk up to the door like Rashanda and I had done yesterday. Knock. Say hello. Talk a bit. Don’t be my usual shy self.

  I was getting better at conquering my nerves, but I guess I wasn’t there yet.

  On the third pass by Hannah’s ,house, another car followed me too close, practically bumped me out of the way, and parked where I was going to park. I eased down a couple of driveways, parked, and looked back.

  There was no doubt it was that tall lanky drum major. Michael Hoffman. Hannah’s boyfriend. Jessica’s crush, as if I didn’t know. I got so pissed off watching him go up to the door.

  I kept my eye on the house for a couple of minutes, surprised when he came back out so soon with Hannah following like a dog. I took off and drove to Parkside then circled around back onto Leonard. I followed them out of the subdivision, but kept my distance.

  I wasn’t dumb. There was nowhere to go and nothing to do around here on a Tuesday night. They weren’t headed toward the hospital. They weren’t turning onto the main street to hit a fast food place. That left one possibility. Michael turned his car onto the dirt road near the back entrance to Stony Park. I stopped and waited.

  A number of pictures formed in my head. Then I chanced it. I drove past where the red glow of taillights blinked out. I went another fifty yards or so and parked off to the side. I didn’t know what I expected. I didn’t care if Hannah and Michael were talking, smoking, or making out, but if it was Jessica . . . oh, man. The anger I felt a few minutes ago flooded back. I had half a mind to get out and go yank his stupid door open and haul him out. Punch him in the face. Leave him bloody on the ground. Take Jessica, I mean Hannah, back home.

  None of that was gonna happen. I ran through a couple other scenarios. Then I hit on a solution.

  Jessica

  Tuesday evening

/>   Hannah and I are having a contest of strength and will. She has agreed to let me up to experience what I want more than anything: a kiss from the hottest, coolest guy in school. I want to be me for a while, in her skin of course, to see if Michael likes my personality, but Hannah thwarts every attempt I make at being humorous, clever, and irresistible.

  Michael isn’t helping the situation either. I wonder if they’re on their way to a break-up and Hannah has been hiding it from me. He isn’t particularly talkative and when we go to the car he throws a pumpkin at another vehicle. It’s just so random that it rubs me the wrong way. When I ask him why he did that his answer makes him sound like a twelve-year-old.

  In drama class it’s remarkable how he can pull his face into impressions of whatever Mrs. Clark wants. He can be amazing and powerful and dramatic. But on the drive to where he’s taking us, he is simply ordinary. Less than ordinary. Is the knot in my stomach from my own anxiety? Am I having second thoughts or is Hannah? We struggle for control. She’s determined to do this her way and I guess she has that right.

  I really haven’t figured out how I flew out of her and onto the diving board. I know I made her think that I knew and that I could duplicate the effort again. The truth is the jump was involuntary. A mystery to me. A teensy, eensy bit of guilt plays at the corners of my conscience for letting her think that I will pop away as soon as I get that kiss. She is going to be so mad when I can’t leave.

  We turn onto a dirt road. Obviously we aren’t going for ice cream. Maybe that’s some code they have for parking. I’ve been staring at Michael’s profile as often as Hannah lets me as we drive in silence. He is such a cutie. I start getting butterflies despite my growing indifference toward him.

  We bump over some rough ground as Michael turns onto a two-track lane littered with brown leaves. The headlights catch the ghostly outline of a silvery structure through the bare trees. We jolt to a stop.

  “It’s probably too cold in the hut. We can stay in the car,” Michael says. He turns the heater to high and lets it blast for a few seconds before he shuts the engine off.

  Before I know it, his arm is around me and his other hand is pressing the release button on my seat belt. I stifle a gasp and keep my face turned toward him. My eyes readjust to the dark, but I feel his breath and sense his nearness before I can even focus on his nose.

  Hannah is doing all she can to repress my excitement. She tries to smother the anticipation with the same trick I used on her. Images of nasty things block out the thrill I should be feeling.

  “What’s the matter now?” Michael’s voice is tense, impatient.

  “Nothing, nothing’s the matter.” I battle Hannah. “Just give me a sec.”

  Without warning, Michael’s hand touches Hannah’s chest. Whoa. This isn’t what I bargained for. Things are suddenly moving faster than I want. If I could have flown out of her body right then I would have. Hannah elbows forward and grabs his hand. It’s her voice and her words that stop him. “Um, easy. I’m, you know, on the rag.”

  She touches his face, strokes his cheek, and offers him a genuine kiss. Still, it wasn’t my kiss. I experience it like I would if there was a glass window in between him and me.

  Then Hannah, Hannah the whore, Hannah the slut, Hannah the trailer trash, shocks me with a quick telepathic perception of what she’s about to do.

  And I hide. I hide in the first dark memory I can find. One when she was only five, and oh so innocent.

  Tyler

  Tuesday evening

  It was an impulse. As I got closer to the hospital, I wasn’t as sure it would work. I just had to believe that she could hear me, though. If I told her things that she would think I couldn’t possibly know, like the fact that she was in Stony Park with Michael, maybe that would shock her enough to, I don’t know, levitate out?

  I was having second thoughts about leaving her there with Michael. What if Jessica, or Hannah, needed me? Crap.

  I still had nearly half an hour before my appointment with Dr. Winston. I could turn around and go back.

  But I didn’t. I pulled into the parking lot and looked up at the windows of the room I knew was Jessica’s. I saw her mother slant the blinds and a few moments later the lights dimmed. Great timing. I stayed in my car until I saw them come out of the hospital. Poor Mrs. Mitchell looked totally wiped out, but Mr. Mitchell seemed to be holding up much better. He struck me as the optimistic type anyway. They drove away and I went in and took the stairs.

  Her door was closed and I felt like I had to knock first, you know, just in case. Of course no one answered the knock. The night nurses were getting briefed by the day nurses and there was a ton of commotion around the nurses’ station. Who would notice if I went in?

  “Hello? It’s me. Tyler.” I helped the door close faster. “Jessica? How’re ya doing?”

  The steady rhythm of the breathing machine was the only greeting. Well, that and a couple of beeps from another monitor. The room wasn’t completely dark. The glow from the machine was matched by a bank of tiny lights along the ceiling. I made my way to her side and stared at her face. The lights gave her a golden blush, but I bet she was just as pale as the last time I saw her.

  Then came the clumsy part. I got real close and put my fingers on the back of her hand. I made little circles on her skin as I talked really, really slow. “Jessica. Wake up. You’re only dreaming that you’re with Michael. Hannah is with him. Not you. Wake up. Come on.” I slipped my fingers all the way around her hand and squeezed. “Come on. Wake up. I wanted to ask you to Homecoming, you know? But we don’t have to go. A movie or something else would be okay instead. Whatever you want. But you don’t want to be at Stony Park. Not with Michael. Not now. Come on, Jessica. Wake up.”

  Her legs shook and I squeezed her hand again. “I know you can hear me, Jessica. Just come back to your body.”

  I must have prayed then. Not something I do. It just sort of happened. But I was sincere and I think God heard me. I know Jessica did.

  Because she squeezed back.

  * * *

  After twenty minutes more of holding Jessica’s hand without another response I finally went to see Dr. Winston. He didn’t have an office, but he had told me to meet him at the doctors’ workroom on the third floor. It was just a little cubbyhole, narrow and probably half the size of my bedroom, with a couple of computer workspaces for doctors to update patient charts.

  “So what do we do?” I asked as soon as he finished explaining coma statistics and how his team of volunteers collected data. “I’ve seen her. Out of her body, that is.”

  “I’m not surprised,” he said. “I felt her in the room when she had the splenectomy. Can you communicate? Have you?”

  “Yeah, but,” this was going to sound weird, “she’s, uh, inhabiting another girl’s body.”

  Dr. Winston’s scowl didn’t exactly express disbelief. He seemed surprised. Maybe they didn’t have any data on this.

  “That’s actually a good thing. Perhaps we can communicate more easily.” He nodded his head as if agreeing with himself. Or else he was crazier than a cuckoo clock. I was desperate to listen to whatever he had to say, though, so I ignored the foreboding that competed for my attention.

  “She’s split,” I said. I tried to think of the right way to explain it. “She’s totally aware of stuff when she’s in Hannah’s body. Sometimes she can take over. Movement and talking. But she’s also still in her own body, too. At least that’s what I think. I was in her room a few minutes ago and I was talking to her. You know? And she squeezed back . . . my hand.” I was talking too fast. I felt the heat seep out around my neck.

  “Let’s go to her room,” he said. He stood and put his arms through the sleeves of his white lab coat and led the way.

  “It happened to my brother, too. My stepbrother, I mean. He was in the same accident,” I let the information tumble out quickly. I sounded like an idiot. He frowned at me.

  “What do you mean ‘it happened’? W
hat happened? Was he in a coma, too?”

  I matched his quick steps. “He was unconscious—in and out of consciousness—and he and Jessica met, er, talked in some, I don’t know what you’d call it, but in some supernatural reality.”

  Dr. Winston stopped short and I slid on the tiled floor just a bit. “Is your stepbrother still in the hospital?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, hmm, I’d like to talk to him first. Do you think he’d mind?”

  * * *

  Keith was not happy to see another doctor, one he didn’t recognize, but he smiled when he saw me.

  “If you’ve come to borrow my car, forget it. Dad says it’s totaled.”

  “Like I’d dare to ask,” I said. I introduced the doctor and told Keith what we were doing.

  “No way,” Keith said. “You mean that wasn’t just a dream? I was actually floating around out of my body?” He squirmed to sit up higher, his elevated leg still anchoring him to one position.

  “It would seem so,” Dr. Winston said, authority oozing from his tone. “Tell me everything you remember about your encounter with Jessica.”

  “Whoa, I don’t know. Um, it’s kind of all fuzzy now.” He paused for breath then continued as if it wasn’t fuzzy at all. “I remember seeing her on the floor at school. Nobody was going to help her up. I knew I was the only one who could see her. I knelt down close to her. We talked a while. And then I saw her in, uh, another room. Tiled walls. And she was coughing her head off. But I was laughing and telling her everything would be all right.” He looked from Dr. Winston to me and back again. “You see how it sounds like a dream? Very random.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Um, yeah. We ended up at the hospital. I remember seeing two of her. She was standing next to herself, that is, her body was in an emergency room bed. I remember saying to her ‘Are you trying to get back into your body?’ I was standing behind her dad, which was weird because he couldn’t see or hear us, and I started laughing at her. ‘You can’t force it,’ I told her.” Keith shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know why I knew that. Then I was back in my body, waking up.”