Trance

by Linda Gerber

  “There you are,” she said. “I was getting worried.”

  “We had to stop for her to catch her breath,” Nick said smoothly. Even after everything that happened, I was surprised by how easily he could lie.

  “I see.” Mrs. Spinelli ignored him as she took my wrist, her fingers cool against my pulse. “Thank you, Mr. Cumberland. You may go back to class now.”

  I waited until the door closed behind Nick before speaking. “I’m fine,” I assured her. “It was just a—”

  “Shhh.” Mrs. Spinelli kept her eyes on her watch for a few seconds more and then released my wrist. “You gave your teacher quite a fright, you know.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No need apologize to me.” She nodded toward one of the chairs against the wall. “Sit.”

  I sat. “It was no big deal,” I said.

  Again she shushed me. “Eyes up here.” She pulled a penlight from her pocket and clicked it on like a mini lightsaber. I blinked against the brief stabs of pain as she shined it into one eye and then the other. Finally, she sat back against her desk, folding her arms and cocking her head. “Now,” she said. “Tell me how you’re feeling.”

  I lifted a shoulder. “I feel fine.” I was lying as easily as Nick now. In reality, I felt weak, dizzy, terrified.

  “So you said.” Mrs. Spinelli carefully replaced the penlight into her pocket. “Nevertheless, you should go home and rest.” When I began to protest, she held up her hand to silence me. “I know. You feel fine now. But given your medical history, we want to err on the side of caution. I can call your father for you if you would like.”

  My chest twisted. She couldn’t call my dad; he was out of town and the school district had rules about that sort of thing. If a parent was going to be away, they had to send a note, giving alternate numbers where they could be reached and naming a guardian in case of an emergency.

  Dad and I had a silent agreement that we would ignore the note rule. Neither one of us wanted to alert the authorities about how long or how often he was away. It wasn’t exactly legal for me to be left alone since I was still a minor, but I didn’t want to stay with someone else while he was gone and he didn’t want to make the arrangements. Besides, we both knew that some secrets were best kept within the family.

  “Um, I think he had a meeting today. He’ll be out of the office.”

  “No problem.” She scanned the emergency contact card we’d had to fill out at the beginning of the year. “We’ll call his cell.”

  Even though I guessed he wouldn’t answer if he saw the school’s number on his caller ID, my palms turned clammy as she dialed the phone. I shouldn’t have worried. He’d had more than his share of calls from school nurses. Why should he interrupt his day and race to the school only to find that nothing was wrong? Nothing he could fix, anyway. It was easier for him to just let the situation work itself out.

  Mrs. Spinelli tried him twice and got his voice mail each time.

  “I tell you what,” she said finally. “You go ahead and lie down on one of the cots and I’ll keep trying to reach him.” She started punching the numbers on her phone again.

  “I seriously don’t need to lie down. Besides, I have a test in trig next period that I can’t miss and—”

  She didn’t even glance up. “We’ll give your teacher a note.”

  I was starting to get desperate. “You don’t understand. If I miss classes I can’t go to track practice and we have a big meet com—”

  She shook her head. “Hon, we can’t clear you to participate in school athletics again until we have a note from your doctor.”

  “What? You can’t be serious.” What was I going to tell Dad about that? “There is nothing wrong with me.”

  “School policy,” she said firmly. “I’m going to need you to lie down until I reach your father.”

  She directed me to one of the narrow beds at the back of the room, where I sank onto the edge of the mattress, defeated. I silently watched her pull the thin curtain along its ceiling track to surround me. The rubber soles of her shoes squeaked over the tiles as she walked back over to her desk, leaving me alone. Which is what I wanted in the first place.

  Her chair creaked, the legs scraping against the floor as she must have scooted herself close to her desk. A moment later, I could hear the soft rustle of paper. I was already forgotten.

  I wished I could forget as easily. This latest trance had me rattled. Over the years, I’d never embraced the trances, but I had learned to live with them once I knew what to expect. But this one was different. Stronger. According to Ms. Crawley, I hadn’t just been zoned out and writing while I was in the trance. I’d been convulsing.

  I hugged my arms and tried not to think about the guy in the road, or the lights racing toward him. With a sick feeling in my stomach I wondered if that guy could be Nick. It was right after I saw him at the mall that the first trance had sucked me in. This one happened while we were in the same classroom. Maybe seeing him was some kind of trigger. Except that had never happened before. But then, things had changed since the accident, hadn’t they?

  Again I thought of Kyra. Was she seeing the vision, too? What details could she see that I was missing? If I was meant to warn Nick, I had to find out what was in her vision so I would know what to tell him.

  But first, I would have to find her, and I didn’t know how to do that. The whole situation left me feeling weary and defeated.

  I stretched out on the bed, the mattress rustling like a potato chip bag with every movement. It must have been covered in plastic under the sheets—I didn’t want to think why. The pillow was like a rock beneath my head, the starched pillowcase coarse and stiff against my cheek. Still, I closed my eyes, only half-listening to Mrs. Spinelli confer with the office about what to do with me.

  “. . . father is unreachable . . . That’s right. Ashlyn Greenfield. Yes, she’s the one. Terrible, wasn’t it. . . . Well, there’s the problem. According to the file, we need his authorization to take her off school property or to seek medical . . . well, of course I tried his cell, but he didn’t answer. . . . I left a message. . . . Right. . . . I can just . . .”

  My head buzzed and my mind began to drift into gray static. Mrs. Spinelli’s words kept playing like a looped tape in my head. “She’s the one. Terrible. Terrible. Terrible.”

  10

  Behind my closed eyelids, I saw a replay of my dad’s non-reaction when I had asked about Kyra the day before. She needs some time to herself, he had said. Which only confirmed that he knew where she was. The ache in my chest dug deeper. Why would he want to keep that from me? Or was she the one who wanted the keeping? Either way, it made me want to curl up in a ball and cry, but that wouldn’t do me any good. Crying wouldn’t stop the trances.

  I thought of Dad locking himself in his office whenever he was home and I wondered what else he was hiding from me. And then my breath caught. I bolted up on the cot. Dad didn’t have to tell me where Kyra went. He was a businessman. He kept records. There had to be something in his office that would point me in the right direction. I just had to get home to find it.

  Mrs. Spinelli and her squeaky shoes stepped out into the hall about a quarter after ten. I didn’t move for a full minute after that, just to be sure. The room sounded empty. It felt empty. I pulled back the corner of the curtain to peek out. She was gone.

  Just then the class bell rang and the hall filled with students. I slipped out into the crush of them and grabbed my backpack from my locker. A lot of the seniors left school for the day after fourth period, so I just walked out with them.

  If anyone at school asked what happened to me, I could always say my dad had sent someone to pick me up. When he got home that night, I’d have him write a note to that effect. Or more to the point, I would type it up for him and have him sign it. Chances were he wouldn’t even read it. He hardly ever read school papers. That had always been my mom’s department.

  And now it was mine.

  Eve
n though I knew Dad was in Houston, I hesitated outside his office door. The office was like his inner sanctum. I almost felt bad for violating it, but the need to find Kyra outweighed my respect for his privacy.

  I started with the desk drawers, pulling the wide middle one out slowly, tentatively. Everything in the drawer was laid out in precise, meticulous order—envelopes and Post-it pads lined up at right angles, pens all facing the same direction, even the paper clips were nestled in uniform rows. That kind of organization seemed strange for someone who couldn’t remember to put the cap back on the milk or put away his own laundry. But I’d been through enough therapy sessions to guess the reason why. It was a compulsive thing. In the house, the office was his refuge. Here, he was master. Outside the office doors he had no control.

  I closed the drawer, feeling more than a little bit sad as I moved on to the smaller side drawers. Everywhere I looked, it was the same: papers, notebooks, files all painstakingly placed. I sifted through them gingerly, careful not to disturb the order.

  I found it in the credenza. Almost passed over it, as a matter of fact. At first when I saw the unfamiliar credit card statement, I figured it was for Dad’s business account, but instead of BG Consulting, the card was issued to Benjamin Greenfield. A personal account—unusual because I’d been paying all the household bills and this credit card wasn’t one of them.

  I pulled the file from the drawer and laid it on the desk, opening it carefully like it might self-destruct. There weren’t many charges on the card, so the fee for a prepaid cell phone stood out. Holding my breath, I thumbed through several months’ worth of credit card bills. Sure enough, the charges started the second week in February, the week that Kyra had moved away.

  Hands trembling now, I turned back to the desk and searched through the files for Gamut Prepaid Cellular. It was tucked into a folder marked, simply, K. I laid that file on top of the credit card file and read through the billing information until I found the prepaid phone’s number. I copied it onto one of the Post-it notes and carefully put both files away.

  My heart hammered inside my chest. This was it. I’d found her. I reached for the phone on the desk, but it felt wrong to call her from there. I stuck the Post-it to the back of my hand, checked to make sure I had left everything in my dad’s office in order, and hurried down the hall to my bedroom.

  Trembling, I sat at my desk and dialed the phone.

  Kyra answered after the second ring. “Dad?”

  My heart tumbled. What was this—their private line? Why did they think they had to hide it from me? “Kyra?”

  She was quiet for a moment. “Ashlyn?”

  “Yeah. It’s me.”

  “How did you get this number?”

  “From Dad.” Then I corrected myself in a small voice. “From Dad’s office.”

  More silence. “What do you want?”

  Her hesitation settled like a weight on my chest. “I . . . I need to talk to you. Can we meet somewhere?”

  “No,” she said sharply. “We can’t.”

  I wanted to cry. “I need your help.”

  Silence.

  “I keep having trances,” I said, pressing on.

  “I’m going to hang up.”

  “No! Please don’t. Please. I need—”

  “I can’t help you, Ashlyn.”

  I gripped the phone with both hands, wanting to hold on to her, to make her understand. “I need to know what you’re seeing, Kyra.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  It was a lie. I knew lying; it was what I did. I recognized it in her voice.

  “Kyra, please. I just want the visions to stop.”

  “So do I,” she said quietly.

  “Then please help.”

  “I can’t do that.” Her voice sounded tired.

  “Please, Kyra. I don’t know what else to do. I need you. You have to help me.”

  “Like you helped me before the accident?”

  My heart plummeted. Kyra standing by my bed. Shaking. Scared.

  “I didn’t know,” I whispered. “Believe me, Kyra, if I’d have known, I would have tried to—”

  “It’s too late,” Kyra said. “We can’t go back.”

  “I didn’t know,” I said again.

  “It’s done, Ashlyn. She’s gone.”

  I dropped my head into my hand, tears clinging to my eyelashes before dripping down onto the Post-it note, smearing her number. “If we can make things right this time—”

  “Don’t call me again,” she said, and hung up.

  I held the phone to my ear until I heard the dial tone. Then the beeping. Then the automated voice, “If you would like to make a call, please hang up and try again.” Letting the phone clatter onto the desk, I hugged my arms. “I’m sorry,” I whispered to the emptiness around me. “I’m so sorry.”

  It’s the morning after the party and I can’t think straight. It feels like my skull split apart and the two halves are grinding together. My mouth tastes like a sewer.

  “Ashlyn . . .”

  “Not now.” I roll out of the bed and lurch to the bathroom to puke.

  An hour later I’m dressed, hunched over the kitchen table. One hand massages my temples and the other holds a cup of steaming herbal tea. Mom is humming off-key in the other room. Kyra slides into the chair next to mine.

  “I have to know.” Her voice is low and conspiratorial. “It’s important. My half of the puzzle . . .” She’s unfolding a sheet of paper in front of me. I can’t focus on the numbers.

  “What is this?”

  “It’s the numbers,” she whispers. “I need to know what yours says, what you saw. I’m afraid that . . .” Her voice cracks and she glances toward the other room, where the awful humming is coming from. “I think something’s going to happen to—”

  I push her paper away. “It didn’t come to me.”

  “What?”

  With some effort, I stand, swaying a little. I grab the table for support. My head’s still throbbing and the movement isn’t helping any. “I haven’t written anything for over a week,” I say. “Whatever this is, it’s just you. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  She pushes back from the table, knocking her chair over. It clatters to the floor and the noise hammers straight into my brain. I groan.

  “Look at you,” she hisses. “You can’t even stand on your own feet!”

  I turn from her, which only causes the room to spin.

  “You didn’t write because you’re drunk.” Kyra spits out the words like they’ve been dipped in poison.

  “I’m not drunk,” I say. Not anymore. But I keep that part to myself.

  “Then it’s not too late,” she persists. “Maybe you haven’t gotten it yet. Maybe you just need to—”

  “What I need,” I say, “is to lie down.” I walk away.

  When I wake, long shadows fill my room. Tentatively, I raise my head and look at the clock.

  “Crud!”

  I throw back the covers and jump from the bed. The mall will be closing in less than an hour and I need to get a new lens kit. The old lens has a hairline crack in it and I want to take pictures on our Spanish class trip to the museum on Monday. I brush my teeth and splash water on my face and then go looking for Mom, pulling my hair back into a sloppy ponytail as I go.

  “You’re up,” she says when she sees me.

  “The mall closes in forty-five minutes,” I snap. “Why didn’t you wake me?”

  “I thought maybe you didn’t feel up to going.” She’s looking at me in a funny way that makes me think maybe Kyra told her about me drinking.

  “I need to get the lens kit.” My voice comes out harsher than I intended and I feel a little guilty, but my irritation won’t let me back down.

  “It’s getting late . . .”

  “I can go by myself if you don’t want to—”

  “Oh, no you don’t.” She’s already standing up and grabbing her car keys. “Rules are rules.”

/>   I take the keys, muttering about how stupid it is that I need to have another driver in the car when I’ve had my license for three weeks. Mom just ignores me. All the way to the mall, she pretends like I wasn’t just a complete troll to her. I’m not in the mood for her forced cheerfulness, but I don’t really want to hold on to my foul mood, either.

  I let my mind wander back to last night’s party, out on the porch with Nick Cumberland. My stomach flips as I remember how he kissed me. I raise my fingers to my lips.

  “Both hands on the wheel,” Mom says.

  I can’t stop reliving the memories as we walk through the mall. It doesn’t seem real. Me and Nick Cumberland! I know I’m grinning like an idiot, but I can’t help myself. I’ve had a crush on Nick since seventh grade when our class was playing dodgeball in gym. I caught a hard throw by Scott Gardener and stood there, dazed. Nick smiled at me and said, “Nice catch, Greenfield.” Until that moment, I didn’t think he even knew I existed, but he said my name! The fact that he hardly spoke two words to me from that moment on never swayed my devotion to him. And now we’re together! It’s like a dream.

  I’m so besotted that I don’t even mind when my mom says she needs to stop into Jo-Ann to get some fabric for new pillows in the study. She makes her purchase and we’re on the way down to Camera Corner when I see him sitting by the fountain in the mall’s center court.

  My heart leaps as I recognize Nick’s tousled brown hair and his Springfield High jersey. But just as quickly, I see that he’s not alone and the breath goes out of me. Alicia Hayes is sitting on his lap, her face all smashed up against his. His hand is splayed across her backside, thumb tucked inside the waistband of her jeans.

  My feet stop working and the bile rises in my throat. All I can do is stand there, staring at them. And then Nick looks up, like I’ve just called his name or something. His eyes meet mine and I watch it register on his face as he remembers last night. His lips part like he’s going to say something, but then Alicia pulls him close to her again.