Trance

by Linda Gerber

  I looked back over my shoulder to the kiosk, where Gina stood watching. She made big sweeping gestures with her arms and mouthed, “Go on.”

  I took a deep breath and turned my attention back to Jake. “Can we go someplace and talk?”

  We sat at one of the deserted tables in the food court. It was late enough that we had the whole back corner to ourselves. For what seemed like a very long time, we just sat and looked at each other before Jake finally spoke.

  “Ashlyn, you can tell me anything. Everything.”

  I traced the pattern of the wood grain on the table with my finger. “It’s hard.”

  “Doesn’t have to be. We just decide right now. You be completely open with me, I’ll be completely open with you. And no one walks away. Deal?”

  His eyes held mine.

  “Deal,” I said softly.

  He nodded grimly, and I realized for the first time that being open could be as hard for him as it was for me. He squared his shoulders and cleared his throat. “I’ll start, okay?”

  I nodded.

  “When I was growing up, my brother was my idol. He’s four years older than I am and I always wanted to be just like him. He was smart. Funny. Good at sports. Everyone liked him. And then . . .” He stared at his hands on the table, his voice growing quiet. “In high school, he started to act different, like he was a stranger in my brother’s body. I never knew what was coming when he was around. One day he’d be completely normal, and the next, he was mean and bitter. He’d throw things around, punch holes in the drywall. He was holding so much anger inside he had to hit something just to let it out.”

  His hand drifted up to his forehead and he fingered the scar absently. He’d said he got the scar wrestling with his brother. Suddenly, I understood. They hadn’t been wrestling for fun.

  “Jake, stop. You don’t have to tell—”

  “Yeah, I do.” He reached across the table and took my hand. “It’s only fair.”

  I caught the corner of my lip between my teeth and stared at the way his fingers curled around mine. Strong. Sure. Everything I was not. After so many years of hiding the truth, I didn’t know how I was going to be able to tell him what he wanted to hear. He was probably expecting some kind of confessional about how I got hung up on my meds, not a story about trances and visions. But when I looked into his eyes all I saw was trust.

  “Okay,” I whispered.

  He nodded and his thumb rubbed back and forth over my knuckles as we sat still at the table, talking with our eyes. Finally, Jake drew a breath to speak again. “At first I tried to cover for him. I didn’t want my mom and dad to see what was happening with him.” His words were rushed, like he needed to get them out. “But then when he got caught, I’d get in trouble, too, for being an accomplice.” He looked down at our hands. “And I guess I was. By trying to protect him, I just helped him get worse.”

  “You didn’t know,” I offered.

  He accepted that with a shrug. “That’s not the bad part. I . . . started to hate my brother. Started to resent cleaning up his messes. For years I’ve been trying to make it easier on my mom and dad by being everything he could have been. I got good grades, lettered in baseball, picked up the slack. But they—” He cleared his throat. “I don’t think they’ve ever even noticed. My brother’s drinking took over everything until they didn’t see me anymore.”

  I dropped my eyes to the table. I knew what it was like to be lost behind the bigger problem.

  “He’s in prison now,” Jake continued in a low voice, glancing around like he was afraid someone else might hear. “DUI and vehicular homicide.”

  Cold washed over me. I heard the screeching of tires, crumpling of metal. Felt the pain all over again. Another crash. Another drunk driver. I hated the driver in our accident for taking my mom away. Almost as much as I hated myself.

  “I’m sorry,” I murmured.

  “That’s why I work at Kinnear. My mom and dad couldn’t afford the attorney fees, so Uncle Dale loaned them the money on the condition that I work it off in the store.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  Jake shrugged. “Life isn’t fair.”

  I knew that was true.

  “So,” he concluded, “now you know. That’s who I am.”

  “No.” I held Jake’s eyes with mine. “It’s what happened. Not who you are.”

  He nodded slowly and his grip on my hand tightened. “Now it’s your turn. What happened with you?”

  I chewed my lip again. Would he understand? Respect him enough to find out, Gina had said. I took a deep breath. “I have visions,” I said.

  20

  Once I started talking, everything tumbled out in one long stream. After so many years of keeping it all inside, it felt good to confide in someone else. Gina was like a warm-up. Jake got the full treatment. To his credit, he didn’t freak out or run away, even though I could tell by the way his eyes got wider and wider that he was more than a little bit shocked by what he was hearing. But he just nodded the whole time, holding my hand in both of his and encouraging me to continue if I faltered or my words trailed off.

  “So that’s my life. It’s not pretty, but there’s not a whole lot I can do about that.”

  “I don’t know. I always heard that if you don’t change the things you don’t like, you have no one to blame but yourself.”

  I snorted. Suddenly, he sounded like one of my counselors. “Oh really? Then what about you?”

  “Me?”

  “Right. Hanging out in your brother’s shadow, apologizing for him, trying to clean up his messes. You don’t belong in that music store, and you know it. I’ve seen you in there. It’s like watching a wild animal in a cage.”

  Jake looked away. “Yeah, well, once Uncle Dale has his money—”

  “But it isn’t your responsibility. What would you rather be doing?”

  He stared at me hard for a moment and then his mouth softened and he sighed. “For real?”

  “For real.”

  “There’s a local band that needs a guitarist for the summer tour. A couple of the guys came into the store the other day and they were talking about tryouts this weekend.”

  “See? That’s what I’m talking about. You should go for it.”

  A smile touched his lips. I hoped that meant he was considering it. “How about we make a deal? I promise to try out if you get your license.”

  “Nice one, but I already have my license. I just don’t drive. Not anymore.”

  “Let me see.”

  “What? You don’t believe me?”

  “I just want to see it, that’s all.”

  I pulled back. “No way. It has the world’s most terrible picture on it.”

  “It can’t be that bad.” He held out his hand.

  I made a face. “Believe me; it is.”

  “Completely open,” he reminded me.

  I sighed and pulled my license out of my wallet.

  Jake grabbed it, grinning in victory, but when he looked at it, the smile froze on his face. “It’s not that bad,” he said, forcing a cheerfulness that I knew he didn’t feel.

  My chest twisted in confusion. Jake was shutting down before my eyes. From what? Looking at my license? It didn’t make sense. I shouldn’t have told him about the visions. It must have been too hard after all. I should have—

  Jake slid back into conversation like nothing was wrong, but I could feel him holding back, forcing his laughter. Finally, I stood. “I have to go,” I said. “Thanks for talking with me.”

  As I feared, he didn’t try to stop me, but looked up, distracted, like he had already moved on to the next thing on his list. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll see you around.”

  I didn’t hear from Jake the next day. Or the day after that. I kept turning on my cell phone just to make sure it was working. It was. I even pulled out the number Michelle had given me and texted him, but he never texted back.

  It really should have come as no surprise. This is why I ne
ver talked about myself. It was too much for people to handle, even people like Jake. After all his talk of honesty, I wanted to hate him for abandoning me like that, but I understood. He was just like everyone else.

  I wandered through the empty house, feeling even emptier inside. I wanted it to end. I wanted to be normal. Whatever it took, I was going to complete the vision that kept repeating in my trances. Maybe then I would be free.

  From what Gina said, all the numbers I wrote had energy, had vibrations. I could feel that in my head whenever the trances took over. I could also feel it whenever I stepped into my mother’s parlor. As if her energy was still there.

  I didn’t believe what the church ladies said, that trance writing and the numbers were evil. But what if they were right about them being messages from the other side? That would account for the different handwriting. If my mom were there now, she would finally understand. She would want to help me. Slowly, barely breathing, I stepped into her room. The reaction was immediate. My heart raced, my hands turned cold, the buzzing in my head felt like it was going to make my brain explode. I must have been right, then. There was energy in that room.

  The darkness had already started to gather by the time I felt my way to her writing table and sat down. I pulled a sheet of paper from the decorative stationery she never used and reached for a pen.

  With a sudden whoosh, the room went dark.

  I don’t have time to think before a car races past me so close that the draft tosses my hair and sucks my breath right out of my lungs. I watch its headlights race ahead into the blackness, where another set of lights appear. I can feel my pulse hammering in my throat as the lights grow brighter, closer. And then the car swerves and loses control. A scream rises from me like the wail of a siren. I throw up my hands and wait for the impact, but it never comes.

  Instead, numbers circle my head like huge crows, dipping, swooping, pecking at my brain as if to say that I should know what they mean. I try to wave them away, but my hands fly right through them. Fives, fours, nines . . .

  Gina’s voice floats above it all. You have the same number vibrations. The same vibrations. The same vibrations.

  The numbers change into white lights. Car lights. Engines revving. Tires squealing. Speeding toward me. Speeding toward a boy in the road.

  I scream. “Watch out!”

  He turns to look at me and my stomach goes cold.

  Jake?

  The lights explode over my head and I feel myself falling backward.

  When I came to, I was lying on my back on the floor, the chair to the desk on its side next to the wall. I sucked in a huge gulp of air, as if I had been underwater and had just now surfaced. The numbers. Where were the numbers?

  I tried to push myself up, but the room was spinning, tilting, pieces settling into place. I rolled over onto my stomach and dragged myself to the desk, using it as leverage to haul myself up onto my knees. On the desk lay the stationery, bold numbers scrawled across it in masculine handwriting.

  1+1+2+5 = 9

  1+5+4+5+2+3+7+5 = 32

  3+2 = 5

  There were more numbers beneath, but the top line is all I needed to see. I recognized the configuration from when Gina did our numbers. When she pointed out that Jake’s number vibrations and my own were the same. It only verified what I already knew from seeing his face in the trance.

  Jake was the guy in the vision.

  A wave of nausea rolled through my stomach but I fought against it. I didn’t have time to be sick. Something bad was going to happen to Jake. I needed to see more. I needed more information so I could warn him.

  I tried to right the chair I had knocked over, but it felt like rubber in my hands. Every time I set it on its feet, it fell over again. I finally decided I didn’t have time to mess with it and grabbed the pen once more.

  In an instant, I was back on the road, my head buzzing and twitching like a hundred live wires were jumping around in my brain.

  Headlights sweep along the road, headed straight for me. I duck my head and suddenly I’m standing on the gravel shoulder, watching them race nearer. Jake is in the spot where I had been just a moment ago. I can see terror in the tenseness of his posture, the way he jerks this way and then that, not knowing where to stand to be safe. And then I see the Indian. Jake is straddling his bike. The car horn blares. I scream for him to look out, but in that instant, the car whizzes by—and then Jake is gone.

  I must have jerked myself out of the trance again because all of a sudden the darkness dissolved and the pain in my fingers registered. “No!” I cried. “Where’s the rest of it? That wasn’t enough! I need to know where this happens! I need to know when!”

  I pressed the tip of the pen to the paper again, but nothing happened. Frantic, I threw that piece of stationery behind me and grabbed another. I dug in the narrow drawer for a different pen to use. Nothing. I tried again and again and again, but I didn’t even get a twinge.

  The pen rolled from my fingers. I dropped my head to the desk and sobbed. How could this be it? After years of seeing visions I didn’t want, now that I needed one to show itself, I get nothing?

  I knew what Gina would say. She’d tell me I had seen all I was meant to receive. That’s just the way it was. And then she’d tell me to stop whining and she’d ask me what I was going to do next. I lifted my head and wiped my eyes. What could I do? Warn Jake? Warn him of what? I didn’t know enough to tell him anything. Besides, he wouldn’t believe it. He had taken off as soon as he found out about me. He thought I was a freak, just like everyone else did.

  So I would just have to find out what was missing in the vision another way. I needed a time. A place. And if I couldn’t see it myself, I had no choice. I had to find Kyra.

  21

  My hands shook as I dialed the phone. This time she wouldn’t hang up. This time I’d make her listen. I pressed the phone to my ear and my chest felt heavier with each ring that hummed from the other end of the line. And then a voice came on.

  “We’re sorry. You have reached a number that is no longer in service. If you think you have reached this recording in—”

  “No. Please, no,” I whispered, and dialed the number again.

  “We’re sorry. You have—”

  I hung up and slumped to the floor with the phone in my hands. Did she want to avoid me so much that she had disconnected her phone after the last time I called? Then she left me no choice. I’d just have to go to wherever she was. I’d appeal to her in person so she couldn’t run away. Then she would have to listen.

  I dialed the phone again and listened to the faraway ringing. Finally, he picked up.

  “Ben Greenfield.”

  “Dad?”

  “Ashlyn?” His voice dropped low. “What is it? I’m in the middle of an important business din—”

  “Dad, where’s Kyra?”

  The other end of the line went quiet. If it wasn’t for the fact that I could still hear him breathing, I might have thought he’d hung up on me. “This is not a good time.”

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “Where is she, Dad? I need to talk to her.”

  “Hold on.” I could hear him making his apologies to whoever he was with, then heard a door open and close. “I am working, Ashlyn. We will discuss this when I get home.”

  “No! This can’t wait.” It was time to tell the whole truth, hold nothing back. No more pretending. I took a deep breath, hoping I was right. “Dad, listen to me. Kyra had a vision before Mom died. I should have seen it, too, but I had been drinking at that party and—”

  “Ashlyn, stop.”

  “That’s just it. I can’t make the visions stop, Dad. I . . . I think I’m supposed to see them. And Kyra, too. But we can’t do anything about them unless we work together.” I wiped my eyes.

  “Ashlyn, I told you—”

  “I can’t do this by myself. I need you to tell me where Kyra is. A friend of mine is in trouble and I need her to help me stop what I saw. Please. I’ll
take back everything I said before. I’ll run track. I’ll do whatever you want. Just tell me where she is so I can talk to her.”

  He was quiet again, and when he spoke, his voice sounded sad, old. “You don’t have to be someone you’re not to make me happy, Ash. That’s not what I want for you.”

  I blinked away fresh tears, but I had to stay focused. “What about Kyra?”

  “She’s . . . not well.”

  “Where is she, Dad?”

  His breath soughed through the phone line. “I’m coming home. I’ll cancel the rest of the meetings. I can be there by—”

  “I need to talk to her tonight. Now. Please, Dad. Tell me where she is.”

  He was quiet again. “Do you have a pencil?” he asked finally.

  I grabbed the message pad from the counter. “Yes. I’m ready.”

  “I hope so, Ash,” he said quietly. “You can find Kyra at the Gathering Place. 784 Sycamore Street. Ask at the desk. I’ll call ahead and tell them it’s all right.”

  “Tell who?”

  But the line was dead.

  The Gathering Place sounded familiar, but I couldn’t remember why. I stared at the address on the message pad. 784 Sycamore. That was just across town. All this time, all this wondering . . . she’d been only twenty minutes away.

  I grabbed the bus-route pamphlet from the basket on the counter and searched for the closest line that went to Sycamore. There wasn’t one. There was a line that ran down Tara Hill, three blocks over, but the last run had been at 7:10. My hands turned to ice as I realized what that meant. If I wanted to get there tonight, I would have to drive. I hadn’t been behind the wheel of a car since the accident. Just the thought of driving again made my stomach hurt, but I kept seeing Jake’s face from the vision as he turned to look at me. I had to reach Kyra, no matter what it took.

  I stood by the door to the garage for a long time, my hand on the doorknob, my chest hot and tight. The keys to the car still hung on the hook inside the little miniature cupboard my mom had gotten on one of her antiques shopping excursions. I couldn’t bring myself to reach for them.