Earthbound e-1

by Aprilynne Pike

  “You have a scrape on your forehead,” a woman says. She looks at me so intently I wonder if she knows me. If I know her. Worse, if she knows Reese and Jay—it’s not a particularly large city—and is about to open up her cell phone and call them. What a disaster that would be. I open my mouth to speak, but before I can, she presses a Band-Aid into my hand, turns to cough politely into the crook of her arm, then walks up the street.

  I watch her go, and just as I start to look away, she flickers.

  What the hell?

  I study her back—a spot of blue pastel among the pedestrians—willing her to flicker again, to have someone else notice, to prove to myself that I’m not crazy. But after about ten seconds of nothing weird happening, she takes a left and walks out of sight.

  I brace my shoulder against the gray stone of the realty office and try to convince myself that I must have just blinked or that it was my imagination or something.

  The blond guy is nowhere to be seen, which is probably a good thing since I’m not sure I could keep myself from screaming at him. He wants me to come to him; he runs away from me.

  Down nonexistent alleys, no less.

  Boys.

  The again-milling foot traffic flows around me, but there’s something … something else making me uncomfortable. A niggling sense of—there! I catch sight of a man across the street, watching me. He’s wearing khaki cargo pants and sunglasses; pretty nondescript.

  But he’s watching me. Great.

  I meet his eyes—I think, stupid sunglasses—and glare, daring him to keep staring at the klutzy girl. He immediately turns his head and begins walking in the opposite direction. I hate embarrassing myself in public.

  Distantly I hear the crinkle of the Band-Aid wrapper as I crumple it in my palm and my chin drops to my chest. I stride up the still-crowded boardwalk, forgetting to count as I work my way along, hoping no one looks at my bright red face too closely.

  At the end of the block I turn and head to a much newer part of town, where my physical therapy center is. My mind races faster than my feet.

  Who the hell is this blond guy? He could be a reporter. Seems awfully young for that, though. I got a good look last night and he can’t be much older than me. And based solely on statistics, he’s probably not a serial killer. He could be some kind of bizarre stalker, but why?

  Maybe he’s just a weirdo. I mean, he grew his hair out for a reenactment costume he wears every day; he could simply be way hard core into that kind of thing. Like the old men who spend all their spare time building model trains or painting Civil War miniatures. Or this guy in my old school who was really into theater and would dress and talk like his character all day, every day whenever he was cast in a new part. It would be about three steps beyond “quirky,” but not unheard of. In fact, that might be the best explanation—for my safety, at least.

  But Mr. Ponytail did try to get me to come out last night. Why would he do that? If he were so into his reenactment life, it seems like he would approach me during the day and introduce himself with some kind of overdone wave of his hat or something similarly dramatic.

  And that flicker when the woman walked away … Just one more bullet point on my list of topics I really don’t want to think about.

  When I arrive at the PT center, a glance in the passenger-side mirror of a random car in the parking lot shows me my injured forehead. There’s a scrape with a little line of dirt on one side. I lick my finger and try to clear the smudge away. The raw skin stings each time I touch it, but I ignore that and scrub until the grayish streak is gone. I adjust my short bangs over the shallow cut and try to convince myself no one will notice.

  I’m about to head in when my phone rings. “Elizabeth?” I whisper to myself. It’s not like she never calls—she used to check up on me somewhat regularly. But it’s been a while. “Hey, Elizabeth,” I say.

  “Got a second?” she asks cheerily, but I’m totally nervous anyway.

  “A few,” I say, glancing at the PT center.

  I hear her draw in a breath, then hesitate. “I spoke with your uncle this morning. He said you were up very early. Two o’clock early.”

  My mouth drops in surprise. “Jay?” Traitor, I think, and kick the tire of the car I’m standing by.

  “Don’t blame him,” Elizabeth says. “He just thought it might be important.”

  Like that makes everything okay. “Well, it isn’t. I had a nightmare. That’s all.”

  “About the crash?”

  “Didn’t Jay tell you?” I sound petulant but can’t bring myself to care. I already feel like I’m living my life in a fishbowl; I don’t need further confirmation.

  Elizabeth says nothing, but the truth is, she doesn’t have to speak; I know the words intrinsically. Tavia, you’re avoiding the issue.

  “No,” I finally answer, one hand fisted on my hip. “It didn’t have anything to do with the crash—that’s why it’s not important.”

  “You know, just because the dream didn’t have a plane in it doesn’t mean it isn’t related to your mind trying to deal with the crash. Many dreams—most, really—aren’t literal.”

  She lets the conversation hang, waiting for me to direct it. I know her tricks.

  But that doesn’t mean they don’t work.

  “I was drowning,” I say, turning my back to the physical therapy center, as though someone inside could hear me. “A stereotypical dream. The kind normal people have,” I add, emphasizing the word normal and clearly leaving myself out of that category.

  “Would you mind sharing?” Elizabeth asks.

  I don’t want to talk about the water. Even thinking about it makes me shiver all over. So I give her as fast a version as I can, skimming over the way it made me feel.

  “Were you able to get back to sleep or did this dream continue to bother you?” She uses the word dream instead of nightmare. I suspect it’s to make it sound more neutral, but I wish she’d call it what it was. Dreams don’t terrify you until you stop breathing. “I went downstairs and had a snack, and that calmed me down.”

  Then silence. Elizabeth knows there’s more and she waits. Just waits. She does this in her office, too—it’s maddening.

  But it works.

  Almost against my will, I start to speak. “There’s …” I know that once I tell her, there’s no going back. I can hardly believe I’m doing this. My shrink. I’m taking my guy troubles to my shrink. But who else can I take them to? Not Reese or Jay. Just … no.

  And Benson already told me what he thinks I should do. I think I need to talk to another woman. Maybe the romantic chromosome we all seem to have will help her understand this weird feeling.

  “There’s a—a guy. I just saw him for the first time. Actually, like the third time and—” I force myself to stop and calm my nerves. I have to start from the beginning. “Yesterday, after our session, I was in the car while Reese was getting milk.”

  She listens without comment—though she breathes a soft, “Oh, Tave,” when I get to the part about him being in the backyard at two A.M.—until I wrap up with the incident at the realty office. Though I fudge the details a teeny bit to make it sound like I’m not seeing fake alleys or flickering women.

  “And he was just gone?” Elizabeth asks when I finish.

  “Gone,” I say, and that weird sad feeling swirls in my chest again. “Benson says I should call the police,” I add when the silence makes me nervous. “But I don’t think this guy’s dangerous. And if … if I call the police, he’ll—” I cut off my own words. I don’t even want to say it.

  “He’ll leave?” Elizabeth asks, and anguish drowns me, filling me so completely I can’t speak. I only make a vague noise of agreement. Part of me hates the way this guy makes me feel—it’s overwhelming and awakens emotions I don’t recognize. It’s different than the way I feel about Benson—he’s a soft, steady light, while this guy is like a firecracker—blindingly bright, but here and then gone in an instant.

  But those brief mom
ents are like liquid joy pouring over my head. That part, I like.

  “You seem to be feeling some very strong emotions here.”

  “I guess.” I brace myself for her to tell me that this is a side effect of my grief, or that I’m projecting unrequited love on an inappropriate target, or that it’s the brain damage talking.

  I’m irrationally relieved when she doesn’t. I want to see him again, even though every shred of logic within me is shouting that it’s a bad idea.

  I can’t help but wonder if this is a sign that I’m getting better or that I’m truly broken.

  “Tave, I really want to make sure we talk about this more tomorrow when we can discuss it face-to-face. Is that okay with you?”

  “Sure, I guess,” I say, almost hating that I told her at all now that the panic has passed. But she’s my psychiatrist—this is the kind of crazy stuff I’m supposed to tell her. Still, I feel like I just spilled someone else’s secret rather than sharing my own thoughts.

  The silence stretches again, but I’m in no mood to deal with it anymore. “I gotta go,” I mumble, looking for an excuse to hang up. “I have a physical therapy appointment.” I force a sharp bark of laughter. “You know, my other therapist.”

  Elizabeth chuckles and then says, “Okay. Go in and … stretch. We’ll talk more tomorrow.”

  “Thanks,” I say dryly, and hang up. I walk toward the center, trying to sort through my conflicted feelings.

  She didn’t tell me not to see him again. But I feel like it was too easy. Mentally, I know Benson’s reaction made more sense. Perhaps part of me wanted Elizabeth to confirm that I really should stay away from him.

  But she didn’t. And I can’t help but wonder why.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Hey, Tave,” Jay says as I slide into the passenger seat, my leg throbbing from ankle to hip. Usually Reese picks me up from PT because Jay’s at work.

  “No lab Nazi today?” I ask, buckling my seat belt. The combination of aches from therapy and knowing that he tattled on me to Elizabeth makes me much less than happy to see him.

  “Worse,” Jay says, pulling into traffic. His voice is scratchy and he stifles a yawn. “I have research to do at home.”

  “The virus?”

  He pauses, so briefly I almost don’t catch it. “Yeah.” But he doesn’t elaborate. “What happened to your head?”

  My fingers fly to the scrape, preemptively sabotaging any lie I might have tried to tell. Clearly, my bangs aren’t doing their job. “Um.” I fumble for an explanation. “I ran into a wall.”

  “Let’s see,” he says when we hit a red light. He stretches his arm out toward my face. I try not to flinch, but when his hand stills midair, I know I’ve failed. I don’t like people reaching for me—not anymore. Too many months of doctors and nurses checking my eyes, my stitches, my ears, my temperature, my scar, and—of course—about a million needles, all pointed toward me.

  He doesn’t push it. Jay’s always pretty good with stuff like that.

  “Please, Jay,” I say, rubbing my eyes with the heels of my hands as I feel a headache building. “I’m totally feeling like a dork already—I was just a stupid klutz. I promise.”

  He hesitates longer than I think is really necessary. It’s just a scrape.

  “I know you talked to Elizabeth,” I blurt after a short pause, my anger making me brave. When in doubt, go with a diversion. Or better yet, an accusation.

  He smiles guiltily, tilts his head like a puppy that got caught chewing on a shoe. “I didn’t really tell her anything,” he protests. “Not even what the dream was about.”

  “Did you tell Reese? What it was about?” I clarify.

  “You know I tell Reese everything.”

  I can’t be mad at that. They’re married. And family or not, I’m an intruder in their life. “Light’s green,” I mutter.

  “It was really casual,” Jay says, trying to placate me. “Dr. Stanley calls once in a while to make sure everything’s going well at home, and she happened to call this morning.” He pauses, glances over at me. “I didn’t think it was confidential; I mean, was it?”

  “Not really,” I admit, feeling my frustration ebb. It wasn’t that big of a deal. “I just feel like I don’t have any privacy. Like, ever.”

  “I’ll warn you next time,” he says earnestly. “In fact—peace offering—when we get home, you go upstairs and put a dab of makeup on that scrape before dinner and I’ll make a teeny exception to my tell-Reese-everything rule. Our little secret,” he whispers with a grin. “Truce?”

  I go ahead and give him a weak smile. It isn’t that I don’t want Reese to know, exactly. But she worries. A lot. Not that I blame her—her stepbrother died in a plane wreck and she inherited his crazy, damaged kid. Death makes people paranoid.

  I should know.

  Just before we pull into the garage, I catch sight of the billowy curtains in Reese’s office fluttering through her open window. Wind chimes that Reese let me mount across the front porch a few weeks ago sway in the slight breeze. As I take in the ringing of the chimes and the classic beauty of the house, I feel my whole body relax. For some reason, I’ve always found their home comforting.

  “You’ll have to excuse me,” Jay says as we walk in the back door, “but I do need to get some work done before dinner.” He yanks off his already-loose tie and tosses it over the arm of a chair as he heads into his “office.” It’s more like a lab, complete with three computers, charts of molecules plastered on the wall, and one side of the room entirely taken up with bookshelves full of colorful reference books in very non-alphabetical order.

  His actual chemistry stuff is at the lab—he says it’s too dangerous to bring home—but every simulation and research tool you could possibly want is in there.

  Assuming you can find it.

  Jay drops into his office chair and gets right back to work, and I tiptoe upstairs to fix my forehead.

  Reese’s office is down the hall from my room and I hear her inside, humming off-key. I creep by the barely cracked door and into my room before she can catch me. My makeup bag is sitting on my vanity, and I pull out my best cover-up and examine the scrape in a decent mirror for the first time.

  It really isn’t that bad; it just stings like crazy.

  I dab pancake-y makeup on it and it stings even more, but at least it’s hard to see now. I finish the job off with a little powder and check out my handiwork.

  Pretty good.

  I still look stressed, though. They don’t have makeup to cover that. It’s something in the eyes. But I think I have reason to be. I’m tired of listing the psycho things that have happened to me in the last twenty-four hours. Tired of trying to figure out how I’m going to talk to Elizabeth about them all without sounding like I’ve taken some pretty massive steps backward in my recovery.

  Avoiding eye contact with myself, I run my hands through my short, dark hair, but all that does is make it look wild and unkempt. With a sigh I smooth it back down and click my compact closed.

  It didn’t used to be short. I wish it would grow faster.

  They shaved the right side of my head for surgery, and when the bandages finally came off, it was covered in matted fuzz while the other side was still halfway down my back.

  That was the first time I cried. Until then, everything was numb and I felt disconnected—like all this medical stuff was happening to someone else. Someone with no parents and very little chance of a normal life.

  Not me.

  But the hair. The hair was mine.

  And if the hair was mine, the rest of it was too. The broken brain, the dead parents, all of it. Mine.

  At least I could do something about the hair. I decided then and there to shave the other side too, so at least I would match. I don’t know that it was the wrong decision, but having a shaved head isn’t exactly my idea of pretty.

  I thought it made me look insane.

  Two hundred years ago, they would shear the hair off all the “pa
tients” in asylums to keep them from getting lice and nits. So for weeks after surgery, whenever I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror with my stubbly hair and hospital gown, I felt like a prisoner in an old-fashioned madhouse.

  And thought it rather apropos.

  Tentatively, I poke at the scar that runs along my head, fingering the raised edge. The doctors told me that it will gradually get flatter and less noticeable, but it’ll always be there. It’s about eight inches long and stretches back diagonally from just above my hairline on the right side of my head. Luckily, once my hair got to be about an inch long, it covered the scar almost completely. The four inches I have now is dark enough that no one can see my scar at all unless I run my fingers through my hair.

  I don’t do that in public; I’m very careful.

  Still, maybe a visit to the salon would help.

  “How was PT?” Reese asks, making me jump. At least she waited to swing by my room until after I hid all evidence of my latest injury.

  “As good as torture ever is,” I mutter, shoving my makeup bag aside. My leg is still aching.

  “And how about your session with Dr. Stanley yesterday?” she continues. Reese and Jay apparently didn’t get the memo about the Elizabeth thing; they always call her Dr. Stanley.

  “Fine,” I say, peeling off my sweater; all this adrenaline is making me hot. The air from the open window cools my prickly skin.

  “So things are going well?” she asks. “Progress?”

  I look up at her, suspicious; this is more than she usually delves. Or maybe I just haven’t noticed, but today everything makes me feel paranoid.

  “I’m only asking,” Reese says quickly, “because I need to visit a client out of town in the next week or so. I wondered how you would feel about me being gone for a couple days.”

  “Oh, that would be totally fine,” I say, too fast. “Is Jay going with you?”

  “Don’t I wish. He’s got a new project. There’s no way they’d let him take a week off now.” She’s leaning against my door frame, her voice distant—wistful. If she weren’t answering a direct question, I would wonder if she was talking to me or herself.