Kai said, “You wanna talk about it?”
She had an uncanny way of cutting through pretense and getting to the truth.
I just said it was Annie. I was a little bit afraid to see her. (Yes, that was an understatement. I was close to terrified.)
Kai said, “It’ll be OK. You’ll see. I’ve known people with all kinds of problems. It’s totally possible to get better.”
I wanted to ask her how many people she knew who’d gotten better; but I decided that if the number was low, I’d be better off not knowing. I told myself everything would be OK.
When we got to the parking lot and Kai pointed out her truck, I panicked. I took back what I’d told myself about how everything was going to be OK. I kind of replaced it in my head with: We’re all gonna die! Man, if ever there was a thing perfectly described as a rust bucket, Kai’s truck was it. There were a couple of places, including the area above both back wheels, where rust had eaten holes right through the metal. In fact, there was so much rust on her blue truck, it looked like it was meant to be orange and blue. And the tires were bald.
Kai smiled as she unlocked the passenger door. She said, “Hop in! Make yourself comfortable.”
Really? How was that even possible? She did have a fake sheepskin cover over my seat, so that helped. It smelled like a dead sheep and it had stains the color of sheep manure, but it was comfortable.
The ride to the spa was so rough, I fought back car sickness the entire time. The truck made all kinds of hissing and grinding sounds. The sheepskin stench mixed with some other horrible smell—something close to gasoline, which made me nervous. Needless to say, I didn’t talk much. When Kai offered to turn on the radio, I wholeheartedly agreed. She played some kind of New Age music. It calmed me down.
When we got to the spa, our jaws dropped open at the sight of it. It looked like a 10-star hotel. I mean, if a 10-star rating existed for hotels, this spa would give it a run for its money. Kai pulled up to the parking lot booth and stared at the place. There we were, sitting in our hillbilly truck, looking like two slack-jawed idiots come to visit the rich and famous. The automated booth spit out a ticket at us. A recorded voice said: Don’t forget to have your ticket stamped inside. First two hours are free. Have a nice day!
Kai grabbed the ticket. Driving around the lot to find a parking spot, we passed a few people. They were dressed like fashion models. I looked over at Kai in her shabby jeans with holes in the knees. I looked at my own jeans. They were shiny from wear and had loose strings along the bottoms from dragging on the ground. We were both wearing cheap, faded T-shirts.
I started wondering if this was a mental health spa or just a regular spa.
I said, “Annie’s family is rich, by the way.”
Kai said, “Ya think? I kind of figured that out.”
People stared as we drove through the parking lot. I wanted to disappear, I didn’t care how. Let wild buzzards drag me from my seat and feed me to their young. Just do it quickly—before I die of embarrassment.
And in case anyone didn’t notice us, Kai’s truck made sure to announce our arrival. What was that sound? It was kind of like: Grrrrr-ruck! Pfffft...Pfft!...Ffffft! Pow! And it repeated itself a bunch of times, just to make sure everyone heard us.
Finally, we found a parking spot way in the back. Which meant a long walk up to the spa.
When we finally made it to the front desk, the receptionist was very kind. People in the waiting room stared at us as if we were being devoured by buzzard chicks, right in front of them. Oh, look, it’s a zoo feeding! But the receptionist was very nice.
She took our names, called Annie’s social worker on the phone, and opened a door leading to the inpatient area. The lock released with a buzzing sound. As soon as we stepped through the doorway, a short perky woman rushed up to us, clutching a clipboard in one hand. Her hair was pulled so tightly back with barrettes, I expected them to launch off her head with the force of a bungee cord and poke our eyes out.
She extended her hand to shake ours. Brrrrrr ... Cold and clammy.
She had a warm personality, though. She introduced herself as Annie’s social worker. Her name was Naomi Shaw. She said she’d heard a lot about me from Annie’s mom and was glad I could make it. She smiled at Kai and said it would be good for Annie to make a new friend.
She warned us, gently, that Annie wasn’t her old self yet. She said it was perfectly normal, though. Annie had experienced a lot of trauma; her body and mind were protecting her by shutting down some of her memories and some of her affect. She said, “It’s actually quite wonderful that human beings are capable of doing this. It gives us time to heal, to recover. Don’t you agree?”
We shook our heads yes. It made sense. And it was nice that people had permission to take their time here. I could live with that.
She led the way to Annie’s room. When we got there, she motioned for us to enter.
For a couple of seconds, I thought we’d walked into the wrong room. The girl in the bed only vaguely resembled Annie.
I blinked my eyes and looked again. It was Annie. At least fifteen pounds thinner and almost as white as her bedsheets.
She didn’t have any makeup on, none of the smudged dark eye shadow that I remembered surrounding her eyes like storm clouds. And she was wearing glasses. It took me a moment to realize that was one of the more normal things that made her look so different. She didn’t have contacts on.
I thought back to when I’d first met Annie. She was wearing contacts with a single red star on each of them. I’d thought of her as the girl with stars in her eyes. When I’d asked back then if she felt starry-eyed, she’d said she did when she thought about the future. She told me that she was smart and had good grades and planned to go far away to college, so that she didn’t get stuck in the small town where we lived. She said that place would kill your soul if you let it, totally petrify your soul into a piece of dead wood.
And here she was, her dreams dashed by the things that had happened to her. Worse than being stuck in a small town, she was trapped by mental illness and stuck in a hospital bed. She’d even been catatonic for a while, paralyzed as though she was actually made of petrified wood.
I couldn’t let her stay this way. I had to do everything I could to help her.
Swallowing my fear and trying to keep my hands from shaking, I walked over to her bedside. I grasped the metal rails and looked into her face.
Annie stared straight ahead, at the wall. I looked to see if there was anything there. There wasn’t. No paintings. No TV. Nothing. The TV was sitting on a shelf in the corner, up near the ceiling. It was off.
Then I remembered Annie’s faeries. She once told me she saw them all around her almost every day. I’d seen them, too. Two kinds: bright spots of light and dark spots of shadow. Of course, the ones I saw had been fake, whipped up by Brandon the ghost. But Annie saw them all the time. Maybe she was seeing them now. If that was true: a.) She wasn’t ignoring me because she was mad at me and b.) She wasn’t going catatonic again. She was just being normal—normal for Annie, that is, which is totally OK.
I breathed a sigh of relief—out loud, which I hadn’t meant to do.
I said, “Hi, Annie. How are you?”
She didn’t answer.
I said, “I’m sorry I didn’t visit you sooner. My mom moved us again. You know how she is. She doesn’t care about anyone but herself. I have to live in a trailer park now.”
When I get nervous, I inevitably put my foot in my mouth. I had forgotten about Kai—who also lived in the trailer park—standing right on the other side of the bed. Why didn’t I just insult her while trying to make Annie feel better? Oh, wait, I just did!
Kai didn’t seem to notice. She was focused on Annie.
I said, “Annie, do you remember me?”
She turned her head slowly. When she looked at me, she looked half dead, like she wasn’t all there. She said, “Oh, yes, I sure do. You’re the girl in the picture my mom showed me.
”
I wanted to cry. To run. To scream. I wanted to stay there and shake Annie by the shoulders until she recognized me. I wanted to slap her across the face, like they do to hysterical people in the movies, to bring her to her senses, to wake her up, to make her snap out of it.
None of those options would help. I knew that. I stood my ground against the part of me that wanted to go crazy.
I said, “Annie, do you remember the day we both saw faeries?”
Annie looked back at the wall. She said, “They don’t exist. They’re just figments of my overactive imagination.”
I said, “Who told you that?”
She said, “Everyone.”
I wasn’t sure if I should mention Halloween or not because that’s when she was kidnapped and all her trauma started, but I decided to chance it because we’d had such a good time earlier that Halloween night. Plus I was one of the last people she’d seen before getting kidnapped. Maybe I could trigger her memory. I said, “Annie, do you remember Halloween? Do you remember us going to the Haunted House and trick-or-treating? Do you remember I dressed up like Leotard Girl?”
Tears streamed down Annie’s face. I had no social skills whatsoever. I’d upset her. I’d gotten a reaction, but not the one I wanted.
Kai reached over and grasped her hand. She looked at me. With her free hand, she put a finger to her lips, telling me to shush. OK, I guess I deserved that.
A flash of jealousy exploded in my head like lightning on a summer night. My new best friend was taking over my old best friend and cutting me out of the picture.
Slowly, color returned to Annie’s cheeks and lips. Her eyes gained a tiny bit of sparkle.
She looked directly at me. She said, “Shade! I remember you! I’ve forgotten a lot of people, but I remember you!” She cried again, but this time from happiness.
I started crying, too. It was a real sob fest, let me tell you.
I reached over and hugged Annie. She hugged me back, real tight like she’d never let go.
I wasn’t sure what to say. I finally thought of something. “How are they treating you here?” It was kind of a lame question. It sounded like something anyone would say to a person in the hospital, just to make small talk. But I really wanted to know if she was OK being there or if it felt more like torture.
She said, “Fine. This is a spa for the wealthy. Did you know celebrities come here?”
This seemed like normal gossip talk, which felt surprisingly good after all we’d been through.
I said, “Have you seen any?”
She said, “A couple. I can’t remember his name, but there’s an actor in here from one of my favorite sci-fi shows. And there’s a fantasy author in here somewhere. I saw her at arts and crafts one day.”
I asked the same question I had asked before. I said, “Annie, do you remember me? I mean, really remember me? Not just stuff your mom told you about me.”
She gave me a weird look and laughed. She said, “Of course, I remember you. You’re Shade, my best friend. How are you, anyway? How’s your new place?”
I tried my best not to look surprised, to just act like everything was normal. I said, “It’s OK. I miss you something terrible. I miss my old house with the attic bedroom. I’m living in a trailer park now. Oh my God, Annie, I live near Roswell, New Mexico. You totally have to visit me! There’s UFO stuff everywhere. You should come see it.”
Kai let go of Annie’s hand, which reminded me that I should include her in the conversation.
I introduced Kai. Annie smiled at her and said, “Nice to meet you.” Those four words made me so happy, I wanted to start crying all over again. Annie was alert and responding quickly to conversation.
Kai said, “Same here. I’ve heard so much about you.”
Annie said, “Nothing bad, I hope...”
Kai laughed and said, “Nope. All good stuff.”
Liar. I hadn’t told her much at all about Annie. I’d only told her about Annie today, as a matter of fact, in order to ask if she’d go with me to the spa. But it was all good. It was the whitest white lie ever and we were having a totally normal conversation. And Annie remembered me!
We chatted for a while longer before the social worker came back to tell us Annie had to go to music therapy.
As we were leaving, Annie said, “Shade, email me! I have my laptop here, so we can chat.”
I got the biggest, goofiest smile on my face. My best friend was back! I promised to send her an email as soon as I got home.
Once we got out of the spa and out of earshot of other people, I asked Kai what she’d done. I said, “I know you did something, Kai. You held Annie’s hand and she got a lot better right before our eyes.”
A smile played across Kai’s face. She said, “I’m an empath. And I think I might be something else.”
I felt confused. I just said, “What do you mean?”
Kai said, “An empath is someone who’s extremely sensitive to what other people and animals are feeling, to the point where we basically experience the same emotions as if they were our own. We’re also healers.”
That made sense. That sounded exactly like what I’d witnessed between Annie and Kai. I said, “That’s wonderful, Kai! Maybe you can heal Annie completely! Can you come back with me maybe once a week until she’s better?”
Kai said, “She may already be completely healed. You should call her tomorrow and keep in touch with her, find out if she gets discharged from the hospital soon.”
I couldn’t believe it. This was like witnessing a miracle. Actually, it wasn’t like witnessing it. I’d actually seen a miracle, I was sure of it. Empaths and healers—I had no idea such people existed. It was like my mind had been pried open and a revelation had been poured inside, exploding on contact. I’d once seen ghosts. Now, I’d met an empath who could heal others by holding their hand. My mind had rebelled against the idea of ghosts when Brandon had first come into my life. But this was different. If an empath could heal Annie, I’d welcome the existence of empaths with open arms. There was nothing I wanted more in the entire world than for Annie to get better.
I promised Kai I’d call Annie the next day. Then I added, “You said that you’re an empath and you think you’re something else. What’s that something else?”
Kai said, “I don’t know. I probably shouldn’t talk about it...”
I nudged Kai playfully with my elbow. I said, “C’mon, you have to tell me now. You heal my best friend right in front of my eyes; then you tell me you might be something else besides an empath, but you don’t want to tell me what? No way! You have to tell me. How bad could it be? Wait...” I grinned. “You’re not an alien from outer space ... or pregnant by one of them ... are you? You were missing for an entire week at the exact same time people spotted a UFO out in the desert next to our trailer park. Were you up in that UFO, Kai?”
I was in a funny mood, on cloud nine after seeing Annie improve so much.
Kai was not in the same kind of mood. She didn’t smile ... at all. If anything, her face got even more serious. She said, “I’m not kidding. None of this is funny. You saw the ghost of that little girl in the cave, but did you ever experience anything like that before?”
Well, that wiped the smile off my face ... and knocked me out of my silly mood right into a panic attack. I felt dizzy and short of breath. A sense of impending doom settled over me like a blanket of darkness. I felt that if it kept escalating, I was going to die.
Was it against the rules of the universe for me to be happy and lighthearted for more than a few minutes? Apparently so! I did not want to talk about my past. It was over. I wanted to leave it behind as much as possible.
But, then, bringing Kai and Annie together had turned out so well, maybe I needed to share a bit more about what had happened in my old town, and to explain how Brandon and his family had played a part in helping me. Maybe it wouldn’t be the end of the world.
I stopped walking. I looked directly at Kai. I was so nervo
us, my upper lip trembled, then my eyelid started twitching. I’m sure I looked a frightening mess. My voice went high-pitched and cracked as I blurted out, “Yes, I have. I’ve seen ghosts before, Kai. It’s a long story. My old house, or at least my attic bedroom in that house, was haunted by a ghost. He couldn’t move on into the afterlife until he helped someone in a major way. He ended up helping me figure out what had happened to Annie and some other girls who went missing. It turned out they’d been kidnapped and sold into slavery. After that, the ghost—his name was Brandon—got to move on. While he was stuck on Earth, hanging out with me, I got to meet other people in his family who had died. I met his grandmother and his brother as ghosts. They were all really sweet.”
Kai said, “I knew it!”
I felt kind of mad. I said, “Really? How could you know that?”
Kai said, “I don’t mean those exact details. I just felt that you had some kind of mystical power ... and that you’d been in touch with something greater than yourself before. Remember when we were inside the cave and I told you I’d sensed you were a ghost whisperer? Well, I didn’t think you’d only ever seen that one ghost, of that one little girl. I sensed that you’d seen ghosts before, that you’d been a whisperer for other ghosts who had tried to communicate with the living.” Kai paused. She shrugged her shoulders, then continued. “I think the universe brought us together ... just like it brought you and the ghost in your attic together. Shade, I think I’m meant to be a shaman. I think I’m meant to do some serious healing. It’s a feeling about my destiny that’s been growing stronger every day. If I really have healed Annie, maybe that’s from having the power of a shaman. I don’t know...”
I tried to swallow my anger. All of this was too much for me. I said, “Who knows what the universe means for us? My mom moved me to the trailer park where you live. The universe didn’t do that. And, trust me, if anyone knows how to mess with any plans the universe might have for me, that would be my mother. She is chaos incarnate, here to wreck any plans an orderly universe might have. She’s the bowling ball thrown into any formation of neatly stacked pins.”
Shade and the Skinwalkers Page 8
