And so the onslaught went.
I had no idea what their agenda was or why it had anything to do with me, but I was highly doubtful that Belle really wanted to go shopping together, or that Jess gave two craps about what shoes I wore. It was ridiculous, but more than that, incredibly annoying.
But, like the Parker Evans situation, I sucked it up, put on a chipper face, and ignored them all.
“One of these days I'm going to kick each one of their obnoxious butts,” Odie said frequently. “Then, you hold them down while I mess up their hair and paint their lips black.”
Imagining The Pastels, as we called them, with tangled hair and goth lips cracked me up every time.
A surprising high point in my new life came when Odie invited me to dinner at her house after school one day. Her parents wanted to meet “the mysterious Roz,” as Odie had said, and I was all for it. They lived less than a mile from The Walters’ home, and I insisted I could walk there but Bonnie wouldn’t hear of it.
“I’m going to know exactly where you’ll be young lady, in case someone there is mean to you and I have to put them all in check.”
Her witticism made me chuckle. I loved the fact that she cared so much.
Mr. and Mrs. Finkler were incredibly friendly people. Mr. Finkler made some sort of chicken and rice casserole that was insanely delicious, which he served with homemade rolls and a green salad. I was impressed that a man would cook dinner for his family, although I shouldn't have been. Mitch cooked dinner several times since I'd arrived in Marion, but I guess I'd thought the Walters were different from other couples, more open-minded in a way. It made me happy, for Odie’s sake, to know her family seemed so balanced.
Mrs. Finkler had jet black hair and was heavy set, with a beautiful round face and a smile that shined. Her hands were covered in rings and bracelets that she seemed to like showing off, because she had terribly long nails which were painted bright red, and she spoke a lot with her hands. She was dressed in an olive colored pantsuit and heels, and looked like she'd just come home from work. Her voice was loud, her actions were animated, and she loved to crack jokes as much as her daughter.
I took an immediate liking to the woman.
Mr. Finkler was the polar opposite of his wife. While she appeared to be very put-together, he did not. He wore ripped, dirty, baggy jeans, with old sneakers, and a faded Metallica t-shirt. He had a receding hairline (how far does a hairline have to recede before you can say ‘bald?’), and wore glasses that made his eyes look large. He was short, only a couple of inches taller than me, and quite skinny.
I looked them over a few times that night, when no one was paying attention, trying to figure out which parent Odie resembled. After several peeks, I decided she looked like neither her mother or father. She was, rather, a combination of them both. She had her mother's round face and chin, her father's grey eyes and strong nose, her mother's dark hair color, and her father's light skin tone.
Genetics. Too cool.
Despite being the walking definition of ‘odd couple,’ Odie’s parents looked absolutely happy with one another and the life they'd built together. They beamed whenever they spoke about their daughter, kissed one another several times while setting the table together, and obviously liked one another’s company.
Odie had no idea how blessed she was.
The Finklers were a regular family, and yet so much more. They were a confirmation that people like them existed, that families loved one another, and that parents could actually be proud of their child. They were a reminder that the entire world wasn't always so bleak, that even in its darker moments, you could still find the light. A true family wasn’t one that forced you into the darkness, they were the ones who guided you out of it.
Odie had no idea how good she had it.
***
Bonnie picked me up from the Finkler home that night, and during the short trip back to our house, she chatted pleasantly about random things, yet I noticed her voice catch every few words.
“What’s the matter?” I asked. “You seem like you’re okay, but… is something wrong?”
She fell silent and took a deep breath, just as we pulled into the garage. She killed the engine, stared straight ahead for several long, quiet moments, and then slowly turned to me.
“They found Amelia’s aunt.”
I cocked my head to the side. “Okay?” I asked, unsure of why that should be something to worry Bonnie.
“Amelia’s aunt. She’s her next-of-kin.”
“Well that’s a good thing, right? Amelia will be able to visit a family member.”
Bonnie’s eyes glistened in the dim light of the garage as they filled with tears. “We are Amelia’s foster family, Roz. We are not her next-of-kin.”
Suddenly her words crashed into my consciousness as their meaning hit me. Amelia’s aunt was found. Amelia was only staying here until they found someone who was related to her.
Amelia. Sweet, innocent, playful-yet-wise Amelia, now had a next-of-kin.
All of the food I’d eaten earlier suddenly threatened to make its way back up, and I had to excuse myself from the VW. I hastily made my way out of the garage, around the front yard, and into the house. I angrily held back the tears as I realized how much I’d grown to love this little girl in the short amount of time I’d been here. Regardless of the fact that she didn’t speak, her and I communicated in our own special way, and each time we did, she opened my eyes to something new. And my heart to something more.
Something more. Like Bonnie.
Inside, Mitch was tucking her in bed, reading her one of her favorite bedtime books, The Giving Tree. I paused outside her door, listening for a tiny moment as Mitch read the beautiful words as gently as he could, yet he could not keep the sadness from his voice.
One tiny tear escaped my eye, and I allowed it. I didn’t wipe it away in anger. I didn’t allow anymore to fall. I simply stood there in the hallway, listening to the story and being completely silent as possible. I heard a noise behind me, and when I turned, Bonnie stood there, sorrow cascading in rivers down her face. The look on her face was so distraught, I wondered how long we had before Amelia was taken away from us to go live with her aunt. Weeks? Days? Hours?
It was too much. I popped my head through the half-opened door, said a silent goodnight to the now-asleep Amelia, and escaped to my bedroom. Even though she was sleeping, Mitch continued to read to her, and his melancholic voice followed me down the hall.
It didn’t stop until I was laying in bed wrapped up in my savior, my Jimmy, who tenderly placed the softest of kisses across my forehead and told me in his ever-comforting way, “I’m here, sweetheart, I’m always here for you.”
Within his arms, I let the tears flow.
CHAPTER 19
The nightmares returned that night. Despite the weekly therapy sessions I’d been attending; despite the anti-anxiety meds my therapist, Lorna, had prescribed; despite the fact that Jimmy was maintaining his visibility throughout the night and was always there; despite the fact that I was actually happy for the first time in years; the nightmares came back.
I dreamt I was sitting on the back deck with Amelia, and we were speaking with one another in our own silent way. I said the sunset was beautiful. She nodded and squeezed my hand. I said the wind was picking up and getting chilly. She rested her head against my arm. I told her I was going to miss her once she went to live with her aunt. She threw her little arms around me and clenched.
And then, in a horrendous, spine-tingling voice that most assuredly would never have come out of the real Amelia, she whispered in my ear: “He’s going to kill you.”
I cried out in my sleep and felt Jimmy’s solid arms clasp themselves around me, urging me to wake up, but I was stuck in the dream and all it did was force Amelia’s arms to gain strength and squeeze around me even harder.
“You’re not Amelia,” I whimpered, trying to push free. Her arms seemed to expand around me, coiling themselves with a fer
ocity that reminded me of a python as it killed its prey. My breath came in gasps as I struggled to find the air, and then suddenly, just like that, the sky turned to pitch black and Amelia was gone.
I took a deep, deep breath and reminded myself it was only a dream. I could hear Jimmy whisper in my ear, “Roz, I’m here baby, you’re safe,” and so I believed him. I was safe. I was just dreaming. Jimmy would wake me up and protect me if things got too scary.
The wind shifted across the back yard, carrying the voice of the nightmare-Amelia with it: “He’s going to kill you,” slithered itself around my body and into my soul, the essence of it filling my entire being with dread.
“Who?” I demanded. “Who is going to kill me?”
“Your James Dean wanna-be can’t save you this time,” the voice said, chuckling.
“Jimmy will always save me!” I declared, defending my protector as best as I could. I knew it unequivocally. Although we’d not ever shared our true feelings with one another, I knew Jimmy loved me as much as a ghost could love a human, and he would do anything to keep me safe.
The voice returned once again. “Jimmy won’t save you, his spirit will be gone. The necromancer will make sure of it!”
I stood, shivering on the back deck, staring out into nothingness. “Who is the necromancer?” I demanded.
The voice’s response did nothing to ease my fear. Indeed, once it spoke, my fear reached an all-time high.
“He’ll take your soul and bind it.
Your lifeforce, he shall steal!
He’ll plunge you into darkness,
And keep your spirit for his meal!”
And with that, I sat up into wakefulness. My body shook from head to toe, goosebumps ran amok all over my arms, and my breathing was shallow.
Jimmy stood above me, his face etched in worry.
“You wouldn’t wake up!” He shouted, unable to disguise his panic. “Why wouldn’t you wake up? No matter what I did, you wouldn’t come back to me, Roz!”
I gulped, forcing large amounts of air into my lungs. My hands trembled in my lap and my vision blurred.
“I was stuck,” I whispered, raising my terror-filled eyes to his. “I could hear you, feel you, and I knew it was a dream, but I couldn’t get out of it. She held me there.”
Jimmy lowered himself to the bed and lovingly brushed the hair from my face. “Who?” He asked.
I swallowed. “Amelia, but it wasn’t really her. I think it was using her to give me a warning.”
Jimmy’s eyes darkened to almost black and his visibility seemed to waver. “What warning, Roz?”
I stared at him, unable to fight off the icy fear as it replaced every single ounce of my blood. “She said… she said, something about a necromancer….”
“What? A necromancer?” Jimmy stood once again, confused agitation marring his lovely face. “I don’t know what that is.”
I watched him carefully, not wanting to scare him but knowing he wanted to understand. After all, he had lived during a different time, not many people knew such things as necromancy back then.
“I don’t know all the specifics, but I believe it’s a person who uses magic to communicate with the deceased.”
Jimmy sat back down next to me on the bed. He ran long, slender fingers through his gorgeously messed up hair and sighed, then faced me. “Are you a necromancer, Roz?”
I stiffened. “What?” I asked, shocked.
He shrugged, “You communicate with me. I’m deceased. It’s possible, right? Have you ever thought about it before?”
I stared at him long and hard, my brain working overtime as it played with the possibilities. “Oh my good Lord, Jimmy, what if I am?” I looked to the wall before me, where Edgar Allan Poe’s beautifully painted quote seemed to mock me. I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.
“No, that can’t be it,” I said, “I don’t practice magic, and I don’t communicate with ‘the deceased.’ Only you.”
He nodded and sighed. “Okay, we’ll come back to that later. What else was there in this dream?”
My face wrenched up painfully as I said, “She told me he’s going to kill me, and you won’t be able to save me this time.”
“Who?” He demanded. “Derek? He’s dead!”
I shrugged pitifully. “So are you, Jimmy. But, I just don’t know.”
Jimmy clenched his jaw, tightly. A vein bulged from his temple. His eyes seemed to both narrow and expand at the same time with his anger. He moved in an instant, placing himself directly before me, and my breath caught in my throat at the fierceness of his gaze as it met my own, head on.
“Understand me now, Rosalind Ines Pastrano,” he said, his voice firm, sure, unyielding. “I am madly, deeply in love with you, and I will always save you, even if it should cost me my own existence. Always!”
Before I could utter a word, his hands were in my hair pulling me forward until our lips became one, and his tongue danced with mine, and my arms moved on their own to pull him closer to me... closer, closer... and I lost every single thing in that frenzied, passionate kiss- my sight, my voice, my breath, my soul, my thoughts, my fear-- everything disappeared, all that existed was him, my Jimmy, my protector, the man whose love for me was so strong, nothing could stop it.
Not even death. Nor life.
I was lost in that kiss. His arms circled me, cradling me as if I were something precious. His hand moved to the back of my head, guiding my head so he could deepen the kiss. A moan escaped his mouth and a sigh escaped mine, and we sat for long moments breathing one another’s air, forehead to forehead, his hands sheltering my face.
It took several long, agonizing moments to compose ourselves, but once we did, there was only one thing I wanted to talk about.
“You love me?” I whispered.
He stared deeply into my eyes and nodded solemnly. “I’ve loved you since you were a child, when I went unseen by everyone else except you. I loved you the way a big brother would love a little sister. I watched you grow up, and my heart broke for you every time your bastard parents would hurt you.” His eye took on a faraway look then, as if lost in thought, and he said, “I’ll never forget the moment I first realized my feelings for you had changed.”
“When was it, Jimmy?” I asked softly.
He smiled wistfully. “Let’s lay down and I’ll tell you. It’ll be your very own personalized bedtime story.”
I giggled and rearranged myself on the bed, as he got back under the covers with me and held me close within the crook of his arm. With my head on his chest, I swear I could almost hear a heartbeat, but perhaps it was just wishful thinking. We got settled and he began to speak.
“It was October twenty-third, the night before your fourteenth birthday.”
I stiffened instantly, knowing that night well. It had been a game-changer for me. I nodded to let him know I was listening, encouraging him to continue even though I knew I wasn’t going to like this story. I was rewarded with his hand in my hair, stroking the waves of it gently.
“I had been trying so hard to focus my energy in hopes that you would see me once again, like you did when you were little, but nothing worked. I remained invisible to you and could do nothing more than be a spectator in your life. Derek was noticing you more and more, and there wasn’t a single thing I could do to stop him. He would watch you so closely, like a predator. I was afraid for you. You were becoming so beautiful, more and more each day, and I was sick with worry that he’d do something to you.”
He paused to gather his thoughts, and I said nothing. I remembered the night before my fourteenth birthday well, despite the repeated attempts to forget it. It wasn’t something I ever wanted to relive, but hearing Jimmy’s version of things as they happened, from his perspective, could perhaps change that memory for me from a terrible night into a beautiful one.
“Your mother had begun celebrating your birthday early. She was drunk of course, and smoking whatever substance they had in the kitchen. You
and Derek were in the living room together, watching a Bruce Lee movie. You sat on the couch with a bowl of popcorn in your lap, your legs curled up beneath you. Derek was obviously high, and staring at you from his recliner. I remember thinking, it was like you noticed the way he always watched you, and you were trying so hard to be invisible, like me.”
I gulped down the memory as it washed over me. Jimmy was right, it was like that, exactly. I had wished for nothing more than to be unseen by my parents.
“Your mother stumbled into the living room, laughing and carrying on. She asked you what you wanted for your birthday, and the way your eyes lit up at her question was... painful… to watch. Because I knew what you were getting for your birthday. I knew the plans she’d made for you. And it killed me that I couldn’t prevent it.”
I began shaking slightly, for I knew what was coming. I wanted to beg him to stop talking, I didn’t want to hear anymore, but I had to listen. I had to know what he had seen in me that night-- that night of all nights-- to realize he’d fallen for the little girl who could no longer see him.
“You sat straight up on the couch, and with the biggest grin imaginable, said so sweetly, ‘I’d like an iPod, please?’ It wasn’t an unusual request. You’d been dropping hints to your mother for months. And the thing is, she knew. You thought she hadn’t paid attention, but she did. She had come home two weeks before your birthday with a brand new iPod, and hid it in her closet. But you never got it, did you?”
My eyes filled with tears and I shook my head, no. What I’d received for my birthday ‘gift,’ was something else entirely. Jimmy looked down at me, and placed his fingers beneath my chin. He tilted my head back, just enough so he could look into my eyes and see the anguish there.
“If I could have stopped them, you know I would have, don’t you?” He whispered. His voice was filled with sorrow and desperation, and it leaked into the crevices of my shattered soul.
Two fat tears spilled over and ran down my cheeks. “Yes,” I whispered. “I know that.”
Rest in Peace Roz: The R.I.P. Series Book 1 Page 12
