Through Indigo's Eyes

by Tara Taylor

  I sat up in my desk, holding my breath, waiting to hear his voice, wondering what it would sound like, what he was going to say. His low, smooth, almost syrupy voice spoke words that were clear and concise, and he reeled off an answer that shocked me, because he sounded like he was a professor and not a student. The teacher nodded his head. “Excellent answer. And your name is?”

  “John. John Smith.”

  “Excellent answer, Mr. Smith.”

  I’d never heard a student talk so intelligently before, and I’d definitely never met anyone who was as mystifying. Right then and there, I decided I was going to do everything I could to get to know him. I had to.

  Later that week, Lacey and I were together in my room, and I said, “I want to change my guy in our book.”

  “Ah, so Dale is a dud. Figured as much.”

  I nodded. Unable to speak.

  “So, who do you want?”

  “John Smith.”

  Lacey looked at me wide-eyed and laughed. Then she said, “Indie, he’s trouble. You know he got kicked out of his last school.”

  “I don’t care.” And I didn’t. Not even one little bit.

  “He hardly talks to anyone. No one knows who he is. Plus, he’s got the worst name ever. I mean, honestly, John Smith? It sounds like John Doe. Bor-ing.”

  “He’s not boring, Lacey.” I hugged my knees to my chest. “Not even close. His name may be plain, but he’s so mysterious. He’s aloof, and it’s like something I just can’t describe surrounds him and makes him deep and dark, and … I want to know him.” The last part of my sentence came out in a breathy whisper.

  “He’s a bad boy, Indie.”

  “But you just said that you don’t even know him.” I rested my chin on my knees and smiled. “And that’s why I like him.” Then I grabbed a black marker, scratched out Dale, and wrote in huge letters the word John.

  Fast-forward to more than a year later, and I still hadn’t really talked to him. Sure we’d said hi and all that kind of stuff, but we’d never talked, just the two of us, alone.

  I snapped the book shut, not wanting to turn the next page to read the pathetic poetry I’d written about John since that day, and shoved it in the bottom drawer of my desk. I grabbed some headphones, put them on, and turned on my portable CD player. I plopped back on my bed, and as I listened to the music, I stared at my white stucco ceiling. Did John like classic rock, too? It wasn’t mainstream. I wondered what music he liked. Heavy metal? Grunge?

  “Okay, so at least I didn’t see anyone or anything die today,” I said out loud. “And I hope I never do. Not even another animal.”

  “Indie,” said my mom from behind my bedroom door.

  I quickly pulled my headphones off and put them on the nightstand. “I’m okay,” I replied “I’m just talking to Cedar.”

  We lived in a three-bedroom, one-washroom bungalow in the South Keys area of Ottawa, a typical middle-class neighborhood, and my parents’ bedroom was just down the hall from mine. Sometimes I blame my parents for the fact that I’m an outsider. They must have known I was going to be weird when I was born—otherwise, why would they have named me Indigo? Yes, my real name is Indigo Russell. I’m named after a color. And the color is something in between blue and violet so in my book, it isn’t even a true color. What parents name their kid after a color?

  “Can I come in?” she asked.

  “I’m in bed. Got a test in the morning.”

  “I think Sheena and Sasha want to sleep with you.”

  I sat up. “Let them in.”

  Mom opened the door, and our golden Lab, Sheena, and our black Lab, Sasha, came bounding into the room. Cedar snubbed her nose at them as if to say, “Ha ha, you get the floor,” and sank further into my bed.

  After I made a fuss over the dogs, they plopped down at the foot of my bed. Once my mom had shut my door and I heard her footsteps padding down the hallway, I curled under my covers, leaving a tiny opening for my nose. Just a peephole so I could breathe. Warm mist circulated around my nose, heating my face but not my body. I didn’t want any white or gray or black visitors in my room, floating around, interrupting my sleep … making me quiver.

  Sometimes, dead people appeared in my room uninvited. Just like my visions appeared in my mind. The only dead visitor I liked was my grandfather, who I called Papa. He died when I was seven, but he often came to visit me when I needed him. I curled into a tighter ball, hugging my knees.

  I heard Sasha sigh and shudder before closing her eyes. Sheena snorted and stilled as well, and Cedar didn’t move from her curled position in the crook of my legs. My animals gave me comfort, protection from the other spirits who liked to lurk. I curled into the tiniest ball possible, wrapping my arms around my body and closing my eyes to the world around me.

  Then I said my prayer:

  Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,

  Bless the bed I lie upon.

  Four corners to my bed,

  Four angels around my head,

  One to sing,

  One to pray,

  And two to watch until the day.

  Chapter Two

  “Indigo Russell,” my mom yelled, “get a move on. You’re going to miss the bus.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I grumbled. I sat up and looked around. I’d had no visitors from the other side, and for that I was grateful. Sasha, Sheena, and Cedar were gone. Brian must have let them out so they could take their middle-of-the-night stroll to his bedroom. Although Brian and I were as different as night and day, we had one thing in common: we both loved our pets.

  Eight minutes later, I gave myself one last glance in the mirror. “Freak,” I said. “Weirdo. Stupid idiot.”

  Then I slammed my bedroom door and trudged to the kitchen.

  “I have a twelve-hour shift today,” Mom said. She was wearing her nurse’s uniform—blue scrubs and white sneakers—and drinking her morning coffee. “There’s chili in the fridge for dinner.” She glanced at her watch and dumped the remains of her coffee into the sink. Then she looked directly at me. “Is that a new blouse?”

  She had recently cut her light brown hair short, and it looked great. I wished I looked more like her; even in her scrubs, she looked so thin and pretty. All my friends thought I had the best mom.

  But she could sniff out a problem from a mile off.

  “No,” I replied. “And it’s called a T-shirt.”

  She smiled, ignoring my snippy attitude. “It looks nice on you.”

  I eyed her. She had that compassionate look in her eyes that said, “I’m sorry I birthed an abnormal child, and I sense something disturbing has just happened to you, so I’m saying something nice to distract you and make you feel good about yourself.”

  My mother was always worried about me, like, 24–7. I hated that she had to stress about me and my problems all the time. Looking at her now, I felt sad. She was worried about me again. She intuitively knew something was wrong. I couldn’t tell her I’d had another vision, because that would worry her even more. As a teenage girl, I was supposed to hate my mom, like so many of my friends, but I didn’t at all. And here she was again, trying to make me feel good about myself.

  “Thanks for the vote on the top,” I said softly.

  With orange juice sloshing around in my stomach, making me nauseated, I headed outside to walk to my bus stop on Bank Street, which is this really long street in Ottawa and one of the main streets that connect different parts of the city. Indian summer had hit; the air was warm, and the sky was a beautiful shade of sapphire blue. My jean jacket flapped open as I sauntered, not in any real rush to get to school. Maple trees lined my street, and because of their maturity, their branches almost touched in the middle, making me feel as though I were walking through a big tunnel poked with holes to let the sun shine through. The little beads of sun shimmered on the sidewalk, and I almost felt cocooned. I strolled by the ranch-style and bungalow homes that made up my neighborhood; most were blue, green, or tan with perfect white trim and white
gutters that were cleaned every year. Of course, in typical Ottawa style, there were also red-bricked homes mixed in with the stucco and aluminum-sided ones. Brick houses are standard in Ottawa, because it is one of the oldest cities in Canada, and the coldest.

  I think my neighborhood was built sometime in the ‘70s; I knew our house was around 20 years old, because my parents always complained about the upgrades they needed. Last summer they had put on a new roof, which meant I would have to wait forever to get a car—even a used car.

  A few petunias and red geraniums still bloomed in front yard gardens and in clay pots, but some were starting to wilt and die off. One good frost, and they’d all be dead—that usually occurred sometime in early October, a few weeks away yet, although sometimes it hit earlier. My parents, along with most neighbors on the street, had spent the weekend in their yards, tidying up flower beds, pruning bushes to clean up for when the cold weather hit. Most of the rosebushes had been covered in burlap already, in preparation for winter, and I missed the wonderful summer aroma of the roses. Green garbage bags full of clippings sat in driveways.

  The leaves had started to turn color already, and some had fallen to the ground because of a nasty wind. I used to love raking the leaves into piles and jumping on them. I looked at my watch and, although reluctant, picked up my pace. Those fun days were done. Sometimes I wished I could go back to when I didn’t know that I was weird. I had kind of figured out something was wrong with me after my papa died, when I realized that not everyone saw dead people.

  Funeral homes were strange places for me and made me really freak out. My parents had taken me for my first time to see my papa. Why was I thinking about him this morning?

  Lots of my family and Mommy and Daddy’s friends were milling around a really quiet room, and there were framed pictures of Papa on a table. Everyone was staring at him and crying and wiping their eyes with white tissues from boxes that sat all around the room. I wanted to see him, too, so I stepped up to the long box and looked inside at the man who lay in blue, shiny fabric that was the color of the sky on a warm summer day. His mouth didn’t move and he didn’t smile at me and his eyes were closed and his skin seemed old and wrinkly. But he didn’t seem as sad as everyone else in the room. And I wasn’t sad, because he wasn’t sad. His hands were clasped together over his tummy, and I reached out to touch his skin. Poor Papa. His hands were so cold they felt like mine did when I went outside in the snow without my mittens.

  That night I crawled under my Strawberry Shortcake comforter and had just closed my eyes when I heard Papa’s voice calling my name. I sat up. He stood at the end of my bed. He didn’t look as old and wrinkly as he had that afternoon, and he smiled at me, like he was happy. I smiled back. I knew he wasn’t sad.

  “Tell Mommy and Daddy that I’m happy. And tell them not to be sad. I’m okay. I’m where I should be.”

  The next morning, I skipped into the kitchen. “Papa said to tell you he was happy.”

  “Indie, what on earth are you talking about?” Daddy said sounding irritated.

  “Papa came to see me last night.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t see him, Indie,” said Daddy. “You must have been dreaming.”

  I frowned. Why would he say that?

  Everyone always thought I was dreaming: parents, school teachers, Sunday school teachers. But even back then, I had known I wasn’t.

  I shook my head. Geez, I so wished it had been a dream. Then I wouldn’t have had to hide this stuff from all the kids in my high school and pretend I was normal when really I was a teenager who still saw dead people and had visions. Like the one with Amber and Burke.

  Ridgemont High wasn’t within walking distance, so I had to catch the OC Transpo, or as I preferred to call it, the red and white limo. Although we lived in a nice middle-class neighborhood and there was a decent high school pretty close by, I had to attend Ridgemont High School because we lived on the other side of the train tracks, and they were the defining line. Literally, we lived on the wrong side of the tracks. It was kind of a drag, but now that I was in my last year of high school, it didn’t bug me anymore.

  Once I hit Bank Street, I made a left turn. My tunnel of trees was now gone, and I was on the section of Bank that had offices and businesses, like insurance companies and vacuum stores, nothing interesting. The sun was perched like a big, yellow ball in a cloudless sky, and it was shedding the perfect autumn heat that should have made me sing. But I felt only the weight of that big ball.

  What am I going to do when I see Lacey? What can I say?

  We told each other everything.

  I shoved my hands in my pockets, lowered my head, and plodded forward, my feet feeling as if they had 20 pounds of mud caked on the bottom. I walked over the few dead leaves that had fallen, kicking them, and they crunched beneath my feet. Sometimes my visions were so confusing, and I had no idea what to do with them.

  In the distance, I heard the bus barreling down the street, so I broke into a run, hitting the bus stop just in time. I trudged up the three steps, showed my pass, and made my way to the back. There were no seats, so I grabbed one of the handrails to keep my balance.

  As the bus lumbered down Bank Street (it ran for miles and through tons of different neighborhoods and business sections, finally ending up in downtown Ottawa), my mind traveled as it always did when I was in motion. I thought about the stuff my mother had read to me over the years, in her valiant effort to figure out what was wrong with me. I could get past this thin veil of something that is supposed to lurk out there, and that was why I could actually see the dead—or ghosts, as most people call them—because I can move into the spirit world. I supposedly vibrated at a different frequency than most people. I quickly glanced at everyone on the bus. Why did I have to be different? Did anyone else on this bus have visions?

  With my free hand, I gently touched the gold cross and chain that hung around my neck. My parents had given it to me when I was confirmed through the Anglican Church, and sometimes just the smoothness of the gold gave me comfort. I’m not sure I would say I was religious, but I did get some sort of weird protection from simple prayers and my cross necklace. I had been kicked out of Sunday school on a few occasions because of the things I’d said. One time, when the teacher said that after we passed away, we all went to heaven, I innocently said, “But my angels told me that some people stayed on earth, and that’s why there are ghosts.” Aggravated, the teacher sent me into the hall for a lecture. She said, “Indigo, angels do not visit little girls like you, they only visit the Men of God, because they are the messengers. Not little children, and especially not you. And there is no such thing as ghosts. You are scaring all the other children in class.”

  Yes, there are ghosts. I could see them, since they often appeared at the end of my bed.

  So caressing my gold cross for support made no sense but then little in my life did.

  My thoughts veered back to Lacey. A dull ache pounded my chest and kept pounding. It was as if her pain were a part of me, lodged deep in my muscles and bones.

  When the bus lurched to a halt at my stop, I moved to the door along with all the other Ridgemont students, none of whom I knew, so I lowered my head and got off. Then I strolled slowly to the school’s front entrance; Lacey’s locker stood beside mine, and I had no desire to face her, since I now had such horrible news about Burke and Amber. If I took my time to get to school, the bell would ring. Lacey would go to class, and I could avoid her.

  As I plodded along, I stared at the majestic maples and oaks, enthralled with how the leaves could turn from green to shades of red, orange and gold in just days. Fall was an amazing time of year in Ottawa, and it was a seasonal ritual to drive across the bridge to Gatineau in Quebec to see the colorful trees, because the valley view was absolutely stunning. Lookout places situated along the winding road drew people from all over the world to visit and take photos of the mesh of colors that made one beautiful collage. I had only ever lived in Ottawa, the
capital city of Canada. With all the federal money, litter was kept to a minimum, and Ottawa was labeled as the biggest white-collar city in Canada. Not that I cared about that, except it gave my dad a job downtown, where he worked with our National Defense as a mediator between the government and his union. He went to work in a suit every day, which he liked.

  To me, Ottawa was home and a great city because all the heritage buildings and history gave it character. Since it was so old, many homes and businesses were made of stone and brick. Plus, there were the magnificent Parliament buildings downtown, near the Ottawa River and the Rideau Canal. But I only liked them for their stone walls and steeples and the Peace Tower Carillon, with its many bells that rang out the time. In other words, all the outside stuff, because inside they were haunted. And I mean really haunted. Every time I went close to them, I just couldn’t go inside, even though they drew tons of international visitors. I had gone in only once and never made it past the front entrance.

  Almost at my school, I saw the cops milling around the front entrance, leashes in hands, holding the drug-sniffing dogs that were about to walk the halls. Graffiti decorated the brick walls. I sighed. So much for enjoying the beautiful fall day. Back to reality.