Mirage

by Tracy Clark

  With my heart beating drums in my temples, I turn back and run straight home.

  Even in the safety of my room, in the cocoon of my bed, my mind spins like the face in those tires. I lie there and realize . . . every barred door is wide open.

  I grit my teeth against the feelings. This haunt is pissing me off.

  “See this cowbell?” Mauricio holds up a large copper bell dangling from a thick leather braid and gives it a good shake. It clangs through the motor home so loud that my eyes squint. “If anyone walks out the door, put the bell around your neck. That way we can find your dumb ass if you’re wandering around in the desert.”

  The motley assortment of people chuckle and shuffle nervously. I imagine it would be terrifying to be lost in the vast desert while trippin’ on hallucinogenic drugs. The Mojave Desert will swallow you whole and spit your bleached skeleton in the sand.

  I’m glad to be in the safety of a closed hangar, but I have to admit, coming back into this RV makes me feel like I’ve walked into a meat locker. Not warm and safe like a cocoon in the summer, where humidity hides under the felt leaves of the succulents. In here it’s snow and sand: a cold and rough paste against my skin.

  Nibbling on chips, trying not to dwell on how boxed in I feel, I blow out a deep breath and look for Joe. He sits in the driver’s seat of the RV, reading a book, and occasionally looks up at me through his blond lashes. He jerks his head toward the door with a question on his raised eyebrows. I’m not leaving. He won’t either. No matter what I say, he won’t let me do this without him being some kind of “trip sitter.”

  Dad would kill me if he knew what I’m about to do. But hey, I warned him. Skydiving gives me the rush I need. It makes me special and unique in the regular world. Without jumping out of airplanes, I’m . . . average, and average isn’t where I want to be on life’s curve. I’d seriously rather be dead than the walking dead. Besides, this is where it started. I figure if I can come in here and face down my fear, it’ll stop haunting me.

  There is a small group of us trying LSD for the first time. Avery’s face is more white than normal, and I wonder why she’s here. It’s one thing if you’re trying to prove something to yourself, a non-thing if you’re trying to prove something to everyone else. I avoid her greedy, attention-seeking eyes. Half the time I don’t know what Avery wants. Our relationship has never been an easy one. The last time we fought, it devolved into petty insults, the kind sisters sling at each other. I told her she was a phony. She laughed and accused me of being a hypocrite. She said she saw through me​—​that I acted like a big hotshot as a cover-up for feeling really small. She said I was the phony. We didn’t talk for a spell. Since then we’ve been peaceful, but I feel prickly as a cactus around her.

  The faces of the people in the motor home are not unlike those of a group of first-time jumpers. Masks of excitement overlaid upon fear. Anxiety is exposed by fidgety fingers and increased rates of speech. It shows in the eyes, for sure: a little more rounded than normal, with hollowed pupils that look like newly dug holes.

  I’ve become convinced that no one can truly hide their fear.

  I pat my own fear on the head. Down, boy.

  Mauricio hands each of us a tiny, colorful paper square. “The blotter paper goes under your tongue,” Dom whispers. I tilt my head like duh, but I had no idea. I slip the square in my mouth, wondering if it will dissolve or what. Dom and I take seats at either end of the couch, facing each other, wiggling our bare toes together. He starts video recording on his phone. Joe sits with his book propped up to his nose and tries to pretend he’s not watching me like a bug under glass. I wink and wait to feel abnormal.

  Mauricio approaches with a bowl in his hands. It’s full of small folded notepapers. I wonder if I’m supposed to put one in my mouth, but we’re instructed to put them in a pocket. “Read it when you need something to think about,” he says with a knowing smirk. “Sometimes it’s good to have a distraction if you’re wandering down a bad street in your brain.”

  “Wait, isn’t LSD supposed to bliss me out?” I ask, stuffing the paper into my pocket.

  “Depends.” Mauricio moves on to the next person.

  “That’s not an answer. Depends on what?”

  Joe leans forward and taps my temple. “Probably on where your head’s at to begin with.”

  I don’t reply, because I’m thinking my head hasn’t been Sanity Street and I haven’t confided that to anyone but Joe. I’m already up shit creek. I don’t need to sink my raft by telling everyone that I’m seeing someone who isn’t there.

  We’re all sitting around talking and clowning, trying to act normal but watching one another closely like there’s a booby prize for who will be the first to act tweaked. People are tossing around theories about who might have owned this RV. It’s a terrorist plot​—​millions of RVs stored all over America will roll out like a giant bus army and attack us. It was abandoned by a family whose kid was killed by a stranger when they went camping, so they just wanted to walk away from it and the awful memories it holds. Maybe it was owned by a stinking-rich family who just uses stuff, then discards it. Maybe they’ll never come get it, and we can raffle it off in a contest . . .

  This is a strange phase where we’re posturing like we’re mellow and lighthearted, yet trying to ignore the zingy bolt of nervous anticipation that’s threading around our bodies. How long does this period go on? It’s hard to tell. The laws of time are rewritten, and I feel like maybe clocks don’t even apply to us right now.

  My hand slides over the edge of the couch, and my fingers brush against the Bible I know is there. It’s heavy when I slip it free, like God’s words are weightier than mere mortals’. I suppose they must be. I let the crisp papers flit by, kicking up dust that wrinkles my nose, allowing the book to come to a place where it wants to be opened. It’s always been one of my favorite things to do, let fate decide where to place its finger on a page.

  James 5:14–15: Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.

  Well, that seems useless. I’m not sick. Unless my recent head hiccups can be called sick . . . I wonder what being “anointed with oil” entails. It sounds kind of sexy. Glancing up at Dom, I think I’d like to anoint him with some oil. My attention bounces back to the book.

  Handwritten names are inscribed in precise script in the back of the Bible: Isaiah, John, Mary, Matthew. All biblical names, with birth dates and death dates next to them. The last name, Rachel, has a birth date just a couple of years before mine. She was only seventeen when she died. How sad. Why would they leave their family Bible in their abandoned RV? I quickly slip the Bible back in its place. This strange family’s history presses me down like a giant thumbprint.

  A faint metallic taste coats my mouth, like I’ve stuck my tongue on the tip of a battery. I find myself wondering if the heart is our body’s battery. If so, what powers the heart? And then, what powers what powers the heart? Suddenly my own beating heart is the only thing I’m aware of. It thrums in the delicate round tips of every finger. It swells like a miniature version of our hill in the middle of my palm, then dissolves back into my lifeline. It surges under the vulnerable spots in my neck. It pulses in my crotch.

  I am an enormous beating heart. I am a battery.

  One guy starts dancing in the kitchen of the motor home, stomping around like some kind of shaman. I think he’s dancing to the beat of my body.

  Or maybe . . . maybe he’s heard his song.

  It occurs to me that my trip may have started in earnest when I realize I’ve been staring at Dom for what seems like days. His black hair is rippling currents in an ebony sea. I hear waves crash on the beach of his forehead. His eyes are swirling, foamy tide pools. I want to reach in and pluck secrets from little marbled shells. H
e catches me watching, stops panning the room with his camera, and smiles wide like he’s happy I can finally see the truth about him.

  Avery sticks her fingers in the current of his black waves, mesmerized by my ocean. I slap her hand, and she wanders away, smiling.

  Someone is playing a ukulele. I’m pleasantly shocked that I can taste the sound. I lean back and let the flavors of the music roll around on my tongue for a while. Major chords are sweet like butterscotch. Minor chords taste like flat gray rocks. We once had a pregnant neighbor who sucked on pieces of terra cotta. What was she hungering for?

  I don’t know how long I’ve been here. The motor home is driving down a timeless road.

  Time dilates like a giant pupil opening and closing the great eye of time watches our every move I don’t know if I’ve skipped ahead like my grandmother does or if I’m behind some of the other people who look static they pushed pause can we rewind I feel like there’s not enough air in here air soup I have to move to circulate the air swirl the colors of it with my fingers painting streaks of life thoughts coming in rhyme and it’s about time my soul unwinds beautiful threads of me unravel and I am the colorful scarf God wraps around her braids.

  Stillness.

  It’s like my brain is taking a deep breath, sucking me back into myself.

  I think about how they say you can’t die in a dream or you’ll die for real. Clarity strikes like lightning: We never die. Never. I feel like the universe has whispered a secret. The secret. We are as eternal as the winds that flow like rivers. The winds may change shape, direction, momentum, but they always are. I am in on a huge secret. I want to run through this house on wheels and announce it to everyone: we literally cannot die. Oh my God. Nothing I do matters.

  I think I always knew this. My dad has drilled this point home with his actions and even with his words. I don’t matter.

  I am safe from death because I cannot die.

  I stand and spread my arms wide, announcing, “Nothing I do matters!” No one answers me, which kind of proves my point.

  There is no death. Only change.

  This realization is so expansive that it scares me, makes me feel small, insignificant. I’m a gnat in outer space. I wonder if listening to familiar music will ground me. I put my earbuds in but don’t press play because I realize I don’t want other people’s music right now.

  Fear perks its ears up. Its long tongue lolls out, panting at my feet.

  My grandmother planted a seed, and I’m afraid I’ll never see it blossom. I want to hear my song. I wonder how old she was when she first heard hers. I’ll bet she heard it in the womb. I can see the truth about Gran’s brain. Why does dementia sound like demented? They’ve got it all wrong. They don’t know that that part of her brain resides in another dimension. They should call it dimentia.

  I warn you, don’t die without sharing your song.

  But we can’t die, Gran. Of all people, how does she not know this? It suddenly becomes enormously important that I find a way to hear my song. I feel panicky, like I’m in peril of eternal soul agony if I am sucked into the winds before I hear my song from this life. Or share it. Why didn’t I ask her what happens if I don’t?

  There’s a pit of writhing snakes in my belly.

  I need to think about something else.

  I frantically pull out the folded paper from my jeans pocket. It’s a quote from someone named Bill Hicks:

  There is no such thing as death; life is only a dream and we’re the imagination of ourselves.

  Such unbelievable syncing with my thoughts that I know it’s not an accident I got this slip of paper out of all the scraps. The universe is whispering again. I reread the quote. I’m already imagining things when I’m not on drugs. If I’m the imagination of myself, then that means there are always two of me.

  Is it this other me who follows?

  Restless wandering, passing everyone in the kitchen and living room. I step over two girls reverently touching each other’s faces as I head down the motor home’s thin hallway. I look in the mirror, trying to summon her, this other me, to boldly face her down. I see myself. My lips are beautiful, pillowy and curved upward at the corners, like my mother’s. I admire the strong structure of my collarbone and shoulders. I can see my heartbeat, a tantalizing pulsing pearl in the indent at my throat. I step closer, peer deep into myself. My eyes are so big and so black and I think . . .

  That’s the hole she crawls out of.

  Suddenly she’s there. We stare at each other, this girl and I. She watches me like I’m a rare species in a cage. And I watch her. I wonder whose vision is truer. Maybe her world is as real as mine. Maybe I am someone else’s dream. Maybe she’s as scared of me as I am of her. Wouldn’t that be weird​—​we two, feeding each other’s writhing snake?

  Wind rushes through the motor home like a jump door’s been opened. I slam on the glass with my fist.

  Her eyes blink a delayed beat later.

  A sharp chill seeps in through my listening ears, invades my breathless mouth, stabs my witnessing eyes. Every velvet inch of my black skin itches from the biting cold burrowing into my pores, and I fear that if I look down, I’ll have turned white. Iced over.

  She presses her palm to the mirror where mine rests and leans her forehead against the glass.

  I suck in my breath and lean my head forward too. It’s cold. So cold. But I do it because I feel seen, because I want to feel connected with someone, anyone. She knows I’m here. She invites me in. Reaches through the door and grabs me by the throat.

  I lean into her, my mouth on the freezing window of her world, and think, How strange . . .

  I feel

  myself

  freefall.

  Nine

  BSBD—​BLUE SKIES, BLACK DEATH. That’s what we say when a skydiver dies. But there’s no blue sky around me, only bleak and utter darkness.

  This freefall has me kicking wildly, my arms spinning and flailing, like I’m swimming, using every ounce of strength not to drown. She is wrapped around my torso, her weight an anchor. I’m struggling to keep her from pulling me under.

  Soaking black yearning, hot red fury, and crystalline shards of glass. My whole world is distilled into color and feeling. This new, shiny blade of fear pierces me in the gut, cuts deeper than any feeling I’ve ever had.

  I’m fighting for my life.

  I punch at her, my fist meeting more glass. It shatters against my knuckles. Her grasp tightens. I kick harder, but my legs sink into blackness like thick mud. A scream rips from my throat. My voice cuts like diamonds. I taste the blood that runs down the back side of my tongue.

  You’re so cavalier, she tells me, her voice angry, accusatory, to dance on the blade of life and death. And you’re wrong . . . stupidly wrong. What you do does matter. Death is the end. You can die. You. Will. Die.

  Sharp shards of glass cut through me as I try to deny her words. She whispers that I’ve slipped from the knife’s edge.

  We tumble in the fall, and now I’m the one dangling, hanging on to her . . . on to myself . . . I look up at my body, at my own terrified beauty. I was a beautiful light. Was. One by one, my fingers rip away.

  I drop from myself.

  I am the leaf, drained of color, crumbling, quaking, as it falls from the tree.

  Ten

  THERE’S HEAVINESS IN coming out of freefall. Gravity has such strong hands. The body is constricting, a corset that’s too tight. It’s hard to take a full breath. The beep-beep-beep of a machine assaults me as the world of color and smells and sharp, stinging pain wrap around me like a barbed-wire blanket.

  All senses are go.

  A baby cries somewhere, and I intimately know how it feels, thrust into the wide open where anything can happen. It’s confusing and scary. My body hurts. I feel like death, toasted on both sides.

  It’s hard to open my eyes, but I fight to, and realize I’m in the hospital. My tongue bursts with pinpricks. When I swallow, it’s like nails ra
king down my throat. I attempt to push my voice up through the fire. “What happened?” Pain causes a hot tear to slide from the corner of my eye.

  Someone’s in the room, but they don’t seem to have heard my raspy question. I try to move, but my body is concrete buried in gripping mud. Someone​—​Joe?​—​notices me struggling and rushes over, wraps his arms around me. I wince but let myself be held because it feels good: physical, warm, and reassuring.

  “Oh my God, honey, you’re finally awake. You wigged out on the acid is what happened,” he says against my ear. His prickly hair stings my face.

  Acid? Oh, of course.

  “I tried to tell you not to do it. We talked about this. Really, how high do you think you can raise your stakes before you lose?”

  I point to my raw throat, noticing my heavily bandaged arms and hands as I do. “Why​—”

  “You crashed right through the mirror like you were diving out of a plane.”

  I blink hard, trying to recall. The memory hides behind a gauzy veil. I can see the outline of it but not the full picture. “I walked through the mirror?” I choke out. Every word cuts.

  “Yeah, that was bad enough, but then you flipped, went completely berserk, flailing and struggling like you were fighting off an attacker. I could barely get you under control, and then you went unconscious. There was blood everywhere.” His kiss on my forehead is fragile. “I love you, you stupid, stupid​—”

  “You ever scare us like that again, and I’ll kill you myself.” That’s my father’s voice coming from the doorway. Chills roll over my body. He doesn’t need to throw threats at me right now. I’m shaken enough. A father should be kissing my head and telling me he loves me. We stare at each other, and I suddenly remember: He’s locked inside himself. Numb. He can’t show me love.

  Then my mother is against my side with tears in her eyes. She slips her palm gingerly beneath mine, trying to be careful of the cuts. “You lost a lot of blood. They couldn’t stabilize your blood pressure. It was touch-and-go for a while.” My stomach jerks. Can we stop talking about blood? I’m appalled with myself.