He rubs his thumb across his stubble and says, “Lark. Great to see you. What’s that?”
“I don’t want to pressure you.” I pass him the printout I made online last night. It’s a simple flyer showing our name and the time we perform.
He holds up one finger and waves it side to side. “Not the way to start. Let me give you a tip. When you approach an exec, you need to be confident.”
I try again, reaching out so he drops his raised hand to shake mine. I say, “You should come to this.”
“Better. Why?”
“Because you’ll like our sound.” I glance at Reid. “Right?”
Martin, who is studying the flyer, says without looking up, “Confidence, Lark, confidence.”
“You would. We’re good. Indie, mellow but edgy, musical, not pre-packaged.”
“I’ll come,” he says, looking up. “‘Saturday Drowning’?”
There is a brief moment of quiet between us. I’m sure he’s thinking about what could have happened that day. And I’m thinking about Alec. Lark! DO SOMETHING!
“Next time,” Martin says, “give a little more warning.”
“Right,” I say. Two weeks isn’t enough warning? I’m smiling hard. He’s going to come! This is mind-blowingly awesome. “I will.”
Then the white door he has just come through gives a strange creak. I turn toward it as it groans and the very fabric of it strains.
Water seeps from underneath the door, pooling quickly toward us. A flickering in the air by the door reveals what looks like a screen suspended in the air; the image on it is the hospital room I saw before. Annabelle lying small and silent in a too-big hospital bed. Dead flowers everywhere. Below the bed—either in the studio where I stand or in the hospital room, it’s impossible to tell—water is spreading over the floor. It is muddied, and small leaves and plants are washed along in the flow.
Suddenly in the flickering screen, I see a face. It’s another girl, her long black hair trailing like seaweed, her eyes wide with horror. As I recognize her, my own eyes widen too.
She’s me.
The water reaches my shoes—wet and freezing. It shocks me back to the studio where I’m standing, Martin and Reid frowning at me. Stark fear threatens to drown me.
CHAPTER FIVE
Day 32: Tuesday, after school
When I get home from school, Dad tells me he’s going out for supper and then to see John Fogerty.
“Without me?” I say.
“You hardly know his stuff. I’m going with, uh, friends.”
“And what am I supposed to do?”
“Lark, you’re a teenager. Go out.”
“But you’re not a hundred percent.”
That merits a mock-glare from him.
After he leaves, I try to find something to do with my evening. I was supposed to be working, but Tish gave my shift to someone else, apologizing for the mix-up. I’ve seen her do that to other staff before . . . as she’s figuring out how to fire them. I don’t want to lose the job, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I eat a sandwich and watch TV for ages.
Discovering that all my so-called friends are too busy to even reply to a message, and that Alec’s at work for a little longer, I go back to the song lyrics my mom left. I stare at them and then put them to a little music to see if I can make them work. As I sing, a couple of the lines stand out. The words are like exclamation marks.
“Parallel you
Parallel me
Just the way it needs to be
You, me, if only . . .”
I stop singing, my throat dry. Then I sing the words to myself again, slowly. Oh my God. Perhaps this explains what happened when I saw Annabelle.
Lark:
Can you come over?
Urgent . . .
Alec:
Sure. Just finishing up.
Alec stops at my house on his way home.
“What’s up?” he asks, as I take him up to my room. He kisses me and flops into my desk chair.
“Listen to this.” I sing him the lines over.
“Nice. You wrote a song?”
“I wish. These are words from Mom. I was trying to add a melody, so I’d have something for the band tomorrow. I’ve really got nothing for them. Anyway, as I was singing it, well, I know it sounds crazy, but . . .”
“What?”
I pass him the page and jab the words with my finger.
Parallel you
Parallel me
Just the way it needs to be
You, me, if only
I open both hands out to him. “What if that’s it?”
“What?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
He stares at me like I’m from another planet, so I explain. “It’s not PTSD—I’m telling you, it’s real. What if this is it? Parallel lives—look at what she’s written there. If we each have another life, wouldn’t that explain what I saw when we were at the hospital?”
He bites his bottom lip.
“Alec, if there are parallel lives, what’s going on with us in the other one?”
He tries a joke. “Maybe we’re making out instead of talking about pseudo-science?” When I don’t laugh, he sighs. “Don’t you think this is just some sort of reaction to what happened with us at the lake that day? Not to mention all the stuff with your dad. Remember how you only freak out at the hospital?”
“What about the messages?”
“I don’t know what to say. I haven’t ever seen one, remember?”
I bury my head in my hands and groan. “I can’t figure out what it all means.”
“Tell me about it.”
“It’s possible, isn’t it? What if these lyrics mean that Mom lived a parallel life too? Maybe she knew?”
“Lark, this is a mish-mash of . . . well, nothing. First you’re living a parallel life, then your mom is?”
“What about the video on my phone? It all makes sense now.”
“Okay, Lark. Honestly? Parallel lives? These are just lyrics.” He tosses the papers lightly to the floor.
“Don’t do that,” I say, more loudly than I intend. I sink to my knees and scramble for the pages.
He holds up his hands, palms facing me. “Sorry, Lark, I don’t want to be a jerk . . . but I don’t know if . . . I didn’t sign up for this.”
“Sign up for what?”
“This—” He gestures toward me on my knees, gripping the sheets of paper.
“This is important to me.”
“I get that.” His jaw is clenched. “I actually have to go. My mom needs me for something tonight.”
“What? You’re leaving?”
“It’s not just you and all this . . .” He points at the sheets of paper in my hands. “It’s things at home.”
What am I doing? I put Mom’s notes on my bed and pull myself to my feet. “Talk to me.”
“I will. Just not now. Okay?”
We stare at each other for a long moment.
“Okay?” he repeats.
“I guess so.”
He stands and kisses me gently, and then a little harder. “First, can we stop all this parallel lives, or whatever it is, stuff?”
“I’m sorry.” I swallow down my rising resolve to understand all this. “I’ll drop it.”
Though I keep worrying about what’s going on with Alec at home, there’s one thought that keeps flashing. Parallel lives could explain all of this. I remember the video of Reid that I saw at the play park—what else could it be but footage from my parallel life?
But who sent it to me? How did it get to my cell? Who knows about this?
My heart sputters. My mom is dead in this life. But what if she’s alive in another life? A parallel one? What if my mom is sending me messages?
I look over the words again.
In the dream
I shifted
Between finding
The portal showed me
How to
Go through
You have
to trust me
You have to go
Back to the beginning
Jump
End it
To break
And resolve
I’m so
Sorry, baby.
This time the word portal stands out. A portal—a doorway. To what? Another life? A way through. I hold up my cell—could it be the portal? I flick from screen to screen. I read some parallel life stuff on the Internet. I type in the word portal. A bunch of sites come up, but none of them seem to connect to me and my experience.
I rub my eyes. I’m tired. I should just go to bed. But instead, I read the song again, as if it were true, as if it were a clue. Back to the beginning. Well, that was the day of the near drowning of Alec.
My brain leaps to Annabelle. How both times I went to see her, I had a hallucination. But what if they weren’t hallucinations? Could they instead have been glimpses of my other life? I think about what that life might be like—better than this one? Worse? Oh God, what if in the other life, something worse has happened to Annabelle? Do I want to know? I feel like I’m falling, no one to catch me—who am I in that life? How can I get there? Do I even want to?
Dolphin:
Are you coming over?
Lark:
Sorry! Forgot.
On my way.
I slip out and away. The air is freezing, the clouds and drizzle from earlier replaced by a clear, bitter night. I get to Dolphin and Lucy’s quickly. The house is impeccably tidy from the outside. I have a flash of myself aged about seven, sitting in this yard on a checked blanket with Lucy, staring up at this crabapple tree.
Lark:
I’m here.
Dolphin:
Come on in.
Dolphin opens the door. She has her hair in braids like Lucy’s, but hers are streaked with grey.
“So what’s going on—I mean, it’s nice to see you, but why without Lucy around?” Dolphin has always been direct: she’s not a smalltalk person.
“I can explain. Thanks for letting me come over.”
“Anytime. You know you haven’t been here very much since . . . Oh, Lark, you . . . It’s just . . . I mean, you look just like her. Your hair is just like hers.”
She blinks back tears, reaches to lift a long black strand away from my face, and then we are hugging. I imagine Mom already on her way inside, about to put on coffee.
Dolphin leads the way into her living room. It’s as messy as always. Tidy outside, chaos inside. Stacks of papers piled up everywhere. Books scattered over the carpet. Two kittens tumble over each other, darting around the houseplants. The house smells of cat pee, of soil from the plants, of dust. One of Lucy’s painting hangs above the mantel—it’s of a huge spiral. An image comes to mind of my mother sitting on this couch, her feet curled underneath her, laughing.
Whenever I come here with Lucy, we use the side door and make our way down to her room in the basement. Coming through the front door makes me feel differently about this house. It hurts to be in this room where my mom spent so much time. I decide to settle where she used to sit, but to do so, I have to move a pile of magazines to the floor.
Dolphin hands me hot chocolate and a plate of muffins. “You want one of these?”
I accept one and take a bite. The muffin tastes of bananas, honey, oats, the past. “Yum.”
“So,” she says, sitting in her favourite armchair. “Much as I love having you here, what’s up?”
“Okay.” I pull out the song lyrics.
She sits quietly as I read the lyrics to her, and the letter.
“You maybe knew her best. Is there anything you remember about this song?” I ask.
“In what way?”
“Can you tell me first? Then I’ll explain.”
Dolphin takes the papers. “It’s so nice to hear one of her songs again—I mean, I know it’s not fully formed or anything,” she murmurs. “It makes me think of a conversation we had once. See, your mom was a pretty amazing woman. She was rooted in reality, in the solid things of life, but she had this other side of her—her artistic side, her nature, her being. She could cook supper for you and your dad and then curl up with a pen and write the most gorgeous song. It’s that side of her that connected with me, I think. I mean, we were so different. But I believed her. See, she believed in parallel lives—really believed in them. She dreamed about them all the time.”
“She did?” I put my muffin down on a small plate and lean forward.
“This was a long time before she got sick. She talked to your dad about it, but I don’t know that he really got it. Your mom . . . this is going to sound crazy, but her dreams were so vivid that she believed they were glimpses of her other possible life. Then, when she was running out of time, she mentioned it again, often. I suspect that’s when she was trying to write this song. The idea of a parallel life when she was dying was something that she longed for—a life where she got to see you growing up.”
“Nothing else?”
“Like what?”
“Like, did she say she lived a parallel life?”
Dolphin looks at me for a long time. “Like I said, I think being diagnosed made her wish for one—it was her thing. You know . . . artistically, it spoke to her. Every artist has a theme. Parallels were hers.”
“So, she might have done? I mean, she might have lived a parallel life and been aware of it—and that’s why she wrote this song?”
“That’s not what she said to me. Look, I don’t want to speak out of turn here, but she and your dad argued about it. He wanted her to be in the here and now, not longing for whatever wasn’t possible. He was afraid it would give you, Lark, false hope.”
Tears spring to my eyes. A question has been forming at the back of my mind. I have to turn my hopes into spoken words. “The thing is, do you think . . . if there’s such a thing as alternate lives . . . Do you think my mother’s alive in another life now?”
“Lark . . .”
“I mean, there might be a parallel life where she’s okay. Right? Where she never got sick. Do you think she could send me messages? Do you think I might get to see her again?”
For a moment, Dolphin doesn’t speak. But her face turns white. “Oh, Lark. I’m so sorry. I should have realized . . . Oh, this is what your father wanted to avoid.”
“No. No. I’m not making it up. The parallel life stuff.”
“Your mom was a creative person. Look. I mean, I know I have Witches’ Brew, and I do believe there are other ways to understand the world. We don’t have all the answers, Lark, but you have to understand the nuances. A parallel life, it exists, but I believe your dad was right. It’s on a metaphorical plane, honey. It’s a way to experience life, this one; and the other life, well, that’s a dream, a story, a song . . . It’s not ever going to be real. In this life, I mean. I didn’t mean that your mom is alive. You can’t go and see her. That’s not healthy for you to hope for. I’m so sorry, sweetpea.”
It’s been a long time since anyone called me sweetpea. It was what my mother called me. Something inside me cracks, like ice on the river after a long winter. Tears slide down my cheeks, and Dolphin comes to give me a hug. I let her hold me while I cry and cry.
Day 38: morning
I push aside a pile of clothes and haul myself out of bed. I check on Dad, but he’s already up, and when I get to the kitchen, he’s made coffee. I perch on the counter stool and take a cup gratefully. I stir in three sugars, and Dad clucks his tongue with disapproval.
We sit in silence for a few moments.
He lets out a long breath. “Dolphin called me last night.”
Oh-oh, here it comes.
“She said you visited her about a week ago. She said you were talking about some pretty intense stuff. And apparently Lucy said you’ve been a little cool with her. Dolphin didn’t want to intrude, but she felt she had to call me—she’s worried about you. Basically.”
“It’s nothing. I was talking to Dolphin about some stuff.”
“She’s obviously told you already.”
“Your mom was very sick at the end. Lark, she was hopeful. She didn’t want to leave you.”
“What if she was telling the truth? What if it’s real?”
Dad slams his hand on the table. Hard. It makes us both jump. “What if it were real? What difference does it make to either of us?” He lets out a shuddering breath, and I can tell he’s trying not to cry. When he speaks again, he changes the subject. “What’s up with you and Lucy?”
“We’re fine,” I say woodenly. “Nothing’s wrong.”
“Lark . . .”
Alec:
How’s it going, baby?
Lark:
S’okay. Just talking to Dad.
Are you feeling better?
Wanna meet b4 school if you’re coming in?
Alec:
I can’t.
He missed school because he was ill most of last week, but he refused to let me visit. I thought he’d be back yesterday, but he still didn’t show. I miss him so much, it hurts.
Lark:
Anywhere. Want to see you.
I’m a good nurse ;-)
Alec:
I bet.
I’ll call you later.
Lark:
Seriously.
Is everything okay?
You’ve been sick forever.
“Lark—I should take that cell phone away from you.” Dad finishes his coffee and goes to wash out the cup in the sink. “Should I be worried about you?”
“I’m . . . I’ll be fine.”
He seems like he’s about to say something else, but I’m distracted again.
Alec:
I’ll be back at school tomorrow.
I gotta go xxx
By the time I’ve read it, Dad is on his way toward the door. “Next time we talk, put the phone away. I have to go to work. Have a good day at school.”
Alec:
Actually, plan B.
Cut school with me.
Me and Me Page 11
