by Gina Rosati
“I don’t know yet, but I can figure something out if you’re willing to try.”
She takes a deep, shaky breath. “I have another idea.”
“What’s that?”
“I stay where I am, and you give me another chance.”
“What kind of chance?” Rei asks suspiciously.
“A chance to … I don’t know, try again.” She uncurls herself a little and turns toward Rei, and the blues surrounding her lighten. “You said Seth and I had nothing in common, but you and I do, Rei. We both know how it feels when parents push, when all they care about is grades and what looks good on our college applications. They don’t care what we have to give up.” She wipes a fresh tear away on the sleeve of her robe. “I know your mom rides you hard, Rei. Kids hear her talking about you at the store. Everyone knows what colleges you’re applying to and what you plan to major in.”
Well, no, not everyone. Rei still hasn’t told me where he wants to go to college. I’m not sure he knows himself.
“That coffin was just a formality.” Taylor leans closer to him. “My parents stuck me in a box a long time ago. I was expected to get into Yale, graduate with honors, and go to law school. My father used to hint around that I could be a Supreme Court justice, if I wanted to. But not if I had a baby.” She wipes her eyes with the heels of her hands. “As if I actually wanted to be on the Supreme Court.”
“I’m sorry,” Rei says.
“I’m sorry, too.” Her voice drops to a whisper. “I just want someone to … understand me, you know?”
Rei nods dutifully. He looks like he just wants this night to be over.
“If you gave me another chance, I could prove to you I’m not this terrible person you think I am. I wouldn’t rush you this time.” Rei shifts away from her slightly. “And I wouldn’t testify against Seth,” she adds quickly.
“So what are you saying?” he asks. “Seth will go free, but Anna’s stuck where she is.”
“Rei, I’m scared,” she whispers. “That light people claim to see when they die? There was no light. Not for me.” Two more tears drop. “If I leave here, I don’t know where I’ll end up. Please?” She laces her fingers through his, almost shyly, and looks up into his eyes. “At least think about it.”
Rei looks down at their hands linked together.
“Ahem.” Both Rei and Taylor jump a little, and even I didn’t hear Yumi’s quiet feet walk down the hall. “Rei, can I talk to you?”
“Sure,” Rei disengages his hand from Taylor’s and follows Yumi down the hall into the office. She closes the door quietly.
“Did she tell you what happened?”
“She just said he came after her, and she hit him with the bottle.”
Yumi looks perplexed. “So what was all that whispering and hand-holding about?” she asks.
Rei assumes his poker face. “She’s just nervous. She thinks her mom will be mad at her. When’s Lydie coming, anyway?”
Yumi looks unconvinced. “She’s leaving now, but she wants to stop at the hospital for a few minutes to check on Steve. She should be here in an hour or so. Rei,” Yumi pauses, “you know you don’t have time to get involved with girls right now.”
This seems to catch Rei completely by surprise. “Huh?”
“Rei, think about it. You have all the pressure of keeping your GPA at school, aikido class, work, college applications, and things will only get busier next year. When would you have time to date? And I know you’re very fond of Anna, but dating your best friend is just asking for trouble. Trust your mother on that one,” she smiles and reaches up to pat his cheek.
“That’s not something you have to worry about,” Rei tells her in a wintry voice.
Suddenly, I have this overwhelming urge to topple a teacup.
CHAPTER 31
Taylor pretends to sleep. I know it. Rei knows it. I think Yumi knows it, too. When my mom gets to Rei’s house and tries to wake her, Taylor feigns sleep like she’s the living dead. Oh, how silly of me. She is the living dead. Rei ends up scooping her up into his arms and carries her across the dark path back to my house.
My mom opens the door for them, and Rei deposits her on top of the lavender comforter in my bedroom. As soon as he slides his arms out from beneath her, she is suddenly wide awake.
“Rei?” She catches his hand in hers.
“What.”
“Will you just think about what I said?”
“Yes.” He gently slides his hand out of hers and leans over her to take the empty vodka bottle off the bookshelf.
“Rei?”
“What.”
“Don’t you ever want to break out of the box they put you in?”
He hesitates. “Yes,” he admits. “You should get some sleep.” He shuts the door on his way out, leaving her in the dark.
My mom stands at the kitchen sink surrounded by an army of bottles lined up on the counter, and she pours the contents of them, one by one, down the drain. I’m feeling a little tipsy just breathing in the fumes.
“Any more?” Rei asks.
“There should be a box in the garage,” she sniffs.
Rei comes back with four bottles full of whiskey and the empty vodka bottle in a cardboard box and sets it on the counter. As soon as my mom empties each bottle and rinses it, he fits it into the box between the cardboard slots. When they are done, there are ten empty bottles in the box. My mom opens the refrigerator door and pulls out a half empty bottle of Chardonnay. She looks at it wistfully, then uncorks it and pours that down the drain, too. Rei adds that bottle to the box, locks the cardboard flaps under, and shoulders it.
“I’ll bring it to the store and recycle them for you.”
“Thanks, hon.” My mom sighs and blows her nose on a paper towel. “Did she tell you why she hit him?”
Rei shakes his head. “She hasn’t really been herself since she hit her head.”
“No, she hasn’t.” My mom rips another paper towel off the roll and wipes a few random drops of whiskey and water off the countertop. “He’s not a bad person, Rei. I don’t know if you remember what he was like before the accident, you were so young. I know Anna doesn’t remember.”
“She will. She’ll get her memory back, and who knows, maybe this was good. Maybe he’ll stop drinking.” Rei shifts the box over to his other shoulder.
My mom sighs. “She didn’t remember anything good about him even before she hit her head. She just … I don’t know. I don’t think she wants to remember. She doesn’t understand this isn’t his fault. And what’s really frustrating is we were getting along so well this week. I felt like we were finally connecting.”
“Um, yeah, I’ve got to go. I’m in court on Friday and I still have some homework to finish up tonight.”
“Oh, that’s right. How did your deposition go today?”
Rei shrugs. “I don’t know. There are a lot of different versions of what happened.”
“Is that why you two haven’t been talking as much as usual?”
I’m surprised she noticed that. I thought she was pretty oblivious to my social life.
“That and other stuff. There’s a lot going on.”
“She had to tell them the truth. You know that, right?”
“Maybe she thinks she’s telling them the truth, but I know Seth. He would never kill anyone. I’m surprised they even believe her after she hit her head.”
My mom looks uncertain. “I wasn’t there at the falls, Rei, but why would she lie? She doesn’t know this girl. I can’t believe she would jeopardize her friendship with you and testify against Seth unless she was absolutely positive.”
Rei looks too tired to argue with her. “I have to go,” he repeats and pushes through the screen door into the darkness.
* * *
I’m waiting for him in his room when he gets home.
I’m sorry, I type on the keyboard even though I really want to type YOUR MOTHER HATES ME! He looks too wiped out for me to bring that up now, though.
“Aren
’t you the one who said we must be the two sorriest people in the world and that you were sick of apologizing?” he asks.
Yes, but I’m still sorry. If I had just listened to Rei and stayed in my body, well, maybe Taylor would still be dead, but there would be no eyewitness. What was the term I heard on Law & Order? Burden of proof? Unless some of Seth’s DNA survived underneath her fingernails during her extended bath in the river, they couldn’t prove anything.
Rei rolls onto his bed and lies on his side, his elbow angled under his head. “She said if I go out with her again, she won’t testify against Seth.”
Wow. What a deal.
“I can’t do that.”
I know I’m going to hate myself for saying this, but I can’t resist. That’s right. Your mom doesn’t want you to date.
“Oh. You heard that,” he says flatly.
I nod solemnly. Especially your best friend.
“It’s not just you, it’s anyone,” he points out. “She thinks I don’t have time. The only reason she said that stuff about you is because if it didn’t work, she’s afraid it would ruin our friendship, that’s all.”
Of course. We’ve been friends for almost seventeen years. Why rock the boat?
What do you think about Taylor?
Rei rolls onto his back and stares up at the ceiling. “She’s scared. She thinks she’ll wind up in hell or something.” He closes his eyes, and he’s quiet for so long, I decide he must be asleep. I pull enough energy to flip the switch on the table lamp next to his bed, leaving only the glow of the computer screen to light the room.
“She said dying is the only way she knows to get out of you,” he says out of the blue.
She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. I don’t bother to type it, but now she’s got me thinking.
She doesn’t need to be dead to get out of me, but she doesn’t know how to disengage herself and slip out like I do. There’s no way I could talk her out, not unless she wanted to leave, but …
What if we found a way to weaken her or disable her somehow? Maybe that would loosen her grip enough to let me pull her out.
He rolls back onto his side to read the computer screen. “How would we do that?”
I don’t know. How hard do you have to hit someone on the head to knock them out?
Rei looks at me funny. “It depends,” he says carefully. “I don’t think we want to be hitting her in the head, though. That’s your head, too.” He pauses, thinking. “Besides, she already hit her head when she fell out of the desk chair. Didn’t you try to get back in then?”
Yes, but she was still conscious. Maybe she needs to be unconscious.
“Why can’t you just go back in when she’s sleeping?”
I tried that; it didn’t work.
Rei rubs his top lip with his knuckle as he thinks. “You know about pressure points, right?”
Like acupuncture?
“Kind of, but acupuncture is meant to heal. If one of those pressure points was hit too hard or squeezed too long, that’s dangerous. We learned about them in aikido so we can avoid getting hit there.” Rei sits up, cross-legged, and pats the bed in front of him. “Come here.”
As soon as I am mirroring him, he points to the top of my head.
“This is the tendo point. You don’t want to get hit hard here.”
That sounds logical to me.
He moves his index finger down to the middle of my forehead, right at the hairline. “This is the tento point.” Now down slightly to the middle of my forehead, about an inch above my eyebrows. “This is the uto point.” Yes, the familiar point where all of Rei’s tension seems to congregate.
He moves from here to a spot between my upper lip and my nose, then just below my lower lip, over to my temple, and then to the spot just behind my ear, telling me the Japanese name of each pressure point as he points to it.
I know I feel like nothing more than a gentle vibration beneath his fingers, but I can feel him, so gloriously solid.
I feel like a dream sitting next to reality.
I try to forget the other reality—the nightmare of knowing this may be the closest we can ever come to touching each other. I am eye level with his mouth, watching his lips move as he talks. I don’t know why, after so many years, I find his lips so irresistible. Because Taylor’s kissed him? If Taylor used my mouth to kiss Rei, did I get cheated out of my first kiss?
“Anna? You with me?”
I look up into those indefinable eyes of his and nod. Using the vibration as a guide, he slides his hand slowly to that familiar spot at the back of my neck, his fingers on one side and his thumb on the other. He clears his throat. “This is the shofu point.” He moves his hand to the front of my neck and runs his fingers lightly over where my pulse should be. “And these are your carotid arteries. Thirty seconds of pressure here should knock you unconscious.”
Does he know? Can he tell I’m just floating here wondering how it would feel to kiss him? It’s pretty obvious to me. Every breath he takes echoes through me, slow and even, and when he slides his hand from around my neck, his energy swells through me like a gentle caress.
“Anna?” he whispers.
Even if I had vocal chords, I couldn’t speak. I’m infinitely grateful that I don’t need oxygen because I couldn’t breathe if my life depended on it. All I can do is nod once.
He leans in toward me and his sigh is sweet cinnamon. “It’s too bad we can’t just give her a peanut butter cup.”
CHAPTER 32
Rei doesn’t notice I’m deflating like a balloon with a slow leak.
“You know, it was stupid of me to tell her she’s allergic to peanuts.” He leans to the side and flips the light back on. “That might have worked, you know. Why do you look all mad?”
Why? Because I do not want to talk about peanut butter cups right now! I want him to turn out that light and continue his guided tour of my pressure points, but I can’t tell him that, so I come up with another reason, and it’s a good reason, too.
Because if you got caught handing her a peanut butter cup, you could get arrested. Again!
“Well, then, the challenge would be not to get caught.”
You really liked jail, didn’t you?
“No, but think about it. The first time you ate something with peanuts, you had a reaction and you just bounced right out of there, didn’t you. Maybe the same thing would happen to Taylor.”
Maybe. You’d have to make sure you had my epi with you.
“How long?”
How long what?
“If I can figure out a way to sneak her something with peanuts, how long do I wait until I use the epi? Do I wait until you’re unconscious? I mean, we’d need to maximize your chances.” He’s actually considering this dangerously stupid idea!
Rei, that’s not something they teach you when you learn how to use an epi. You’re taught to act quickly, that every second counts. You are NOT taught to play chicken and see how long you can go before you die. How am I supposed to know how long to wait?
“Why are you still mad? I think this might work.”
Well, I think you and Seth will end up in neighboring cells in a maximum security prison. It’s too risky for you.
Rei scoffs in the face of danger. “I’m more worried about you. As long as I use the epi in time, you’ll be okay, won’t you?”
Not necessarily.
“What do you mean, ‘not necessarily,’” he asks warily. “I thought the epi was your safety net.”
I mean, not necessarily. I need to get to a hospital in case I have a second reaction. Plus I’ve only ever had that one reaction. I have no idea if another one will be more or less severe. It’s a gamble for both of us. I vote we just clock her on the head.
“Can I use the keyboard?”
Sure. Just make sure you hold it with both hands when you hit her with it.
“Very funny.”
I glide away, and he sits and Googles “anaphylaxis.” I give him a sour look and
wave.
“Why are you leaving? Are you still mad?”
I have no idea what I feel right now. Mad? Confused? Frustrated? Scared? All of the above? Yeah, that sounds about right.
I’m going to check on my father. I’ll see you later.
* * *
Despite the many stitches in his head, my father is not in nearly as much pain right now as he will be when he learns my mom has poured his entire stash down the drain. His head is bandaged like a mummy’s, and there’s an IV taped firmly to the back of his hand. He is probably heavily sedated, although I suspect he’s still quite drunk, as well.
I’ve always known him to have a dense gray aura, but now it’s nearly black. I’ve spent so many years trying not to look at him, hoping that maybe if I ignore him he’ll just go away. Well, now he’s gone, for a little while, anyway. I suppose if I vacuum out the deepest crevices of my brain, there are memories of the man who supposedly kissed my toes and blew raspberries on my belly. But what’s the point of remembering? Then I’ll just have to mourn the loss of what’s gone. It’s easier this way.
But I can’t help feeling a tiny bit of compassion for this broken man. I can’t gather any energy in here, it’s too heavy, so I go out under the starry sky and soak up what I can. I carry it back to him and release it, bit by bit, until the black fades to gray and the gray fades to blue.
* * *
Even though helping my father made me feel a little better, I’m not quite ready to go back to Rei’s right now. He’s overwhelming me with his obsessive need to save me and Seth, and a small, hopeless part of me wonders … what if? What if Rei is wrong? What if I never get back into my body? What if Rei does something stupid, tries to pass off a candy bar to Taylor and she survives, only to point a finger at Rei as the culprit who tried to kill her? What if Seth is convicted of Taylor’s murder and spends the rest of his life in prison? Even if we do get Taylor out of me, how do we keep her from haunting us for the rest of our lives? How did this one twisted girl get so much power over us?
And what the hell am I going to do about it?
CHAPTER 33
