I felt a drafty sensation in my chest as if it were a hollow cavern through which cold wind blew.
She must have seen the concern in my eyes. “It’ll be a bit of a crash course, but I have a feeling you’ll be a quick study.”
I didn’t want to do this. Sitting and breathing was the last thing I wanted to do. I wanted to go home and try to reach my grandma, but I didn’t know how to say no to this goddess. She was already walking away, across the yard to a small patio. I followed her like a reluctant but obedient puppy while Clark stayed with Ed.
“Sit down, cross-legged,” she said.
I did so. Light rain fell through the branches of the tree that overhung the patio.
“Breathe through your nose with your mouth closed, making a whispery sound like you’re taking in air through a hole in your throat.”
I found the image disturbing—like a tracheotomy—and frowned at her but she ignored me.
“Fill every cell with breath,” she went on. “Imagine yourself surrounded by a body of rose-colored light. And that your cells are dancing particles of light, dancing very fast.”
The whole idea sounded weird and too hard to do anyway. At first my mind kept drifting—did I look like an idiot? When could we leave?—but after a while a tingling sensation spread across the surface of my skin, warming me in spite of the rain. Listening to Amrita’s honey voice, I could imagine my cells dancing faster and faster.
“This is what I mean by the vibrational protection,” she said softly, but it startled me.
And I lost my breath.
What did I need to protect myself from? Grant’s face appeared in my mind; the whites of his eyes were red. My own eyes flicked open and I gasped for air.
“I can’t,” I said. “I can’t sit still like this.”
Amrita took a bottle of oil from her pocket and touched a drop to her finger. The lavender fragrance reminded me of Grandma Miriam and calmed me immediately.
“May I?” she asked.
I let her touch a drop of lavender oil to each of my temples. “Keep practicing. All this is necessary.”
“How do I do it at home?” I couldn’t even sit peacefully here, let alone in my musty room with the sounds of heavy metal music and evil refrigerators shaking the walls.
“Set up a special altar with some candles, a white one for healing, a red for knowledge, green to attract luck, maybe an object or two that is important to you. Try five minutes at a time at first and work up to an hour. Focus on your breath, just the way I showed you. It will help you handle what’s to come.”
“What if I start thinking about other stuff?”
“You will. Just bring it back to the breath,” she said. I scowled and she smiled at me, surprisingly feral teeth between gentle-looking lips. “I know, it’s easier said than done. Our thoughts are wild creatures who’ve been wounded countless times. We have to tame them.”
LATER CLARK AND I, wearing the over-sized cotton promotional (RAINWATER SAGE AND SWEAT) T-shirts we’d been given, stood with Ed and Amrita at the entrance to a low building; we had to crouch to enter. Inside rocks were piled on the coals, and Ed poured water to make them steam. I was hot right away and soon beads of sweat were popping out of every pore. It was hard to find air and I had to concentrate on my breath in order not to panic and pass out. A couple of times I almost crawled for the entrance. Clark sat bolt upright across from me, eyes closed, sweat trickling down his face. Ed mumbled something I did not understand. But it had the rhythm of prayer and his voice was so resonant I could feel the words penetrating my skin.
He turned to me then, and spoke clearly.
“What do you want to release?”
“Grief,” I said.
Ed nodded. I couldn’t see his face clearly, but I knew the fierceness I’d have seen in his black eyes if I could.
“And you.” He turned to Clark. It was a question but spoken as a statement.
Clark said, “Fear? At least that’s what all these random strangers keep telling me. And . . . I can’t . . .”
Ed said, “Try.”
Clark wasn’t joking around now. His voice was deeper when he spoke. “Fear. And my brother. But I’m not ready yet.”
“Thank you for your honesty,” said Ed Rainwater. “He’s not ready either. It may be hard work. This will help but it’s not enough. It will have to come from you.”
Great. These healers looked impressive but they all pretty much said the same unhelpful things. I knew Clark was sharing my thought by the way he raised his eyebrows in my direction.
When the sweat was over, he and I had to hold on to each other to get outside; our legs were weak. But as we stood in the rain, I felt the drops slide down my skin and it was as if everything that had been released from my body was washed away. I raised my hands over my head and spun around slowly, not worrying about the size of my bare thighs. For the first time since I was a small child, I felt graceful in my body and at ease in my skin. There was a painful but pleasant lump in my throat as I looked at Clark standing there in the wet dark, his eyes familiar and yet lost. No awkwardness between us, maybe for the first time. I wanted to stay here with him forever and forget everything in Los Angeles. We had been sent out into the world for something and I wondered if what we had been sent for was this moment and nothing more.
Amrita handed us towels. “Ed tells me you have some Native American blood,” she said softly, stroking my wet hair the way my mom did and I suddenly missed her.
“My dad was. But he was a surrogate so I don’t know much about him.”
“Cherokee, right? Like Ed,” Amrita said. There was a curious look on her face as she glanced back and forth between Ed Rainwater and me. “How did you find us, again?”
“My grandma had an advertisement for your store in her book. I just found it and it mentioned the sage. We figured we should come.”
Ed nodded and looked at me, hard. “The meditation will help you. And pay attention to your dreams, especially the difficult ones.”
“I only get little bits that don’t make sense.”
“Keep trying to remember and you’ll have more.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to. And none of this provided an answer to the question that brought us here in the first place. “What about the ritual?” I asked. “What are we supposed to do?”
“It’s always different, depending on the person who performs it, depending on the spirit. You must be creative and find your own. It’s an art, it takes practice.
“Now get back home,” said Ed. “You have work to do. And not much time.”
Not much time? Before I could say anything more, Ed and Amrita had turned away and were walking back into the shop, holding hands, the top of her head barely reaching his shoulder, Otto waiting at the door for them.
“MAN,” CLARK SAID IN the car on the way home. “All these healers are like something out of Buffy. Central casting central.” He was trying to make light of it, but I knew he was shaken. Not that either of us ever weren’t feeling that way lately. “And this whole thing about, ‘We can’t help you. It has to come from you. Do it yourself.’ They should be on Etsy.”
This actually made me laugh and Clark smiled at me sideways; I could tell he was proud of his joke.
The desert sped by; Joshua trees surrounding us on all sides for miles witnessed our departure. My body was empty and weak from the sweat, from the whole day. I propped my head in my hand, leaned against the window, and shut my eyes.
I WOKE JAMMING MY foot against the floorboards again and again.
“What’s wrong? Julie!” Clark shouted.
I looked at him gripping the steering wheel, then ahead at the car eating the white lines on the dark road and I opened the window for air but I couldn’t speak yet, not with my stomach way up in my throat.
“What happened?” Clark said, softer now.
“I had a dream. A car accident.” I couldn’t remember the details; only that it felt real enough to slam through my body.
Slam my foot on an imaginary brake. Was it another dream about Grant?
“Damn, dude, you scared the crap out of me,” said Clark. “Are you okay?”
I nodded and leaned my head out the window, into the wind, remembering Ed’s words, wondering if I was going to have to remember more dreams like this one.
IT WAS ALMOST DAWN when Clark dropped me off. I hadn’t bothered to call my mom, mostly because I was still mad at her from Thanksgiving and my birthday. I figured that she didn’t care what I was doing anyway. She hardly ever questioned me about where I was going or when I’d be home. Though she had said it was because she trusted me and Clark, I thought it had to do with the fact that she was too busy thinking about Luke. I just hoped he wasn’t at the apartment.
When I saw that her car was there but not Luke’s truck, I felt the anxiety-bubble in my chest deflate. Until I got inside.
The light on the answering machine was blinking the number twelve.
No one called us that much.
And my mom wasn’t home.
I scrambled in my bag for my phone, remembering I’d forgotten to turn it back on. There were ten new messages there as well.
The balloon of anxiety was now ready to burst me open. I checked the last text I’d received.
There’s been an accident. Call immediately. Luke.
1. THE VISITOR
After I spoke to Luke, I called Clark crying, but it was Grant who pulled up in the same car that had taken us to the desert, his face and voice rough with sleeplessness, although perhaps he had been asleep while Clark was awake and now the reverse was true. (It made my brain feel like an overstuffed stomach to think about this.) I recognized the dead twin immediately.
“Why are you here?” I said.
“Because you need me. I’m better than he is during crisis.”
I knew I didn’t have time to waste so I got in the car with a ghost anyway. “She’s at Cedars Sinai.”
We drove in silence for a while. My arms were crossed over my chest as I tried to keep myself from rocking back and forth in the seat like a straitjacketed mental patient.
“Do you want to know where I’ve been?” he asked.
“Not really.”
He ignored this. “I’ve been giving you your space. And him. To let you realize that you need me.”
“He needs you to leave,” I said, gripping the door handle as Grant raced through a yellow light that was turning red, thinking, in spite of myself, that Clark, even in an emergency, would have stopped cautiously instead.
Grant looked at me sideways. “But what about you?” he asked softly, his voice deeper than usual. The traffic lights played off his cheekbones. His dilated pupils made his eyes look black. Even in my fear, or maybe in part because of it, I felt desire for him queasy in my belly and tense between my legs.
THE AIR WAS FREEZING when we stepped into the hospital lobby, so cold I was surprised I couldn’t see my breath. I felt myself grow numb under the sick-making fluorescent lights. If I stopped experiencing any sensations in my body, I might be able to escape it and the world, get away. I was glad to have someone at the hospital with me, even though he was dead.
My mom was in the ER with a broken leg and a concussion, and Luke, who’d been pretty unscathed in the car accident, had gone home by the time we got there. Luke was driving. They’d been coming home from a bar.
She was so out of it that I was worried she wouldn’t know who I was, but she kept saying, “I’m so sorry I wasn’t with you at Thanksgiving!”
“It’s okay, Mom.” I stroked her head.
“Are you going to drive her home?” the nurse said.
I looked at Grant, who nodded. I wondered what she would think if she knew who he was. It didn’t really matter; there weren’t funds for more than one day in the hospital, even if the person who took you home had been killed in a car crash once.
The air smelled of fire as we drove south toward the apartment. It smelled of fire and of fear, a deep belly terror, the kind that could turn you inside out.
Grant and I helped my mother inside. She gripped my arm, digging her fingernails in.
She kept asking, “Where’s Luke? Where’s Luke?”
I told her he was okay and had gone home to sleep, but I had the same question. Where was he? Why wasn’t he taking care of her? How had he let this happen?
We got her inside, in bed. Gave her more pain pills and something to help her sleep.
Grant took my hand and led me to the kitchen. My limbs felt dead as I stumbled after him.
“You have to eat.” He opened the refrigerator and brought out a container of black-rice-and-currant kicharee with cinnamon Clark had sent home with me from school on Friday.
“I can’t,” I said.
He opened the container, sniffed it, and rolled his eyes. “I don’t blame you. I want a hamburger, myself. Make that a double cheeseburger. With fries. Strawberry milk shake.”
Even though my mouth was suddenly watering for sugar and fried grease instead of kicharee, it also made me nauseous to think about and I missed Clark then, with a bang in my chest as forceful as the refrigerator at 12:03. How had I allowed this to happen, to accept Grant again? My eyes felt like pebbles; I was so tired. When was the last time I’d slept? It seemed like a week had passed since we’d left for the desert.
Grant put the kicharee back in the refrigerator. “Come with me to get some food.”
“What’s this thing you’re doing with the banging at midnight?” I said, ignoring him.
“Well, no one’s banging me at midnight.”
I glared at him.
“Sorry, not funny.”
“Not at all,” I said. My anger had brought me back to myself a bit. “You like hanging out inside the refrigerator when you’re not possessing your brother’s body?”
“Not exactly. I don’t hang out there. I’m just trying to get your attention. Since you started snooping around town talking to all these psychics. ‘He’s going to take over and pretty soon there won’t be anything left of you.’ ‘Angry ghost.’ ‘Espíritu maligno.’”
He was looking down at me, smirking, but then his expression changed, softened, and for a second I thought I saw Clark flicker in him.
“It’s like he’s dead when you do that,” I said. “Where does he even go?” I couldn’t control the escalating pitch of my voice. “Are you willing to basically kill your brother so that you can stay?”
“Listen, Julie. I love Clark, but I don’t have a choice about this and neither do you.”
“What do you mean, neither do I?”
Grant leaned close to me so that I could feel the heat coming off his skin. I now realized how weird this was considering his true chill. I could also smell him, a scent weirdly different from Clark’s—spicier, denser. “You need me. Who else will help you with your mom? With your grandma?”
I backed away and bumped into the kitchen counter. “I need a human.”
Grant’s jaw clenched; he spun and pounded his fist on the refrigerator door. “I am so fucking sick of this,” he said. “And of you and my brother with your little rituals to try to what? Send me to hell? I’m going to get sent back anyway, Julie. On the anniversary of my death, which is coming right up. Unless I send him there first.”
My hands reflexively went up to my chest, warding him off.
“Sweetie?” my mom called. “What’s going on?”
“It’s okay,” I managed. He can’t go near her.
I kept my eyes on Grant as I backed out of the room. “Please leave now,” I said.
My mom was trying to move around, tugging at the sheets. The hair on her forehead was damp with sweat, loose strands sticking to her face. “I don’t know what happened,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
I stroked her forehead and tried to remember to breathe the way Amrita had taught me. To keep away the invaders, the danger. Grant was the danger, but somehow I had forgotten. Why had I let him go with me to the hospital at all?
Relief coursed through me, washing away everything except the need to sleep.
I WOKE THE NEXT evening; the sky was darkening among the palm trees. My body felt heavy and hot. What had happened? What day was it? Where was my mom? Where was Clark? Had Grant been here?
Clark and I were in Joshua Tree. Grant and I were at the hospital. They had both left in one body. Grant had said something about sending Clark to hell.
And I’d had another strange dream. It had nothing to do with Clark or Grant. Instead I had dreamed randomly of Ally Kellogg. I was walking around naked at her Halloween party. The stone lions had come to life and were roaming the rooms. Ms. Merritt was there, with a tall, thin man in black whose face I couldn’t see, and she didn’t seem to recognize me when I approached her. The claw-foot table was doing the rumba. Monsters were having sex with each other on the floor, leaving trails of organs in their wake. None of this seemed to bother me particularly. Until I went outside and saw Jason Weitzman pissing into the pool, which was filled with bloody appendages.
“Where’s Ally?” I asked him.
He turned to look at me, pointing his finger into the pool, and I woke up.
My mom was calling for me so I dragged myself out of bed and stumbled into her room, my body still buzzing from the dream.
She reached out for me and I went into her arms, but it didn’t feel safe there, not the way I wanted it to. And I saw the gray color coming off her like it had the day she lost her job. I still didn’t know exactly what it meant or why I was able to see auras at all, but I knew the gray wasn’t a good sign.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, more lucid now.
“It’s okay, Mom. What happened? Was he drinking? I’ll kill him if he was drinking.” Luke hadn’t sounded wasted on the phone, but I wasn’t sure. I turned Tatiana’s ring on my finger, remembering the bile-green color I’d seen on Luke and in the ring the night I called Clark to say we were going to Joshua Tree. Had the color been a warning that I had ignored? Could I have helped my mother if I’d known how to interpret it? Were there other signs I’d been ignoring?
Teen Spirit Page 12
