by Brandt Legg
“Do you have any more questions for me, Mrs. Little? I’d like to get back to class.”
“You can go, Nathan, but please try and remember I’m on your side. You can come to me anytime.”
Faking a “thank you, Mrs. Little” would have been a good idea, but not slamming the door behind me was as much as I could muster.
After school I rushed over to Sam’s house, a geologist who lived across the street, two houses down. I’d taken care of his lawn since I was eleven or twelve. With everything going on, I completely forgot to cut his grass over the weekend. It wasn’t like he would fire me or anything—we were buddies—but I wanted him to know it would be covered.
“Hey, how was school?” he greeted me, while pulling a laptop case out of his car.
“Sam, sorry I didn’t get your grass done this weekend.” I pushed my mower up his driveway.
He looked over his yard and shrugged. “I don’t think they’ll kick me out of the neighborhood. No worries.”
“How was Canada?” He was often going to exotic locations around the world—the Ukraine, Alaska, South America, North Africa—always in pursuit of oil.
“Cold. I’m home for a couple of weeks and then back out again.”
“Where you headed next?”
“North Dakota, I’m afraid,” he sighed, as if it was the most awful place he could think of. He was away more than he was home and in addition to paying me to do all his yard work, he gave me an extra fifty dollars a month to keep an eye on the place, take in mail, water house plants, feed his fish, that type of thing. But it was cool because Sam had a massive DVD collection and didn’t mind me borrowing them. We were both huge classic film fans—Hitchcock, Spaghetti Westerns, Steve McQueen—our taste identical.
“Is Lisa going to be staying here next trip, or do you need me?”
“No, she’s coming with me and . . . it’s Liz.”
“Sorry, I can’t keep them all straight,” I said, half serious, but we both laughed. Sam was a bit of a womanizer, and sometimes one of them would stay at his place when he was away.
“Hey, let’s catch up later. I’ve got to get changed for a date.”
“Liz?”
“Kristy.”
“Hope you keep them all on a spreadsheet.” I laughed.
“Good idea.” He smiled, as he went inside.
It was always nice when he was back home. Sam filled in for my dad and older brother in the most relaxed way. And there were plenty of weeks when I saw him more than my mom. He was in his mid-forties, about the same age my dad would have been. Other than his short hair, he even looked a little like him, six-one, six-two, a fit, avid jogger. Dustin used to say, “Dad probably sent Sam to keep an eye on us.”
9
Tuesday, September 16
Amber Mayes was seventeen and one of the prettiest girls at Ashland High. She was a senior and I, a mere junior, so she was out of my league even if she wasn’t the daughter of a movie star. Everyone seemed to know that her father had bought her a perfectly restored vintage 1969 VW convertible bug on the day he filed for divorce. Because her mother, Ivy Mayes, was a well-known actress currently on a TV series shooting in Portland, most of the horrible divorce details were covered on the Internet, cable news, and worst of all, in the local newspaper. Amber and I had been in classes together for half our lives but were never really close. I was walking a block from school when she pulled over in her turquoise bug, “Nate, you need a ride?”
I didn’t mind walking, but Amber was truly irresistible, even if she was only being nice to me because her older sister had been dating Dustin at the time of his breakdown. Now we shared the bond of “broken home, family in crisis.”
“I’d never miss a chance to ride in the coolest car in town.” I regretted my words as soon as they were out. She didn’t think the car was cool.
“How long ’til you get your license?” she asked, as we cruised up the street with the top down.
“In like nine months. My mom is making me wait until I’m seventeen on account of Dustin freaking out right after he got his.” I knew it was precisely 264 days, but I didn’t want to sound like a ninth grader.
“Well, if I still have this guilt-mobile on your birthday, maybe I’ll sell it to you cheap.”
“Cool.” Just then a moose jumped in front of the car. “Watch it,” I yelled, as I braced my hand on the dashboard.
Amber stomped the brakes, “What?” she shouted.
I don’t know what it really was, a sign for the park, a low-hanging branch, it didn’t matter; I’d clearly seen a moose, but nothing was there. With just about anyone else I would have made up some excuse, but for some reason I found it impossible to lie to Amber. “I thought I saw a moose.”
“A moose in downtown Ashland? Do you see moose often?” she asked, with not a trace of sarcasm. She resumed driving and turned off the main road to cut over to my street.
“No, first time it’s been a moose.”
“You mean this happens often?”
“Yeah, well, it’s no big deal. My eyes just play tricks on me every so often.”
“Have you ever looked up any of the animals?”
“Why would I?”
“To see what they mean. Animals all have meanings. Maybe your guides are trying to give you a message,” Amber had a bit of a reputation, some kids called her “New Age Mayes” because of her not-so-secret obsession with psychics, reincarnation, and crystals.
“You’ve lost me.”
Amber pulled over and started playing with her iPhone. “Here you go,” she read, “The moose is predominately a solitary animal known to have an uncanny ability to camouflage itself, otherwise known as shapeshifting.” She looked up at me. “It’s the symbol of creativity and dynamic forms of intuition and illumination. This is the important part. The moose teaches us the ability to move from the outer to the inner world.”
“Why is that the important part?”
“I don’t know, Nate. Do you?” Amber’s green eyes filled with excitement. But this was nothing new. They always looked like she was seeing some spectacular party that only she’d been invited to; it was part of what made her so dazzling.
“How would I know?”
“Nate, I don’t think about things before I say them. I just let it flow. You should try it. I feel like you’re always censoring yourself.”
“Look, I’m dealing with a lot of stuff right now, and I don’t need a bunch of recycled Hollywood psychological garbage thrown at me.”
“Wow! There you go. Does that feel better?”
“It would take a lot more than that to make me feel better.”
“How long have you been seeing animals?”
“It’s no big deal.”
“Yeah, you said that already. That’s how I know it is a big deal.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Why, what are you afraid of?”
“I’m not afraid.”
“Do you think you’re going to end up like Dustin?”
“Do you think you’re going to end up like your mother?”
“I think I liked you better when you censored yourself.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Let’s go to my house.”
“No, I really should get home.”
“Too bad because I’m kidnapping you.” Her mother wasn’t home; she never was. Her sister was a freshman at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, studying acting. Amber mostly lived by herself with an old housekeeper who had come by three times a week since she was six.
The house was fancy but not overdone. The real money came from her father. He was a “money manager,” and several of his clients were well-known Hollywood stars. They also had a place on the Oregon coast, a condo in Los Angeles, and something in Mexico. “Dad’s been living in LA for a while now.”
“Sorry about the divorce and everything.”
“Me too, but Dad isn’t the deepest guy in the world, and Mom was
born a messed-up drama queen, so it was bound to happen.”
I started to nod then stopped. “Now who’s censoring themselves?” I said. “That’s like a quote you’d give to a tabloid reporter.”
“No, I’d tell tabloid reporters to go screw themselves.”
I couldn’t help but laugh, even though she wasn’t being funny. We climbed the stairs and sailed down the hall to her bedroom. It was big with its own bathroom and balcony. “Nice scenery,” I said, surveying the whole town and the mountains beyond.
“Tell me the last animal you saw before the moose.”
“Why won’t you let this go?”
“Because I want you to know you’re not crazy.”
“You mean not like Dustin? Well, I know I’m not crazy.”
“Do you?” She stared into my eyes so long that I wanted to run away, I wanted to hug her, I wanted to cry. “It’s okay, Nate. You can tell me. I can help.” She took my hand in both of hers. It was jarring. I was sitting with the hottest girl in school on her bed, alone in her house, and she was holding my hand in hers and talking softly to me. If I wasn’t days from losing my mind, I might have thought I’d won the lottery, might have tried something I shouldn’t have.
Instead I started to tremble. “Oh God, I wish you could.” My voice was shaking.
“I can.”
And I believed her. She wrapped a blanket around me, and I realized in my crumbling weakness that strangely Amber Mayes might be my last chance. “What do you most want, Nate?”
“Ashland.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sometimes, it’s like my life is slipping away. Not like I’m dying but that who I am, in Ashland in the present time, this sixteen year-old,” I said, pointing to myself, “is fading out.”
“To where?”
“It’s like I’m losing my life in Ashland and falling into a web of nightmares.”
“Tell me about them.” She had her arm around me rubbing my back. “Just breathe slow and deep and let it go.” I told her about three Outviews before I was too drained to say more. She went to her bookshelf and pulled down a book. Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation.
“Do you know what it is?” she asked. “Do you believe in it?”
“I’ve never really thought about it.”
She looked at me, bewildered. “Well, I do. And I think you’ve been seeing your past lives.”
“Is that even possible?”
“Read that book.”
“Why is everyone giving me books to read all of a sudden?”
“I could give you two dozen books about it, but this one is by a scientist. Dr. Ian Peterson was a biochemist and professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia. He spent decades traveling the world, interviewing kids who had memories of past lives.”
“You mean there are more like me?”
“Well, his work focused around children between two and four. A child would start saying things to his parents or siblings about a life he led in another time and place. And these kids want to go back to those other lives because they miss people or need to finish something. When the parents start looking into the facts and descriptions the child has given, they find out he is right. Some of these kids are two, and they can perfectly describe places they have never been to and people they have never met.”
“That’s crazy.”
“No! It’s not. And you’re not crazy. You’re doing the same thing. Somehow a channel has opened up, and you’re able to tap into your past lives.”
“So, how do we keep living all these lives?”
“Because we’re energy. We’re not the flesh and bones sitting here. Our souls go on and on. They just keep switching vehicles. Your body is nothing more than a vehicle for this particular trip called Nathan Ryder.”
“You’re blowing my mind, Amber.”
“You’re blowing my mind. You don’t know how lucky you are to be able to see what you see.”
“You call it luck. I call it a curse.”
“I wish I could do it. The kids Stevenson studied—and he investigated hundreds of cases—are too young to know how to develop it. They lose their abilities about the time they start formal schooling.”
“Yeah, they probably have counselors like Mrs. Little.”
“I’m serious. This is real. Stevenson followed strict scientific protocols. He was published in prestigious journals and released like six books. He’s a modern Galileo.”
If she was right and reincarnation was real, then maybe I wasn’t going crazy, and that was a relief. Waves of tension left my body. She made it all sound so believable. But if I was falling back into past lives, then where was that going to end? What was that going to do to me?
“Nate, you have to start writing down your Outviews.”
“Why?”
“It’ll help you get to the point where you can control them. I’ve read other books where people are able to regress themselves at will and even choose where and when to go.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Why wouldn’t you? There are so many things you can do once you figure out how to handle this.”
“How am I supposed to handle or even understand this monumental metaphysical stuff when I can’t even handle being a teenager?”
She took me home, making me promise to keep a journal of Outviews. After the time spent in Amber’s bedroom, I knew my life would never be the same again. She had opened a new world to me, given me something other than insanity to explain what was happening. And, my God, what if it was true?
10
Ten minutes later there was a knock on my door. I thought it was Amber returning, but it was Linh. She had walked over to check on me. “Tell me about what happened the day before your dad died, why you think it was your fault.”
Normally I would have refused and changed the subject—it had come up before—but this time I was drained from the session with Amber, and it just came pouring out. “Dad, Dustin, and I had been hiking up Grizzly Peak. As always, Dustin wanted to go off trail, and we made our way down into a steep bowl and up the other side to a far ridge where the terrain got tough. An area of scree caught me by surprise, and I sprained my ankle pretty bad. Dad carried me on his back all the way to the car. The next morning at work, he had a heart attack.”
“Oh, Nate. It wasn’t your fault. I know as a twelve-year-old it may have seemed like it, but he—”
“You sound like Dustin. He told me over and over that it wasn’t my fault.”
“Dustin was there, and he was older. Why didn’t you believe him?”
“Because he told me at the funeral that we would get through this and that he wouldn’t let me forget about Dad. And he lied. We aren’t getting through it. Our family is destroyed. And I can’t remember everything. My dad is fading away. All the hikes he took us on, camping, the music he made us listen to, it’s all lumped together.”
She held me without saying anything. Minutes passed.
“I’m sorry I’m such a mess. I didn’t want you to see me cry.” I rubbed my eyes.
“Don’t be dumb.”
After she left my plan was to search reincarnation on the Internet, but I was fried, so I put my iPod on shuffle, turned up the volume, and went for a walk. “Unwell,” an old Matchbox 20 song, came on and immediately threw my thoughts back to Dustin.
I was convinced that before Dustin was locked up he must have been going through the same stuff. He couldn’t deal with Outviews and voices, and then drugs complicated his reality-bending fog. For two years he’d been shut away and wasn’t even crazy. What had they been doing to him all that time? How much of him was left? Did he still have Outviews or any of the other “problems” that I hadn’t been brave enough to share with Kyle, Linh, or even Amber? Tomorrow it was time to tell them everything.
Sam was getting mail from his box. I pulled out my earbuds when he waved.
“Look what I just got in the mail.” He ripped open the bubble mailer. “
Blindman.” He held up the DVD. “1971. Starring Tony Anthony.”
“I’ve always wanted to see that. You know one of the Mexican outlaws is played by Ringo Starr!”
“I know, fresh off the break up of the Beatles, and it’s supposed to be a pretty cool movie. Want to borrow it?”
“Yeah, thanks! But you see it first; I won’t have a chance until next week sometime. Hey Sam, can I ask you something?”
“Sure.” His look reflected confusion in my sudden change of mood.
“Do you believe in reincarnation?”
“Wow.” He chuckled. “Little early in the day for such a deep subject.”
“Seriously.”
“Seriously? Okay. Yes, I think I do.”
“Really? Why?”
“Why do people believe in anything beyond this life? Fear. Faith. I don’t know. I think there’s too much going on in our heads to just have it end when we die. You should read this book, hold on.” He ran inside his house.
Great, someone else giving me a book to read, I thought. He jogged back out and handed me the book, Reincarnation, An East-West Anthology, edited by Joseph Head and S. L. Cranston.
“Do you remember Mindy?”
“That pretty blond you were dating for a long time?”
“That’s right.”
“What ever happened to her? I always thought her name was Mandy.”
He laughed. “You really can’t keep them straight can you? That’s funny. She married a chiropractor in Medford last year. But anyway, she was big into reincarnation and said this was a great intro into the topic. This book is a collection of thoughts and writings of well-known people throughout history—scientists, statesmen, theologians, philosophers, and poets. It’s definitely enlightening.”
“Thanks!”
“Hey, Nate, are you all right? Everything okay?” Sam knew what happened to Dustin, and I could see the concern on his face.
“Yeah. I’ve been having some strange dreams lately, and then I met this girl at school who’s all into reincarnation . . . ”
