by Amy Henwood
There was one item that she didn’t know about me, something I had only told one person with grave regret, and then never mentioned it again—for fear that people would not believe me and call me a liar or an imposter, keeping me from sharing this detail with any living soul. I didn’t know if I should’ve been lucky and thankful for this as an ability, or unfortunate for it as a disability.
It began when I was eight years old—a night I vividly remembered as if it was yesterday. That summer evening was still, with only a light mist beading off my bedroom window. Drops smaller than a child’s tears. Mom and I completed our bedtime routine. Prayer, tucking me in and a single kiss on each of my cheeks.
I closed my eyes and I was beginning to slip out of consciousness when a light voice softly said my name. I opened one eye at a time with caution, my mind instructing me not to be afraid. I remained calm and locked myself into a standstill.
A figure stood at the foot of my bed watching me. My vision took time to adjust itself to the dark room showing an outline of a body. I was unable to clearly make out a face, as only the speckled moonlight cast the faintest light on the figure. It repeated my name once more, and this time I recognized the voice. My grandma, who had passed only a few short weeks prior, was standing in my room, in a full body apparition. She moved along the side of my bed, approaching my head. A clearer view was now in my perception, and she appeared healthy and pain-free. The cancer that had taken her away from us, that had sucked the life out of her slowly and painfully, wilting away at her body, was no longer visible. She had tried keeping her ending days cheerful by helping us cope with her inevitable departure, but the closer she had got to the end, the more she had struggled, not knowing what life after death would bring. She felt death was punishing her, taking away the opportunities to see marriages, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren.
Grandma leaned over my bed and kissed me on the nose and then my forehead. Her lips were cold against my skin, with no moisture left behind to evaporate. A tender I love you was whispered into my ear. This routine was one that we had done every time we parted until her departure from earth. This only confirmed her presence with me. My eyes fell closed involuntarily, taking in the precious moment. As brief as it was, when I reopened them, I was in my bedroom alone. Stone still, and overwhelmed by the experience, my eyes were fixed on the ceiling, unmoved, blink-free, processing the event. I struggled between fact and fiction, trying to decide if what I saw, heard and felt was real.
In my naive youth, the following morning at breakfast I explained to my mom what happened.
“Scarlett, honey, you were dreaming,” she said and immediately changed the topic to waffles and preferred toppings, or some kind of children’s talk.
I failed to get a read off her. Wondering if she was avoiding the topic because she knew it was true and wishing that by brushing it off, it would make me leave the thought at the table and it would be washed away with the soiled dishes—spiralling down the drain and never coming up again—all in the hopes that my childhood would continue on as a normal one. Maybe she felt I had turned into some kind of crazy and wanted to trample it before it would explode out of control. A fear grew inside me, and from that moment forward, I never mentioned it again, to anyone—not even my best friend, Mia.
Nevertheless, the experiences didn’t stop with that one occurrence with my grandma, they only grew. Being in public places, surrounded by people, intensified the experiences. It started with mumblings in my head, like static on an out-of-tune radio. I knew words were being spoken, but I couldn’t make them out. At points, it would sound as if an entire crowd was trying to get my individual attention, fighting for me to listen solely to them.
As years passed, the radio slowly tuned itself and the mumbles became clearer. They were sometimes so vivid that if it was not for the absence of the body, I could easily mistake the voices for someone standing directly beside me.
Wanting to know who these spirits were and what they wanted with me, I studied my surroundings carefully—who was physically around me and what spirits were with me. The pieces came together, and I made the connection. The spirits who presented themselves were connected to the people in close proximity to me. A parent, spouse, friend and, in the most devastating circumstances, a child. Commonly, their message was wanting me to tell their loved one that they were still around and watching over them, mentioning that the butterfly that landed on their knee outside was a gift they sent or the breeze that kissed their face at an opportune time was them.
I could never bring myself to approach a stranger and mention someone they had lost was with them. I didn’t want to be known for the psychotic Courtright girl who claimed she talked to dead people. In a small town, it wouldn’t take much to be singled out.
I came to terms that the voices were not going to dissolve, and I turned my focus to learning about my disability and why these spirits chose to interrupt my everyday life.
Conducting research at the local library became a norm in my teenage years. I used the excuse that it was more productive to do projects there instead of home, where two younger siblings causing a ruckus in the house distracted me. While it was not a complete lie, as I did work on school projects and homework, I just didn’t return immediately after completing said material. Instead, I would research spirits, ghosts, legends and folklore.
The problem with learning about death, unless you are dead, is that no one alive knows about it. The theories varied from author to author, and I never discovered any consistencies.
Being a staple at the library, I had to choose my seating carefully. Just as I didn’t want my parents to walk into the computer room in the basement and observe my internet search for articles about the afterlife, so I also did not want to draw the same attention to me at the library.
Having little to no success in gaining knowledge, it was up to my self-perseverance to learn solo. I couldn’t decide who and when spirits contacted me, but I learned how to control the contact. I created a mental barrier that I constructed when I wanted silence from them, which was almost always. I simply called it my barrier. It felt weird to give my mental blockage a name, considering that I didn’t share my secret with anyone alive. I guess it was a comfort thing that I had a name for something strange. It took years of practice to build my barrier, especially in larger settings like a mall. The more approaching spirits, the harder I would have to concentrate on keeping my wall from being broken down. They did not mean any harm, but I wanted to be like every other living being and not have voices in my head, good or bad. Over time, my barrier had become easier to put up and keep up with minimal effort, helping me maintain an easier way to live my day-to-day, moderately normal life.
There was the exception of one spirit I did not mind making contact with on a regular basis. After a terrible day caused by any given reason, in the silence of my bedroom with no other living bodies around, I let my barrier down and my grandma was always there, ready to greet me. We talked about situations that I felt uncomfortable talking to my parents about, or she would be there only to listen if that is what I needed. My best friend was a dead person.
* * *
“What do you think so far, Scarlett?”
Mia was tugging on my outfit, smoothing out microscopic wrinkles, and playing with my hair, pondering how to style it. She pulled me from my complex thoughts with her question. The entire drive home, I had been trying to figure out how the teen’s mother leaked through my barrier that kept all spirits at bay.
I stood in front of Mia’s floor-length mirror, styling the outfit she had assembled for me. The top, the jeans, and the new boots all combined into a Vogue-worthy photo shoot ensemble.
“I love it,” I said honestly. There was no denying she had an eye for fashion. “You should have gone into a fashion and design program. It comes naturally to you.”
“Thanks, but I like books and numbers. Experimenting with style is a hobby for me, not a career. Now let’s get your hair and ma
keup done.”
I sat cross-legged on her bed as she collected a hair straightener, brushes and an array of compressed aerosol sprays. The second trip brought a lot of makeup. Dropping the items onto the bed, she plugged in the straightener and placed it on the bedside table. Her fingers ran through my hair, flattening, pulling and adjusting the location of strands. A comb broke apart knots and provided a silky touch. After the mall incident, my hair was a coiled mess.
The hot straightener compressed my golden-shaded hair at the roots. Mia twisted my hair around it, slowly working her way down to the tips. She continued the process around my head, finishing with explosive-near-extreme-heat hair products. Makeup was step two. Eye shadow, liner and foundation. Look up, look down, stop blinking—I was constantly being instructed. The process soon came to an end. Mia removed herself from the bed and stepped back to admire her masterpiece.
“Done,” she proudly announced.
She gave me a hand mirror to take a gander at her artwork.
My hair had been left down and parted to the side with loose curls throughout, giving my thin hair a sense of volume and bounce, with enough hairspray to support the Leaning Tower of Pisa. She knew makeup was not a necessity in my life, so she kept the aspect simple with a natural look.
“Wow, Mia! It’s amazing,” I said, fidgeting with my hairdo.
“You have such natural beauty.” I flushed at her remark. “I just highlighted your amazing features to express them even further. There is no possible way that Chase will be able to keep his eyes—or hands—off you.”
“Hey, now. It’s a friendly, get-to-know-one-another outing, not a grope-fest.”
“My sincerest apologies,” she said, but didn’t mean it.
If only I had a nickel for every time she had apologized that day alone.
Headlights glared through the front window of our rental. A small car was parked crooked in the driveway to keep the back end off the road.
“He’s here,” Mia said, jumping up, showing more excitement than me—I felt the excitement inside.
“Mia,” I said.
“Yes?”
“Thank you for everything today. I really appreciate it.”
“You’re welcome,” she said, pulling me in for a hug.
She retrieved a black jacket from the hall closet and assisted me into it.
“You’ve got this,” she said, hoping her encouragement would calm my nerves, yet it did the opposite. It forecasted a shadow onto the expectations of my performance.
It’s not like I had never been asked out before, but every time—all four times—I was stood up. There were the two that had some decency in class that called me mere hours—well, minutes—before and cancelled. The excuses were always vague and unconvincing. All the boys were schoolmates, and once I was denied the date, they would avoid all eye contact with me from that day on. They would sit in the farthest corner of the cafeteria from me or leave it all together and eat on the hallway floor. One even went to the extent of switching his timetable around so we would no longer have chemistry together. A little ironic on the class subject.
A knock at the front door jolted me. Nervously, I reached for the handle. Taking one final deep inhale and a large exhale, I pulled the door open. There he stood. The outdoor porch light glistened off his face, accentuating his jaw bone and the unshaven stubble. How I wanted to run my palm against the coarse hair, learning the contours of his face like braille. I had to mentally remind myself to continue breathing at a steady human pace.
“Good evening, Scarlett,” Chase greeted me. “You look absolutely breathtaking.”
I was flattered, and my face instantly began to change hues.
“Thanks. You are handsome yourself.” That was the only response I could come up with.
My supposed life coach stood silently in the kitchen watching over my certain failure. Surely, she was taking notes to lecture me later.
“Shall we go?” he asked.
I nodded my head to agree, fearful of the strange words that would slip from my mouth. I turned to Mia and she gave me a wave, encouraging me to get out of the house.
Chase opened and closed the passenger side door of his Honda Civic for me. He reversed out of the driveway and shifted into drive before coming to a complete stop.
“Your final year at Darlington?” He asked it as a question, but it strangely sounded like a statement.
“Yes,” I responded.
“And was that your roommate?”
“Mia? Yeah. We have been living together since first year.”
“How did you meet?”
“Residence, first year. We were paired together by computer science and since we got along well, we decided to room together the following year off campus. We have been at our rental and inseparable since.”
“Inseparable. How come?”
“Minus bathroom time, sleeping and most work shifts, we are always together.”
“Do you work together too?”
“Oh no. She bartends at Fishbowl, and that is beyond my skill level. I work at this little coffee shop: Cinnamons. If I am on shift, and she has no plans for the day, she will drive me to work and stay the entirety of my shift.”
“That seems a bit obsessive, don’t you think?”
“I have never thought so. She brings along school work, a book or her iPad to binge watch Netflix. She enjoys getting out of the small confines of our house, and that I can’t blame her for.”
“She thinks Cinnamons is bigger than your place?”
“You have been there?” I said with an odd sense of excitement.
“Several times. Best scones in town.”
“Original or fruit?”
“Fruit of the day.”
“Good pick.”
“What do you do there?”
“Supposedly I am a barista, but I can barely make a decent froth, yet alone design leaves or those fancy swirl patterns.”
“Maybe I will be lucky enough to catch you there on shift, and I will be the judge of that.”
“Get ready for disappointment.”
He removed his eyes from the road for the first time since we started driving. “You are anything but a disappointment.”
What exactly does he mean by that? He has known me for less than a few minutes and he’s talking like he knows me, like he watches me. Has he been stalking me? No, that can’t be true, but he has been to my place of employment. Did he know I worked there before today? There are only a handful of specialty coffee shops in town, and even less to pick from for good coffee. It must be a coincidence.
The stillness was broken when he parked the vehicle against a curb and left the confines of the Civic. Stopping at the passenger door, he opened it before I could, and extended his hand to me, much in the same manner when he assisted me upright from my glorious faceplant. My mitten-enclosed hands accepted the gesture more willingly this time.
We walked past several parked cars and then turned up a driveway only fit for a single vehicle. The white siding was embedded in grime caked into every crevasse and the walkway was poorly shovelled. Some people were gathered on the front porch, butting out cigarettes. I recognized a few of them from school.
As I did in all—and especially public—places, I paid close attention to my barrier, checking for any cracks and sealing them closed. As much as my barrier was natural, letting loose in new places could lead to holes that let new spirits come through, particularly around new people.
“Hey, guys,” Chase said to the group.
“What’s up, Chase?” a man with black hair and a leather jacket responded.
Chase placed his hand on my lower back. I took a sharp breath. Even with the partition of my jacket between my bare back and his hands, a jolt of electric sensitization wove through me with his single, simple, sentimental touch. He was proudly showing me off to the group, letting them know that I was his.
“Scarlett, this is Ethan,” he said, moving his unoccupied hand in Ethan’s dir
ection.
“Good evening, Scarlett,” Ethan said to me. His eyes took a gander at me, before focusing back on Chase. “She the one you have been telling us about?” He was immediately jabbed in the rib cage from the woman beside him.
Chase has been talking about me to others? I wondered what he said. We hardly knew each other. How much could he have possibly told them? I might be onto something with the stalker assumption.
“Yes,” Chase responded sharply at Ethan, annoyed by the question.
The other two men and one female exchanged nods and hellos with me as Chase introduced them.
Cora was a woman with short, brown hair and sported a black leather jacket matching Ethan’s. The bulk of the jacket covered her petite figure, and with the close proximity of Ethan to Cora, I quickly assumed they were an item.
Brandon was a tall, striking man that gave off the immediate impression he was the follower in the group, siding with everyone and avoiding conflict—being a welcomed figure, but not the favourite, putting up with neglect in order to feel apart.
“Dominic and Sadie are inside,” Ethan informed us.
Ethan opened the front door, leading the way inside. I kept close to Chase, not straying from his side.
I prepared myself for scattered dirty dishes, dust-covered shelves, stained carpet and gym-locker-room scent, but the interior was light toned and surprisingly well decorated. Strategically placed books spiralled on top of another. There were large decorative accents but nothing over-cluttering.
Chase stood behind me and removed my jacket, exposing my bare back from the low draped shirt.
“Wow,” he mumbled breathlessly.
Mia was right about the shirt. I thought I would feel embarrassed exposing that much skin, but instead, it empowered me, proud to show off the physical assets I possessed.
He led me to the kitchen where Dominic and Sadie were stationed. Sadie moved around with grace, mixing drinks and plating simple snacks—vegetables, chips, cheese, crackers, and pre-packaged sandwich meat, rolled up to give the illusion of a fresh deli platter, and an array of steaming appetizers from the oven. Dominic was creating an obstacle course for Sadie to dodge and navigate around. He stood against the counter with a beer in one hand and the other sneaking food when her back was turned. The odd time she did catch him, she swatted his guilty paws away like an annoying house fly. She flowed through the kitchen as if she belonged there. My suspicions of a female roommate were confirmed.
