The First Time I Died

by Joanne Macgregor

  I turned my bread over in the toaster and pushed the lever down again — I liked my toast well done and hard enough to crack a tooth — and poured myself a cup of coffee, thinking about where in this house old phone chargers might be stored. Hadn’t my father once owned an iPhone?

  Under the counter to the right of the fridge was a double-depth drawer that we McGees called “the drawer with the answer to everything” into which were crammed loose odds and ends that might, with luck, include a charger. Rummaging through the contents — most of which were tangled up in the stretched tape of a disemboweled cassette — I found a bottle opener in the shape of a leprechaun; several fridge magnets in the shape of the US states; some papers held together with a binder clip (including a takeout menu from Pitchford’s only pizzeria and a pamphlet about the Beaumont Golf Estate); an almost-empty bottle of arnica oil; a coaster from an Irish pub in Montpelier, and a mulch of loose batteries, elastic bands, bamboo chopsticks, tarnished coins, loose keys, corks, and tiny takeout packets of hot sauce and chili salt that I suspected were still from when I’d lived here.

  Nestling right at the back of the drawer, under a stack of orphaned Tupperware lids, was a bird’s nest of electrical cords. I disentangled these and separated out three phone chargers, and then ran up to my bedroom and tried each of them on Colby’s phone. None of them fit. Damn.

  Back downstairs I shoved the chargers back into the drawer and then struggled to get the damn thing closed again — the contents seemed eager to make a break for freedom. Perhaps there might be more old chargers in the basement, where Dad kept his electric tools and stuff.

  Spreading a thick layer of butter on my hot toast, I sprinkled it with salt and white pepper and took both it and my coffee with me down the stairs that led to the basement and garage. It was freezing down there. My socks were a flimsy barrier against the cold of the cement floor, and my breath made white puffs in the musty air.

  The basement light — an unshaded globe dangling from the ceiling — threw sharp shadows across a workbench and shelves untidily stacked with Dad’s tools and fishing tackle, and the overflow of Mom’s crap from the house. I munched on my toast as I took in the mess. A bundle of dried herbs — “white sage for smudging” according to the label tied to it — lay beside a power drill; dusty porcelain fairies stared blankly at an incomplete set of spanners, and a fist-sized jade Buddha with the lobe of one ear chipped off sat atop a stack of sandpaper.

  Two cardboard boxes packed with old magazines teetered precariously at the edge of the workbench, and a pile of Dad’s old leather-bound planners, one for each year stretching back to 2005, were wedged on the shelf above.

  Dad’s narrow workbench was littered with pliers, hand- and hacksaws, screwdrivers, a hammer and other unidentifiable tools that looked like they might belong on a tray of torture instruments. A kitchen stool, fuzzy stuffing escaping a rip in the leather seat, stood beside the workbench, and on the floor underneath it, I spied a couple of large Rubbermaid storage containers. The one closest to me bore a strip of masking tape on which was written, in my father’s hand, “electrical”.

  Bingo.

  Gripping the remaining half of my toast between my teeth, I dragged the container out and delved in, but although I found electrical flex, plugs, fuses, spare globes in a dozen different shapes and sizes — though none that looked like replacements for my bathroom mirror light — a snarled string of Christmas lights, and several old TV remote controls, I found not a single phone charger.

  Shivering, I sat back on my heels, drank some coffee — already more than halfway cold — and then ferreted through the contents of the other container, which was labeled “miscellaneous.” Inside I unearthed several rolls of duct tape, an economy-sized pack of rubber gloves, wrinkled and twisted tubes of superglue, a spray-can of silicone lubricant, a flashlight, a bundle of zip ties of different lengths held together by a thick rubber band perished with age, an old jelly bottle filled with different-sized screws, a padlock and keys, a disposable raincoat, an ancient-looking canister of pepper spray, a roll of black trash bags, a coil of green nylon rope, and a vicious-looking box-cutter. But no phone charger.

  I replaced the lid, musing that the contents of Dad’s miscellaneous storage box could easily equip a serial killer or two. I laughed out loud at the crazy thought, then stopped abruptly and peered back inside — the hodgepodge of items now appeared sinister. The last bite of toast tasted like sawdust in my suddenly dry mouth. I washed it down with the remains of the cold coffee and chided myself for being ridiculous. I was just spooked by my father’s awful books and Ryan’s killer theories, that was all. Time to go back upstairs — I wouldn’t find anything useful here.

  As I shoved the containers back under the workbench, I remembered that the box of Colby’s belongings was still in my car. I retrieved it and turned to head back to the kitchen, but with a soft pop, the lightbulb above me went out, stranding me in a darkness so complete, it felt solid. My savage expletives fell into the cold silence like pebbles into a bottomless well. Clutching the box against me with one hand, I stuck my other out ahead of me, groping blindly for obstacles.

  I touched a soft, smooth surface which yielded beneath the pressure of my fingertips. Sliding my hand sideways, I felt fluffy softness. Skin and hair! I gave a terrified yelp, then immediately cursed myself for being six kinds of stupid. It was the stool that I’d touched — the leather seat, the fleecy stuffing — nothing more.

  Taking tiny steps, I shuffled over to where I thought the stairs must be and, fumbling, eventually found the bannister. I clung on tightly as I climbed. No claws dragged me back, no teeth nipped at my ankles. Of course they didn’t.

  22

  NOW

  Wednesday December 20, 2017

  Back in the brightly lit kitchen, I poured myself another cup of coffee, even though caffeine was probably the last thing my rapidly beating heart needed. I briefly contemplated spiking it with a calming shot of whiskey, resisted the urge, and carried the box of Colby’s stuff up to my bedroom, still chiding myself for my silly, childish fears.

  Professor Perry had what he called an “open house” every weekday morning between seven-thirty and eight o’clock, when he took unscheduled calls and allowed pop-in visits at his office at the university. I still had fifteen minutes to kill before I could call him and be reassured that I wasn’t being visited by the ghost of Colby past, and also — a more likely but equally scary possibility — that I wasn’t experiencing the visual and auditory hallucinations and thought delusions consistent with a diagnosis of psychosis. That I wasn’t, in other words, either being haunted or going crazy.

  I sat cross-legged on my bed, contemplating the box, wondering what monsters of memory might lurk inside, ready to drag me back into the pain of the past. Taking a deep breath, I opened the lid a fraction and closed it again — Pandora slamming the lid on the box of evils afflicting humanity. Then I gave myself a mental pep talk. It’s just old stuff. Colby’s not in his things. You have to do this, so you may as well get it done. Eat the frog. Just do it, already! If you do this, you can have as much chocolate as you want today.

  What finally gave me the motivation to open it was the thought that maybe his old iPhone charger might be in among the contents. I opened the lid again, paused, and sniffed hesitantly. Smelled only stale air, leather and paper. Lying on top of the contents were Colby’s old school notebooks for AP Chemistry, English, and World History. What had happened to his notes for the other classes?

  I opened his English notebook and stared down at the familiar angular handwriting, tracing a finger up and down the spikes of his capital A’s. The first exercise was a descriptive essay on the history of the town of Pitchford — we’d all had to write it in our first week of senior year. This was followed by various fiction pieces, some angsty poems that an objective reader might call hilariously bad, but which brought tears of sadness to my eyes, and a letter to the editor of The Bugle urging the law enforcement agenci
es of Vermont to take a tougher stance in the war against drugs, alleging that incompetence and indifference were allowing the rampant spread of the problem. We’d all had to write a letter to the press and send it to the local newspaper as part of the exercise. The Bugle had printed Colby’s, but not mine, which, if I remembered correctly, had urged parents and teachers to put more effort into encouraging girls to study STEM subjects.

  Jessica’s had been a diatribe about the dangers of alcohol and drug abuse, but the spineless editor of The Bugle called her mother for permission to publish it. Mrs. Armstrong refused and then tore a strip off her daughter for airing the family’s dirty laundry in public. Jessica’s mother had always been set on preserving the family’s reputation. Between Blunt’s drug abuse and her own escapades, it must have been a full-time job.

  Colby’s English notebook was only half-filled; the last exercise was a review of the movie Michael Clayton, dated December thirteenth. Three days later, everything had stopped. One by one, I turned the blank pages, the tangible emptiness of the life unwritten, until I got to the last page. And there it was, in blue ballpoint on the bottom right corner — a pair of interlinked hearts crested with two words in my handwriting: Always. Forever.

  We’d had a habit of writing miniscule messages to each other on the inside back covers of our notebooks. I was pretty sure that if I still had mine — which I didn’t, I’d tossed everything from that year — I’d find the same words inscribed by him in the back of at least one of them. Always and forever. That phrase had been our thing, how we’d signed off texts, what we’d tattooed on our arms in felt tip pens, what we’d promised between heated kisses.

  I checked the inside cover of the history notebook and found a Nietzsche quote I’d written there: “There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.” I grabbed the last notebook — AP chemistry — keen to see if I’d written anything there. There were only a couple of blank pages left in this one. It looked like Colby had written his class in the front and then started filling up from the back with his research and experiments for the research project we’d all been so busy with that semester.

  The fine hairs on the back of my neck prickled, and once again yellow saturated my vision. Groaning in frustration, I rubbed the heels of my hands hard against my eyes, pushing back the yellow until pinpricks of lights popped behind my eyelids. When the color receded, I checked the inside back cover of the notebook, read the handwritten exchange between the two of us.

  Don’t go, read Colby’s.

  Don’t stay, read mine.

  This is my world.

  My world is bigger than this.

  Promise you’ll come back?

  I promise I’ll come back for you.

  I recalled that exchange, how I’d crossed the fingers of my free hand when I wrote the last line, because although I had truly intended to return, I’d planned that it would be solely to persuade him to join me in leaving forever.

  Had Bridget Beaumont kept these particular notebooks, rather than all of them, because of these personal notes? Already cursing myself for being a sentimental fool, and knowing I’d regret it, I set them aside to keep along with a black fountain pen which brought back memories of me buying it, getting Colby’s name printed on the side in gold lettering, and giving it to him on his birthday.

  Sifting through the pile of stuff left in the box — a jumble of old CD’s, paperclipped pay slips from his job at the town clerk’s office, swimming goggles, a couple of books, and a worn baseball mitt — I found myself looking into Colby’s eyes. The photograph of him, the same one that had been in the church the last time I’d set foot in it, the same one that now hung on the upstairs wall in the Beaumont’s new house, was reproduced on the front of a blue leaflet.

  Damn. Why would his mother have kept the funeral program? It was nothing but a reminder of Colby’s death, of that unspeakable day, and the bleak days on either side of it. I wanted to toss it into the trash can but found I just couldn’t. Dropping it onto the detritus of used tissues and candy wrappers would be like admitting it, too, was just worthless trash.

  Ah, so that was how it worked, this limbo of hanging onto the relics of the dead. It hurt to keep them, but you couldn’t let them go.

  I picked up the funeral program, ready to drop it back into the bottom of the box, and at once an image — a series of images — flickered behind my eyes. Jessica, collecting the blue programs left behind on pews, gathering them into a pile and depositing them on the table by the door; her mother roughly shaking Doc Armstrong awake with low imprecations muttered through gritted teeth; Chief Turner, kneeling at the altar, praying; Roger Beaumont helping his dazed brother down the outside stairs of the church; Blunt Armstrong leaning against a wall around the back of the building, passing a baggie to the town’s homeless guy; Vanessa, holding her sobbing mother in a tight hug; and Cassie, solemnly walking down the aisle into the bright light outside, her hands carefully cradling the urn of Colby’s ashes.

  It was happening again. I was “remembering” something I’d never experienced. I couldn’t have seen those things — I’d been out of that church and walking home long before the service even ended. I felt dizzy with disorientation and unable to fill my lungs. Either the inside of me was filling up with expanding bubbles of air, or I was teetering on the edge of a panic attack.

  I grabbed my phone and called Professor Perry.

  “It’s Garnet McGee. Do you have a few minutes to talk?”

  23

  NOW

  Wednesday December 20, 2017

  “Well, hello there,” Professor Perry said, sounding more cheerful than any normal person should at such an early hour. “What’s up? Have you reached a decision?”

  “A decision?” I said, confused. Then I realized he was talking about me reevaluating my future career choices. Had that discussion occurred only two weeks ago? “Uh, no. A lot has happened since I got here.”

  I filled him in on my fall and head-bang, and on how I’d apparently drowned in the pond and been brought back to life.

  “Good God, that sounds ghastly! Not the part about saving the boy, obviously, that was positively heroic. But what you went through must have been an ordeal. Are you okay?”

  Define okay. “The doctors have said I’m fine.”

  “I can hear an unspoken ‘but’.”

  “Yeah. But I’ve been having some strange … symptoms.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I get these bouts of nausea and exhaustion, and chills that give me goose bumps, and bad headaches all the time.”

  “That could all be due to concussion.”

  “One of my eyes — the iris, I mean — has turned brown.”

  “Bugger me! Anything else?”

  I hesitated, reluctant to put my crazy into words.

  “Hello? You still there?”

  “Okay, so this is going to sound weird,” I warned him.

  “I’m a shrink. I’m good with weird.”

  “Right. So … I’ve had flashbacks of drowning and dying. And random waves of emotion that aren’t related to what’s happening at the time.”

  “Those are bog-standard post-traumatic stress symptoms, Garnet, you know that.”

  “Yeah, except … You remember I told you about my boyfriend’s death back when I was in high school?”

  “I do.”

  “Well, the flashbacks are of his death, his drowning. Not mine.”

  There was a long silence on the other end of the phone. I could just imagine Perry’s expression of surprise and disbelief. I tugged off one of my socks and ran a hand over the underside of my foot, feeling the wrinkles in the skin, the roughness around my heel.

  “I had an– an episode, I guess you could call it, where I saw him being assaulted,” I continued. “But it was as if I was him. I could feel the blows on my body, and I heard someone talking in the background, yelling at the attacker to stop.”

  Perry cleared
his throat. “And this isn’t something you witnessed at the time?”

  “No! No one did. Apart from the attacker, obviously.”

  More than one.

  “Attackers. There was more than one of them,” I added, obediently taking direction from the words in my mind.

  “But there must have been reports, from the police or in the news? Perhaps you picked up some details that lodged in your subconscious, and now they’re bubbling up to the surface?”

  “I guess.” My fingers picked at the ridge of hard skin between the pads on the ball of my foot, searching for an irregular edge. “But I’ve also had other memories that aren’t mine. Like of things that happened at his funeral after I left. And of his younger sister. I feel a little …” What — haunted? Accompanied by a presence? Not myself? I settled on a clinical term: “Dissociated.”

  “That must be distressing,” Perry said. “Sorry to ask you this, but I do need to check: have you been taking any drugs?”

  “Just painkillers for the headaches. Not even anything that contains codeine.”

  “And have you had any trauma debriefing?”

  “No,” I admitted. What could a counselor tell me that I didn’t already know? “And another thing, when I drowned, that was also some crazy stuff right there. White light, euphoria, floating out of my body — the whole nine yards. What was that about? I’ve always believed, I’ve always been sure, that dying would be merely a lights-out-and-then-nothing kind of experience. But it wasn’t like that at all.”

  “Perhaps not, but neuroscientists have found biological explanations for most of what people claim to undergo in near-death experiences,” Perry said. “Should I fill you in on the details?”

  “Sure. Hang on a sec while I find some paper, so I can take notes.” I got my notebook from my handbag, found a clean page and pressed the nib of the fountain pen down until the ink started flowing. “Right, shoot,” I told Perry.