The room disappeared and Vree wondered if she had returned to the other world when it been black without any light, before she found the sofa and the light dropped on her from above. She looked for the light—any light—and saw none while she seemed to float on her back atop invisible waves of a gentle ocean. Fuzzy voices spoke around her in unintelligent words until her father’s face appeared over her and whispered, “Wake up, baby doll.”
She did.
Someone had raised the head of her bed so that she sat up now. The hospital room came into focus slowly. Daylight from the corner window hurt her eyes. She squinted, tried to swallow away her thirst, but someone had glued sandpaper to the back of her mouth. She lifted a hand and felt her swollen lips.
“Thirthy,” she said.
A white plastic cup hovered in front of her face for a moment before she took it from the offering hand. The water was warm but tasted good.
“More,” she said.
The hand took her cup and she closed her eyes until the voice that seemed to be connected to the hand told her to drink.
“Mom?” She opened her eyes to see Karrie Erickson’s happy but troubled face look at her before tears distorted the image.
“Welcome back,” Karrie said as Vree pulled her close and did her best to hug the woman, despite the feeding tubes and bed railing that got in the way.
Chapter Two
IT WAS 2:00 p.m. on July fifth, a Saturday during Fourth of July Weekend when most families in northwest Pennsylvania gathered at backyard cookouts and picnics, or took to the road for camping getaways and other fun events to celebrate the holiday. Vree and her family headed north, away from the Pittsburgh area and closer to their new home in Ridgewood, one hundred miles away.
The highway they were on teemed with vehicles carrying bicycles and pulling campers or boats; Vree watched from the silver Sorento’s backseat as the traffic passed her and her mother, sister and brother. The sunny sky did little to brighten her anxious spirit, and the heat inside her mother’s SUV caused her to tug at the front of her sweaty yellow Pittsburgh Pirates T-shirt with one hand and wipe sweat from her forehead with the back of her other hand. The vehicle’s AC had stopped working an hour ago, right around the time the transmission had begun making rattling noises. And now her lemon-lime Gatorade from their last stop was gone. She grumbled under her breath, regretting that her mom had sold their dad’s newer, fancier, and roomier Escalade two days ago.
“Are we there yet?” she asked her mom after they reached their third hour on the road.
“Almost,” Karrie Erickson said from the driver’s seat. She pointed past the windshield to a large, weather-beaten billboard sign ahead of them that read WELCOME TO RIDGEWOOD in large, black letters. Below, in smaller letters, the sign advertised cottage rentals at Alice Lake, next right.
“New home, new school,” Karrie said as she slowed down for three white-tailed deer dashing across the road past the billboard. “Well, new school for you guys,” she clarified.
Vree’s face, which had softened to see the deer, soured as a realization punched her in the gut. “We’ll be the new kids at school. The ones everybody’ll pick on.”
“You’ll be the one who’ll get picked on,” her brother Dave said from the front seat pushed all the way back, giving Vree little room to stretch her legs. He was tall and lean like their dad, and had blonde hair kept short in an Ivy League crew cut—a style worn by their dad most of his life, except that one time when he was a law student at the University of Pittsburgh—an incident their mom referred to as The Lost Bet of ’93.
Dave brushed a long hand across the top of his head and added, “Trust me; you’re destined to wear Kick Me signs on your back all year and eat alone at lunchtime.”
Vree bristled. “Mom!”
“It’s tenth grade,” Karrie said to Vree. “You won’t get picked on.”
“I agree with Dave,” Vree’s sister Amy said. She sat left of Vree, earbuds jammed in her ears and leaking tinny music from an iPod in her lap. Like Vree, she had straight, shoulder length hair, but auburn like their mom’s.
“You read too much,” Amy said to Vree. “All that Harry Potter and fantasy is so out.”
“Is not.”
“And you’re always painting unicorns and fairies.”
“Well, you’re always writing love songs.”
“But I play sports and do other things. So does Dave. But you—”
“I studied dance.”
“Not a sport, loser.”
“I didn’t say it was. And stop calling me names!”
Karrie told the girls to hush. Vree glared at the passing green and brown countryside out her window, fretting over Dave and Amy’s remarks and wishing their father were there to defend her. Charles had always been her protector.
Vree choked back an onslaught of anger and extreme sadness. Her frown cut into her brow as it deepened. She knew she needed to control her temper, so she let out her breath with a “Damn” and pretended to curse at the sun to the east that baked the side of her face. Still, she stewed. She had missed her dad’s funeral and the time of closure and final goodbyes during her time in the hospital. Even her cat had perished while she was unconscious. An important part of her life had been stolen from her—a part she could never get back. She rolled down her window, which only caused chaos with her hair. She closed her window and muttered, “Lousy, stupid, unfair life.”
The path of your new life will be difficult.
She tried to remember who had told her that. Remembering was slow since waking from the coma, and sometimes she didn’t know if she remembered actual events, dreams, or stories she had read in books.
She pushed stray hair from her eyes and lifted her gaze far enough to see acres of second growth farm fields and pastures with old fences roll past. She shut her eyes and wished it all away. When she opened them, the dismal scenery remained.
Another saying came to her.
Hope only brings us disappointment if we set our expectations too high.
Her mother had told her that before leaving Pittsburgh. They had said goodbye to the Jensen family, next-door neighbors who had taken them in when they became homeless, and Vree had told Mrs. Jensen they would see each other soon once they were financially sound again.
Now Vree realized their move was going to be a long-term investment.
Despite Grandpa and Grandma Lybrook’s generosity of wanting to help, which included a job teaching seventh grade science at the high school if Karrie wanted it, there would be no going back to how things used to be. Their sudden losses had left them SFC: strapped for cash, a term Karrie used whenever talk turned toward money. It was a term Vree hated hearing. It ranked up there with SOL, which is how she felt no matter how many times her mom said their new lodgings were temporary—six months at the most—and that things were going to get better.
Karrie banged an open palm against the dashboard and startled Vree from her funk. The engine had overheated again.
“I wish your grandpa still had his dairy farm,” Karrie said after striking the dashboard once more. “It would have given you kids a chance to see what life is like growing up on a farm. Milking cows and baling hay and harvesting crops.”
Vree realized she wasn’t the only one pining for the past. “Not me,” she said, turning up her nose. “Not where there are cows and cow manure. No way.”
She turned her attention outside.
They had entered Ridgewood. On both sides of the street, chipped and faded brick and cement storefronts pressed tight against each other. Their big windows with names and titles revealed no one inside. Even the street itself was barren of traffic.
Ridgewood was a place struggling financially. Vree knew that. She had heard her mother mention it before they left Pittsburgh. But to see it felt like a hard slap to her face.
The town was a place of missed opportunities; it looked as broken as she felt.
“Where is everyone?” Vree asked. Their old nei
ghborhood would have been teeming with shoppers on a Saturday at 2:15 pm. Ridgewood looked like a ghost town.
“I’m taking you kids past the high school before we go to your grandparents’ place,” Karrie announced when she stopped at a red light.
Dave and Amy sounded excited, but Vree’s attention fixed on a two-story brick and cement building outside her window. Someone had painted the place a nondescript battleship gray, and had hand-lettered a black sign over its steel front door that said SAM’S PUB in white block letters.
The door of Sam’s Pub opened and belched two ragged looking patrons onto the uneven sidewalk. The men staggered past the building’s two grimy windows that had neon signs advertising ice-cold beer inside. The last window sported a black and white sign in it that announced fifty-cent wings on Saturday nights only. The men disappeared around a corner and a moment later, three girls on bicycles and around the ages of ten or eleven turned the corner. They raced by and teased each other with obscenities that shrilled and shrieked through Vree’s window, which she had rolled down upon entering Ridgewood.
The pub’s front door opened again and a dark complexioned, white-haired woman exited from the front door. She leaned against the wall and smoked a cigarette. She paid no attention to Vree or the Sorento, or anything around her for that matter while she inhaled deeply from her cigarette. Her lined face looked ancient and her plump body had on a tattered green Army jacket, a red T-shirt, and blue jeans that looked brand-new. Behind her, in the darkness of the front door that the woman had propped open, two red beady eyes peered out at Vree.
Does it see me?
The words came to Vree in a shout.
Can it see row ellens?
Vree turned away from the eyes and shuddered at the voice’s ferocity.
The stoplight changed. Vree looked up at the intersection just as her mom turned left into the path of an oncoming semi.
Vree gasped. The speeding truck had come out of nowhere. Its large aluminum grill filled the right side of the windshield as the truck came at them. Vree screamed inside her mind—there was no time for anything else.
The world inside the Sorento rippled like disturbed pond water while the green and white truck with yellow running lights passed through the SUV.
A buzzing sound came with it, as though thousands of bees had flown through the SUV.
Cold wind blew at Vree while she waited for death.
It did not come.
The rippling air and buzzing noise stopped.
Vree listened to the ticking and rattle of the Sorento’s engine, to her sister’s tinny music, and to the hammering of blood rushing past her ears.
“Did you see that?” she tried to say to Dave and her mom, but her voice refused to work.
They still sat at the light, her mom waiting for it to change. The white-haired woman still leaned against the wall at Sam’s Pub and smoked her cigarette. The red beady eyes were gone.
The light turned green.
“Wait,” Vree said when Karrie began easing the vehicle into the intersection. Something terrible was going to happen. A chill ran between her shoulder blades.
“Stop the car,” Vree cried out. “Please stop the car.”
Karrie stopped the SUV and turned in her seat. “What’s wrong?” she asked. Fear mixed with the exhaustion and sweat on her face.
The semi—the one Vree had seen in her mind—passed by. Vree turned and watched it go. A car horn sounded from behind the SUV. Vree faced front and saw the familiar look of frustration cross her mom’s face.
“Do you want to drive the rest of the way?” Karrie asked Vree.
Dave and Amy snickered and Vree lowered her head, away from her family’s stares. The Sorento’s engine stalled for a moment before it roared to life and the SUV leaped and turned safely through the intersection.
Vree shut her eyes, caught her breath, and held back a sob. For several minutes, she tried to make sense of what she had seen—or thought she had seen. Her mind replayed over and over the red eyes, the woman smoking, and the vision of the semi passing through them before the real semi came and passed by safely.
But none of the strange things that happened made any sense.
“Hey-hey, girly-o, look at the bright side,” the familiar voice of her subconscious said. “You saw a future event and were able to save everybody.”
“Whatever,” Vree grumbled.
She opened her eyes and saw her mother pull over and park the SUV beneath a giant maple tree along a residential street. Outside her window, past a wide sidewalk and a manicured sprawling green lawn, a single-story yellow brick and tinted glass building sat a hundred feet away and sprawled in sharp angles across the lawn.
“Where are we?” she asked after Dave happily announced he saw a baseball field beyond some far trees.
“My alma mater,” Karrie said, “though looking a lot different than I remember.” She beamed at the place and gushed forth memories of attending school there; of how simpler and happy her life had been all those years ago, but how complicated her hormonal and societal life had been as well. Ridgewood High was a place where she had made friends and then lost most of them after graduation, college, marriage, her career, and raising a family. “And now I’m back to teach the children of parents I went to school with.”
Vree, Dave, and Amy heard for the first time how nervous and excited their mother was to be teaching there.
Vree felt strangely assured that her mother would become someone important here. And so would Dave and Amy.
“You’ll be a great teacher, Mom,” Dave said, echoing Vree’s thoughts as Karrie took one more wistful look at the school, then drove away from the place and headed the Erickson family once more toward their new home.
* * *
KARRIE DROVE TO the north side of Ridgewood, to a highway that ran steep to a hilltop where large anvil-shaped clouds choked the northwest sky. Sunlight shone in rays around the clouds, and where it touched the earth of woods and fields of barley and knee-high corn, it colored the land in ripeness.
At the highway’s hilltop stop sign and intersection, a reddish-brown horse pulled a black Amish buggy slowly past them, clopping along the country blacktop as though it and the bearded old man in the buggy needed witnessed and appreciated.
Vree’s frown softened while she looked out at a world so very different from the one she had left behind one hundred miles away. Gentler sunlight fell across her window and bathed her face. She heard bees buzzing again, but they sounded far away.
“It’s okay,” Charles said to her. “The sound won’t hurt you.”
His voice seemed to come from the seat occupied by Amy, who still listened to music on her iPod; she had her eyes closed and kept time to the music by bobbing her head.
Is that really you, Daddy?
“Yes.”
Vree relaxed at the sound of Charles’s pleasant voice coming to her on the sound of bees buzzing.
“Your mother is worried,” he said. “The house you’re going to is new to her. And … well, she’s afraid of the future.”
Afraid? Vree swallowed. She watched her mom stare in the direction the buggy had gone. Is that why we’re sitting here at this intersection and not going anywhere?
“Yes. And because this part of Myers Ridge is unfamiliar to her. But it will be okay. Trust me. You need to tell her which way to go.”
But I don’t know where we’re going.
“Yes you do. When the lightning struck you, it changed you. You can do anything you put your mind to.”
He had spoken these words to her before; she didn’t remember when.
She watched her mom tap her fingers against the GPS unit in the dashboard. When Dave asked if everything was okay, she told him that the unit had stopped working and that she didn’t remember if she needed to turn right or left.
“Turn left, Mom,” Vree said. Somehow, she knew the way. “Grandma and Grandpa’s place is about three miles away on the right.”
“Leave Mom alone,” Dave said. He turned his head and frowned at her. “You’ve never been to Grandma and Grandpa’s new place, so be quiet.”
“I don’t have to be quiet,” Vree said. “And I do too know where their new house is.” She even knew what the house looked like, even though she had never seen pictures of the place or, as Dave had pointed out, had never been to it. But she saw clearly in her mind a white foursquare farmhouse trimmed in blue, with a green and white Mayflower tractor-trailer parked in the driveway.
“Just let Mom drive,” Dave said, turning in his seat far enough so he could glare at Vree. “She knows what she’s doing.
Vree glared back. “I’m just trying to help.”
“No one needs your help.”
“Why can’t you mind your own business and stay outta my life?”
“Why can’t you and Dave stop fighting?” Amy had removed her earbuds and looked annoyed at Vree.
“She started it,” Dave said, “rambling like some crazy person about how she knows the way to Grandma and Grandpa’s new home. I think her accident knocked a few screws loose in her brain.”
“Enough,” Karrie said, turning her attention away from the rise in the road and fixing it on Dave. “Apologize to your sister. Now.”
Dave did but Vree barely heard him. His apology felt meaningless to her. He would always be the oldest and the only male, therefore replacing their father … at least in his mind anyway.
Karrie turned left. Dave remained scowling as he turned back in his seat. Amy returned to her music. And Vree called for Charles in her mind but his presence was gone. She listened for his voice while Karrie drove along a twisting ribbon of blacktop that took them to a long, stone paved driveway on the right that led to a white foursquare farmhouse trimmed in blue and a two-car garage painted to match the house.
Despite Vree’s wishes, Charles’s voice never came to her.
Karrie parked the SUV alongside a green and white Mayflower tractor-trailer that had moved their belongings donated by friends and various charity groups, as well as their meager ones that had survived fire, smoke, and water damage.
The truck reminded Vree of how she had kept her mother from turning into its path downtown.
“When the lightning struck you, it changed you,” Charles had said to her.
So far, she didn’t like anything about her life changing, especially the change of seeing and hearing things that others didn’t.