And yet, here I was, declaring war, turning that line in the sand into a mere dot in the distance behind me.
The lobby of St. Catherine’s Hospital was full of people during this time of day. Some of them were waiting for appointments with one doctor or another. Others were holding vigils for loved ones on the floors above. My father had walked through this very space on a Monday morning, not all that long ago, demanding information about his daughter and a bus accident.
For not the first time, I wished for a cosmic do-over, a chance to relive that day again. When my dad called that morning, I would have told him to get over it and deal with my mom himself. Then I would have refused to speak to either one until they got their act together. Immature? Possibly, but it would have solved the problem of me being their go-between, which was what caused all of this in the first place.
Well, not this specifically. This—me being here in St. Catherine’s, preparing to take last-resort measures—that was all on Will.
He left you no choice, I reminded myself. Even still, I knew he’d never forgive me after this. Whatever “more than friends” vibe had been between us would be gone, dead beyond resuscitation. But my message would be delivered, and he’d know that I didn’t need him to do it. That was the important part.
I headed toward the elevators and stood next to a woman with a giant bundle of GET WELL SOON balloons and a huge teddy bear that had one furry arm in a sling. She looked like she would be going to the right place. Now that I’d made up my mind to do this, I didn’t want to waste time riding up and down to all the wrong floors.
My hands were sweating. I’d only done this once before and in desperation. What if it didn’t work?
I shook my head. No, it had to work.
Though, honestly, the thought of what it would take to succeed almost scared me more than the possibility of failing. Almost.
The elevator signaled its arrival, and I followed the woman and her balloons inside. As I’d hoped, she pushed the button for the fifth floor. Pediatrics.
When the doors opened, revealing the same obnoxious smiley faces and rainbows that I remembered from my first trip, the woman headed off with her bear and balloons to the right. I took a left, past the nurses’ desk, acting on the memory of an afternoon I would really have preferred to forget.
As I walked, I counted the doors lining the corridor and stopped when I reached a partially closed one about halfway down the hall. This one seemed right, from what I could recall.
I peeked inside. The room was dim with the blinds mostly drawn and television off, but I could still see well enough to know I was in the right place.
Lily Turner looked much the same as when I’d first seen her a couple of months ago. Not all that surprising, given her permanent comatose state. She lay half elevated in the bed, her shiny light brown hair spread over the pillow behind her. This time, though, at least her eyes were closed. Seeing her staring off at nothing had been creepy as hell.
I stepped inside, passing partially through the door, and couldn’t help but notice that while Lily had stayed the same, her room had changed dramatically.
A couple of months ago, she’d had just a few framed photographs here and there. It was like her family had been expecting her to go home…or pass on any second.
Now, though, it was like her bedroom at home had been painstakingly brought over piece by piece and reassembled around her hospital bed.
A bedsheet with castles, fairies, and horse-drawn carriages was tacked to one wall, covering up the cinder blocks. Clearly, Lily had not redecorated at home since she was about six.
Books and photo albums were piled up in a sloppy stack on her bedside table. Stuffed animals, well-worn and missing various appendages, guarded the windowsill. Next to them, a ballerina lamp, her pink tutu the shade, gave the room a pale rosy glow.
And then there were the Ouija boards. They were everywhere. It was worse than I’d ever imagined. Will had told me it was bad, but I’d never thought it would be like this. In addition to the old-fashioned wooden board in the bed with Lily, her limp fingers resting on the planchette, a dozen varieties and multiples of each lay scattered around the room. Made of wood, plastic, in bright pink (something wrong with that, for sure) and standard tan and black, old, new, big, small (travel-size Ouija boards?), even a couple that appeared to be made of that weird see-through yellowish material that would probably glow in the dark.
Some were stacked on the floor; others were haphazardly placed around the room, on the nightstand, on the empty bed that would have belonged to her roommate, on the table with wheels they would have used to serve her meals if she could eat that way. Packaging for at least two new boards stuck out of the garbage can, and a stack of unopened Ouija board game boxes rested on one of the visitor’s chair.
These boards, I knew, had nothing to do with re-creating Lily’s room at home, and everything to do with Will and me.
Last year, Lily had left a party—a first-tier party, one that I’d attended myself—in tears after a confrontation with her “boyfriend,” Ben Rogers. Ben was a player, especially when it came to underclassmen like Lily. She really should have known better, but then again, she evidently hadn’t had much experience in our social scene. This was all according to Will, who’d been one of Lily’s few friends, before she’d tried to gain a few rungs on the social ladder.
In any case, she’d crashed into a tree on her way home from that party and landed herself in the hospital. She wasn’t dying, exactly, but she wasn’t getting any better either.
Will said her spirit was gone. She’d moved on to the light right away, apparently, but her body had just kept ticking along, at least for the time being.
Then a couple of months ago, Will’s other friend, Joonie, had, in effect, kidnapped Lily’s body and brought it to Will in the hope that he would be able to find her spirit and put it back in place. Joonie had pieced together Will’s secret about being a ghost-talker from his strange behavior and various context clues. She felt Lily’s accident was her fault—they’d had a falling out back when the three of them were friends—and she wanted Will to help her make it right. Actually, she’d been beyond crazed to make it right. Will had told her that putting Lily’s spirit back into her body wasn’t possible, but Joonie didn’t believe him. Then Joonie’s negative energy—fear, frustration, guilt, and regret—in combination with Will’s presence and the Ouija board, had manifested itself as a physical force. In frustration with what she saw as his lack of cooperation, Joonie unwittingly targeted Will with that energy. It choked off his air and his ability to breathe, slowly killing him. Joonie had been too caught up in her own misery to see what was really happening. So, I’d done what I had to do to get her attention.
In the heat of the moment, with Will’s life in danger, it had been easy. Using the physicality that came from Will being nearby, I’d spelled out the message Joonie needed to hear on the Ouija board and then put my hand inside Lily’s to touch Joonie. It had worked. Joonie had stopped; Will had been saved.
But I’d evidently also given Lily’s family cause to hope. The quantity and variety of Ouija boards in her room screamed of desperation. If this one didn’t work, maybe another one will. Maybe she doesn’t like the plastic ones. Maybe we should get one in her favorite color. They’d pinned their hopes on every new purchase, never knowing, of course, that there was no perfect board, and even if it existed, Lily wasn’t around to use it.
Lily was gone in the only way that mattered. She had moved on to that peace, that blissful space empty of worry and fear, the one I could only remember in the briefest and most frustrating flashes.
But thanks to me, her family thought she was still hanging around, and in fact, I was here today to use that belief to my advantage.
I swallowed hard, looking down at the pale, hospital-thin girl who seemed lost among her bedcovers and pillows. She wasn’t exactly pretty, or hadn’t been, but she could have been striking, with a little confidence and the right
education in hair products and makeup. Now there was also the matter of the jagged scar stretching from her hairline down to edge of her jaw on the left side of her face. But even that seemed to be getting better in small degrees. It looked less puffy and red this time. That part of her was healing, even if nothing else was, and probably gave her family yet another reason to hope.
Could I really do this? Once, I probably wouldn’t have hesitated. I’d used people in all kinds of ways when I was alive without thinking twice. My perspective was if you were willing to be used or weak enough to allow it to happen, then you got what you deserved. If you’re not a predator, you’re prey, you know? But now…
One time. That was it. I just needed to get a message across to my parents.
I moved closer to her bed to wait, my heart beating too fast. I half-expected Will to appear in the doorway suddenly and start shouting at me. He knew what I could do. In fact, I was the only spirit he’d ever seen or heard of with this ability. He had to know I’d be thinking of this…right?
But Will did not come.
The room stayed quiet and still with only the steady beeping of Lily’s heart monitor in the background to break the silence.
Then, a woman with the same light brown hair as Lily’s entered the room, bearing a hospital tray with a pathetic-looking sandwich, a wilted salad, and two oranges. Her mother. It had to be. According to Will, her mother rarely, if ever, left Lily’s side, hoping she would wake up enough to communicate again.
I watched her approach. She moved like every step was painful. Her hair-ball–brown cardigan seemed three or four sizes too big for her rail-thin frame.
“I brought you oranges, baby,” she said softly, like Lily was just dozing and she didn’t want to scare her awake. She picked her way carefully around the end of the bed and sat in the visitor’s chair on the far side by Lily’s head. “I know how much you love them. I thought I’d peel them up here so you could smell them. Maybe have a slice or two if you wake up.”
Her voice sounded hoarse with weariness. This woman was giving all she had to her daughter, her every bit of energy, every ounce of strength. If Lily could have been tube-fed the will to live, her mother would have had her up and around in no time.
This was the worst part. To communicate through Lily, I would need someone living to take down my words. I would be using her mother as much as I was using her.
That first time, the consequences of communicating to Joonie through Lily had never occurred to me beyond the immediate benefit—Joonie would stop and Will would live. I hadn’t thought about her family, waiting for months on end to see if she would wake up, only to not be around the few short minutes she had appeared to demonstrate some momentary awareness. It must have been devastating…and cruel.
It hadn’t been intentional, not then. But now it would be, and contrary to what most people, including Will, seemed to believe about me, I did have a conscience. Telling someone she looks like a bloated pumpkin in her new cinnamon minidress (truth) is worlds away from giving somebody’s grief-stricken mother false hope (mean).
Just get it over with. You’ll do this just once, and then maybe once everything settles down, you can come back and tell her family good-bye for her. She’d probably appreciate that.
I waited until her mother was settled and peeling anorange before I started. I did not want to have to do this twice today. I remembered all too clearly the feeling of losing myself that had gone along with using Lily’s body, like we were merging into one person. It had been scary, really scary. And I wasn’t eager to experience it again.
I leaned over the side of Lily’s bed, lining my hand up with hers. Then I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and then placed my hand on top of Lily’s.
For a second, I didn’t think anything would happen. I could feel the warmth of her skin against my palm, but that was all. Then, like I’d broken through the surface tension in a pool, my hand slipped down into hers. At our wrists, the boundary between us smeared, becoming a blur of my still sun-darkened skin and hers, a pale hospital-bleached white.
Trying to ignore the sensation of heat crawling up my arm, even faster than it had the first time, it seemed, I forced my hand forward and Lily’s lurched in response. The plastic planchette dug into the wood of the board under the weight of her hand, but I could still move it. It had been easier when Will was here and I could just move the piece around on the board myself, but this would work, too, and it would, I admitted reluctantly, have more of an effect.
MOM
I grimaced. It felt wrong, bad to be using this word for someone who wasn’t my mother. Then again, my mother couldn’t even be bothered to hang on to my stuff, let alone relocate it somewhere else entirely. She was just trying to survive in the only way she knew how. I got it. But still.
The heart monitor next to Lily’s bed picked up a beat or two, but nothing too bad sounding.
MOM
It took a few seconds for Lily’s mother to recognize the sound she was hearing—the scrape of the planchette across the board. She jolted up, the tray slipping from her lap to the floor with a rattle of hard plastic and the crash of ceramic, to stare at the Ouija board on the other side of the bed.
MOM
Ugh. I was sweating already from the effort…and I hate sweating. The heat from Lily’s arm had crawled up my arm and into my shoulder, and a strange pulling sensation had started, like vacuum suction, yanking me downward. The muscles in my back ached with the effort of keeping me upright.
This time, though, Mrs. Turner understood. She paled, raising a shaking hand to her mouth, her gaze fixed on the board, like if she looked away it would vanish.
Okay, what now?
Um…
HI
Her mother began this weird laughing, crying thing, with her shoulders shaking and tears streaming, but no sound emerging. She came around to my side of the bed, and she touched Lily’s hand. The strange part is, I felt it on my hand.
DONT B SAD
IM OK
Her mom nodded wildly, tears flying off her face and splattering our arms and the bed below.
Yeah, I would definitely have to come back and say good-bye on Lily’s behalf. I couldn’t leave it like this with her mom. She didn’t deserve this.
She stroked our arms, and I shivered at the odd sensation. “Baby, I’m so glad you’re here. I need you to do me a favor,” she said.
Okay, I had not been expecting this.
“Your father needs to see this. Then he’ll believe me.” She whipped her cell phone out of her sweater pocket and began dialing. “I could record it, but you know your dad, he won’t believe anything until he sees it for himself.”
So I was just supposed to hang out here until Lily’s dad made it in from wherever? I don’t think so. I started painstakingly spelling out my message, hoping her mom understood texting abbreviations.
MSG FRM ALONA
“Just wait, please, baby? He needs to see this.” Her mother covered the phone with her hand. “You know he doesn’t mean anything by it, all that talk about taking you home to…to pass. He just doesn’t understand.”
What?
The strength of whatever was pulling me into Lily gave a great yank, tugging me down until my whole arm was part of her and my chin was melding with her shoulder. And I started to panic.
This force inside Lily’s body was slowly pulling me inside. I needed to get out. Now. My message would have to wait until later.
I tried to pull back and found I couldn’t even force myself into a standing position.
Crap.
“Jason, she’s here! She’s doing it right now,” Lily’s mom said excitedly into the phone. “You need to come see her.”
The voice on the other end said something I couldn’t hear over the roar of blood in my ears. The weak, light-headed sensation that usually accompanied my vanishing act was now cascading over me. By the strength of it, I was guessing I didn’t have much of me left below the knee. The power
of my fear was dissolving me where I stood even as Lily’s body tightened its grip on what was left.
Lily’s mother frowned down at our hand on the board. “Nothing right this second, but she was just doing it,” she said into the phone.
The heart monitor in the corner beeped faster and louder now.
“Lily?” Mrs. Turner asked. “Are you still there?”
Calm down. Think happy thoughts. I had to stop the disappearing.
The suffocating heat closed over my face then, drawing me down, filling my nose until I couldn’t breathe.
I freaked and lashed out with everything I had left, tryingto break free…and my fingers, inside Lily’s, spasmed. That was it.
I heard the planchette skitter off the smooth wood, and Mrs. Turner gave an anguished cry. The heart monitor shrieked…and then nothing.
“Are you okay?” Sam, my boss and my mom’s semi-boyfriend, stopped by the booth I was cleaning on his way back to the kitchen. “You haven’t said much today.” He sounded concerned.
“I’m fine.” Nothing that about ten hours of sleep and way less frustration in my life wouldn’t solve.
I’d chased after Alona when she’d fled this morning, but she was too quick for me, what with me actually having to open doors to get outside. Then I’d driven over to her mother’s house, thinking I might catch up with her before she got there, but no such luck. Either she’d gone somewhere else, or she’d gotten there faster than I would have thought possible and was already safely ensconced inside by the time I got there. It wasn’t as if I could ring the doorbell and ask for her.
While I was there, I couldn’t help but notice the small mountain of black trash bags at the foot of her mother’s driveway, lending credence to Alona’s story. Ignoring the strange looks from the few neighbors who were out and about, I’d snagged a few bags at random for Alona and tossed them in my trunk. Here was hoping I’d managed to grab something other than a week’s worth of her mom’s takeout containers or whatever. I hadn’t been trying to hurt her this morning. It was just…everything was so confusing now.