“Trust me,” he instructs firmly. “You have to.”
“It felt so real,” I tell him finally, limply. “At first it was you. You were crazy, and then you died. You died, Finn. But when I woke up, you were alive and I was crazy. I am crazy. I’m so confused, Finn. What is happening to me?”
My brother looks at me, then away, and he grabs my hand.
“I don’t know. But I’m not dead and I won’t let you be crazy, Calla. Never tell mom and dad the things you see. Only tell me, ok?”
I nod, because I can see the wisdom in that. They can never, never know.
“It’s you and me, Cal,” he says solemnly. And he’s my brother, and I know he’s right.
“You and me,” I whisper.
He smiles.
“Let’s take Dare to the beach before mom figures out that you’re gone.”
“Why do I have to stay in bed so much?” I grumble as we wind our way down the rocky trail to the sand that lies below. Finn shrugs.
“I don’t know. They want you to rest. It’ll help you get better.”
I want to get better. That is something I know for a fact.
So when my mom finds us a little while later, agitated that I’m not in my bedroom, I go with her meekly back to the house. I climb the stairs to my room, and I watch Dare and Finn from my window.
They’re building a fort out of the brush-pile, and they’re laughing and running together, already oblivious that I’m gone, their faces flushed with play-time and fresh air.
That should be me.
I can’t help but feel the resentment swell in me, from my feet to my hands to my heart. I should be running and playing. Not confined here, not in this bed. My new step-cousin shouldn’t be playing with Finn in my place.
That should be me.
“Calla, my love,” my mother murmurs as she comes back into the room, a cup of apple juice and a handful of pills in her hand. They’re colorful like jewels, but they taste like dirt. “You have to listen to me. You have to rest, you have to recover. Do you trust me?”
I nod, because she’s my mother, and of course I trust her. What an odd question. I turn to her and obediently reach my hands out for the pills.
One by one, I swallow them and they stick in my throat so I gulp at the juice. My pretty mother watches me sympathetically, stroking my red hair away from my face.
“Everything will be worth it,” she assures me. “I promise you, Calla.”
But there’s something in her voice, something something something. Like she’s trying to convince herself, not me. It’s a fragile tone, an uncertainty.
But then she turns away and leaves me alone.
I turn onto my side and pull the covers up to my chin, staring out the window. A heavy fog descends upon me because of the pills, pulling my head under a current, a murky dark current, and I can’t fight the sleepiness. It’s here, it’s heavy, it blurs my vision.
But before I stop seeing and the darkness covers everything, I see Finn and Dare on the lawns. They’re playing and laughing and abruptly, Dare stops and tilts his head up, his dark dark eyes connecting with mine.
He stares at me, into me, through me.
My breath catches, because something feels off here, something feels odd.
Dare raises his hand and waves, and he runs off with my brother into the trees.
My brother.
Mine.
Resentment fills me again, because I’m in this bed and he’s outside with my brother, playing the games I should be playing, with my brother,
Mine
Mine
Mine.
I can’t stop the darkness though, and it arrives, covering up my resentment and my desire to play. It covers up everything, dulling it, deadening it. Sleep comes and I’m lost…in dreams, in nightmares, in reality.
Who can tell the difference?
Finn is there, and Dare is there and my brother reaches out his hand. Because I belong with Finn, not Dare. I should be playing, shrieking, laughing.
We run away, away from Dare, toward the cliffs, toward the sea.
When I look over my shoulder, Dare is watching us go,
with the saddest look on his face that I’ve ever seen.
He doesn’t move to chase us, and I know that he’s resigned.
He knows what I know.
He doesn’t belong with Finn, I do.
Finn is mine.
When I wake, I hear voices reverberating through the halls of our home. I smell the carnations and the stargazers, the flowers of funerals, of death.
I pad across my bedroom and down the stairs.
The smell of hotcakes surrounds me and I inhale the maple syrup.
“Why is today special?” I ask my mom, because we only get hotcakes on special days. She looks up at me as she bustles through to the kitchen.
“Your cousin has to go back home early. His Latin tutor arrived ahead of schedule.”
“Latin?”
My mother nods. “Your grandmother wants all of you to learn Latin. You and Finn will learn it too, probably starting next year.”
“You can start right now, if you want,” Dare interjects from the sofa. He’s reclined there, with a blanket covering his lap. He looks paler than I remember from yesterday. “Iniquum. It means unfair.”
I form the strange sound on my tongue, twisting it into submission. “Iniquum.”
My mother hands Dare a plate filled with steaming breakfast food. He starts to get up, but she motions him to stay down.
“It’s fine, sweetheart. Stay there and rest.”
Rest.
With a start, I realize that no one has chastised me for getting out of bed.
“Your father would kill me if I let you wear yourself out,” my mother adds, as if she doesn’t recall that merely yesterday Dare was chasing Finn around the lawns.
“Did you hurt yourself?” I ask him curiously. He looks at me and rolls his eyes.
“No.”
I’m confused, so so confused and I look at my brother, but Finn acts like this is normal, as though Dare is supposed to be in bed. Not me.
Not me.
“What is happening?” I whisper, so utterly lost. The room swirls and everyone moves like they’re in fast-forward and I’m the only one standing still.
My mother glances at me. “I told you, honey. Dare has to return to England. Don’t worry. We’ll be joining him shortly, like we do every summer.”
We do?
I look at Finn, and he looks excited, as though he’s looking forward to going to England, as though we’ve done it every summer for all of our lives. The problem is… I don’t have any memories of this at all.
“I really am crazy,” I tell myself softly. “I’m as crazy as they say. I’m crazy.”
Finn grabs a plate and hands it to me, stacked with steaming maple pecan pancakes, drizzled in syrup.
It’s heaven on porcelain.
I know that.
I take bite after bite, but by the third one, I can’t move my tongue.
For a second, I think it’s my mind playing tricks on me again, making me think that I’m paused while everyone else is fast-forwarding, but then I watch my hand fall limply to the table, and my mom lunges to grab me and I can’t breathe I can’t breathe I can’t breathe.
“Calla!” she says sharply, and she bangs on my back with her hand because she thinks I’m choking. I’m not choking. I just can’t breathe.
I claw at my throat, claw at my face, claw at my tongue.
The air
The air
It won’t travel down into my lungs.
The light
The light.
It surrounds me and I think I’m dying.
This is what it feels like, I realize.
To die.
It’s warm and soft and inviting.
It’s comforting, like home.
It doesn’t smell like embalming fluid and stargazers, the way it does in the funeral home. It smells like rain, like grass, like clouds.
The light surrounds me, and my throat doesn’t hurt anymore.
Nothing hurts.
I’m light as a feather.
I’m light as a cloud,