A Symphony Of Cicadas Part 8

"His condition appears to have improved," the doctor told the mother while jotting down a few notes on his clipboard. "He was well enough tonight to join the other kids during music hour, and he responded to the sounds."

"Do you think that means he might be able to come home again?" Jacob's mother asked, hope radiating from her eyes as she squeezed Jacob's hand.

"It's too soon to tell," he apologized. "We'll run a few more tests and keep a watchful eye on him for the next several days. But I wouldn't cancel Hospice just yet. We won't be out of the woods for a little while. I don't want to get your hopes up, though it doesn't hurt to hold on to hope for his sake. However, sometimes I've seen patients make miraculous recoveries only to pa.s.s away the very next day." Jacob's mother winced, and I could see the doctor regretting his words. He started to say something else, and I could hear his brain searching for just the right words. But in the end he just smiled and squeezed her shoulder and then walked away to leave all of us alone.

Underneath the beeping from the monitor next to the bed and the noisy labored air that escaped from Jacob's mouth as he slept, was the sound of his mother's gentle weeping as she continued to hold his motionless hand. She was exhausted. I could sense it when I tuned into her, feeling the weight of stress hanging on her chest like a hundred bricks. Her emotions were a mixture of grief, sadness, anger, and a tinge of relief at the notion that everything might be over soon, followed by immense guilt for even thinking that way. And drowning it all was a feeling of fear, afraid for her little boy who might cross over to a place she couldn't follow, and afraid for herself when her life was void of his presence.

She stayed that way for some time, praying next to him into the early hours of the morning, Please G.o.d being her most fervent request to an almighty spirit that felt light years away. It was reminiscent of the prayer breathed from John's lips a million breaths before in the church where we were to have been married.

Jacob's mother took a deep breath in an attempt to compose herself. She wiped her eyes and searched her son's face for any sign of movement that showed he might pull through this. I could see visions of Jacob in her mind, images that appeared to be from a few months earlier when he was full of life and running on his own two feet. I could see the sparks within Jacob's head, currents of electricity that didn't quite meet up, making it impossible for him to move on his own accord. The notes on the chart flung out at me as if under a microscope. Pediatric stroke and blood clot were written in dark black ink, followed by scribbles of diagnosis and instructions of care for the nurses.

Jacob remained motionless in sleep, and his mother submitted to the heaviness of her eyes as she curled up on the couch to sleep for a few hours. As she drifted off, the spirit woman in the corner moved forward and stood by Jacob's bed. She didn't touch him, but just stood there watching him. Out of the shadows, I could see the striking resemblance she held to both Jacob and his mother. I wanted to ask her how she was related to them, but was aware of how private this moment was. I looked over at Aunt Rose with a look of helplessness, asking her with my eyes if we should leave, if it was okay if we were here. She gave a small nod of affirmation, then turned back to Jacob and the spirit. I did the same.

It wasn't long before I saw his body glow, the outline of his shape appearing to expand as his spirit grew just bigger than his body. The steady sound of the heart monitor next to him started to beep fast, waking Jacob's mother with a start. She ran to his side and grabbed his arm. Jacob's face remained motionless.

"Nurse!" she shouted, grabbing the call b.u.t.ton from the side of the bed and punching it with her thumb over and over. "Hang on Jacob, just hang on," she pleaded with him. "Nurse!"

Two nurses rushed in, moving his mother to the side as they checked his pulse. Jacob's body began to shake with violent movements. The machine went crazy as his body convulsed, forgetting the paralysis that had left him immobile for the past few months. I could hear the crackling in his brain as he underwent another stroke, his inner voice screaming in agony, images flashing through his mind of things he had seen in his life and the face of the calm spirit woman who stayed next to the bed.

"Code blue," was heard over the intercom. A crash cart was wheeled in, and they fired it up as a nurse held the paddles. The doctor rushed into the room and barked orders at the nurses who surrounded Jacob's body. One of the nurses placed a breathing mask over his mouth while another injected a clear substance into a bag of liquid connected by an IV to his arm. Jacob's body ceased moving and he lay as if sleeping. The heartbeat on the monitor slowed from its rapid rate, moving to a regular beat before slowing even more until it became one thin line with a long beep to match.

"Clear!" the doctor called, and Jacob's body jumped with the shock of electricity, the thin line jumping with it before settling back into an unresponsive scream. They tried it over and over, Jacob's mother crying in the corner as she watched in helplessness, the spirit woman waiting near Jacob's head, and Aunt Rose and me intruding on a moment that didn't belong to us.

As the chaos swirled around Jacob's body, I saw his spirit sit up and look around him. Fear was written all over his face as he looked at what was going on to his body and with all the people that rushed around him. But when his gaze settled on the spirit woman, he relaxed into an easy grin. She returned his smile with sheer happiness, the first strong emotion I had seen her express since first noticing her. Taking Jacob's hand, she helped him to hop down from the bed. He looked down at his legs, held his arms in front of him, and stretched every part of himself now that he was free from his frozen body.

"Welcome home, Jacob," the spirit woman said as they walked towards us.

Jacob didn't even notice us as he moved towards us, but he did give one last look over his shoulder as his mother sat crying on the couch, the nurses putting the paddles away while the doctor told her they did everything they could. We all watched as the doctors and nurses left the room to give her a few moments with her son's body. She stood up, hesitating with her hand over her mouth. She walked forward as if weights were strapped to her feet. She reached Jacob's body, which seemed very small amid the mess of wires and machines. One by one, she unhooked them all, removing the breathing machine last from his pale face, and holding her hand against his cheek with the gentlest of touches. Jacob's spirit broke free from the spirit woman's hand, rushing to be near his mother. He touched her face in the same way she was touching the cheek of his body, and his mother shuddered into tears from a feeling she couldn't quite place.

"Take care of him, sis," she whispered, certain she was heard as she relinquished her boy to the sister who had already pa.s.sed on. Jacob kissed her on the cheek, smiling at his mother with love, and then ran back to his aunt. Together they evaporated from the room as his mother collapsed in a shaking and silent cry with her head on his lifeless chest.

"Where did they go?" I asked Aunt Rose.

"She's leading him towards Heaven," she said. I sighed and shook my head at the great irony that we have so many answers about Heaven in life, but knew nothing about it in death.

Fifteen.

"I don't understand," I said to Aunt Rose. "All this time I've been asking questions about Heaven, and no one seems to know anything at all. And then this kid gets to go to Heaven just like that, and you know exactly what is going on? What about Joey? You didn't seem to have any answers for me then!" My mind was racing overtime, the world opening up in a whole new light and presenting me with so many questions I didn't know which to ask first.

We stood in an empty room now, the hospital long faded away. I didn't know where we were, but it was clear we were in utter solitude. Aunt Rose smiled at me, waving her hand next to her to reveal a plush couch. She sat down and patted the seat next to her. I joined her with caution, still having a hard time trusting this woman who both made everything feel more difficult and was the only one who could guide me to real answers.

I started. "Where is Joey?"

"I don't know."

My frustration, never far below the surface, exploded. "What do you mean you don't know?" I demanded. "You knew where Jacob was headed, didn't you? So why don't you know where my son is?" Aunt Rose sighed, giving me another one of her patronizing smiles as if I were but a child and she were about to teach me the ins and outs of the universe. The worst of it was that I felt like a child.

"Rachel, you want me just to say he's in Heaven, right? Well I can't be certain he's there," she maintained. "I can a.s.sume, as can you. It's likely that's where he is, being that he's a child and leaving the world behind just seems to come easier for them. But can I guarantee it? No. Just because we can't find him doesn't mean that he's moved beyond this divide to get to Heaven. He may be doing some exploring of his own or he may be stuck in his own attachments. He could be anywhere."

"Why doesn't anyone know anything concrete about Heaven?" I asked Aunt Rose. I was thinking back to conversations with Jane, when she told me she felt like there was a Heaven but couldn't be sure.

"Because none of us have been there," Aunt Rose said. "If we had, we wouldn't be back to this divide. We'd be there to stay for good."

"Okay, look. My friend Jane, who also exists in this divide, didn't seem to know much of anything about Heaven. In fact, she seemed to believe in it through faith alone. But when pressed for facts, she couldn't be sure there was a Heaven, a G.o.d, or anything beyond this place we exist now. She just felt it was true. But here you are, speaking with certainty that there is a Heaven, that this is only the resting place before we move on, that Jacob was being led by that spirit to this Heaven, and that Joey may or may not be there. How can you be so sure of these things, and yet you're here in this world and not there?"

"Now you're getting to the real questions," Aunt Rose said, her eyes twinkling at my confusion. "Do you know who that spirit woman was that led Jacob from the room?" she asked me.

"She was his aunt, I think," I said. "It seemed like he knew her, she looked a lot like him and his mother, and his mom referred to her sister, so I can only a.s.sume she pa.s.sed away and was now there in the room when he pa.s.sed."

"Yes, she was probably his aunt. But do you know her purpose there?" Aunt Rose pressed on.

"You said she was a 'family guide', someone who guides a loved one through the afterlife," I said.

"Yes. But with children, their time in this divide is very brief, sometimes serving as just a pathway to Heaven. You saw how Jacob kissed his mother and then left with the guide. He was leaving her for the last time, and he was okay with it. His guide's responsibility is to help him through the transition of life to death. And when he's ready, she leads him to the entrance of Heaven where he will stay forever."

"So he's trapped there? What kind of Heaven is that?" I asked Aunt Rose, and she laughed at my naivety.

"No, he'll choose to stay there. Once you enter Heaven, it's so magnificent you won't want to leave at all. But the only way to be able to pa.s.s through those gates in the first place is to let go of everything that exists on this side of Heaven. That includes the people you once loved and the life you once led. So you have the ability to come and go, but no one wants to come back to the darkness of this world once they've let it go and moved to the next."

"How do you know so much when you haven't been there?" I asked her.

"I told you before, I'm a guide," she told me. "I'm your guide, and I've been the guide of several before you." She paused and counted off on her fingers. "Let's see, there have been four I think. It's been so long I can hardly remember. I led one of my good friends when she pa.s.sed on. She didn't linger much at all, being ready to die in her later years of life. One of my neighbors pa.s.sed away some time ago and that bitter man had no family or friends at all who he'd be comforted by. So I helped him to get to the peaceful side of death and transition to Heaven. And there were a couple more. All of them, once they were done peering into the window of the living, were led by me to Heaven where we both got a glimpse of what's to come before they left me and moved on. Let me tell you, darling, what waits for us on that other side is better than anything you've ever imagined."

"But if it's so great, why are you here and not there?" I asked her.

"Because you have to be able to let go of the living and the world they live in before you can move on to Heaven," she affirmed. "And, well, you know how that goes."

"That's why I'm here, too," I mused.

"That's correct," she nodded, free of judgment.

I was beginning to understand. Her obsession with my sister and me, her inability to detach was being mirrored in my feelings for John. I thought about how I couldn't tear myself away from being near him and Sam, and how involved I got in the living world even though I was no longer a part of it. All of a sudden, I was having a hard time holding my death against her, having just risked John's life through my own attachment. I was even having a hard time staying angry over the death of my son. Remembering the intense pull to bring John over, the way I had to struggle to stop killing him, I could get a sense of what Aunt Rose had experienced in my final moments of life. I realized she couldn't overcome the intense emotions that existed in this world, the feelings we clung to when we were able to grasp onto little else.

Even now I was being tortured by my own longing. More than anything, I longed to see John, to be by his side as he recovered in the hospital. But just as strong was the fear that my presence would put his life in peril. It had taken so much for me to be able to pull away from dragging him down. What if I found myself in the same position I was in before, leading him down a road he could never return from, leaving behind Sam and everything else he held dear in this life? I couldn't do that to him. And yet, I needed to be next to him again.

"Come with me?" I begged Aunt Rose. "Stay near me while I visit John? I don't think I can do this alone." I could tell in her eyes that she wanted to protest this, to persuade me to leave him behind and focus on moving on. I could also tell she wasn't going to say any of this out loud. Instead, she nodded.

"But darling," she cautioned, "if you start pulling him back down, I can't stop you. Only you have the power to refrain from that. And he's in such a weakened state, any thoughts you may have of him being with you in this existence will surely kill him. So go ahead and visit him, but practice restraint. Keep your mind clear and your intentions pure. And think of his needs before your own."

I nodded and grasped her hand, squeezing it tight and drawing comfort from the safety net I gathered from her presence. Together we left the empty room and went back to the hospital where Jacob had just pa.s.sed only moments before. But this wing was different. There were no guitars playing or children singing. No streamers hung from the ceiling, no drawings were taped to the wall. This wing of the hospital had a far more serious air, where doctors and nurses rushed from room to room, family members shuffled in and out with somber faces, and the most prominent sounds were the voices over the intercom and a steady stream of beeps from the nurses' station and each room we pa.s.sed by.

J. Hanlon was on the wall outside his room, and I peered in as if I were visible and afraid to wake him. I jumped with a start when I realized someone else was in there with him, a woman holding his hand. A dangerous feeling of jealousy began to bubble up before I realized it was only my sister. I let out a long breath, realizing just how hard this was going to be.

John was sleeping, his appearance fragile in his hospital gown. He was hooked up to an IV at his arm and wires attached to his chest to monitor his heart rate. The machine beeped beside him at a steady pace, almost as if nothing had happened. Sara sat next to him, rubbing the top of his hand with her thumb as he slept. She stared off at a wall, her mind traveling a million miles a minute. I did my best to tune out her thoughts, but captured a few fragments of the troubles she'd been having with Kevin, fears about joint custody, and the terrifying thought of supporting herself on one income instead of two.

John stirred, shifting under the thin blanket before opening his eyes and blinking with heavy lids. He saw Sara and smiled, his murmur so soft she couldn't hear what he had said. But I heard it glisten through the air to my ears.

"Rachel."

He opened his eyes a little wider as he woke, and realized with a start where he was and who was holding his hand. "Sara," he said, praying she didn't hear him call her by her sister's name. She smiled and squeezed his hand. "How long was I out?" he asked her.

"Half of yesterday and pretty much all of today," she said. "But that's mainly because they've been keeping you sedated. I'm supposed to let them know when you come out of sleep."

"Not yet," he said. "What time is it?"

"It's late, about eleven o'clock at night. They allowed me to stay when I said I was your sister." Her smile held notes of guilt. He chuckled.

"You're a bit fair to be my sister, but whatever works. I'm glad you're here. Does Sam know?"

"Yeah, they called your ex-wife first and she told him. He's the one who called to let me know," she informed him. John was startled by this, so was I. It seemed so out of character, strange even, that Sam would even think to call Sara. "I a.s.sume it's because he needed someone who wasn't his mom to be here," Sara explained, making sense of the confusion. "I think..." she began, hesitating before she continued, "I think, that I just happened to be the closest person to Rachel he could think of to be here with you and with him." She said it in one breath, hoping that by doing so, John would be unscathed by the reminder that she was just my stand-in. It didn't stop John from wincing, hiding it under an exaggerated yawn. "He was here earlier today, but needed to get home since he has school tomorrow."

"It's nice to know he cares," John said, and grimaced, regretting the words as soon as they left his mouth. "I mean...I didn't mean that. I guess I just meant that with him being a teenager and all, and especially now that he lives with his mom, it's hard to know exactly what he's thinking. It's just nice to know...that he cares," John said, followed by an awkward chuckle.

"He cares," Sara told him. "He was worried about you. He stayed here for a few hours while you slept, and we chatted about how things are going at his mom's house."

"He talked with you?" John asked. As he said it, he tried to sit up with his elbows, only to have his face twist with pain as he collapsed on the bed.

"Don't overstrain yourself; here, let me help you with the bed." Sara reached over him and pushed a b.u.t.ton on the railing of the bed, and the back of it raised so he could sit in an elevated position with no effort. "You had a heart attack, John, which is not normal for a forty-year-old man. It was likely caused by stress, but the doctors still need to run a few more tests." She paused, looking uncomfortable. The shift in her demeanor wasn't lost on John, even as he fought to stay awake under the lingering effects of the sedatives.

"What's wrong?" he asked her.

Sara gave him an embarra.s.sed smile, and I could hear her thoughts mulling over how to ask the question. She took a deep breath and let it out before speaking.

"I don't know how to ask this, and hate to even bring it up while you're just waking up. But your ex-wife was the first person they called. Apparently she's still listed as your next of kin. You didn't have Rachel on there?"

It was John's turn to be uncomfortable. I waited for his answer, though I could hear his mind tumbling over excuses loud and clear. He had Wendy on there instead of me? Aunt Rose touched my arm, and I was reminded to still my thoughts and just be an uninvolved observer.

"I know," he admitted. "It's not that I didn't want Rachel on there. I blame it on laziness more than anything. It's my downfall, putting everything off until last minute. In the weeks before her death, I had planned on adding her to all that I owned, including power of attorney and next of kin. I just hadn't gotten around to it."

"Well, I guess it's a moot point now. Besides, it was probably a good thing Wendy was still on there since they may not have known who to call otherwise," Sara said, smiling. He squeezed her hand with a returned smile, and she was reminded that her hand still grasped his. Embarra.s.sed, she pulled it back in her lap.

"So, Sam talked with you about life in Sebastopol," John said, changing the subject. "What did he say? Does he like it? Is he miserable? Is his mom a tyrant and he realized he made a huge mistake?" Sara laughed at this.

"Well, he seems to enjoy his new school," she told him. "He's made a few friends that he already sort of knew from his mom's neighborhood. And he says there are a few cute girls there, even though he misses one girl in particular from his old school. His mom is okay, not bad but just different. And even though he'd never admit it to you, he told me that he misses living with you. He says you don't visit him that much, blaming it on you being busy with work and the house in San Anselmo. But I think he'd like the two of you to hang out more."

"I guess I didn't...I mean, I didn't realize... I didn't think he wanted to hang out. I don't know. I mean, I feel like a total idiot now. I thought that since he didn't hang out with me much before he moved out, he wasn't going to want to see me much after. And...I guess I just didn't know how to call him up and ask him to go do something." John moved his arm to run his hand through his hair, wincing at the pain of the simple motion. The wires attached to his arm brushed against his face and rattled the IV bag. Sara reached over and helped him to untangle from the awkward wires.

"I think because he doesn't live with you, he especially wants you to call him up and ask to hang out. He's testing you, trying to see how much you care."

"I know," John admitted. He made an inner resolution to try harder with Sam. He wasn't sure how - maybe a phone call or a lunch out, perhaps an afternoon to work on his throw even though Sam's interest in baseball was starting to wane. But once he got out of this hospital he swore to himself he'd be a better dad. It seemed like he was always making promises like that, something he realized even as he did it again. This time, he swore, he would follow through.

"I should really let the nurses know you're awake," Sara said. "They're going to want to poke you in all sorts of fun places to see how you're doing."

"Sounds kinky. Any of them cute?" John asked. Sara grinned.

"You're such a pervert. I'm going to take off now, but I'll be back tomorrow to check in on you. Don't go anywhere, okay?"

"Heck, no. I got ladies waiting to fulfill my every whim. I'd be a dummy to take off now." Sara grinned, leaning over to kiss him on the cheek. Without thinking, John inhaled, catching once again the familiar scent of my hair in my sister's blonde locks. It stirred something inside him, just as it had before. Except this time, instead of seeing my face in front of him, he saw Sara's. The feeling caught him off guard, but he managed to tuck it away. Sara didn't see it, but the newness of this emotion inside him felt like a slap in my face.

The struggle to keep my emotions at bay became too heavy a burden to control. I felt the bitter acid of jealousy brewing inside of me, the taste of it sparking on my tongue at the reality that John could move on, and my sister could be the one to help him do that.

Before I could jeopardize him any further through emotions beyond my control, I knew I needed to escape. And I needed to go alone. I moved out of Aunt Rose's reach and focused on a place as far away as I could manage. Only when the room began to evaporate around me did Aunt Rose turn toward me. Her saddened eyes were the last thing I saw before I was cast into darkness.

Sixteen.

"What do you want from me?!" I screamed to an invisible G.o.d from where I stood. "You've taken everything else from me. Why this? Why now? Why her?"

So that I would not affect John with the ridiculous feelings that threatened to devour me, and ultimately him, I had to get far away from the hospital. I knew I could have gone farther, that I could have traveled to the farthest corner of s.p.a.ce where I'd gone before, but I was afraid of the voice that spoke to me within that emptiness, and of the churning tornado on the other side of the barrier. So I envisioned a different point that was still safe on earth, choosing to keep my feet grounded in the familiar rather than exploring the unknown.

Well, sort of.

I'd seen pictures of Mauna Kea, the tallest mountain in Hawaii, in a National Geographic when I was young. The article read of tours to the domed observatories at the top of the mountain with a view of the surrounding islands and an uninterrupted night sky that boasted millions of stars. In the colder seasons, the bald peak of the mountain was covered in snow.

The fact that there was a mountain in Hawaii that had snow fascinated me. Though I had never been there in life, it seemed like the perfect escape for me. I needed to be able to process my thoughts without killing anyone, and to remain hidden for at least a little while. So this was where I now found myself on the top of Mauna Kea in my escape from whatever was manifesting itself between my sister and John in a hospital in San Francisco.

It must have been autumn on top of the Hawaiian mountain, because, much to my dismay, no snow could be found. The air was cold, with a slight drizzle wetting the ground. But the whole top of the mountain remained bare. I clenched my hands in anger and willed time forward. In my determination, the motion was effortless. Day became night, night became day, and the stars moved across the sky in mere minutes. The air around me changed from cool to colder. The light rain changed into snow flurries. Soon, the ground was covered in white, the season having changed from autumn to winter on the Hawaiian peak of Mauna Kea.

My feet left no footprint in the frozen slush, but I still slipped through the ice, kicking at it with anger. I yelled out at the ocean far below, screaming with everything I had. A few explorers wandered around the observatory, pa.s.sing right by me as I shrieked into their ears. But they heard nothing as I bellowed against a life I didn't ask for and circ.u.mstances that were beyond my control.

"G.o.d d.a.m.n it all to h.e.l.l!" I blasted into the air. "Why? What the h.e.l.l is the reason for all of this? As if being dead wasn't enough? You give me all this power in exchange for life, but you've placed too many limitations on me! I can't touch John. I can't even get him to hear me. And I definitely can't feel too strongly about anything around him or else I'll kill him. What kind of joke is this? It's not fair! I have shackles on me when I'm supposed to be free!" I cried out. I breathed hard against my anger, feeling the fury racing through me. Here I was, unbound from the laws of gravity without an earthly body, and the ability to travel anywhere and be anything. And yet, the rules of this world kept me in an inescapable prison. I was trapped, unable to just dive deep into my yearning so I could mourn all I had lost.

"And then Sara? Why Sara? Why her? Please G.o.d, anyone but her!" I pleaded. I couldn't bear the thought of my sister wrapped in John's arms, even though I knew that any girl who replaced me in John's heart wouldn't be worthy in my eyes. But Sara? This truth stung. Why did she have to visit him so much, attaching my memory to her presence to make him fall for her? Why did so much about her have to be so similar to me, and so familiar to John?

I screamed into the wind, haunted by the inequities of the situation, and the atmosphere shook around me as sound waves rippled through the air. A few adventurous birds that had traveled to the top of the mountain looked in my direction. But even they steered clear of me, afraid to come close to the crazy ghost causing such a racket. Storm clouds brewed in the sky, threatening to break open and envelop the earth and all the injustice it held. But they just churned as a covering to the heavens, becoming a fogged-up mirror to the storm within me. The torrential rains were restrained from spilling over, just as I was forced to bottle up the pain from my sorrow and devastation.

When I had no more words left, my emotions having drained me of anything else I could scream to an uncompa.s.sionate G.o.d, I sat on the icy ground and stared out at the horizon. The fog was just starting to creep in, covering the ocean and lopping off the bottom of the mountain so that I appeared to be standing on just a mere hill. The carpet of white went as far as I could see, and I had the sudden urge to just jump out at it and land upon the fluffy covering, curling up inside until I could sleep away the injustices of this in-between world. Only one thing stopped me as I stared out at the inviting cloud of white, and that was a memory of my father.

As a child, I once asked my father why we couldn't just drive across the foggy covering of the valley that led to our home. I was around five years old, peering out from my pa.s.senger side window of our family's car, trying to catch a glimpse of the vineyards that were concealed under the thick white cloud. We had just rounded the bend towards our home in Sonoma, and the fog looked more like a solid blanket than a fluffy cloud. He chuckled, a deep baritone sound that filled my soul with gingerbread and hot cocoa, a laugh I hadn't heard in so long that just the memory of it warmed me on this morning atop a snowy mountain in Hawaii.

Back then, he'd taken the time to describe the way moisture and the different temperatures of the air created the fog, and how we were able to pa.s.s right through it. He explained that it wasn't a blanket at all, though it did help to keep the ground warmer than it'd be without it. He always was one who believed the truth in science was more important than the magic of the imagination, even when explaining things to a five year old child. He figured that bypa.s.sing childhood "lies" would ensure my education wasn't tampered with, giving me an edge compared to my cla.s.smates. To him, magical things were a waste of time.

As I sat looking out at the Hawaiian fog, I knew that I could curl up within it and sleep hidden within the confines of the misty padding. Escaping within the magic of the impossible seemed like the perfect game of pretend. But just as important, I needed my dad to be right - even in my death where the impossible was possible. And right now, I wished more than anything that he could be here next to me, telling me the science of air and temperature, and a better truth - that everything was going to be all right.

I hated that I was having such a strong reaction to the mere pa.s.sing thought that was shared between John and Sara. It didn't mean anything. So what if John smelled me in Sara's hair? It wasn't as if they were having an affair, or even entertaining the idea of one. At least, I didn't think so.

But what if they were?