Auracle. Part 26

"Sleep tight," she says and closes her bedroom door.

By the time I brush my teeth and get into bed, I can already hear my mother's light snores through the thin wall separating our bedroom. Through my open window, I hear the faintest music, and it sounds like Rei is up late playing his guitar. Even though it's getting cold out, I leave the window open and pull the ugly lavender comforter Taylor bought up over my bare legs instead. Just as I'm relaxing in preparation for a good, long chat with my subconscious ...

Snap!

The comforter goes flying off me. I shriek out of sheer surprise. Somewhere in the shadows, I hear Taylor snicker.

My hairbrush, my pink magnifying mirror, my Cherry Chapstick all shoot off my dresser like machine gun ammunition. I scramble to get my pillow up as a shield. "Stop it!" I whisper urgently at her. "You're going to wake up my mother!" Books drop off my bookshelf, one by one, then the closet door wrenches open and clothes start falling into a heap.

I thought positive energy was stronger than negative energy, but with the damage Taylor is inflicting right now, she's totally blowing that theory of mine.

"How do you like it?" she asks in that mutant voice of hers. "Every night until you die, I will haunt you, Anna. Unless I'm next door haunting Rei. Or at the jail haunting Seth."

I was afraid of her at the falls today, but now, I'm just mad. I turn the lamp on and she immediately turns it off.

"Fine!" I huff at her. "Be that way."

Newton's law of motion dictates that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. So if she wants to be negative, I'll be positive. If she wants to stay in the dark, I'll surround myself with light. It's harder to concentrate since I'm so tired, but before too long, I manage to summon the light.

"Enough with that d.a.m.n light!" Taylor yells before she bolts, snapping my window shade up so hard on her way out that it falls off the bracket. I look around at the mess I'll have to clean up before my mother sees it and decide it can wait until morning. I have just enough energy to reach down and pull the comforter back over me.

"Thank you," I whisper.

When I was about twelve, my mom decided I needed some religion in my life. Every Sunday morning for about a month, she would cart me off to church where I'd spend an hour admiring how pretty the sun looked shining through the stained gla.s.s windows and trying to figure out why people got up so early on a Sunday morning to mumble the same canned prayers they mumbled last week. "Faith," Rei told me when I asked him. "Some people feel closer to G.o.d in a church or temple or wherever their religion tells them to go."

Rei likes to learn about different religions, but for the most part, I find them convoluted and confusing. I know that an afterlife exists, so I'm not bound by the fear that death is eternal sleep. And if I want to feel closer to G.o.d, I just go outside and look up at the starry sky. To me, faith is about trusting my instinct when logic tells me I'm an idiot. Tonight, it's faith that tells me to close my eyes, that it's safe to sleep because the light will keep Taylor away, and I am grateful.

The next thing I know, there is sunlight streaming in through my unshaded windows.

Schmoozing is an important skill I need to learn, and my mom is a seasoned pro. I tag along to the hospital with my mom who schmoozes with the hospital staff until they track down the doctors who treated me. Both doctors write notes to the judge, saying it appears my concussion resulted in severe memory loss and perhaps even in dissociative amnesia (whatever that is), but apparently the stress from my allergic reaction triggered the full restoration of my memory.

In plain English? In the doctors' professional opinion, I am not a reliable witness.

After we secure the notes, I sit downstairs in the waiting room trying to stay awake while my mom goes up to see my father. I am not allowed to see him yet. Apparently, my mom was right. Detox is not a comfortable thing unless you enjoy sweating, shaking, and hallucinating that little people are crawling all over the walls. My mother doesn't want me to see him like that, as if this will somehow diminish my opinion of him. I don't argue, though. She's promised to take me to KFC when we leave, and I'm beside myself with antic.i.p.ation of a two-piece extra crispy meal with a double side of mashed potatoes and gravy, followed by a visit to see my good friends, Ben and Jerry. I haven't tasted anything really delicious for so long, although the thought of Taylor out there watching me makes me more than a little queasy.

Fortunately, Taylor stays out of sight all day. Unfortunately, so does Rei as Yumi keeps him busy at the store. It's hard to imagine there's so much inventory that it takes him until after six o'clock to count it all, but apparently, there is. He stops over at my house on his way home, apologizing for not showering first, and I can tell by the dark circles under his eyes that he's wiped out. It's the end of a long week, and there's still tomorrow to go.

"I would love for you to stay," I tell him, and I can't resist reaching out to trace one of those dark circles with my thumb, "but you need to sleep."

"Who can sleep?" he asks. "Taylor showed up after midnight and trashed my room. I spent the rest of the night cleaning up and waiting for her to show up again."

"I'm sorry. She did the same to mine."

He just stands there, unshaven and exhausted, his jaw slack with disbelief. "So you didn't sleep all night either?"

"No, I did. I, um..." I've never tried to explain the light to Rei. "Don't freak out if you see a light in your room later tonight."

"What kind of light," Rei asks suspiciously.

"Well, it's the same light that comes when people die, so ... "

"Oh, that light." Rei very nearly smiles. "Sure, no problem."

"I know it sounds strange, but when we were in New York, I figured out I could call the light," I explain. "I've been trying to convince Taylor to go into it, but whenever she sees it, she runs away. So I asked the light to stay in my room last night, and it did. So maybe it will come to your room tonight."

"But what about you?"

"I'm pretty sure this light can be in more than one place at a time."

After Rei leaves, I can't face another night of mindless television with my mother, so I hang out in my room. I try texting Rei, but he's not answering, so I hope he's finally asleep. I torture myself by checking online concert schedules, but since I can't astrally project with Taylor on the loose, it looks like I'm going to miss some amazing summer concerts.

Sadness.

But maybe I could astrally project just a piece of myself outside my body while the rest of me stays put. That can't be dangerous, can it? Hmmm ... It takes me over an hour, but I figure out how to project my hand. Just my hand. And once I get my hand out, I stretch the energy and I can move stuff, even stuff that's across the room. I sit here on my bed and move stuff around my dresser, turn the light on and off, scatter the dust bunnies under my bed. I'm still not as strong as Taylor, but how cool is this?

My mom sweeps into the courthouse first thing on Monday morning with the doctors' notes in hand and schmoozes with the judge. He reads the notes, which are written on official doctor letterhead and signed in illegible scrawl. I stand there looking utterly confused, and he agrees it would be unethical to put me on the witness stand. That's all well and fine, but it's the district attorney who scares me. He meets me by an office and directs Rei to wait outside on a bench in the lobby. My mom stays while he questions me, and he has someone in the room, too, a rotund woman with peach-colored hair and a fancy beaded necklace holding her gla.s.ses around her neck. Her fingers fly over the keys of her machine as she records my statement.

"So," he says as he settles back into his seat and frowns at the doctors' notes in his hand, "you are no longer considered a reliable witness because you have memory issues."

"Yes."

"You have memory issues," he repeats.

"Yes," I confirm, and a knot twists in my stomach as I remember the way he tried to bait witnesses with his obscure questions. I debate whether my spectral appearance during Taylor's deposition has helped or hurt me.

"But you knew what Taylor Gleason was wearing when she died," he says. His eyes are power drill bits.

I fight the urge to blink. "I don't know how. Maybe I saw her before she walked down to meet him. I can't be sure; I don't remember."

He leans back in his chair and strokes his chin thoughtfully, staring at me. He looks like he wants to poke me to see if I'm real. Finally, he shakes his head and his icy stare thaws a bit.

"Well, since the police searched the Gleason home and found the magazines from which the letters were cut, and since all of the late Miss Gleason's friends are now crystal clear on exactly what the word perjury means and since our only eyewitness has had medically confirmed amnesia, it doesn't look like we have much of a case against Seth Murphy. But just out of curiosity, Miss Rogan," he parks his elbows on his desk and leans closer to me, "are you familiar with the concept of astral projection?"

If it was ever to my benefit to look stupid, now is the time. "Um," I look everywhere but at him, "isn't that when, uh, a person can project astrally?"

He smiles knowingly. "Indeed it is."

It seems like a good time to change the subject. "So what happens to Seth now?"

"The case will be dismissed due to insufficient evidence. Seth will be released into the custody of his father." He checks his watch. "And I have to be in court in ten minutes. Goodbye. Good luck. And be careful out there, Miss Rogan." He walks me and my mom to the door.

Rei pops up from his seat like toast when the door opens.

"Case dismissed due to insufficient evidence," I tell him, and I can actually feel the tension whoosh off him as he corrals me in a one-armed hug.

"That's the best news I've heard in a while," he admits.

"Yes," I lower my voice, but my mom is already busy checking her phone for messages, "but we've still got one problem left."

CHAPTER 37.

My mom had to go to work, so Rei drives me home.

"Should we bother going to school since we finished so early?" he asks.

"I thought we called in absent for the entire day." I have the window down and I'm hand-surfing the waves of the wind current.

"We did. I just thought since you missed so much school, you might not want to miss any more."

I look over at him and he takes his eyes off the road for a split second to look over at me, and we both crack up laughing. He's in a happy mood now that he knows Seth will be cleared of charges. I am, too.

"Hey, want to see what I taught myself to do now?" I ask.

"Um, I don't know. Do I?" Rei asks cautiously.

"Watch this." Hopefully he doesn't think I'm showing off, but I'm going to show him anyway. I concentrate until my hand pops free and I stretch it to turn on the radio.

"Did you just turn that on?" Rei asks.

"Yup. No hands, baby." I flip around through the stations.

"So you're telling me you can do telekinesis now."

"I'm telling you I can disengage just one hand and move stuff. Just little stuff. Nothing big."

I decide to test myself and go for something a little bigger. Rei's cell phone bulges from his front pocket, and it takes considerable effort for me to wiggle it out and set it on the console.

Rei grins and shakes his head. "Magical, mystical, Auracle girl."

"Yeah, feel free to come up with a cooler nickname."

Rei laughs. "I'll get right on that. In the meantime, let's go back to my house and get some lunch."

Lunch? I like lunch.

Rei's idea of tuna salad is not the conventional mayonnaise-soaked sandwich. When we get to his house, I automatically head to the fridge and pull out red-leaf lettuce, grape tomatoes, a cuc.u.mber and red onion, then find cans of dolphin-safe tuna and black olives in the cupboard.

Rei is in charge of cutting up watermelon for dessert. "One for you," he pulls a paring knife out of the knife block and hands it to me, handle first. "And one for me," he gets the big watermelon knife out for himself.

"Watermelon is my favorite," I remind him once he starts cutting the slices up into bite-sized chunks.

He offers to hand feed me a piece with his fingers, and when I tilt my head and open my mouth to take it, our eyes meet and he blushes an adorable salmon pink. I really want to bring up that kiss at the falls, but I feel myself start to blush too, just thinking about it.

We eat our salad and our watermelon, then we let the clean up wait while we sit at the table talking about stuff that has nothing to do with the past two weeks. Random stuff. Funny stuff. It feels so good and normal, like we can pick up the pieces and keep on going and everything will be okay now that Seth is a free man.

Until Rei's water gla.s.s goes zooming off the table and shatters on the ceramic tile floor.

"Oops," Taylor's flat voice comes from my right and she materializes behind Rei. "What's for lunch? Oh, that's right. It doesn't matter to me because dead people can't eat!"

Rei spins around in his chair. "c.r.a.p," he mutters. "Where's that light you sent last night?"

"Oh no, you don't!" Taylor says just as everything in the room starts churning with the force of a small tornado. Plates, gla.s.ses, watermelon rind, lettuce leaves and onion peels go smashing haphazardly into the walls, the ceiling, our heads.

Rei stands up and pulls me roughly into him, shielding my head with his arms. "How the h.e.l.l is she doing this? You could never move stuff this heavy." One arm leaves me for an instant and I can tell he's just blocked something big just by the force he uses to push it away.

"What was that?" My voice is m.u.f.fled against his chest.

"The blender."

Rei is right, I could never move something as big as a blender, and I'm pretty sure I wasn't capable of my own personal tornado, either. At least when she was in my body, she was contained. Now it's like we've cracked open a nest of angry wasps. Rei is shouting over the bedlam, trying to reason with Taylor, when he suddenly arches his back and his chest shoves against me, jerking my head back.

Everything goes very quiet.

"Rei?" I look up cautiously, and Rei's eyes are fixed and staring at me. "Rei!"

"Oh s.h.i.t!" Taylor swoops down beside Rei. "That was an accident!"

Why hasn't he taken a breath yet? "Rei? Are you okay? Breathe!"

He nods once without blinking and struggles to inhale.

"I swear, I didn't mean to do that!" Taylor insists.

I lean around him to see what Taylor didn't mean to do and the freakin' watermelon knife is jutting out from between Rei's shoulder blades.

"Oh G.o.d!" The blade alone must be a foot long, but only about six inches are left protruding from his back. Every little bit of me wants to panic. Rei has always been the level-headed person in a crisis, not me, but I can't fall apart now. An ambulance! We need an ambulance. Rei reaches back and fumbles for the knife handle.

"No! No! Don't pull it..."

Too late. His next breath is the rattle of dead leaves as he stares at the b.l.o.o.d.y knife in surprise. I try to take the knife out of his hand, but he shakes his head. "Don't touch it," he croaks. "I don't want your fingerprints on it."

"Why not?" I grab a dishtowel and press hard to stop the bleeding while I guide him into a chair. Stupid white dishtowel stains red in seconds. How do I leave him to call an ambulance with him bleeding like this?

"I swear I didn't mean for anyone to get really hurt. I just wanted to..."

"Then do something useful," I bark at Taylor. "Find the phone in this mess so I can call an ambulance!"

Calm down, Anna, I remind myself. I can't help Rei if I flip out.