Death, and the Girl He Loves

What was supposed to be a chastisement only served to urge Brooke on. “Absolutely,” she said, her eyes sparkling with anticipation.

“Maybe we can have a séance, too, right here in the girls’ room.”

“You think?” she asked, teasing me.

I opened the sketchbook to the picture I’d drawn and took off my gloves. “This is not my best work,” I said to her.

She looked down at it. “In all fairness, you were six at the time.”

“True.”

After releasing a loud sigh to emphasize my annoyance, I settled onto the countertop and touched my fingertips to the picture. I concentrated on clearing my mind, relaxing my muscles, focusing on the lines, the blurriness of the man’s face, the wind cutting through the air. Then I heard it. The wind. I felt it against my skin, and the ripple that had quaked through my fingertips before did so again.

A tightness wrapped around me as the wind roared around me, and my first thought was of my parents—the scene so real, I fought to breathe under the weight of it. I was back. I was at the ruins where my parents disappeared. It had been ten years, but I was there. I looked around frantically, wanting to see them, praying I’d see them, but they were already gone. I’d entered the scene too late. I looked on as a beast stood before me. He was as tall as the trees around us. His shoulders as wide as the horizon.

Fear gripped me so fast and so hard, I was catapulted out of the picture.

“Lorelei,” Brooklyn said, her voice muffled as though she were underwater. “Lorelei, it’s me.”

I pushed at her, held out my arms to keep her back, kicked out. Then I realized where I was. I’d scrambled for a corner of the girls’ restroom and found myself wedged between a wall and a trash can.

“Lor, are you okay?” Brooke’s eyes were like saucers, wide and uncertain. “Lor,” she said right before collapsing into my arms. “I thought you had a seizure or something.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“You fell and flew back against the concrete.”

That would explain the splitting headache I suddenly had.

“And your eyes rolled back. I thought— Oh, my God—”

“I’m okay,” I said, soothing her, hugging her back. I realized then that Kenya had come in. She stood in the doorway, her expression wary.

“I did it,” I said breathlessly. “I went into the drawing, and it was like I was there.”

Brooke sat back, her hands still on my shoulders. “You went into it?”

I nodded. “But only for a second. It—it was horrible. It was so real. I remembered everything.”

Brooke sank onto her bottom.

“Malak-Tuke. I saw him again. He was standing before a little girl.”

“You,” she corrected. “He was standing before you.”

Kenya sat beside Brooke. The bell rang but we ignored it.

“Brooke,” I said, “how is that even possible?”

“No,” she said, thinking back. “It is. It’s totally possible. I remember reading that one of Arabeth’s daughters did something similar.”

“Oh, yes,” Kenya said, closing her eyes in thought. “My parents told me about it. She would draw pictures with ashes from certain herbs that she burned, and she could see into them. Into the pictures.” She blinked in bewilderment. “This is just so cool. I can’t wait to tell my parents.”

“No,” I said, suddenly self-conscious. “Not yet. What if I can’t do it again? What if it means nothing?”

“Nothing?” she said. “Lorelei, this could be the answer. You have to tell your grandparents.”

I curled my hands into fists and covered my eyes with them. I was so tired of being scared. So tired of feeling like a fraud. Of being told I was something I wasn’t. That I would do something I couldn’t. I had to get the bloody heck over myself and fast.

“Maybe you’re right,” I said, almost agreeing. “But first, let me see what else I can get from this picture.”

“You’re going back in?” Brooklyn asked, her eyes wide once more with fear. When I nodded, she said, “No way. Not yet. This time, we need backup.”

* * *

We gathered the troops and called my grandparents on the way home.

“Okay, they’re waiting for us in the basement at church.” The basement was the Order of Sanctity’s headquarters. It was where all the archives were stored. All the documents and texts that my father and his father and so on over the decades had collected. “They aren’t going to be thrilled that we didn’t tell them about this before,” I said, suddenly worried.

“Here.” Kenya held out her hand. “Take off your glove and check.”

“Kenya, I don’t want to see that again.”

“But if this really is the answer, then things will have changed, right?”

Reluctantly, I did as she’d wanted. And she was right. Things had changed. Oh, her death was still brutal. She was scared, terrified beyond reason. Only this time, she died in Riley’s Switch. She died a thousand miles away from her family, running for her life alone. No. I looked to the left. Running for me. Trying, even in her last moments on earth, to protect me. My despair knew no bounds. That this beautiful girl would die on my account.

When I came out of the vision, tears burned my eyes. I clenched my jaw to fight them and looked out the window. “Nothing has changed,” I said, my throat raw.