The Way We Bared Our Souls (10 page)

This was all a bit too abstract for me. When was he going to get to the part about healing my disease?

The shaman pulled another leather pouch from his satchel and reached his hand in, withdrawing an ash-like powder. He held it over the fire and began chanting in a language I didn’t recognize. Just then, I heard a scuttling behind me. A dark figure dashed through our circle, barely evading the central flames. A coyote. Dakota must have found a hidden entrance. Or was it possible that she’d been there the whole time? And in her mouth, I saw a skull. A small human skull. Jay threw his powder into the fire. I screamed.

Then the kiva went dark.

• • •

By the time Thomas got the fire started again, Jay was gone. As was Dakota.

“Is everyone okay?” Kaya asked as she reflexively checked her body for damage. Kit was clinging to his cell phone, flashlight function engaged.

“Sure,” Ellen said. “Except now I’m dying for some real medicine. The kind that comes in a plastic bag. That ‘ritual’ was such a joke. Whoever heard of a sacred burden-shedding ceremony? And then trying to scare us like that by putting out the fire? I don’t care how smooth Jay is. He’s obviously an amateur.”

“But the coyote?” I said. “The skull?”

“Huh?” Kit said. “A skull? That’s not funny, Lo. Let’s just get out of here. I’m starting to feel claustrophobic.”

Did I imagine the coyote altogether? I was too afraid to ask. Perhaps hallucinations were another side effect of my illness.

I looked around the kiva. I didn’t see my own terror reflected on anyone else’s face. They all looked either baffled or embarrassed. For me?

“Wait,” I said. “You guys agree with Kit? You don’t think the ritual did anything?”

“Look,” Kit said, his tone gentler than usual. Great. They thought I’d wasted all their time. Maybe I did. And worse than that, I’d wasted their hope. “At least Jay . . . Does Jumping Jacks with Coyotes, or whatever, didn’t steal our wallets. Though we should probably get back to your car before he tries to hot-wire it.”

“You’re right,” I said, feeling totally demoralized. “We should go.”

On our dark walk back to the parking lot, Thomas put his arm around me and left it there for a brief moment. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s not your fault. You tried.”

“Thanks, Thomas.” I wanted to sink into his shoulder. The experience had been so intense, so revealing for everyone, and now it was just stamped out, like our kiva fire.

Everyone was quiet as they piled into the car. They all fell asleep on the long drive home, leaving me alone with my thoughts. Meanwhile pain periodically shot down my arms, wrapping itself around my white knuckles like razor blades.

The ritual had been a failure. Maybe I deserved this pain. Maybe it was better that I stay sick and just learn how to cope with it. I shouldn’t tamper with other people’s lives. I contemplated throwing my horse totem out the window. It was worthless now.

I glanced in the rearview mirror. Ellen was asleep on Kaya’s shoulder. She looked so peaceful when she wasn’t high, smoking cigarettes, or getting drunk and scrappy. I thought again about tucking her into bed, singing her a lullaby.

“Are you okay, Lo?” Thomas said, breaking up my reverie. He sat beside me with his eyes closed, leaning his head against the windowpane.

“Oh,” I said. “Hey. I thought you were sleeping.” I unclenched my hands from the steering wheel. “I’m fine. Maybe just disappointed. Why?”

“I can feel the tension in your body.”

“Is it that strong?” I said.

“Yes.”

“You know, I used to be able to do that. Sense people. Except . . . well, it’s dumb.”

“Tell me,” Thomas said, cracking one eye open.

“Well, I used to think that I could sense people’s energies. That sounds really hokey, like I thought I could read auras or something. But you know how sometimes you can just sense if someone is happy or sad? Or nervous? Well, I sensed that, but it was a little different. Often it was . . . musical. It sounded just like a song.”

“You said ‘used to.’ Do you not perceive people’s songs anymore?”

“Not really,” I said. “My own noises are too loud right now. It’s as if some little girl has stationed herself inside my body and she’s banging on pots and pans.”

“Did you ever hear my song?”

I blushed. I couldn’t lie to Thomas, and yet the truth was so embarrassing. When I used to pass him in the hallway, the Cat Stevens song “The Wind” would spring into my head unbidden. Sometimes I couldn’t shake the melody for the rest of the day. I had to go home and listen repeatedly to the record Karine had bought me.

“Once or twice,” I said. Thomas was quiet.

“Don’t you want to know what it was?” I said.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “I probably wouldn’t like it.”

“No,” I said. “It’s good. It’s one of my favorite songs.”

“Really?”

“Really.” I quietly started humming the tune. His whole body relaxed, and he leaned his head against the window once more. In his sleep I saw him smile. Suddenly I felt hopeful again. Maybe tomorrow would be brighter after all.

IT DIDN’T SEEM FAIR THAT,
thanks to my alarm clock, my body was so used to jerking awake at seven
A
.
M
. that it was now physically incapable of sleeping in, even on a Sunday. A day that was made for sleeping in, despite what Mom says about church. Even God took a rest after he made the world, right? And I’d had a rough Saturday night.

I was still locked in my dream world as I shook off the covers. I’d been doing what? Kissing Thomas? We’d been together, but I couldn’t remember where or why. Maybe something about a garden? No, a jungle. We’d walked through a jungle holding hands, and the tree canopy was so high and had sunk us so deeply in shadows that it was like being underwater. It had been unnerving. But also wonderful. Because I’d been alone with Thomas.

Then I heard Seymour scurrying back and forth on my windowsill as usual and felt the morning sun on my eyelids, and I remembered the real world soon enough. I reached for my fuzzy purple bathrobe and began walking in the direction of the only thing capable of decisively waking me from my dreams: a cold shower.

Bang bang bang!

I almost dropped to the ground in fright. When my aunt Karine used to jump around corners to scare me, she laughingly called this my “playing dead” stance. “Up, Apple!” she’d say, swinging me to my feet with my childhood nickname. “Up!”

Bang bang bang!

I whirled around to see Kit grinning in my window, Mohawk still all kinds of angular from sleep, fist poised to begin pounding again.

“Kit?” I said.

This blast from the past worked almost as well as a cold shower. In elementary and middle school, Kit used to tap on my window when he wanted to organize a neighborhood game of flashlight tag or capture the flag. What was he doing here now? Wait, was I wearing indecent pajamas? I looked down and was relieved to see my modest tank top and shorts combo under my open bathrobe.

Kit began tapping the beat to “It’s a Hard-Knock Life.” Was something different? Then I remembered the ceremony. Something radical must have happened overnight to supplant Kit’s perpetual scowl with this giant, luminous smile. I’d forgotten what a cutie he could be when he was happy.

All in one movement, I rushed to the window and tried to lift the sill, a hustle that simultaneously made me trip and cause the window to slam down. Clumsy. I was glad Dad hadn’t seen—I’d never hear the end of his teasing. He still ribbed me for the time I dropped a full bowl of mashed potatoes on the living room rug at Thanksgiving. We ate instant rice instead.

“Consuelo!” Kit said once I’d managed to open the window with more feminine grace. “Have you been outside yet?”

I shook my head, stunned into silence by his exuberance. This was not the same Kit who’d been in the kiva last night.

“It’s seven
A
.
M
.,” I said, smiling at him quizzically. “I’m just waking up. Clearly.”

“I’ve been up for hours,” Kit said. “I skated over from the Dents’ house. Thomas wouldn’t get out of bed so I came here to bother you. I was literally the only person on the road here this morning . . . the only one inhaling the . . . sky . . . the birds. . . . Except there’s this one Mexican lady on Old Santa Fe Trail who sets up her table of flan and
pan de muerto
early, like at the break of dawn. Swear on my life, Lo, her flans smell exactly like sex.”

I’d have to take his word for it.

“Man, Kit,” I said. “How much coffee have you had? What’s gotten into you?” Not that I necessarily disliked whatever it was. He seemed more like the boy I’d known the summer before high school, the one I’d laughed with in the swimming pool. The one I’d kissed.

“What got into me? This knockout
morning
got into me. Got into my blood, like a freaking transfusion. The sunlight got to me. Who knows, maybe underground magnets got to me. . . .” He was talking a mile a minute, but then he stopped abruptly.

“Lo,” he said curiously. “Your hand.”

I looked down and saw a large gash on top of my hand. It looked as if someone had gone overboard with a Halloween makeup kit, had substituted flesh-colored putty and red corn syrup for my actual flesh. But this was . . . real blood. My blood. My own skin torn apart. What the . . . ? How . . . ? Was this . . . was it the window? But I hadn’t felt anything when I’d tripped. As I looked at the bleeding wound, I registered it mentally, but not physically. Was I still dreaming? I clenched my fist. Blood dripped onto the sleeve of my purple bathrobe, but it was still as if it was someone else’s blood, someone else’s hand.

“Kit,” I said, “I can’t feel it. I can’t feel my hand.” Oh no, oh no. My Sclerosis. Was this the next phase? Had I lost all feeling in my limbs? Had my nerves finally disintegrated completely? My phone rang softly on my dresser, but I ignored it. My body. I’d lost my body for good.

I began to cry, not caring that Kit was still there and could see everything. “Is this it?” I said. “The last stage before the disease takes over? I thought. . . . Jay said the ritual would make me better. . . .”

“Wait a second, Lo,” Kit said calmly, like a scholar contemplating a philosophical quandary. “Let’s think about this. There’s something really weird going on. But the universe works in mysterious ways, right? This might not necessarily be bad.”

I sniffled. I guess my nerves were pretty frazzled.
TranquiLo. For external use only. Call ahead to refill your prescription.

“Come to think of it,” I said, turning my gaze to Kit, “you’re acting pretty unusual this morning, to state the obvious. When was the last time you knocked on my win-dow? No, scratch that. When’s the last time you were
happy
, and talking about the birds and the weather? At seven
A
.
M
.?”

Kit laughed. “Oh my god, you’re
right
. This morning is the first time since Lucita’s accident that I didn’t wake up under a freaking little black storm cloud. I actually feel
good
. Maybe my antidepressants finally kicked in?”

I left the window open and stepped back, trying to think, while Kit started chattering again about the smells outside, the “bioluminescent energy” coming off the flowers. Then he began playfully chasing my mom’s chickens around our aboveground pool, but I was too lost in thought to follow the movements of Pollo Hermano and company.

I wandered toward my desk to grab some tissues for my hand. My phone was still blowing up on the dresser, but I returned to the window, pressing paper against my wound to stanch the bleeding. I still felt nothing, even when I wiggled my fingers. Then it hit me. This couldn’t be related to my sickness. I hadn’t woken up with my usual aches and pains. No migraine. No stumbling out of bed with a doomsday feeling and tingling toes.

“Kit!” I shouted. He was cackling gleefully as he dashed around the yard in pursuit of Pollo Bronco, Mom’s prized leghorn.

“Kit!” I shouted again, over the sound of the berserk clucking. He reluctantly left the hysterical hen and returned to his bleeding, petulant Juliet leaning against her windowsill.

“Kit,” I whispered, with a growing amount of clarity. “Do you think that during the ritual we could have . . . somehow . . .
swapped
? Our burdens? I don’t feel at all like myself right now. In fact, I feel really, really . . . weird. Pinch me. Pull my hair. I feel nothing. I feel like. . . .”

Oh. I knew exactly who I felt like. Kit pinched my arm between his bitten fingernails. Nothing. We looked at each other with wide eyes.

“I feel like Kaya.”

“Hm,” Kit said. “Hell of a theory. I mean, if you got Kaya’s . . . whatchamacallit . . . analgesia, then what did I get?” I thought for a second. It clearly wasn’t Thomas’s burden. Couldn’t be my MS or Kaya’s painlessness. That left only Ellen. Kit wasn’t on drugs . . . but he did have a manic energy about him that seemed to seek and feed off external stimulation. Like chickens. Or sex flan.

“Ellen. You have Ellen’s addiction,” I said, suddenly convinced. But Kit was barely listening. He took off after the hens again, trying to corral them into my mom’s herb garden.

“Oh my god,” I said, knowing both that I was right and that this was not going to end well.

My phone buzzed again. I scrolled through my messages and saw Ellen’s name over and over again, dozens of times.

where are you
, she’d texted earlier in the morning.

Then,
i feel like hell.

what did you do to me?
this was such a bad idea.
call me as soon as you get this.

Crap. Something had happened to her too. I called her back, and she picked up on the first ring. The only word I could make out in her panicked speech was my name.

“Ellen,” I said, interrupting her sobbing rant. “It’s okay. Calm down. Kit is with me. Get in touch with Thomas and Kaya. Just pull yourself together and tell everybody to meet us at the Dents’ balloon field ASAP. I have a pretty good idea what’s going on.”

• • •

I threw on my jeans and sneakers without the usual struggle and galloped to the kitchen with a bra balled up in my fist. “I’m taking off,” I called to the parental sounds behind the bedroom and bathroom doors. “Love you guys!”

Kit was waiting for me in the driveway, skateboard in hand, grinning. Despite my initial moment of alarm, and despite how awful it had been to hear the distress in Ellen’s voice . . . I actually felt pretty good. My body felt right again. It was in motion without hesitancy. Without Mysterious Symptoms. I wasn’t in pain. My mind galloped. But did this mean that someone was feeling what I used to feel?

In my car Kit blasted music and danced in his seat, cajoling me to join in. Finally I relented, and it was actually kind of great. I hadn’t listened to music that wholeheartedly since before I started feeling lousy all the time. For those brief, blissful moments of keeping time on the steering wheel while my torso abandoned itself to the beat, I let myself forget about Ellen and everyone else.

This was amazing! The ritual had worked, in its own way, and I really couldn’t have hoped for a better outcome. I was already informed enough about Kaya’s medical condition to know how to protect myself. But first I needed to make absolutely sure. I slammed the butt end of an empty iced tea bottle against my kneecap. I bit down hard on my lip. I even made Kit burn my finger with my car’s cigarette lighter. Nothing registered. Then I remembered that my hand was still spouting blood through the tissues, staining my shirt and shorts, not to mention the interior of my car. I should probably clean that up before seeing the others.

I dug around in the glove compartment, pushing past the painting Kaya had given me, until I found a handful of fast-food napkins. Meanwhile Kit craned his head out the window, taking in the scenery. He kept gleefully pointing things out to me—squirrels pocketing nuts in trees, dogs reveling in their early morning walks—not the least bit concerned that he was forcing me to take my eyes off the road. I pressed the napkins to my hand, containing the blood flow and leaving shreds of paper stuck to my skin in the process. Still, I felt nothing. Only mild euphoria. I could do anything. I was sitting pretty not only where my illness was concerned, but I was also ecstatically above the laws of pain.

This was a miracle.

I couldn’t wait to test out my new body.