Yes, but I’m still sorry. If I had just listened to Rei and stayed in my body, well, maybe Taylor would still be dead, but there would be no eyewitness. What was the term I heard on
Law & Order?
Burden of proof? Unless some of Seth’s DNA survived underneath her fingernails during her extended bath in the river, they couldn’t prove anything.
Rei rolls onto his bed and lies on his side, his elbow angled under his head. “She said if I go out with her again, she won’t testify against Seth.”
Wow. What a deal.
“I can’t do
that
.”
I know I’m going to hate myself for saying this, but I can’t resist.
That’s right. Your mom doesn’t want you to date.
“Oh. You heard that,” he says flatly.
I nod solemnly.
Especially your best friend.
“It’s not just you, it’s anyone,” he points out. “She thinks I don’t have time. The only reason she said that stuff about you is because if it didn’t work, she’s afraid it would ruin our friendship, that’s all.”
Of course. We’ve been friends for almost seventeen years. Why rock the boat?
What do you think about Taylor?
Rei rolls onto his back and stares up at the ceiling. “She’s scared. She thinks she’ll wind up in hell or something.” He closes his eyes, and he’s quiet for so long, I decide he must be asleep. I pull enough energy to flip the switch on the table lamp next to his bed, leaving only the glow of the computer screen to light the room.
“She said dying is the only way she knows to get out of you,” he says out of the blue.
She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. I don’t bother to type it, but now she’s got me thinking.
She doesn’t need to be dead to get out of me, but she doesn’t know how to disengage herself and slip out like I do. There’s no way I could talk her out, not unless she wanted to leave, but …
What if we found a way to weaken her or disable her somehow? Maybe that would loosen her grip enough to let me pull her out.
He rolls back onto his side to read the computer screen. “How would we do that?”
I don’t know. How hard do you have to hit someone on the head to knock them out?
Rei looks at me funny. “It depends,” he says carefully. “I don’t think we want to be hitting her in the head, though. That’s your head, too.” He pauses, thinking. “Besides, she already hit her head when she fell out of the desk chair. Didn’t you try to get back in then?”
Yes, but she was still conscious. Maybe she needs to be unconscious.
“Why can’t you just go back in when she’s sleeping?”
I tried that; it didn’t work.
Rei rubs his top lip with his knuckle as he thinks. “You know about pressure points, right?”
Like acupuncture?
“Kind of, but acupuncture is meant to heal. If one of those pressure points was hit too hard or squeezed too long, that’s dangerous. We learned about them in aikido so we can avoid getting hit there.” Rei sits up, cross-legged, and pats the bed in front of him. “Come here.”
As soon as I am mirroring him, he points to the top of my head.
“This is the
tendo
point. You don’t want to get hit hard here.”
That sounds logical to me.
He moves his index finger down to the middle of my forehead, right at the hairline. “This is the
tento
point.” Now down slightly to the middle of my forehead, about an inch above my eyebrows. “This is the
uto
point.” Yes, the familiar point where all of Rei’s tension seems to congregate.
He moves from here to a spot between my upper lip and my nose, then just below my lower lip, over to my temple, and then to the spot just behind my ear, telling me the Japanese name of each pressure point as he points to it.
I know I feel like nothing more than a gentle vibration beneath his fingers, but I can feel him, so gloriously solid.
I feel like a dream sitting next to reality.
I try to forget the other reality—the nightmare of knowing this may be the closest we can ever come to touching each other. I am eye level with his mouth, watching his lips move as he talks. I don’t know why, after so many years, I find his lips so irresistible. Because Taylor’s kissed him? If Taylor used my mouth to kiss Rei, did I get cheated out of my first kiss?
“Anna? You with me?”
I look up into those indefinable eyes of his and nod. Using the vibration as a guide, he slides his hand slowly to that familiar spot at the back of my neck, his fingers on one side and his thumb on the other. He clears his throat. “This is the
shofu
point.” He moves his hand to the front of my neck and runs his fingers lightly over where my pulse should be. “And these are your carotid arteries. Thirty seconds of pressure here should knock you unconscious.”
Does he know? Can he tell I’m just floating here wondering how it would feel to kiss him? It’s pretty obvious to me. Every breath he takes echoes through me, slow and even, and when he slides his hand from around my neck, his energy swells through me like a gentle caress.
“Anna?” he whispers.
Even if I had vocal chords, I couldn’t speak. I’m infinitely grateful that I don’t need oxygen because I couldn’t breathe if my life depended on it. All I can do is nod once.
He leans in toward me and his sigh is sweet cinnamon. “It’s too bad we can’t just give her a peanut butter cup.”
CHAPTER 32
Rei doesn’t notice I’m deflating like a balloon with a slow leak.
“You know, it was stupid of me to tell her she’s allergic to peanuts.” He leans to the side and flips the light back on. “That might have worked, you know. Why do you look all mad?”
Why? Because I do
not
want to talk about peanut butter cups right now! I want him to turn out that light and continue his guided tour of my pressure points, but I can’t tell him that, so I come up with another reason, and it’s a good reason, too.
Because if you got caught handing her a peanut butter cup, you could get arrested. Again!
“Well, then, the challenge would be not to get caught.”
You really liked jail, didn’t you?
“No, but think about it. The first time you ate something with peanuts, you had a reaction and you just bounced right out of there, didn’t you. Maybe the same thing would happen to Taylor.”
Maybe. You’d have to make sure you had my epi with you.
“How long?”
How long what?
“If I can figure out a way to sneak her something with peanuts, how long do I wait until I use the epi? Do I wait until you’re unconscious? I mean, we’d need to maximize your chances.” He’s actually considering this dangerously stupid idea!
Rei, that’s not something they teach you when you learn how to use an epi. You’re taught to act quickly, that every second counts. You are NOT taught to play chicken and see how long you can go before you die. How am I supposed to know how long to wait?
“Why are you still mad? I think this might work.”
Well, I think you and Seth will end up in neighboring cells in a maximum security prison. It’s too risky for you.
Rei scoffs in the face of danger. “I’m more worried about you. As long as I use the epi in time, you’ll be okay, won’t you?”
Not necessarily.
“What do you mean, ‘not necessarily,’” he asks warily. “I thought the epi was your safety net.”
I mean, not necessarily. I need to get to a hospital in case I have a second reaction. Plus I’ve only ever had that one reaction. I have no idea if another one will be more or less severe. It’s a gamble for both of us. I vote we just clock her on the head.
“Can I use the keyboard?”
Sure. Just make sure you hold it with both hands when you hit her with it.
“Very funny.”
I glide away, and he sits and Googles “anaphylaxis.” I give him a sour look and wave.
“Why are you leaving? Are you still mad?”
I have no idea what I feel right now. Mad? Confused? Frustrated? Scared? All of the above? Yeah, that sounds about right.
I’m going to check on my father. I’ll see you later.
* * *
Despite the many stitches in his head, my father is not in nearly as much pain right now as he will be when he learns my mom has poured his entire stash down the drain. His head is bandaged like a mummy’s, and there’s an IV taped firmly to the back of his hand. He is probably heavily sedated, although I suspect he’s still quite drunk, as well.
I’ve always known him to have a dense gray aura, but now it’s nearly black. I’ve spent so many years trying not to look at him, hoping that maybe if I ignore him he’ll just go away. Well, now he’s gone, for a little while, anyway. I suppose if I vacuum out the deepest crevices of my brain, there are memories of the man who supposedly kissed my toes and blew raspberries on my belly. But what’s the point of remembering? Then I’ll just have to mourn the loss of what’s gone. It’s easier this way.
But I can’t help feeling a tiny bit of compassion for this broken man. I can’t gather any energy in here, it’s too heavy, so I go out under the starry sky and soak up what I can. I carry it back to him and release it, bit by bit, until the black fades to gray and the gray fades to blue.
* * *
Even though helping my father made me feel a little better, I’m not quite ready to go back to Rei’s right now. He’s overwhelming me with his obsessive need to save me and Seth, and a small, hopeless part of me wonders … what if? What if Rei is wrong? What if I never get back into my body? What if Rei does something stupid, tries to pass off a candy bar to Taylor and she survives, only to point a finger at Rei as the culprit who tried to kill her? What if Seth is convicted of Taylor’s murder and spends the rest of his life in prison? Even if we do get Taylor out of me, how do we keep her from haunting us for the rest of our lives? How did this one twisted girl get so much power over us?
And what the hell am I going to do about it?
CHAPTER 33
Rei is still sleeping when I cruise in at seven the next morning. Is he sick? I poke at him for a minute, which does nothing, so I bombard him with energy until he opens his eyes and stares at me.
“What?” he asks groggily.
The computer is still on. I have a feeling he stayed up late into the night surfing the internet.
You’re late for school.
He lifts his head up to read my message, and then he lies back down and closes his eyes. “I’m not going to school today. I’m going to finish my paper. Then, I don’t know, maybe I’ll hike up to Red Rocks or something. I need to get away from everything for a while to think.”
Hiking? There’s one day left until the trial and he’s going
hiking?
Okay, bye.
He opens his eyes once he hears the click of the keys and reads. “Where are you going?”
You need to get away from everything.
“Not from you!”
Oh. I watch him yawn and stretch. His hair is all tousled; his eyes are still soft and sleepy; and he does look very adorable, even though I’m still kind of mad at him. He sits up and the sheet slides down to his waist. Okay, I forgive him.
“What did you do for the rest of the night?” he asks as he pulls his shorts on over the green plaid boxers he slept in.
Same thing I’ve done just about every other night since I got locked out. I watch Taylor sleep and hope she slips out during a dream. Do I snore?
“Well, as boring as that sounds, it’s good thinking on your part. And no, you don’t snore. Why?”
Because Taylor snores, so I wonder if I snore, too.
“I’ve never noticed you snoring. And even if you do snore, so what? I’ll be right back.”
This truancy is very un-Rei-like. I hear the toilet flush, the water run, and Rei’s quiet footsteps coming back down the hall.
Are you skipping school because you want to avoid Taylor?
He sits on the bed and combs his hair back with his fingers as he reads my message. “That’s part of it. I just don’t want to talk to anyone at school about the trial, and I know people will ask me questions. Plus things were so hectic last night, I never finished this paper,” he admits.
He doesn’t have much left to finish on his paper, and then he invites me to go hiking with him. It’s a relatively short drive to South Burlington, and from the parking lot, it’s only about two and a half miles until we reach the top of Red Rocks. He’s quiet on the way up the trail. I’m not sure if this is because he doesn’t want to look like a crazy person, talking to himself, or if he feels the difference in vibration now that we are so close to the lake.
Water is a good conductor, not just for electricity, but for other kinds of energy, too. I’ve spent a lot of time on the beaches of Indonesia and Australia, where day is parallel to our night, because I love the erratic vibration of the ocean. The quiet hum of the lake is soothing after this crazy week. Even the trees are at peace, surrounded by a shimmery blue.
The view is incredible from the top, eighty feet high overlooking Lake Champlain. Kids come here all the time to cliff jump into the deep water below—in fact Rei and Seth were here last summer, but Rei didn’t tell me until after they got back. You have to wear old sneakers when you jump unless you either want to swim all the way up to the sandy beach or risk shredding your feet on freshwater mussels that live on the rocks along the shore. Rei is wearing his good hiking boots today.
He sits on the edge of the cliff, one leg dangling over. Except for a few boats motoring around the lake, no one is around, so I materialize beside him and we sit in companionable silence. Every now and then he tells me something random, like how the red quartzite rocks below us got their color from thousands of years of underwater oxidation during the Cambria period, and that he once dreamed he fell into an ice-covered lake and how the sun looked shining through the ice and water above him as he ran out of oxygen.