We walked down the narrow paved road running through the center of the dilapidated older section of the cemetery and passed a small white and green building, probably a caretaker’s shed. I stepped over a low brick retaining wall that defined the newer section where Dad had been buried, and Zak followed.
Even though it was October and the air had begun to cool off from the scorching Texas summer, it was still so humid the air felt liquid. The moon shone bright enough to bathe the cemetery in blue light, causing the monuments to cast long, eerie shadows across the grass.
I inhaled, took in the salty sea breeze, and rubbed my hands over the goose bumps on my arms. I knew the beach was almost a mile away, but it still unnerved me. From the time I was little I’d hated the beach for no apparent reason. Mom called my fear of the beach a childhood phobia, but I didn’t seem to be outgrowing it. I zipped up my blue windbreaker and dragged my hair out of my face, determined not to let an irrational fear get the best of me.
Zak reached over and took my hand. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m good,” I lied. I laced my fingers through his and gave his hand a squeeze. “Thanks for being so cool about bringing me all the way down here to Galveston.”
“I just want you to feel better, babe.” He set his guitar down and wrapped me in his arms, giving me a slow, tender kiss that made my knees weak. His lips were warm and tasted like whiskey. For a moment, I forgot all about noises, and voices, and hallucinations.
From the corner of my eye, I saw something move in the shadows of the trees lining the perimeter fence. Then there was the distinct pop of a twig snapping. I pulled away from Zak and held my breath, listening and watching the darkness beneath the trees.
Zak stepped into my line of vision. “Something wrong?”
“Shhh. Listen.”
“What?”
“Shhh!”
Trembling, I studied the shadows. The sensation of being watched was overwhelming—like insects creeping under my skin. I clutched Zak’s large hand and listened, gripping Dad’s guitar as tightly as I could.
Nothing.
No movement and no sound other than my frantic heartbeat and the static in my head.
Fantastic.
Add paranoia to my list of crazies.
I took a deep breath and released his hand. “It was nothing. Just my nerves, I guess.”
This was the first time Zak had ever given me the you’re-a-crazy-person look—or at least the first time I’d seen it.
Blinking back tears, I picked up my guitar and continued toward the corner where my dad was buried, determined not to look back over my shoulder at the trees.
Dad’s headstone was the only one carved from black granite in this section, which made it easy to find. The surface was polished to such a high sheen, you could see your reflection in it. I stopped several yards away and sat on a bench, pulling his guitar case against my chest. My insides churned, and I knew I’d break down if I got too close. Zak plopped down next to me and unscrewed the top of his bottle.
“Want some?” he asked, whiskey sloshing as he pushed it toward me.
“No. Thanks.” I bit my lip and fought the urge to ask him to slow down.
“You should tell your mom what’s going on,” he said, taking another swallow.
“I can’t. She might have to lock me up, like she did with my dad—it’d wreck her.” I ran my fingers over the guitar case and popped it open, but couldn’t bring myself to lift the guitar out.
Zak pulled his out and began tuning. “What’re we playing?”
I swept my palm over the surface of Dad’s guitar. “‘Free Fallin’,’” I said. It was Dad’s favorite song and the last one we’d played together. This guitar hadn’t been touched since. I’d used my own, but hadn’t had the guts to even look at his. I lifted the guitar out and laid it in my lap as Zak strummed the first few chords of the song, checking his tuning. Waves of grief swept through me as the crisp smell of mahogany and Dad rose from deep inside the instrument.
“Whoa. Cool guitar,” Zak said, shifting on the bench so he was angled toward me.
“Yeah, it’s not spruce.” It had a natural matte finish and was the color of chocolate. Dad said he bought it because it was the same shade of brown as my eyes. The strings moaned as I ran my hand over them, bumping my fingertips along the frets. It wasn’t as out of tune as I’d have expected for having been untouched for nine months. I could almost feel Dad’s hand on mine as I adjusted the pegs. The patch of patina where Dad had worn the surface down below the strings was smoother than the rest of the wood, and I ran my palm over it.
“I couldn’t help him, Zak.”
He stopped strumming, but said nothing. That was one of the things I liked most about Zak: he was a great listener.
I wiped a tear off the top of the guitar with my sleeve. “Mom and I tried everything, but it wasn’t enough. Our love wasn’t enough to keep him here.”
“Oh, babe. I’m so sorry.” He tucked my hair behind my ear.
“I couldn’t save him.” The noise in my head became a little louder, or maybe I just was more aware of it at that moment. “Nobody’s going to be able to save me, either.”
“I’m here, babe.” He laid his hand over mine. “We’ll get through this. It’ll be different for you. The pills help, right?”
I wanted to believe him. I really did, but something in me knew what was happening was out of my control. Nothing I could do would stop it.
Zak screwed the top off the Jack Daniels. “To your dad,” he said, holding the bottle to the moon before taking a gulp. He passed it to me.
“To you, Dad,” I whispered to his tombstone before raising the bottle to my lips, shuddering as I swallowed.
I placed the bottle under the bench and strummed the first few chords of “Free Fallin’.”
I didn’t know how drunk Zak was until we began to play. He knew the song, but his fingering was sloppy and his rhythm was off, which was never the case when he was sober. Eventually, he stopped even trying to play, and I finished the last chorus by myself.
I’d come to the cemetery thinking it would help my restlessness. Singing to Dad hadn’t brought the relief I’d expected. In fact, I felt edgier—like I was missing something.
Zak snapped the clasp on his guitar case and scooted closer while I strummed. I didn’t struggle when he took the guitar from me because he was pretty messed up, and I didn’t want to damage it. After it was safely in the case, I moved to lean against the mausoleum on the other side of Dad’s grave.
Zak followed. “I can make you feel better,” he whispered in my ear as he put his hands on the pitted marble either side of my head. “Make you forget this.”
I looked at the headstones around us. “Zak. Not now,” I said, placing my hands on his broad chest.
“C’mon, Lenzi.” He ran his hands under my shirt, fingertips grazing my skin.
I grabbed his wrists. “Zak, please. Not at my father’s grave.”
He froze, then took a couple of steps back and put his hands up in surrender. “You’re right, babe. Got carried away. I just wanted to make you feel better.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and shrugged. “Sorry.”
I exhaled slowly through my nose and relaxed against the mausoleum.
He glanced over his shoulder at Dad’s tombstone. “You want some time alone?”
Crossing my arms over my chest, I nodded.
“Whatever you need, babe.” He gave me a kiss on the forehead before he shuffled off to a bench in the moon shadow of a vine-covered mausoleum and lay down. Good. In a few hours he’d sober up enough to drive me home.
I stayed leaning against the mausoleum for a few moments, watching Zak’s chest rise and fall. I wanted to apologize, but thought better of it.
It worried me when Zak got wasted. His dad died from an overdose when he was a little boy—Zak had been too young to even remember him—and his mom kicked Zak out when he graduated from high school last year. That’s probably why we were so good together—he understood loss and loneliness. But I was lucky compared to Zak. At least I’d gotten to know my dad. He never even had that chance.
As his breathing slowed and he drifted into sleep, the shadows of the trees in the moonlight played across his face, accentuating his strong jaw and high cheekbones.
I reached into the compartment under the neck of Dad’s guitar and pulled out the lotus flower I’d made from the sandwich wrapper.
I knelt in the grass in front of Dad’s tombstone, my reflection in the shiny surface blue and ghostly, and placed my paper flower on his grave. “I’m going nuts, Dad.” I ran my fingers over the carved letters of his name. He’d only been forty-five when he parked his car on the train track. And he had started hearing voices when he was in college. It was happening to me much younger. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to end up like you.”
I placed my palm flat against the slick blank space where Mom’s name would be carved when she died, and the chill of the stone seeped into my hand.
Another face appeared next to mine in the reflective surface of the tombstone. The face of the guy I’d seen in the car when my eyes were closed. Crap. Now I was hallucinating with my eyes open. And even after taking Xanax.
I ran my fingertips over his reflection.
“You’ve kept me waiting forever, Rose,” he said in a smooth, rich voice.
I sat back and stared at the vivid image my mind had conjured in that reflection. He was tall and thin, with longish hair. Well, if I was going to hear bogeymen, I supposed it was better that I could see them too, especially if they looked like this one. But why would I conjure one that called me by my middle name?
I’d had enough weird for one day. It was time to relegate him to my imagination where he belonged.
“Okay, you can just take off now.” I waved my hand toward the entrance, shooing him away like a child.
“I can understand if you want me reassigned.”
I covered his reflection with my hands. “Back you go. Back to my brain. This isn’t really happening.”
“Rose, look at me,” he said. The grass crunched behind me as if someone were really there.
Oh, God. My hallucinations were taking corporeal form.
I covered my face with my hands and shuddered. No wonder Dad had been terrified. How much of this could I take before I ended up just like him? My heart pounded in my ears.
There was a gentle touch on my shoulder. “Look at me.”
I jerked away. “No. This isn’t real.” I pressed my palms tight to my eyes and took a deep breath. “You’re going to go away now,” I ordered. Shouldn’t a figment of my imagination do what I wanted it to do? “I’m going to open my eyes, and you’re going to be gone. Got it? Opening on three. One, two, three.”
I opened my eyes and looked straight into the eyes of the guy squatting right next to me.
“Shit!” I jumped up and backed away.
“Rose—”
“Stop calling me that! My name isn’t Rose. I told you to go away.” I held up my hands to ward him off.
His brow furrowed. “Your name isn’t Rose?”
Well, technically it was. Sort of. My mom dreamed she had a daughter named Rose the night before I was born. She thought it was some sort of message, but she and my dad had already agreed on Lenzi, so she stuck it in the middle. But I wasn’t telling that to some freaky hallucination. Besides, I’d never told a living soul my middle name. I hated it.
“No. My name isn’t Rose.”
“How odd . . . It’s your seventeenth birthday today, right?”
For a moment, I was startled that he knew stuff about me—but hey, he was just a figment of my imagination, right? He’d know everything I knew. I decided to play along. “Yeah, it’s my birthday, why?”
The boy shoved the hair out of his eyes and let out an audible sigh. “What a relief. For a minute, I thought I was too early. I mean, I felt your soul calling, and I came right away. I wasn’t really expecting you yet. I’m only seventeen. Usually, I’m at least twenty-one when you show up. I figured I had four more years before you’d emerge. Or maybe even longer. When you denied me, I thought something was wrong.” He smiled. “Your sense of humor is seriously lacking, Rose. You’ve never been very funny.”
“Yeah, right. My soul called you.” This hallucination might be mildly amusing if this guy would quit calling me Rose.
A troubled look crossed his face. “Of course it did.”
Enough is enough. “Look, whoever you are, this—”
“Alden. My name is Alden, Rose. You know that.” From the look on his face you’d have thought he was watching a car wreck.
“Okay . . . Alden, this has been a lot of fun and all, but it’s time for this little mind trip or whatever it is to end. Time for you to go away.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe you want a different Protector. Say the word, and I can be reassigned. I can certainly understand that, considering how you died.”
Well, that scored a perfect ten on the creep-o-meter. “I died?”