Splendor (17 page)

I could see the curve of Palos Verdes Peninsula to our left and, across the swath of ocean, my own island.

I got the feeling that Sabine was waiting for me to speak. I’d been pretty quiet all morning and the night before, too, so I was sure she knew I wasn’t in the best of moods. To her credit, she didn’t press me but seemed content to wait for me to be ready to share.

She’d be waiting a while. Even though I was furious with my father, it would feel traitorous to share his secret with Sabine. But there were other things I did want to speak to her about.

I had told her before about the dream I’d had of seeing myself through Will’s eyes. Now I told her about the other dreams that I’d remembered, visions that I realized I had been experiencing. She didn’t ask questions, just listened as I explained, but I could feel her energy quivering, growing more intense and focused.

It was nice that she was so interested in me. My parents seemed pretty wrapped up in their own extracurricular activities, so Sabine’s attention felt especially warm. And she seemed to really think I was
special,
that I had a talent, even though the dreams made no sense to me, even though they weren’t something I had to work for, like my skill in the saddle or my grades.

“Have you told Will about this yet?”

I hadn’t—not really. He would be back on the island in a couple of weeks, and I wanted to talk to him in person.

“It would be nice if you and Will could visit together when he’s in town,” Sabine offered. “I know the kids would love to see him again, and Martin, too.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That would be nice.” Inwardly, I thought that any excuse to spend time away from my parents was a good one.

“Would you like to practice some chanting?” Sabine asked.

“Here? Now?” My eyes scanned the beach; it wasn’t as crowded as the boardwalk behind us, but it was hardly what I’d call private.

“That’s all we have,” Sabine said, smiling as if pleased with her little joke. “The here and now.”

No one seemed to be paying attention to us.

Sabine pushed her cup into the sand to steady it, and I did the same. Then she closed her eyes and rolled her neck, slowly. “Join in whenever you’re ready,” she said.

I had been practicing the chant that Sabine had taught me. It wasn’t difficult, just hard to keep straight. It involved moving my head—to the left, to the right, up, and down, and back to center between each turn—and breathing in and out as I moved, as well as vocalizing a series of sounds.

“The true name of God is a mystery,” Sabine had told me. “The ancients believed the power of God’s true name was so strong as to be potentially devastating, so they rarely spoke it aloud. But after so many years of the name being veiled in secrecy, we forgot how to say it at all. All that is left are the consonants that form the name:
Y-H-V-H
. But the vowel sounds that connect them—those are lost. Still, if we work our way through all the possible permutations of vowel sounds, we will at some point speak the name…even if we do not know we have spoken it. And just the act of meditating on the sounds, of moving our heads and breathing in rhythm, with focus and concentration, brings us closer to God, to our highest and truest selves, to an ecstatic experience.”

So there on the beach, I joined her. I closed my eyes and touched my thumbs to my middle fingers, as Sabine did, and I breathed with her, moved with her, made the sounds with her.

At first I had to force myself not to open my eyes and check if anyone was staring at us. I felt my face flush at the possibility that a line of onlookers might have formed to laugh and point.

But Sabine’s voice was clear and fearless, and by the third round of head movements—up, center, left, center, right, center, down, center—my voice rang clearly, too.

It was as if I’d stepped away from the things that had been bothering me—my anger at my father, my confusion over the way I felt about Gunner, my yearning for Will—if only for a little while.

I stopped counting the rounds of our chant. With Sabine’s strong voice at my side, I found it easier to slip into each syllable, matching my tone to hers, knowing without looking that her head moved along with mine, that her breaths crested and released in tandem with my own. Direction ceased to exist, and slowly I separated myself from the sun above me and the sand beneath me. Slowly I felt warmth spreading through me, a sweet, radiating tingle that seemed like something I could almost reach, I could almost become, if only I concentrated more intently.

But the more I concentrated on reaching that sensation, the more it seemed to elude me, frustrating me, and I became aware again of the sounds I was making, the way I moved my head, the breaths I took, and the moment was gone as if a spell had broken.

Then I realized that I didn’t hear Sabine’s voice any longer; I chanted alone. My voice faltered and flagged, and I stopped.

When I opened my eyes I found Sabine watching me. Her eyes seemed eager.

“You felt something,” she said.

I had. Nodding, I said, “I think so. I felt—not me, for a minute, if that makes sense.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “It does make sense. But you never stopped being you. Anything you may have felt…it was you. It
is
you. That reaching out that you felt—toward the universe, toward God—it’s a reaching
inward,
a form of touching your truest self. There can be profound joy, Scarlett. Even ecstasy.”

Until that moment, sitting on the beach with Sabine, the warmth of our chant fading from me, I hadn’t clearly articulated to myself why I was interested in the study of Kabbalah. Last year, reading Martin’s books, my research had been a way to heal myself, a way to channel my energy into care rather than harm, as well as a way to learn more about Will’s strange abilities. But since Will had left the island, my focus had become less clear. Maybe I studied Kabbalah because it made me feel less detached from Will, who was separated from me by the length of a continent. Maybe I studied to avoid thinking about my family. But nearly grasping that elusive sensation—now I had a new reason to study, and a positive one at that.

It felt
good.
That surge of warmth and energy—whether something I channeled or something I created—I missed it already, and it had only been a moment since it passed. I wanted more of it.

I smiled at Sabine. She smiled back. I asked, “Can we try that again?”

I took the last ferry home Sunday night, and during the whole ride I sat in the open bow of the boat, feet tucked beneath me, fingers and thumbs gently touching, weaving my way through the permutations Sabine and I had practiced. Everyone else stayed inside, but as we plowed through the ocean toward home, the sun extinguished as it dipped into the water, I practiced ecstasy.

“Your mother called.”

Dad was sitting in the kitchen, waiting for me. The lights weren’t on; I’d thought maybe he wasn’t home. Maybe he was out with Alice.

“Jesus, Dad, you scared the crap out of me!”

“Really?” he said.

I flipped the light on.

His face looked drawn; his hands were clasped on the empty table. “Where were you?”

The anger I’d been feeling for almost a week now simmered inside me, daring him to push me further. “I told you,” I said smoothly. “I was on the mainland.”

“You knew I’d think you were with your mom.”

“Frankly,” I said, “I’d think you’d have been glad for some time without me hanging around, regardless of where I went.”

He looked confused. “What are you talking about?”

I sighed. “Forget it,” I said. “What did Mom say?” I’d gotten calls from both of them, one after the other, while I was on the ferry, but I’d ignored them and hadn’t listened to the messages.

“She was looking for you. When I told her you’d gone to the mainland, it took her a while to calm me down, I’ll tell you that much. She said you must have gone to those friends of Martin Cohen—is that where you were?”

I didn’t want to answer him. I didn’t want to check in with him. So I just stood there in the kitchen, my backpack slung over my shoulder. “I’m tired,” I said. “Can I go to bed?”

His eyes were pained. “Scar—” he said, but I’d already turned away.

In my room I slammed my pack on my bed. All the warmth and comfort I’d felt with Sabine and by myself on the ferry—all of it was gone, replaced by a mean emptiness and anger.

I could feel Dad steaming in the kitchen, and I stood waiting for him to follow me, willing him to, planning what I would say if he dared to darken my doorway.

But he didn’t come.

And then there was one.

The buildings and the paved streets, the cars with their agitated drivers, the traffic signals and flashing lights—all of it formed an animated concrete labyrinth. He didn’t know this cityscape; it was not his home. He tried to get free of it, tried to get to a place where he could take a breath of air.

She was behind him, clasping his hand, which felt like a beacon of hope in the throbbing crowd. But he couldn’t clearly see where he needed to go. So, even though he knew it might mean losing her in the crowd, he squeezed her fingers and let go.

Then the path he needed to take lit up in front of him—not with lights, but with sensation, as if a long golden wire snaked through the web of bodies, through the twists and turns of the streets and the towering buildings.

He heard a word behind him—
Will.
A call to him, or a question, or a command. But he couldn’t turn to answer it, so he chose to hear it as an order—use your will, find your way, set things right.

And he would do it. He willed it to be so. A mighty flame of vengeance stoked his heart and he broke into a run, the echo of the word—
Will
—calling him back, urging him forward.

I
woke with a gasp, sitting straight up in bed, my hair wild around my shoulders as if I’d been thrashing in my sleep, or running hard. My heart thrummed in my chest like a hummingbird and the whole world seemed to vibrate in the aftermath of my dream.

The red numbers of my alarm clock read 4:23. The sky outside my window, still black. I should go back to sleep; I should pull my quilt back over my cold shoulders. But I felt the restless pounding of feet on pavement from my dream and needed to get up. Outside my bedroom, the house was heavy with sleep. I heard my dad’s even, deep breaths from his room down the hall. My long white nightgown tangled between my legs as I tiptoed down the stairs to the first floor.

It was midweek; we had one guest, a loud snorer we’d put in the Purple Room just off the front hallway. I passed his doorway quietly and found myself in the Yellow Room, the place I’d once sat with Will. No one was in it now. I found myself staring into the yawning maw of the darkened fireplace, remembering when this room had been bathed in firelight as Will shared with me his story.

It was like there was a hook in my brain and it pulled me like a fish on a line through the dark streets of the city.

In my dream I had felt the tug of that thin golden wire he had described, reeling me toward an unavoidable destination. But in this dream it hadn’t been painful; it had been intoxicating, heady, a siren song.

Next to the fireplace squatted a basket of split logs. I arranged three of them in the hearth along with some loosely crumpled newspapers and struck a match. When the fire caught I lowered myself in front of it, pushing away the chairs where Will and I had sat and settling cross-legged on the floor. The fire’s fingers reached and splayed, warming my chest, my face, my hands. I closed my eyes and tried to recapture the feeling I’d had in my dream, the thrilling urgency I’d felt while running in Will’s body. But I couldn’t grasp it now; I was too awake.

So I fell to chanting again, almost without intending to do so, softly stretching my head up, then back to center, then turning left, center, right, center, down, and back to center. The more I did it, the better it felt, and I added the breaths—in and out, deep, chest-opening breaths that left me light-headed and somewhere just above my body, the way hyperventilating had when I was a kid.

And the sounds—
Y-H-V-H
—strung together with each vowel in turn, wound together in a loop of sound as strong as the golden wire from my dream but this time all my own.

Time passed. The fire turned to embers, but still I was warm, an internal conflagration replacing the heat from the logs. The room grew lighter, and undefined shadow shapes around me became chairs, a little end table, the lamp upon it. Everything seemed tinged with pink and orange. Day had come, and though I registered this fact, it seemed that I wasn’t attached to it. I at once saw and set aside the details of the room, the details of dawn. The tingling thrill I had felt on the cusp of embracing when I’d chanted side by side with Sabine returned to me. Again I focused my energy on reaching that place, grasping that specific vibration.

But as before, as soon as I placed my intention and reached for that sensation, it eluded me. I wanted to cry out to it as if that feeling was another person or a tame animal. But there was nothing tame about it; it was wild and feral and beautiful and would not belong to me, not that day. Then I suddenly noticed my legs beneath me. They felt stiff.

The moment was lost once more.

To shift from that sensation back into the mundane activities of a school morning—tooth brushing, shoelace tying, breakfast eating—felt disappointingly pedestrian. Even Lily’s appearance at my front door as I latched it behind me, dressed in cords and a hoodie, my backpack slung over my shoulder and a bagel balanced on the rim of my coffee cup, didn’t fully recall me to myself.

“It’s such a
bore
the way you’ve been taking off on the weekends,” she complained as we headed up the street toward school. “Thank
god
I’ve had Gunner to keep me entertained, or I don’t know what I would do.”

“You guys went out again?”

“That boy,” Lily gushed, “is like
catnip
to parents. Jack and Laura
adore
him. He came over Saturday morning—he
said
he was returning a book he’d borrowed, but of course I hadn’t loaned him one—and they invited him to stay for breakfast. Maybe it’s his accent. Or his smile…” She sighed, remembering. Then she asked, “Do you think he’ll like my outfit?”

She held her arms out and did a little spin. I don’t think you could really call what she was wearing
pants
…
tights
would be a more accurate word, though I’d never seen a pair made out of fabric like that. They were textured velvet, I think, plum colored, and fit Lily like a second skin. They disappeared into yellow Hunter rain boots; I guess there were some clouds in the sky, though the ground was dry. But whatever…Lily could pull it off.

Really, her sweater was demure: positively no cleavage. But the way it wrapped across her chest, a long thin rope of twisted ribbon passing twice around her torso like a Grecian goddess’s before ending in a little bow just beneath her right breast, belied its baby-girl shade of pink.

“Who wouldn’t like it?” I said. “What’s not to like?”

“Exactly.”

“So what did you and Gunner do after breakfast?” My voice sounded light and tinged with best-girlfriend interest. I hoped only I felt the subtle edge of my words that gnawed at me.

“We took a walk.”

That sounded pretty innocuous.

“Back to Connell’s place. He and his folks were out for the day, so Gunner and I had the place to ourselves.”

Ah.

“Did you…have fun?”

Lily laughed. “We didn’t
do it,
if that’s what you’re asking.”

I hated that it kind of was.

“We just hung out. Talked. Smoked a bowl of this killer weed he had. And, you know…fooled around a little.” She grinned and looked around before stopping and turning toward me, angling her back to the school just up the road. Then she stretched open the neck of the sweater, pulling it down to reveal the milky crest of her right breast. And I saw why her fabulous cleavage was under wraps.

“He gave you a
hickey
?”

“Shhh.” She laughed, yanking her sweater back into place and shaking her dark curls. “The whole
world
doesn’t need to know!”

“Sorry, sorry.” I had taken only a few sips of my coffee, but I felt jittery, on edge, like I’d downed a whole pot.

Her grin threatened to split her face.

“So does that mean you’re official?”

She shrugged. “Gunner isn’t really into labels,” she said in a tone that revealed they’d definitely talked about it.

We’d arrived at school. Just ahead, standing under a tree in front of the main building, was Gunner. He could have been dressed for a trial; he wore a blazer and a sweater-vest, and the neat knot of a tie peeked out.

“He’s waiting for me,” Lily said, and I could feel her contained energy at my side. She was practically vibrating, and as Gunner caught sight of us and ambled our way, I wondered for a second if she might explode from the sheer thrill of it.

“Good morning, ladies,” Gunner said when we reached each other. His smile landed on Lily briefly but then turned to me. “Scar,” he continued, “might we chat for a moment before class? I have a question about our little joint autopsy.”

“Um…okay,” I said, and only as we were walking away did I think to turn and say, “See you later, Lil.”

But the words froze on my lips. Her gaze was venomous.

That afternoon I was relieved to escape to the stable. I turned Delilah out in the smaller arena and watched as she trotted a little ways before lowering herself with a grunt to her knees and then rolling in the sand. It seemed to take her more effort than usual to fling her legs up and over so that she could rub her other side.

She stood and shook off the sand; it puffed out around her. Then she strolled over to an edge of the arena where she could best reach grass across the fence and settled in to her snack.

It was the second week of December. Delilah looked definitely pregnant. Her belly stretched beneath her in a round taut curve. Her gait was more rolling, less up and down and more stretched out. And eating, rather than running, seemed to be her preferred leisure activity.

Even though it had been my idea to get her pregnant—and my hard-earned dollars that had paid for the sperm—I felt kind of sad. Like I was losing my best friend to a stranger.

As I thought those words, it occurred to me that they fit more than one of my relationships. I didn’t know how much longer I could stand this hot-and-cold Lily; one moment she was pouring out her secrets to me, and the next she was surrounded by people at lunch, barely acknowledging my existence.

It pissed me off, actually, that she could let the attentions of some guy dictate what was happening between us. A little voice urged me to admit that she wasn’t the only one susceptible to Gunner’s charms; after all, I’d let him lead me away from Lily that morning.

And what for? As soon as he got me out of Lily’s sight, he claimed that he’d forgotten what he’d wanted to ask.

But the damage was done. Not only had Lily been too popular at lunch to save a seat for me, she’d disappeared from campus before I’d been able to track her down after school.

Horses were simpler, I told myself. After returning Delilah to her stall and pouring a little extra A&M into her feeder, I decided this would be a good day to see if Traveler had changed his mind yet about trot poles.

I could use a good fight.

At last, at last, at long, long last, the day came that Will would return to the island. School was closed for winter break; Lily and her family had headed off to Australia (“The twins want to see boxing kangaroos,” Laura had told me by way of explaining this year’s destination); and I paced my bedroom wildly, back and forth, wondering if I’d chosen the right outfit, if Will would be glad to see me, if that feeling we’d shared—that magical electric connection—would still be there when we touched or if I’d somehow ruined it by feeling the way I did about Gunner.

People misunderstand the word
ambivalent.
It had been one of the words on the list I’d studied over the summer, vocabulary words most likely to appear on the SAT. I’d been surprised to find that I’d misunderstood the word for years. People think
ambivalent
means that you don’t care about something one way or the other. But that isn’t what it means at all.
Ambivalent
can mean desperately wanting two completely different things—being pulled equally in opposing directions.

My mind wasn’t ambivalent; it was Will I loved, Will I admired, Will, Will, Will.

But my body didn’t feel so certain. It was ambivalent.

I’d seen Gunner the night before. I had gone down to the beach just before sunset, wrapped in a wool blanket and holding a cup of hot tea. I hadn’t seen him standing in the shade of the pier; it wasn’t until I had made a little nest for myself on the sand and had settled in to watch the final sunset before Will’s return that he stepped out of the shadows.

Just then the sun lit the sky in its last triumph and it glowed behind him like a giant fireball, rays of orange blinding me. I couldn’t see his face, just his form, the black outline of him.

“Hello, Gunner,” I said, but when he stepped closer to me, preparing to sit on the sand, I said, “Goodbye, Gunner.”

“Not in the mood for company?”

“Not really.” I meant it. Really, I did. I wanted to stare into the blackening sea and dream about my reunion with Will. So why did my traitor flesh tingle the way it did? Why did my stomach turn in slow flips?

He shrugged. “I just wanted to say goodbye,” he said, and started to turn away.

I was on my feet instantly, against my own best intentions. “You’re leaving?”

When he turned back to me, his smile was slow. Sardonic. “Does that bother you?”

I didn’t answer.

“Connell’s parents are taking us to Los Angeles to visit his aunt over the holiday,” he said. “Don’t fret. I will return.”