The Summer We Came to Life

Chapter

35





“HOLY CRAP!”

I can’t help but laugh at Mina’s words and the sound echoes like an empty silo. I’m in a house of mirrors, piecing together slivers of landscape materializing out of the light. The water does stretch into eternity—a windowpane mirage of water and clouds.

I turn to see the grass and revel in surprise at the return of my body. It feels like goosebumps from a lover’s touch—every inch of my skin springs back into being and sings in the sun. I surrender to an avalanche of sensation; I celebrate it—the air coursing down every alleyway of my insides. It feels so good I start to cry. When the hot tears traverse my cheeks, they are like drops of sunlight dripping off the tip of my nose.

And the dripping sunshine brings me face-to-face with Mina.

Seeing her is a spark of static shock, as all the details of her face rush over me at once. Her smooth, clear skin. The tiny scar above her left eyebrow, her thick hair always swinging from behind her ears, that tremble of her lips when she’s about to smile—

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey.”

I reach out like she is a soap bubble that might vanish at any moment, but the shock of raven hair between my fingers is coarse and soft at the same time, in any case tangible.

“I tried to find you.”

Mina smiles. “I know.”

I hug her. Blasts of memory superimpose over the warmth of her skin, the grip of her fingers. I’m bowled over by the sensation of existence, and by the contradictory feeling of surreal familiarity. She pulls back and winks.

“This isn’t exactly what I had in mind,” she says.

And then we burst out laughing, like the day we rode a roller coaster seventeen times, like the time we ice-skated in the middle of the night, or gorged on pancakes after prom, like all the thousands of times we shared a perfect moment of happiness in life.

Except that none of them felt like this.

Our laughter is a thousand flashlights clicking on at once. Happiness bubbles between us like warm, oozing honey. She is every good thing that ever happened in my life, and the reason that all the bad turned out okay. Memories stream from her and rise around me like a warm bath after a long day. Listening to us laugh, I am five years old; I am seven. I am nineteen.

And everything is okay. Everything is alive. I still exist. The lake laughs with us. The sky is smiling. The clouds chuckle. I feel like I might burst of glee. It feels a little bit like falling, like a stream of water arcing toward the earth. I am a balloon filling with water. No, wait.

Light. I’m filling up with light.

The expression on Mina’s face changes and then everything is obliterated by white blinding light.



“What happened?”

“I don’t know, Sam. Where are you?” She sounds scared.

Green. Everything is greenish-brown. I think I’m in the lake.

Tinkling laughter. “Figures.”

The water starts to swirl around me, rushing like a river, no, like an ocean. A dark, menacing ocean. I don’t love the water anymore. I don’t know how to swim anymore. I am a bronzed version of my former self, like baby shoes. And I am sinking.

“Sam, what’s wrong?”

I’m drowning. I’m sinking at lightning speed into a black void beneath the surface. Everything swirls gray and blue, and cold like the dead dust of the moon. Dark. The water is so loud. And angry.

“Samantha, stop it. I should have warned you. I’m sorry. I’ll find you. Just listen to me. Like before. I will always find you.”

Your eyes. I can see your eyes.

“There you are, silly girl. Come to the surface now. Come on.”

I rise through the placid water and break through the surface. I can see the sky, blue and clear, the clouds anchored in place, like I could pull myself up by them. I look at the dock. Mina waves, trying not to laugh.

“Don’t make fun of me!” Wow. When I shout, it’s really loud.

“Yes, it is. Come sit with me.”

I swim to her and climb the wooden ladder to the dock. I sling a dripping arm across Mina’s shoulders and smack a wet kiss on her cheek. “Okay, Lucy, you got some ’splainin’ to do. Where the hell are we?”

Mina’s face falls a little, softens. “I’m not exactly Dante’s Beatrice, kiddo. I didn’t know you were going to die.”

My stomach lurches into my throat. I’d been so focused on feeling alive that I’d bounded past the truth. In a flash I remember swimming purposefully into a gigantic wave, up, up, and reaching her, gripping her freezing cold hand—

“Isabel! Is she alive?”

Mina nods silently. Thank God.

But that means I didn’t make it, doesn’t it? I put a hand to my chest, try to keep my thundering heart from being ripped out. But— “But I have a body. I’m breathing.” I look at Mina’s chest rising and falling. “You’re breathing.”

Mina smiles sadly. “I think it’s a projection.” She brings a hand up in front of her face and then waves it across the horizon surrounding us like a snow globe. “Alternate worlds, Sam, like you said. Alternate possibilities. I created this one. From memory.” She fingers the frayed edge of my sundress, an old favorite stitched up in three places. “Including us. Apparently, I can’t imagine a world where we don’t breathe.”

So of course I have to try to stop breathing. But there’s no way to stop without holding your breath, making me hyper-aware of my lungs, the air pushing against them, and the fact that I’m about to pass out.

Mina snorts in laughter. “Nice try, Einstein.”

I deflate noisily, but I don’t feel like laughing anymore. “You’ve been here the whole time. Locked up here by yourself.” My head is a bag of Jiffy Pop, kernels of questions about to explode like a machine gun.

“Not exactly.”

I look around at the eerily tranquil summer day, my skin prickling like I’m being watched. “I don’t get it. An alternate world? You just—poof—landed on a dock?”

Mina frowns. “Well, that’s the thing. When I went, I heard a different voice—my mother’s, I think. She was guiding me, helping me to create a space where I could join her. Same as how I got you here. But I kept thinking about you, about our plans, our research. And the light scared me, so I conjured a favorite memory—this place. Then I ended up here all alone.”

I study Mina’s face, sadness draped over it like a funeral veil. And, I realize now, she’s trying not to show me she’s afraid. Her mother’s voice, she said she heard, like all those stories of near-death experiences. My next words I whisper. “But why do you think it’s an alternate world, Em? And not just—” I shiver in the sun “—death?”

“Well—” Mina’s face turns purposefully mischievous, a twinkling in her black eyes I know all too well “—I’ll show you.” She takes my hand, pressing my fingers together hard. Her eyes catch mine and hold, like now I’m the soap bubble hovering on a breeze. “I have no idea if you’re ready.” She scoots forward on the dock, pulling me along. “We’ll find out.”

I resist her tugging. The last thing I want to do is go for a dip. “What do you want me to do?”

“Jump.”

Mina yanks me into the water and everything goes black. I scream like a fish hooked through the eyeball must scream inside its head.