“Maybe,” she admitted.
Faith Good walked into the room and pointed at Rainer, her face clenched into a tight, angry frown. Of all the people who didn’t like Rainer, Faith liked him least of all. She started stomping around. The little boy with the train was over by the hearth. Choo-Choo! Choo-Choo! Then the squeak-clink started up again. God! Seriously?
“What’s wrong?” asked Rainer.
He looked around the room to see what she was seeing. But of course he couldn’t. The show was for her alone. She could barely hear him.
“Nothing,” said Finley over the din. “Nothing. Look, I have to go.”
“Okay,” he said, drawing out the word.
She moved back toward the door, and he grabbed his jacket, followed her out. She climbed on the bike, while he stood by, still looking helpless.
“What can I do?” he said. “How can I help?”
“I’ll call you,” she said, gunning the engine.
She left him standing there, looking after her, as she took off down the road as fast as she could go, the engine wailing. She couldn’t go fast enough, drive far enough. She wasn’t going to be able to drown them out, to outrun them.
We don’t choose, Eloise had warned. We are chosen.
*
She wound up at school. Maybe she could catch her professor, an older, somewhat joyless guy whom she had yet to see smile. Her other professors didn’t seem much older than Finley; there was a casual air to them—jeans, call me Sam, a kind of easy aura to the lectures, lots of “like” and “um” in their speech. But Dr. Burwell was the real deal—balding, sweater vest, leather briefcase. He always had an outline for each class—a pile of them printed and stapled, sitting in a neat stack on the corner of his desk for the taking. He did not post his outlines or assignments online.
He was packing up his things when she knocked on his door.
“Miss Montgomery,” he said. “Better late than never.”
She wouldn’t have thought he’d notice who was in class and who wasn’t. He seemed pretty wrapped up in his lectures on Jungian concepts. He nodded toward the papers on his desk, and she stepped inside and took one.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I had to work.” It wasn’t exactly a lie.
He nodded easily, then started rifling through his briefcase. When he found what he was looking for, he looked up and handed her the essay she’d submitted last week about the Jungian concept of synchronicity. A patient of Jung’s had reached an impasse in therapy, her rational mind not allowing her to accept some of the ideas of her unconscious. One night she dreamt of a golden scarab. The next day in therapy, she and her doctor heard an insect knocking at the window only to find that it was the golden scarab from her dream, a very rare occurrence for that place and climate. This experience led Jung to explore other strange coincidences that allowed his patients to receive information in “extra-sensorial ways.” Many of Jung’s theories delved into the paranormal, due to what he referred to as “uncanny happenings” in his early childhood. He even had a psychic medium in his family, had conducted séances, and had called for a serious scientific study of spiritualistic phenomena. Finley found this particularly fascinating.
“I enjoyed this,” he said. “Very insightful.”
She saw the letter A scrawled on the title page and felt a little rush of joy.
“I liked your thoughts on how the normal and the paranormal dwell side by side,” said Dr. Burwell. “How the things we think of as extraordinary or impossible may really just be unexplored aspects of the normal human psyche.”
She felt her cheeks flush; Finley was unaccustomed to praise like this.
“It sounded like you were writing from a personal interest,” he said, pulling on his coat. “Have you had unexplained experiences?”
“Some,” she said with a nod. He looked at her as if expecting her to go on. When she didn’t, he said, “Well, good work, Miss Montgomery. Try to make it to class next time. We’ll be talking about some of Jung’s theories on the supernatural. I’d love you to share some of your points with the class.”
She smiled. “I’ll be there.”
Outside, she took a breath. When winter fell in The Hollows, a low cloud cover seemed to block out the sky. She remembered last year feeling so closed in, so heavy with it. Having to garage her bike for three months and hitch rides from her grandmother had been a serious hindrance to her independence. She couldn’t afford her own car, her savings account was dwindling fast. She needed to get a job, a real one with a paycheck. Something that didn’t involve passing out in the woods and seeing dead people or working with desperate living people who needed help that she couldn’t give.