I warn you, don’t die without sharing your song.
But we can’t die, Gran. Of all people, how does she not know this? It suddenly becomes enormously important that I find a way to hear my song. I feel panicky, like I’m in peril of eternal soul agony if I am sucked into the winds before I hear my song from this life. Or share it. Why didn’t I ask her what happens if I don’t?
There’s a pit of writhing snakes in my belly.
I need to think about something else.
I frantically pull out the folded paper from my jeans pocket. It’s a quote from someone named Bill Hicks:
There is no such thing as death; life is only a dream and we’re the imagination of ourselves.
Such unbelievable syncing with my thoughts that I know it’s not an accident I got this slip of paper out of all the scraps. The universe is whispering again. I reread the quote. I’m already imagining things when I’m not on drugs. If I’m the imagination of myself, then that means there are always two of me.
Is it this other me who follows?
Restless wandering, passing everyone in the kitchen and living room. I step over two girls reverently touching each other’s faces as I head down the motor home’s thin hallway. I look in the mirror, trying to summon her, this other me, to boldly face her down. I see myself. My lips are beautiful, pillowy and curved upward at the corners, like my mother’s. I admire the strong structure of my collarbone and shoulders. I can see my heartbeat, a tantalizing pulsing pearl in the indent at my throat. I step closer, peer deep into myself. My eyes are so big and so black and I think . . .
That’s the hole she crawls out of.
Suddenly she’s there. We stare at each other, this girl and I. She watches me like I’m a rare species in a cage. And I watch her. I wonder whose vision is truer. Maybe her world is as real as mine. Maybe I am someone else’s dream. Maybe she’s as scared of me as I am of her. Wouldn’t that be weird?—?we two, feeding each other’s writhing snake?
Wind rushes through the motor home like a jump door’s been opened. I slam on the glass with my fist.
Her eyes blink a delayed beat later.
A sharp chill seeps in through my listening ears, invades my breathless mouth, stabs my witnessing eyes. Every velvet inch of my black skin itches from the biting cold burrowing into my pores, and I fear that if I look down, I’ll have turned white. Iced over.
She presses her palm to the mirror where mine rests and leans her forehead against the glass.
I suck in my breath and lean my head forward too. It’s cold. So cold. But I do it because I feel seen, because I want to feel connected with someone, anyone. She knows I’m here. She invites me in. Reaches through the door and grabs me by the throat.
I lean into her, my mouth on the freezing window of her world, and think, How strange?. . .
I feel
myself
freefall.
Nine
BSBD—?BLUE SKIES, BLACK DEATH. That’s what we say when a skydiver dies. But there’s no blue sky around me, only bleak and utter darkness.
This freefall has me kicking wildly, my arms spinning and flailing, like I’m swimming, using every ounce of strength not to drown. She is wrapped around my torso, her weight an anchor. I’m struggling to keep her from pulling me under.
Soaking black yearning, hot red fury, and crystalline shards of glass. My whole world is distilled into color and feeling. This new, shiny blade of fear pierces me in the gut, cuts deeper than any feeling I’ve ever had.
I’m fighting for my life.
I punch at her, my fist meeting more glass. It shatters against my knuckles. Her grasp tightens. I kick harder, but my legs sink into blackness like thick mud. A scream rips from my throat. My voice cuts like diamonds. I taste the blood that runs down the back side of my tongue.
You’re so cavalier, she tells me, her voice angry, accusatory, to dance on the blade of life and death. And you’re wrong . . . stupidly wrong. What you do does matter. Death is the end. You can die. You. Will. Die.
Sharp shards of glass cut through me as I try to deny her words. She whispers that I’ve slipped from the knife’s edge.
We tumble in the fall, and now I’m the one dangling, hanging on to her . . .?on to myself?. . .?I look up at my body, at my own terrified beauty. I was a beautiful light. Was. One by one, my fingers rip away.
I drop from myself.
I am the leaf, drained of color, crumbling, quaking, as it falls from the tree.
Ten
THERE’S HEAVINESS IN coming out of freefall. Gravity has such strong hands. The body is constricting, a corset that’s too tight. It’s hard to take a full breath. The beep-beep-beep of a machine assaults me as the world of color and smells and sharp, stinging pain wrap around me like a barbed-wire blanket.
All senses are go.