When would she wake up as a thousand-year-old girl I couldn’t even talk to, and I’d lose both Brooke and Marci forever?
“You never used to cry,” said Marci.
“You did that,” I said. “Or my mom did, I guess. You died, and I broke, and now I feel things differently but I … am not really good at it.”
“I’m sorry about your mom.”
“She’s not—” And then another wave of emotion gripped me. “She’s not in there too, is she?”
“No,” said Marci, shaking Brooke’s head. “Nobody took your mom after she left Brooke—whatever new thoughts she had in those few seconds, and whatever she gained from your mom, was all lost in the fire.” She put Brooke’s hand on my face. “I’m sorry.”
I pulled away, slower than before but still deliberate. I couldn’t process this yet: Marci, back again. It had always been a possibility, of course, but I had never dared to think of it because I had never dared to think of Marci. I hadn’t made a healthy personal connection in years, maybe in my whole life, but I had with her, and then I’d lost it, and now to have it back in the worst possible way.…
“Do we have a place to stay?” asked Marci. She looked around at the darkened town; we could see streetlights in the distance, closer to the center, but here on the edge it was lifeless and empty.
“How much do you know?” I asked. “A lot of the memories seem to blend together for Brooke; one personality dominates for a while, but they all seem to share certain—” And then I had to stop because I knew she was only going to leave me again. “How long will you be here?”
“As long as I can be,” she said.
“How long is that?”
She spoke softly. “I don’t know.” She looked away again. “I think it’s like you say: I have some of her memories, but nothing concrete. Impressions, mostly. The last thing I remember clearly was the suicide, when Nobody slit my wrists. But it’s not like I jumped straight from that moment to this one, you know? I’m aware, somehow, that time has passed, and that I’m in another body, and that there are other girls in here with us.”
“Did you … talk to them?”
“It’s not like that,” said Marci, “it’s more of a … I don’t know. I think I was aware of everything Nobody did in my body because it was my body, and I was still in there, but now I’m not … I’m not me, I guess. I’m my memories. Maybe I’m actually Brooke and I only think I’m Marci, but I remember everything—things Brooke never knew, things nobody ever knew—and I feel like me. The body’s weird, I’ll grant you—I was never this thin—but I really feel like me. My personality, my habits, my … self. I guess I just contradicted myself, like, five times in one breath, but … does that make sense?”
“No,” I said quickly, then shook my head and sighed. “But none of this does, and it hasn’t for years.”
“We’re hunting demons, right?” said Marci.
“We were,” I said, “but that’s because Brooke wanted to. If you’re you now—”
“Come on,” said Marci, “remember who you’re talking to. The cop’s daughter and the mortician’s son, together again.” She raised her eyebrows with a mischievous smile, then shrugged. “This isn’t really how I imagined our TV series would go, though.”
“Nothing’s gone the way we wanted,” I said.
Boy Dog wandered toward us, back from exploring the smells of the area, and I gestured toward him. “By the way, this is Boy Dog. Boy Dog, Marci.”
“His name is Boy Dog?”
“I didn’t name him,” I said.
“Obviously you would have gone with Harvey.”
“Obviously.” She knew me better than I remembered.
She crouched down and Boy Dog padded toward her and licked her hands and face. “Good boy,” she said, scratching his ears. “Good Boy Dog. This is…” Her voice trailed off, and she put her hand on the asphalt.
And held it there, seconds ticking by into minutes, closing her eyes and simply … being.
“The road’s warm,” she said at last. “Just a little, but you can feel it. Asphalt traps the heat from the sun. And the breeze is cool, and it smells like … cows.” She laughed, her eyes still closed. “Chlorophyll. I can smell cut grass and motor oil and lilacs. I haven’t smelled a lilac in … how long has it been?”
“Two years,” I whispered.
“Two years.” She stood up slowly, opening her eyes to stare up at the sky. Boy Dog flopped to his belly, resting on her toes protectively. “Two years. The twins’ll be six.”
“You can’t go back.”
Her voice was a hoarse whisper. “I know.” She stared at the sky for a moment longer, then looked at me and wiped her eyes. “Anyway. We’re standing in the middle of the road in the middle of the night, with backpacks that I assume hold all our worldly possessions. Safe to assume we just got here?”
I nodded. “We hitchhiked.”
“So now what?”
I stared at her helplessly. “I can’t do this.”