CHAPTER Thirty
I jump off the couch and run into the front entryway. Mattie walks in, looking pale. Rollins follows close behind, holding her elbow to steady her. From the looks on both their faces, I’m pretty sure Rollins already broke the news about Scotch’s death.
“We’ll be up in my room,” I call to my father.
The three of us climb the stairs and shuffle wordlessly into my bedroom. I lock the door behind us and then turn to face Mattie, who sinks onto my bed. Rollins sits in the rocking chair, looking nervous.
“What did Regina have to say?” I ask.
Mattie shakes her head. “No one was home.”
“Matt, I have to tell you something.”
“Rollins already told me about Scotch,” Mattie replies. Her eyes are slightly glazed.
“It’s something else,” I say gently. “Something about me. I’ve been keeping a secret from you,” I say.
Mattie’s forehead wrinkles. “What is it?”
Clearing my throat, I try to think of the best way to explain. Mattie was so young when all of this started. I don’t know if she even remembers those days when I first started passing out. Or the fight I had with my father when he wouldn’t believe what was really happening to me and he decided to send me to a shrink.
“Okay. I know you were young, but do you remember when I told Dad that something strange was happening to me when I passed out?”
Mattie shakes her head.
“I don’t have narcolepsy. When I pass out, I go somewhere else. It just depends on what I’m touching at the time. Say I’m touching Dad’s watch. That means I’ll slide into Dad and see through his eyes, whatever he’s doing. Only it can’t just be any item. It has to be something that’s important to the person. Something they’ve emotionally imprinted on.”
“I don’t understand,” she says. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
“I know. It doesn’t make any sense, but it’s true. And the weirdest part is that I’ve learned how to control it. I can take over a person’s brain and make them do things, say things. I can control them.”
“What are you talking about?”
Taking a deep breath, I tell myself it’s okay. I knew this was going to be hard. Mattie will have to see it to believe it.
I pull open the bottom drawer of my dresser and search through the things I’ve accumulated over the past few months, the things that allow me to slide. I grab the Smashing Pumpkins T-shirt Rollins gave to me last fall. He left an emotional imprint on it that allowed me to slide into him a few times. When I explained about my ability and that I saw his miserable home life through his eyes, he accused me of invading his privacy. Since then, I’ve never slid into Rollins again.
Not until now.
I hold the shirt up to Rollins, a question in my eyes. His face tightens, but then he nods. It’s the only way for me to convince Mattie. I have to demonstrate my power. With the T-shirt crumpled in my hands, I sit next to Mattie on the bed.
“I know it’s confusing. Just watch, though.”
I arrange myself so I’m lying on my bed, cradling the T-shirt against my chest. I think back to the day Rollins gave me the shirt, how happy I was. I’d wanted it for such a long time. I was confused the first time I slid into Rollins because I didn’t understand why he would be emotionally attached to a gift for me. He’d kept his feelings for me a secret. But now I know, and it feels strange to slide into him, almost intimate.
My perspective shifts. I am in the same room, but seeing through Rollins’s eyes. He is still sitting in the rocking chair, facing my bed. Mattie is gaping at my unconscious form, which is sprawled out with the Smashing Pumpkins T-shirt.
“Mattie,” I whisper. “It’s me.”
Mattie looks at Rollins, confused, like she’s not sure what he’s talking about. I need to give her some evidence to prove that it’s really me.
“It’s me. Sylvia.” I rack my brain, trying to think of some obscure piece of trivia about Mattie that only I, her sister, would know. “All right, how about this? I know that you threw up in Matthew Baker’s hair in the second grade. You were so embarrassed because you had the biggest crush on him.”
Mattie’s face scrunches. “Why are you guys playing tricks on me at a time like this? It isn’t funny!”
“Shhhhhhhh,” I say, getting out of the chair and going over to her. “It’s not a trick. It’s really me.”
She glares. “You guys are sick.”
“Look. How about this? You ask me a question, something no one else could know. Something only I would know.”
“Something Vee would know?”
“Exactly.”
Mattie looks down. I see her face change. When she raises her head, I see a challenge in her eyes. “Before Mom died, what did she give me to remember her by?”
Yes. This is something I know. “She gave you that necklace,” I say, pointing. “You never take it off because you’re afraid that if you do, you’ll forget her completely.”
I can see the tears in Mattie’s eyes, threatening to spill. She comes close to me and studies my face intently. “Vee?”
My face breaks into a grin. “You got it!”
She throws her arms around me—well, Rollins, really. I can feel her breath, hot in my ear. “It’s true then. It’s really true.”
“Of course it’s true. Did you think I was lying?”
And then she really is crying, her whole body shaking against me. “It’s just that—I thought . . . I thought I was going crazy.”
“You’re not crazy.”
“I didn’t know what was happening to me . . .” Mattie says, her voice breaking. “I was having such weird dreams. And then things were happening. My dreams were coming true.”
Now it’s my turn to be baffled.
“What are you talking about?” I say, pushing her back so I can see her face. She is crying freely now, and I can hardly make out her words.
“First there was that car accident. And I thought it was just a coincidence. But then I dreamed of Lookout Point, and I thought there was something really wrong with me.”
I grab hold of her face and make her look at me. “Slow down. Tell me everything.”
She gasps for air. I wait for her to catch her breath. Then she speaks. “Vee, I was there the night that Scotch fell.”
I take a step back, covering my mouth. “What?”
She starts to cry. “What do you call it, sliding? I can do it, too.”
My knees buckle, and I sink to the floor. She collapses next to me, and we sit there, clutching each other.
She explains how it started a few months ago. She was having strange dreams that she was other people, doing ordinary, mundane things. She dreamed of my father brushing his teeth. She dreamed of me, taking notes in English class. The dreams were strangely vivid, but she didn’t think anything of them until the night I got into a car accident.
That night, she dreamed she woke up in my room. The radio was on, so she turned it off. She went down to the kitchen and stared at the moon through the window for a long time. Then she had a crazy idea. The dream was so real, and she was able to control it. She decided to test it out. That’s when she went into the garage and started my father’s car. She took it for a long ride, and then the dream ended abruptly.
I shiver as she tells the story. So well I remember that night, waking up in a car that was racing down the road. I thought it was my nightmare about Zane, so I yanked the wheel. And realized it wasn’t a dream. Someone slid into me and made me steal my dad’s car.
It was my sister.
Mattie goes on. Next she describes sliding into my father. It was late, and he was in the living room, gazing at old pictures of our family from when our mother was still alive. Mattie felt a rage plow through her, a rage that my father refused to get past our mother’s death. He kept letting his grief get in the way of really being there for us. So she grabbed our parents’ wedding portrait and threw it on the floor. She kept grabbing pictures and smashing them everywhere. Then I appeared in the doorway, and all the anger fell away, and she slid back into her own body.
“And then there was Lookout Point.”
Mattie takes a deep breath and explains what happened the night of Scotch’s accident. She fell asleep while waiting for me, and then she found herself standing in the middle of the woods. She was confused, but she saw two beams of light shining through the trees. When she stumbled into the clearing, she saw such a beautiful vision. It was all sky, and the night was so clear that she could make out all the stars. She was filled with a deep happiness, a feeling that she was connected to everyone and everything.
“But then someone grabbed me. I turned around, and I saw that it was Scotch. I was so scared. I felt myself start to slip away. I was falling to the ground. But before I left, I heard Scotch yell, ‘Get off me!’”
I stare at Mattie.
“Someone else was there, Vee. Someone did push Scotch.”
What the hell?
“Who?” I ask.
Mattie shakes her head. “I don’t know.”
Frustrated, I stand up and start pacing around. I’m not used to Rollins’s body, though, and I stub my toe on the rocking chair. I decide it’s time to slide back into my own body.
Mattie sits on the bed and watches as I leave Rollins sitting in the rocking chair. When I am myself again, I open my eyes and see him stretching his arms over his head.
“That was weird,” he says. “It was like I was floating above you guys. But everything was black. I could kind of hear you, but not really.”
“Well, you missed a lot,” I say. As I explain that Mattie was the one who slid into me and caused me to crash my father’s car, Rollins’s eyes grow large.
“You’re effing kidding me.”
“And she was in my body the night that Scotch fell. I mean, the night he was pushed—”
Mattie interrupts me. “Someone else was there. I mean, physically there. Someone pushed him off that cliff. I just didn’t see who it was.”
I flip through the possible suspects in my mind. Could it have been Lydia? Maybe it was Diane . . . ? If it was either of them, they must have driven to Lookout Point. Maybe Samantha or Regina saw a car and forgot to mention it.
“Hey, Mattie, why don’t you try calling Regina again?” I suggest.