Mirage (14 page)

“In and of itself, a belief in the paranormal does not mean someone is suffering from a mental illness. You did not disclose this in your assessment the last time you were here. You did not disclose much at all. But by your parents' reporting of the events they
do
know about, you have exhibited behavior consistent with someone who suffers from schizophrenia. Someone who believes in ghosts does not normally display such a marked difference in personality.”

When I say nothing in response, the doctor forges on. I know from the hollow feeling in my stomach where this is going.

“Since you're a minor, your parents have the authority to medicate you for your own safety and for the safety of those around you. This decision has not been made lightly. Their highest priority is to see you well and adjusted. Able to live your life as close to normal as possible.”

“Normal,” I whisper, mostly to myself. “I'll never be
normal
.”

I've been fighting medication because the night I cut my mother in the kitchen, the sedative made me feel weak, less concrete in my body. And because the phantom was still there even beneath the haze of the drug. She wants to climb inside me, claim me. I can feel it, like she's pounding on the door of my soul. What if, by taking the pills, I become too weak to fight her off? And somewhere, deep inside me, I think medication is poison. I don't know where that thought comes from, but it feels like a conviction. Now they want to force me to take it, and because I'm a minor, they say I have no choice.

“Ryan, this is not your fault, nor is it something you can will away. The bravest thing you can do is to come to a place of acceptance so you can move forward in life, healthier and better able to cope. You don't have to suffer.”

You do. Yes, you do.

We fill my new head-med prescription, and after the first week of taking it, I don't feel much difference. My mom is worried that the prescription isn't effective. “Maybe that's because I'm not mentally ill?” I offer with some sarcasm.

My mom cries openly while driving home from my follow-up visit to Dr. Collier's. “I feel like I'm losing everyone I love. Your bodies stay here, but your minds become a room I can't enter. It's been a long road with your father's PTSD. He's having bad dreams again. Did you know that?” I didn't, but she doesn't wait for my answer. “Your grandma slips deeper into herself every day, and you . . . you've changed before my very eyes.” She wipes her face with the sleeve of her flowered blouse.

“Why didn't Gran come with us to the doctor?” I ask in a feeble attempt to change the subject.

Mom notices and gives me a raised eyebrow. “She isn't feeling well. I couldn't rouse her this morning, so I let her stay in bed. She should be fine for this short while.”

I think of Gran's hitchhiking adventure and how quickly she can slip away. She shouldn't be alone. “I lost her,” I blurt. “After I got out of the hospital. She went hitchhiking for pancakes.”

My mom's eyes pop open in alarm. “She went​—” Then she laughs, but quickly stops herself with the back of her hand to her mouth. Her laugh isn't carbonated like before. Now her laugh is flat soda: sweet but lifeless. The car speeds up, and after a few tense minutes she says, “You should have told me.”

“I know. I'm sorry.”

“We were always so close,” she says. “I feel like I've lost my daughter.”

“I'm sorry.” I'm marinating in it.

“I know you didn't want to take the pills, but they brought your father back to me. If they bring you back, then it seems worth it.”

I swallow the lump in my throat. The daughter she knew is gone. Visions of the girl they miss scroll through my head like a movie montage. Everyone's fighting to save the girl they love.

We're all losing the fight.

Suddenly I feel sick. There are kids whose parents don't fight to save them. The strange, potent thought comes from last night's dream, but with such emotional force, I'm pierced as if it's my own story. It's one of those visions, populated by people with dour, pale faces who are crowding in on me, laying hands on me, that I had to scribble about in my journal. The visions are increasing and uncontrollable. They're like nightmares while awake.
Daymares.

“Have you ever dreamed people you don't know?” I ask, wanting to know if this is a normal thing. I dream the same cast of strangers so frequently, I feel like I'm starting to know them. And deeply hate them. Powerful emotions​—​hate, anger, despair​—​skip like stones on the lake of my dreams and visions, but otherwise, in day-to-day life, they sink to the bottom.

My mom gives me one of her assessing glances, full of concern. “I think we are all of the characters we dream. Different parts of our psyche playing various roles.”

So does that mean I hate myself?

My dad phones and asks if my mom can come handle some paperwork for the exhibition jump for the facility visit of the organizers of the X Games. He's called in some favors and has arranged for more jump planes to be onsite when they come. The hangar is getting the top-to-bottom white-glove treatment. With each day, his anticipation ramps up. It has the faint trace of desperation.

My body hums with jittery excitement at going to the airport, and it's a welcome sensation, something new. Maybe if I skydive, I'll feel like myself again. The thought of jumping makes me queasy all of a sudden, but to be all the way alive, to experience something more than guilt and confusion, I have to do everything I can to be
that
girl​—​and that girl eats and breathes the drop zone.

The desert is particularly gorgeous today. The sky is so blue that the mountains look like they've been painted against it. I'm glad for the open space of the Mojave. I think I'd be overwhelmed in the bustling city with its colors and crowds and . . . glass.

My dad is in a good mood, or at least he looks like he is. When we walk in, he's prepping two full loads of jumpers​—​a good sign for business, but my parents exchange a glance that is a question about me and my follow-up visit with Dr. Collier. Even though I haven't wigged out in front of them in almost a week, he probably wants confirmation that the meds are permanently dousing the crazy in me.

Whether Dr. Collier realizes it or not, the way he speaks of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder has burdened me with a sense of hopelessness. The statistics don't support my notion of “getting over this someday.” According to him, most people with schizophrenia never recover or live normally. I wondered why I even needed the medication when he said it often doesn't help with problems like craving isolation, feeling numb, or having no interest in life in general. What's the point, then?

My mom is talking to my dad about how we're busier because word has gotten out that we're being considered for the X Games. People want in on that action. The energy of the drop zone is a living thing, eddying around the bodies of the jumpers, infusing the air with an electric charge. I feel more alive. My blood pumps faster. This could be my medication.

Someone taps my shoulder. I startle.

Dom breaks into a chuckle. “I'm sorry, Ry. I didn't mean to scare you.” He's wearing his jumpsuit and has a camera affixed to the top of his helmet. His dimples flash as he grins. He has a full-wattage smile.

“It's okay. I'm sorry I've been cold to you.” My admission also startles me. Seeing him standing here, with cute dimples and sweet eyes, makes me feel warmth, and that's another novel sensation after days of feeling numb and disoriented. Scared.

Dom looks into me so deeply, I swear he can see every secret under my skin. I don't know if anyone has ever looked at me so penetratingly. But then I realize:
He has.
He's also trying not to say anything about my shaved hair, but his eyes can't help but flick to the top of my head. “I want to talk more with you, but I have to go up and film a jump,” he says, regret in his rich voice. “Paco broke his ankle on a jump, and Kelsey's sick, so we're way short on camera crew. We need to get you back in the air. I'm worried we won't have someone to film the big-way. So can I talk to you when I land?”

“Okay.”

I don't know what else to say, because there is too much to say. He was my other best friend. More than that . . . my first love. I don't know what we are now. I don't want to carelessly hurt him the way I've hurt Joe and my mother.

“We can talk later,” I promise, and watch his brown eyes light up with hope. He sweeps in and kisses my cheek, then darts out toward an airplane waiting on the tarmac with its engine droning like a million bees.

My father clears his throat. “I've got a surprise for you,” he says, pulling me outside through the wide-open hangar doors. He leads me onto the tarmac, where rows of parked planes wait to fly. People are gathered around one old plane in particular. It's enormous​—​gleaming polished metal with four engines and bubbles of glass on the nose and underbelly. A painted pinup girl smiles over her shoulder at us from the nose. “It's a B-17,” he says through a wide grin.

He looks like a little boy on Christmas. I feel the most genuine smile erupt on my face. It pulls tight at my wound.

“How many girls do you know who get to ride in a real-live World War Two bomber?”

My smile fades. “Ride?” I ask, trying not to sound apprehensive. “We get to go up in it?”

“You've been doing better, right? Besides, I'll be going up too. It'll be the ride of your life, kiddo. I've booked you a special seat.” My dad leads me to the side of the plane, where stairs are propped against it, and gives me a leg up. He climbs in behind me. I feel like we've crawled into the belly of a metal whale. Exposed bulkheads dotted with rivets wrap around us as we scuttle through the plane on a wooden platform.

I look out the waist gunner's window and try to imagine what it must've been like for the crew during the war. My father introduces me to the two pilots and directs me toward the nose of the plane. “It's the nose turret,” he explains. “This is where the gunner would sit and shoot at planes approaching from the front or crossing the path of the bomber. Sit down.”

I saddle myself in the metal seat, and he buckles me in. “I think it'd be scary being so exposed,” I say.

“Well,” he says, climbing out of the turret, “you're gonna find out.”

I grab his leg. “Wait! I'm going to sit
here
while we fly? While we take off and land?”

His glorious smile returns. “Fantastic, right?”

“Right.”

One engine starts, then two, three, and four. The plane vibrates with the collective power of them. It's like a racehorse at the gate, bursting with the desire to run. The plane moves forward, taxiing toward the run-up area. I can't believe they're letting me sit here as we move to takeoff position and the runway begins to roll faster and faster right underneath my feet.

A “whoop!” flies out of me as we leave earth. I can't help it. This exhilaration tastes way sweeter than the acid of pain. My heart is pounding, and I feel so alive. We pull higher into the sky, and I try to disregard the reality that I'm essentially hanging from the bottom of the plane in a glass bubble.

I'd feel better with a chute on.

Progress.

The bomber banks to the right, and we climb higher. Mountains sweep past the left side of my glass bubble. If I lean forward enough, I can see in every direction. I'm sitting in the middle of a clear ball at fourteen thousand feet. The immense desert stretches from here to forever.

I stare in awe at its vastness. There is nothing in the world so rigidly true to itself as the desert. If the brown canvas of the Mojave had a dominant characteristic, it would be strength. The landscape is strong, stubborn: beauty that insists on its right to life on its own terms. I can appreciate that.

The steep turn of the plane makes my stomach lurch. My reflection materializes on the glass, stares out the window. We are watching the desert roll beneath our feet. Hands pressed against the glass like we could touch the sky. Strange, though, that I'm seeing the
back
of my head. I struggle with the laws of reflections for a moment. Shouldn't I see my
face
looking back at me in the glass?

It's not until my reflection turns slowly, looks sadly over her shoulder, that my heart stutters, and I realize who it is.

I
DON'T KNOW WHY
this time is different, but it's like I can
feel
her ferocious sorrow and desperation with me in this dome of glass. It magnifies her, as if she's standing, three-dimensional, right in front of me. She moves toward me, menacing. Her mouth is set in a grim line. Her eyes intent as she draws closer. She reaches for me.

My trembling fingers fight to unlock my harness, but the clip won't budge. Panicked, I kick at the apparition of myself, but my feet flail uselessly in air.

This other me, Death disguised as me, advances like prowling smoke.

“What do you want?” I yell, but not as loud as I intend. Fear has choked off my voice.

I want​—​

“Hey, kiddo. Some view you've got up here.”

Our heads both pivot to see my father leaning into the bubble. I look back to the spirit, whose eyes now see only him. Her mouth moves. She's trying to speak to him, but he can't hear, and when her attention is not on me, neither can I. She lunges for my dad, and I want to fling myself in front of him but am still strapped in the damn chair.

His eyes narrow at my reaching arms. “You okay? Maybe this wasn't such a good idea . . .”

“I, uh, I just wanted a hug.” It's the first thing that came to mind, but I realize it's true. But asking Nolan for a hug is like asking him to give me the Medal of Honor. He might wish he could, but he doesn't have it to give.