Pieces of Hope (16 page)

But not
today.

Hearing
the question in my head,
Creesie
said, “He’s been in
and out of surgery a few times. That’s how you missed him.”

My neck
gave a too-familiar tingle. Before we even entered the room, I knew who it was.
A small moan escaped me. No, not him. Please, not him.
  

The
first time I saw Daniel
Hartlein
he was six years
old.

We had
flown into Los Angeles with the
Alexanders
, and had plans to head off to Disney Land
the next day, but with lots of sunshine and half a day to kill, we wound up at
our lame hotel pool because Brody was terrified of the ocean. The pool was
crowded and noisy (and I kept wondering why everyone wasn’t at the beach where
I certainly wished I was), but at least it had a diving board. There were a
couple of signs telling everyone that there was no lifeguard on duty, even
though we could see that with our own eyes. I was suspended in mid-air when I
first spotted him. Just this scrawny kid floundering near the middle of the
deep end, and swallowing half the pool by the looks of it.

What I
did wasn’t much—it really wasn’t. But I couldn’t just let him drown. Eyes wide
open, I swam underwater and gave him a good hard shove toward the side—enough
for my mother to reach in and yank him safely out of the water. She wrapped him
in a dry towel and hugged him until he caught his breath. I sat with my legs in
the water, studying him the way you might a wet puppy that had almost drown. My
insides felt all mushy and soft, and I couldn’t say why I couldn’t turn away.
Though it didn’t make any sense, there was just something about him that
wouldn’t let me. His mom, Anna, was nearly as skinny as her son, and twice as
scared. Together, they were a pair I would never forget.
 

The
second time I ever saw him he was leaning against my locker, eyeing me like I
was some undiscovered species. That was different. I was fourteen-years-old,
and didn’t cause heads to turn. At least, not that I’d noticed. Then again,
none of my goals included conquering the XY chromosomes. Graduate top of my
class, attend Colorado
State, earn a D.V.M. just
like my dad. That was the plan.

But he
was different, and I could feel it. Though I didn’t know at the time that he
was the same boy I’d saved from drowning when he was six, the universe knew it.
He was like a meteor rocketing to my earth, and I couldn’t have avoided the
impact even if I had wanted to.
 

I could
still see him in that moment. His wavy, sandy brown hair, longish all over and
falling into his eyes . . . Daniel’s eyes . . . How easily I’d get lost in
them. They were closed now, but it didn’t matter. I’d memorized the color.
Grayish blue. Same as the sky before a storm. It suited him.
  

Wrenching
myself from my thoughts, I gasped as I approached the side of his bed, stopping
short of touching his skin. I couldn’t tolerate feeling his emotions any more
than I already did.

“
Creesie
, why is he—”

Creesie
patted my hand where it rested on the bedrail. “We
were in the accident with you. He was driving the—”

“Green
car . . . the one that struck me.” I couldn’t believe the odds of it. How was
it that the two people I’d saved in my lifetime had been in the accident with
me? It was just as Brody had said—freakish.

“It’s no
coincidence,”
Creesie
divulged, looking over at his
bandaged head. “Both of you needed a second chance. This is it.”

“This .
. .” I waved my arms about, “is it?” I was unable to keep the sarcasm from
seeping out. “No winning lottery tickets? No free rides to college? Was this
all they had left—two near-death experiences?”

“You
were forewarned,” she said lightly. “But you kept going.”

“What?”
I started to protest, but stopped short. The nightmare, the one that had
haunted me for seven nights. And Mom’s warning.
Save yourself
. It wasn’t the easiest
 
connection. How could I have known that the
old woman in the street was actually me?

“You
were expecting a post-it?”
Creesie
said pleasantly.

“Something
a little clearer would have been nice,” I grumbled.

Walking
around me,
Creesie
sank into the chair beside
Daniel’s bed and I stared after her. My head was pounding with the rhythm of a
thousand tiny fists, and they were all trying to break through.

“Best
not to look a gift horse in the mouth, Hope.” With her head inclined slightly
to the right, I knew she’d heard the question I was about to ask. “It’s an old
expression— means you shouldn’t second-guess your gifts, but should happily
accept them.” Raising a hand of objection, she said, “And yes . . . before you
disagree, it is a gift. Rarely are folks given second chances in life. This is
yours. Choose wisely, my dear . . . one or the other.”

One or the other.
Live or die? Did she
have to make it sound so matter-of-fact?

As the
difficulty of my choice began to sink in, I saw additional complications. In my
mind, unbidden, I envisioned all three: Ethan, here; Mom, elsewhere. And just
where, I asked myself, might that leave Daniel? Stuck Somewhere with me?
 

“But why
us?” I pleaded. My second burning question was, how long did we have to make that
choice? But I was too afraid to ask. What if it was sooner than I—than
we
—were ready for?

She
shrugged. “The why shouldn’t be nearly as important as the fact that it simply
is. Despite living such different lives, it seems you’ve landed in the exact
same boat.”

“Yeah, a
sinking one,” I groaned.
  

Creesie
gazed at me with a gentle expression. In a soft
voice, she said, “Have you ever considered how your paths crossed in the first
place? Can you imagine how destiny intervened so that the two of could meet the
way you did? Madly in love . . . only to part again? And now, regardless of all
that’s happened since, or the opposite paths your lives have taken, imagine how
destiny aligned so you could find each other once again.”

“’Find?’”
I spat, hating how literal this realm was. “Don’t you mean
ran
into each
other? Call me crazy, but I think destiny has a gruesome sense of humor.”

I could
feel my agitation rising by the second, and I hadn’t any idea why. While it
wasn’t the ideal situation for either Daniel or me, I had no cause to be upset
with
Creesie
. The idea occurred to me that it might
have something to do with my proximity to Daniel, that these feelings were
actually his, and that I was merely the receptor. I took three steps away from
the bed, and the pounding in my head stopped. That’s when a question popped
into my mind.

“An
officer at the accident said he was chasing the kid in the green car because of
his possible involvement in a series of burglaries. What do you know about
that?”

“That’s
a question for Daniel,”
Creesie
said evasively.

“But you
know,” I insisted. “You know the whole story.”

“I do.”

“Why not
just tell me?” I pressed. “Save us both a whole lot of trouble.”

Creesie
was looking at Daniel as she replied. She seemed to
be speaking mostly to him. “Daniel needs to tell you that himself. It’s not
easy to disclose our innermost secrets, secrets that might make us unlovable,
especially to those we still love.”

She
looked at me then, and there was something so pitying in her expression that my
vision blurred with unexpected tears—Daniel loved me . . . still?
 

My brain
flew off in a dozen directions as I imagined what might have happened to him
since we’d last spoken three years ago.
Creesie
was
probably right; it was better to hear it straight from his lips because, for
some unfathomable reason, I was terribly afraid it might tarnish my memories of
him, and this idea—more than any other—disturbed me more than I cared to
admit.
   

It was
too easy to remember the way we were together, inseparable for all of our
freshman year. I’d never met anyone with an imagination like his, and it wasn’t
likely I ever would again. He loved to draw—portraits of me, mostly. Every day
he’d sketch my face—some in chalk, others in pencil, a few in shapes reminiscent
of Picasso. Though the likeness was there, he made me look far prettier than I
was in person. And yet each time I said that, he would unequivocally deny it.

We
didn’t spend our days together; I took advanced classes and Daniel was barely
passing (intelligence wasn’t the issue, boredom was). But to make sure we were
never far from each other in thought, he created a secret texting code that was
based on the number of letters in a word, once you skipped the double
consonants. There were too many to put to memory, and occasionally I’d forget
some and spend the rest of the hour wracking my brain to figure them out. Even
so, it was our little secret, mine and his alone, and I adored him for it. For
the first and only time in my life, school wasn’t my priority . . . Daniel
Hartlein
was.

Only a
few still came to mind. There was: 133, I miss you. 143, I love you. 224, I’m
so sorry. And my favorite: 3 back 3.

Daniel
explained that if you placed two 3’s back to back—taking time to flip the
second one over, then laying them down side by side—you’d see the eternity
symbol. He equated the 3’s to each of us. I was the first one, the one facing
forward, while he was the second one—the one who did everything the hard way,
the one flipped backwards.
 

“Get it,
my love? You and me through eternity,” he used to say.

I
stepped out of my memories, now seeing Daniel in his present state. Somehow I
knew he wasn’t in the room with us, wasn’t with his body. Maybe in my bodiless
form I was more aware of people’s souls. In any case, I knew he was in worse
shape than I was. Though he didn’t appear to have any broken bones, he was on a
respirator, and there was an assortment of loudly beeping machines around him.

“Just
tell me one thing,” I begged, now staring into
Creesie’s
eyes.

She
nodded cautiously.
 

“Where
is he?” The words were a plea.

“Nowhere
we can find him at the moment, I’m afraid.”
Creesie
studied him, her expression more tender than usual. “It’s terrible; the things
we do to ourselves, the way guilt can eat us alive. Daniel’s had a difficult
three years—fell in with the wrong crowd, made some very bad decisions, and now
he wants nothing more than to escape from that in the only way that he knows
how.”

“Is he
dying?” I was sickened at the thought.
 

“He’s
definitely trying. He believes it’s his only option . . . You, of all people,
can probably understand that.” I nodded, too ashamed to look at her, recalling
similar ideas of my own. “And you can already feel the loss if he succeeds,
can’t you?” Again, I nodded, unable to speak. “As for where he is exactly . . .
if I ventured to guess, I’d say that Daniel is wandering aimlessly . . . lost
in one of the other Stations.”

“Then we
should go get him!” I insisted. “What are we waiting for?”

Creesie
hesitated, looking first at Daniel, then slowly
back at me. “I wish it were that simple. Before anyone can be found, they have
to want to be. And Daniel, well . . . Daniel’s lost his hope, you see.”

For some
reason, my attention stuck on the way she’d phrased it, and it struck me as intentional.
He’s lost his hope
. In some
convoluted way, had she been referring to me? Given that we’d started in this
together, could we leave the same way? Together? Though I didn’t love him—at
least, not the way I used to—I cared for him the way you always cared about
your first true love. Besides, now that Ethan was in my life, there was only
room for one.

But as I
pictured him lost, I was overcome by a quiet sense of desperation.

“We have
to find him,
Creesie
. We do.”

She
stood, nodded, not seeming surprised by what I had said, but not the slightest
bit happy about it, either. “When the moment is right, I’ll help you, but
Daniel isn’t ready to listen yet. He’s too caught up in himself to be able to
hear much of anything else.”

I
exhaled loudly.
Creesie
would keep her promise, that
much I knew, but torturing her about the details wasn’t going to help me. There
were a dozen more questions that I wanted to ask, but something (or rather
someone) told me to stop, and I bit my tongue to keep from speaking.
 

“Until
then,” she said, changing the subject abruptly, “there’s plenty to keep you
occupied.
Amora
has been asking for you. And,” she
added knowingly, “I hear you have something in mind for a future shortcut of
your own.”

“You
said you rarely paid attention,” I reminded her with an embarrassed grin.

Back to
her usual self, she snorted, “Your mother’s going to kill me.”

On our
way out, I paused to look again at Daniel, not bothering to notice who else was
near. As I stood in the doorway, a violent force ripped through me, paralyzing
me. It was enough to make my limbs go stiff, and there was a tightening, almost
a vice-like grip around my head. My hands balled involuntarily into fists,
seemingly imagining Daniel’s neck in them. And racing, rushing thoughts ping-ponged
in my mind—of a kind I’d never experienced before.

How I
despised the Thing . . . the Creature that was a part of Anna!

She tricked me! She deceived me!