Salem's Sight (2 page)

I felt her pain flood through me, as
if we were linked by something more, something even stronger than
genetics. My body held her blood, her DNA, but at the moment it
also held a piece of her soul and I winced at her
suffering.

She sure could have used some watching
over these last few months. We both could have.

For some strange reason, I looked up
toward the light fixture. Instead of the flicker of corroboration I
half expected, the light beamed bright and steady. Soft raindrops
pattered against the window. Finally, I relaxed. Just a storm after
all. Nothing weird going on in this room.

I glanced at the wall, then quickly
away. Nothing weird going on in this room. Yeah, maybe if I kept
telling myself that I’d believe it.

I sat down on the bed causing the
mattress to squeak in protest while a coil from the old box spring
jumped up and bit me in the butt. It was enough to clear my head.
“Okay, so why did she sign her name? Why not just write
‘Mom’?”

Mom sighed, clearly exasperated.
“Salem, you put your full name on important documents to make them
official, don’t you?”

I nodded.

“
She was doing the same
thing, making a point.”

Okay, from everything she told me
about my grandmother, it sounded legit.

I scooted further back on the bed and
another coil shot up like a missile. Direct hit.

I stood to avoid any more attacks from
revenge of the old mattress, and decided to change the subject.
Sort of. “When is our furniture going to get here? This bed isn’t
exactly comfortable.”

The truth is it wasn’t just about
uncomfortable furniture. It was this room. This house. The whole
uncomfortable place. And this niggling feeling of unease I couldn’t
shake.

“
A few more days and all
our things will be here. It’ll seem more like home
then.”

I assessed the furnishings that had
suffered abuse at the hands of college renters. “What will we do
with all this stuff?”

“
Salvation Army? Whatever
they won’t take, we can put out as trash.”

I nodded. Truth was, I didn’t care
where the old junky furniture went as long as it went fast. My
greatest fear was Mom would say we were never getting our things;
that we’d have to get used to this bizarre alternate reality at
Grandma’s.

She put her hands on my shoulders.
“Things will get better, Salem.”

Yeah, right. There was as much of a
chance of that happening as there was of a television star jumping
out of my closet to tell me I’d just been punked.

If I were a good kid, I would have
stood still while she put her arms around me and bent her head
toward my forehead. But I wasn’t, so I tugged away and left her
hanging in mid-kiss.

Almost immediately I felt guilty, so I
turned away to hide my face. I mean, allowing a mother to see guilt
is like letting a Doberman smell fear. Once you do, it’s
over.

It actually hurt to back away though.
It hurt to watch her suffer. “Your fault” my conscience screamed. A
lot of her pain was my fault.

The light flickered again, this time
accompanied by a loud clap of thunder. I jumped.

“
It’s just a storm,” Mom
said. I saw her hand reach out toward me, then pull back. Without
another word, she turned and left the room.

Late that night, while the thunder
boomed and the lightning flashed, I thought about her again. Why am
I directing all my anger toward my mother?

I couldn’t answer that question and no
matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get to sleep. As if anyone
could in that room.

Seriously? You try to sleep alone in a
room where the walls are scraped clean, and big bold handwriting
shouts, “I’m watching over you.”

Yeah. That’s what I
thought.

I mean, it’s no wonder I weirded
out.

CHAPTER TWO

Okay, so maybe my mind had started
working overtime. Call me strange, but it actually felt like I
could hear my grandmother’s whisper.

Yeah, I know, great. Hearing things.
Let’s just add that to the list. But that sound … No, impossible.
She died when I was too young to be able to remember her
voice.

Yet I heard the words and the sound of
a voice that reverberated with familiarity.

Yeah, whack job. They have
institutions for people who hear things. Knock it off, or end up a
rubber room, which I have to admit, style wise would only have been
a lateral move.

Maybe I was just spending too much
time alone.

I clenched my eyes tight, determined
to shut out everything. Just focus on sleep, your eyelids are
getting heavy, just focus on sleep.

Yeah, whatever.

I pictured the counting sheep, cute
and fluffy. But as they jumped over the bed, they pursed their lips
like babies and gave me the raspberries. Wait ‘til my Serta
arrived. Then I’d banish those sheep and their attitudes. I turned
over, and turned back, tossing around the bed like a ship flung
about in a storm.

I’m not sure when it began to get hot.
It might have been gradual, like the coming of spring. Or maybe it
ignited quickly, like a barbeque grill. But the heat was definitely
increasing steadily.

My skin burned and I was
semi-conscious when I kicked off the blankets. I felt like I was in
the center of a large orange blaze, thrashing to get out, yet not
getting anywhere.

If I didn’t get out, I’d
die.

Somewhere deep inside a sound started
around my toes and climbed higher and higher toward my
throat.

The scream erupted from my mouth,
sending what was left of my slumber viciously away like hot lava.
Reverberations shook my soul and were loud enough to wake souls on
the other side.

I sat up trembling and gasping for
breath. Beads of sweat popped out on my forehead.

Then I heard the thunderous sound of
the cavalry.

Mom stormed into the room making more
noise than a herd of buffalo stampeding. Her arms enveloped me like
a soft feather boa, smooth and comforting. “Are you okay?” she
choked out. “Were you having a nightmare?”

I’ll never know why she always asks
the obvious. Normally it makes me mad, but not tonight. “It didn’t
seem like a dream.”

Relieved I was no longer alone I let
myself relax a little, and answered her. “I mean, I guess it was.
But … it seemed so real.” I tried to focus and bring it back now
that my mother had made me feel pseudo safe. “I can’t believe it
wasn’t real.”

I put my head on her shoulder the way
I did when I was a kid and breathed in her mom scent. It helped and
my breathing began to slow, but it wasn’t as reassuring as it had
been when I was little. Then again, I knew she couldn’t protect me
from everything. Adults couldn’t always protect
themselves.

She rubbed her hand over my hair in a
caress. “Tell me about the dream. What frightened you?”

Not exactly an easy question to
answer, since the images jumbled in my head like tossed pieces of a
puzzle. I gave it a shot. “I felt like the center of a
fire.”

“
You dreamed you were in a
burning building?” she asked.

“
No, no building. There
wasn’t anything but the fire. Nothing. Just a giant flame in space
… and I was in it.”

Mom squeezed tighter. Silence hung
awkwardly in the room, like leftover smoke from my imaginary
embers. “The car didn’t burn Salem. Is that what you’re thinking?
That the car went up in flames?”

My body stiffened and I sat back in
bed pushing away from her. Now wasn’t the time to talk about it.
“No, Mom, really, I wasn’t thinking about the accident.”

Lately she linked everything that
happened to the fatal collision and it was starting to get on my
nerves.

“
It had nothing to do with
the crash,” I said again, this time louder and with more force. My
words only made the grooves in her forehead deepen.

Even in the dark it was easy to see
she didn’t buy it.

****

As soon as I heard the radio turn on,
I knew my life was about to enter major suckdom.

I pulled the covers over my head and
tried to pretend it wasn’t happening. This was only the third
morning waking to my very own pillow top comfort supreme. Only I
couldn’t relax because the music only meant one thing.

School.

I murmured a few expletives that my
Grandy Beatrice, Dad’s mom, had once crossly told my cousin were
unbecoming from a lady. I could think of no reason to be ladylike.
I punched the pillow then covered my head with it to try to block
out what I had to face.

A new school, in a new city, where I
would be the new girl – a big, fat nobody.

It had taken forever to get exactly
where I wanted to be in my old hometown. Not the most popular kid
on the planet, but someone who had friends. Good friends. Friends
who’d always been a part of my life. I’d never even imagined life
without them.

And now less than a month after I’d
left, they were forgetting me. At first, they texted and emailed
every day. After a few weeks I noticed time elapsed before texts
would be answered and the lack of IM’s made me wonder if I’d
actually been taken off of certain buddy lists.

And here I was, abandoned in
Sucksville. There’d be no one to talk to in study hall. Assuming
this school even had a study hall. Worse, there’d be no one to have
lunch with. Yup, that’d be the hardest part of the day, looking
like a total loser, isolated and at the mercy of total
strangers.

The classes I could get through. I
always paid attention in class anyway. Well, except for the really
boring stuff. Then I’d just look it up on the Internet and get the
abridged version.

But lunch … all alone…. Strange, as
much as I didn’t like crowds these days, I didn’t like being by
myself either. I was alone enough inside my head. Before Dad died,
that hadn’t meant lonely. Sadly, now it did.

I groaned, flung the covers off,
pulled myself upright, and trudged out of bed. At least I could
make sure that I didn’t smell and looked reasonably
fashionista.

A new pair of jeans was casually
draped across the top of my desk chair. An obvious plant of my
mother’s. Nothing too flashy, yet stylish and well fitting. They’d
do.

I stood a little longer in front of
the too-small closet, which was stuffed to over-capacity. The
clothes were jammed so tight that every item boasted at least a
wrinkle or two. Randomly, I selected a top.

Ugh. Wrong choice. I shoved it back
and tried again, this time yielding better results.

Not that what I wore mattered. Who
cared anyway? I didn’t know anyone and didn’t really want to. What
was the point?

I’d learned the hard way relationships
didn’t last.

Surprisingly, Mom was still home when
I went down to breakfast. Kent County Hospital, where she now
worked, had pretty flexible hours. Or, at least the nurses could
exchange shifts with others when they needed to.

Mom had actually grinned when she
snagged the job. Definitely her first smile since you-know-when.
She didn’t think it’d be that easy to get employment, since she’d
been out of the field for so long. But no one cared about that.
Nurses were in demand and she had a current certificate. Welcome to
the working world, Mom.

Since she started the job, she’d been
out of the house before I woke up each morning. Not too surprising,
but then again I didn’t exactly wake up early if I didn’t have to.
From now on, I’d have to.

Mom looked pretty in her crisply
ironed pink hospital scrubs. She wore just the smallest hint of
make-up. Anyone else might not have noticed there was a problem. I
did.

Mom tugged on her shirt to the point
where if she yanked any harder she would’ve ripped it. Then she
smoothed over her chin length perfectly coiffed hairdresser-blonde
hair. Once perfected, never mess with the ‘do. She ran her hand
over it again using her fingers as a comb.

Yeah, let me translate. So not a good
sign.

She stole a glance at me, and then
blue eyes that mirrored my own quickly became riveted to the coffee
pot. She stood there and watched it brew, as if mesmerized by the
thin drips of liquid.

Okay, like I’m not exactly stupid.
Eye-contact-avoidance lady might as well have been blinking
neon.

Her body language screamed nervous and
I knew that expression well. The old ‘I’m going to give you bad
news’ look.

My body tensed and I started to gear
up for flight, in case my first instinct, fight didn’t work. I
crossed my arms over my chest. My answer to everything, attack and
escape. Then, on guard, I said, “Spit it out.”

“
Spit what out?” She tried
to look innocent, but let’s face it, she wasn’t.

Did she really think I’d let her off
the hook that easy? No way. She had to know me better than that.
After all, I was her daughter. “Whatever it is you have to tell me
that I’m not going to like. Let’s just get it over
with.”