Uncertain (10 page)

I cleared my throat a few times, trying to decide what to say.

“Are you OK?” Kevin asked.

“Yeah, are you?”

He nodded. “But I didn’t do much.”

We sat for a minute or two watching a Mexican man selling pastries off a cart he pushed.

I swallowed hard to build a little courage. “What did it look like?” I asked, feeling slightly odd for asking. My eyes stung with tears, and I blinked them back. The feeling of being afraid of myself drifted back up to the surface. I suppressed it.

“What did what look like?”

“Earlier. I did something to help Drina?”

“Oh. Um, let me think.” He rested his arms on his knees and looked at the grass between his feet. “It was like you knew exactly what to do.” He picked up a weed from the ground and rolled it between his finger and thumb. “Like you’d done it before.”

I swallowed hard again. “Did I pick up the baby?”

“No, no. She stayed on the bed.”

I nodded. He seemed really weirded out, and I felt sad.

“You kind of stood over her and made this large circular movement over her.  You never touched her—just made this circular movement. Like a cylinder in the air that gained momentum. Then a blue light kind of built up in your hands and you—I guess—you kind of stopped all of a sudden. Then, you held the blue light over her little chest. And then you stood up, and that was the end of it.”

“For how long?” I asked, watching the vendor hand pastries in tissue papers to a family.

“It took maybe five minutes, I’d say,” he whispered.

I wanted to ask him how he was feeling, but I was afraid to. I didn’t want him to leave me here, although as soon as I thought that, I felt defiance rise in me. I could do this on my own.

“Kevin?”

“Yeah,” he whispered.

“What should I do?” My voice cracked, and I felt him looking at me. I cleared my throat to camouflage my nervousness.

“I have no idea.” He looked at me more closely. “Mel, if you feel like crying, don’t hold back for me. I wasn’t even involved and
I
feel like crying. Don’t think for a second that I’m gonna judge you. I may just break down right here.”

I knew he was joking, and I thought it was funny, but I didn’t smile. I cleared my throat again and managed to croak out something that I’d been wondering. “Are you…afraid of me after all that?”

The words tumbled out of me. I felt worried about the answer, and I still wouldn’t look at him. I decided that if he was afraid, I’d keep my cool and tell him that I was all set. No baggage here. No way I had to lean on him. I could get home on my own. I
for sure
could. He didn’t need to be my chaperone or whatever. This was just too much. It
had
to be too much for him to deal with.

“Mel, come on.”

I shook my head quickly, trying to gather my thoughts. “I just—there’s no reason for you to have to deal with this. Whatever ‘this’ is. I can do it on my own—seriously.”

He fidgeted for a while, and I could tell that he wanted to say something.  I waited.

“I don’t want this to sound creepy because I don’t mean it like that. But I want to be with you more now than ever.” He looked at me. I wasn’t sure what he meant, and I didn’t feel like asking, so I didn’t say anything. Had he said that because he thought I had superpowers? I felt like an imposter.

As we sat on the ground, I discreetly tried to make a small rock move, using my mind. I stared at it and willed it to move or float or jiggle. Even shake. Nothing.

I rolled my eyes at myself. No powers here. What was it then? Was I possessed? My stomach sank at the thought. That couldn’t be it. Did people do good things while possessed? Not according to any movie trailers I’d ever seen.

I stretched out my legs and leaned back on my arms. I looked over at Kevin who had been fussing with his pants. I noticed that he had a scratch on his arm. What if I could heal it? I waited until he was looking away. A guy selling hats on a bike had his attention, so I held my hand over the scratch on his forearm.

I clenched my eyes shut and envisioned a blue light like Isa and Kevin had mentioned. Could I heal Kevin? I moved my hand away after a minute of this and looked for the scratch. It wasn’t gone. I felt totally stupid. I looked up at Kevin, who was staring at me.

“What were you doing?”

I hadn’t realized he was looking.

“Trying to heal you, bro.” I cleared my throat and smiled widely, trying to make light of the fact that I felt as if I might be a lunatic.

“Am I—was I injured?” he asked, lifting up his arm and bending it in odd ways so that he could see what I was talking about.

“Yeah, and you still are,” I said with a laugh. “I really don’t have
powers
or whatever.”

Kevin laughed. “Kind of a bummer.” He looked around and fidgeted with some rocks that included one of the ones I’d tried to move with my mind like a spaz. “So, do you feel OK?”

I nodded as a reflex. I wasn’t bleeding, after all. I knew that I wasn’t answering on behalf of my mental state once this whole thing sank in—if I ever let it.

“You sure?”

I looked at him. “My stomach is kind of—I dunno, knotted. Otherwise, I’m OK.”

He nodded and then walked his feet around and spun on his butt so that he faced me.

“OK. So, if you could do anything in the world right now, what would you want to do?” he asked, his voice rising in mild excitement.

I sighed. My first thought was that I’d want to know the reasons behind all this. Why me? But, I knew that wasn’t what he meant.

So, I said, “I’d want to go to the best beach in Mexico, lie under a giant umbrella and have…like really delicious turkey sandwiches and a buncha beer.”

“Seriously?” He laughed.

“Yeah. Well, I mean, I might have a better idea if you gave me some more time to think on it.”

“You absolutely crack me up.”

“How about you?” I asked, thinking that I should probably ask.

“I’m not sure. I wasn’t expecting you to say Mexico—it threw me off.”

“What the hell, man? You make fun of my idea, but don’t have one of your own?”

“I know!” He laughed. “I just wanted to know where your head was at. To be honest, I like yours. I’ll hang out with you, and your turkey sandwiches and beer.”

“Buncha beer,” I corrected.

“Even better,” he said, pointing at me. He looked up for a while and stared at the movement on the street.

“I’m tiptoeing around this, Mel, because I’m freaking out,” he said with emotion in his voice. “I want to be strong for you, and I’m not sure that I’m doing that.”

“You’re fine,” I said to him as I let my eyes lose focus and looked at the ground between my feet.

“Yeah, but you’d tell me that right now even if you didn’t mean it. I know you,” he accused.

I sighed.

“Talk to me,” he said.

I shook my head. “Not yet,” I told him. I hugged my knees and rocked a little. He put his hand on my back.

We were quiet for several minutes.

“I know you’re freaking out too, Mel. And I’m sure it’s not a huge help that I want to talk through a play-by-play of what happened one thousand times. I know that’s not a big help, and I’m trying to see things your way and deal, you know—with it. We’re just different this way.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No way! Don’t be. Seriously. I just don’t want you to shove it away and make yourself crazy—literally. You know what I’ve been thinking? I’ve been thinking that people overuse the word amazing. They really do. Like, that movie was amazing or your house looks amazing.” He paused and banged his thumb on his thigh. “It’s only because they don’t know
you
. You are
perfectly
amazing.”

I wanted to feel as though he’d complimented me, but I couldn’t work myself up to that. I really wasn’t amazing.

I thought about telling him how I’d mentally left the room when Drina was healed. I thought about telling him fifty times. But I kept pushing the thought from my mind and never said a word. What did I expect him to say to that, anyway?

We sat silently for another half-hour.

Kevin spoke up. “Wanna head back? I’d feel bad if they made us a dinner and we weren’t there when it was ready.”

He stood and extended his hand to help me up. It was then that I remembered.

“Oh, by the way, so…” I squished my face. “They think we’re married.”

“Who does?”

“Isa.”

Kevin raised his eyebrows. “Wow. Ok.”

I felt a little embarrassed. I took his hand and stood up. “I just didn’t want to correct her. I didn’t see the point of it.”

“You didn’t see the point, huh?” he said, with a big smile.

“No. Well—shut up.” I struggled to answer, stuttering which made it worse. “I mean I didn’t think it was a big deal. It’s not like they have two separate bedrooms they could give us instead.”

“It’s fine. We’ll be married people.” He hooked his arm around mine and started to walk. “I’m voting hotel for the next couple nights though. I mean, she wasn’t even expecting us.”

“Yeah, I agree.”

“I’m really excited to see what they made, though. When’s the next time we’ll get a homemade Mexican dinner?”

“Right?” The idea brightened my mood a little.

We walked through the lively streets on the way back to the tomato –colored house and I felt myself slowing down. A type of inescapable exhaustion pulled at me. I suddenly felt hot and irritated and I had a feeling of lightheadedness that reminded me of how I got once after holding my breath for too long. I wanted to crumple right there on the sidewalk.

Kevin noticed and squatted down in front of me, offering a piggyback ride.

“C’mon,” he urged me.

I over-carefully got on his back, and he gingerly brought me back to the house.

The aroma in the house was intoxicating, but I couldn’t bear the thought of food. Isa seemed to know just as soon as she saw us and led Kevin to the bedroom, now with all fresh bedding.

Kevin backed up to the bed and squatted down so I could climb off of him. I pushed my shoes away and struggled to keep my eyes open and talk. My eyebrows were up and I fought to keep my eyes open.

“Are you OK?” Kevin asked me. “I can stay. I’m not going to understand a word they say anyway.”

“No, you eat. I’m just tired. Save me some,” I said, smiling at him and turning toward the pillow.

“I’ll be back in just a little while. OK?”

“OK,” I whispered, already mostly asleep.

I started to dream almost immediately. I was standing on the beach somewhere. I felt wind on my face, but I noticed that my hair wasn’t moving. The ocean in front of me was a deep blue that I felt was familiar. It wasn’t quite daylight, so the extra darkness made me feel uncomfortable. It also wasn’t nighttime, though. This place was odd; the sky was partially lit—almost glowing in a purple-blue, but I didn’t notice the sun going down or coming up anywhere.

Someone was approaching, and I turned to see, but as always, my movements were too slow, as if I moved in a gel that surrounded me. I wanted to see my mother, but I didn’t know what to expect.

I saw a person with a familiar walk coming toward me. But it wasn’t my mother. As he walked toward me, I realized that the person was Dave. I felt happy. The sandy dog was next to him, the dog that had been in so many of my dreams before. This time, the dog was wet, his fur was matted, and he had dirt on his undercarriage. He stood right next to Dave.

“Melia!” Dave beamed. “You did it, Melia. You saved the baby.” He reached his arms out but couldn’t really touch me, and then he lowered them, still smiling—not a bit discouraged. I smiled back.

“I’m sure you have so many questions, and it really
sucks
that you can’t talk. Your mother told me that like 156 times.” He seemed a little different. “But I want to tell you this—the baby’s heart was made imperfect on purpose. It was a way to hide her energy from the bad guys, so that they couldn’t see her. Her heart failed way, way earlier than they’d planned for, though, and that’s why all of this had to happen so quickly when you didn’t come yesterday—the wheels kinda fell off the bus. Now her heart is whole and her energy is hidden from them. From the bad guys, I mean.”

I had too many questions, and I felt frustrated. What bad guys? Who the heck would hunt down a baby? And what energy? I tried to focus on the dream. I also wondered about Max. I wanted to ask Dave about him.

I remembered Vita’s advice about lucid dreaming. I decided to try it. I concentrated hard and took over some control of my dream. I squatted down and wrote in the sand with my finger.  ‘Why me?’

Dave sighed. “It’s not time for you to know that.”

I wrote again. ‘No signs? Like last time?’ Writing again in the sand took incredible time and effort. I was almost surprised that Dave was still standing there after I’d finished.

Dave paused. “You were too
sad
. We couldn’t get to the right dream point. Signs while you were awake just weren’t working out.”

I was losing the ambition to write again. But I forced myself. ‘R U happy?’

Dave smiled at me genuinely and paused before replying. “So happy.”

My heart swelled.

I sat up in the bed and had a brief moment of panic  I couldn’t remember where I was. I looked around the very fancy, very small goldish-yellow room. The bedspread had been removed and neatly folded in a wooden chair that sat in the corner. On the bedside table, food neatly wrapped in plastic had been set down for me . A beachside painting hung on the wall by the dark wood-paneled door that appeared to be cedar. Several other boldly painted landscapes also hung on the walls. On the far side of the room were dozens of bouquets of white flowers. Kevin was asleep on a rug very close to the door on the burnt-orange tile floor.

He must have heard the bed squeak as I moved, because he woke abruptly, pulling his eyelids around with the heel of his palms.

“Hello. Why are you on the floor?” I asked him.

“Well, we didn’t talk about the sleeping arrangements, so I didn’t want to make any assumptions,” he said, stretching and cracking.

“You’re so weird.” I told him.

He laughed.

“You missed…the best dinner…of my life,” Kevin said with dramatic flare.

“Yeah? That good?”

“I nearly wept,” he said, getting up, bones cracking. “Oh and they had some priest here who spoke pretty good English. Someone to talk to.” He shrugged. “He told me that he’d been called to give Drina last rites. Do you believe that? Last rites.” He shook his head. “Now she looks perfect. Like the Gerber baby.”

I had briefly forgotten all of that, and the weight of the unknown was blasted right back into my face. I breathed in and out deeply. We heard Drina crying a little in the other room and looked at each other.

“Hey, how are you feeling?” he asked me, sitting on the bed.

“Good. How long did I sleep for?”

Kevin looked at his watch. “About 15 hours, I think.”

“Geez.”

“Well, you know, you had kind of a big day, Mel.”

“Yeah,” I replied. I didn’t want to talk about that. “You must be tired, sleeping on tile all night.”

“It wasn’t bad. But one bug and I would’ve chucked all this gentlemanly crap out the window,” he said, stretching. The stretching made his voice sound funny.

“So what now?” he asked, finishing his stretch.

“I dunno. I guess, technically, we could go home whenever we want. We don’t have to stay. But we’re in Mexico. Maybe we stay the next couple of days until our scheduled flight?”

“I could stand a couple days here,” he agreed, nodding and smiling. “We could check out the downtown today and then get a hotel, maybe check out the beach.”

There was a knock at the door with baby sounds nearby.

“Come in,” we said in unison.

Isa walked in holding Drina, and one of the women from the night before brought in coffee. The smell was wonderful. Drina was bobbing around on Isa’s shoulder and making excited sounds.

“Good morning! She’s a completely new baby! It’s just a miracle, Miss Amelia. I am very honored that you chose to stay with us. You are welcome here as long as you like.”

“Oh, thank you.”

She handed me Drina, and Kevin and I played with her for a few minutes. She was almost angelic. Her tiny head was as soft and smooth as a peach that had been warmed in the sun. I couldn’t help but smile at her.

I wanted to feel proud for healing her, but I wouldn’t let myself. It didn’t seem right. The skill wasn’t mine—it came from someone working through me. That made feeling anything other than odd and fake very difficult. I just felt crappy. Still, when I held her, I actually felt happy.

“I wonder, miss, if I may ask you to take this picture of my aunt. She’s been
so
sick,” the woman holding the tray asked.

“Maria…” Isa objected gently.

I felt tired again suddenly. I hesitated before taking the picture until I realized that if I was in any position to give her hope, I should do it. Even though I knew I couldn’t heal her aunt, I would still think of her and try. I smiled at her and took the picture. The picture was of a woman in a floral shirt. She had short, black, wavy hair and sat at a picnic table laughing with her hand over her mouth.

I looked up at Maria and smiled. “I will try, but I’ve only been successful once, with this baby girl. But I will try.” I pressed the photo between my hands.

“Thank you, healer.”

“Will you stay with us again?” Isa asked me.

“I think we’re going to check out some of the area and stay near to the beach. Make a little vacation of our last couple of days here.”

“Very nice, very nice. Well, you can come back here any time you wish. Any time. Even a year from now—or ten years from now.” She held my hand while Kevin made goofball faces and crazy sounds to get Drina to smile.

About an hour after breakfast, we left. Leaving was harder than I expected. Drina was very fond of Kevin particularly, and I missed her already. I wondered to myself if she was somehow special, and that’s what all of this was for. But I still couldn’t get out of my mind: Why
me
? I wondered if I’d ever know. Then I wondered if I’d ever see Drina again. I kissed her gently on her bouncy, rosy cheek.

Isa took both my hands while Kevin acted like a lunatic some more to get smiles from Drina.

“I hope to see you again, Miss Amelia. You are truly unique, and He works through you. It is unmistakable.”

“Thanks, Isa. Take care of that baby. I’ll think of you both. I really will.” She handed me a large bag of food that they’d packaged up for us.

I wanted to just get my thoughts out of my head. I didn’t want to think about anything at all or try to figure anything out. Talking through any of this was an absolute waste of time. We knew nothing, and we weren’t going to figure any of it out.

Kevin and I took a bus to the area near the beach. We found a clean and reasonable hotel with a partial view of the ocean. As soon as we walked into the room, we tossed our bags on the bed and walked out to the balcony where we found two white chairs with a small tile table between. We sat down and put our feet up on the wall that surrounded the balcony. We were quiet for several minutes.

“If you could have any superpower in the world, what would you choose?”

“Oh boy,” I said, dread filling my mind. We’d barely spoken on the way over here. I wondered if it was going to be like this forever—super awkward and the feeling that we could only talk about one thing.

“I’m serious.”

“OK. So you tell
me
then.”

“I’d want the power to
heal
.” He looked at me hard. “I think most good people would. Mel, you should’ve seen it. You moved like you’d done it 10 times before.”

I put my head in my hands. “Kevin. It wasn’t me.”

“But what if it was? What if you just don’t know how to control it yet.”

“I think if that’s what it was, wouldn’t I be like accidentally healing people uncontrollably?”

“Maybe.”

“Kevin?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think there is any way we can just kind of ignore what happened for a while?”

“It’s just so incredible, Mel.”

I didn’t respond.

He got up and walked over to my chair and squatted down. I had been sitting with my arms crossed. He tugged on my wrist and put his arms around me. I hugged him.

“I’m sorry. Let’s check some stuff out around here and have a good time.”

“Please don’t say sorry,” I whispered.