Where Bluebirds Fly (9 page)

My legs pump till they burn. I laugh, exhilarated by the wet kiss of the snow hitting my face. I am shivering wildly, and I don’t care.

I picture him in my mind, and it blazes with light. A light I was certain was dead. Blotted out with grave-dirt, buried forever with the love of my parents.

My boot strikes wood, and the pain in my foot sings.

I stare down in glorious triumph at the bridge.

The Bridge of Evanesce, or fade-away, I realize I’ve named it.

I grasp its railing in my shaking hands. He’s calling me—I can almost hear it.
 
He is just beyond this bridge. My throat goes dry.

I step onto the bridge, leaving a boot print in the gathering snow.

The woman’s singing, deep and low, cuts into my heart with her longing.

I repeat the words. “A land…from a lullaby?” Yes, if the man lives anywhere, it would be in such a place.

I see the word
blue
in my head. The same shade as his eyes.

I reach the summit and hold my breath. Is it wrong to try and find him? I find, I don’t care.

I leap over the apex.

* * *

Chapter 8

Next Evening

“Are you all right, True?” Ram turned, placing the final dinner dish in the cupboard.

David, one of the teens, interjected, “You’re so white. Dude, you’re always pale, but tonight you’re freakin’
pasty.
”

“Brilliant, thanks.” Truman rolled his eyes.

Dave shrugged, walking out of the kitchen.

Truman massaged his face with both hands, his fingers stopping in a steepled prayer position before his lips.
 

He stared at Ram. “Dunno. I think it’s the new one we’re expecting. Don’t know if I’m up to it. I mean, Todd, and his tantrums, David and Ethan with their fabulous adolescence, oppositional defiance disorder and detachment. Maybe I should’ve said no.”

“Well, your
problem
doesn’t help the situation, does it?”

“
Which
problem? Don’t start on me, Ram. I’m in no mood. I’ve been pricked, prodded and wired up to more machines than should be humanly permissible.”

“It’s emotion-color synesthesia, it has a name and we should use it. It isn’t some sort of weird, new-agey ability.” His hands fluttered and he pulled a face. “It’s a cross-wiring of your senses—we’ve been over this.”

Truman hesitated.
Should I tell him everything?
It would mean another endless round of battles, with Ram insisting on more tests.

I need to prove to myself I’m not mental.

“There’s something I’ve never told you.”

Ram’s eyebrows traveled up his forehead into his jet-black hair. “I knew it! I knew you were holding out on me! Your P.E.T. scans were the most original I’d ever seen. Spill it. I cannot be-
lieve
you didn’t tell me everything.” His expression changed from surprise to irritation in a tick.

“I’m sorry. Look, I already feel like a freak, you know? It’s what kept me from being adopted till I was what, fourteen? Because I opened my big, fat mouth and was labeled abnormal. So, forgive me if I’m not the most trusting sort when it comes to psychologists.”

“You’re stalling.” His foot tapped. “And I’m your best friend.”

“Fine.” He stood up and paced back and forth in front of the kitchen sink. “I can also…
feel
people, for who they are…their personalities, their singularity, if you will.”

Ram’s face re-lit with the familiar scientific fascination he’d come to despise. “Go on, man. How?”

“Again, it’s subjective, naturally, to how I assess them, I suppose—but typically it’s spot on.”

Ram stood and pulled open a drawer, scrabbling around till he extracted a notebook and pen. He clicked the pen up. “Give me an example.”

Anger simmered. Truman bit his bottom lip. He struggled not to bite his analytical head off.

He opted to scratch one eyebrow, and roll his eyes.
 
Ram was compulsively curious.

“Like you, I’ve told you, your color is brown. But what I didn’t tell you, was the sensations which go with brown. I smell chocolate, and feel...compassion, when you’re around.”

Ram laughed out loud.

“Look, I know how it sounds—
shut-it
, or I’ll quit.”

He wiped the smile from his face, and motioned to continue, pen poised. He was doing his psychologist shtick.

Truman bit back a growl. “Ok.” He took a huge breath, and blurted, “The girl from the other night, in the corn.”

“The one we aren’t certain is real? The one I am fully convinced was a dream, created by your self-imposed abstinence? Perhaps resulting in a testosterone-fueled psychotic break?”

“Quit joking!”

“Who’s joking?”

“Yes, well that
dream
-girl was a strangely beautiful shade of lavender, one I’ve never seen before. And she felt…” His cheeks went hot.

Ram’s mouth dropped. “I’m astounded. Mr. I-have-no-interest-in-women-they-are-all-shallow-and-beneath-me just blushed.”

Truman squeezed his eyes shut. He didn’t want to watch his reaction. “I felt her pain and fear like a black tsunami, dousing me.” His hands mimed the positions. “And below it, submerged, was a crystal pure feeling, the same I get with ice or snowflakes. Purity, maybe?”

He was surprised to hear footsteps. He opened his eyes. Now Ram was the one pacing.

“We have to tell Dr. Kinney at the lab. You have
sets
of synesthesia going on in there.” He tapped the side of his head.

Guilt plagued him, for editing. His mind also calculated facial expressions-analyzing them into complex patterns. The human lie detector. Ram would
never
let him be if he confessed it.
 

I am so not talking about the journal. He’ll have me committed.

“No. I’m done with all the testing. It’s going nowhere.”

“Don’t be stupid, what if your gift could help others?”

“Gift? That’s stretching it a bit. If you fire me, I could get a job as a carny, though. Come one, come all—see the human name-taster!”

Images filled his head.
 
He stood alongside the president or prime minister, as they simultaneously requested he assess the personality or intentions of a foreigner standing before them. Or if they were lying.
No, thanks.
 

“I’m going out.”

He flung open the back door, leaving Ram with his mouth gaping again.

He jogged toward the corn. Entering the rows, the familiar color cut the air, and he felt her presence. His heart swelled, screaming at him to find her.
 
He barreled to the bridge.

His mind sped, flight of ideas really. He’d read about
Soul Mates
—their mythological origins. He thought it all bollocks.

But what if the perfect person for you, happened to be born in the wrong century? What then?

“Then this bloody cornfield.”

It made sense, in a fair, but twisted sort of way.

Somewhere to his left, music began. Music?

His heart jack-hammered.
 

Oh, no, oh, no. I am losing it.

He stopped dead as recognition struck. The music crackled, like his father’s antique Victrola.
 

“I don’t believe it.”
 

Judy Garland was singing.
Somewhere over the Rainbow.
 

If any song encapsulated his childhood, his fears—this was it. He’d first heard it at the orphanage, fell in love with her, wanted to step into her world, at the age of six.
 

It was the one part of the song. He couldn’t believe it when he’d heard it. It was if God was answering his prayers, that he wasn’t a freak, wasn’t alone with his oddity.

If a place existed,
where trouble smelled like lemon drops
, then surely, that was the place for him.

He laughed out loud.

A few years older and wiser, he learned they
melted
, not
smelled
.

He bolted again, Judy’s voice sound-tracking his experience like some 1940’s film. Following him toward the bridge.
 

Toward her, the nameless girl, he’d felt love, overprotection…but now desire wolfed down the other sentiments, consuming him.
 

Somewhere along the way, he’d cut his neck. He swiped it away.
 

The rustling corn, the thunder, the crickets, all faded to nothing. He was consumed with a singular thought.
 

The woman in white. My reader.
What is your name?

* * *

My boots slide in the snow, gathering on the bridge. Anything, anywhere, must be better than Salem. The sound of the hornets in my head whir in protest.
They don’t like freedom, they thrive on pain.

I hurtle myself to the top, directly at the bridge’s apex.

I connect, with a hard-cold-wall of blackness. Sparks conjure out of nothing, exploding from my impact.
 
Multi-colored and beautiful, they fizzle immediately, suffocated by snowflakes.

My head snaps back, shooting pain down my spine. I sprawl in a heap, sliding backwards on the slick boards. My head darts up, I’m riveted. And angry.

It’s like a wall.

The air churns in a rectangle, and whispers come and go. It’s as if the world is cut in two. Snow gathers around my feet, falling in huge white clusters. But only two steps more, on his side, the corn is green, lush and full.
 

I hear footsteps beating up the other side. My heart stutters, knowing
it’s him
.

I stand, and rush to the door, placing my hands against it, unsure if he can see me.
 

Little zaps of light envelope my hands, twisting down my fingers up to my arms.

I can’t move. I’m not afraid. I can’t move.

He bursts into the clearing. My stomach bottoms, and a hot, driving urge rushes through my veins. It is him. My writer and the man from the other day, they are indeed, one and the same.

He pauses for but a moment, his face auditioning a cast of emotions; surprise, concern, yearning, and finally joy.
 

He bolts up the other side, yelling,
 
“Are you all right? Come closer, I—”
 

He collides with the door, hands spread like mine. Our hands overlap, but don’t touch. The door separates us.
 

The rainbow colored lightning overtakes his hands, melding him to the other side.

I am panting like an animal. His face is so close, I could taste his breath, if not for the wretched door.
 

His blue-green eyes widen before I feel it, but then a shock vibrates me, hard enough to rattle my teeth. His eyes are fearful, I know for me.

His mouth moves, but no words come out.

Then I see it, in my mind. The cornfield disappears.

I see him, as a baby, and his crying mother. She slips him into a woman’s outstretched arms, and flees the room, sobbing. She flies past a sign that reads, Applegate Orphanage.

A swirl of light and pain.

He’s a boy now. I shudder. I feel his hunger, as acutely as if it’s my own. And his loneliness. It crushes me, and my lips part—I can’t cry out. He swings alone in a dirty play yard.

More pain, a sensation of falling.

I see him again, he’s almost his age now, just a little younger. Sitting at a desk, staring at a book with a million letters and numbers that mean nothing to me. I feel the loneliness, though. It feels exactly as it did when he was a boy. Only now, it’s mixed with anger.

He grabs a container before him, spilling a bunch of small pills into his hand. He glares at them. His hand shakes, sending some flying onto the desk. Seething hatred fills him, fills me, and he pelts them against the wall. I hear their tapping as they rain down to the floor.

I’m back with him now. His eyes are contracting, and widening, not really seeing me. His mouth twitches, and his lips are moving—but I hear nothing. My hands begin to warm by bits, like ice dethawing, and suddenly I can feel his rough hands.

I am alive, for the first time.
 

* * *

 
He feels her presence. The wind is whipping crazy, and Ram will undoubtedly call the psych ward.

“I can’t go back. Not yet. And now I’m talking to myself.”

He laughed, but it died in his mouth as he broke through the corn.

There she was, standing frozen on the center of the bridge, her hands held up on either side of her as if under arrest.

Her red hair whips around her, and her expression is terrified. She shudders, the rest of her body moving while her hands remain seemingly glued to thin air.