Chapter 16 #2
“Where did you get this?” I flipped through the book and found several versions of the same picture.
All the drawings were the same: black scribbles showing a nighttime scene.
Some were in crayon, some in pen. But the darkness of the scene was always broken by a full moon and railroad tracks leading away from me.
Just before the vanishing point, there was the light of an oncoming train.
Some of the drawings were more detailed than others, but most were mere sketches of the scene, always from the same angle, always with the light of the full moon and the train. It never came nearer.
“I told you,” said Yasmin. “I see it. Ever since I was little, I’ve had visions of this image. It happens often enough that I don’t even bother drawing it anymore.”
“What does it mean?” asked Annabelle. She’d flowed around Yasmin to stand behind me and look.
I held the drawings close to my chest so that she couldn’t see them and abruptly stood. My entire body was flooded with adrenaline. There was ten times as much energy coursing through my body as there had been when I was on the giant horse. “Don’t ever draw this again.”
“But I can’t control it—”
“Ever. Promise me you will never draw this again,” I shouted. I stabbed a finger at Yasmin. My face was hot with a rage that, if I let it out, would flow directly at her.
Yasmin was too shocked to respond. I didn’t give a damn.
“Gibson?” Annabelle said.
I yanked open the back door, taking the book and my wine with me. “Leave me alone, Marley.”
***
Nate and Yasmin were doing the dishes and speaking in hushed tones. Then they went upstairs and turned the light on in Yasmin’s second-floor bedroom. The window creaked as it closed, and I was relieved—I didn’t want to hear their conversation any more than they wanted me to eavesdrop.
About thirty minutes went by before Annabelle appeared on the deck.
I hadn’t done anything but sit, wanting desperately to run somewhere and knowing there wasn’t anywhere to go on this stupid island.
Not only was there no subway to take, there were no cars to borrow and drive mindlessly out into the country, no motorcycle to hop on the back of—no way to speed away from my problems and my past. Instead, I had to sit with my stupid emotions and wonder how in the hell Yasmin would know about my darkest day.
“Are you all right?” Annabelle asked softly. She appeared in her chair as if she’d been sitting there the whole time.
“There was a day when I was seventeen,” I said, not looking at her. “I stole my dad’s car. It was a big ole Buick. Practically as big as a boat, with a leather interior that got stupid hot in the summer, and ... never mind, you don’t care about cars.”
“I’ve never seen one except on television,” she admitted. “There are a few on the island for emergencies, but I always found them too frightening to try and investigate.”
“Anyway. I drove the car out in the desert. I wish I could show you the desert, Marley. It’s like ... it’s huge, like the water is here, but so different. You know how the colors of the water and the sky are so vibrant, even though they’re basically just shades of blue?”
She nodded.
“It’s like that, but with orange and purple skies, plus green and brown and ... I wish I could show you.”
She placed her hand close enough to my arm for it to tingle and left it there.
“But, anyway, there was a day, when I was seventeen, when I stole my dad’s car.
” I paused, not reliving the day but also not eager to talk about it.
I didn’t talk about it. Ever. And it was okay, not to talk about it.
It really was. But it meant that putting the memory into words was new.
That day lived in my brain for so long without words that I had never fit the experience into language before.
It was a memory that only ever came out through my fingers on the strings, not words from my mouth.
Forcing myself to speak, I said, “I drove. And drove and drove. No destination, I just needed to escape. Finally, the sun came down, and I drove through a spectacular desert sunset. One of those sunsets that make you think maybe there is a God because it’s just so damn beautiful.
Then the sun went down, and I stopped at a railroad crossing. ”
I swallowed.
Annabelle was looking at me with infinite compassion in the set of her mouth, but she didn’t say anything. I remembered her sitting here telling me about her father, and how fragile that moment had seemed. I imagine she felt something like that now.
I shook my head, not wanting to worry her. “It’s fine. Everything worked out, and it’s fine, I promise.”
“Gibson . . .”
She moved her fingers so that her hand was resting in the same space as my arm. It felt zingy, like pop rocks on my skin.
“It’s fine now, Marley. But it wasn’t, not then. It was too hard, to be young and angry. So I drove and I stopped on the tracks and for a while, I thought I might let it—”
“No,” she whispered.
“But then I looked and I saw the train coming. Yasmin’s stupid drawing ...” I shook my head. “It’s exactly what I saw that night.”
The words weren’t nearly as difficult to pull out of me as I thought they might be. Time had dislodged them from where they stuck in my chest, and somehow Annabelle coaxed them the rest of the way.
“I don’t know how it’s possible, but that drawing is an image I’ve had in my head for over twenty years. When I see it, I’m reminded of the feeling I had when I hit the gas pedal and moved off the tracks. That I wasn’t ready for the end.”
Annabelle brought her other hand to mine, trying to grab on to me with both but she couldn’t. She slid right through.
“It’s fine, Marley.” It wasn’t. Yasmin kept trying to tell me that we were connected, and I kept refusing to believe her. The fact that she’d been drawing that image proved she was right. Somehow, as crazy as it sounded, we were linked.
And if Yasmin could see into my life, maybe that meant she could bring Annabelle back.
“I believe you, my dear,” Annabelle said quietly. “Because you’re here with me.”
We sat quietly, listening to insects buzzing around the porch light. There wasn’t any music in the back of my head. But for once in my life, that was okay. I sat with the silence and the image of the train, but it never came any closer. And it was fine.
“If you could come back,” I asked, trying to sound casual, “what would you do?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, if you could be ... real again, what would you want to do? I’m just curious. If all of Mackinac Island was yours to roam for a day, what would you want to do?”
“Oh,” she said, looking thoughtfully beyond the garden. “I’d like to have high tea.”
“At the Grand Hotel?”
Annabelle nodded. “I’d like to go shopping. And play the candy game.”
“Candy game?”
She held out her hand as if she was holding a cell phone, then mimicked touching the screen with her fingers.
I laughed. “Candy Crush? Okay, yeah, you can play Candy Crush all you like. But be careful whose money you spend. Then what?”
“Then I’d like to visit my father’s grave.” She turned to me, her smile sad but fond. “Pay my respects. And then ...”
“Then what?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Dinner, I suppose. And I’d like to dance. With someone, I mean.”
I nodded. “Sounds like a nice day.”
“It would be, wouldn’t it?” Annabelle giggled. “Not terrifically exciting, though.”
“Well,” I said, “exciting is in the eye of the beholder.”
“Indeed.” Annabelle clinked her empty glass to mine, and we traded smiles. I turned back to the garden, but suddenly, it looked completely different.
It was like there was another layer of reality on top of the one I was currently seeing.
The decaying vegetables and empty fire pit were still there, and the weeds were omnipresent.
But I could also see a roaring fire, with children standing around it holding sticks with marshmallows at the end.
The night was dark, but it also wasn’t. I saw strings of fairy lights extending from the house out to the end of the porch and lamps strategically placed throughout the garden, filling the whole place with soft, magical light.
The garden beds were full of colorful tomatoes and other plants I couldn’t identify.
There were bicycles leaning against Yasmin’s shed and a horseshoe pit off to the side of the yard.
Tears welled behind my eyes, and instead of fighting, I let them fall. I heard people murmuring, glasses clinking, and from somewhere behind me, a song that I half recognized.
“Gibson?” Annabelle said, “are you all right?”
I blinked. The vision disappeared but the feeling didn’t. I looked at Annabelle’s beautiful face, shining with concern, and said, “I’m great, actually. I think ... I’m home.”