Chapter 31 Mariella
I reread the current page of my book, the words trickling from my brain like water through a sieve.
Eventually I toss the book on my nightstand, switch off my lamp, and lie back on my pillow.
After Anna and I turn in each night, my evenings are spent like this, lying in bed, daydreaming about Parker and my first day at Neurovida.
Meeting his younger self. Falling in love.
The light from my phone cuts through the darkness, Silas’s name appearing on the screen. We haven’t spoken since the day he showed me the picture of Parker and Rose. He’s sent an attachment, with a message underneath:
I’m sorry.
I jerk upright, flick the light back on, and click on the attachment. My mother’s black-and-white death certificate fills my screen. It’s only one page, the typed contents bearing the speckled markings of a photocopy. Under Standard Certificate of Death is my mother’s name.
The date and place of her birth.
Our home address.
My deceased grandparents’ names.
I read on. The certificate names Massachusetts General Hospital as the place of death, with an inpatient box checked and the name of the cemetery where her body was taken. Beneath are the signatures of the funeral service licensee and the attending doctor. I continue reading.
The report lists December twenty-fourth as the day my mother died. Suicide is stated as the immediate cause of death and, below this, bilateral vertical incision to ventral surface of wrist. The report lists the underlying causes as schizophrenia, psychosis and post-traumatic stress disorder.
“What?” I whisper at the screen and reread the report. It must be wrong. My mother didn’t kill herself. She wouldn’t leave me. At this point, I’m not even sure she was sick. Maybe she was in danger and had to flee, like Parker and Rose?
I blank my screen and lie back in bed. Neurovida will have answers, I know it. At the minimum, I’ll learn to time travel, and I’ll visit my mother.
I’ll uncover the truth if it kills me.
Brilliant white light dances around me, easing backward with every step.
“Mari, come here.” My mother’s voice drifts through the waning light, and I rush forward until she’s within my circle of clarity.
I suck in a stilted breath.
She’s standing at the end of the hospital corridor, her frail arms reaching for my younger self, like two bony twigs lined with scars. Her sack-like hospital gown engulfs her malnourished body, the lilac color a cruel complement to the purple rings under her eyes.
Recollections of this day inundate my brain. Memories suppressed and faded by time.
“No,” I whisper.
My younger self runs toward my mother, the green linoleum squeaking beneath her feet. “Mommy,” she squeals, and she catapults into my mother’s arms.
My mother almost tips from the impact. Clutching her daughter against her chest, her head whips back and forth along the empty corridor before she lowers the girl to the ground and drops into a crouch.
They huddle together in the tiny space between the hospital corner and a mobile laundry unit overflowing with bleached-white sheets and well-used cotton blankets.
“I need you to listen to me, Mari,” she whispers into the ear of my younger self. “Are you listening, darling?”
“Yes,” she replies in a small voice.
I edge forward and crouch beside them. My mother’s eyes are two wide, unblinking beacons, holding us both in place.
“I want to show you something.” She holds her hand up into a fist, her thumb poking out between her index and middle finger.
Fresh, angry marks line her wrist. A bitter taste fills my mouth. “This means safe. Can you do it too?”
The little girl mimics the gesture, and my mother’s smile transforms her face.
The hollows in her cheeks fill, and her eyes sparkle.
“I’m going to teach you another one.” She crosses her index and middle fingers over one another, like a child telling a fib.
“This is how we can tell there are people around us who are dangerous.”
“Evelyn, how did you get out of your room?” a nurse calls from the other end of the corridor.
My mother’s eyes widen, and she leans toward my younger self, fingernails digging into the girl’s tiny shoulders.
“We can use these to communicate with each other. Our little secret, hmm?” Hospital staff in navy scrubs stride toward us, and my mother stands, thrusting the girl behind her.
“You’re not safe, Mari,” she screams. “They’re going to kill us. ”
Two nurses approach, speaking under their breath. “I found a stash of pills in her bedroom. She hasn’t been medicated for over a week,” one says.
“Explains the hallucinations,” the other says.
A younger man in black scrubs steps past the nurses and approaches my mother. “No one’s trying to kill you, Evelyn. We’re here to help you.”
Another nurse reaches for my younger self’s hand. “Time to go, Mari.”
My mother straightens, staggering backwards into the laundry cart. “This isn’t real,” she screams.
“We’re real, Evelyn,” the man in black scrubs says calmly.
A burly staff member clamps his arms around my mother, her bare feet lifting off the ground.
“Get off me,” she screams, and it sounds as if the words are being torn from her throat. “No. They’re trying to kill me.”
I jerk awake to the rumble of a garbage truck and the clatter of breaking bottles.
My heart’s racing from my dream, my mother’s unhinged face fresh in my mind.
Grabbing my phone, I open Silas’s message containing my mother’s death certificate.
Bilateral vertical incision to ventral surface of wrist. Tears spill onto my cheeks at the memory of the fresh, raised cuts on my mother’s wrists and her high-pitched wail as she was dragged back to her room.
Schizophrenia, psychosis, post-traumatic stress disorder.
Did reading my mother’s death certificate somehow trigger a memory trapped within my own subconscious?
Electric sparks lick at my fingertips, and I shake my hands, hurling the energy away like it’s toxic.
I read the report again, each inhale more restricted than the last.
“Time travel isn’t genetic.”
“We studied theory of time travel with McGregor at Neurovida every day. For years. If it was genetic, we’d know.”
A shiver races down my spine, and my gaze jumps from the closed bedroom door to the sliver of night visible between my drawn curtains.
No one is watching you. I creep toward the window and glance down at the empty street.
A cat scampers beneath a parked car. A memory flashes through my head: my mother standing by her own bedroom window, fingers curled into her cardigan as she peered down at the street.
“Shh,” she whispered, eyes glued to the front lawn. “Someone’s out there.”
My hand rises to my mouth.
Oh, God.
Time travel isn’t genetic. My mother killed herself. And there were warning signs. Her secret hand signals and lying about her medication. Her paranoia about being followed, just like mine.
There’s a knock on my door. “Ella, are you in there?” Anna says.
I cross the bedroom on numb legs and turn the handle, my thoughts scrambling. Anna’s hot pink lips are pressed together, her brows scrunched.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, seeing the subtle tic in her jaw.
She shifts on her wedges, arms crossed tightly against her chest. “I was at dinner with my father last night, and he ran into an old rowing friend and his daughter. Sarah Walker.” The blood drains from my face. “I told her it was really nice to finally meet her, seeing as she’s your best friend.”
“Anna—” I say, cringing.
The smile on her face sends chills down my arms. “She says she hasn’t seen you in years.
Says you weren’t even friends at school.
She only knew who you were because she said your mother killed herself when you were in elementary school.
” Tears brim in her narrowed eyes. “Ella, you told me your mom died from a heart attack. Did you not think you could trust me? That I would want to be there for you? And I know you went through my closet again.”
“What?” I ask.
Anna shakes her head and picks something up from the floor. She places my sketchbook into my arms. “I found this in there.”
My head snaps to the desk next to my bed, where my sketchbook usually sits. Why was it in Anna’s room?
“Where have you been all this time, when you said you were with Sarah?”
I stare down at the book clutched in my hands, wishing it would suck me into its blank pages. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Try the truth,” she says, her voice trembling. She pulls a bottle of pills from her jacket—the half-empty container I tried to give Rose. “What are these?”
I shake my head. I don’t know what to say without lying. How do I tell her I took them to stop time traveling in my sleep? I can’t. How did I get myself into this mess? I never should’ve lied to Anna about my mother’s death.
Black, mascara-infused tears streak Anna’s cheeks. “Ella, if you can’t be honest with me, then are we really friends?”
I press my lips together. Even if I did tell her about time travel, I don’t have any proof.
It would only sound like farfetched lies.
I lower my gaze to the floor, as if I might find a piece of my heart on the thick sage rug.
I can’t bring myself to tell Anna another lie, but I also can’t give her the truth.
My bottom lip trembles. “I’m sorry—I can’t. ”
Mouth tense, Anna tosses my pills onto the bed and strides to her own room, her thick wedges clunking on the floorboards. With one last disappointed glance, she slams her door closed, locking our friendship away with it.
The porch stairs creak as I climb to my front door, satchel in hand and the past twelve hours ringing through my head.
Three lines of police tape cross the doorway, one obstructing the four locks my mother installed.
Another sign of her paranoia—the beginning of her disease progression.
My skin crawls and I whip around, scanning the few parked cars on the street.
My fist closes around the charm on my necklace, right above my racing heart.
This is more than the familiarity of watching myself in my sub-t.
My paranoia’s real. And it’s worsening. I’m already following in her footsteps.
I flash back to my mother in that hospital, screaming. My mother who couldn’t differentiate fact from fiction. My mother who killed herself.
I can’t end up like her, locked up while my mind slips away.
My stomach hardens. Silas was right. I can’t throw away my lifelong plan on a whim.
I need to finish my studies and learn about my mother’s disease.
Book back in with Dr Williams. I need to fight for the safe, normal life I’ve spent the last twelve months building.
The ache in my chest feels like a tangible thing. No Neurovida. No Parker.
When I break the tape and open my front door, I’m hit with the thick, bitter scent of smoke and burned plastic.
I trudge across the living room and collapse on my faded brown sofa, the half-empty bottle of pills rattling inside my open bag.
I miss Anna and her constant chit-chat. Her revolving door of guests and outfit changes.
I lie back and close my eyes, but they tug back open.
If I go to sleep, I’ll dream of my mother and the trauma ahead of me.
Of my future with Parker that will never be.
The blood drains from my face, and my heart aches fiercely.
I’ll never see him again. I reach into my bag and pluck out my medication.
Tipping the bottle, I shake two pills into my open palm.
I don’t want to dream… I want to forget.