Ashes of Foreverland (4 page)

Her toe caught something.

It was the
National Geographic
from the waiting room, the one the kid was reading. The corners were bent; creases cut across the tropical island and reflective waters. She picked it up as the elevator opened on the ground floor and rolled it into a tight cylinder.

Fifteen minutes passed. A produce truck had sideswiped a taxi and nothing was moving. The buildings' shadows grew longer and brake lights brighter. Cars honked; people shouted. An ambulance threaded its way down the street.

An hour elapsed.

Alex walked down the street and found the white Camry in the intersection of Forty-Sixth and Ninth. Traffic was slow enough that she climbed into the passenger seat, tossed her stuff on the floor and kissed Samuel on the cheek. Just as she was turning around, before she had a chance to look into the backseat—

Two headlights blinded her.

The driver's door collapsed beneath the bumper of a delivery truck, crushing Samuel's head.

Glass rained down.

Blackness enveloped her. Horns bled into angry shouts and the tinkle of glass. She spun in the darkness like a stuffed animal tumbling in a clothes drier...over and over and over—

“Oh!” Alex snapped her eyes open.

“You all right?” Samuel's voice was distant, almost like he wasn't there. “What's wrong? Alessandra, what's wrong?”

The car was fine.

There was no broken glass. No blood.

Not even a truck.

She climbed out of the car. Traffic angled to get around her, drivers raising their hands or giving her the finger. She stumbled against the car and looked up at the tall buildings, the sky bruised and crumpled. Anxiety lit her chest with dazzling tendrils. At the very same moment, lightning flashed across the sky.

Later she would remember looking at her hands, balling them into fists, and the city rushing past her like a raging storm. She would remember her husband's voice calling through cotton stuffed in her ears, even though the traffic was sharp and clear. Eyewitnesses reported she fell on her knees and pounded the asphalt.

She didn't remember that. Or the flashing lights of the ambulance.

Or seeing her husband.

New York City

P
ressure.

Her head felt like an overinflated balloon, the rubber skin creaking with each stroke. And voices. There were voices out there.

So many voices.

Each one blurred like a bad recording. Each time, it joined a smudge of color, like blackness streaked with glowing lights, vivid smatterings of pigments that lingered for a moment, just a moment, then were swallowed by the dark until the next one.

Her own thoughts flitted in and out of existence, like an art film splashing random images. A few made sense, but none belonged to the voices. Just before the last stroke of the compressor filled her head, she saw a pair of brown eyes.

Coco
.

The balloon popped.

A bright flash swallowed it all.

Alex was spared the pressure and the voices and haunting thoughts. The world fell into place, all the pieces reshuffled and fit where they belonged. And the universe existed again.

It just existed.

And she did, too.

——————————————

“W
e'll be suing,” Samuel was saying. “Negligence, pain and suffering.”

Through a veil of crusted eyelashes, the flowers were blurry. Brightly colored balls bobbed over them. Alex blinked slowly and the balls turned into helium-filled balloons tied to colored ribbon. She smacked her lips; the corners of her mouth stung.

“Got to let you go.” Samuel hovered over her. “Alex? You awake?”

“Water.”

He rushed out of sight and returned with a cup. She tried to lift her head. He helped her reach the bendy straw.

“Little sips.” He took it away. “Give that a moment.”

The water rushed into her parched throat and cooled her insides all the way to her stomach. He stared at her while she looked around the hospital room. His black hair was pushed back, his whiskers casting a shadow over the lower half of his face. And his smile glowed.

She smiled back, couldn't help it, but winced when her lips cracked.

He helped her with two more sips before setting it down.

“Are you feeling all right?” His voice was soft. She couldn't remember the last time it was like that. So soft, so caring.

“How long...have I been asleep?”

“Almost three days.”

She lifted her arms and stared at her hands. There were no bandages. Besides feeling a bit shaky—she always felt that way when she was hungry—there didn't appear to be a reason she was in the hospital. Or sleeping for three days.

“They reset your biomites.” He ran his hand through her hair. “Do you remember anything?”

The first thing was the pressure and streaking colors. But then the memory of traffic slowly rose from obscurity, the impact of a speeding truck and blaring horn that wasn't there.

And Coco.

“What's your name?” he asked.

She smiled. “Alex Diosa.”

“Your full name?”

“Alessandra Diosa.”

“That's my girl.” He kissed her forehead. “I'll get the doctors.”

He gave her one more swallow of water and put it out of reach. The muscles moved beneath his T-shirt. She collapsed on the pillow and watched him go. She was already tired, fighting sleep. She wanted to see the doctors, to see Samuel again.

The ceiling tiles had tiny perforations, like a white slice of the universe. The helium balloons drifted back and forth, crashing like soft metal.

A wave of static passed through the room, like a radio dial turned through a space of nothingness. It wasn't static. It was more like a conglomeration of words.

Voices
.

She was suddenly thirsty. It took considerable effort to reach the cup. Her fingers brushed over the surface, finally grasping it. She took large sips, noticing the tracks her hand had left on the table.

And a circle the cup had left in a thick layer of dust.

——————————————

A
lex checked her email and answered voicemail, followed by a nap. There were more doctors and a thousand explanations. She felt partly numb, but that would change.

“What about the voices?” she asked.

“Voices?” the doctor asked.

She waved her hand around, as if this explained her experience. It was like a crowd in a distance, a stadium miles away, the roar swelling, the sounds blending, the voices indistinguishable from each other.

“What about that?”

The doctor nodded. They would run some more tests. Eventually, the voices would fade.

The next morning, she waited to be discharged.

A nurse was supposed to come with a wheelchair. Alex's belongings were already in the truck.

Except a ragged
National Geographic
.

It took a moment; then she remembered. It was on the elevator floor. Someone was looking at it in the waiting room. She was compelled to pick it up. Samuel must've thought she was doing research and brought it up to the room. It had been years since she'd read a print magazine.

The pages flopped in her hands. The cover was a tropical island set in the middle of the ocean, with swaying palm trees and a setting sun.
Not a bad place to be
.

The nurse finally arrived. Alex kept the magazine on her lap and was about to give it to an orderly when she noticed a piece of paper stuck in the middle. The end was torn.

An “A” was written on the end in green ink.

Chills crawled around her neck and tightened, reminding her of the cold chills in the Institute, not like a cool breeze or frozen rain. More like someone watching her.

Alex opened to the centerfold and the bookmark fluttered onto the floor. The nurse stopped to pick it up and handed it forward. She flipped it over.

Alessandra.

Few knew her birth name. Even fewer knew how to spell it. And there it was, written in block letters and wedged into a worn magazine. It wasn't Samuel's handwriting. And he didn't have a green pen, not that she knew. Not that any of that was impossible.

So why did she feel so cold?

An island off the coast of Spain

A
n espresso waited.

A shirtless young man walked barefoot onto the veranda. He stretched, ribs protruding beneath pale skin, a patch of freckles across his shoulders and upper chest. He flipped the shag of red hair from his eyes and took the cup to the railing.

A tiny sip jolted Danny awake.

Jet lag still tugged at his inner clock, swishing in his head like water in the ears. Rarely did he fly back to the United States, but there were times when the situation was unavoidable. He spent the weekend in New York City and slept so hard on the flight back—a nonstop red-eye—that he hardly remembered boarding.

The Balearic Sea was spread out below, the deep blue water nearly glassy, cutting the horizon sharply where it met the equally blue sky. Beyond was the mainland of Spain and the port of Valencia. Once a month, he took the boat over to walk the open-air markets and meet with people for lunch, maybe dinner.

Business. Always business. And unusual for a sixteen-year-old. But very few sixteen-year-olds owned a thirty-million-dollar villa in the Mediterranean.

His name would not appear in Forbes or any other lists. His money was hidden, dispersed amongst various accounts and names. Danny had good reason to remain anonymous.

He finished the espresso, but it did nothing to clear his head. Maybe yoga would help. He looked more like a skater than a wealthy acolyte of meditation: lanky and rail thin. His breath was slow and purposeful. He could feel the sea below him, the birds above.

A breeze cooled him, sifting through his thick curls, as if God breathed with him. Through him.

Lilac. I smell lilac.

Lying in the corpse pose—the final pose—he thought that was odd since there were no lilacs growing on his property, yet it pervaded the atmosphere, saturated each breath. He heard a bone-china cup placed on a marble table beneath the portico. Sweat beaded across his chest. He exhaled then retreated to the shade.

Another espresso waited.

He took a moment to listen to the birds, to bathe in the mysterious lilac scent before tapping the low-set table. The morning reports danced across the surface in high definition. Life on the island was peaceful, almost solitary. But technology made distance irrelevant.

He sat back and sampled his drink, rubbing the knot on his forehead while scanning the newsfeeds. It itched this morning. The hole had healed, but a scar reminded him of Foreverland. Even if he could forget the itch and ignore the scar, his dreams took him back to the tropical island, put him back in the dark and dank cell where the needle waited. Two years in his past and he still fought the temptation to reach for the needle in his dreams.

We never left the island,
someone once told him.

He left the island. He just went back there every night.

He had escaped the island with the seed money to invest in the villa. For that he was grateful but, given the choice, would trade it all to erase those days from his past.

“
¿Quieres algo más, señor?
” Maria stood near the open doors.

“
No, gracias, Maria.
”

“
Muy bien. El correo está sobre la mesa.
”
The mail is on the table.

“
Gracias
.”

She smiled and began to close the doors.

“Maria, wait!” Daniel waved to stop her. He retrieved the colorful bag that he had placed beneath the sink a week ago. She shook her head while he held it out.

“
Para su hijo
,” he said. “
Feliz cumpleaños.
”
For your son. Happy birthday.

As she stood with one hand over her mouth and the other over her chest, Danny hooked the handles over her fingers. Her son had been in an accident. Danny was paying the medical bills, but the boy might not walk again.

“
Gracias
,” she muttered. “
Gracias, gracias, gracias
.”

He returned to the kitchen. The veranda doors were still open, the curtains dancing as the breeze picked up. He searched the refrigerator for a late morning snack, cutting cantaloupe and pineapple into chunks. The wind scattered the mail across the floor. Danny took a bite and started for the basement, where more business waited.

A thick envelope rested between his feet.

Danny Boy
was written on it.

He nearly dropped the bowl. No one had called him Danny Boy in years. Two years, to be exact.

Not since the island.

There was no return address, just a stamp in the corner. The handwriting was shaky, the ink bright green. He held it up to the light, as if it might ambush him. He could feel something inside it, something circular and heavy.

Danny tore it open.

It was a disc about the size and shape of a DVD but as thick as a slice of cheese. The edge was blue, but the reflective surface was scattered with a hundred pinholes. Maybe a thousand. He turned it at angles, watching his blue eyes cross over the constellation. A sticky note was attached to the back.
Build the bridge, Danny Boy.

A single sheet of lined paper fell out of the envelope, the writing in the same green ink as the address and sticky note. It was four lines:

He read it at least a dozen times and promptly tore it up, and would spend the coming weeks trying to forget who sent it.

——————————————

D
anny woke in heaven.

The clouds floated around him. His stomach rose into his throat, and then he remembered he'd taken a meeting in the immersion room—a hemispherical domed projection room—and fell asleep. He had been dreaming of, what else, the island. Just before waking, he was flying like they often did in Foreverland.