Ether (5 page)

 Eventually
though, I notice that the lingerie helps my shape, giving me respectable
curves. I smile and wink at my reflection, turning a little to see the back.
When I twist forward I see the mirror flicker and Ephraim’s image forms full
length in front of me. His eyes sweep over me and his mouth drops open
surprise. I scream and grab for my clothes, which I stuff on as quickly as I
can, right over the fancy print bra and panties.

I
don’t wait for Ephraim to fade out; I bolt out of the change room, veering away
from every mirror I pass. Mandy laughs, “That bad?”

I
glare at her, the pile of lingerie, the salesgirls, everywhere. I know without
looking that I’m blushing so badly it looks like I’ve been dipped in red candy
coating. I’m starting to see what Ephraim might have to apologize for. A
complete lack of privacy is a lot to get used to. As soon as I think about
privacy the hundreds of other private acts I don’t want witnessed come flooding
into my mind. I groan.

*          *          *

I’m hanging up my new
purchases, ultra embarrassing zebra prints included, when I sense his presence
near me. I move to the bathroom and run the hot water.

Sorry,
appears
on the bathroom mirror.

BOUNDRIES!
I print in large, angry capital letters.

I
feel a quiver in the air behind me and turn to see his body outlined very
faintly. He is standing just inside the bathroom door, a sheepish grimace on
his face. His image wavers like water in a pond, “I didn’t expect you to be
undressed in the middle of the day, in a public place. You surprised me.” His
voice is faint and whispery.

I
blush again in front of him. “Haven’t you ever heard of a dressing room?” I snap.

He
shakes his head, “No, not really. For what it’s worth you looked-”

“Don’t
say it,” I warn, “Let’s just pretend that didn’t happen.”

His
image ripples, like a stone being thrown into the waters of a pond, his image breaking
up in little eddies, “Maybe I should knock next time?” he suggests.

As
his image begins to disappear I call out one more question to him, “Ephraim,
can you see me all the time?”

“All
the time, everywhere,” he says from thin air, and then adds, “But I don’t
always look.”

Chapter 4: Off Day

            Matt is
late picking me up Thursday morning. I glance down at my watch, ten minutes
late. I shrug my backpack over one shoulder and start walking towards Justin’s
corner; might as well have some company while I wait. I’ve walked about half a
block when I hear the rumble of his car behind me. It coasts up to the curb and
I make a quick grab for the handle, but the door is locked tight. I wait for
Matt to unlock the door but he’s staring forward. I rap lightly on the window. Nothing.
With rising frustration I make a fist and pound on the door. “Come on Matt!” Matt
jumps, looking at me for the first time. The pupils of his eyes are huge and
dark, like he’s just come out of a very dark room. He leans across the front
seat, as if he’s going to unlock the door but he hesitates, gazing unseeingly
at me. His hand drops limply back down, his head swivels away and the car surges
forward. I have to scramble backwards, giving the trunk a pound as he takes
off.

            “What the
hell Matt?” I call after him, frustration boiling inside me. That totally
wasn’t funny. I fume and then I remember the glassy, empty look in his eyes and
I start to worry. Matt isn’t the kind of guy who plays tricks like that on
people. There isn’t an ounce of meanness in him so something has to be wrong. I
sigh and start walking again. Hopefully I can meet up with Justin for the rest
of the walk to school.  

            I turn the
corner just in time to see Justin duck his head into the car and slam the door before
it speeds off. “Hey!” I yell, not that he can hear me. I’ve totally been
ditched, by both of them; which doesn’t make sense. Maybe something is
bothering Matt, or he’s sick or something, but both of them? Unless Matt told
him I wasn’t coming. Would he do something like that? I drop my backpack and sit
on the edge of the curb as I fish out my cell phone. I’m just finishing an
angry text full of capitals and exclamation points when I feel Ephraim near me.
I jam the send button then slip the cell phone away, distracted. “Ephraim?” I
whisper.

            “Becks?”
And he’s there, sitting casually on the curb, inches away from me. His image is
shimmery but solid enough that I can’t see through him. The irritation leaves
me at the sound of his quiet, steady voice.

            “I can see
you,” I say simply.

            He holds
out one of his hands, inspecting it. “It’s becoming easier for me to manifest.
What just happened?”

            “You didn’t
see?”

            “I told you
I don’t always look.” His voice is teasing and soft but I hear his concern, “so..?”

            Nothing I
can explain. My instincts tell me something is wrong with Matt but on the
surface of things, he’s just playing a mean trick. Either way, it isn’t
something Ephraim can help with, so I just shrug. “Walk me to school?” I have a
long walk ahead of me; school is at least forty five minutes away and I can
definitely use the company.

            He smiles
that bright, slow smile of his, “It would be my pleasure.” As he stands his
image begins to flicker out. “I can’t sustain my image but I’m still here
Becks. Talk to me? Tell me about yourself?” I feel a little silly talking aloud
when, to anyone watching, I’m all by myself. But there’s hardly anyone around
now so I start a little monologue. “Let’s see, you must know a lot about me
already, lurking like you do. You probably already know my mom and dad are
separated, that happened about three months ago. I’m an only child but Matt,
Justin and Mandy are sort of like siblings, we’ve been friends for so long.
What else? The wall paper in my room is not my fault. Dad’s been promising to
change it since I was seven. The cartoon animal undies are my fault. Mind you I
didn’t expect I’d be showing them to any boys-” I thought I heard a chuckle.
What am I saying? Am I really talking about underwear to
Ephraim
? I try
to change the topic to more neutral subjects, wishing I can see his reactions.

            “How about
when you were younger? Do you remember your childhood?” Ephraim prompts from
the empty air next to me.  

            “Of course
I do. Okay, I don’t remember everything and the earliest memories are all
jumbled together but I remember all the important things.”

            “What kind
of things are those?” he asks curiously.

            “The usual
stuff, birthdays, vacations, playing with friends, realizing my parents cared
more about fighting with each other than they did about me.”

“I
doubt that,” Ephraim says, “It might have seemed that way to a young child
though.”

I
shake my head. “It still seems that way.” Normally I don’t talk about
unpleasant things; it’s sort of a survival mechanism for me, but Ephraim is easy
to talk to. “When I was a kid I was by myself almost all the time. My mom
worked, my dad stayed away from the house. They were so busy avoiding each
other that I had to invent an imaginary friend, just to have someone notice me.
It wasn’t all bad though; I’d go on all kinds of adventures with him.”

“Your
imaginary friend was a boy?” Ephraim asks.

“I
guess.” I shrug. All my closest friends have always been boys; I’d never really
thought about it before. “One time, when I was six or seven, I was pretending
to be a mountain climber. I climbed this huge tree near my house, way higher
than I’d ever climbed before and just as I reached the top my shoe came off, so
I couldn’t climb down. I was stuck in the tree for hours and hours. It got
later and later and the sun started to go down. I kept thinking my parents
would be frantic. I kept expecting to hear them calling my name and looking for
me. But you know they never did come looking for me; neither of my parents even
realized I’d been gone.”

            “I
remember,” Ephraim murmurs so softly I can’t be sure he said anything at all.  

            I shrug and
go on. Now that I’ve said this much, I might as well finish. “You’d think it
would be this terrible memory. The whole time I was up there I felt safe and
happy and free. Anyway, eventually Justin came looking for me and he threw me
my shoe and kept encouraging me until I finally climbed down. He’s been
rescuing me since we were six.” I finish with a sigh. It’s the most I’ve talked
about myself, ever actually.

            We walk in
silence for a while. I’m thinking about other times like the time in the tree,
talking to my ocean, taking long walks by myself. Solitude has never been
unpleasant for me, which is probably a good thing, considering. As I walk
little prickles start running up my neck. I rub my neck absently a few times
before I catch myself and pay attention. I have the sensation of being watched.
I glance over my shoulder but nothing’s there. “Ephraim?” I ask tensely.

“Still
here,” he answers softly, but something in his tone makes me even edgier. I
keep glancing over my shoulder but the path behind me is empty; until it isn’t.
This time when I turned a middle aged man, eyes wild and dark is trailing half
a block behind me. I keep walking, casting quick backwards glances. He is still
behind me. My heart speeds up. Every instinct in me is screaming that he’s
following me and that I should run and run hard.

            I quicken
my pace. I’m on a nice residential street, in a nice quiet neighbourhood. He
could be just a regular old man out for a morning walk; A regular old man with
insane eyes who happens to be strolling the entire way to my school. My heart pounds
in my chest.

            In a few
minutes I’ll have my answer one way or the other. A left turn will take me
along an isolated pedestrian walkway. The path is fenced off from a scrubby
empty field and on the other side is the school’s parking lot. There’s no
reason for him to be walking there. If he isn’t a murderous predator he should
just keep strolling along. On the other hand, if he is dangerous, I’ll be
caught in a deserted corridor with high chain link fences on both sides. “I think
we might have a problem here,” I whisper as softly as I can. I hope Ephraim was
telling the truth when he said he’d stay with me.

            “Speed up,”
his voice whispers in my ear. “When you make the turn, flatten yourself right
against the fence and hold still. Understand?”

            “Mmm-hmmm,”
I murmur assent. I speed up, moving as quickly as I can without breaking into
an actual run. I try to make it look like I’m going to pass right by the turn,
keeping my head and eyes forward. At the last possible second I dash sideways,
diving into the path and pressing myself hard against the cold wire fence.

            A second
later the old man bursts into the pathway, and charges past me. He’s moving
with impossible speed. His head swings back and forth, looking for me. He
stiffens and bolts forward. Way down the path, I see a girl wearing my clothes
scramble over the fence and tear off through the field. The man jumps at the
fence, grabs it halfway up and swings himself over, dropping nimbly to his feet
on the other side. As fast as he is, the girl he is chasing is much faster. She’s
starting to pull away from him. I see her scramble over a wooden fence and drop
from view. Only when my pursuer drops from sight do I take a breath.

            “Go,”
Ephraim says weakly beside me. I move. Letting loose every flight impulse I have,
I sprinted the rest of the way to school. I arrive at the doors lungs burning,
legs like jelly. It’s a relief to let the heavy blue doors shut out the world
and just worry about missing homework assignments. I rest my head against my
locker, struggling for breath. “Thank you,” I whisper to Ephraim.

            If I hurry
I might be just in time to slide into class unnoticed so, naturally, I have to
try my locker combination about five times before it finally clicks open. When
I slide in beside Mandy she gives me a
look
that says at once, “Where
the hell have you been? And is everything alright?” in one quick expression. I
shake my head and mouth the word
later
at her.  

            I try to
concentrate in class but I was just not raised to expect near death experiences
on a daily basis. I am not supposed to live in a world with car crashes,
avalanches, stalkers and ethereal saviours. The more I try to wrap my head
around it, the less sense it makes. There are only two things I can really fix
on; Something is trying to kill me and Ephraim is keeping me alive. My pen
drifts away from note taking and writes in the margins,
What was that back
there?

           
The
answer appears beneath mine almost instantly, confirming that Ephraim is close,
even now.
Numina.

            The word
sends a shiver through me. W
hat are Numina?
 I respond.

           
This
time his answer is slower and I picture him considering his words.
Evil,
he
writes at last.

           
No
kidding!
I scratch underneath. But I think the effects of sarcasm are lost
on paper. He obviously isn’t going to give me a straight answer right now. It’s
probably too complicated for notes anyway. So I change tactics.
What did you
do back there?

            Limited
alteration of the bounds of reality. In human form, most Numina are limited to
human perceptions. Dangerous but easily mislead.

           
Mandy
cranes her neck, trying to see what I am writing so earnestly; not
s
urprising
since I never put that much energy into note taking. ‘Limited alteration of the
bounds of reality’? Why can’t Ephraim ever say something simple? I puzzle over
it a minute before I realize he means he used some kind of illusion. And the
rest of it? I reread it and reread it but it doesn’t make any more sense to me.
What the heck does ‘in human form’ mean? Do the Numina have a non-human form? I
shudder. Okay, so something not human is trying to kill me and Ephraim is protecting
me. Does that make things better or worse for me?

            Before I
can figure that one out, the bell goes off. As soon as I step into the hallway
I feel a change around me. Under the hustle of kids moving through the corridor
the air seems to crackle. I pause, scanning the crowded hallway, shifting my
gaze. Am I imagining things or is there a faint humming sound? It’s like
standing under high voltage electric wires. The hum changes to an ear splitting
whistle. I jam my hands against my ears, trying to block it out. Beside me,
Mandy scowls at me and threw her hands up dramatically. I can just make out her
voice as she exclaims, “Rude much!” and storms away.  Weird that she didn’t
react to the noise. The shriek becomes intolerable. I push through the hall,
trying to escape it, but if anything, the noise becomes louder and more painful
as I move. I am almost running now, not watching where I’m going, just driven
to escape the noise. Someone steps into my path and I jerk backwards, almost
colliding with a tall senior boy. He steps haughtily away from me, eyes dark
and empty.

            The more I
look at him the emptier he looks. His face is bleak, frozen, and unnatural. The
noise vibrates over his skin, making his features ripple before my eyes. I turn
down the first corridor I come to, anything to take me from his view. The
whistle fades behind me until I am standing in a normal, quiet hallway again.
Is this what it felt like to lose your mind? I want to call out to Ephraim so
badly. The hallway is emptying slowly as students rush to their next classes. I
pick my way reluctantly towards the library. It seems kind of pointless to try
studying right now.