From a Distant Star (2 page)

My mom had told me that my father had been an international student at the university where she’d once worked as an administrative assistant. They’d had a fling for a few weeks and then he was gone, back to where he came from. Mom was vague about his country of origin, but judging from my coal-black eyes, olive skin, and dark hair, it seemed likely he was Middle Eastern. My mom wasn’t much for long-term relationships. She’d always had boyfriends, but none of them were keepers. One had shown me how to hot-wire a car and the best way to roll smokes. That guy was named Owen. He didn’t last long before Mom found out about his outstanding warrants and kicked him to the curb. Her taste in men was questionable, but at least they never lived with us.

So the Walkers looked down on me. Once I overheard Lucas’s mother say, “She follows him around like a duckling, like she’d be lost without him.” Lucas wanted to confront her about this, but I talked him out of it. That was back when I still thought I could win them over. But it never happened. Lucas and I had been together for over a year and the entire time they hoped we would break up, but we didn’t.

I didn’t think too much of them either, for two reasons. First of all, for as many problems as my mom had, she was the perfect mother as far as I was concerned because she didn’t try to take credit for everything I did. Sometimes I’d hand her my report card or show her a paper I wrote and she’d practically cry with joy. “Brilliant,” she’d say, hugging me. “You are absolutely brilliant. I’m so impressed.”

Not like Lucas’s dad, Mr. Walker, who took credit for everything Lucas did, bragging, “He takes after me.” Or worse yet, smugly telling Lucas, “See, I told you if you studied, you’d get an A.” And then he always had to add, “Now don’t get complacent. You still have to keep this up for the rest of the semester, you know.”

So that was the first reason I wasn’t a fan of Lucas’s parents. The second reason is that they gave up on him so easily. Sure, he
had cancer, but big deal, people got cancer and beat it all the time. It was a shock for everyone when he was diagnosed, but Lucas was athletic and strong. All you had to do was look at him and you knew he’d survive. He
was
life. Lucas could run like the wind. I’d seen him lift a ninety-pound calf like it was nothing. It was unthinkable that he’d die. I just knew this was a bump in the road. Something to beat. We had plans, the two of us, and dying of stupid cancer wasn’t part of them.

But both of his parents gave up on him right from the start. They always thought the worst, selling his car when he got too sick to go to school. As if he’d never drive again.

His mother couldn’t look at Lucas without getting teary eyed. And Mr. Walker was devastated to learn the treatment would leave Lucas sterile, as if passing on the family genes meant anything at a time like this. Mr. and Mrs. Walker had hushed conversations about statistics, and treatment plans, and numbers. Always the numbers. They’d say, “The numbers don’t look good. They’re not in the range.” Their negativity was everywhere, seeping from room to room, poisoning the air. Later on, they started talking about funerals and how they didn’t want him to suffer any longer, and I had to put my hands over Lucas’s ears to keep him from hearing. The last member of the family, Lucas’s fourteen-year-old brother, Eric, started to avoid everyone, including me and Lucas. When he wasn’t doing chores or going to school, he was out in the barn, tinkering with old cars in his workshop. He holed up in there like he hoped to come out someday and find everything fine again.

I was the only one dealing with this in a sane way. The only one. After Lucas went into a coma, even the visiting nurses tried to undermine me. They’d point out how much weight he’d lost, how his skin tone had changed, and how shallow his breathing was. One of them, a tall woman named Nancy, put her hand on my shoulder and talked to me like I was a first grader. “See how sunken his eyes are?” she said. “And how nonresponsive he is?”
She pinched his wrist and Lucas did nothing but lie still like he was playing dead. “I’ve done hospice care for a long time, honey. This is the beginning of the end.” She went on to say he might have as much as a week, but that if we were lucky, he’d slip away sooner than that. “Poor baby has suffered enough.” She told me they were doing something called palliative care. He had a catheter for his pee and a patch for pain relief and that was all. “Not much urine,” she said, showing me the bag. “And what there is, is dark in color. His body is shutting down.”

I didn’t bother to respond to her, but after she left, I whispered in Lucas’s ear, “Don’t listen to her. You’re going to get better. We’ll show her.” Once he went into the coma and couldn’t eat or drink on his own, I dribbled water into his mouth and wiped a wet sponge over his parched lips. Screw Nancy and her wise proclamations. She didn’t know a thing about Lucas. After he made his miraculous recovery, I’d tell him all about Nancy—her ridiculous scrubs covered in cartoon panda bears, how she called everyone “honey,” and the way she always bustled in humming some nameless tune, acting like she knew it all.

Because I had a few things up my sleeve that I hadn’t told anyone about. Mainly that I was calling in outside forces. First of all, I’d been praying like no one on the face of planet Earth had ever prayed before. I’d never been one for prayer, but when things got serious, I put it into overdrive, imagining God on the other end thinking,
hmmm
. . .
Emma doesn’t usually pray. This must be serious.
I could almost feel God making a plan for everything to work out just fine.

So that was the first thing.

The second thing I’d done was visit Mrs. Kokesh right after school let out for summer vacation a few days earlier. She lived as far from the center of town as the Walkers did, but in the other direction. With my backpack strapped on, I rode my bike to her house. By the time I arrived, I was out of breath, my legs like
jelly. Her two-story house was falling down, white paint peeling, porch sagging. Moss growing on the roof. The place was reportedly haunted. Mrs. Kokesh sold produce from a stand by the road during the growing season, which generally didn’t start until late June in this part of central Wisconsin, but mysteriously, her vegetables were always ready before everyone else’s.

She also did magic, for a price. I’d heard the stories for years. Tales of dying pets brought to health. Love potions that really worked. Magic candles that affected everyone who breathed in the smoke. A spell that ended a drought. But things backfired too, and if she didn’t agree with your motives, you might get what she thought you needed instead of what you asked for, and some of it was pretty nasty. That was the story anyway. I didn’t know anyone who’d actually gone to her, but the stories, they went round and round. I saw her once at the gas station filling up her ancient Buick, and she just looked like an old lady to me, all hunched over and wearing lots of layers of clothing. It was her disguise, they said. She looked like a harmless old lady, but really she was very powerful.

I made the decision to visit right after Lucas went into the coma and Nancy said he was as good as gone. I still had my faith, but things were looking really bad; even I could see that. All the stories I’d heard at school had made me a little afraid of Mrs. Kokesh, but after biking all that way, there was no way I was turning back. I got off my bike and let it drop to the ground, then went up the steps to the porch and knocked on the door. She answered like I had an appointment, greeting me by name and ushering me inside. She wore a shapeless, brown dress with a droopy fabric belt. “How do you know my name?” I asked.

“Small town,” she said, shuffling past a staircase and down a dimly lit hallway. “Pretty girl like you stands out. Especially when you’re with the Walker boy. Him with his blond hair, you so dark.”

“You know Lucas?” I’d followed her into the kitchen where she gestured for me to take a seat. I pulled out a chair and set my backpack on the floor next to my feet.

She nodded and got a glass from the cabinet and a pitcher of lemonade from the fridge. “I know everyone in this nothing town, but he is especially memorable. I’ve had more than a few girls come with him in mind, asking for love spells.” She set the glass of lemonade in front of me. “One said she’d loved Lucas since the third grade.”

I wrapped my fingers around the cold glass, but didn’t drink. “Did you do it? The love spell?”

“Ha!” Mrs. Kokesh said. “What do you take me for? This magic stuff is nothing to fool around with. It can’t be wasted on high school crushes.” She crooked one scolding finger toward me and leaned across the table. Up close, I could see every wrinkle on her face, the lines crosshatched like badly drawn artwork.

“So your magic is real. It works?” I said.

“Of course it works, but it’s serious stuff. Not to be trifled with.” Behind her, a gray tabby cat jumped up onto the kitchen counter, sniffing at the open pitcher of lemonade.

“Your cat?” I pointed and she turned to look. “Is he supposed to be up there?”

“He’s okay,” she said, shrugging. “Just curious.”

I tightened my grip on the strap of my backpack. It held all the money I had in the world. A lifetime of babysitting cash, Christmas gifts, and last year’s strawberry-picking money. “I came today because of Lucas.”

“You want him cured.” She raised one eyebrow. “You’re in love with him and you want the cancer gone.”

“Yes.” I couldn’t believe my luck. Here I’d been afraid to come and she’d welcomed me right in. I didn’t even have to ask. She knew immediately what I wanted and said it like it was no big deal.

“Can you do it?” I asked.

She tilted her head to one side, regarding me carefully. I held her gaze, keeping very still, afraid to break her concentration. Right now it seemed like I had a shot and I didn’t want to blow it. Behind her, the cat wandered to the end of the counter; I heard a soft thud as he landed on the floor. She tapped her fingers on the table for what seemed like the longest time, and finally she said, “There is a potion that can be used to save a person’s life.”

I exhaled in relief. “So you’ll do it?”

“I can do it, of course, but I’m seeing that something else is going on that might be a problem.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Mrs. Kokesh shook her head. “I’m not sure. It is out of my area. I’ve never seen anything like this before.” She smiled. “All of the universe is connected, you know. Every living being is part of the cosmic fabric and all of the energy is intertwined. I’m feeling something impending with your boy. A disturbance in the force, isn’t that what they call it?” She cackled as if she’d told a joke.

“I guess,” I said slowly, unsure of what she was saying.

“Okay, I’ll tell you what.” She slammed her hand on the table. “What the hell. I’ll do it. I have to warn you, though, he may not come back the way you want him to.”

“What do you mean?”

“He might not be the Lucas you know and love.”

“Like, what would be different?” I asked.

“You’re asking me? Ha! I have no idea,” she said. “People who’ve been near death, they come back different. Sometimes more serious, sometimes more careful. Or he might be more spiritual and want to become a priest.” She raised her eyebrows. “Are you prepared for that?”

I could tell she was messing with me now. I said, “Lucas would never become a priest. The Walkers aren’t even Catholic.”

Mrs. Kokesh shrugged. “Just an example. Don’t get so bent out of shape. People change even under the best circumstances. And
when you pull them back from death’s door, well, that’s no small thing. Maybe he’ll be not so smart or not so strong. His brain has probably been oxygen deprived, so who knows what’s happened there. This potion has its limits. You still want to do it?”

“Yes,” I said. I’d take Lucas back any way I could get him. I unzipped my backpack and took out everything I’d heard she might need: a photo of Lucas, a lock of his hair, and a small vial with a rubber stopper containing a bit of his saliva. I took them out and lined them up on the table.

“You came prepared,” she said, nodding in approval. She held the vial up to the light. “His spit?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” Mrs. Kokesh stood up abruptly, the legs of her chair scraping against the grooved linoleum. “Give me your phone number and I’ll call you tomorrow when I have the potion ready.” She grabbed my full glass of lemonade and poured it into the sink.

I stood up, zipping my backpack. “You can’t do it now? I can wait.”

“It’s not like making cupcakes,” she said gruffly. “You don’t just whip these things up. I’ll call you tomorrow as soon as it’s done.”

I pulled some paper out of my backpack, wrote down my name and cell number, then slid it across the table. Without even looking at it, she folded it and stuck it in the front pocket of her baggy dress.

“Okay then,” she said, taking my arm and pulling me out of the kitchen. “Off you go.”

Before I knew it, she’d guided me down the long hallway and pushed me out the front door. Once I was on the porch, the door slammed shut abruptly behind me. She never even said good-bye.

“Thanks,” I called out, picking up my bike. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

The next day, I biked back as soon as she called. Mrs. Kokesh was ready for me, sitting on the top step of the front porch with a
paper bag on her lap. When I approached, she handed the bag to me. “As promised,” she said, her voice grim. “But I have to warn you, I have a bad feeling about this.”

I opened the bag and saw that it contained an empty pickle relish jar, the label still on it. “I don’t get it.” I gave her a confused look. “What is this?”

“The potion is at the bottom,” she said. “There’s not much, but you don’t need much.”

I held it up to the light. Sure enough, a small puddle of clear liquid coated the bottom of the jar. For some reason, I’d been thinking it would be blood red. This looked like nothing. Like she was selling me water. I tilted it back and forth and watched it slosh from side to side. “What do I do with it?”

“Spread it over his eyes and put it on his lips,” she said. “Then press your lips to his and seal it with a kiss.”