Grasping at Eternity (The Kindrily) (2 page)

“My family, help them,” I whispered.

God-awful pain blasted through me, forcing me back into consciousness. Tons of real stars filled the sky. I had imagined the angel. I was alone. Alone, but alive.

Water still lapped calmly under the dock. Crickets continued chirping. A spider spun its web on a nearby railing. The world hadn’t stopped, and neither could I.

Mikey fought back. I would too.

Reaching down, I touched the wood jutting out from the bottom of my shirt, not believing it could be lodged through the middle of me. I grabbed it with my left hand and pulled hard.

A rush of warmth flowed over my skin, but my teeth were chattering so hard they should’ve shattered. How could it be so cold in the middle of June? Green specks of light flashed in front of me. My heartbeat and breathing slowed. The rumbling in my head stilled. Even the pain eased.

The star-angel appeared again. He leaned over me, looking so real.

Howling sirens grew louder, but help would be too late. My angel had come to take me home. He peeled off his red and black motorcycle jacket and covered me with it. His tan face almost shimmered against the dark sky above us. He stared at me with enough love to fill eternity.

Then his face blurred. Colors faded. He slipped further away until I saw only pure white. Lost in eternity, I was content never to be found.

Quiet.

Stillness.

Peace…

"Clear!”
 
Someone shouted.

Agonizing pain snapped me awake. The earthquake in my head increased to a 9.5 on the Richter scale. My chest blazed, and a metallic taste soaked my tongue.

“I’ve got a heartbeat! Honey, can you hear me? What’s your name?”

At least I think that’s what the paramedic said. His words were muffled by the throbbing in my head.

I choked and spit out blood. “It hur-urts.”

“We’re giving you something to help the pain. Hang in there, okay?”

I stared at the black sky and blurry stars, yearning to see the angel’s face again. The sensation of floating up into the sky felt nostalgic—like I belonged there. I had an aerial view of the paramedics working on me.

My arms and legs looked like pale twigs, bent and snapped into pieces—just like the wood lodged into my stomach. I could’ve sworn I pulled that out. Blood matted my strawberry blond hair. I floated away, unable to look at myself anymore.

One of the paramedics said to the other, “She’s out, poor thing. Only survivor.”

No
. My family can’t be dead. This can’t be real.

A force kept tugging me toward the sky. Part of me wanted to drift away. If my family were gone, I had no reason to stay. Fire trucks and police cars swarmed our street. Flashing red and blue lights reflected off every window of our house.

I kept floating higher. Stars pulsated around me. I reached out, trying to grasp onto them, but I couldn’t. The stars slipped through my fingers.

Please remember,
the brightest star whispered.

Then a hole ripped open in the sky, sucking me out of this world and into blackness.

Nathaniel

Please, no.

Please don’t let this happen. Not now, not like this.

“Open your eyes,” I begged. “Fight for this. Fight for us.”

She had always been a fighter. Every life. She was the bravest soul I’d ever known.

I looked up at the hospital room ceiling as if I could see through it to the stars and midnight sky. Rage pulsed through me, singeing my veins and scorching my heart. “Give her memories back! I don’t care what she chose! This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.”

I didn’t care if the nurses heard me. I’d be gone by the time they came to investigate.

Her face was like porcelain, beautiful but motionless. I imagined her eyelids opening, seeing the endless light I loved so much. I took for granted it would always be there.

I pressed my lips to the back of her hand. “You and me for eternity, remember? Don’t break your promise. It’s not your style.”

Her heart monitor continued beeping slow but steady.

“Fight,” I demanded. “Live. Open your eyes.” I leaned forward and kissed her forehead. “And
please
, remember.”

Maryah

Being in a coma for two weeks was nothing. Literally, I remembered nothing. Those two weeks just disappeared from my existence.

But waking up in the hospital and remembering my parents and Mikey were gone—that I ran away while intruders robbed them of their lives—was the worst pain I’d ever experienced. Doctors pumped me with enough pain meds to ease the physical hurt of my broken arm and leg, but no one and nothing could fix my broken heart.

I blocked out reality by sleeping as much as possible. Two weeks hadn’t been long enough. I wanted to hide from the waking world forever.

Krista, my cousin, my best friend, born one day after me, refused to let that happen. For over a month, since the moment I woke up at the hospital, she’d been at my side. She held me while I cried, drew hearts and flowers on my casts, promised me we’d get through it, and tried brainwashing me with her feel-good philosophies.

Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, my blow to the head required me to have brain surgery, so her brainwashing didn’t work. Too bad my head trauma didn’t wipe out my bionic memory. I’d never forget
that night
.

Dreary clouds passed by my airplane window. Krista sat beside me, trying to fix the wobbly latch of her tray table. We’d only been on the plane for twenty minutes, but my emotional claustrophobia was as strong as ever. Sadness and guilt had been suffocating me all day every day until I wanted to permanently stop breathing. So when my aunt and uncle offered me a chance to escape for the weekend and meet my godmother, I took it.

I never even knew I had a godmother. My parents used to live in Arizona, but they moved to Maryland after Mikey and I turned one. My uncle said Louise Luna was my mother’s childhood best friend, but they hadn’t spoken in over a decade. My aunt and uncle didn’t want me moving away, but this Louise lady insisted that she was my legally appointed guardian and convinced them that my mother would want me to consider my options.

I just wanted to get away. I didn’t know what awaited me in Sedona, but it wouldn’t be pieces of my past. No guilt or reminders of my old life.

“I never said goodbye.”

Krista blinked her big brown eyes like she was surprised to hear me speak. I hadn’t said much the last few weeks. “To my parents? You said goodbye.”

“No. Last time I saw Mom and Dad I gave them dirty looks and stormed out of the house. How could angry silence be the last thing I said to them?”

“What about at the cemetery? You stood there a long time. I’m sure they heard everything you said.”

Imagining my parents and Mikey stretched out in coffins freaked me out, so I was relieved that the funerals took place while I was in a coma. Aunt Sandy had stood over a plot of newly laid grass and told me it was Mikey’s. A bunch of sunflowers sat in a metal vase by her feet. No way would Mikey want a bunch of flowers. A bouquet of Tootsie Roll Pops or a case of Orange Gatorade? Sure. Sunflowers? No way.

My brother and parents couldn’t be covered in dirt, sentenced to darkness and living with bugs. I kept picturing them alive: smiling, laughing, dancing, and talking about when we would adopt a dog or what we needed from the grocery store. None of those things could happen if they were buried in the earth.

I fought back tears. “Talking to their tombstones doesn’t count.”

“Sure it does. Spirits hang around awhile before they cross over. They know how much you miss them.”

I shook my head, unable to look at Krista. I had to tell her. We didn’t keep secrets from each other, and I’d already bottled up the truth too long. “That night, I wished on a star that they’d leave me alone. Seconds later those men broke into our house and—”

“Whoa, Pudding, don’t be ridiculous.” She turned my chin so I faced her. “You didn’t wish for them to die.”

“But I ran away. Mikey was still alive. I should’ve helped him, but I ran out of the house. Mom and Dad might’ve been alive too.” I searched Krista’s gaze for blame. Even though I couldn’t find any, she probably wondered if I would’ve left her to die too. “I should’ve grabbed a knife, or…done something. Being alive is my punishment.”

“You aren’t being punished. Sometimes terrible things happen.” She pushed a stray hair behind my ear. “The universe works in mysterious and heartbreaking ways.”

I faced the window again.

Outside, gray clouds stretched to infinity. Were my parents and Mikey out there somewhere? I imagined them soaring like birds through the heavens, and wondered how, in a sky so endless, could there be no room for me?

I lowered the plastic window shade and let the roar of engines lull me to sleep.

∞

Unexpectedly, in all of his breathtaking gorgeousness, my angel of death was back.

In my dream, he strutted through a parking lot, looking less like an angel and more like a movie star. He was six feet tall with a confident swagger. I appreciate those who stand out in a crowd, but he surpassed that. Crowds would part and roll out a red carpet just so this guy could have a VIP path to heaven. I’d be the invisible wallflower who got trampled by paparazzi and his fans.

He’d been at my side when I first woke up from my coma, standing next to Krista like he was there to take me. But then he vanished and I hadn’t seen him since. Why would he take my family but leave me behind?

He pulled out a cell phone and looked at the sky. “Maryah’s flight took off safely. I’m coming home.”

It was only a dream, but I smiled when he said my name correctly. In real life most people butchered the pronunciation. Mariah is the common spelling, but my mother wanted me to be “special.”

He tucked his phone into his jacket and climbed onto a motorcycle, pulling a helmet over his short, dark chocolate hair. When he started the engine, I jumped in front of the bike and grabbed his handle bars, not wanting him to disappear again. Through the shield of his helmet, his spellbinding green eyes blindly stared past me.

“I could get lost in your eyes for centuries,” I confessed.

His engine rumbled to life, and he drove through me. I followed him, hovering above him as he turned down a deserted road.

Up ahead, a barrier with a large sign warned that the road was closed. Movie-star angel man swerved around it, accelerating to a speed not possible in real life. Another sign read
Bridge Closed
. The road ended where a dilapidated bridge dropped off into a dried-up river.

“Slow down!” I yelled, as if he could hear me over the roaring motorcycle—or like anything in dreams ever mattered.

He gunned the gas one last time. The bike launched off the bridge and flew through the air. Right before he would have crashed into the ground below, he and the motorcycle instantly disappeared.

I floated there, staring at the barren valley. “When you get back to heaven, tell my family I’m waiting for them.”

I don’t know why I said it. He was gone. And so was my family.

Maryah

We walked off the jetway and I paused at a row of chairs to set my bag down. “This was a stupid idea. I can’t meet a bunch of strangers. Look at me. I’m a train wreck.”

“You do look a little derailed,” Krista teased. “But they don’t care how you look. It’s your soul they love.”

“They don’t even know me. Besides, I feel like I lost my soul.”

“It’s there. It’s just going to take us a while to get it to shine again.” She smoothed my disheveled hair. “Your hair on the other hand...”

My long hair was the only pretty thing about me, but even that had been taken away. A section had to be shaved off before my surgery. My aunt cut the rest in layers until it was shoulder length because she claimed my short patch wasn’t as noticeable. I swatted Krista’s hands away and put on Mikey’s favorite Ravens hat.
 

“Good idea.” She tugged on the rim. “It’ll hide the grease.”

“And the short patch,” I grumbled.

“It’s grown out enough that no one will notice.”

“Easy for you to say.” Her Pocahontas hair looked flawless. Krista had Egyptian ancestors on her mother’s side and she was exotically beautiful. What I wouldn’t give to trade my tissue paper complexion for her smooth, olive skin.

I eyed the check-in desk a couple feet away. “Let’s buy a ticket back to Baltimore. I can’t do this.”

“Your instincts told you to come to Sedona, and your instincts are never wrong.” She handed me my duffel bag. “Come on, something tells me we’ll like these people.”

I took a deep breath and forced my feet to carry me forward.

We spotted Louise Luna at the end of the terminal.

My aunt had showed me old pictures of her, and Louise hadn’t changed much. She held tulips and a heart-shaped balloon. I could see why my mother loved her, but I still wanted to run in the opposite direction.

“You okay?” Krista asked.

I nodded, but my legs felt like they had anchors tied to them.

Louise waved as we got closer. Circular sunglasses covered her eyes, but I suspected she was giving me the poor-orphan look. She had a definite hippie vibe going on. A medium bob of silky brown hair framed her makeup-free face, and a wooden necklace hung low against her gauzy—probably earth-friendly fiber—shirt. Her flowing skirt grazed the tops of her open-toed sandals.

A tall bronze-skinned man towered behind her with his hands in the pockets of his jeans. His dark hair draped like a curtain on either side of his navy blue sunglasses.

Before I could say hello, Krista steamrolled Louise with a hug. What the? Why would Krista hug a total stranger like that?
 

Louise squeezed Krista tight. “We’re so happy to have you girls here.”

When they let go of each other, Louise removed her glasses, placed her hands on either side of my face, and looked into my eyes.