Rachel (3 page)
***
“You’re mine,” Leanne said, yanking me
out into the backyard.
“Did anyone hear from Jessica yet?”
“She stopped to get you something.”
“
Pepto
bismol
, I hope.”
A few early birds gathered around the
bar. I’d be on call for congratulating and handshaking soon, so I hoped I could
get hypnotized into a state of blissful relaxation in five minutes or less.
Didn’t seem possible.
Theresa, standing with the gaggle of
green, waved me over to the man in a tweed jacket and handlebar moustache.
We shook hands.
“David Mesmer’s the name. I hear you’re
a little tense?”
“Mesmer, huh? Any relation?”
“Great grandfather. I fell into the
profession. Lie down right here.”
The sky was clear blue and sunless as
the day darkened into night. I felt ridiculous lying on a chaise in a formal
suit. I felt vulnerable and scrutinized by four of my seven sisters. I feared
I’d miss Jessica’s arrival if I wasn’t by the door and if any of my friends saw
me getting hypnotized the ribbing would break a bone.
“Let’s get this over with,” I said.
“Said like a truly anxious man. Can you
focus your mind on what’s making you tense? I’m going to count backwards from
ten.”
The string quartet keyed up and began
with Mendelssohn. Very nice, even for a group of teenagers. Despite being from
the gifted school, I hadn’t expected much, especially not from the viola. No
one could be that beautiful and talented at the same time. But her beauty
carried to her playing, because as David counted back from ten, I didn’t hear a
goddamn thing past five except the viola as if there was not another instrument
on the planet.
***
The rain on the night of Sheila’s party
was near blinding.
“Stop it!” Rachel shouted, snapping away
the jacket I tried to hold over her head. “I want to get wet, that’s why I came
into the rain. To get wet!”
I tossed the jacket to the side. “You
came out here because I’m taking you home.”
“You’re crazy!”
Drunk as I’d been that night, I took in
the conversation as a cold, sober observer. On the night it actually happened,
alcohol had blacked me out. I remembered nothing after Rachel saw my face and
stood up. My memory of the events of that night ended there, and were retold to
me by the media and my parents. The hypnosis was like watching a movie in my
own point of view.
“I am sick of this,” she shouted. “I’m
sick of you wanting to know where I am all the time. Sick of it. You’re a
control freak. You’re worse than my stepdad, do you know that?”
I knew I was getting hypnotized. I knew
Franz Mesmer’s great grandson had counted from ten and my body was at my
engagement party, and I also knew the movie was about to play the part where I
lost someone I cared about.
“What the hell did you think you were
doing in there?” I growled. Though I felt all the panic and fear I felt that night,
I was also my older self, who knew how it all ended.
Calm
down. Get control.
My older self spoke to my younger self urgently, as if
it could change anything.
“What’s going to happen when I go to
college? You going to tell me who to talk to from here? Should I keep a log of
what I wear? Well I won’t. Nothing. No more.” Rachel’s brown hair was soaked.
She’d run out in a light sweater, leaving her jacket and purse behind.
“What were you saying to him?” I
yelled.
“You really want to know?”
I stepped forward. I was already six
feet tall, an intimidating presence in the class, and in front of a young woman
in the rain.
She stepped back. “I’m not going to get
enough to go to Penn, so he’s coughing it up. Every fucking dime, or I’m
telling everyone what a sick bunch of fucks you are.”
She and I were open about what a sick
bunch of fucks we were. We even laughed about it sometimes, but I’d always felt
like she was talking about my parents. This time, it sounded like I was
included. It sounded like she’d be more than happy to take me down as just
another sick fuck who bedded her. What had I thought I meant to her? Did she
think I’d used her? Or was it the other way around?
“Don’t play with him, Rachel. You can’t
win.”
“I’m not playing.” She looked more like
a grown woman when she uttered those words than ever before. She really meant
to tangle with my father.
I took my car keys out. “I’m taking you
home.”
She stepped back, under the edge of the
eave, where the water dripped in fatter, condensed streams. One splashed on her
shoulder, but she didn’t notice or didn’t care.
“I’m sorry.” Her voice cracked. “Don’t
look at me like that. I love you Jay.”
“And I’m just one of the sick fucks? Did
I ever treat you with anything but respect?”
“There’s too much baggage, Jonathan. I
want a regular boyfriend.”
I froze. What did she mean? Instead of
asking her, in my immaturity and drunkenness, I stepped forward again.
You’re
being menacing. She’s going to run...she’s going to—
She snapped the car keys from my hand.
“Give me those.” I grabbed for them, but
my balance was off, and I was slow.
She ran.
I ran after her, but the images got
foggy and indistinct.
I was in the driveway, looking for my
car.
I was in the house, searching through
coat pockets.
I was driving in a
shitstorm
of rain.
How?
What did I miss?
I felt a pain in my shoulder.
I was in the driver’s side of the car.
It was too dark to make out much more than the outline of the keys. They seemed
to stand up sideways in the ignition, defying gravity. My vision swam. Then the
keys rotated on the ring, pointing toward the ceiling. Odd.
Creak
.
Crunch
.
I was on the ground. I heard the beep of
the warning signal and saw the beam of a single headlight, but all I saw was a car
on its side, ready to fall into the whirling floods of the Pacific Ocean.
It rolled and fell. There was no splash.
When I scrambled up to the edge of the
cliff, a car was floated in the foaming waters.
I heard her scream.
Rachel.
It had to be. She must have been belted
into the passenger side?
But
how?
“Rachel!” I yelled. What a ridiculous
thing to do. I could barely hear myself.
I dove into the water.
Cold.
I became aware of the viola again, just
as I gulped water and felt a stabbing pain in my lungs. The real me, the me at
my engagement party, the twenty three-year old who had control of his life,
gasped real air and felt water. I was coming out of it.
But the sixteen year-old me woke up to
grass tickling my nose. The world swam as if I was riding the teacups at
Disney. I opened my eyes. Just in front of me, so close I had no context but a
few blades of grass, the dark of the rainy night, and my own nausea, was
Rachel’s face. She, too had her cheek to the grass. Her eyes glazed over. Her
mouth hung open. Her hair stuck to her face in the rain. She blinked, and a
tear fell over the bridge of her nose.
Rachel,
Rachel, I am sorry.
***
The sound of the full quartet sounded
like a philharmonic, and I knew I was out of the hypnosis a second before I
bolted straight in my chair. Jessica sat on the edge of the chaise in an ecru
dress. The orchid in her hand matched the one in her blonde hair. She must have
gotten it for my lapel on the way back from the manicurist. She always thought
of everything.
“Jon,” she said, taking my hand. “What
happened?”
“You have to meet me halfway,” grumbled
David Mesmer.
“Jonathan,” Theresa said. “Let me get
you a drink, my God.”
The other sister’s voices broke into my
consciousness. Jessica and I just looked at each other, barely hearing.
“You look
worse
.”
“We really need to try the crystal
cleansing lady.”
“Have the guy with the wine come this
way.”
“Christ, I think half of Stanford just
showed up.”
Jessica slipped her hand between mine
and tugged. I got up. I pulled her away to a quiet corner between two
chest-high planters.
“Are you all right?” she whispered.
“I don’t believe in hypnosis,” I said.
“Of course not.” She pressed the orchid
to my lapel and wove a three inch straight pin through it, fastening it to my
jacket. Her eyes gazed at me suspiciously and with no little concern. “But you
look like you just saw a ghost.”
“I remembered that night. Things I
hadn’t remembered before.”
“That night? Jon, really. Which night?”
“The night Rachel died.”
She touched my cheek, and I brought my
arm around her waist. “Tell me,” she said.
I put my lips close to her ear. “She’s
alive.”
“How is that possible?”
“I remember. I woke up in the grass, and
she was next to me. Her eyes were open. She blinked.”
Nothing about Jessica’s expression
changed for the first second, and I watched her closely. I needed her to tell
me something. Maybe comfort me, or tell me I was wrong. Maybe I’d missed a
shred of evidence that proved what we’d always known. That Rachel was dead and
buried and the family tracks covered with six feet of dirt.
She put her hand on my lapel. “You know,
this isn’t a reliable memory, right?”
“Yes. But I also know it’s right. Sure
as we’re standing here.”
“Well then, there’s only one way to know
for sure.” She squeezed my hand and put her lips to my ear. “We’ll have to find
her.”
A streamer floated down from a tree and
landed between us, while the sound of the quartet drew my attention back to my
engagement party and waiting guests.
END
------------------------------
Thank you for reading.
I hope you enjoy these extra scenes. If
you want to talk to me about them, you can catch me on
Goodreads
,
Facebook
, or email me at
[email protected].
There’s also a
Goodreads
fan group,
CD
Canaries
that you can join for buddy reads, discussions and general
camaraderie. I don’t run the group, but the people who do are
superfantastic
and wicked sharp. Check it out.
Book Six,
Resist
will be out in a few weeks.
------------------------------
Reading Order
Sequence 1
Songs of Dominance
Sequence 2
Resist – Due Aug 2013
Sequence 3
Cry
Sing