The Way We Bared Our Souls (11 page)

OURS WERE THE ONLY FOUR
cars in the Psalms Over Santa Fe parking lot that morning, indicating that it wasn’t only Christian people but Christian balloons that took Sundays off. Judging from the erratic angles and disregarded white lines, everyone had parked in a hurry. As Kit and I rushed toward the balloon hangar looking for our friends, I almost began doing handsprings across the airfield. I could have hula-hooped until I lifted off the ground. The same field that had seemed barren and ugly when I’d met Thomas on Friday now seemed lush and inviting. Where I’d seen only death before, I now saw life.

Finally we spotted them, huddled against the far side of the hangar.

When Ellen caught sight of us, she stormed up to me with arms crossed over her chest. She shook with what I could only identify as fury. There was a rag doll quality to her movements that I’d never seen before.

“You!” she screamed. “I’m
sick.
You made me
sick
.”

“What?” I said, taking a step back, out of her line of fire.

Ellen gesticulated erratically, and that’s when I noticed it. My turquoise horse. In
her
hand. “This is what I woke up with this morning,” she said. “This . . . sick pony. And you know that Jay gave me the raccoon last night. That’s what I took home from the ritual, anyway.”

Kit reached into his pocket and pulled out Ellen’s raccoon. And I was sure that when I went home, there would be a deer on my dresser, just as there would be new totems in Kaya’s and Thomas’s rooms.

“I’ve been on Google since six
AM
,” Ellen continued. “I have every symptom of MS. The pins and needles. The dizziness. The blurred vision. You gave me your disease, Lo. You. Tricked. Me.”

“Ellen,” I said, “I’m so sorry. I had no idea that this would happen. Jay didn’t say anything about a trade. . . .”

“Maybe you were just too fixated on getting
your
cure to listen.” Ellen hurled the horse to the ground. Her eyes were bloodshot, and her whole body shook inside her silk pajamas.

“Ellen, please, just calm down for a second,” I said. “I need to think. What’s going on with everyone else?”

I looked at Kaya. She stared into the overcast sky, failing to register my presence. What on earth had the ritual given her?

“Oh, yeah,” Ellen said. “Kaya here has been catatonic all morning. We haven’t gotten two words out of her since she got here.”

I looked at Kaya again. She was acting exactly like Thomas did when he withdrew from the world, and I put the pieces together. The bear. Oh no. This was bad. But at least she could feel pain now, right? Isn’t that what she’d so desperately wanted?

“That leaves me,” Thomas said solemnly. I’d been too caught up in Ellen’s panic to acknowledge the lonely figure in a gray hoodie leaning against the white metal wall of the hangar.
The bed is checked for monsters / And the food for poison. / You are not looking hard enough, he says.

“You,” I said. I flashed back to my dream of us. Walking through the jungle, feeling his arm around me, the humidity from the treetops settling on my skin like morning dew. Then I was drawn back to the quick math of the present moment.

“It’s Kit’s,” I said. “Kit’s problem.” The rabbit. Was Thomas . . . afraid now? Petrified of death? Thomas had never seemed to fear anything. Except his own memories, and I’d only just learned that recently. He was a warrior.

“What. The hell. Is going.
On
,” Ellen said. I slowly bent to pick up the horse she’d thrown. She snatched it away.

“I think we all . . . swapped,” I said. “I think that’s what the ritual did. That’s why you have my symptoms.”

“Well, yeah,” said Ellen. “That’s becoming blatantly obvious. But
how
? And how do we swap back?”

Now Thomas definitely looked scared. Kit slapped him amiably on his back, making him jump, as if he thought his friend was about to punch him.

“Whoa, man,” Kit said. “Sorry.” Then he reached down and picked a purple flower from the field—probably the only wildflower for a mile. Kit presented it to Ellen as if it were a four-leaf clover, but she just scoffed at him, still in disbelief. He shrugged his shoulders and stuck the flower in his black T-shirt pocket like a prom corsage.

“Jesus, Lo!” Ellen screamed. “I was just trying to be
nice
when I told you I’d rather have MS last night! I’d never in a million years volunteer for this life!”

Thomas stepped toward me, taking note of the bloodstains on my pajamas.

“And you,” he said, touching my hand and displaying the fresh blood on his fingers. “You clearly swapped with Kaya.”

“It seems so,” I said, trying not to let on how secretly pleased I was. Fresh terror washed over Thomas’s face.

“Don’t worry,” I told him, hiding my lacerated hand. “It . . . doesn’t hurt. I can’t feel anything. Nothing like a flesh wound to start your day, right?” No one was amused.

“We have to find Jay,” Ellen said. “Right now. We have to switch back. I can’t be this sick, not even for a week. Lo, you yourself said that this disease can work quickly. What if I die before the ritual is reversed next Saturday?”

“Ellen, calm down,” I said. “It’s one week. You’re not going to die. And it’s not like taking on my burden temporarily is more dangerous than doing
meth
. Or washing down a bunch of pills with booze and then going for a drive around the block.”

“At least I
chose
to do those things! I didn’t sign up for this. None of us did.”

“Ellen’s right,” Thomas said. “This whole . . . situation feels wrong. We need to find Jay.”

“I . . . don’t think he has a phone,” I said. “He told me he lives in a cave.”

“Glorious,” said Ellen. “Perfect.”

Kit had lifted a spider from a rock and was gazing at it in wonder, letting it crawl up his arm. “Check it out, guys,” he said, giggling. “It tickles.”

“Look,” I said, ignoring him. “We just need to get through the week. Jay said the experience would ultimately be positive, right? For all of us. One week, and then we switch back. I know none of us exactly consented to this, but here we are. Now we’re bound to one another, and we need to get through it together.” I could get everyone through it. I had to. “One week.” I turned to Ellen. “I repeat: It’s not going to kill you.”

“Easy for you to say,” Ellen said. “You won the lottery here, as usual. I’m the one who has to suffer this week. Worse than before. When this ritual was supposed to make me feel better too, remember?”

“Ellen, I’ll help you,” I said. “I promise. I’ll show you the medications you can take for pain. . . .”

“Ironic that you were the one who said all you wanted to do was get me off drugs, and now you’re the one trying to push them back on me,” Ellen said. “I thought I was supposed to be detoxing this week.” She stopped, softening her voice. “It’s so surreal, though. This morning I woke up with absolutely no desire to . . . self-medicate. It’s like my head is revolting against being anything but clear.”

“See?” I said. “It’s not all bad.”

“No, it sucks, actually. I feel like I’m . . . overflowing.”

Before I could come up with a response, I saw that Kaya seemed to be noticing me for the first time. She looked me up and down, evaluating the drying blood on my tank top and the wound on my hand. Then she broke out of her stupor like a pack of wild horses.

She lunged for me, but before I could assess whether she meant to protect me or murder me, Thomas had restrained her. Kaya was not a violent person, except to herself. She was kind and gentle, like the doe that Jay had given her. But now she was practically growling through her teeth, swiping madly at me with her ravaged fingernails. If Thomas hadn’t reacted so quickly, I had no doubt that she’d be tearing me apart. Sweet Kaya? It didn’t make any sense. Why was she at war with me?

I realized that I hadn’t moved a muscle when my body was under attack. It was as though my body had lost all fight-or-flight response. Was I simply in shock, or did I really think I was invincible?

Kaya collapsed to the ground through the sieve of Thomas’s arms and began trembling in the fetal position.

“You don’t know what they did to us,” she said. “They mutilated our bodies. They scalped us.”

“They?” I said. “Who is ‘they’? Did someone try to hurt you, Kaya?”

Kaya was silent again, shivering on the ground. I wanted to gather her up in a hug, but her body language was still so forbidding. Thomas stood over her, looking as helpless as I felt.

“Thomas?” I said. “Do you know what she’s talking about? Are these your memories?”

“No,” said Thomas, his voice scared and defensive. “I never . . . did any of those things.”

“They pried our eyes open and left us to burn in the sun,” Kaya said. “Left us half buried in the desert until the wolves found us, ate us alive.”

Ellen grabbed for Kit’s arm and missed—he couldn’t stand still, not even now.

“What? What desert?” I said softly, starting to get really frightened now. “Kaya, where are you right now?”

“I don’t know what she’s talking about,” Thomas said. “It’s like she’s suffering from my trauma . . . but with different memories.”

He knelt in front of Kaya and wrapped his arm around her. As much as I knew that it was unjustified, I felt a small pang of jealousy that I quickly tamped down. I guess I wasn’t immune to all pain.

“It sounds like Indians,” Kit said from further out in the field. All of us except Kaya, who was still curled up on the ground, looked at him in surprise. “Am I the only one who pays attention in Mrs. Laramie’s class?” he said. “It sounds like Kaya’s remembering the war for the West.”

Kaya never talked much about her ancestry, but I knew right away that Kit was right. You couldn’t live in the Southwest and not know at least a little something about Indian history. The scalpings and the mutilations; the slow deaths from exposure. The newcomers from Europe had set out to annihilate the people who’d made their home in the Americas for tens of thousands of years.

“You’re saying she’s remembering things that happened, like, two hundred years ago?” Ellen said.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Kit said. “Think about it. Her people were traumatized for decades by Anglo incursion. So, there’s that, and now she can feel pain for the first time. She’s probably emotionally reexperiencing what her people went through. It’s what Thomas said—she’s expressing his trauma, only differently.”

“But that’s impossible,” Ellen said.

“Says the girl who now has walking MS because of a horse figurine,” Kit said. He began laughing gleefully. “What a crazy world.”

Thomas coaxed Kaya to her feet.

“What’s going on?” she said sleepily. “Did I fall? I’m so tired.”

Everyone looked at me for a response. Did she really not remember what had just happened? Should I tell her that she’d maybe just tried to assault me while in some kind of mystical, time-traveling, body-swapping Indian trance? No, I decided to brush it off. It was better to minimize the unforeseen by-products of the swap. At least for now.

“You just . . . fainted,” I said. Thomas gave me a disappointed look and turned away.

“Are you sure?” Kaya said. “I had this crazy vision that. . . . Never mind.”

“This is so effed up,” Ellen said.

“It’ll be okay,” I said, snapping into action mode to prevent Ellen’s doubts from pervading the whole group. “We just need to help each other. Like, Ellen, whenever my headaches start up, it helps . . . or it used to help, to turn out the lights for a little while.”

“Wonderful,” Ellen said. “Thanks so much, doctor. I’ll just suffer in the dark.”

“And Thomas, maybe you can look after Kaya, since you have a better understanding of. . . .”

“I’ll try,” he said.

“I feel so different . . . ,” Kaya murmured. She was rubbing the dusty thighs of her sweatpants with a look of wonder on her face.

Thomas looked from my face to my hand. “But who will look after you?” he said.

I wanted to say that I wouldn’t need looking after. That my new “burden” made me immune to destruction. I wanted to say that everyone
but
me was at risk, that I was living in an earthly paradise.

“We’ll all look after each other,” I said. “We’ll be okay. We just need to figure out what to do next.”

“I HAVE AN IDEA,” KIT
said, now sitting cross-legged on the dusty airfield, as serene as a Buddhist monk. “We should all stick together, right? At least for the immediate future? So let’s meet at Zozobra tonight.”

I’d totally forgotten about Zozobra. The event was a favorite among the dramatic offerings of our city’s annual Fiestas de Santa Fe. It was essentially a capital-A Arts event that involved publicly burning a giant action figure alive—a tradition that was founded way before the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert made it trendy to burn a giant action figure alive. Historically it was an excuse for me and my Agua friends to get tipsy at a tailgate and then snuggle on blankets in front of a massive bonfire. Dad thought it was all an accident waiting to happen, but even Smoky the Bear couldn’t fight the enthusiasm for the event of the season. Santa Fe had been burning that fifty-foot man (whose official name was Old Man Gloom) in effigy for almost a hundred years.

“Wait,” I said. “I thought Zozobra wasn’t until next weekend.”

“They moved it up because of the wildfires,” Kaya said. Weird—Dad hadn’t mentioned that. Then again, I hadn’t seen him much lately. He’d been working on the mountain around the clock.

“Okay,” I said. Maybe it was too soon to tell, but it seemed as if the leadership role was perhaps beginning to suit me. “Tonight. That’s a good plan, Kit. We all meet at Zozobra. Ellen, are you okay with that?”

“Will Jay be there?” she said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s possible. It seems like everyone in Santa Fe goes to Zozobra.”

Ellen was about to respond when a howl rang out from somewhere, making me look to the edge of the hot-air balloon field, where a coyote stood, watching us intently. Was it Dakota? Was I hallucinating again?

“That’s bizarre,” Kit said, gazing in the same direction. “They usually don’t come out in the daylight like that. Maybe it’s a good sign? I bet Jay would say that’s a good sign.” So it hadn’t just been me this time. Phew.

“Yeah, right,” Ellen said. “Are you high? You have my burden, so I wouldn’t be surprised. If a flock of vultures was circling our heads right now, you’d probably interpret that positively too.”

“Lighten up, love,” Kit said. “Your legs hurt? Here. Get on my back.”

“No way.” But Kit backed into her, caught her wrists, and flung her arms over his shoulders anyway. A second later she had been hoisted into a galloping piggyback ride across the airfield and toward her car in the parking lot. From a distance I couldn’t tell if she was laughing or screaming. I guess Kit had a ride home.

“Kaya?” I said, starting to stroll away from the hangar with her and Thomas. “Are you cool with going to Zozobra tonight?”

“Hm?” she said, scratching intently at a bug bite on her forearm. “Oh yeah. Zozobra. That’s fine. My mom owes me an outing.” Blood smeared across her mocha skin from her bug bite. “Wow,” she said, and kept scratching. I wasn’t sure if I should interfere.

“Can I give you a ride home?” I said.

“No thanks,” she said. “I have my car. Was just leaving. I’ve got some errands to run.” Suddenly she looked a little mischievous. “You should stay here and see if Thomas needs anything. It looks like Psalms is opening up.”

Sure enough, Mr. Dent was waving at us from the balloon hangar at our backs. Though he was probably curious as to why Thomas was there with two girls on a Sunday morning, he thankfully didn’t come over to investigate.

We said goodbye to Kaya, who headed toward her car at a fast trot. Only Thomas and I remained.

“Are you okay?” I said. “With everything?” Together we watched a church bus pull into the parking lot, the people hot off a sermon and ready to take to the air.

“Actually, no,” he said, staring at the passengers getting off the bus. “My shift’s about to start. I’m supposed to take all those people up in a balloon in about ten minutes. That means igniting an extremely combustible gas burner, untying rope anchors, and launching us all into space in a glorified Easter basket. It all just seems so stupid and unsound. What if something happens? What if someone gets hurt? And for what? So a handful of humans can pretend they’re attached to a cloud for a couple of hours? They could just wait on the ground and get rained on.”

I smiled. “They’d have to wait a long time. We’re in the middle of a drought.” He shrugged. “Listen,” I said, “you’ve done this so many times before. You know how to keep people safe.”

“No. No, I don’t. Many people have . . . fallen . . . because of me.”

“Whatever happened when you were a kid isn’t going to affect the fact that you’re strong, and brave, and
good,
and you know what you’re doing. I was in a balloon with you, remember? You’re a good pilot.”

“I just don’t know anymore,” he said. “I start picturing the bad things that could happen, and I. . . .”

“I understand,” I said. “Just try to ride out the anxiety. In a way it shows . . . progress. You know, that you care. Can I do something to help?”

“Will you just stay with me for a while? Help me set up? I think I can get Charlie to cover for me in the air as long as I do the prep work.”

“No problem,” I said. “Where do I start?”

• • •

When I pulled away from Psalms Over Santa Fe an hour later, I took one last look in the rearview mirror. The coyote hadn’t moved. It still stood there at the edge of the field, seeming to scrutinize my departure.

For the first time in a long time, Kit and I were on the same page. I agreed with his conclusion: This seemed like a good omen indeed.