After Obsession (6 page)

“I won’t think you’re crazy,” I say really fast.

“Okay … You have to promise not to think I’m a freak or anything. I know freak is a bad word, but, um … can you just promise?”

“I promise.” I think she’s a lot of things, but freak is not one of them.

She pulls in her breath so hard I can hear it over the phone, then she blurts out, “Do you have dreams that, you know, come true?”

“Not really.” My hand goes to the medicine bundle at my chest. How do I tell her about Onawa?

Her voice gets really tiny. “Oh. I do.”

Neither of us speaks for a minute. Then I say, “I don’t think you’re a freak.”

“Oh. Thanks. That’s really nice of you to say … I don’t … I don’t think you’re one, either.” She makes this tiny hiccup noise. “Listen, Alan, I don’t want to talk about this on the phone, but I think we have to talk because my dream is really not good and I don’t want to sound like a wimp, but it’s scaring me. We should meet somewhere. Not at school. Too many people might hear.”

Blake would get jealous.
I don’t say it. Instead I say, “Okay. Where and when?”

“Tomorrow,” she says. “I’ll figure it out. Peace, Alan.”

Peace?

I promised Mom I’d never go to sleep wearing my medicine bundle. Since I came home from Lake Thunderbird with it, she’d reluctantly allowed me to keep it, but wouldn’t let me wear it to bed. “You’ll get it wrapped around your throat while you’re asleep,” she argued. I wasn’t sure that would happen, but I’d promised. Still, I’m holding the bundle in a tight fist against my chest right now.

And I’m praying. That’s something I don’t do very often. Sure, I have conversations with Onawa in my head all the time, but that’s different. Onawa isn’t the Great Spirit. The Great Spirit intimidates me, I guess. I mean, who am I to pray to a Navajo god, even if it is the same deity anyone else prays to, just with a different name? I don’t even know who my father is. I can’t apply for the tribal roll because Mom isn’t 100 percent sure my dad is Navajo or if the partial name he gave her is really his name. It makes me feel like I’m trying to claim something that isn’t really mine.

I lie awake in bed. Everyone else in the house is sleeping. The house should be quiet, but the scratching noise goes on beneath the floor of the upstairs bedrooms. Is it just mice? I’m not so sure anymore.

Mom met my father at a party. They had sex. Apparently the condom failed, and I was the result. All Mom can tell me about him is that he was very good looking, tall and muscular with long hair and fierce eyes. “Bad-boy eyes,” she calls them. She says I have his eyes. She says she was a little drunk, but she felt it when he locked his eyes on her at this party. They barely talked before sneaking off to a bedroom of the house where the party was going on. He told her his name was White Deer, that he was Navajo and didn’t live in Oklahoma City. That’s it. Mom screwed him, they went back to the party, then he was gone. She’s never seen him since. She doesn’t even have a picture of him.

She stopped partying when she found out I was growing in her womb. She hasn’t told me everything she used to do, but she’s told me enough that I know she led a pretty rough life. She sobered up and got a job at a tire factory right after I was born, and she worked there until we moved to Maine.

She named me after my father. Alan Whitedeer Parson. She says she wanted my birth records to show that my father is Indian, but without knowing his last name she couldn’t do it.

“We don’t need their casino money,” she said when she told the story. I don’t care about the money. White Deer, whoever he is, probably saved her life by knocking her up. When I was little I liked to think that the Great Spirit sent him to save her and help create me, but I guess that’s pretty conceited.

Only Onawa tells me different. If not for the vision quest, I’d think I’d just made her up out of my desire to know something about where I came from. Mom’s dead parents were both the grandchildren of German immigrants. Fine. Okay. I’m half German. That’s not the half I’m interested in.

I don’t know many of the prayers. The ones I know I got off the Internet. Still, it’s the best I can do. I recite a Cherokee prayer over and over as I lie awake, listening to the scratching.

“As I walk the trail of life in the fear of the wind and rain, grant me, oh Great Spirit, that I may always walk like a man.”

Walking like a man in the face of fear. Sometimes it’s the best we can do.

I’m in that state between being asleep and being awake. That’s when Onawa usually finds me. I can only think of Aimee. Aimee screaming something at me as the black spirit world closes around her. Is she being possessed or something? I don’t know. Aimee’s red hair is flying around her face, like in my painting.

Remembering the painting breaks the vision apart. Onawa calls to me. She has more to say, but I can’t hear it. My eyes open as I feel my face flushing again over the thought of Aimee finding my crude painting of her in the art room.

“I’m such a dumb-ass,” I tell the ceiling. Still, it
had
gotten her to call me, and she didn’t seem mad that I’d painted her.

It’s early morning. I dress and go downstairs. I start the coffeepot, then put some water on the stove for oatmeal. Aunt Lisa is in the kitchen when I turn away from the stove.

“You’re quite the handyman around the kitchen, Alan.” She gives me an early-morning smile before adding, “Not in a girly way, you understand.”

“It’s the least I can do for the aunt who found that awesome truck for me,” I say. “Want some oatmeal?”

Eventually, Mom and Courtney make their way to the kitchen, too. I run up to my room to get my books, and as I’m coming out of my room I hear a commotion downstairs.

“No, I’m not riding with him. I’ll take the bus like I always do,” Courtney says loud enough that I can hear her on the upstairs landing. “I don’t like him.”

“Why?” Aunt Lisa asks. “Alan is a nice boy.”

“He’s an asshole. He came into my room!”

“Courtney Rae Tucker! You will
not
use that kind of language or tone in this house, and especially not about our family.” Aunt Lisa is furious. I wonder what Mom is doing during this exchange. As far as I know, she’s still in the kitchen. I feel awkward even hearing the conversation from up here.

“Fuck you!” Courtney screams. Even I’m shocked by this, and I’m pretty used to hearing kids cuss at their parents. She runs through the dining room and out of the house. She doesn’t bother to close the door.

Below me, Aunt Lisa starts crying. Mom is saying something to her, but I don’t get to hear what because something sharp slams into my back. The pain is sudden, completely unexpected, and right on my spine. I can’t help but let out a girly little yelp, like a dog that’s been stepped on or something. Whatever hit me falls to the floor and I hear glass breaking.

God, it hurts!

I look down and see a framed picture of Courtney. It looks like it’s from early grade school. The glass is broken and one corner of the frame is busted. Her face stares up at me with a happy little gap-toothed smile. She doesn’t look like a girl who’d yell curses at her mother.

My back hurts. The pain isn’t quite as sharp as it was, but it’s still there, in a spot just out of reach so I can’t even rub at it.

What caused that?

I look around the hallway and find a rectangle of space on the wall that’s whiter than the rest. The spot is a good twenty feet away from where I was when the picture hit me. My arm hair prickles up again. No way that was a coincidence. No. Freaking. Way.

•
7
•

AIMEE

You are mine. You are all mine.

Despite the stupid dream voice that’s echoing in my head, I go kayaking when I wake up, same as always.

Last night it wasn’t just the voice. I dreamed of boys beneath the water and a seal with seeing eyes. But things are normal on the river. It’s so quiet as the kayak glides over the water that I almost think I can hear my mom there, feel her breath when she kisses me good night, hear her say my name. Ospreys glide in ever-widening circles above me, catching up winds. I would like to stay out here forever, but there’s school. There’s always school.

I get ready to go, kissing all the men in my life good morning, which causes Benji to make fake puking noises. I bop him lightly on the arm, but it’s like I’m just going through the motions. In the shower I make a list of things I have to do today, but the first one makes me stumble, slip in the stall, and hit the tiled wall. Today I have to dump Blake.

He picks me up in his Volvo. I slide inside, put my bag on my lap. He leans over to kiss me. It’s all I can do not to cringe. I turn my head so he gets my cheek.

“So, how’s my favorite beautiful groupie this fine morning?” he asks, pulling out of the driveway, acting like nothing at all is wrong. He turns the music back up. He always turns it down when he gets me so that Gramps won’t lecture us about our precious eardrums.

“I’m okay,” I answer.

It’s like all my courage washed down the drain in the bathroom. Blake keeps talking about his tunes and cross-country and more about his tunes. Then he suddenly throws out, “Him beating me was just a fluke.”

“Yeah? Who?” I have this disconnect, can’t figure out what he’s talking about.

“That Indian. Courtney’s cousin.”

My heart beats once. It beats twice. We head down a hill toward Schoolhouse Corner. “Did you just refer to him as ‘that Indian’?” I shift around, trying to find a way to get comfortable. My foot lands on the top of some ancient Glue CD cover.

Blake reaches over and yanks it from under my foot, then straightens up again. “Jesus. You cracked the cover. What’s wrong with you?”

Somehow he manages to stay on the road.

I decide to not be the peacemaker this time.

“What’s wrong with
me
?” I say. “You’re the one who just referred to someone by their race like it’s their one defining character trait or something. I’m not the one who just did that. Plus, you took the Lord’s name in vain.”

“Aimee, calm down.” His face sort of gets normal again, like his anger is seeping out of him. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

“You said it, Blake. Lately you’ve been acting differently.”

“I could say the same about you.”

I stare at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Whatever, Aimee.”

“Whatever?”

He grabs the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles whiten. “Whatever.”

All my insides tighten up. I shut off the music, trying to calm myself for what I have to say to Blake, who I thought I knew, who I thought was nice, but somehow isn’t all of sudden. I just say it. “We can’t go out anymore.”

“What?”

I repeat it. “We can’t go out anymore.”

He gets his I’m-humoring-her voice. “Okay. Why can’t we go out anymore?”

“Because you’re a racist.”

He stops the car. “What? Saying ‘that Indian’ does not make me a racist. You’re acting crazy.”

“I’m not crazy.”

“No. You’re just looking for excuses to break up with me.” His voice is full-on angry, tight, compressed. A muscle twitches under his eye.

“You’re a racist, Blake. I mean, that’s not all you are, obviously. You’re funny and you’re a great singer and stuff, but you—you—” I can’t find the words. “I just can’t go out with you.”

“It’s because of him, isn’t it? Because of that Indian?”

“You said it again!”

“Whatever. You like him. He’s faster than me, so you want to go out with him now, right? He’s just this giant stud.” His jaw clenches and all the happy-fun-singing Blake is gone. It’s just gone. It’s like something else is looking out of his eyes. He glares at me and spits out the words. “You are freaking insane.”

“I’m not crazy!” I push myself farther away from him and lean against the car door, trying to stay calm. He’s hurting inside. That’s all. That’s why he’s saying these sorts of things that he’s never said before. That’s why his face is a twisted mask of rage. “What is wrong with you? You aren’t acting like you.”

“Right.
I’m
the one who’s acting like a freak.” He snorts. For a second he’s silent. For a second nothing happens. For a second cars just pass on the street. Then he roars—literally roars—“It’s that kid! It’s that stupid Indian kid!” He slams himself out the driver’s side door. Two seconds pass and he’s on my side. My door flies open before I can figure out what’s happening. He’s yanking me out. “Out of my car. Out of my goddamn car.”

My bag falls on the ground. “My seat belt.”

It’s still attached. I’m tangled up. I’m a mess. I’m stuck in the car. He’s grabbing both my arms, yanking. I manage to reach over and unclick the belt. The moment I do, I’m tumbling out of the car sideways. I land on my hip and my elbow and my bag. Blake is standing above me and I’m sobbing out, “Don’t you kick me. Don’t you dare kick me.”

His face suddenly changes. It loses its anger, just snaps into his normal face. His lips quiver for a second. His eyes widen and he says, “Oh my God. Oh … Aimee … I’m … I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did that. Aimee, I’m so—”

He reaches his hand down to help me up. I’ve held that hand a million times, but I know I won’t ever again.

“Don’t touch me,” I snap, holding on to my anger so I can stop crying. “Don’t.”

The bus goes by. I swear eight hundred million people look out the windows at us. The one face I recognize for sure is Courtney’s. She smiles. They are all smiling.

I cringe and haul myself up. My knee barely holds my weight, wiggling, trying to find its place. Dirt marks my jeans, smeared across the side of my leg.

“Aimee. I’m sorry. I was just so mad—” Blake starts. “I don’t know what I was doing. I—I can’t believe I just did that. Aim—I’m—I’m so—I don’t know what’s wrong with me lately—”

I raise my hand to stop him talking. My shoulder aches. “Don’t.”

I haul my bag up and start walking. Each step sends a knife of sorrow-pain through my leg and right into the core of me. I go around him, putting one foot in front of the other, ignoring the trash that’s on the shoulder of the road, the old McDonald’s bag, the Ziploc sandwich bag, the newspaper, wet and moldy and discarded. I keep walking to school, limping, hurting, but that’s all. It’s over. I’m okay. I am perfectly okay.

Blake has never been like this before. He’s always been a tiny bit competitive, but he’s never been jealous, never been racist or sexist. He’s the kind of guy who wants to succeed, win some running awards, go to college, sing, be happy. He was nice. He was good. Everyone knows that. In a town like this everyone knows everything, really, and … I swear, I’m just walking down the hall before first period and people are already whispering about what happened with Blake and me on the side of the road. Their voices come at me from all sides, girls, guys, high, low, worried, know-it-all.

“He just hauled off on her … totally not like Blake. Everyone’s so freaking pissy lately—”

“She and Blake broke up.”

“Her mom was totally psycho. I heard she—”

“What crap. You know it’s a rumor. They’d never break up. They’re perfect. They put like a hundred hearts on each other’s status updates.”

The two-minute walk to Spanish seems to take hours. All I want is the safety of my desk and conjugated verbs. I manage to hold it together before I remember that I’ll see Alan in bio next period and I need to have some kind of plan for us to talk—like I’m in any condition to talk right now. But I have to be, don’t I?

Courtney corners me after Spanish. She’s got her ancient orange textbook under her arm. With her free arm she grabs my elbow and pulls me closer. She speaks softly. “Aim, are you sure about this?”

I want to say, “About what?” but instead I just nod.

“He told me. Wow, Aimee, you and Blake. You’ve been going out forever and …” She struggles for the words. Her dark brown eyes close and then open again. “I don’t think you should just dump him like that. He’s really sorry.”

“I know …” I remember her face smiling in the bus while I was on the ground. “It doesn’t matter. How about you? Are you okay?”

“Me?” She stops walking. Her voice goes shrill. “Oh, yeah. I’m brilliant. You know, it’s not like my dad
is missing
and everyone insists he’s dead.”

“Court …” I don’t know what to say.

“And, my stupid-ass cousin barged into my room without knocking.”

“He did?” My brain shudders. Alan’s supposed to be the good one. Why would he do that?

“Yes.” She shakes her head, lets go of my elbow, and wraps her arms around her rib cage. “Everyone is acting funny lately. Have you noticed? It’s like all the bad in them, all the bad qualities are getting pumped up more often, like everyone’s losing their temper, like everyone’s getting more insecure or mean or jerky or something. I don’t know … I don’t know. I can’t believe you dumped him.”

I start to say something, but I’m having a hard time figuring out what to respond to. She’s all over the place.

She talks before I have a chance, letting go of her ribs and running both hands through her hair really quickly. “That’s not what matters. What matters is … do you remember what happened at that séance?”

I swallow. I don’t answer. Our feet move us forward through people weighed down with backpacks and book bags and secrets.

Court keeps going. “Do you remember what happened to you?”

“Yeah,” I say, flat and hard. How can I not remember the pencil catching on fire? The way my hair was suddenly wet and how I’d screamed and screamed because it felt like someone was ripping my arms off, and how I’d freaked everyone out. “Why? What’s this about?”

“It’s just … There are certain things, Aimee, things that you can’t do anything about, you know? Certain things are totally beyond you.”

I adjust my bag, which is slipping. Everything smells stale, like old-lady houses and nursing homes, or clothes that haven’t been washed in a while. “And you believe that?”

She smiles, a slow half smile that is far from happy. We’re at the place in the hall where she goes left and I go right. Some people wave and say hi. We all jostle forward into the middle of the intersection.

I head to the wall and open my locker, shoving my Spanish book onto the top shelf.

“Aim …” Court’s voice tugs at me.

I shut the locker.

“I just want to make sure you know what you’re risking. Going out with Blake made you seem more normal.”

“What? So everyone will think I’m a freak again if we stay broken up?” I angry-whisper at her. And for a second I almost think that I made the wrong decision when I broke up with Blake, but it isn’t just because of what happened today. He’s been getting progressively jerkier and I’ve been getting less and less happy with him. You shouldn’t make do when you’re dating, should you? You shouldn’t date just because dating makes you seem less crazy.

Courtney shakes her head. “No. That’s not what I’m afraid of.”

“What, then?”

She swallows. “I’m worried something bad will happen to you, like at the séance, and with Chuck. I’m worried that he’ll notice you again.”

My heart stops beating, but my mouth still works and I whisper, “Who?”

“The River Man.”

Everything stills. Shivers seem to creep around my hair. “He could be a figment of my imagination.”

“Aimee. We both know that’s not true.” Her face is a crashed-apart painting. Her eyes and mouth are rigid-scared because she knows how bad things can be. “I think he’s doing something, right now, to the town, making people mean.”

“So you’re saying Blake isn’t a jerk because he’s a jerk. He’s being a jerk because of the River Man.”

“Yes,” she whispers. “Yes.”

About a week after that seventh-grade séance, Court and I tried this Ouija board thing. It’s supposed to connect you to the spirit world. We wanted to find out why Chuck died. The Ouija board has this little pointer that you place your fingertips on. Then it spells out words by moving to letters of the alphabet.

“Why did Chuck die?” Court had asked the board, because we’d agreed that I was not the person to communicate with the spirits anymore.

The pointer spelled out, “Because I wanted him to.”

I took my fingers off the pointer and hugged my arms around myself, terrified.

Court battled on. “One more question, Aimee. Okay?”

“I don’t want to do this,” I’d said, my voice edging into hysteria. “I don’t want to.”

“Aim. One more,” Court said, and like an idiot I put my fingers back on the pointer thing. Then she asked, all strong and calm, “Who are you?”