Circle Nine (11 page)

Since Amanda died, it’s as if I have been granted permission to see into another reality.

My thoughts are confused, disordered.

The world is sometimes perfect as it used to be, sometimes gray and bitter.

I can’t sort it all out, so I sleep.

And sleep, and sleep.

That’s what we have done for most of the past few days, Sam and me.

Today, though, Sam says we have to go. He says we have to pay our respects.

Pay our respects?

In Circle Nine. They stole her away. They have her now, but we can say good-bye.

Part of me is angry. Can we never be rid of Amanda? Because really, this is what I wanted — for her to disappear, so I can have Sam back, all mine, for good.

I want you there,
he says.
It’ll be fun. A day trip.
He knows I hate being here for too many hours on end.

We pull on rain gear. It’s blustery and cold. These feelings are somewhat foreign to me; I used to notice them, but somehow they never touched me. I could feel the cold on my skin without feeling it sink deep below. It is as if a protective orb has always surrounded me until now.

I shiver as we step outside our home. Sam clasps my hand, and then we are off into the impenetrable world.

We crouch hidden behind an angry marble tomb many yards away from the crowd.

It’s a mausoleum,
Sam says.

Like for the Egyptians,
I say back. Sam shakes his head. He ignores me. He clutches a colorful strand tight in his palm. It’s one of her bracelets, one she always wore. The lucky one.

Where did you get it?
I ask him.

She gave it to me,
he says.

When?
I press. Amanda wouldn’t have given up the lucky one.

I took it,
he admits.
When she died. Look, it’s not like she needs it anymore.

I nod. I try to stretch my legs out, but Sam stops me, puts a firm hand on one knee.

We have to stay hidden, or they’ll see us,
he tells me.
We’ll get in trouble.

I don’t want to hide. I want to run up past the gravestones over the grass burst through this crowd of people we don’t know jump into the wet soggy earth with Amanda. Who are these people who cluster around her? Who is that overweight man all in black patting that little boy’s shoulder? Why are they here? Amanda was ours. We do not know these people.

I’m sad, Sammy.
I rest my head on his shoulder, where I feel that he is tense.

Why?

Because she’s gone.

She isn’t gone, Abby,
he says.
Amanda is not dead.

I am confused, but I don’t say anything. How can she not be dead? She can’t talk to us anymore; she can’t dance in circles or play word games or laugh or kiss Sam when I’m not looking or try to kiss me, too. My anger boils up. I can’t think like this. There is no reason for me to think like this, now that she is gone.

Sam,
I ask,
why are we here? Why do we need to see her again? We’re OK on our own.

She wanted to go to California, Abby,
he says dreamily.
That’s where she always wanted to go. Let’s go to Cali just as soon as we can. We’ll bring her with us.
He has tears in his eyes all of a sudden, and his voice sounds gruff. Rage flows through me at this. He can’t love her. He doesn’t. But maybe he did. Maybe he did love her all his life like she said. What does it mean? How could he love us both? Why is he trying to keep her alive? Why won’t he let her go?

I never want to see Amanda again. I am a pillar of locusts and vultures and poison and everything bad. I think of her funeral pyre. She is now all burned up so she fits in a small metal jar. I wonder how it was done, if there was a special ceremony for that. I feel at once regretful that we missed it, happy she is gone, sad she is gone, and guilty for feeling happy at all. I am a big, fiery mix of emotions, a column of fire to match her own.

We wait there long after the Circle Nine people have gone, and they have dumped dirt in Amanda’s hole. My legs are cramped and for a while, I take a nap in Sam’s lap. When he nudges me to wake up, my body feels stiff and tired. It’s long-dark, I can tell from the richness of the shade of black cloaking us. We walk to Amanda’s hole and stare at it for a long time. Sam mutters words I can’t understand. He paws at the earth.

Maybe she will need it,
he says.
Maybe it is like the Egyptians. Maybe I shouldn’t have taken it.
Sam digs and digs with his hands. He wants to give the bracelet back. Sam digs a tunnel to Amanda. I imagine him crawling through it, as if Amanda is China. My heart is thumping hard in my chest. But suddenly there is a noise and then a light, and we are running off into the night, finding pockets of darkness to conceal us. We are panting by the time we get back to the cave. Inside and outside, the world is a muddled mess of dim and dark and gray. Sam still has Amanda’s bracelet tucked into his palm. When he opens his hand, I see that he’s left crescent moons in his skin, he was gripping it so hard.

It’s OK,
he says, but it sounds like he’s talking mostly to himself.
It’s OK. She wouldn’t mind us having it. She wouldn’t mind.
He carries the bracelet over to the corner and sets it carefully on a small ledge there. He rummages around the rest of the cave-palace. He returns with some of her things: some clothes she kept here, a toothbrush. He sets them by the bracelet.

A shrine,
he explains.
She would have liked that. She liked attention.
He looks proud of himself, but I only feel sick. She will always be here. She invaded our space like locusts and won’t ever leave, even in death.

We are making dinner together, Sam and me. It has been so long since we’ve done it. Sam lights the stove, and I pour glasses of wine fuller than I should. We cook mutton and eat it together at a long oak table, where we sit on either side in high-backed thrones, far away from each other so we have to shout our conversation. The meal is delicious, and I am so happy because Sam is in a good mood. He is so rarely in a good mood anymore. Ever since Amanda . . . but that is finished, and we don’t speak of it.

Amanda’s shrine is in the corner still, and we fixed her a plate, too, setting it carefully by her belongings. She hasn’t touched it. Sam looks a little worried, but I can tell he is putting on a brave face because the atmosphere is so jolly and he doesn’t want to ruin it. Afterward, we curl up together, drunk and full, and the cave is filled with our laughter, lit from within by a rainbow aura. It is like old times.

Yesterday, I had another one of my dreams. The same woman, the same girl. A man this time, too. They’re getting clearer, and I can make out very specific facial features now, and so my sketches are more detailed than ever. When I showed Sam my new sketch, he was enraged. I would not use that strong of a word unless I thought it were true. He tore it in half, and I nearly cried. I used to think he gets so angry because he is afraid I would leave him to try to find these other people. He must know that no one could take me away from him. But if he doesn’t, it means he’s afraid of something else. And so I can’t help but think he might know something he isn’t telling me. When he looked at my drawing, his face was ashen. Maybe Sam is right to be worried. After all, they are from Circle Nine.

His anger, though, makes me angry. Ever since Amanda died, my itch to know who I am has grown, as if the shock of her death brought something in me alive. The pain in my head doesn’t stop me; I push through it, along with the danger of Sam’s fury and of Circle Nine. I am hungry for clues. I suspect this angers him more than anything else. But after all, he hid my little journal so long ago. If he is hiding something else, I must find it. But along with these thoughts races a parallel line of thinking that shouts in my ear: no, no, you are betraying yourself by doubting him! He is your only ally. I don’t know truth from anything else. I realize now that I never had a concept of truth, only of instinct. I must try to trust my instincts. There’s just one thing I need to find out, above all else — even if my identity remains elusive, I need to find out who the people in my pictures are. Why Amanda reminded me of Dream Girl. How it all connects.

I eye Sam from across the room, where I am dusting Amanda’s shrine. (I like to keep it clean.) He is reading a book and writing in his journal. He is sitting in the leather chair, which has brass studs lining its bottom edges and arms, and his feet are propped up on our ottoman. He smiles at me, and I smile back quickly before I resume my polishing.

I am suspicious of Sam and the way he’s been acting. I wish I could help it. I feel guilty. When I try, I can swat my suspicion away and not think about it. It’s easiest when he’s happy and we’re like we used to be, like tonight. But even now, I think of it.

This one was so awful that I wake up shaking with my mouth open in a wide-mouthed grimace because I’m unable to scream. I feel his arms tucking around me as he whispers
shhhh
into my ear.

What this time, baby?

Another fire,
I gasp.
And two others.

Who was it? Did you see them this time?

A man and a woman, Sammy. Dead. Their eyes were lifeless, their faces burned. They were wrapped all around each other, intertwined like we are now. They were dead, but then the woman reached out to me, made a grab for my hand. I looked into her eyes, and they were mine.

What do you mean, made a grab for you?

My wrist. But I was very small, just a little girl. Her fingers broke off where they touched me, crumbled to dust. I ran to a dark space under a cupboard and hid.

How old?
He pets my hair.

Eight, maybe. Nine. Sammy, I think they were my parents. I think they didn’t want me to leave.

No, baby. You and me, we don’t have families.

Not anymore, you mean.

No. Never. That’s why you can’t remember anything before me. You’ve always belonged to me.

Then why do I dream these things? Who are these people? Who is that girl?
I challenge him because something in me says I know different.

Was she there, too?
His tone is sharp.

No!
I say.
Just the other times. The times I’ve told you about.

OK,
he says soothingly.
Back to bed,
mija.
Forget all that.
Soon he is snoozing.

But forgetting has always been my trouble. I don’t want to forget; I want to cling to these memories and dreams, which come nearly every evening now, much more often than I admit to Sammy. Something in me makes me hold back from him. They’re more real to me when he can’t just explain them away. They’re more real than anything I’ve ever known. Sometimes, and then it scares me, they’re more familiar to me than Sammy.

I don’t know Sammy all the time anymore. I look at him sometimes and I see this foreign person, this being other than myself. He didn’t used to be a separate being. He was as much of me as my arms and legs. Tearing him away, I used to imagine, would cause too much bleeding for me to stay alive. Now I think I could stay alive. But I wouldn’t want to. I miss feeling sewn together, and the times I don’t feel it I know I am more alone than anyone else in the universe. So I hold on to him as tight as I can. Even so, the more I realize I could maybe survive without him, the more I turn toward these memory-gifts. And the more memories I invite in, the more my headaches improve; the pain in my head is a barrier that’s crumbling, leaving me freer than before.

These changes tug at my world and make me fight with Sam and make things bad between us, and the dynamic shifts every time just slightly and I fight to get it back but it’s so elusive. How could things have once been so perfect? I see the world now in all colors and shades of darkness and light, and the darkness mixes with the light until it’s indiscernible, where before the only dark was outside our home and the only light within. Something awful has happened to change me. And with it came the girl with the black hair and these people,
my parents,
and they’re poking their way into our home and my head. Nothing is safe from my nightmares. I am not safe; I don’t know what is real and what is imagined. Sammy is my only voice of reason, but sometimes the darkness takes him away, too, and then I have only myself. I can feel a gap opening between Sam and me like when Amanda was around, but this one has nothing to do with jealousy. I will stop telling Sam about my dreams. I’ll figure it out on my own.