Immortal Light: Wide Awake (29 page)

Lucy obeyed.

“
What do you feel?”

She felt around with her
fingers. There were small branches, leaves, thick blades of grass,
but somehow she knew that was not what he wanted to know. She held
her hands still, and then she felt it. Coming up from the ground,
she could feel energy. It was just like the
light
she felt from Benjamin and
Peter, but much more faint.

“
I can feel
the
light
.”

“
Excellent. I want you to focus
only on that for a moment. You’re going to need that.”

Lucy lay still as the
light
energy intensified
and she could feel it covering all parts of her body. It was almost
like being in a bath as the water slowly rose over her. It came up
her arms and legs, up her sides, and over her torso and chest. She
felt the warm, electric sensation on her face and absolute joy
filled her entire being. She wanted to laugh and cry and dance, but
she obeyed Peter while quietly enjoying the
sensation.

Peter’s voice came again,
softly so as not to cause too much of a distraction. “Now think
about your
haven
.
Build it element by element. Start with something simple and
familiar.”

Lucy thought of the sand on the beach, how the
grains felt to the touch. She could feel the leaves and grass under
her fingers change texture and suddenly she was feeling sand all
around her.

The next time he spoke, though it was clear,
it sounded distant. “That’s perfect, Lucy. Now, add something else.
Make it something related to what you just imagined, maybe the two
things touch or combine.”

She immediately thought of the waves. How the
cold water would send chills up and down her back just by stepping
into them. Without warning, she felt icy water tickle her feet, and
instantly she heard the sound of the shore. It was so clear that
she was certain she had made it back, but she didn’t dare open her
eyes; she didn’t want to lose it.

Peter’s voice was even more
distant, yet it was perfectly audible. “Keep your mind on
the
haven
; focus
every ounce of the
light
on the details.”

The darkness started to get lighter under her
eyelids; she could feel the warmth of the sun on her face, the cool
of the waves at her feet and the grit of the sand on her skin. It
felt firm and stable. She wasn’t sure if Peter had stopped
prompting her or if she just couldn’t hear him because she had made
it; but, regardless, she decided to open her eyes.

It was a slow process. She didn’t
want to lose what she had, but she was fairly certain she wasn’t
going lose it—there was too much definition to where she was. As
she cracked her lids, the extreme energy of the sun radiated down
on her, causing her eyes to adjust.

Outlasting the required seconds for
adjustment, she saw nothing but blue and orange in the sky. Snowy
white wisps of clouds outlined in orange floated overhead, and as
she stood up, she was back at the bay, and once again, every detail
was perfect. She was back and she was filled with an overwhelming
sense of accomplishment.

For the rest of the night,
she worked with Peter on techniques to make her
haven
more stable. It was difficult
to do, but Lucy could feel herself improving. By the time she was
done, she could, with a modicum of absolute focus, get back to the
bay as she pleased. Her last trip alone was spent collecting sand
dollars and thinking about the events in her life that had
transpired.

Then, she started to think about
Kat. She had pushed away the one person who had stood by her and
sacrificed relationships with boys just to strengthen their
friendship. Lucy realized just how selfish she had become. If the
roles had been reversed, Kat would never, not ever, have pushed
Lucy away. Kat Caldwell was one of the most caring and selfless
people in the world.

Memories of their friendship flashed in her
mind. For every tragedy that had ever occurred to Lucy, Kat had
been the one to bring over Oreos and candy and just listen to the
plight of a girl who had been grounded or had received a B- on a
test, or had never been kissed. Kat was always there.

Looking out over the ocean as it rolled into
the bay, Lucy heard the sound of seagulls as they screamed in the
wind. Their familiar cry was one of the soothing sounds Lucy
enjoyed at the beach. But then there was a sound that she didn’t
recognize. It was a different kind of cry, but it came from down
the beach.

The other side of the bay was at least a
quarter mile away. The cry came again two or three times before its
source could be seen some three hundred yards north. It was a
person.

Lucy ran toward the person,
who slowly started to come into view, when she heard her own name
on the wind. The person was calling her. Lucy ran faster and as she
got closer, she was able to make out who it was. It was Kat.
Somehow Kat had made it to the
haven
. All of Lucy’s thoughts had
been concentrated on her friend, which she surmised was the reason
for her appearance, but there was something different. Kat was
distant; she wasn’t near Lucy like Benjamin had been. She had
entered the
haven
far away.

The two kept running toward each other, but at
around one hundred yards apart, Lucy felt the oddest sensation that
no matter how hard she ran, she could not get any closer to Kat.
She could see clearly that Kat was running to her and calling to
her. Looking down at the sand she ran faster and harder and even
though the sand passed under her feet, when she looked up they were
no closer. She was gaining ground, but there was nothing to show
for it.

Kat called desperately to
her, but Lucy stopped and just stared, perplexed as to how or why
Kat had even arrived there. As far as she knew, Kat was
unresponsive to the
light
and anything to do with the other world. Lucy
realized that Kat was only partially there. She seemed to be stuck
in a place that was not as tangible as the
haven
. She couldn’t be sure that Kat
even saw the
haven
, but she knew for a fact that Kat had seen her. As Lucy
stared at her friend trying desperately to reach her, she saw Kat
fade away, and she was once again alone on the
beach.

The robotic ring tone of her cell phone woke
her out of sleep. The clock read 5:47 AM. In a delirious state,
Lucy groped around her night table to silence the sound. Squinting
at the bright blue screen she saw that it was Kat. Instantly awake,
she sat up and flipped the phone open.

“
Hello?”

“
Lucy!” Kat’s voice was raspy and
labored.

“
Kat, what’s the matter? You sound
out of breath.”

“
Lucy, we need to talk. Can you
come and get me and we’ll just go over to the school?”

“
Absolutely; I’ll be there in ten
minutes.”

Slapping the phone shut, Lucy raced to her
closet, grabbed a pair of jeans, a t-shirt, and hooded sweatshirt.
With her backpack on, she pulled her hair into a ponytail as she
descended the stairs.

Kat was already waiting outside when Lucy
arrived. In a matter of seconds she was in the car.

“
What’s the matter; is everything
okay?” Lucy asked.

Kat hesitated a moment. “I just had the
weirdest dream.”

Lucy’s heart started to race
just a little bit. Was it possible that she had actually called Kat
to her
haven
?

“
What do you mean ‘weird?’” was
all Lucy could respond.

“
Well, I don’t
know exactly. From the beginning, it felt like any other dream,
just sort of weird and nothing making sense, but the longer it went
on, the more I started feeling like …
”
Kat searched for an adequate
explanation.

Lucy looked at her as she drove. She knew the
words Kat was looking for, but she was still wrestling with the
likelihood that what Kat had experienced was what Lucy believed she
had experienced.

“
It was too …
too real.
”
She
looked at Lucy for some sympathy.

Lucy diverted her attention back to the
road.

Kat, not being one to just roll over on a
conversation, decided she needed to clarify. “You know how dreams
are sort of lacking in details, like color and sound?”

“
Yeah,” Lucy responded with a
particularly flat affect.

“
Well, it wasn’t
like that at all. I was on a beach and I could smell it and feel it
and hear it—all of it.
”
She waited for a response.

A million thoughts went
through Lucy’s mind. Her friend had become a part of what she had
been experiencing, and it wasn’t so much the fact that Kat had
actually been there in the
haven
, it was that it was possibly
the first solid evidence that any of it was actually real. Relief
and sheer frustration took hold. She started to cry at the prospect
of knowing that her best friend had been to her
haven
and she couldn’t say anything
about it to her because if Kat knew how deep the rabbit hole went,
there was no telling what she would say or do. But, regardless of
the things she couldn’t talk about, she let the tears flow down her
face. She wanted them to; she wanted Kat to know that something was
wrong. She wanted Kat to ask her what was wrong, and she knew she
would.

“
It wasn’t a dream, was
it?”

Lucy let go of all of her
emotions and sobbed, shaking her head. Kat reached out and touched
her arm. Lucy could feel the
light
energy flow between them, but Kat still didn’t
seem to respond, like everyone else outside the
haven
.

“
I’m sorry,” Lucy choked out as
she wiped her eyes. “I need to tell you some things about what you
saw last night, and I can’t do it in just a few
minutes.”

Kat, suddenly in charge again, her
ability to be sympathetic dominating her, let go of Lucy, grabbed
her backpack and threw it in the back seat.

“
Then we’re skipping school
today.” It wasn’t a question; it was an order.

Wiping her eyes, Lucy mulled over
in her mind the consequences if her parents were to find out that
she skipped school again. The risk wasn’t really worth it, but a
part of her needed to tell someone everything, and that someone was
always going to be Kat.

The girls left Lucy’s car in
the school parking lot and walked to the city bus stop. They rode
to North Bend and spent the day talking about everything. Lucy
didn’t hold back about the
haven
and Benjamin. She expressed her feelings toward
him, and despite the embarrassment caused by vocalizing those
feeling out loud, she didn’t stop. Every word felt like a
confession, and it was absolutely cleansing. Kat listened and asked
appropriate questions. Every moment was one of pure
relief.

As they sat in the front window of
a mini-mart eating donuts, Kat was silent. Lucy felt confident in
her decision to tell her everything. She watched as Kat ate and
thought. She was so grateful for her friend. There had never been
anything the two of them hadn’t communicated and with the one
secret she’d ever kept from Kat out of the way, she felt that their
semi-estrangement had been resolved.

“
Lucy,” Kat said
in a soft, subdued tone. “I just want you to know that I believe
you. I don’t know why—and I
’
m being totally honest with you—but
under normal circumstances, I would probably say you were
crazy.
”

Lucy looked momentarily shocked.

Kat held up her hands as if reading her mind.
“Let me finish.” She sat up and placed her hands on the table.
“What I saw last night, I could feel it, I mean physically touch
it, and I know that what you saw was the same.”

She looked down at her hands and Lucy could
tell she wanted to say so much, but none of it was
coming.

“
I don’t know
what my part is in all of this, and maybe you’re right, maybe you
just concentrated so hard on me that I was brought to you. But, I
just want you to know …
”
Tears began to well up. Lucy
couldn
’
t remember
the last time she had seen Kat cry.
“
… that whatever
you
’
re going
through, no matter how weird or bad or whatever it is, you can
always talk to me. Okay?” She reached across the table and grabbed
Lucy’s hands.

It wasn’t until that moment
that Lucy realized that everything she had told her that day was
secondary only to the abandonment Kat had felt over the last week.
They were the best of friends and had been for years, but in a
matter of days, Lucy had managed to shake their relationship at its
core. The gravity of her actions and her selfishness finally hit
her harder than it had in the
haven
and she, too, began to cry. The two girls held
tight to each other’s hand.