Outview (6 page)

The house was fancy but not overdone. The
real money came from her father. He was a “money manager,” and several of his
clients were well-known Hollywood stars. They also had a place on the Oregon
coast, a condo in Los Angeles, and something in Mexico. “Dad’s been living in
LA for a while now.”

“Sorry about the divorce and everything.”

“Me too, but Dad isn’t the deepest guy in
the world, and Mom was born a messed-up drama queen, so it was bound to
happen.”

I started to nod then stopped. “Now who’s
censoring themselves?” I said. “That’s like a quote you’d give to a tabloid
reporter.”

“No, I’d tell tabloid reporters to go screw
themselves.”

I couldn’t help but laugh, even though she
wasn’t being funny. We climbed the stairs and sailed down the hall to her
bedroom. It was big with its own bathroom and balcony. “Nice scenery,” I said, surveying
the whole town and the mountains beyond.

“Tell me the last animal you saw before the
moose.”

“Why won’t you let this go?”

“Because I want you to know you’re not
crazy.”

“You mean not like Dustin? Well, I know I’m
not crazy.”

“Do you?” She stared into my eyes so long
that I wanted to run away, I wanted to hug her, I wanted to cry. “It’s okay,
Nate. You can tell me. I can help.” She took my hand in both of hers. It was
jarring. I was sitting with the hottest girl in school on her bed, alone in her
house, and she was holding my hand in hers and talking softly to me. If I
wasn’t days from losing my mind, I might have thought I’d won the lottery,
might have tried something I shouldn’t have.

Instead I started to tremble. “Oh God, I
wish you could.” My voice was shaking.

“I can.”

And I believed her. She wrapped a blanket
around me, and I realized in my crumbling weakness that strangely Amber Mayes
might be my last chance. “What do you most want, Nate?”

“Ashland.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sometimes, it’s like my life is slipping
away. Not like I’m dying but that who I am, in Ashland in the present time, this
sixteen year-old,” I said, pointing to myself, “is fading out.”

“To where?”

“It’s like I’m losing my life in Ashland
and falling into a web of nightmares.”

“Tell me about them.” She had her arm around
me rubbing my back. “Just breathe slow and deep and let it go.” I told her
about three Outviews before I was too drained to say more. She went to her
bookshelf and pulled down a book.
Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation
.

“Do you know what it is?” she asked. “Do
you believe in it?”

“I’ve never really thought about it.”

She looked at me, bewildered. “Well, I do.
And I think you’ve been seeing your past lives.”

“Is that even possible?”

“Read that book.”

“Why is everyone giving me books to read
all of a sudden?”

“I could give you two dozen books about it,
but this one is by a scientist. Dr. Ian Peterson was a biochemist and professor
of psychiatry at the University of Virginia. He spent decades traveling the
world, interviewing kids who had memories of past lives.”

“You mean there are more like me?”

“Well, his work focused around children
between two and four. A child would start saying things to his parents or
siblings about a life he led in another time and place. And these kids want to
go back to those other lives because they miss people or need to finish
something. When the parents start looking into the facts and descriptions the
child has given,
they find out
he is right. Some of these kids are two, and they can perfectly describe places
they have never been to and people they have never met.”

“That’s crazy.”

“No! It’s not. And
you’re not crazy. You’re doing the same thing. Somehow a channel has opened up,
and you’re able to tap into your past lives.”

“So, how do we
keep living all these lives?”

“Because we’re
energy. We’re not the flesh and bones sitting here. Our souls go on and on.
They just keep switching vehicles. Your body is nothing more than a vehicle for
this particular trip called Nathan Ryder.”

“You’re blowing my
mind, Amber.”

“You’re blowing
my
mind. You don’t know how lucky you are to be able to see what you see.”

“You call it luck.
I call it a curse.”

“I wish I could do
it. The kids Stevenson studied--and he investigated hundreds of cases--are too
young to know how to develop it. They lose their abilities about the time they
start formal schooling.”

“Yeah, they
probably have counselors like Mrs. Little.”

“I’m serious. This
is real. Stevenson followed strict scientific protocols. He was published in
prestigious journals and released like six books. He’s a modern Galileo.”

If she was right and reincarnation was real,
then maybe I wasn’t going crazy, and that was a relief. Waves of tension left
my body. She made it all sound so believable. But if I was falling back into
past lives, then where was that going to end? What was that going to do to me?

“Nate, you have to start writing down your Outviews.”

“Why?”

“It’ll help you get to the point where you
can control them. I’ve read other books where people are able to regress
themselves at will and even choose where and when to go.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“Why
wouldn’t
you? There are so many
things you can do once you figure out how to handle this.”

“How am I supposed to handle or even
understand this monumental metaphysical stuff when I can’t even handle being a
teenager?”

She took me home, making me promise to keep
a journal of Outviews. After the time spent in Amber’s bedroom, I knew my life
would never be the same again. She had opened a new world to me, given me
something other than insanity to explain what was happening. And, my God, what
if it was true?

10

Ten minutes later there was a knock on my
door. I thought it was Amber returning, but it was Linh. She had walked over to
check on me. “Tell me about what happened the day before your dad died, why you
think it was your fault.”

Normally I would have refused and changed
the subject--it had come up before--but this time I was drained from the
session with Amber, and it just came pouring out. “Dad, Dustin, and I had been
hiking up Grizzly Peak. As always, Dustin wanted to go off trail, and we made
our way down into a steep bowl and up the other side to a far ridge where the
terrain got tough. An area of scree caught me by surprise, and I sprained my
ankle pretty bad. Dad carried me on his back all the way to the car. The next
morning at work, he had a heart attack.”

“Oh, Nate. It wasn’t your fault. I know as
a twelve-year-old it may have seemed like it, but he--”

“You sound like Dustin. He told me over and
over that it wasn’t my fault.”

“Dustin was there, and he was older. Why
didn’t you believe him?”

“Because he told me at the funeral that we
would get through this and that he wouldn’t let me forget about Dad. And he
lied. We aren’t getting through it. Our family is destroyed. And I can’t
remember everything. My dad is fading away. All the hikes he took us on,
camping, the music he made us listen to, it’s all lumped together.”

She held me without saying anything.
Minutes passed.

“I’m sorry I’m such a mess. I didn’t want
you to see me cry.” I rubbed my eyes.

“Don’t be dumb.”

After she left my plan was to search
reincarnation on the Internet, but I was fried, so I put my iPod on shuffle, turned
up the volume, and went for a walk. Unwell, an old Matchbox 20 song came on and
immediately threw my thoughts back to Dustin.

I was convinced that before Dustin was
locked up he must have been going through the same stuff. He couldn’t deal with
Outviews and voices, and then drugs complicated his reality-bending fog. For
two years he’d been shut away and wasn’t even crazy. What had they been doing
to him all that time? How much of him was left? Did he still have Outviews or
any of the other “problems” that I hadn’t been brave enough to share with Kyle,
Linh, or even Amber? Tomorrow it was time to tell them everything.

Sam was getting mail from his box. I pulled
out my earbuds when he waved.

“Look what I just got in the mail.” He
ripped open the bubble mailer. “
Blindman.”
He held up the DVD. “1971.
Starring Tony Anthony.”

“I’ve always wanted to see that. You know one
of the Mexican outlaws is played by Ringo Starr!”

“I know, fresh off the break up of the
Beatles, and it’s supposed to be a pretty cool movie. Want to borrow it?”

“Yeah, thanks! But you see it first; I
won’t have a chance until next week sometime. Hey Sam, can I ask you
something?”

“Sure.” His look reflected confusion in my
sudden change of mood.

“Do you believe in reincarnation?”

“Wow.” He chuckled. “Little early in the
day for such a deep subject.”

“Seriously.”

“Seriously? Okay. Yes, I think I do.”

“Really? Why?”

“Why do people believe in anything beyond
this life? Fear. Faith. I don’t know. I think there’s too much going on in our
heads to just have it end when we die. You should read this book, hold on.” He
ran inside his house.

Great, someone else giving me a book to
read, I thought. He jogged back out and handed me the book,
Reincarnation,
An East-West Anthology,
edited by Joseph Head and S. L. Cranston.

“Do you remember Mindy?”

“That pretty blond you were dating for a
long time?”

“That’s right.”

“What ever happened to her? I always
thought her name was Mandy.”

He laughed. “You really can’t keep them
straight can you? That’s funny. She married a chiropractor in Medford last
year. But anyway, she was big into reincarnation and said this was a great
intro into the topic. This book is a collection of thoughts and writings of
well-known people throughout history--scientists, statesmen, theologians,
philosophers, and poets. It’s definitely enlightening.”

“Thanks!”

“Hey, Nate, are you all right? Everything
okay?” Sam knew what happened to Dustin, and I could see the concern on his
face.

“Yeah. I’ve been having some strange dreams
lately, and then I met this girl at school who’s all into reincarnation . . . ”

“You, too, huh?” He gave my back a little
shove, laughing.

I laughed, too. In the right circumstances,
Sam could have a serious conversation. We’d had some about my dad and Dustin in
the past, but this wasn’t the time for either of us.

11

Wednesday, September 17

After school I made the dreaded walk to the
Station to meet Amber, Kyle, and Linh. I arrived early to talk with my parents’
old friend and partner, Josh. The scents of my childhood-- fresh-baked bread,
chocolate and pastries, ground coffee and musty beer on tap--relaxed me. It
seemed like Dad was in the back doing inventory, as if he might walk out any
minute.

Seventeen years earlier, Dad had been
thirty and Mom just twenty-six when they started the place with Josh, who was
still at the university then. He’d been their college connection ever since,
keeping the Station relevant and popular, staying up on the latest music, having
a knack for harnessing hip and cool.

“Nate, wow. Six months?” Josh grabbed my
arm.

“Yeah, sorry I haven’t been around much.”

“Jeez, you’ve grown.” He stood back. “I
can’t get over how much you look like your dad.” Only in the last year had he
stop sporting a ponytail and kept his beard trimmed close. Jeans, fluorescent
tees, and a ball cap from some nearby vineyard were his uniform. Even at Dad’s
funeral, he showed up in a faded black pair but substituted a black shirt. “If
I was your age, I wouldn’t be hanging out at my mom’s business either.”

“How’s it been going anyway?”

“We’re busier than ever. Bet you don’t see
your mom much because she’s constantly here putting out one fire or another.”
He’d always been skinny, but I noticed the beginning of a beer gut or, knowing
the desserts at the Station, maybe a cake gut.

“Josh, can we talk about something for a
minute, in private?”

“Sure.” He motioned for me to follow him. We
walked passed Mom’s office. She smiled and waved, clearly pleased that I had listened
and had come to see Josh.

I closed the door behind me. “When my dad
died, you were here with him, right?”

“Yeah,” he hesitated.

“Did you find him?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Can you tell me about it?”