True: An Elixir Novel (16 page)

“I understand.”

“I remember my first day,” Spirit Bitsy says, a hint of mist in her eyes. “It was so overwhelming. But believe me, once you transition, you’ll be so much happier. Spirit Krysta will take over all your burdens, and you’ll have eternal peace and happiness. I’ll be right outside the door. Just knock when you’re ready.”

She gives my arm a supportive squeeze, then uses her key card to pop open the door. Handles and knobs are apparently at a premium here at Transitions.

I stare at the dress rack.

I hate baby blue.

The underwear I at least expect to be white,
but when I open the drawer, I find another sea of baby-boy pastel. Ugh. As I find my size and pull it on, I can’t help thinking about how many other people have worn them, and for a second I can’t bear to let it touch my skin. Next I go to the dresses, which run big; I try on two of them before I find the one that fits. It’s comfortable, at least; a soft cotton with thick straps over the shoulders and an empire waist. I add the flats and look at myself in the mirror. Aside from the color, it’s not a hideous outfit. I guess Brightley figures that with the crazy money people spend on this place, they want their institutional wear to at least smack of chic.

I knock on the door, and Sister Bitsy pops it open immediately, her face aglow.

“You look beautiful,” she says. She bags up my regular clothes, makes note of all my sizes, then says she’ll lead me to my room. As we go, we walk out the back of the reception building and onto a rock path that winds over the lush lawn, around the pool, and toward a circle of casitas, each three stories tall, with large windows and patios off each level. There are a few more people around the pool, and I notice what I missed before: All their bathing suits are the same shade of powder
blue as my dress. I can’t fathom how Brightley imagined powder blue would be the perfect “neutral” shade; maybe the dye was on closeout.

Spirit Bitsy calls out hellos as we wander along the path. Then, as we get closer to one of the casitas, I notice a clutch of three women sitting on the patio of the top floor, dressed in tops and shorts splashed with every color
except
baby blue. “Some of the transitioners keep their regular clothes?” I ask Spirit Bitsy.

“Oh, no,” she says. “They’re facilitators. They’ve already transitioned, so their new spirits are of course free to personalize their bodies. It also makes them easy for transitioners to spot. If you have any questions; they’re the ones to ask. Along with myself and Spirit Burnham, of course.”

“Actually, I do have a question,” I say. “After you transitioned, did you ever have any problems?”

“What kind of problems?”

“Issues with your new soul. Did your body have any trouble accepting it?”

“Not at all. Why would it?”

“No reason. Just wondering. Have you known any other transitioners to have problems afterward?”

She gives me an understanding smile and puts a gnarled hand on my arm. “It’s normal to be worried about the next step, but if you ask me, that’s what’s holding you back from making the change you want. Let go of your fear. Spirit Krysta will do just fine in your body.”

I smile and thank her, but inside I’m disappointed. Either Spirit Bitsy has no experience with soul rejection, or if she does, she won’t say anything about it.

She leads me to an outdoor spiral staircase, and we climb to the second floor of the casita next to the one where the facilitators are taking in the sun. Unlike the doors in the main building, this one has a regular knob. “Spirit Charlotte, welcome to the last earthly building that will ever weigh you down, and the first that Spirit Krysta will call home.”

She flings open the door to an airy, open apartment. Light streams in from the floor-to-ceiling windows, illuminating every room I walk through. Everything is large and spacious: the kitchenette, living room, bathroom, and bedroom. There’s plenty of closet space, which Spirit Bitsy assures me will be filled with a full wardrobe of clothing within the hour.

It has all the amenities of a five-star hotel, but without the technology: no computers, no phones, no TV. Spirit Bitsy says this is so transitioners won’t be distracted by the outside world as they prepare to make their change. Before she leaves, she hands me a paper cup with my “vitamin” and tells me to take it right away, then assures me someone will fetch me for my therapy session before dinnertime, but until then I’m free to wander the grounds and relax.

Vitamin. I’d bet any amount of money it’s some kind of psychotropic drug to help residents believe they’re really “transitioning.” I pretend to take it in case there are any Big Brother cameras around, but I actually palm and flush it.

Now to mingle.

I really want to talk to the five facilitators. If any of them had a genuine Walk-In experience, they might have dealt with soul rejection. I go outside and look up at the patio next door, but the three women aren’t there anymore. Instead I wander to the pool. It’s so hot outside I’m dying to jump in, but my no doubt baby-blue swimsuit hasn’t been delivered yet, so I just sit on the side and dangle my feet in the water. Of the ten transitioners, five of them are here at the pool, but the
person who catches my eye is an older man with thick white hair and wrinkled flesh that sags off his gaunt build and over the band of his disturbingly small bright-green Speedo.

Bright green. A facilitator.

He walks back and forth in the shallow end, and when he notices me he smiles, showing his yellowed teeth.

“Why, hello!” he says. “You’re new here, aren’t you? I’m Spirit Angus.”

“Nice to meet you,” I say. “Spirit Charlotte.”

He shakes my hand. His grip is strong, and the life in his dancing blue eyes takes years off his age.

“How long has it been since you transitioned?” I ask.

“Oh, two years now.”

“Really? And you’ve stayed here the whole time?”

“Of course! It’s incredibly fulfilling to see the joy brought into people’s lives when they transition. And what would I do out there in the world, pay a small fortune for a retirement community? I’d rather spend my nest egg here and give a little something back to Spirits like yourself.”

“You don’t ever want to go back?” I ask. “What about your family?”

“I don’t have any family out there. Spirit Rory did, of course. A wife, close friends . . . but they all passed on, one by one. They take your memories, when they go. When you can’t share them with anyone who was there.”

He’s lost in that past, and it’s so easy to picture how painful it must have been.

“I’m so sorry,” I say.

“His wife was the worst,” Spirit Angus continues. “When he saw her lowered into the ground, under the stone with the blank half just waiting for his own name . . . that’s when he was done.”

He sits with the memory a moment, then blinks, and the sunshine returns to his eyes. “But that wasn’t my life, it was Spirit Rory’s. He was terribly depressed, of course, but then I stepped in and offered to take his place, so he could join his loved ones. Now we’re both where we’re meant to be.”

I think about his story, and Spirit Bitsy’s wasted hands. I’m understanding more about Transitions now, and I ask the next question with a good sense of what he’ll say ahead of time.

“After you transitioned, did you have any problems? Trouble with your memory, sickness . . . anything?”

A transitioner in the Jacuzzi looks up at my question. She looks like she’s my age or just a little older, with the body of a swimsuit model, long brown hair, and a perfect tan, and I wonder what brought her here. Despite her beauty, she seems uncertain in her own skin. Her shoulders hunch a little bit, and she lets her hair fall around her like a curtain between herself and the world. She looks away shyly when I catch her eye.

“Spirit Charlotte, the only problems I had were
before
my transition,” Spirit Angus assures me. “Trust me, this will be the best thing you’ve ever done.”

I thank him, and he goes back to walking the pool. I want to talk to the transitioner with the long brown hair, but she’s already in her towel, scurrying back to her room.

While I don’t get to chat with her, the pool is clearly the focal point for socializing at Transitions, and over the next couple of hours, I talk to several more residents, both transitioners and facilitators, and I get it. Everyone here has a sob story, some terrible trauma they can’t handle. Listening to the stories, I feel like I’m manning a suicide hotline. People tell me about murdered family members, terrible accidents, debilitating diseases,
crippling depression . . . it’s gut-wrenching.

Yet somewhere along the way, each of the residents stumbled into the theory of Walk-Ins and jumped on it, creating a new “spirit” that wanted to take over. A spirit that had never experienced the trauma, and could therefore function in the world. Word of mouth led them to Transitions, where the combination of vitamins and therapy let them embrace their new self and eventually return to the world.

I’m glad I’ve figured this out in time for my therapy session that afternoon. It’s in the main building, another key-card-controlled door with another baby-blue pile rug. This room is cozier than the dressing room, though, with a cushy couch, pleasantly dim lighting, and incense that smells, ironically enough, like sage. Despite myself, I relax right away, and fall even more at ease when the therapist, Deborah, introduces herself. She’s middle-aged and dresses like an earth mother, in a floor-length black skirt and knitted flowered top. She wears thick, dark-framed glasses, and gray streaks the black curls that cascade down her back. Her voice is hypnotically calm and makes me feel like she’d never judge me, no matter what I say.

Still, when she asks me why I want to move on, I know I have to have a truly tragic story, and it’s frightening to realize I don’t have to make one up.

“It all started when my father died,” I begin, then take her through all the highlights: meeting the love of my life only to have him kidnapped and nearly killed, then rescuing him and thinking everything would be okay . . . when it turned out he had a disease that was destroying his mind, and there might be no cure.

By the time I finish I’m crying, and Deborah gently tells me I can end all that pain by just letting go of myself and welcoming in Spirit Krysta, a whole new soul with none of Spirit Charlotte’s baggage. She asks me to sit cross-legged on the floor, and she joins me.

“Close your eyes,” she says, “and picture Spirit Krysta. Picture everything about her—how she dresses, how she wears her hair, what she likes to do . . . but most of all, picture her happy and enjoying life in your body, free from all the pain and suffering Spirit Charlotte had to endure.”

I close my eyes, and when she thinks I’m picturing it, she taps my knees, one at a time, back and forth.

Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.

Six times to lock in the image.

I know this technique. I was in therapy for almost a year after my dad died. It’s called EMDR, and it’s supposed to retrain the brain. I can see how it would work for people like the ones I’ve met at Transitions, especially if they’re taking “vitamins” that make them even more open to suggestion. In some ways, I’m not even sure it’s so terrible. The residents I talked to couldn’t bear to face another day the way they were; Transitions gives them a way to be happy again. Sure, in a perfect world it would be better if they could do that without creating a whole new persona for themselves, but if the world was perfect, they wouldn’t have had the trauma to begin with. And yes, “Spirit Burnham” is a charlatan pretending he believes in Walk-Ins, and he’s making a killing off their pain, but in a weird way he’s also maybe doing them a favor.

“Okay,” Deborah says. “You can open your eyes. How do you feel?”

I look into her kind face and inhale the strong scent of sage . . . and I burst into tears all over again.

“It’s okay,” Deborah says, pulling me into a hug. “It’s okay. It’s always hard when you come back to the present, but I promise, Krysta is coming, she is.”

I cry even harder because she doesn’t understand. Of course she doesn’t. I knew we were grasping at straws coming to Transitions, but I really hoped I’d find something that would help heal Sage. Instead all we’ve done is lose time coming all the way out to Arizona when we could have been doing more research at home.

“It’s not fair,” I sob. “After everything we’ve been through, it’s not fair. I can’t lose him now.”

“Spirit Krysta won’t,” Deborah says. “Spirit Krysta has nothing to lose, so she’ll be just fine.”

For a second I wish there really was a Spirit Krysta. It would be much less painful to stop caring so much and let a whole new person take over. Then I think of Sage losing his memories, and how tragic it would be to have those memories and throw them away willingly. No matter how much they make us ache, our memories are our lives. How can anyone let them go?

Maybe Brightley isn’t doing his residents a favor after all.

With another hug, Deborah sends me off to dinner. I consider trying to get out and head back to Sage, Rayna, and Ben right now, but I have to at least talk to the remaining residents on the off chance one of them has an actual insight into true
soul-swapping. I doubt I’ll find anything, but I’m here, so I need to make sure. I follow Deborah’s directions to the opulent dining room in the main building and hear a wild buzz of excited chatter. I see Spirit Angus at the large dining table, resplendent in black pants and a maroon smoking jacket, and ask him what’s going on.

“Oh, Spirit Charlotte, it’s wonderful!” he exclaims. “Spirit Lianne is transitioning! If all goes well, she’ll be leaving first thing in the morning!”

Have I met Spirit Lianne? I scan the room and quickly pinpoint the one person who isn’t here: the shy woman with the long brown hair. I guess when you transition, you can’t be bothered with meals.

The only empty seats at the table are between people with whom I’ve already chatted, but it doesn’t even matter, because no one wants to talk about anything except the exit of Spirit Lianne and the imminent arrival of Spirit Maggie.