Unhinged (16 page)

“You can do anything, Aimee. You just have to
remind yourself that it isn’t your memory. Once the crash is done,
you have to remove yourself from Julia by touching her again within
the memory.”

I hear shuffling of feet behind me as Brett
moves closer to stand with me by Julia’s bed. He must sense my
hesitation. “You can do this. Just breathe and focus. I won’t let
anything happen to you.”

Hearing the same words Logan said to me long
ago in Dejana’s room should have made me feel better, but hearing
them only make me miss Logan more. The image of his face suddenly
pops into my head; his smile is sexy and he exudes light. It’s a
light I so desperately need, or else I will drown in all this
darkness. Seeing his face has strengthened my desire to eliminate
whatever memories I can to get him back. Resolved, I move as close
as possible to Julia and place my hand just above her forehead,
preparing to touch my skin to hers. There’s just one more thing I
have to say before the darkness takes me. I turn to Dr. Evans and
Brett and I’m instantly and perversely amused by the worried looks
that cover both their faces. They seriously have no idea what’s
coming. I turn back to Julia to hide my smile.

“Hey guys?” I ask them without turning.

“Yes?” respond Dr. Evans and Brett
simultaneously.

“Which one of you is going to catch me?” I
ask as I place my bare hand upon Julia’s cool forehead and the
familiar darkness once again envelopes me.

Chapter
Sixteen

~ 911~

Sitting in a silver convertible Mercedes, I
feel the wind through my hair and the sun on my face. Justin
Timberlake is blaring through the radio while I sit in the back
seat beside a guy that, come to think of it, looks an awful lot
like JT, with his short blonde hair and blue eyes. His white teeth
practically shine as he smiles out into the great beyond. The sun
gleams back at me from the reflection in his sunglasses, but it
doesn’t hurt my eyes. The ugly pink shirt he’s wearing is a
different story, however.

Giggling from the front seat draws my
attention away from the JT wannabe. Julia’s blonde hair billows out
behind her as the car speeds away on the back roads. Her olive
skinned friend sits in the passenger seat, decked out in a brown
tank top and short white shorts. They apparently are sharing a
funny story, but the wind is roaring in my ears, making it
impossible to overhear what they’re saying to each other.

I look out past Julia and see that she’s
driving down a two-lane highway filled with curves. Every once in a
while, we pass a few stores, but other than that, the red clay is
all that adorns the roadsides. We could be on any typical back road
of Georgia. I’m afraid I don’t have much time, so I lean forward to
touch Julia, to make my way into this version of her memory, but
I’m stopped dead in my tracks when she turns her head and stares
right at me.

“Hi, Aimee,” she says nonchalantly. “He told
me you might visit. I’m supposed to show you exactly what happened
to me. If you don’t touch me soon, it’ll be too late.”

Rendered immobile by shock, my hand freezes
midway between us. I have no idea how she knows my name, or even
how she knows I’m here. I’ve never met her before and I would have
thought her coma would have rendered her unable to interact. This
just shows how little I know of anything that has to do with my
curse. I swallow hard. Though time is short, there’s something I
have to know before I touch her.

“Who told you I was coming, Julia?”

“The great seer of course. But you can call
him David.”

Unexpectedly, she reaches out from the front
seat and grabs my frozen, outstretched hand. Immediately, I’m
pulled into her consciousness; I can see what she sees, feel what
she feels, just like in the echoes of memories I’ve experienced
before. I’m behind the wheel of the Mercedes, chatting away with my
best friend Miriam. The only worry I have is how my hair will look
when we arrive at the Varsity later tonight. My makeup will be
perfect of course, but the wind is never good for my hair, which
took me hours to perfect this morning. There’s a party tonight at
Cody’s house after dinner and everyone will be there. It’s
important that I look good for Cody’s football friends. I glide
into the next curve, careful not to go too fast. Miriam asks me a
question about my homecoming dress, and I eagerly explain to her
how beautiful the deep red color is, but I’ll have to be careful
between now and then, or else I’ll be forced to lose at least three
pounds before I put it on for the dance. Nothing can break my good
mood today.

From its perch on the dashboard, my cell
phone buzzes. I don’t normally answer it while I’m driving, but it
could be something important about the party tonight, so I decide
to glance at it. I take the cell phone out of the car phone holder
I have attached to the dashboard and look at the lit up screen.
It’s from some unknown number so I start to put my phone back into
its cradle when I read the three letters lit up on the screen like
a Christmas tree:
NOW.

Something inside my brain switches, and I
immediately feel the need to turn my car to the right. Up ahead,
there’s a curve, but I hold onto the wheel tightly with both hands
so it won’t move. As I accelerate into the curve, I can hear Miriam
and Cody yelling at me, but I don’t understand the words. I have
one thought, one goal in mind, and I need to stay the course.

Beside me, Miriam tries to take the wheel,
but it’s no use, my hands are cemented to it because that’s how he
needs it to be. Nothing can convince me to alter my course; fate
can’t be changed.

As soon as the car hits the railing that
separates the road from the cliff, I feel the car lurch. But that’s
nothing compared to the feeling of freedom as the car takes flight
and glides like a bird with spread wings, riding the wind into
forever as the car heads straight down a fifty-foot cliff.

Time stops. The roar of the engine is silent;
even the wind dies down to help me savor this one moment of
time.

My goal is achieved.

I’m unusually calm as I unbuckle my seatbelt
and push up as hard as I can to make my way completely out of the
car. I want to fly some more, feel the wind beneath me as it pushes
me higher and higher towards Heaven. I’m fully released now from
the metal bird, so I close my eyes, fan out my arms, and lift my
face towards the sun in anticipation of what’s to come. After
savoring the moment a bit longer, I look down and wave to Miriam
and Cody still locked into the car by their seat belts. I silently
wish them a happy journey as I fly free above them. I don’t notice
the fearful looks upon their faces; I’m too busy flying.

As I float suspended in the air, I watch as
the car reaches the bottom of the valley, hits the ground with a
loud thud, and bursts into flames. My hands cover my face so I’m
not hit by the flying car parts or scorched by the flames. The
ground gets closer and closer. The heat from the car is almost
unbearable as I near it. The flames resemble more of hell than of
heaven.

The buzz I feel from flying is slowly being
replaced by pain and fear. As I near the crashed car, crumpled and
melting now at the bottom of the cliff, I see Miriam in the front
seat, but she looks so strange. She’s slumped over at an odd angle,
like half of her is under the car reaching for something. The top
half of her is black, scorched from the fire that erupted the
minute the car hit earth. I look for Cody, but I become panicked
when I can’t find him. I search and search, but I can’t see his
beautiful blue eyes anywhere.

My heart beats faster; sweat’s pouring down
my face from the fire that is getting closer and closer. I’m
frantic now, searching for him; my eyes dart back and forth in a
vain attempt to find anything that resembles my sweet Cody.
Finally, the sun catches something pink. I look to the left of the
burning car and see his pink shirt billowing out in the wind like a
flag. But that’s all there is, his pink shirt attached to a torso.
His beautiful eyes aren’t there anymore—they're about five feet to
the right of where his head landed.

Tears flow down my face, but I don’t feel
them. All I feel is numb. The ground gets nearer, the sweet
oblivion that death offers is comforting now. I have no idea how I
came to be here or what caused any of this. My mind is a muddy mess
of confusion, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters now that the
two people I love most in this world are dead. I close my eyes, not
wanting to see the instrument of my destruction. Time moves even
slower, just when I need it to speed up.

Yet, as I wait for death, something else
pulls at me. Some purpose to all of this. There’s something I’ve
been sent here to do, but I have no idea how to get it done before
I hit the ground.

A sudden pain erupts in my chest. It’s like
something inside of me is trying to eat its way out. I claw at my
chest with my nails, trying to help it along, anything to stop the
excruciating pain. I look down and see the skin on my chest rise
and fall as the image of a hand tries to emerge. Finally, the hand
breaks through my chest like a small explosion. It’s quickly
followed by a head, shoulders, and a body. Within milliseconds, the
long body of Julia has crawled out of my chest and is now floating
in front of me. As we look at each other falling together as one, I
note that her face and body are flawless, but her fear is
contagious. Her mouth is moving, but I can’t hear anything over the
roar of the fire. All I can do is read her lips as they say the
same phrase repeatedly as we draw nearer to the unforgivingly hard
ground: “He’s coming for you.”

The bottom of the cliff is so close now I can
make out the granules of the sand that surround the bushes thriving
there. I’m painfully aware that our time is almost up. I reach out
my hand as far as I can towards Julia, desperate to reach her in
time. Julia extends her hand out towards me as well, like she knows
instinctively what I need to do, but we aren’t going to make it. I
was too late. She’s going to hit the ground before I’m able to
touch her and take this memory back with me.

Julia turns to look at the ground and then
back at me. Tears fill her eyes. She realizes what’s coming, knows
there’s nothing she can do to change it. She flings herself up and
grabs my hand just inches before she makes contact with the valley
floor. The burning pain that accompanies her touch is excruciating
as it spreads throughout my body. She’s so close now I can hear her
whisper, “I’m so sorry” before she hits the ground hard and the
world before me explodes into a thousand pieces of white light. The
force of it throws me back from Julia and the impending ground,
forcing me painfully back into the real world.

Chapter
Seventeen

~ Revelations ~

“Julia!” I scream as I open my eyes, fully
prepared to see a girl’s mangled and broken body before me. But all
I see is a white tiled ceiling with moldy water spots and Brett’s
concerned face hovering above me, his strong arms holding me
still.

“Calm down,” he says in a soft voice. “You’re
safe now. I won’t let anything hurt you.”

* * * *

I’m almost lulled to sleep by the sound of
the wind coming through the open window of Brett’s truck. The night
is cool and the city quiet. It’s ironic since it’s the complete
opposite of what’s going on in my mind right now. Not to mention
the tornados currently wreaking havoc in the minds of the people I
love.

Every time I doze off, memories of free
falling to an exploding car jolt me awake. The nightmares plague me
even when I’m awake. I shiver, more from the bleakness of the
situation than the cold. In one quick motion, Brett pulls a blanket
from the back seat and covers me with it. I’m touched by his
thoughtfulness, but immediately feel guilty at allowing such
comforts when Logan is still lost within himself, waiting for me to
save him. Now that I have a real shot at it, I can barely move. My
legs and arms feel like Jello, and my head feels like it was hit by
a truck. I guess experiencing a memory within a person takes more
energy out of you than just revisiting the echo. Regardless, I
won’t be of much help to anyone if I don’t rest first. I guess I
did need someone to drive me home after all.

It isn’t long before Brett’s pulling his
truck into my driveway. He throws it into park so he can come
around the car and quickly help me out. Normally, I wouldn’t even
entertain the thought of anyone touching me. I’ve never felt this
drained before and don’t think I could make it into the house by
myself anyway.

I lean my head back against the headrest,
trying to gather enough energy to walk inside the house. The car
door opens and suddenly Brett is in front of me, his face a mask of
concern. I’m too tired to be alarmed when he scoops me up in his
arms to carry me inside. My body’s covered as usual, but my face is
bare so I turn it away from him, resisting the urge to rest my head
in the crook of his neck before I fall into oblivion.

He gently carries me inside the front door
and races up the stairs to my room. I’m too tired to care that he
isn’t supposed to be in here. I can’t keep my eyes open as he slams
open my bedroom door and quickly enters, placing me gently on top
of my bedspread. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I know that I
should feel threatened by being alone with a guy I barely know in
my bedroom, but something about him being here feels comfortable,
safe even. Despite the intense exhaustion that threatens to
overtake me, I want to thank Brett. He was thrown into this after
Dejana fell into the coma, and to his credit, he hasn’t yet fled as
I had expected him to.