Praefatio: A Novel (3 page)

Grace

“Hey, sis,” Remi said. He blew into the room just as I finished writing. Remi flopped onto the bed, grabbed the letter from my shaky hands, read it, smirked, and said, “I’ve got something that will take your mind off of him!”

“Oh yeah? And what’s that?” I took the letter and shoved it under my pillow, as if Remi’s discovery of my strange obsession was not what it was: revelation of my most embarrassing secret.

“I can move stuff with my mind.” Remi raised both eyebrows and smiled.

“Whatever, dork,” I teased, attempting to sound as if I wasn’t the least concerned that Remi knew I wrote letters to a boy I have never met and am in love with. A boy who lives only in my head.

“Seriously. Been practicing.” Remi straightened, then made a face like he was constipated. “Watch this.” When he raised his left hand, my calculus book (the one I should have been studying) floated from my desk, across the length of the room, and into my open hand. Remi smiled before waving the book away. It hovered in mid-air, then floated back across the room, where it placed itself neatly beside
Romeo and Juliet and Vampires.
I squealed with delight, then punched Remi in the arm.

“Remi! When did you learn to do that?” I sat straight up on my bed, staring in total shock at this wondrous soul.

Remi shrugged, cool as always, and sat back on his elbows. “Listen, you really shouldn’t be summoning him like that.” He got serious all of a sudden, and a cold darkness crossed his face.

I shivered, abruptly aware that I was still clutching my pen. “What are you talking about? I’m not
summoning
anyone.” My voice cracked. Remi was creeping me out. He couldn’t possibly take a letter written by a girl who sees things and hears voices seriously.

Remi smiled and placed a warm hand over mine. His face returned to normal, instantly putting me at ease. I exhaled the breath I’d been holding, then forced a weak smile.

He continued as if the elephant in the room had left. “Last weekend at band practice, I accidentally levitated my drumsticks into my hands. Everyone thought it was a trick, so I kept doing it.”

“You
have
to teach me!” While waiting for Remi to instruct me, I closed my eyes tight and crisscrossed my legs, determined to keep thoughts of
Him
at bay.

Remi leaned forward, then blew air into my face. I opened my eyes.
WTF?

“There. Now you know everything I know.” He smiled, then left the room so quickly I didn’t have a chance to respond. From the hallway he called, “Later, sis. Going to the movies with Jenny!”

I threw Mr. Fluffy Rabbit in his direction. Poor Mr. Fluffy Rabbit. He was all kinds of torn, re-sewn and tattered since coming to be my best stuffed friend at age two (mine, not his). He only had one good eye, and the lemonade sale I had in third grade to get him rotator cuff surgery fell short about four dollars. I sat staring at Mr. Fluffy Rabbit, lying in the hall face-down, awaiting the rescue he was sure would come. I could never leave him.

The jingle of Mrs. Larson’s car keys and Jenny’s easy laughter, followed by the harsh slam of the front door meant I could face another plan-free weekend without the sympathetic smiles of those with an active social life. Door-slamming usually made Mr. Larson cringe and was among the many ways Remi annoyed him. I wondered if Mr. Larson knew we could hear him curse Remi under his breath.

Like an idiot, I raised a hand, clutched the cross around my neck, closed my eyes as tight as I could, and tried to will Mr. Fluffy Rabbit back into the room. Opening one eye and then the other, I nearly jumped to the ceiling when I noticed Mr. Fluffy Rabbit missing! Gone.

“Looking for this?” Mr. Larson stepped into the doorway holding a sad-looking, poorly-stuffed, formerly-white rabbit. He tried to smile, but tension tightened his jaw alternatively into a grimace.

“Oh. Sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say. My ego had deflated in two seconds flat. I knew Remi and I only reminded him of his wife’s love for my dad. I averted his gaze, collected the sorry rabbit, and thanked him with the sweetest smile I could muster. Neither of us said anything in the remaining few seconds that he stood in the doorway. What would we say?

Him: Sorry your dad died.

Me: Thanks. Sorry your wife loved him more than she could ever love you.

Him: Thanks. You’re a good kid, unlike your brother, whose life’s goal seems to revolve around getting into my daughter’s pants.

Me: Yeah. Sorry. About. That.

***

Remi never took any of the stuff that happened to us seriously. Nothing affected him the way it did me. He wouldn’t be caught dead spending hours at the library poring over books on consciousness, spirituality, or accessing untapped power.

I, on the other hand, felt compelled to find out why Remi and I had these …
abilities
and what he knew about my “voice.” He seemed pretty sure that I should leave
Him
alone and not summon
Him
. But what if I
could
summon
Him
? What if the voice I’d been hearing since age nine could appear to me right then, seven years from the first time I’d heard it? That would be way cooler than levitating Mr. Fluffy Rabbit.

I knew Remi was full of crap with the “now you know everything I know” garbage, but if Remi could levitate, I wanted to learn too.
Ugh
. In a pissed-off huff, I gathered books, clothes, stuffed animals, and whatever was available into a heap in the middle of my room, then tried desperately to will them into the air. Nothing. They wouldn’t budge. Mr. Fluffy Rabbit just stared at me with his one good eye. Even he could see I was a fool.

I thought about the voice,
His
voice
.
What it would mean to meet him and how stupid I was for falling in love with a voice. I did my best to convince myself that anyone who’d heard the same voice, dreamed of the same voice, and written to the same voice for six years would’ve fallen in love with
Him
too—even if she had no idea who he was, or what he looked like.

Around three in the morning, I dozed off. As it turns out, attempting levitation is a major time
and
energy suck. Would have been more productive had I grabbed that calculus book mid-air and set to studying.

I dreamed of the voice. He sang to me, a different song this time, rich and melodic. Like always, I never saw his face as he walked with me and we rode horses. We rode through a beautiful garden and talked for what seemed like hours. He asked a billion questions about me and what I liked. He seemed particularly drawn to my love of music and songwriting. And he didn’t make fun of my obsession with
Romeo and Juliet
. In all the time I spent with him, I never once asked his name. I never got the chance to ask about him.

The cold on the floor the next morning was like needles pricking my feet. The contrast of the freezing floor with my warm covers jolted me out of my awake-but-not-yet-cognizant stupor just enough for me to notice the missing heap from the night before.
Mrs. Larson must have come to get the laundry.
But she’d taken my … dresser, chair, books, stuffed animals … too?

I spun in a slow circle and tried to process why all my furniture was missing. Just gone. Even my snotty tissues had disappeared.

I crept over the icy wooden planks like a mouse creeping past a sleeping alley cat. The only thing left was my bed. I’d planned to go screaming like a banshee to Remi’s room, but terror caught my voice in a vice. I ran back to the bed, hopped in, and pulled the covers over my head.

My breath came in shallow bursts. I couldn’t stay there forever. What if whatever had taken all my things came back for me? What if it was still in the room? My heart pounded so loudly in my ears that I couldn’t hear myself think. I peeled the covers back, slow as molasses, opening one eye at a time, afraid of coming face-to-face with whatever had claimed the contents of my room. A chill seeped under the covers with me, causing me to tremble and my teeth to chatter.

With both eyes open, the ceiling was in sight. I gasped, taking in what little air I could, then nearly peed my Paul Frank boxers. The contents in question were on the ceiling—arranged the way they had been on the floor, only upside down. Turns out, I’d levitated my bedroom stuff after all.

I pulled the covers back over my head and screamed with terrified delight, “Holy crap!”

Hindsight is Always 20-20

They say hindsight is 20/20. I guess I should have listened to Remi’s warning. But I ignored it, along with my own instincts.

I had to know
Him
.

The moment I thought it, I knew I could never take back the desire, the need. Somehow, by the very thought, I’d managed to seal my fate that day. And even though I had no idea at the time, I’m certain now that
He
had everything to do with how it all ended.

***

Things got bad after that. Like immediately. Visions came faster than I could process, sometimes several per day. Some seemed like precious memories, others like premonitions, still others like horrific nightmares. My mind was on video hijack. I saw what it wanted me to see, when it wanted me to see it, and there was nothing I could do about it. Then there were the times when it seemed to be looking for something in particular. I would focus on something, then visions would whiz past on fast forward before stopping briefly on something else. The only thing worse than that was when they went in reverse.

My body constricted as the video began. Fast forward. The day I was baptized. Remi’s first day of kindergarten. The day Dad gave me his Jeep. The day Mom left us for the first time to take a role on Broadway. “New York City is no place for children.” She said it with such concern, who could argue? One day, I decided then, I was going to live in New York City too.

My stomach lurched forward when my mind’s video thrust me into a memory of something I will never forget.

Behind the giant tree. Something isn’t right.
Where am I? Those eyes look so familiar. Wait. Oh no. Run!
He’s too fast.
He’s taunting her, enjoying the fear in her core. It’s like he can taste it, and it satisfies a deep and ancient hunger. I can feel it. The hunger. It wants to overtake me from the inside.
No
!
Stay with her
. He’s way too fast.
Remi! Run faster!
He’s too … fast. Impossibly fast. Tears drip from my eyes, and I don’t try to stop them. I’m frozen solid with fear feeling cowardice drape me in its sad grip. He’s gonna …
Remi? Oh no. Remi, please. You can’t win this. Please don’t. He’s … a … Holy …
I’m dizzy.
I can’t take deep breaths. It feels like I might hyperventilate.
Remi, don’t be stupid, just go. GO NOW! They’re coming. Don’t you see them? Remi? Oh my God. What did you do?

Then I was shivering, shaking my head, trying to push away the memory of what I had just seen, vivid as if I had been there. I felt the wind in the air and the fear, like cold pinpricks on my skin. My heart pounded in time with the pounding of Remi’s feet on the frozen earth beneath him. And then it stopped. Remi’s feet—not my heart—I don’t think. I wiped frigid tears with my sleeve. Looking down, I saw that my hands were fists, my knuckles devoid of color, as that of the dead.

Normal is Relative

A small voice came from the other side of the two-way mirror. “What just happened? Someone get the power back on in there. Is she OK?”

“Are you OK to continue, Grace? Do you need a break?” It was Mullane this time.

I must have blacked out or something. In the darkness, the overhead lights flickered and buzzed in protest, and the video camera’s red light was out. My heartbeat quickened as someone in the room with me whispered, “
Memento mori. Respice post te
!”

But there wasn’t anyone there. I knew enough Latin to know the phrase had to do with death, my death to be exact, and felt a sickening sense that whatever had spoken was determined to keep his word.

The fly from earlier landed on my hand. I considered swatting him for leaving me in the dark, but I preferred the company. “No … I’m okay.” I cleared my throat.

Just then the lights came on. I looked around, and there was still no one there that I could see. But then, I heard faint breathing, and it wasn’t the fly.

“Go ahead, Grace. Just finish up now,” Vivienne urged through what I imagined were tight lips.

***

Aside from the visions and ability to levitate things and the voice in my head, I considered myself pretty ordinary. And judging by the two dates I’d had since officially entering the “scene” at age fifteen, my status as ordinary seemed to be well confirmed by the boys at school. Leave it to my mother, Vivienne Lenore Crescent, to give me, Grace Anne Miller, the most ordinary name in the world. Dad, on the other hand, seemed to truly believe I was special.

“One day, you are going to find out just how special you are,” he would say. “Your life has meaning, Grace Ann Miller, whether you ultimately decide to accept it or not.” He told me that when I was nine years old—the day I’d first heard
His
voice. Special or not, when I heard the voice for the first time, I locked myself in the closest, blasting music, as loud as it would play, through my headphones. Remi found me hours later, passed out in pee-stained shorts.

Deep down I knew Dad was right, at least partially. There
was
something different about me. I was either gifted or crazy, and if it turned out that crazy won out over gifted, well, hiding in my closet seemed like the best solution.

By the time high school rolled around, I had reconsidered. Perhaps my dad was mistaken. I’d seen the movies and read the books, so I knew the drill. No one was after me, I wasn’t guarding any special jewelry or ancient egg, and no one had invited me to wizard school—yet. Quite frankly, how special could I be? Aside from hearing voices and seeing things, I was as normal as anyone.

The You Know What Hits the Proverbial Fan