The Fifty-Seven Lives of Alex Wayfare (3 page)

“Are we on a train?” I asked, stupidly. Of course it wasn't a train.

He laughed and tapped his hat. “Not that kind of conductor.”

The woman who called me Katherine laughed too. “She's thinking of the conductors on the train ride here. They were dressed in similar uniforms.”

The conductor nodded, then turned to me. “And which ride do you like best, little lady? The steam train? Or Mr Ferris' grand Wheel?”

One more glance out the windows and I understood what he meant. Why the tiny room felt like it was rising through the sky. I was still riding a Ferris wheel. Possibly the Ferris wheel – the one Pops said he rode as a boy at the St Louis World's Fair.

I reached out to the glass again, to take the scene all in, but my fingertips touched nothing but air. Cotton filled my ears, and darkness came.

“Am I really at the Fair?” My voice sounded so far away.

Lights. Squeals. Laughter. Carnival music.

“Of course you're at the fair, silly.” Dad gave me a squeeze and laughed in my ear. Audrey made a face. Mom waved.

I trembled.

 

 

The Ferris wheel vision tossed my cat theory out the window and replaced it with a new one. Déjà vu. Although I didn't know the term at the time, the concept, however basic, seemed to be the answer. Holding a feral cat produced a vision of holding a feral cat. Riding a Ferris wheel produced a vision of riding a Ferris wheel. But I still didn't know why those experiences should produce a vision at all. What was so special about a cat or a Ferris wheel?

Three more years passed before I could test my new theory. Once again, it was proven wrong.

I was ten, it was summer, and I was in Sunday School. I remember sitting next to Jensen Peters, the most popular boy in fifth grade, and thinking how lucky it was we went to the same church. He usually sat by Billy Piper in the back, but Billy was out sick, and Jensen wasn't the type to sit quietly by himself like I did every Sunday. He needed an audience. And since I was the only other fifth grader in the room, he chose me to applaud for him that day.

He was sharing my art supplies, and I was dreaming of how perfect it would be if our hands touched while reaching for the same colored pencil, when the classroom went dark. This time, though, I felt more annoyed than frightened. It was just my luck that the first chance I got to introduce Jensen to my stunning wit and artistic talent, I got yanked away into oblivion.

My senses left, one by one, until only my thoughts and that deep black remained. I waited, much longer than the second time it seemed, for the light to come and the vision to manifest. The longer I waited, the stronger that same fear I'd entertained before pricked at the back of my mind: Maybe the light wouldn't come. Maybe I really was dead this time.

I died in Sunday School.

But the light did come eventually, and so did the new vision.

At first there was haze. Nothing but thick, gray haze everywhere. Like being trapped in a storm cloud. Then there was rocking. A relentless, random motion, heaving me in every direction. I wrapped my arms around a railing in front of me before I even knew it was there, pressing my cheek to the smooth, slick wood to steady myself. I breathed deeply through my nose, the scent of brine and fish coating the back of my throat.

I was on a boat, out at sea. I couldn't see the water beyond the thick veil of haze, but I could hear it slapping against the hull, the ship surging and groaning in response. Huge white shapes loomed in and out of the fog overhead, which I could only assume were sails, and dark shadows slinked here and there across the deck, perhaps belonging to the crew. None of them seemed to notice me.

I clung to that railing, nestled in my own shroud of fog. Rise and fall. Back and forth. Endlessly tossing. Always that acrid smell of fish – never a fresh, clean breath.

There was no holding it in. I was going to throw up.

The darkness came swiftly, sweeping in and around me like black smoke. I fell into it willingly, dizzy and shaking. The light followed, as intense as ever, pressing all the air from my lungs until I was back in Sunday School, sitting beside Jensen, gasping for breath.

“Oh my gosh, are you OK?” Jensen laid a hand on my shoulder. “Are you having a seizure?”

I remember liking that he was worried about me. I remember liking his hand on my shoulder. I remember how cute he looked with his honey hair swept across his forehead and his hazel eyes wide and full of concern.

I remember throwing up in his lap.

I don't think Jensen ever told anyone about my “accident.” No one said anything about it at school. I guess admitting someone threw up on you was just as embarrassing as being the person who did it. Like when a bird drops a bomb on your shoulder. It isn't your fault, but you hope to God no one witnessed it so you can forget it ever happened.

Jensen did, however, tell everyone I had epilepsy. According to the rumor, I could burst into spastic convulsions at any given moment, swallow my own tongue, and ultimately choke to death. Apparently Jensen had performed the Heimlich Maneuver and saved my life that day.

As preposterous as that story was, I had to give Jensen credit. It made us fascinating subjects at school. He was more popular than ever, and, incidentally, so was I. Which is why I had to shut everyone out. I couldn't take one more person asking about my “condition.” I hated the way they all looked at me, like I was a grenade about to explode. Mostly because it was true. I did have a condition, and I was about to explode. Each timid glance they tossed my way reminded me of the complete lack of control I had over the visions. And if I had no control – if the visions were random – it meant they could come and go as they pleased, cutting into my life like an unwanted dance partner.

Like my Uncle Lincoln when he's drunk at a wedding reception.

I went over that day hundreds of times in my head, trying to find something that backed my déjà vu theory. The Sunday School lesson hadn't been about Noah's Ark, or Jonah being tossed from a ship and swallowed by a whale, or even Jesus walking on water. It had been about Esau giving up his birthright to Jacob. I read the passage over and over, and nothing linked it to my vision of the ship. Even my art project – a drawing of Jacob's ladder – held no nautical significance.

I had to let my theory go and accept that the visions were indeed random. They came and went, dragging me along like something hooked to its sleeve. It wasn't aware of me, it just swept me along. My wants, desires, and needs never mattered. And soon, that's exactly how I saw my life.

None of it mattered.

 

 

After a year as a self-made pariah, I had successfully alienated myself from the kids at school. Whether or not I sat alone in the cafeteria was no longer a topic of discussion. No one commented on the fact that I walked home from school by myself. Even the teachers assumed I was just an oddball. One of the shy ones. They never talked to me about my lack of friends or interest in extra-curricular activities. I suppose they didn't want me to feel bad. I had epilepsy, after all.

There wasn't a day that went by I didn't consider telling my parents about the visions or asking them for help. But I didn't want to bother them. They had their hands full already. With Gran and Pops losing their farm and moving to Maryland to live with us.

With my sister, Audrey.

So I lost myself in my fix-it projects. Hunching over a circuit board, stripping wires, making connections – it all provided the clarity and focus I needed to forget about the visions.

When I'd taken apart almost everything in the house and perfected my repair skills, I moved on to custom modifications. I installed a touch screen tablet computer in one of the kitchen cabinet doors so Gran could look up recipes online at eye-level, listen to music, or watch TV while she cooked. I wired all the electronics in the den to a “movie night” setting, so with one press of a button, the projector would turn on, the DVD player would whir to life, the lights would dim, and the window blinds would lower. I even helped Dad get his old Mustang running again, and managed to increase the gas mileage while still maintaining its kick-ass power.

At school I immersed myself in drafting, computer programming, physics, and biology, and kept my pariah status intact by hiding out in the AV room or computer lab during lunch or free periods. My grades were top tier compared to what they are now, and I had a drawer full of brochures for the best engineering schools in the country, courtesy of Dad, who wanted me to become a biomedical engineer like him. The nerdy glasses I wore and my hopeless, shaggy mop of dishwater blonde hair helped round out my geek facade.

In a one-time effort to add an extra-curricular activity to my record, I briefly joined the Robotics Team in my sophomore year at the request of Mrs Latimer, the team leader and head of the AV department, but the Jamestown vision came on full force during our first competition. She found me huddled in a corner in the competing school's vending machine room, all the lights off, rocking back and forth and stuffing myself with Oreos.

I was so hungry.

I was so terrified by what I'd seen.

Now even the smell of Oreos makes me want to puke.

CHAPTER 3

 

After I dump all of that on Dr Farrow, I totally expect her to look at me like I'm crazy. I expect her to drill me on the visions. Those are why I'm here in the first place, and I'm getting impatient for answers.

But she doesn't go there. Instead, she taps her pencil on her bottom lip and says, “Tell me about Audrey.”

For a split second, I think back to a few hours earlier, before I left the house for my appointment with Dr Farrow. Audrey was where she always was, sitting on the daybed on our screened-in porch. She wore fingerless gloves and a black bandana with cartoon pumpkins on it. (Halloween is her favorite holiday.) Her thin, frail legs were curled under her; one of Gran's afghans was draped over her lap. Her homebound algebra homework was spread out on the coffee table before her, but she hadn't touched it yet. Instead, she traced the words of Robert Burns on dog-eared pages with her fingertips. A shiny new bruise graced her collarbone.

I tried not to look at it when I kissed her goodbye.

“I don't want to talk about Audrey,” I tell Dr Farrow. I look away and try to swallow the sudden lump in my throat.

She nods and puts pencil to paper. Then, “Tell me how it felt to tell your parents about your suspension.”

Oh. That.

 

 

The day of the Mr Lipscomb Incident, Mrs Gafferty called Dad in from work to tell him face-to-face. He sent me out to wait in the car while they talked, and I sank into the cool vinyl in the back of the Mustang. Waiting. Breathing in autumn air.

Even though the backseat was cramped, and I always preferred sitting beside Dad in the front, the back seemed fitting for that day. I was a criminal after all – captured and corralled – headed to the precinct.

There were no words on the way home. Tension weighed heavy on my shoulders in the silence. I pressed my temple to the rear window glass and watched the blur of curb and grass, the swirl of crisp leaves in the breeze, the rise and fall of power lines. They reminded me of the time Audrey and I climbed the old power line poles at the edge of Pops' farm to steal those glass insulators the power companies never use anymore. They were the most exquisite shade of blue-green, like the Chesapeake Bay on a clear day.

Once Audrey caught a glimpse of that color, winking from the top of the power lines, she couldn't rest until we had climbed all the way up and liberated each one. We carried them home, heavy and sagging in our stretched-out T-shirts. I spent a week fastening small lightbulbs inside each one, while Audrey coiled copper wire in intricate and lovely patterns around the outside. It was always that way with us. Whenever we found forgotten or broken objects, I would repair them and bring them back to life, and Audrey would make them beautiful. I was the stoic one with Coke-bottle eyeglasses. Audrey was the beauty, with a laugh that gave color to our world.

Mom called our hobby upcycling, a term that helped us sell several of our hanging lamps at one of the local boutiques in Annapolis' historic district. The rest were strung up in my workshop in the attic, a constant reminder of those blue-green days when Audrey could climb and run and leave beautiful things trailing after her.

We arrived home sooner than I hoped. Dad pulled into our driveway, shaded by century-old sycamore trees ablaze with fire and gold, and cut the engine. Our house, a small brick Colonial, sat back from the road, nestled comfortably in those trees. It beckoned me inside, but I didn't reach for my seatbelt.

Dad pulled his keys from the ignition. He turned around and rested an arm on the back of the passenger seat. His eyes were kind and gray, like always, but his lips were curved in a frown. His dusky blond hair looked like he'd raked his hands through it a dozen times. Probably during his talk with Mrs Gafferty.

“Do you want to tell your mom, or should I?” he said.

My gut tightened. I could already see the disappointment on Mom's face. Hear it in her voice – a shadow behind her ever calm, ever even words.

Dad let go of his frown and a faint sympathetic smile showed itself. He knew all about my struggles with Mr Lipscomb. And Tabitha, for that matter. He was on my side when it came to both of them, though that didn't mean he was OK with what I did. It just meant he understood. Which, honestly, pretty much made him the best dad in the world.

He was the peace-keeper of our household, always trying to shield Mom from school-related problems and take care of them himself. Not that she wouldn't want to know about them, but Dad figured they would distract her from her work. This time, however, he needed to “inform her of the escalated situation.” That faint smile meant he was sorry, but it had to be done.