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lights, no signs of life anywhere. I had a monster on my tail and no one around
to help. Many times, when I was a child, I'd had a nightmare in which I tried to
flee from a hungry creature with scales, claws, and dripping teeth. I had
awakened in a cold sweat, crying for my mother. Sometimes she would come to
my bed and comfort me. But other times she wouldn't hear me, and there'd be
no comfort, and no sleep, until the sun came up.
I knew it was hopeless, but as I raced across the highway and onto the sand
toward the vast ocean, I called for her once more.
"Mother!"
It was a hundred feet behind me, and in the next moment it was on top of me. I
had run out of room. I'd run straight to the water's edge, boxing myself in. I
turned to face it, to plead for mercy, but I couldn't bear to look at it. Without
looking, I knew there could be nothing more horrible than what it had planned
for me.
It stopped several feet from me. For several seconds it appeared to study me,
and I could feel wave upon wave of loathing radiate from it like dark swells in a
poison ocean. And what made it so utterly terrible was that it knew me. It had
reason to hate me. It reached out a distorted hand to touch me.
"No!" I shrieked, turning and fleeing into the water.
I was no saint. I couldn't walk on water. I began to go down, but still it pursued
me. "Mother!" I cried. "Save me!"
"Shari."
I heard my name. I opened my eyes. It was dark. I was home, in bed with my
mother. She lay with her back to me, and I was holding on to her, trying to. I
couldn't see her face, but I could hear her crying. I could feel her heart
breaking. I tried to squeeze her tightly.
"I'm here, Mom. I'm here. Please don't cry."
There was a pause, and then, when she said my name next, it was as if she
had heard me. "Shari?"
"Yes!" I cried. "It's me! I'm here! I'm here! I never left!"
She didn't respond, not directly. But she did stop crying, and soon she was
asleep. And so I also slept, holding on to her as best I could, and swearing to
myself that I would never, ever let go.
CHAPTER
VII
A. AWOKE TO a sunny day. My mother was gone. So was her bedroom. I had
moved again. I was at Amanda's house. I jumped up from the bed on which I
was lying. I still had on the green pants and yellow blouse I had worn to Bern's
party.
They were wrinkled, as if I had in fact slept in them, and I felt greatly relieved.
It was not as though I had forgotten what had happened the previous night,
but I had a sudden rush of confidence that it couldn't have really happened.
People died all the time, I realized, but it was simply too ridiculous to think I
could have been so unfortunate.
My confidence lasted long enough for me to walk into the living room. Mrs.
Parish, dressed in mourning black, was sitting on the couch holding a rosary.
"Hello, Mrs. Parish," I said, flipping a spunky wave at her.
Nothing. Not even a puzzled glance in my direction. I plopped down in the chair
across from her. "Damn," I said.
Apparently, dying was one condition a good night's sleep couldn't remedy.
"You better finish your breakfast," Mrs. Parish said to Amanda. "They'll be here
any minute."
Amanda, wearing a long gray dress that matched her wide gray eyes, was
seated at the dining-room table, a bowl of oatmeal in front of her. The table, in
fact the whole place, was fairly undistinguished. There wasn't a piece of
furniture one couldn't have found at the Goodwill.
"I'm not very hungry," Amanda said.
"You'll need your strength," Mrs. Parish said, although it was clear from her
shaking hands that it was she who needed the strength. "Please eat."
"All right," Amanda said, spooning down another soggy bite. "Where's the
service going to be?"
"At the chapel at the cemetery," Mrs. Parish said.
"Now hold on a second," I said. "I just died. I'm not ready for any funeral. I'm
not ready to "
Why say it? Who was ever ready to be put in the ground?
But there was still a scheduling problem here. No one was buried the day after
they died. The only logical explanation was that I had slept away several days.
My, I thought, how time flies when one splits open one's skull.
"Will it be a Catholic service?" Amanda asked.
"I don't know. I don't think so."
"You might not want to bring your rosary. They only use those at Catholic
masses."
Mrs. Parish looked down at her string of tiny black beads.
"I can pray quietly," she whispered, squeezing her eyes shut.
"What?"
Mrs. Parish looked up. "Nothing, honey. Are you almost done? They should be
here soon."
"I'm almost done," Amanda said, nodding patiently.
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