19 Chapter 19

“I really do think it’s only a coincidence,” Linda prompted, deciding to fill the silence I’d cast over us. Smiley and teasing shouts fluttered in the background. “Those people in the news fell into coma doing nothing—none of them were working or overexcited or anything. They just fell, all of them doing meaningless things.” I opened my mouth to add something but she cut it with a pointed tilt of her head. “And I know what you’re going to say but just one of them was reading—the woman you told me yesterday. The rest were watching TV or listening to music. I think a few of them were at the cinema, too—but not reading.”

I shook my head with a sigh. “I don’t know, Linda. There’s something weird with them, I…I don’t know how to explain it, but I feel it in my gut.”

“Well, I’ll give you that. If you wouldn’t have told me, I think I would’ve never noticed anything.”

Because people don’t open their eyes to the realities of others.We are too busy with our own.

How many times hadn’t I slithered by that shy boy at my old school and hadn’t bothered in saying “hi” or giving him a smile? He’d always wandered school alone, with no friends filling his empty sides, slumped. The blue in his eyes had been overshadowed by a dark storm of sadness. A sadness that had weighed my heart down every time I’d spotted those sullen pools in the hallway. I’d known he avoided the crowds, hanging out in the bathroom during lunch time, and I’d known that those sullen pools had gotten deeper, fathomless, and out of reach over the days. Guys hadn’t bothered him. Girls hadn’t spoken to him. No one had showed any sign of awareness in his presence. He’d been like a ghost—a ghost no one had taken their time to acknowledge.

Until one day.

Mrs. Morrison, our English teacher, strode into the classroom, halting everyone’s frantic chatter. Her lips were pressed tightly, and her face was paler than usual. I thought she was sick—an upset stomach perhaps. She had the same look a person had before throwing up. But then, her words broke through the narrow space of her mouth, and the light in the room seemed to dim. My breath caught up in my throat for a few heartbeats.

His name was Sam. Sam Collins. He liked playing the electric guitar, going to wild concerts, and he dreamed about having a band someday. Possibly landing a record deal later on as well. Everyone in school seemed to know him, as if he’d been part of every group, every social circle. An article in the school newspaper was everything that had taken to finally acknowledge him. And his death. A death that had been given by his own desperate hands in solitude.

And that smile I’d always wanted to give him would forever remain in my lips, unused.

Maybe all of this persistence had something to do with the remorse I couldn’t seem to push away. I didn’t want other names haunting the depths of my mind. “I know reading isn’t an evil-starred thing, and that everyone has their own obsessions to handle, but this is different, Linda. There is something wrong with them, and I don’t know how to prove it, but it’s all connected with those people in the news.”

“Dafne, I understand…”

“Don’t give me that I-get-it-but-you’re-crazy tone. I know what I'm saying,” I said. “You’re the one who’s always arguing we should ‘grasp the inner nature of things intuitively,’ to trust our third eye or whatever they teach you on those meditation classes. Well, I'm doing it now and look what you’re doing…”

“I wasn’t trying to…”

“You agreed with me on this before. You saw all the weirdness—still see it. So why are you backing down all of a sudden? Is it because you’re afraid?” I asked her. “Believing a lie is simpler, I guess—safer.”

“Please, don’t start with your psychological archery,” she said with an exasperated sigh.

“My what?”

“You always do that when you want to break through someone’s armor with the arrow of your tongue.” She lowered her eyes, her foot tapping the ground impatiently.

I swallowed back a laugh. “Did the arrow hit the center?”

The tapping increased, the tip of her shoe beating the ground as if running for its life. In her mind though, I figured she was running away from the words about to tear loose from her mouth. She halted her leg shaking and uncrossed her arms. “Maybe I just wanted to enjoy my spring break without a bee in my bonnet.” She groaned, looking at me. “Is that a crime?”

Oh. “Of course not,” I told her ashamed for pushing her so hard. “I forgot about your cruise trip, I’m sorry.” Her parents had been saving up for the last three years to go to Bahamas as a family. Linda’s older sister was going to join them in Florida for a week of battery reactivation and fun under the sun—what everyone looked to when given the chance to get off of the working wagon. And Linda had been excited over sailing turquoise waters bordered by sugar-white beaches and splaying palm trees. She needed the break. Her heart was still too dented because of the bitter hailstorm Brad had caused inside of her, and soaring above the ocean while soaking up some vitamin D was positively the best therapy for her.

I, on the other hand, was adding more turbulence in her head with my worries and ruining her whole experience. So much for being a good friend. “I wanted to know I wasn’t alone in this, that’s all.” I added with a sharp tinge of regret in my tone.

“You’re not alone in this, Dafne. You’re not getting crazy or anything, but…what can we do? It’s like searching for a needle in a haystack. Where do we start searching? And what are we sear…” She trailed off with the sound of keys rattling behind her. A guy was battling with the keyhole of the car where Linda’s back was pressed. It was an old one, probably from the late eighties—an era where automatic door locks still were a half-baked idea.

“Oh, sorry,” Linda told the guy, unstitching herself from the car in a flash.

“No problem,” he said with a shy smile, barely glancing at us. But that glint of time was enough to recognize those eyes.

“Hey!” I called before he would slip inside the car. He’d already won the battle against the keyhole. He stopped and turned to look at me, surprise and confusion swimming together in his hazel eyes. Something must’ve snapped him out from the bafflement though, because he shook his head a second later and proceeded to slip inside again.

“Hey!” I tried once more and closed the distance with the window opposite to his. I bent forward and tapped the crook of my finger against the class. “Can I talk to you?” I looked at him with beseeching eyes, softening the planes of my face to that dainty expression I knew no guy could fight.

His hazel eyes widened, surprise and confusion spinning in them again. He turned back and pushed his door open. I straightened and found Linda’s lips mouthing what are you doing a few inches from me. I smiled and told her under my breath, “our search just started.”

She frowned and aimed her brown-black eyes on his, which looked even more baffled under the sun, like dry leaves fluttering restlessly over moss. “Were you talking to me?” he asked me, his voice fading with uncertainty.

Was that so shocking? “Yeah, why the surprise?”

He waved his eyes around and stopped on mine. “Because you never talk to anyone—besides your friend,” he added with a polite smile for Linda, as if remembering she was there next to me.

It was true. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d spoken to someone in school willingly and not because the circumstances had forced me to. He must’ve been wondering why the sudden change. “Look, I saw you the other day—actually, for several days—reading inside the school and everywhere…and I was wondering if, I don’t know, you’ve felt an urge or something weird going on inside of you that pushes you, um, to pick up a book.”

“Excuse me?” he said, looking at me as if I was an alien from planet Mucus. “Is this a joke or something?”

Linda stepped closer to the car. “What she means is that…” She paused, trying to formulate some logical explanation, and gave up. “We’ve been seeing a lot of people reading, okay? Like, more than usual. And some of you have this look, as if you're under a spell of the Wicked Witch of the West and…” She stopped, noticing the guy’s face had gone more incredulous—and fearful. I didn’t need to read minds to know he thought we belonged in a mental institution.

I looked at her with my eyebrow arched and mouthed, “Wicked Witch?”

She swallowed and flushed a deep pink.