Abandon - Meg Cabot [9]
So I had absolutely nothing to worry about! He wasn’t coming back for me. Because he was a figment of my imagination.
I’d sat across from those psychiatrists, and I’d nodded. They were right. Of course they were.
But inside, I’d felt so…
…sorry for them.
Because the walls behind those doctors’ desks were filled with so many framed diplomas and degrees — some of them from the very same Ivy League schools my parents now despaired of my ever being able to get into.
And that was what made me saddest of all. Because my parents couldn’t see that it didn’t matter. All those diplomas, all those degrees.
And those doctors still didn’t have the slightest idea what they were talking about.
Because I had proof. I always had. As I stood in front of the crypt beneath the poinciana tree, I undid the first couple buttons of the too-tight dress Mom had suggested I wear to the party, and pressed my fingers against it. I could have pulled it out at any time in any one of those offices and shown it to them and said, “Lucid dreaming? Really? What about this, then, Doctor?”
But I never did. I just kept it where I always did, tucked inside my top.
Because — despite the fact that they didn’t believe me — all those doctors had tried so hard to help me. They seemed so nice.
I didn’t want anything bad to happen to them.
And I had found out the hard way that bad things happened to people who took too much interest in my necklace.
So after that, I never showed it to anyone. Not even Grandma when she’d said that thing in her kitchen. Not that it would have made a bit of difference to her.
It wasn’t until I was standing there in front of the crypt where we’d met that I suddenly realized maybe I was the one who was making the bad things happen.
Because I’d come back. Not only come back from the dead, but come back to the place where it had all started.
What was I even doing there? Was I as crazy as everyone back in Connecticut kept saying I was? I was in a cemetery by myself after dark. I needed to get out of there. I needed to run. Every hair on my body was standing up, telling me to run.
But of course by then it was too late. Because someone was coming, crushing the dried-up flower petals on the path beneath his feet as he got closer.
Bones. That’s what it sounded like as those flowers got trampled. The breaking of tiny bones.
Oh, God. Why had Mom told me that story? Why couldn’t I have a normal mother who told normal stories about fairy godmothers and glass slippers, instead of stories about human skeletal remains scattered across beaches?
I didn’t even have to turn around to see who it was. I knew. Of course I knew.
The scream I let out when I actually spun around and saw his face was still loud enough to wake the dead.
He seemed as if against me he were coming
With head uplifted, and with ravenous hunger,
So that it seemed the air was afraid of him;
DANTE ALIGHIERI, Inferno, Canto I
He looked as shocked as I felt. “What are you doing here?”
His voice sounded like the thunder I could hear growing closer every time lightning flashed above the tops of the palm trees, where the towering gray storm clouds were crashing into each other.
I tried to say something, but all that came out was air.
Well, that shouldn’t have been too surprising, even if a part of me had known from the moment I’d heard Mom say the words Isla Huesos that this moment was coming. I guess I’d even been hoping to get it over with, in a weird way. Why else had my head kept telling my feet to pedal towards the cemetery?
Not my head. My heart. That four-inch cardiac needle they plunged into my chest? It may have gotten my heart started again.
But that doesn’t mean it’s not still broken.
I tried again, after clearing my throat. I hoped he couldn’t see how badly my knees were trembling beneath the skirt of my dress.
“I…I’m sorry,” I said. “About the screaming. You startled me. I wasn’t…I didn’t…My mom and I just moved here.” This last part came out in an incoherent rush. “To Isla Huesos.