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Samantha rocked back and for a moment looked as if she might faint. She leaned against her locker and scrolled again and again over the list of tweets, reading each of them, seeing new ones pop up. A thirtieth. A fortieth. In minutes the entire school would know a lie, a lie she could deny but never destroy.
Samantha gasped for breath. Her eyes darted to the exit, and she made a little jerking motion in that direction but couldn’t seem to move. She was frozen in panic. Tears were filling her eyes.
I reached for her without thinking because her knees had started to buckle, but of course I could not touch her, I could not help her. Yet she needed help. Maybe there were people who could laugh off a rapidly spreading lie, but Samantha was not that person.
/> Kayla was coming down the hall with two of her followers, her primed-for-cruelty followers, her toadies, her co-conspirators. Not Kayla’s fault alone, I thought, not just her, them, too! Them, too! They were laughing but not looking at Samantha, not making eye contact, avoiding eye contact, just laughing, loudly, with the hard-edged falseness that spoke of sadism and not humor.
Samantha looked almost pleadingly at Kayla. Not angrily, pleadingly, desperately. She looked like a cow going to slaughter who smells death ahead and knows with sickening dread that there is no escape.
“I don’t want to watch this,” I said. Minutes before I had been an unwelcome spy in Emma’s and Liam’s minds. Now I was a helpless witness to bullying. And I knew already where the bullying would lead.
It is a terrible thing to watch evil unfolding. It’s a terrible thing to see doom coming to an innocent girl. I felt like throwing up. I felt sick of everything that had happened to me in the time since I had woken up beneath that unwholesome yellow mist. I crossed my arms, digging my fingernails into my forearms, a protective pose, a fearful pose. A pose that in a small way transmitted reflected pain.
“How long?” I asked Messenger through gritted teeth. “How long have I been here?”
He did not answer.
“I can’t do this,” I said. I felt as if I couldn’t breathe. As if my heart was too large an organ to fit my narrow chest. “You don’t understand, I’m not like you. I’m not . . . I can’t . . . I can’t just watch this happen and not try to stop it.”
“It’s easier if you believe that all of this has already happened, Mara,” Messenger said. There was something almost human in his voice. But I did not fail to notice his careful word choice.
Easier if I believe.
Had it already happened? It must have; I’d seen the final act of Samantha’s tragic story. But what meaning did past and present and future have when you could dip in and out of a person’s life, a minute here, an hour there?
It was impossible to accept as reality. But no, no, that wasn’t quite true. In fact, I had accepted it. In a very short time I had adjusted in some ways at least to the notion that I could simply move through time and space. This new reality should not have been as easy to accept as a change in the weather.
I had a sudden realization.
“You closed off my memory to make it easier for me to adapt.”
Messenger’s face remained impassive. But something came through anyway, some sense that he was pleased. Pleased with me for understanding.
To my shame I swelled with pride. Then instantly I pushed that emotion away. Was I some lonely puppy, bouncing and groveling because Messenger had given me a pat on the head?
I called up the images I had seen when Messenger had touched me, images of terror and pain and utter despair. I could call him Messenger, but his full title was Messenger of Fear.
Fear. And I was to be his apprentice until such time as I was ready to become the dread messenger myself.
I imagined escaping from him. I could run out the door of this school and find a phone to call my parents. No, my mother. Just my mother. I had forgotten again that my father was dead.
I imagined the call. Mom, I’m . . . somewhere. I need help. I’m trapped with a supernatural being who apparently thinks he’s some sort of judge, jury, and executioner. Get me out of here. Wherever here is.
I saw a memory of her then. Perhaps a memory of a picture. That simple gift, the ability to remember my mother’s face, however imperfectly, filled me with emotion and made swallowing difficult.
I did not want to cry in front of Messenger, but I needed to cry for so many reasons. I needed to cry for Liam and Emma and the dog they had killed, and even for whoever might own and love that dog. I needed to cry for Samantha Early—I needed to scream at heaven for what was coming to Samantha Early.
And, in unworthy self-pity, I needed to cry for myself, because surely whatever I had done to deserve this, whatever had wrung soul-searing sobs from me, it must surely have been a mistake, an accident, like Liam and Emma. For surely whatever I had done, it was nothing that sank to Kayla’s level. I didn’t believe I was capable of true wickedness.
But I would learn that we don’t always know ourselves.
I would learn that and more.
10
IT WAS WITH THE GREATEST RELIEF THAT I SAW we had moved on, leaving poor, doomed Samantha Early to read the 140-character mocks and insults and false expressions of disgust.
We stood outside a house perched just below a narrow, one-lane, poorly blacktopped, and winding road. My house? For a moment it was almost as if Messenger had read my thoughts, my search for my own roots, and was taking me to a familiar place. There was a familiarity about the place, but no, of course this wasn’t my house, it couldn’t be.
