They’re building a fort out of the brush-pile, and they’re laughing and running together, already oblivious that I’m gone, their faces flushed with play-time and fresh air.

That should be me.

I can’t help but feel the resentment swell in me, from my feet to my hands to my heart. I should be running and playing. Not confined here, not in this bed. My new step-cousin shouldn’t be playing with Finn in my place.

That should be me.

“Calla, my love,” my mother murmurs as she comes back into the room, a cup of apple juice and a handful of pills in her hand. They’re colorful like jewels, but they taste like dirt. “You have to listen to me. You have to rest, you have to recover. Do you trust me?”

I nod, because she’s my mother, and of course I trust her. What an odd question. I turn to her and obediently reach my hands out for the pills.

One by one, I swallow them and they stick in my throat so I gulp at the juice. My pretty mother watches me sympathetically, stroking my red hair away from my face.

“Everything will be worth it,” she assures me. “I promise you, Calla.”

But there’s something in her voice, something something something. Like she’s trying to convince herself, not me. It’s a fragile tone, an uncertainty.

But then she turns away and leaves me alone.

I turn onto my side and pull the covers up to my chin, staring out the window. A heavy fog descends upon me because of the pills, pulling my head under a current, a murky dark current, and I can’t fight the sleepiness. It’s here, it’s heavy, it blurs my vision.

But before I stop seeing and the darkness covers everything, I see Finn and Dare on the lawns. They’re playing and laughing and abruptly, Dare stops and tilts his head up, his dark dark eyes connecting with mine.

He stares at me, into me, through me.

My breath catches, because something feels off here, something feels odd.

Dare raises his hand and waves, and he runs off with my brother into the trees.

My brother.

Mine.

Resentment fills me again, because I’m in this bed and he’s outside with my brother, playing the games I should be playing, with my brother,

Mine

Mine

Mine.

I can’t stop the darkness though, and it arrives, covering up my resentment and my desire to play. It covers up everything, dulling it, deadening it. Sleep comes and I’m lost…in dreams, in nightmares, in reality.

Who can tell the difference?

Finn is there, and Dare is there and my brother reaches out his hand. Because I belong with Finn, not Dare. I should be playing, shrieking, laughing.

We run away, away from Dare, toward the cliffs, toward the sea.

When I look over my shoulder, Dare is watching us go,

with the saddest look on his face that I’ve ever seen.

He doesn’t move to chase us, and I know that he’s resigned.

He knows what I know.

He doesn’t belong with Finn, I do.

Finn is mine.

When I wake, I hear voices reverberating through the halls of our home. I smell the carnations and the stargazers, the flowers of funerals, of death.

I pad across my bedroom and down the stairs.

The smell of hotcakes surrounds me and I inhale the maple syrup.

“Why is today special?” I ask my mom, because we only get hotcakes on special days. She looks up at me as she bustles through to the kitchen.

“Your cousin has to go back home early. His Latin tutor arrived ahead of schedule.”

“Latin?”

My mother nods. “Your grandmother wants all of you to learn Latin. You and Finn will learn it too, probably starting next year.”

“You can start right now, if you want,” Dare interjects from the sofa. He’s reclined there, with a blanket covering his lap. He looks paler than I remember from yesterday. “Iniquum. It means unfair.”

I form the strange sound on my tongue, twisting it into submission. “Iniquum.”

My mother hands Dare a plate filled with steaming breakfast food. He starts to get up, but she motions him to stay down.

“It’s fine, sweetheart. Stay there and rest.”

Rest.

With a start, I realize that no one has chastised me for getting out of bed.

“Your father would kill me if I let you wear yourself out,” my mother adds, as if she doesn’t recall that merely yesterday Dare was chasing Finn around the lawns.

“Did you hurt yourself?” I ask him curiously. He looks at me and rolls his eyes.

“No.”

I’m confused, so so confused and I look at my brother, but Finn acts like this is normal, as though Dare is supposed to be in bed. Not me.

Not me.

“What is happening?” I whisper, so utterly lost. The room swirls and everyone moves like they’re in fast-forward and I’m the only one standing still.

My mother glances at me. “I told you, honey. Dare has to return to England. Don’t worry. We’ll be joining him shortly, like we do every summer.”

We do?

I look at Finn, and he looks excited, as though he’s looking forward to going to England, as though we’ve done it every summer for all of our lives. The problem is… I don’t have any memories of this at all.

“I really am crazy,” I tell myself softly. “I’m as crazy as they say. I’m crazy.”

Finn grabs a plate and hands it to me, stacked with steaming maple pecan pancakes, drizzled in syrup.

It’s heaven on porcelain.

I know that.

I take bite after bite, but by the third one, I can’t move my tongue.

For a second, I think it’s my mind playing tricks on me again, making me think that I’m paused while everyone else is fast-forwarding, but then I watch my hand fall limply to the table, and my mom lunges to grab me and I can’t breathe I can’t breathe I can’t breathe.

“Calla!” she says sharply, and she bangs on my back with her hand because she thinks I’m choking. I’m not choking. I just can’t breathe.

I claw at my throat, claw at my face, claw at my tongue.

The air

The air

It won’t travel down into my lungs.

The light

The light.

It surrounds me and I think I’m dying.

This is what it feels like, I realize.

To die.

It’s warm and soft and inviting.

It’s comforting, like home.

It doesn’t smell like embalming fluid and stargazers, the way it does in the funeral home. It smells like rain, like grass, like clouds.

The light surrounds me, and my throat doesn’t hurt anymore.

Nothing hurts.

I’m light as a feather.

I’m light as a cloud,

The light fills me up and makes me float.

I drift toward the ceiling, and I look down at myself, at my small body crumpled on the floor. My red hair spreads in a fan around me, like a pool of crimson blood and it fascinates me, the color. The endless color. The light distracts me though, shining as brightly as the sun from outside the house, glinting into my eyes. I suddenly realize that I’m ready to leave, I’m ready to let go, to drift away. I’m getting ready to glide through the window to touch it, when I see my brother’s face.

He’s as white as death,

He’s terrified, and he’s screaming my name, clutching at my hand, pulling at my body sprawled on the floor.

I falter, my feet on the windowsill, even as the light reaches my toes.

I can’t

I can’t

I can’t leave him.

I can’t leave him alone.

First he left me, but it turned out he really didn’t. He would never leave me alone, and I can’t leave him either.

With a sigh, I step down from the sill, and slip back into my body, and when I open my eyes again, I’m in the hospital.

“You’re allergic to nuts,” the nurse tells me solemnly, and my mom and my brother are sitting on the bed with me.

“You can never eat nuts again,” my mother tells me, and her eyes are filled with terror.

“You died for a minute and a half,” Finn announces, and he no longer looks afraid, instead, he looks intrigued. Because I’m safe now. Because I was dead, and now I’m not.