Chapter 1
My name is Neila. I’m a girl. I was a girl. I don’t know.
You know what?
Let me start over.
Ahem.
My name is Neila. I don’t think I’m supposed to be here. I think this might make more sense to you than it does to me.
I’ll start from the beginning. Well, not the beginning. Just where the important stuff started happening. It happened to me and I’m still trying to put it all together.
I’m dead. There it is.
You probably don’t believe me. I don’t blame you. I found it hard to believe, myself.
It started in a bathroom stall. I walked out of American History to puke in a toilet.
So, there’s the stomach flu, food poisoning, nausea. I can tell you it wasn’t any of those. I felt fine all day, but for some reason, six hours into the school day, I spontaneously needed to purge my stomach. It wasn’t a habitual thing for me. I only remembered throwing up twice before then and those times were when I was really sick. This literally came out of nowhere.
I emptied my stomach, and my friend Marilyn came to check on me. I locked the door so she couldn’t see me, but I told her not to worry. I hugged the toilet bowl. The room was spinning. I felt much hotter than I should have. As I was with most things, I tried to regulate my body so I could return to full health as soon as possible. None of my methods worked. Slow, controlled breathing, fanning myself, looking up at the ceiling.
If anything, my symptoms just seemed to get worse. I must have blacked out.
When I woke up, I wasn’t where I remembered being. I was suspended in the air, looking down at my unconscious body. It was an out-of-body experience. My first one. It scared me to death.
I was in the air like I was in an indoor skydiving cyclone. I was stuck there. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t talk, and I couldn’t feel anything.
When I fell down, it wasn’t because I suddenly got control over anything. It happened suddenly, and I wasn’t prepared for it. My body still seemed to be alive, breathing, but it was there, and I was next to it. That was the problem. That was supposed to be me, so why was I there, looking at myself? No reflection or impersonation, my body.
It could have been a dream. American History was a snooze. I didn’t fall asleep in classes often, but if I did, that would be the perfect place to do it. I probably never even left the classroom. I dreamed the puking, heaving, and feeling miserable in my body. That was it.
Still, nothing I did seemed to wake me up if it was a dream after all. I was trapped in a bathroom stall with my body. I looked down at myself. I was invisible. Where my hands should have been, was nothing. Legs, stomach, hair. Everything was gone. I was bodiless. I was just consciousness, understanding, perceiving, unable to interact, change, or influence my surroundings.
I knew then that it wasn’t a dream. I knew this couldn’t be happening. Maybe I was tripping. Maybe I caught something second-hand, or someone slipped hallucinogens in my water bottle, or the utensils were laced with drugs. Whatever the explanation was, I was useless alone. I needed Marilyn. I needed to get back to the classroom.
I rose to my feet. My perspective got taller. I knew I didn’t have feet or a body, but using one to get around was the only way I knew how. It was my only frame of reference. I tried to lift my leg and walk like I usually would, but nothing happened, because I didn’t have legs.
I outstretched my arms to undo the latch of the stall door, but my fingers just slipped through the metal. I was getting frustrated. I pounded against the plastic stall door, but my fists fell through it. I huffed.
Shit. I really was dead. No. Stay focused. There’s a logical explanation for this.
I mustered up the courage to explore this further. If I couldn’t walk and walls weren’t an obstacle anymore, this should be no problem.
I started running. I ran through the stall door, the brick wall behind it, and clean into the hallway connecting the classrooms in the high school. I had trouble stopping. I had trouble moving at all. I couldn’t walk like I was used to, but I could run like the flash. I also felt the plastic grains and the hard brick texture run through me. I shivered from the sensation. But the classroom was right there.
I walked, then remembered belatedly that walking doesn’t exist anymore for me. I ran, or hopped, then hopped like it was a burlap sack race to get to the door. The door was closed but not latched. When I touched it, it moved. The classroom looked at me. I froze.
When nothing else happened, they looked away, disinterested, and listened to the boring lecture. I touched the door again, and the creaking noise and the movement caught their attention again. I opened the door and walked through it. I looked at all of them, but none of them could see me. They were just noticing the door moving on its own.
I ignored the teacher and hopped all the way to Marilyn’s desk. She was doodling in her notebook, obviously not paying attention to class.
Mare? I was shocked at the sound of my own voice. Not because I’d never heard it before, but because it didn’t feel right. I knew what talking felt like, my voice was my instrument in choir and small ensemble. I liked using the air in my lungs to make a note. I could feel it. It had weight. I liked emptying out my lungs like yelling but beautiful. You could feel it in your diaphragm, your lungs, your throat, your tongue, even the top of your head. Talking now didn’t feel like anything. There was no vibration. It was the voice in my head. But now it was my only voice.
Marilyn didn’t respond. She continued to doodle, directionless, on her notebook.
MARE!
I screamed at her. I don’t know why. I figured if I was dead, shouting would eventually make it through to her. Still, she didn’t react.
I looked at the teacher, and the rest of the kids in the class. It was like I wasn’t even there. I felt that way normally, but now I was standing, talking, yelling, begging for attention and it was like they were all lifeless, unmotivated bodies just killing time. They had it so easy. They could be heard, stand, walk, no problem. They took it for granted. Now that it was taken from me, what options did I have?
I snapped. My hand swung out and knocked Marilyn’s pencil straight out of her hand. It clinked against the solid floors in the silent room besides the professor’s monotone droll.
The classroom looked at her for making a disturbance. Marilyn was confused, then embarrassed to have everyone’s attention at once. She rose from her desk to pick it back up and quickly sit back down. I stared at Marilyn with my jaw open. First the door, and now the pencil. Why were those the only things I could interact with? Unless it was a fluke and I was just reading into things.
I narrowed my eyes at the pencil between her fingers. She stared at it now. I hated to do this to her, but I have to prove a theory. I smacked the pencil out of her hand, and she almost screamed. She was holding it. She knew she didn’t throw it. What happened should have been impossible.
“Ms. Kelly,” the Professor said, losing his patience at being disturbed. “Do you need me to keep that for a while?”
“No, sorry,” she said, avoiding his attention and bending to pick up the pencil.
Marilyn couldn’t touch the pencil anymore after what I’d done with it. I leaned over her desk and picked up one end. It floated in the air in front of her face. Her eyes went wide, and she snatched it out of the air before anyone could notice.
I picked up the notebook. Marilyn was freaking out, but she hadn’t screamed out loud, yet. I flipped to a page without doodles and took the pencil from her. Marilyn leaned over her desk and pretended to be the reason behind the seemingly sentient book and pencil moving on its own.
I wrote: Mare, it’s me. I know you don’t believe me, so to prove it, here’s something only I would know. You’ve had a crush on Frost since the third grade and when he joined the school play you put bees in Jody’s wig so you could be his scene partner.
Marilyn almost shoved the notebook off of her desk, denying what she was reading, witnessing.
When she calmed down, I continued writing: You need to get me out of the bathroom. I’m asleep in there. Help, Mare. Leave now.
Marilyn got to her feet. She froze when the teacher immediately looked at her.
“What is going on today? I know you don’t respect me, but you could at least let me do my job.”
Marilyn was on her way out of the door, remembering to grab the pencil and notebook. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly to excuse herself, cringing at the teacher.
“I could have been a private tutor in Brazil before this…” he muttered to himself when we left. I followed Marilyn to the bathroom. Hopping was really exhausting, but I kind of stumbled forward. I found a perfect medium between the two. It was unnatural, but it felt like riding a hoverboard. It was like I was just gliding.
Marilyn slid under the stall next to the locked one and unlocked the door. I wasn’t in there with her. I spun around. That couldn’t be right. I was right there. I took the notebook and pencil from her. I guessed leading her to my abandoned body would have proved I was the person she was communicating with. With this new curveball, she was acting less trusting and more scared of the thing on the other end of her notebook.
I wrote: I was right here. We have to keep looking. Please, Mare. It’s my body.
I handed Marilyn the notebook, more gently this time, and waited for her to read it and make a decision. She got to her feet.
I followed Marilyn. I couldn’t go far. Marilyn had the notebook. I’d need to be near it in case I needed to communicate something. Marilyn and I were in the middle of the empty hallway. We didn’t hear or see anything. Then, the sound of a car engine gurgling and wheels spinning caught our attention. Marilyn started running down the ramp to the teacher’s parking lot and I followed her.
Once we were outside, we could see a black van taking off at a speed that was unnecessary. It was suspicious, especially in the parking lot of a school in the middle of the day. Marilyn was quick enough to use her pencil and paper to write down the license plate number: 771k2kab.
The van veered off into the distance. We were left with nothing but a license plate and a rough description of the vehicle. The wind blew the branches of the trees in the distance as if today was as unremarkable as any other day.
“Are you still here?” Marilyn asked to the wind.
I tapped the pencil on the notebook for confirmation. Marilyn nodded. It was clear she thought this was weird, but she was going to suspend her disbelief for now.
“Follow me. We need to move now before we lose them.”
I fought to keep up with her, especially on the stairs, but it honestly got easier to move after experimenting. Instead of staying stationary and growing frustrated, I thought about what I wanted to do, and it happened just like rolling the shoulders or stretching. Marilyn climbed to the second floor and knocked on a door of a class in progress. Marilyn made a face through the small window in the door. I recognized it as the one she used with her sister Carolina, mostly because she wouldn’t look at a teacher that way.
“What?” demanded Carolina, peeved by her sister showing up, even if it did get her out of class.
“I need your car,” Marilyn said, as if this was a common request. Carolina looked her sister over suspiciously, glancing at the single notebook and pencil in her hands.
“For what?” she asked, scoffing.
“It’s an emergency. Just give me the keys.”
“I’m not letting you drive my car. Get that idea out of your head,” Carolina rebuked easily.
“Jesus!” Marilyn swore. “I don’t have time for this! Neila is in trouble, and I need the car to save her. Okay?” She started reaching for her sister’s pockets and Carolina slapped them away, now even more annoyed than before.
“Even if I did believe that, the car is not here, and you can’t drive!”
“Oh, God,” Marilyn suddenly stilled, “What did you do to it?”
“What? Nothing-”
“Mom and dad are going to be pissed!”
“Nothing happened to the car, Ferbie. Shut up,” Carolina shushed her sister and shut the classroom door silently behind her. “What is your problem?”
“Give me a ride and I won’t tell that you totaled the car.”
“I didn’t!” Carolina yelled back and Marilyn pulled out her phone. She pressed one number, and the phone started dialing. “I can’t just-” Carolina looked between her sister and the phone as Marilyn raised it to her ear. “You turd monster!” Carolina screamed at her sister. She snatched the phone from her hand and growled. “I can’t give you a ride.” Marilyn didn’t take no for an answer. Without her phone as leverage, she snuck around Carolina and started walking into the classroom. “No. Hey!” Carolina grabbed Marilyn by her shoulders and yanked her back. “I can’t but I can get Shad to.”
“Shad?” Marilyn asked.
“Yes, Shad,” Carolina said, exasperated. She gave a bored wave of the hand. “My boyfriend, Shad. He’s just in the computer sciencing, or whatever. He’ll drive you.” Carolina turned from us on her heel, her shoulders taught and marched down the hall to another classroom.
I took a moment to realize just how much of the school was wooden. The doors, the panels, the frames, and who knows what else. Somehow, I was lucky to happen to attend such an old school. Any more modern, and I wouldn’t have any ground to stand on.
Carolina opened the classroom door and sat down next to a lanky senior in the back of the class. She paid the teacher no mind, nor the other students in the class. She twirled a finger through her short blond hair and sat shoulder to shoulder with the poor kid.
She spoke in hushed tones, but no one had trouble understanding what she was doing. It seemed that Shad was not the type to skip out on school early. Carolina had to charm him in the way only Carolina could do to get him to follow her out of the classroom.
Shad packed up his laptop and stumbled over another person’s chair to keep up with her. They both ignored the teacher trying to get them to stay in place.
“You’ve got your keys?” I could hear Carolina asking. The boy nodded, packing up the last of his school things behind her. “Marilyn, meet Shad. Shad, meet Marilyn, the most recent reject of the Chewbacca school of stink and uselessness.”
“Pleasure,” Marilyn spat. Carolina did not pause, she walked past us, Shad trailing, and strode right to where she knew his car would be.
“Do your thing, Starboy,” she leaned on the car like she owned it.
Shad searched through his pockets for his keys while his arms were full with his school supplies. “Hey, by the way, where are we going?” He asked as he climbed into the front seat. Marilyn and I got in the back.
Marilyn leaned forward so she could share the license plate number with him, “I need to follow this van. I was going to suggest you take us to the police station, but…” she stared at Shad. “I don’t want to presume, but we did find you in the computer science lab. You wouldn’t know how to hack into the police highway camera footage, would you?”
“Easy,” Shad said, and I was in disbelief. He handed Marilyn his school things and sat his laptop on his lap. He scoffed, “When I was pulled out of tech360 by my girlfriend two hours from the end of the school day, the last thing I expected to be asked to do was doing police camera hacking for her little sister.”
“You don’t have to specify ‘little.’ I’m her only sister.”
“Ugh,” Carolina groaned, disinterested. “Just hurry up. I have things to do today.”
Shad stared at his girlfriend, then returned to his task. He said, “So far, it’s headed south driving seventy-five miles per hour. Looks like they have things to do today, as well.”
“What are you doing following this van?” Carolina asked Marilyn, suspicion returning in her voice.
“Who is this guy, anyway?” Shad piggybacked off of her, “Why are you so interested in this van?”
Marilyn was quiet. She had the words ready on the tip of her tongue, but she knew how they sounded. Under so much scrutiny, she struggled to think of anything convincing to say. I saw accusatory eyes devour her alive and I knew the part I had to play. I grabbed the notebook and pencil from her grasp.
I scribbled: Listen here, underage imbeciles. This is Neila. I tell you to follow that van, and you ask, “how fast?” This is our arrangement. Or else, I swear to the deities, Carolina, I will haunt you till the end of your days.
I saw Carolina’s eyes widen and her face blanch, reading the words. I smirked in amusement.
I kept writing: You will not get off the hook. You will not run away. You will have no privacy, and no freedom until you do everything I tell you. Anything you do, say, or attempt, will become public news and your worst fears will be realized. Shad, pleased to make your acquaintance.
Surprise added to the collage of expressions on that guy’s face. He looked as though he was trying to solve an impossible riddle, but was thrilled enough to be happy just to have read it. Shad was skeptical, but with good humor, whereas Carolina was spooked, bordering on angered.
I scribbled: If you would step on it already, I will spare you the same torment, my man.
Contrary to my expectations, and much to my dismay, stillness followed.
I watched their faces impatiently. Shad, still amused and waiting for any more clues I would drop on the pad of paper as to how this was possible, seemed to have already forgotten his purpose in this car. Carolina was furious but satisfyingly scared to bits.
I groaned and rolled my metaphorical eyes at the pair of them. Come on! I felt heat in my throat and a tingle on my arms similar to when I’d done something wrong. The color red bounced into my eyesight and pulsated a faint hue. From an outsider’s perspective, where I was in the car turned a transparent colored dust shapeless sphere tinted red. It was like I was a floating blob of Holi powder.
With the pencil, I added: NOW. I scribbled it furiously across the page. Shad turned straight around in his chair and started the car. Carolina put an uncomfortable hand through her hair anxiously and sat quietly for the first time since I’d met her.
Marilyn was also uncomfortable. I felt for my friend. She was in this because of me, and she had a lot to lose. She was missing school, tennis practice, not to mention her parents would find out soon that both of their children skipped out on school to hang out with a senior.
I shifted closer to Marilyn and repositioned the notebook to check in with her.
I wrote: Thank you, Mare. The scribbling paused while I debated over what to tell her. I continued: Well. This is new. I don’t know how to handle this situation, but I couldn’t have gotten this far without you. I passed the notebook back to Marilyn and waited for a response.
After a moment’s hesitation, she accepted her notebook and took the pencil. How mundane. Both of us writing notes to pass to the other as though neither of our lives changed in the last hour. She handed the book out and I accepted it gently. I wasn’t the best at controlling my ligaments, yet, but I got the message that anything I did was scary because no one could see or hear it coming.
Marilyn wrote: There is nothing in the world that would keep me from protecting you. You need this. It was a no-brainer. It’s dealing with these two potato sacks that has me worried. I just hope this is all over soon.
Marilyn did look troubled, but I could at least feel a little less guilty for forcing her to help me. I passed her back a note that made her snort. The moment of levity was brief. Marilyn took the notebook back.
She wrote: Seriously. What was that about? The more we know, the better prepared we’ll be.
I knew who I was dealing with. Marilyn and I were nearly the same person. We loved to read. We loved to solve imaginary crimes. Marilyn was good at thinking and STEM subjects. I was the creative with the imagination and the desire to express myself through art and other mediums. If there was anyone to be in an unexplainable conundrum with, I was glad and relieved it was Marilyn.
One can never prepare for war. The thought was a kneejerk reaction. The words spooked me. I could feel a truth in them that I’d never felt before. A certainty that I could not in any way have been sure of.
Marilyn wrote: How is it that you can still be you and exist without your body? How did you separate from your body? Are you even still alive?
I replied: Mare, I know this will be difficult for you, but I think we have to accept the possibility that none of this makes sense, maybe not everything has a definable answer.
The area in the car that I took up changed colors from red to green. I didn’t reach for the notepad. I sat in silent pursuit of my identity.
Hours passed before we stopped for a rest break. Shad accessed the police records and was able to deduce that the location of the black van we were tracking had a long journey ahead of it.
“Nevada, Groom Lake,” Shad said, “you know what they do in Nevada.”
“Oh, shut up,” Carolina was rude when she cut him off. “Do you understand how unattractive you sound when you get all nerdy like that? Really. Grow up.”
“But you don’t get it,” Shad didn’t back down. “We are chasing after actual official government personnel. This is big! Before, I thought we were following a random van heading to nowhere, but this is something. We could be in books; celebrities could play us in movies.”
“Hold on,” Carolina held up her hands. “This is ridiculous. We are not driving to Nevada. Mare, our parents would kill us. I have let this go on long enough. We’re going home.”
“We can’t. We have to follow the van.”
“Why?” Carolina asked her sister. Marilyn held her tongue.
“Neila’s body is in there.”
Carolina blinked at her sister for what an egregious lie she could make up just to play hooky for a day.
“Are you going to say you’d rather not help my best friend get her body back? We can’t just leave her like this. Just because it’s not happening to you that doesn’t mean it’s not important. This is two against one.”
Carolina snorted, “Your invisible, practical effect doesn’t get a vote.”
I felt anger surge within me. I felt invisible ever since I started school. Hearing out of the mouth of one of the most popular girls at school, while I couldn’t defend myself was the turning point. I decided it was no longer acceptable. I didn’t want to leave my body and have it be stolen. I didn’t want to have my best friend and strangers be witness to the most traumatic moment in my life. It was embarrassing, but there was no way I could do it by myself.
I knew I couldn’t really expect Carolina to have an open mind. Believing an empty seat in the back of the car held a conscious and invisible person required a certain level of determination and faith I didn’t think Carolina was capable of. I was lucky anyone believe me.
I turned red thinking about Carolina. Her small minded, self-centric, perfect pretty girl way of life. I fantasized over her blond hair catching fire. I painted the imagery of her satin shirt falling off of her like it was diseased and rotten skin. I thought of her face warping and sucking in on itself so that her bones stuck out of her skin. The further my imagination took me, the lighter I felt. It was like getting my body back. I could feel the thrill running up and down my arms. I felt invigorated. I let the images in my head fester and take hold.
I bathed in the way it made me feel. The fantasy crumbled when I heard the screams. I didn’t know if it was Carolina or Marilyn’s. Once I was back in the car and not swimming in my malicious thoughts, I could tell what had happened.
The feeling, the screwdriver twisting in my brain sensation, was more than just anger or fantastical imagery. Something happened that I could not explain. Yes, I wanted it to happen, but I never thought that it actually would. I had no control over it. Carolina changed in the short time I had lost my temper; she was physically altered. Her normally plastic mannequin face had deepened, worsened. Her hair was short now and unevenly burned at the ends like a doll in a housefire. Even her clothes had deteriorated like she’d been buried for years.
I thought those impossible thoughts and they came to be like a horror movie in real life. Carolina’s wild eyes chased those of Shad and Marilyn’s. Carolina’s breathing was heavy and ragged. My dust form was pulsing red in the car. Carolina glared at my shapeless form. I had the power to take her apart and she had the power, too, to demean me with words and hurt me with a look. Carolina had everything I wanted, and she didn’t deserve any of it, but still her words had an effect on me like they were set in stone words to live by. I couldn’t understand why I let her get under my skin.
I turned opaque. Then I looked like nothing at all. Shad was stricken, looking at what I’d done to his once beautiful girlfriend. Now she looked the same on the outside as she did on the inside. Marilyn was horrified for her sister.
All I wanted to do was hide, disappear. I wanted it all to stop and be one big, horrible dream. This was never supposed to happen. I wasn’t supposed to be outside of my body. I wasn’t supposed to be here. I wasn’t supposed to be able to do what I just did. I couldn’t hide from this. I shrunk in on myself. I turned myself over and over, inverted inwards and outwards.
I chased myself out until all I could see were blurred faces and streaking colors. I was escaping. For the first time, I felt free.
Until, of course, the pain kicked in.
I felt forces pulling me apart and combining me together again. Pulling, stretching, and then burning. Since I had no material body to dampen the pain for me, I felt more like flammable gas that caught fire with no chance of it getting put out.
I screamed. For the first time, I screamed. I screamed a scream every mother wants to protect her child from screaming. I let it out as if anyone could hear. I went breathless as if it would help ease the pain. It whistled, it lingered, and it intensified. I burned red hot. I felt like I was exploding into pieces like a firework and once the sparks burned and fizzled out, I came together again and continued the cycle. Nothing stopped it, nothing slowed it down. It was an infinite pattern of pain eating itself over. It became my reality.
