M.I.A.

Chapter 22

Chapter Twenty-Two:

Mia

I stare at the ghost of Corey Rossi for a long time. I call him ghost because that's what Sydney used to call her hallucinations, those things that she believed—with her whole heart—were real. Corey doesn't seem like a ghost. I can feel him and I can see him and I can hear him. He's warm and breathes like a human. But then, he fell right through Cutter...

I'd seen him trying to stop Cutter from beating me...and he'd fallen right though him. Just like a figment of one's imagination should.

That doesn't make sense because he landed on top of me and he had a body and he had weight. But then Cutter punched right through his body.

He's not real. He's not really a ghost. He's only here because I made him be. A kindred spirit, another lost person who will not be found. He's solid in some ways because I need him to be. But when it comes to actually freeing me, he can't because that's where the line between reality and imagination is drawn. Imagination cannot impact your external world.

The bottle of pills sitting on the hospital table draw my eye. They had come out of the other room and then the next day, Cutter had given them to me. He didn't go to the other room to get them. And what about the knives? They moved, Cutter's reaction to their movement hadn't been a hallucination...had it?

Things don't make sense.

But then, I can't think straight, can I? I'm sick. It's too hard, even to think.

I can't feel my arms and legs.

What does that mean?

I close my eyes. I don't want to think about it. I don't want to listen to my body telling me I'm dying. I want to be grounded in non-truth. In a fantasy. Maybe that's why I imagined Corey up. "Story," I whisper. My throat feels like fire. Everything feels like dry fire. At least, the parts that I can still feel.

The bed shifts as he looks down at me. "You want me to tell you a story?"

I nod, though I'm not sure if I even move. It feels too heavy and dizzy-making. I squeeze my eyes shut in pain.

Corey reaches out and loops a strand of my hair behind my ear. His touch is gentle, but even that hurts on my bruised, swollen face.

"Okay," he breathes.

But he doesn't continue. I open my eyes, confused. He's staring at me. As if realizing it, he looks away and begins to speak, "When I was alive, I had a crush on this girl, Ashley..."

I close my eyes and listen to Corey's low voice drag me deep and under, into the warm hearth-place. I imagine myself as a child sprawled on a huge bearskin rug—without a care or a pain—and I listen to his story.

He tells me about Ashley. His breaths are a lattice-work of words that build a person bone to bone and then paint skin in delicate strokes. He creates a girl who I want to love just because his voice-poetry makes her beautiful. Her gentle smile lights the room like Victorian floor lamps. Her clean, innocent scent is a zephyr over a cotton-clad hill. The way she moves when she walks is a waltz in tasteful stilettos. Her laugh rises like bubbles and thrills like circus music.

His memory of her keeps her real in a way that he is not; his secret, reverent love gives her a heartbeat. My crazy mind does the rest.

She is a coiffed, emerald-clad, mahogany-haired princess at a Labyrinth-like ball. I follow her between the swirling bodies, desperate to hold her hand, desperate to know her beyond the high school façade of quiet, bookish girl who has never looked at me despite the fact that she should—everyone sees me. She does not. She defies logic and I'm falling deeper and deeper into a white-rabbit slumber, a slumber where my own dreams and my own prince are waiting for me.

Not the boy with the lip ring, but the one with the strong arms and intense eyes. The prince I know and love and hate myself for hurting. The one that I'll never be able to say sorry to or reclaim my love for. Because I'm going to be dead soon. I know that. But, when I die, I want to be like Corey Rossi. I want to be a ghost and I want to go be with John forever.

***

When I wake up, Corey is still beside me. He seems to be sleeping as well, but when I shift, he's instantly alert.

I smile at him, though I'm drowsy and heavy-lidded. I don't know if this is sleep or awake anymore. I don't know if I'm dead yet and my spirit self has become interred with Corey. "Fake."

He smiles back, his expression sad. "I miss sleep," he admits. "I miss dreaming. Being awake all the time is lonely."

My fingers ache to touch his face, to let him know he's not alone. As if sensing my thoughts, he looks back down at me. "It's nice to have someone to talk to...I mean, I talk to Cutter all the time. But he doesn't like to talk back." I don't miss the irony in his tone.

I force the painful words out. My tongue feels so fat and heavy, a slimy slug. "What...happened?"

He shrugs. "My story isn't all that different than yours, really. I was on a school trip."

I nod, vaguely remembering the news reporting that Corey was on a school trip in New York City when he went missing.

"I was," he pauses, looking for the right words, "distracted, I guess. Cutter came up from behind me and knocked me out, must have dragged me to his van, brought me here." His slate eyes lift and rove around the room, taking it in. "Tied me up here—just like you." He looks down at his hands and says, "I'm sure you can fill in the blanks from there."

"Yeah," I croak. Neither of us want to talk about something that is already so real. If my imagined Corey is anything like me, Cutter would have introduced him to The Sisters and they would have tasted of his flesh like they have of mine. He would know the same pain and thirst and hunger and fear that I know this very moment. He wouldn't have had a compassionate imaginary ghost to help him through it like I do.

He would have died, hurt and scared and alone. And that's why he's here, so I don't have to die like that.

For a long moment, there is an uncomfortable silence and I don't think Corey's going to tell me anything else. Finally, he says, "It took me about two weeks to die. At least, I think it was that much. You kind of lose track after..." He lifts his hands and rubs them over his face. When he looks at me again, there are tears in his eyes. Ghost tears, but who's to say dead people can't feel pain and terror just as keenly as we do? And the laws of nature can bend when you're crazy. "When death came," he breathes, "I was so happy." He shakes his head, dark curls brushing his high forehead. "I thought—finally. Finally, I'm done. He can't hurt me anymore."

His voice is choked and emotional. I wish I could touch him, reassure him and comfort him like he has done for me countless times since I've arrived here...but I can't. I'm still bound and that just makes it all the more painful. Heart-pain to go along with all the other physical pains that Cutter has sewn into my flesh. A pain that makes me see my own fear, makes me see my own wishes. Because he's only echoing what I want.

He bites a trembling lip and smiles bitterly, his face spasming in a way that shows he's barely holding it together. "But then I woke up..." His voice squeaks, forcing him to take a deep breath and close his eyes. The tears that have been balancing on his eyelids finally escape. One lone tear for each eye. They break my heart. "I was still here."

And there it is. An expression of the true fear. I bite my own lip, making it bleed. What if I end up living this nightmare forever? What if I don't die? Or what if I die and somehow end up staying here? My soul trapped here, tethered by my need to fulfill everything I ache for—to love John, to reconcile with Ti, to hold my sister's hands when the nightmares come to assault her. Would I be able to do that? Or would I be shackled to these four walls, screaming and making the floorboards shake with my frustration?

What would be worse? To go or to stay?

Idon't know.