M.I.N.D. Read Free Page B

fight, then she has a meltdown, and the next thing you know, they’re loading her onto a stretcher.” She glides her hands along the rail like she doesn’t know what to do with them, then plants them in her lap.
    â€œSomething the matter?” I ask.
    â€œSo it’s true,” she says. “You sat with her on the bus.”
    â€œIt’s not like I asked her. She just plopped down and started ranting away.” I hate sounding so defensive, like I’m some kind of traitor. Like the mere act of acknowledging Amanda’s existence is a criminal offense. “And that’s another thing,” I say. “Why was she even talking to me? She snubs me all year and suddenly she’s confiding in me? Except she wasn’t making any sense. She was talking a mile a minute.” Something occurs to me, and I feel like crying all over again. “It could be the last thing she ever said in her life, and I don’t have a clue what about.”
    â€œYeah, well, neither did she,” Leanne says. “They say she was wasted.”
    We’re quiet for a moment, and then I say, hesitantly, “I saw her again, Leeny. After the crash. I think she was trying to tell me something then too.”
    â€œExcuse me? After the crash she wasn’t conscious. Neither were you.” She gives me a worried glance. “Are you starting that again? Are you saying you took another walk on the astral plane? So how was the weather up there? Did you at least see a white light this time?”
    I already regret mentioning it. Like my mother, Leanne is psychically phobic. OBE? To her, an out-of-body experience means limp hair. Near-death experience? Riding in a buggy behind the horse’s tail. “No, but I saw John Lennon. And Kurt Cobain says hello.”
    â€œWhy are you always so sarcastic?”
    â€œ I’m sarcastic? You spew it out like a machine gun. Which is why I didn’t want to mention it in the first place.”
    â€œSorry,” she says, though she doesn’t sound sorry at all. “Tell me what you saw. I promise I won’t laugh. Cross my heart and hope to fly.”
    I have no one else I can talk to and I have to talk to someone, so I tell her. “I left my body,” I insist. “I was there again, Leeny. It was real .”
    â€œIt was a dream, Cass. Just like the last time.” She looks around like she’s buying a box of Monistat and is worried someone might see. “Think about it. Aren’t you supposed to be going somewhere on a bus or a subway or something with a bunch of spirits? Amanda is kind of disembodied, but why would you see Zack? He didn’t even need a Tylenol.”
    â€œI don’t make the rules,” I snap. “I just know what I saw.”
    â€œYou had a chemical reaction in your head, and everything got all mixed up. The reason you saw your father is because you feel guilty you’re alive and he’s not. The missing-eyes thing is symbolic of the drowning. If he had seen what was coming, maybe he could have stopped it.”
    â€œThank you, Dr. Freud, for your astute analysis, but that is totally ridiculous. And I don’t feel guilty.” After all that time I spent in therapy, I’d better not.
    â€œYou don’t think it’s odd it happened to you twice? How many near-death experiences does a person get? Wait! I know! You have the soul of a cat. You have nine lives. Actually, seven now.” Then she gets all serious. “Maybe it was a seizure.”
    â€œI didn’t smell lilac. I always smell lilac before I zone out. Plus, after an episode, I never remember the details. And it wasn’t a near-death experience, since technically I didn’t almost die. But I did leave my body. And I was there again. I know I was.”
    â€œFine,” she says. “It wasn’t a seizure. I believe you. But seriously, Cass, the astral plane? Do you even know how weird that