I look at Kalinda, who isn’t looking at me, and I want to ask her how she knows so much about this world and crossing over to be with the spirits, and spirits crossing over to ours, but then I get so scared at what her answer will be—that she knows this because this world wasn’t originally hers, and that the real Kalinda is now trapped on the other side—that I decide it’s best not to ask it at all.
Anyone listening to us would dismiss our conversation as child’s play. They would say that our imaginations have gotten the best of us. I feel that heartbeat of reality, the idea of saying these things out loud to anyone else, and realize how outlandish this all is—how insane, how impossible.
But I’m sharing these thoughts with Kalinda. Maybe this isn’t so insane after all.
“If you’re serious about this,” Kalinda says, “then you have to wait until the next eclipse.”
“When will that be?” I ask her.
“Three months and three days,” she says with a certainty that makes me wonder why she would know this, how she would know this, unless she was a regular visitor of the spirit world herself.
Three months and three days. She might as well have told me eternity.
“But this is good,” she quickly adds, “because now you can have time to think about whether you really want to do this.”
“I really want to do this.”
“Then,” she tries again, “you can have time to prepare. Make sure you’re ready.”
I don’t know what I have to prepare for in the spirit world, but I already know I’m ready. I’ve been ready to see my mother again since the last time I saw her, before that morning when I woke up and couldn’t find her, that night which didn’t seem special at all, where she was sitting in the living room with her feet up on the center table, reading a book that I can’t even remember the title of, with me sitting next to her, stretching my feet out to rest them on the table too, even though my legs were too short for me to sit comfortably.
“I’m ready” is all I say on that. Kalinda must believe me, because she only nods.
As I walk home, I think more about Kalinda’s anger. I would be angry too if she told me she was leaving this world for another that may or may not exist, so flippantly and easily, like I didn’t really matter to her at all. Of course she matters to me. She’s the first friend I’ve ever had. The one person who’s made me feel like I deserve to be alive. I love her.
I decide that since she’s helping me find my mom, I should at least tell her the truth. She deserves to know that she’s loved by someone. It isn’t fair, to keep such a large secret away from her. But telling her—saying the words out loud … I don’t think that’s something I can do.
I’ve never been afraid to speak my mind before in my life. That’s what feels worse than anything else. Silencing myself, when I’ve so often fought to be heard against people like Missus Wilhelmina and Anise Fowler and her hyenas. They aren’t telling me to shut up now. I’m telling myself. I’m a traitor to my own voice.
I lay on my bed, on my back, with my arms spread like I’m on the cross, staring at the cracks in my ceiling. Those cracks have been made from the earthquakes this island has. There are hundreds of earthquakes every day—that’s what my mom told me—but we can’t feel them all, because they’re so small. But those earthquakes send cracks up through the dirt and into the concrete. I watch those cracks now, watch them good, like I’m daring them to crumble this house on top of me and bury me alive.
The cracks don’t dare to do any such thing. I roll onto my stomach and pick up the purple journal that’s been resting at my bedside since the night I threw it like I meant to throw it out of this world and into another. Pick it up and stare at the blank paper, and as I stare, words start falling across the paper.
It’s not a letter to my ma at all. It’s a letter to Kalinda. And it’s telling her the things I’m too afraid to say out loud. It says:
I love you, Kalinda, and I wish that we could one day be married and live together for the rest of our lives. I would love to wake up and see you in the morning, and lie down for bed at night and have you be the last thing I see before I close my eyes. You have brought me joy, and I thank you for that, and I wish that I could continue to feel this joy every day for the rest of my life. I know that we could not live as husband and wife, but that wouldn’t matter, because I would be with you, and you would be with me too. It’s painful that I cannot have this. I wish I could have both this and my mother, and I wish I did not have to choose, but I do have to choose, and I do have to choose my mother, because she is my mother. But if I didn’t have to choose, I would hope that we could live like this, two people in love with each other, and that you could feel the same way about me too. The possibility that you could feel the same way gives me an unending hope. Leaving this island will be the second most painful day of my entire life, the first most painful day being when I woke up to find that my mother had gone. I don’t want to
