The Summer We Came to Life

We spent the rest of the afternoon in bed, naked under crisp white sheets. Remy reclined on fluffy pillows and I curled around him, my head on his chest until he said it was too hot. He twirled my curls around his fingers and teased that my skin betrayed my every emotion—from anger to desire. He kissed the top of my head and told me stories about his life, his travels, his work. Entranced, I lifted my head to kiss him and he moved smoothly to meet me halfway. We kissed slowly, Remy brushing his petal-smooth lips side to side across my mouth, flicking his tongue ever so softly to part my lips. I loved the way he touched me, knowing every muscle, every sensitive spot, as if he were reciting a manual on female pleasure. I slid my body atop his lean torso and muscled stomach, easing myself down onto him, him inside of me. We both exhaled and moaned into each other’s mouths, lips hovering centimeters apart.

Isabel bumped my seat. I yelped when the ice-cold soda hit my broiling thighs.

“Shit!” I sprung my legs apart and caught myself panting.

“Sorry!” Isabel yelled overly loudly, on account of rocking out to her headphones.

Jesse looked at me closely. “Well, I have a purty good idea what you were thinkin’ about.”

Jesse kept thinking about Kendra’s last-minute bailout. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but something wasn’t right. She remembered what Lynette had told her about the conversation. Kendra blaming her crazy boss and her incompetent assistant. Normal. Kendra letting it drop about a fancy client dinner. Normal. Kendra stressed-out and overworked and feeling guilty about spending too much on shoes. Totally normal. Worrying about missing work was Kendra since her first job. But that girl cared about this group and about her family.

Maybe Kendra and Lynette had some latent issues. Lynette had confessed only a handful of times that she wasn’t sure she’d done a good job raising a mixed-race daughter. Jesse had to smile. She didn’t think the problem had to do with Kendra being half-black so much as it had to do with Kendra being Kendra.

Lynette came from a conservative Southern family, but turned out a hippie actress. Jesse knew Lynette had envisioned being the understanding mom to a wild artistic daughter. But kids don’t care much about a parent’s plans. Kendra used to infuriate Lynette by playing businesswoman and asking her why she didn’t own any pantsuits. It was during Lynette’s latest incarnation of the red phase—when she was directing community theater and into wearing scarlet felt clogs and burgundy tunic sweaters over leggings.

Jesse smiled. At least Lynette and Cornell had each other. It had been hard sometimes—raising Isabel by herself and running the salon—to constantly be reminded what it would’ve been like to have a partner. Cornell and Lynette were sickeningly meant for each other. That might not have been so bad.

Cornell was half dreaming, half thinking about Sandra Miheso. He imagined them in court, defending the case they’d been working on together for months. He also pictured the way she laughed over Chinese takeout when they worked late in the office. Sandra Miheso was such a difficult woman—proud, stubborn, with a laugh like a queen. She wore traditional African attire, wound her hair up in scarves. Cornell loved those bright, colorful scarves.

It made him feel young to talk with Sandra. Their fiery conversations brought Cornell back to the days before he discarded his Black Panther convictions, or his vows to move to Africa.

It was slippery territory, for those were the days when he had lost Lynette for almost a decade. A long, lonely decade. What was his problem? It was just that there could not be two more different women in the world than his Lynette and Sandra Miheso.

Just then, Lynette reached out from the front seat and laid a hand on his leg. He opened his eyes slowly to look at his wife—her wrinkled, rumpled shirt, her hair slightly mussed. His Lynette, on yet another adventure with him, after all these years. Cornell smiled and patted her hand.

November 12

Samantha

Aaahhh!

I’m going to drive myself crazy reading all this stuff. I just plowed through another New York Times bestselling physicist autobiography. I don’t know what to think. I love you; I want it to be true, but it’s an awful lot to swallow, Em. On one hand, how can so many case studies and anecdotes be wrong? I’m talking about the guy at UVA who studies past lives. UVA has a whole division devoted to scientific study of the paranormal—and after-death communication. It gives me goosebumps; it gives me hope. But it also rouses my inner whispering skeptic that wonders if human desperation is not what is driving all this science. Sorry.

Most scientists are determined to peg consciousness as a side effect of brain function.

Why the rush to equate the two? Because it would discount the alternative—that we have souls that operate freely and live on after death. It makes scientists happier to kill a notion without a tangible basis in science.

It all goes back to the double slit experiment. There are different theories about what’s really going on. The Copenhagen Interpretation says that the wave that travels through the two slits is not an actual wave, but a wave of probability, and that the human act of observing collapses the probability wave into a single outcome (i.e. an electron). That means, in a nutshell, that the human mind dictates the physical world, not the other way around.

This has kept scientists in a tizzy for the last eighty years, while spawning a landslide of New Age books on how to literally rethink your life. Maybe, using the power of consciousness and subconsciousness, the living can join the dead in some kind of…in-between state.

It may unnerve the scientists, but if there is a way, Mina, it has something to do with this theory.

CHAPTER

11

NOW THE HIGHWAY WAS DARK, BLACK AS VULTURE feathers. Only a jellybean-shaped keyhole view of the road was granted by the headlights. There were no streetlamps, no reflectors to indicate lanes, no metal railings to keep you on the road. Just a dusty snake you had to ride as it wound its way through the mountains. Jesse squinted into the night, her fingers gripping the wheel. We were stuck behind a truck piled high with bananas, going twenty-five miles per hour. I searched for soothing music on Isabel’s iPod. I settled on Cowboy Junkies, but it sounded haunting in the darkness.

The Ford stayed close behind us now, Arshan still at the wheel. Lynette, Cornell and Arshan were listening to Norah Jones and discussing Kendra’s marriage prospects with Michael.

“This is crazy. Screw it,” Jesse said, and reached for the gearshift. She gunned the accelerator and swung beside the banana truck.

Arshan sprang to life. He’d been anxious to get around the truck, too. He floored the gas, feeling exhilarated.

I gulped, didn’t say anything, turned up the music, and pretended it was exciting. Isabel wasn’t even paying attention. Man, she has the good seat. I turned to look at the banana truck as we came up beside it. The driver was an old man hunched over the wheel. There was the shadow of a child next to him. Or maybe a dog. I leaned closer to the window to look.

“Oh shit!” Jesse yelped. I spun back around to see a tractor trailer barreling down the mountain, around the curve. His horn blared and the lights blinded us. Jesse looked in the rearview mirror to check on Arshan. I could see his surprised face lit up in the glare. No way was he moving back fast enough. Jesse squeezed her eyes nearly shut, floored the gas pedal and sped into the lights. Isabel and I screamed at the top of our lungs.

Arshan moved his foot to the brake, then veered to the right, barely slipping in behind the truck, which then slammed on its brakes, trying to avoid the Honda. Arshan jerked the car to the right again without looking.

I closed my eyes. I heard the tractor trailer fly past with clanking metal, searing horn and screeching brakes. I opened my eyes to see another car appear in our headlights. Jesse cursed again and spun off the road, wheels skidding toward the edge.

Arshan jerked the steering wheel and veered around the truck toward the edge of the mountain. In front of him, out of the dust, like a desert mirage, appeared the Honda. Cars rushed by on his left. There was nowhere to go. He slammed on the brakes and grimaced, his eyes squeezing shut.

They were going to hit.

Oh, thank God we didn’t go over the edge. I was a hunchback statue, gulping in shaky breaths like a winded Chihuahua, a hand on my chest to both affirm and calm my racing heart. WE, breathe in, ARE, breathe out, ALIVE, breath in—

Bam! We were struck from behind. The seat belt karate kicked my ribs, and my palms slapped the dashboard. Isabel, the idiot not wearing a seatbelt, crashed full body into my seat, adding more sounds of crunching metal and thudding body parts to the night. Jesse let out a groan. Then silence.

Silence.

Silence in both cars.

If both of us died, Kendra would be an orphan.

So help me God, I will never look at Sandra Miheso again.

Maliheh. Reza. Mina. Almost joined you.

Jeezus H. Christ. No one else here is allowed to die. You hear me, Mister Almighty? I should have told Isabel about her father.

You take me if you’re going to take anyone else. You stay away from my friends.

Mina, did you save us?

“Holy crap!” I said so I wouldn’t cry. I opened my car door and nearly walked off the edge of a mountain. “Holy crap!” I said again. “Jesse, get out so I can climb across.”

Jesse didn’t move.

“Everybody okay?” I heard Arshan call out.

Jesse started at the sound of his voice. She whipped around and looked at Isabel.

“I’m okay,” Isabel choked out and looked down at her still intact body in awe.

Arshan called out again and Jesse finally stumbled out of the car. I climbed across and made it out just in time to see Jesse fall into Arshan’s arms. Arshan stroked her hair with his eyes shut tight until Isabel jumped out of the car and Jesse hugged her fiercely. We really did almost just die, didn’t we?