Get your own Free Home Page
Night is the hardest time to be alive. Four a.m. knows all my secrets."
-"Lost Souls" Poppy Z. Brite
Hours later, the phone rang again.
"Hello?" Cafi hit the alarm clock with her bungling arm and knocked it into a glass of water, which spilled all over the table.
"Cafi?"
"Yes?" Her voice came out pitifully surprised.
"It's Daisy. We've had an accident, can you come right away?"
Cafi rubbed her eyes. "Where are you?"
"Rachel University Hospital."
"Who's dead?"
"A young werewolf. His soulmate is here, she's very upset and you're so much better with these things than I am-"
"Don't worry, I'm coming. I'll be there as soon as I can."
She hung up and dressed quickly in a brown dress with snaps running up the front. The world was deathly still, eerie with the neon lights of the storefronts. Cafi drove her care carefully through the snow, taking her time with the corners and stopped. She'd been fanatical about driving safely ever since Jeremy died.
Rachel was almost an hour away, a college town that had evolved into a real city at some point in history. Rachel University graduated students who went on to be some of the most incredible law enforcement agents in the world, CIA, FBI, and the local force wasn't bad, either.
The hospital was larger than the town really needed. Cafi supposed that had to do with all the armed and gun-happy college students just itching to shoot something that frequented the area. She parked her car and went in through the emergency entrance, seeing Daisy before she had reached the front desk.
Daisy was slight, with a narrow body and a large head that remined Cafi of a daisy flower. Her hair, the colors of butter and honey, surrounded a yellowish face and bright green eyes. "She's over here," Daisy said immediately, not bothering with hellos. She grabbed Cafi's arm and led her to a couch in the waiting area where a woman around forty-five sat sobbing.
Cafi crouched down in front of her and touched the woman's arm. She introduced herself, explained why she was there, and asked if there was anything she could do to help. A younger woman who looked similarly--probably a younger sister--held the woman's hand and rubbed her back. "That's it," she kept saying. "Go ahead and cry, Janet."
Cafi stayed at the hospital until dawn. She spoke to Janet for over three hours, letting the woman tell her the entire story of her relationship with the deceased. Janet's family stayed with her the entire time, touching her often, constantly showing their support. Cafi spoke with each of them privately, encouraged them to let Janet experience her grief, not to rush her out of it but subtly hinting that they should watch for signs of depression that lingered more than a few months afterward. She finally left the hospital at the same time Janet did, giving her a card and promising to come by the house a few days later and talk some more.
She knew Janet would be fine. She had handled her grief well, and she had a family that was obviously willing to do anything to help.
But my family was there, Cafi thought as she drove back toward Cross Bien in the first rays of weak morning light. They did everything they could think of for me.
She wondered why her reaction to her soulmate's death had been so different from Janet's, why she had sunk into herself and away from the outside world. Maybe some people were just different on some deep psychological level that couldn't really be understood.
It doesn't mean I loved him any less than Janet loved Alan, she added.
She tumbled into bed again, this time barely alive enough to bother climb out of her dress and into a tee-shirt. Physically, she was only drained, but emotionally, she was exhausted. Helping always meant taking a little of someone else's pain, and it inevitably brought up her own wretched memories.
Cafi pulled the curtains closed above her bed and fell instantly to sleep.
*~*~*~*
It seemed like only moment later when she felt a shoulder shaking her. "Cafi?" a female voice asked, and she opened her eyes painfully.
Her best friend, Roberta Sleck, was sitting on the edge of her bed. Her face, pretty but not beautiful, made up of pleasant features and a large nose, was tight. "What's wrong?" Cafi mumbled, getting up on one elbow.
"Cress killed himself last night," Robbie said.
Cafi felt her heart thump, strained. "What?" she asked almost simlently.
"He went home after the meeting and drank a gallon of pure maple syrup. I found an email from him this morning when I checked my mailbox, it was a goodbye letter. He said he just couldn't hold on any longer."
Cafi tried to speak and felt her words dissolve into tears. Bobbie's eyes were red-rimmed, it was obvious that she had done her own share of crying that morning, but she still looked surprised to see Cafi breaking down.
"Oh god," she whispered, feeling Robbie's arms warp around her. "Look what I did. I should have taken more time with him-"
"It's not your fault," Robbie said. "Sometimes people don't make it. You did everything you could."
Cafi shook her head, melting miseribly into the hug. "I should have been there for him. I should have seen that he was losing control."
She stopped speaking, awash in hopelessness. Not just for Cress, although the thought of him alone in his house, forcing down jug after jug of deadly sap, made her weak with pain, but also for herself. For all the emptinesses in her life that were growing more and more empty. Not for Jeremy, as much as for the presence of someone she could tell her every secret to.
"What am I doing?" she whispered, resting her head on Robbie's shoulder.
"Burning out, I think," Robbie said gently. "You've got to take a break. Sometimes we loose people, you know that. You can't blame yourself because Cress wasn't strong enough."
She wiped her eyes. "But I can blame myself for losing faith."
"Faith that you can change the world? You can't, you never could. You can only help a handful at a time. Think of the successes, Ivy and Warsj and Joel. Their lives are better because of what you've done for them."
"What exactly did I do for them?" Cafi asked bitterly. climbing out of the bed and stepping toward the mirror. "Ruined their memories, taught them how to betray their own hearts? Helped them forget what it was like so that they can walk around every day half whole?"
"You taught them to let go," Robbie replied. Her tone was still gentle, the same voice Cafi had used with Cress a hundred times. Soothing, comforting.
"And when you let go, what do you have left except your own husk?"
She could see Robbie in the mirror, serious and hurt. "A seashell," she said softly. "You have a beautiful seashell."
Cafi nodded. "Hard and cold and burning with salt."
Robbie frowned. "What's this about, Cafi? What's going on?"
Cafi closed her eyes. "I guess I'm just tired. I should get dressed and go call the others. They'll be upset."
But after Robbie left, and Cafi was alone again, she found herself reaching for the notebook she'd left on the night stand. Turning to the last blank pages, she wrote quickly.
*December 1, 1998: I've figured it out. I'm sick of living a perfect life. I want to go out and get hurt again. I'm ready for that, and all this crap I've been preaching for the last year is only half the puzzle. You aren't really well until you're jumping off cliffs again.*
The End
Tales From the Scarecrow Stories
Get your own Free Home Page