Sandcastles Read online

“Are you scared of these visions?” Aunt Lola asked me one afternoon when she treated me to McDonald’s for vanilla shakes.

  I sat across from her, struggling with brain freeze, and nodded. “A little.”

  “You don’t have to be. The angels blessed you with the gift of helping people.”

  My ‘gift’ as my Aunt Lola called it, was more like a curse. “I’d rather have roller blades.”

  She laughed and slurped her milkshake.

  “You don’t understand it now, but one day you will.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’d still rather have roller blades.”

  “The angels blessed me with the same gift.”

  I stopped slurping. “They have?”

  She explained to me that she was a clairaudient psychic, which meant she could hear voices and sounds from the spirit world. She could also catch visuals from time to time. She told me I had the gift of psychometry. Pretty much through the sense of touch, I could see, smell, hear and taste the past, present and future.

  After our shakes that day, we walked through the park and sat under a big tree.

  “This is my favorite tree,” she said, staring up at it. Her long braid swept the ground below. “When I was a kid I used to read books under it. My mother would take me and your mother to the library right across the street, and we’d sit here for hours reading.” She smiled and her whole face glowed. She raised her head upright, and her braid fell against the back of her flowery shirt.

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “It’s called a weeping willow, and when I was just about your age, I remember declaring that I would one day name my daughter Willow.”

  I hugged her, sinking into her safety. “Willow. I like it. I wish that was my name.”

  “It could be my nickname for you. Would you like that?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  Later that afternoon, I told my mother, “Aunt Lola renamed me to Willow.”

  “Your name is Catherine. It will always be Catherine. Do you understand me?” She pointed that finger of hers at me again. I feared a bar of soap would soon follow if I didn’t agree.

  “But it’s just a nickname.”

  “Your Aunt Lola is weird. She scares people with pretending she can tell the future and read their mind. I don’t want you hanging around her anymore. From now on, no more milkshakes with her. She’s not right in the head. If she’s not careful, she’ll end up being jailed in one of those mental institutions. You don’t want that for yourself. Do you?” She scanned my face.

  I pictured doctors and needles, and being chained to a bed just like in that movie I peeked in on when I fooled my parents by pretending to be asleep.

  “Well do you?” she yelled.

  “No,” I cried. “I’m not like that. I don’t see things anymore. I don’t need to go to jail.”

  She exhaled and stared me down.

  The tears began to leak down my cheeks.

  In a matter of seconds, she softened and drew me into her arms. “That’s my sweet girl.”

  I loved hearing those words. I tightened my grip around her, wanting to stay swaddled in that moment forever. I always wanted my mother to love me, and I never wanted her to fear me the way she did my aunt.

  For several years, I kept quiet. I pretended to be a normal preteen kid who didn’t see things that weren’t real. When I’d get a happy vision, I’d giggle and smile over it by myself. When I’d get a bad vision, I’d point my finger at it and say stop it.

  When the holidays swung around and Aunt Lola came by, I’d hide from her. I didn’t want to talk about my ‘gift’ with her. Things were going great between me and my mother. She began to relax around me and not wear that fear on her face anymore. She even trusted me to watch my sister in the yard while she cooked dinner or folded laundry. I felt normal, and I didn’t want that to end.

  Life was cruel, though, and didn’t always work that way. I stole those words from my father. He spoke them most every day. I finally understood what he meant.

  I was sitting on my front porch playing with a puzzle. Mary Rose rode her big wheel bike out front. She pedaled by me, waving. Then, just like in my vision from when she took her first steps as a baby, she disappeared over the wall. An eerie silence filled the neighborhood as if everyone stopped breathing, talking, and laughing all at once. Dread engulfed me.

  I stood up and screamed for my mother. She ran out of the front door wearing her rollers. Panic dripped down her face. She wore her housecoat and still had dough smeared on her hands. I just pointed to the wall.

  She screamed and ran to the wall. “Oh God. Oh no. No. Please no.” Her screams rose even louder when she bent over to see Mary Rose.

  I couldn’t talk. The fright in those few fragile seconds of when my mother dove off the wall to when I heard Mary Rose’s first blood curdling screams snuffed out the air. My mother yelled out for someone to help. Soon, the next door neighbors, two teenaged boys, dashed off their front porch and jumped off the wall to help. The three of them carried a very bloody faced and panic-stricken Mary Rose to our porch. Her two front teeth were missing and blood poured out of her mouth like someone turned a faucet on in the back of her throat.

  I feared the worst. I feared my mother would send me off to a mental hospital and have me locked away for good, far away from them all.

  But, she surprised me. When my mother tucked me into bed that night, she spoke to me with a sweet quality. “Can you see what’s going to happen to me?”

  I shook my head. “What do you mean?”

  She kissed my cheek, and my heart ached suddenly. A sadness filled me, and I wanted to cry.

  “It’s nothing, Catherine. Just go to sleep now and have pleasant dreams.”

  I couldn’t fall asleep that night. The sadness wrapped itself around my heart and tightened with each beat. I sensed a terrible gloom, one that I didn’t understand.

  The following week my mother landed in the hospital because she fainted. After that, she needed to sit down after standing for not more than five minutes. She could barely get through cooking dinner most nights. My father worked harder because of the medical bills, so I’d end up mixing up macaroni and cheese a lot while my mother collapsed on the couch in a cold sweat. Six months later, lying in a hospital bed, she asked me to come close to her so she could tell me something.

  Her breath hit my ear in short, punctuated beats. “I’m glad you couldn’t see this the way you saw Mary Rose fall off the wall.”

  “See what, Mom?”

  She drew a long, shallow breath as she smiled at me with tired eyes. “This moment when I have to leave you.”

  I waited for her to breathe again. She didn’t.

  I stared at her mouth, willing it to move.

  It sat still. The air in the room stopped circulating. My father sniffled. Mary Rose clung to his leg and cried.

  I wanted to yell stop it and escape the nightmare. Only I couldn’t. I witnessed it in real time, not the past or the future. But right then and there.

  She never took another breath. She simply closed her eyes on a smile and never opened them again.

  In the weeks that followed, my father called on my Aunt Lola to help him out with us because he had no one else to turn to. He never brought up our psychic abilities, and neither did we. We simply went on living our lives as normal as possible, eating hot dogs and going to the movies, riding bikes, and taking walks in the park. Aunt Lola would take me and Mary Rose to Sand Hill Cove Beach every Tuesday when my father had to work second shift, and we’d collect seashells.

  Now, at thirty two years old, almost twenty years later, I still met with my Aunt Lola weekly. Only now instead of collecting seashells, we worked a booth together at the Bellingham Flea Market every Saturday and Sunday.

  On occasion, I’d run into people from my past at the booth and be surprised at how much they had changed since the last time I saw them. Some got fatter or skinnier and some lost their good looks or gained some. But opening up that
booth curtain and seeing Lia Stone standing before me surprised me in the biggest of ways. Lia Stone hadn’t changed one bit. She still wore her hair cropped and sexy, kept her same toned body, and still didn’t need an ounce of makeup to bring out her God-given features. That same enigmatic force laced her eyes and pulled me in with its lure. Just like an unopened present under the Christmas tree, she challenged my inner desires to peel away her façade and discover once and for all what waited inside.

  I used to dream about kissing her when I first met her as a teenager. I saw the way she looked at other girls with a curiosity, and longed for her to look at me like that. I’d go back to my aunt’s Winnebago, a few campsites down from the rec hall at the lake, and pretend we snuggled up against each other, kissing, running our fingers through our hair, and whispering sweet things to each other.

  All of that halted the day she laughed at me in front of her sister and all of her friends.

  I was walking past her to buy a soda at the refreshment stand. As I drew closer, I smiled. One of the friends yelled, “Do it.” Then, next thing I knew, I tripped over the stick that Lia placed out in front of me. I fell flat on my face, scraping it on the gravel. They laughed at me. I looked up at Lia, the same pretty girl I dreamed of kissing every night that entire summer, and she turned ugly to me.

  I hated to be laughed at like some weak, powerless girl.

  “How dare she?” I said to my aunt later when I returned to her camper.

  “She has no idea how special you are.” My aunt gripped my shoulder, and a power surged through me.

  That power surge marked the moment when I viewed my gift as a true treasure and no longer a curse. After that, I modeled after my Aunt Lola, embracing my gift.

  I predicted things at the campground, and they came true. Instead of laughing at me, the other kids would ask me to read their thoughts and predict the future. They took interest in me. And I liked it.

  They respected me. If they were playing the Ms. Pac-Man machine when I walked into the rec hall, they’d clear a path for me and let me take over the play. If I stood behind them in line for refreshments, they’d let me get ahead of them.

  I reigned supreme in the social circle at Bowdish Lake Campground, except with Lia’s adopted sister, Anna. She feared me, and often begged her friends to not talk to me. But, they stopped listening to her, and started listening to me.

  Life was great.

  Then one day I caught Lia peeking up at me over the rim of her diet soda. My tummy flipped. She curled up her finger and motioned for me to come over to her. I floated in her direction, swept up in a deep and poignant dance between longing and trepidation.

  She stared at me. My mind blanked. I reached around for something witty and bold, or heck, even half-normal. “I like your hair.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “I don’t really care.”

  The unexpected blow buckled me, popping my inflated ego. Its hiss echoed in the silence that followed.

  I needed to correct that, so I sidestepped her insult and asked her, “How about a piece of gum for a sip of your soda?”

  She handed me the can. “It’s yours now.” She stood up and scoffed. “I always knew you were a fake.”

  I placed my lips on the rim of the can where her lips had been two seconds earlier. I suddenly sensed her fear, even though she stood before me smirking with the upper hand. I imagined her hunched over in the corner of a tiger’s cage, arms over her head in a protective pose. She cowered in the corner without protection from her friends, fearing that the tiger would come in and expose her weak skin by ripping through its delicate layers with one quick, easy swipe.

  Lia feared me.

  Now, so many years later, driving down Pulaski Boulevard with Lia Stone in my passenger seat, I wondered how she’d react to the emotional vision I got of her when I touched her arm on the roadside.

  “Thanks again for driving us back,” Lia said, once I pulled into the parking lot of her building.

  “No problem.” I smiled through my nerves.

  She opened the door and went to climb out, but I placed my hand on her wrist to stop her. “So what is it you do up there behind those windows?”

  The guy in the backseat leaned forward. “She drives us all crazy is what she does. When she’s not doing that, I suppose one could say she creates award-winning marketing advertisements.”

  “Don’t listen to him.” A casual grin surfaced on Lia’s face. “I create award-winning marketing campaigns.”

  “I stand corrected,” he said.

  I sensed a playful comradeship that served them both in ways no one outside of themselves would truly fit into or understand.

  “Marketing, huh?” I paused to pretend I weighed a burning question. “The wellness center sure could use some help with that.”

  She locked eyes with me, and in her powerful gaze I found that appeal I used to dream about as a naïve teenager, the one that would set my heart racing and my inner thighs screaming for her touch.

  She reached into her pocketbook, now scratched from the roadside catastrophe of an hour ago, and handed me her business card. “Call the number. Dean will set something up for us.”

  She climbed out of the car, but before closing the door, she leaned back in and whispered, “I’m guessing you’re not a fake after all.” She winked and closed my door.

  I guarded my smile until she turned away, then I accelerated with an energy that surprised even me.

  Chapter Three

  Lia

  Three Years Ago

  I met Dean when he first arrived in the country. He moved to the United States from India as a young professional looking for a new opportunity. He arrived at the marketing firm of Edwards and Harding as my marketing assistant right off the cusp of failing India’s premier and highly sought after Exams for Civil Services Program. Apparently, out of four hundred fifty thousand people who tested for that elite program, only twelve hundred passed and moved onto the next grueling test phase.

  Dean did not pass.

  So, he applied at our firm and our boss assigned him to my team.

  At first, I felt sorry for him. He just came in, sat at his desk, and did his work quietly. Not until we initiated bagel Wednesdays did he start to open up to a few of us. He carried the weight of his future around like a bag full of bricks, always talking about how his parents expected him to come back to visit India one day as a success story.

  He’d say things like, “Well, sometimes life tosses a person curves, and those curves force him off the promise road and unto one far less predictable.” We’d nod and sink our teeth into the soft, warm bagels and agree.

  He spoke with such eloquence, so much so, that I started to search for equally intelligent words only to come up short.

  Well, the day had arrived when Dean finally lost his knack for eloquence when our boss, a big, tall, goofy-eyed man in his late forties, confronted him. I’d never seen Dean look so frightened.

  The day started off as any other in the marketing firm with me prepping a cup of coffee in the kitchen. Then, Dean entered. He darted his eyes down to me, smiled, and got about his business of microwaving his curry chickpeas and jasmine rice breakfast.

  I stood staring at the back of his head as he watched his white bowl go round and round in the microwave, wondering if he’d ever consider eggs instead. Then, in walked our big, goofy boss, Mr. Edwards. He wore an emerald green suit, which only served to showcase the extreme wideness of his body. He looked like a giant green bean plumped up with too many salty fluids.

  He walked right up to Dean. “What did you do to Mr. Allen’s logo?” He spoke slowly, deliberately, as if Dean couldn’t hear him.

  Dean’s face flashed a dangerous shade of red. “His logo?”

  “Yes, his logo.”

  Dean blinked a few too many times. “I fixed it for him.”

  Oh fixed. Not a good word choice.

  Mr. Edwards got right up in Dean’s face. “Did I permit you to access his
account?”

  “I was just trying to make it better, Mr. Edwards.” Dean swallowed hard.

  Make it better? Yikes. Nothing eloquent about that.

  “Did I tell you that you could redesign his logo?” Mr. Edwards nudged his right shoulder, and Dean arched backwards against the counter. “Well, did I?” His voice grew too loud for the small kitchen nook.

  The man sure had a temper and loved to wear it like a sick badge of honor.

  “It wouldn’t have resized correctly in its current state.” Dean stuttered and darted his eyes to me, blinking again as if signaling for help in Morse code.

  “I should fire you.”

  Dean’s eyes twitched.

  I had to do something to save the poor guy. “I told him to redesign the logo,” I said. My words pinged against the orange cabinets and reverberated back against my clouded mind.

  Mr. Edwards glared at me. “Why would you redesign anything without my permission?”

  “Because I’m the marketing manager, and that’s what I do.” I spoke slowly and deliberately to him now.

  A smirk surfaced on his cracked, chubby lips. He moved in closer, so close I could smell his cigarette breath. “You walk around this place barking out design orders like you’re the queen of the marketing world. Frankly, I find that incomprehensible.” His eyes flashed anger. “You’re not the marketing manager anymore.”

  I stepped back, absorbing the impending gravity of the situation. “What do you mean, exactly?”

  “You’re fired.”

  “I’m fired?” My voice echoed in my head, banging around like a tin can gone wild in the back of a pickup truck bed.

  “Fired.” He seethed, and backed up. “Enjoy your curry, Dean.” He walked away and waved at everyone who he passed like he was the Jolly Green Giant.

  I couldn’t be fired. I had plans. I needed a job, a steady paycheck, and the dignity that came along with that. My girlfriend, Sasha, and I had just secured a new apartment in the city. We purchased a new ergonomic massage chair from Brookstone, and the first payment was due in three weeks. I finally convinced Sasha that I could, too, manage my half of the responsibilities, even though she made almost double what I did as a life coach.