Veiled (Ada Palomino 1)

“Ada,” she says softly, almost like a whine. “I’m not sure what you want me to say.”

“That you believe me,” I implore. My voice is shaking and I’m surprised that so much is riding on her simple—or not so simple—belief in me.

She runs her hand over her face, as if lifting away a veil. “But I don’t,” she says bluntly. “I can’t. You’re . . . you’re either a terrible friend Ada or you need help. From a professional.”

Her words hurt more than I thought they would. Puncture wounds all around my heart. “But I’m telling the truth.”

“Then your truth is fucked up. Ghosts are real? Your mother died because she was possessed by a demon? Jesus Christ, at least try and have some respect for your mother’s death instead of making up a story.”

“It’s not a story!” I cry out. “It happened. I had to tell you everything, I had to be honest. It’s been killing me for years having the burden of all of this, to keep it all inside.”

“And what did you think I’d say when you told me?”

My mouth shuts, for a moment, lips clamped hard together until I can feel like blood run out of them. “I thought you’d believe me. Because you’re my best friend. You know I’d never lie to you, Amy.”

Her eyes narrow for a moment. “Never lie? Apparently you have been. You just said so yourself. All this time you’ve been thinking you’re seeing ghosts, that your whole damn family is haunted. You’ve kept this to yourself, away from us. Why tell me now?”

“Because I have to,” I manage to say, looking down at the concert tickets in my hand that I’ve absently taken out of my purse on the walk over. “What’s happened before, it’s only going to get worse. It is getting worse. And I’m going to need your support. I’m not asking you to do anything except just stay my friend and believe me.”

I search her eyes, begging for her to see my sincerity, to see the sanity I can only hope is there.

“Ada,” she says flatly and it’s then that I know it’s all over, and just like you know when your boyfriend is about to give you the “talk,” I know that our relationship has crashed and burned around me. “I am your friend. I always will be. But you’re asking too much of me. I don’t believe in ghosts. I don’t believe in the supernatural or demons. And I know that even though that’s what you think is going on, that it’s not. I’ll help you get the help you need but you have to help yourself first.”

I can’t even speak. She doesn’t understand. Not even close.

She thinks I’m fucking insane.

God, I wish I were.

I wish this whole thing was something that could be fixed with high doses of anti-psychotics and a short-term stay at the hospital. If only.

“So that’s it,” I say weakly. “You don’t believe me. You think I’m sick in the head.”

“Grief does funny things to a person,” she says.

“Oh what the fuck do you know about grief,” I snap. It’s like I’ve been bound by an elastic band, unbeknownst to me, and with one sharp, painful snap my worry and fear has been replaced with anger. Vicious, rolling anger. “You get to sit there with your boyfriend and look down on me, ‘Oh poor fucking Ada, going through so much shit, will she ever be better?’ I see your pity, I know you wish I could just get over it, become the person I was before. Well guess what? The person I was before was no better. I still saw the unexplainable. And you still would have called me insane.”

She’s staring at me with wide eyes and I realize I’ve never yelled at her before. In fact, we’ve never even had a fight. I always thought it was because we got along so well, that it was a testament to our relationship. Now I realize it’s because she never really knew me and I never really knew her.

I definitely didn’t expect this to go this way.

“Look,” she says when she finds her voice and it comes out hard. Any sympathy gone. “You don’t make things easy on anyone. You’re difficult even when you’re pretending to be normal. You live in some bubble where it’s just you and no one else. Maybe your clothes, maybe your blog, sometimes your family. But it’s just you and it’s always been you. You’ve been shutting all of us out for years.”

“Yeah because I was afraid to tell you the truth!” I’m yelling now, raising my arms. Thunder trumpets again. “And I had a right to be afraid! You think I belong in a mental institution!”

“Anyone would think that!” she yells back. A few people heading for the security lines give us a look, a guy sniggers at the impending catfight. “Ask anyone here!” She gestures to the crowd, to the stage where the band has started up playing again. “They’d all agree with me. Ada,” she grabs my arm, “you’re not well. And the sooner you come to terms with that, stop hiding from it, stop blaming it away, the sooner that everything will go back to normal.”