Fated (The Soul Seekers 1)

Jennika nods, her eyes so watery, face so weary, I can tell she’s this close to crumbling.

Then before either of us can form any sort of reply, the doctor reaches into his bag, retrieves a needle, flicks it on the side, squirts a spray of whatever into the air, and stabs me in the crook of my arm. Causing my body to sag, my tongue to grow heavy and flat, and my eyelids to droop until I can no longer lift them.

Dr. Ziati’s instructions to Jennika are the last thing I hear: “This should hold long enough for you to pack up your stuff and make preparations to leave. When she wakes, give her one of these tablets every four hours to help you get through the flight. After that, you need to get her the kind of help she so desperately needs. If not, I’m afraid the delusions will only get worse.”

three

It happened again on the flight.

About a quarter of the way across the Atlantic, poor exhausted Jennika collapsed into a heap that saw her sleeping well past the alarm she’d set on her watch.

Well past the four-hour allotment between Dr. Ziati’s prescribed doses.

Awakened by an angry flight attendant who was quick to fill her in on my breakdown. Telling her it took five crew members and three passengers to contain me—to stop me from shrieking, and raging, and trying to bolt through the mid-exit door—before they were able to shove me into a seat and restrain my arms and legs with the same kind of Ziploc ties normally used on trash bags.

And while I can’t recall any of it, I’m told that because of my actions, the pilots were consulted, calls were made, and we were almost diverted to Greenland.

What I do remember is being met by a team of very angry, very official-looking authorities who whisked us off to a windowless room, where I slumped on a table in a drug-fueled stupor, as a tearful Jennika fought to explain. The whole thing ending with my flying privileges being revoked for the next several years, along with a hefty fine they told us to be grateful for. Supposedly, it could’ve been worse.

A psychotic break—that’s what they’re calling it. That’s what a battery of tests and in-depth interviews have seen me reduced to.

Another sad story in a succession of many—another teenaged girl held hostage to her own paranoid delusions.

These things happen.

It’s nobody’s fault.

But all it takes is one look at Jennika to know she blames herself.

We sit in silence as she starts the borrowed car, cranking the ignition once—twice—until the newly restored sky-blue Karmann Ghia is sparked back to life.

I stare out the window, watching the ugly gray cinder block hospital shrink smaller and smaller as we trade the black asphalt parking lot for black asphalt streets that lead us to Harlan’s—Jennika’s on-again, but mostly off-again, photographer boyfriend, who was kind enough to lend us the use of his car and his place while he shoots an editorial piece somewhere in Thailand.

“What did you say to them?” Jennika’s eyes dart between the road and me as she punches all the presets on the old FM radio. Finally settling on Janis Joplin singing “Me and Bobby McGee”—a song I know well because Jennika always sang it when I was a baby, even though it stems from a time well before hers.

I shrug in reply. Force myself to concentrate on the horizon, hoping it will somehow work to stabilize me, ground me. This latest dose of pills is making my head so light and airy I fear I might flit through the window, drift with the clouds and never return.

Jennika brakes at a light, turns in her seat until she’s fully facing me. “Seriously, Daire.” She uses her determined voice, the one that tells me she will not rest until I acknowledge her. “What on earth did you tell them back there?”

I slump down in my seat, shielding my gaze from hers. “Nothing.” I sigh, tucking my chin to my chest and allowing my hair to fall in a long, thick drape over my face. “Trust me, I barely said anything. I mean, what’s the point of defending myself when everyone’s already made up their minds—convinced themselves of the worst?”

I peek at her through the strands, seeing how she mashes her lips together and grips the wheel so tight the blood retreats from her knuckles and turns them the color of bones. Two very good signs she’s debating whether or not to believe me, which is all I need to return to window gazing. Taking in a stucco slab of a mini-mall featuring a dry cleaner, a nail salon, a tattoo parlor, and a liquor store running a weekend special on beer.

“Well, you must’ve told them something,” she huffs, her voice competing with Janis’s until the song fades into “White Rabbit” and she lowers the volume. “Because now they want to institutionalize you.” She glares, pronouncing the word as though it’s fresh, breaking news—as though I wasn’t sitting right there alongside her when the doctor first mentioned it.

I swallow hard. Gnaw the inside of my cheek. Aware of the way her breath hitches, how she swipes the back of her hand under each eye in an effort to steady herself.

“Do you get the significance of this?” Her voice rises to the point of hysteria. “None of the meds are working! And I don’t know what to do for you. I don’t know how to help you—how to reach you—and I’m no longer sure that I can. But if you continue to insist that—” She pauses, sighs. “If you continue to insist that these delusions are real, then I’ll have no choice but to—”

“They’re not delusions!” I swivel in my seat until I’m fully facing her, staring hard into a pair of green eyes that look remarkably like mine, except hers are lined with glittery purple eyeliner, while mine are shadowed with drug-induced dark blue half-moons that spread to my cheeks. “The glowing people are real. The crows are real too. It’s not my fault I’m the only one who can see them!”

Jennika’s face crumples. Scrunches in a way that tells me I’ve failed to make my case. “Well, that’s the thing—according to the doctors, that’s what everyone in your condition claims.”

“Everyone in my condition?” I roll my eyes, shake my head, swivel back in my seat ’til I’m facing the window again. Counting an import furniture store, a vegan café, and a psychic with a blinking neon eye in the window among the local offerings.

“You know what I mean,” she says.

And something about her tone—a tone that perfectly mimics every smug doctor who’s ever had the pleasure of reviewing my case—causes me to lose it. To let out every pent-up thought I’ve held back until now. “No, Jennika, I don’t know what you mean. I really, truly don’t. And while I get how hard this must be for you—trust me, it’s not like it’s some kind of picnic for me! When your doctor friends aren’t drugging me into a stupor, I’m being terrorized by images that are all too real despite the fact that no one else sees them. And even though you refuse to believe, I’m here to tell you that time really does stop! There are moments when everything just comes to one big crashing halt. And, for the record, I am not suffering from some sudden bout of adolescence-induced crazies, this has been happening for a w