Hi, everyone! Okay, I'm getting better with regular updates. We're never going to get back to that every day thing I did two years ago, but at least you're hearing from me more than once a month, at least. I hope you like this one.
I had totally planned to go straight to the counseling office after that, but for some reason, I didn't. When the bell rang I checked my phone to see what time it was and how many classes I'd missed, calculated the next class period I needed to be in and hurried to Writing Elective with Ms. Kelley. Thank God! Axl is in that class with me.
"Hey Axl," I hissed across the table as soon as Ms. Kelly finished her mini-lesson on the difference between its and it's.
"Watch your language, Christine!"
"What?"
"What did you just call him?"
"Axl." I drew it out carefully. "Axe-el"
"Oh." Ms. Kelly looked sheepish. "I thought you said something else. Sorry." Ms. Kelly is cool like that. Not like other teachers, she actually admits when she's wrong.
Axl was doing that weird silent laugh he does.
"Come, on. Be serious. I've gotta ask you something."
He took a deep noisy breath. "Okay, okay, I'm serious. What?"
"Okay. Do you think it's like totally crazy if someone believes in reincarnation?"
He squinted at me, then blinked twice. "Um, no. Obviously."
"Obviously?"
"Bekkah's a Buddhist." He said it in that tone that implies "Duh," without saying it.
"Yeah, I forgot. But no, I mean like-" God, I almost said regular people. I shook my head, took a deep breath and started again. "Assuming someone is not a Buddhist. Would it be very odd for them to believe in reincarnation?"
He opened his mouth and I cut him off.
"Assuming they aren't Hindu or whatever else, either, Axl. I mean just someone like me."
He shrugged. "I don't see what's so strange about it. Early Gnostic Christians believed in reincarnation. It's probably only due to errors in translation that it's been rejected by mainstream modern Christianity. Hasidic Jews still believe in it, as do extreme Sh'ia Muslims. Not only that, but many Greek philosophers believed in it as well." He paused for a sip from his soda. Yeah. Ms. Kelly doesn't make a big deal if we have soda in writing elective. It's a great class. "So did the Druids. If you ask me, it's probably pretty weird that we don't believe in it."
"So you don't believe in it?" I asked him.
"I meant 'we' as in most Americans. Or 'we' modern western thinkers. Personally, I haven't decided yet. But I don't reject Bekkah's beliefs."
"Of course not. So..." I was confused again.
"Practically speaking, it's not like you'd remember who you were last time around anyway. So it's sort of a moot point."
"Mute point?"
"Moot, Christine, moot. Like, irrelevant."
Learn a new word every day, I guess. I vaguely wondered why it wasn't on the vocabulary list and decided it was because there was no way to illustrate it. All I could picture was a big, irrelevant cow saying "mooooot."
"So, do you believe in it or not?"
Axl sighed. "Maybe I do. But since I don't remember any past lives, it's not like it impacts me in a measurable way. And suppose I come back as someone else. I don't expect I'd remember being Scott this time around, either. So it's not of much value. Of course, there are those who claim to have memory of past events, but a lot of that is just paranormal bullshit—Sorry Ms. K.—unless they're a bodisatva, which I'm obviously not. So, you know." He paused for another long swing of soda. "I'm not particularly worried about it, you know?"
"Right. Yeah. I know. I mean, neither am I." Long uncomfortable pause. "At least, not usually." I shot a glance at Ms. Kelly. She didn't appear to be listening, but one could never tell. I dropped my voice a little lower. "What if someone told you they did remember a past life? Or like, maybe not remembered it but figured out who they had been?"
Axl made a face and thought about it. "I guess it'd depend on who the person was."
"I know someone like that."
He nodded and said nothing.
"He thinks he knows who I was, too."
Axl's mild curiosity seemed to intensify a little.
"He thinks we were involved with each other in a past life but it turned out wrong. He says maybe we're here to fix it this time around."
A grin broke across Axl's face. "That sounds like a line, Christine."
"No, seriously!"
"Well, it's a good line, isn't it?"
"No!" I thought about it a second. "Maybe—"
"If I'm ever single again, I'm definitely going to try that one," Scott said. He was fighting valiantly not to laugh at me.
I pretended not to notice. "I don't know. I didn't take it that way. If you knew who I meant—"
Axl nodded. "If you're sure Chrissy."
"I'm sure, Axl," I said. No way. Alex wasn't capable of a line.
He nodded wisely.
I left him alone after that to work on his story. I tried to write something of my own, but found I couldn't think about anything except that stupid novel so I started making lists.
Ways I am like Christine
1. I have blond hair.
2. I have blue eyes.
3. My name is Christine.
4. I sing.
Ways I am not like Christine
1. I am not Swedish. At least I don't think I am.
2. I do not live in France.
3. Both my parents are alive.
4. I am not that talented.
5. It is not 1800 and something.
I got stuck at this point. I could say "I am younger" but that didn't prove anything. Considering the whole reincarnation argument, the fact that it wasn't 1800 something didn't really matter. The point was—moot—as Axl said. I tried again to picture the flash card for moot and couldn't come up with anything but a cow. Knock Knock. Whose there? Irrelevant cow...Mooooooot.
For that matter I could add "I am a girl" and "I am young" to ways I am like Christine. It was too easy to come up with whatever you wanted. I started a new list. Ways I am like Lady Gaga and ways I am not. I came up with about the same number, so I started listing ways that Lady Gaga is like Christine and ways she is not. I decided that you could make yourself out to be almost anyone, therefore it wasn't any kind of serious proof of anything. I felt better after that.
I felt even better still when Alex didn't come around. I mean, not that I noticed his not coming around and actually thought 'Oh yeah, I feel better about this' or anything, but once he left me alone for a few days, I sort of forgot about the whole creepy thing for a while. Alex wasn't around for almost two weeks. I don't know where he went or what he was up to, but he was all the sudden absent from all the classes we had together. Maybe he was in he boiler room the whole time. I wouldn't know because I didn't go looking for him. I was too busy with Ryan, who had apparently decided that he had screwed up and needed to kiss my butt to make things better. For a couple of days it was just nice text messages saying how sorry he was about the dance and the morning after. Then it was stopping by and not telling dad anything messed up. Then he asked me to catch a movie with him on Friday night. I admit I wanted to. I really, really wanted to, but for some reason I just didn't. I decided I'd rather see him just at school for now. But during school I did my best to get back to normal. I went to practice when I needed to, and when I didn't, I went home. I stopped skipping classes. I stopped going to the boiler room. Ryan took the opportunity to hang all over me between every class, meet me at my locker and even carry by books in a totally-Grandma's-generation kind of way.
One day during lunch he confided to me that he'd been talking seriously with one of the military recruiters about ROTC. I shouldn't have been surprised. Ryan's dad is career military and it's pretty much always been a given that Ryan would at least consider following in his father's footsteps. It meant money for college, which is always a big deal. So like I said, I shouldn't have been surprised, and I wouldn't have been, if I hadn't made a connection I didn't want to make. I was listening and trying not to get especially freaked out when all the sudden Ryan grasped the handle of the boiler room door and said, "Hm. What's in here?"
"No! Don't do that!" I threw my weight against it and shoved it closed.
He regarded me with wide eyes for a few seconds then kept walking to class. About five paces down the hall, he burst out laughing. I pretended I wondered what the hell was wrong with him for laughing on top of what the hell was wrong with him for even thinking to open the boiler room door, but underneath that, I was obsessing over the fact that Ryan was talking about joining the navy and I had just replicated the scene where Christine drags Raoul away from the trap door. I checked the book to try to find a difference and instead noticed another similarity: Erik had left Christine alone for two full weeks and during that time, she spent her time with Raoul.
Dun dun dun!
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