Takigawa and Chance will be seen to.

8

Ayako came flying out the moment I was home, pale and bright-eyed.

"You're okay!" she cried.

Her tackle-like hug swapped all my cloud-high feelings into the wall behind me.

"You never came back from working on the old science building and then I get that stupid cryptic email from the professor saying not to worry, but the last time you stayed at his house you came back acting like he'd raped your or something—"

"He did not rape me!"

She pushed me away to scream, "How the hell was I suppose to know!"

But I couldn't have said anything even if I had the words, because now I could see the tears in her eyes, and it shocked me to my core.

What had happened to my disconnected, apathetic roommate?

"You…you were that worried?"

She scowled. "Uh, yeah, dumbass. Did you honestly think I wouldn't? I'm the only thing you got in this world, and if I don't hear from you, who will?"

A wave of that warmth that shivered from my feet to the top of my head zipped up, leaving me feeling cracked open.

"Oh…" I said.

"Oh's right, and I swear, if you don't pick up your phone again—"

"I didn't have it, remember?"

"Screw that! You should have left me a note or something!" She threw her hands in the air. "That's it! I'm just—I'm not talking to you. This is the silent treatment, this is punishment, so frick. You're buying groceries for the rest of the month or, so help me god, I am dumping your ass!"

I flinched. "I'm sorry! I really, I…"

She let go of me and moved to stomp back to her room, but on looking back to send me one last glare saw my chin wrinkling up and my bottom lip curling big time. Letting out an explosive sigh, she stomped back over and tugged me back into another hug.

"I…I didn't think you cared…"I managed to squeeze out past the rock in my throat.

"How the heck did you get that idea? We're friends, aren't we?"

"Yes, I just…"

"You just what?"

I pulled back to rub my face hard. The snot works were well on their way.

"I…I'm not use to someone caring. I mean, I was comfortable asking you to be my roommate because I thought you'd be friendly and impersonal at the same time, because I'm not—I don't know how to do, you know, close stuff, like secrets and talking about feelings and thoughts and—I don't—I don't know how to…"

She let out another sigh, this one a bit softer than before, and pulled away so as to meet my eyes.

"You think too much," she gave me a little smirk. "You don't just decide to do those things, they just happen. Besides, you blurt whatever's on your mind anyways. Now…" she looked up past me and around, peeking around the still open door. "Why is Professor Ice dropping you off again? There's no way I'm taking that 'nothing's happening' crap again."

I gave her my best wobbly smile. "He likes me. He's taking me to church." Since Gene had told me all religions had a way to strengthen mental defenses, if there was a chance I didn't have to return to Spirit bitch, I'd grab hold with both hands. And I missed the sweet Father Brown.

She grimaced. "Yay? First date? Though, you know, dates are generally more…romantic—but hey, everyone has their own taste."

I laughed weakly. "It's not a first date."

"Then I take it you're back to get a dress? Oh no, I'm not letting you go until you swear to me you're telling me all the juicy details when you get back."

I gave her a thumb up. "The juiciest of the juicy."

Her answering smile reached her brown eyes. "That's the stuff."

I spent the rest of the day with Naru. I made dinner this time, and though I was no chef Boyardee, I was no slouch either. Even so, I had fun giving him crap for not showering me with praise. It was almost a game now, our teasing. He still couldn't do sarcasm—he just always sounded so serious. But the smile appeared so often, I thought for sure something bad awaited for me around the corner.

Not quite so. I had to wait till Tuesday.

Ms. Hara Masako sat so clean, cut, and cold in her pencil skirt and flowery silk blouse it put Professor Davis's grumpiest of days to shame.

I didn't have to wait for Lin. He sat right next to her, his candles and incense already set out on the little fold out table of his electric wheelchair. While he failed to look as rigid, his black eyes settled on me with all the weight of an iceberg.

The overwhelming sense of unwelcome nearly made me turn around and march right out the way I came. But the thought of telling my professor I'd run out on the medium lessons he'd set up for me made me stay. I couldn't be fragile forever.

"Take a seat," she said, polite as crisp napkins. "Prepare yourself for meditation with a focus on solidifying your image of true self. I trust you've been practicing?"

I held back a wince. "Yeah." Though I didn't know if she thought prayers to Jesus on the same level as contemplating the ether or whatever the flip she believed in. Father Brown seemed to think it was the same. At least he thought I was making progress.

She nodded and folded her hands as I got comfortable. Once I gave the go, she turned on a little stereo to play some of that weird yoga-ambient-groan/chime noise. Touch'n ether music.

After a few minutes of that, she asked, "Are you honest?"

I knew the answer to that a little better now: yes. Even sometimes when I shouldn't be, and even more so when I'm sleepy. But despite all my slip ups and saying the wrong things, I thought I liked that about myself. I wanted to be honest. Honest to a fault. So when I laid in bed at night in my worn out blue sheets and thought of mom, I wouldn't feel that ugly twist in my chest.

She continued on with the usual questions. Nice, lonely, etc. I still thought I was sarcasm, squares of plastic wrapped American cheese, and Beevis and Butthead reruns, but remembering the week before made me think that, perhaps, there was something less…cheap and useless in myself. I saw it in the covert glances Naru shot my way in class, even as I desperately fought to hold myself from screwing with him in front of everyone. Our relationship had to be secret, after all. At least, while I was his student. Oh, but I had thought of over twenty unique ways to get his ears to turn red. It would have been delicious.

Finally, the groan/moan/chime music clicked off.

"Do you feel ready for another practice?" she asked.

"I think so," I said, trying not to wiggle in the couch as a show of bracing myself. Butts do not braced minds make.

"I suppose that's the best we can hope for," she said, giving the nod to Lin, who set to work lighting his candles and incense with his shaking, palsy hands.

"Though, um, Professor Davis mentioned something about protections of some sort? You know, sense the whole practice makes my mind weaker to possessions for a bit…?"

"I can't see why you would need those," she said, with a sniff. "There's nothing harmful around your home and your sensitivity could hardly summon anything farther than the room you're in."

I frowned. "Uh, what about the great humper you called up?"

The polite smile she gave me was somehow…mean. "He came from another apartment. My range is far wider and practiced than yours. No need to fear."

"But I could hardly walk home last time."

"You seemed to walk plenty fine to me," she said, her words becoming clipped. "The protections you speak of take time and effort to prepare, and therefore, money. If you are willing to pay, I'd be glad to provide them. But as of now the lessons I'm providing you are courtesy of Professor Davis. Normally you would have to go through a grueling screening process just to be considered, but since I trust Professor Davis's judgment…" she left it off there, giving me a steely look of finality. "I believe Lin is ready. If you'd close your eyes and prepare the stage of your mind."

Gulping, and despite my obvious unease, I closed my eyes and did so. As Lin started up his ethereal whistling, I sent a silent prayer..

Gene, if you can hear me…

When I opened my eyes next, five minutes had vanished. I was once more drenched in a cold sweat that made me regret taking off my jacket.

Ms. Masako looked amused. "Well…that was enlightening."

My stomach rolled. "Wh-what happened? What did I do?"

"Nothing you need to concern yourself with," she said flippantly. "That was disappointing. You hardly gave up a fight. Is this what you have to show after a week of meditation? Prepare yourself."

With sinking heart, I scrambled for my faculties, fighting to focus on my own mind. Maybe if I focused on something purely me.

I thought of McDonalds hot chocolate and Naru walking besides me, pale as a ghost, his breath clouding in the late autumn air.

'Looking, but not touching?' he said.

Lin's whistle pushed out all sounds of heartbeat or breath.

Twenty. I had thought of twenty ways to make him blush during class. And yet, the stop sign turning left at the boulevard had been loud and clear, if only that idiot truck had thought to listen to traffic laws, I wouldn't be drifting, lost, smeared on the pavement—

I jerked up.

"There you are," I breathed.

I pushed the strange thought aside.

Minutes passed, followed by more and more strange thoughts. I caught hold of one just as my eyes rolled into the back of my head by remembering Father Brown's warm hands on mine as we prayed together last Sunday.

'Oh Father,' he had murmured, so low no one would have been able to hear unless they had knelt next to us. 'Help thine daughter to stand tall, as you do. Give her strength. Give her hope.'

When Lin's whistling finally ended and I opened my eyes, ten minutes had passed and I remembered every one. Even so, the muscles in my neck felt like wire and my head ached something fierce.

"Very good," said Masako, though her smile didn't reach her eyes. "You were quite composed that time. There were a few times there I almost saw a spirit overlay you, but you held true."

My eyebrows shot up. "You can see them?"

She just smiled at me. "There's a reason I know you are not at the same level as me. Take a moment, then we'll start again."

With my brain all stretched out like taffy and my neck no longer flesh anymore, not to mention I was freaking freezing, I did not look forward to this. But backing out and losing face to her sounded so much worse.

So I just nodded and closed my eyes.

The third time Lin's whistling begun, I caught an alien thought almost instantly.

But the next thing I knew, I was blinking up at the ceiling, lain out on my back with one foot bent at a very uncomfortable angle against the door and my arm hurting something nasty.

"That was the most exciting one yet," said Ayako, a hand up to her mouth. "Though you have progressed significantly. Professor Davis will be pleased to hear this the next time we have lunch. I think we can call it a day."

I got to my feet slowly, every joint in my body shaking like a bad game of Janga.

Lunch…? He has lunch with her?

That shouldn't bother me. It shouldn't.

She bowed her head to me, her beautiful, doll-like face still giving me that perfected smile.

"Same time next week?"

Outside, my jacket did nothing against the cold. Navy shadows crept on against the dying golden sunset. Cars passed me in the street, all most likely filled with college students, based on their various degrees of old or battered. A set of Saudi students zipped by on bikes.

My head hurt.

My foot hit a wall, jarring me back. I looked up to find the business building's face of black glass and yellow-brown eighties brick looming over me.

"Wha…?" I had been passing the library last. Ms. Masako and I met in a room in a house refurbished for offices across the street from the university campus. It was owned by the university itself just for such kinds of unique lessons and meetings. The library had been across the street from it.

I sighed. "At least this didn't happen while I was crossing the street."

I reached into my pocket for my phone…

And found it wrapped around the rearview mirror of a bright red corvette in the parking lot.

I let go as though it were on fire, horrified.

"What—" then I got a look around me. I wasn't even on campus anymore. A grocery store, one I went to sometimes when I wanted to get a little nicer food, stood several rows of cars away. A middle aged woman chattering on her phone passed behind me, completely unaware.

Above me, full night had come over, with only the faintest of light blue in the west.

Panic, like a great spike, rammed through me. My breath came out in a long, terrified whin.

"Naru," I gasped. "Gene. God, please."

Even as I squeaked that, I heard something again, something that couldn't be me.

…a 1989, just take it for a spin—pawn the radio while you're at it—

-I hate him I HATE HIM—

...black bumpers never show the blood…

I thrust my hand into my pocket and brought up my phone. My finger jabbed at the screen, but it had gotten too cold for the sensor to register it.

I jabbed harder.

"Gene?" I whined again, looking around me, holding tight to…what?

And then I was opening my eyes once more at a place I had no memory of coming to.

But Naru was there, both hands on my arms, his face inches from mine.

"Mai?"

I was cold. Colder than I had ever been in my life. My jacket had gotten wet along the way and I couldn't feel my hands or feet.

And at the sight of him, and his dusty, pinsol scented house around him, I felt every muscle in my body seize up. Tightening until my head fell back into a bone rattling cry that buckled my knees.

He caught me.

"Mai! It's okay, you're safe now!"

I just wailed. The warmth of his house felt too much.

Gently, he leaned down to scoop up my legs, carrying me to his sofa. I had managed to reign back into normal enough sobs by then, even though the way my stomach muscles had bunched up beneath my lungs still fought to push out my breaths into long, ear-piercing whines.

He wrapped the fuzzy blanket around my shoulders before pulling me tight to him, hushing me and murmuring my name.

"It's okay, Mai. Gene had you. He brought you here. Nothing bad happened."

But how did I know that? I had been all the way at the grocery store parking lot before coming here. What had happened between Masako's office and there that had stopped Gene from getting to me there?

But I didn't have the space of mind to think of that. I couldn't seem to control myself anymore. I hurt, and I had to figure out how to breathe again.

"Shh, Mai, honey. I love you, it's okay. You're safe."

'Mai…'

My head jerked up, looking over Naru's shoulder, where a copy of him stood next to the empty fireplace, oddly pale in a bright way that didn't shine upon anything else. His broken expression held none of the anger I saw shadowing the Naru holding me.

'I'm sorry,' it whispered from a distance. 'I tried to reach you. The other spirits were wrapped too closely. They had been called…' My eyes seemed to shift, as though twitching, and the image vanished.

But something drifted through to me, not through my ears, but through something within me.

'Something's wrong. Mai, it's dangerous.'

Stunned by what I was seeing and hearing, my sobs halted as I held my breath, desperate to hear more. I blinked hard to clear the tears, and the vision of Gene flickered through, though faint, as though I looked at his reflection in a window.

And he wore a blue shirt.

'Mai…' he called. 'Something's…wrong…'

"Mai?" Naru pulled back to see my face, but I was afraid to move my eyes. "Mai…what are you looking at?"

I blinked, Gene vanished, and I looked to Naru.

Only to have my vision go black.