CHAPTER 9
Maria

She was still fuming as she knocked on Max's door. How her boyfriend even could come up with the idea to even suggest putting up his Metallica posters all over the living room walls in their new apartment was beyond her. Sometimes he was so dense it made her want to tear her hair, or his, out. She was kind of enjoying the mental image of ripping off Michael's brown hair when Max opened the door.

"Hey," he said, giving her that shy half-smile that Maria adored. How this person could hold onto that tad of innocence after everything was a mystery.

"Girlfriend," Maria answered and pecked him on the cheek. "How are you?"

Max let her pass into his small flat of one bedroom and open-spaced living area that co-served as kitchen and dining area.

"Any more seizures?"

Max mumbled a negative and added, "But the dreams are back."

Maria stopped dead in her tracks. "The dreams? The ones you had when you were younger?"

Max absent-mindedly scratched behind his ear. "Uh-huh."

Maria sank down on the armrest of the sofa. "Are you okay?"

Max nodded. "The dreams are okay. Better than having seizures or visions or whatever they are."

Maria could feel a 'but' hanging in the air and voiced it, "But…?"

Max leaned against the wall, looking troubled. Well, at least more troubled than usual. Max was always troubled, there were only various degrees. "I used to have dreams of two girls. Never at the same time, but usually I saw them both an equal amount. Now… I've been having the dreams for the last four nights and it's only been her. The brunette girl. The girl from my seizure."

Maria didn't want to burst his bubble or anything, but "Don't you think that's because it was her you saw in your vision? That it has influenced your dreams?"

"Maybe," Max mumbled. "Of course I've considered that as well. But I feel this…tug. As if she's beckoning me, calling for me. I never felt that before. It was mostly the blonde girl that was…um…calling for me."

Maria watched Max's ears turn red and she smiled. She had a feeling she knew just how the blonde girl was 'calling' for Max, but she didn't want to embarrass her friend further by addressing that. Instead, "Do you believe the dreams are real? That they are communicating with you? I mean, normally that would be a ridiculous notion, but you, my friend, are not really normal."

Max rubbed a hand down his face. "I've always felt that they were more than just dreams. But I don't know if that's because I'm reliving something that might've happened or if they are somehow visions of a future, of something that hasn't happened yet. Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the accident."

Maria frowned at his jump in the conversation, not following. "What accident?"

"The one that happened on the day I was adopted- Did I tell you about this?"

Maria nodded distractedly, trying to conjure up the details of that memory. "Yeah yeah, you did. Long time ago."

"The driver - the mother - was killed-"

"She was speared," Maria filled in and grimaced. Even though she had only had the accident described to her, not having to live them herself, the details made her wince.

Max nodded. "Right. And I think the girl was dead as well."

Maria's train of thought ceased. The girl? "You never told me about a girl."

Max looked surprised. "I didn't?"

"I'm pretty sure you didn't."

"There was a girl - the daughter - thrown out of the car. My parents hadn't seen her as they went to get help, but I saw her from where I was sitting in the car. I distinctly remember her being really cold and her lips being blue."

"Dead," Maria echoed.

"I didn't understand it then, that she was dead. I was obsessed with the blood. She was covered in blood. So I begged her to stop bleeding…"

Maria's mouth fell open, stunned, as she put the pieces together. "You healed her."

He nodded. "I think I did."

Maria tried to clear her thoughts. "You didn't just heal her, you brought her back from the dead."

"I willed her to stop bleeding."

"Oh my God. Max… Did you know? Did you know what you had done?"

Max shook his head. "I realized a couple of years later. I was watching some medical show on TV and there was a girl that had drowned, her lips blue. I was instantaneously taken back to that day and that girl on the ground and I realized that she had been dead. When it had happened, I thought she had been asleep and as I got older I chalked it up to her being unconscious. I never really thought about those lips and how she was so still. She wasn't breathing."

"What's the connection?" Maria wondered. "Between the accidents and your dreams? And between your vision?"

"I didn't really take a good look at that little girl. I was too freaked out about the blood. But lately I've been wondering if it wasn't the same girl. The same girl that has been in my dreams and now in my vision, only grown up."

"But how could you-"

"Know what she would look like?" Max shook his head. "I think I just made it up. Maybe I hadn't really processed the accident since it happened when I was so young, and that was my way of processing it. By making her the same age as me, visiting me over and over again in my mind."

Maria frowned. "How would that help you to put the accident behind you?"

Max shrugged. "Beats me."

"And why would your mind put her in another life-threatening situation, like in your vision, to traumatize your memory of her even more?"

"It doesn't make any sense, I know," Max murmured. "The most plausible explanation is that the girl in my vision is really not the girl from my dreams which is really not the same little girl from the accident. I've just conjured up this image of a girl and I'm plastering her everywhere, because it's familiar to me."

Maria worried her lip, a deep thinking frown forming between her eyebrows.

"What are you thinking?" Max wondered.

"I'm not convinced," Maria said. "There's just too many coincidences. Sure, your mind might just be making all this up, but if you brought that girl back from the dead, you might still be connected to her."

Maria saw her long-time friend freeze. She swallowed, knowing that her hypothesizing might hurt her friend who was already suffering from a chronic anxiety problem. "What you did to me, when I was sick. That was some major interfering with nature. I was supposed to die. When you removed my cancer, you formed a connection with me." Max was mimicking a statue, so Maria continued, "We both know it's there, even though we rarely speak of it. Like when-"

"When you were craving cookie dough ice-cream and I got the mental memo even though I hate cookie dough ice-cream and went and got some for you? Maria, that's just intuition. And the result of spending way too much time with you."

"No," Maria shook her head. "No, remember when I broke my leg and you felt it?"

Max took a deep breath, but remained silent.

"And how whenever you try out your protective force field, I can literally feel energy being pulled from me, draining me. As if I'm this big accessory battery to your force field or something."

Maria rose and walked up to Max, locking green eyes with amber. "Max, what would happen if you didn't only heal someone from a major disease, but you actually brought someone back from the dead? You really don't think there would be some kind of residual trace? A connection? A pull? Something? You pumped energy into her to heal her. She's carrying some of that energy." Maria let out a humorless, disbelieving laugh. "For all we know, her life energy is only Max energy, since her own life energy had left."

"Christ, Maria," Max whispered, distancing himself from her by walking into the kitchen and starting to rummage through the refrigerator for something to drink. He was suddenly very thirsty.

"Think about it, Max," Maria stepped around the refrigerator door. "Doesn't it make more sense that it's actually the same girl from the accident that you're seeing now? Maybe she's actually in danger. Maybe she's trying to contact you."

Max opened a Coca Cola, the frizzing sound, which was a consequence of carbon dioxide escaping, interrupting their conversation. "Then what about the blonde? Who is she? You? Because I've only ever healed two persons in my life. You, and that little girl."

Maria rolled her eyes. "I have no idea who the blonde is. Maybe it's your dream girl. Your fantasy girl. The way you keep describing her…"

"Hey, it's not some sex dream, okay," Max interrupted. "She's just a lot more…forward than the brunette."

Maria smiled. "Right."

Max sighed. "This is serious, Maria. What if there's some truth to what you're saying? What if there's a girl out there with a connection to me? What if she has been altered by what I did? What if she's been having abilities of her own? What if-"

"Whoa whoa," Maria stopped. "We don't know, okay. Don't get all worked up about something you don't know. Maybe…" Maria paused, an idea coming to her. "Maybe you could describe what she looks like and I could draw her. Like the police does with the face of a wanted person. Then we might be able to track her down. If she even exists."

Max pondered this. The idea was not a bad one, Maria could tell. And she was quite a good artist. Maybe, if everyone else could see who Max was seeing, he wouldn't feel so responsible and weighed down by the situation.

Happy that she finally could help Max in some way, Maria made the decision for him. "Let's do it. Do you have paper, pencil?"