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In Plane Sight

Jason Austin

    The dusk sky had that smell of thunder clouds rolling in as I hit the lab door. A handful of cars were scattered in the parking lot for the evening crews. I had a long night ahead of me if I was to help Dr. Weinstein with publishing his results. The hard part wouldn’t be manipulating delta and theta waves in our patients, it would be keeping my mind off the half-naked cosmetology students that I dodged all night like a skateboarder through a minefield. All those pulsating fun-bags dancing around, getting all juiced up with beer-sweat. Dammit! Why were smoking hot women so god-awful frightening?
    “OK Leroy,” Dr. Weinstein said from behind the glass. “Alright, we’ve got Mrs. Efram all set up on table two. Slide on your goggles and we’ll get started.”
    I pulled the goggles over my eyes thinking how they made me look like a cross between a fifties biker and that blind guy from Star Trek: The Next Generation. What was his name? Anyway, I double-checked the connectors planted just under Mrs. Efram’s bushel of salt-and-pepper hair. Her worry lines made them look like large sheet music notations.
    “She’s in REM sleep,” I said.
    Mrs. Efram’s theta wave activity was always so bright, like a golden aura emanating from the third eye. It was beautiful. Hard to believe it was causing her so much anguish.
    “Activity’s pretty hot here; theta waves are fluctuating rapidly.” I reported.
    “Heart rate is up, perspiration and EEG are all on point,” Dr. Weinstein answered. “I’m initiating wave adjustment.”
    The counter wave stimuli that Dr. Weinstein produced through Mr’s Efram’s headgear produced an almost instant change in her wave aura; it slowed to a crawl then sped up again—tuning itself to Dr. Weinstein’s command. Watching it ripple about her frame could likely cause sea-sickness to the untrained eye, but I’d been using the wave goggles for nearly a month now and each time I was able to judge the effect with greater accuracy.
    “Mrs. Efram,” I said, “Look to your left.”
    Her eyes rolled to her left under the dancing lids.
    “Now look to the right.”
    Again her eyes obeyed.
    “Good Mrs. Efram. You’re in complete control. Nothing can harm you and everything is for your best interest. Look down if you understand this.”
    Once more the nodules beneath her eyelids did as commanded. For the next twenty minutes I stood vigilant over her prostrated frame, watching for theta and delta wave evidence that she was losing lucidity. Whenever it wavered, Dr. Weinstein readjusted the stimuli to compensate and she regained control of the dream.
    “Okay Mrs. Efram, you’ve done great. I’m going to count backwards from ten and when I’m done you’ll be wide awake and feeling fully rested.”
    Dr. Weinstein made the proper adjustments from the control to increase beta wave activity and awaken our patient.
    “How do you feel Mrs. Efram?” I asked.
    “I heard you,” she said with tears already starting. “I was in control. For the first time I was in control. And I kicked his ass!”

*****

    “Leroy, come here,” Weinstein said. “You’ve got to see this.”
    I hoped whatever he was eyeballing was worth a wicked crick in his neck. He’d been staring up at the night sky the whole time I was locking up. Thing is, he was wearing the wave goggles. They were half of the equipment responsible for the most revolutionary form of psychotherapy since Prozac and he was using them as a toy. Not that he didn’t have every right. I mean he did invent the things. But they played a bit with the visual cortex. The basics were an independent power supply that charged pretty fast and a multiteired, adaptive lens structure with generators for optoelectronic modulation. It wasn’t really made, so much, to adjust to light or distance, but instead to the eyes of the wearer in tandem with the auric EM field. It was sort of like an optometer, except it did the adjustment automatically. It was how I was able to make out the theta and delta wave disruptions emanating from a patient.
    “Should you really be using those outside the lab?” I asked wandering up to him.
    “Who’s the boss here, kid?”
    He clicked off the goggles, removed them and handed them to me. “Take a look.”
    “They’re just stars,” I reminded him. “And their not even that bright.”
    “Just look.”
    I took the goggles, strapped them on and rebooted. It was best to turn them off and reboot for a different wearer every time because it made a data recording of retinal patterns and optical adjustments and... “Whoa.”
    “In the words of the almighty Spock: fascinating...isn’t it?”
    It’s still hard to describe, but I can tell you the almighty Spock didn’t have a word in English or Vulcan that fit.
    “My God, even the dimmest ones have almost blinding coronas.”
    “Mhm.”
    “I can see...everything. What are those wisps in between?”
    “Minor cloud formations. So light you can barely see them with the naked eye, but through there...”
    “Silver lining. And the colors. I never thought of stars having colors.”
    “Look around on the ground.”
    I grudgingly pulled away from the awesomeness and peered at the surrounding woods and grassy acres beyond the lot. The trees were alive with electric colors. A pair of rabbits in the distance were brilliant with sheen. I soaked it in for I don’t know how many more minutes before removing the goggles.
    “That was...”
    “I know.” Weinstein said. There are only two things in world worth gazing at for hours and a sky like that is one of them.”
    “What’s the other?”
    “A room full of naked strippers, of course. Where’s your head, son?”
    I chuckled.
    “It’s got me rethinking additional applications. For the technology. Having a little something extra for the pencilpushers couldn’t hurt considering the crap they’ve been giving me lately about results and funding.”
    “They wouldn’t really cut us off would they?”
    “I don’t know,” he said with a smile. “They kept telling me that it was drugs they wanted, not real cures, not real therapies. Just the next magic pill that makes you forget the disease for a few hours instead of curing it for a lifetime. Find a way to make them live with it. The first time I ever heard those words come out of an executive’s mouth, I knew I could never let them have meaning for me.”
    And that’s why I was his student.
    “They wouldn’t let you park in the lot tonight?” I asked.
    “I promised my wife I’d start taking a few health tips to heart. Walking a few extra yards from the front door is the least of it. Just do it for me, Nathan, she says. Ah. I’ve had it with those nasty bran muffins. And if they do cut off the funding, well, at least I’ll still have my health.”
    “Mr.’s Efram isn’t the only one who had a great breakthrough today. She confronted thirty years of her father’s abuse and potentially turned her life around all because your work gave her the ability to take control in a way she never has before. A lifetime of antidepressants, suicide attempts and shrinks putting her in the poorhouse could be over. Who else could have thought of treating mental illness through expanding the Kirlian Effect?”
    “You might have,” he said.
    “Me? Are you kidding?”
    “Leroy, why do you think I chose you out of all the other students at this university? Your insight, your ability to think outside the box is what advancement in any field of science is all about.”
    Oh puke. I blushed like a virgin on a first date.
    “I’m sorry if I embarrassed you. You’re going to have to learn to take a compliment if you expect to be a pioneer.” He stuck his overactive finger at me. “You also need to loosen up. God, when I was your age I was too busy trying to get laid to be a teacher’s pet. Speaking of which...”
    “Aw c’mon Dr. Weinstein.” I wanted desperately to end the line of conversation. I was never in a mood to talk about my fat, sexless existence. A twenty-year-old virgin, a hundred pounds overweight, pretending to be the second coming of James Bond on the internet? Shit, I’d make fun of him.
    “Alright, alright, forget I said anything.”
    He head out to his car, hands in his pockets, sauntering like he hadn’t a care in the world. No wonder I liked being around him, looked up to him; except for not being handsome and dashing, he was everything I wasn’t. Namely, confident.
    “Night, Doc,” I hollered with a wave.
    “She’s out there waiting for you, kid,” he piped without looking back.
    Hmf. Confident.
    I barely caught a glimpse of the car in my peripheral vision before it screeched behind me and struck Weinstein head on. I’d parked mine under a bushel of trees that inhibited the street lights. All I remember is seeing Weinstein, cast in shadow, fly one way and the goggles fly another. Quiet and running on one headlight, the culprit car spun out and, for a minute, I thought it would go for me. I mean, everything happened so fast, but I remember how it sat there a little too long, like the driver couldn’t decide whether two-birds-with-one-stone was worth the extra gas. After it peeled off I sprinted over to Weinstein sprawled in the middle of the street.
    He was broken up pretty bad. Blood was quickly painting the blacktop. The car had plowed into him while he was hunched over the goggles. At the speed it was going, there’s no way Weinstein
didn’t
have internal injuries, massive ones at that. I could barely see straight. My eyes were flooding and I felt the electrocution of adrenaline robbing my senses. I tried my best though. I told him to lie still, which sounded awfully stupid and pulled my phone to call for an ambulance. He bubbled something through his bloody pool of a mouth. God only knew what. Then he pressed the goggles into my hands.
    “It’s okay,” I said pointlessly. “It’s okay.”

*****

    The rooftop of my building was always a good place to let things go. I must’ve looked invisible in the night, with my midnight complexion and still wearing the black suit I had on from the funeral. I guess I’d kept it on the rest of the day as some sort of unconscious tribute; though right then, nothing reminded me more of the Doc than the sky above. It was like the stars were talking to me in Morse code. Oh, to unlock the secrets of the universe in the ebb and flow of the sparkling. It was a clear night too, even the naked sight of it was enough to snag admirers, apparently of all ages. Across the street, a boy who couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen scampered up a tree in the adjacent park just to sit and watch. The goggles were making him look like he was flickering, almost like a firefly in the park’s playground...at—I looked at the clock—11:44 pm? A little late for...
    That’s when I saw the kid in the tree stand up. I mean the boy just stood up and looked off into the sky like it was calling him. I swear it looked like he was going to jump. I yelled out to him, but I guess he didn’t hear me.
    Then damn, if he didn’t jump right out of that tree.
    That’s when I closed my eyes and ripped off the goggles. Because I could have sworn that boy jumped from that tree and lit off into the sky like Superman. I gripped the goggles in both trembling hands. There was no way they’d make me see something like that. On top of everything else, the damn things couldn’t make a person hallucinate...could they? I looked down into the park and, sure enough, the kid was gone. My only question now was, was he there at all. I decided to abandon the roof for a closer perspective from the street.
    I stood under a street light like I was headlining in Vegas. I slipped on the goggles and timidly opened my eyes like a newborn getting his first look at the world.
    Nothing. I didn’t see squat. I panned through the park, down both sides of the street, everywhere in my field of perception. All I saw was a stray dog and a couple of passing cars—perfectly within the realm of reality. What was I thinking? The whole deal with Weinsein getting creamed like he had was taking its toll; I’d have an anxiety attack if I wasn’t careful. Although up until now, none of it had caused me to hallucinate. I breathed a sigh of tepid relief and headed back inside to make sweet, sweet love to my pillow.
    Before I could open the door I got pushed aside by someone I couldn’t see. I spun quick, ready to get in a fight or hand over my pocket change.
    There was nothing, no one. In fact, almost immediately I began to deny I’d felt anything at all. How could I not? No one was there. No one.
    Except...
    Across the street, floating around the park playground there was...someone. And she was floating. Somehow her steps were out of sync with her movement. And it was a her. Young, about my age. She was...like the boy: there but not there. Her head hung low, like she was looking for something she’d dropped. I reached for the goggles to take them off and the moment my fingers touched them I knew to keep them on. Come on Leroy, keep it together. What the hell was going on? I shouldn’t be seeing these things. None of this is real.
    In the blink of an eye, the girl spun toward me and leapt, what must have been, forty yards across the grass to land not ten feet in front of me. I felt my blood freeze and I was sure I’d pass out. I quickly waged a campaign to stay on my feet as I felt myself casting off into panic. Had to reason it out. I had to stay grounded. So I just watched her. I avoided judging what I was seeing and just watched. In doing so, I became slowly bathed in an onrush of sheer comfort. She moved closer to me. I almost removed the goggles again but I...
    She didn’t just have an aura; she was the aura. I recognized the theta signatures, but they were far more complex. They weren’t waves that pulsed outside of her; they were her flesh. They painted her into existence like Michaelangelo’s pallet. She was absolutely exquisite. It was like being in the presence of something otherworldly, something you can’t describe because you’ve never seen it, but awesomely familiar. I’d dreamed about women like her. Her eyes had a reach that could snatch the moon from the heavens. It was like staring into a pond so deep and so captivating that you couldn’t tear yourself away until you could see all the way to the bottom. As she got closer the aura effect increased, making it more difficult to fixate on her form. I mean, I could see her, but I just couldn’t perceive her in definitive terms. It was like having visual agnosia where some folks are unable to distinguish a person’s face and they’re forced to recognize them by their voice or clothing. Maybe the goggles didn’t work right outside the lab setting. Truthfully, I wasn’t sure it mattered. I could see so much else, as it were. I couldn’t explain it thoroughly, but there was just something so real, so true about what I was witnessing. Like I was meant to see her that way from the beginning. If I’d allowed myself to think about it, I would have been astonished at the vacuum of fear. I guess I was too busy being awed to be frightened. Or too busy falling in...Oh my God!
    “Hi,” I said, quivering. Hi?! Hi?! Was that really the best I could come up with? Dr. Nathan Weinstein’s premier protege and all I had in my verbal attache for a moment like this was “hi?”
    “I’m Leroy. What’s your name?” On a roll now.
    She suddenly looked puzzled, like she couldn’t remember the answer. For a second it seemed almost painful for her to even try.
    “Are you all right?” I asked. I wasn’t sure why I was suddenly concerned for her.
    She seemed like she couldn’t answer because something else was demanding her attention. The only thing happening around us was quiet night, but dammit, if something wasn’t tugging at her, distracting her. Then she spoke. “I ha...t...if...pl...me...
    I rattled my fat head. It suddenly felt like my brains were made of clam chowder. I couldn’t understand a word she was saying. Was it some kind of foreign language? If so, I’d never heard it and I’d read quite a few books in a number of dialects. It was more like the words were incomplete, like she was speaking through a busted cell. Moreover, why would I be able to hear anything at all. Did just being able to see her somehow influence my other perceptions.
    “Can you tell me your name?” I asked.
    She tried to speak, but again I got nothing but esophageal static. She looked disheartened, like I’d let her down. She knew she wasn’t getting through.
    “Please. I can’t understand you. Keep talking. I’ll try.”
    That’s when she reached out to me.
    Her hand lifted to my face. I expected to feel a natural touch, but instead it was like she reached inside me and caressed my very being, like she touched part of me that was long sleeping. I wanted to grab her, to hold her close and never let go, but I knew I couldn’t. I was so scared of her running away from me. Yet I knew I couldn’t stop her form doing just that. Whatever the looming disturbance that had her yoked was stronger than both of us. She turned her attention to an indeterminate direction and before I could articulate a single plea, she soared off as if tethered to the very night. I stayed out front for quite a while after the... angel had glided away. Angel was all I could think to call her. I waited and waited and waited. What had I seen? Why had I seen it?
    My God, she was beautiful.
    I couldn’t even take off the damn wave goggles. I must have looked ridiculous. It took forever for the lash of the early April air to drive me back inside where any hope of sleep would be just that: hope.

*****

    Don’t ask me why, but walking around a Costco always helped me think. And I had a crap-load of thinking to do. The meandering shoppers, the sound of price scanners, even the random, bitchy eight-year-old that wouldn’t stop until his mother caved in on the overpriced toy or what passed for candy were like white noise that stimulated my brain cells. Put it together, Leroy, I said to myself for the hundredth time this morning. What was it you saw last night? How could you see it? The two most important questions to unlocking this paranormal perplexity and they weren’t even foremost in my thoughts.
    No.
    Who was she? That’s the question that consumed me. The one question that would probably yield the least results and it was all I could think. Who was my angel?
    Electronics was my favorite spot to hang out. Computers, sound systems and hulking televisions hung all over the place and I gawked at that fine-ass reporter from channel 5 news with the killer boobs, hovering over me from a sixty-inch Sony LED.
    “Local authorities still have no leads on the attack of William Paterson freshman Carolina Reyes, the girlfriend of national phenom basketball player LeShawn Rucker. Reyes has been in fight for her life ever since she was apparently assaulted while standing outside the William Paterson library annex just four days ago. This all happens while Rucker, himself, has been fielding questions about his possible decision to forgo the remainder of his college career to turn professional.”
    Feh! I couldn’t wander ten feet without hearing girls my age joke about how they were going to stalk him and trick him into getting them pregnant. He was handsome, popular, getting richer by the second and since he was six-feet-nine-inches of basketball stardom, I boiled to think of how he impressed in the locker room showers. I hated him. In fact, I nearly put my foot through the television until I saw the other picture. Her picture. The picture of the victim.
    Angel.

*****

    From the library to the lab and back again and again, I jumped like an equestrian horseman. I reran any and all applicable data on Weinstein’s auric imaging tech. What Semyon Kirlian had pioneered in 1939, Abraham Weinstein had revolutionized. Relating brain wave patterns to auric science was one thing, but technologically manipulating the effect was genius on a whole different scale.
    Weinstein was amazing.
    Almost feeling like a rat in a maze with the endless and exhausting online searches, a fringe article on astral projection managed to sniff me out and pull me along. I’m not sure Weinstein would ever have lined up the transcendentalists theory that many people, perhaps all, actually leave their bodies when they’re asleep—although he certainly would not have dismissed them. They believed a person’s consciousness or astral form leaves the physical body, but retains a connection with it, like an umbilical cord or radio wave. Once out, it can travel unbound along the astral plane. It literally had the entire universe as its playground. Time and space become irrelevant boundaries. And furthermore, it might very well be a natural part of REM sleep.
    I held my breath a little as a I put it into perspective point by point. Coma is the condition of a brain which is accompanied by dominant theta wave activity. Is that what Angel—I mean Carolina was; a projected mass of her own theta waves taking shape? Was it possible?
    It would mean either her or the goggles had one hell of a range. Maybe her brainwaves were putting out more than usual, trying to force consciousness to the surface. I was suddenly ashamed of myself, fantasizing about such a helpless creature. If I’d invented the world’s first functional pair of X-Ray glasses , I’d be on every sorority’s terror-watch list from here to California. I wished I could see her, but fat chance they’d let my fat-ass in. News reports had the doctors giving her around fifty percent odds , but with some head injuries it was a just roll of the dice. Her parents were already draining their own sick days being at her bedside and I wasn’t about to offer them any false hope. The goggles had never been tested on comatose patients and I’d need access to the rest of Weinstein’s lab equipment which was no longer available. The only other option was to pray that somehow she could reestablish contact, which there was no reason to believe was even possible. “Shit!” I never wished I was both wrong and right about something. So help me, if this turned out to be a matter of the whole mechanism just going freaky and zapping my brain with something that made me see shit that wasn’t real.
    God, please don’t tell me I’m that lonely and pathetic.
    But I couldn’t get her out of my head—or whatever part of me she was occupying. She’d tried to say something; I know it! Was she just dreaming?
    Or was I? I had to know.

*****

    The goggles tucked into my backpack, I marched right up to the nurse’s desk and asked to see her.
    “Her parents and other family members are with her almost ‘round-the-clock. You’d have to get their permission,” the nurse, not as hot as Carolina, said.
    Well step up, wonder boy. Just tapdance right into her room and tell Mom and Dad your dead man’s theory about scoping out their comatose daughter’s aura with your costume-prop Darth Vader goggles. “OK. Thanks.”
    The room door looked pretty scary I’ll admit—like a mouth that would chomp me in half and spit me out if it found me unpalatable. Inside, hushed and faltering, but audible, I could hear Carolina’s parents praying. In this case, her mother’s native Spanish was a universal cry that even the most ignorant in foreign languages could understand. I tried to look inside; I swear I did. But it was a no-go. My shoes became laced bear-traps and I just hovered before the little colored, plastic flags screwed to the room’s status plate.
    “Carolina,” her father whimpered. He talked directly to his daughter and in perfect English as he was still used to doing. Mom handled Spanish while Dad, English so Carolina’s bilingualism was assured. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere, I promise. The doctor’s say maybe you can hear me. I wish I knew if that were true. I’m not so sure I’d want you to hear everything I’m saying. You know I’m not like your mother; she pours everything she has into those rosaries and I kind of count on her to keep me in God’s good graces.” He paused and did a rocky swallow. “But I have a hard time staying hopeful. I swear, baby, I mean I swear I’m holding onto it with everything I’ve got; they say it’s the best thing you can do for your loved ones. But it feels so fragile, like if I give just the slightest inch, it’ll be snatched away. Like they’re going to tell us any second that we’re wasting our time, there’s nothing they can do. I wish I were stronger, Carolina...like you.”
    It all ended in a gurgle caused by hands blanketing a distraught father’s mug. I sighed in defeat, wanting to plop down on the floor. My knees were certainly weak enough to excuse it. Instead, I just ran my thumb under the backpack’s strap—you know, the one I’d use later to hang myself for being so stupid—and walked away.

    ****

    An hour of driving around proved to be a dumb idea. I always ended up coasting through a Dairy Queen or a donut shop and going home with my gut a few inches closer to the steering wheel. Wouldn’t you know I had a dozen jelly-filled and a giant malted cozied up beside me on the passenger-seat like a prom date. Both untouched, though. My mind was a million miles away and usually had to be somewhere in the vicinity for me to enjoy a junk-binge. It was important to break the thought cycle, get out of my own way and try to rationalize something that was intrinsically irrational.
    Without even realizing, I’d driven within a quarter-mile of the place where Weinstein had been rundown with no more consideration than a fly hitting the windshield. Funny where your mind takes you when you’re not even paying attention. They’d had news-cameras up here the day it happened. Nothing now but some police tape lashed around the nearby trees. I parked on the street and glared at the exact spot where he lay only 48 hours ago, choking on his own blood. Was I looking for the part of me left there? Maybe I thought I could retrieve it; only, I wasn’t sure I wanted it back. I’d done just about everything wrong that night. My description of the car was vague, at best, because of the lack of light and my petrified brain not focusing on the license plate. The most police managed to get were a few tire-skids, which weren’t going to be much help. I hammered my skull against the steering wheel, feeling sorry for myself until I couldn’t stand the stench of it anymore.
    Three donuts, chased by half the malt and, I was coasting through the recent campus expansion around William Paterson University. Twenty-six, fresh acres of grassy knolls and pretentious facades, including a new library. Why did I even consider it post high school? It was too close to home. What happened to that grand gesture of a jumpstart I had lined up? I’d planned one wicked Houdini—a sure fire nuke of any and everything that reminded me of who I used to be. I was going to lose fifty pounds, take some tae-kwon-do classes over the summer then head cross-country. The looks on people’s faces when I, the cool, mysterious kid from parts unknown strutted across the courtyard. I’d have a philosophy book under my arm, have a set of brass knuckles in one pocket and a pack of condoms in the other.
    Hell yeah!
    Of course, maybe I had a better chance of being struck by lightning, in the middle of a desert, while sharing a sundae with the Abominable Snowman...but I didn’t care. I would get as close as I could and never look back. I’d dare life to try and stop me! And no woman could resist me. I could have a woman like Carolina without...
    Carolina.
    I’ll be damned. Wasn’t she attacked somewhere around the new library out here? Only a day or so after Weinstein was killed. She was supposed to have been waiting for her ride and got waylaid by some thug. Goddamn! This sure was a brainiac move: driving out here when I’m trying to jettison the stressors.
    I idled in front of the library, eyeballing the cordoned crime scene and besieged by imaginary scenarios of what must have happened. Carolina standing innocently by the entrance, minding her own business then blindsided by some rectal flotsam with a hard-on for dope money. It made me sick. Truth told, I got salty enough to spit Alkaseltzer. Bringing it to a boil made made me need to hit something. It got so bad, I had to park and get the hell out of my car as I was primed to tear out the upholstery with my bare hands. I could see her so vividly. She was standing there, in her air of innocence, books clung to her bosom and completely clueless of the pending danger. She’s caught completely off-guard. Brutish, vise-like hands clutch her neck. She’s rattled in that bastard’s grip like a castanet before his fist flies downward, crashing into her and sends her head slamming into the unforgiving concrete. I could see it! It all happened right there! Damn him! I could see it all!
    I could see the... truth.
    Like a moth to a flame, I was lead to a bundle of bushes outside the cordoned area. My eyes groped the loosely tilled soil until the faintest sparkle captured them. I reached down and dug out a necklace that was, as best I could tell, pretty heavy in karats. On the back was inscribed, CAROLINA, MY LOVE FOREVER.
    My chest tumbled in every possible direction. And I knew the last time I’d felt it. It was the feeling I’d been grasping at for days. I booked back to the car and popped the trunk. I practically threw the tarp covering the goggles into the street, I went for it so fast. I strapped them on and whipped my head around like a busted compass. I practically sniffed the air like a bloodhound, hoping in vain, that my other sense could tell me something the feeling couldn’t.
    Nothing. The air was empty.
    My racing blood returned to a crawl and my balloon plummeted back to earth. My gelatinous-ass flattened against the side of the car and I stared at my size-twelves as if they should have some words of wisdom to share. Even if they had, I’m not sure I’d have listened. Thoroughly disgusted with myself, I eased upright and hammered the trunk closed.
    And my angel cometh.
    There, in all her radiance, was Carolina Reyes. Her effervescent astral form glowed before me like a shrunken star. My arms trembled as I struggled to keep them at my sides. The urge to hold her must have been ten times stronger.
    “Carolina,” I panted tearfully.
    She smiled.
    Just when I thought her astral incandescence didn’t get any brighter.
    “You’ve been with me the whole time, haven’t you? You led me here.”
    She didn’t speak. Or at least didn’t make any verbal note I could pick up. Rather she spoke with her entire self. That is how it felt. It’s like we were beyond words. Either these astral forms seemed to have more than one way of communicating, or I just had a rapport with Carolina’s that was like a direct line to my soul. She looked at the necklace seized in my trembling fist. “Le..., she mumbled.
    “What?” I said impatiently. I ached to hear her say something I could understand. So when she tried to speak I jumped on the moment. “My name is Leroy, Leroy Lofton.” I held up the necklace. “Can you tell me what this means? You wanted me to find it, I know. What should I do with it? Do you want me to bring it to you? I don’t know if they’d let me.”
    She stepped or hovered to within inches of me.
    “Leroy,” she said.
    I could have flown to the moon and back. She said my name! She knew who I was! I had gotten through! What a time for my usually fat mouth to dry up. “I...I...”
    I think even in her astral form she knew a fear-frozen loser when she saw one. She cupped my hand with the necklace and gazed at the cordoned area. Best I could tell, she was looking at something specific. Was there something else I missed? I knew I had what she wanted. There was nothing else there but strips of police tape.
    And I understood.
    Not an easy task, to break through the cement that encased my brain. Carolina reached for my face and moved closer. Her form seemed much more illuminated than before, more clear. Maybe I had tuned to her, moved into alignment with her. It was funny how the angelic brilliance of her astral form never blinded me, no matter how close she came. It must have been a different nature of light. Like my eyes only interpreted the true light that existed from within rather than absorbed the light from without. I like to think some of her light passed through me as she kissed me. There’s certainly no other way I can explain it. Something like that really can’t be put into words, only put into heart. That night, I was left holding the necklace and a swelling joy that lit me afire. Not just because my angel had spoken to me, but because it didn’t matter if she never did again. It was enough that I’d helped her. I sure didn’t expect it to be. But, bless my soul, it was enough.

*****

    I brought the necklace into the downtown Police station and to a detective Bill Wiles who was in charge of Carolina’s case. Stupid me just assumed I could drop it off and leave. No chance. Wiles grilled me for a few minutes, until he was convinced I’d just found it and wasn’t involved in the assault.
    After he traced the necklace’s purchase, Wiles went out to that midget mansion paid for with “questionable” money. LeShawn Rucker answered the door in a mild sweat. He’d thought for sure Wiles was the father of the sixteen-year-old girl he’d shooed out the back when he heard the doorbell. Rucker remembered Wiles as the detective who questioned him the night of Carolina’s attack. Wiles beat around the bush a little to bring Rucker’s guard down then presented the necklace.
    “Oh yeah,” the idiot said, “It was a gift for our three-month anniversary. Should have seen her eyes when I gave it to her; she lit up.” Then he got teary-eyed and said, “She’ll be glad to have back when she wakes up.”
    “A three-month anniversary,” Wiles said. “That’s cute. How long ago was it?”
    “About two weeks.”
    “Really? Because I traced the necklace to Roman’s Jewelry on Madison. According to their records it was bought on the eighteenth; that was barely a week ago. Jeweler’s a big basketball fan too. He remembers selling it to you on that day.”
    “Um, yeah that’s right. I’d forgotten the three-month thing and Carolina got upset with me. What guy do you know remembers stuff like that? I bought it last minute.”
    “Hm. The eighteenth was the same day Carolina Reyes was attacked, you know. If I remember right, you told me you hadn’t even seen her that day.”
    Rucker bit himself. “I-I didn’t. I had it delivered.”
    At that point, Wiles had to keep his cop’s lip-curl under lock-and-key, while Rucker continued to chew on his expensive athletic-shoe leather.
    “I thought you just said she “lit up” when you gave it to her.”
    From there, it all spilled out like a colonic. Rucker cried like the little rich bitch that he was and confessed to hitting Carolina during an argument. He fought with her that night at the library. His little charm-bobble didn’t work. She was still intent on going to the police and telling them all about the accident. Rucker wasn’t hearing it. He wasn’t about to have his future in the pros get smoked up like a blunt. They’d been arguing about that night driving home from the party. Rucker had been drinking and was well over the legal limit. Carolina had, at least managed to talk him into taking the less populated back roads home. She continued to beg him to let her drive, but Rucker was being a nuclear asshole. He even claimed it was her fault for distracting him, said it was she who caused him to careen into that Weinstein guy. Guess it’s always somebody else’s fault. I later wondered if she had to talk him out of backing up over the fat guy. I’m sure Rucker didn’t want witnesses. Anyway, there it was. Wiles found the car in the garage, unmoved since the accident. Rucker was too scared out of his tiny little mind to have the damage repaired. He said he didn’t mean to hurt Carolina, just wanted to make her understand. Well if the message was, “woman-beaters often come in pretty packages”, I’d say she got it.

*****

    I sat in the lobby for a straight hour. Even after I’d looked at the clock for the fortieth time, I still hadn’t worked up the courage to at least ask to see Carolina. They’d never let me in. Family was still keeping virtual round-the-clock vigil at her bedside. They’d heard about the break in the case, but my name hadn’t been mentioned. Since Rucker confessed to everything it didn’t look like they would need much more from me than my official statements. I wondered could I ever tell anyone about the astral form that visited me. It’d probably be a one-way ticket to a padded cell. Better that I be content that the truth came out and that Carolina and Weinstein had justice give them an early Christmas gift. The feeling suddenly waxed genuine. I decided to call it day and leave things as they were. It promptly seemed intrusive to try and see Carolina now. I didn’t want her mother feeling like a sideshow. I kept it simple and inquired at the nurse’s station on Carolina’s condition. I told the on-duty my name and that I was working for my school newspaper.
    “There hasn’t been much change,” she said. “She’s...
    “Get a doctor!” Carolina’s mother had zipped alongside the desk so fast it left me checking the floor for skid-marks. “Get a doctor,” she repeated.
    My guts dropped to the floor. Oh god, what had happened? In a heartbeat, a wave of nurses and two doctors within earshot rushed Carolina’s room. I sort of calmly rode the wave in behind as they ignored me. I damn sure kept my distance, but angled and shifted like a squirrel clawing his way up a tree. Peering through the harried white-coats and pastel uniforms, I was able to make out the face of Carolina Reyes.
    I completely fell apart.
    My knees felt like they were resting on stilts of jellied cranberry sauce. I would’ve fallen against the wall if I wasn’t sure I’d draw too much attention. This just couldn’t be happening.
    Her eyes fluttered and lifted open like aching bird wings. She’d muttered something, which sent her mother into hysterics. Smart woman, advancing on the moment. Looked like she wanted to draw Carolina out, rattle her to consciousness. Doctors practically had to wrestle moms away so they could check out their patient. It became a general bustle after a few minutes and I backed off. Boy, I could have flown out of that hospital right then, I was feeling so good. I might have to find a little corner to cry in if I wasn’t careful. And if I didn’t then, what I heard next might have surely sent me into a womanly fit.
    “Leroy?”
    It was faint, but I heard it. Somebody had said my name. Only one of them knew who I was. It was the on-duty nurse from the desk. She’d said my name. I had no idea why, but I always felt like I was about to be strung up when I heard my name mentioned from across a room. “That’s him,” the nurse said.
    Carolina’s mother trotted out and hoisted me by the arm.
    “Are you Leroy?” she asked.
    “Yes,” I choked.
    “Please come in, quickly.” She towed me into the room under some serious horsepower. Never underestimate the strength of a distraught mother. The others had parted like the Red Sea, opening a path directly to the bed. Moms was definitely running the place. She whipped me in front of here daughter and held me fast by the arm like she was worried I might try to make a break for it.
    My eyes bounced from stem to stern, groping for something, anything to focus on besides the woman, I now felt somehow, I’d violated. What I was I thinking? Playing around in someone else’s head like that! I was such a world class loser! I deserved what I got!
    Carolina looked at me in a way I couldn’t interpret. So I tried not to. Instead I just returned it and spent the rest of my energy keeping my bladder in one piece. The tingling waves I felt when she merged her hand with mine was like a tide of peace that, all at once, washed away my fear. And I thought, this is what angels do.
    “Hi Leroy,” she smiled softly.
    “Hi.”

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