The Way We Bared Our Souls Read online

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  ISBN: 978-0-698-13724-0

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  For Latham, Zoe, and Harper

  1

  IT FELT AS IF WE’D just been here, on this same dirt floor, within these same adobe walls, in this same spectral formation.

  But it had been a full week since the subterranean ritual, and everything had changed since then. For the most glaring example, I needed only to look around the ceremonial kiva at the stricken faces before me. Only four of us remained in the ghostly underworld of our initiation. Where Kaya, our fifth, had sat beside me on a blanket last Saturday night, there was now just a depression in the dirt. Kaya, the girl who felt no pain.

  Now she would feel nothing, ever again.

  What would Jay say? He had warned me of the consequences, but I hadn’t listened. He had entrusted me with his magic, and I had let him down. Could he have been completely wrong about me? He’d told me that I had a powerful soul, but now I just felt muted and buried, crushed by the earth above me. Maybe I’d never been equipped to lead my friends to better lives. I’d wanted so badly to be healed that I’d let myself get carried away—and had doggedly carried others with me. And we definitely weren’t noble Indians of the Southwest communing with the benevolent spirits of our ancestors. We were just four kids from Santa Fe High crowded around a fading fire in the New Mexico desert that served as our city’s suburb. And now we’d lost one of our own. I’d lost her. Me. My fault. Not Jay. Not his mystical coyote. Me.

  I was Kaya’s murderer.

  Across from me and through the thickening smoke, Ellen looked berserk—more jittery and unmoored from reality than she’d ever been in her burnout days—and this despite the fact that most of the drugs had been flushed from her system. Except for the ones she took for her incurable disease. Or rather, for my incurable disease. If it was still my disease. Confusing, I know, but bear with me. A lot of crazy things happened that week.

  Ellen’s bleached blond hair was tangled with sage and juniper from scrambling down the mountain the night before. The mud on her face had hardened, like the aging adobe slathered on every building in our city. I wrapped my Navajo blanket around her shoulders. She accepted the offering numbly, lost in her own anxious world. I almost wished she would lash out at me, as she used to when she was under the influence. Now, her distance felt unnatural.

  Not that any of this was natural. Death seemed the most unnatural thing of all.

  When Ellen adjusted her arms I saw the turquoise horse figurine she clung to. I looked down at the object I gripped in my own hand. It should have been a deer totem, but instead it was a shard of bone. Which, I didn’t realize until now, was drawing blood from my palm. And I was the one expected to save us?

  “Lo,” Thomas said, his voice muffled by his zipped-up hoodie, “you’re bleeding again.” Was it my imagination, or had some of the solicitude left his voice? As a child Thomas had been through a war, practically a genocide, and yet even he was shell-shocked by recent events. You can only see someone bleed so many times in a week without getting caregiver fatigue.

  “Here,” he said, offering me a fresh white towel from his backpack. I shook my head and tucked the sharp object back into my pocket. I didn’t want to soil something so pure.

  “Serves Lo right,” Kit said, prodding the fire with a stick. He had revived his old resentment. The joyful, manic energy he’d been cultivating for the past week seemed to have taken a sinister turn. He ran his fingers through his stubby Mohawk, which barely moved under the gesture. He also hadn’t seen a shower for a couple of days. We’d all been too busy trying to survive. Trying, and failing, to keep each other whole.

  “Leave her alone,” Thomas told Kit. But judging from his weak, exhausted voice, I could tell his heart wasn’t even in that small defense. Kit could probably shove me violently against the kiva’s sacred wall right now, and Thomas would scarcely budge. I deserved all that and more. Thomas knew me better than anyone else in the world at this point, well enough to know that he would be wise to be done with me. He’d been a foot soldier for a psychotic warlord, and I’d still never be good enough for him. We were both killers, but at least he could cite force and coercion as an excuse for his fatal mistakes.

  Judging by the buttery light filtering through the hole above our heads, the desert sun was finally rising. Kaya should have been waking up right now to the dissonant hum of her alarm clock. Her mom should have been in her bedroom to take her temperature and check for any cuts and bruises that might have accrued in the night. But now Kaya was beyond injury.

  My eyes climbed the ladder rungs that we’d descended to get into the ceremonial chamber the night before. We were buried together in this dark interior, but I could still see the peekaboo brilliance overhead. Another blue-sky day in New Mexico, big surprise. It was the Land of Enchant-ment, after all. I guess I couldn’t expect this climate to reflect the tragedies I created. Santa Fe boasted three hundred days of sunshine every year. I boasted one stupid decision to haunt me for the rest of my life. However long that might be. My days were numbered differently every day.

  “Please just bring her back,” I murmured, but to whom, I wasn’t sure.

  Then the opening darkened, and a pair of legs appeared on the ladder. For one ecstatic moment I thought they belonged to Kaya, but then I recognized the weathered hiking boots, the worn Levi’s.

  Jay.

  The ring of desert sunshine formed a halo around his head as he seemed to drop effortlessly from the sky. When Jay touched down I immediately felt more grounded. Maybe he could miraculously undo the damage
I’d inflicted.

  Jay quietly assessed the kiva’s inhabitants. “Where is your fifth?” he said. Ellen began to cry.

  “We were hoping you could tell us,” I said. I closed my eyes and tried to see Kaya’s face, but it was pushed aside by images of deranged coyotes and angry bulls, machine guns and burning men. . . .

  I felt a hand on my shoulder. Jay studied me softly. He seemed to understand my guilt, my fear. Our overwhelming loss.

  “You already know,” I said. He nodded.

  “It’s over, Consuelo,” Jay said. “It’s time to reverse the ritual.” I crumpled to the ground. My selfish experiment had reached its ugly, bitter end. Jay reached out to touch my quaking back. I raised my head. “It’s not just Kaya who departed our circle last night,” he continued. “You have all let your centers weaken. It’s time for you to reclaim your souls. Only then can you see your friend again.”

  See her again. Maybe we could resurrect her after all.

  Jay’s coyote trotted up from some dark recess of the kiva and licked my bandaged forearm, around the puncture wounds that she’d made the night before. I petted her absentmindedly on the scruff of her neck. I knew she wouldn’t try to hurt me.

  Thomas, Ellen, and Kit regarded me through the smoke, hungry for whatever wisdom I could deliver. It seemed they still saw me as the natural leader of our spiritual outfit, even though I’d failed them miserably. We were all suffering beneath our burdens, but right now the heavy, subterranean silence weighed on us the most. I had never felt more lost, more disconnected from people, from my own strength, from daylight itself. I took a deep breath and prepared to speak.

  “I got you into this,” I said, pulling a precious object from my pocket and extending my wounded, lifeless hand toward the flames. “And now I’m going to get you out.”

  2

  “HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN experiencing symptoms, Consuelo?”

  When Dr. Osborn finally removed his flashlight from my retinas, the exam room filled with white dots. I squirmed on the paper sheet that lay between my undergarments and the exam table, really wishing that I hadn’t chosen to wear my fluorescent orange underwear under my jeans to the hospital that morning. But I hadn’t expected this neurology exam to be so comprehensive. So full-body. After all, I wasn’t really sick. I just had weird headaches now and then. And shaky hands. And blurred vision. And sometimes shooting pain down my right arm that was so violent I had to stop whatever I was doing and envision rainbows and puppies to keep from throwing up. Okay, so maybe that did sound sort of bad.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “Maybe a couple of months now?”

  The doctor grunted. This wasn’t Dr. Sue, my usual pediatrician who still insisted on sneaking me a lollipop after appointments and who spent most of our time together pumping me for gossip from Santa Fe High School. This was a specialist—one totally lacking in bedside manner—and you had to take numerous turns and elevators through a labyrinthine hospital in order to reach his exalted offices. And somehow I didn’t think he’d care about my negligible love life.

  “Do you remember the first time you felt something might be wrong?” said Dr. Osborn. He was now (sadistically?) banging his rubber mallet against my bare knee. I resisted the urge to kick him lightly on the shin and blame my reflexes.

  The first time. . . . Jeez, that was hard to answer. I supposed it was over summer break. I was trying to swim laps when my legs started trembling in the pool. Or when my favorite trick hula-hoop suddenly began skittering to the floor because my hips couldn’t keep up with its rotations. Or when I stopped dancing solo around my bedroom altogether because my body no longer felt like my own.

  The backs of my thighs began to sweat onto the filmy white paper. Why did the doctor sound so foreboding? So concerned? I thought this appointment was just a precaution before I got too busy with junior year. I’d be taking the SATs this fall and needed to be at the top of my game so I could get good grades, get a good boyfriend, get into a good college, get a good job, have a good life, et cetera, et cetera. I didn’t have time for serious illness. I didn’t even have time for a head cold.

  “Lo?” Mom said. For a second I’d forgotten that my parents were there with me in the exam room. I wrapped my cheap, hospital-issue gown further around my back to ensure that my obscene underwear stayed hidden from all three adults. Mom sat in the armchair in the corner, twisting her hands together and looking at me expectantly. I’d spaced out for . . . some length of time—not an uncommon occurrence those days.

  “Sorry,” I said, glancing at her and then at my dad, who stood frozen next to her chair. He tends to turn to marble whenever he’s worried about something or is over-thinking his fatherly thoughts. “I was just . . . trying to remember.”

  Mom settled back in her seat but continued to fidget. Like mother, like daughter. I tucked my gown further beneath me and sat on my restless hands.

  “I guess when I first felt different . . . ,” I mumbled at Dr. Osborn, getting distracted by seeing my own reflection in his giant silver belt buckle. Only in New Mexico would your neurologist be styled like a cowboy. “Well, it actually wasn’t long after . . . Aunt Karine died.” I looked at Mom; as I expected, hearing her sister’s name had made her wince. It was our unspoken rule that we never mentioned Aunt Karine within our triangular family unit. But Mom quickly collected herself and waved at me with subtle encouragement. She looked so young, so pretty, so capable in the pink scrubs from her overnight nursing shift. I know it pained her that she couldn’t heal me.

  As I spoke, Dr. Osborn seemed to be preparing to listen to my heartbeat, but the cord of his stethoscope got tangled in his bolo tie.

  I forged ahead while he fumbled.

  “So maybe around the Fourth of July or so? I was making coffee in the kitchen and felt a sort of . . . spasm in my arm that made me drop my mug. And I’m not clumsy at all usually.” Dad raised an eyebrow. At least he still had his sense of humor. “Despite what some people think.” He winked at me.

  Then I didn’t like the pensive way the doctor was looking in my direction, so I started to babble. “The mug pretty much shattered on the floor. Even now, like three months later, I’m still stepping on shards of porcelain every once in a while, in my bare feet. Did you know that, Mom? I’ve tried and tried to clean it up. I think the Dustbuster must be defective. Guys, can we get a new Dustbuster?” I clasped my hands in front of my heart as if I were asking for a pony for my birthday. “Pretty please?”

  Mom nodded absentmindedly. The mug that I’d broken had been one of her favorites. I’d had it printed with a photo of the three of us and given it to her for Christmas one year. Dad had called it the Holy Caffeine Grail.

  Dr. Osborn seemed to have given up on my heartbeat. His bolo tie had cast too stubborn a web.

  “It’s not unusual,” he said, “for this disease to manifest first in loss of coordination.”

  This disease. He said it like it was an established fact. I knew it ran in families, but. . . . He must have noted the sudden look of horror on my face because he quickly backtracked.

  “I’m going to schedule you for a series of more-conclusive tests a week from Monday.” He made a note on my chart. I imagined it was a brainstorm about a new line of clinical wear that combined medical functionality with Southwestern fashion sensibilities. Lab jackets printed with Aztec designs. Fringed cowhide face masks. Hygienic paper shoes that could fit over cowboy boots and spurs.

  Okay, then. Monday after next. A Monday would decide my fate. Couldn’t it at least be a Friday, so I wouldn’t have to go to school the next day? Or even a Sunday, so I could go to church beforehand and pray to the Virgin Mary like Mom was always doing? I’d never prayed before, but surely it wasn’t too late. God, if you’re out there, please grant me a Dustbuster and perfect health.

  “Meanwhile, Consuelo—” the doctor said.

  “It’s just Lo,” I
interrupted, surprised by how irritated I sounded.

  I should say something about my name: Consuelo McDonough. We’re Anglo, not Hispanic, but when my parents came to Santa Fe years ago on their low-budget honeymoon, my mother embraced Southwestern culture to an extreme. She’s sort of obsessed with the Spanish missionary history of the city and never strays far from the kneelers of our local Catholic churches that the conquistadors founded. When we moved here from California when I was in kindergarten, I found that my name helped me fit in immediately. Santa Fe is about 50 percent Hispanic, after all.

  “Of course,” the doctor said, finally returning his rubber mallet and flashlight to his lab coat pockets as if he were a Wild West outlaw holstering his pistols. “Just Lo, then. I’ll make a note. Just Lo, until your next appointment, I need you to keep up with the vitamin and dietary regimen that I recommended, and don’t hesitate to be liberal with the pills I prescribed if you’re in pain. The steroids especially. Later we can talk rehab, support groups—”

  Dad cleared his throat loudly. Bless him. He’s a fire ranger, and he was missing work to be with me. I used to think his job was romantic. Then I got older and realized that it’s not exactly a privilege to be sent into raging infernos by the Forest Service. It actually sounds pretty hellish. Dad is part of an elite crew of “hotshots” who hike toward the flames and then dig a line to break the progress of the fire. I sometimes wish he had an office job. Pencils rarely burst into flames.

  “Right,” Dr. Osborn said. “There is plenty of time to discuss those matters. And of course it’s all contingent on next week’s paraclinical tests. Meanwhile, do you have any questions for me, Consuelo?” I didn’t correct him this time. I shook my head. I just wanted to get out of there.

  “Then you’re free to get dressed. Mr. and Mrs. McDon-ough, may I speak to you in the hallway for a moment?”

  My parents left with the doctor. In a daze, I began to reassemble my outfit. Faded black jeans. A vintage rock T-shirt that was always slipping off my shoulder. It wasn’t until my boots were laced up that I realized I’d forgotten to put on my socks.