People didn’t fade when they got called in.
It was more like they unraveled. Like they were slowly being taken apart and put back together somewhere else. It was a joyful moment usually. Ecstatic. Anna had watched it happen before. She’d hugged someone as they came apart in her arms.
The day that James unraveled, Anna was standing with him on the porch. They’d just come back from a walk.
“Anna,” James said in a strange voice.
She turned to him—his face was shocked, he was staring at her.
“James,” she said, looking down at his shimmering feet.
“Anna.” He rushed toward her. He grabbed her arms. “You’re …” He was staring at her hands. At her fingertips. They were shimmering, too.
“Oh my God,” Anna said. She backed away from him. “No …”
Peaches was at her feet. She picked him up.“No,”she said. She ran to the pillar by the front steps and wrapped an arm around it.“No!”
“Anna …” James was trying to pull her away from the pillar, but his hands were collapsing. “Sweetheart, we’re going together.”
“James—it won’t be like this!”
“I know.” He got his arms around her waist. They slipped through. He put them around her again.
“We might not even know each other, there.”
“Come with me, Anna.”
It wouldn’t be the same, wherever they were going. And they weren’t going anywhere good—Anna knew this was true, because this washerstory, and her story was never going to be good. Poor James. His arms slipped through her waist again.
“Anna,” he said, “I love you. Come with me.”
“No!” she screamed, and Peaches fell through her disappearing arms. “It won’t be us!”
James was reaching for her. He didn’t have hands. He didn’t have legs. The sun was still shining in his hair. “I was meant to be with you,” he said, his voice thready. “Wherever it is we’re going.”
Anna imagined him staying, but imagining it didn’t make it so.
So she imagined herself staying. Her feet immediately felt more firmly grounded.
“Anna!” James looked horrified. There wasn’t much left of him, but he could see what she was doing.
She reached out a solid hand, imagining he’d catch it and become more solid.
But he shook his head. He was almost gone. “Come with me.”
He disintegrated.
James was gone, and the story was whipping around Anna, pulling at her ankles.
She imagined herself solid.
She imagined herself staying.
Who was to say what she was meant for? She’d been born too long ago. She’d waited too long with no direction. She’d given most of her memories to herself.
Who was to say where she belonged?
Thiswas life.Thiswas real.
