Chapter 17

After school, Nick met Emily on the bleachers before practice. He hopped up to where she was sitting. Tiny tendrils escaped her messy bun and danced around her temples. He studied her as he sat down. “I wasn’t sure you’d be here.”

She shrugged. “Don’t you need to be with her?” She grimaced. “Cat. Research partner?”

“Em…” Nick put his arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “I didn’t have a choice in partners.”

“I guess not.” She gave him a small, forced smile.

“Tell me what’s new?”

She wiggled her feet, showing off her sneakers with pictures of cartoon characters on them.

“Besides those,” he said with a laugh.

“Homecoming.”

He frowned. “That’s weeks away.”

“It is, but there’s a lot of planning for the dance, the floats. Everything.”

As she talked, her feet moved, and he couldn’t help but look at the characters and wonder where she found her shoes.

He grimaced, not realizing what all went into planning homecoming.

He opened his mouth to speak, but Emily continued.

“The lunch meeting didn’t go well.” Her hands fluttered with her agitation. “I had the DJ all lined up,” she cried. “And someone, I won’t name names, hired a different one. Now we have two DJs!”

Nick tried to look attentive. Emily was stressing about a DJ, while he worried about his soul in another life.

“This will be a real mess to fix,” she said.

Nick listened in sympathy, knowing there wasn’t a fix to his mess.

****

Nick arrived home to his father’s red-hot chili for dinner.

His parents were having wine, and Nick looked longingly at the burgundy liquid, wishing he could have a drink too. The alcohol might take the edge off the weird vibes from his dreams and visions and even give him more energy to do his homework later.

“We didn’t get a chance to talk about what you thought after listening to the tape last night,” his mother said, picking up her drink and studying the contents before taking a swallow.

His parents leaned forward expectantly, waiting for his reply. Tell the truth or fudge. In seeing his parents’ fatigued faces from running back and forth to check on Grandma, he decided to fudge a little to not add to their worry. “I honestly don’t remember it.”

And as much as he wanted their help, this was something he had to do himself. It was his problem, not theirs.

“That’s what I thought. It was from the concussion,” his father said, flourishing his spoon over the chili.

Nick pushed a few remaining beans around his bowl. “Coach harps on us about wearing helmets.”

“Scary stuff.” His father shook his head.

“So what about that girl?” his mother asked.

Nick chose his words carefully. “She’s had a hard life,” he said and paused. “When she was little, her parents left her at an orphanage because they couldn’t take care of her.”

“That must have been terrible.”

“She said her adoptive parents are good to her.”

“And…What about knowing each other before?” His father leaned over a bit as if stretching out his words.

“I’m not sure where that came from.”

“Does she know you were talking about a boy who lived in France when you were younger?”

“Yeah, I told her.”

His parents waited for him to continue. He pushed away his bowl, full and satisfied. “She said something about how little kids fantasize about stuff like that.” That wasn’t exactly what she said, but they didn’t need to know the full extent of their conversation. He decided to switch the topic. “How’s Grandma?”

“Much better.” His mother smiled. “She asks about you, you know? But I told her how busy you were.”

“I’ll try to see her soon.”

“She’d like that.”

Nick pushed back from the table. “I’ve got homework. Thanks for the chili, Dad. It’s the best.” He fanned his mouth, indicating it was beyond hot.

His father grinned.

Once in his room, when his homework was finished, he had a chance to sort through what he knew: One, he thought he had been a soldier named Jean Claude when he was a kid. Two, his parents were concerned enough to have him exorcised by a priest. Three, he remembered bits and pieces of dreams and visions about Jean Claude. But did that prove anything? Four, Jean Claude Rousseau was a real person, a famous movie director, so he could have heard that name or read about him somehow. Five, Cat remembered he left her to die. He wasn’t entirely sure about this reincarnation or rebirth stuff, but he knew to his very core he wouldn’t have deliberately left someone to die. Many innocent people died during wars.

A rap on his bedroom door. “Night!” his parents said in unison. After his parents went to bed, Nick snuck downstairs, uncorked the cabernet, and gulped some from the bottle. He waited for the warmth of the French wine to spread through his body before going upstairs to bed and slept dream-free.