Ghost Time

the bright side, I didn’t get in any trouble, because of that. Because it wasn’t just my phone, and then everyone was talking about it for the rest of the day. Like as soon as the bell rang, the halls were insane : people shouting, and all the teachers had to come out, telling everybody to get to class, because everyone was freaking out. I knew then—I knew it was a sign from Cam. I mean, I have no idea how he did it, but that was the first time. The moment after that wave hit, I turned around and I thought, What if Cam wasn’t kidding? What if he was actually telling the truth?

SUNDAY, APRIL 3, 2011
    (TWENTY-FOUR HOURS EARLIER)
    5:04 PM
    I’ve been having episodes again. I had a fever all weekend, drawing in tongues—that’s what my grandmother called it. Not Gram, my mom’s mom. No, it was my dad’s mom, Nanna. She said I used to throw fits, drawing, the way some children threw fits, kicking and screaming on the floor. She said it wasn’t normal—I heard her, telling my dad that. She said I should see a doctor, a specialist, and I heard my dad try to play it off, asking her what sort of specialist treats drawing in tongues? Really, Mother, it’s not epilepsy, he said, and she goes—I’ll never forget this—Nanna goes, Don’t be so sure.
    Of course I didn’t know what epilepsy was at the time, and I could tell it wasn’t nice, what she was saying about me, but it’s one of my favorite memories about my dad, because I heard him sticking up for me. I’ll always remember him saying, Mother, Thea’s artistic , and Nanna didn’t say anything for a minute,thinking about it, and I could hear ice being dropped into a glass. Then she said, She’s got a bad head, Michael, and Dad goes, Oh, please, Mother. Enough with the bad head, and I heard her lift her glass, mixing the drink, taking a sip. Then, Mark my words, she said, and I swear, it sounded like a curse. I was about four or five, and hearing that, their entire conversation, I almost blew my cover, pretending I was the CIA’s youngest girl spy ever, crouching on all fours, hiding behind the couch in Nanna’s sitting room. It took every ounce of self-control I had not to get up and march into the living room, because I was just like, My head didn’t do anything bad, so don’t say that!
    Seriously, I got so angry, because I didn’t understand what a bad head meant, and I was trying to be so well-behaved, too. Every time we visited Nanna’s house in Chicago, where she lived in this huge apartment on East Lake Shore Drive—I’m talking like twenty rooms, the place was so big. And of course my mom stayed home, in New York, making up some excuse, but she’d send me off with my dad for long weekends, always telling me to be on my best behavior. I know why, too, because this other time, I heard Nanna tell some friends of hers that my mother was very pretty, but she simply wasn’t cultured. I remember hating that word, cultured , because I knew it was being used against my mom, and against me, too, or at least half of me.
    Also, it’s like Nanna had all sorts of wack ideas about what art was and wasn’t. Seriously, she used to love to say, Imagination is a wonderful thing—just so long as you don’t get carried away. She said that all the time, and I was about eight or nine when it finally occurred to me, and I asked her, point-blank, Then whatis the point of imagination, if you don’t get carried away? Then she told me I was impudent , and I didn’t know what that meant, either, but even then, I knew, deep down, she was afraid of my drawing, how I could get so lost in my own world.
    After I got my first camera, I found out she didn’t consider photography art, not like painting and sculpture are art—fine art, she always said, photography is not fine art . She said, Thea, pay attention. Because if you paid attention, you wouldn’t need to take a picture of every last thing, now would you, dear? Nanna said people were taking pictures before they’d taken a moment to look at what was right in front of them, all these special moments they were trying to capture for all eternity. Well, how’s this for irony? After all her talk about remembering, after all her rants, Nanna lost her memory. Alzheimer’s.
    That’s what I was thinking, holding my pencil in my hand, when I finally heard him: Thea? Thea… yo? I didn’t hear him before—I didn’t hear Cam saying my name, three, four times, and then I about jumped off my chair like, Oh!