Meridian

Prologue

The first creatures to seek me were the insects; my parents cleaned the bassinet free of dead ants the morning after they brought me home from the hospital. My first word was "dead."

After age four, when I stepped out of bed one day and popped a giant toad like a water balloon, I never again turned any lights off.

For all of my sixth year, I slept sitting up, thinking I'd spot the dying coming toward me.

There were times when it felt like my insides were full of broken glass, times when the souls of the animals passing through me felt too big, too much. I'd open my eyes in the morning and peer into the glassy gaze of a mouse on my pillow. Death never became my comfortable companion.

I didn't have nightmares about monsters; I wasn't afraid of a thing in my closet. In fact, there were many times when I wished they, the dying, would hide under my bed instead of burrowing into the pile of stuffed animals by my head.

My mother hugged me, told me I was special. I'd like to think my parents weren't revolted by me. But I'll never forget the feelings apparent in the glances they exchanged over my head. Worry. Fear. Repulsion. Concern.

My first chore was to clean up the carcasses. My second was to make the bed. I'd don rubber gloves and pick the dead up. My hands grew calloused from digging so many graves. We ran out of room in the backyard by my fourteenth birthday. When I was too ill to do it, my dad stepped in and removed them, always with thinly veiled disgust.

I trembled my way through the days, constantly sleep-deprived, chronically ill. My stomach always hurt. Low-grade headaches constantly thumped a slow tempo. Doctors labeled me a hypochondriac, or worse; still, they never found causes for the symptoms. The pain was real, the cause a mystery. They suggested shrinks. Perhaps I was one of those children who required lots of attention. I'd catch my mom staring at me—she often started conversations, only to break off and leave the room.

With each moon phase, each month that passed, the animals got bigger. Soon, they came not only at night but during the day as well. At school, kids whispered my nicknames: Reaper, Grave Digger, Witch. Other names I pretended not to hear. Adults ostracized me too. It hurt.

As I got older and stopped trying to bond, I came to the same conclusion as everyone else: I was weird. A freak. A sideshow act.

When my brother, Sam, was born, I kept a vigil in his room. Intent on cleaning up the dead things before he woke. I focused on making him feel like he wasn't alone, that I understood how scary this world could be. I wouldn't let him suffer my fears; he'd be normal in my eyes. By the time he was a month old and the only dead venturing near him came because of me, I retreated.  

  My parents pretended it didn't matter. That nothing ever died around me. That our backyard wasn't a cemetery. If anything, they acted like I had a talent. A gift.

If we had any extended family, I didn't know them. The exception was my namesake, a great-aunt who sent me a birthday quilt every year. My world was, and is, me and death. It's a lonely place to live, but I thought things were getting better.

My name is Meridian Sozu, and I was wrong.