The Extraordinaries

Chapter Eight: Emilie

When I wake, I'm still in the car, and it's raining even harder, turning the windows silver so that I can't see the trees around me. I shiver; I wish I'd thought to bring a jacket. Switching on the windshield wipers, it becomes clear that I'm going to have to wait out the storm from wherever I am now. It's coming down much too quickly to block it out.

I pull up my knees, curling into a ball. I don't remember pulling over and falling asleep, but there's a lot that I forget these days. It's hard living on my own, having to be my own source of comfort. It's not like it was easy in the first place, but at least when I was a teenager I had my family and Kayla to help me when I started breaking down.

I imagine that I'm in the back of Kayla's truck, listening to the soft trills of her voice as she sings me a song. I imagine her hand, stroking my hair, whispering words of comfort. I imagine her arm around me, the pulsing of her heart reaching me from the other side of her ribcage, unspoken words hanging in the air between us.

It doesn't help. That's how I know what they say about me is wrong: if I were truly crazy, I would feel as if Kayla were really here rather than just a blast of cold air. If I were crazy, I would feel better.

Instead, I rock back and forth, letting the pain escape my body in the form of sounds. Tight little screams that rocket against the windshielf. Moans and yelps and long grumbling shouts.

All because my friend from secondary school and I lost touch.

Most women of my age, twenty-five, are starting to put their lives together. Most women my age have jobs and boyfriends. Some are married. Some, like my sisters Svea and Catrine, have children. And then there's me, Emilie, screaming like a baby, a mess of a human being.

An Invalid. That's what they called me when I was eighteen and my mom finally decided something had to be done about me. Kayla was off at university, but I couldn't get out of bed. Finally, I was going to be fixed.

Invalid means nothing, though. They'd never seen a case like mine, not one of the thirteen doctors my mom dragged me to before giving up. Doctors who stared at me like I was a freak, a medical specimen of some kind. They'd never known someone who cried with no obvious pain, who was shaken by tremors that came from inside, who spoken of feelings beyond the simple happy and sad we all learned in primary school. All they did was make sure I would never have to work and say they were sorry.

No one cared about the fact that I was in pain. No one cared that fixing me would mean more than an end to my family's suffering.

There's a knock on my window, and I jolt upright, hitting my thigh bone of the steering wheel, sending aches into my bones. I grit my teeth, inching the door open a crack so I can see the man outside, a guy in his mid-thirties wearing a red raincoat that makes him look like a children's cartoon character.

"Excuse me," he says sharply. "Why are you parked in the middle of the road?"

My eyes widen. "The middle of the road?" I still can't remember, though I dig through my mind for some image of me growing too tired and giving up right there on the freeway.

He nods. "That's right, Miss. Are you..." He glances around wildly as if searching for something. "Are you intoxicated?"

By now, the inside of my car is being spattered by a torrent of water, and I want nothing more than to slam the door on this man's face and go back to my panic attack, but I don't. I don't answer his question, either, just let what tears I have left roll down my face, all of them at once.

The man looks frightened, but he doesn't leave. Instead, he reaches a slim hand through the crack the door leaves and grabs my own. "What happened, Miss? Were you in some kind of accident?"