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Show Inside Out, 41 J: can't automatically find people, J: can't follow people around just out of curiosity. J: It takes a lot of will J: to stay engaged with things there, J: to follow people. J: But when I'm attached to someone there's a sort of current J: like a river current or like the tide, J: thaf s easy to ride, that keeps me near them, if I want J: I can hang here because I spent so much time here before. J: This was one of m y . . . haunts. © Goosebumps rose on my arms and I looked around for the source of the breeze. Wait a minute. I had felt goose bumps like this before, a long time ago. It was the night I was in the hospital for my appendix when I was twelve. I had been so lonely and the sheets had smelled so strange and the lights in the room had made it hard to sleep and my I. V. machine was broken so that the alarm kept going off and the nurse had to keep coming in and resetting it. After a while the nurse had seemed angry with me because of the I. V. and I cried. And then, right after the cranky nurse left the room, I felt my arms raise in bumps and a sort of electric breeze, and I knew that Mom had come to sit with me. After a few minutes of resting against my invisible mother, I was able to fall asleep. And now, it felt the same. It really felt like I was with a ghost. I rubbed my arms and looked again around the library. He must be here, right here with me. Or how else could he talk to me this way? Same bookshelves. Same table and carpet. Same empty chair across from me. But he was here, somehow. |