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The soft cotton bedcover brushed against Rachel's legs and her shoes clacked against the wooden bed as she slid as far back as possible to fit her reflection in the dressing table mirror situated in the corner of the cramped room. Although her figure was nowhere perfect or how it used to be in her twenties, Rachel could still fit into some of her mother's flower print summer dresses and by applying the MAC concealer she pinched from her neighbour ? the big-bosomed, bird-brained bimbo's house ? she looked much younger than her forty-one years.
Ordinarily, Rachel contended herself with the small bathroom mirror in her ground-floor bedroom, but today she needed everything including her appearance to be perfect, which was why she climbed to the first floor to view herself in the largest mirror in the house. After adjusting her scarf around her neck, Rachel tried various expressions in the mirror until she found the one that conveyed appropriate sorrow at the untimely death of her elderly neighbour, Mrs. Jones, whom she had known all her life and whose children had been her friends and playmates while growing up. With her heart beating faster than usual, Rachel mentally rehearsed the lines that would steer the conversation in the right direction without arousing anyone's suspicion. Susan and Tommy she'd manage, she told herself. It was the smart one, the youngest of the three siblings, Hannah, she must be careful about.
The stairs creaked noisily as she climbed down to the ground floor. In her bedroom lay her faded grey suitcase packed with summer dresses and hats and sunscreen and flip-flops ? all the things she'd need during her five-day, six-night vacation to Santa Monica in California, where a two-storied modern beach bungalow was booked in her name.
Ms. Rachel Adams. The booking agent had only momentarily hesitated before confirming her booking over the phone when Rachel had explained that she'd be travelling alone even though the winning prize was a holiday for two people.
Of course, whether Rachel would actually be able to go on the holiday depended on how she conducted herself in the next hour or so.
As she grabbed the casserole she'd prepared for the Jones family, locked her front door and strode across her withered garden, Rachel drew her coat closer. The winter had been particularly harsh this year and she couldn't think of a better time to visit the beach As she paused before crossing the road, she closed her eyes momentarily and thought of the only time in her life she'd visited a beach. She remembered her blue dolphin-printed swimsuit, her mother's silver bird-shaped pendant that she fingered as she laughed heartily, the wondrous feeling of the sun's warmth on her back, her father perching her over his shoulders and carrying her into the sea until the waves lapped at her ankles and she begged him to turn back. But most of all, she remembered the curse that had befallen her that day, the curse that killed her parents three months later in a car crash.
As Rachel approached the Jones family's front yard, she noticed the open door of the black Ford Explorer with the New York number plates. Tommy and Lily Jones, both investment bankers, lived in New York and had driven here a week ago upon hearing the news of Carla's demise. As she passed by, Rachel glanced curiously at the polished interior of the car and nearly collided with Tommy, who just then emerged from the house carrying a carton that was blocking his vision.
?Oh, hi!? he piped on seeing her. ?Let me just...?
Towering at six feet two inches and carrying a weight of only 160 pounds since the day he graduated, Thomas Jones moved clumsily. He placed the carton on the back seat of his car and closed the door, dusting his hands off.
?Last of the lot,? he said to Rachel. ?My toys that Mum and Dad kept all these years.?
Rachel wondered what he'd do with the toys as Tommy and Lily were child-free by choice as they often liked to declare.
?Lily wants to leave early morning tomorrow, so we're packing whatever we can today.?
?It must be such an emotional time for the family. Selling the family house and all,? Rachel said, bringing her arms together and squishing her boobs against each other. Tommy couldn't help staring at her boobs through middle school.
?Yeah,? said Tommy, staring dreamily at the double-storey house Rachel thought was just short of ugly. ?But it's the right thing to do with all of us living elsewhere, you know??
His blue eyes flickered over her chest and then stopped at the casserole in her hands.
?Please come in, Rachel. How thoughtful of you!?
As Rachel followed Tommy into the house, she noticed the bald spot on the back of his head and visualized smacking it with a baseball bat and closing her eyes to the warm spray of blood.
Leaving Rachel to wait in the living room, Tommy called out to his sisters from the hallway and disappeared into the kitchen. Rachel sat on the beige sofa she had occupied several times in the past week during her condolence visits. There was a new scent in the air. Sandalwood, she realized with a jolt.
Suddenly, Rachel was thirteen again, dressed in a white T-shirt and faded blue jeans, her hair pulled back into a high ponytail, sitting nervously in the smoke-filled, dimly-lit room of the Indian palm reader. A wrinkled old woman of seventy, Sheela had studied Rachel's palm from every angle her fragile neck allowed, wagged a bony finger in Rachel's face and said the words that still crushed Rachel under their weight.
?You are cursed, my child. Cursed,? she'd said in a thick Indian accent. ?It's the curse that killed your parents.?
Rachel had glanced at her friend Stephanie, who'd simply shrugged at the palm reader's words.
?Wh... what curse?? Rachel had mumbled
?It will bring you ill-luck all your life. If only...?
?Yes...?
?Water,? she had growled, baring her broken yellow teeth. ?It started with water and with water, it shall end.?
And so, had begun Rachel's lifelong quest to end her curse. Only, she hadn't managed to summon the courage to spend a fortune out of the meagre savings her parents left her to buy herself an air ticket. Most of her savings were tied up in fixed-term deposits, earning her a paltry income each month, and to diminish her savings significantly for a trip to a beach city seemed foolish. No, she'd figure something else out, she'd told herself. And thus had passed many years during which many of Rachel's plans to ?acquire? the means to travel to a beach city had failed. Ill-luck. The curse, of course. How could she succeed when the curse hampered her every little effort, she'd thought, frustrated.
After her parents' death, Rachel had spent her childhood living with her maternal aunt and uncle, who lived in the same city and brought her to her home every weekend, where she played with Susan and Tommy, while Hannah watched warily from a distance.
As soon as Rachel turned sixteen, she returned permanently to her home on Pine Street. She never finished her education or got a job because what good could come of sticking your neck out when you've got a curse riding over your head? Beautiful though she was, Rachel never married because the marriage wouldn't work, would it, with a curse hanging over her head like a sword? And children, she should've had three by now but she didn't because what was the point when the curse would end each pregnancy with a miscarriage or worse, a retarded child whose arse she'd had to wipe all his miserable life?
Rachel had waited patiently to end her lifelong curse and today was about ensuring she got on the airplane to Santa Monica tomorrow. And then once she had ended her curse by dipping her head under the sea for a full minute while chanting the mantra scribbled on the crumpled paper the palm reader gave her years ago, which Rachel had memorized by heart, would begin her fabulous life of glittering jewellery and shimmering dresses, of foreign holidays to exotic locations, of a hard-bodied and fat-walleted husband and a lovely, large house, of perfectly well-behaved, high-IQ, tall and beautiful children, of socialite friends and Saturday brunches. Maybe she'd even start a small business selling the hand-made, sweet-smelling candles she's been making in her attic for many years now. Yes, Rachel would have it all.
?Oh, Rachel, my dear!?
Susan Abbott waddled into the room, panting from the effort of walking over from the adjacent room, where she had spent most of the past week stretched on the upholstered sofa with the TV blaring in front of her. It was as though Susan was determined on keeping her mother's memory alive by literally taking her place in front of the telly, stepping into her furry pink and white flip flops and attacking the remaining packets of her mother's favourite crisps with a ferocity that was unusual in Susan.
Rachel jumped to her feet eagerly and opened herself to a bone-crushing embrace from Susan. Wishing Susan would wash her hair more often, Rachel stood smiling while Susan held her for what seemed like two full minutes in an embrace and whispered words of thanks in her ear.
Rachel took a deep breath as Susan released her and moved away to occupy the adjacent chair, dropping her heavy bottom into it with a plop.
?You are so kind, Rachel,? she crooned, gesturing at the casserole that rested on the small table between them.
?Not at all. It's nothing,? said Rachel in her self-deprecating tone.
From the pocket of her dress, Susan retrieved a handkerchief and began blotting her eyes. ?It's been such a hard time for us. Knowing that Mum was alone when she... when she...?
?She loved you very much. She never said so, Susan, but I could tell you were her favourite,? she Rachel.
?Is that so??
Hannah stood at the threshold of the living room holding a tray with cups of tea, the usual icy expression on her face.
?Oh, don't be like that, Hannah,? said Susan. ?Mum treated all of us the same and you know that.?
?Yes, I know that,? said Hannah, placing the tray on the table and pouring tea for everyone.
Rachel mentally cursed her ill-luck, but there was no retracting from her words, so she decided to try another tack.
?Mrs. Jones was so proud of all of you,? Rachel said, looking at Hannah, who like her brother Tommy, was a high-achiever. A highly-qualified psychologist, Hannah Jones ? she'd refused to change her name after marriage, some feminist shit, thought Rachel ? was often in the news for authoring ground-breaking papers or winning prestigious awards or in connection with her husband Frank Morris, a famous criminal lawyer, who was as often in the news as his wife.
?It must have been a shock to you, finding Mum like that,? said Hannah, passing a cup of tea to Rachel.
Rachel's pulse quickened on realizing she'd never narrated the story of finding Mrs. Jones heaped at the foot of the stairs in a puddle of her own blood in front of Hannah. She wondered if Hannah was somehow trying to trip her up.
Rachel took a deep breath. ?It was the worst day of my life. To say it was horrible finding Mrs. Jones like that is an understatement. I loved your Mum. She'd been so much like a mother to me, you know, after my parents...? Rachel allowed her voice to quiver and break off.
?And what brought you here that day?? asked Hannah over the brim of her cup as she took a sip of tea.
?I'd brought her some soup for her flu?
?Mum often left the door unlocked, didn't she?? said Susan, dabbing her eyes with the hankerchief. ?She was a trusting woman.?
Trusting woman, my arse, thought Rachel as she remembered Carla during their last encounter. The woman was shrewd, ill-tempered and often spiteful. The only reason Rachel tolerated her and even humoured her was that she was certain one day the stupid bitch would prove to be useful. And she had been right.
?I called an ambulance and they were here within ten minutes,? said Rachel, sniffling. ?But it was too late.?
?We're so grateful for all that you did for Mum,? said Susan, leaning forward and patting Rachel's hand.
A thumping sound on the staircase shook the chandelier. A moment later, a thin, bespectacled ten-year-old boy burst into the room with a dusty blue and white toy airplane in his hand.
?Mom, look what I found! Can I keep it? Please. Please.?
?Don't you have an airplane at home, Luke?? said Hannah, exasperated.
?Yeah, but this one's so cool.?
?Ask your uncle. It belonged to him.?
?So, did Mrs. Jones tell you about the holiday in Santa Monica?? she asked.
?What holiday?? said Tommy, entering the room and sinking into the sofa next to Hannah.
?She won?? said Susan.
?She did!? said Rachel, beaming.
Susan's face fell. ?When was this? Mum never told me. Did you know?? she asked her siblings.
?It was two days before the accident,? said Rachel. ?And Mrs. Jones was down with the flu and with her arthritis, she didn't think she'd be able to travel.?
?Huh,? said Hannah.
?So,? said Rachel, gathering her courage, ?being the kind woman she was, she gave me the tickets. I refused, absolutely refused to take them, but she was adamant. I told her to give the holiday tickets to one of you, her children. But she said that...?
?What did she say?? said Hannah, staring at Rachel.
?Well, she said that each of you can afford your own holidays,? said Rachel in a small voice.
?Yes, absolutely,? said Tommy. ?You should go, Rachel.?
Hannah looked at Rachel for what seemed like an eternity and then nodded.
Fireworks were bursting in Rachel's head. She wanted to cry tears of joy. Tomorrow, she'd be on her way to a perfect, sunny beach. It made everything she did worth it, even throwing her weight against the fat cow to push her down the stairs.
Yes, Carla had won the holiday. But no, she hadn't offered to give it to Rachel. The stupid bitch was totally happy with letting the holiday go to waste, but she wouldn't give the tickets to her neighbour. So Rachel had slid into Carla's bedroom on the pretence of using the bathroom and pinched the tickets. The idea of murder hadn't crossed Rachel's mind at first, but the shrewd hag had suspected her. She was asking questions, too many questions and Rachel was afraid she might tell someone about the missing tickets.
The chandelier shook again with the thumping sound.
The croaky voice of Carla Jones, seventy-two, filled the room as the boy pressed ?Play.'
With snowballing dread, Rachel heard her own voice on the tape recorder, unctuous and conciliatory.
?Mrs. Jones, I brought you some soup for your cold.?
Rachel shot up. She knew what was coming on the tape recorder in just a few seconds. The stupid bitch must have pressed the record button on seeing Rachel's reflection in the mirror where she stood fiddling with a device on the dresser.
?Argh... I... I left milk on the stove. Sorry, gotta go.? With these words, Rachel hurried towards the front door as Hannah, Susan and Tommy looked at her in surprise.
?I don't want your soup. I told you not to come here anymore, you thief!?
Rachel broke into a run as she descended the porch stairs and crossed the lawn. She looked over her should just as she was crossing the road and saw Tommy running towards her with a fury on his face she'd never seen before. Hannah was right on his heels, barking into a mobile, calling the cops for sure. Susan stood at the porch, crying copiously, Luke's arms wrapped around her round waist.
Because she was looking over her shoulder, Rachel did not see it coming As the speeding lorry slammed into her body, Rachel flew into the air fifteen feet before landing face-down with a thud on the road, all the while cursing her luck.
Nathan sits in his doctor office as he waits for his test result, his mom tries to assure him ,everything would be fine, he force a little smile and nod. The doctor returns with the test results ,he took a deep breath and said here is the results of the test carried out on Nathan,his mom takes the results paper from the doctor, she looked at her son and asked if he was ready to see,he smiles and said yes, when they opened the results ,they both wore a sad look,the doctor told them Nathan had just a month left to live,his mom asked if anything could be done, the doctor told her the cancer in Nathan body could not be treated anymore. When they got home,he told his mom not to cry,he makes a joke, his mom asked him how could he joke about such serious issue, he smiles and tells her,he still had a month. At night Nathan wrote all the things he wants to do before his last days, he told his best friends about it,at school when the school bullies tries to harass him ,Lisa defended him,she asked the bullies if how they would want to treated after knowing they had a month to live, she told them Nathan had just one month to live and he should be treated with much love, everyone present in the locker room felt sad after they heard this, Nathan asked his friends why they told Lisa about his death ,his friends told him they were helping get closer to his crush, they didn't thought Lisa will tell the whole school. When Nathan got home,Lisa came to pay him a visit, she said she was sorry for announcing his condition that way,he smiles and thanked her for defending him,she told him, he could see her as a friend,she said after hearing about his illness, she felt sorry,Nathan smiled and told her ,he doesn't need anyone pity,he said everyone would die one day,the only different is that he would be going earlier. Lisa asked if he had plans for things he wants to do before his time comes,Nathan picked up his note book were he listed all the things he wants to do.first on his list was to be the male lead in Romeo and Juliet, lisa told him he has to audition for the character, at school Nathan pass the audition and was chosen as romeo,during the rehearsal he fell I'll,the director insist Nathan should be replaced but he refused, the day on the Romeo and Juliet play production came,Nathan acted as romeo while lisa was his Juliet. After the play,lisa asked how he felt acting as romeo,he told her romeo and Juliet really loved each other, he wish he could die with his Juliet ,but too bad he won't get her before he goes to the afterlife, lisa asked him who he likes,he asked if she would help him get the girl,if he tells her she nods,he smiles and said in a sweet voice"what if you were the one ?would you date me? She replied yes,he told her, he had a crush on her since 4th grade,he tried everything then to get her attention, but he wasn't lucky, he told her ,it seems death is helping achieve what he never thought he could,she ask if dating her was on his to do lists,he replied yes. Nathan and lisa started dating, everyone at school treats him well,even the school bullies became his friends, he told Lisa that the third thing on his list was the kiss,lisa asked him to close his eyes for 3seconds,when he was about to open his eyes she gave him a surprised kiss,she asked if he likes it ,he blushed and said the only thing he liked was the taste of her strawberry lip balm. He decided to go camping with lisa and his friends, they all went to the zoo together, he went fishing with his grandpa, Nathan also joined his mom and grandma in the kitchen to prepare the dishes for thanksgiving, when they were all gathered,he stood up to make a speech, he told them this was the last thanksgiving he would be celebrating with them,little rose asked why he said so,he told her,that he was going on a long trip soon and he doesn't want anyone feeling sad about it. Lisa parents invited him over for dinner, her dad asked if nathan had any interest in playing golf,nathan said he had always wanted to play golf,lisa dad asked if he would want him to tutor him,nathan said yes,lisa dad taught him how to play golf and also how to drive,when he got home he met his mom knitting a coat for him,he asked if she could teach him,so he could knit hers,so she would always remember he would be with her when she feels cold and alone,he hugged his mom and told her not to worry about him when his gone. Nathan and his friends went on a Friday road trip,went clubbing ,he even visited the cinema with lisa,they ate popcorn and cried when watching a sad movie,he organized a costume party for his school mates,had sleepover with lisa and his friends, they all went on a double dating trip,he went to dance lessons with lisa and attended yoga classes with his mom. At night his mom put him to sleep as usual, she told him she would miss this when he's gone,he smiled at her and said she could put his cat to sleep every night,he made her promise to look after herself when he's gone,which she did. At school,lisa asked if he had anything left to do on his list,he brought out a photo of him and his father at Kauai island at Hawaii, he told her he wish he could spend he's last days at the beach with her,lisa booked a plane tickets for the two of them to Hawaii,they arrived at Kauai island, nathan went hiking with lisa,they went surfing, they both went on a twilight tour,watched a movie,went on a date. At the beach ,lisa asked why he wanted to come to the beach,he told her he wanted to spend sometime alone with her,he wants to be in a place were there is no worries, no pain,no sadness, a place were he won't be scared to closed his eyes and journey to the world beyond, he asked lisa to tell his mom he loves her and help him apologize to her for been a sick boy,he told her he was tired,she asked if he wanted to sleep?nathan replied yes,she made him lay his head on her laps and told him to sleep,so the pain could go away.
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