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It couldn’t have been more than a couple minutes before I lost consciousness, but the seconds seemed to expand as I tried—and failed—to find a way to make him stop.
When the darkness finally closed in, the pain and the pressure disappeared with the light.
When the light reappeared, I could still hear him grunting behind me. I could still see the dirt and gravel beneath my face. Everything else had gone numb.
To my amazement however, I rolled away from his grasp.
To my horror, he didn’t even notice. Because the girl with the dark, messy curls lying face down in the dirt didn’t move at all.
I’d seen those Dateline specials about people who had out-of-body experiences. Near-death experiences. I quickly decided that’s what was happening.
“GET OFF ME,” I screamed, launching myself at him.
My fists landed on his back with all the force of a butterfly wing.
“Stop, stop, stop,” I cried. I knew he couldn’t hear me. I wasn’t sure I could even hear myself.
The girl on the ground—me—wasn’t putting up a fight anymore. Her lips were a deep lavender. There was a long line of drool coming out of one corner of her mouth. Her eyes weren’t closed, but they weren’t open, either.
The distant sound of a vehicle on the interstate was what finally made him let go. It wasn’t close, but there was no cover out here, aside from some scrubby sage and the shallow creek.
I watched as he finally stood up and inspected his hands then walked back toward the blue Kia.
He didn’t look back at the body on the ground.
As I heard his tires crunch along the road, I waited for it to happen. For my soul to reunite with the lifeless, dusty body in the dirt.
I sat down and got as close as I could to my body. “He’s gone,” I whispered. “You can wake up now.”
I imagined reuniting with my body, focusing as hard as I could on what it had felt like in the moments before everything went dark. I lay down next to myself, hoping that all of a sudden, I’d feel the pain again, the desperation to breathe. That was what happened in the Dateline episode. You saw yourself outside your body, and then wham, you came roaring back. Or some kind of loving being appeared to tell you it wasn’t your time to meet God yet.
“Come back,” I whispered. I thought about my mom, already home from work and wondering why I hadn’t beat her home. Why I hadn’t texted. Whether I wanted two or three pupusas.
My phone was lying in the dirt beneath me. I could see one corner, pinned underneath my thigh.
It was still and silent.
Just like me.
4. MEGHAN
Oquirrh Mountains, Utah
1 year before
It took all night for me to find my way back to my body in the dark forest.
The thumbnail of a moon provided just enough light to get me back to the rocky gully. From there, it was an impossible guessing game of sagebrush, crumbling limestone, and hundreds of scrawny pine trees that looked exactly alike.
There were no stumbles or falls to slow me down as I moved through the darkness. But as it turned out, being a ghost didn’t come with a maps app. And it didn’t make me any less afraid of the dark. The night was full of snapping branches, and unearthly muttering noises. I screamed in terror and frustration every few minutes. The sound didn’t echo.
Despite my best efforts to move like the spirits I’d seen on TV, my feet stayed on the ground, in the lace-up coral flats I’d been wearing earlier.
Above me, the stars were brighter than I’d ever seen them. Everything else surrounding me was swallowed up in inky blackness.
I’d always enjoyed camping—the few times I’d gone anyway. Still, I was quick as anyone to park myself around the campfire or zip myself up in my tent when the sun set. Nature was beautiful, at a distance. Up close, it was usually terrifying.
With every new twig snap or rustling branch, I froze. Or screamed.
