I dropped.

The last thing I saw, before a metal bar snapped off the scaffolding and flew through my throat, was one of the faces I had painted on the ceiling.

Screaming. There was screaming all around and not just human. Metal—the scream and grind of metal against metal for seconds, then gone. Nothing breaking or snapping this time, only meeting. Meeting for earsplitting seconds in a fast hot sparking touch and gone. We flew. The car rocketed forward. I opened my eyes again onto bright sunlight after the tunnel’s blackness. We twisted, rose, turned. A fresh gust of screaming from the children in our car. We went up up up, almost stopped, then fell into the intricate loop and swing of the roller-coaster track.

I looked at James. His hair was flattened against his head. Staring straight ahead, he wore a crazy adrenaline smile. As we sped along I kept watching him, trying to find in his face what had been palpable all day but not clear until now. The moment he turned and looked at me, I knew: I no longer loved him.

It was my eighteenth birthday. James had suggested we go to Playland to celebrate. It had been a wonderful day. We were leaving for different universities in two weeks and had never been closer. But now I knew we would not go beyond those two weeks. No matter what we’d said about writing and calling and Christmas vacation isn’t so far away… I no longer loved him.

As the roller coaster curved and fled down the track toward the now visible end of the ride, I let out a sob so strange and violent that it sounded like a bark.

“Do you know what I love about you?”

We sat on a bench eating cotton candy and watching people pass by. I pretended to be busy working a piece of the sweet pink gunk off my fingers and into my mouth. I didn’t want to know what James loved about me, not now, not anymore.

“I feel famous in your arms.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. I just feel famous when I’m in your arms. When you’re holding me. Like I mean something. Like I’m important.”

“That’s a really nice thing to say, James.” I couldn’t look at him.

But he took the cotton candy out of my hand and turned my face to his. “It’s true. You don’t know how much I’m going to miss you next year.”

“Me too.”

He nodded, assuming we were thinking the same sad thoughts, and that made me feel even worse. I felt my throat thicken and knew I was about to start crying. So I squeezed my eyes closed as tightly as I could.

Instant silence. IT was huge after the roar of the amusement park ride. When I looked, thirty-year-old James sat in the bay window across the Crane’s View bedroom watching me. All of the dolls were gone. It was once again the room I had shared too briefly with Hugh Oakley.

“Welcome back. What’d you learn on your tour?”

“All those women were me. The little girl flying, the painter, me with you at Playland… All lived different lives but they were the same… person inside. And the only thing they thought about was themselves. They were all total egotists. Were there others? Have I lived other lives, James?”

“Hundreds. They would have shown you more of them but you’re smart—you saw it with the three most recent.”

“And all of the people in them were connected.” I touched my ten fingertips together. “Shumda was Frances’s boyfriend. The little girl went to his show. And the woman painting the fresco was Lolly Adcock, wasn’t she?”

James nodded and said sarcastically, “Who tragically fell to her death just before the world recognized her talent. She died in 1962. Miranda Romanac was born in ‘62. The little girl died in 1924. Lolly was born the same year.”

“You were involved in that scandal about the fake Adcock paintings. And Frances owned a real one.”

He pointed at me. “So did Hugh, but didn’t know it. Those four pictures of the same woman he had? Lolly painted them when she was studying at the Art Students League.”

“They’re paintings of the little girl who fell at the theater, aren’t they? What she would have looked like if she’d lived and grown up. Lolly thought she was imagining them. That’s why I felt so strangely about those pictures. Like I knew the woman in them even though I’d never seen her before.”

James winced and drew a short harsh breath. “How do you know that?”

“How? For God’s sake, James, what do you think I just went through? What do you think all this is all about? Don’t play games. I thought you were here to help me.”

“No, you’re here to help me. Miranda. You’re here to get me the fuck out! I’m not here for you—I’m here for me. Let me go free, please! I’ve done everything I can. I’ve shown you what I know. You knew about those paintings; you knew who the subject was. I didn’t. Don’t you see? I’m done. I’ve given you everything I’ve got. So let me go now. Free me!”

“Why is all this happening to me now? Why suddenly now?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Where is Hugh now?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who am I?”

Leaping up, he started toward me, furious. “I don’t know! I’m here because I was supposed to tell you what I knew. What I know is, you’re reincarnated. Everything in all of the lives you have lived is interconnected. Everything. And each time you’ve lived you cared only for yourself. The girl in the theater was a bratty, selfish kid. Lolly Adcock used people like toilet paper. You… Look what you did to me, even after you knew you didn’t care anymore. And Doug Auerbach. The guy with the video camera who came into your store and hit you. You broke up Hugh’s marriage because you were selfish and you wanted him.… Always you first, no matter what.”

“Why did they make you come for me? Who are they?”

“Miranda? You all right in there?” McCabe’s voice through the door made both of us turn. James gestured toward it.

“Your friend’s waiting.”

“Who are they, James? Just tell me that.”

Lifting his chin, he slowly twisted his head to one side, like a confused dog.

“Miranda, open up!”

“I’m okay, Frannie. I’m coming.”

James’s voice was a high plea. “Please – let me go.”

Without looking, I opened my left hand. Lying on my palm was a small silvery-white stick. Written on it in perfect brown calligraphic letters was James Stillman.

It began to smoke. It flared into rich flame. Although it burned brightly in the center of my hand, I felt no heat or pain. It was hypnotic. I couldn’t take my eyes away. The flame danced and grew and spread up my arm. I felt nothing.

Someone said my name but I only half heard the man’s voice. James? McCabe? I looked up. No one was there—James was gone.

Then pain came like a roaring explosion. My arm was agony. I screamed and shook it, but the flame only ate the wind thus created and blossomed upward. My skin went red, orange, molten, and shiny as oil.

But from somewhere inside, from someone I was but had never known, I knew how to stop it. Sweep the fire away like a live cigarette ash. With my free hand I brushed it and the flame that devoured my arm slid slickly down and dropped onto the floor like some kind of jelly.

The door behind me banged open and McCabe was there, pulling me by the collar out of the room. I could barely move. My arm did not hurt anymore. I wanted to watch as the flame spread across the floor, caught on the throw rug and jumped to the bedspread.

“Come on! Come on!” McCabe jerked me and I stumbled backward into him. The bedroom smoked and burned, flames rising high off the blazing bed, licking, blackening the ceiling.

As Frannie pulled I knew what had just happened to me but could not frame it clearly in my mind. When James asked me to free him and without warning I felt the stick in my hand, I was the other person. The one who had conjured stick and flame from nowhere. The one who had lived all the lives and understood why. The one capable of hearing impossible noises in Frances Hatch’s building. The one I would soon know too well and fear.