18 Thoughts (My So-Called Afterlife Book 3) (23 page)

“I’m sorry, sir,” Nate said, hopping off the bike and hanging his head low. “This is all my fault. It was my idea.”

Dad ignored him. “Get inside right now!” He pointed to the front door. He pointed a lot when he was angry, which wasn’t very often. Usually Mom did the yelling.

Both my parents followed me inside, Dad the last one in, slamming the door in Nate’s face with full force. “I don’t even know what to say right now. This behavior isn’t like you. We raised you better than this. Just… go get ready for Mass. We leave in an hour.”

Anxiety pulsed through me as I remembered my plans for the day. “But Conner was going to meet me for 11:45 service.”

“Really?” Mom asked, her tone saturated with surprise. “Well, call him with the change of plans. Then you’re grounded, from your phone and from all social activities. Outside of church, school, and work, you’re home. Understand?”

“Yes, ma’am. For how long?”

“How long do you think you should be grounded?”

I frowned. She’d never asked me that before, but I guess I didn’t usually do things to get grounded, either. “Two weeks?” A girl could try, right?

Mom’s cackled response startled me. “Try two months!”

My heart froze. “Mom, that would mean being grounded on my birthday. You’re seriously going to hold me hostage even after I’m a legal adult?”

“She has a point, Elizabeth,” Dad interjected, his face less red now.

Mom took a deep breath. “Fine. You’re grounded until your birthday. Go take a shower, Olga. I don’t want to see your face until we’re leaving for church.”

Quickly, I did the mental math. Forty-four days. That was longer than Jesus spent in the desert! But I didn’t think now was a good time to argue my sentence.

“Yes, ma’am.”

I knew I should call Conner and fess up about not being able to make our date, but the thought made me want to puke, and I wanted him to come to church. Sending a text to meet at ten instead, I got in the shower and washed off the sand. I wished washing away my guilt were just as easy.

“Why the change in plans?” Conner asked with a yawn, stretching. Bags under his eyes dominated his face, his shaggy, surfer-style blond hair pushed away from his forehead by a pair of Ray Ban sunglasses. He dressed in gray swim trunks and a black T-shirt, hardly church attire, but I guessed I should just be thankful he came. Seeming to notice my ogling, he said, “What? I came dressed for our date afterward to make things easier. I hope you remembered your swimsuit underneath that flowery sundress of yours. You got my text, right?”

I still didn’t have the guts to tell him the truth. “It’s too cold for swimming.”

“That’s why we’re sailing. We can’t stay off the water together forever. I already missed joining the sailing team this year. Don’t worry, I already checked the weather forecast. Nothing but clear skies ahead.”

Clutching my purse, I almost breathed a sigh of relief because fear over sailing with him again could give me a way out of my date without telling him about last night. But then I remembered he doesn’t give up so easily. Time to come clean.

“So, guess what I did last night?” Ugh, I was trying to keep my tone light, but I realized too late it sounded like taunting.

“Cried yourself to sleep over picking Nate for your first date instead of me.”

I eyed the cross above the entrance to the church, praying for a little help.

Conner seemed to notice my anxiety and was quick to try to end it. “Hey, joking. You said to guess, so I did. What’s up?”

“I got myself grounded.”

The ache on his face was palpable. “How?”

“I snuck out.”

His relaxed posture stiffened, and he knew.

Our eyes held, frozen, the color of his irises turning black—an eerie contrast against the blue sky. Staring at him, I felt like I was spiraling down into a bottomless chasm. He stumbled forward, like someone pushed him from behind, except nobody was there. The bell rung, signaling the start of service, but the sound seemed like a million miles away. I couldn’t tear my gaze away from Conner, couldn’t form words. The face I saw before me was a monster, unrecognizable. Simultaneously, it was as if Conner noticed me for the first time. He bared his teeth, then kicked my feet from under me, my back landing with a heavy thud on the grass.

“Enough Mr. Nice Guy.” He hoisted me up and threw me over his shoulder, heading for the parking lot toward his Ford.

Screams desperately clung to the inside of my throat, but I couldn’t force them to my mouth. I couldn’t understand what happened. Was he kidnapping me?

He threw me into the passenger side of his hybrid, then ran to the other side and hopped in. I tried leaving, but he yanked me back when I was halfway out the door, then kept my head down with a heavy hand. “Don’t worry. I’ll show you how a real man operates,” he said, turning the key in the ignition. “You’ll forget all about that little punk, Nate.”

Suddenly, there was a hand grabbing Conner, shoving him outside the vehicle. Another hand punching him repeatedly, screaming, “Did you really think you could get away with this? I’ll kill you and go to jail forever before I let you hurt her.”

Nate
. Either he stalked me or could hear my thoughts. I didn’t care how he knew I needed help; I was just happy to see him. But then Conner threw a punch and hit his face so hard that he flew backward. I rushed to Nate’s side, and Conner took the opportunity to flee the scene, wheels squealing as he drove out of sight.

I bent over Nate. “Are you okay?”

“I’ll live,” he said quietly. “But I can’t promise the same for your best friend if I ever see his face again.”

Tears streamed down my face as I shook my head. “Whoever that was, that wasn’t my best friend.”

“Maturity has more to do with what you’ve
learned from the past than your age.”
—Nate’s Thoughts

’d been taunted by nightmares ever since Conner disappeared that day in the church parking lot, exactly forty-four days ago. In my dreams, his teeth were bared in a grimace, lips shrunken back. Empty eye sockets peered down at me before the feeling of his cold, hard fingers flinging me over his shoulder came. He’d bring me to a dungeon, where he revealed his true self. Flashing a smile of black decay, he’d tell me, “We’re all reduced to this eventually anyway.”

Then I’d wake up, sweating profusely and in a fit of anxiety. I didn’t understand any of it. Part of me wondered if a demon had possessed him, and I wanted to ask a priest about it. But were demons even real? I’d never heard Father Jamie talk about them. I’d been reading a book on spiritual warfare we stocked at the Bookman, but for some reason, even though I always believed in angels, I thought demons were the inventions of Hollywood. Now I wasn’t sure. Now I was pretty sure demons weren’t only real, but that I’d even caused one to take notice of me at one point and put Conner in danger. I knew this because of the journal.

I didn’t know where the Daily Meditation Guide came from, only that on the day Conner disappeared it wasn’t on the desk in my room, and the next day it was. Funny thing, there were journal entries written in my handwriting that I had zero recollection of writing. More curious, the entries were dated in the future, next June to be exact. One spoke of the vast empty hole in my heart exactly Conner Anderson shaped, how Nate didn’t fill the void, and I’d never fully let go of Conner. A later one sounded like I was trying to talk myself into waiting longer, to be more patient for answers about Conner before I embarked on a mission concerning an Alpha File 120 so it wouldn’t fall into the wrong hands. Plain as day, I just
knew
those wrong hands meant a demon. I just didn’t know who to talk to about it. Of course, I told Nate; he’d hear about it in my thoughts anyway. But seeing as neither one of us had any new memories to share, we were road blocked.

My only solution was to protect myself as best I could, so I started carrying my pocket-sized mass book around with me and wearing my rosary beads wherever I went. Those kind of things did a lot to solidify my freak status at school, but I didn’t care anymore. Praying every spare moment I had, I was so distracted that I practically knocked everything down I came into contact with. I knew I only saw the tip of the iceberg that was my problems, and God alone saw the big picture and he worked slowly, but I wished he would hurry up with some answers already.

The one silver lining was my parents released me from my grounding sentence after just two weeks. I’d done some research on my computer concerning how long teens should be punished, then presented my findings in an essay: Most experts agreed that longer than two weeks would not teach the child anything because consequences for poor choices only worked if the teen was able to get back the ability to make wise choices.

If Conner hadn’t gone missing, I doubt they would’ve gone for it, but I got their sympathy vote. Not that I used my freedom for any more make out sessions with Nate. Instead, the Jedi Order accompanied me to all of Conner’s most commonly visited haunts—the nearby music store, the beach, the coffee houses, the pizza parlors, the bowling alley—in search of him, hoping he’d show up eventually. But finding nothing, we’d each return to our homes feeling more miserable each day. The police weren’t exactly out there looking for him very hard either, since Conner had turned eighteen in June. My parents helped Mr. and Mrs. Anderson search whenever they could, not that Conner was their favorite person these days after what he did to me. But they wanted the
real
Conner back, too.

In an effort to lift everyone’s spirits, Nate suggested we all go firewalking for my eighteenth birthday. His idea was the only thing that’d made me smile since Conner left, even if it did mean another possible grounding sentence, since we were skipping classes. Nic picked me up for school as usual. No sleeping in so we wouldn’t raise suspicions with my parents.

“Good morning, sunshine!”

A wave of hunger hit me. “Can we stop for some food on the way to the firewalking place?”

“Change of plans,” Nic said, searching for something good on the radio. “When Nate looked online last night for the closest place to firewalk, he realized everyone would need parental consent, since we’re not all legal like you, and that’d be kind of hard since we’re skipping school today. Plus, not everyone has money to burn. Get it, burn?” She laughed at her own joke.