After Ever (17 page)

“Solace room,” Ellie provides helpfully.

“Right. How
did
I get here, by the way?”

Her narrow shoulders dip up and down. “I have absolutely no idea. If you would like I could let you rest for a year or so. As I said, solace rooms are quite difficult to come by.”

A
year
or so? “No, no, that’s all right. I, uh, should probably get back to Sam now. He was kind of in trouble.”

“Yes,” she sighs. “He often seems to be.”

Something in her tone has me studying her face very carefully. “Do you know him?” I ask.

“Know who?” She blinks owlishly.

“Sam.”

“Sam…”

“My guide!” I burst out.

“Oh, that Sam. No, I am afraid not.”

“Then how did you know–”

Her hands clap briskly together, cutting me off. “Well,” she says brightly. “Best be getting on, my dear Win. I have other things to do, you know. Stand up, stand up, and face that wall.” She points to the wall directly in front of her, opposite of the one I tried to use to make a Jump Door appear.

I stand up. My gaze locks on the blank wall, my muscles tensing as I wait for a door to appear. Absently I wonder what color it will be – and what the color will signify.

“Now,” says Ellie, stepping beside me. “Click your heels together three times and say there is no place like home!”

I glance at her sideways. “Are you kidding me?”

“Well yes,” she admits, chuckling softly. “Yes I am. I do like you, Win. I just knew I would.”

“I… like you too?”

“Close your eyes,” she says, abruptly all business. “Quickly now. I do not have all decade.”

I pinch my eyelids together so hard I see white spots. I feel a faint pressure on my shoulder – Ellie’s fingers. They burn through my shirt, so hot I gasp and try to squirm away from them.

“Good luck!” she cries, and the fingers that were holding onto my shoulder splay flat across the middle of my back and shove with alarming force.

I fly forward and instinctively throw my hands up to brace myself, expecting to slam into the wall, but the wall is gone, replaced by a dark void that swirls in endless circles and spits bright, angry looking sparks.

I do not tumble gracefully through the darkness this time so much as I plummet head first. My hair tangles around my face, blinding me as I free fall towards the bottom, kicking my legs, flailing my arms, and shrieking bloody murder as my body spins like a bullet.

There is a flash of blinding light and suddenly I’m jerked back, as if someone has put an enormous hook through the back of my sweatshirt. The whip lash of stopping so quickly snaps my head up, and my arms fall limply by my sides as I dangle, helpless as a worm.

I open my mouth, prepared to shriek to the high heavens, but before I can utter a single syllable I am released. I land hard on my feet and crash forward into something solid that catches me right in the gut. Groaning, I stumble back as the room spins dizzily around me. My new surroundings come into focus slowly, just like they did before in the tree house.

Someone bumps me from the side and slides away, muttering an apology under their breath. I rub my eyes and blink, struggling to clear the blurriness from my vision. I see the pool table under the green tinted lights first. The outdated juke box in the corner second. My ears pop, and I hear Jon Bon Jovi’s
Livin’ on a Prayer
wailing through the speakers.

The room is impossibly crowded. I take in the men with their leather jackets and sullen expression. The women wearing painted on dresses and mile high hair. My gaze flashes to the neon signs on the walls, and my noise recoils at the acrid scent of beer and smoke and smoothing a little too sweet as I realize where I am.  

Holy crap.

I’m in a bar.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“Sweet hair.” A man leans towards me and tugs at one of my dreads. He is older than me, late twenties or early thirties, and the goofy smile on his face combined with the half empty glass in his hand tells me is far from sober.

I duck my head and turn away without responding, edging my way down the long wooden bar that runs the length of the room, sucking in my belly as I go to avoid being squished. A few people glance my way before looking elsewhere, their expressions strangely vacant. One woman with curly blond hair teased high in a ponytail blows a long stream of smoke right in my face. I cough, choking on the smoke, and flip her the bird without breaking stride. She chuckles and twists around to murmur something to the man standing behind her. More people press in around me. I shimmy under arms stretching out for drinks. Jump over legs. I am searching for an exit, but the only sign that catches my eye is a blinking red one that points to the ladies room.

I burst into the bathroom choking on smoke and one guy’s particularly strong cologne. The door swings shut behind me, cutting off Bon Jovi mid wail.

It is brighter in here away from the heavy cloud of smoke and dim lights. My eyes take a few seconds to adjust. The floor to ceiling red tile is hideous and makes me feel like I’ve stepped inside someone’s stomach. Two women are crammed together in front of one of the four sinks, their lips puckered and their eyes extra wide as they carefully apply mascara. I manage a thin smile when our eyes catch in the mirror.

“Hi,” I say.

“A little underdressed, ain’t cha?” asks one of the women, looking pointedly at my plain t-shirt and jeans.

“I guess.” I wonder how they can breathe in their skin tight blue dresses. Fabric that tight has to cut off circulation somewhere. Probably to their brains. I don’t have to pee, but I duck inside one of the stalls anyways and lock the door firmly behind me. Taking a moment to clean off the seat with a few wads of toilet paper, I perch on the very edge of it and stare hard at the tile floor.

Where the hell did Ellie send me? This isn’t one of my memories. I have never been to a bar in my life, especially not this sleazy hole in the wall. Could Sam have come here to escape the Unknown? I bite down on my lower lip and draw it between my teeth to worry the silver hoop with my tongue.

Maybe. Maybe he had no choice but to create a Jump Door, even if it meant Craven would be able to follow. I pinch the bridge of my nose and close my eyes as I try to reason it all out. Nothing is adding up or making sense. If Sam did somehow manage to get away from Craven, why would he pick a place like this? So he could get lost in the crowd? Still, this doesn’t strike me as somewhere Sam has ever been before. So he wouldn’t have been able to create a Jump Door to get here… right? Damn it. I strike out with my right fist and hit the toilet paper dispenser in frustration. I’m no closer to finding Sam than I was before.

Someone knocks hard on the door, jolting me from my thoughts. I sit upright as I automatically say, “This stall is occupied.”

The knocking turns to pounding.

“Are you deaf? I said someone is in here!”

The entire door begins to rattle on its flimsy metal hinges. Furious, I spring to my feet, unlock the latch, and throw it open so hard it slams into the next stall over and bounces back. I stop it from hitting me by throwing up my left hand. It slaps hard against my palm, but I barely notice the sting. I am too busy staring down the girl who can’t take a hint.

Only slightly taller than me, she has olive skin and sleek black hair that looks natural as opposed to my out of the bottle color. Her features are delicate and refined and would have been quite pretty, if not for the sneer that twists her mouth to the side.

“Are you Winnifred Coleman?” she demands. She has a thick accent and hits the last part of my name hard, making it sound like Winni
fredi
.

“Who wants to know?” I cross my arms and lean into her as a renewed sense of confidence washes over me. I may not know about Solace Rooms or Jump Doors or where Sam is, but I do know how to hold my own against a chick with a bad attitude.

The two women in the skin blue dresses are still hovering around the sink. One look from Sneer Face has them fighting each other to be the first one out the door.

“My name is Francesca and my father he own this bar,” says the girl, tossing back her hair. It slips behind her shoulders, revealing a sparkling red top. Her dark eyes narrow to slits. “You are not welcome here Fresh Dead,” she spits.

Fresh dead? That’s a new one. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I said you is not welcome here!”

“Yeah, I got that part.”

“You will leave
now
,” she hisses. One heavily ringed finger jabs at my chest. I slap her hand away, not hard, just enough to tell her I don’t play those sorts of games. She gasps as if I have struck her across the face. “You dare touch me?”

“Listen Fran, I’m just trying to find my friend. I didn’t want to come here. I don’t even know where here is.”

“You are at Carlitos,” says Francesca, is if it should be obvious.

I strikes me suddenly that I am talking to another dead person. For all she appears to be a regular girl with a bad taste in clothes and a snotty attitude, Francesca is really a
dead
girl with a bad taste in clothes and a snotty attitude. At least I think she is. The rules of the After are still pretty hazy. Am I in the past, or the present? If this is Sam’s memory, does that mean this girl knows him? Or is she a memory within a memory, like the people I saw when Sam and I were walking through my hometown? Not dead, but not alive either – just recreations to fill a void.

“You do not listen! I said, you have to leave.” Francesca uses both arms to push against my chest and I don’t think, I just react.

My hands shoot out and grab her by her spindly arms. I shove her backwards into the bathroom counter and then hold her there while my face hovers an inch from her own. “Listen, bitch. I don’t know what is going on or who you are or how the hell I even got here, okay? All I need to know is where I can find Sam. You got that?”

Francesca strains against my grip, twisting left and right. I hold fast. If I can pin down fifty pounds of wriggling five year old, I can subdue one skinny girl. She releases a string of words in a language that sounds like Spanish. “You should not be here,” she says finally, breathing heavily as she resorts back to her accented English. “You must leave!”

I shake my head. “No. Not until I find Sam.”

Her eyes flash. She mutters something under her breath and manages to jerk one arm free. I let her go, hoping she has calmed down enough to give me some answers.

“You said I was Fresh Dead,” I say. “What does that mean?”

Her expression turns to one of thinly veiled disgust. “You are so Fresh Dead you do not even know what Fresh Dead means.
Si
, you must leave.
Ahora
!
Ahora
! Now. You leave now.”

I roll my eyes. “Would you stop saying that? I am not leaving until I find Sam. Can you get that through your thick head? If you want me to get out of here so bad why don’t you help me? The quicker I find Sam the quicker I leave.”

Her lips purse as she considers it. Finally she gives a hard nod and sighs. “Fine. I will help you find this Sam. Who is he? Your boyfriend?”

“
No
,” I say quickly. My cheeks flush. I hope she doesn’t notice. “He’s my guide.”

“You have lost your guide?” Her eyes widen. “How did this happen?”

I am halfway through retelling the story of how Sam and I came to be separated when Francesca wraps her hand around my wrist and brings one finger to her lips. “Shhh,” she says. “We cannot talk here. Many ears,
si
? Follow me, Fresh Dead. I will keep you safe.”

I start to tell her my name is Win, but the fierce glare she tosses over her shoulder seals my lips. Staying close, I follow her as she leaves the bathroom and weaves through the bar. Music pumps all around us, playing some sort of upbeat rap song I don’t recognize. People crowd in from all sides, their bodies bumping and grinding with the music. The floor is slick under my feet with sweat and spilled beer. Someone pinches my butt. A ridiculously tall woman with ebony skin and a head full of elaborate corn rows slams into me from the side and spins off without bothering to apologize. I cling to Francesca’s arm and let her half pull/half drag me through the throng.

We fight our way across the entire bar to a set of narrow steps. Francesca climbs them quickly, no easy feat in her four inch stilettos, and I stumble after her. At the top of the stairs is a door which she unlocks with a gold key procured from a necklace I had not noticed her wearing before.

She motions for me to go through the door first and stands in the threshold for a moment, her eyes flicking back and forth before she closes and locks it behind us. “Sit,” she says.

I take a quick glance around the room. It is small, more like an attic really. Someone has taken the time to decorate it with bright throw pillows, colorful rugs, and huge movie posters. I stop in front of the first poster. A kid my age stands next to a futuristic car, checking his watch. I am not so oblivious to pop culture that I don’t recognize a young Michael J. Fox, or the title of the movie:
Back to the Future
. I think I even saw it once upon a time. My eyes drift down the long line of posters. Some titles I recognize, some I don’t.
The Goonies. The Breakfast Club. Sixteen Candles. Dirty Dancing. The Princess Bride. Ghostbusters. Splash.
All famous movies, yet nothing new. Nothing recent. It makes me wonder, but I don’t ask. Not yet.

Francesca flops theatrically into one of the four bean bag chairs scattered across the wooden floor. It folds up around her, giving her the absurd appearance of being swallowed. “First of all,” she says, peering up at me beneath her heavily gooped up lashes. “You know you are dead,
si
?”

Forgoing a bean bag chair, I sit cross legged on the floor and prop my chin in my hands. “Unless this is all some kind of bad dream I haven’t woken up from yet,” I say dryly.

Francesca frowns.