After Ever (22 page)

“Weird,” I finish for him for him when he trails off. “It’s really weird.”

“Well, yeah.” He shrugs helplessly. “It is. Especially since you’re… Never mind.”

“Especially since I’m Fresh Dead?” I say, arching one eyebrow.

Sam scowls. “Who called you that?”

“Francesca. And the guy at the bar who wanted to sell me to the highest bidder.” Oh, Peter. I wonder what he’s doing now. I almost feel sorry for him, now that I know he will be trapped in Carlitos for an eternity. Almost.

“They shouldn’t have said that. It’s a derogatory term,” Sam says, still frowning.

“Like when Draco called Hermione a Mudblood.”

“A what?”

And Sam says
I’m
out of touch with good movies. “Never mind,” I say, echoing his earlier words. “So what next, oh wonderful guide? What other exciting adventure do we get to embark on next?”

“That was not an adventure, that was a – Win, what’s happening? What are you doing?”

The sudden alarm in Sam’s voice sends little pings of fear racing through me and all I can think is
what now
? Was dragging Francesca out of an evil bar, shooting an Unknown in the face, and rescuing Sam not
enough
? Is there some kind of competition going on I don’t know about? A “let’s see how much we can make your life suck after you die” contest?

I follow his horrified gaze to my hands. I lift them up in front of my face – and see Sam’s face right through them. I’m turning invisible. No, not invisible. I’m fading, inch by inch.

“Sam?” I jump to my feet. He does the same, making a wild grab for my arm, but it disappears before his fingers can make contact. “What’s happening to me? Sam, what’s going on?”

“I – I don’t know.” His face is white as a ghost, his gray eyes huge. “Win, hold on to something.”

“With what?” I snap. My arms are gone. So are my legs. I am still standing, but only my torso and head are visible. Cold is creeping over me, as if my disappearing body parts have been plunged into buckets of ice.

Sam lunges forward and tries to wrap his arms around what remains of my body, but he is too late. There is nothing left to hold on to. With a little shriek, I vanish entirely.  

CHAPTER TWENTY

As quickly as I vanished into thin air, I reappear. Like one of those magic tricks where the woman goes into a box and reappears across the stage I have been transported, leaving the tree house behind completely. The only difference? The magician’s assistants knew where they would end up.

I have no idea where I am. Somewhere outside and in the open. On some sort of bluff, if the waves crashing viciously one hundred feet below me are any indication. I take a hesitant step forward to peer over the edge – and scramble back in sheer panic when rocks crumble under my feet and ping off into the frothy white surf.

“You would not die, you know,” a familiar voice calls over my shoulder.

I whirl around, not surprised in the slightest to see Ellie standing calmly behind me. At this point, I doubt I will ever be surprised by anything again.

She smiles at my lack of reaction and links her arms in front of her. The slim white dress she wears rustles in the sudden breeze and her hair – now long enough to touch halfway down her back – sways gently. “If you fell,” she continues, glancing past me to the edge of the cliff, “your body would be slammed against the rocks until every bone in your body snapped in half and you drowned, but you would not die as you did when the ice gave way beneath you on the lake.”

“Did you bring me here?” A wasted question. Of course Ellie brought me here. Who else could have?

A smile blossoms across her face, drawing her lips back to reveal her teeth, except this time instead of being white and perfectly aligned they are scattered through her gums and stained a mustard yellow. “I was feeling nostalgic for the sixteen hundreds,” she says, noting my disgusted expression. “Not a good look for me?”

“No,” I choke out, trying not to gag. “That’s totally gross.”

Ellie nods sagely. “Just think about how the people in the seventeenth century felt. I rather thought you would have liked that time period.”

No toothpaste? No hot water? No bathrooms? No thank you. “Why would you think that?’

“Your hair.” Ellie plucks a coiled strand off my shoulder and twirls it between her slender fingers. “They did not have brushes either. Or at least, the commoners did not.”

I pull my hair free and scowl. “They’re called dreadlocks.”

“Is that what they are called? I rather thought you had simply forgotten to brush your hair for a very, very long time.” She sighs. “I told you there were other means of travel in the After. Layers, my dear Win. Everything is wrapped in layers. For example, when you came here what was the first thing you took note of?”

“The first thing I took… what? What are you talking about?”

“Answer the question,” she says, her mouth tightening.

“The bluff,” I reply quickly, caught off guard by the sudden cruelness that twists her lips. Again, I feel an irrational surge of annoyance. Can nothing here be simple? Can nothing be easy? I had enough problems when I was alive; I don’t need any more to add to the pile now that I’m dead.

Ellie twirls in a slow circle and her dress spins out around her, lifting slightly to reveal knee high purple socks and the ugliest shoes I have ever seen. She whirls again and then stops, breathless and laughing, to face me. “Yes, yes, the bluff. But what now? Uses your senses,” she urges, spreading her hands. “All ten of them.”

Ten? I’m pretty sure there are only five, but I’m not going to be the one to burst Ellie’s bubble. She is definitely unstable in an I-like-you-one-moment-but-I’ll-kill-you-the-next sort of way. “Uh… The air smells… salty?”

“Is that a question or an answer?”

“An answer. The air smells salty. And my skin feels damp from the sea and…”

“Yes? What else, what else?” she asks when I hesitate, her eyes locked with feverish intensity on my face.

“And the sun feels warm. And the earth is hard under my feet.”

“Oh that sounds
heavenly
,” she sighs. Her lips quirk and she winks at me. “Heavenly? Get it?”

I don’t, but I nod anyways.

“Now,” she says, clapping her hands together. “What have you come to talk to me about today?”

“I didn’t come here to–”

“Why, I simply cannot remember the last time I scheduled a private appointment. This had better be good, young lady.”

“But I don’t –”

“Ah yes,” she says, tapping her chin. “Now I remember. I sent you off to rescue your guide. What was his name again? Sander? Stavros? Stephan?”

“Sam,” I grit out. “His name is Sam.”

Ellie lips purse out in a pout that would have made Girlfriend #3 green with jealousy. “Is that not what I said? Sam. Sam… Sam… Sam Trent! Yes, I know him. Handsome young man. A bit… stodgy, if you ask me, but then his kind usually are.”

I fight back a sudden grin as I imagine what the expression on Sam’s face will be when I tell him Ellie called him ‘stodgy’.

“And the girl?” she continues. “What of her?”

“You mean Francesca?”

“Is there another delightfully outspoken girl with a penchant for sparkly things I do not know about? Yes, of course I am speaking of Francesca. Goodness. You are a bit slow on occasion, are you not?”

My eyebrows snap together. Elder, ghost, or just plain crazy – it doesn’t matter. I am quickly losing my patience with Ellie. “She’s fine.”
Even though I have no idea where she is
.

Ellie’s face softens. “You have done me a great service, Winnifred Coleman. I am in your debt.”

I stiffen, every muscle in my back drawing tight. I don’t want anyone to be in my debt. Not Sam, not Francesca, and certainly not Ellie. “So give me something and we’ll be even,” I say.

“
Give
you something?” Ellie looks astounded.

“You said you’re in my debt, right? So give me something and we’ll be even steven.”

“Even steven,” she repeats, working her lips around the words as if she has never spoken them before. Maybe she hasn’t. One thing I know for certain about the woman standing in front of me is that she is no ordinary woman. Mentally I check off the things that make her different than the average dead person I have encountered so far: she can change her appearance at will, appear and disappear, procure furniture from about a million years ago, and, most importantly, drag me around the After whenever she feels like it.

“Are you a level five or something?” I ask, studying her eyes closely. Maybe she can change her hair and maybe she can take me away from Sam, but the eyes don’t lie. They can’t.

A fleeting smile touches her lips. She walks past me to stand at the edge of the bluff, raising her arms and letting the wind blow out her hair. I swivel to face her, but I stay a healthy distance away. Water and I don’t exactly mix.

“From personal debts to personal questions,” Ellie says, raising her voice to be heard above the pounding surf. “You are an unusual creature, Win.”

So I have been told in so many words over and over again.

You’re a freak.

What a loser.

You’re just… different.

And the worst:

Why can’t you be like you used to?

As if once you are one way, that is how you have to be for the rest of your life. Like you’re stuck in concrete. You can’t move, can’t breathe, but the people around you are happy, because as long as you’re stuck you can’t change. Until the day you break free and you
do
change except everyone else is still in their blocks and they can’t understand why you would want to get out of yours.

Ellie spins in another circle, catching my eye. She spins faster and faster, until she is a blur of black and white, and when she finally stops she has changed yet again. Now she is a pale faced, blue eyed girl no older than Brian with tufts of blond hair and a bright red jumper. “Come,” she says, beckoning with one little hand. “Let me show you. Come
on
,” she insists when I hesitate. “I wanna go now!”

I go to her. I feel
compelled
to go to her, as if there is no other choice. She curls her fingers around mine. Smiles a little girl’s smile. And yanks me off the edge of the cliff.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

The water is freezing. I choke in a mouthful as I struggle to reach the surface. It slides down my throat, tingly and… fresh? I just swallowed
fresh
water? But I’m in the ocean.

Aren’t I?

My legs and arms kick wildly as déjà vu kicks me even harder. I have been here before. I have fought for my life in this murky darkness before. I have choked on water and felt it press down on me, heavy, so heavy, until it crushed me from the inside out before.

A part of me, a very small part, knows that I am dead. It knows that I could let myself sink to the bottom right now and nothing would happen to me that hasn’t already happened. Yet the instinct to fight for my life, to survive against all odds, is not an easy one to suppress. 

Bubbles stream from my mouth as I kick, claw, and fight my way up to the shimmering surface. It glares mockingly down at me, slivers of light breaking through to bathe my face. One more hard strike of my legs. One last desperate grab of my fingers.

I break through the water with a gasp and a sputter, drawing air greedily into my starving lungs. My arms flail out, seeking to hold my body up, and hit something hard. Something cold. I blink the water from my eyes and see the ice. I am clinging to a chunk of it, floating out in the middle of a lake. No, not a lake.

The
lake.

The lake where I drowned.

The lake where I died.

“ELLIE!” I bellow her name again and again, until my voice is hoarse. Beneath the water my legs paddle slowly back and forth, keeping me afloat. My teeth chatter, but I don’t feel cold. Oddly, I don’t feel anything at all.

I spin my ice raft in a slow circle, searching the shoreline. Snow is piled high on the ground, covering everything. The trees are naked, their skeletal branches reaching up in vain towards the pale yellow sun.

A flash of blue and red through the pine. My breath catches.
Brian
. Red snow jacket. Blue hat.
Brian. Brian. Brian.
It becomes my chant as I sink my nails into the ice and haul myself up out of the water.

My clothes begin to freeze to my body the second I am in the open air. I wring out the bottom half of Francesca’s borrowed shirt and knot it, exposing my midriff. My sneakers are heavy with water. I kick them off. One slides into the lake, never to be seen again.

Barefoot I race across the ice, falling more than once, but always getting back up.
Brian. Brian. Brian.
He waits for me just beyond the short, partially obscured by the line of pine trees.

I sink in the snow up to my knees when I reach the bank. Wading through it takes every inch of strength I possess. “Brian, don’t move,” I cry desperately. “I’m coming. DON’T MOVE.”

He raises one arm, urging me faster. I stumble into the grove of pines, trip over a hidden rock, and go sprawling face first. Arms trembling, I push myself up and lift my head, staring straight into the face of a little girl with tufts of blond hair sticking out beneath her blue hat.

“Hello, Win,” she says.

I drag myself to my knees as my eyes dart wildly, looking for where Brian has gone. “Ellie, did you see – my – my brother – he – he was here,” I say between gasps.

Shaking her head, Ellie softly says, “No. He was never here.”

“Never here? But I – Wait.” I look at the little girl again. I study her blue wool hat. Her puffy red jacket.
Blue hat. Red jacket. A flash of red, running through the woods. Not Brian.
“Not Brian,” I say aloud. “It was never Brian.” Disbelieving, I fall back into the snow. Ellie crouches next to me, her blue eyes impossibly wise beyond the years of the child she portraying.