Ash and Darkness (Translucent #3) (11 page)

“Let’s just see if this works, okay?” She knelt to fiddle with a valve on the side of her machine.

Evading the question.

“Sarah, uh . . . we will be able to go home, right? I mean, we’re not going to be stuck here forever, are we?”

“Forever’s a long time,” she muttered, reaching behind a pipe.

“But . . . but there’s a way to get back home,
right?
”

She said nothing.

“Sarah?” My voice quivered.

“We can survive,” she said firmly. “Today. We can survive today. And when tomorrow comes, we can survive tomorrow. One day at a time. That’s all we can do—survive one day at a time. That’s what matters.”

“Stop, I don’t want to hear that. There’s got to be something. Dark matter . . . whatever teleported us here, there’s got to be a way back.”

“Well, I don’t know it, Leona,” she said. “I’ve looked. I’ve looked everywhere. There is nothing here but dirt and death and decay. The dark matter channel that brought us here, it doesn’t have an opening on the other end. It was a one-way ticket.”

“Then we’ll keep looking,” I said. “There’s got to be something. There’s got to be a way.”

“You just got here,” she said, her voice strained. “You just got here. You’ll see.”

“I have to go home,” I said flatly.

“Leona, I’ve looked everywhere. I’ve tried everything.”

“No, you don’t understand—” I glanced left and right, quickly growing frantic. “I have to go back. I
need
to go back. There’s . . . there’s something I have to do, it’s . . . I just, I need to go home. I can’t stay here. Someone needs me.”

“Boyfriend?”

“No, not my boyfriend. I could get over my boyfriend. I don’t even have a boyfriend. It was something I did, something really horrible, and no one knows I did it . . .” The words got stuck in my throat. 

“I’m listening,” she said.

Might as well get it out.

I took a deep, shaky breath. “It was at the beginning of summer,” I whispered. “I’d just gotten my license, and it was dark, and . . . and it all happened so fast, I didn’t see her, I didn’t know what to do.” A tear slid down my cheek. “She was just standing there, and I tried to stop, but then she was dead, just lying there, bleeding, and . . . and I didn’t know what to do, so I put her in the trunk . . .” I swallowed, my throat dry. “No one knows I did it. No one ever found out. I need to go back, because I need to turn myself in, I need to make things right,
please
—” I bit off my words, stunned at what I’d just said.

I’d confessed.

I’d just confessed.

The first time I’d ever told anyone. Only Megan shared my secret, and we’d vowed never to tell. Now the secret was out.

I held my breath, waiting for Sarah’s response.

She straightened up and wiped her palms off on her overalls, leaving grease stains. “Ashley Lacroix,” she said grimly. “I know.”

Chapter 12

My jaw fell
open. “You
knew?
”

“I did,” she said.

“You mean, you actually knew? Like, before I told you just now? How did you know? Did Megan tell you?”

“It wasn’t that hard to figure out,” she said. “It’s all you and her ever talk about. I wasn’t
trying
to overhear, but I was a ghost. I was completely invisible. You guys had given me the dark matter, so I followed you around hoping you’d reveal a clue or something, some way to get it off.” She hesitated. “I followed you that night you led her brother to the corpse. I saw her.”

My heart had gone still. “You think I’m a monster, don’t you?”

“No, just an irresponsible teenager who made a very regrettable decision in the heat of the moment.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat. “You mean hiding the body?”

“Next time, you’ll know better.”

“But I
didn’t
know better,” I said. “That’s the thing. When it actually counted, I didn’t do the right thing.”

“I know. I’m not arguing with that.”

“Yeah, but isn’t that what makes someone bad?” I said, trying to get her to admit it. “It’s what they do in the heat of the moment, not what they think they’re going to do or what they hope they’re going to do, it’s what they actually do, because that can’t be faked, right?”

“If that’s what you believe, then good luck being happy.”

I stared at her. “You don’t believe that?”

She shrugged.

“I bet you would have called the police.”

“Yeah, well, I’m a lot older than you are. I’m twenty-two. You’re sixteen.”

“Oh, come on, you would have called the police when you were sixteen, too,” I said hotly. “It makes no difference.”

“Probably. I was a good kid.”

“See, that’s my point. I can pretend I’m nice and all, but when something really bad happens—like what happened that night—then I’m not brave, I’m not heroic or honorable or good, I’m a fucking coward, and all I did was prove it.”

Sarah frowned. “I don’t see how that proves anything.”

“I hid Ashley’s body because all I could think about was how I didn’t want to go to jail and how it wasn’t fair because it wasn’t my fault. I had the chance to do the right thing, and I didn’t do it.”

“Morals are
learned
, Leona. You learned your lesson—I’m assuming—so you’re a different person now.”

“That doesn’t matter,” I said. “It’s what I
did
that matters. That’s what defines me, not what I’m
going
to do.”

“Well, would you do it again?”

“Do what again?”

“Hide the body,” she said. “Would you do it again?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

She nodded. “You don’t trust yourself.”

“Sarah, I
murdered
someone.”

“No, you killed her on accident. It was an
accident
, Leona. It’s not that one mistake that defines you.”

“It was manslaughter. I shouldn’t have been driving anyone else, there were drugs in the car, I was speeding—I was at fault. One hundred percent my fault.”

“See, the fact that we’re even analyzing this right now means you’re missing the point. Are you a serial killer? No. Do you derive pleasure from killing? No. Are you a psychopath? No.”

I glared at her and felt my cheeks flush. “I just . . . I don’t agree.”

“Whatever,”  she said, waving me off to resume tinkering with her water generator. “I feel like I’m talking to a brick wall.”

I dug Ashley’s
diary out from where I’d hidden it under my blankets and collapsed on Sarah’s air mattress to read it down in the bomb shelter, still trembling from our conversation, which had reduced me to a mess of quivering nerves. Why did it bother me what she thought? So what if she
wasn’t
judging me?

I didn’t know what to feel anymore.

Last night, I’d felt so close to Ashley. I needed that again. I needed to hold on to her memory, to feel what she’d felt, to hear her whisper secrets in my ear. No matter what Sarah said.

Ashley had led me to the diary for a reason, because there was something in its pages I needed to understand . . . a clue, a hint, the answer to a riddle. Forgiveness, maybe.

And we needed her help to get home.

Her entries continued where I’d left off.

May 7

I keep trying to take the invisible stuff off, but when I’m asleep it puts it back on me. It’s like I’m two different people, and I’m in control during the day and it’s in control at night. I’m stockpiling food and water in case I get stuck there again. I’m just not going to sleep. Ever. If I never sleep, it won’t be able to take me.

May 12

I’m sooooo tired. It’s been five days and I haven’t dared to sleep a wink. I’m fighting it so hard. I feel like I’m floating in a gray fog. I look in the mirror and my eyes look haunted. Emory’s really worried about me. I’ve been painting every night to stay awake. I can paint a lot between when everyone else goes to bed and when they wake up, and it’s really quiet and still out there, but my pictures are all morbid. But even if I never sleep again, it’s better than that other place. I’m so tired.

May 15

I’m back in that other place. I call it the dark world now. I must have fallen asleep at some point. I wish I could just curl up and die.

May 29

It’s been two weeks since I’ve seen another human. I miss my mom and dad. I miss Emory. I hate this. I hate this dark world. The voice is evil and it’s keeping me here for longer and longer each time as its prisoner. I ate the food again. WARNING: Don’t eat the food. It changes you. I couldn’t help myself, I was so hungry and it kept telling me not to, but it was all a trick, like when Mom uses reverse psychology. It wanted me to eat it. Now I have to stay here even longer. What if I get stuck here forever? I’m really scared.

I wanted to reach back in time and hug her, comfort her. I actually missed her. How could you feel this close to someone you’d never met?

We were in this together.

June 9

There’s something else down here. A little shadow man. It says it wants my soul.

Her words made my skin crawl.

I kept reading, eyes glued to the page.

June 12

I tried to kill myself yesterday. I swallowed my entire bottle of meds and all the other pills I could find in the medicine cabinet. I don’t even think it did anything. I don’t think the voice will let me die. I understand what I have to do now. I have to kill myself in the real world while I’m awake. If I don’t, it will feed on my soul forever in this horrible place.

My heart ached for her.

I read faster, skimming the page, realizing I was nearing her final days where she’d been driven to suicide.

It would be soon now. She’d died on July 1.

The next entry, I saw, was her last.

June 30

Today is my final day. I’m becoming part of it, I can see its thoughts. I will have one last night on Earth, and then it will have fed off enough of my soul to claim me forever. Tonight will be my last chance to kill myself. But now I know how to kill it, too. Yeah, that’s right DARK. While you were feeding off me I was learning all your secrets. I know what you are. I know how to kill you, and I’m not stupid enough to write it here because I know you’ve been reading my diary. You’ll NEVER get my soul. I regret that I didn’t have enough time to kill you myself, but mark my words, someone who comes along after me will find my clues and destroy you. To that person, all you need to do is follow the breadcrumbs.

I scrambled to the next page, breathless.

“No,” I whispered.

Clinging to the folds were its tattered remnants. The next page had been torn out.

The page after that was blank.

I flipped through the rest of the diary. All blank.

The ache in my heart deepened. Ashley’s story was over. She had left behind so little, but I wanted there to be more. I
needed
more.

A chill lingered after I finished reading. Her time here had turned into a nightmare, like mine and Sarah’s. Death had been her only escape.

Was I being hopelessly optimistic to think we could do any better?

“Sun’s going to set in a few hours,” Sarah said, coming through the blast door to grab a water bottle, which she sniffed carefully. “If you wanted to bring over your stuff from your house, I’d do it now.” She took a tentative sip and seemed satisfied. “Before it gets dark. We’ll test the extractor when you get back.”

“Wow, you really
were low on supplies,” Sarah said, eying the jar of peanut butter I’d set on the concrete next to her—still a good spoonful left in the scrapings along the inside. I ignored her and unloaded the rest of the duffel bag.

I’d spent the last few hours raiding cupboards and closets and drawers at my house for anything useful and lugging it back here by bike—I’d found one of those bike trailers for kids at my neighbor’s house and refashioned it as a cargo trailer—and now the late-afternoon sun beat on my neck.

It would be night soon.

I extracted my cell phone and put it next to the peanut butter.

“Hah, good luck getting reception,” she said.

“I’m using it as a flashlight.”

I unpacked the bulkiest item next—my telescope—again feeling Sarah’s eyes on me.

“That’s a nice telescope.” She leaned closer, frowning at how I was manhandling it. “Is that a Celestron?”

I sighed. “Aren’t you supposed to be busy?”

She smirked and went back to work on the water machine.

I assessed my pile, wondering which item could teleport me back to Earth.

“What if we put dark matter on again?” I said.

“Tried it,” she said, without looking up.

“And?”

“It loops back. The white space spits you right back out here.”

“Fuck,” I breathed.

“Yeah. I know. Once it collects you, it doesn’t let you go.”

“Did dark matter ever talk to you?” I looked up at her.

She twisted the ends of two wires together. “It told me to take it off. It told me I wasn’t ready.”

“Ready for what?”

“I don’t know.”

“By the way, strange question, but uh . . .” I picked at my fingernails, avoiding eye contact, “what happens if we die down here?”

“Like, what happens to your soul?”

I swallowed. “Yeah. That.”

Her eyes darkened under brooding eyebrows. “That’s the question, isn’t it?” She stood up and clapped her hands, ending our talk. “Come on, let’s make some H
2
O before the sun goes down. It’s all finished.”

Nearby, she’d filled a huge plastic cistern with pool water and attached the hose to an intake on the machine. Next she plugged the machine into the power cable from the solar panels.

Nothing happened.

“Uh . . .” I began.

“Relax, I haven’t turned it on yet.” She poised her finger on the switch, inhaled slowly, and flipped it.

A high-pitched whine revved up inside the machine, and the hose in the cistern burped up a bunch of bubbles, then sucked them back in.

On the side of the machine, the needle in a pressure gauge jiggled, then began to climb.

“It’s working . . . it’s working . . .” Sarah backed away slowly, as if one sudden movement might bring the whole contraption crashing down.

Water sprayed from a spigot at the base of the machine and ran down the driveway.

I jumped sideways to dodge the splash. “Is that supposed to happen?”

“That’s the contaminated water,” she yelled over the spray. “Look . . . it’s working!”

I followed her finger to a plastic cup under another spigot, where a tiny, wobbling bead of water clung to the metal. The bead grew fatter before our eyes and finally plunked into the cup, only to be followed by another, and another, until a steady stream of droplets were pittering out.

The machine drained the cistern in ten minutes, and Sarah switched it off, leaving a ringing in my ears. We would lose power soon anyway once the sun set. Downtown was already in shadow.

She extracted the cup—scarcely a tablespoon at the bottom—sniffed it, and took a sip.

I watched her, holding my breath.

She swished it around her mouth, and her throat tensed briefly as she swallowed. She stared straight ahead, deep in concentration.

Then her eyes bulged.

“Sarah?” I said nervously.

She made a choking sound and clutched her throat.

“Sarah, are you okay?” I ran forward to help.

She spun and grabbed my shoulders, eyes wide, and a desperate gurgle bubbled up from her throat. “
Help
 . . .
me
 . . .” she wheezed.

“Sarah!” I screamed, powerless as she died in front of me.

She stopped choking and broke into a grin. “I’m kidding. It’s fine.” She held out the cup, fighting laughter. “It’s just water.”

I glared at her, heart still pounding from the scare. “Okay, seriously, it’s crap like that—”

“Come on,” she said. “It was funny.”

“No it wasn’t,” I muttered darkly. “I thought you were dying.”

“Ooh . . .” she clicked her tongue, “then you’d have another body to hide. Another moral dilemma.”

The words stung. “Take that back,” I whispered.

“Relax,” she said. “I’m just trying to lighten the mood. You’re always so serious.”

“No.” I folded my arms. “I’m not going to let you. I’m not going to let you make light of what I did and the fact that a girl is dead because of me, because when you do that, when you make a joke out of it, out of
her
, you disrespect her memory, and you disrespect everybody who ever loved her, and so I’m not going to let you do that.”

“Whoa, now look who’s all high and mighty,” she said.

“I’m
not
trying to be high and mighty,” I spat. “I’m just trying to hold on to what’s left of her.”

“Then stop,” she said. “Let go. Look around us, Leona. Look where we are.
Look!
” She gestured vaguely into the distance, where the sunset faded to a bronze haze. “None of that stuff matters anymore. Whatever you did or didn’t do on Earth, none of it matters here.”

I held her gaze. “How can you give up like this? Don’t you want to go home?”

“You just got here. I’ve been here three weeks. I tried everything, I checked everywhere, I did everything, so don’t lecture me about giving up.”

“Did you check every house? Did you check inside every car? What about other cities? Did you check LA? Maybe there’s something in LA”

“LA’s a hundred miles from here.”