Dust to Dust (6 page)

I look down at the bright green grass under our feet.

“I'm not emotional,” I say defensively.

“More emo than Nick at a Bon Iver show,” she says, and I stifle a smile.

“I don't think so.”

“Okay, not that emo,” she says. “But pretty close. I just want to know why.”

Her dark-brown eyes are shining with curiosity, and I realize that this is my best friend in front of me, and she's asking me legitimate, natural questions. I'm just not sure how to answer them. So I tell her the truth. Some of it.

“I don't know,” I say. “I'm not sure what happened when I was in the coma. A few things I remember in detail, I think.” I pause, a flash of Thatcher's achingly kind, frustratingly distant eyes in my head.

“There's the emo look!” says Carson.

I glance at the ground and wipe thoughts of him from my mind before I continue. “Other stuff is more hazy. Think about all the painkillers I've been on.”

Carson nods. “I know it can't be easy.”

“I haven't taken a pill since yesterday,” I confide in her. “My dad thinks I'm still on them, but I want to stop feeling so foggy-brained.”

No more pills. Clear your mind.

“Do you feel okay?” asks Carson. “Are you in pain?”

“Not really,” I tell her. “I need to get my head straight, even if it means I hurt a little. But Cars, you can't talk to the press. Please. What happened to me isn't even certain enough for me to tell you about it, and it's definitely not something I want to hash out with reporters. Don't you get that?”

She nods, and then her eyes meet mine. There's an apology there—I can see it plain as day.

“I just think it's such a blessing,” she says. “You almost crossing over and then coming back to life. It's a miracle. People want to know what it was like.
I
want to know what it was like.”

“I know,” I tell her. “And I will share as much as I remember with you, once I figure out what was real and what wasn't.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

Carson moves forward to give me a hug and I lean into her, relishing this affectionate touch. And I remember how in the Prism we moved around each other, with space between us. Touching was dangerous, touching was . . .

My eyes flash open as I recall the energy pulls I felt when I was touched in the Prism. When I shared my energy.

Suddenly, a wave of sensation starts to tingle in my toes, washing up through my body in a whoosh, a swell of energy. It starts out as a buzz, but then it escalates into an uncomfortable electricity
that's shocking in its intensity. I let go of Carson and stumble off the bench, sinking to my knees as I close my eyes and let my hands feel the soft, mossy earth.

“Callie? Are you okay?”

Carson is bending by my side but her voice sounds far away. All I can feel is the sparking and burning that's happening inside my body. I open my eyes, forcing my mind to stop tricking me, letting my eyes and ears show me what's real, what's solid. My hands grip the ground until my fingernails hit dirt, and then the crackling pulses that undulate in every fiber of my physical body start to ebb.

I lean back against the leg of the bench with a long breath.

“I'm fine,” I tell Carson.

“Maybe you need to rethink the meds,” she says. “Just for another few days until your body's healed some more.”

I shake my head no. I try to tell myself that the jolt of pain I just felt is normal after what my body has been through. It's because of the accident, whatever's left in my system of the pills, the physical trauma I've experienced.

But a part of me wonders if it was something else. Something more ominous.

I look up to ground myself in the world around me before my mind gets carried away. And that's when I come face-to-face with the plaque on the center of the bench.

Of course, the memorial bench.

Three names:

Thatcher Larson

Leo Cutler

Reena Bell

“Callie, what is it?”

Carson catches me staring at the names, and I realize that she knows me too well to be kept in the dark.

“Those people,” I tell her, gesturing at the plaque. “I met them . . . on the other side.”

“You did?” Her eyes light up.

I look up at the branches of the tree above us, and I remember a moment in a cemetery like this one, where Leo and a friend were shaking branches and frightening people on a ghost tour.

“Reena and Leo, they were the types of ghosts who liked to mess with the Living.”

“Like moaning and slamming doors?” asks Carson. I can tell she's letting her mind run wild with the ghost stories she's heard.

“Something like that,” I say. And then I start to tell her what I'm remembering as it comes to me. Because maybe sharing it out loud will help everything come together inside my brain. “I spent time with Leo and Reena, walking on the beach, going to a café, almost pretending we were alive. They made me laugh; I had fun with them at first.”

“That sounds cool!” Carson smiles at me. “But why do you look so sad?”

“They weren't really my friends,” I say, and as I talk to Carson my memories are becoming clearer. “The way Reena taught me to move objects, the way she asked me about my life and shared her friends with me, it was nice. But something wasn't right.”

“What wasn't right?”

The word
poltergeists
reenters my mind, and now the underside of Reena, Leo, and their friends is coming into full view. When their smiles faded, I saw that they were angry and bitter, hatching some kind of insane plan to live again. Reena was just using me. I had a special kind of energy in the Prism, and she drew on it because she knew it might get her what she wanted. All the poltergeists did. Thatcher tried to protect me from them as much as he could but . . .

Now that I'm alive, back on Earth, am I safe from them?

“Callie, what is it? What's wrong?”

I've gone silent, because it's getting harder and harder to fill up my lungs with air.

The further away I get from my last pain pill, the crisper my otherworldly memories become. And suddenly, nothing makes sense and the world seems mad. At first I thought it was the meds that were bringing on these visions, these phantom voices. The truth is, they were dulling them, erasing my memory of what happened during the time I was in that coma.

Because one thing is for sure: My body may have been in that hospital bed, but my soul sure as hell wasn't.

I stand up shakily.

“Let's go,” I say to Carson. “I'm not feeling great.”

“Of course.” She hurries to hold my elbow and I keep an eye on the memorial bench as we make the descent down the hill to Carson's car, as if something might arise from beneath the grave to pursue us.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

“THE FILET MIGNON FOR Callie May; I'll have the rib eye.”

My dad orders for me at our favorite restaurant downtown, where the staff all know us. Soft candlelight flickers on the clean, white-tiled walls, casting shadows in the antique mirrors and on the industrial-steel tables and chairs. This place is a mix of old and new, the past and the present coming together in a modern southern steakhouse. I love it here.

We're having a celebratory father-daughter dinner—it's the first time we've been out since the accident. Dad smiles at me as he tucks his napkin into his collar, a country-boy habit Mama never could break him of. I grin back and smooth the white linen napkin over my lap.

“How are you feeling?” he asks me.

“Good,” I say, nodding as if to affirm it. “Really good.”

Dad clears his throat. “I'm glad,” he says.

The waiter brings over a basket of bread, still warm, with soft butter on the side. I lean forward to take a roll.

“I want us to be honest with each other,” says my father. My knife freezes midbutter.

“Me, too, Daddy,” I say, not meeting his eyes.

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out an empty pill bottle. “Carla found this in the trash when she was cleaning your bathroom.” He sets it down on the table between us, next to the still-steaming bread basket. There is supposed to be at least half of the prescription in there, but now there's nothing left. “Do you have an explanation for this?”

My mouth opens as I start to lie, but I can't do it.

“I flushed them,” I say softly.

As soon as I acknowledge it, though, I'm relieved. I hated miming the afternoon pill swallow in front of my dad, hated hiding my own strength from him.

“We talked about this,” he says. “I thought we agreed that following doctor's orders was what was best.”

“I know. But I'm feeling much better, I swear.”

His eyes are questioning and doubtful, so I try to be a little less cavalier. “Okay, I have a few aches, but no real pain,” I tell him, dismissing the sharp crackle I felt at the cemetery with Carson. That was a one-time thing—it hasn't happened again. “And my mind isn't as foggy. I feel like I'm thinking clearly, for the first time in forever.”

“So you're back to your old self already, huh?”

“I guess so,” I say. Inside, though, I feel very different. “I'm
strong like you,” I tell him, taking a bite of warm bread.

He laughs. “You sure are strong. But not like me. Like your mama.”

I stop chewing for a moment, surprised that he mentioned her so casually. Usually any thought of Mama comes with a tortured look in his eyes and a glass of whiskey to chase her away. He misses her too much to think of her.

“You know,” Dad continues, his voice quieting, “she hung on as long as she could in this life.”

“I know, Daddy.” A lump forms in my throat. I remember when she got sick, how she grew weak but kept a smile on her face for me, always lighting up when I came into the room. Even at the end, under the harsh hospital lights. For me, she glowed with love.

“She waited for you,” he says.

“What?”

“She was ready to die, but she waited for you to get there. She wanted you to be the one who let her go.”

His words hit me in the chest. They remind me of what Thatcher told me, that my mother was able to move on to Solus, the final stage after the Prism, only after I got over her death. My eyes cloud with tears and I take a sip of water, hoping that I won't cry at the table.

“I'm sorry, Callie—I'm upsetting you.”

“No.” I shake my head. “It's okay. I like hearing about her.”

“Well, I just thank the Lord that he let you stay here with me,” says Dad. “I talked to him all the time while you were in the hospital. I begged him not to take my other girl, and he listened. We
should be grateful for every day we have together, Callie.”

I look at him sideways. My father's not much for God talk, especially out in public and surrounded by strangers. Still he makes a good point about being grateful for being together, because I'm beginning to learn just how painful it is to be separated from someone you have an unbreakable bond with.

When our steaks arrive, Dad bows his head in prayer, and I instinctively mimic him, though we don't usually say grace in restaurants. I guess this is a new thing, and it feels kind of comforting.

“We thank you, Father, for the food we are about to receive. Tonight we celebrate the miracle of Callie's life, and the special gifts you've bestowed upon her.”

I open one eye to peer at him. What gifts is he talking about? Does he know about the Prism? About my connection with Thatcher?

No . . . he can't.

I close my eyes again and wait for the
Amen.

On the ride home, I'm a bit shell-shocked by our conversation. That dinner was more intense than I expected. Usually Dad chews his steak and we talk about sports or a documentary he just saw or something. I wasn't prepared for him to talk to me about the day Mama died—or how he begged God not to take me away from him. I'm not sure where any of it came from, or if I was quite ready to hear any of it.

“Look,” says my father, slowing down at a red light behind a big green truck. There's a bumper sticker that reads
FUBAR
, and he
says, “Remember when you asked me what
FUBAR
stood for?”

I let out a snort. “Fully and Utterly Bad and Wrong!”

“I had to think of a clean version on the fly,” he replies, smiling.

“Well, I guess you conveyed the general meaning.”

We both laugh until our eyes fill up with joy tears, and a small spot of happiness settles into my heart. I can't remember the last time being with him was this easy. And it shouldn't be, considering that he knows I've been lying to him about the pills. The father I knew six months ago would have given me a stern lecture and probably even grounded me for “not following orders.”

But maybe being grateful for every day we have together means not letting things come between us and keep us at arm's length. Maybe it means giving each other more room to be who we are and loving each other in spite of the fact we might not see everything eye to eye.

My feelings bubble over as we step out of the car, and I rush up to him for a hug.

“Whoa, what's all this?” he asks, squeezing me back.

“I just . . . ,” I start. “I really love you, Daddy.”

He kisses the top of my head. “Me too.”

When I get up to my room, I shut the door and sit down at my desk to open my laptop. My search history shows their names: Thatcher Larson, Reena Bell, Leo Cutler. It would be so easy to go down this rabbit hole again, trying to find clues to trigger all of my memories and a way to call out to Thatcher. I close my eyes and turn inward, concentrating, and I can feel his presence, like a
gentle hand on my back, an impression on my skin.