Dust to Dust (7 page)

He's here with me. But I can't see him, I can't talk to him.

My computer dings with an iTunes update. I click to cancel it, and that's when I remember the song. The one they played at Thatcher's memorial. I download it and press Play.

It's amazing how you can speak right to my heart.

Without saying a word, you can light up the dark.

The first verses send my pulse racing as a montage of images runs through my mind. Thatcher, greeting me in the mist of the Prism right after my crash, guiding me on Earth and teaching me patience and restraint in my haunting, standing always out of reach until his walls came down and we . . . what did we do? Fall in love? Me and a ghost?

A laugh-cry escapes my lips, and I cover my hand with my mouth. Music always does this to me—sends my mind traveling over memories or wishes for what may come. Always reaching into my soul. Just like he did.

I press Play again when the song is over and I set it on repeat before I go to my bed to lie down. In the hazy place between sleep and waking, where emotions fill your body and dreams seem possible, I call to him. “Thatcher . . . Thatcher.”

“Callie.”

It's a whisper, a notion . . . but I hear it. His voice is like velvet—smooth and soft, draping a curtain over my reality. I can't tell if my eyes are open or closed when I see the outline of his shape, shimmering in front of me. I sit up and search for him with my hands, but they don't connect with anything. The air feels thicker where
he is, but he's not solid. I lean back against my pillow on the bed. “Are you real?”

“I'm here.” His voice is enough. For now.

“Thatcher—” I start.

“My mother loved this song,” he says, and now I know that he
is
here, in my room and sensing everything around us. Even the music in the background. “It was playing—”

“At your memorial.” I finish his sentence.

“Yes.”

I feel a plane of warmth around me, like I'm pressed up against a brick wall that's been baked in the sun. I have so much to say to him, but I have no idea where to begin. My breath quickens as I try to figure it out, but then I remember something else I learned in the Prism that instantly relaxes me.

All the thoughts and feelings that I'm having—Thatcher is already aware of them. The sense of intuition and perception that spirit guides have is incredible. So in a way, the pressure of saying the perfect thing to him is totally off. And oddly enough, I've never had that with anyone in my life. Not even Nick.

With that last thought, my body tenses up. I wonder if Thatcher has been witness to everything since I awoke from the coma, including private moments that Nick and I shared in this very room.

“Are you with me all the time now?” I ask him.

“No. I'm here often, to see how you're doing, but I have to return to the Prism when my energy gets low. And there's also . . . other business to attend to.”

“Right.” I sigh, a little relieved, yet still feeling a bit foolish for
ever thinking he would devote all of his time to me.

“I've felt your knowing.”

“What?”

“You can sense when I'm here, Callie, can't you?”

There have been times when I think I've felt him near me, as well as a strange coldness that makes it seem like he's far away, but I wasn't sure if my impression of him was real or not.

Until now.

“Yes, I think I can.”

“The way we're connected, it's . . . unique,” he says. And I think his voice sounds almost loving, but I'm afraid I'm wishing for that more than hearing it.

I'm about to ask him why this connection of ours is different from what he has with anyone else. But all of a sudden, something in the room changes. It's an invisible shift, as if someone opened a door on a bright winter day, letting in a chilling wind.

Although I can't see Thatcher's face clearly or his remarkably blue eyes, I sense his gaze turning serious, like he's holding back his feelings so that he can tell me something important.

“Are you off the pain meds completely?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“Good. Thank you.”

“I got your message,” I say.

“That took a lot of energy. I had to go back to the Prism for a while after that.”

“It was a bold move,” I tell him. Thatcher, the consummate rule
follower, surely wasn't supposed to scrawl something on a mirror for a living person to see. It's a breach of worlds.

I hear the conflict in his voice when he responds. “I had to do it.”

“Why?”

He doesn't answer right away, but then he says, “Unclouded thinking is always best.”

Thatcher sounds exactly like he did when we were in the Prism together, teaching me about things that I didn't even know mattered, changing me forever.

“It's strange. My mind is getting clearer, but what I'm remembering sometimes seems so unreal that I don't trust myself.”

“You should. You've had good instincts from the beginning. You were more aware and alert than anyone else I'd ever worked with.”

I feel a big twinge of insecurity when he says that, like we were just business partners or something, but that fades away when my thoughts wander back to the words I wrote in my journal, the ones I thought came from Thatcher:
I'll find them. I'll protect you.

I remember the fear I felt in the cemetery, and I have to ask him: “Thatcher, am I in danger?”

“You're alive, and that means you're safe.”

“But what about the polt—” I start.

“Callie, you shouldn't worry about anything that happened before. It's best if you move forward, live today's life.”

Move forward
. Does that mean he wants me to forget him?

“I can't.” It's a whisper, soft and pleading, because the truth is that I don't want to let go of him or our time together. I don't want him to ask that of me.

“You
can
,” he says. “That's what I came here to tell you. I know you've been through a lot, more than anyone could ever imagine. But you have a real second chance, and I want you to embrace it and really
live
.” He pauses for a moment, and I can feel how reluctant he is to say what's coming next. “Which is why you have to turn your back on everything you experienced while you were in a coma. Thinking about the Prism or me or anything else from that time is just going to interfere.”

“I don't understand. You told me to stop taking the pills and it made me remember more,” I say. “If you wanted me to forget, why did you—”

“I wanted you to know that you weren't crazy. That you didn't hallucinate or imagine any of the things you saw. I didn't think you'd be able to be true to yourself if you believed your mind was playing tricks on you.”

I curl my legs into my chest and breath in deeply, letting the sweet air fill my lungs. I missed that when I was nearly dead, I realize. That feeling of my chest expanding and releasing a soothing sigh.

“You have no idea how remarkable you are.” Even though his shape is barely visible, Thatcher's voice fills the corners of my room, nestling into the crevices of my bookshelf, enveloping the window seat and the bed, covering me like a blanket. “No one else has ever been to the Prism and returned to Earth like you did. Coma victims usually don't come to the Prism—they linger on Earth until they die
or wake. But you . . . you've seen both sides.”

“I have. So how can I forget what I saw? What I felt?”

“What you felt?”

He's going to make me say it—make me tell him that I love him. “Yes,” I say. “What I felt.”

The room goes quiet, and for a moment I'm afraid he's vanished. But then Thatcher speaks again. “You're back with your family and friends,” he says. “You have your whole life in front of you. Anything you might have felt in the Prism doesn't matter now.”

“Doesn't matter?”

“Callie, don't make this harder on us,” he says.

And the sound of those two letters—
us
—lets me know that he felt it, too, that he remembers we did much more than “work” together. His voice deepened in that last moment, and I feel a strange tingling sensation near my ear and running down along my chin, like Thatcher is trying to caress my face.

“The people you really care about are all here—your father, Carson . . .” He pauses, and then he says, “Nick.”

As soon as he says Nick's name, the tingling is gone.

“He truly adores you,” Thatcher says, like he's trying to remind himself not to cross a line with me.

“I know,” I mumble. I want to say that I adore Nick, too, but our relationship doesn't come close to the completeness that I feel right now, at merely the sound of Thatcher's voice. I can't even see him, and yet at the same time he's all I need.

And then he lets an admission slip: “I wish I could . . . be there for you in that way.”

My throat tightens as I swallow down a lump of sadness that threatens to rise up and spill into tears.

Thatcher laughs, a small, rueful sound. “I'm almost jealous.”

“There's nothing to be jealous of,” I tell him, and as I say it, I know it's true. What I have with Nick isn't what I have with Thatcher.

But what Thatcher said is true, too. He's not a part of the physical world, the way Nick is. And as hard as it is for me to acknowledge right now, Thatcher can't give me a future of togetherness. All he could offer me is a life of separation and him haunting me from a place I'll never see again . . . until I die.

“Oh, but there is,” says Thatcher. And then I feel a whisper of a touch on my forehead, like he's kissing me good night. I lift my face, hoping that I'll feel the same light pressure on my lips, but then suddenly the temperature drops in the room, causing me to shake.

He's gone. And when I wake up the next morning, I only have a vague sense that Thatcher was with me.

Like it was all a dream.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

“CALLIE, YOU HAVE
GOT
to pay attention!” Carson snaps her fingers in front of my face and I blink.

“Sorry,” I say. “What was the question?”

“Classic navy striped dress with ballet flats, or cooler eyelet lace mini with cut-out ankle boots?”

She's holding two potential first-day-of-school outfits in front of me as I lie on my stomach across her fluffy rose-dotted comforter. I'm sleeping over at her house for the first time since I've been out of the hospital—Dad's been reassured by how well I've done off the meds, and the doctor cleared me to start school with everyone else on Monday.

“Both are cute,” I say, rolling over onto my back with a sigh.

“Okay, you could not care less,” says Carson. “I know that. Indulge your best friend.”

I close my eyes and reach out, grabbing one of the outfits. “This one!” I say.

“Callie, this is
serious
,” says Carson, throwing the clothes and their hangers onto the chair in the corner.

“It's really not,” I tell her. But I sit up with a grin.

“Fine,” she says. “I'll decide tomorrow. But I do want to finish our conversation from the other day.”

“What conversation?”

“In the cemetery,” she says, her eyes shining with anticipation. “Remember, you said you knew those people whose names were on the plaque, and that you were friends with them but that something wasn't right?”

I look down. Now that I've seen Thatcher, I have the feeling he wouldn't want me talking about the Prism. But I've already told Carson something about that world, and my best friend is not someone who lets these things go.

“Can I take a rain check on that conversation?” I ask her. “I'm sorry . . . I'm just not up for it right now.”

She looks disappointed, but I can tell she doesn't want to push me too much.

“Why don't you tell me more about the gossip that happened while I was in the coma,” I say. “I want to be caught up for school on Monday. What'd I miss? Who's fighting? Who's in love? Who got drunk and hooked up?”

It's a lame attempt to change the subject because Carson knows I don't really care about stuff like that, but she reacts strangely. She freezes for a moment, and her face looks stricken. Then she moves
slowly to a spot on the bed next to me, her eyes glistening with tears.

“Cars, what is it?”

She averts her gaze. “I wanted to tell you sooner, but . . .”

The pause is excruciating. “
What?
” I ask finally.

Her face crumples. “Um, it's about Nick.”

“What about Nick?”

Another pause. “Two things.” I can tell the tears are about to come streaming down her round cheeks. “I've been holding this in and I don't think I can do it anymore and I have to tell you because if I don't I'm going to go crazy and—”

“Geez, Carson! What is it?”

“IthinkIkissedhimwhenIwasdrunk.”

She says it in such a gush—“I think I kissed him when I was drunk”—that if I didn't already know about this, deep down, I'd probably have to ask her to repeat it. Carson covers her face with her hands, peeking out through her fingers to see my reaction.

I close my eyes, though, because I'm picturing a moment in my mind, a vision that's been triggered: Reena using my energy to take control of Carson's body during a party at Tim McCann's house.

Carson's lips curving up in triumph. Carson straddling Nick and pressing her lips to his. Her hair falling over her neck as she leans down to . . .

I shake my head to try to stop the memory as it comes. I
saw
Reena enter Carson's body; I saw her
possess
my best friend and kiss Nick in that moment, right after he said . . . that he was planning on breaking up with me.