Forever Blue (27 page)
Authors: Abby Wilder
Lennon
We didn't speak as we walked along the shoreline. The moon was high in the sky and the lake was calm, reflecting its image back like a mirror. Our footsteps crunched on the stones. He led me to the carnival which sat forgotten, unloved and forlorn in the darkness, having closed its gates to the public when the sun went down.
"Judah and I worked here one summer," Ruben said, sitting down on one of the horses on the merry-go-round. It was Pegasus, frozen in flight, trapped to forever turn in endless circles. "It was when we were fifteen and I used to operate this merry-go-round. At the time I thought I was wasting my life, sitting here, pulling levers while everyone else got to enjoy the rides. The song drove me insane." He chuckled and patted the horse next to his. I sat down and held onto the brittle leather bridle. "I was a terrible brother," he said. "I lied to save my own name instead of clearing his. I stole the girl he loved. I did everything thinking only of me and never of anyone else. I was afraid of how people saw me and then I was cursed with a life where no one could."
"Except me," I said.
Ruben reached over and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. "Except you, Ringo," he echoed. He pulled his hand away and swallowed deeply. "I know," he said.
My heart beat a little faster. "You know, what?" I asked.
"It's me," he said. "I'm the one who is making you sick, aren't I?"
I let my eyes drop.
"I knew it the moment your Grams reacted to me the way she did." He paused and a morepork flew down from a tree and nestled on a nearby spoke of the Ferris wheel. The small, dark owl looked at us, unblinking, and let out its mournful call.
"What are we going to do?" he whispered.
He waited for me to reply but I couldn't think of what to say. With him sitting here in front of me, he wasn't the monster Grams made him out to be. He was just a boy with dark hair, sad eyes, and freckles on his cheek. And I was just a girl who felt for the first time in her life, someone actually saw her.
"I don't think I've got the strength to quit you." Ruben stood from his horse and moved to cup my face in his hands, but I shied away from him.
He swallowed painfully and took a step back. "You're afraid of me."
I shook my head, but it was a lie. The fear was there, nestled down deep, even though I tried to deny it.
"I never meant to hurt her," Ruben said, pleading. "She took me by surprise." He covered the scratches on his cheek. "I just reacted. I never meant to hurt your Grams." He stepped forward and took my face in his again, forcing me to look at him. "You have to do it," he said. "You have to be the strong one, because I'm not. You are my everything. You are my world." He kissed me slowly, yet urgently, and I felt myself weaken. "But I am only a part of yours," he said. "I am already dead, Lennon, and you have your whole life to live. You don't need me, but I don't have the strength to leave you. In fact, simply saying this to you now is almost hurting me more than I can bear. So listen to me, Lennon. Listen to what I am saying because I won't be able to say it again. Whatever your Grams has told you to do, you must do it, okay?"
When tears formed in my eyes, he shook my head gently between his hands, and that's when I knew he had overheard our conversation. He knew what I had to do and he was giving me permission.
"Promise me, Lennon. Promise me you will do whatever it takes, and you'll do it soon, because tomorrow, when I've been without you for a few hours and remember what it is like to be alone, I will not be able to stop myself from coming to you. I won't be able to stop. I will take everything from you, because that is who I am. I was like it in life and I am like it in death. I did it to Judah and now I'm doing it to you, just like she did it to me."
Ruben - the previous year
They say that invisibility is a super power, and maybe it is. But only when it's a choice.
I thought it would be like a baptism. I would plunge into the water and come up clean, rid of her. It worked, just not in the way I hoped. Looking back now, I can't see how I expected any other outcome, but back then, with my mind addled by lack of sleep and tormented by Lana's ghost, it made sense.
At first, I didn't notice that she wasn't there. I was too busy yelling at Judah, prying the ambulance officers' fingers off the gurney, and retching on the side of the road. It took me hours before I realised she was gone. Her hand didn't crawl along the grass beside me. Her eyes didn't haunt me. But it was hardly a comfort.
I didn't want to believe it. It didn't seem real. I thought I was stuck in a nightmare and tried desperately to wake myself. But as the endless hours passed, the truth became harder to deny. Even with her gone, I couldn't find peace in sleep, and the days and nights blurred together in a constant grey monotony.
Each night, I watched my mum come into my bedroom, eyes glazed with drunkenness, and fall asleep on my bed, tears soaking my pillow.
She and Dad were never the same. They slept in separate rooms and barely spoke to each other. He came home one night before Mum had retreated to my room, and I witnessed an exchange between them. I got to see them in a light they had never shown while I was alive. Dad walked in and saw Mum on the couch, blankly staring at the TV, wine glass resting lopsidedly in her hand. He sighed heavily and picked up the jacket he had only just slung over the back of a chair.
"Where are you going?" Mum asked when her eyes focussed on him.
"Away," was all he said.
"You've only just got home. You're never home anymore." There were tears in Mum's eyes. She held out her hand. "Come to bed with me."
Dad had begun to walk out but he looked back. "Not tonight."
Mum stood and drained the last splashes of wine from her glass. "Not tonight," she mimicked. "Not any night. Not since that night."
The colour flared up Dad's neck. "And what would you know?" he hissed cruelly. "You're usually passed out on his bed, too drunk to know what I do."
Mum blinked through her tears then lifted the bottle of wine from the floor and downed the remainder of its contents hungrily and defiantly, straight from the bottle. "I know enough," she said. Then she tightened her dressing gown around her waist and stumbled towards the stairs. "I miss him," she said wearily over her shoulder, but without looking at him. "I miss them both."
Dad sighed. "It didn't just happen to you." And he slammed the door.
I followed him, although I already knew where he was going. His office held the one thing his home didn't; warmth, and the seductive arms of his secretary. I guess I was more like Dad than I cared to admit.
But it was Judah who made me face the truth, even if he didn't know it. Judah never showed emotion. Judah never cried. He sat through my funeral with the same expression as he wore through the police interviews. They wanted to blame him. They tried their hardest to lock him away for my death, but they weren't able to. The truth wasn't on their side. But Judah did nothing to help himself. He stared at them blankly and refused to answer their questions. He spent all his time in his room, headphones on and talking to people who never knew what he was accused of, or working on that car, painstakingly resurrecting it back to life. He never said a word to defend himself, not even to our parents, though I begged him. What was the benefit of speech if no one could hear?
But the night I finally admitted to myself that there was no escape from this world, was the night Judah took a bottle from Dad's liquor cabinet and stumbled to the abandoned house, swinging the bourbon to his lips and devouring it with large gulps. He never went into the house. Instead, he built a fire on the shore of the lake and crouched beside it, staring into the flames.
When he began to yell, I yelled back. We argued. Only, he never heard me. Judah shouted at the sky. He cursed at the lake. And he let his tears fall onto the stones.
I began to worry when the ranting and raving stopped and he started to methodically remove his clothes until he was standing in nothing but his boxer shorts. He didn't say a word as he walked into the lake, his steps steady and sure, denying the alcohol he had just consumed. When the water reached his waist, I ran in after him and begged him to stop. But his reality pushed my phantom being aside. But he didn't do what I thought. He kept walking until the water lapped his chin, and then he sunk below and screamed until there was no breath left. Somehow, that action made me admit the truth.
I became an observer of Cara more so than I had ever been in life. She attended school but she didn't learn. She talked to her father but she never heard what he said. She mourned Lana and she mourned me, but she never spoke about us to anyone. And I watched, unable to interfere, as her hatred for Judah grew. What was the purpose of a body if you couldn't be seen?
When I couldn't stand by and watch the people I loved fall apart any longer, I tried to leave. I walked out of Puruwai only to hit an invisible barrier. I tried to lose myself in TV shows and books, but I could only turn on screens I had used before, and they only played shows I had already seen. And the books that I hadn't read while I was alive were too heavy to lift. My life was made only from my memories. For everything else, I was merely a spectator.
I left the comfort of my family home and found that my former teammate, Stuart, loved to binge watch TV shows. He would spend hours each night watching episode after episode of his latest obsession and eating potato chips. For weeks, I flopped down on the couch beside him, lost myself in a world which seemed more real than mine, and tried to ignore the crumbs that fell each time he lifted a handful to his mouth.
I memorised the entire biblical story of Ruben and Judah and wondered at my parents' choice in choosing their names. Was Ruben the hero for suggesting they throw their brother into a pit, rather than kill him? Or was Judah the real hero for selling his brother to the traders and, therefore, saving his life? Maybe Ruben was just afraid of what his father would think, and Judah was only after the money. Maybe neither were good and neither were bad. Maybe they were both heroes. Maybe they were both villains.
I played the soundtrack of the
Phantom of the Opera
on repeat until I knew every word and wished I had someone to share them with.
I walked around town and tried to visit old friends. Once, I even went to Sienna Deacon's house and was surprised when I couldn't open the door. I had been to the house before. The door wasn't locked, and I couldn't figure out why I couldn't open it, until I realised I only ever came in through Sienna's window.
As the months slipped by, I became desperate for human contact. But the more I tried to interact with the world, the more shunned I felt. I would live with people, sometimes for weeks at a time. It was probably more accurately called stalking.
I came to know the daily routine of Sergeant Dickson. I knew how many cups of coffee he consumed and how many Dickson-holes he ate. Seven and nine. I knew that Mr Watson returned home from school each day, logged onto the same website and paid money to the same lady. I knew that Inspector Anderson left town as soon as she couldn't make the charges against Judah stick, and that Alex blamed himself in part for Lana's death, even though all he did was kiss her.
It was torture. I was losing my mind. If I thought being haunted by Lana was bad, it was nothing compare to this.
I began to shut myself off to the world and live in the messed up recesses of my mind. Words can't express the loneliness of being surrounded by people who don't see you. So I stopped seeing them. I think that is why I never noticed her approach. I was too busy feeling the coldness of my own gravestone.
When she spoke, even though she looked right at me, I still doubted that she was actually speaking to me. I was so sure she wouldn't hear my reply, yet so hopeful that she would. There was only one thing to say. "Blue."
She repeated the word, and that was when I knew. She saw me. For the first time in months, someone saw me.
And with that one word, I knew I never wanted to be unseen again.
I knew I could never be without her.
Lennon
He knew why I asked him, but he came anyway. He knew when I arrived in Judah's Fairlane. He knew when I parked opposite the white cross attached to the barrier that shielded the road from the cliff over the lake. But he never said a word. And he didn't try to stop it.
The engine purred, the vibrations travelling up through the floor and trembling through my fingers wrapped around the steering wheel. There was still a part of me that wanted to refuse to believe. I needed to hear it from him. Maybe, somehow, it would make it better, make it easier. "What was it like?" I asked, needing to know if it had been the same for him as it was for us.
He shook his head, knowing exactly what I was asking. "I can't," he whispered. Then he shook his head again, as though it would somehow give him the strength he needed. "It was different. It was torment," he said. He twisted in his seat to face me, scooting over the space between us and taking my chin between his fingers. "It's not like that between you and me. Please tell me it isn't. Tell me that you will remember more than just the end."
I closed my eyes and rested in his touch. When I opened them again, the sun's rays danced on the water. "Ethereal?" I offered, wanting to take our thoughts away from why we were there, even if it was only for a moment.
He smiled, a dimple sinking into his cheek, and rested his head back on the seat, turning so he could still look at me. "Forever blue," he said.
"Forever blue," I echoed. We sat in silence but I couldn't meet his eye. Conflicting thoughts battled in my head, some of fear, most of sadness. The memories of our time together were tainted by the last few hours when I couldn't look at him without pain in my chest, but I didn't want our last memories together to be like that. "Kiss me?" I said, more of a breath than words.
He slid over and leaned across the seat until we were almost touching. "Always," he said. And then our lips met, and exhilaration and fear pounded through me as desperation. I wrapped my fingers in his hair and pulled as though we could somehow be closer than we already were, like it was the last kiss we would ever share.
Ruben pulled back, closing his eyes and drawing in a deep breath as though the movement had hurt. His chest started to heave and his nostrils flared in and out with each breath. "Do it," he said shakily. He stared over the lake, focussing on the rippling rays of the sun. "Please, just do it."
I never thought it would end like this. I never thought it would end at all. But not all stories get a happy ending.
As I tore myself away and the car lunged forward, I ignored his pleading eyes and the terror that had settled within. It only took a few seconds, but it seemed like an eternity. The tyres chewed the gravel and savagely spat it out behind us. The barrier did nothing to stop the car and we sailed over the edge. He reached over and took my hand in his, just as the force of hitting the water smashed my head into the steering wheel. I wound down my window, not daring to look at him.
His eyes stayed on me as water filled the car. And although he never voiced it, he knew. He knew this was the end. He knew there was no other choice. And he didn't fight. He smiled sadly as the water rushed in through the open window, and as we were sucked below, the cold lapped against our chins. It filled the car quickly, and as we sunk to the bottom of the lake, I closed my eyes, blocking him from my vision, my life, my memory.
I needed to move, to leave what would soon become a watery grave, but even though my lungs were bursting and panic sounded like a siren in my head, I turned to look at him one last time.
"Forever blue," he said, though the water muted the words. As the last breaths of air escaped, bubbles slipped from his mouth and became trapped under his eyelashes. His dark hair swayed with the movement of the water. But he did not move. He did not try to follow. He just smiled faintly as I pushed myself through the window and swam towards the surface. With one final glance, back I watched as his eyes followed me from the watery depths. And even though I was desperate for air, the feeling no longer panicked me. It was too familiar.
I broke the surface and gulped in air, running my hands over my face to push the water away. A raindrop splattered on my cheek. He did not rise. Seven more raindrops in quick succession splattered against my skin. And still, he did not rise. The heavens opened and rain fell like a sheet, blanketing me, cutting me off from the rest of the world.
I thought it was the end of everything. But I was wrong.
Judah swam over, bobbing in the water, scanning the surface, waiting for any sign of the appearance of a ghost he had never seen, but the rain kept us from seeing anything.
"What do you think happened to him?" Judah yelled through the downpour as he began swimming to the shore where Cara was waiting. "Do you think he's really gone, or that you just can't see him anymore?"
A breath caught in my throat and choked the words I didn't want to say. Judah's powerful stroke meant he was ahead of me. Tears formed in my eyes but the rain hid them.
"Ruben?" I said as a sob hit me. I swirled around in the water, suddenly filled with desperation to see him again. "Ruben?" I yelled. I strained to hear if he would reply but there was nothing but the sound of the rain hitting the water.
Something brushed against my foot and I jerked away, but it wrapped around my ankle and dragged me under. I called out, but my cry was cut off by water. Bubbles blocked my vision. The rain was loud underwater. I kicked against my captor but his grip was firm and he dragged me further under. I fought against him but he was strong. I longed to call out, but every time I opened by mouth the water muted it. Just like in my dream, despite the rain, the sun hovered as a ball of light above, but instead of struggling to reach it and being unable to, it grew smaller and smaller as I was dragged further down in the murky depths. I looked down and saw his form, dark and menacing, like a shadow in the deep. Bubbles were still pitted in his skin. His eyes were open and staring at me, and blood swirled where his nails dug into the flesh of my ankle. I inwardly pleaded with him. His mouth opened and even though the words were distorted by the water, I heard them in my head.
"It must be me," he said.
Internally, I begged him for release as the tightness in my chest swelled to the point of explosion. I thought back to the relief I felt when I finally surrendered and breathed water in my dream. But this wasn't a dream. This was life, my life, and I wasn't about to give up. I gathered what strength I could and kicked violently, until finally, release. I fought my way to the surface, gasping and spluttering when air finally entered my lungs. I thought I heard his voice say he didn't want to be alone. Terrified that he was still below me, I swam for the shore, screaming for help, but my voice was lost in the rain.
I fought through the water until I could make out Cara standing on the shore. She wasn't looking at me, though, her eyes were trained on Judah back in the lake, diving below the surface. I didn't stop. I swam, terrified of being dragged back under until I felt the safety of the rocks under my feet, and pulled myself to shore, gasping for breath. When I could muster the energy to sit, I turned to watch Judah struggling with something in the water. My heart constricted. Could he see Ruben now, too? Was all this for nothing? Had I simply transferred the curse to someone else?
Judah dragged a body to the shore and Cara fell to her knees, crossing her hands over the chest and pressing up and down frantically. I got to my feet and started to run towards them, afraid of seeing Ruben's dead body, knowing that it was me who had done this to him.
"It's not working," Cara panted as she performed compressions. "It's not working!"
"This wasn't supposed to happen." Judah ran his hands through his wet hair and fell to his knees. "I can't do this, not again."
Cara sunk to the ground, defeated, and said weakly, "I told you this would happen." She covered her face with her hands and Judah took over the compressions, pushing against the chest of the body, refusing to give up.
I stumbled over the rocks, then stopped. My eyes fixed on the body. It wasn't Ruben. It was a girl with long hair and a lonely smile. I clutched my stomach and fell to my knees, realisation and dread filling the pit of my stomach. There was a reason they could no longer hear me.
Judah continued to press against the chest, willing my heart to start beating again.
Cara reached out and placed her hand over his. "It's too late. She's gone."
But Judah refused to give up until Cara pulled his hands away and he slumped to the ground, crawled into her lap, and began to sob. Cara wrapped her arms around him and began to rock back and forth, lending him her strength and letting the rain wash away his tears.
Someone scuffed the stones behind me and I turned, peering through the blanket of rain. But it was no longer the face I was used to. His hair was still brown, his eyes still grey, but they had a darkness about them that I hadn't seen before. His shirt was soaked and clung to his chest. Water dripped from his hair and ran in trails down his face. He smiled, but it was cold.
"Forever blue," Ruben said.
