Forty-Four Box Set, Books 1-10 (44) (16 page)

The teenagers cheered.

Being able to bring the tourists up on shore to scout the rapids was one of the nice things about this particular river trip. People usually liked studying the raging waves and massive drops down the canyon. Big Eddy was an impressive stretch of whitewater and seeing it was a thrill. It still took my breath away no matter how many times I’d done the run.

Ty pointed out the hidden rocks as he showed everyone the route. He also talked about the small but powerful whirlpool that we needed to avoid.

“Any questions?”

A few hands went up. As Ty answered them, I stared out at the water.

Although it was intense, the run wasn’t a serious river trip. This was more of a tourist attraction. Little kids were even allowed to come. It only took about an hour or so to run the three miles and we did it four times a day. Our job was to make sure the customers had a good time, and then deliver them safely to the take-out point for the bus drivers to shuttle them back down to the resorts in town.

It wasn’t the biggest deal that Kate made it out to be sometimes.

“Ready? Let’s go!” Ty said behind his super dark sunglasses that wrapped around his eyes, making him look like an alien.

The other four guides were by the rafts upriver, waiting. They were friendly enough, but I didn’t know them that well. They had all been river rats for the past few years and I was the newbie. Ty was the only one I really talked to.

We headed back to the water. Before taking my seat in the back, I helped Amber hold the raft steady while my group got in. The four women and two men smiled, but they still looked scared. Seeing Big Eddy up close hadn’t helped ease their fear.

Amber pushed us off and I lined up just behind Ty’s raft. My heart thundered in my ears as I grabbed my paddle, staring ahead.

The river immediately picked up speed.

“Okay, everybody, remember this is the fun one!” Ty said, his voice booming over the roar we were paddling into. “Yaw!”

The yells of the teenagers bounced off the black lava rocks. I back paddled a bit to give Ty room. My group gripped their paddles, waiting for my instructions.

Ty’s raft disappeared into the foam and mist and noise. Wild screams ensued.

“Okay,” I shouted. “Everybody ready? Plant your feet and paddle hard. Here we go!”

I waited another second or two before paddling, my stomach swaying with each roll of the waves. We were lined up okay, but I was left of where Ty had been, a little off from where I wanted to be.

The river took us, turning white and mean as we dropped and flew over the waves, water splashing into the boat. The current was strong and was trying to push us into the rocks on the right. I told myself I could do this. I could run these rapids. I could beat this water.

“Okay!” I called out. “Right side only.”

They listened well and did exactly as we had practiced, the three women on the left pulling out their paddles. The raft evened out as I guided us back into the middle of the channel.

“Good, okay, everybody now!”

The churning water soaked us as we lunged into the next drop, sliding into a wave. We passed the boulder in the middle of the river a little closer than I would have liked, but we were okay.

“Paddles out!”

I dug deeper into the water and steered us away from the last rock on the left and we dropped again, shooting into the middle of the suddenly calm river.

“Yeah!” I yelled. “Great job!”

My group was all smiles, but unlike everybody else around us, they didn’t cheer or high five each other.

Ty gave me a thumbs up without turning around.

The other rafts joined up as we meandered down the canyon, past pine trees and rock cliffs. A crow cawed as it flew above us. I searched for the pair of bald eagles that lived in the trees nearby, but they weren’t there.

As the hot sun baked my shoulders, we drifted through the calm stretch. With the roar of the rapids at my back and the beauty of the forest all around me, a new feeling swelled up inside.

Peace.

CHAPTER 2

It had been more than a year since I had seen Jesse.

Thirteen months ago, on a warm May afternoon, we sat by our lake and talked about how we died. His eyes sparkled as he looked at me. And then he kissed me. A long and passionate and sweet kiss. The kiss of dreams. The kiss that you remember forever because it’s the one.

And then he vanished.

I turned up the radio and let Adele flood the Jeep with another song about lost love as I waited at a light.

I had searched everywhere for Jesse. At the basketball courts around town. On the hills of Awbrey Butte and at the parks. I followed every skateboard that scraped the sidewalk. I ran up to tall strangers. I waited outside his house. I lingered around the lake. I drove up to Mt. Bachelor and searched all the ski runs hoping to find him speeding down the slick slopes with that crazy smile plastered on his face.

But I couldn’t find him.

I sighed as I pulled into the parking lot. I got out and walked across the grass.

When we were kids, Jesse and I always came here. It was our park. Sometimes we’d walk over after school and sometimes Kate would drop us off. He played goalie for me and I played one-on-one with him. Or we would just walk around talking while he dribbled his basketball.

It was a good place. I knew he would come here to find me if he could.

I sat down on the cement table, taking a deep breath of the summer air. I watched two kids throwing a Frisbee back and forth. I scanned the play structures, the basketball courts, the fenced-off dog park.

I wasn’t going to give up. Jesse was out there somewhere, and I was going to find him.

But sometimes I did wonder if Dr. Krowe, the psychiatrist I used to see, was right. That Jesse had just been a figment of my imagination.

“The mind is an incredible instrument, Abby. It can create whole worlds,” he had said during one of our sessions.

He had helped me a lot back when I was recovering. I was having a hard time, lost in a dark place.

“Don’t you see?” he continued. “You invented Jesse. You loved him and couldn’t accept his death so your mind protected you through your trauma. Have you ever thought of what might have happened if you hadn’t had Jesse with you all those months? That maybe you wouldn’t have made it back psychologically? Having him around you in those transitional months probably saved you. And you must know that Jesse vanishing at the exact same time that you realized he had died is not a mere coincidence.”

Dr. Krowe was good people. I knew that. When I woke up after being dead for 44 minutes, I was a mess. I couldn’t see colors anymore, play soccer, or remember things. And then I started having terrifying dream-like visions of a serial killer. Dr. Krowe helped me deal with all that. And even though I still lived in a black and white world, most everything else was a lot better. He helped me out of the darkness.

But he was wrong about Jesse. Jesse was real. I could feel it.

But I needed to find him.

Jesse wasn’t the only ghost I saw. Since the accident, I saw other ones sometimes. They moved around slowly, weighed down by confusion and regret. I didn’t see them often, just once in a while. They were in crowds, in stores. Walking down busy streets. They stood a little ways from the living, lurking in this world and not willing to let go.

But they looked different than Jesse. Duller. Faded. Sad. And they had these frightening, intense eyes that gave me chills if I stared at them for too long. That’s how I knew they were from another world. They had ghost eyes.

The sightings always left me with a bad feeling afterwards. I tried to ignore them, ducking into stores or turning around and walking the other way. I didn’t know why I was seeing them and I didn’t care.

There was only one ghost I wanted to find.

I flashed back to when I saw Jesse in the hospital room, standing over my bed right after the doctors brought me back to life. He didn’t have his baseball cap on and his eyes were large with worry. I hadn’t even recognized him. But then he spoke.

“Craigers,” he said, leaning down and whispering. “I’m so glad you made it back.”

I had made it back from death to be with him.

And it took me more than a year to figure out that he wasn’t even here.

My phone buzzed. It was Kate, calling to let me know she would be home for dinner.

A heavy surge of sadness rushed through me as I walked back to the car. The engine started along with Adele, always willing to share my sorrow.

CHAPTER 3

The house was hot and stuffy when I got home. I threw down my bag and flipped on the air conditioning. After taking a quick shower, I headed to the kitchen.

I had started cooking a few months ago after getting hooked on the
Food Network
. At first I made simple things, like steak and mashed potatoes, omelets, and spaghetti. But then I went to the library and checked out cookbooks and started trying more complicated recipes. Lately, most of the dinners turned out pretty well.

There was something special about cooking, about chopping onions and fresh Italian parsley and smelling the different spices. Florence and the Machine sautéed on the stereo while I did the same thing to the garlic. The sweet aroma flooded the house.

I read over the recipe once more, double checking that I hadn’t missed anything before putting the glass dish into the oven. Then I sat at the counter skimming over other recipes in the cookbook and looking out the window. After about half an hour, I peeked in at the chicken parmesan penne bake. It was bubbling and almost done.

I was trying to do more things around the house to help out. Kate was still a little mad about the river guide job and I was hoping that the dinners would help smooth things over.

“Christ, Abby, couldn’t you have just found a summer job serving coffee or something?” she had said when I told her that I had been hired. “I mean, seriously. Why would someone with your history do something like that? I totally don’t understand.”

She had a point. It wasn’t logical and maybe it was even a little insane. Most drowning victims probably didn’t want to go anywhere near water ever again. And with everything Kate had gone through while I recovered, she had a right to be angry.

But I had to do it.

I tried to explain to her why I liked being on the river every day. I told her that sometimes I didn’t understand it either, but that the dark lake where I drowned had taken something from me and being on the river allowed me to take back some of what I had lost.

“Forget it, Abby. I’m putting my foot down on this,” she had said.

She must have been thinking I was still a kid or something.

I took the job anyway. She didn’t speak to me for a few days, but after a little while she let it go. She still didn’t like it, but at least we didn’t fight about it anymore. Sometimes I felt guilty. I didn’t like for her to worry. But it was where I belonged.

“Smells amazing in here,” Kate yelled as she dropped her keys on the entryway table.

“Hey, Kate.”

Her heels clicked quickly towards the kitchen across the wood floor.

“Can’t wait to eat,” she said, patting my shoulder on her way to the fridge.

She swung open the wide door and stared inside for a long time before grabbing a small bottle of water.

As always, she looked great even after working all day. Her hair had been growing out and was pulled up loosely on top of her head.

“Good day?” I asked, closing the cookbook.

She drained half the bottle.

“Eh,” she said. “That trial is long and boring. It’s hard to sit on those uncomfortable benches for hours and then head back to the paper and write up the story for deadline. But I guess it’s coming along. I’m hoping they’ll wrap up next week. How ‘bout you? Good day?”

“Yeah, it was good,” I said.

She slid off her shoes.

“What are we having, by the way?”

“One should never ask,” I said, quoting from a favorite movie. “It spoils the surprise.”

“Thanks, Hannibal. Guess I’ll just have to wait to see then.”

I got up and checked on dinner after she left. A nice, crusty brown layer had formed on top so I pulled it out of the oven.

I served the penne on fancy white dinner plates with gold rims and put them out on the table with a bottle of white wine and a corkscrew. Kate appeared a minute later in sweats and a T-shirt and sat down.

“This looks great,” she said, inhaling the thick steam rising up.

She took the freshly-grated parmesan cheese I had put out and sprinkled some on the pasta while I uncorked the wine and poured her a glass. I served myself some sparkling water.

“To the chef,” she said, raising her glass.

She took a bite.

“Delicious.”

I agreed. It was really good. The flavors had come together nicely.

Within a few minutes she had finished and sat back in the chair.

“Want some more?” I asked.

“No, let’s see if that holds. But thanks. It’s really nice coming home to this.  You’ve sure become quite the cook.”

After a few minutes, we headed over to the living room and turned on the TV. Kate flipped through the channels, stopping at a news feature on CNN about a famous old basketball player who had written a book about depression.

“So, you had a good day?” she asked again, rubbing her face.

“Yeah,” I said.

“And that Ty guy? How’s he doing?”

It wasn’t like I had talked that much about Ty to Kate or anything, but she always asked about him ever since we bumped into him at Safeway one night. She didn’t understand about Jesse.

I could see the wheels turning in her head.

“He’s good,” I said. “Of course, Ty’s the type who is always good.”

“Yeah, he seems like a happy guy. Does he have a girlfriend?”

“No,” I said. “I think he just got out of a relationship. At least that’s what I hear him tell the girls back at the office when they throw themselves at him.”