Hereafter (Shadowlands) (13 page)

I woke the next morning with tears streaming down my face, my nose clogged, and the sound of Aaron’s screams—which had plagued my dreams all night long—echoing in my ears. Gasping for breath, I pressed my hand to my forehead. My heart skipped a beat, and I whipped around to look at my nightstand. No coin. Thank god. I couldn’t handle ushering anyone else today.

A glance at the clock told me it was already past ten. It took me a good minute to remember it was Wednesday; I was supposed to be at Krista’s house right now.

I whipped the covers off, changed quickly into a T-shirt and sweats, and wove a new braid into my hair. Then I jammed my worn Princeton baseball cap over my dirty hair, and headed out.

I crept downstairs as quietly as possible. Behind his closed door, my dad tapped away at his keyboard. I tiptoed over to the open door of my sister’s room. She was lying on her back on her bed, reading a magazine. I slipped past as silently as possible. I couldn’t handle her questioning where I was going again; I had no idea what kind of excuse I could give this time.

Outside, the sun warmed my shoulders as I speed-walked across town, my eyes trained on the ground. If Nadia or Dorn or Pete was skulking about, watching me, I didn’t want to know. I just wanted to get to Krista’s as quickly as possible and find out if anyone had a clue about what had happened last night. As I climbed the path to the bluff, the big blue mansion seemed to loom threateningly overhead, and there was the weather vane, still pointing stubbornly, heartbreakingly south.

Somehow, knocking felt pointless. I gripped the cold gold doorknob with a trembling hand and pushed open the door. The first thing I heard were angry voices shouting behind the closed door of the mayor’s office. I froze in my tracks.

“I’m telling you, they’re all clean!” the mayor snapped, sounding frustrated.

“But that’s just not possible,” a male voice answered. “Have you checked the—”

“Yes! Of course I have! Do you take me for some kind of imbecile?”

“Hi, Rory!” Krista said loudly.

I jumped. Krista stood at the top of the stairs in a blue-and-white-striped sundress, her blond hair down around her shoulders. The moment she spoke, the shouting stopped. I stared at the office door, waiting for the mayor to come out, but nothing happened.

I wondered what she would do if I simply knocked on her door and told her what had happened with Aaron. Wouldn’t she want to know if someone had been ushered to the wrong place? Wasn’t that the sort of thing one was supposed to bring to the attention of those in charge?

“Come on up!” Krista said. “We’re just working on some garlands and stuff.”

I hesitated, staring at the mayor’s door.

“Rory?” Krista said.

“Coming!” I replied reluctantly, following her up the creaky stairs. Krista’s room was huge and pink, with dark wood accents and a stone fireplace on one wall. There were floral throw rugs everywhere, and Lauren sat on the edge of the biggest one, stringing beads onto thick white yarn. Krista sat down across from her and carefully pushed a needle and thread through the back of a small cloth flower. Bea was sacked out on the queen-size canopy bed, flipping through magazines. Strewn all over the hardwood floor were hundreds of the flowers, cases of colorful glass beads the size of Ping-Pong balls, and bags full of large white and pink feathers.

“You can help Lauren with the garland,” Krista suggested as I hovered in the doorway.

“Garland. Sure.”

“The pattern is pink-pink-yellow-pink-pink-white,” Lauren instructed me, pointing at one of the boxes of beads as I sat down next to her. “Because we have more pink than any other color.”

I glanced up at Bea, who laughed. “She’s anal-retentive,” she explained.

“All righty, then,” I said. I pulled the box of beads toward me, grabbed a spool of the heavy-duty string, and got to work, wondering if I could broach the subject of Aaron’s ushering.

“Where did all this come from?” Joaquin asked, suddenly appearing in the doorway.

“Would you believe it was all in the relic room?” Krista asked. There was a lightness about her this morning. The wispy, light fabric of her dress made her tan skin glow, and she hadn’t stopped smiling since I arrived. She suddenly tossed her head as if something funny or pleasing had just occurred to her, but she didn’t share.

I wished I were in her mood, wherever it had come from. “What’s the relic room?” I asked.

“It’s this big bedroom downstairs that Tristan converted into a storage closet,” Bea said, idly flipping a page. “It’s where we put all the visitors’ stuff once they move on.”

“And we kind of go shopping in there whenever we need anything,” Lauren added.

I gulped, feeling suddenly hot around the collar of my T-shirt. I knew the room they were talking about. I’d stumbled in there accidentally the previous week and seen the guitar strap that had belonged to the musician from the park, hanging from a shelf. I wondered if all of Olive’s and Aaron’s stuff was down there now—her guitar and his windsurfing gear, her flowy sweaters and his preppy jeans—just waiting to be picked over and claimed.

“You’re kidding,” Joaquin said. “When did we have Barbie’s circus come through here?”

Bea snorted. Joaquin glanced at my blank face. “At least someone around here thinks I’m funny.”

“Pink-pink-white-pink-pink-yellow,” Lauren muttered under her breath as she strung each bead.

Joaquin reached for a bag of feathers and tore it open. It exploded all over everything.

“Joaquin! I’m trying to concentrate!” Lauren chided him, dusting a pink feather off her leg. A white one fell directly on top of my head, the end hanging down to touch my nose. I blew it off, annoyed. I couldn’t believe I was there doing this while Aaron was trapped in the Shadowlands.

“Sorry,” Joaquin shot back. He looked Krista up and down as she pushed a needle and thread through the center of one of the flowers. “What’re
you
doing?”

“Making flower leis!” she replied happily.

“And you?” he asked Bea.

“Resting my arms after carrying all that crap up here,” she said, not looking up from her magazine. “And I just learned how to do the perfect cat-eye with gray shadow and black eyeliner,” she added in a wry tone. I doubted she’d ever worn eye makeup in her life.

“So then I guess I should—”

“Have you guys ever sent a soul over the bridge and then found out they ended up in the wrong place?” I blurted.

Bea stopped page-flicking. Lauren stopped muttering. Joaquin stared.

“Are you kidding? Never,” Krista said, her knee bouncing as she tied off the end of the thread on the lei she’d just finished. I wasn’t sure whether to feel relieved at that answer or more confused. When no one else chimed in, she looked around at the group. “But then, I haven’t been here that long. Why?”

Everyone else was still gazing at me, and I started to feel exactly how I didn’t want to feel—stupid. Joaquin’s attention was somehow more intense than the others’, his brown eyes sharp, like my question hadn’t just startled him, but scared him.

“Yeah, why?” Lauren asked.

“No reason,” I said, lifting a shoulder. My fingers trembled as I reached for the next bead. “Just trying to learn the trade.”

“It happens,” Bea said finally, sitting up. “It sucks, but it happens.”

“Usually it’s someone you think is supposed to go to the Light who ends up in the Shadowlands,” Lauren said. The tiny pink end of her tongue stuck out as she started to concentrate again. My stomach clenched.

“Really?” I said.

“Some people are just very good at hiding their true natures,” Joaquin confirmed, gathering up the fallen feathers around him and shoving them back into what was left of the plastic bag. He did it more vehemently than necessary, and his fist suddenly tore another hole in the back of the bag, rendering it useless. He tossed the whole thing aside, making an even bigger mess. Lauren sighed, but Joaquin didn’t seem to notice. “But the really bad ones are pretty obvious. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone I was convinced was bad end up in the Light. Only the other way around.”

“Oh,” I said. “That’s…interesting.”

So maybe Tristan was right. Maybe Aaron had me totally fooled. But I just couldn’t wrap my brain around that.

Suddenly, Lauren’s posture slumped. “Rory! It’s pink-pink-yellow-pink-pink-white! Not white-white-yellow-pink-pink-white!”

I looked down at my garland and saw that I had, in fact, strung the last few beads incorrectly.

“That’s okay. They don’t all have to be perfect,” Krista said, patting my knee.

“Yes, they do!” Lauren protested.

“No, they don’t. It’ll be eclectic!” Krista replied.

“Eclectic is for amateurs,” Lauren muttered. She grabbed the garland out of my lap and yanked. “I’ll start it over.”

Krista and I exchanged a look, and I almost laughed. Almost.

“Ooooh-kay,” Joaquin said, standing. “This whole decorating-committee thing is a little too intense for me, so I’m just gonna—”

“No! You just got here,” Krista whined, getting up.

But Joaquin was already halfway out the door. The second his foot hit the hallway, he stopped, startled. “Oh. Hey, man.”

“Hey,” Tristan said.

Tristan stepped around the corner, his ears red. At the sight of him, all the intense feelings surrounding our kiss came rushing back, prickling my skin, and making me blush, but they were quickly crowded out by the memory of him shouting at me. He’d obviously been hovering outside the door, and I wondered if he’d heard our conversation about the bridge.

“Are you gonna help?” Krista asked him hopefully. “Because if you want, you and Joaquin could go check on the tent and make sure all the pieces are there. I know it’s a little girlie in here, so—”

“Actually I stopped by to remind you,” Tristan said, pressing his palms together, “there’s someplace you’re supposed to be.”

Krista’s eyes widened, and she covered her mouth with one hand. “Crap! I’m supposed to be clearing out Aaron’s stuff.”

My skin tingled. Tristan glanced at me apologetically. It was clear he hadn’t wanted that said out loud.

“Sorry.” Krista dropped her lei on the pile of finished versions next to her bed. “I’ll go now. Guess the party’s over, people.”

“Yes!”
Bea cheered under her breath, flinging the magazine toward a pile on Krista’s nightstand. It slid right off the top and fluttered to the floor, where it landed with a
thwap
. Bea made no move to pick it up. Lauren, meanwhile, had put my beads aside and started organizing Joaquin’s feather mess.

“I’ll do it,” I volunteered.

“What?” Tristan said.

“Really?” Krista asked.

“Yeah, I want to.” I wanted to find out if there was some clue as to why Aaron had ended up where he did. Maybe if I had proof that the coin had made the right decision, I would somehow start feeling better about all this. “I’m supposed to be learning how to do these things, right?”

“That’d be awesome, Rory,” Krista said, looking down at her project. “I have so much to do. Including baking cupcakes. Actually, can you come help with those tomorrow? At two,” she asked brightly, gazing at me with wide blue eyes.

“Sure, no problem,” I answered distractedly as I stepped over the box of beads I’d been working on and navigated my way around the piles of flowers and feather bags. As I was heading out the door, Krista grabbed Bea.

“You can take her place at the beading station,” she suggested happily.

Bea groaned. “You’ll pay for this, Miller!”

“Sorry!” I called over my shoulder.

“I’ll go with you,” Tristan offered.

“You don’t have to,” I said tersely.

His face fell. “Do you even know where he was staying?”

I narrowed my eyes, thinking back. “He mentioned a room, but…no. He always came to my place.” Was that some kind of clue? Had he been hiding something from me?

“I can take her,” Joaquin offered.

We both tensed. For a second, I’d forgotten he was even there.

“That’s okay. I got it,” Tristan said, angling around my side as if to block Joaquin out.

We walked down the stairs together, conspicuously not touching. Near the bottom step, I glanced back up and caught Joaquin lingering at the top, watching us with a brooding expression.

Tristan held the front door open for me, and as we passed through, I saw that the door to the mayor’s office was slightly ajar. A second later, it banged shut.

“Did you see that?” I whispered.

“See what?” he asked, closing the front door behind us.

My reply caught in my throat. The fog was creeping in slowly from all sides, rolling over the grass and crowding out the flower beds at the foot of the stairs. Just like that, the mayor was forgotten.

“Someone else is being ushered,” I said flatly.

“Looks that way,” Tristan said.

I bit my tongue to keep from saying what I wanted to:

I hope they end up in the right place.

I stood in the doorway of Aaron’s room, a small, square chamber at a one-storied bayside motel called, in a very dead-on way, the Bayside Motel. Tristan hovered a few feet behind me, keeping a respectful distance while the fog continued to thicken around us. I waited for some sort of epiphany to strike me—a deep thought to occur that would put everything in perspective—but all I could think was this: Aaron was a minimalist.

There wasn’t a shred of clothing in sight. No soda cups or candy-bar wrappers or magazines. No razors or cookie crumbs or crumpled tissues. The only personal items were his canvas beach bag, which was slung over the back of a desk chair, and a hardcover copy of
Tales of the City
, which lay on his nightstand next to the motel’s old-school telephone, its spine perfectly aligned with the edge of the table.

“So…what do I do?” I said quietly.

“Find his suitcase, pack everything inside, and—”

“And then we take it back to the relic room,” I finished, turning to look over my shoulder.

Tristan cleared his throat. “Yes.”

“So everyone can go through it and take what they want,” I said bitterly.

“It’s not like that,” Tristan replied, shoving his hands in his pockets. “People don’t just raid the place every time someone moves on. We just leave it there, and it may or may not eventually get used.”

I nodded as the hissing fog swirled around us. “However you want to say it, it still doesn’t seem right to me.”

Tristan’s blue eyes looked pained. He glanced down, dragging his toe across the wood-plank walkway that stretched the length of the building, serving as a sort of front porch. “Rory, about last night—”

My heart thumped. I wasn’t ready to talk about this with him. Not yet. “I should get started.”

I took a deep breath and stepped over the threshold. The gray carpet inside the motel had been worn paper-thin, just like in a real motel in the real world. I wondered why they couldn’t fix up the place a little bit, considering it was the last stop before eternity. Would visitors really get that suspicious if the rooms in the motel happened to have new carpet?

“Do you want me to—?”

“No,” I told Tristan. “I’m fine.”

I looked in the small closet and found Aaron’s newish tweed suitcase, which I placed on the bed. The opening of the zipper sounded like a bomb going off in all the fog-induced silence. When I opened the top drawer of the dresser, a chill went through me that was so fierce I had to stop and force myself to breathe. There was Aaron’s rugby shirt, the one he’d worn to the Thirsty Swan with Darcy and me just a few days ago. His folded beach towel. His plain white T-shirts. I lifted them out and got a whiff of Aaron’s cologne. The scent brought tears to my eyes.

Suddenly, all I could think about was getting this over with. I placed his things in the suitcase and moved on to the next drawer, trying to ignore the pang in my heart when I touched the wetsuit from our windsurfing lessons last week. When I found the sneakers he’d worn on the beach my first night on the island—the ones that had made me feel like less of a loser for having worn mine—I had to bite back a sob. I tossed them in the bag and closed it.

There were no drugs, no alcohol, not even a pack of cigarettes. I didn’t uncover a journal filled with maniacal, violent drawings illuminating the inner workings of Aaron’s mind. No serial killer–style magazine tear-outs with faces x-ed out in red. No lists of names of the people who’d wronged him and deserved revenge. No beheaded dolls or dead puppies or bags of hair. I did, however, find a folded picture of David Beckham in his underwear drawer.

Yep. This guy was a real threat to society.

I emptied Aaron’s bathroom of its perfectly aligned bottles of shampoo, conditioner, gel, and body wash, checked under the bed, then opened the drawer on his bedside table. Something slid out from the back and knocked against the front stop of the drawer. My heart caught in my throat. It was his cell phone.

Glancing over my shoulder, I saw nothing but the open doorway; Tristan was giving me my space. Shakily, I turned the phone on, and it let out a loud, jaunty
bing
as it powered to life. There were, of course, no new messages, but when I scrolled to Aaron’s outgoing calls, a tear slid down my face.

There were twenty-three calls to his father over the past three days with a few to his brother and sister mixed in. Next to each of them was the awful message:
CALL FAILED
.

I sat down on the bed, clutching the phone in both hands, silent tears pouring down my face. Aaron had been a good son who wanted to make up with his father. I knew it. I had
felt
it last night when I’d held him. He was sorry for what he’d done, and all he wanted in the world was to have his apology heard. There wasn’t a bad bone in Aaron’s body, and this room proved it. He was just a person, a good person who had befriended me and my sister, all while suffering with his guilt.

The light in the room shifted, and I looked up at the four-paned window. The fog was starting to roll out, revealing the empty parking lot, the manicured hedge across the street, a seagull-shaped windmill stuck in the center of the front lawn across the street.

Tristan stepped into the doorway, his expression pained. “Are you all right?”

“No,” I replied bluntly. I turned the phone screen toward him. “Look at this. Just look. All he tried to do the entire time he was here was call his father so he could apologize. That was all that mattered to him. How can he deserve to be in the Shadowlands?”

Tristan blew out a sigh. He sat down next to me on the bed, the weak mattress buckling beneath our weight.

“I’m sorry, Rory,” he said, putting his arm around me. “I’m sorry you have to go through this on top of everything else.”

Anger flashed through me, so hot and sudden it made me spring to my feet. “Stop it!” I demanded. “Just stop! I don’t want you to tell me how sorry you are. I want you to fix it!”

“I can’t,” Tristan said, shaking his head. “I can’t fix it.”

“You’re telling me that you guys sent all those poor people off to the Shadowlands over a hundred years ago and you haven’t even tried, in all that time, to figure out a way to get them back?” I demanded.

An awful jolt of pain crossed Tristan’s face. “How can you say that to me?” he demanded, rising from the bed. “I told you how awful it’s been for me to live with that. You don’t think I would have brought them back if I could have?”

“There must be a way, Tristan,” I said. “There has to be.”

“Rory, look, I know that you’re a problem solver,” he said, irritated. “That you’re a questioner and a scientist, but I can tell you that this is one problem you’ll never find an answer to.”

“I can’t believe you,” I said, turning toward the door. “It’s like you don’t even care. Like you
want
him to rot in hell.”

Tristan just stood there, glowering at me, his jaw working under his skin.

“How can you be so complacent?” I ranted.

“You know what, Rory?” Tristan said, his eyes on fire. “I think we both need to cool off a little. I’m going to head out.” He slipped right past me out the door and into the bright sunlight.

“But what about Aaron’s stuff?” I shouted at his retreating back.

“Leave it!” he yelled without looking back at me. “I’ll get it later.”

He got to the end of the sidewalk, turned the corner, and was gone. At that moment, the phone on the nightstand rang, its old-fashioned bell pealing so loudly I jumped. A moment later, it rang again. Slowly, I walked over to the table and picked up the receiver, my hand shaking as I brought it to my ear.

“Hello?”

Outside the window, four crows landed on the fence across the street, watching me with their glassy black eyes. On the other end of the line, there was the faint sound of slow, rhythmic breathing. My heart hammered against my rib cage.

“Hello?” I said again, clutching the phone.

Laughter echoed through the line. Quiet at first, but growing rapidly louder. I banged the phone down and bolted from the room, leaving the door wide open behind me.