Hereafter (Shadowlands) (7 page)

I tripped onto the sidewalk in front of my house, blinking back tears, and a few yellow leaves floated down from the magnolia tree in our yard before being caught up on the ocean breeze. As I shoved open the gate, I could feel him watching me from the gray house. Always, always watching me.

A wave of despair threatened to overtake me as I pictured the darkness of a forever without him.

Focus, Rory. Focus.

“Hey, beautiful.”

I flinched at the familiar voice. Joaquin. Fantastic. Just what I needed. He sidled up behind me and walked right through the gate as if invited.

“I’m not in the mood right now, Joaquin,” I said, speed-walking toward the porch.

“Not in the mood for what? I just came by to—” Joaquin suddenly stopped and slapped at his neck. “Ow!”

“What?” I said, whirling on him.

His hand trembled as he gazed at his palm. Curled up in the center was a small, very dead, hornet.

“Are you okay?” I asked dutifully.

Joaquin didn’t answer. He cupped the back of his neck for a second with his other hand and glanced around, as if waiting for the punch line. But there was no one but him, me, and the birds chirping in the boughs of the magnolia tree shading the walkway. When he looked down at the hornet again, his trembling grew violent.

“What? Is it bad?” I asked, alarmed now. “Are you allergic?”

“No,” Joaquin said. “I just—”

He shook his head, and instead of flicking the tiny corpse to the ground, he shoved it into his pocket.

Joaquin shifted his weight and squinted out of one eye. “Where were we?”

“I think I was about to go inside and slam the door in your face,” I said, stomping up the porch steps, which creaked and sagged beneath my feet.

“Okay, but just wait for one second,” he implored, coming after me.

I threw up my hands. “Why?”

Behind him, the curtains on the upstairs window across the street fluttered closed. My throat closed, and I crossed my arms tightly over my chest.

Joaquin took a step closer. “Look, I just wanted to check in and see how you’re doing today. Sometimes the second day is even harder than the first.”

“How do you
think
I’m doing?” I asked, glancing behind me at the door. I just wanted to get inside before Tristan came out. There was no way I could handle seeing him again just then.

Joaquin touched his sting and winced. “At the moment I’d say…livid?”

“Do you have any idea how hard this is?” I ranted, yanking a geranium bloom from the nearest window box. “I spent all yesterday listening to my sister talk about finding her next hookup, and all I could think was
You’re dead
and you have no idea.
She’s never going to graduate from high school or get that tattoo she’s always wanted or save up for that damned leather jacket she’s been talking about since last Christmas. She’s never going to do
anything
, and I know it and I can’t tell her. Do you have any clue how awful this feels?”

“Wait a minute. Darcy wants to hook up with someone else?” Joaquin asked, screwing up his face in consternation. “Is it Fisher?”

My jaw dropped. “Are you kidding me? That’s all you took from what I just said?”

“All right, all right, calm down.” Joaquin reached for me. “You’ve crushed the poor flower.”

I looked down at the pink petals strewn all over my feet and released the head of the geranium from my sweaty grasp. Then I saw his fingers on my skin and yanked my arm back, angling myself away from him.

“Don’t even try that Lifer mind trick on me. I’m not letting
you
control me.”

“I wouldn’t think of it.” Joaquin crossed his arms over his chest and smiled in an amused way.

“What?” I said, tossing the flower to the ground. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I like this attitude,” he said. “I thought you were a Goody Two-shoes, but I’m digging this whole defiant thing you’ve got going right now.”

Defiant? He thought I was being defiant? More like I was turning into an emotional basket case. Little did he know my current manic state stemmed from a broken heart, nothing more. I glanced back at the gray house, but it was quiet.

“Me, I full-on lost it for at least a week,” Joaquin said, leaning back against the porch railing. “When I first got here, they placed me with Ursula in that pink gingerbread house over on Sunset.”

“Wait.” I shook my head. “Placed you? And who’s Ursula?”

“Oh, you know Ursula. The waitress at the general store? The one with the white hair? She’s supposed to be my grandmother. We live together.”

I thought of the cheerful woman I’d seen behind the counter last week. “
Supposed
to be your grandmother?” I echoed.

Joaquin shrugged. “Yeah. All of us who died when we were young were placed with adults when we got here so our living situations would look normal to visitors,” he explained. “Like Tristan and Krista living with the mayor…”

“Huh?” I shook my head as I tried to keep up.

Joaquin sighed and sat back on the railing now, settling in. “The mayor isn’t their real mother. Krista and Tristan aren’t even related. You know that, right? She only got here last year, and he’s been here forever.”

I blinked. Krista and Tristan looked so much alike they were practically twins. How could they not be related? The sun suddenly felt much hotter than it had a moment ago.

“Anyway,” Joaquin continued, “when I first got here, I spent way too much time at Ursula’s huddled under a flowered bedspread that smelled like mothballs and gardenias, wailing like a baby. To this day, if I even walk past a gardenia bush, I dry-heave.”

“Can I ask you something?” I said, my heart fluttering nervously as I traced a groove in the side of the porch swing with my fingertip.

He looked me in the eye, crossing his arms over his stomach. “You want to know how I died.”

His gaze was unflinching. For the first time, I noticed the gold and green flecks peppering the deep brown in his eyes. I held my breath. “Is that a bad thing to ask?”

“No. Everyone asks eventually.” He leaned back. “I committed suicide. After I killed my mother and sister.”

I froze. “You…what?”

Joaquin nodded, his jaw set. “It was 1916. I was kind of a drunken asshole, and my dad had just gotten one of those newfangled automobiles,” he said sarcastically.

“Wait a minute, 1916?” I blurted out. “You’ve been here for—”

“Yeah, I know. I look good for my age,” he teased. “So anyway, me and my friends went out joyriding on far too much whiskey, and on the way home I was driving, if you could even call it that, and there was an overturned grocery cart in the road, and I didn’t see it till the last second. And when I swerved…I swerved right into my family. They were coming back from evening services, and I…killed them. I mean, not my dad. He wasn’t there, but…”

He looked away and briefly touched the side of his hand to his nose.

“Anyway, my father stopped talking to me after that, and I stopped doing pretty much anything,” Joaquin went on, his tone matter-of-fact. He leaned back and toyed with his leather bracelet, moving it up and down on his arm, though it only moved about an inch. “I couldn’t sleep without seeing their faces, without hearing my little sister scream.… So one night I went up to the attic with a length of rope and—”

He made a little hanging motion with his hand and stuck out his tongue. I grimaced and looked away, disgusted.

“Don’t do that,” I said.

“Don’t do what?” he asked.

“Make a joke of it. It’s not funny.”

“I know it’s not funny,” he said fiercely. “Believe me, I know. I thought by hanging myself I was escaping it, but instead, I landed myself here, and here I’ve been, for almost a hundred years, and every day I still see their faces. I can still hear her scream.”

I looked down at the floorboards beneath my feet, my bottom lip trembling. He’d just confirmed my worst nightmare. Being here forever meant never forgetting. It meant never escaping. It meant I was going to feel this stupid, this humiliated, this small, for all eternity.

I could feel a black hole start to open up within me. This was not good. This was very not good.

The door of the gray house creaked open, and Tristan stepped out. He ducked his head, being careful not to look in my direction, not to even acknowledge me, then turned and hurried off down the street.

My eyes welled with tears. “I have to go,” I told Joaquin, standing up and shoving open the door.

“Rory, wait,” Joaquin said, scrambling to his feet.

But I just slammed the door behind me and sank to the floor.

Yesterday, forever had felt like a possibility, like a promise. But now I knew it was the exact opposite. Forever was its own death sentence.

All afternoon I’ve watched her sit on her porch, sighing out her heartbreak. One day and she’s already figured it out: Forever isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

I’d take her with me if I could, but she’s actually what I pretend to be: good. She would never agree to my plan.

But I see it happening already, the cracks in the perfect facade. The sting is just the beginning. And I’ll do what I’ve always done: smile, nod, and fool them all.

No one will ever suspect a thing.

The Jeep pitched and dived as it climbed the rocky hill toward nowhere. All I could see in front of me were the sky and stars, and I clung to the roll bar, just hoping that Bea was as adept behind the wheel as she seemed to think she was. Next to me on the bench backseat, Krista smiled with her head tipped back, as if enjoying the sensation of her hair being nearly ripped from her scalp. To her right, Fisher stared straight ahead, his mirrored sunglasses on to guard against the wind. Joaquin and Bea occasionally spoke to each other in the front seat, but with all the whooshing air in my ears, and the frantic tripping of my heart, I couldn’t make out what they were saying.

I had no idea where we were going. All I knew was it had taken Joaquin half an hour to wheedle me into the car, swearing left and right that whatever we were about to do was going to make me feel better about everything. It wasn’t until he mentioned that Tristan wouldn’t be there—he was working the closing shift at the Thirsty Swan—that I’d finally agreed to come.

“Just look at the stars!” Krista said, splaying out her arms.

“Yeah. They’re…great,” I replied flatly.

Up ahead, the ground seemed to just end, like we were coming to some sort of a drop-off.

“Um, Bea!” I shouted, leaning forward. “Maybe you should stop.”

“Don’t worry. It’s fine,” she called back, glancing over her shoulder at me.

“But you’re heading for a cliff!” I yelled, watching the edge of the world rushing toward me at an alarming speed.

“Don’t worry about it!” Fisher said with a smile.

My heart was in my throat. What was so cool about this? Were they going to drive me off a cliff just to prove I couldn’t die?

“I
am
worried about it!” I cried, frustrated by their calm. “I’m sorry if I’m not used to being a Lifer yet, but I just got here and I don’t want to—”

Bea suddenly applied the brake, and we skidded forward. I closed my eyes as the Jeep turned sideways, the back wheels swinging toward the precipice. I heard the dirt and rocks spray out over the edge and clenched my fists, waiting to feel the ground drop out from underneath me. Dreading the weightlessness. And then, we stopped.

“We’re here!”

“Everybody out!”

The Jeep bobbed as the others climbed out and jumped down onto the rocks. As my breathing began to slow, I could hear the waves crashing somewhere down below. Ever so slowly, I opened one eye, then the other. The stars winked overhead. I was still alive. Relatively speaking.

“What is the matter with you people?” I screeched, standing up on the seat. Instantly, the world swooped beneath me. The tire under my feet was aligned perfectly with the edge of the cliff and the water was miles below me. One wrong move and I would tip over the edge. Slowly, I sat down again, breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth. To my right, Bea and Fisher were stripping off their outer layers and walking to the far edge of the cliff, laughing and chatting along the way. Kevin parked his sleek black car nearby, and he, Lauren, and Cori clambered out, all of them shedding clothes along the way. There was no sign of Tristan. Or Nadia, for that matter.

Joaquin and Krista stood on the other side of the Jeep.

“Sorry. Bea’s our resident speed freak,” Krista said, tying her hair into a ponytail.

Joaquin stepped closer. “I’ll help you down.”

I slid across the bench and stood up shakily. Joaquin reached out and clasped my waist with his hands. I jumped down, assuming he’d back up, but he didn’t, and we grazed hips. I looked up into his brown eyes. He was still holding on to me.

“Well,” he said. “Maybe you’re not such a goody-goody.”

I blushed and stepped back. “What’re we doing here?”

“Come see!” Krista said excitedly.

The others were all gathered at the very edge of the cliff. I walked toward them on quivering knees, clinging to the front of my sweatshirt with both hands. The fierce wind whipped my hair against my face. In the distance I could see the bridge, the fog swirling lazily around its legs. I stood behind the others on my toes and looked down.

All I saw was water. Water and foam and spray and rocks.

“It’s a cliff,” I said flatly.

“Yep.” Shirtless, Fisher stepped backward toward the edge, tossing his sunglasses onto a pile of clothes. “And it’s perfect for this.”

My eyes widened. “Don’t!”

But it was too late. Fisher had stepped off the edge. He let out a loud, merry shout as he fell. It seemed like five minutes passed before he finally hit the water. He was so far below us I didn’t even hear the sound of the splash, but I saw the white water spray up around him.

For a long moment, no one said a word. I was sure I was never going to see Fisher again. No one, dead or alive, could survive a drop like that. But then, suddenly, the water broke and his head emerged. He let out a whoop and the crowd cheered. My shoulders slumped in relief as Fisher swam toward some low rocks and scrambled up onto them.

“That was awesome!” Joaquin shouted.

Fisher cupped his hands around his mouth, and a moment later I heard the faintest call. “Who’s next?”

Joaquin, Lauren, Bea, Kevin, Cori, and Krista all turned to look at me.

“Oh no,” I said, backing up. “No way. I’ll just wait for you guys in the Jeep.”

“Come on, Rory. It’s an amazing feeling,” Bea said imploringly.

“Here, look. I’ll do it. It’s fine,” Cori told me.

Then she turned and jumped, disappearing from view in a snap. The rest of them cheered, hooted, and hollered. This time I didn’t look, but I heard her shout up to us when she emerged.

“The water’s perfect!”

Crazy. They were all crazy. Every last one of them. I turned and walked away as fast as I could, my pulse thrumming in my ears. Krista, Bea, and Lauren came after me, but I threw my hands up at them, my sneakers crunching across the pebbles and sand.

“You guys do whatever you want to do,” I said. “But just FYI, peer pressure is pretty lost on me.”

“We’re not trying to peer-pressure you,” Bea said, screwing up her face as if I’d offended her. “If you don’t want to do it, don’t do it.”

“Why are
you
even doing it?” I demanded, feeling annoyed and embarrassed that they were all so blasé about something that scared the breath out of me. “That has to be a twenty-story drop!”

Bea shrugged. “Because we can. There’s a lot you can do when you realize you can’t die.”

My gaze darted past her to the edge. So that was what this was about. Illustrating Joaquin’s point. I was going to “live” forever. Which meant nothing could hurt me. Not in a permanent way.

But still. That didn’t mean I was ready to jump off a cliff.

“Hey, if you don’t want to jump, don’t worry,” Krista said, reaching for my hand with both of hers. Her skin was warm and soft. “We’ll sit this one out with you.”

“We will?” Bea asked, disappointed.

“Don’t let me stop you,” I said.

“No. We want to hang out with you, right?” Krista said to the others as she tugged me toward a grouping of large rocks. “Let’s sit.”

Bea sighed, looking longingly over at the cliff. “Fine.”

“I’m in,” Lauren said with a shrug.

Krista and I settled down on a wide, flat, gray rock and Bea and Lauren perched around us. Bea sat with her knees together, her feet apart, and pushed her hair behind her shoulders, her jaw clenched. Lauren fiddled with the gold seashell she wore on a chain around her neck. I glanced over my shoulder at the waves far below, feeling awkward. Being the center of attention was not my thing.

“So,” Krista began, biting her lip. “Are you okay?”

I froze. Had Tristan said something to her? “Yeah. Why?”

“Just Joaquin kept going on about how we had to cheer you up, and when Tristan came into the general store this morning after your tour, he wouldn’t even look me in the eye,” Krista explained. “Did something happen between you two?”

“Me and Tristan?” I squeaked. “No. Of course not. We’re not, I mean, he’s not—”

“Oh god. You like him, don’t you?” Krista squealed.

“Ugh. Not another one,” Bea said bluntly.

“What do you mean, another one?” I asked.

Lauren leaned back on her hands. “Just don’t let Nadia find out.”

“I knew it!” I exclaimed. “She likes him, doesn’t she?”

Silence. The three of them exchanged knowing looks, and a new and awful thought occurred to me, one that would explain everything that had happened this morning and also make it ten times more embarrassing.

“Wait a minute. Are Tristan and Nadia, like, together?”

“Uh, no,” Krista said with a scoff. “Please.”

“Not that she doesn’t
want
to,” Lauren sang, pushing her legs out straight.

“Lauren!” Bea kicked Lauren’s shin with her toe.

“What?” Lauren was wide-eyed. “I’m just saying! Rory should know. If you have a thing for Tristan, it’s better to know. Trust me.”

I blinked. Did Lauren have a thing for Tristan, too?

“What do you mean? Wait, is that why she’s always lurking around and glaring at me?”

“She’s been
lurking
?” Krista blurted out.

Bea sighed loudly and raised her eyes to the stars. “I don’t know about the lurking, but Lauren’s talking about the Jessica Rule.”

“What’s the Jessica Rule?” I asked.

Someone let out a loud whoop, and when we looked over, Kevin had disappeared from sight. We waited a couple of minutes until we heard him whoop again, his voice echoing up from the depths.

“Are you losers doing this or what?” Joaquin shouted to us.

“Keep your pants on!” Bea shouted back.

He laughed, then pulled off his shirt before diving over the edge.

“What’s the Jessica Rule?” I repeated.

“Basically, the deal is this,” Lauren began, tucking her glossy dark hair behind her ears. “Jessica was this Lifer who got here way before the three of us did, and apparently Tristan fell for her. Like, big-time fell. We’re talking running barefoot through the fields, swearing undying devotion under the stars, epic kind of romance.”

I squirmed, my toes curling inside my sneakers. “And?”

Lauren’s eyes sparkled with mischief in a way that made me think of my sister and her friends back home. They got that exact same look on their face when they had good dirt. She leaned toward me conspiratorially.

“And
then
she—”

“Broke up with him,” Bea interrupted curtly. Lauren whipped around to glare at her. “She broke up with him, broke his heart, and he vowed to never get into a relationship with another Lifer. Which is what Nadia found out when she tried to get together with him upon her arrival. What was it? Thirty years ago now?”

“Why not?” I asked. “I mean, why not ever get into another relationship? People break up all the time.”

Krista took a breath. “Because she—”

Suddenly I was blinded by a flash of light. We all turned around at the sound of a gunned engine. A black sports car with a huge firebird painted on its hood came flying up the hill out of nowhere and skidded to a stop, spraying dirt and pebbles all over the place. Pete clambered out from behind the wheel and jogged over to the jumping point, leaving the engine running and the radio and lights on. He peeled a white tank top off over his head.

“Woo-hoo!” he shouted. And then he flipped off the edge.

Yep. Crazy people. I was living among a bunch of crazy people. I was just turning back to the conversation when the passenger-side door opened, and Nadia stepped out. She looked right at me with a cocky expression, slammed the door, and sauntered over. Her Mohawk was spikier this evening, and she wore thick black eyeliner that made her dark eyes look huge.

“What’re you girls doing?” she said teasingly, pushing her hands into the pockets of her black vinyl jacket. “Getting a knitting circle going?”

They were the first words I’d actually heard her speak. Bea, Lauren, and Krista all turned to look at me.

“What?” Nadia said, looking down her nose at me.

I pushed myself up to my feet, my insides shivering and sliding. Nadia eyed me with interest.

“Do you have a problem with me?” I demanded. Bea, Lauren, and Krista all stood up around us, forming a circle.

She lifted a shoulder. “I have a few, actually,” she spat, looking me up and down like I was dirt.

“What?” I asked, turning my palms out. “If this is about Tristan—”

“Tristan?” she barked indignantly. “Are you kidding me? This is not about Tristan. It’s about the fact that I don’t trust you.”

My jaw dropped. “What did I ever do to you?”

Bea and Lauren exchanged an alarmed glance, as if they knew what was coming and didn’t like it.

“Like you don’t know,” Nadia said, jutting her chin.

My fingers curled in frustration. “Enlighten me.”

“Okay, fine,” Nadia said. “Ever since you got here, something’s off. All this strange stuff has been happening.”

My eyes narrowed. “What strange stuff?”

“That’s not her fault,” Lauren said to Nadia, not defensively, but as if my innocence were obvious.

“How do you know?” Nadia demanded. “No one knows for sure.”

“What strange stuff?” I repeated, looking around at the others.