Of Delicate Pieces (36 page)

Authors: A. Lynden Rolland

Tags: #YA, #paranormal, #fantasy, #ghosts, #death, #dying, #love and romance

BOOK: Of Delicate Pieces

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As she stepped onto Lullaby Lane, the only movement came from the memories. She saw four towheaded boys trampling through the flowerbeds and a small girl trailing behind. The smallest boy fell back to help her. They vanished like ghosts to be replaced with Danya Lasalle scooping a small Alex off the pavement with a rip over the knee of her ballet tights.

An image of David Lasalle appeared, throwing a pitch to Kaleb, who smacked the baseball with enough force to shake the memory away. And she saw Chase … as a three-year-old holding her in a wagon being pulled by Gabe. She saw him as a five-year-old holding her hand as they stumbled up the giant steps of a yellow school bus for the first time. She watched Chase hand her a snow cone while red, white, and blue fireworks exploded overhead.

None of the memories included the man on whose doorstep she now stood. So many times, she witnessed her father searching for her mother. He’d mutter her name in his intoxicated sleep. He’d rush around corners in the house and ask where she’d gone. Alex wondered if Logan Ash had actually seen his wife from time to time. Now that she knew it was possible.

She lifted her fist and knocked four times on the chipped door. She looked nowhere else for fear that things would change. She’d see who had moved into the Lasalles’ old house. She’d see a new driveway or a different paint color, new pavement or fresh mailboxes. And she didn’t want to see that.

The door flew open like an opportunity. Loss, bitterness, and alcohol had aged her father well beyond his years. He poked out his graying head and turned it left to right. Alex did not move. Even after he slammed the door, muttering about stupid kids.

He didn’t see her. He still didn’t care to look for her.

***

Chase considered Thea’s words again and again. She said the line between life and death was like the line of the horizon over the bay. They were equally vast, equally gorgeous, and separate.

How
, Thea asked Chase after Alex left,
would he feel if the waves bled into the pink and purple sky, making a pinnacle to the other world?

Scared
, he replied. He thought about that question now as he glanced at the redwoods towering above Lazuli Street. The trees breathed life into Thea’s words, reaching their fingertips to the heavens above. Alex sat in front of him on the rickety staircase, one that led to nothing. She leaned back and rested her elbows on his knees.

She sighed, and he didn’t want to do anything to ruin her air of happiness. He kissed her head, keeping his lips shut.

Right
, Thea had said,
because the ability doesn’t exist. But we’re all looking at it the wrong way. Which world do you live in, Chase? The one that belongs to the earth or to the sky?

The earth, I guess.

And what of the bodied?

The same.

That was Sephi’s mission. To make the spirited see that we were all one and the same. Our worlds don’t have to be separated. We could help one another. And the world keeps trying to make it so. Sephi was not the first. She was an ending in the same old cycle, as is Alex. They all end the same.

Recalling these words, Chase grew cold.

Alex turned to look at him behind her. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, why?”

“Your hands are like icicles.”

He rubbed them together as if that might do something. He looked to the sky, but the sun could find no way to break through the clouds today. He could do with a little light.

You say it will repeat
, he’d said to Thea.
Is that why you told me this after Alex left? You’re saying she’ll die.

The prophet always does.

He refused to accept it. And he’d do whatever he needed to do to change it. Whether Alex agreed to it or not.

“I have a theory,” Alex announced. Her caramel hair fell over the side of his thigh.

“Oh?” He worried she would bring up something he didn’t want to discuss.

“If we climb these steps to nothing, we will exist on nothing.”

“I’m confused.”

“We’ll walk on air. That’s why the stairway is here.”

He wasn’t convinced. “We’d have to really believe it was possible for it to happen.”

“No kidding. We only exist as projections, right?”

He stood up and held out a hand, helping her to her feet. “All right, Houdini. Let’s give it a try.”

She clasped her hand in his. “Together.”

“Of course.”

With each step they took, he realized how ridiculous they looked, one foot at a time, one step at a time, like a wedding march.

“Don’t let Pax see you up here,” he joked. “She might try to shove you off the steps.”

“Yeah, I ruined her perfect little Truce March, didn’t I?”

“I think the riot did that, but the Legacy group needs someone to blame.”

They didn’t stop when they reached the last step. On either side of them, he could see the ground so far away. At the peak of the staircase, their only company was skepticism.

“Westfall took it better than I thought he would,” Alex said.

“He was a little distracted with the new information we were able to give him.”

“That Jonas is fighting some war we didn’t know existed?”

Chase looked at her. “That Van Hanlin is still alive and fighting it with him. What did Westfall tell you?”

Alex deepened her voice to mimic him. “You keep living. You keep fighting. You keep purpose.” She looked over the edge. “On that note … ”

After the last step, they both tumbled forward. They didn’t walk on air; they fell. Chase pulled Alex close and wrapped his body underneath hers as they flew down. Nothing would hurt her. And because he believed it in his mind, when they hit the ground with a thump, his head pained, and she giggled.

“Well, that didn’t work, did it?”

On the contrary, his experiment tested out perfectly. He proved Thea wrong. Nearly everything he’d learned since death emphasized the power of belief. If he believed he could protect Alex, no harm could come to her. As he lifted his aching head to press his lips against hers, it didn’t seem like anything could ever change that.

Because he loved her. And that was never something he had to force himself to believe.

Epilogue

In her dream, Alex was back in the desert, the one with the footprints, except this time the sky was purple. Chase appeared and intertwined his fingers with hers.

“Hi, Chase.” His name still tasted like sunlight, and the sky brightened, once again.

He squeezed her hand. “There are a lot of footprints in the sand now.”

Parrish’s legends were hard at work. “We aren’t alone. I don’t think we ever were.”

“Think some people will see the footprints in the morning?”

They would if they were looking for the right ones.

Alex was more concerned with the sand dunes, and her hopes rose as they traveled closer to the bonfire. Finally, beside the dune with the tousled beach grass, Rae huddled and hugged her knees, just like the sketch. When she spotted Alex and Chase, she leaped to her feet and ran forward, opening her arms and barreling into them.

The kids playing volleyball near a bonfire—four brothers and a sickly undersized girl on the sidelines—didn’t notice. But someone else did. Near them, an open-mouthed Liv Frank froze in place, staring at them.

Alex waved her hand, gesturing Liv to come out to the water.

“What are you going to tell her?”

There was so much she could say. That they were going to die. That she doesn’t need to look for them, and she shouldn’t try. That they loved her.

“I’m just going to hold her hand,” Alex replied. “And have her walk with us.”

A. LYNDEN ROLLAND

A. Lynden Rolland was born and raised in a picturesque town obsessed with boats and blue crabs. She has always been intrigued by the dramatic and the broken, compiling her eccentric tales of tragic characters in a weathered notebook she began to carry in grade school. She is a sports fanatic, a coffee addict, and a lover of Sauvignon Blanc and thunderstorms. When she isn’t hunched behind a laptop at her local bookstore, she can be found chasing her two vivacious children. She resides in Maryland with her husband and young sons.

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