On the Fringe (17 page)

It was time for another Memory Trace. If I
had
killed him like he claimed, then that memory should be in my past, lost somewhere in my subconscious,
right
? Who could forget something like that?

I started to rewind, trying to search for one forgotten moment in a million, combing through every second, every day… turning the clock backward… trying to focus on any memories tinged with danger or anxiety I could’ve easily suppressed over the years.

He had to be there, somewhere.

“You killed me.”
His words hovered over me briefly, nearly floating away. I held onto them, trying to remember that voice and face and the look in those eyes…hoping they’d lead me to an answer. He seemed so convinced. Maybe there was some truth to it.

I dove in…

On the very top of the pile were the easy, shallow memories—things that had happened over and over again in the same places with the same people, day after day. Which meant I had to dig deeper, beyond familiar faces of friends and family, past my house and the lake, past school and track meets and mountain biking…even further than that…to a circular playground with a rusted blue spiral slide surrounded by spider-like domes that were perfect for climbing. I saw myself tirelessly bounding to the top in celebration, like a king or a tyrant, my heart pounding in relief…and then I moved along…

To a crowded mall with hundreds of people squishing me with their funny bags and boxes. I try to look up at the gigantic Christmas tree filled with basketball-sized ornaments, but can’t see anything above my nose. Then I realize I’m lost, and my heart thumps like a drum. I feel tears falling down my cheeks and I spin in circles, crying for my mom…

Next.

I am running down the shore of a strange beach, the pebbly sand sticking to my soles and in between my toes when a huge wave of salt and sea takes me out. I feel the pull of the monster ocean grabbing for me. As it tries to drag me into its mouth, the rough sand burns my eyes, trapping my ears inside a tunnel. I find my footing and stand up, the water receding, taking with it pockets of sand beneath my feet. Finally I’m free. I run up to the dry sand, shivering and spitting and blubbering all at once…

There was real terror in that memory. However, I felt compelled to move on until something felt strikingly familiar, pulling at me like déjà vu.

I am straddling a bike, speeding along as fast as possible. It’s dusk, and I’m riding through a little park lined with shoebox houses trapped between narrow driveways. As I weave in and out of parked cars like I’m leading an obstacle course, my new black and tan beagle, Oscar, runs alongside me as I clutch his leash. We swerve around the towering trees in wide angles before stuttering along the bumpy grass and then on to the bike path leading up a huge, green hill.

Dad and little Addie dawdle together way down at the bottom of the hill. They are much too slow for Oscar and me. Impatiently, I race ahead, feeling an oversized smile overtaking my face. Oscar breaks free from my grasp, and before I know it, he’s so far ahead I can’t keep up with him. That means trouble
.
For him and for me.

Oscar is only a few months old and very naughty. Now his leash trails behind him as he yips and yaps at everyone, probably bragging about how he just got away from his owner. I pedal even faster, trying to catch up, thinking I’d better get to him quick—especially after that peeing accident last night (his, not mine).

Without looking or caring where I’m going, I pedal as fast as I can, wondering what’s taking Dad and Addie so long. Like a rocket, I fly off the curb and into the street, my eyes focused on catching that crazy Oscar. He’s a lot less trouble when he’s asleep.

Before making it across the street, I skid to a stop at the sound of a loud screeching. It completely drowns out Oscar’s howls. When I realize what’s happening, that the horrible noise is coming from a motorcycle headed straight for Oscar, I lose my breath along with the ability to think, or even scream. All I can do is watch the hazy headlight turn in circles around us just before I jump off my bike and run. As fast as I can. For Oscar.

The motorcycle and I reach Oscar at the same time. I pull him into my arms and squeeze my eyes shut at the exploding noise. The motorcycle skids across the pavement as the metal and rubber screech in protest, but somehow miss us. A stinging pain rips into my knee, and I hear the sound of breaking glass and crunching metal behind me as the driver flies off his bike, straight into a tree. I can’t see because my eyes are too blurry from tears and my shaking head.

The world goes quiet until Oscar whimpers.

Even though I don’t want to, I have to look at the driver all crumpled and mangled beneath the oak tree. Everything about him looks wrong. His head is twisted sideways even though the rest of him is turned the other direction, and his black eyes are wide open, staring straight at me. I see the blood. There’s too much of it oozing out through the thick pile of black hair on top of his head, like a slippery sauce spilling all over the ground.

Dad, who has been yelling my name for a long time now, rushes over to me, picking me up in his arms and asking if I am all right. I can’t stop crying, even after he keeps telling me everything is okay, and reassuring me that I’m not in trouble.

‘Shhhh,’ he whispers in my ear over and over again, his warm hands smoothing my head and tickling the back of my neck. It seems like I will never stop shaking or crying. Ever…

Stop.

Wake up.

The sirens faded along with the memory, until everything around me was dark and I was sliding forward through a speeding tunnel of light and color to the present, to Hidden Lake. I felt like I was suffocating, and sunk to the ground, burying my head in my knees, trying to grasp what I’d just seen.

The ghost was right. I
had
killed him, and I thought I was going to be sick.
I created a monster.
My anger suddenly felt much more complicated.

The nausea along with the spinning memory subsided as I scanned the neighborhood, eventually focusing on the glassy water of the lake reflecting blue, dotted with a couple of stray cotton ball clouds. More than anything I felt a sense of relief to be back in the present, away from the contorted, bloody face of the victim I now recognized too well. But I couldn’t move. Not now.
I’d killed someone.

I wondered what it meant for Claire.

As soon as her face registered in my mind, I felt the pull toward her, and shifted to wherever she was—which by then happened to be at school.
Great.
Reluctantly, I followed her around most of the day, mulling over what to do about her, and more specifically this slowly unfolding nightmare.

Claire and Addie ate lunch outside on the quad while I watched everyone hanging out in their little groups and cliques, all talking and laughing, like what they had to say was the most important thing in the world. Just stuff like last night’s sitcom or next week’s party. I’d never noticed it before, but everyone here seemed so young, so naïve.
Crap,
it wasn’t like I was even that much older than these guys. Is that what death did to you? Turn you into a philosopher?

I had to get away from here.

As I made my exit, a spidery chill crawled up my arms—this time more subtle, but definitely still there. When it reached my shoulders and tingled down my spine, I peered through the crowd of familiar faces, trying to find one that didn’t belong. But there were too many bodies everywhere, making it impossible to pick out a ghost among a sea of mortals. I focused on my feet as the crowd traipsed through me, and a light wind blew, scattering a mixture of leaves and wrappers and debris until it was impossible to tell the leaves from the garbage.

The bell rang, prompting everyone to get on with life and file back to class. I scanned the vacated quad and spotted the trespasser—the ghost lady with the crazy hair who seemed to be stalking me. She was leaning against the vending machines outside the cafeteria. Everything clicked, and I realized she was the ghost I had seen here just after I’d died. She wore the same pink robe and fuzzy slippers as before, with messy hair that had never met a comb.

Had she been following me around this whole time?

Her lips turned upward, and she looked me in the eye, like she had something on her mind. I drifted nearer, making a point to keep my distance. With a long, bony finger, she motioned at me. “Over here,” she said, her voice deep and mellow.

I stopped a few feet from her. And, whoa—up close she was a real mess. Her face was caked with an orangey-glow powdery substance, her eyelids a bright purple like she’d used crayons to color them in, and her lips varied between dark and light pink, each horizontal line on her lips obscenely magnified. Even
I
could do better than that.

She batted her eyelashes, which looked like black, hairy spider legs. “I know something you don’t,” she said.

“Okay. Anything different than what you told me the other night?” I asked.

“It’s about Aden.”

“Who?”

“Aden.”

“Who’s Aden?” I tried not to stare at her peeling face. Seriously, as a ghost she had so many options. Why choose that?

“You don’t know much, do you?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Well, let me break it down for you.”

“Okay?”

“Do you mind if I have a smoke first?”

I wondered if she were as mental when she was alive as she appeared now. “You do realize you don’t have any lungs, right?”

“Habit,” she said, fishing a cigarette from her pocket and lighting up. She even went through the motions of the whole thing—one big, fake production. I was curious if she also imagined the poison seeping into her non-existent lungs, too. One time, I’d tried eating a hamburger but thanks to my lousy imagination it didn’t taste all that great.

She finished. The cigarette vanished into her magenta lips at the same time her pink robe getup disappeared. Now she was all dressed up in heels and a black, sparkly dress, her hair done up, her makeup no longer sliding down her face, her fingernails long and red. It was definitely an improvement. I was speechless.

“That’s much better,” she said with a deep, throaty breath. “Well, hello there, Daniel. I’m Nico. I don’t think I introduced myself last time.” She extended her slender, bare arm. I pretended to shake her hand, but it seemed weird. Probably not something I wanted to repeat.

“You know my name,” I said, wondering how, but not enough to ask.

“Let’s just say I’ve been around.”

Okay.

“Like I said, I have crucial information for you.” She looked over my head and behind me, her eyes roving. “But we need to make it quick before he finds out, or I won’t be able to follow him around anymore,” she said.

I pretended to sit on a nearby bench while Nico paced back and forth in front of me in ridiculously high heels. “How do I even know I want your information?” I asked.

“Believe me, you will. But hold on…
if
I give you this information—
new
information, mind you—then you have to agree to something in return.”

“I’m not sure I’m interested,” I said.

“That ghost who’s been haunting your girlfriend? You don’t want to know more about him?”

Fine.
“Okay, what do you want from me?” I asked, wondering what her request might be. How bad could it be?

“What are you worried about, kiddo? I just want a little companionship.”

My face must have shown the shock I felt because she made a gesture like she was slapping my back. “Oh! I’m not that kind of woman.
Crimony
. I was only talking about a little outing. As friends. In case you haven’t noticed, there aren’t a whole lot of us around.”

An
outing?
Was she serious? I wasn’t looking for more friends.

“I like movies,” she said.

“Movies. You want me to go with you to a movie.”

“You have a problem with that?”

“I guess not.”
This better be worth it.
“Why do you care about me…or Claire, anyway? I don’t even know you.”

She paced to the vending machine and back. “Let’s just say I don’t like it when our kind interferes with their kind,” she said, clasping her hands together. There were about twenty rings and bracelets there now that I hadn’t noticed before.

“
Our
kind?
Their
kind? We’re not aliens, you know.” This lady made my sister look… well…kind of boring.

“So you’re that type, huh? No imagination, whatsoever. You’re not going to get very far here, you know.”

“Um, that isn’t really my goal. And I thought you said you had new information. I already stopped connecting to Claire like you told me to, so unless you’re here to tell me you made a mistake the first time you warned me, then I think we’re done talking.”

She sidled up next to me on the bench, her eyes scanning the empty quad. “I thought for sure that would stop him. Really, I did. But Aden figured a way around it. A way to hurt Claire.” Her eyes stopped on mine, like they were frozen.

“How do I even know you’re telling the truth?” I asked. “Maybe you’re working with Aden, trying to keep me and Claire apart. Come to think of it, last time you weren’t exactly helpfulby leading me all over the place. He
haunted
her while I was away, you know.”

Nico looked guilty. Her eyelids dropped and she turned her head away from me, studying a pink-flowered bush, like it was a mirror. Suddenly, she zoomed to the other end of the bench. “I admit it. That was my mistake. For a while now I’ve been trying to figure out how he haunts her, which, come to find out, is because of YOU. You just happened to catch me following him that night. But you shouldn’t have left Claire. That was
your
fault, not mine.”

“Why didn’t you just come clean instead of running away from me like you were up to something?”