Pieces of Hope (50 page)

Charlotte held my gaze.
Only half-hearing
Rin
, I muttered, “I guess you
haven’t heard yet.” I softened my voice to break the news. “I’m dead.”

“Where’s
Daniel, Hope?”
Rin
repeated more urgently.

“No, you
aren’t,” Charlotte
insisted. “We just left your body.”

“Hope!
Where’s Daniel?”
Rin
broke in, shouting now. It was
difficult, but I yanked my attention away from Charlotte to shut
Rin
up.

“When I
last saw him, he had swum off in a Great White. He’s probably off the coast of Australia by
now.” I was still smiling like an idiot, thinking that Charlotte was playing some kind of joke on
me—a very bad one—unable to assemble the pieces.

“We
should go.”
Rin
sounded tense. She peeled back a
curling wave, preparing to take a shortcut somewhere. Instead, I grabbed one of
each of their hands and shot like liquid vapor to the sandy beach. My mind felt
distant, millions of miles away. Too many things were disrupting my ability to
think—the roaring of the waves; Charlotte
and
Rin’s
tennis-match style of speaking; and most
urgently of all, the matter of whether or not I was actually dead. How could I
not be? My phantom heart pounded. Ached, really. It was unbelievable how real
it felt. I couldn’t get over it. And I was shaking from the inside out. That
usually only happened when my body sensed something before my mind could
process it.

“What
did you mean when you said you’d just left my body? Where exactly did you leave
it?” I asked, still trying to work it through. Charlotte and
Rin
bunched their eyebrows together, but said nothing for a
moment.
 

Finally,
Rin
snarled, “That’s a stupid question. Isn’t it
obvious?”

“Maybe
we should sit down,” Charlotte
suggested nervously.

“Just
tell me where it was!” I insisted. How could this be real? My phantom heart
thrashed out a new rhythm, something akin to a death metal band gone mad.

In a
quiet voice, Charlotte
asked, “Hope, why do you think you’re dead?”

Sucking
in a calming breath, I gathered my wits enough to speak. “Well, for one . . . I
can’t feel anything. I can’t feel the water or this sand . . .” I dug my toes
into the sand, but moved nothing. I made a face. “That didn’t used to happen.”
I tried to recall my last visit to Ethan’s. Had I felt the floor beneath my
feet? The bedding as I touched it?

“That’s
normal!”
Rin’s
anger was stifling. I shrank from her.
“You’ve been away from your body too long!”
 

Charlotte stepped
forward, blocking my view of
Rin
.

“
Rin
is right,” Charlotte
said patiently. “Didn’t
Creesie
tell you that some
changes happen faster than others? “That’s why temporary visitors shouldn’t
stay away from their bodies too long.” She paused for several heartbeats and
looked softly into my eyes. “See, there’s nothing else to—”

“Daniel
said . . .” I hesitated a moment. Had Daniel actually told me I was dead or had
I mistakenly jumped to that conclusion? The details were unbelievably fuzzy, as
if I were looking at my memories through a thick piece of cloth. As I struggled
to think, my pulse raced once again.

Charlotte took my hands
in hers and my heart rate slowed considerably. “If Daniel said that, he was
probably just confused,” she reasoned.

“Confused?”
Rin
turned an alarming shade of red. “Daniel lied,
plain and simple—Your body’s at the hospital, same place it’s been this entire
time.” She screwed up her face. “You look gray and skeleton-skinny, but Claire
fixed your hair so you don’t look nearly as disgusting as you did a few days
ago.”

“
Rin
didn’t mean that quite the way it came out,” Charlotte said, irritated.

“That
can’t be right.” Still shaking my head, I took Charlotte’s suggestion and sat down on the
sand. It felt the same as sitting on nothing. “No, that definitely can’t be . .
.”

As if I
were deaf,
Rin
shouted, “Can you feel your heart
beating?”

I
listened, nodded numbly. “Yes, but it’s a phantom thing . . . Like when someone
loses an arm or a leg, but they still have the sensation that it’s there. It’s
not really real.”

I looked
up at their disbelieving faces.

“What?
It’s not!” But even as I said the words, they sounded false in my ears.

Charlotte sat down beside
me and took my hand. “I don’t think he did it to hurt you. He loves you . . .
you know that, don’t you?” She looked up at
Rin
. “And
we know it, too. We’ve known it for a very, very long time.”

Without
speaking aloud, I heard
Rin
repeating,
But he lied! He lied to keep her!
     

“Daniel
wouldn’t have—he wouldn’t have—” The word lie refused to roll off my tongue. “
Hurt
me intentionally. Something must
have happened. He must have thought I had died. It was an accident, a misunderstanding.”
I wasn’t sure who I need to convince. Me or them? Maybe both. “And what about
Daniel, is he—is he—?”

“Same as
you,”
Rin
said, softening her tone at Charlotte’s glare. “Same
dull gray pallor, same skin and bones—only his hair doesn’t look quite as good
as yours.”

Rin
, a little sympathy, please
, Charlotte whispered in her
head.

“We need
to go. There is a sort of urgency, you know.”
Rin
was
edgy, maybe not as heartless as she appeared at the moment. “Daniel might come
back.”

And as
if speaking his name had somehow made him manifest, Daniel leaped out of the
clear turquoise waters, his hair disheveled—as if he’d just escaped from the
mouth of a Great White shark and landed in the mouth of another.

He was
the essence of composure, seemingly
unrattled
as he
looked at us. “Hello, Charlotte,
Rin
.” He strolled barefoot to a spot beside me, sat
down and stretched out his long legs in front of him. His demeanor wasn’t that
of a guilty person. There had to be some other explanation. “What’s going on?”

My hands
were shaking. I sat on them to make them stop. “Daniel,” I began. “These two are
under the impression that I’m still . . . still alive.” I tried to laugh; it
came off more as a
gaspy
-choke. “Tell them they have
it wrong. Tell them we’re in this together.”

3 back 3 . . . You and me through eternity.

He was
looking below my eyes, staring blankly at my chin. “We are in this together,”
he said in a jagged whisper. Seeming not to care that
Rin
and Charlotte were just a few feet away, he played with the ends of my hair.
His eyes, dull gray now, looked into mine. “I mean that. I’ll always mean that.
I’ll never love anyone again . . . not the way that I love you.”
 

“It’s
true?” I clutched at my chest, the place where my heart—not so phantom after
all—still beat. The words were barely a whisper. “I can’t believe you lied to
me . . .”
  

“Technically,
I didn’t.” He looked into my eyes. Not apologetic, just sad.

That was
it? Was that all he was going to give? Where was my profuse, tear-laden
apology? And the groveling? Didn’t I deserve a little? A lot? I was on my feet
in one blurry movement, stomping back and forth in the sand.

“Technically?
Technically, you didn’t say that? Do you think you can pass this off as a technicality?”
Fuming, I tried to kick up some sand, but failed. “Try again!”

Instantly,
he was up, too, his lanky form easing into a casual stance as if he believed I
would eventually see things his way. “Do you recall the conversation, Hope? I
told you I had something important to tell you, something life-altering, something
I ought to have told you a while ago . . . and then you made the
sugges
—”

“I asked
a question!” I froze and faced him, glaring into his unhappy face. “I can’t
believe you lied to me! Were you ever going to tell me the truth?”

“Yes, I
was—I would have—eventually. After some time passed, I hoped we’d have a good
laugh about it.” His tone was a little too light. I sneered at him. “I mean
 
. . . I hoped you’d come to see that I did it
out of love. I just wanted us to be together.”

Through
my teeth, I repeated, “But. You. Lied!”

“You
mean like the way you lied to Ethan?” His tone wasn’t accusatory, just flat and
emotionless, like that of the sole survivor of an unnatural disaster.
Nevertheless, it caught me off guard. I wasn’t sure which more surprised me
more—that Daniel had just called Ethan by his real name (for the first time
ever) or that he’d accused me of being a blatant liar. It felt like someone
punched me in the stomach.

“What is
that supposed to mean?” I shouted.

“Why
couldn’t you tell him?” Daniel wasn’t begging, but he was close to it. “Why
couldn’t you tell Ethan that you loved me as much as you loved him?”

I
flinched, unable to answer.

“I’ll
tell you why,” he went on. “Because you couldn’t bear the thought of losing him
any more than I could bear the thought of losing you . . .” In one undetectable
movement, he closed the distance between us and I didn’t step away. There was a
numbness in my bones. It made me ache for something I knew I would miss.

Daniel
ran his hands delicately up and down my arm. “Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me I
deserve to be punished.” His voice cracked, and I heard the pain inside it.
“But if what I did is so unforgiveable, how will you ever forgive yourself?”

“Daniel,
I lied by omission. That’s not the same as—”

“I knew
you were going to pick him,” he said in a rush. “I only wanted more time to
change your mind.”

“But that’s
just it.” I spoke in the lowest of whispers, turning away from
Rin’s
evil stare. “I hadn’t made up my mind yet.”

“And now
you have?” He squeezed my arms.

It hurt
too much to speak. It felt as if my insides had collapsed. As if I had folded
in on myself. I could only shake my head. What was it
Creesie
had said?

One or the other
. . .
   

“Say you
forgive me, Hope. Say you understand.”

I
brushed his cheek with my thumb, even managed to smile a little. But inside, my
heart was breaking. Here was the real choice and it had nothing to do with
living or dying. My death was never part of the equation. It was about loving
one and losing another—death of an entirely different kind. Daniel or Ethan.
One or the other
. . .
 

It
mattered little if I understood it. It mattered only that I knew it. Tears
blurred my eyes. Daniel’s fingers locked in mine.

“Stay,”
he whispered in my ear. “We’ll make our own heaven.”

I shook
my head slowly.

“Stay,”
he repeated.

And then
I realized what Daniel wasn’t saying and fear turned me ice-cold. “You’re
coming back, aren’t you? You won’t stay here . . . permanently?”

There
was a catch in his throat, and the answer was there before he could say it. “I
have things to do here first. I don’t think I could live with myself if I
didn’t find out what happened to my mother. I thought you understood that.”

“But Daniel,
I made a mistake. I never should have come here. I think that’s why my mom
hasn’t shown up; she wants me to go back and live my life.” I thought of
Ethan’s gentle reminder. “Maybe we aren’t supposed to know everything, maybe we
can’t know everything, at least not yet.”

“Are you
saying there’s a time for everything?” One side of his mouth twisted up in a cynical
smile. I knew he was thinking about us.

I wanted
to remain focused and clear-headed as I pleaded for his return. But instead,
sloppy tears rolled down my face. “Daniel, you have to come back! You just have
to!”

Folding
me in his long arms once more, he kissed my forehead tenderly. He was the
essence of calm as he asked, “You still don’t know, do you?”

I
couldn’t answer. I couldn’t even shake my head. Whatever was the matter with
me? I suddenly understood the helplessness that Ethan must have felt all
along.
 

A second
later he whispered, “Safest of sojourns, my love.”

“We
really should be going,” Charlotte
urged quietly. I jumped. I’d forgotten she and
Rin
were nearby. “We need to hurry.”

“You
should go, Goo.” Daniel kissed my forehead again. “You don’t want to miss your
bus.” I released him reluctantly. The last thing I saw as
Rin
and Charlotte pulled me backwards into the shortcut was his smile—
the
smile—the one that made girls from
eight to eighty weak in the knees. I attempted to smile back, but couldn’t.

24
Before

 
So, this was the emergency? One pit stop at
the Yamhill County Fair—
Oats, Goats, and
Root Beer
Floats.

I could
tell it wasn’t the real deal. Had we stayed in the living realm, I couldn’t
have felt the softened earth beneath my feet or smelled the delightfully intoxicating
scents around me. But I wasn’t alarmed by the delay. Having been nearly dead
several times running now, very little frightened me.

Stating
the ridiculously obvious, I said, “If time is of the essence, and I’m evidently
breathing my last breaths as we speak, what’s with the stop at the county fair?
Did somebody need a corndog fix?” I cracked a smile. “If so, count me in.”

“Sorry,
Hope.” Charlotte
shook her pretty head. “We should have told you there was time for one last
stop. But it’s an important one. We’re supposed to meet some people here.”
Anxiously, she scanned the faces of the crowd. I could guess for whom she
searched. No doubt
Creesie
, Gus, Mac, and Cat wanted
to chastise me one last time before I returned to the living realm. Or maybe
they wanted to say their goodbyes. (Just this once, I preferred the former
because I despised the latter; goodbyes never were good, especially the permanent
kind.)