Spree (YA Paranormal) (20 page)

Authors: Jonathan DeCoteau

BOOK: Spree (YA Paranormal)

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Two starters for Westfield, including Will Coldon, ended up Keepers.

At least five members of each team were dead. I only saw two players, a kid named Ben, and Tom, who became a Taker in training.

While Jessica survived, Sue was also here, but so dark in form I barely recognized her.

One baby was killed.

Her soul was so precious and so beautiful it became a blinding white light that rose straight to heaven.

Two small kids died. They became angels of light too.

Both Coach Ryan and Coach Derriza died.

I can only hope they went to heaven.

So many died.

So many I never saw again.

They were remembered only in the hearts of those who knew them.

But there was one ray of heavenly light.

Alex lived, and he and Steph began the relationship that would lead to their marriage.

How I envied Steph, but how I knew this was the medicine of the soul that she needed: love, pure, unconditional, if only a shadow of the mother’s love that I’d taken away from her.

One day I’d meet up with Steph’s mother again. One day I’d ask her if I did well saving her daughter’s life, if I’d kept my word.

I can only imagine that, after all this, she’d smile.

Even Takers have dreams; that was mine.

But now it was time for reality, and so my attention drifted back to the game.

The plays were a pale imitation of the hard-hitting action that started off the championship game, but the game wasn’t in the plays. It was in the smiles of the boys who played like teenaged boys should, having the time of their lives, laughing again, as they jousted back and forth across a field no longer drenched in blood, but blossoming in a life not even the massacre of late fall could kill. Suddenly, a bright light took the field. I felt the ghosts of the other players, who for a brief moment, joined them from Spree, playing the game in the field, each side knowing, so assuredly, that Burgundy Hill would win, that Franklin Shore would win, that they’d have the game of their lives.

In the final seconds of the exhibition, which Burgundy Hill did win 3-2, I saw a sight I thought my ghostly eyes would never see again.

There, joining the spectators, surrounded by the other Burgundy Hill mothers, was my mom.

She’d been working hard to make the court payments, renting a tiny apartment on the edge of town. But here she was, clapping for the boys, calling out for them, along with the other Burgundy Hill mothers.

This was the way soccer was meant to be.

This was the way our senior year should have been all along.

LATE JUNE

Chapter 14

Taking souls became second nature to me, but I never tormented a single soul the way Crazy T did me. I didn’t manipulate their fates for my own personal gain. I simply led them to Spree, where they became a Keeper, Taker, or went straight to heaven or hell. I’d even seen heaven in small glimpses—for me, it was just an ocean of light stemming from a long, white-sanded and silt-shored river. There was a tremendous feeling of peace, of a sobriety that wasn’t painful to achieve. But the vision always came to an end a split second later as the soul I ushered turned back and waved and was gone. At least I knew there was a God. Maybe one day I’d see Him for myself.

I never thought I’d see any of my old friends again after the shooting.

Even Zipper became darker and eventually broke away. Other Takers said they saw hell swallow him. As his Taker, I felt it, even though I wasn’t there.

I was here, in the middle of what should have been my graduation ceremony, looking on.

How serious my friends all looked. Chairs were decorated with robes, a diploma, and flowers for those of us who didn’t make it to the end. An entire front row of seats was set aside, for myself, for Preggers, for Tom, for Sue, for all those lives lost, too many for such a young class. I was tempted to sit in my seat—Sue actually did sit in hers—to feel what graduation would be like, but I knew that what Belinda said during that battle months ago was just as true today. Fay was dead. The Taker was what remained.

Moments before the conferring of the diplomas my school had a special speaker approach the podium. I’d been so busy working as a Taker that I hadn’t taken the time to feel the aura of my mother in months, and I was stunned. She was dressed not in a business suit, but in a simple pink and white dress. She was dressed as Mom.

“I’m not a speaker like your congressman is. Most of you know me. I’m Mrs. DeSoto. Fay was my daughter.”

The entire audience grew silent. For an outdoor graduation, with each seat full, that was saying something.

“Today I don’t just speak as a mother, but as a Burgundy Hill mother, about what it was like to wake up and find out that my daughter had died and killed two other people,” Mom began. “I want to speak about what it was like to wake up and find that a school shooting had happened, that my daughter’s death was believed to be part of the motive. I want to speak of those things, but I’m just a mom, and I can’t find the words. All I can say is that my heart never left the night of November 3rd. And I bet yours never left the night of November 9th. But, together, you made it here today. The first thing I’d ask you to do is to not forget my daughter or the friends you lost on the night of the shooting. Talk about them. Keep them alive. Just don’t dwell on them. Give them a hug like you would any friend you’re about to say goodbye to. And remember the laughter, the joy, the blessing from God that each of them was in our lives.”

Mom grew emotional here; the crowd kept quiet.

“I’m not going to take time away from your speakers,” Mom said, “but I just want to ask you not to let a moment of your life be wasted. Live for Fay, for Tom, for Lynn, who you knew as Steph’s mother, for every friend you had to say goodbye to far too soon. Just live. Don’t let their deaths be yours. Don’t let the fact that you’re the only class in Burgundy Hill history to graduate so close to July stop you. Don’t let yourself be labeled the dysfunctional class, the class of the shooting. Aren’t your smiles, your nights out, your friendships worth more than that? Tragedy shapes us, that’s true. But it needn’t define us, not everything that we are. Smiles shape us too. Don’t let a day go by without smiling for the lives we honor here today.”

Mom paused, fighting to regain her focus.

“Let me just end by saying that the night of November 3rd I opened the door to have two police officers tell me that my daughter was dead. I then shut the door and kept it shut. Today, June 30th, I’m opening that door, even if it is to a smaller place than the place I lived in then. I’m letting life back in. You see, Fay’s never coming home. She drank. She made a bad choice. Some of your friends are never coming home. They protected us with their lives. They made a good choice. No, none of them are ever coming home, but for the best of reasons: they are home already. They’re home in our hearts. I beg you: don’t be like I was. Open the door to each other, not just to classmates, not just to friends, but to family because family is forever and every one of you is family now. Turn to the person next to you. Hug them. Call them brother. Call them sister. We are all family now.”

Mom left the podium. The audience was silent for a moment, a long, staggered moment, absorbing her brief words. Just then a tidal wave of cheers, of hugs, of applause went up. Up and down the rows, graduates were hugging people they’d hardly known just seven months ago, people who were closer to them than some of their relatives were now.

As Mom left, I caught a glimpse of the state congressman who was to follow that speech. I’m sure his words would be more articulate, his delivery better rehearsed, but I’d never want to be him. I knew no words were more powerful than the words that came from the bottom of a mother’s heart.

I applauded, joined in the cheering, the hugging, even if I was unseen.

Sue did too. We even hugged each other briefly.

Just then, I heard a tiny, sweet voice. I heard Belinda.

“Fancy seeing you here,” she said.

She looked like a bright white angel, wings and all.

“I felt pulled here,” I told her.

“So did I, by the strength of a mother’s love,” Belinda said.

The head I held in my arms shook in denial. “I’m sorry, but that’s not the reason I’m here.”

“You’re kidding.”

I said nothing.

Kids started walking across the stage. I saw Alex, limping, make it. I saw Steph with the first smile I’d seen on her face in quite some time. I heard my name called, to applause I didn’t deserve.

But the biggest applause went to Aliya, who wheeled her way across the stage with undeniable grace. She’d buckled down in her studies, was granted late acceptance to a second tier Ivy League school. I was so proud of her. I was so proud of them all.

Except one.

“How in the world will this kid die?” Belinda asked.

“How did I die?”

“Another drunk driver? After all they just heard?” she asked. “After what happened to you? After a school shooting?”

“Don’t ask me,” I said. “I’m just the Taker.”

“Can’t you stop it?”

“Of course I’ll try, but–”

“But the kid’s mind is already made up.”

“To party way too much, yes,” I said.

Belinda watched as the class turned their tassels, tossed their caps in the air.

“But which one?” she asked.

I scanned the crowd. “I won’t know until it’s time. It could be anyone,” I said. “I was just another kid several months ago.”