Under Zenith (17 page)

“I don’t know,” I lied.

“Are you really that unconcerned with your own ambitions and feelings that you just don’t care about the fact that your life was cut off so abruptly?”

“Of course I care,” I answered. “You’d have to be crazy to not be at least a little upset that all of the things you wanted to do have been stolen away from you.”

“I wasn’t going to put ‘crazy’ past you. I just wanted to make sure.”

“Shut up,” I said playfully, laughing for a moment before it was cut off by a post-cry hiccup, which only made me laugh more.

I used the hand that Hayden wasn’t sort of holding to wipe the last of my tears away.

“There were a lot of things I wanted to do,” I assured him. “Monica and I wanted to travel overseas.”

I left out the fact that we were hoping to meet some cute boys with English accents, since that would probably clue him into the fact that, despite how mean he was, I was a sucker for a good English accent.

“There was this boy who worked at the bookstore that I always wanted to ask out, but never did. Actually I’d made a pact with Monica that I’d give him my number the day after we graduated. Which would have been the day after I died,” I said in slight amusement. “I hope she went on a date with him to honor my memory.”

“You are one of a kind, Isla Edison,” Hayden told me.

“How do you know my last name?” I asked him.

“How can I perfectly recall all but one of your memories?” he asked rhetorically.

“Good point,” I agreed before going back on to my rambling thoughts.
“Anyway, I could tell Monica liked that boy too, so I hope she doesn’t refrain from talking to him because she’s scared I’m going to haunt her or something. Speaking of which! After these tasks are all done, can I go back to visit my family as a ghost or something?”

Hayden laughed at this question. I’d take that as a ‘no’.

“All I know is how to get you to your Destination. Anything else, you’re going to have to take up with whoever is on the Other Side for you.”

“Will you not come with me?” I asked, suddenly feeling a little sad at the idea of not having Hayden around, no matter how
unpleasant he was.

“Of course I can’t come with you,”
he stated.

I couldn’t tell how he felt about the situation when he simply
defaulted to his normal unhappy setting, but I liked to think that Hayden was slowly coming to think of me as a friend. He was sort of turning into my unwilling hostage and I had every intention of forcing him to be happier whether he liked it or not.

Curious to know if he thought of me as a friend now
, I opened my mouth to ask him, but quickly shut it again when the snow started to fall. I definitely didn’t want to ask a question like that when Hayden had such a perfect excuse to leave abruptly without answering.

I could feel my eyelids growing heavy. Hayden took his hand off of mine and suddenly he was cradling my head as he lowered me into a laying position on the bed.
He was actually kind of helping me.

I fought to keep my eyes open or even to say something to him about how nice it was to have him being sweet to me, but I couldn’t seem to form the sentence. The desire to sleep was just too much.

Just as my eyes closed completely, I felt Hayden tuck a stray hair behind my ear, his hand brushing against my cheek for just a moment longer than it needed to and I knew the answer to my question without ever having to ask it.

Hayden was my unwilling friend.

Chapter 16

“Isla?”

The word was so faint that I hardly expelled the effort to open my eyes at the sound. My body still felt heavy from the snow yesterday and my head was hurting where the bump refused to go away.

“Isla?”

The word came again. Only this time I actually sat bolt upright. It wasn’t the fact that my name was being called; it was the voice calling it.

“Daddy?” I whispered to the still empty office.

Paper crackled underneath me as I pivoted on the hospital bed and let my bare feet touch the cold linoleum floor.

I hadn’t taken my boots off the night before when I’d fallen asleep.
The only thing I could think was that maybe Hayden had removed them for me while I was sleeping. Somehow, that didn’t really match up with the normal image of my Guide. I couldn’t see him as the sweet doting type.

Sun was still streaming in lazy beams through the shades in the office and I had to think this was very early in the cycle for the sun to still be out. I wouldn’t be surprised if Hayden wasn’t even here yet. He only seemed to show up once the sun melted away, allowing itself to be subdued by the ever present fog.

“Daddy?” I called again, this time standing from the bed and searching the small room.

I didn’t really need to walk to search, since the room was so incredibly
tiny. Still, I didn’t want to run the risk that I might miss my father, if by some miracle he was in the room.

Maybe this was
what happened once you got closer to your Destination. Maybe they let you see a member of your family to give you some encouragement or moral support.

The sun was already starting to fade and soon the fog darkened the room considerably, leaving only the flickering fluorescent light above my head.

It didn’t take long for me to confirm that my dad, in fact, wasn’t in the room. It didn’t really come as a surprise to me, but I’d still had a hope, in the back of my mind, that I’d be able to see him one last time.

Feeling like I should
n’t dwell on my moment of hallucination for too long, I put my boots on and made my way outside, assuming I’d run into my Guide there and he’d either be able to explain what had happened, or give me another impossible task to take my mind off of my own loneliness.

“Bout time you showed up,” Hayden called to me, as if on cue.

He was standing on top of a grassy hill, looking down at me in exasperation. Apparently I was able to annoy him before I’d even opened my mouth.

“Hayden
, I need to ask you something,” I said as I jogged over to him.

I would have asked him about the voice I’d heard only moments before. I had every intention of asking him if it was possible that my dad might
be here. But instead my words were cut short when I saw the brightly colored puddles that dotted the land in front of me.

“Yellowstone?” I guessed, trying to make sense of the green valley surrounding the rocky, neon colored pools.

“Sort of,” Hayden confirmed, sounding only mildly impressed by my guess. “Yellowstone with a few alterations.”

“At least it’s not a junk yard
, right?” I asked, trying to joke, but getting no response from my Guide. “Hey there’s a place in Yellowstone called Hayden Valley…so that’s…interesting,” I finished lamely.

He wasn’t in the mood for jokes today.
I was guessing it was because he’d used up all of his nice energy last night when he helped me into bed.

“As long as I don’t have to fight off bears or stop an unstoppable geyser I think I can handle this.”

“You don’t even know what the task is yet,” Hayden pointed out.

He sounded bored.

“I know it’s not a giant robot spider that wants to cut me in half, or a flesh eating zombie who’s after my brains. So that’s a step up.”

“What was your question?” he asked, obviously wanting to change t
he subject away from whatever aspect of my personality was bugging him at the moment.

I considered how I could phrase my question for a moment. I couldn’t just ask if my dad was here because Hayden would say I was being homesick and weak. On the other hand, I couldn’t say I’d heard his voice because then he’d be sure I was completely nuts.

“I wanted to know how many tasks there are,” I finally said. And while that wasn’t actually the question I had intended to ask him, it was something I had been wondering about for some time.

“I can’t believe it took you this long to ask me that,” he
said condescendingly before I gave him a look that said I was having none of his attitude today.

“
There are only six tasks,” he amended.

“Six?” I repeated. “So after this I only have one more?”

It didn’t seem possible that I was actually this close to being done with the crazy and seemingly random tasks. This newfound knowledge meant that I’d actually need to think about if I wanted to go to my Destination or not. After all, even Hayden couldn’t tell me what it actually meant to reach it.

For all he knew, it could mean I was volunteering to become a Guide myself. Or maybe I’d simply pass through the door and that would be the end of me. I’d be cast into an eternity of nothingness.

“Are you just going to stand there, or is it all right with you if we get on with things?” he asked, and had I not been so deep in thought, I would have shot him another look. Instead I simply nodded distractedly. “Fantastic.”

Hayden beg
an walking down the hill toward the pools of water though I didn’t follow behind him. Suddenly, with the end so close, I wasn’t sure how I felt about rushing through each task in the hopes that I’d get to my unknown Destination sooner.

Why was I so anxious to get to this place if I didn’t even know if it would be an impr
ovement on my current situation?

“I know it’s a bit early
, but as a general rule you need to be present to complete these tasks,” Hayden called over his shoulder, stopping his trek down the hill and turning to give me an appraising look. “I don’t want to overwhelm you with that fact or anything.”

He was looking at me expectantly, waiting for me to make a snarky remark right back at him or whine about how mean he always was to me. It was his joy in life to do this little back and forth exchange and be as terrible as he possibly could be. But suddenly, I wanted nothing more than time that I didn’t have. I didn’t want to be forced to begin the task and I
couldn’t care less if that messed up Hayden’s quota somehow.

Instead
of answering him, I turned around and began walking toward the wooded area away from both the safe house and the task ahead.

“Isla?” Hayden asked, sounding confused at first
, and I could only wonder how long it would take for his confusion to be replaced by anger.

His anger wasn’t usually too far from the surface to begin with.

Ignoring his calls, I stopped under the shade of the tall pine trees and sat on the ground, giving no mind to the dirt I’d inevitably get on my skirt. In the long run it didn’t matter since A) I was dead, and B) my dress would simply clean itself the next morning.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Hayden asked, his previously subdued anger now showing through the vein on his forehead.

“I’m sitting,” I replied with a too-sweet smile.

“Yeah, I can see that.
I’m not an idiot, but maybe I need to rephrase the question so that
you’ll
understand. Why aren’t you doing the task?”

I refrained from rolling my eyes at his less than friendly tone.

“Why should I be so anxious to get to my Destination?”

“Oh please not this again,” he said in complete and utter exasperation. “I swear pairing me with you is some kind of punishment.
”

“I’m serious
, Hayden!”

“So am I.”

“If you don’t even know what my Destination is, then why should I want to go there?” I asked. “It might end up being something bad.”

“It’s called having a little faith,” he said, not making any move to sit down next to me, but not screaming and throwing things at me either. “You just have to trust me.”

“Trust you?” I laughed. “I trust you about as far as I can spit.”

“Charming expression.”

“Why on earth would I trust you? You’ve given me absolutely no reason to.”

“You’ve made it this far haven’t you?” he asked smugly.

“No thanks to you. I’ve made it this far despite your best efforts to sabotage me at every turn.”

“So we’re  just forgetting about the help I’ve given you?” he asked, surprising me that he was actually the one to bring up the one time he’d broken the rules for me.

“Sorry. Thanks for the one time you helped me because I was about to be sliced in half and you exercised one ounce of human decency,” I amended sarcastically.

Really, I was grateful that he’d helped me during the last task since I was definitely only a few seconds from dying again. But still, it seemed like the only decent thing to do to break the rules a bit to stop someone from being torn to pieces.
I would hope Hayden had at least
that
much humanity in him.

“What are you talking about? You needed motivation for the first task and I provide that to ensure you didn’t fail,” he said, sounding like he really believed his own terrible reasoning. “You didn’t think you could jump over the gap on the second task so I helped you along.”