Текст книги "Hereafter"
Автор книги: Kate Brian
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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 14 страниц)
Pills
Darcy wasn’t home. I’d gone back to the house, ready to explain, but she wasn’t there. And my dad was tapping away at his laptop, as always. Even with the sun shining brightly through the windows, the place felt desolate, and I spent the entire morning on edge, waiting to hear the door open downstairs. Anticipating the confrontation. But Darcy had never returned. Which meant she was seriously pissed.
She still wasn’t home when I left for Krista’s. As I cut across the park, I twisted my hands together in front of me, trying to ignore my mounting fear of going to the mayor’s house. Instead, I focused on Tristan and what I was going to say to him to get him to believe me about the usherings.
I understand why you’re scared, but I can’t accept this, I thought. Aaron doesn’t belong in the Shadowlands.
I shook my head, laughing tersely at myself as I passed the fountain. I’d only said the exact same thing a million times yesterday. Why would his response be any different? Maybe…
I understand why you’re scared, but there clearly is something wrong around here, I thought. Don’t you want to help us figure out what it is?
I bit my lip. That might work better, keeping Aaron out of it.
I was just squaring my shoulders and starting to psych myself up for this whole walking-into-the-lion’s-den thing when I saw them. Pete and Cori, straddling their dirt bikes not ten feet away, glaring at me.
My steps automatically slowed as frustration burbled up inside me. What? I wanted to yell. What’s your problem with me?
But then Officer Dorn and Chief Grantz strolled over to join them. And then Yoga Woman from the park. And the grocer. And two other people I didn’t recognize. I stopped in my tracks, adrenaline and fear surging through me. All that was missing was Nadia and her piercing black eyes.
Dorn leaned toward Grantz’s ear, and they both fixed their angry gazes on me. The others seemed to shift as one, as if primed for an attack.
Tristan’s voice echoed in my mind: Once angry people get together and are out for blood, they’re not satisfied until they get it.
I ducked my head and kept walking, faster and faster and faster, until I reached a sprint at the top of the hill. I had to get to Krista, to my friends. It wasn’t until I saw the weather vane creaking overhead that I froze, a new wave of terror crashing over me.
How stupid an idea was this, going to the mayor’s house right now? All night I’d been waiting for the ambush. What if it was waiting behind Tristan’s front door?
Suddenly, Krista walked around the side of the house, her face creased with concern. She was wearing a lavender sundress and her hair was pulled back at the sides. There was a streak of flour on her cheek and when she saw me, her eyes brightened.
“There you are!” she said, reaching for one of my hands with both of hers. “I was just about to go down to your house to check on you.”
“Why?” I felt light-headed.
“You’re late,” she replied. “And Joaquin said something about keeping an eye on you. He seemed like he was worried.”
“Um…yeah. I guess I’m just a little freaked out about everything that’s been going on around here lately,” I said, glancing one last time over my shoulder. “Is Tristan inside?”
“No, he left a little while ago,” Krista replied. “Nadia came by, and I think they went out surfing or something.”
My stomach fell into my toes. “What?”
“Oh. Right. Sorry.” Krista made an apologetic face. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”
I tasted bile in the back of my throat. It wasn’t nothing. If the two of them were out somewhere alone together, Nadia was definitely trying to convince him of my guilt. Trying to make him believe he was just letting another girl pull the wool over his eyes. And considering that the last time I saw Tristan we’d yelled at each other, I couldn’t trust that he would take my side.
“Come on,” Krista said, tugging me toward the house.
We were just passing the dead garden in front of the porch when a shout sounded from inside, followed by a door slamming. A bevy of crows took off from the roof of the house, cawing angrily.
“Um, maybe we should just sit out here for a while,” Krista suggested, clutching my hand so hard it hurt.
“What about Bea and Lauren?” I asked, clutching her right back.
“They’ll live.”
We looked at each other and shared a strained laugh over her choice of words. Cautiously keeping an eye on the front door, Krista led me up the porch steps and over to a wicker bench facing the bluff and the wide-open ocean beyond. As soon as she sat down, Krista deflated, hunching back against the puffy cushions in a very un-Krista-like way.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“I’ve been thinking about what Joaquin said yesterday,” she told me, picking at a broken piece of wicker on the arm of the bench. “You know…why are we even here if everything can go so wrong?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
Krista sighed and crossed her slim arms over her stomach. “Do you ever miss it? Your life?”
My life. Considering everything that had gone on in my new life the last few days, I hadn’t had much time to think about my old one. And it was almost impossible to focus on it now, knowing that Tristan and Nadia were out there somewhere, talking.
But after a moment, I realized that unless I counted school, there wasn’t all that much to miss. I’d had friends, but no extremely close ones. I’d already been missing my mom for years, so that hadn’t changed, and Darcy and my dad were still with me. My mind flashed on an image of Christopher, but I could hardly remember what he looked like. When I thought of him, I felt a pleasant hum inside my chest, but nothing more.
“Not really,” I told her. She gave me this doe-eyed look that was sad, like she’d been expecting another answer. “But I guess I haven’t been here long enough to really miss it.”
“That’s true,” she said with another sigh.
I gazed at her petite frame. She seemed so fragile in that moment, so breakable. “Krista,” I started gently, “do you want to tell me…I mean, do you want to talk about how you…”
“Died?” she asked, her voice breaking. “I killed myself.”
“Just like Joaquin,” I said.
She laughed harshly. “Not exactly. I didn’t mean to do it.”
“What?” I gasped, startled.
Krista turned her hands over and over in her lap. “I just…my boyfriend, Andreas…he broke up with me, and I only took the pills because I figured I’d pass out and then he’d find me. And when he found me he would realize how much he loved me. It was a whole Romeo and Juliet thing. We were supposed to go to prom together, and I had a dress, and I just wanted him to want to take me. But instead, I ended up here. It was all supposed to be perfect, and I ended up here. Without him.”
She pressed her face against my shoulder, dissolving into tears. I wrapped one arm around her and let her cry, thinking how awful it must have been for her, knowing she could’ve just gone to prom with someone else and gotten on with her life. If only she hadn’t taken too many pills.
It was kind of how I’d felt about taking the shortcut through the woods that day. If only I’d gotten a ride, if only I’d taken the long way around, Mr. Nell would never have had the opportunity to attack me. My sister, my father, and I would all be alive back in Princeton. Back in “the other world.” I wouldn’t have to worry about the angry mob or the mayor or the Shadowlands or Oblivion or where Tristan was right now and what I would say to him when I had the chance.
Maybe I did miss my life.
“I’m sorry,” she said, sniffling. “I’m really sorry. I’ve just been thinking about this a lot lately, with the one-year anniversary coming up and everything…but for some reason it just feels worse today.”
“It’s okay, Krista,” I told her, rubbing her back. “Hey, what was your selfless act?” I asked, hoping that might cheer her up.
“Oh. That.” She laughed and looked down at her fingers in her lap. “It was so lame. Not like saving a life or ridding the world of an evil maniac, like some people.”
I smirked. “Tell me.”
“I saved a doll.”
“What?”
She rolled her eyes slightly, but smiled. “I’d been here for three days and I was down at the beach with a couple other people who moved on ages ago, and there was this family there. A mom, a dad, and two little kids. I found out later they died in a car accident.”
“Wow,” I said, the wind knocked out of me.
“Anyway, the little girl left her favorite doll near the shoreline and it got swept out to sea,” Krista continued. “She completely lost it, crying, screaming, and her dad was basically like, ‘Too bad. You have to learn to take care of your things.’ I mean, the girl was, like, three years old.”
“Are you serious?” I asked.
“Yeah. Real nice,” Krista agreed. “All I could do was watch this soggy pink doll bobbing out on the ocean and the little girl crying, and it reminded me so much of me when I was little. I had this Raggedy Ann that I would take with me everywhere. By the time I gave it up in fourth grade it was falling apart and probably totally diseased.”
She smiled again, looking nostalgic. “So even though I was never a great swimmer, I dove into the ocean and swam out there and saved the doll for her. I thought I was gonna die by the time I got back to the beach. I was panting so hard I was seeing stars. But she got her doll back.”
“That’s awesome,” I said. “What did her dad do?”
“He basically grunted at me,” Krista replied. “But the little girl was so happy… They moved on that night.”
I swallowed hard, hoping that that family, even the grumpy dad, had made it into the Light. We both sighed at the same time, looking out at the sun glinting on the ocean.
“You know what this is, Krista?” I said finally. “It’s just a bad day.”
“What do you mean?” she asked. Her blue eyes were shot through with red.
“It’s something my mom used to say. One day everything can look okay, and the next day everything looks so grim, even though nothing has really changed,” I said. “On bad days you have to remember the okay days, and then you’ll know that things will be okay again, eventually.”
“But something has really changed,” Krista protested, sitting up straight, pulling away from me. The bench groaned as she shifted her weight. “I liked how I had this important job, ushering people to their eternal destiny. But if that’s getting all screwed up, then what else do I have? No one here even likes me.”
“That’s not true!” I replied emphatically. “Tristan loves you.”
“No, he doesn’t. He thinks I’m annoying,” Krista said, looking at her lap. Her pert nose was red, and a tear rolled slowly down her cheek. “Imagine how you’d feel being an only child for two hundred fifty years and then suddenly getting stuck with a sister.”
“Well, the girls adore you,” I said.
“Please,” she retorted, rolling her eyes.
“Um, two of them are inside right now, baking cupcakes for your anniversary party, while you’ve been MIA for at least fifteen minutes,” I reminded her. “If that’s not dedication, I don’t know what is.”
Krista bit her lip. “I bet Lauren is separating the sprinkles by color and driving Bea bonkers.”
“Probably.” I laughed. We both stared out over the ocean. “I think you just have to find your thing, your place, how you’re going to fit in for the long run,” I said, thinking of Tristan, of my odd new relationship with Joaquin, and of the very slowly blossoming friendship with Krista. “We all do. But it’s going to take time.”
“And we have nothing but that,” Krista muttered.
A soft knock sounded behind us, and I glanced back at the mayor’s office windows. Two clear blue eyes stared out at me through parted wooden slats. I caught my breath. The mayor held my gaze for a long, long moment before snapping the blinds shut.
I turned back to Krista, an awful feeling spreading through my gut that my time might be running out.
Imagined crime
Joaquin was silent as he walked me home from Krista’s later that afternoon, beadily eyeing the Lifers at the center of town like he was my own personal bodyguard. He’d shown up out of nowhere as we’d finished the last batch of strawberry-scented cupcakes and had ever so casually offered to escort me back to Magnolia Street. Now I knew why. He thought I needed protection.
I wasn’t sure if that made me feel safer, or a lot more terrified.
“So…” I said finally, as we reached the far side of the square and the ever-present shadows on Freesia Lane. “How about those Yankees?”
“What?” Joaquin snapped.
I blushed, hard. “Sorry. It’s just something…my dad always says that when there’s an awkward pause in conversation. It’s like a thing.”
“Oh.” It was his turn to blush. “I guess I’m a little tense.”
We started down the hill, passing by the tall, imposing Victorian houses, their eaves decorated with intricate carvings, their porches lined with pretty potted flowers—although some of these had begun to wither and brown. The overgrown park at the center of the lane was as deserted as ever, and I averted my eyes from the eerily creaking swing.
“Did you see Tristan at all today?” he asked suddenly.
I shook my head, my heart skipping a beat. Every time a door had closed or a floorboard settled inside Krista’s house, I’d been sure it was the mayor coming for my head, but it was always nothing. Apparently, wherever he and Nadia were, they were having a good time together.
“Krista said something about him going surfing with Nadia,” I replied.
Joaquin rolled his eyes. “Yeah, right,” he said. “Tristan and Nadia are like… What two elements explode when they’re mixed together?”
“Well, there’s oxygen and phosphorus.… There’s—”
“Then they’re like that,” he interjected, gazing at the ocean in the distance. “If they’d spent any kind of time together, we’d know, because the island would have been obliterated.”
I smirked, feeling a little better. Joaquin, after all, knew Tristan better than anyone.
“He’s probably just off on one of his thinks.”
“His thinks?” I asked.
We emerged onto Magnolia and turned toward my house. Overhead, the sky was just beginning to darken, the lowering sun shading the clouds violet and pink. Joaquin sighed.
“Every once in a while Tristan… He just disappears,” Joaquin explained, glancing down at a dying sunflower that drooped all the way to the sidewalk. He stepped over it with a wide stride, like it might suddenly come to life and bite him. “Doesn’t tell anyone where he’s going. Just vanishes for a day or two, and when he gets back he won’t talk about it. One time I finally got him to tell me what he’d been up to, and he said, ‘I was thinking.’ That was it. So now we call them his thinks.”
Something inside of me sank. All along, Tristan had been bent on protecting me. Postponing telling me the truth about my new existence, making sure I didn’t hear about things dying for the first time ever, not telling me about Jessica and Oblivion. But now, when I really needed protection, it was Joaquin walking me home from the mayor’s, not him. He was off alone somewhere, thinking. But I supposed it was better than the alternative.
“Well, here we are,” Joaquin said as we arrived at my front gate. “Home sweet home.”
“Yeah.” I paused with my hand on the latch. “Thanks, Joaquin,” I said, looking him in the eye. “I appreciate you going out of your way.”
“Eh, I was gonna go for an evening swim anyway,” he said, shrugging me off. Then he smiled. “I’ll come down and get you for the meeting tonight.”
“You don’t have to do that,” I said, even as my blood ran cold, remembering the looks on the faces of Nadia’s crew that afternoon.
“Just for now,” he said. “Until we figure it all out. Which we will do.”
I nodded, trying to feel as confident as he seemed. “Okay.”
I went to push the gate open, but he didn’t move. When I looked up at him, I could have sworn he caught his breath. “You sure you’re all right?”
My palms began to itch, and there was a slight hitch in my pulse, but I ignored it. This was Joaquin. He was a player. He’d screwed over my sister. And I was with Tristan. Wherever he was. I heard a loud caw and saw them coming, five dark splotches against the purple sky. The crows swooped in and landed on the apex of our roof, one, two, three, four, five. Overhead, the seagull circled and bleated, but it was clearly outnumbered. It finally turned and soared out to sea.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m fine. I’ll see you later.”
I shoved the gate open, forcing him to take a step back, and strode inside without a second glance. As soon as I inhaled the familiar, musty scent of the house, I started to relax. I was home. I was safe.
Then I spotted Darcy at the kitchen table, and my heart froze. Maybe I wasn’t so safe.
“Hey, Darcy,” I said casually, hoping that if I acted like nothing was wrong, she’d follow suit.
But Darcy just made a grunting, scoffing sound in the back of her throat and pushed her chair back.
“Darcy,” I implored her.
“Leave me alone,” she said, one foot already on the bottom step.
My pulse started to race in that sickly way it did whenever Darcy was mad at me, but there was no way I was going to let a misunderstanding about a guy get between us. Not again. Not now, when Nadia was busy turning everyone on this island against me. I caught up with Darcy just as she was about to slam the door to her room. I flattened my hand against it and stopped her, jamming my wrist.
“Darcy, if this is about Fisher, there’s nothing going on,” I said.
She groaned again and walked farther into her room, tossing a book onto the bed. It flapped closed, and I saw the ancient silver writing, faded, on the cloth cover. Wuthering Heights. Impressive.
“Did you or did you not sneak out of the house to have breakfast with both the guys I like?” Darcy demanded.
I paled. She’d seen Joaquin, too? “It’s not like I—”
“Answer the question!” she fumed.
“Okay, yes,” I stated. “Yes. I did. But do you really think I’m going to go after Joaquin? Or Fisher?”
She flopped down on her window seat, turning her palms up atop her thighs.
“No, I don’t think you’re interested in either one of them. Not really,” she said. “But do you have any idea how this feels? It’s like you’re trying to hurt me. You. My own sister.”
She drew her legs up, facing away from me with forced casualness, as if she were fine and not vibrating with 5,000 megahertz of anger and sorrow. My chest heaved, desperate to just tell her the truth. Desperate to fix things between us however possible.
But I couldn’t. Because if I told her the truth, I would damn her to the Shadowlands. I so wished she’d just perform a selfless act already, so this would all be a done deal. What I wouldn’t give to slap a Lifer bracelet on her wrist and tell her everything. But all I could do was keep my mouth shut and hope that it would happen. And soon.
“I’m sorry,” I said finally, quietly. “I guess I’ll just go.”
“Fine,” she spat. “Go!”
I turned on my heel but paused at the door, my fingers curling around the beveled trim.
“But, Darcy, there is one thing you should know,” I said, looking halfway over my shoulder.
She sighed. “What?”
“I would never intentionally do anything to hurt you,” I said. “Never.”
Then I slipped into the hallway, closing the door behind me.
5 souls
I stared at the Scrabble board in the center of the kitchen table, but the letters might as well have been hieroglyphics. My vision blurred in and out. Nothing made sense. Darcy hated me. Joaquin, quite possibly, liked me. But worst of all was Nadia. Clearly, she was determined to turn the town, and especially the mayor, against me. And now she might even be working on Tristan. What if she convinced him? What if she and her angry mob stopped glowering from safe distances and came after me?
“Bam!” my father shouted suddenly, nearly knocking me off my chair. “Quixotic! Q on a triple-letter, X on a triple-word; that’s one hundred and eighty-eight points! Read it and weep.”
I stared at him, trying to pull myself into his present. A present where he was alive and well, devouring ice cream, playing Scrabble with his daughter, and kicking her sorry ass. He licked a drop of chocolate sauce off his lip and smiled.
“Sorry,” he said when he saw my face. “That was a tad over the top. But you gotta admit…”
He gestured at the board, waiting for me to give him his props.
“Yes, Dad. You are a genius,” I said in a jokingly toneless voice. “Get over yourself.”
I looked down at the makeshift score sheet he’d drawn out for us, two columns labeled R for Rory and D for Dad, and it reminded me of the tally I’d found down at the cave. I wondered what Pete had done with it, where it was now, whether the mayor had seen it.
“Do you want to take a break?” my father asked. “I’m not really sure your head is in this tonight.”
A survey of the board proved him right. My words were stellar little pieces of brilliance like dog, from, and mat. With one word he’d pretty much annihilated my score.
“I guess not,” I told him, leaning back in my chair, feeling impossibly heavy. Outside the window screens, the waves sloshed against the shore, the low tide marking a steady, low rhythm.
“Everything okay, Rory?” my dad asked, his brow creasing with concern. “You look like you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders.”
Not the other world. Just this one, I thought. I gazed across the kitchen table at him, hesitating. Over the past few years I had barely spoken to my father, other than to inform him when I’d be home, that I had a doctor’s appointment, that I needed money for a haircut. It had been forever since my dad had offered to talk.
“Have you ever felt like you could trust someone one day and felt completely opposite the next?” I asked, toying with my tiles on their wooden rack.
He narrowed his brown eyes. “Is this about a boy?”
“Dad!” I said, blushing slightly. “Just answer the question.”
He leaned back as well, mimicking my pose, and thought. “Yes. Yes, I have,” he said at last.
“And? What did you do?” I asked.
“Well, Rory, things aren’t always exactly what they seem,” he said. “So I gave the person a chance to explain and then decided whether or not it was enough for me to trust them again.”
“And? Was it?” I asked hopefully.
He frowned and picked up his spoon, swirling it in the melted remains of his sundae.
“In my case, no,” he said, causing my heart to drop. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll be the same for you.”
“I know,” I replied.
I balled my hands into fists on the table, stacked them one on top of the other, and brought my chin down on top of them. The seven playable letters in front of me spelled out SPITBLA. My father sighed, gazing out the window to his right.
“Your mother was always so much better at these things,” he said wistfully.
“You’re doing fine, Dad,” I assured him, just as Darcy padded into the room on bare feet, her pajama pants sitting low on her hips. She dumped her own sundae dish into the sink without looking at us.
“Yeah?” my dad asked.
I gave him a small but genuine smile. “Yeah. You’re great.”
He sighed and nodded, as if pondering whether or not he could trust me. Then he sat up straight and dropped his spoon back into his dish.
“Fog’s coming in again.”
I stood up, knocking my chair back, my eyeballs suddenly throbbing. The thick gray mist already covered all the windows, blocking our view of the house next door, squelching all the light. I went to the back door to look out, but all I could see was the swirling cloud. It had moved in faster than I’d ever seen before. My mouth went dry as unadulterated panic seized my heart.
This couldn’t be happening. Not now. Not when we hadn’t told everyone yet—not when we hadn’t come up with a plan.
Darcy stepped up next to my dad, who was now on his feet. “Could it be any creepier?”
A sudden crash, like metal trash cans colliding, made all three of us jump. It was followed by a quick, but very real, shout of pain.
“What was that?” my father said, already reaching for the door.
I grabbed his arm and squeezed. “No, Dad! Don’t!”
He ignored me. He yanked open the door, and a few fingers of fog licked at his shoes. Darcy and I looked at each other, and I could tell she was as terrified as I was.
“Hello?” my dad called out. “Is someone out there? Are you all right?”
The reply was a soft, mewling whimper. Like a hurt kitten. Except I’d never seen a cat or kitten on this island.
“Girls, I’ll be right back,” my dad said, fumbling for a flashlight from the nearest drawer. “You stay here.”
“Dad, no. You’re not gonna be able to help. You can’t see anything,” I protested.
“Seriously, Dad,” Darcy added. “You can’t—”
“Just stay here,” he repeated. And then he vanished.
For a long moment we stood there on the threshold between crisp kitchen air and moist, warm mist. I heard my father barrel down the steps, shouting out, but after that, nothing. The mewling sound had stopped, and all I could hear was the incessant, menacing hiss of the fog, the pounding of my own heart, the sound of Darcy’s broken breath.
“Where is he?” Darcy’s voice was shrill.
“I’m sure he’s fine,” I said automatically.
“What if Steven Nell’s out there?”
I froze. “What?”
“What if he followed us?” Darcy asked, her eyes desperate. “What if he’s just been watching us? Waiting for a chance to lure one of us out? What if he’s out there right now, stalking Dad?”
“Darcy, he’s not,” I said, trying for a soothing voice, wishing I could tell her why I knew this to be true. “Trust me. There’s no way he—”
“Dad!” Darcy shouted into the swirling mist. There was no reply. “Dad! Answer me!”
Nothing. I looked at Darcy. Darcy looked at me. Then something changed in her face. Something hardened. “Screw this.”
Before I could even blink, she’d turned and dived into the fog. “Dad!” Already, her voice sounded distant. “Daddy! Where are you?”
I cursed under my breath and followed, my heart slamming against my ribs as I groped for the stairs and the handrail.
“Darcy!” I cried. “Dad!”
Someone laughed. The exact same laugh I’d heard coming through the phone line in Aaron’s room. A mocking voice echoed back my plea: “Dad!”
I stumbled down the steps, clinging to the railing for dear life. I misjudged how far I’d come, and where I’d thought there’d be one more step, there was nothing. My stomach swooped as I tipped forward and fell face-first into the sand. Pain radiated through my skull and down my spine, and zipped up my arms. Another laugh, but farther away this time.
“Dad!” I shouted, scrambling to my knees.
“Rory?” he sounded impossibly far off, his voice a mere croak.
“Dad? Are you hurt?” I asked, whirling around, blind. “Where’s Darcy?”
A dry finger grazed my cheek. I reached up and slapped at it, my skin burning from the violence of my own hand.
“Stop it!” I shouted as loud as I could. “Stop screwing with me! Where’s my family?”
Another sound behind me. “What are you—?” my dad said.
There was the unmistakable sound of a punch hitting home. A cry of pain. “Dad?” I cried, terrified, desperate. I felt around in front of me blindly, looking for someone, anyone, in the mist.
There was a struggle. A tear. A crack. I whirled toward the sound, catching my breath again and again. Nothing but gray.
“Get off him!” Darcy shouted.
Another crack.
“Darcy!?” I wailed.
I turned and my foot jammed into something hard. I flew forward again, my arms flying out to brace myself. I flipped over and scrambled back on my hands like a crab, but it wasn’t a body that had tripped me. Just a large piece of driftwood, rotted and riddled with holes. I started to crawl, tears now streaming down my face.
“Dad? Darcy?” I whispered. “Where are you?”
Silence. No laughter, no mocking, no cries. My fingers groped in the darkness, growing colder as they dug into the frigid sand, finding nothing but seaweed, shells, smaller shards of wood. The longer I searched, the more sure I was that someone had taken my family. That I was never going to see them again. The fog seemed to drag on for hours.
Whoever they are, fight them, I begged silently. Don’t let them take you to the Shadowlands.
“Rory?” Darcy shouted suddenly. “Are you there?”
“Darcy!”
At that moment, my hand came down on a shoe. I screamed at the top of my lungs.
“Rory?”
“Dad!” I shouted, jumping up.
My sister threw her arms around me, and I flung my arms around my father. But the second I touched my dad, I had a sudden flash. I saw Mr. Nell grab him from behind and whip his head to the side, snapping his neck. I heard the sound of the bones splintering. I watched my father’s limp body slump to the ground, stunned, his eyes open, his mouth hanging down on one side like he’d just been numbed at the dentist. I released him and staggered backward. Until that moment, my only memories of that night had been the things I’d actually seen, and I hadn’t seen my father die—only his body after the fact. This was new, and it was horrifying. I clutched at my stomach, swallowing over and over to keep from heaving.
I knew what this meant. My father was never going to be a Lifer. He was going to move on. And I was supposed to usher him.
“Rory?” Darcy asked, her eyes concerned. “Are you okay?”
I turned away from her and fell to my knees in the sand. At that moment, I couldn’t have been more grateful for the fog that enveloped me.
“Rory? Where are you?” my father asked.
“I’m here,” I squeaked. “I…I tripped.”
I breathed once. Then again. Struggled to stop the sobs from coming.
“Where?” he asked. His foot kicked the side of my leg. “Oh. Oops. Sorry. This fog is so thick. And my head…”
“Your head?”
“Some asshole tried to grab him,” Darcy said.
“Yeah, but we fought them off,” my dad replied, sounding proud.
“Yeah, we did,” Darcy replied.
I pushed myself up off the ground at the exact moment the fog began to lift. It pulled back across the water, the last wisps curling teasingly around my ankles until it was gone. My father was holding the back of his skull. I shoved the image of his death—and his looming ushering—from my mind.
“Are you all right?” I asked, grabbing at his arm.
He pulled his hand down and held it in front of us. His fingers were bloody.
“It’s okay,” Darcy said, checking the cut. “He’ll live.”
“Did you see who it was?” I asked her.
“No. Probably just some idiot messing around.” She leveled a look at me, and I knew it meant she didn’t want me to bring up Steven Nell.
