Текст книги "Hereafter"

Автор книги: Kate Brian

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Anywhere but here

“I knew it!” I shoved Tristan with both hands. “I knew someone was watching me that day!”

Through the gleaming window I had a perfect view of the room across the street—the room Olive had occupied in the Freesia Lane boarding house last week when she was here. I’d gone looking for her there when she stood me up for breakfast, and I could have sworn someone was spying on me from this very room.

“Yeah, that was Lauren,” Tristan said, holding the blue brocade curtain back. “She told me later that she was sure you’d spotted her over here. She had such a panic attack about it that Krista let her reorganize her closet to calm her down.”

“That’s calming?” I raised an eyebrow at Tristan.

He threw up his hands. “It is for Lauren.”

“I saw the blinds move, but I didn’t see who was behind them.” It was weird, staring out that window, imagining my own curious face peering in from the other side.

“With practice, you get really good at not being seen,” Tristan told me. His words hung in the air for a long moment, and I had a feeling he was thinking the same thing I was. He hadn’t done such a great job of not being seen by me.

Tristan cleared his throat. “So, what do you think of the behind-the-scenes tour so far?”

I chewed on my bottom lip and glanced around the room. The wood floors were old and creaky, and the fraying lawn furniture haphazardly placed around the room left something to be desired. It had been like this in every “lookout” Tristan had taken me to—the library attic, which afforded a perfect 360-degree view of the town from its windowed rotunda, the widow’s walk above the surf shop overlooking the ferry dock. Even the upstairs apartment at the Crab Shack had offered nothing more than a vinyl couch and a cracked cooler. Whatever Lifer life was like, it wasn’t glam.

“Don’t you guys ever want to, you know, get comfortable?” I asked.

Tristan laughed and leaned against the window, the sun illuminating his handsome face and highlighting the lines of his chest. I blushed and glanced away, focusing on the sidewalk outside. Fisher and Kevin walked by, in the midst of an intense conversation, and Fisher checked over his shoulder three times in the space of five seconds. Then they disappeared from view. I stepped closer to the window next to Tristan, to see if anyone was following them, but the street was empty.

“We’re never in one place for very long, I guess,” Tristan said. “But if you want to make any changes anywhere, feel free. You’re one of us now.”

He gave me this look that sent a warm glow through my chest, like he was glad, relieved, even, to finally be able to say that.

“Noted,” I said, my heart rate skipping all over the place. “So, what’s next?”

Tristan hesitated. He shifted almost imperceptibly from one foot to the other. “Well, there is one more place you should see.”

It was clear that whatever it was, he didn’t exactly want to show it to me. Intrigued, I followed him down the stairs and out into the bright sunlight. It didn’t take long for me to figure out where he was taking me, and my pulse started to thrum as we stopped outside the gray house across the street from my own. Tristan had told me that his grandmother lived out there and that she liked to watch the world go by. That was how he’d explained away the moving curtains, my constant feeling of being watched, and the fact that he always seemed to be hanging out there. I glanced over my shoulder at Darcy’s window, hoping she wasn’t looking out. The house stared back at me, its two upper windows and double front door forming an accusatory face.

“You okay?” Tristan asked.

“Yep,” I replied curtly.

“All right, then.”

We strode up the steps and Tristan shoved the door. It let out a loud, painful squeal as it swung open. It wasn’t until I stepped inside the cool, shadowy, empty house that I realized I’d actually imagined what it might be like inside. In my mind’s eye I’d seen antique chairs set up around an ancient card table. I’d imagined lace doilies placed over the backs of upholstered sofas, a faded chintz rug, a fireplace decorated with knickknacks and framed portraits of grandchildren. Instead, what greeted me was a whole lot of nothing. The walls were gray and bare, the fireplace boarded up, and the only furniture on the first floor was a plain white desk, set up right in the center of the living room.

“Let’s go up,” Tristan said quietly.

I held on to the worn banister as I followed him up the stairs to the room that faced Darcy’s. Here we found three white wicker chairs with faded and stained cushions, all of them facing the windows. I pushed a curtain aside and looked out. Darcy lay back on her four-poster bed, holding a magazine at arm’s length up over her face. The view was so perfect I could see her blink.

“Wow,” I said. “This is just—”

“Creepy?” Tristan supplied.

“Yeah,” I said, turning away from the window.

“Maybe we should—”

Instead of finishing his sentence, he undid the faded tieback on the first curtain, and the fabric fell across the window, blocking the view of my house. Then he did the same with the other two windows, tossing the tiebacks onto the floor and casting us in relative darkness.

“I’m sorry,” Tristan said finally. “It’s just…it’s what we do.”

I tried to think back to all the times I’d been on the front porch or in Darcy’s room. Tried to remember what he and his friends might have seen.

“What’s the point?” I asked finally.

He seemed startled. “What do you mean?”

“I mean what’s the point?” I asked, extending my hand toward the covered windows. “What’s the point of all the watching?”

“Oh.” He chuckled, as if relieved. He gently rested his hands on the back of one of the wicker chairs. “We have to keep an eye on the visitors. We have to interact with them, because we’re integral in sending them where they need to go.”

A cold gush of fear crashed over me. “Wait a minute. You said you don’t decide where people end up.”

“We don’t,” Tristan replied.

“So what does that mean?” I asked. “How are you integral?”

He chewed on his bottom lip and looked up at the plaster ceiling, crisscrossed with cracks. “It’s a little hard to explain, but basically, everything we see, everything we hear…it all goes into the ultimate decision.”

“Do you have to write a report or something?” I asked, resting my hands on the chair across from his.

“No. Nothing like that,” Tristan said with a short laugh. “The information we gather, it just goes where it needs to be.”

“So what you’re saying is, you’re telepathic,” I said.

He shrugged, tilting his head to one side. “Kind of. We all are.”

“And you send telepathic messages to who? God?” I asked, almost laughing at the absurdity of the concept. Fortunately, though, I managed to hold my tongue. I didn’t want to offend him.

“I don’t actually know,” Tristan said. “I’ve tried never to ask that question.”

“How could you never ask that question?” I blurted out, my grip tightening on the back of the chair. “That’s the single most important question there is! Why are we here? Why are we doing all this? If I’m going to be someone’s eyes and ears, I’d kind of like to know who that someone is.”

“I don’t ask that question, Rory, because I’ll never get an answer,” Tristan said, his voice reaching a point very close to anger, a point I’d never seen him approach before.

I looked down at the floor, my face burning. “Oh.”

Clearly this was a topic of some frustration to him as well. Only he’d been dealing with it for a very long time. I turned away from him and stepped over to the window. With one finger, I moved the curtain an inch to the side, looking out at my house, our house, the last house my sister, my father, and I would ever live in together, and my chest felt full. My eyes prickled and I gulped in a breath.

“Are you okay?”

I felt the warmth of Tristan’s body as he stepped up behind me, the tickle of his breath on my neck. Instantly, my heart began to pound.

“Yeah,” I said quietly. “I’m fine.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, sending a shiver down my spine. “I didn’t mean to snap.”

I turned my head ever so slightly to the side. My breathing was shallow, my pulse skipping with him so near. “It’s okay.”

“I try not to question everything, because I know that what we’re doing here matters,” he said, his voice low.

I turned to face him, so fast that my braid brushed his bicep and our knees touched. I pressed myself back into the window, flattening the curtain behind me, but he didn’t even flinch.

“How?” I asked hopefully, looking into his eyes. “How do you know?”

His eyes roamed my face, flicking from my lips to my cheeks to my eyes to my hair. “We’re maintaining the balance of the universe,” he said. “There’s nothing that matters more.”

His eyelashes fluttered and he stared down at my mouth. My lips tingled and my fingers itched to reach out and grab his hand, his waist, his arm. I recalled the feeling of his thumb tracing my cheek last night, the way he’d held me close at the cove, how he’d looked into my eyes yesterday when he told me how strong I was. How beautiful. How true.

In a rush of bravery, I stood on my toes and pressed my lips against his. For a split second, everything was perfect. His soft lips, the heady scent of sea and salt in the room, the sound of the waves crashing outside the open window. But then Tristan abruptly pulled away. He flattened the back of his hand against his lips, his eyes wide. It wasn’t until that moment that I realized he hadn’t kissed me back.

“I’m…I’m sorry,” I stammered, flustered. “I didn’t—”

“No, I’m sorry,” he said, finally dropping his hand, an unreadable expression on his face. “I didn’t mean to give you the wrong impression, Rory. I never meant to—”

This wasn’t happening. This was not happening. I slid along the window, moving away from him, mortified. The things he’d said…all the touching, the stares, the obvious tension between us…how could I have misread him so completely?

But clearly that was exactly what I’d done. Of course I had. I’d only ever kissed one guy before and he had most definitely kissed me first. Besides, Tristan was perfect. He was the Golden Boy. The guy everyone looked up to, the guy every other guy wanted to be, and probably the guy every girl wanted to be with. I bet he’d kissed hundreds of girls over the endless years of his existence. Maybe even thousands. I was just the latest pathetic, recently deceased loser to throw herself at him. And now I was going to have to live with this humiliation—this skin-searing humiliation—forever.

As he stared at me, I realized he was wishing he could be anywhere but here. I knew the feeling.

“Forget it,” I said quickly. “This never happened, okay? Let’s just pretend it never happened.”

I turned my back on him before he could see me break down for the second time in two days and stumbled toward the door, leaving Tristan and whatever was left of my pride behind.

Death sentence

I tripped onto the sidewalk in front of my house, blinking back tears, and a few yellow leaves floated down from the magnolia tree in our yard before being caught up on the ocean breeze. As I shoved open the gate, I could feel him watching me from the gray house. Always, always watching me.

A wave of despair threatened to overtake me as I pictured the darkness of a forever without him.

Focus, Rory. Focus.

“Hey, beautiful.”

I flinched at the familiar voice. Joaquin. Fantastic. Just what I needed. He sidled up behind me and walked right through the gate as if invited.

“I’m not in the mood right now, Joaquin,” I said, speed-walking toward the porch.

“Not in the mood for what? I just came by to—” Joaquin suddenly stopped and slapped at his neck. “Ow!”

“What?” I said, whirling on him.

His hand trembled as he gazed at his palm. Curled up in the center was a small, very dead, hornet.

“Are you okay?” I asked dutifully.

Joaquin didn’t answer. He cupped the back of his neck for a second with his other hand and glanced around, as if waiting for the punch line. But there was no one but him, me, and the birds chirping in the boughs of the magnolia tree shading the walkway. When he looked down at the hornet again, his trembling grew violent.

“What? Is it bad?” I asked, alarmed now. “Are you allergic?”

“No,” Joaquin said. “I just—”

He shook his head, and instead of flicking the tiny corpse to the ground, he shoved it into his pocket.

Joaquin shifted his weight and squinted out of one eye. “Where were we?”

“I think I was about to go inside and slam the door in your face,” I said, stomping up the porch steps, which creaked and sagged beneath my feet.

“Okay, but just wait for one second,” he implored, coming after me.

I threw up my hands. “Why?”

Behind him, the curtains on the upstairs window across the street fluttered closed. My throat closed, and I crossed my arms tightly over my chest.

Joaquin took a step closer. “Look, I just wanted to check in and see how you’re doing today. Sometimes the second day is even harder than the first.”

“How do you think I’m doing?” I asked, glancing behind me at the door. I just wanted to get inside before Tristan came out. There was no way I could handle seeing him again just then.

Joaquin touched his sting and winced. “At the moment I’d say…livid?”

“Do you have any idea how hard this is?” I ranted, yanking a geranium bloom from the nearest window box. “I spent all yesterday listening to my sister talk about finding her next hookup, and all I could think was You’re dead and you have no idea. She’s never going to graduate from high school or get that tattoo she’s always wanted or save up for that damned leather jacket she’s been talking about since last Christmas. She’s never going to do anything, and I know it and I can’t tell her. Do you have any clue how awful this feels?”

“Wait a minute. Darcy wants to hook up with someone else?” Joaquin asked, screwing up his face in consternation. “Is it Fisher?”

My jaw dropped. “Are you kidding me? That’s all you took from what I just said?”

“All right, all right, calm down.” Joaquin reached for me. “You’ve crushed the poor flower.”

I looked down at the pink petals strewn all over my feet and released the head of the geranium from my sweaty grasp. Then I saw his fingers on my skin and yanked my arm back, angling myself away from him.

“Don’t even try that Lifer mind trick on me. I’m not letting you control me.”

“I wouldn’t think of it.” Joaquin crossed his arms over his chest and smiled in an amused way.

“What?” I said, tossing the flower to the ground. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I like this attitude,” he said. “I thought you were a Goody Two-shoes, but I’m digging this whole defiant thing you’ve got going right now.”

Defiant? He thought I was being defiant? More like I was turning into an emotional basket case. Little did he know my current manic state stemmed from a broken heart, nothing more. I glanced back at the gray house, but it was quiet.

“Me, I full-on lost it for at least a week,” Joaquin said, leaning back against the porch railing. “When I first got here, they placed me with Ursula in that pink gingerbread house over on Sunset.”

“Wait.” I shook my head. “Placed you? And who’s Ursula?”

“Oh, you know Ursula. The waitress at the general store? The one with the white hair? She’s supposed to be my grandmother. We live together.”

I thought of the cheerful woman I’d seen behind the counter last week. “Supposed to be your grandmother?” I echoed.

Joaquin shrugged. “Yeah. All of us who died when we were young were placed with adults when we got here so our living situations would look normal to visitors,” he explained. “Like Tristan and Krista living with the mayor…”

“Huh?” I shook my head as I tried to keep up.

Joaquin sighed and sat back on the railing now, settling in. “The mayor isn’t their real mother. Krista and Tristan aren’t even related. You know that, right? She only got here last year, and he’s been here forever.”

I blinked. Krista and Tristan looked so much alike they were practically twins. How could they not be related? The sun suddenly felt much hotter than it had a moment ago.

“Anyway,” Joaquin continued, “when I first got here, I spent way too much time at Ursula’s huddled under a flowered bedspread that smelled like mothballs and gardenias, wailing like a baby. To this day, if I even walk past a gardenia bush, I dry-heave.”

“Can I ask you something?” I said, my heart fluttering nervously as I traced a groove in the side of the porch swing with my fingertip.

He looked me in the eye, crossing his arms over his stomach. “You want to know how I died.”

His gaze was unflinching. For the first time, I noticed the gold and green flecks peppering the deep brown in his eyes. I held my breath. “Is that a bad thing to ask?”

“No. Everyone asks eventually.” He leaned back. “I committed suicide. After I killed my mother and sister.”

I froze. “You…what?”

Joaquin nodded, his jaw set. “It was 1916. I was kind of a drunken asshole, and my dad had just gotten one of those newfangled automobiles,” he said sarcastically.

“Wait a minute, 1916?” I blurted out. “You’ve been here for—”

“Yeah, I know. I look good for my age,” he teased. “So anyway, me and my friends went out joyriding on far too much whiskey, and on the way home I was driving, if you could even call it that, and there was an overturned grocery cart in the road, and I didn’t see it till the last second. And when I swerved…I swerved right into my family. They were coming back from evening services, and I…killed them. I mean, not my dad. He wasn’t there, but…”

He looked away and briefly touched the side of his hand to his nose.

“Anyway, my father stopped talking to me after that, and I stopped doing pretty much anything,” Joaquin went on, his tone matter-of-fact. He leaned back and toyed with his leather bracelet, moving it up and down on his arm, though it only moved about an inch. “I couldn’t sleep without seeing their faces, without hearing my little sister scream.… So one night I went up to the attic with a length of rope and—”

He made a little hanging motion with his hand and stuck out his tongue. I grimaced and looked away, disgusted.

“Don’t do that,” I said.

“Don’t do what?” he asked.

“Make a joke of it. It’s not funny.”

“I know it’s not funny,” he said fiercely. “Believe me, I know. I thought by hanging myself I was escaping it, but instead, I landed myself here, and here I’ve been, for almost a hundred years, and every day I still see their faces. I can still hear her scream.”

I looked down at the floorboards beneath my feet, my bottom lip trembling. He’d just confirmed my worst nightmare. Being here forever meant never forgetting. It meant never escaping. It meant I was going to feel this stupid, this humiliated, this small, for all eternity.

I could feel a black hole start to open up within me. This was not good. This was very not good.

The door of the gray house creaked open, and Tristan stepped out. He ducked his head, being careful not to look in my direction, not to even acknowledge me, then turned and hurried off down the street.

My eyes welled with tears. “I have to go,” I told Joaquin, standing up and shoving open the door.

“Rory, wait,” Joaquin said, scrambling to his feet.

But I just slammed the door behind me and sank to the floor.

Yesterday, forever had felt like a possibility, like a promise. But now I knew it was the exact opposite. Forever was its own death sentence.

Cracks

All afternoon I’ve watched her sit on her porch, sighing out her heartbreak. One day and she’s already figured it out: Forever isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

I’d take her with me if I could, but she’s actually what I pretend to be: good. She would never agree to my plan.

But I see it happening already, the cracks in the perfect facade. The sting is just the beginning. And I’ll do what I’ve always done: smile, nod, and fool them all.

No one will ever suspect a thing.

The Jessica rule

The Jeep pitched and dived as it climbed the rocky hill toward nowhere. All I could see in front of me were the sky and stars, and I clung to the roll bar, just hoping that Bea was as adept behind the wheel as she seemed to think she was. Next to me on the bench backseat, Krista smiled with her head tipped back, as if enjoying the sensation of her hair being nearly ripped from her scalp. To her right, Fisher stared straight ahead, his mirrored sunglasses on to guard against the wind. Joaquin and Bea occasionally spoke to each other in the front seat, but with all the whooshing air in my ears, and the frantic tripping of my heart, I couldn’t make out what they were saying.

I had no idea where we were going. All I knew was it had taken Joaquin half an hour to wheedle me into the car, swearing left and right that whatever we were about to do was going to make me feel better about everything. It wasn’t until he mentioned that Tristan wouldn’t be there—he was working the closing shift at the Thirsty Swan—that I’d finally agreed to come.

“Just look at the stars!” Krista said, splaying out her arms.

“Yeah. They’re…great,” I replied flatly.

Up ahead, the ground seemed to just end, like we were coming to some sort of a drop-off.

“Um, Bea!” I shouted, leaning forward. “Maybe you should stop.”

“Don’t worry. It’s fine,” she called back, glancing over her shoulder at me.

“But you’re heading for a cliff!” I yelled, watching the edge of the world rushing toward me at an alarming speed.

“Don’t worry about it!” Fisher said with a smile.

My heart was in my throat. What was so cool about this? Were they going to drive me off a cliff just to prove I couldn’t die?

“I am worried about it!” I cried, frustrated by their calm. “I’m sorry if I’m not used to being a Lifer yet, but I just got here and I don’t want to—”

Bea suddenly applied the brake, and we skidded forward. I closed my eyes as the Jeep turned sideways, the back wheels swinging toward the precipice. I heard the dirt and rocks spray out over the edge and clenched my fists, waiting to feel the ground drop out from underneath me. Dreading the weightlessness. And then, we stopped.

“We’re here!”

“Everybody out!”

The Jeep bobbed as the others climbed out and jumped down onto the rocks. As my breathing began to slow, I could hear the waves crashing somewhere down below. Ever so slowly, I opened one eye, then the other. The stars winked overhead. I was still alive. Relatively speaking.

“What is the matter with you people?” I screeched, standing up on the seat. Instantly, the world swooped beneath me. The tire under my feet was aligned perfectly with the edge of the cliff and the water was miles below me. One wrong move and I would tip over the edge. Slowly, I sat down again, breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth. To my right, Bea and Fisher were stripping off their outer layers and walking to the far edge of the cliff, laughing and chatting along the way. Kevin parked his sleek black car nearby, and he, Lauren, and Cori clambered out, all of them shedding clothes along the way. There was no sign of Tristan. Or Nadia, for that matter.

Joaquin and Krista stood on the other side of the Jeep.

“Sorry. Bea’s our resident speed freak,” Krista said, tying her hair into a ponytail.

Joaquin stepped closer. “I’ll help you down.”

I slid across the bench and stood up shakily. Joaquin reached out and clasped my waist with his hands. I jumped down, assuming he’d back up, but he didn’t, and we grazed hips. I looked up into his brown eyes. He was still holding on to me.

“Well,” he said. “Maybe you’re not such a goody-goody.”

I blushed and stepped back. “What’re we doing here?”

“Come see!” Krista said excitedly.

The others were all gathered at the very edge of the cliff. I walked toward them on quivering knees, clinging to the front of my sweatshirt with both hands. The fierce wind whipped my hair against my face. In the distance I could see the bridge, the fog swirling lazily around its legs. I stood behind the others on my toes and looked down.

All I saw was water. Water and foam and spray and rocks.

“It’s a cliff,” I said flatly.

“Yep.” Shirtless, Fisher stepped backward toward the edge, tossing his sunglasses onto a pile of clothes. “And it’s perfect for this.”

My eyes widened. “Don’t!”

But it was too late. Fisher had stepped off the edge. He let out a loud, merry shout as he fell. It seemed like five minutes passed before he finally hit the water. He was so far below us I didn’t even hear the sound of the splash, but I saw the white water spray up around him.

For a long moment, no one said a word. I was sure I was never going to see Fisher again. No one, dead or alive, could survive a drop like that. But then, suddenly, the water broke and his head emerged. He let out a whoop and the crowd cheered. My shoulders slumped in relief as Fisher swam toward some low rocks and scrambled up onto them.

“That was awesome!” Joaquin shouted.

Fisher cupped his hands around his mouth, and a moment later I heard the faintest call. “Who’s next?”

Joaquin, Lauren, Bea, Kevin, Cori, and Krista all turned to look at me.

“Oh no,” I said, backing up. “No way. I’ll just wait for you guys in the Jeep.”

“Come on, Rory. It’s an amazing feeling,” Bea said imploringly.

“Here, look. I’ll do it. It’s fine,” Cori told me.

Then she turned and jumped, disappearing from view in a snap. The rest of them cheered, hooted, and hollered. This time I didn’t look, but I heard her shout up to us when she emerged.

“The water’s perfect!”

Crazy. They were all crazy. Every last one of them. I turned and walked away as fast as I could, my pulse thrumming in my ears. Krista, Bea, and Lauren came after me, but I threw my hands up at them, my sneakers crunching across the pebbles and sand.

“You guys do whatever you want to do,” I said. “But just FYI, peer pressure is pretty lost on me.”

“We’re not trying to peer-pressure you,” Bea said, screwing up her face as if I’d offended her. “If you don’t want to do it, don’t do it.”

“Why are you even doing it?” I demanded, feeling annoyed and embarrassed that they were all so blasé about something that scared the breath out of me. “That has to be a twenty-story drop!”

Bea shrugged. “Because we can. There’s a lot you can do when you realize you can’t die.”

My gaze darted past her to the edge. So that was what this was about. Illustrating Joaquin’s point. I was going to “live” forever. Which meant nothing could hurt me. Not in a permanent way.

But still. That didn’t mean I was ready to jump off a cliff.

“Hey, if you don’t want to jump, don’t worry,” Krista said, reaching for my hand with both of hers. Her skin was warm and soft. “We’ll sit this one out with you.”

“We will?” Bea asked, disappointed.

“Don’t let me stop you,” I said.

“No. We want to hang out with you, right?” Krista said to the others as she tugged me toward a grouping of large rocks. “Let’s sit.”

Bea sighed, looking longingly over at the cliff. “Fine.”

“I’m in,” Lauren said with a shrug.

Krista and I settled down on a wide, flat, gray rock and Bea and Lauren perched around us. Bea sat with her knees together, her feet apart, and pushed her hair behind her shoulders, her jaw clenched. Lauren fiddled with the gold seashell she wore on a chain around her neck. I glanced over my shoulder at the waves far below, feeling awkward. Being the center of attention was not my thing.

“So,” Krista began, biting her lip. “Are you okay?”

I froze. Had Tristan said something to her? “Yeah. Why?”

“Just Joaquin kept going on about how we had to cheer you up, and when Tristan came into the general store this morning after your tour, he wouldn’t even look me in the eye,” Krista explained. “Did something happen between you two?”

“Me and Tristan?” I squeaked. “No. Of course not. We’re not, I mean, he’s not—”

“Oh god. You like him, don’t you?” Krista squealed.

“Ugh. Not another one,” Bea said bluntly.

“What do you mean, another one?” I asked.

Lauren leaned back on her hands. “Just don’t let Nadia find out.”

“I knew it!” I exclaimed. “She likes him, doesn’t she?”

Silence. The three of them exchanged knowing looks, and a new and awful thought occurred to me, one that would explain everything that had happened this morning and also make it ten times more embarrassing.

“Wait a minute. Are Tristan and Nadia, like, together?”

“Uh, no,” Krista said with a scoff. “Please.”

“Not that she doesn’t want to,” Lauren sang, pushing her legs out straight.

“Lauren!” Bea kicked Lauren’s shin with her toe.

“What?” Lauren was wide-eyed. “I’m just saying! Rory should know. If you have a thing for Tristan, it’s better to know. Trust me.”

I blinked. Did Lauren have a thing for Tristan, too?

“What do you mean? Wait, is that why she’s always lurking around and glaring at me?”

“She’s been lurking?” Krista blurted out.

Bea sighed loudly and raised her eyes to the stars. “I don’t know about the lurking, but Lauren’s talking about the Jessica Rule.”

“What’s the Jessica Rule?” I asked.

Someone let out a loud whoop, and when we looked over, Kevin had disappeared from sight. We waited a couple of minutes until we heard him whoop again, his voice echoing up from the depths.

“Are you losers doing this or what?” Joaquin shouted to us.

“Keep your pants on!” Bea shouted back.

He laughed, then pulled off his shirt before diving over the edge.

“What’s the Jessica Rule?” I repeated.

“Basically, the deal is this,” Lauren began, tucking her glossy dark hair behind her ears. “Jessica was this Lifer who got here way before the three of us did, and apparently Tristan fell for her. Like, big-time fell. We’re talking running barefoot through the fields, swearing undying devotion under the stars, epic kind of romance.”

I squirmed, my toes curling inside my sneakers. “And?”

Lauren’s eyes sparkled with mischief in a way that made me think of my sister and her friends back home. They got that exact same look on their face when they had good dirt. She leaned toward me conspiratorially.

“And then she—”

“Broke up with him,” Bea interrupted curtly. Lauren whipped around to glare at her. “She broke up with him, broke his heart, and he vowed to never get into a relationship with another Lifer. Which is what Nadia found out when she tried to get together with him upon her arrival. What was it? Thirty years ago now?”