by Meg Cabot
Dead. That was the main word I heard. I was dead.
That’s where I stopped listening.
I suppose a part of me had known all along. But actually hearing him say the word — Dead. I was dead — was the biggest shock of all. Worse than the blow to my head. Worse than choking on the water. Worse than lying at the bottom of that pool, knowing my dad was never going to come in time to save me, and that I’d died because of a bird. A bird!
A bird that hadn’t been hurt at all but just stunned by the cold or something, because it had flown away as soon as I hit the pool cover. I’d seen it as I drowned.
Dead. I was dead.
So many things made sense now. That’s why no one’s cell phone had worked. Their cell phones were dead.
Just like we were.
I felt frozen. All of me. Like I was still at the bottom of that pool, in that icy, icy water.
I was only fifteen. Just a few hours ago, I had been talking to Hannah on the phone. We’d been planning on going to the mall to see a movie later. I’d managed to convince her to have her mom drop us by the stables to visit Double Dare first —
Mom! My mom didn’t even know where I was. I had to let my mother know where I was.
“I…” My tongue and lips seemed to be the only parts of me that weren’t frozen. “Thank you,” I said to him, interrupting whatever he’d been explaining. Because John was still talking. Who knew what he was saying? He looked nervous again. “Thank you so much for everything. But I have to go now. Good-bye.”
I turned away from him and started to walk off in the direction of those gauzy curtains, towards the courtyard. He took a quick step forward, blocking my path.
“I know it’s upsetting,” he said. “But it doesn’t exactly work that way. You see, once you’ve arrived here, you can’t leave.”
I shook my head. “But I have to,” I said. “I have to let my mom know I’m all right. Except for the being dead part,” I added. I wasn’t quite sure how she was going to take that news.
“Your mom is fine,” he assured me, laying his hands on my bare shoulders and physically steering me back into the room. “I told you, you can’t leave. And I think you should sit down again. You’ve had a shock.”
“What do you mean, I can’t leave?” I spun back around to face him. Suddenly, I didn’t feel vague anymore. “What about all those people down by the lake? They’re leaving, aren’t they?”
He shrugged. “In a way. To their final destination.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Their just rewards,” he said, a little bitterly.
“That’s where the boat is taking them?” I asked. “Aren’t I supposed to be getting on the boat? The one that’s leaving?”
My voice trailed off as I read his expression. It was more serious than I’d ever seen it.
“The one that just left, you mean,” he said.
The words seemed to echo around the room. Although they didn’t really.
“Wait,” I said. “What?”
“The boat is gone,” he said. “I asked if you wanted to go someplace else, and you said yes, please. And now the boat is gone. You chose me over the boat, and now this is where you’re going to have to stay. Look, you really don’t seem well. I think you should sit down. Won’t you eat something? What about a drink? Some hot tea?”
Thunder rumbled. But it was inside my head, not outside. Suddenly, I was freezing again, in spite of the blazing fire in the enormous hearth.
“Are you telling me that I have to stay here with you forever because you made me miss the boat?” I demanded.
He was so tall, I had to crane my neck to look into his face. What I saw there — the muscle leaping in his lean cheek, the stubborn set of his jaw — made me as frightened as I’d felt back down by the lake.
Even when, despite the determination I could see in his face, I noticed the sadness in those silver eyes…
None of that helped the tears I could feel coming, or my racing pulse.
“What about the other boat?” I demanded. My voice sounded shrill even to my own ears. “The one for the people in the other line?”
“You don’t want to go where that boat is headed,” John said shortly. “Why do you think they all wanted to get on yours?”
I couldn’t believe this was happening.
“It’s okay,” I said, fighting for calm, even though I could feel my heart hammering in my throat. “Because I didn’t get on the boat, that means I haven’t passed on to my final destination, right? And you can make dead people come back alive. You did it with the bird. So you’re going to do it with me. You’re just going to make me alive again. You have to, because you messed up, making me miss my boat. So do it. Now, John.”
His expression remained obstinate, even as his eyes remained sad.
“I can’t,” he said.
“Can’t?” My voice caught on a sob. “Or won’t?”
He looked away. “Won’t,” he said.
Now my heart felt as if it were being constricted back in that pool cover all over again. “Why not?”
“Because,” he said. But he seemed to have to think about it a while. “It’s against the rules.”
“Don’t you make the rules?” I asked. This was horrible. This was the worst thing that had ever happened to me. Including having died.
“No,” he said. I could tell he was trying to keep his temper in check. But he wasn’t having any more success with that than I was with my tears. Way off in the distance, thunder was rumbling. This time, it wasn’t in my head. “I don’t.”
“Then who does?” His figure had started to dissolve in front of me. Not because he’d gone anywhere but because of the tears that threatened to spill over from my eyes. I wiped at them furiously.
“I don’t know,” he said. Now he just sounded tired. “All right? Do you think I like this any more than you do? Don’t you think I’d like to leave here to go see my mother? But I can’t either.”
Hearing he longed to see his own mother wasn’t exactly helping the situation with my tears. I’d never even considered someone like him might have a mother. But of course he did. Didn’t everyone? “Why not?”
“Because of the Furies,” he said flatly, as if that explained everything. “Trust me, they make sure that the consequences for breaking the rules around here are much worse than anything you could imagine. And not just for breaking the rules. For anything they feel like —” He broke off and looked at me, then glanced down and shook his head. “Well, just trust me. That’s why I gave you the necklace. It will warn you if any Furies are around. That way you’ll know if you’re doing anything that might put yourself in danger from them, even inadvertently.”
When he glanced back up again, his own eyes were bright. Brighter even than Dad’s throwing stars. But his voice was gentle. “I promise you, Pierce, in a little while, you’ll see, it’s not so bad here. You have everything you could possibly want. All the comforts of home…”
It was the worst thing he could possibly have said. All the comforts of home…except everything — everything — I loved.
Now I wasn’t frozen anymore. I was melting. The tears started pouring out so thick and fast, everything, including him, disappeared before my eyes.
“I’m sorry.” I hid my face in my hands. This was terrible. I was dead, and now I was being tortured as well? “I can’t stay here. I can’t.”
“Don’t,” he said. Now the thunder sounded as if it was right over our heads. “Don’t cry.”
He’d reached out as he said it to lay a hand on my shoulder — to comfort me, I suppose — but I sprang away at his touch, recoiling as if he’d scalded me, and retreated to the hearth, where I collapsed.
Forever? I was going to be trapped here with him forever?
And why? Because of some arbitrary rule? Something called a Fury? He had to be joking. I could only imagine what my dad would say if he were here. Don’t you know who I am? he’d bellow.
Thou
gh I felt completely numb inside, I could still sense the heat from the flames against my back. How could I be dead if I could still feel? How?
A second later, John was beside me, saying, “Here. Drink this. It will help.”
He put a cup of something hot in my hands.
But I couldn’t drink.
Then he sat down beside me on the hearth. After a while, I noticed he was speaking again.
“I know it seems bad now, but it gets better, I promise. Soon — not right away, but eventually — you won’t even mind. Or at least, you won’t mind as much. It’s not the same as not minding at all, I know. But at least you won’t be alone. That’s the important thing. That was the worst part. Being alone for so long.”
What was he even talking about? I lifted my bruised gaze and let it wander around the room, until it finally came to rest on the bed. It was only then that I noticed how huge it was. Built for two, really.
Oh, God.
Stay away from the pool in the wintertime, Pierce. Even with the cover, it isn’t safe.
This was the price I was paying for not listening to my mother.
I never thought it would be this high.
It couldn’t have been a coincidence that at that very moment, I noticed an open doorway through an arch across the room, just beyond the bed. Through it I could see a long hallway lit by elegant wall sconces. Two stone staircases curled from it. One led up.
The other led down.
I hadn’t noticed it before, I was certain, because I hadn’t been wearing the necklace. He’d said himself that the diamond protected its wearer from evil.
It was already working.
There was really only one question in my mind: Which staircase would lead me as far away as possible from here?
I was just going to have to make that decision when the time came.
“Well,” I said, realizing that if I didn’t distract him somehow, I was never going to get a chance to make my escape at all. “I guess you’re right. I’m…I’m just being silly.”
He stared down at me, seeming a little shocked at my abrupt change in attitude. “Really?” he asked. “Do you…do you mean that?”
“Of course,” I said. Somehow, I even managed a watery grin.
Then I lifted the cup he’d given me as if I was actually going to drink from it.
That’s when he did something he’d never done in my company before that moment. Something terrible. Something that showed that, despite what he’d said earlier about knowing my nature so well, he didn’t really know me at all.
He smiled.
And then I did something that still causes my heart to twist in my chest whenever I remember it. Something that still haunts my dreams. Something I can’t believe I did and, to this day, really wish I hadn’t.
Except that I had to. The way that bed was sitting there, and the way he was sitting there, and…well, what other choice did I have?
It’s just that whenever I remember that smile, my heart still breaks a little.
But I was so young, and so scared. I didn’t know what else to do.
So I did the first thing I thought of. The thing I’m sure my dad — and even my mom and the Westport Academy for Girls — would have wanted me to do.
I threw that cup of hot tea in his face.
And then I ran.
So did my soul, that still was fleeing onward,
Turn itself back to re-behold the pass
Which never yet a living person left.
DANTE ALIGHIERI, Inferno, Canto I
I took the staircase that twisted down, thinking it would lead me back to the lake. I remember — as clearly as if it were yesterday — that with every step, I’d felt as if my heart was going to explode.
That, the psychiatrists assured me later, was the epinephrine.
The next thing I knew, I was looking up at my mom’s face. I watched as her expression went from agonized, tormented grief to wild, joyous hope as I responded like a robot to the ER doctor’s questions.
Yes, I knew who I was. Yes, I knew who my mother was, and what year it was, and how many fingers the doctor was holding up.
I was alive. I had gotten away from there, wherever it was.
Away from him.
Everything after that seemed to happen in a blur. The surgery for the hematoma. My recovery. The doctors. The psychiatrists.
The divorce.
Because of course Dad wasn’t the one who saved me, in the end. That was Mom. When she got home from the library and called for me, then looked around and finally found where I’d disappeared to, she was the one who dove to the bottom of the pool and pulled me out. Her lips were the ones that turned blue from trying to blow life back into my frozen corpse for the twelve minutes it took the EMTs to get there. It was her wet hair that froze, like icicles, to my face.
Dad didn’t even realize what was going on until he heard the sirens from the ambulance she had called on her cell. He was still on his conference call.
“But it’s a good thing,” Dad always says, “that the water in that pool was so cold! Otherwise, you wouldn’t be alive today. That’s the only way they were able to restart your heart, once they got you warmed up.”
He’s actually right about that, though. Thanks to the near-freezing temperature of the water, my physical recovery was complete.
It was my psychological “issues” that needed work. Especially when, as she was signing me out of the hospital after my recovery from the surgery, Mom said, “Oh, honey, I’ve been meaning to ask you. Where did this come from?”
And she dropped a necklace into my lap.
The necklace. The one he’d given me.
“Where did you get this?” I asked, clutching it, hoping the horror I felt didn’t show on my face.
“They brought it out with your other things while you were being prepped for surgery,” she said. “After they revived you. Apparently, you were wearing it under your coat. I almost told them they’d made a mistake and it wasn’t yours, because I’ve never seen it before. Is it yours? Did you borrow it from Hannah or something?”
“Uh, no. It…was a gift,” I said. How was this possible? How could it have crossed over with me? Especially when every single doctor I’d told about what I’d seen while I was dead — my neurologist, the trauma surgeon, even the doctors who had strolled in to check on me over the weekend — had assured me that it had all been just a horrible, terrible dream —
But this meant it hadn’t been a dream. This meant that…
“Gift?” Mom was distracted by all the forms. Dad usually filled out the forms. But Mom had banished Dad from the hospital. The sight of him upset her so much that, though I didn’t know it then, she’d already kicked him out of the house.
“Gift from whom?” Mom had asked, absently flipping the forms in front of her. I’m not sure if it was because I was holding the necklace that I had the wisdom to answer the way I did or if I just knew better than to tell her the truth.
“Just a friend” was all I said at the time as I stared down into the blue-gray depths of that stone. I was too upset to say more than that.
This meant it was real. It was all real. He was real.
Thank God I didn’t tell Mom the truth. Thank God she was so distracted by the divorce, she never mentioned the necklace again. Thank God I always wore the diamond tucked inside my shirt after that, too confused by what its existence in this world implied about my so-called “lucid dream” to share it with anyone.…
Well, except for what I mentioned to Hannah about it when I got back to school. And even that had quickly shown itself to be enough of a mistake that I learned to keep my mouth shut.
But not as bad as the mistake I made a week or two later, when Mom was “unavoidably detained” by Dad’s lawyers from picking me up after an outpatient appointment, and I found myself wandering into a jewelry store I’d spied on the same block as my doctor’s office while I waited for her. Gazing absently at all the “gray quartz” they happe
ned to have for sale, I must have unconsciously pulled out the diamond and started playing with it, since the man behind the counter noticed it and commented on its beauty.
Blushing furiously, I’d tried to tuck it away, but it was too late. He asked to look at it more closely, saying that he’d never seen such an unusual stone.
What could I do? I let him look but kept the chain around my neck, as always. I’d never removed it since Mom had given it back to me. I don’t know why. The stone fascinated me. It never seemed to be any one color or another but was constantly changing. Even as the man behind the counter held it, it was turning from a pale silver to a deep, rain-cloud purple.
The next thing I knew, the guy behind the counter said he just had to show it to his boss, who was in the back, having his lunch. He was going to love it.
I don’t know what I thought was going to happen…or why I had such a strong urge to run away.
I should have listened to my instincts. I should have seen what the stone was trying to tell me.
But I didn’t.
After the assistant disappeared, the head jeweler came out, wiping his mouth on a napkin. By that time, I could see that my mom had pulled up in her car across the street.
“Actually,” I said, a surge of relief rushing through me. Now I had an excuse to leave. “My ride is here. I need to go. Sorry —”
The older jeweler had already seized the end of my pendant by then, though, so I was trapped…held suspended across the glass counter by the gold chain.
That’s when several things seemed to happen all at once.
Something went cold in the jeweler’s gaze when it fastened on the stone. The closer he bent to look at it, the more nervous I got…and the darker the diamond seemed to turn at its heart. My own heart began to beat very hard.
And though I couldn’t turn my head all the way to look because the jeweler had me almost literally by the neck, I could have sworn I saw, out of the corner of my eye, him standing outside the store, looking at us through the window.
“Do you have any idea what this is that you’re wearing, young lady?” the jeweler demanded. And then he launched into some kind of bizarre diamond speak. “This is a fancy deep gray blue. If I’m not wrong, it’s probably worth anywhere from fifty to seventy-five million dollars. Maybe more if its provenance can be proven, because it looks uncannily like one I’ve seen somewhere before.”