That day, she was barely civil to the customers at ’Tis the Season. When she arrived home, she went straight to her room. Opening the door, she found Philip there, spreading out his baseball cards. She had noticed that he no longer called out the play-by-play for his games, just moved the players silently from base to base. But when he looked up at Ivy, he smiled at her for the first time in days. He pointed to her bed.
“Ella!” Ivy exclaimed. “Ella!”
She hurried in and dropped to her knees beside the bed. Immediately the cat began to purr. Ivy buried her face in the cat’s soft fur and started to cry.
Then she felt a light hand on her shoulder. Drying her cheeks on Ella, she turned to Philip. “Does Mom know she’s here?”
He nodded. “She knows. It’s okay. Gregory said it was. Gregory brought her back to us.”
P1-13
When Tristan awakened, he tried to remember which day of the week it was and what lessons he would be giving at the swim camp. Judging by the dim light in his room, it was too early to rise and dress for work. Lying back, he dreamed of Ivy—Ivy with her hair tumbling down.
Slowly he became aware of footsteps outside the door and a sound like something being wheeled by. He leaped up. What was he doing there—lying on the hospital floor in the room of a man he had never seen before? The man yawned and glanced around the room. He did not appear at all surprised by Tristan’s presence; he acted as if he didn’t even see him.
Then it came back to Tristan: the accident, the ambulance ride, the paramedic’s words. He was dead. But he could think. He could watch other people. Was he a ghost?
Tristan remembered the old lady. She had said she saw his light, which was why, he thought, she had mistaken him for an—
“No, no.” He said it aloud, but the man didn’t hear him. “I can’t be that.”
Well, whatever he was, he was something that could laugh. He laughed and laughed, almost hysterically. He cried too.
The door behind him swung open suddenly. Tristan quieted himself, but it didn’t matter. The nurse who entered was not aware of him, though she stood so close her elbow passed through his as she filled out the man’s chart. July 9, 3:45 A.M., Tristan read.
July 9? It couldn’t be! It had been June when he’d last been with Ivy. Had he been unconscious for two weeks? Would he black out again? Why was he conscious and there at all?
He thought about the old woman who had reached out to him. Why had she noticed him, but the nurse and others had seen nothing? Would Ivy see him?
Hope surged through Tristan. If he could find Ivy before he fell into the darkness again, he’d have another chance to convince her that he loved her. He would always love her.
The nurse left, shutting the door behind her. Tristan reached to open it, but his fingers slipped through the handle. He tried again, and again. His hands had no more strength than shadows. Now he’d have to wait for the nurse to come back. He didn’t know how long he would stay conscious or whether, like ghosts in old tales, he’d melt away at dawn.
He tried to remember how he had gotten this far and pictured the halls he had traveled down from the emergency room. He could see very clearly the corner where the orderly had gone through him. Suddenly he was traveling the halls to that spot. That was the trick. He had to project a route in his head and focus on where he wanted to go.
Soon he was out on the street. He had forgotten he was at County Hospital and had to get himself all the way home to Stonehill. But he had driven the route a thousand times to pick up his parents. At the thought of them, Tristan slowed down. He remembered his father in the emergency room, leaning over him and weeping. Tristan longed to assure him that everything was all right, but he didn’t know how much time would be given to him. His parents had each other; Ivy was alone.
The night sky was just starting to fade into dawn when he arrived at her house. Two rectangles of light glimmered softly in the west wing. Andrew must have been working in his office. Tristan went around back and found the office’s French doors thrown open to the cool night air. Andrew was at his desk, deep in thought. Tristan slipped in unseen.
He saw that Andrew’s briefcase was open and papers with the college insignia were scattered about. But the document he had been reading was a police report. Tristan realized with a jolt that it was the official report on his and Ivy’s accident. Next to it was a newspaper article about them.
The printed words should have made his death more real to him, but they didn’t. Instead, they made things that had once counted—his appearance, his swimming record, his school achievements—seem meaningless and small. Only Ivy was important to him now.
She had to know he loved her and that he always would.
He left Andrew to pore over the report, though he didn’t understand why he would be so interested in it, and took the back stairs. Slipping past Gregory’s room, which was above the office, he crossed the gallery to the hall that led to Ivy’s room. He could hardly wait to see her, hardly wait for her to see him. He trembled as he had done before their first swimming lesson. Would they be able to speak to each other?
If anyone could see him and hear him, Ivy could—her faith was strong! Tristan focused on her room and passed through the wall.
Ella sat up immediately. She had been sleeping on Ivy’s bed, her thick black fur balled close to Ivy’s golden head. Now the cat blinked and stared at him, or at the empty air—after all, cats did that, he thought. But when he moved toward the other side of Ivy’s bed, Ella’s green eyes followed him.
“Ella, what do you see, Ella?” he asked quietly.
The cat began to purr, and he laughed.
He stood by Ivy’s side now. Her hair was tumbled over her face. He tried to brush it back. More than anything he longed to see her face, but his hands were useless.
“I wish you could help me, Ella,” he said.
The cat walked over the pillows toward him. He kept very still, wondering what exactly she perceived. Ella leaned as if she would rub against his arm. She fell over sideways and yelped.
Ivy stirred then, and he called her name softly.
Ivy rolled onto her back and he thought she was going to answer him. Her face was a lost moon, beautiful, but pale. All of her light lay in the golden lashes and her long hair spread out like rays from her face.
Ivy frowned. He wanted to smooth the frown away but couldn’t. She began to toss and turn.
“Who’s there?” she asked. “Who’s there?”
He leaned over her. “It’s me. Tristan.”
“Who’s there?” she asked again.
“Tristan!”
Her frown deepened. “I can’t see.”
He laid his hand on her shoulder, wishing she would awaken, certain that she would see him and hear him. “Ivy, look at me. I’m here!”
Her eyes fluttered open for a moment. Then he saw the change come over her face. He saw the terror take over her. She began to scream.
“Ivy!”
She screamed and screamed.
“Ivy, don’t be afraid.”
He tried to hold her. He wrapped his arms around her, but their bodies slipped through each other. He could not comfort her.
Then the bedroom door flew open. Philip rushed in. Gregory was close behind him.
“Wake up, Ivy, wake up!” Philip shook her. “Come on, Ivy, please.”
Her eyes opened wide now. She gazed at Philip, then glanced around the room. She did not pause at Tristan; she looked straight through him.
Gregory rested his hands lightly on Philip’s shoulders and moved him aside. He sat down on the bed, then pulled Ivy close to him. Tristan could see that she was shaking.
“Everything is going to be all right,” Gregory said, smoothing back her hair. “It was just a dream.”
A terrifying dream, thought Tristan. And he couldn’t help her, couldn’t comfort her now.
But Gregory could. Tristan was overcome with jealousy.
He couldn’t stand to see
Gregory holding her that close.
And yet he couldn’t stand to see Ivy so frightened and upset. Gratitude to Gregory, as powerful as his jealousy, swept through him. Then jealousy again. Tristan felt weak from this war of feelings and backed away from the three of them, moving toward Ivy’s shelves of angels. Ella followed him cautiously.
“Was your dream about the accident?” Philip asked.
Ivy nodded, then dropped her head, running her hands over and over the twisted sheets.
“You want to talk about it?” Gregory asked.
Ivy tried to speak, then shook her head and turned one hand over, palm up. Tristan saw the jagged scars running up her arm like the traces of lightning strikes. For a moment the darkness came up from behind him, but he fought it back.
“I’m here. Everything’s okay,” Gregory said, and waited patiently.
“I—I was staring at a window,” she began. “I saw a large shadow in it, but I wasn’t sure who, or what, it was. ‘Who’s there?’ I called out. ‘Who’s there?’”
From across the room, Tristan watched, her pain and fear pressing upon him.
“I thought it might be someone I knew,” she continued. “The shadow looked familiar somehow. So I walked closer, and closer. I couldn’t see.” She stopped and glanced around the bedroom.
“You couldn’t see,” prompted Gregory.
“There were other images on the glass, reflections that made it confusing. I got closer. My face was almost against the glass. Suddenly it exploded! The shadow turned into a deer. It crashed through the window and raced away.”
She fell silent. Gregory cupped her chin in his hand and pulled it up toward him, gazing deeply into her eyes.
From across the room, Tristan called to her. “Ivy! Ivy, look at me,” he begged.
But she looked back at Gregory, her mouth quivering.
“Is that the end of the dream?” Gregory asked.
She nodded.
With the back of his hand he gently stroked her cheek.
Tristan wanted her to be comforted, but—
“You don’t remember anything else?” Gregory said.
Ivy shook her head.
“Open your eyes, Ivy! Look at me!” Tristan called to her.
Then he noticed Philip, who was staring at the angel collection—or perhaps at him; he wasn’t sure. Tristan put his hand around the statue of the water angel. If only he could find a way to give it to Ivy. If he could send her some sign—
“Come here, Philip,” Tristan said. “Come get the statue. Carry it to Ivy.”
Philip walked toward the shelves as if drawn by a magnet. Reaching up, he put his hand over Tristan’s.
“Look!” Philip cried. “Look!”
“At what?” asked Ivy.
“Your angel. It’s glowing.”
“Philip, not now,” said Gregory.
Philip took the angel down from the shelf and carried it over to her.
“Do you want her by your bed, Ivy?”
“No.”
“Maybe she’ll keep away bad dreams,” he persisted.
“It’s just a statue,” she said wearily.
“But we can say our prayer, and the real angel will hear it.”
“There are no real angels, Philip! Don’t you understand? If there were, they would have saved Tristan!”
Philip fingered the wings of the statue. He said in a stubborn, little voice, “Angel of light, angel above, take care of me tonight, take care of everyone I love.”
“Tell her I’m here, Philip,” Tristan said. “Tell her I’m here.”
“Look, Ivy!” Philip pointed toward the statues, where Tristan stood. “They’re shining!”
“That’s enough, Philip!” Gregory said sternly. “Go to bed.”
“But—”
“Now!”
When Philip passed by, Tristan held out his hand, but the little boy did not reach back to him. He stared with wonder, not recognition.
What did Philip see? Tristan wondered. Maybe what the old woman had seen: light, some kind of shimmering, but not a shape.
Then he felt the darkness coming on once more. Tristan fought it. He wanted to stay with Ivy. He could not stand to lose her now. He could not stand to leave her before Gregory did.
What if this was his last time with her? What if he was losing Ivy forever? He struggled desperately to keep back the darkness, but it was rising on all sides now, like a black mist, before him, behind him, closing over his head, and he succumbed.
P1-14
When Tristan awoke from his dreamless dark, the sun was shining brilliantly through Ivy’s windows. Her sheets were pulled up and smoothed over with a light comforter. Ivy was gone.
It was the first time Tristan had seen day-light since the accident. He went to the window and marveled at the details of summer, the intricate designs of leaves, the way the wind could run a finger through the grass and send a green wave over the top of the ridge. The wind. Though the curtains were moving, Tristan couldn’t feel its cool touch. Though the room was streaked with sun, he couldn’t feel its warmth.
Ella could. The cat was lying on a T-shirt of Ivy’s tucked in a bright corner. She greeted Tristan by opening one eye and purring a little.
“Not much dirty laundry lying around here for you, is there?” he asked, thinking of the cat’s fondness for his smelliest socks and sweats. The stillness of the house made him speak quietly, though he knew he could shout loud enough to—well, loud enough to wake the dead, and only he would hear.
The loneliness was intense. Tristan feared that he would always be alone this way, wandering and never seen, never heard, never known as Tristan. Why hadn’t he seen the old lady from the hospital after she died? Where had she gone?
Dead people went to cemeteries, he thought as he crossed the hallway to the stairs. Then he stopped in his tracks. He had a grave somewhere! Probably next to his grandparents. He hurried down the steps, curious to see what they had done with him. Perhaps he’d also find the old woman or someone else recently dead who could make sense of all this.
Tristan had visited Riverstone Rise Cemetery several times when he was a little boy. It had never seemed a sad place to him, perhaps because the sites of his grandparents’ graves had always inspired his father to tell Tristan interesting and funny stories about them. His mother had spent the time trimming and planting. Tristan had run and climbed stones and broad-jumped the graves, using the cemetery as a kind of playground and obstacle course. But that seemed centuries ago.
It was strange now to slip through the tall iron gates—gates he had swung on like a little monkey, his mother always said—in search of his own grave. Whether he moved from memory or instinct, he wasn’t sure, but he found his way quickly to the lower path and around the bend marked by three pines. He knew it was fifteen feet farther and prepared himself for the shock of reading his own name on the stone next to his grandparents’.
But he didn’t even glance at it. He was too astonished by the presence of a girl who had stretched out and made herself quite at home on the freshly upturned dirt.
“Excuse me,” he said, knowing full well that people didn’t hear him. “You’re lying on my grave.”
She glanced upward then, which made him wonder if he was shimmering again. The girl was about his age and looked vaguely familiar to him.
“You must be Tristan,” she said. “I knew you’d show up sooner or later.”
Tristan stared at her.
“You’re him, right?” she said, sitting up, indicating his name with a jab of her thumb. “Recently dead, right?”
“Recently alive,” he said. There was something about her attitude that made him want to argue with her.
She shrugged. “Everybody has his own point of view.”
He couldn’t get over the fact that she could hear him. “And you,” he said, studying her rather unusual looks, “what are you?”
“Not so recently.”
“I see. Is that why your hair is
that color?”
Her hand flew up to her head. “Excuse me?”
The hair was short, dark, and spiky, and had a strange magenta tinge, a purplish hue, as if the henna rinse had gone wrong.
“That’s what color it was when I died.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“Have a seat,” she said, patting the newly mounded earth. “After all, it’s your resting place. I was just crashing for a while.”
“So you’re a … a ghost,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
He wished she’d stop using that annoying tone.
“Did you say ‘ghost’? You are recent. We’re not ghosts, sweetie.” She tapped his arm several times with a long, pointed, purplish black nail. Again he wondered if this was from being “not recently” dead but was afraid she’d puncture him if he asked.
Then he realized that her hand did not pass through his. They were indeed made of the same stuff.
“We’re angels, sweetie. That’s right. Heaven’s little helpers.”
Her tone and tendency to exaggerate certain words were starting to grate on his nerves.
She pointed toward the sky. “Someone’s got a wicked sense of humor. Always chooses the least likely.”
“I don’t believe it,” Tristan said. “I don’t believe it.”
“So this is the first time you’ve seen your new digs. Missed your own funeral, huh? That,” she said, “was a very big mistake. I enjoyed every minute of mine.”
“Where are you buried?” Tristan asked, looking around. The stone on one side of his family plot had a carving of a lamb, which hardly seemed right for her, and on the other side, a serene-looking woman with hands folded over her breasts and eyes lifted toward heaven—an equally bad choice.
“I’m not buried. That’s why I’m subletting from you.”
“I don’t understand,” said Tristan.
“Don’t you recognize me?”
“Uh, no,” he said, afraid she was going to tell him she was related to him somehow, or maybe that he had chased her in sixth grade.
Kissed by an Angel/The Power of Love/Soulmates Page 11