This is Not the End

by Chandler Baker

  Copyright © 2017 by Chandler Baker

  Teaser Copyright © 2015 by Story Foundation and Chandler Baker

  Cover photo of landscape and people © LeviEly/Offset

  Cover photo of stars © PSDgraphic.com

  Title lettering by Molly Jacques

  Cover design by Tyler Nevins

  All rights reserved. Published by Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address New York, New York 10023.

  ISBN 978-1-4847-9852-2

  Visit www.hyperionteens.com

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Acknowledgments

  Preview of Alive by Chandler Baker

  About the Author

  For Rob, we’ve created some

  wonderful things together

  The most formative memory of my life isn’t even my own. It doesn’t matter that I wasn’t there to see it happen, that I didn’t feel the rip of pain or hear the solitary shriek followed by silence, I’ve still managed to live that moment a thousand times. One thousand times I’ve told myself the story from his perspective. One thousand times I’ve tried to rewrite history and failed.

  Here’s what I recall.

  Big, soggy clouds hanging low in the sky, the last drizzle having been wrung out of them. It’s not an important detail, but if it hadn’t been a rainy day, we would have been on the back porch or down on the shell-y stretch of gray beach behind our house. I know the rain must have made Matt bored, because usually I was the one climbing things and getting scraped-up knees those days, mainly because Matt was too old. He did still read to me about talking lions and magical queens that turned the world to ice, but I also caught him talking on the phone to girls occasionally, and I didn’t like it.

  In the memory, I’ve tried to edit the weather, but it never works. The story won’t hold together without it.

  Our neighborhood has a palm tree infestation, which is to say that there are palm trees everywhere and their roots try to choke out any plant that dares to grow nearby. They can make other kinds of trouble too. The tall ones that mark the property line around our house have to be supported at the base with wooden beams so that the giraffe-like trunks don’t topple over and gouge holes in our roof.

  So it’s notable that we have one of the only oak trees in a one-mile radius. Since nobody can climb palm trees, I can attest to the fact that looking at a nice, solid oak does tend to give you the urge to hike an arm over one of the branches and climb it. In other words, I get where Matt was coming from. I just wish for the thousand-and-first time that I could change it. But, like I said, he was bored and must have just finished a book—actually, yes, I remember that, one of his books about aliens or sorcerers—and that oak tree is right outside his window. Maybe if the previous owners hadn’t planted it there or if Matt and I had swapped rooms, maybe none of this would have happened. But they didn’t, we didn’t, so we’re stuck in it.

  Matt went outside. He rubbed his hands on his pants and over the bark. The air smelled like damp wood with a hint of seaweed, since we’re so close to the shoreline. He could see bits of sand trapped in the tree’s crevices because, of course, sand gets everywhere—even in our ears sometimes. There are times when I relive this story that I find myself wiping my own hands, and then I realize that I’m not in the memory and Matt’s hands don’t work anymore.

  He had a new paperback shoved in his back pocket, and he’d decided to read it from up in the tree, like one of the boys in The Swiss Family Robinson. So he stretched onto his tippy-toes until he could reach the lowest branch. The bark stung the inside of his arm as he hoisted himself onto the lowest branch. He enjoyed the sensation of his dangling feet and climbed higher so that there was more air between his shoes and the ground.

  The branches creaked under the soles, but there were fat, sturdy limbs above him. So Matt scaled farther up the oak, careful not to slip on the wet wood. This is the part where I try to tell Matt to stop. End the story here. Turn back. Go no farther.

  The last branch that he hooked his arm over looked like all the others. He didn’t see the gash between the limb and the trunk. He didn’t feel it give under his weight until all of it was already pressing down and it was too late.

  I wish I didn’t remind myself of this so much. Then maybe I could un-remember the memory.

  Too late.

  The sound was the cracking of bone. Flashes of leaves and twigs that tore at his shirt and neck. His stomach shot up to his throat as his torso fell unevenly toward the dirt, which was packed hard from the rain. Time stopped. Just like it does in the movies. Everything else crawled into slow motion.

  It felt like he was falling forever.

  Then, when his back hit the ground, it seemed like there would never be breath in his lungs again, and his spine splintered like thin ice under a footstep, forking off into spidery veins that fractured the world—into before and after.

  When I was eight, I watched a woman jump from a bridge while my mother and I were stuck in traffic. Her arms spread out like a bird’s wings, and for a moment she was suspended, the wind catching her blouse like a sail. Then the moment snapped and she fell from the air. Her body cracked against the water. And her existence was snuffed out. Gone.

  So for as long as I can remember, I’ve known that water’s strong and solid enough to kill. I think of an early memory of my brother standing on the shore behind our house while I picked my way barefoot across a stone jetty that protruded out into the sea. “If you fall,” he said, “I’ll bring you back.” He had puffed out his chest and pushed his crop of sandy-blond hair out of his eyes, squinting into the sun that reflected off the water. He was so unbroken then, his forehead crumpled into a worried knot of skin at the top of his nose as he tried to sound brave. I’ve always been the daredevil between us.

  I watch the water now frothing against the rocks below me like a rabid animal. My toes hook precariously over a jagged rock face. The distance is thirty-odd feet, far enough to send needle pricks through the soles of my feet, not far enough to crush my bones on impact. I consider this a happy medium.

  Then there’s the thwack of bare soles behind me. A shad
ow crosses. A foot plants inches from mine. “You snooze, you lose, suckers!” My boyfriend, Will, tucks his bronzed legs into a cannonball. His hair—which at this stage of the summer now matches the color of his skin—spikes up and trails after him, fluttering in the furious rush of wind as he plummets into the ocean. Behind him, a white plume of water gushes up and he disappears below the surface.

  I glance back. “You’re next.” I gesture to Penny, who stands three carefully measured feet from the ledge. She is so not a daredevil. More the yin to my yang.

  From that vantage point, I imagine she can see the horizon, but not the drop waiting below.

  “No.” She shakes her head, swishing a so-blond-it’s-nearly-white ponytail across her shoulders. “I can’t. I want to. I really do. I just…” She has this way of bowing in her knees like she has to go to the bathroom, literally shrinking into herself. I know this as the first telltale sign of chickening out.

  I lean on one leg and peer back over the ledge where Will has resurfaced. He treads water and tosses his head so that ocean spray flies out and plasters his hair over his right eyebrow. He cups his hands around his mouth and calls up to Penny: “Get it together, Hightower.”

  We discovered this point two months ago while we were swimming offshore of the public beach. From the surface, we took turns diving as far down as we could, trying to see if we could touch the bottom to find out whether it was safe enough to jump. It was Will who had tried it first. I had held my breath, waiting for a scream—or worse, nothing. But Will had come up laughing and baiting us in after him. Will and I have been coming back once a week like kids circling the line at an amusement park.

  Staring down, my pulse thumps in the webbed skin between my thumb and pointer finger. The feeling of my stomach leaping clear into my throat is there even before I step into thin air.

  I look back at Penny, who is quivering in a turquoise triangle-top bikini and using her eyes, the color of sea glass, to plead with me. I consider myself the definitive expert on all things both Will and Penny, and this, I know, will be good for her. With just a few weeks left of our last summer together, her chances to conquer her fear of heights are dwindling.

  “Think about it this way,” I tell her. “You just start from there and keep on walking. One step, that’s all you have to commit to and then—poof!—no turning back.”

  “Keep on walking…off a cliff,” she says. Goosebumps pop up all over her skin, even though the air is the temperature of a Jacuzzi. “You forgot to mention that part.”

  “If all your friends jumped off a cliff, wouldn’t you?” I quirk an eyebrow and hold out my hand. “We’ll do it together.”

  She closes her eyes and takes a deep, soothing breath, pinching her thumb to her middle finger. It’s what she calls her “centering” ritual, and since she’s not looking, I don’t mind rolling my eyes. Penny is a devotee of yoga and Eastern meditation, much to the confusion of her Jewish parents. As for me, I’m more act first, think later. Penny, on the other hand? Think first…and then think some more.

  After a moment, she swallows and nods, then gingerly steps closer to me. Her palm locks against mine, hot and damp, covering up the silvery crescent-shaped scar on the side of my hand left over from where a dog bit me a couple of years back. Between heights and fang-toothed fluff-balls, I’ll take the death-defying drop any day.

  Penny peers down her nose at the water below. The waves break in white crests, slamming up against the rock face, but I’m not worried. Penny’s a good swimmer. It’s the jumping she needs work on.

  “The only way the bottom gets closer is if you get farther from the top,” I say. “You ready?”

  Her lower lip quivers. “You’re sure this is safe?”

  I squint. “I’m living proof, aren’t I?” At this she looks me over as if to double-check that I am, in fact, alive and therefore suitable evidence. She squeezes my hand tighter. “Okay. On three. One…” I bend my knees. “Two…three…” I swing my arm and lunge out into the open air. Penny’s fingers immediately slip from between mine, and all of a sudden I’m grasping nothing but wind. I try to turn to see if she’s with me, but I’m falling too fast. The air whistles in my ears. Sky and sea roar around and through me. It’s a split second before the ocean stabs my legs and the tough skin on the bottom of my feet.

  A gush of salt water rushes into my nostrils. My sinuses burn. I squeeze my eyes tighter and kick. Bubbles pour out my nose and the tide drags me back and forth horizontally while I struggle up, up, up.

  I fight against the undertow and the water grows warmer, which is how I know that I’m headed in the right direction. My mouth breaks the surface and I gulp air down. My hair clings to my head and neck and I’m grinning, shaking the water out of my ears and swishing my legs furiously to tread water.

  I glance up and there’s Penny waving at me from the top of the cliff. “I couldn’t do it!” Her voice echoes down the cragged face. “I’ll meet you guys down there.”

  “Pen—” But splashing is coming from behind me and before I can get a word out a weight pushes down on my shoulders and water charges through my parted lips. Sinking back under, I work to pry the calloused fingers away. Then, twisting, I give Will a sharp jab to the ribs. He swims backward and I come up coughing and laughing before whacking my arms against the water and splashing him square in the face.

  “Truce! Truce!” he calls, dog-paddling toward me. I let a few sips of salt water fill up my cheeks, and then when Will’s hands are on the straps of my bikini bottoms and he’s leaning in for a kiss, I spit a fountain of water at him, giggling and retreating with a backstroke for safety. “Hey! I called truce!” He runs his hand over his eyebrows and down his face. “A blatant violation of the rules of engagement.” He snatches my ankle just as I’m almost clear of his reach and tows me back where he plants a wet kiss on my cheek. I scrunch up my shoulders and make a show of not liking it even though it’s obvious to us both that I do.

  “Let’s hurry up. I’m so hungry I could eat a woolly mammoth,” I say.

  “Why not just an elephant?” Will asks.

  “An elephant? But they’re adorable.” I dip my head underwater, wetting my hair so that it slicks straight back. “God, Will, I’m not a monster.”

  Will swims in front of me and I wrap my arms around his neck so that he’s giving me a swimming piggyback ride. “I could eat a pterodactyl. I bet they taste like the chicken of the sky,” he says grandly.

  “We’re strange, you know that?” I rest my chin on the crook between his neck and shoulder. He smells like seaweed and coconut suntan lotion.

  He shrugs. “Three more weeks until your great, big, epically magnificent, cowabunga awesome birthday surprise. Have any guesses?”

  I feel the steady beat of his legs underneath me, kicking calmly toward shore. His broad shoulders tense and relax with each stroke.

  “Does the birthday surprise have a nickname? Because that seems like a bit of a mouthful.”

  “Oh, that is the nickname. That’s how awesome the surprise is.” Will doesn’t do understated. Sometimes I worry that if we ever get married, Will’s proposal will involve a large-scale choreographed dance number and singing animals, if he can swing it.

  “Let’s see. Last year you took me on a helicopter ride during which I puked in a bag. The year before that you rented a party bus to take us all to see a cheesy horror-movie marathon. So, that’s land and air. I’m going to guess water this year. A boat! You’re taking me on a boat!” I squeeze him harder around the neck.

  He lifts a hand and wipes water from his eyes. “I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

  “But then there’d be no one left to bring me back.” I jut out my lower lip. “I think that’d sort of defeat the whole birthday-surprise hoopla.”

  “Then I guess I’d better not tell you.” He tickles the bottom of my feet. I cringe and curl my legs more tightly around him. Penny, Will, and I all have summer birthdays—Penny thinks that’s part
of why we all get along so well, and as much as I scoff at her stargazing horoscope babble, she may be on to something, because all three of us could basically live on the beach, and that’s one of my favorite things about us. I mean, I’d die if Penny made us go hang out at the mall or something.

  The two of them have both turned eighteen already—their birthdays are only a week apart, with Penny being the older one. Their closeness in age is why their moms are best friends. Neither Penny nor Will used their resurrections on anyone. There are rumors that a few kids in our class might be using their resurrection choices this year. Penny thinks her aunt resurrected somebody back when she and Penny’s mom were teenagers—back before the Pickering Regulations passed to control population growth by only allowing one resurrection choice on a person’s eighteenth birthday—but none of us know if it’s true or not. I don’t think I personally know anyone who’s used their choice. The thought makes my stomach clamp down on itself like a steel trap.

  Because there it is. The countdown. Ticking away in the back of my brain. Just over three more weeks until my eighteenth birthday, and then…

  “How about a hint?” I ask, because I want to focus on the good part of my birthday, the part where I get to spend it with my two favorite people in the world. Nothing else.

  “So greedy.”

  “Come on, a pre-pre-birthday present.”

  Will pauses. He spits some seawater from his mouth. “Your wish is my command.” And then he just stops. I feel the grin in his cheeks.

  “Yes…and…?” I prod.

  “That’s your hint.”

  I splash him in the face but manage to get myself in the nose just as much as I get him. The salt burns. “That’s not a hint, you cheater.”

  He shrugs and readjusts my weight on his back. “Guess you’ll just have to finish the hunt to find out.”

  I groan. This is so Will. “What kind of hunt?” I whine. “Are we talking treasure, Easter egg…deer?”

  He laughs. “Deer? And risk the wrath of Penny?”

  The sinking sun spreads golden fingers of light up to the beach. The water grows shallower and I can feel Will bouncing along on his toes to keep our heads above water. I dip a toe down, but it’s still too deep for me to stand, so I lay my cheek on Will’s warm, sunburned shoulder and close my eyes. “You know you’re not as charming as you think you are, Will Bryan,” I say with a sigh.