As I say that, I do it. I close my eyes and raise my face into the sun, basking in its warmth in the way only the Living can do. It’s a pleasure that feels even sweeter because I couldn’t feel it—this earthly sensation—when I was almost dead. I let the rays soak into my skin, and run my hands through my hair. Carson’s silent, still transfixed as she keeps her eyes on the road and her mind on my story. And I continue.
“There was a shining light, and thousands of sparkles dancing around Ella, enveloping her. The spirits were playing mbiras, these instruments that mimic a rainfall and usher the dead into the next world.”
Remembering it all, reliving it in my mind, makes me long for that world as well, for that feeling of complete rest. Life and the After, both so rich and vivid, tug at my insides. “It was like magic,” I say. “I felt a tranquility, a peace I’d never known. It actually made me cry.”
“Wow, Callie. That sounds beautiful. I mean, angels-singing, gates-of-Heaven beautiful. But better.”
“It was.”
“So that’s what all the ghosts do, eventually?” she asks. “They merge in this ceremony and then . . . what comes next? What’s Solus?”
“It’s a leap of faith.” I’m quoting Thatcher again, and for a moment it’s like he’s sitting in the backseat, happily going on this weird road trip with us. “Solus is the heart of the universe—it’s where we all belong.”
“And that’s where Thatcher will be, once we talk to Wendy.”
I feel a pang of guilt at not being straight with Carson, not telling her the real reason we need to see Wendy. But I tell myself I’m going to come clean soon, when we know more about what we’re really up against.
“Hopefully.” I turn the radio up, not wanting to dwell on the thought of Thatcher merging. Maybe after the poltergeists are gone, maybe then, I can think about how to help him, and Wendy. But it would mean saying a true, final good-bye. And I’m not ready yet.
“You okay?” asks Carson.
I nod, just as my phone sounds—I silence my father’s ring.
“Your dad?” asks Carson.
“Yup.” I glance at the clock: 8:04 and I’m not in homeroom. The school probably called him.
“Better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission,” says my usually good-girl best friend.
“Carson Jenkins, you’re becoming a badass.”
She smiles and raises her sunglasses, batting her eyes at me. “In the name of love? I’ll do anything.”
Carson pulls up in front of a brick building with enormous old windows and a pretty garden out front. “This is Wendy’s dorm,” she says.
I look around and the campus is flecked with palmettos, the South Carolina state tree, and the grass is trim and bright, welcoming students back to campus with a lush green spirit. The brick buildings give off a stately air, each entrance announced with regal white columns. There are some boys to our left throwing a football out on the quad and two girls in retro-style bikinis are applying more sunscreen on our right. I look out at the buzz of the campus, and a surge of gratitude washes over me—I will do this. I will go to college, and live my life. I feel sad for all of those who won’t. For Thatcher, of course, but also Reena and Leo and everyone I met who died young.
It just isn’t fair.
“It’s so beautiful,” I whisper.
“Hand me the Fritos,” says Carson. She’s not quite in the same appreciate-all-the-little-parts-of-life zone that I’m in.
I reach down and snag her a bag. She tears into it and starts crunching. Then she presses the button to put up the top on the convertible so we won’t burn in this strong sun.
“What do we do now?” I ask her.
“We wait.”
“Until . . . ?”
“Until you see Wendy come out of the dorm,” says Carson, as if this is such a duh question.
“How will I know it’s her?” We looked Wendy up online, but it’s not like I’m sure I’ll recognize her. There are a lot of girls with blond hair walking around.
“You’ll know,” says Carson confidently. “You’ll feel it inside.”
When I give her a skeptical glance, she adds, “She’ll remind you of Thatcher.”
Carson saying that makes my heart thump louder, and I sit still, watching her finish a fun-size bag of Fritos.
After one more bag of Fritos, three MoonPies, one apple (Carson: “Yes, I did bring healthy stuff, too”) and one Coke each, I’m about to doze off. But then there’s a sharp rap on the driver’s-side door.
“Y’all can’t park here,” says a college guy outside as Carson rolls down her window.
“Oh, sorry, sir!” says Carson in her sweet-as-honey voice. “We’re visitors. We’re trying to find Wendy Larson and she didn’t tell us where to park.”
“Just because you’re pretty doesn’t mean you can break the rules,” says the guy, who has close-cropped brown hair and a sunny smile that’s beaming toward my best friend. “You need to go to South Lot. It’s around the other side of campus.”
“Aw, thank you!” says Carson. “We’re just going to wait for a couple more minutes but we’ll head right over to that lot as quick as we can.”
She rolls her window back up and rolls her eyes at the same time.
“Cars, that guy was totally cute, and totally hitting on you,” I say.
“No he wasn’t,” she says. “He was like a college safety monitor . . . telling me I can’t park here. Why not?”
I point to the bright-red hydrant near her front bumper.
“Well, I’ll move if there’s a fire, obviously,” she says.
“Whatever.” I pull down the visor mirror and smooth out my eyebrows. “You should have talked to him more. He’s a college guy.”
Carson waves her hand. “I don’t need the hassle.”
“What do you mean?” I ask her. “You never think of romance as a hassle.” I study my face in the mirror, wondering if Wendy will think I look like a crazy person when I tell her I met her long-dead brother this summer.
I realize Carson’s gone quiet and I’m about to press her further about the cute parking guy when, reflected in the mirror, I see her. I see Wendy.
She’s walking out of the dorm, carrying a single book and a blanket and striding toward the grassy quad.
Carson was right. I just know. It’s the way she’s walking, confident and purposeful. It’s the way her eyes stare straight ahead, like no one will deter her from her path, and her lips, they form the softest of smiles. I can see it from here. It’s almost like I’m seeing . . . him.
“Stay here,” I say to Carson.
“But I—”
“Stay.” My eyes must convey what I’m feeling. I need to do this alone. Carson shuts her mouth and nods.
Then I bolt out of the VW Bug and rush up to Wendy, but when I get right next to her we almost collide, and she steps to the side.
“Whoa, watch it,” she says. Her light hair is shaved on one side and her eyes are lined with thick black kohl. She has a bunch of piercings—all up her earlobes and one in her lower lip.
But when I look at her eyes, swirling oceans of blue, and the shape of her lips—soft and full with a perfect inverted arch at the top—my knees go weak and my mouth opens dumbly.
She frowns. “Do I know you?”
I nod slightly, but I can’t seem to make my body do anything else. This girl is wearing all black, full of metal, and yet at the same time, she looks so much like Thatcher that it makes my heart melt into a pool in my chest.
My silence is getting weird, and I watch her eyes cloud over.
“Watch where you’re going next time,” she says.
And then she’s moving again, walking away.
“Wendy, wait!”
She freezes and turns around slowly. “Are you in my Shakespeare class? Are you the girl who’s always late?”
“No. I’m . . . I’m . . .” Why can’t I talk? Maybe it’s because of her hair—it’s the exact color of Thatcher’s: blon
d with copper tones threaded through it, a slight wave at the ends. Her cheekbones are high and sharp, her nose long and thin. There’s a smattering of freckles across her face, and even the way she tilts her head at me, like she’s trying to figure out who I am . . . it’s just like he would do it. She could be his alterna-twin.
“What’s going on?” Wendy’s voice is clipped. I won’t have her attention for long.
“I’m Callie McPhee,” I say. “I’m a friend of your brother’s.”
She sneers at me. “You look really young to have been a friend of my brother’s,” she says. “Did he babysit you when you were in kindergarten or something?”
I shake my head no.
“I met him this summer.”
Wendy narrows her eyes at me sharply, and I know I’ve made a misstep.
“What I meant to say is, I knew him a long time ago . . . and then this summer I thought maybe I should come find you and tell you a little bit about what I remember about him,” I stammer, trying to save this moment.
“Why?”
“Can we go somewhere and sit?” I don’t want to do this without some ground underneath me. I’m weakening just looking into Wendy’s ocean-blue eyes.
Wendy studies my face.
“I don’t think so.” She folds her arms across her chest, holding her blanket like a shield.
The wind starts to blow and her face is shadowed for a moment in the rippling shade of a palmetto tree.
I can tell that she’s about to leave. I have to do this. I don’t want to lie to her. I realize that I want to tell her the truth, like Thatcher said to. So I do.
“I was in a car accident at the beginning of the summer,” I begin. Then I lean down to roll up the leg of my linen pants and show her the biggest scar. I want to prove things to her, show her the tangible parts of my story, because I know what I’m about to say is going to be hard for her to believe.
She winces at the pinkish puckering slash on my calf.
“It’s okay,” I say. “I mean, I’m okay. Now. But I was in a coma for a few weeks.”
“Oh!” Wendy’s face softens slightly. “That’s why you look familiar. I read about you in the the Post and Courier.”
She’s warming a little now, and I remember something Thatcher told me about her: that she was always wanting to take care of people, always looking for the happy endings. She had cancer as a child, and she beat it, but she never lost her faith in life and joy and miracles . . . until he died.
I nod, rolling down my pants and standing up again.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” she says, her frown returning. “But what does this have to do with my brother?”
She reaches up and lowers her sunglasses so I can’t see her eyes anymore. And I’m partly glad, because they look exactly like his eyes, and they make me feel untethered.
I take a deep breath. “While I was in the coma, I found myself in a world that’s somewhere in between Earth and Heaven, an afterlife. And that’s when I met Thatcher.”
“Is this some kind of stupid prank?” She glances over her shoulders at the other students on the quad.
“No—” I start.
“Did Bella Cryer put you up to this?” Her voice is angry now. “Because it’s NOT FUNNY!” Wendy shouts that last part, and I reach out to put my hand on her arm, but she pulls away quickly, like I’ve got a contagious disease.
She starts to turn from me, but I can’t let her go. “I know he was drinking at Homecoming, at the upper Wando River,” I tell her. “I know he was with Reena and Leo, and someone named . . . Hayley. She lived, but—”
“That was all in the newspaper,” she snaps, turning back to me. “Everyone can read those details online.”
“He talked to me about your cancer,” I say, and as she looks at me, her lip and its metal ring start to quiver. “You were four years old and spending most of your time in a hospital.”
“Anyone could have told you that,” she says. “I don’t know why you would go to such lengths to play a cruel joke on me, but that’s obviously what you’re doing.”
“Wait, Wendy,” I say. “I’m telling you the truth. I do know Thatcher, from another dimension.” I pause for a moment, realizing how insane I sound. But she’s standing there, staring at me, so I start again. “We were friends . . . he sent me to find you, he sent me to get a ring, your grandfather’s class ring.”
She tilts her head. “You want me to give you my grandfather’s ring?” she asks, her voice full of wonder at my audacity.
I’m doing this all wrong. I’m losing her.
“I don’t know who you are or who told you to do this to me, but I want you to leave. Now. And take your crazy-ass friend with you.” She points to the curb in front of her dorm, where Carson is leaning out of the window of the Bug watching us with a rabid intensity. I’m surprised she doesn’t have binoculars.
Wendy turns and starts walking away, quickly. My heart speeds up. I’m not going to get the ring. I need the ring.
“Wendy!” I shout. “Thatcher says, ‘The treasure is in the tree!’”
She stops in her tracks, turning so I see her profile, which is so like her brother’s that it takes my breath away. “What did you say?”
I’m quieter now, realizing we’re attracting attention.
“Thatcher said to tell you, ‘The treasure is in the tree.’ Please . . . you have to get the ring for me.”
Wendy spins on her black boots and marches back, coming to stand as close as she can without touching me. Her face is filled with fury. “I don’t have to do anything!” she whispers, her teeth showing as her lips curl back in anger. “And if you did see Thatcher in some afterlife, you should know that he hates me enough to want me dead, too.”
My face must register shock because she smiles triumphantly. “That’s right,” she says, backing away. “If you know so much about my brother, you should know that he blames me for his death. He told me so himself, when I was just twelve years old. So you tell me how I’m supposed to let go of that.”
Twelve
“DO YOU THINK SHE’S crazy?” asks Carson.
Seeing Wendy didn’t take as long as we thought it would, and Carson and I stop at the Dixie Diner on the way home. In the car, I told Carson about what Wendy said last—about Thatcher blaming her for his death. Now, in front of a tuna melt (Carson) and a grilled cheese (me), we try to figure out what she meant.
“No,” I say. “I think she’s grieving. It’s kind of insane that it’s still so raw after ten years, but I think she believes what she said.”
“Thatcher hates her?”
“No,” I say. “He talked about her with so much love. She must remember wrong. But she thinks he blames her for his death. I just don’t understand why.”
“Well, we have to ask him,” says Carson, scooping a big lump of tuna fish out of her sandwich and putting it on the side of her plate as she, who ate two bags of Fritos and two MoonPies earlier, mumbles about portion control.
“Ask who?”
“Thatcher,” she says, biting into her sandwich.
I tilt my head sideways at her.
She grins, her mouth full, and chews rapidly before wiping her lips with a napkin.
“I get that he probably wants to stay in the shadows or whatever. I know he wants you to move on,” says Carson. “It’s noble. Blah, blah, blah. But this Wendy thing? There’s something going on there. He should want her to heal; he should do whatever he can to make that happen. And what he can do right now is help her, through you.”
She looks up at the ceiling of the diner, at the lamps of red-and-blue glass and the silver fans, circling slowly. “Do you hear me, Thatcher?” she says in full voice, drawing stares from other diners. “You need to help us do this.”
“Sh!” I quiet her down.
“Well, if you won’t talk to him, I will,” she says, taking another big bite of tuna melt.
I love Carson for her big heart, for her willingness to help me, but she’s
not on the same mission I’m on. She doesn’t know about the ring, or the poltergeists.
Not yet.
When we get outside, Carson stretches and yawns in front of her car. “I’m sleepy. You wanna drive?”
I hesitate. I haven’t driven since the accident.
Carson smiles at me, reading my mind. “You have to start sometime.” She hands me her keys.
When we’re back on the highway, it feels good to be behind the wheel. Carson fiddles with the radio.
“Why the slow lane?” she asks.
“I’m not in as much of a hurry as I used to be.”
“That’s probably a good thing.” She leans her seat back and relaxes in the passenger seat, starting to doze off.
I drive steadily for forty minutes, letting everyone pass me on the left, including a few 18-wheelers. I feel good—not shaky, not nervous like I thought I would. I smile at the blue sky. Driving is such a pure pleasure. I’m glad to have it back.
When we get to our exit I slowly veer to the right and turn left at the stop sign, heading back to our neighborhood. I’m crossing under the overpass, stopped at a red light, when suddenly I feel a crackle of pain in my leg. Before I can think, my right foot presses down on the gas and we take off, blowing through the last seconds of the red light as the car increases speed.
Carson starts awake. “Callie! What are you doing? Slow down! There’s another red light ahead!”
I’m panicking—my foot is tingling like mad, like it’s surging with blood, and I have no control over its movement. It’s pressed to the floor as if there’s a cement block on top of it. I watch our speed climbing: 20 mph . . . 30 . . . 40.
“Callie!” Carson’s scream rings out over the rev of the engine as she grabs the wheel and steers us around the car waiting at the red light in front of us. A van to our right skids to a stop and spins out to avoid hitting us. “I can’t lift my foot!” I shout, and I see Carson’s face flash with fear.
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