someone like Jared, and every time I try to my stomach churns unpleasantly. His life doesn’t deserve that kind of end.
“No!” he says quickly. “No. It’s just something I noticed. I don’t even know if it means anything. But I get the feeling that I’m not totally in the clear, so stuff like school and bullies don’t really matter anymore, you know?”
I know. I understand exactly what he’s saying. Janie was the main source of my frustration, but even her words didn’t affect me on the day I went home and killed myself. In retrospect, I don’t think anything that happened that day could have changed my mind; nothing seemed to matter once I made my choice.
Now I get why Andy came to school today, and why he’s been so calm – almost detached – all day. He still thinks something bad might happen to him, just because he can see me. Again, my presence is bad news; I should just leave. It would be better for everyone if I did.
“I get that,” I say, only half truthful. “But you’re not gonna die any time soon. Remember how I told you about that pulling feeling I get when someone’s going to croak? I don’t feel that around you anymore. So you’re going to be fine. Mellie hasn’t even been hounding me about not hanging around you lately.”
I’m lying through my teeth, and I know Andy can tell. I’m still being pulled to him – the tugging sensation is stronger, keeping me at his side; if I stand completely still, my body gravitates towards his on its own. At first I thought maybe it was because saving him was one way I could move on, but since I already did that, it’s
obvious what it means. Andy’s a part of something significant that hasn’t even happened yet.
And I wasn’t lying about Mellie; she really has been leaving me alone, but not because she doesn’t mind me seeing Andy anymore. She’s still upset about what happened to Jeremy and how I handled it. Reece has been keeping me updated, but he doesn’t say much about Mellie. Most of the time he talks about the deaths I’ve missed; since I’m being pulled so strongly to Andy, I’ve been able to ignore the fatalities around town. People are still dying, and I still feel when it’s about to happen, but I don’t have to be there. Part of me feels guilty for skipping out on my ‘job,’ but I know Mellie would call me if she wanted me there. Obviously she doesn’t miss me, since Reece has taken my place as her lackey.
Jeremy’s funeral comes faster than I anticipate, and before I know it the school is half-empty and the cemetery two miles down the road is full to capacity. I stop by for a few minutes despite my better judgement, floating above the heads of the crowd and looking down on the solid black casket in the center of the mourners.
It feels so surreal, me standing just a few feet away from the body of the person I killed. It hits me like a blow to the gut, what I’ve done. These people sobbing around the coffin are sad because of me. A teenager is dead because of me. If I had any tears in me, I’m sure I would be crying alongside the crowd, but I’m not sure if I feel that way out of pity for Jeremy or myself.
He wasn’t a good person, I tell myself, but it doesn’t help. He made a mistake; maybe the rest of his life would have been spent repenting for it. I don’t know what he was like before he beat Andy
to a pulp. All I have to judge him on is a few minutes of his life – the very end of it. That’s not enough information to decide he deserved to die.
A middle-aged woman with her hair parted to one side and curling around her neck steps forward after the priest says his prayer. She looks back at a man with a salt-and-pepper beard and gives him a sad smile. Jeremy’s parents, I assume.
She clears her throat and says, “My Jeremy was as good a kid as they come. He… he was brilliant, wanted to go to Harvard Law; he got the best marks in his class last year and was in the running for valedictorian. He had so many friends, everybody loved him. I can’t imagine him ever hurting a fly.”
Yeah, I think, except for the kid he punched and kicked into a bloody mess last week.
Jeremy’s mom stops for a moment, a sob catching in her throat; her husband nods at her and she continues.
“When he was twelve, Jeremy’s father died in a car crash and I remarried. He never once complained, and he threw himself into his studies rather than push his feelings on anybody else. He was a star athlete, and – ”
I stop listening after that; I’ve heard all I need to. So Jeremy was the perfect son, a smart, loving kid who could do no wrong. That still doesn’t excuse what he did to Andy. I know I’m grasping at straws, but I need to find something to ease my own guilt. Everyone has a dark side; even someone as wonderful as Jeremy is capable of something as heinous as murder.
I’m capable of it, too.
I fly away from the cemetery, over the trees and as far away as I can go without looking back. I can still hear Jeremy’s mother’s voice in the back of my head, echoing words that make me feel sick. It doesn’t matter that he was a good person before he hurt Andy. Good people can do bad things, too. I thought I was a good person, but obviously I’m not – not after what I did.
I keep flying, speeding over buildings and between street signs. Andy doesn’t know I went to Jeremy’s funeral; I don’t know how he would react to the news, and I really don’t want to see him right now. I need to be alone.
Without even thinking about it, my body leads me home. And that ends up being the second biggest mistake I’ve made since I died.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I remember my mother. It happens so quickly, I almost don’t catch it – memories whizz past my head at breakneck speed. I can see her face, plain as day, her toothy smile and smattering of beauty marks on her cheeks. I don’t know why it took so long for her to come back to me, but now that she has, she’s all I can see.
She looks like a supermodel, with her fair skin and long blonde hair. She’s thin and beautiful and it’s more obvious than ever that Olivia took after her while I look more like our father.
I look at my bed and I can see her telling me stories, waving her arms and grinning down at me; by the closet she’s helping me organize my clothes, throwing out the ones that are worn or too small now that I’ve finally started growing. I blink and shake my head and she blurs together with the walls, distorted in stripes of color that flow back into solid shapes the longer I stand still. I walk to my bedroom door and it’s like she follows me, holding the hand of a much smaller, much happier Terra by her side.
All at once I remember her, and it’s like she never died. How
could I ever forget my own mother?
I make my way to Olivia’s room, breathing in the scent of freshly washed sheets and fabric softener. I phase through the door and my mother flickers out behind me; she appears again on the other side, braiding my sister’s hair in another memory. Every time I turn around she’s there, different clothing and makeup and ages, but still the same woman I’ve always known.
And in one single, heartbreaking moment I understand completely why I took my own life. After my mother died, everything changed; my father withdrew from the family, my sister stopped sharing her feelings with me, and I stopped trying altogether. It was only a matter of time before everything else fell apart.
I felt alone. And Andy probably feels alone right now too. That’s why I was drawn to him, and that’s why it’s important that I stay with him.
I turn away from my sister’s bedroom and walk down the stairs, looking at all of the photos on the walls in a new light. I remember each moment captured in these pictures, like a camera reel flickering in my mind. Why didn’t I see these things last time I was here? Were my memories just slow in coming back?
My mother died of a heart attack five years ago. Usually my memories return backwards, starting with the most recent, but I get the feeling her death will be the last to come back. Maybe that’s because I’m dreading it the most.
When I get to the kitchen, my mother is waiting for me. She
looks older, like she did just before she died; her hair is braided
down her bac
k and laugh lines are faded into her cheeks. She smiles at me – the real me – and sits down at the table, reading the newspaper and sipping her morning cup of coffee. I don’t know why this particular memory jolts me so much; maybe because it’s so mundane, there’s nothing about it that distinguishes it from any other morning. But that’s also what makes it so important.
The door blows open and my mother glances up, the smile on her face faltering for a moment. I shake my head and the memory flickers; the door goes back to being closed and my mother disappears. I blink and it returns, in full color and clarity.
And then Mellie steps through the door, and the illusion shatters.
My mom looks up at Mellie like she can actually see her and grins, motioning to the seat beside her. Mellie sits down, and my confusion boils down into bitterness.
“Mellie?” I whisper, taking a step closer. “What are you doing here? I’m imagining things, aren’t I? There’s no way you’re really here right now.”
As if in answer, Mellie doesn’t acknowledge me, not even batting an eye as the volume of my voice begins to grow.
Mellie and my mother are talking, but their words sound soupy, slow and clipped and foreign. Something makes my mom laugh, her face lighting up with a smile that shows her perfectly white teeth. Mellie looks different somehow, but I can’t quite figure it out. Maybe she looks younger, but that’s impossible; she hasn’t
aged in years. Her curls are bouncy and light, but her body seems more corporeal now. She seems more human, sitting next to my
mom and chatting like they’re old friends.
This has to be an illusion, something my mind concocted to torture me. There’s no way my mother knew Mellie when she was alive; I would have been aware if a ghost had been hanging out around my house. Or maybe I wouldn’t have, since I couldn’t see spirits at the time. But if my mother could…
This has to be my last memory of her. I must have been here, at this moment. I realize belatedly that my mother is talking to me, not Mellie; she’s just a bystander. I’m standing exactly where I was when all of this happened, but it feels so ordinary that I can’t remember what we talked about or why she was so happy.
Every so often my mom glances over at Mellie, giving her a small, apologetic smile. Mellie seems to understand that I – at least the past me – can’t see her. She keeps quiet and watches, observing like she does with all of the deaths she handles.
But my mother is so calm, she seems to know that Mellie is a ghost and she isn’t at all bothered by it. They’ve known each other for a while, at least. My mom had a whole second life with a person I thought I could trust, and I didn’t know about any of it.
And then the memory fades, the kitchen sparkling back to normal, the door closing and the table clearing itself right before my eyes. I blink hard, trying to will the scene to reappear, but nothing happens. I must have left for school; I came home early on the day I found my mother’s body. It all feels eerily familiar, even though the
pieces of my memory haven’t all connected yet. I’m watching everything for the first and second time, and every second feels like a lifetime.
I know where I need to go next, but I’m almost afraid to. I found my mother in the living room that day, her body sprawled out on the floor by the couch. She looked like she had just fallen, her eyes half-closed and her hands curled at her sides. There was nothing unnatural about her death; it was a heart attack, just like the coroner said.
But when I finally get up the nerve to walk into the next room, my mother isn’t alone. I see myself, five years and three suicide attempts earlier, sprinting through the front door. My backpack falls to the ground and my knees buckle. I don’t remember calling an ambulance, but there’s a phone in my hand and I’m shouting frantic words that my current self can’t understand.
I look up and there she is – Mellie. She’s standing over my mother’s body with a solemn expression on her face. Her feet hover above the couch and her hands are balled into fists at her sides. I glance around for my mother’s spirit, but enough time must have passed for her to move on. I hope she made it to Heaven; she deserved it.
“Mellie…” I say again, even though she can’t see me. “Why are you here? Is this another thing you lied to me about?”
Mellie blinks slowly, watching as the hands of my younger self scrabble frantically at my mom’s wrists, searching for a pulse. I remember the feeling, like being submerged in ice-cold water. My
heart sinks in tandem with my past body’s and I feel ill, experiencing every sensation over again like it’s the first time.
Hot tears well up in my eyes, but they disappear as quickly as they come. I can’t watch, so I turn away and close my eyes, but my
sobs and panicked shouts fill my ears in the background. No matter how hard I focus, I can’t will the memory away.
“You need to see this,” a voice speaks out from behind me, and at first I mistake it for another memory. “It might help you move on. Otherwise it wouldn’t have come back to you in such… detail.”
I open my eyes slowly and there she is again, in the doorway to the kitchen this time. Mellie. Her bright red hair seems duller and her expression is more stern than mournful, but she’s the same woman I just saw hovering over my mother’s dead body. Except that when I glance back into the living room, she’s still there, still watching my breakdown on the floor as the phone line goes dead and my younger self shakes with sobs.
“You owe me an explanation,” I say, turning my attention back to the present-day Mellie. I can still hear myself panting in the next room, but I ignore it. “Now.”
In retrospect, speaking to the Grim Reaper like that probably isn’t the best idea. What are the odds she blasts me into pieces right here and now, or sends me to Hell for back-talking her? But I’m beyond caring at this point. She’s lied to me one time too many, and about something as important as my mother. She had no right to hide this from me.
“Calm down, Terra.”
“I am calm. As calm as I can be watching my mother die.” I wring my hands together, taking another look in the room to my left. There’s a knock and then the door flies open, emergency responders crowding their way into the living room. “And you were there. Why didn’t you tell me you knew her?”
Again, that strange expression passes over Mellie’s face; it’s like a mixture of sadness and resolve, making her eyebrows push closer together and her cheeks crinkle with frown lines.
“I didn’t want you to find out. That’s part of why I was distracting you with cases – jobs, deaths, things that would get your mind off of your mother until you finally were able to move on.”
The realization hits me like a punch. Mellie really didn’t need my help after all; she was just keeping me busy so I wouldn’t have time to go back home and learn her secret. But why would she not want me to know about her relationship with my mom? I don’t care that they knew each other. If she made my mother happy, then I’m grateful they were friends. But Mellie doesn’t seem like the type of person who gets close to others; it’s almost like she’s lost some of her empathy since she died. I only know of one person she let herself become friends with, and that ended in… the other person’s death.
“You killed her,” I say, more sure of my words as they leave my mouth. “You killed her! That’s why you didn’t want me to know; because the person you touched and murdered was my mother!”
Despite my harsh words, Mellie doesn’t look at all surprised; if anything, she looks like she expected this exact reaction from me. She’s been preparing herself to deal with this situation for a long time – probably ever since she first met me.
“You know the story,” she replies, her voice even. “Your mother was my friend. I loved her, and I never wanted to hurt her. She really did have a heart attack, and I panicked and accidentally touched her. She wasn’t set to die for… for a long time. I was just trying to help her, and I made a mistake. I really am sorry.”
Her words a
re so practiced, so precise that I don’t believe a single one of them. It sounds like she’s rehearsing a speech, trying to get me to feel sorry for her when all she’s telling me is lies. I look back into the living room again, but my mother’s body is gone; the door is wide open and my younger self is running through it, following the line of men carrying my mom into the back of an ambulance. Mellie is nowhere to be seen.
I turn back to the Mellie standing in the kitchen next to me. “If you had just told me this a long time ago, I might have thought you were telling the truth. But you kept this from me for a reason. Either you’re feeling guilty – which, knowing you, I really doubt – or you know you did it on purpose.”
“You don’t really believe that,” she says, but I see a flicker of doubt in her eyes. “I was with your mother for months; she was the only living human who could see me for that long. I thought she was safe, because I wasn’t pulled to her and her death wasn’t set in stone yet. I knew that it was dangerous, but I didn’t think – ”
“Exactly! You didn’t think. And you knew that touching her would kill her? But you still hung around with her?”
“I didn’t know that it would kill her. I wasn’t very well-informed when I got this job, Terra; I knew about as much as you do
now. I was told by my predecessor that making physical contact with a human would have unpleasant consequences, but I never thought it would kill her. She was suffering and all I wanted to do was help. I wasn’t thinking clearly. If you had been there, and seen what I did, you would know that.”
I don’t doubt that my mother’s death was difficult to watch; it was hard enough for me, and I wasn’t even there when it happened. But Mellie had already been dealing with death for at least five years when my mom died. She should have been used to it by then.
But I thought I was getting used to it, and then Andy came along and threw me off completely. There’s a possibility – as much as I don’t want to admit it – that Mellie was drawn to my mom the way I was to Andy. And Mellie isn’t the only one at fault here. I killed someone too, and I knew the consequences. That makes what I did even worse.
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