Pieces of Hope

by Carter, Carolyn

  Ethan chalked up before descending. Unlike mine and Brody’s, his hands were glove-free. He held the rope behind him—about mid-back for better control. For as long as my heart could take it, I watched him rappel down, but his speed was so brisk that it scared me to look. At the rate he was dropping, I knew he’d reach the destination in no time. Then it would be our turn, one at a time, to slide down one hundred and eighty feet to the waiting ledge below.

  “Brody!” Ethan shouted much too quickly. It meant that he had already rapped to the platform, and was awaiting Brody’s descent. I exhaled. At least he was safe.

  Duplicating Ethan’s demonstration, Brody stepped gingerly off the ledge before lowering himself down. An achingly long time later, he shrieked happily, “Dude! The eagle has landed! I repeat, the eagle has landed!”

  The way he’d descended reminded me more of an arthritic chicken, but I kept my comments to myself, focusing on the daunting task ahead.

  I hooked myself to the fixed line with utter precision, keeping one arm behind my back, and repeatedly closing my hand around the rope to slow my pace. My new bodiless form should have left me fearless. Unfortunately, it had the opposite effect. That first rap down was less than stellar. I dropped as slowly as Brody had, possibly slower. In a word, it was humiliating.

  Once I stood upon the same shelf which Brody had recently landed, I dared a look at Ethan who, in the span a few dozen heartbeats, had traveled the same distance we had taken several lifetimes to achieve. He was truly the rock star; we, the low-life roadies. I groaned. As Ethan grasped its meaning, I heard him chuckle quietly to himself.

  Looking around, I noticed Ethan had already managed to set up a belay station. A belay was a means of securing a climber in case of a fall, and usually it required a bit of set-up time, but evidently not in this world. Silently, I prayed that Ethan remembered his promise. If he died on me now, I swore I’d go back and kill him a second time myself.

  While Ethan secured himself to one end of the rope, I attached the opposite end to my harness. Once Brody and I had made our ascent, Ethan—as the last man up—would require one of us to take over belay duties from the summit. In essence, we became each other’s anchor, safety net, and security blanket all rolled into one.

  I removed my gloves, clipped them to my harness, and then chalked up my hands. As I took over as lead climber, my monkey genes kicked in. Feeling along the steep rock, my fingers easily found a ridge just a couple of feet above my head, and I secured my left foot into a small crevice about eight inches up. As my lower body pushed, my upper body pulled. Every muscle inside me (well, it felt like muscle) resonated with pure joy.

  Around my waist, I carried various sized cams—metal, spring-loaded devices that expanded to fit into cracks—which I slipped into place about every six feet or so, before I secured them to the rope. It wasn’t as effortless as painting a room with a roller, but to me it was a peaceful, repetitive action. I gripped along the wall, pulled and tugged on various spots, then squeezed my right hand around a jutting knob. Higher and higher, I ascended without a hitch. I was getting the hang of this new fluid form of mine, and I liked it a lot. It was light, more liquidy than my real body, and although I sensed I could have flown up the crag if I had wanted to, I opted to stick with normal human behavior for my first visit. As I slid into the zone of climbing, I stopped thinking and allowed my natural impulses to take over. Hand and footholds seemed to appear as I needed them—almost as though I’d created them. It brought to mind the ease of my first experience. Just a cheesy rock wall at a nearby county fair. My first sweet taste of addiction.

  A short time later, I reached the top of the summit. Releasing the rope from my harness, I shouted down to Ethan so that Brody could begin his ascent, “Off belay!”

  Heaven’s Peak aside, the view of Ethan was far more heavenly. I sat down on the tippy edge of the pirate’s plank, hooked the heel of my sticky shoes into a shallow ridge, and leaned backwards off the bluff. I couldn’t sense Ethan’s emotions, but I could clearly see his face, and he looked a little angry. It was an easy guess that he was worried I might fall off the cliff and kill myself. Oh, if he only knew.

  Strange, I thought, how I couldn’t sense Ethan’s emotions here—almost as if they were blocked or barricaded—but I could definitely feel Brody’s, and terror was the word for the day. Either my best friend had suddenly forgotten how to climb, or Brody was just as self-conscious under Ethan’s steady gaze as I was. With deep wrinkles creased into his forehead, and sweat dripping profusely from his brow, he conquered the crag like a baby walrus learning to crawl.

  In stark contrast, there was Ethan. More than once I caught him, poised in mid-air along the sheer rock-face, almost as if he were sunning his handsome self. It was a blatant case of hang-dogging (and when Brody did it, it annoyed me immensely), but Ethan was a highly skilled and graceful climber, and every move he made was captivating. Though I tried to hide it, I sensed I wore a puppy-dog look of admiration on my upside-down face.

  On the drive down, my expression in the rearview confirmed my stupidity. Ethan watched me from the backseat, his long arms outstretched, almost lazily. The climb had been good for him. Less tightly-wound came to mind. From the passenger’s seat, Brody looked wiped-out, but he had that perpetually sunny glow about him.

  “Hope, you should have seen the look on your face when Ethan first mentioned a rap off that crag.” Brody gave me a goofy grin. “I thought you were going to scream like a little girl.”

  “You mean the way Claire used to do when I pinched her thighs with my toes?” I laughed with Brody. He’d witnessed my torture of Claire on numerous occasions.

  “Dude,” Brody announced to Ethan. “Hope’s got toes like lobster claws!”

  I glanced in the mirror and captured Ethan’s eyebrow reaction.

  “They don’t look like lobster claws,” I argued. “They’re strong like them.” I gave Brody’s shoulder a shove. “Try not to make me sound like a crustacean, will you?”

  Brody formed silent but exaggerated kisses in the air. Was he all of twelve? Ethan smiled as my face flushed red. I shoved my head as far back into the seat as it would go, waiting for the moment to pass. But I did think it most unfortunate that my Jeep (an early college present) didn’t come standard with passenger ejection seats.

  Brody, clueless, shuffled through my album of CD’s, pausing at one of my sister’s favorites, Heartless Bastards. Changing topics without missing a beat, he asked brightly, “Claire’s coming around. Don’t you think?”

  “Absolutely,” I agreed. “Another twenty or thirty years and she’ll be all yours.”

  Brody smiled a toothy smile. “Hey, if she’s half as hot in twenty years, I’ll still take her when she’s old.”

  “I bet you would—toothless and hairless, too!” I started to laugh then caught sight of Ethan’s reflection in the mirror. My mind couldn’t process what my eyes were seeing.

  “Let’s not get carried away.” Brody’s voice sounded muffled, as if he spoke from a great distance. “I have my reputation to con—”

  I looked to my right and Brody was gone. I slammed on the brakes, coming to a dead stop along the secluded path. Wheeling around in my seat, I turned and faced Ethan. He was disappearing then reappearing like some unseen hand was flipping a light switch off and on—and he was the light!

  Despite the difficulty of it, he seemed determined to stay with me. I could see the steadfastness on his face—his desire to stay with me. The strength of his will was almost a physical entity. When the flashing stopped, Ethan gently brushed the back of his hand over my cheek. The effect was mind-numbing. It was all I could do not to reach out and grab onto him for dear life, but my mind raced with the possibility of repercussions. Had something gone terribly wrong? What if my actions made it worse?

  My mouth was moving, but I didn’t think I was saying anything. “It’s going to be all right,” Ethan assured me, stroking my cheek. “But there’s something I need to�
��”

  “You think you know me,” I blurted, reaching up to touch his hand.

  “Yes, there’s that, but—” He looked surprised, but, thankfully, also very solid. “I was about to say I think we once shared a history.”

  “A history?” I repeated, startled. Creesie had said that souls could travel together through lifetimes, but a history implied, well, more. Much more.

  Then, without hesitating, he added, “I believe we fell in love a long time ago—a very long time ago. Before you were Hope and I was Ethan. Before something took me away from you.” He emphasized the word again in case I’d missed it. “Before . . .”

  Slightly dazed, I found myself struggling to breathe. Not because the words he’d spoken seemed so impossible, but because they hadn’t. They stirred something within me. Not quite a memory nor a realization, but something less tangible—a desire, a belief, a hope that he might be right.

  Whatever pulled at him was stronger than his infallible will. Nearly transparent now, Ethan shouted, “Find me again, Hope. Promise that you will!”

  My brain was still scrambling to form words when Ethan completely disappeared. Everything else quickly followed. First, it was the steering wheel. Then the Jeep. Then all the lights went out! It was so devastatingly dark that I couldn’t see my hands in front of my face.

  “Ethan?” I called out hesitantly, my voice trembling.

  But Ethan didn’t answer.

  I stumbled around in the dark after that, stretching my arms in front of me, longing to feel something—anything. But not only was there was a void of sounds and scents and light, there seemed to be an absence of everything.

  “Ethan!” I screamed louder as panic took over. But there was no hint of a reply, not even an echo of one. The entire place was empty, as though I’d been vacuum-sealed into a large black bag and tossed into some forgotten closet. For several terrifying moments, I fumbled blindly in the emptiness, struggling to make sense of it. And then, from nothing, I knew. I just knew—

  Ethan was awake!

  7 New Friends

  My thoughts tripped over themselves. What was I supposed to do now? Why hadn’t Creesie explained how to return to Liberty Station? And she called herself a travel guide? I chewed off three fingernails before an idea finally came to me . . .

  If the Station operated on thought, and if I had thought myself to Ethan, then maybe I could go back the same way. Closing my eyes, I envisioned myself back on that yellow-bricked street, pictured all those stunning souls coming and going, and—while it didn’t feel as if I’d moved even a fraction of an inch—when I opened my eyes, I found myself standing in the exact spot that I’d landed in the first time.

  “Have a nice trip?” someone asked as she appeared beside me. Without waiting for a reply, she raced on, “I wish you could have seen my sister! She was so happy to see me!”

  The girl was elated and, of course, extraordinary. Her auburn hair was pulled up in a loose knot, and she was wearing a long gown with thin, silky straps.

  Seeing me glance at her outfit, she said, “Oh, this . . . I died on prom night ten years ago. Drunk driver.” She shrugged as if it no longer mattered, or nothing could be done about it. “My family is still lost so I visit as often as I can.” There was sadness in her voice. “I keep trying to tell them, but they don’t want to hear it . . . I didn’t feel a thing.”

  Instantly, I thought of my mother and hoped it was the same for her. Perhaps that was the norm after you died—the actual manner of death was of little concern. Or maybe it felt more like a distant memory, like the time I fell out of the Alexander’s oak tree and broke my collarbone. It had happened, sure. But it was so long ago that it almost seemed like someone else’s memory. Maybe it was something like that.

  “Oh!” I said at last, stopping short of I’m sorry for your loss. Not only had those words sounded hollow when my mother died, they seemed kind of stupid to say out loud in this place, what with everyone walking around like they were happy as sunshine.

  As we approached the revolving door—as though it was the most normal thing in the world to say—I asked the girl, “What did you and your sister do?”

  “We shopped! Oh, it was so much fun!” she gushed in a little-girl voice. Her blue eyes were round and wide, and I couldn’t help but notice how they matched her gown. “I helped her find the prettiest dress for prom. I just know she’s going to love it!”

  “It’s . . .” I hesitated, not certain I was hearing her correctly. “It’s a real dress?”

  “Yes, I spotted it at the mall and showed it to her.” She twirled one loose red curl around a finger. “Tomorrow—or rather, in her time—if I know my sister, she’ll be dying to know if it’s real. And when she goes to the store and finds it hanging on the rack, well, she’ll put two and two together and know that I’m real, too!”

  I found myself wondering about Ethan’s reaction. Would he think of me all day? Visit Heaven’s Peak? Best case scenario, I hoped he couldn’t wait to fall asleep and see me again. Yes, that would work out nicely.

  “I’m Charlotte Gooding, by the way.” Her grin was infectious. “And you must be the new girl . . .” In less time than it took to blink, she said, “Hello, Hope Valenti.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t believe how fast word travels around here.”

  “Yes, well it’s that and your smell.” Her face didn’t wrinkle up, but I stopped just short of sniffing myself, hoping I didn’t reek. Did they take showers here?

  “My . . . smell?” I made a face. “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, it’s nothing bad,” Charlotte chirped, waiting in line to enter the door. “To the dead, the living smell a lot like, well, fresh blueberries is the closest thing to it. But it’s a little stronger than that. And hard to ignore. Everyone smelled you on your arrival.”

  “Hmm . . . that’s not so terrible. I like blueberries.” It was a relief to know I didn’t smell like rotten eggs or dead fish. Charlotte giggled, and I guessed it was because of my stupid reply. I like blueberries? Then again, maybe she’d overheard my thoughts.

  “Back from a visit with your boyfriend?” she asked. Before I could answer, we stepped inside one of the pie-shaped wedges together and the door revolved in response, automatically granting us entrance to the Station.

  “How did you—?” I began.

  “I wasn’t reading your mind, silly. You were rubbing your lips.”

  Astonished, I looked down. My fingers were still touching my lips. Charlotte giggled louder this time, and gave a little wave to an Asian girl with long silk-like hair and penetrating black eyes. She was seated at a bench at the other end of the Station, but thanks to my heightened senses, I could easily see her through the crowd.

  .

  “That’s Rin Suzuki! We’ve been best friends since the first grade,” she rambled excitedly. Charlotte exuded the kind of giddy enthusiasm found only in small children and hungry squirrels. It had the potential of either getting on your last nerve, or growing on you. In Charlotte’s case, I found it oddly endearing. “We tend to do everything together. We even died in the same accident, but it’s not like we planned it that way.” She laughed a little, then changed the subject. “I can’t wait to tell her about my last visit! And,” she added with a heartwarming smile, “introduce her to our new best friend.”

  I was flattered. If only it were this easy to make friends in the real world, I could be as popular as Claire.

  “Rin’s very . . . pretty,” I said. The compliment was dreadfully inadequate, but adjectives were incapable of their usual impact. Here, everyone was extraordinary.

  A long line had formed in front of the ticket booth. As we passed by, Mac jerked up his head. His perma-grin widened. “What’s up, buttercup? Back from your visit?”

  I returned his smile and nodded. Charlotte tugged my fingers away from my lips, and we laughed as we glided our way through the crowd.

  Rin was even more spectacular up close, though not quite as bubbly
as Charlotte. Aside from Rin’s gown being bright fuchsia, the two of them were identically dressed, wearing tall, skinny heels, and a single flower in their upswept hair.

  We sat comfortably on a high-backed bench, the traveling bus in clear view to our right. A long line had formed beside it, no shortage of travelers today. Squeezed between the two of them in a tight three-way huddle, I waited as Charlotte finished a recap of her visit. “Rin, do you think she’ll know it was me this time?”

  “I’m sure of it, Char,” Rin said, working at a smile. “Lucky seventy-nine!”

  “Have you visited your sister seventy-nine times?” I asked. If that were the case, I couldn’t help wondering what Ethan was going to think. There was no way he’d believe it was me after just one visit. I’d have to do something more memorable next time.

  Charlotte looked at me, and I saw the tears in her eyes. From out of nowhere, Rin passed her a tissue. “I usually visit my mother, not my sister,” she said quietly. “I wonder if she’ll ever stop crying.” As she dabbed at her eyes, she tilted her head a little. Knowing she could hear my thoughts, I tried to stop thinking, but couldn’t. Out of reflex, my face flushed. “I wouldn’t worry too much about Ethan,” she said at last, her voice sweet and clear. “It should be easier for him to believe it was you. After all, Hope, you’re not dead.”

  “I’m so sorry, Charlotte.” I fought the urge to slap my own face. “That was inconsiderate. Moronic, really. This dead thing is new to me. Well, not new but—”

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” she interrupted, reaching for my hands. “There’s no need to be sorry. I’m”—she glanced at Rin—“we’re very happy you’re alive.”

  It made it both easier and harder that they could hear my every thought as clearly as if I had shouted them out loud. I felt a mounting pressure to monitor myself and, to say the least, I was disturbingly awful at it.

  “Most people are too preoccupied to listen to your thoughts,” Charlotte interjected sweetly as she eavesdropped again. “And we’ll try our best not to do it. Won’t we, Rin?”