Pieces of Hope

by Carter, Carolyn

  “What’s the verdict?” Ethan’s voice was light, but I saw the tension as I lifted my eyes to his. “Am I going to live a long and happy life?”

  “If I have anything to do with it, there are no other options.” I kissed his palm the way he had kissed mine so many times. Then I gathered my courage. “Ethan, I do have to find Daniel—to help him, I mean.” I waited for his expression to change, but there was no indication that he’d even heard me. “Creesie believes he’s lost at one of the other Stations. It’s hard to believe, but they’re like cities in our world, you know, too many to count, and anyway”—I rambled on, my tongue seeming to have a will of its own—“I only agreed to go with her because Creesie says that Daniel needs my help . . .”

  Or had it went some other way? Had I simply told Creesie that I was going to help Daniel—no matter what—and she’d agreed because no wasn’t an option. I couldn’t recall how it went exactly. It tasted like a lie on my tongue.

  “I’ve got a bad feeling, Hope.” He twisted his face away from me. “I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something about that guy that I don’t like.” He looked back at me, his voice insistent, “And it’s not because he’s your ex-boyfriend.”

  He didn’t sound very certain about that. In fact, he sounded very jealous.

  “It’s not? You’re sure?” I asked.

  “It may be a little of that,” he admitted, “but there’s something else, too.”

  “You’ve got nothing to worry about. I’m not going to run off with Daniel.” Of this, I was certain. He nodded, but I thought he’d wanted to argue his point, instead.

  For what felt like a long while, we floated around the pond in awkward silence. It was Ethan who finally broke the silence. “I have a question, but if it’s too painful, let’s just skip it. Agreed?”

  From the crook of his shoulder, I felt my head nod. But I secretly hoped the subject had nothing to do with Daniel. Or hospitals. Or delayed promises . . .

  Warmth filled me from head to toe, like I’d just downed a cup of hot chocolate on a bitterly cold day when Ethan said, “Why don’t you tell me about your mother?”

  I looked up, grateful for the change of subject. He gave me a half-smile and that was all I needed. I babbled about Sunday mornings. About how, even after I had moved in with Claire, I’d find myself back at Vivienne’s kitchen table, the two of us eating our weight in cake, and talking about anything that came to mind . . . my plans for college, the new buds in her garden, the town’s newest gossip, Brody’s last stupid joke, you name it . . .

  “My mother used to tell me we were very much alike,” I gushed. “I even look like her. Did you know that?”

  He shook his head. “You must have loved her a lot,” he said quietly.

  “I did.” I corrected myself. “I mean, I do. It’s pretty amazing. I hadn’t been able to think about her. Not like this, anyway, until I came here. It hurt too much.”

  “And it’s easier now?”

  “My mom’s death was . . .” I couldn’t find the right way to explain it. “It was like I’d been shoved through a giant shredding machine and pieces of me were everywhere. But here, I feel whole again. But it’s more than that, though. Sometimes I get a feeling that’s so intense that I’ll suddenly turn, expecting to see her standing behind me, and I’m surprised every time when she isn’t there.”

  “You feel her around you?” Somehow he made me sound so normal.

  “Every single second.”

  Ethan shifted. “I’ve never mentioned it to anyone, but Poppy told me during the last summer I visited that he would watch over me after he died. He was getting older, a little up in years, I guess, and thinking about his mortality. I told him he was going to be with us a long time, and to stop talking like that, but then a few weeks later he died in his sleep.”

  I knew where he was going with this. “And you feel him around you?”

  “All the time,” he said wistfully. “There’ve been moments when all I wanted was one last conversation with him, one last time to hear him laugh.” Ethan slid down into the boat so that his eyes were level with mine. “Hope, I want you to know I understand . . . more than you can imagine, how much you miss your mother. But at the same time, I don’t think we’re supposed to be with them before it’s our time.”

  His eyes bore into mine, softly inviting me in. So many of the things I tried not to think about came gurgling up, like tiny air bubbles trying to surface. If I went back to my body, how would I endure the agony of my mother’s death? If I stayed here, how would I survive without Ethan? And then there was the nagging question of Daniel. Why was I so concerned about Daniel?

  “How do you know it isn’t my time?” I was surprised at how calm I sounded.

  “I’ve only just found you, remember? It can’t possibly be your time.”

  We talked until the sun set, until the last of our day flickered in the waning light, until Ethan awoke. But this time he knew what was coming. He gave me a heartbreaking kiss before he left, his parting words echoing sweetly in my ears as if he were calling to me from some distant mountaintop. “Is tú mo ghrá . . .”

  14 The Others

  Charlotte and Rin were pacing outside the Station, seemingly awaiting my arrival, but I didn’t think much of it. In my delirious state of mind, a house could have landed on my head, and I might not have thought much of that, either. Neither of them was smiling, and although this didn’t fully register, some part of me did find it odd.

  I nearly tripped over my feet as I ran to them.

  “He loves me! HE LOVES ME!” I repeated loud enough for everyone to hear.

  Charlotte’s solemn expression broke into a grin. “We know, Hope. We’ve known it for a long time.”

  “I knew it! I knew you were there!” I breathed in an excited voice. Waiting in line behind a group of Turkish students, I babbled, “Just like at the falls, I saw you . . . well, I saw your shadows. It was strange the way you hopped, but I guess that’s how—”

  Rin turned anxiously to me. “Did you say you saw a shadow?”

  I nodded warily. Something in the way she’d asked it gave me cause for alarm.

  “And it . . . hopped?” Charlotte asked, equally concerned.

  I nodded again. Now I knew it wasn’t worry but fear on both their faces.

  “This isn’t good. Not good at all.” Rin nervously tapped her finger on her teeth, as if this mundane gesture helped her to think. With a terse nod, she communicated something to Charlotte without saying it aloud. Suddenly, each of them took hold of an arm, dragging me to the front of the line, rudely cutting in front of a dozen at least a dozen teenagers who seemed unconcerned about the intrusion, or our growing level of anxiety.

  “What’s going on?” Alarms were sounding in my head. “You’re scaring the life out of me!”

  Charlotte was fighting to keep the hysteria out of her voice. “That’s because we’re scared. Don’t worry, though! We’re going to fix it!”

  “Fix it? Fix what?” And then I heard what she wasn’t saying, and shouted, “Wait! Scared? What could possibly scare the two of you? You’re already dead!”

  They didn’t answer, nor would they look at me. Instead, they jostled me between them as we entered the revolving door, then waited shortly for it to turn. In my throbbing head, I was running through all sorts of scenarios, but nothing was making any sense.

  Then something tumbled together in my thoughts.

  “Does this have something to do with that shadow I saw?” My heart thudded to a stop. I shrieked, “Is it Ethan? Has something happened to Ethan?”

  Rin and Charlotte whisked me through the Station, past the ever-present throng, in the direction of the flat-nosed bus. Just ahead, I saw Creesie, Gus, Mac, and Cat looking worriedly in my direction. I could feel their anxiety clear across the room.

  Creesie and Gus, seated at one of the double-sided benches, were only twenty feet from the crush of travelers coming and going, directly adjacent to the wal
l of glass; Mac and Cat huddled over them. As we crushed over, they immediately straightened up and tried to look normal. The entirety of their panic punched me square in the stomach.

  “You told them already?” I nearly bit Rin and Charlotte’s heads off. I glared at the rest of them. “Somebody tell me what’s happening!” Several eyebrows shot up at once, but no one uttered a sound. “And don’t almost answer me!” I focused hard on Creesie as I said this, but the full-on view of her round, angelic eyes made me backpedal so I glowered at the others instead. “Somebody start talking!”

  Everyone looked blankly at Creesie.

  “NOW!” I insisted, my heart thumping somewhere in my stomach.

  Without further delay, Creesie replied calmly, “It’s Daniel. The shadow is Daniel.”

  “Oh!” The word came out in a rush of air. I tapped my chest a few times. “That’s not so bad. I thought something had happened to Ethan. You gave me quite a—”

  “It’s certainly not good news.” Creesie was wringing her hands, still unable to look at me. “We have to travel. And quickly.” She offered no explanation. “We need to help him immediately. Things have taken a very bad turn . . . ” Her voice faded.

  “Is he dying? But I thought you said—”

  “I didn’t know all the circumstances until a moment ago.”

  “What kind of circumstances? You said Daniel was lost. You said we would help him when it was time. You said—”

  “I said Daniel was in a very dark place. I didn’t know how dark.” Creesie looked up at me then, her face so full of torment that I flinched reflexively.

  Through her mind, I could see him then. The image was dark and blurry, and for some strange reason it caused my limbs to feel heavy, but it was definitely Daniel—crouched in a corner, terrified and enraged. As I looked on, something eerie happened. As though the two of us had switched identities, I found myself staring out of Daniel’s frightened eyes, cowering as he was beneath what appeared to be a broken bench.

  It took me a moment to realize that the fluorescent lights flickering overhead had caused the unnerving buzzing in my ears. The intermittent light made it nearly impossible to see, but Daniel seemed to be in a cavernous room closely resembling our Station—yet completely unlike it at the same time. Here, strange forms moved about, faster than even my new eyes could take in. Though they resembled people, they didn’t seem as solid as I was accustomed to seeing, nor did they move like everyone at our Station. These bodies moved more like black smoke caught in a strong vacuum. Adding to my apprehension, the longer I watched them, the more cruelly my insides knotted. At once, I doubled over, the disturbing connection suddenly broken.

  “What’s wrong with him?” I cried. I yanked myself up and my mind out of reach of the images lingering in Creesie’s head. “What’s happening to Daniel?”

  I now saw that the six of them had gathered around me in a semicircle. Charlotte stretched a tiny arm about my waist and gave me a sad little smile. Everyone watched for the next several seconds as Creesie’s expression altered from anguish to relief, as if she’d just extricated herself from a horrific car crash.

  “Daniel is trapped in a Station where very dark souls reside.” Creesie waited a few seconds, allowing the idea of that to sink in. But it wasn’t necessary. I couldn’t get Daniel’s terrified image out of my mind. “We really should be going, there isn’t much—”

  “And Daniel—” I shrieked, my stomach twisting as I tried to process what she was saying. “Are you telling me that Daniel is one of them?”

  “Things here aren’t quite as black and white, or right and wrong as they seem to be in the living realm. This isn’t something that’s easily understood . . .”

  “You mean it’s easier to get when I’m dead! Well, I’m not,” I shouted, “so we’ll just have to work around it. Give me something to go on. Make me understand!”

  She looked troubled, seeking silent counsel from the others around her. The six of them engaged in conversation, without me knowing a word that was said. I watched their expressions alter from dull to dire, but there were several in the middle that were hard to pinpoint. Eventually, Creesie spoke again, pausing a few times as she tried to convey a concept I would eventually and fully understand, only after death.

  “Souls can be, for lack of a better word, influenced by more powerful souls—”

  “Just like the living,” Charlotte said in an attempt to be helpful. But I was swiftly losing my patience, and it was infuriating that they thought me so incapable.

  “Okay, I get that—go on!” I leveled my gaze at Creesie.

  “And if Daniel is in the vicinity of other dark souls, he may—” Creesie hesitated, possibly attempting to soften the blow, or find the right phrase.

  “He may what?” I shrieked, no longer agitated. I was suddenly very afraid, and a part of me didn’t want to hear the rest.

  Creesie didn’t blink. “He may lose all vestiges of his former self.”

  “You mean he could turn evil?” I didn’t believe it, not a word of it. “But you could be wrong,” I argued. “You’ve been wrong before, right? So far there’s no indication that—”

  “Shadows are a very bad sign,” she interrupted. “Remember what I said regarding the significance of auras?” Without waiting, she hurried on, “Remember? I told you that they have meaning—the freer and brighter the soul, the clearer the color. The darker the soul, the more muddied and grayish . . .”

  I nodded briskly, impatiently. Of course, I remembered. But what did this have to do with Daniel?

  “Now imagine a soul absent of color, a soul without substance, a soul that’s only a shadow of itself . . .”

  “No, no, no—please, not Daniel!” I croaked. My knees collapsed, but Charlotte’s bony arm held me steady. Her strength surprised me; I thought she would have crumpled to the ground beside me.

  “Don’t worry, Hope We’re going to help you,” Charlotte whispered sweetly in my ear. “We’re going to save Daniel. You’ll see, everything is going to be all right.”

  I couldn’t even nod. Charlotte had meant to reassure me; unfortunately, her words had the opposite effect. Everything was going to be all right? How?

  I suspected the dead would be gossiping about this misguided rescue attempt and dying of laughter for centuries to come. Just how unlucky could a person get? I was this close to traveling to some perverted version of our beautiful Station—headed straight into the lair of evil—accompanied bravely by a pair of skinny sixteen-year olds, two would-be senior citizens, a super-speedy waitress, and a twelve-year old gap-toothed charmer who ran the ticket booth.

  We had neither height nor muscle on our side. Aside from Gus—who was close to six feet tall—and followed closely by Cat, I stood next in line a few inches shorter, and Mac was right there with me. Creesie was lucky if she broke five-foot, and Rin and Charlotte were just slightly taller. If I had to guess, Gus looked the oldest (and I hoped with age came wisdom) and though he was tall and lanky and that often translated to klutzy (especially with teenage boys), Gus moved more like a dancer. Even standing still, he looked remarkably elegant and graceful, just like everyone else at the Station. I wracked my brain as to how that could be beneficial.

  In regards to usable skills, Cat undeniably moved the fastest. Numerous times, I’d see her standing somewhere, and then, suddenly—between blinks, it seemed—she would be gone. Unlike the others who behaved as though they still had bodies, Cat moved more like whispery-thin vapor, mysteriously disappearing and reappearing at will. Then again, it was possible they all possessed that talent, and I simply hadn’t witnessed it.

  And yet, not a single one of them looked as if they could ward off a bad cough, let alone battle an evil being. They had the kind of faces you’d come across in People’s “100 Most Beautiful” issue. (Nice to look at, but not very useful.) And yet, for reasons that were a total mystery to me, this unorthodox group was planning to rescue my first love from a fate worse than death? If the i
dea hadn’t been so pitiful, I’m certain I would have laughed myself into hysterics. Looking at them again, I cringed. I’d seen tougher-looking kids at Claire’s ballet recitals.

  “I’m guessing we should prepare ourselves for the butt-kicking of the century,” I muttered, despair marring my attempt at a joke.

  No one uttered a word in reply. Genuine terror inched up my spine.

  “But if what Rin and Charlotte said holds true, none of you can be . . . can be”—I couldn’t say the words, let alone imagine the process involved—“That is to say, none of you can be . . . permanently affected by whatever it is that’s near Daniel.”

  There was a mutual shrug, which I interpreted as a no, and which did nothing to allay my concerns.

  “You mean, can we get our souls sucked away?” Rin volunteered.

  With Daniel’s terror still lingering in the back of my mind, I was almost successful in swallowing my sarcasm. “That’s one way of putting it, Rin. Truthfully, it gives me a visual I don’t really need right now.”

  Creesie cut in, casting a firm, motherly glance at Rin who looked back as if to say What? “For what it’s worth, Rin’s rather graphic way of speaking isn’t an accurate depiction. For the living’s sake, we have a tendency to oversimplify things . . .”

  “But nothing can happen to any of you?” I asked again. A guiltier conscience was not something I was in need of, especially given our odds.

  Creesie’s eyes grew soft. “Nothing long-lasting, I assure you. Any effects we feel will be temporary. And all things considered, I’d prefer you didn’t dwell on the details.”

  I tried not to, but when she paused, I dwelled. I was thinking about what Charlotte and Rin had said about how they could feel other beings’ emotions the same as if they were their own. And if the emotions were distressingly wretched, even evil—?

  Cat’s head tilted. Unfortunately, she’d heard me dwelling. Her expression brought to mind an angry, wet cat—a real one—sopping and snarling. Though why she directed it at me was puzzling. “Curiosity killed the cat!” she shouted, and it sounded like a warning.