by Edie Claire
My mother stood up. "Well, that's good to hear, I guess," she said, sounding anything but settled. "It seemed to me like you and Matt were getting along well tonight. Wouldn't it make more sense to hang out with him and his friends, who you might actually go to school with next year?"
"Of course," I agreed, relief setting in. I was going to get out of this mess after all. Amazing. "I told you, Matt and I are going out again tomorrow."
"Yes, I know," she said, still looking at me somewhat suspiciously. She took a step toward the doors, then turned. "Do you like him, Kali?" she asked, her emphasis on the word "like" making her meaning clear.
My eyes caught hers, and it occurred to me that up to now, I hadn't really looked straight at her. I wondered if she had noticed that. I wondered if I was really getting away with everything I thought I was.
"I'm not sure, Mom," I said honestly. "Right now, I really just don't know."
My mother smiled. But it was a smallish, sad little smile. "Okay, Kali," she said heavily. "We can talk more later, if you want. Goodnight."
"Goodnight, Mom."
She walked into the condo and closed the doors after her, and I sunk down into one of the patio chairs.
Quite suddenly, I was exhausted.
"An Oscar-worthy performance," Zane said without humor, slipping into the chair opposite me. His expression was grave.
"What do you mean?" I said, irritated by his downer tone even as I was, in fact, deliriously happy to see him again. "I didn't really even have to lie… much."
"You shouldn't have to lie at all."
I took a good look at him. He looked terrible. Aside from the fact that he was so translucent I could make out the features of his chair through the majority of his torso, his hair was an unruly mess and he was wearing slacker clothes again—a gray hoody and baggy sweats. On another guy the look might be grungy and unattractive, but Zane could look good wearing trash bags. What bothered me far more was the morose expression on his flickering-solid face.
"What's wrong with you?" I demanded, my heart beginning to race again. "Did something happen?"
"Nothing happened. Nothing earth-shattering, anyway. I remembered some more, but I wasn't really trying."
He looked up at me, catching my gaze firmly with his. "Kali, there's something I’d like you to do for me. After… well, after I'm gone."
I didn’t want to think about that. I couldn't.
"What's that?" I asked, trying to lighten my own tone. Knowing, even as I asked, that I would do anything for him.
He continued to hold my gaze. "I want you to tell your parents the truth. About your gift."
My eyes widened. "About my gift?" I sputtered. "Are you crazy? I told you, I could never do that! It would kill them. It would kill me!"
He leaned forward. "I understand what happened before," he said earnestly. "You were a child, and your parents were frightened. But can't you see that things are different now? You're practically an adult. You're well adjusted in every way. Do you really think that if you told your parents the truth, they would believe that you were mentally ill? Please, Kali. Give them some credit. If you explain everything, including how you lied on purpose back then just to make everyone stop worrying about you, they'll believe you now. How could they not? They know you're smart, they know you're sane. But they've seen for themselves how you react when you're in a place with strong emotions attached. They'll put it all together, and they'll know you're telling the truth. They may not understand it any better than you do, but they'll believe you, Kali. And they can help you."
I pushed back my chair and stood up. I couldn't believe he was laying all this on me now. How dare he try to fix me!
"Help me?" I repeated angrily. "How can anyone help me?"
Zane stood up with me, bending down to make his face level with mine—still holding my gaze, not giving an inch.
"By listening to you!" he thundered. "By being there for you to talk to. By letting you know that you're not crazy, and you're not alone. By stopping you from having to lie to everyone you love every day for the rest of your life!"
I started to open my mouth. Then I closed it again.
I looked into what I could make out of Zane's once-beautiful green eyes, and my anger melted instantly.
He was doing this for me.
He could see how much I hated lying to my parents. He could see how much it meant to me, the last few days, to be able to share everything that was in my heart. He knew he would be gone soon—we both knew that. He didn't even know where he would be going, but right now, he was worried about me.
"I'm worried about you, Kali."
My eyes teared. I sniffed out a laugh. "Yeah," I said, stammering like a fool. "I can see that."
His brow furrowed, but some of the darkness in his expression lifted. "Well, then? Will you promise me?"
Promise you what? A cruise to Aruba? Ten kids? Name it.
"I… um…" I backpedaled. The ten kids would be easier, actually. "I don't know, Zane. I'll need to think about it."
"Don't think about it," he pressed, "Just promise me. Promise me you'll tell someone the truth. Someone besides me. Someone you trust. Please, Kali."
His form, which had become more solid as we talked, blurred suddenly; within a fraction of a second he had changed from the gray sweats into the hottest outfit I'd ever seen—a soft, skintight muscle shirt and workout shorts, with his feet bare and his blond curls framing his face like he was posed for a movie poster.
I pitched back a step and laughed out loud. "Oh, that is SO unfair!"
He flashed a killer smile. "Promise, Kali."
"All right! All right!" I conceded, all but forgetting whatever it was I was promising. "Just put the freakin' sweats back on, okay?"
He smirked in victory. "How's this for a compromise?" In a blink, he was back in his favorite board shorts. His curls were damp.
"Put a shirt on," I ordered.
His smirk widened. "Fine."
A white tee shirt appeared, and I nodded in approval.
"You promised," he reminded.
"I know." What had I done?
Bright lights were on inside the condo; I could see my parents inside, and my mother glancing my way. The porch light was dim, but she could still see me. I seated myself at the table again, facing away from the house and toward the ocean. The waves pounded on the shore in the distance, and a light breeze ruffled my hair.
"It would be nice not to have to pretend anymore, wouldn't it?" Zane commented, slipping into the opposite chair.
"Enough about me," I responded, even as I had been thinking the very same thing. "I want to know how you're feeling. You're…" I tried hard to sound positive. "You're getting fainter every time I see you. Do you feel different?"
He paused a moment, then nodded, his gaze trained on his own, ill-defined hands. "I can feel something happening, yes. At first, I just felt disconnected somehow, like part of me was somewhere else. But more and more, I feel…"
I leaned forward, wanting desperately to understand, even as I feared what he would say.
"I feel like something's pulling at me," he finished. "Like part of me is in another place, and the part that's here—." He broke off. His expression seemed pained. "The part that's here isn't supposed to be."
I swallowed. I would be optimistic about this, for his sake. I would.
"Well, we knew that," I said, as lightly as I could manage. "Your being here at all—like you are—had to be a mistake of some kind. But now that you're connecting with your memories… you can be whole again. You can move on."
He raised his head and looked at me. "Right. Move on."
He didn't want to go.
My breath caught in my throat. This wasn't right. Any of it. And it was my fault. I wanted him to stay because I would miss him—but that wasn't fair.
Who was I kidding? It was his dying that wasn't fair!
Maybe he shouldn't be with me, but he didn't belong in some perpetual… whatever, ei
ther. He deserved to be alive, to be young, with his whole life still ahead of him!
"I can answer your question now," he said, intruding on my thoughts, and mercifully so.
"What question?" I asked, my voice ragged.
He leaned forward and smiled at me. My knees wobbled again, but it was okay this time… I was sitting.
"You asked if I ever had a serious girlfriend. I remember now—or at least I think I do. The answer is no. Not unless I met someone particularly outstanding right around the time I died, which would be doubly tragic, I suppose."
His tone was pleasant, despite the gravity of his words.
"I don't believe it," I said without thinking.
He smiled at me again. "Oh, no? Why not?"
"Because!"
"Because why? You think I'm not selective?"
"No, you idiot," I teased, grateful for the return to a frivolous topic. "Because you're ridiculously hot and I know for a fact you wouldn't last ten minutes in any high school without half the population fighting to be your girlfriend."
His eyes narrowed. "I repeat: you think I'm not selective?"
"Even if you are," I protested, "you could have anybody."
He leaned back in his chair. "I wish," he said solemnly.
His mood turned gray again. Wishing like crap I hadn't used the present tense, I hastened to brighten it. "You're seriously telling me that in your high school in Hackensack, there wasn't a single girl who interested you enough to go out with more than twice?"
He drummed his fingers on the table. At first, the tips went through the metal, but after a few tries, he mastered the illusion perfectly. "You're making it sound like I was an operator," he answered. "But you're wrong. I never had any trouble getting dates, that's true. And to answer your other question, yes, I did really dance at the dances, when I could go to them. But once I started having to work all the time, I never could. I couldn't do much of anything."
He was quiet for a while. I knew he was remembering more, because his form grew fainter as I watched.
I interrupted him before I could stop myself. All good intentions aside, I just couldn't stand the sight of it. "Okay, that I understand. Maintaining a girlfriend would take some time."
"It wasn't only that, Kali," he said seriously. His gaze moved over my shoulder to the inside of the condo, and he gestured in the direction of the window. "You see that?"
I turned and looked in. My parents had their arms around each other. My father was holding some sheet of paper—it looked like a real estate flier—and they were laughing together, canoodling like newlyweds.
I whirled back around. "Yeah, I know. Embarrassing, aren't they?"
Zane looked at me incredulously. "Are you kidding me? What they are is happy." He stood up from the table with a jerk and began to pace. "Not that it matters anymore, seeing as how I'm dead," he said ruefully. "But if you want to know why I wasted what little dating life I had being 'selective,' it's because I was determined not to wind up like my parents.
"Neither of my parents were ever happy. They were both good-looking and successful and had plenty of opportunities for companionship and sex, but I don't think either of them was ever in love. My dad had no concept of it; he was completely self-absorbed. My mother got infatuated with a different guy every five minutes, but she never really cared about any of them. Both my parents claimed they were happy, but even as a little kid, I could see they weren't content. They spent their whole lives feeling restless, always looking for something else, having no idea what that even was."
He dropped down in his chair, and his gaze floated back over my shoulder. "But I knew what I wanted. I wanted what your parents have, Kali. I wanted that."
Warily, I cast just enough of a glance over my own shoulder to see that my parents were now, as expected, making out in front of God and everybody.
I turned my head back around and groaned.
Zane glared at me again.
"I'm sorry," I apologized. "I don't mean to sound ungrateful. You're right, my parents are happy. They've been married forever and they're still happy. It's great."
"No," he said after a moment, his voice more upbeat. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to unload all my childhood baggage on you. It doesn't matter now, anyway."
He stood up again. He walked to the opposite edge of the deck and leaned his arms on the railing, looking out toward the ocean.
Wordlessly, I joined him. I knew I was doing a lousy job of this. I wanted to give him what he needed—whatever that was—to feel good about what was happening. I wanted him to have hope for his future. But I was failing. I was too damn depressed about what he had already lost. And, yes… I'll admit it. What I was losing.
"Zane," I asked quietly. "You said you felt like something was pulling you. I can't tell… I mean… is it a good feeling?"
He didn't answer for a moment. "It doesn't feel like anything at all," he said finally. "I think about my past, and I get gloomy. I try not to—I really do. I try to remember the good times. But the bad things that happened at the end… they're stronger. They still weigh on me, if that makes any sense. While I've been here, I've been free of them. I've laughed. I've played. I've had fun. You have no idea how long it's been since—"
He broke off. He gave his head a shake. "It's been like a dream, you know? I can see now that none of this was real. The only real thing is this force that's pulling me away. It's like someone is telling me, 'Enough. The party's over. Come on to the endgame.'"
"The endgame," I repeated thoughtfully. "That's what I'm asking. Please tell me you have some positive feelings about that."
"I wish I could, Kali. But I don't feel anything at all." He exhaled slowly. "Backwards is sadness, loneliness, guilt. Forwards is just… nothing."
He turned to me and smiled weakly. "Looks like the fun's all here. But my ticket's expiring. I can't stay any more."
My accursed eyes began to water again. "I'm so sorry," I said helplessly. "I really thought… I mean… I wanted to make things better for you."
"I know you did," he said softly. His eyes locked on mine, and I leaned on the railing to steady my jelly legs. "I wouldn't trade getting to know you for the world, Kalia Thompson."
My heart beat like a jackhammer. I stood breathlessly, unable to move, as he stretched out one faint, flickering hand and gently traced the line of my cheekbone.
I felt nothing. Nothing physical, at least. Inside, my heart was shattering.
"Zane," I whispered breathlessly, knowing it was wrong, but powerless to stop myself. "If things were different… if you were alive… and I was alive—"
"Yes," he said immediately, interrupting me. He leaned in closer. His voice was no more than a whisper. "Absolutely, yes. Don't ever doubt it, Kali."
I stood, frozen, while his head slowly lowered. Our noses touched. His lips grazed over mine.
But there was nothing to feel. No sensation. No warmth. Not even the faintest buzz of vibration I had seemed to feel before. His face was no more than a mist… a vapor.
He drew away again.
A tear rolled down my cheek.
Chapter 21
"Kali?" my mother called. "Come on in, will you? It's getting late."
I wiped my eyes hastily with a fist. "Yeah, I know. I'm coming."
"Lock the doors behind you."
"Sure."
Zane's form began to drift away.
"Don't you dare!" I ordered.
He stopped, but wouldn't look at me. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have—"
"Yes, you should," I said shortly. "And I'm not sorry." My voice began to crack, but I steadied it. "You haven't got much time. We both know that. And I don’t want to spend whatever time you have left with the both of us feeling sorry for ourselves."
The words coming out of my mouth surprised even me. "I know. Come to my room. We'll have a slumber party."
Zane's faint eyes danced. He laughed out loud. "A slumber party?"
"Yes," I said with authority. "A slumbe
r party. Ever been to one?"
He smirked. "Not likely."
"Well, I don't have any popcorn," I admitted. "And the usual procedure is to giggle and talk about boys all night. But we can modify."
His eyebrows rose.
"I'll sleep on the bed; you can float around in mid air. We'll talk about whatever makes us laugh. And we'll keep each other company till the wild chickens crow. What do you say?"
He grinned at me a moment. Then he answered with a mirage. The tee shirt and board shorts disappeared; in their place were SpongeBob Squarepants pajamas.
I laughed so hard my stomach hurt.
I opened the doors and led him inside.
***
I don't know when I fell asleep. I didn't think I would sleep at all. But at some point I closed my eyes, and time skipped cruelly forward.
"Kali?"
The urgency in Zane's whispered call brought me back to consciousness immediately. Morning sunlight peeked through my shutters; the drone of the ocean was calm and distant.
"What? What is it?"
His voice was feeble, indistinct. "Sorry to wake you. But… I don't think I can do this much longer. And I didn't want you to think I'd just left you."
He was leaning against the side of my bed, his legs stretched out across the floor, his head close to mine. No part of him was solid.
"The pull is really strong now," he continued. "I've been trying to fight it. But I just keep feeling… well, weaker, I guess."
I slid off the bed and down onto the floor beside him. My arm overlapped visibly with his, but still, I couldn't feel a thing. "You'll be all right, Zane," I assured helplessly.
"I know I will," he responded confidently. "You were right about me, you know that? I didn't give up."
My eyes widened. "You remember about that?"
We had talked and laughed for hours last night—but mainly about nonsense. We had steered clear of his unpleasant memories, focusing only on the good times. That had left precious little to discuss of the recent past.
He nodded. "I know how I died, Kali."
My heartbeat quickened. Just hearing those words on his lips struck daggers through my gut.