I'd Rather Not Be Dead

by Andrea Brokaw

  “Looks like you're not the only one in your family with a temper,” Fray tells me, his eyes sparkling.

  Outside, the wind roars to signal an incoming storm.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “My sister didn't kill me, Fray.” I've said this several times already, but it's not sinking into his head any better than the idea it wasn't Cris has sunk into Finn's.

  We're in a triangle in Finn's floor with the ferrets laying between me and Finn while we brainstorm about my death. We're not getting very far.

  “She was thinking about it when she left.”

  I roll my eyes. “Of course she was. And that I'd ruined her life. And that the only reason I would possibly want Finn is because she wanted him first. But thinking about murdering me when she's pissed off doesn't mean she'd actually go through with it.”

  Fray scowls.

  “That's exactly what she was thinking, wasn't it?” I ask.

  “Almost verbatim.”

  “Should I feel insulted?” Finn wonders as he holds out a piece of string for Juliet to bat.

  “You should feel scared,” I tell him, earning myself a confused look.

  “I thought you just said Bobbi wasn't going to do anything.”

  “No, I said she wasn't going to kill me,” I correct. “She's going to go home and scream at me for a very long time.”

  His eyes close in accompaniment to a moan as he catches on to my meaning. “At the version of you that wasn't in my room.”

  “And who's going to be incredibly pissed at you telling people you've hooked up with her,” I finish.

  He shoots me a look of protest. “I never said that.”

  “Doesn't matter,” Fray says.

  “Nope,” I agree.

  “So... What?” Finn opens his free hand in a gesture of having nothing. “What now? Do I call her about it?”

  “No!” Are all boys this clueless or just the ones I know? “If you call her, you'll be keeping me company in the afterlife.”

  “Wouldn't that suck?” He gives me a droll roll of his eyes. “Being stuck with me?”

  I smack his foot as his phone starts ringing. “That's not me. I'd yell in person.”

  He lets it go to voice mail, then listens to the message with a frown. “It's not Cris,” he whispers. “He doesn't kill you.”

  “Why?” I ask, suddenly very cold.

  Finn puts the phone down, his expression making me want to cry before he even says anything. “He's OD'ed.”

  “He's alive. But...” He shakes his head angrily. “You know what, it's gossip.”

  He get up and puts the ferrets away. “This moving through Shadow thing, how do I do it?”

  He grunts in frustration when no one answers right away. “I'm coming with you, Drew.”

  Only after those words do I realize I should be doing something other than sitting here in shock, that I should be rushing to the hospital to see what's going on. “He's in the hospital?”

  Finn reaches down to help me stand, lets me lean on him when I find myself on my feet but not able to fully balance myself. “Intensive care.”

  Intensive care's bad. Means they're really worried about you. My grandfather died there.

  Fray gets up and takes my hand. “When you feel us start to leave, just hold onto her and concentrate on coming with us.”

  “That's it?” Finn asks.

  I sniffle, noticing for the first time that I'm crying. “You might have to pull on the universe a little too.”

  He frowns, but holds me tight and nods.

  Fray and I start to move to the other place, Finn clings, and then we're all standing in the middle of the local emergency room.

  Finn looks around. “And now I'm in Shadow?”

  “Yes,” Fray answers, giving a wry look to all the people around us who failed to leap up screaming about someone appearing out of thin air.

  “I don't feel any different.” Finn sticks his arm out as an old lady hobbles by. He shudders. “Okay, that's strange.”

  “It's also incredibly rude,” I tell him as the woman stops to wrap her cardigan more tightly around her. “That poor old lady's going to think she caught a chill.”

  “Not the first thing she's caught,” Fray says easily. “She used to be the local prostitute.”

  Finn and I stare at him until he shrugs and moves toward the sliding doors between the waiting room and the actual medical area.

  We find Cris by the simple process of locating the nursing station and looking over some shoulders. People in scrubs stand outside his room talking about chemical compounds. The names don't mean anything to me, but I understand when one of them says, “Either he was trying to kill himself or he didn't know what was in those pills.”

  “It's a high dosage not to be suicide,” one of the others says, sounding slightly confused but not at all upset.

  “Yeah, but this kid's got a history,” the first counters with the same lack of alarm. “He probably has a tolerance. He'd have been okay without the impurities.”

  Finn prods me into the room and Fray goes to look over the charts.

  Cris lies in a bed, the center of a system of wires and the focus of a host of machines. He looks tiny and wasted, appears more dead than I am.

  I plaster myself against Finn, who puts an arm around me and walks me until we stand at the foot of the bed.

  “The papers don't say much,” Fray says apologetically. “It's all in the computer now.”

  “What do they say?” Finn asks him.

  “He has no known allergies.”

  “Helpful,” Finn grunts.

  Fray gives a little hum. “It is if we wanted to inject him with something.”

  I feel as if I should want them to shut up, but their voices are anchoring me.

  The door opens behind us, letting in a nurse. And the other me.

  TOM stops, gasps. The look on her face... It's as if her entire world just shattered. Finn stiffens and I don't blame him. If he looked at anyone else like that, it'd destroy me.

  Tears running freely down her cheeks, TOM rushes to the bed and sits in the chair beside it, staring at Cris like her heart's breaking. “I'm sorry,” she whispers, reminding me they've been fighting.

  “She thinks it's her fault,” I say, not that I think the others were in doubt of it.

  She reaches out for his hand, hesitating at the needles stuck in it. His hand looks so fragile with those there. She holds it lightly, reverently. “You can't leave me here, at the mercy of the hillbillies and the Jesus freaks. I won't let you.” She tries to sound bluff and brave, but her pain is too vibrant to be hidden.

  “Drew?” he mumbles, his eyes still closed.

  “Crispin?” she cries, leaning over him, her eyes wide and expectant.

  The nurse gives her a pitying look. “He's talking in his sleep, honey. He's not going to wake up for a while yet. Probably a few days.”

  “But he will wake up?” TOM asks her.

  With a gentle smile, the nurse nods and relief flows over me. “He should.”

  There's a smile on TOM's face, though new tears run down it. She squeezes Cris's hand and he smiles for her, a small but meaningful smile. His eyes flutter open ever so briefly and focus on her. “Love you, Drew.”

  I bury my face against Finn, little pieces of my heart breaking off.

  “Wow,” TOM breathes. “You can lie in your sleep.”

  But she stays next to him, holding on until the nurse says she has to go.

  We don't say anything about the scene before we leave. Fray brushes his hand across my cheek and whispers, “You can get yourself back home,” before he vanishes for his own.

  I wish me and Finn back to his room. Our room... Finn walks into the bathroom and turns on the faucet, sticking his hand into water. My hand wouldn't get wet if I did that, but his does. He's out of Shadow, back in the land of the living. Where he belongs.

  He closes the door and I hear the shower start.

  The ferrets ar
e sleeping and Finn... Well, he deserves a few minutes to himself.

  Thinking myself into a black cotton nightshirt, I crawl into Finn's bed, cold and numb and exhausted. I listen to the wind wail outside, banging tree limbs against each other. It shakes the house's siding, rattles against the windows, and fills the night with a surreal eeriness.

  My eyes close for just a second. But when they open again, the room is bright with sunlight invading from around the blinds. Finn's curled up behind me, one arm under my neck and the other holding me against him. I hug that arm to me, relieved to find it there.

  The doorbell rings.

  What is it with people annoying Finn first thing in the morning? He stirs, but snuggles against me and makes no signs of ever getting out of bed. Which would be fine with me.

  There's a knocking on his door and his mom calls through it, “Finn, honey? Are you awake?”

  He sighs but yells back, “What is it?”

  “Rain says she needs to talk to you as soon as she can,” she says through the closed door. “Says to tell you it's about her sister.”

  Finn's feet are on the floor by the end of the first sentence and he's pulled jeans on over his boxers by the finish of the second. My clothes shift to presentable with a quick thought, in case Finn's mom forgot her pills again. But she's cleared the hallway before we hit it.

  Rain's huddled in an armchair in the den, a teddy bear hugged tightly against her chest. “It's today,” she whispers.

  “Where is she?” Finn demands. “The hospital?”

  “Probably.” Rain rubs a shredded tissue against her nose. “She's really upset about Cris.”

  “I know.” Finn's answer is dull.

  My sister sniffles. “That doesn't change how she feels about you.”

  He gives her a soft smile. “I know that too.” His eyes shift to me, silently repeating the words. “And I'm not letting her get hurt.”

  Then he's charging up the stairs again. He finds a long sleeved shirt, trades it for the t-shirt he slept in. I grab his boots for him, find his jacket while he's putting them on. “So, this is it?” I whisper as I hand it to him. My hand's shaking. I'm terrified, but I'm not sure why.

  Finn tosses the jacket onto the couch and takes my face in his hands. “You'll be okay, Drew.”

  “The worst that happens is I die, right?” I ask. “I'm already dead. It's not bad.”

  “Right.” He tries like hell to smile for me.

  My eyes search his, trying to see what he's not saying. “What happens if I don't die?”

  He drops his hands and retrieves the jacket, starting to pull it on. “Don't know. Never heard of it happening.”

  “What do you think happens?”

  At first, I don't think he's going to answer, but he makes himself meet my eyes and say, “It'll be like you never died. Like you were never here.”

  “We won't remember?”

  Sighing deeply, he shakes his head. “How could we? It wouldn't have happened.”

  The idea stabs me straight through the heart. “Stay here.”

  “What?”

  “Let me die!”

  He stares at me. “I can't.”

  “I don't want to live!” I yell at him, aware I'm sounding melodramatic but not giving a damn. “I want you!”

  One side of his mouth curls up. “Then you'll have to trust me. Trust we'll figure it out again.”

  I shiver. “The Shadow Lord said I had to trust you to save me.”

  “There you go, then.”

  His misery belays the message he's trying to send me. He thinks saving me will be the end of us. And how can he think otherwise, with the other me still hating him and being so upset to see Cris hurt? She's spending every moment worrying about Cris, thinking about him. She's forgiven him for the girl in the sweater set, for Bobbi, for every wrong he's ever committed. If the two of them both make it through this, how could she possibly spare a second for Cooper Finnegan?

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I take Finn to Cris's hospital room. My friend has a little more color than he did yesterday but still makes for a pitiful sight. “There's no way he's going to be pushing anyone off a cliff today,” I say.

  Finn gives me a slanted look, a wordless comment on my tone of voice. I said those last words without any of the told-you-so sarcasm I'd have expected them to be filled with.

  “Yeah. I didn't think I agreed with you either.” But obviously part of me had believed Finn, had thought maybe Cris would cause my death. He wouldn't have meant to. He would've regretted it like crazy. But the possibility of him snapping for just one second, the one second it took to end an argument by hitting me... Even though he'd never done that before... Yeah, it was possible.

  TOM's not in the room. It's just Cris, the machines, and his mother keeping vigil in the company of a very worn copy of the King James Bible. I want to hug her, but that's a waste of energy.

  “So now what?” I ask Finn.

  He shrugs. “Where else could you be?”

  “I could be in the waiting room if I'm not in here because of the visitors' policy.” Frowning at the door, I think about it. “I'm not at home or Rain would have known were I was. I don't think I'm stupid enough to be trying to figure out who supplied him with this stuff.”

  “You are.” Finn walks to the door and then stands staring at the knob, unsure what to do with it.

  “Just go through it,” I snap.

  He turns his head until he can see me, his eyes crinkled in confusion. “You're mad at me.”

  Rolling my eyes, I walk through the door and start up the hallway. But Finn catches up quickly and pulls me to a stop. “Drew?”

  “What's the point?” I ask, numb. “What's the point in talking about what's going on if neither of us will remember it tomorrow anyway? Why waste time better spent saving us from having to be together?”

  When I wrench my arm free and stomp away, he doesn't try to stop me. And it hurts. Hurts a lot.

  I stop myself, turning back to look at him. He's staring at me, lost and shattered.

  “If the living you saw me here, she'd yell at me for it. I've thought about just talking to her, asking her to be careful, begging her not to leave home today. Following her if she refuses, trying to protect her. But she'd bellow and curse and act like I'm the devil. She'd probably be willing to leap off a cliff just to get away from me.”

  His eyes hold me as immobile as physical restrains. “Do you really not have any idea how hard it is for me to let you go back to being her?”

  “Then don't,” I whisper, feeling tears start to form.

  “Is that really what you want?” Finn asks, inching closer to me. “To spend the rest of forever in this town? Be seen by only a handful of people? Never eat or drink or feel the weather? Never see the rest of the world? You want that?”

  A million needles of pain prick my eyes, a million tears being born. “I want you.”

  He continues toward me, each step only an inch or two long.

  “I'm alive. I'm going to get old and I'm going to die. And most people don't end up in Shadow. When I die, I could leave you. Forever.” He's close enough to touch me now and he does, cupping the side of my face with both palms, his fingers entwining in my hair. “I can't stand to think of you trapped here alone.”

  “I'd go into The Spirit,” I whisper, certain that I would.

  “Can't stand that either.” He leans his forehead against mine, stares into my eyes from millimeters away. “Do you still not get it? I love you, Drew.”

  It's not news, but he's never said the words before. They reach inside me, calming some of the turmoil. “I love you, too,” I tell him back.

  He smiles. “I know.”

  “How sweet,” Fray comments.

  Finn and I both start, pulling our faces apart, and I turn a glare to the interruption. “What are you doing here?”

  With a harrumph and a pout, he pretends to be insulted by my attitude. “I just thought that you might like t
o know where you are.”

  “Where is she?” Finn grabs the bait.

  “Lobby.” Fray's head jerks toward the elevator. “Getting coffee from one of those machines. From what I've heard, that could kill her, though I don't know how the cliff comes into play.”

  Finn looks expectantly at me and a second later we're holding hands in the lobby while the other me mutters darkly at a coffee dispenser.

  “Here, let me try.”

  Both versions of me stare at Ricky Woodman, who gives TOM a smile he probably thinks is charming and motions her aside.

  “I know how to use it.” TOM glowers fiercely, but moves to make room for Ricky by the machine.

  “Sometimes you have to enter stuff in a different order,” Ricky says. “I have no idea why.”

  He pauses and looks at the buttons with uncertainty until TOM says, “Milk, no sugar.”

  The look she delivers when the machine beeps happily and starts to gurgle is truly nasty. “You a frequent shopper?”

  The Crusader takes a long breath, watching coffee start to drip into the cheap plastic cup. “Spent a lot of time here when my mom was sick.” He swallows, his shoulders quivering ever so slightly with emotion. “A lot of time.”

  The living me has the grace to look guilty about her antagonism. “She was sick a long time?”

  Jerky, Ricky nods. “Yeah. Cancer. They cut it out twice, but...”

  “I'm sorry,” TOM says, sounding like she is. I'm a little proud of me for finding the sympathy.

  Ricky shrugs. “Yeah, well... It was God's will...”

  “Drew?” Finn calls, grabbing my attention and directing it to where he and Fray are frowning at a very pale rendition of Tanya. She's slumped in a chair on the edge of the room, her head against the wall. Her eyes are open but there's drool in the corner of her mouth.

  TOM takes the coffee from Ricky, mutters a thanks near his general vicinity, and starts toward the elevator bank while I frown at Tanya. It's Sunday morning. What are she and Ricky doing here? Even if the church canceled normal services today for the revival, shouldn't these two be at that?