by Tracey Ward
“Yeah.”
“He’s handsome,” she reminds me needlessly.
“He’s okay.”
Dad snorts inside the fridge.
“Ugh,” I groan. “It’s not a big deal.”
“You keep saying that,” Mom points out playfully.
Dad smiles at me. “It makes it seem like maybe it is a big deal.”
“Whatever.” I push the grocery bag I was carrying across the island to them. “I’m going to watch TV. Let me know when dinner is ready.”
They’re talking about me as I leave the room. They need to get lives outside Ashley and me. It’s getting embarrassing how absorbed they are in our stuff—Mom in Ashley’s everything and Dad literally timing my conversations.
In the living room, I curl up under a blanket and turn on my favorite murder mystery. As I watch it, I lose track of the story and the characters. I’m fading inside the warmth of the blanket, mesmerized by the crackle of the fire on the other side of the room. Outside, the snow is falling harder. The world is getting darker. Still, I can see the brilliant white shape of Kyle’s house standing tall across the street. There’s a light on in their living room. Another in what’s probably the kitchen, and a third upstairs. I wonder if that’s his bedroom. I wonder what he’s doing.
I run through every conversation we had today, committing them to memory. I don’t want to forget them. I want to wrap them in pretty paper and keep them in my closet where I can take them out and surprise myself with them when I’m feeling low. A little pick-me-up in the form of his deep laugh. His dark, mossy eyes. His citrus scent. It’s stupid. I’m obsessing the same way Mom and Dad are, but I can’t help it.
There’s something about Kyle Rixton that feels so important to me.
chapter nineteen
I wake up in the dark. The fire is out. The TV is off. Kyle’s house across the street is gone; eaten by the night. It’s silent. So quiet my ears are ringing, searching for sound.
I sit up with a grunt, pushing the blanket off with more effort than it should take. I feel sluggish and strange. I’m almost dizzy when I stand up. Disoriented in my own home.
“Mom?” I mumble, though I don’t know why. No one is down here. I can feel that I’m alone, the same way you know in your gut when you’re not. There’s no one else downstairs. They must have gone to bed without waking me up. They ate dinner without me too. I should be starving, but I’m not. I don’t feel anything. Not a sliver of fear from the dark or a rumble of hunger in my stomach. Even my fingers that have been achingly cold all day feel fine.
It’s a weird sensation.
I pull out my phone to check the time.
2:32 a.m.
“Why didn’t they wake me up?” I grumble irritably. I make my way through the darkness by memory. The sound of my own breath is my only companion. Even the light from my cell phone doesn’t give me enough to go on safely. I keep waiting to crack my shin on some low table edge that I’ve misjudged or to stumble on Dad’s big boots kicked off haphazardly by the door.
It doesn’t come.
Finally, my fingers make contact with the cold bannister leading upstairs. I follow it nimbly by practice. Each stair is measured out perfectly in my mind, and when I hit the landing, I can count the steps to the left that I need to take to reach my bedroom.
There’s not a sound from the bedrooms on either side of mine. Not a snore, a cough, a fart in their sleep. Nothing. Even my doorknob is silent as I turn it, stumbling into my bedroom that’s lit with a dull red glow from the power strip by my computer.
The house has an eerie empty feeling to it that I just can’t shake. The longer I stand in my room listening for sounds of life inside or out, the more freaked out I get. There’s nothing. Literally nothing. Not even the gentle hum of my computer. Not a rustling of hot air in the vents.
Pure silence.
“Mom?” I call out hesitantly. I don’t want to wake her but I want to hear her voice. I need to know that she’s here. I move to the doorway, heading for the hall, but my body feels sluggish. I feel dizzy and afraid of something I can’t see because there’s nothing. “Dad?”
I knock on their door quietly.
No answer.
I can’t feel the knob in my hand as I take hold of it. It’s like it’s not even there, but I can turn it slowly. Their door slides open without a sound.
“They’re not in there.”
“Jesus!” I shout, spinning around on my heels.
Ashley is standing at the other end of the hallway. She’s dressed like she’s about to go to school. Her hair is braided. Her shoes are on.
“What are you doing up?” I ask her breathlessly. I sag against the wall, my hand over my racing heart. I can feel it pounding in the back of my throat. “You scared the crap out of me.”
“They’re not in there. No one is here.”
“We’re here, Ash.”
“Not anymore.”
I frown at her, confused out of my mind. “What are you talking about? Where are Mom and Dad?”
“I don’t know,” she says with a shrug. “But they’re not here because this is nothing.”
I open my mouth to tell her she’s talking in circles, but something stops me. It’s not just the fact that she’s dressed at almost three in the morning. It’s not that she’s saying our parents are gone and she doesn’t know where they are. That’s all weird enough, but it doesn’t freak me out. Not like the shrug.
Never in my life have I seen Ashley shrug.
“What’s going on with you?” I ask hesitantly.
“The same thing that’s going on with you.”
“You’re being weird. Quit being weird.”
She rolls her eyes. “Whatever. Figure it out yourself then.”
I dart into my parents’ room, reaching for the light switch. My fingers stumble over it, but when I flick it, it doesn’t change. The room stays dark. Empty.
I spin back around to face my sister, but she’s not there. Something is there, but it’s not her. It can’t be her.
“You’re not Ashley,” I whisper shakily.
“No,” she confirms. “I’m you.”
“You’re me?”
“I’m you.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.” I run my hand through my hair, pulling hard at the roots until it hurts. I feel like I’m going crazy. “None of this makes sense!”
“You’re not going crazy.”
I freeze, staring at her with wide, wet eyes. “I didn’t say that out loud.”
“You didn’t have to,” she explains impatiently. “I know what you’re thinking because I’m you.”
“No.”
“Yep.”
“Shut up! Stop talking like that!”
“Like what?”
“Like me! Ashley would never say ‘yep’.”
“I know. But you would, and I’m you.”
“No. You’re not.”
Ashley crosses her arms over her chest. “Okay, fine. I’m not. Are you happy?”
“No.”
“Yeah, me neither.”
“There can’t be two of me. I’m the only me. You’re a . . . a what? A ghost?”
“Am I the only one that paid attention in Biology? What were you doing, huh? Passing notes back and forth to Makena about what your Prom dress will look like?”
“I paid attention,” I argue weakly.
“Sure you did,” Ashley laughs. Her voice, her face, they’re so animated, it’s unnerving. Ashley is inscrutable. She’s even all the time, unless she’s melting down because they discontinued her favorite flavor of Pop Tarts or she finds out the coral in the Great Barrier Reef is dying. Then she’s every emotion. Every color of the rainbow all at once. But she’s never like this. She’s never like me.
I lick my lips, my eyes darting to the bedroom. It’s still empty. There’s no one here but the two of us, and I’m not even sure we’re actually here. I don’t know where here is anymore. “What did I miss in Bio
logy?”
“Do you remember the diagram of the human brain? Do you remember Mr. Nyan talking about how there are two halves to it?”
“The creative and the logical.”
She smiles proudly. “Good. Yes. You were listening. That’s us right now—the logical and the creative. Two halves of the same brain.”
I shake my head weakly. “I don’t under—”
“Yes, you do. You’re the creative side, Grace. And you see Ashley as logical, so you see me, the logical half of yourself, as her.”
“That doesn’t make sense. Why wouldn’t I see the other half of my own brain as myself?”
She cocks a doubtful eyebrow at me. “Would you really feel more comfortable talking to yourself right now?”
“No,” I admit reluctantly. “That’d freak me out way worse than whatever this is.”
“This is how we’re protecting ourselves. Though you’re going to mess things up if you keep trying to make up memories that never happened.”
“Memories? This is a memory? Like a dream?”
“Kind of. Only this isn’t fluid like a dream. You can’t just go making stuff up. Things happen the way they happened. That’s it. You can’t make a memory go somewhere it’s never been, like walking into a room you didn’t walk into in real life. There’s nothing there.”
“What do you mean? Of course there’s something there.” I jab a finger at the empty bedroom. “It’s the middle of the night. Mom and Dad are in that room. If I go in there, they should be there.”
“Not in your memory they’re not. Memories don’t care what you think happened. Object permanence doesn’t exist in a memory. If you don’t see it, it doesn’t exist.”
“Then where are we right now? How does the house exist?”
Ashley purses her lips, glancing around the hallway pensively. “I think it’s like a picture. Like we’re standing in a photo. We could stay here forever and nothing would ever change. The sun wouldn’t rise again. The weather wouldn’t warm up. The old clock over the fireplace will never move. It’s sort of limbo.”
“Or purgatory?” I ask angrily.
“I don’t think so. Do you really think that?”
“You put it in my head.”
“We have the same head, Grace,” she reminds me crossly. “And you jumped to the conclusion because you’re impulsive. You gotta slow down and think about things rationally.”
I laugh. It sounds hysterical even to my own ears. “There’s nothing rational about this! I’m trapped in my own brain and I can’t get out!”
“Have you thought about asking why you’re trapped? Figuring out why might be helpful in getting out.”
“Do you know why we’re stuck here?” I demand.
For the first time, Ashley looks unsure. It annoys her. I can see it in her eyes. I can feel it in my own chest. “I think I know, but you’re not going to like it.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I don’t like it.”
I sigh impatiently. My head is starting to hurt. “What is it? Why are we stuck in purgatory?”
She frowns sadly. “We’re dead, Grace.”
I laugh. I don’t mean to but it just comes out. Out of all the insane things she’s said so far, that is the craziest. “Okay. Yeah. I’m dead. How’d I die, Ash?”
“Kyle killed us.”
Nope. That’s the craziest thing she’s said so far.
“It’s not crazy,” Ashley argues calmly. “It makes sense.”
“Stop reading my mind!” I lash out.
“It’s my mind too!”
“Then why can’t I read yours?”
“I think you’re too deep in the fantasy that this is all real and we’re still alive to manage it. You’ve gotta wake up and face facts. We’re dead and all of this,” she gestures wildly to the house around us, “is pretend. You’re playing make-believe because you can’t deal with the fact that it’s over.”
“And you can? You’re so completely fine with dying that you’re all meta about it and I need to get with your program?”
“I’m not fine with it but I’m not in denial like you.”
“You think Kyle killed me,” I remind her tersely. “You’re in worse shape than denial. I barely know him. I just met him yesterday.”
“Did we?” she asks carefully. Ashley takes a slow step toward me. She’s looking at me like I’m a big, dumb bear caught in a trap, lashing out wildly. “Or have we known him for over a year?”
“No, psycho. He just moved here.”
“Aren’t we in love with him?”
“I. Don’t. Know. Him,” I chant clearly.
She offers me her hand. “Come with me. I’ll show you.”
I eye her hand like it’s a snake. Poisonous and cruel. “No.”
“You have to.”
“I don’t have to do anything.”
“Do you want to stay here forever in this photograph of an empty house with no one to talk to or do you want to come with me and see Kyle.”
“I told you. We just met him.” I shake my head, trying to clear it. “I just met him. I did. You’re just some psychotic episode I’m having.”
“You know him better than you think,” Ashley whispers.
She’s close. Too close.
And I’m too slow to stop her from taking my hand.
chapter twenty
It’s springtime. The world is warmer than it’s been in months. The lake is still coated in a thin sheet of ice, but the ground is starting to thaw. The snow has almost melted entirely away and the grass is a rich green that almost glows in the fading sunlight. Scott Gardner’s family cabin is behind us on the hill, nestled between two large oak trees. There’s a light on inside. There’s music playing softly from a speaker in an open window.
It’s a perfect evening. Soft and promising.
“Do you need a coat?” Kyle asks.
He’s standing behind me. He smells the way he always does; like life at the beach, away from Jackson the way we talk about. We’ll go to the islands, we say. We’ll live on a boat. We’ll be together. Forever.
We’ve been dating for over a year. Plenty of time to make millions of plans that may or may not ever come true. We’re Seniors now, staring down the barrel of the next part of our lives. College for him. Then the NBA. And for me . . . I still haven’t figured that out yet. All I know is that whatever happens, I won’t spend a minute longer than I have to in Jackson.
I shake my head, smiling over my shoulder at him. I lean back to rest against his chest. “No. I’m good.”
He wraps his long arms around my waist. He holds me close the way he’s done a thousand times before, but it feels different tonight. It feels sweeter, like the air filling with spring. I smell flowers. I hear birds in the trees behind the cabin. The winter is going and life is coming back to this place. Finally.
“We’ll have to head back soon,” he murmurs against my ear.
“Just another minute?”
“I could do a million minutes like this with you,” he says, his smile rich in his voice.
I wish I could see it. I think about turning to look at him, but I’m happy the way we are. I’m warm. I’m safe. I’m with the man I love, even if it’s only for now.
Spring is here, bringing in a new beginning, but I can feel an ending as well. I feel it in the way he holds me. In the way my heart pinches too hard in my chest, making it difficult to breathe. This moment is so bittersweet, I can hardly stand it. I want it to end but I can’t walk away from it either. There’s something too impossibly final about it to ignore.
“I got my letter from Villanova,” Kyle says softly. Reluctantly.
I suck in a deep, steeling breath. “And?”
“I got in.”
I smile thinly, gripping his hands tightly with mine. “That’s amazing.”
“It’s good news.”
“You’ll stay with them for a year?”
“That’s all I have to do before I can
enter the Draft.”
“Villanova is in . . .”
“Pennsylvania.”
I nod slowly. “Right. And after that, who knows which team you’ll end up with.”
“If I even get picked up.”
His rare show of humility makes me laugh. “You’ll get picked up, Kyle.”
“But you’re right. I don’t know by who. I could end up anywhere.”
“Like Florida. You could play for the Heat and make all of your mom’s dreams come true.”
I feel him shake his head hard. His body goes rigid against mine. “No. I’m never going back to Florida. Ever.”
I don’t touch that. I know it’s about Karina and a coffin without a body, a missing girl who everyone gave up on, but I feel like there’s more to it than that. There’s a part of that story that he’s not telling me and I’ve never pushed for it. I was too afraid to before and I’m just as terrified now. Whatever it is he’s keeping from me, it will hurt me. And I’m a coward when it comes to pain.
“Pennsylvania is pretty far,” I comment, not sure where I’m going with that. It’s just a statement of fact, like saying the skies are clear and the lake is cold. Donuts are good and broccoli tastes like feet.
Kyle is leaving and I’m going to lose him.
All facts. All true.
Kyle shifts on his feet anxiously. “Not if you go with me,” he whispers in my ear.
I sigh, resigned. “I can’t get in this late. I never applied there.”
“Just come with me to Pennsylvania until I get drafted. Then we’ll go wherever we go. We’ll start our adventure. Together.”
He’s never asked me to go with him before. It’s tempting. Oh God, is it tempting. It’s everything I’ve been hoping for since I met him. It’s almost everything I want in the world.
Almost.
I take a shallow breath, unable to draw in more. My chest is too small. “I don’t know.”
Kyle moves. His arms leave my waist to dig around in his pockets, but then they’re back at my sides. He leans in against me hard, his chin on my shoulder. His cheek against mine. “Give me your hand, Grace,” he tells me gently.
I offer him my right.
He shakes his head, pushing it down slowly. “No. The other hand.”