Chasing Before

by Lenore Appelhans

“Maybe I should be in charge of our menu. I could really go for a Fourth of July barbeque. Hamburgers. Hot dogs. Potato salad. Apple pie.”

  I giggle. “That’s so American of you!”

  Neil bristles. “You’re American.”

  “Sure, but I went out and tasted the world.” I can’t help but let a note of pride slip in.

  “Because you had the chance to,” he says matter-of-factly. “Not all of us did.”

  I fall silent. I want to point out that we might have taken trips together and that we probably did. Our lost memories could reveal so much. But we’d only be rehashing the same argument. So instead I swear to myself that I’ll get the memories first, and then show him. He won’t be able to refuse them when they are right there in front of him.

  “Have you seen this yet?” I point out the Forgetting Tree as we draw near.

  Neil ducks his head. “Uh, yeah. I came here with Libby. Early this morning before the bells.”

  “Breaking curfew twice in one night. Nice.” So he was hanging out with Libby this morning and didn’t even tell me. At least he has the decency to be embarrassed about it.

  He stops in front of the tree and looks upward at its heavy branches. Thousands of paper scraps ripple in the breeze. “She brought me here, and I pinned up my paper. It’s the first big step in the detachment process. You should also do it.”

  It’s a step I’m certainly not ready to take, and I’m annoyed that Neil’s so eager to prove that he is. “Where’s yours? I want to see it.”

  Neil pulls me away from the tree. “Oh, it’s way up there. We’d have to materialize a ladder, and then you’d be late to class.” The only thing that stops me from asking what he wrote is the horrible thought that he wrote my name. That I’m the one he wants to get over.

  As soon as his grip is loose enough, I slip out of his grasp and pick up my pace. “No, we certainly don’t want to be late,” I say under my breath. So much for my attempt at being supernice.

  Neil matches me stride for stride, and we walk in silence.

  When we reach Eastern Avenue, we face each other awkwardly. “Okay. See you later.” I step closer to Neil and hold out my arms. He gives me a quick hug, doing that annoying flutter pat thing that people do when they don’t really want to touch you, or when they hug a stranger. It totally freaks me out for a second, because I don’t ever want Neil to be a stranger.

  Once he’s out of sight, I turn to head off to Furukama’s class and crash right into someone.

  “Oh, sorry.” I back away, looking up. I’ve run into Libby. Maybe I’m not so sorry after all.

  “It’s fine.” Libby tucks the red silk scarf at her throat into the open collar of her white button-down blouse. Her skirt and heels are red too, which must mean she’s firmly committed to rebuilding the healers now.

  We size each other up for a moment. Finally she gives me a prim smile. “I assume Neil is doing well.”

  “You should know.” I try not to let my irritation show. “You saw him this morning.”

  “I’m surprised he told you about that,” Libby says innocently.

  I don’t want her to think that Neil doesn’t confide in me, so I suck in a deep breath. “Of course he did.” Unfortunately, my voice cracks a bit, undermining my show of false confidence. “We tell each other everything.” A huge lie, but Libby doesn’t need to know that.

  “I used to think Jeremy told me everything,” Libby says, and I groan inwardly. I don’t want to hear about her doomed relationship again, especially because it is clear Libby thinks she’s imparting some kind of lesson to me. “I wanted to forgive him for our murder and for us to stay together. We roomed together. We joined the healers together. We spent every moment together. I thought it would be enough. It wasn’t.” She pauses again and regards me expectantly, as though it’s my turn to deliver my line of a script.

  I want to run in the other direction. Instead I settle for what I think she wants to hear. “What happened to him?”

  “He became a spirit trapper. He lives in Area Three, and from what I hear, he’s always on assignment on Earth, rounding up the malevolent spirits that haunt humans.” There’s a deep well of regret in her words. She runs her hands over her skirt as if to smooth it, even though there’s not a wrinkle to be seen, and I notice her fingernails, jagged and chewed down to the quick. “But I can’t change the past. I chose to live forward, not backward.”

  That’s easy for her to say. She still has all her memories. “Um, that’s great.”

  “You should be in class,” Libby says abruptly. Girl talk is over. She has closed back up, returned to her unruffled, chipper default.

  “On my way now.”

  She nods at me absentmindedly and waves me across the avenue.

  When I get to the building marked Gym Three, the door is ajar, kept open by a yellow rubber duck with an orange beak. The area out front is deserted, but voices buzz from within. I slip in and stifle a curse. There have to be more than five hundred applicants and trainees, and each and every one of them except me is wearing black.

  seventeen

  I DIDN’T EXPECT THIS MUCH competition. Perhaps I am overestimating my talents by even trying out. If I thought I could simply show up and they’d give me a place automatically, this full gym of gung ho applicants proves otherwise.

  “Felicia! You made it.” Brady calls me over. He’s perched on a balance beam that’s shoved up against the wall. The samurai poser sits next to him, and when I approach, he scowls.

  “Angel sympathizer,” he whispers roughly. “If it weren’t for you, that traitor would still be rotting away.”

  “Stop picking on her, Wolf.” Brady bends and puts a hand on Wolf’s shoulder. Wolf shakes free indignantly, his eyes like twin puncture wounds. He stalks off.

  This exchange makes me think a whole bunch of things at once. First, Julian isn’t in jail anymore, which is a great relief. Second, if he isn’t in jail, where is he? Third, Brady has got my back. Fourth, Wolf is about the most unlikely name I can think of for the samurai poser.

  Before I can form any of these thoughts into words, Autumn enters the gym. She kicks the rubber duck outside, and the door slams shut.

  At the front of the gym, she bows. “Seraphim reign supreme,” she says.

  “Seraphim reign supreme,” the entire gym repeats. They know the drill.

  “Who is here for the first time?” Autumn asks. I raise my hand, as does almost everyone else in the crowd. They seem to belong here more than I do. It’s not only their black outfits; it’s their fearless stances and fierce expressions. Any one of them could fit in with the military, whereas I’m sure I’d wash out in a second. “Okay. Listen up, newbies, because I’ll be blunt. Most of you won’t pass Furukama-Sensei’s test today, and you can go elsewhere tomorrow.” She snaps her fingers to materialize a bowl with slips of paper in it, and places it on a table. “Come up and take a number.”

  My fellow newbies rush to grab a number, as if being first will better their chances. I’m the last to draw, and when I do, Autumn squints at me as if she wonders why I’m here. I end up drawing number 425, meaning I’ll be one of the last to take the test. At least this is the perfect opportunity to do some stealth investigation. Once I return to the back of the gym, I close my eyes and focus on Julian’s brain waves so I can find out if what Wolf said was true, if Julian really is out of jail. After a few seconds I find him in the dorms, but his shape is still off, like last night. I hope that he’s not still in such an awful condition that he doesn’t know who I am. As much as I want to rush over and check on him, I have to take my test.

  I roam over to Brady on the balance beam. “Hey, thanks for defending me.”

  “Don’t sweat it.” He pats the beam. “Come on up.”

  I accept his invitation, and as I settle in next to him, I scan the room. Most of the crowd watches Autumn, waiting for testing to start, while some stand or sit along the edges of the gym, joking with one another. The latter must be tra
inees who’ve already gone through testing. I lean back and dangle my legs.

  “Are you here to help out with the testing?” I ask.

  Brady plants his hands on the beam and stretches out his arms, lifting his body in the air. “Nah, I’m scoping out the competition.” He smacks back down on the wood surface and then blows into his cupped palms. “There’re only twelve spots open this rotation, and one of ’em’s mine.”

  “You mean on Ascension Day?” a voice approaching us asks. It’s Moby. And he’s with Cash. I’m surprised to see Moby here after meeting him at the muse training. He seems surprised to see me too.

  “That’s right,” Brady says. “At the end of each term Furukama-Sensei chooses the twelve best candidates to ascend to the seraphim guard when the portal opens for all the retirees.” Cash gives Brady a fist bump, which is a good alternative to bowing. Moby follows suit. “The name Brady Sandoval is going to be on the list. Count on it.”

  Cash flashes a smarmy grin. “Right after mine,” he boasts. The more I’m around him, the more he reminds me of a used-car salesman. “Have you met Moby yet? I ran into him at the career fair yesterday, and convinced him to take the test.”

  Moby leans on the beam casually, and I admire the snake tattoo that wraps around his forearm. Brady appraises it too. “Nice ink. And what’s cool is that if you ever don’t want it anymore, you don’t have to laser it off. Dematerialization is all it takes.”

  “What’s even cooler is this.” Moby twists his arm, and the tattoo morphs into an actual coiled snake, which promptly opens its fangs as if to strike, startling me and making me bang my elbow against the wall.

  “Whoa, dude, put your snake away,” Brady jokes. “There are ladies present.”

  Moby’s arm shimmers, and the snake recedes back into the tattoo. His theatrics have gained us a few curious onlookers among the newbies, including a petite Asian girl with dreadlocks who can’t take her eyes off Moby’s tattoo.

  “So you love snakes, like, a lot, I guess,” she remarks. “I love them too.”

  Moby crosses his arms and runs his hands from midbiceps, where the sleeves of his black T-shirt end, to wrists, elongating his shirt so it covers up his tattoo. “I used to love them, but now I can’t stand the little buggers. A snake is the reason I’m here.”

  “Death by snake bite, huh?” Brady says sympathetically. “And yet you keep the tattoo. Respect.”

  Everyone starts trading stories about how they died. Brady died of a brain tumor at a children’s hospital in Dallas. Snake lover, who introduces herself as Zhu Mao, cracked her head on the side of a heated pool in Aspen while diving, and drowned. A girl built like a weight lifter who says her name is Maria Lucia tells how she choked on a bagel in a deli in Boston. Then they all look expectantly at me.

  “Um . . . I didn’t die.” I hug my arms tight around myself. “I mean, I guess I did at some point or otherwise I wouldn’t be here, but I don’t remember anything about it.”

  A shadow crosses over Cash’s face and he frowns, like he’s trying to solve a difficult equation.

  “Oh, so, like, you hit your head so hard you got postmortem amnesia,” Zhu Mao says, as if it is some kind of afterlife medical condition, easily cured with a trip to the healers. I wish it were that easy.

  “No.” I jump down from the beam, irritated. “I’m saying someone wanted me to think I died in a car accident and then stole a bunch of my memories. Sometimes I think I’d do anything to get them back.”

  “But who could do something like that?” Brady asks. “That sounds impossible.”

  I’m about to answer, but the way they’re all looking at me like I’m crazy makes me pause. So far there is no evidence that this type of memory loss is widespread. I know of it happening only to Neil and me, and in our case it seems to be related to my role in the Morati’s plans. And even though Brady and Cash are aware of the Morati because they are part of the security team, I’m sure they don’t know everything the Morati are capable of. Despite the bombings and the murders, Libby and Furukama, along with the rest of the career heads, have tried to keep everything as normal as possible. With the exception of the mandatory curfew and going door-to-door in the dorms questioning people, they’ve taken no public security measures that I’m aware of. It’d be wise to keep this to myself for now. I might have already said too much.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe I do have some sort of amnesia.”

  Us newbies compare our testing order and find out that we’re all very close together, with Zhu Mao being first.

  The conversation moves on to other topics, but I’m only half listening. Instead I focus on the action at the front of the gym. Furukama has arrived and begun testing.

  The screening appears simple enough. Autumn whispers instructions into each candidate’s ear. The candidate steps up and touches his or her palm to Furukama’s. Evaluations take anywhere from ten seconds to two minutes. Afterward Furukama points to either the left or the right. Considering there are so few to his right, I’m guessing those are the ones who have passed. Those to the left don’t leave but simply take a seat on the hardwood floor.

  Finally, after an agonizing wait, Autumn calls Zhu Mao’s number. She takes her test and is sent to the right. Then Maria Lucia has a turn. After her test she shuffles to the left, her shoulders drooping. When Moby finishes his test, he is sent to the right.

  When Autumn calls my number, my throat constricts. If I pass, I can build up my skills and have a chance to expose the Morati. I’ll have a choice about whether to serve or not. But if I don’t pass, the choice is taken from me, just like my memories were. I make my way past the seated candidates who now take up most of the left side of the gym. Autumn approaches my ear and cups her hand over her mouth. “Find the horse.”

  Furukama gives me a slight smile as he holds out his palm. The second I connect, a bright white light pierces my consciousness and hard surfaces press up against me from all sides. I panic. It’s like I’m back in the Morati’s mainframe and everything I’ve experienced since being captured by the Morati has been an elaborate fantasy.

  I reach out with my mind to try to latch on to Julian’s brain waves. Nothing. I try again with Neil, but I can’t find him, either.

  The walls start to crush me, and I push down the scream rising in my throat. A horse. Look for a horse. I reach deep into myself and pour all that I am into one thought: horse. Slowly the pressure on me lessens, and I’m rocked in a gentle side-to-side motion before being jolted upward and then smacking down hard. I’m riding a horse bareback, speeding through a bamboo forest, with arrows whizzing past my head. I squeeze my legs together so I can sit better. Just as my horse is about to leap over a narrow stream, I’m pulled out of Furukama’s memory and back into the gym. He points to the right, and my head spins. I passed.

  While Autumn breaks the bad news to those on the left, I concentrate on staying upright. Being inside Furukama’s head was even more disorienting than being inside Autumn’s, almost like he knew my fear and tried to use it against me. I’m not sure I really want to train with him if it will continue to be like this. But I repeat my pledge to track down the Morati for the good of Level Three. Seraphim guard training will not be easy, but I have to try.

  Amidst groaning and complaining, the failed candidates exit the gym. That leaves thirty candidates who passed previously—including Autumn, Cash, Wolf, and Brady—and ten new recruits, including Zhu Mao, Moby, and me. Forty candidates vying for twelve spots. Well, thirty-nine, since I don’t ultimately want to ascend. Not without Neil.

  After the long day Furukama dismisses us with the guard’s motto “Seraphim reign supreme.” He reminds us of the curfew and tells us to come back tomorrow. He bows, and we all bow back. Before we leave, those of us who passed today pick up a huge binder with our syllabus and required reading.

  While everyone chats animatedly about what their tests entailed, I make a beeline for the door and slip out.

  Autumn catches up
to me. “You did great in there!”

  “You’re not mad?” I ask. I know she wasn’t superkeen on me trying out for the seraphim guard.

  “No way,” she protests. “It will be fun to spend more time together. I didn’t get to see much of you yesterday.”

  I saw her only briefly at the healers’ booth crime scene and defending Julian when he was arrested. “Thanks for putting in a good word for Julian. Do you know where he is now?”

  “He’s under house arrest while he recovers. It’s unfortunate that Libby insisted on jailing him. Now we can’t get anything coherent out of him.”

  “But you don’t think he’s guilty?”

  “Not of the stuff he’s accused of, at least,” she says flippantly. Something in her tone makes me wonder if she’s really over Julian. Perhaps it’s best not to discuss him. No need to pick at old scabs.

  “I’ll have to build up my strength to make it through training. Are there some techniques you can teach me?” The more I can learn from her, the better equipped I’ll be to survive whatever the afterlife throws at me next.

  “Concentration and practice are the main tactics.” Autumn holds out her palm to me. “Try to read my memories again. But focus.”

  “Okay.” I suck in a breath and let my palm connect to hers. Like the first time right after my arrival in Level Three, I’m plunged into an inky blackness and I find myself spinning out of control. I grab on to an image fragment as it speeds by, and I hold tight, but I can’t quite get inside the memory to experience it. Instead I merely get a glimpse. Autumn and Julian are at the movies. She’s laughing as Julian throws kernels of popcorn at her. He starts to say something, and then the scene shatters into a million shards, and I’m thrown out of Autumn’s mind.

  She stumbles slightly when we break apart, surprise showing in her face for an instant before it’s gone. “You’re getting better at this. We can practice more later.”

  “Thanks. I’m lucky to have you as a friend.”

  Autumn laughs. “Damn straight you are!” Then her eyes narrow. “Hey, where’d you get that?” She reaches out and touches the skep charm. It must have come loose from under my shirt when I was trying to get inside Autumn’s mind.