Chasing Before

by Lenore Appelhans

  As I look into Autumn’s petrified eyes, I realize how I have been investing all my time and energy in the Morati’s narrative version of my life, letting them shape me via my memories. I spent my time chasing before, trying to find myself in my past, when all along I held the power to create myself in my present. It is time to take my life back. To be the best version of myself that I can be.

  I shake my left arm violently, and Cash digs his fingernails into my flesh. He’s not going to go easily. My feet begin to slide. If I can’t get Cash loose, he’ll pull me in too.

  “Help! Neil! Nate! I’m slipping!”

  Autumn takes a deep breath. “I’m so sorry, Felicia. I let envy control me. I deserve this.”

  Tears well in my eyes. “Don’t say that. We’ve both made mistakes. But the future is a clean slate. We can be friends again. Best friends.” My knees buckle. My strength is gone. We’ll both go down together.

  She shakes her head. “It’s too late for me. But not for you.”

  She twists her arm within my grasp, forcing my fingers open. “No! Don’t let go!” I shout. I clutch at her, but I can’t reach her.

  She throws herself around Cash’s waist. Cash’s fingernails tear down the length of my hand, and his screams send chills down my spine.

  As both Cash and Autumn fall into the abyss, I sink onto the floor and curl into myself, too horrified to even cry. My best friend. Gone. My memories. Gone.

  I’m dimly aware of movement above me. Three bodies are thrown into the pit. The twins and Emilia? Shrieks, high-pitched and close, pierce my eardrums and then become quieter and quieter until they are nothing at all.

  Nate gets in my face. “Are you okay, Felicia?”

  I open my eyes. Nate and Keegan stand over me. Keegan must have arrived recently. I sit up with a start. “Where’s Neil?”

  Nate harrumphs. “What? No thank-yous?” He pulls Keegan with him. “Come on. Let’s clean up the mess up top and leave the two lovebirds alone.”

  Considering we broke up, “lovebirds” probably isn’t the most accurate description. Maybe it will be again soon. But even if it won’t be, I have to make sure Neil’s okay. I’ll never stop wanting the best for him. Ever.

  “Nate!” Neil calls out. He’s by the stairs, lying in the fetal position, his arms clutched over his chest. Nate stops, leans over, and offers Neil his wrist to help him up, but Neil refuses it with a grimace.

  Hurt registers on Nate’s face until Neil says, “I think my ribs are broken.”

  “That’s nothing compared to the shape the other guys are in.” Nate chuckles morbidly.

  “Yeah. Thank you for being here for me,” Neil says. “I appreciate it.” As I begin to crawl toward them, Neil lifts his knuckles for a conciliatory fist bump.

  Nate crouches down and knocks his knuckles against Neil’s. “No one messes with my little brother but me.”

  Neil smiles. Then he turns his gaze toward Keegan. “I told you to stay outside!” he admonishes. “You could’ve gotten hurt.”

  “You guys needed me,” Keegan says defiantly. “And I kicked some Morati butt.”

  “That you did.” Nate claps Keegan on the shoulder. “Now let’s go.” He nods at me and leads Keegan back up to the surface.

  As soon as I reach Neil, I cross my legs and pull his head into my lap. I stroke his hair, mourning everything I lost today, but marveling, too. I am sitting here, despite all the odds, with this beautiful boy by my side. Even if we have only this moment, it’s up to me to make the most of it. That’s all I can do. “I could sing to you. I hear music really helps the healing process.”

  He grins at me, rewarding me with the first dimple I’ve seen in ages. “Yes, please.”

  I’d sing “Blessed Be the Tie That Binds”—it is kind of our song, after all—but it now reminds me too much of how I’m forever bound to the Morati, and there is nothing blessed about that. Instead I make up some lyrics to the Prancing Goat Symphony on the spot.

  Neil covers his ears in mock distress. “Okay, okay—you can stop singing now.”

  “Why? Because you feel better? Or because I’m torturing you?”

  “Both?” We laugh. It’s no secret my singing voice is atrocious.

  He sits up. “I like you better without all that black eye shadow.” I touch my eyelid with my finger, and it comes away clean. The eye shadow is finally gone.

  “How did you find me down here?” I’m lucky Neil came and called my name when he did. “Can you stand?”

  He nods, and we both rise to our feet.

  “Julian got your distress call. He found Nate and me and told us where you were. He’s waiting outside.” Neil pulls at his collar. “He wanted to help . . .”

  But he couldn’t because of the brimstone exposure.

  “. . . but I begged him not to,” Neil finishes. “He can’t lose any more power. He has to get stronger so he can rebuild the bridges and the portal. Level Three needs him.”

  Even when Neil is rushing to my rescue, putting his own life at risk, he still has the presence of mind to be concerned about everyone else’s well-being. It’s so typically Neil to put others before himself.

  “What about Brady? Furukama? Are they up there too?”

  “I didn’t see them,” he says.

  I fill Neil in on what happened before he came, including what I saw in Autumn’s memory. When we return to the surface, Neil steps between the waiting Julian and me, in full-on protective mode.

  “I was so worried!” Julian says.

  “Were you? Then why were you plotting my demise in Autumn’s memory of your meeting before the Halloween party?”

  Julian gulps. “You saw that?”

  “I did.”

  Julian puts his hand out to me beseechingly. “I’ve done some things I’m not proud of. But I stopped working with the Morati a long time ago.”

  I won’t let Julian emotionally manipulate me anymore. And I want answers. “You knew Cash was here. You knew Autumn was involved. Why didn’t you warn me?”

  “They were watching me on Earth, in Level Two, and here, and they threatened to hurt you if I told you about them. I couldn’t let that happen.”

  From what I saw in Autumn’s memory, I know he’s telling the truth about the Earth part, and the rest is plausible, though frustrating. “Okay,” I say warily.

  “They already punished me for contacting you at all. Autumn was the one who sent the anonymous tip and got me put in jail. She even bragged about it to me. They didn’t want to torture me, just teach me a lesson, so Autumn convinced Furukama to let me out after one night.”

  “In your memory of our bike ride together, you claimed you’d do anything to protect me,” I say as calmly as I can. “And yet you sent Neil down to face Cash instead.”

  Julian’s so wrecked, I’d swear there are tears in his eyes. “I would do anything to protect you. If you don’t believe anything else, believe that.” He steps closer. “You have no idea how close I came to rushing down those stairs.”

  “That’s true,” Neil confirms.

  Julian blinks, and a tear escapes. “But I realized that what you most needed was an antidote against Cash’s false promises, someone who represented goodness to you, and only Neil could provide that.”

  I try to imagine how it might have gone if Julian had come instead of Neil, but I can’t. He was right that Neil was the exact person who could break through to me at the moment of my compulsion. “Julian, I—”

  “Don’t.” Julian’s lower lip trembles. “It’s okay. I’ll be fine.” And then he turns and walks away.

  Neil slips his hand into mine, and that simple act breaks me. I pull him in and we hold each other. I let my tears flow as the thoughts of recent events all flood into my mind at the same time.

  I always thought the universe demanded reasons, that by viewing my memories, somehow the story of my life would make perfect sense. But I’ve learned the hard way that reality is messier than fiction, and no matter how much you
want to, you can’t sneak a look at the last page to see if everything turns out okay.

  Neil leads me back to his room. We don’t talk. We simply lie in his bed, foreheads and knees touching, hands clasped, breathing each other in. And right now that’s all I can ask for.

  thirty-seven

  THE BELLS RING, marking the start of a new day. I untangle myself from Neil’s sheets and lean over him to stroke his cheek. His eyelashes flutter, but he doesn’t open his eyes. He smiles and then says, “You were right. It is nicer to wake up next to you.”

  I laugh and snuggle back in next to him. “I could stay here all day.” Especially considering I don’t want to yet face any of the fallout from last night.

  “Stay as long as you want.” He sits up, the sheet sliding down to reveal his bare chest, and gives me a searching look.

  “Are you sure? You’re really okay with us sharing a room?”

  Neil blushes, but he doesn’t bow his head. “Yeah, I think I am. Level Three is different from what I was taught to expect from the afterlife. I didn’t know the rules of this place, and I automatically assumed that the rules I learned on Earth carried over. But they don’t. I get that now.”

  This is a giant step for Neil, especially after yesterday, when we basically broke up. “What changed your mind?”

  “Seeing you fight down there, I remembered why I fell in love with you in the first place. You’ve always been strong. But you don’t realize it sometimes.”

  “Strong?”

  “You are who you are, and you don’t pretend to be someone you’re not.” He turns his head away. “Not like me.”

  I catch his chin so that he has to look at me again. “No regrets,” I say. “But no more secrets either, okay?”

  He nods. “No more secrets.”

  That means I have to tell him about my Morati DNA. I don’t really know how to say it after all this time, so I start casually. “So guess what I found out?”

  “What?”

  “Since my thirteenth birthday I’ve been eight percent angel.”

  Neil sits up straighter. “How is that even possible?”

  “I don’t know, but Julian said it happened when the fissure opened between Level Two and Earth.”

  “And you believe him?”

  “He doesn’t lie all the time.” I scoot over to sit next to him against the headboard.

  Neil shakes his head as if it’s too much to take in. “Amazing! I mean, that’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

  “Well . . .” I hesitate. Neil might hate me when I tell him the truth. “Not really. Because I’m eight percent Morati, I think it gives me a tendency to become obsessed. You told me yesterday you thought something was off about me.” I lower my head so that my hair falls over my eyes.

  Neil puts his arm around me and pulls me to him. “No. Some of the Morati chose to rebel, like Mira and Eli. And even Julian. They fought against evil. And so do you.”

  I’d like to think I wouldn’t be drawn into the Morati’s schemes again. I still feel their presence here, but I can’t be sure if it’s only Julian or if there are more, lying low, waiting for another chance to ascend to the next level somehow.

  “That reminds me. I have a present for you,” Neil says.

  “One of my birthday presents?”

  “No.” He takes my wrist and unties the chain that still holds the obol, letting the charm slide off and fall onto the bed. “This skep here, it’s a part of another story.”

  I rub my wrist, glad to have the charm and its destructive power gone. But I still don’t know how Neil managed to obtain something on Earth that originated in the heavens. “Can I ask where you got the skep?”

  “I found it on my desk at home,” Neil says. “With a typewritten note that said ‘Felicia might like this.’ I thought one of my parents left it there. But now that I know what it really is, that doesn’t seem very likely.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  Neil hands me a small white box. “Open it.”

  I remove the lid and poke around under the cotton inside until I uncover a charm in the shape of the infinity symbol.

  “This is the start of our new story.” Neil threads the charm onto the chain. “And we’ll write it as we go. No promises that can be broken, just infinite possibilities.”

  “I love it. Thank you.”

  We stay like this for several minutes, letting everything sink in. There’s so much uncertainty right now. The one thing I can be sure of is that Neil is squarely on my side. But if Neil and I should break up someday, we break up. It won’t be the end of the universe. My afterlife will go on.

  Then Neil lifts the sheet, a seductive glint in his eye. “How shall we start chapter one?”

  “I might have a few suggestions,” I say, pouncing on him. He throws the sheet over our heads, and for the first time we join together without a single reservation.

  Two days later, when we finally emerge from Neil’s room and venture outside onto the green, we discover a new, more peaceful Level Three. Julian has rebuilt both bridges, so full classes can resume. Julian’s next task will be to try to repair the files in the records room, so we can find any Morati who may be flying under the radar, but he needs to regain his strength first.

  Furukama is fine after his shock of being mind stunned by four of his trainees—Autumn, Cash, Ira, and Ian—in his office. Brady tells us that it was Cash who knocked him out on his way back from finding Nate. Furukama and the career council reprimand Nate and Keegan for throwing Emilia and the twins into the pit when they could have been interrogated. Keegan claims he did it as payback for Kiara’s murder.

  I fill in Furukama on everything that happened with Autumn and Cash—even that I had a part in the explosions by viewing Cash’s memory globe gifts instead of turning them in. Maybe in part because I know about his reinvention and he wants me to keep his secret, Furukama lets me off lightly—he dismisses me from seraphim guard training. But he also hugs me, so on the whole I think he’s grateful for my contribution to exposing the Morati.

  If Furukama, the security team, and most of Level Three are surprised that Autumn was working with the Morati, Nate is not. “I always knew there was something off about her,” he boasts to whoever will listen. I remake my former room into a shrine of sorts for her, though. In the end she was my friend, and she sacrificed herself so that I could live. Despite everything else she did, I honor her for that.

  The weeks fly by, and soon Ascension Day is upon us.

  As I make my way to Assembly Hill, I run into Julian. Since he repaired the bridges, he is being celebrated as a hero, and Libby allowed him to join the muse program with us as a reward. We haven’t had the chance to talk, because his entourage usually surrounds him, but today he is alone in front of the rebuilt Muse Collection Library.

  “So it all worked out for you, didn’t it?” I ask him. “You’ve been found innocent of the bombings, you’re popular with the people, and you’re going back to Earth as a muse. You got everything you ever wanted.”

  He reaches out and lightly grazes my cheek with his knuckles. “Not everything,” he says sadly.

  I deflect the emotionally charged moment by asking a question that’s been tumbling around in my mind. “How did Cash know that, as a hybrid, I could open portals?”

  “I’ll show you,” Julian says. “Even though this memory doesn’t paint me in the best light. Okay?”

  When I nod, he materializes the eggplant sofa right out here on the lawn. We sit down together, like old times, and we connect our palms.

  Julian drives the stolen police car, pumping the gas pedal. He’s on the lookout for Neil’s car, because Cash has ordered him to hit it head-on and take Felicia’s life. Julian doesn’t know why vehicular homicide is not considered murder, but it isn’t. In any case, Julian doesn’t want to go through with it. He has a plan. He’ll have to crash into them, or Cash will become suspicious, but he can do it so that Felicia has a maximum chance of survival.

&n
bsp; Julian turns on the sirens as a warning. He switches lanes as he rounds the bend, and Neil’s car speeds straight toward him. At the last second he swerves, but Neil swerves too and the cars collide, metal grinding and glass shattering. As they spin together, Julian locks eyes with Felicia.

  The cars screech to a halt in the middle of the road. Julian exits the police car from the passenger side and rushes over just before a second police car comes barreling at Felicia, who is still trapped in the wreckage. He recognizes the driver, Octavia. Cash must have sent a backup Morati assassin. Felicia throws her arm out in front of her face in a protective gesture, through the broken window, a metal charm glinting in her palm. A blast of light flies out of her fingers. It steamrolls toward the oncoming car, flattening grass and shrubbery alongside the road before it entirely encompasses the car and zaps it into oblivion.

  Julian stops in his tracks, utterly stunned and terrified. Somehow Felicia made an entire car and its driver disappear. It’s impossible, and yet he witnessed it with his own eyes.

  Julian approaches Felicia with caution, dialing 911 on his cell phone.

  “Nine one one. State your emergency,” the dispatch says calmly.

  “There’s been a car accident. Two people are hurt.”

  “Where are you? Why are there sirens?”

  “I don’t know what it’s called, but it’s the old country road off Route 4. Hurry!”

  He hangs up. “Are you hurt?” he asks Felicia, his whole being on high alert.

  She stares straight ahead, like she’s in shock. “I—I can’t get out.” Her long hair is stuck in the twisted frame of the car. “Please help Neil!”

  Julian rips Felicia’s door off the hinges and throws it to the pavement. He leans over her and gently extracts an unconscious Neil from his seat belt, keeping Neil’s neck straight as he pulls him over Felicia and lays him in a patch of grass. Julian administers CPR and makes sure Neil is breathing normally before he turns to Felicia in anguish.