Chasing Before
Page 27
“I have to go before the ambulance arrives.” He kisses her on the forehead and wipes a tear from her cheek. “I’m so, so sorry. I hope you can forgive me someday.”
Felicia doesn’t say anything, and Julian knows he doesn’t deserve an answer anyway. He’s a coward, and he proves it by racing off across the field as fast as his feet can carry him.
We exit the memory, and Julian flinches like I might punch him.
“I made a car disappear?” I ask incredulously.
“That’s why Cash didn’t want you to have that memory. He was scared of you. He theorized that as a hybrid you might be able to destroy angels. He thought if you knew, you would eventually use your power against him and the other Morati.”
“Why didn’t you show me this before?” I ask.
“Honestly? Because I thought you would smite me, first chance you got.”
“You think I have it in me to smite you?”
“You look like you want to smite me right now.”
I laugh. “I do a little.”
“Told you.”
“Fair enough,” I say. “But the water from the Styx wasn’t involved in the car crash. I thought the three main ingredients were a hybrid, the Styx, and an obol.”
“Cash said you probably blacked out when you were thrown from the car and maybe partially crossed over, which would mean going through the Styx.”
“Okay, but how did Cash go from theorizing that I could kill Morati to theorizing that I could open portals?”
Julian wipes his hands on his jeans. “Later, once you were already in Level Two, Cash found Octavia, the assassin he thought you destroyed. She was hiding out in a hive, afraid that Cash would punish her for her failure. That’s when he knew that what you actually did was open an unstable portal to a higher level. But he didn’t tell me that until recently.”
“But you’re a hybrid too. Can’t you open portals? Why didn’t Cash just use you instead of setting up this elaborate scheme with me?”
“I can open them, but only to lower levels. We’re linked, and so our powers are balanced out that way. I bet you can open them only to higher levels.”
It’s not a theory I want to test out anytime soon, that’s for sure.
Back in Level Two, when I relived the memory of my supposed death, the shock of Julian’s betrayal left a deep scar in my psyche. But now I understand that he was manipulated as much as Autumn and I were. That doesn’t make it right, but it gives me a reason to forgive. “After the crash you stayed to make sure I was okay. You helped Neil. That counts for something.”
“I ran away. I left you there.” He groans and punches the arm of the sofa with his fist. “If I had stood my ground right then and there against the Morati, if I had stayed and protected you every day of your life, maybe you’d still be alive.”
So many maybes. So many ways for things to have gone differently. So many versions of the story that will never be told.
I touch his arm, and his fist relaxes.
“It’s okay. We’ll be fine.” I can’t be sure whether he’s finally telling me the whole truth or merely his understanding of the truth, but in the end I don’t care. I can accept Julian for who he is, bad and good and everything crazy in between. “Friends?” I ask. It’s the most that I can offer.
“Friends,” he says.
Julian and I walk together to Assembly Hill, where a crowd has already gathered. There’s an air of celebration as Area Two prepares to send off the twelve chosen candidates for the seraphim guard, including Brady and Moby. Over in Area Three they are bidding farewell to the retiring Careers and the people older than sixty-five, who get an automatic pass to Level Four.
There’s a barrier put up between the ascension site, where the graduates stand, and the rest of us. I join Neil in the front row. Brady comes up and hugs me. “Bye, Twitchy,” Brady says. “I don’t know where in creation I’m going, but I reckon it’ll be exciting.”
“Aww! I’ll miss you,” I tell him, “but I won’t miss that nickname.” We both laugh.
The portal opens. It’s a door leading to a staircase, one that looks more like it goes up to a dusty attic than the heavens. Furukama and Libby stand to the side and bow to each graduate as they ascend. Both Moby and Brady turn and wave at us as they pass through, and my eyes fill with happy tears.
The last graduate walks through the portal, and it closes behind her. Libby throws her arms up, and confetti and glitter rain from the sky. She twirls and twirls, laughing, until she bumps into Neil and me. I’ve never seen her so unburdened. She winks at us. “I used to be fun, you know,” she says.
She continues dancing through the crowd, and all at once I imagine I see my mother the way my dad used to see her. I wait for the sting of rejection to pierce my heart like it usually does when I think of her sending me away, but it doesn’t come. And that’s when I realize I’ve finally forgiven her.
After the ceremony Neil and I go to the Forgetting Tree.
I’ve thought about this moment a lot over the past few weeks. If memories make you who you are, then the Morati killed a version of me by stealing them. I’ll never know how I actually died. I’ll never know if Neil and I stayed together on Earth or not. I may never know the fates of my family and friends. But maybe my best memories are just waiting for me to make them. Whatever is in store for me, I can’t stop it. I’ll take the days of my afterlife as they come.
I materialize a scrap of paper and a pen and then write “My stolen memories” on it. Neil stands close by as I pin the paper to the tree. And then he takes hold of my hand.
Now I understand what letting go means. It means not allowing anyone else to define you, and that includes past versions of yourself. It’s not about throwing away keepsakes, or distancing yourself from the people who matter, but about accepting that you’re a person who’s going to make mistakes sometimes, and that’s okay. Mistakes don’t define you. It’s what you learn from them that does.
We don’t erase the past. Our triumphs, our failures, our loves, our betrayals—they all provide the clarifying context that makes life more meaningful. Without our roots we might be carried off by the first wayward wind.
But we also need to realize we can fly.
© Vania Stoyanova
Lenore Appelhans has been blogging about books since 2008. After reviewing hundreds of them, she decided to write one. She is the author of The Memory of After, The Best Things in Death (an e–short story), and Chasing Before. Lenore also wrote Chick-o-Saurus Rex, a picture book illustrated by her husband, Daniel Jennewein. She lives in Frankfurt, Germany, but loves to travel, so you can often find her on planes—at least until she learns how to teleport. Visit her online at presentinglenore.blogspot.com and on Twitter @lenoreva.
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Also by Lenore Appelhans
The Memory of After
The Best Things in Death (an e–short story)
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2014 by Lenore Appelhans
Jacket photograph copyright © 2014 by Ali Smith
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Book design by Lizzy Bromley
Cover design by Lizzy Bromley
Cover photo by Ali Smith
The text for this book is set in Janson Text LT Std.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Appelhans, Lenore.
Chasing before : book 2 of the memory chronicles / Lenore Appelhans. — 1st edition.
pages cm — (The memory chronicles ; bk. 2)
Summary: Four months after Felicia saved Level 2 from the Morati, corrupted angels who trapped her and her boyfriend Neil in the afterlife, she learns some shocking truths about her life that make her question whether she should continue the fight on Level 3.
ISBN 978-1-4424-4188-0 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4424-4190-3 (eBook)
[1. Future life—Fiction. 2. Death—Fiction. 3. Angels—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.A6447Ch 2014
[Fic]—dc23
2013040677