by Natalie Lund
“But when you’re dead, you can’t eat mandocas.”
“There better be mandocas in heaven or I’m not going,” his dad said before hugging him goodbye.
Israel sat at the counter in the empty kitchen sipping coffee and scrolling through his phone. He didn’t want to wait until he was dead to rest. He’d begun to feel the paper thinness in the fall when he’d had four tests in the same week for his AP courses. He’d tried to fight off the dream by staying awake, chugging caffeinated drinks, blasting music in his headphones, and pacing his room with note cards to study. It had been hell at school. He’d snapped at everyone, he hadn’t had any energy on the field, and he’d barely stayed awake through the physics exam.
Even some sleep was better than none, he’d decided. For midterms, he’d tried over-the-counter sleep aids, and they’d certainly kept him asleep, but he’d experienced his dream death on a loop. It had made him jumpy, cringing away from loud noises and afraid to drive.
If he was going to go to college in a little over a year, he had to figure out how to live with the dream or get rid of it altogether.
He couldn’t ask his parents for help. When he’d told them about the dream as a kid, his dad had looked at him like he was a disappointment. It was the kind of moment that you remembered forever: his father, shaking his head, his eyes squinted and hard in the rearview mirror. No sympathy, no concern, and certainly no belief. After that, Israel had begun to curl into himself, quiet and protected like a snail. He’d vowed never to talk about it again.
So this spring, when he’d started having the dream more frequently, he began doing research, reading every book he could find about past lives—from the anthropological to the religious to new age to psychology. The most helpful had been the group he’d found online, Remembered Souls. It was filled with people who recalled past lives just like he did. He’d been lurking on the page for months, and then a few days before, he’d finally been brave enough to break his vow and write what he’d been dreaming every night.
People had responded to his post asking for details about the make and model of the car, if he remembered what state he was in or Lara’s and Peter’s ages. He didn’t have many answers.
He took a sip of his coffee and logged on. Overnight, someone had replied with a link. Israel clicked it, aware of the heartbeat in his temple.
He inhaled sharply when he saw the headline. It was an old death announcement:
Randolph A. Ryerson, 42, of Honore, TX, died February 17, 2002. A funeral service will be held at VanDyke Funeral Home, officiated by Deacon Harvey Jenkins. Cremation will be accorded and a private inurnment held at Beachtree Cemetery. He is survived by his wife, Lara, and son, Peter.
Israel rubbed his eyes and reread it. He read it again. February 17, 2002? It was his birthday. That was impossible. Wasn’t it? His pulse was racing, hammering now in his head and jaw. This was the closest to proof he’d ever found that his dream was true. He had been Randolph.
He glanced at the time. He’d be late to econ, but he couldn’t stop now. He googled Randolph Ryerson, his fingers slipping and sweaty on the phone screen as he typed. There was nothing except the death announcement. He tried the website of the local newspaper in Honore, but they didn’t have online archives from that time, and it was so long ago that Israel couldn’t find any social media accounts. Israel kept searching and found a few documents on a family history database. A birth certificate dated 1960. A marriage certified to Lara Ripple.
Israel looked Lara up first and found a social media page that hadn’t been updated in months. She had dark gray hair cropped to a puff around her face, sharp eyes, and a stony expression. She never posted about herself, only shared other people’s posts—sentimental videos of soldiers surprising their children at school and dogs singing while their owners played the piano.
He searched Peter Ryerson next. The son—now a grown man—lived in the same town his father had. His social media accounts were private, but the public cover photo showed a thin blond man with pink-splotched skin, a short beard, and beady blue eyes. Israel wasn’t sure what similarities he’d expected to see—something behind the eyes perhaps—but he didn’t have anything in common with the man except, perhaps, a car accident that had changed both of their lives.
Israel found Lara’s address on the map and stared at the white line of her street, the highway nearby, stretching all the way to their island. He slung his backpack over one shoulder. He couldn’t just ring her doorbell and say, Hello, I’m your dead husband, but he couldn’t do nothing, either. If he was going to succeed in college and be the suited man his dad imagined instead of a paper-thin person stuck to someone else’s shoe, he had to do something—and soon.
CHAPTER EIGHT
NATE
Thirty-one days before
ISRAEL WAS WAITING for Nate outside his precalculus class so they could walk to the cafeteria for lunch. He had a textbook pinched under his arm, his hair was untamed like he hadn’t combed it, and his dark eyes had purple smudges beneath. The kid didn’t sleep, Nate knew, but he looked wired—like he’d swallowed a bunch of caffeine pills.
He tried so hard at everything—at school, at soccer, at being friends with Shane and Nate. At first the constant striving had been laughable to Nate, but now it had become almost admirable. If there was a student in their school who was actually going somewhere, it was Israel. Nate sometimes wished he felt motivated to be better like his friend. The only thing he was good at was soccer and, for that, he didn’t have to try or practice. He’d always been fast and the game was instinctual for him: he understood where the ball would go and how the players around him would move.
“I have something for you.” Israel pulled a pamphlet out of his econ book and handed it to Nate. “I got this in the mail and thought you’d be interested.”
Two soccer players fought for the ball on the front of the pamphlet, the University of Maryland’s name on their jerseys. Inside, the brochure raved about the diversity, the rich student life, the ample opportunities for internships.
“Maryland?” Nate asked, raising his eyebrows at Israel. “Do they have a good team?”
“Yeah, and it’s a good school, too. I heard they send scouts to that camp you’re going to this summer. You might get noticed.”
Between Israel and Janie, Nate had been hearing about college all year. It’s where you’ll find your people, Janie had told him wistfully. For Israel, it was sleek city streets and skyscrapers. For Nate, who didn’t really want anything except soccer, college was only a path to playing professionally someday.
Nate and Israel passed the library, which had recently been remodeled with floor-to-ceiling glass walls, so it sat in the heart of their school like a fish bowl. Janie was in the stacks, her friend Marisol beside her, running a finger over the spines of the books. Janie’s brassy hair was wound back in its usual braid. She was dressed in light-wash jeans, white tennis shoes, and an orange bowling shirt that she’d probably bought at a thrift store. Nate hated to wear clothes that someone had worn before him—part of having an older brother and years of hand-me-downs.
He looked at the pamphlet again. Maryland looked so green—not a dark tropical green like their island, but a cool green. An Atlantic green. Janie had grown up in Maryland, but she never spoke about it—probably because her mother had moved back there when she left. It would be so easy for him to stop and show her the pamphlet, to ask her if she thought he could fit into that faraway place, but there was still a wall between their two worlds.
That summer Janie moved in, Shane had been away at camp and Nate’s brother, Aaron, had grown out of what Nate called their adventures: riding bikes to the ocean, digging in the sand for crabs, collecting sea glass, riding the free ferry, and net-fishing jellies. Nate was starting to feel left behind. Everyone else his age was strutting laps around the public pool, identifying new crushes, and eatin
g Pixy Stix until their tongues were bright shades of blue or purple.
But Janie was different. She smelled like dusty cotton, like the T-shirts at the bottom of your drawers. Her green eyes were large and round, her chin got lost in her neck, and she was a few inches taller than him. When she stuck out her bottom lip to blow her bangs off her forehead, he had a strange desire to climb her like she was Jack’s beanstalk. Best of all, she was eager to ride with him to the beach, to stand at the seawall and marvel at everything he still found beautiful.
One morning they’d woken up early and he’d biked them to the point with a half watermelon tucked under his arm. They waded ankle-deep into the tide pools and he told her all the names his father had taught him.
Banded sea star.
Sea anemone.
Red sea urchin.
Lined periwinkle.
False limpet.
Blue crab.
After, they sat on the sand, scooping watermelon out of its rind with salty hands. Nate had rolled onto his stomach so he could see the curve of her bang-covered forehead, the upward slope of her nose, the rise of her chest. He wanted nothing more than to know her.
“Tell me a secret,” he’d said. “Something you’ve never told anyone.”
She was quiet for a moment. “My mom doesn’t like us very much,” she said.
“Your mom? What do you mean?” Nate had met her mom a few times. She was a petite woman with a blond pixie cut. She was almost always sitting on their back porch with a book or a newspaper, her bare feet up against the slats of the railing. She never seemed to read—just stared at the house behind theirs. If he said hello, her eyes focused quickly on him, and she’d smile—sadly—and say hello before returning to her stare.
Janie had rolled onto her stomach too, so their noses were inches apart. He could smell her breath, sweet from the watermelon. “I hear them fighting,” she’d said, looking down at her hands. Nate could see a few tears clinging to her eyelashes. “My mom always brings up how she had to drop out of medical school when I was born. My dad kept going, and she worked at a bank for a while to pay for his school. When he was done, she did a nursing degree.”
“Well, that’s not your fault. She could have finished medical school if she’d wanted, right? Maybe she wanted to be a nurse.”
She looked down and picked at her cuticles but didn’t answer.
Two weeks before the end of the summer, her mom left. Nate didn’t see Janie for days after that, and when he finally coaxed her out of her house, she stared at everyone in this outright, uncomfortable way—like they were aliens and she was trying to understand their culture—to the point that Aaron said, Take a picture; it will last longer. This had made her burst into tears—the gasping kind where he thought she was going to hyperventilate.
She began acting more erratically, too, like a cornered stray. His mother had asked her if she was doing okay, and she’d practically shrieked that she was fine, that everyone should stop worrying about her. Once, when she was borrowing Nate’s bike, she’d start pedaling fiercely and glancing over her shoulder at him, a wide-eyed look of terror on her face as though he were chasing her. She wouldn’t slow, even when he called after her. When he finally found her, she was kneeling in the sand, digging with her fingers.
He was out of breath, but he knelt next to her and started digging too. “What are we looking for?” he asked.
“I lost something,” she said.
“What?”
“I don’t know.” She practically wailed the words. Nate stopped digging and brushed off his hands, watching her. The mad scramble of her fingers, the sand coating her knees and thighs, the way her pupils seemed loose in her face.
He hadn’t intended to cleave his two worlds so cleanly that first day of seventh grade when the new school year began. He’d simply asked his mom to drive him early so that he could catch up with Shane. And when Janie had walked through the school doors a little later, her hair frizzing out of its braid, her eyes roving wildly, he’d looked away. Marcus had snickered and whispered something to Shane. Nate hadn’t heard what he said, but it was enough to embarrass him. What if she told everyone that he’d spent his summer going on adventures, like a child? That he’d called the ocean magic? What if they thought he was dating her? His popularity afforded him everything—teachers favoring him more than he deserved, an easy circle of friends at lunch, coaches letting him run drills.
Now, as though she knew he was staring at her, Janie’s eyes lifted from the bookshelf, looked out the window into his. And just as he had that day so long ago, Nate looked away.
CHAPTER NINE
SHANE
Thirty-one days before
SHANE CLIMBED THE stairs to Cass’s condo and rang the doorbell. He heard her mom from the other side of the door: “Cassie! He’s here.”
For the better part of five years, Shane had walked Cass to school. There were a few months where he’d driven her, before he totaled the car his parents had given him for his sixteenth birthday and they’d gone back to walking.
He’d known her his whole life, but he hadn’t really noticed her until that first day of school in seventh grade. She had returned from volleyball camp with lean triceps stretching from her shoulders to her elbows. She wore a band of stretchy fabric that flattened her gold-tinted curls at the top of her head and behind her ears, but allowed them to explode on the other side like licks of flame. She’d grown gloriously tall, taller even than Shane at the time. There were boobs, too, of course, and black stretchy volleyball shorts that made him want to pull her hips against his own. That year, he’d vowed that he would walk her wherever she needed to go for the rest of their lives.
“Hey,” Cass said as she stepped out. He felt like an antenna tuning to her. She was even more beautiful than she’d been back in seventh grade. Her jeans were high-waisted and tight, and her floral top had tiny pearl buttons down the front that gapped and gave him peeks at the lace of her bra.
“Hi, gorgeous.”
She flushed slightly, which made her cheeks glow. “Did you study for history?” she asked.
He shrugged.
“Shane.”
“Whatcha going to do?”
“Yes, what are you going to do?”
They were having this argument more and more often now. His sister, Meg, had left for college this past fall. Cass was heading there too, to study chemistry, probably on a path paved with scholarships. And Shane? Cass thought he should go to a community college for two years before transferring to a university near wherever she ended up. The thought of two to four more years of homework and tests made him nauseated, but what else was there? The navy, like her dad? Becoming a fisherman like Nate’s? Constructing houses like Israel’s? Would any of that be good enough to keep Cass? It certainly wasn’t good enough for his parents. His own dad was a geologist for an oil company and his mom had studied art in New York before becoming the floral designer for all the big tourist weddings at the historic hotel downtown. They’d both come from money, and their expectations were even higher than Cass’s. The real problem was Shane had no clue what he wanted to do with his life.
“Cass, my lass,” he said in his Irish accent, which was informed more by Lucky Charms than any actual knowledge of Irish people.
“Yeah, you’re not allowed to do that accent.”
“Okay, I’ll add it to the list.”
“Great, put it right after ‘don’t keep trying to look down my shirt.’” She was smiling now.
“Oh no, I cannot, in good conscience, put that on my list.”
“It’s not like you haven’t seen them before.”
“Are you ever like, ‘I’ve seen the ocean before; I never want to see it again’?”
She laughed, and that—more than her looks, more than her intelligence—was what he loved most. It rang through him, and he was alwa
ys trying to find new ways to inspire it.
It was for that laugh that he’d first stopped at the Seabreeze Cove construction site the second week of seventh grade.
“Let’s go inside,” he’d said, pointing to a vacation house that was just a skeleton, perched on pilings. They’d had to wrap their arms and legs around the pilings and shinny up, like climbing a palm tree. But once they were up, they’d slipped between the studs and found a room that seemed like a promising kitchen.
“Sit. I’ll make you something to eat,” he’d said.
Shane had pretended to cook them dinner, and she’d waited for her plate, cross-legged on the floor. The way she’d pursed her lips to blow on an imaginary spoon before taking an imaginary bite had made him tingle from neck to knees. She’d asked Shane about his day and he about hers, and they’d invented jobs for themselves: chemist, professional basketball player, deep-sea diver, architect, international lawyer, cartoonist, psychic hotline operator.
“You want to be a phone psychic?” she’d asked.
“What else am I going to do with these?” he’d said, flexing his long skinny arms.
She’d laughed like it was a surprise—a huff of voice and breath and gravel and bells.
He wished they could go back to the days when he didn’t have to be more than a phone psychic to make her laugh like that.
* * *
• • •
Izzy was waiting for them on the corner a block from school. When she saw them, she tossed her smooth dark hair over one shoulder and smiled. It was fake, like she was posing for a selfie.
“Hey, Cass,” she said cheerily. Then: “Shane.”
He nodded back.
Izzy was like a terrier who guarded Cass and sunk her needle teeth into him at every chance. Peahead, Neanderthal arms, skinny bones, paddle ears, and, if Cass wasn’t around, Reading Rainbow, which never made sense to him because, as far as he knew, the whole point of the old TV show was that the guy liked reading. And, while Shane wasn’t illiterate, he certainly wasn’t a good reader. He could look at words on a page and understand them. The problem was that once he started stringing the words together for longer and longer stretches, he lost the map and had to wander. It took tracing every single word with his finger as though he were pinning them into his brain, memorizing them really, to get through a page and have any idea what he’d read. And if he was assigned a whole book? Forget it.