I wipe my eyes. “You don’t remember anything? Not the car that hit you? Not what happened right before? You don’t remember hearing or seeing anything?”
He shakes his head. “I told you, nothing.” He hesitates. For the first time since we’ve been together, his tone softens just a bit. “I was alone, Liz. Not like you are. I didn’t have anybody to help me. I’m sorry if I’ve been cynical, but you have to imagine—I’ve been by myself for almost a year.”
“What have you been doing?” I ask. “You’re here, so obviously you can go places. Have you seen your family? Your parents?”
He nods. “Sure. I’ve gone home now and then. But trust me, I’d rather be anywhere else. My house is not exactly overflowing with laughter at the moment. My parents practically haven’t left church in months, they’re so busy praying for my soul. And when they’re home, my mom pretty much stays in bed.” He pauses. “When she’s not wandering around the house, holding vigils for me, crying.”
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper.
“It’s okay.” He half smiles. “Not your fault, is it? Anyway, I can go places, but it’s not like there’s a whole lot to keep me entertained. For the most part, I’ve just been staying near the road where I died. And then, all of a sudden—here I am.” He shakes his head. “I don’t know what I’m doing here. Honestly, I’m almost as confused as you are.”
I stare at him. “But we can go places. That’s what you’re saying. I can go home if I want to.”
He nods. “Yes. But you won’t want to, not after the first couple of times. It’s horrible, watching everyone cry and mope around, watching them suffer. Knowing you can’t reach out to them and make them feel better, or even let them know you’re all right.”
“But we’re not all right,” I say. “Not really. Are we? I mean, we’re trapped.”
He appears to think about it. “Yeah,” he agrees. “I guess you’re right. Trapped.”
“And you’ve just been stranded like this? For a year?”
“Well … not exactly. There’s something else.” He hesitates. “It’s like I showed you. You can go into memories. You can go back and see yourself. You know how you don’t remember everything from when you were alive?”
“Yes. Why is that happening? Do you know?”
He appears to be thinking. “I’m not sure. But I have a theory.”
I stare at him. He doesn’t say anything for a while.
“Well?” I demand. “Are you going to tell me, or are we just going to stand here?”
He sighs. “Okay. But it might sound strange. Like I said, it’s just a theory.”
“Tell me.”
“Well, we’re here. On Earth. We’re not … somewhere else.”
“What do you mean? That we’re not in heaven?”
Alex nods. “Heaven, hell … you’re getting ahead of yourself. My point is, we’re stuck here for some reason. We both died young. And we both want to know why, right?”
“Of course,” I say.
“Well, when I really started to think about what I could remember, something occurred to me. It was like I could only remember mundane facts. I knew who people were. I knew about some things that had happened. But I couldn’t remember anything … significant. Not at first.” He takes a deep breath. “I think we’re supposed to learn something. Not only about how we died, but I think we’re supposed to—I don’t know, to gain some kind of deeper understanding. Before we can move on.” He pauses. “Does that make any sense?”
Nothing makes sense to me right now. But I don’t want to admit that to him. “Okay,” I say. “You’ve been dead for almost a year. What have you learned so far?”
He averts his gaze. “A few things.”
“Did you see what happened to you the night you died?”
“Not yet.”
“What?” I almost screech the words. “After a whole year?”
“It might be different for you! I don’t know. I’m just telling you what I think, okay?”
I glare at him. The last thing I want is to remain in some kind of Earthly limbo for the next year. There has to be something more. Doesn’t there?
“I can tell you other things,” Alex offers.
I’m so frustrated that I feel like I might start crying again. “Like what?”
“Well,” he says, “do you feel tired at all?”
I nod. “Really tired.”
“Yeah, me, too. But you’ll learn—at least, this is what it’s like for me—that you can’t sleep. Something different happens instead.”
“What? I’ll go into more memories? I’ll remember things?” The sun is starting to come up. Time is moving quickly; it feels like I’ve been out here for ten minutes, when it must have been hours.
Alex scratches his head, thinking. “Well, you know how they say that, when you die, your life flashes before your eyes?”
I nod.
“It’s kind of like that. Except it’s much … slower. You get really tired, like you’re going to fall asleep. You close your eyes. But you don’t sleep. Instead, you see things.”
“What kinds of things?”
“Things from your life. Sometimes they’re just random memories. Other times, they’re more important. It’s like you’re putting together a puzzle. You watch things happen, and when you’re seeing them from the outside, you can understand them better. It’s like what I showed you in the cafeteria.”
“But you don’t know who hit you yet?”
“No. Not yet.”
I pout. “Are you even close to finding out?”
He nods. “Yes. I’m close.” Then he adds, “But it might be different for you. I don’t know.”
“Oh, you’re a big help. Thanks a whole lot.”
“Want some real advice?” he offers.
“Oh, please. You’ve done so much already.” My voice simmers with irritation and sarcasm. I’m over the shock of my initial rudeness. Alex and I are not a good mix. There’s no point in pretending to get along, is there?
Alex nods at the boat. “There you go. Things are about to get interesting.”
I turn around. Standing on the deck, wearing nothing but a pair of plaid boxer shorts, is my boyfriend, Richie Wilson.
“Richie,” I say, starting to cry again. I raise my voice to shout at him. “Richie!”
“He can’t hear you.” Alex sighs. “You aren’t the sharpest sheep in the barn, are you?”
“That’s not even the right metaphor,” I snap, my attention still focused on Richie. “It’s sharpest pencil in the box.”
“Right.” Alex nods. “Except you are a sheep. I’m not stupid, I just adjusted the metaphor to fit your persona—”
“Oh, shut up. Richie!” I scream again. Alex shakes his head.
“Liz?” Richie calls softly, looking around. He wraps his arms around himself, shivering in the cool morning air. “Liz, are you out here?”
I scream his name, over and over again, until I’m so tired that I feel like I’m going to collapse. He obviously can’t hear me.
Richie looks around for a few more minutes. He doesn’t seem concerned; why should he? My parents’ house is less than a two-minute walk from our boat. For all he knows, I woke up early and went for a run. The last thing he’s thinking, I’m sure, is that I’m standing less than ten feet away, practically right beside him. Or that I’m also in the water, beneath him.
He waits a few more seconds. Then he walks inside, probably to go back to sleep, sliding the door shut behind him. Richie and I have known each other since we were toddlers. We grew up on the same street. We’ve been a couple since seventh grade. We love each other. Somehow, from deep within myself, I know all this. These aren’t the kinds of facts that I can imagine ever forgetting.
“Damn it,” I whisper, watching as he slips back inside the boat, wiping more tears from my eyes.
“Don’t worry,” Alex says.
“Why not?”
“He’ll know soon enough.”
&nb
sp; “He’ll never be the same,” I murmur. “None of them will.”
“You’re probably right. How will any of your friends function without you?”
I decide to ignore his sarcasm for the moment; I have more important things to deal with. “What do we do now?” I ask. The sun is growing brighter, reflecting against the water. Beyond the boat, beyond the docks, I can see the town of Noank beginning to illuminate.
“We wait,” he says. His gaze follows mine. Together, we stare at our little town, where everything used to feel so safe. “It won’t be long now,” he says, “before someone finds your body.”
“And then what?” I whisper.
He pauses, considering the question. “Then we find out what happened to you.”
“We do?”
“Yeah.” Another pause, this one longer than the last. “Maybe.”
Three
But it does take a while for someone to find me. And when it finally happens, it’s terrible. Alex and I waited until the sun was all the way up before we decided to go inside the boat. I don’t know why it took us so long to get the idea. As we were sitting on the dock, watching my friends move around inside, I said, “I wish I could hear what they’re talking about in there.”
“Oh, we can,” he said. “We can go in.”
I looked at him, not saying anything. I just got up to walk inside.
But when I reached the sliding glass doors to the boat, I stopped. “The doors are closed, boy genius,” I said. “How am I supposed to get in?”
“You’re dead, Einstein,” he replied drolly. “You don’t exist in the physical world anymore. The rules don’t apply. Just walk through.”
I hesitated. I reached out a hand, tentatively, and gasped when I saw that Alex was right—there’s a feeling of coolness where the door is, but my hand goes right through.
My physical body is still in the same place, lodged awkwardly between the boat and the dock, except now both of my boots are long gone. And I’m not looking so hot anymore. Not that I was when I first saw myself, but a few more hours in the cold salt water has not been kind to my skin. I’ll leave it at that.
Alex follows me onto the deck of the boat. “Go ahead,” he says. “Walk in.”
So I do. Just like that. Like there’s no door or anything. As terrified as I am, I can’t help but feel the slightest bit exhilarated. I’m supernatural.
As we step into the boat, all of my friends are huddled in the back, sitting quietly together.
“Should we go to her house and check?” Mera asks.
“Good timing,” Alex says. “They’re talking about you.”
We take a seat on the steps and watch. I stare at Richie, who’s sitting right across from me on a sofa. My purse is in his lap. My cell phone is in his hand. So they’ve obviously gotten this far—they know I’m missing, and Richie looks worried now. He probably knows I wouldn’t go home without taking my purse. And there’s no way I’d leave my phone. It’s like my umbilical cord to the outside world, has been since I first got one at age ten. I’m lost without it.
Oh, Richie. I want to go to him, wrap my arms around him. I close my eyes for a moment, imagining his touch.
All of a sudden the uncomfortable feeling of cold is yanked away, and I feel like I’ve been submerged in a warm bath, except I can breathe. It’s just like before, when I put my hand on Alex’s shoulder and followed him into his memory of us at school. My surroundings kind of swirl into oblivion, and I find myself standing at the edge of the community playground in Noank. Two grown women are side by side in front of me. They’re each pushing toddlers on swings. One boy, one girl. The girl is me. I can’t be older than two.
“She’s adorable,” the little boy’s mother says, nodding at me. She smiles at my own mom.
My mom! I stare at her, trying to take it all in. Aside from photographs, it’s the first time I’ve seen her in nine years. I want to hold on to her, to curl up beside her, to hear her whisper in my ear. My whole body aches with the knowledge that I can’t do any of those things. I want to tell her how much I love her, even though she left us. Even though she left me, her little girl. I was nine years old and she left me alone, to be raised by my father, at least until he and Nicole got married.
I used to feel so angry that she’d let herself die. But I recovered from my loss; I forgave her. Now, more than anything, all I want is to be with her—to really be with her—even if it means I’m not alive anymore.
My mother was only twenty-four when she had me, which would put her in her late twenties here, and she’s beautiful. She has long blond hair, almost exactly the same shade as mine. She’s tall at nearly six feet. She gives the other woman a nervous smile. I never remembered that much about my mom, even when I was alive, but I do remember my father telling me she was always very shy around strangers.
“I’m Lisa,” my mom says, “and this is Elizabeth. My husband and I just moved from the far side of Mystic into his father’s old place, on High Street.”
“Oh! You’re our new neighbors!” The other woman is not nearly as shy, not around strangers or anyone else. “I knew I recognized you. I’m Amy Wilson. This is my little boy, Richie.”
For an instant, I see Amy’s gaze flicker down the length of my mother’s body. Despite her height, she can’t be more than a hundred and twenty pounds. Her hip bones are visible through her shorts. And even though she’s smiling, obviously happy to have met a neighbor, there is something sad about my mother’s gaze. She looks tired; there are dark half-moons beneath her eyes. She looks hungry.
Already, Richie and I are friends. I smile as I stare at us, tears pricking the corners of my eyes. We hold hands as we swing. He has dark curly hair and full red lips. Someday they’ll be my first kiss, when we’re both four years old. And then again, when we’re both twelve—he’ll be my first real kiss. The only person I’ve ever kissed like that. As I stand there watching the four of us, I realize that I don’t remember everything about Richie and me, especially anything too recent. But I remember enough to know that I loved him. I’m sure of that.
“Liz? Hey—are you there?” It’s Alex’s voice. Like before, I feel the sensation of being sucked through a vacuum. As quickly as it began, the memory is over.
“I saw him,” I say, breathless. “And I saw my mom, and Richie’s mom. We were toddlers.”
Alex doesn’t seem surprised. Again, he’s blasé. “Really? You saw all that?”
I nod. I’m still crying. It feels like I’m never going to stop. My breath is ragged; I’m overwhelmed with emotions that are coming so quickly I barely have time to process them. It’s all too much for one girl to comprehend, on what would have been such a lovely summer morning. “I was looking at Richie, thinking about him, and all of a sudden there I was. It was the first time we met, on the playground.”
“Oh.” Alex blinks. “How nice for you.” But then he pauses. “They won’t all be good memories, Liz. You know that, right?”
I cross my arms. “Why would you say something like that? I was happy for a second, and you had to go and ruin it.” I feel defensive, even though I’m not sure why. All I know is that Alex Berg is not turning out to be my favorite person on this plane of existence. “What’s wrong with you? I’m dead, Alex. It’s already a pretty bad day.”
“All right, don’t have a conniption.” His tone is annoyingly light, like this is all just a distraction to him. “I wanted you to be prepared. That’s all.”
I shrug. It doesn’t really matter; I’ve just seen my mom again! And she was so young, so … alive. She was touching me, taking care of me. Loving me. Her only little girl.
“What did I look like?” I ask Alex. “You know, when I spaced out just now?” The feeling of intense coldness has returned. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it.
Alex only shrugs. “It was nothing weird. You were just kind of staring at him. At Richie, I mean.”
“Oh.” I pause. “For how long?”
“A few minute
s.”
“Really?” I ask. It didn’t feel like that long. “What did I miss?”
“Well, they sent Mera up to your house to look for you.”
The words are barely out of his mouth when we hear a very loud scream coming from outside.
All of my friends sit up straighter. They look scared. For a moment I study their faces, trying to figure out if any one of them looks different, maybe a little guilty. But as quickly as the idea materializes, I dismiss it. These are my best friends. Nobody killed me.
But then, how is it possible that I drowned?
Mera doesn’t stop screaming, not even after my friends have gone outside after her. And then I hear them, all of them, reacting as they see me.
It’s pure horror. I close my eyes.
“Do you want to go out there?” Alex asks, his tone tentative. He already knows the answer.
I shake my head. When I speak, the words come out fast and frantic. “I want to go home. You said I can go home. How do I do that?”
“They’ll be calling your parents soon, Liz.” He shakes his head. “It’s not a good idea.”
I stare at him. Who is he to tell me what I should and shouldn’t do right now? “I don’t care. I want to go home.”
“But do you really want to see that? I’m telling you, it will break your heart.”
“Now,” I tell him firmly. “Before it’s too late. Before they get the call.”
“Okay …,” he says, obviously reluctant. “It’s just like earlier, when you went into the memory with me. Just close your eyes, and imagine that you’re already home.” He pauses. “Do you want me to come with you?”
My breath is shaky. I don’t want him with me; I don’t even like him. But more than that, I don’t want to be alone.
“Yes,” I admit. “Will you come?”
He almost shudders. “You’ll have to touch me again.”
“Oh, how terrible for you.” With force, I clasp my hand onto his shoulder. “Close your eyes,” I order. “Let’s go.”
My parents are still asleep in bed. I call them my parents; I’ve been calling my stepmom, Nicole, “Mom” for the last eight years, which is as long as she’s been married to my dad. I know it might seem strange that she fell into the role so quickly—my mom wasn’t dead a year before Nicole and my dad married—but I was so young. And like I said, I was angry with my mother for leaving us. Nicole had always been nice to me. And when I got her as a stepmom, I got Josie, too. I had a sister. We were best friends. It was like a slumber party every night.