Absurdly, someone in the crowd actually did that ooooh sound, as though Ben had come up with some kind of magnificent burn instead of pretty much making up a nonsensical statement that contained only the insult of calling me crazy, which everyone had already assumed anyway. Whatever.
Alona yelped suddenly, and I turned to see that Erin/Lily had taken advantage of our distraction and scrambled out from underneath Alona and was running for the woods, her bad leg slowing her down only slightly.
If she got away now, we might never be able to find her again. I lurched after her, but Ben grabbed my arm.
“Where do you think you’re going, man? We’re having a conversation.”
Alona rose to her feet unsteadily, still flickering. I yanked my arm free of Ben’s grasp and focused on her.
She tipped her head to one side to look at me, her hair gleaming in the torchlight and her eyes bright with unshed tears. She reached out and touched my face, her fingers alternating between warm and solid, and cold and barely there.
And I knew this was good-bye.
I shook my head mutely, tears welling. “Don’t.”
“Are you going to cry, Will Kill?” Ben demanded.
She leaned in to me, pressed her cheek against mine, and whispered, “Be careful,” then slipped away before I could grab her.
“No!” I started after her, but Ben stepped around to block me. I caught a glimpse of her passage through the crowd, people moving involuntarily away from a strange cold spot near them. But then she was gone, beyond the reach of the lights, and into the shadow of the woods.
“We’re not done talking about how you crashed my party, freak,” Ben said, giving me a shove. Others behind him—ambitious juniors, the new seniors now—circled in anticipation, beer fueling their need to prove something.
Suddenly I was weary. Tired of all this stupid posturing and bullshit when more important things—life-and-death matters—were going on.
I sighed. “Look, high school is over. And if you weren’t such a dickhead, you’d know that. We’re just people now, okay? All of us. And you’re not any better than—”
That’s when he punched me. Hard.
It hurt more than I’d thought, leaving Will behind. I didn’t want to do this alone. I didn’t want to die again…alone.
I shoved those thoughts away, forcing myself to focus on the task at hand. Finding Erin.
Fortunately, even in the dark, it wasn’t that difficult. The moonlight was pretty bright…and she was crashing through the underbrush like a lovesick elephant.
“It’s called grace, and maybe a little coordination,” I muttered when I heard her hit the ground with a thud.
I paused for a second to catch my breath—it would take her longer to get back up and going again—and leaned forward, my hands on my knees. Unfortunately, I could see right through my lower half to the tree behind me, down to the detail on the bark.
With effort, I tried to shift to thinking happy thoughts. Mrs. Turner lighting up at the prospect of a shopping trip with her daughter. Will smiling at me. Will’s hand in mine. The way he would argue with me, not afraid to push back.
So many of them were related to Will and the last few months. Well, it kind of made sense. I hadn’t really lived until after I’d died, in some ways.
But this time, focusing on the positive didn’t seem to make any difference. I could still see through me. Which meant this was it.
I took a deep breath, feeling surprisingly calm at the idea. But there was one more thing I had to take care of.
I rallied my flagging strength and pushed myself forward to where I’d last heard Erin.
As expected, she was just picking herself up off the ground.
I folded my arms across my chest, hoping it made me look more imposing, which is, frankly, a tough feat when you’re mostly invisible. “Erin.”
She spun around, startled, and nearly fell down again.
Good grief.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, wobbling until she regained her balance.
Evidently she hadn’t heard me following her amid all the noise she was making. Shocking.
I huffed impatiently. “You know why I’m here.”
She laughed, swaying. How much had she had to drink?
“Nope, not yet,” she declared. “Not done with my turn yet.” She swiped her hands down her front, succeeding in removing some dead leaves and twigs.
I stalked toward her, closing the distance between us. “This isn’t a game.”
She stepped back warily. “Maybe not to you.”
“It shouldn’t be to you either, stupid.” Oops, there I went being negative again. Guess it didn’t matter now. “Where do you think you’re going to go?”
She glanced over her shoulder, deeper into the woods. “There’s got to be a through street or a highway or something…eventually.”
“Not like that.” I rolled my eyes. “I mean, you’ve been hanging around in the in-between for five years. How much longer do you think it will last? Another five years? Five days? All I can tell you is it won’t be forever, and it’s way less now that you’re blowing through energy carrying her around.” I nodded toward her appropriated body.
“You’re lying.”
“Nope, I’m not. I was in there once, remember? And look at me now.” I gestured down at the vague outline of my body.
Her eyes narrowed. “You’re only saying that because you want me out so you can take over again.”
“You honestly think I’m going to be able to do much of anything like this?” It pained me to admit that to her.
Her smug look returned. “Then I guess we’re done here.” But then she hiccuped, destroying what I’m sure she imagined was a triumphant moment.
I sighed. “Not even. Look, the girl whose body you’re wearing, she has a family.”
“So?”
“So…” I resisted the urge to add “you jerk,” because I wanted to have the time to finish the conversation. “She’s not a plaything. She’s a real person with people who care about her. You can’t just waltz around as her, doing whatever you want. They’re worried about her. Thinking she’s run off or been kidnapped or something.”
In fact, the image of Mrs. Turner hunched by the phone waiting for news, as she’d once sat by Lily’s bedside, waiting for her daughter to show some sign of life, killed me. I hated that I wouldn’t get to thank her, however indirectly, for all she’d done for me, even though she believed it was for her daughter. She…cared. Really cared. And it was, well, a nice experience, if an unfamiliar one.
Erin waved a dismissive hand. “Like you bothered with that when you were her.”
I gritted my teeth. “I did, actually.”
“Why?” she asked, sounding genuinely surprised. “What’s the point?”
“The point is that in death, just like in life, not everything is about you!” The words exploded out of my mouth before I had time to consider them, and when I did…I found I believed them.
Huh.
“Everyone is struggling in their own way,” I said, trying to find the words to convince her, to make her understand. “Whether you can see it or not. If you can’t make things better, you have an obligation to try, at least, not to make them suck more. Got it?”
“Who says?” she demanded. “God or something?”
“I don’t know,” I said wearily. I could feel my energy fading, whispering in my ear that I should stop fighting and lie down. “How about human decency?”
Erin opened her mouth to protest, but I held up my hand. “All I’m saying is your choices will come back on you. Trust me.” I sat down at the base of the nearest tree and leaned against the trunk, feeling a small measure of relief.
Erin eyed me with a frown. “But I didn’t get my chance,” she said in a small voice.
“Yeah. You did,” I said. “And you blew it by limboing a little too close to the edge. Sucks to be you.”
She glared at me.
; “But the point is that if you’re determined to stick with this…with her”—I gestured at her body—“you still have the opportunity to do the right thing for someone else. A family who never did anything to you, who never cost you any portion of your life.”
She grimaced.
Yeah. Having a corporeal form was way less of a party when you had to think of other people’s feelings. Ha. Welcome to my world.
“Erin?”
She looked up startled, and I turned around to see Ed, the moonlight reflecting sharply off his glasses, stumbling through the brush toward us. Great.
“Ed? What are you doing here?” She took a step toward him and then remembered my presence and held her ground, perhaps afraid I’d take a swipe at her ankle when she walked by. And…who knows? I might have, if I could’ve summoned the effort.
He stopped a few feet away, putting me in between them, and cocked his head to one side. “Is that really you in there?”
“How did you find me?” she asked, unfolding her arms and then refolding them, as if she didn’t know quite what to do with her body in this situation.
I could imagine. She was a twin, probably used to looking at Ed and seeing some version of herself. Not anymore. He towered over her.
“I followed you from the party,” he said, studying her as if he wasn’t sure what he was seeing.
She sighed. “When you bashed your head on the coffee table because I was chasing you—”
“—you told Mom it was the dog,” he said grimly.
“Satisfied?” she asked with a smirk.
“What is…What are you doing?” He frowned.
She brushed herself off again. “Like it? It’s a new look.”
I groaned. “Were you even listening to anything I said?” I demanded.
She scowled at me and then returned her attention to her brother. “Well?”
“Who is she?” he asked finally, nodding at her body.
She jerked back, obviously not expecting that question. “What?”
“I mean, who is it?” he asked, sounding exhausted, like he’d been having this conversation, or some type of it, for years.
“It’s…it’s me.” She gave a nervous laugh. “We covered that already, remember?”
He didn’t say anything.
“Oh, come on, Eddie, don’t be such a pain. What’s the big deal? This is good for all of us,” she said pleadingly. “I can have the life I missed out on, and you don’t have to blame yourself anymore. I’m making things better, for both of us.”
So, clearly, nothing I’d said had stuck with her.
“So this is your solution, to take what you want, just like always?” His voice was deceptively calm, but even I could hear the thread of anger running beneath the surface.
Apparently, so could Erin. “I don’t have to listen to this.” She turned away, pointing her nose up in indignation, but she stumbled and fell again when she tried to stalk off.
“I am sorry,” Ed said in a clear, calm, angry tone.
She looked over her shoulder at him, her eyes wide with panic.
“I should have gone with you,” he said, “if only to keep you from hurting yourself.”
“What are you doing? Stop it. We don’t talk about this.” She scrambled to her feet. “We never talk about this!” She sounded outraged and maybe a little afraid.
“But the truth is, I was tired of always doing what you said, and I was starting to think for myself. And you knew it.” He advanced on her, drawing even with me. “You were losing control over me, and you wanted to punish me for it.”
“No.” She shook her head. “It was an accident!” Despite the anger in her voice, Erin was crying. I could hear her sniffling. I sympathized. I didn’t know what Erin was like, but Lily was a crier, for sure. In that body, there was no way around it. Angry, happy, sad, surprised, Lily would sob through it all.
“It wasn’t. Want to know how I know?” Ed demanded. “You’re afraid of heights,” he continued without waiting for an answer. “I could never figure out why you were on that roof in the first place. The only reason you would have gone up there was to prove something. I thought it was to those other people, the frat guys and whoever, but they wouldn’t have known what it meant for you to do that, would they? But I did.”
“It was an accident,” she repeated. “I slipped and—”
“No.” Ed shook his head vehemently. “This is just like all those other times: Cub Scouts, the science fair, prom. I wasn’t playing along, so you did whatever you thought it would take. A few bumps and bruises from a tumble off a roof, and you knew I’d make damned sure you didn’t go to another party alone, even if it meant sitting in a corner all night while you ran around talking to people.”
Holy crap. Erin had done this to herself? By accident, it sounded like, but still…that was hard-core.
“You didn’t mean to kill yourself,” Ed continued, “but—”
“Of course not!” she shouted, her fists clenched at her sides. “It’s your fault that I’m like this.” She gestured down at herself, and I had to assume she meant being dead rather than being in Lily’s body. The latter was all on her. “If you’d come with me, the way I’d asked you, the way you were supposed to, then none of this would have happened. But oh, no, Edmund always has to be difficult. Never mind what I’m trying to do for us.”
“I didn’t want to be somebody new, talking about keg stands and frat parties. I liked who we were,” he said.
“We were losers!” she snapped. “I was trying to make us better, but you’re so selfish—”
“As selfish as hurting yourself to get other people to do what you want?” he demanded.
She threw her hands up in frustration. “Like I had a choice!”
“There is always a choice!” he shouted back at her. Then he stopped, visibly making an effort to calm himself. “You made yours, and I’m making mine. You have owned me for the last five years. You let me torture myself with guilt for something you did. But I’m done. This is my life, and I want to live it.”
Uh-oh. I could sense some kind of change looming, like a charge in the air around us. I would have spoken up in warning, but suddenly it felt like too much effort. I didn’t bother to look down to check the progress of my disappearance. It wasn’t like it was going to be getting any better, right?
Erin seemed to sense the shift, too. She looked truly scared for the first time, and stepped toward her twin, her hands out in a placating gesture. “Eddie, wait, listen. It wasn’t like that.”
He looked at her in a cool, evaluating way that actually made me feel a little sympathy for her. “I’m sorry you’re dead, and I’m sure I’ll miss you…eventually.”
Oh, ouch.
She flinched.
He took a deep breath and tilted his face toward the dark sky above us. “I’m letting her go. She doesn’t need to be here for me anymore,” he declared.
A chill slid over my skin at his words. He and Will must have had another chat after I’d left the car.
“Edmund!” Erin shrieked, her hands flying up over her head as if to fend off some invisible force from above.
But nothing happened. At first.
Then her eyes rolled back, and she collapsed…or, rather, Lily’s body fell to the ground. And standing above it was the whisper-thin outline of Erin in her original form, barely visible in the bright moonlight. The pink of her bikini was a mere hint of color in her rapidly fading appearance.
He’d released her, completed his unfinished business with her, and now she was disappearing, her energy depleted from possessing Lily’s body.
What was left of Erin, more shadow than person, stepped toward her brother, but he looked away.
She glanced around wildly until she spotted me. Help me, she mouthed.
I shook my head, which felt like it weighed about thirty pounds. I could have told her to try to claim her brother, as I’d reclaimed Will, but I wasn’t sure it would work. Same with trying a barrage of
positive thoughts and comments. Eventually she’d have ended up right where I was…vanishing for good.
“This is it.” I forced the words out. “Last chance. One more opportunity to make the right choice.”
She rolled her eyes.
I made a frustrated noise. “You don’t get it. You go this way and there’s nothing else. Gone for good.”
Erin’s eyes widened.
“So, don’t be a dumbass,” I said wearily. But to be honest, I thought this was a bit of a long shot. After all, I was disappearing, too—a little slower, thanks to my connection with Will, but it was still happening. And the light hadn’t come for me. What were the odds that it would come for her, even if she did manage to pull the stick out of her butt and say the right thing to her brother?
We were both screwed, most likely. But if she could make Ed’s existence slightly better before she went, that could only help.
She shifted her attention to her twin, who still was not looking at her.
I’m sorry. I could see the words flash across her mouth, but of course he couldn’t hear them. He didn’t even glance—didn’t see her making the effort.
And that finally seemed to spark a sense of panic in her.
She flailed her arms around in front of him, her lips moving in a rapid stream of words.
But her brother remained oblivious, half turned away from her.
“Oh, come on,” I said to him, knowing he couldn’t hear me, but unable to resist the urge to say something. “Look at her.” It would have been one thing for her to try and fail anyway, but for her to try and have him not even be aware of it? That wasn’t fair to either of them.
She stopped jumping around and shouting, then, to stare at him, her focus almost palpable.
Yeah, like that was going to work.
But to my surprise, after only a few seconds, he turned swiftly, almost as if he didn’t realize he was moving until it was too late to stop, and their gazes locked. For the first time, I recognized clear similarities between them.
He was older now, of course, so they looked more like regular siblings than twins. But their hair color, the shape of their faces…I could see it now.
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…She mouthed the words, slowly and distinctly, but her gaze conveyed desperation.