I struggled with the memory, trying to grasp at it, when another figure joined him at the edge of the bridge and flung its arm around Doug’s neck. When it leaned forward, I could see its face.
It was Serena Taylor.
Serena had been my best friend since childhood. The girl I’d met during endless hours of home-schooled soccer, forced on us by our parents in an attempt to make us socialize. The girl who’d taught me how to apply lipstick, sneak sips from the bottles in my dad’s liquor cabinet, and charm my dad into letting me go to public high school shortly after she’d entered it. The girl who was as blond and as beautiful as Doug and who, once I’d introduced her to him, had tried various schemes to seduce him, including forcing him to help her organize a party.
The one they’d thrown together for my eighteenth birthday.
The day on which I’d died.
My head jerked up to Doug and Serena again. They were both bent over the railing of the bridge, their faces more visible now. Even from this far away and through the rain, I could tell something was wrong with them. Their nearly identical blue eyes looked too dark, too unfocused.
Inexplicably, I started to shake. Staring up at their familiar faces—faces that shouldn’t still look eighteen, should they?—I felt dizzy.
At that moment Serena cried out to me. Her shrill voice pierced the night air, sounding slurry and drunk and completely out of control.
“Amelia! Amelia. Happy, happy birthday, baby!”
She reached an arm out to me and, with an absurdly wide smile, gave me a frantic wave.
Before I could answer her, or scream at her to help me, for God’s sake, I had a sudden, uncontrollable flash.
It happened much like the other flashes I’d been experiencing since I’d met Joshua—the sights and sounds of the past, the memories I’d forgotten since my death, came rushing back into my mind.
Without warning, I was standing in front of my locker in the brightly lit hallway of Wilburton High School. Taped to the front of my locker was a small card decorated with cartoon balloons. I didn’t need to open it to know who had taped it there. Nor did I feel any real surprise when the card giver squealed out a greeting behind me.
“Happy birthday, birthday girl!”
Grinning widely, I spun around. “Serena, you’ve had about ninety tardies this semester. Don’t you think you should be in homeroom by now?”
She grinned back and then blew one blond strand out of her eye with a puff of breath. “Not on my bestie’s b-day.” She flopped against the bank of lockers, banging their doors with the paper bag in her hand.
“What’s with the bag?” I asked. “And the trench coat?”
With her free hand, Serena tugged at the belt of her khaki overcoat, and it fell open. Underneath, she wore a pink dress that narrowly towed the line between sexy and sleazy. Its tight bodice plunged just a little too low for my taste, and its hemline crept just a little too high.
“Hello, hot stuff,” I crowed.
“Glad you approve.” She tossed the bag at me, and I caught it in midair. “Here’s yours for tonight. Hope you like strapless.”
“Serena, I can’t—”
“Yes, you can,” she growled with mock ferocity.
“Okay, okay.” I laughed. “But what do you mean, ‘tonight’?”
“You didn’t think you’d get out of one of my famous parties, did you? Especially for your eighteenth birthday. It’s, like, mandatory.”
I groaned, more out of concession than protest. “Fine. When and where?”
She flashed me a wicked grin—one that, for some strange reason, made me uncomfortable.
“Not telling you, Amelia baby. I’m just picking you up at eight and escorting you to the best party of the year. After I talk your mom into a very irresponsible curfew, of course.”
“You’re going to start another one of our epic fights if you do.”
Serena, however, just shrugged, unconcerned about my family drama.
I laughed again, but more shakily this time. “Really, Serena. I need to know where the party’s going to be.”
She shook her head and winked. “Nope. Now, shut up so I can go find Doug and see if he approves of the dress too.”
Suddenly, the flash skipped me forward several hours. Images blurred all around me until my vision cleared and I found myself standing in a large crowd.
A huge crowd, actually. Tons of people surrounded me, smiling and laughing and converging around what looked like a small keg of beer. Some of them were my friends, from home-schooled extracurriculars as well as from Wilburton High. Most of the partygoers, however, were total strangers.
“Serena,” I said through clenched teeth. “Who are all these people?”
Serena bounced next to me, hyperactive and probably a little tipsy. She handed me her cup, and I took a nervous swig from it.
“Friends,” Serena giggled. “Or, like, all of Wilburton High. So . . . potential friends?”
“Is this Doug’s doing?” I asked, handing her back the cup and then smoothing imaginary wrinkles from my white dress.
Serena’s choice for my birthday outfit hadn’t really surprised me. The dress was absolutely gorgeous—strapless and tight on top, with layers of delicate tulle below—but also totally inappropriate. I flushed with embarrassment as I stared down at it. It probably made me look like I was on my way to prom.
A thick arm slung across my shoulder, making me shriek in surprise.
“Of course it is,” Doug said, pulling me closer to him. He took a sideways peek at me. “Nice dress, by the way.”
I shrugged out from under his arm. “You know you like Serena’s better.”
“Possibly,” he mused, and then pushed past me toward Serena. Within seconds the two of them had linked arms and disappeared into the crowd, leaving me alone, in a beautiful but embarrassing dress, at my own birthday party. I peered into the crowd, searching for my friends without success.
A loud boom distracted me from my search, and I looked up. Above me, the night sky appeared dark and blank, but I knew better; thick gray clouds had covered the sky all day, threatening storms. Now lightning sliced across the black, glinting harshly off the metal girders of High Bridge.
I hated this place, I really did. It was too rickety and too old, and it had seen far too many car accidents and suicides for my taste. But I had a good idea why Serena had chosen this bridge for my party: its bad reputation had left it pretty abandoned as a roadway, making it the perfect spot for wild parties. In fact, I may have been the only person in Wilburton who wasn’t inclined to booze it up on High Bridge. Tonight was no exception.
Thinking like this, however, hardly improved my mood. So I glanced at the faces around me, trying to find someone to talk to.
Everyone, however, ignored me completely. Well, all but one person ignored me. A boy, far into the crowd and only partly visible, caught my eye. He looked startled for a second, as if something about me surprised him, but then he smiled and gave me a slight nod. The gesture should have made me happy, but it actually unnerved me. I’m not really sure why since the boy was so attractive: oddly luminous skin beneath his long blond hair; bright blue eyes; and a black shirt, open provocatively over his bare chest to reveal a cluster of necklaces. But something about his smile seemed more like a smirk.
I leaned over to a girl who looked vaguely familiar and shouted above the noise. “Hey, you see Mr. Rock Star over there? What’s his story?”
“Who?” she yelled.
When I turned back to point him out, I could no longer see him in the sea of faces. Maybe he’d moved?
I frowned and began to shove through the crowd, suddenly and inexplicably intent on finding him. The crowd swayed and surged around me, sometimes blocking my way and sometimes pushing me forward. I studied each partyer but had about as much luck finding Mr. Rock Star as I’d had with Doug and Serena. As I elbowed my way across the bridge, raindrops began to fall, slowly at first and then gaining in speed.
r /> “Perfect,” I muttered, wiping at a fat droplet from the corner of my right eye. No matter how furiously I wiped, though, the droplet wouldn’t go away. In irritation, I swung my head violently to the right.
That’s when I saw them. They must have hung at the edge of my peripheral vision, almost but not quite out of sight: black shapes wafting through the crowd, circling around people’s heads. The inky, insubstantial things moved like liquid, undulating and swirling. Yet they looked dense, almost like clouds, or . . .
“Smoke!” I screamed, pressing against a particularly out-of-control boy.
I kept screaming the word and shoving against people, but the crowd responded to my screams with nothing but shrieked laughter and unfocused stares, as if they couldn’t see me, much less the strange shapes moving above their heads.
I started to panic. My adrenaline surged, and I tried to elbow my way through the thick mass of unresponsive bodies.
Suddenly, my arms broke through the crowd. My hands flailed in the air for a moment until they caught something solid: the cold, wet smoothness of metal. I grasped it tightly and used it to pull myself free from the wall of bodies.
I looked down and saw my hands clutched to the edge of the metal guardrail of the road, a flimsy one meant to keep cars from plummeting off the bridge and into the river below.
With the crowd writhing behind me, I hugged the railing as if to escape them. But escape to where, honestly? I spared one glance below me, to the river.
The water rose up to me, swelled by almost three weeks of Oklahoma’s spring storms. I’d never seen the water so high or so churned by the speeding current. The river seemed to foam at the edges, frothing like a rabid dog. The sight of it sent a deep, piercing chill through me.
And yet . . .
What if I just . . . jumped?
I leaned farther over the rail, staring into the water. Sure, I was a few stories up, and the river looked more dangerous than I’d ever seen it. But maybe I could get away from the party if I leaned forward just a little more . . . ?
I gasped and pulled myself back from the guardrail, shaking my head in fear. What on earth had given me that impulse, made me think I could just jump down and swim away? Where had that so obviously lethal idea come from?
At that moment I’d never felt so strong an urge in my life: I wanted to be away from this place. Away from this crowd of strangers and the bizarre smoke hovering—seemingly without source—above them. Away from this river.
I stared back into the crowd, desperate to find someone I knew. Someone who could get me out of here.
At that moment I caught his eye again. Mr. Rock Star. He watched me from behind an array of faces, now wearing an unmistakable smirk. I don’t know how I knew, but instantly, I just did—he could see the fear in my eyes. And he was enjoying it.
Before I could call out to him, to tell him to leave me alone, another face popped in front of his. When Serena gave me a broad grin, I nearly fainted with relief. She brushed aside the partyers until she broke through to stand in front of me.
“Serena, thank God—”
“Amelia!” she interrupted with a happy cry, and then threw her arms around my neck in a fierce hug.
The motion was too forceful, and it nearly rocked me over the railing. I grabbed onto the edge of the curved metal, clawing desperately against its smooth surface.
“Serena, let me up!” I screamed.
Immediately, she dropped her arms, and I was able to plant myself against the railing once more. But instead of checking my safety or even calming me down, Serena turned back to the swaying mass on the bridge.
“Hey, all you people,” she said, slurring each word. I’d never heard her so drunk. “Did you know it’s Amelia’s eighteenth birthday?”
In response, the entire crowd shifted its focus to us. The effect was disturbing, as if hundreds of eyes had simultaneously riveted on me. Now I could just make out Doug’s blue eyes, no more than twenty feet away. Mr. Rock Star’s eyes also reappeared, sparkling coldly, close to Doug’s. Above all of them, the black shapes still floated, slipping over and around each figure.
Suddenly, the partyers all began to speak again, but this time they spoke only one word. The same word, repeated over and over again in a hundred different voices.
My name.
Still staring at them, Serena leaned back against me, and her weight pushed me farther over the rail. My feet actually lifted up off the asphalt and swayed slightly in the air.
The motion should have horrified me. Yet when Serena spun back around to face me, I found myself transfixed by her eyes.
They were unfocused, as anyone’s would be if they were drunk enough. I’d seen her eyes affected by drink before, plenty of times. But whatever clouded Serena’s eyes now, it certainly wasn’t alcohol. Her eyes seemed too wide and vacuous, the pupils so enlarged that only a thin line of blue circled them.
Serena looked possessed.
When she leaned in to me this time, I flinched. But my fear didn’t deter Serena. She closed the space between us, pushing me farther and farther over the bridge until I was parallel with the river. Then Serena grasped my shoulders and, in a raspy whisper, said, “Happy birthday, bestie.”
With a strange, too-wide grin, she let go of my shoulders.
That movement was all it took.
My scarce balance upon the guardrail vanished. I rolled backward and hovered for what seemed like an eternity on the edge of the railing. Then I fell, tipping over the metal. Beneath, I could hear the water, foaming and slavering as the river rushed up to meet me. Just before I hit the water, I could hear a chorus of shouts above me.
At that moment the flash ended.
For a while I’d almost forgotten I was experiencing a flash. But the past blurred and faded, and I was once again back in the river, staring up at the bridge.
A terrible realization dawned on me. I didn’t know how or why, but when this latest flash ended, it didn’t take me back to the present and the relative safety of my graveyard. Instead, the flash left me still flailing in the river, still experiencing what I’d initially thought was just another afterlife nightmare.
So, the flash hadn’t ended. Not really. Because this was the present, in a sense. I was still here, in the river, on the night of my eighteenth birthday. And, suddenly, Doug and Serena were still staring down at me with wild eyes.
“Doug, she sees us!” Serena shrieked. “Amelia sees us!”
Doug didn’t respond to her proclamation, nor did he break eye contact with me. He just grinned like a crazy person and, as Serena had done before the flash, waved at me.
I could still see the shadows, dark and swirling around my friends. I knew what they were now. Those shadows could be nothing other than the trapped souls from the netherworld. Eli’s minions. The mindless orchestrators of this entire evening.
“Doug, Serena, please. I can’t . . .”
My voice came out even fainter than it had before the flash. I could feel myself losing the fight against the current. I was far too weak to swim out of the stormy waters now; I knew it. I would need their help.
Help they didn’t necessarily seem inclined to provide me. Doug and Serena looked like statues, standing stock-still on the bridge.
“Please,” I called out once more, as loudly as I could.
At the sound of my watery voice, Serena turned toward the crowd of partyers behind her. She called out to them, her voice rising to a hysterical octave over their laughter.
“Hey, everyone! Let’s sing ‘Happy Birthday’!”
I shook my head feebly. I wanted to scream out to the crowd, to beg them not to listen to Serena. To tell them they were all being controlled by dark spirits, driven wild and out of their minds. But my voice, like my arms, seemed to be on the brink of failure. Instead, I stared at Serena and pled silently with my eyes.
Serena looked back at me with a suddenly determined stare. I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Her expression could only mean on
e thing: she’d decided to call for help. The police, an ambulance, maybe even my parents. Whoever came, I didn’t care so long as someone pulled me out of this water.
But when Serena finally spoke, she did so calmly, warmly. With no sense of urgency at all.
“This one’s for you, Amelia, baby,” she said, and then turned toward the crowd. “Ready, everyone? Okay!”
A unison of voices surged from the bridge, like a choir.
“Happy birthday, dear Amelia . . .”
“No!” I screamed, trying to struggle once more against the waves.
But of course, my scream never rose above a hoarse whisper, and my struggles were nothing compared to the control the current now had over my body. I was fast losing my ability to stay afloat, much less escape the drag of the current.
With horrifying clarity, I realized what was happening. The people above me were too crazed, too lost, to help me. I wouldn’t regain my strength. And I would continue to weaken in my fight against the river.
There was only one way this scene could end.
No! I screamed in my head. This doesn’t have to happen again. I can change this. I don’t have to die this time, I don’t!
“Help!” I screamed aloud, but my energy was almost completely gone and the scream echoed only in my mind. My head bobbed underwater and stayed there for a few seconds. When the current bobbed me back up to the surface, I gasped in fear.
The gasp didn’t have much of a lifespan, because the current almost immediately yanked me back down. Once under, I continued to gulp for air, swallowing more water in the process. The current spun me around and finally pulled me to the other side of the bridge before it lifted me out of the water again.
Coughing and sputtering, I looked up at the bridge, now from the opposite side from which I’d fallen. I could just make out the rain-blurred figures of Doug and Serena running to this side of the bridge. I tried to reach out to them, but I couldn’t even bring my arm above the surface of the river.
Only then did I notice Serena hold something out to me. It was her hand, once again extended over the railing toward me. She gave me another cheerful wave, flailing her arm joyously in the thick rain.