To Robert. In an instant. In a heartbeat.

Contents

Chapter One

It was the same as always, but different from the…

Chapter Two

My first impression of the scene was wrong. The water…

Chapter Three

Two days passed.

Chapter Four

I was just full of foolish impulses lately. There he…

Chapter Five

Hours can pass like years when you wait impatiently for…

Chapter Six

That night I didn’t mark the passage of time with…

Chapter Seven

I shouldn’t have been surprised. My world had changed the…

Chapter Eight

Death may have stolen my old memories of riding in…

Chapter Nine

After school ended, Joshua drove us back to Robber’s Cave…

Chapter Ten

By the time Joshua pulled his car off the main…

Chapter Eleven

I have no idea how long I wandered after I…

Chapter Twelve

I bolted upright, gasping.

Chapter Thirteen

At the sound of the knock on the window, we…

Chapter Fourteen

After Ms. Wolters’s class ended and other students made their way…

Chapter Fifteen

Joshua guessed it would take us at least twenty minutes…

Chapter Sixteen

When the oppressive black water finally vanished, I woke up,…

Chapter Seventeen

Long after Ruth disappeared back into the church, I paced…

Chapter Eighteen

The first step into his bedroom transformed me into a…

Chapter Nineteen

While the night shifted into morning and Joshua slept on,…

Chapter Twenty

“Would you like to hear a story, Amelia?”

Chapter Twenty-One

I felt my vision narrow to a black pinpoint and…

Chapter Twenty-Two

Joshua hunched over his cup of coffee—the last remains of…

Chapter Twenty-Three

It was the same as always.

Chapter Twenty-Four

I woke up, still wheezing and gasping. My fingers twitched…

Chapter Twenty-Five

For a moment I thought something inside the graveyard—possibly a…

Chapter Twenty-Six

I should have known, from the first moment I spotted…

Chapter Twenty-Seven

I rushed to the guardrail, but I was too late.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

I thought I’d burned them all, incinerated the living and…

Chapter Twenty-Nine

I should have been scared. And I was. But instead…

Epilogue

“I’d stop asking you if you’d stop being such a…

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Chapter
ONE

It was the same as always, but different from the first time.

It felt as if my sternum was a door into which someone had roughly shoved a key and twisted. The door—my lungs—wanted to open, wanted to stop fighting against the twist of the key. That primitive part of my brain, the one designed for survival, wanted me to breathe. But a louder part of my brain was also fighting any urge that might let the water rush in.

The black water seized and scrambled and found purchase anywhere it could. I kept my lips pressed together and my eyes shut tight, though I desperately needed sight to escape this nightmare. Yet the water still entered my mouth and my nose in little seeps. Even my eyes and ears couldn’t hold it back. The water wrapped around my arms and legs like shifting fabric, tugging and pulling my body in all directions. I was buried under layers and layers of slippery, twisting fabric, and I wasn’t going to claw my way free.

I’d struggled too long, fought too hard, and now my body was weakening from the lack of oxygen. The flail of my arms toward what I assumed was the surface became less exaggerated, as if the invisible fabric around them had thickened. I literally shook my head against the urge to breathe. I shouted No! in my head. No!

But instinct is a slippery thing, too—ultimate and untrickable.

My mouth opened and I breathed.

And as I always did, except for the first time I’d experienced this nightmare, I woke up.

My eyes remained closed and I continued to gasp. This time my gasp brought hysterical gulps of air, but not the brackish water that had flooded my lungs and stopped my heart during that first nightmare.

Now the air was useless, purposeless in my dead lungs. I nonetheless felt a dull joy at its presence: although my heart no longer beat, the air meant I was no longer drowning.

Still, I felt a little silly for being afraid. After all, it’s not like you can die twice.

And I was already dead, that much was certain.

It had taken me awhile to accept the fact, perhaps years—time became a very uncertain thing in death. Years of wandering, confused and distracted by every sight and sound. Screaming at passersby, begging them to help me understand why I was so lost or even just to acknowledge my presence. I could see myself—bare feet, white dress, and dark brown hair that had dried into thick waves—but others couldn’t. And I never saw another person like myself, someone dead, so there was really no point of comparison.

The nightmares were what made me finally see, and accept, the truth.

At first nothing in my wandering existence brought back memories of my life, nothing but the elusive familiarity of the woods and roads I wandered.

But then the nightmares began.

I would suddenly and without warning fall into periods of unconsciousness. During them I would drown again. Only after the first few nightmares did I see them for what they were: memories of my violent death.

So the memories of my death had returned. Yet only a few memories of my life came with them: my first name—Amelia—but not my last; my age at death—eighteen—but not my date of birth; and, of course, the fact that I’d apparently thrown myself off a bridge into the storm-flooded river below. But not the reason why.

Though I couldn’t remember my life and what I’d learned in it, I still had some vague recollections of religious dogma. The few tenets I remembered, however, certainly hadn’t accounted for this particular kind of afterlife. The wooded, dusty hills of southeastern Oklahoma weren’t my idea of heaven; nor were the constant, narcoleptic revisits to the scene of my drowning.

The word “purgatory” would come to mind after I woke from each nightmare. I would play out my horrific little scene and then I would wake up, gulping and sobbing tearlessly, in the exact same place each time. It wouldn’t matter where I’d been wandering when I went unconscious—an abandoned railroad track, a thick grove of pines, a half-empty diner—my destination was always the same. And each time the nightmare ended, I would wake in a field. It was always daylight, and I was always surrounded by row upon row of headstones. A cemetery. Probably mine.

I never waited around to find out.

I could have searched for my headstone maybe. Could have learned more about myself—about my death. Instead, I’d pull myself up from the weeds and dash for the iron gate enclosing the field, running as fast as my nonexistent legs would carry me.

And so it was with my existence: a montage of aimless wanderings; an occasional word spoken to an unhearing stranger; and then the nightmares and subsequent hasty escapes from my waking place.

Until this nightmare.

This nightmare had started the same. And, just as it always did, it ended with a terrified awakening. But this time when I finally opened my eyes, I didn’t see the sunlight of a neglected cemetery. I saw only black.

The unexpected darkness brought back the terror, the frantic gasping. Especially since, after what would have been only one beat of my still heart, I recognized my location.

I was floating in the river again.

My renewed gulps, however, didn’t drag in muddy water that surrounded me. My body was still as insubstantial as it had been before this nightmare. It floated, unaffected by the drag and pull of the angry water. This time things were different, although the dark, twisting scene looked almost the same as it did in each of my horrible dreams.

Almost.

Because this time I wasn’t the one drowning.

He was.

Chapter
TWO

My first impression of the scene was wrong. The water wasn’t entirely black. Faint light shimmered above the surface—moonlight, maybe; it was too grayish to be sunlight. Below me two muted yellow beams seemed to rise from the depths of the river.

No, not rise. The beams pointed upward, but they were retreating. I spared a quick glance at them. They came from a huge, dark shape just below me. The shape—a car, its headlights beaming into the darkness—floated downward with an eerie slowness.

I shook my head. I didn’t really care about the car; my attention was riveted on the boy illuminated in its headlights.

His body had shaped itself into a kind of X, arms floating limply upward and sneakered feet dangling. His head hung down, but I could tell his eyes were closed.

This boy didn’t flail or struggle, and I had a sudden, sickening realization. The boy was unconscious. Not the kind of unconsciousness that torments the dead, but the kind that kills the living.

If he didn’t wake up, this boy was going to drown.

Without another thought, I swam to him as fast as I could. When I reached him, I could see his face fully. He was young, no older than I was when I died. His face looked peaceful in its stillness. He was strikingly handsome. I could see that, even under the water. His dark hair floated above his head almost lazily, considering the current. An involuntary and silly image sprang to my mind: his outspread arms resembled wings. Useless wings, at that. I wondered, almost idly, whether my arms had resembled his when I died.

My thoughts, then, were as sudden as they were fierce. This boy couldn’t die. I couldn’t watch him die. Not here, not like this.

I began to grasp at him, frantically trying to pull at his clothes and his limbs. To drag him to the surface. I tugged at his long-sleeved shirt and his jeans, even at his dark hair.

I pulled and pulled, but of course nothing happened. My stupid, dead hands couldn’t touch him, couldn’t save him. It was like struggling in the water on the night of my death—not a damn thing that I did would have any effect on the outcome. I was impotent, ineffective, and never more aware of the fact that I was dead.

Soon I started weeping my tearless sobs and pressed both my hands against his chest. As we sank deeper into the river, I became acutely aware of something: the sound of his slowing heartbeat.

As far as I knew, I possessed no supernatural senses whatsoever. Although some of my human senses had survived my death—my sight and hearing, obviously—I could no longer smell, taste, or feel anything in the living world. My remaining senses hadn’t dulled, but they certainly hadn’t improved, either.

So the sound of his heartbeat shocked me. I shouldn’t have heard it so well, but I did. Even with a foot of water between us and with my no-better-than-human hearing, I could hear his heartbeat as clearly as if I’d pressed a stethoscope to his chest.

I wondered whether this had something to do with death. With being dead. Perhaps the dead could hear one of our own approaching, racing toward us. Or slowing toward us, in his case.

The boy and I continued to sink; and as we did so, his fragile heart beat unevenly toward its end. Each thud came slower than the one before it, until finally—

His heart stuttered once. Twice. And then I couldn’t hear it anymore. A tiny bubble escaped the corner of his lips and floated upward.

I screamed. I screamed as I did in the first flush of death, angry and humiliated at my own lack of power. I screamed and slapped my useless hands against his chest.

At that moment his eyes opened.

He looked to the left and the right, taking in his surroundings. Then he looked at me. He looked right into my eyes.

I froze. Could he … see me?

He smiled, and then suddenly reached out his hand to place it upon my cheek. I felt his skin, warm on mine. Without thinking, I put my hand over his. His smile widened when I touched him.

He did see me.

He saw me, he saw me, he saw me.

My still, unbeating heart soared. And then so did his.

His heart—the one I’d just heard dying—stuttered, and stuttered again. The renewed beat sounded slow and uneven at first, but quickly it began to steady itself.

He looked down at his chest and back up at me, eyebrows arched in surprise at the sound coming from within him.

Then he coughed. The motion shook his whole body and sent bubbles flying out of his mouth.

He began to kick and flail. As he flailed, I realized I could no longer hear his heart. It was silent, at least to me. Yet he was thrashing about, fighting against the dark water. He continued to cough violently as his lungs spasmed back to life. Through the churning water, I could see his expression. He looked angry, terrified, and desperate.

I recognized that look. I had once felt that look. This boy was alive. He was alive, and he didn’t want to die.

“Swim!” I screamed at him suddenly. “Up! Out!”

He didn’t look at me, but he began to scissor his legs and grab at the water above his head as if he were climbing out of a pit. Unlike my efforts on the night of my death, however, his struggles worked. He began to float upward, toward the surface of the river.

I’d never felt a wave of relief like this. Not in a million nightmare-wakings. Not in a million of those gasps that proved I was no longer drowning.

“Up!” I screamed again, this time with joy.

He continued to claw his way up, not once looking back at me or at the sound of my voice as I followed him effortlessly. Perhaps to him I was once again other, different—dead. For the moment, I couldn’t have cared less. He would live. He wouldn’t die in this cold, wet pit like I had. That was more than enough.

It felt like an eternity until he broke the surface of the river, but he did. In the night air, he choked and sputtered and gasped, flapping his arms against the water as if he were trying to fly away from it.

I floated beside him, entirely unaffected by the current or the churning his movements had created. When he sucked in a huge breath of air, I actually laughed aloud and clapped my hands together. Then I clapped my hands over my mouth. I’d never laughed. Not once since my death.

“Josh! Josh!”

The unfamiliar voice startled me. Someone had called out across the river to us. Well, to the boy anyway. I turned away from him, almost unwillingly, and saw a cluster of figures on the riverbank behind us.

“Josh!” a girl’s voice screamed. “Oh Jesus, Josh, please! Someone help him!”

I turned to the boy, who was still coughing and flailing.

“Josh?” I asked. “Are you Josh?”

He didn’t answer.

“Well, Josh or not Josh, I know you’re tired. God knows I know. I know you probably can’t hear me, either. But you’ve got to swim toward those voices. Do you understand?”

For a second he didn’t react. Then, with painful slowness, he began to move his arms. The movements didn’t exactly qualify as swimming, but they were enough to start pushing his body through the water.

As he got closer, the screams from the shore grew louder. In them I could almost make out a rational thread of conversation concerning the plan to pull him out of the river.

But really, I wasn’t listening to the people on the shore. I was watching the boy swim, closer than I’d ever watched anything in my existence. I found myself praying for the first time since my death. Praying that he made it safely to the shore; praying that he didn’t give up and let the current take him.

“Please,” I whispered as I followed him. “Please, let him make it.”

This boy proved much stronger than I ever had. For several more agonizing minutes, he fought his way through the current. Finally, he was close enough so that someone was able to grab his arm and half swim, half drag him to the shore.

Cries of both joy and fear rose up from the crowd that had gathered on the grass embankment and the bridge above us. A man, the one who had pulled the boy from the water, stretched the boy out upon the muddy red riverbank. As I rose out of the water and walked onto the shore, I could see the man flutter his hands over the boy’s body, checking for some sign of life.

The boy instantly rolled over, coughed once, and began to vomit water. Audible sighs of relief rose up from the crowd. Their faces were illuminated by headlights from the cars parked in a jumble on the grass as well as on the bridge. The onlookers’ expressions varied from tense to excited to scared.

“Josh. Josh,” they called like a chorus.

They all seemed to know his name.

It was then that I noticed the multicolored flash of lights coming from the emergency vehicles that had formed their own sort of crowd behind the bystanders on the bridge. Within what seemed like only seconds, two uniformed paramedics had made their way down the embankment and knelt beside the boy, doing their own, more effective sort of fluttering over him. Within less than a minute after that, the boy—my boy, if I was honest in my suddenly possessive thoughts—was placed on a gurney and hoisted across the bank, then up toward an ambulance. The crowd surged forward with the paramedics, and I lost sight of him.

That should have been the end of the ordeal. Yet I couldn’t stand still. I couldn’t watch strangers take away the only living person to see me. My boy. My Josh.

Determined, I pushed through the crowd. They couldn’t see or feel me, of course, but I still had to fight to find a clear path.

By some miracle I made it through. I shoved in between two figures and suddenly found myself at the side of the gurney just as the paramedics began to raise its wheels so they could slide it and its passenger into the ambulance.

I leaned over the boy. He looked pale in the moonlight, his face gaunt and drawn. For some reason I had to hold back a sob.

“Josh?” I moaned, unsure of what to do. Unsure of everything.

He opened his eyes then. Dark-colored eyes—too dark a color to identify at night. He looked at me and held my gaze in the moment before the paramedics moved him out of my sight, possibly forever.

“Joshua,” he croaked, his voice rough from the river water. “Call me Joshua.”

Then the gurney was shoved into the ambulance, the doors slammed shut, and he was gone.

I stood there on the riverbank, motionless. Some of the onlookers remained after the departure of the ambulance, milling around to discuss what I could only assume was the near tragedy. I barely noticed when the last member of the crowd left and the last set of headlights disappeared into the darkness of the night. I wasn’t really paying enough attention to hear or see anything going on around me.

What I saw instead were his eyes, looking right into mine. What I heard was his voice … talking to me? Yes, I’m sure he’d been talking to me. No one had asked him to identify himself as they loaded him into the ambulance. He’d had no reason to give his name to anyone but me. Most of the crowd seemed to know him. Maybe they’d known him all his life. Maybe they’d sensed, as I had, how important he was.

Of course I knew his importance now. I knew it deep in my suddenly very awake core. I knew nothing about him—not his age, his last name, the way his voice would sound if it spoke my name. But I knew things had changed for me. They had changed forever.

Chapter
THREE

Two days passed.

Their passage, although probably not remarkable to the living, was extraordinary to me. I’d never really had a reason to count the passing days. The sun’s rising and setting had no effect on me except to obscure my vision at night. I didn’t need sleep, and my lack of company in daylight didn’t change at sunset. When the nightmares had begun—wrenching me from wakefulness into unconscious terror and then unfamiliar daylight—I’d lost the will to mark time altogether.

Until now.

Now I couldn’t stop counting each lonely moment as it passed.

On the first night, while I watched the ambulance drive away, I’d thought fleetingly of following it on foot. But I’d ultimately rejected the idea. Even though I could travel instantly through space and time in my nightmares, I hadn’t discovered a way to do so while awake. I still moved at a normal human pace, and I could probably walk for years before I found the hospital where the ambulance had taken the boy.

It hadn’t occurred to me until after the last car had left the riverbank that I could’ve snuck into an empty backseat, maybe gone with the driver to the hospital … and then what? The idea of stowing away with a living stranger on the slim possibility that I would end up at a hospital, wandering lost through its corridors in search of another stranger—well, I felt silly and irrational just imagining it.

Of course, milling around the scene of my death didn’t seem very rational, either.

From the bank of the river, I’d watched as police barricaded the gap in the bridge above me. I’d looked on as a wrecking crew, completely oblivious to their audience of one, towed the boy’s sodden car from the water. While these activities took place, I hardly questioned my desire to stay here—really, who wouldn’t be interested in such things?

But after the activity had ended, each subsequent moment I’d spent at this site made me feel more and more foolish.

For a while I’d tried to justify my need to linger. I told myself that I just needed some time to reorganize my thoughts before I began wandering aimlessly again.

Deep down, however, I knew the truth. I knew the real reason I didn’t leave this river.

I didn’t want to wander aimlessly anymore. I wanted to wander with a very specific aim. I wanted to wander to someone.

Someone who had nearly died (or actually died; I couldn’t be sure) in this river. Someone who, in doing so, had changed me irrevocably.

There were signs, other than my unwillingness to leave, that a change had taken place. First, there were what I came to think of as “flashes.” I would be walking through the woods beside the river, or along the bank, and a flash would happen. An image—bright and colorful, and full of smell and taste—would flash across my mind and then disappear as fast as it had arrived.

Like my nightmares, the flashes occurred unexpectedly. But instead of terror and pain, the flashes brought something infinitely more appealing: what I could only assume were memories of my life before death.

Nothing significant had appeared yet: a black ribbon fluttering in the wind; the sound of a tire squealing on pavement; the earthy smell of a spring storm. No people, no names, no fleshed-out scenes to give me some clue as to who I was or why I’d died. Nor did I really experience the tastes and smells. The things that occurred in the flashes were more like ghosts of those sensations. But they were enough.

However little I saw, I became more and more certain that these images were mine. My memories from life, breaking free of the fog that death had wrapped around my mind.

And it was because of him. Because of his eyes on mine. Because of his hand upon my cheek, placed there as naturally and easily as it would have been had we been made of the same stuff. Skin, blood, bone. Breathing, seeing, touching.

The mere memory of his skin on mine made me tingle. But not some fleeting, imaginary tingle—this was a sensation. An actual, physical sensation. And the next, most miraculous, change in my new existence.

The first time I’d felt something had occurred on the night of the accident. While I stood on the riverbank watching the lights of the ambulance fade, I’d become aware of an odd, pins-and-needles sensation in the soles of my feet. I stared down at them, confused and afraid. Suddenly, I could feel the mud between my toes and the tickling of the dry grass upon my bare feet. Then, just as abruptly as it had begun, the sensation had ended.

The event had stunned me, to say the least. For so long I’d been desperate for a waking, physical sensation. I’d wanted to feel something, anything. Yet I could place my hand on an object, press myself against it, and it would never matter. I felt nothing. Nothing but a dull pressure that prevented me from going further.

My afterlife had proved all the supernatural stereotypes wrong. I couldn’t walk through walls or float amorphously from room to room. The living people who came close to me didn’t walk through my body but instead seemed to move unthinkingly around me, as though I were just an obstacle in their path.

The only thing I could feel, could affect, was myself. I could touch my hair, my dress, my own skin. After a while this exception provided me no comfort. Actually, it became more of a big, hideous joke: I was trapped in a prison of one. It was as if I existed in my own little dimension, unseen and unheard by others but maddeningly aware of my surroundings.

I have no words to describe the way that made me feel: not only invisible, but also without the power of smell, taste, even touch. Then, how to describe the way I felt when I realized my only physical sensations occurred in the nightmares through which I reexperienced my death?

Or, alternately, how to describe the touch of a hand on my cheek after so long?

Not only was the touch itself extraordinary, but it had also opened some sort of floodgate of sensations.

In the two days following the accident, and at the strangest moments, I would feel things from the living world. Such as the rough bark of the blackjack oak tree against which I’d leaned, or a tiny drop of rain when a brief shower had passed over the river. These feelings came and went quickly, outside of my control.

Yet I found I could control one of them: the little thrill in my veins each time I thought of his skin. This thrill bore a haunting similarity to a quickened pulse in my wrists and neck, so I sought ways to replicate it as often as I could.

I was thinking of his skin again when another flash occurred. Without warning, a scent overwhelmed me, capturing me completely. I froze where I stood, smelling a cluster of late-summer blackberries that clung to a bramble along the tree line. I leaned closer to them, breathing in their smell, tart and overripe under the noonday sun. Although the scent soon vanished and the numbness began to creep back over me, I laughed aloud.

This was the second laugh of my afterlife, and I wanted more of them. Without another thought, I dashed up the steep, grassy embankment to the bridge.

Bounding tall hills in a single breath. Or no breath at all. Super Dead Girl. I laughed again, feeling giddy as I arrived at the top of the hill and began to stride across the grass.

When I crossed the shoulder to the road, however, I froze, one bare foot on the pavement and one on the grass, arms out in an imitation of a trapeze artist.

High Bridge Road.

The words whispered like a threat in my mind, and I immediately had an urgent desire to get away from this place. I could feel a gnawing at the back of my mind, an itch creeping up and down my skin.

Did I sense the stirrings of another nightmare? No, this felt like an entirely different kind of foreboding, one I’d never before experienced.

I shook my head. I was being ridiculous. After all, I was dead. What could be scarier than me?

I forced one foot off the grass and the other farther onto the pavement. My legs moved almost involuntarily, and each step along the shoulder of the road sent unpleasant tingles up my spine.

This is stupid, I thought. I straightened my back. I refused to skulk on the side of the road like a dog with its hair on end.

“Move it,” I commanded myself aloud. I strode forward with purpose, albeit still a little stiffly. Each step unnerved me further, but I didn’t slow until I made it almost halfway across the bridge.

I only stopped when I reached the jagged gap in the waist-high metal railing to my right. Yellow police tape and a few wooden sawhorses stood between the gap and the road, ready and willing to keep absolutely nothing from plummeting off the bridge. The torn railing hung out over the edge of the bridge on both sides of the gap, swaying lightly in the breeze. His—Joshua’s—car had torn a hole at least six feet wide into the railing before flying into the river.

I shivered from the very idea of the crash as well as from the sound of his name in my head. Wrapping my arms around my body, I spared a timid glance at the ground. Streaks of black rubber crisscrossed the pavement where his tires had made a futile attempt to keep him from going over the edge.

It was then I heard the scream, a terrible, pealing sound that shrieked from behind me.

I actually jumped up in the air. An expletive, one I didn’t even know I knew, flew out of my mouth as I turned to face the sound.

Only then did I see that the horrible noise hadn’t been a scream after all. It had been the sound of tires squealing to a sudden stop. Only ten feet away from me, a black car parked, and the door opened.

Without thinking, I relaxed. My ghostly instincts kicked in and told me there was no need to run, no need to fear anything. Because if it drove a car, it couldn’t hurt me. It couldn’t even see me.

But, obviously, my instincts had forgotten the one exception to this rule, even if my heart hadn’t.

A boy climbed out of the driver’s side of the car and slammed the door shut. From his profile I could see he had full lips and a fine nose with just the slightest curve in it, as though it had been broken once but set well. He had almost black hair and large, dark eyes. When he cast those eyes on me, I absently mused that he was a much healthier color than when I’d last seen him.

“You! It’s you!” he cried, pointing right at me.

Without another thought, I turned and ran.

Chapter
FOUR

I was just full of foolish impulses lately. There he stood, the boy about whom I’d been thinking—obsessing, really—for the past two days. Yet I ran, as fast as I could, in the opposite direction. Had any of my adrenaline still existed, it would have burned in my legs as I fled.

Apparently, and as I’d suspected, my ghostly instincts had become as strong as my living ones had been. Ghosts weren’t meant to be seen, no matter how much they wanted to be. Anything to the contrary was cause enough to run away, and fast.

At least those would have been my thoughts were I capable of any. But at that moment I was only capable of blind terror. Fear buzzed in my brain, and it nearly blocked the voice that rang out from behind me.

“Stop! Come on, stop! Please.”

It was the quality of the voice that did it—low, and still a little hoarse from the river water he’d swallowed. Hearing the break in it, I felt a little ache right in the middle of my chest. Just a small, inconspicuous, and completely incapacitating ache.

I skidded to a stop, almost at the other end of the bridge. Ever so slowly, I turned around to face him.

“Thanks,” he called out roughly, settling back on his heels. From his stance he looked as if he’d just been about to take off after me.

I gave him one tense nod. There was a noticeable pause, and then he asked, “So, will you come back here?”

I shook my head. No way.

Even this far apart I could hear him sigh.

“O-kay.” He dragged out the sound of the O as if he was taking the seconds of extra pronunciation to deal calmly with a frustrating puzzle. “Then … can I come over there to you?”

I frowned, not indicating an answer one way or another. I guess he took my indecision as a yes, because he began to walk toward me. He kept his steps intentionally slow, and he held his hands in front of his body in the universal gesture of “I won’t hurt you, wild animal.”

“I come in peace,” he called out, and I could see him grin just a little. The grin was all at once wry, and sweet, and cautious.

So I couldn’t help but grin right back.

The boy dropped his hands and smiled fully at me. And, with that, the little ache exploded in my chest like a bomb, warming every limb.

Warmth. I felt warmth. Really felt it, just like I’d felt the touch of his hand in the water. My smile widened.

“Does that smile mean I can keep walking toward you?”

“No,” I said quietly.

He stopped moving, surprised by my words, or maybe just by the sound of my voice. “Really?” he asked after a moment.

“Walk over to the grass,” I instructed.

He frowned, knitting his dark eyebrows together. “Why?”

“I don’t like this road. I want to go back over there.” I jerked my head in the direction of the embankment I’d only recently left.

He kept frowning, but that grin twitched at the corners of his mouth again.

“O-kay.” He gave me a thoughtful look, holding my gaze. The message was clear: I was the frustrating puzzle with which he was calmly dealing.

Then he smiled, closed lipped and dimpled like a little boy, and gave me a quick nod. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans, turned on one heel, and began strolling back to the embankment.

Slowly. Too slowly. Swinging his legs in an exaggerated, deliberate way. I sighed loudly.

“Could you hurry up, please?”

He laughed, still walking away from me.

“You have a way with giving orders, you know that? Not a master of the casual chat, are you?”

Given that you’re the first person I’ve talked to in God knows how long since my death …

Aloud I muttered, “You have no idea.”

I could tell he’d heard me because he hesitated just a little. Then he kept walking forward, minus the mocking swing of his legs. After he’d gone about ten feet, I began to follow him. I walked even slower than he did, trying to think, think, think of what I was going to do, or say, when he stopped.

Blessedly, he kept going, past the black car and past the end of the bridge. Then onto the grass of the embankment. I was worrying so deeply about our upcoming exchange, I didn’t notice when he stopped and turned toward me. I looked up in time to jerk to a stop just a foot from him, within touching distance.

Terror raced through me. I could have run into him. If that had happened, I would have either felt him, skin against glorious skin, or I would have felt nothing but the numbing, impossible barrier. Either way, he surely would have realized something was wrong and do exactly what he should: get away from me.

“So,” he began, casually enough.

“So,” I responded, my eyes going to my bare feet. I felt ashamed, terrified, excited.

“I’m Joshua.”

“I know.”

“I thought so.”

The humor in his voice made me look up, finally meeting his eyes. As I suspected, his eyes were very dark, but not brown. They were a strange, deep blue—an almost midnight sky color. I was certain I’d never seen eyes that color before, and they had a disconcerting effect on me. I felt even more flustered just staring into them.

I was suddenly, uncomfortably aware of my own appearance: the tangles in my hair; my deathly pale skin; my hopelessly inappropriate dress with its strapless neckline, tight bodice, and filmy skirt. I probably looked as if I was headed to some sort of dead girls’ beauty pageant. For the first time in a very long time, I wished I had access to a mirror, whatever good it would do someone who couldn’t cast a reflection or change clothes.

He didn’t seem to notice my discomfort, however. Instead, he looked right into my eyes and grinned at me, although his expression had lost some of its amusement. He looked more speculative now, as if he knew there were mysteries between us. Questions.

“So,” he started again.

“You already said that.”

“Yeah, I did.” He laughed lightly and looked down at his shoes, absentmindedly running one hand through his hair and then leaving it on the back of his neck.

There went my little ache again, flowing out of my core like a pulse. That absentminded gesture—the guileless sweep of a hand through his hair—was utterly endearing. He looked so vibrant, so alive, that the words spilled right out of me.

“You want to know what happened, don’t you?”

I recoiled from my own words, blinking like an idiot. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

“Yeah, I do. I really do.” He dropped the hand from his neck and stared at me more intently, the playfulness entirely gone from his eyes.

Crap.

“Well, that’s a matter of opinion, Josh,” I said aloud.

“Joshua. Joshua Mayhew,” he corrected instantly. “But my name’s not really important right now.”

Deflect. I had to deflect, and fast, so I blurted out the first question that came to mind.

“Why am I supposed to call you Joshua if everyone else calls you Josh?”

“You’re not everyone,” he said bluntly. “Anyway …”

He knew I was stalling and meant to lead me back to the original trail of conversation, that much was clear. What was less clear was whether or not he meant any flattery by his words.

“Um …,” I floundered, and did something I hadn’t done since my death: I fidgeted. I grabbed at my skirt and began to twist it. I had no idea where to go from here.

Neither did he, it seemed. He watched me worry at my skirt and then he stared at my face until I eventually met his gaze.

“What’s your name?” His question was soft, gentle. He wasn’t trying to lead me back to the conversation. He really wanted to know.

“Amelia.”

“What’s your last name, Amelia?” His voice wrapped so well around my name, I flustered out yet another stupid answer.

“I don’t know my last name.” Or, at least, I’d never felt brave enough to try and find it in the graveyard.

He blinked, taken aback.

“Huh. Where do you live?”

“I don’t know that, either.”

Disarmed. I was completely disarmed. That was the only reasonable explanation for my stupidity.

“O-kay.” The long O again. He wasn’t as playful with the sound this time.

He stared down at his canvas sneakers, frowning and digging the toe of one shoe into the grass. He shoved his hands back into his pockets and rolled his shoulders forward, a reflexive gesture that made him look boyish and sweet. After a few more silent moments, he looked back up at me.

“You know, we have a lot to talk about.” His eyes, serious and urgent, met mine. My little ache curled out even farther in my chest as he continued. “I would have come and found you sooner, but they wouldn’t let me out of the hospital. Apparently my heart may have … Well, I may have … died, a little. In the water.”

He tilted his head to one side, clearly gauging my reaction. I shivered, but I didn’t look away. I probably didn’t look too surprised by his choice of words, either. After all, I was there when it happened. My face obviously answered some unasked question of his, because he nodded again.

“So,” he went on, “after I got out of the hospital, I started asking around about you. But nobody saw you that night. Not my family, not my friends, not even the paramedics. Not only did nobody see you on the shore, but nobody saw you in the water with me. Which I find weird. Because you were in the water with me, weren’t you?”

I bit my lower lip and nodded slightly.

“I knew I didn’t imagine you. Well, maybe when I was, you know, dead.” He said the word as if he was afraid of it. “But not after. Not when I swam to the surface or when I made it out of the water.”

Still biting my lip, I shook my head. No. You didn’t imagine me. You saw me.

“I practically had to steal my dad’s car to get out of the house today, and I came right here—to the scene of the crime. And here you are.”

“Yes,” I whispered, totally lost for a clever response. “Here I am.”

“So,” he whispered back, “we have a lot to talk about.”

“You already said that.”

He laughed, and the sound surprised us both. Then he nodded decisively.

“Well, here’s how I see it, Amelia. We don’t have to talk now. I have to get the car back to my dad soon anyway, since I’ve spent the whole morning stalking you. Besides, this doesn’t seem like a conversation you want to have, especially in this place. Can’t say that I blame you.” He glanced quickly at the hole in the railing, shuddered, and then looked back into my eyes. “So, tomorrow I’m going to be at Robber’s Cave Park. Do you know where that is?”

Stunningly, impossibly, I nodded yes.

I knew the park. I suddenly knew it as well as I knew my first name, and I knew the direction of the park from where I stood now. I knew it from memory, a genuine one that hadn’t flashed into and out of my mind but just … was.

What was this boy doing to me?

“Okay, good. I’m going to sit at the emptiest park bench I can find. I’m going to be there at noon, because, unfortunately, I’m healthy enough to go back to school tomorrow. I think I can talk my parents into letting me skip fifth period—play the sympathy card with them—but noon’s the earliest I can get there. So I’m going to go to the park. And I’m going to wait for you.”

“And if I don’t show?”

He shrugged. “I’ll respect your privacy. Or I’ll pursue you all over the earth like I’ve been trying to do since they let me out of the hospital. Probably the latter.”

I should have been afraid. I should have run away again, hid until the years passed and Joshua became an old man and the fog wrapped around my dead brain again.

Instead, I smiled.

He gave me a slight nod, grinned, and walked past me back to his car.

“Till tomorrow,” he called out with one small, backward glance.

I watched him walk away, once more unsure of everything. But when he opened his car door, my incapacitating ache curled again. My impulses, it seemed, were still doing unfamiliar things to me, because the ache seemed to have incapacitated everything but my big mouth.

“Joshua?” I called out, a slight hitch in my voice.

“Yeah?” He spun around immediately. I could swear he looked expectant, maybe even eager.

“What do I look like to you?”

He tilted his head to the side, frowning.

“What do I look like to you?” I repeated urgently, afraid that if I didn’t talk fast enough, I would have time to realize how absolutely, mind-bogglingly stupid I sounded.

Joshua smiled. He answered me, so quietly I almost couldn’t hear him.

“Beautiful. Too beautiful for people not to have noticed you the other night.”

“Oh.” The little sound was all I could manage.

He stood up straight then and cleared his throat. “So … um … I’m going to leave before I say anything else that makes me sound like an idiot. Tomorrow?”

I nodded, stunned. “Tomorrow.”

Joshua, too, nodded. Then he got into his car and reversed it back off the bridge, giving wide berth to the gap in the railing. With one quick, final spin, the car pulled away, disappearing from sight around a curve.

Chapter
FIVE

Hours can pass like years when you wait impatiently for something, especially something you crave and dread in equal measure.

What I craved, in a manner so intensely I nearly ached from it, was to see Joshua’s face and to hear his voice. Wandering and dreaming of him, I’d never imagined Joshua would be able to see me and talk to me again, much less that he would want to. I hadn’t anticipated how much I would want it too. How much my longing to be seen, and specifically by him, would intensify each time I was.

But seeing him again meant telling him the truth.

Sitting on the riverbank after Joshua left, I felt certain I wouldn’t be able to lie to him the next day. Not if my completely ridiculous behavior on the bridge proved any indication of my ability to deceive him. If I saw him in the park, and we spoke, I would undoubtedly tell him everything: what I’d seen under the water, and what I really was. Which, in turn, would undoubtedly drive him away from me.

So even if I went to the park, I probably wouldn’t see him again afterward. Presuming this, I had to ask myself what would hurt worse: the numb loneliness of invisibility or the aching loneliness of an outright rejection from the living world? I knew the awful boundaries and depths of the former, but I had no idea how excruciating the latter could, and likely would, be.

Following this line of reasoning, I came to a decision about my course of action the next day. I wouldn’t go. I would hide. I would protect my dead heart from anything worse than numbness.

And I would probably feel miserable about it for years. I lay my arms across my knees in a posture of defeat.

That’s when something made my head jerk upward and then made me jump up into a crouch on the grass. At first I couldn’t be sure what made me react this way. When I tried to glean some clue from my surroundings, I noticed that the sun had nearly set while I sat feeling sorry for myself. It threw a fiery glow across the water and cast deep shadows into the woods.

Yet it wasn’t the dying sunlight that had frightened me. It was instead the thing that contrasted so sharply with the burning light of the sunset: a bitterly cold wind that now lashed across my bare legs and through my hair.

I’d been experiencing so many unexpected sensations lately that perhaps I shouldn’t have been so alarmed by the wind. But I was.

Late summer was not the season for a freezing wind. Worse, nothing around me had ruffled in the wind—not the tall grass on the bank or the needles of the nearby pines. The wind came from the wrong direction, too. It didn’t blow off the water behind me or down the wide alley that the river made through the woods. It came directly from the shadowed tree line in front of me.

Realizing all of this, I actually felt the hairs on my arms stand on end. I couldn’t help but raise my forearm to stare at the goose bumps there, marveling at the revival of my long-dead fight-or-flight response.

Without warning, the wind became a gale, whipping my hair across my face and obscuring my vision. I stumbled backward, knocked off balance by its force. It howled out from the trees, and my hands flew up to protect my ears from the sound. Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the wind stopped. The bank became deathly still.

My hands still covered my ears, and I’d unknowingly squeezed my eyes tightly shut. I’d curled almost completely over, clutching my bent knees together with my elbows.

“Hello, Amelia.”

A male voice floated silkily out from the tree line. I remained curled over and opened only one eye, refusing to believe I could actually hear someone speaking directly to me. Someone other than Joshua.

“Do you hear me, Amelia?”

I opened the other eye and straightened myself slowly, still keeping my hands over my ears as if they afforded me some protection from this stranger’s voice. I couldn’t seem to force my vocal cords to work. He sighed impatiently, obviously waiting for me to provide him with an answer.

“Really, Amelia, you’re being terribly rude.”

“E-excuse me?” I managed to stammer.

The owner of the voice clicked his tongue in admonishment. “Still rude.”

His tone broke through the terrified frost that had begun to creep over my skin. I felt myself flush with the warmth of anger, as though I were able to blush from fury.

“You can see me, but I can’t see you. Don’t you find that a little rude?” I demanded.

He laughed, a smooth sound that didn’t do much to dispel the skin-crawling feeling. “Oh, I suppose I could remedy that problem, if you wish.”

The tree branches directly in front of me stirred as something crept out from behind them. I could tell that, whoever the speaker was, he moved deliberately, possibly to put me at ease and keep me from bolting from this place. It wasn’t a very effective tactic, because I could feel the twitch of impending flight in my muscles.

Before I made the final decision to run, however, the owner of the voice stepped out of the gloom of the woods and into what little sunlight still filled the bank.

I knew instantly that he wasn’t a living being, although at first I wasn’t sure why. As I stared openmouthed at him—another action he would likely find rude—I noted all the details of his appearance. He looked about my age, or maybe just a few years older, but he wore strange, wild clothing: an unbuttoned black shirt, its sleeves rolled up to reveal metal cuffs on both his wrists; impossibly tight jeans slung low on his hips; and several necklaces bunched together on his bare chest. Beneath the ashy blond hair that fell in messy curls to his shoulders, he looked terribly pale. As if someone had scrubbed all the color from his face.

Despite his pallor, I supposed you might call him handsome. Sexy, even.

The contrast of his skin against the darkness, however, gave away his otherworldliness. His skin was too bright, too unaffected by the dying sunlight. It had its own, nearly imperceptible glow in the dark, reflecting neither sunlight nor moonlight but illuminated by his very nature. Like a black-and-white photograph that had been given a slight sheen and then centered in front of the darkened scenery. Out of place and otherworldly, just like me.

“What are you?” I breathed.

“You know exactly what I am. I am what you are. The better question, Amelia, is who am I?” He halted his approach, folded his arms over his bare chest, and smirked at me.

So I was right. He was a ghost. A ghost of whom I wasn’t growing any fonder. I threw back my shoulders and raised my head high.

“I don’t think I’m really interested, but thanks anyway.”

“Funny girl. Of course you’re interested.”

“And why is that?”

“Because I’m the first of our kind you’ve ever seen.”

I stifled a gasp. How could he know that?

I thought briefly of retorting that it didn’t matter anyway, because he certainly wasn’t the first person to see me. Yet some protective instinct told me not to mention Joshua. To keep the very thought of Joshua out of my head, if possible.

The other ghost was too sharp—he noticed my pause and narrowed his eyes.

“I can understand your shock, Amelia. I’ve been watching you for years, keeping my distance. You’ve never seen me, and I’ve never noticed you encounter any of our kind. Unless you’ve been sneaking around behind my back.” He smiled, showing off a slightly chipped front tooth. The effect would have been charming were he not so creepy.

“But … how do you know my name?” I asked.

“Well,” he said, “you spent a lot of time screaming it at the living, didn’t you?”

I felt myself retch.

This ghost, this dead thing, had been watching me—for years? If so, then all of my private moments had been exposed to him. Shared with him.

I came to another, quick conclusion: if he’d been watching me, then he’d let me wander, utterly lost and alone, for God knows how long. He’d left me without a guide or a friend, amusing himself with my humiliation and loneliness. How cruel did someone have to be to silently watch another’s suffering for so long?

Anger sparked within me, glowing like a small coal in my core. I found myself suddenly grateful for the implication that this ghost apparently hadn’t seen Joshua and me together.

“Why haven’t I ever seen you?” I tried to speak evenly, carefully choosing my words to reveal as little as possible.

“Well,” he said, “you’ve always been too lost, too blind, to know I was there, sometimes right at your side. Except for those odd times when you disappeared all at once and I had to hunt for you afterward.”

I exhaled quietly in relief. He couldn’t follow me into my nightmares. Strange that I would now appreciate the solitude they afforded me. Luckily, he didn’t notice my change in expression but instead continued to explain himself.

“You have to know, Amelia, it was quite the momentary surprise to see you turn around tonight. You see, the wind you just felt is … well, a kind of supernatural announcement of my entrance. My calling card perhaps.” He smiled, almost proudly. “You’ve always been too unaware to feel the wind, just as you’ve never seen me before. But now you do.”

“Yes,” I said flatly. “Now I do.”

He sighed. “Then I’m obviously left with a dilemma.” He paused, apparently waiting for some sort of audience participation from me. I stared at him in silence, willing myself not to glare outright.

“My dilemma, Amelia, is a complex one: what do I do with you now?”

I winced. “What do you mean?”

He sighed again, intentionally drawing out the drama of the moment. “I’ve grown pretty fond of watching you stumble along. But now that you’re awake and aware, I can’t really let you wander around anymore. Rules are rules. So, like I said: what exactly do I do with you now?”

I resisted a strong urge to scream at him that he wouldn’t be doing anything with me, ever. Now I wasn’t the least bit angry that he hadn’t pulled me from the fog and explained my nature to me. I had nothing but a foul taste in my mouth at the very thought that he’d been so near to me at all. Instead of expressing these thoughts, however, I responded quietly and calmly.

“What’s your name?”

“In life my name was Eli.”

“And in death?” I couldn’t hold back the trace of scorn in my voice.

“Eli will do just fine,” he said.

“I think I have a solution to your dilemma, Eli.”

“Wonderful. Would you share it with me?”

“Well, Eli, the way I see it, I can feel that wind now. It’s not one of those things you can easily hide, is it?” I smiled sweetly but tried hard to make sure my derision was as thinly veiled as possible. “So it stands to reason that you won’t be able to watch me unannounced anymore, right?”

Eli frowned deeply. I could tell he had no glib reply, no way to circumvent my logic. Inside, I shouted a silent cheer. Apparently, there were no loopholes that might allow him to continue to watch me unseen.

After a long pause Eli sighed and smiled. I could have been imagining it, but his smile looked much less cocky than before.

“Yes, Amelia, you’re right. You’ll always be aware of my visits from now on.”

“Great. Since we’ve got that settled, I’d appreciate it if you’d limit those visits from now on, too.”

A shadow seemed to pass over his face. “What are you saying, Amelia?”

“I’m saying that I know what you can ‘do’ with me, Eli,” I said, faking a bright grin. “And what you can do is leave me alone. Permanently.”

Instantly, Eli’s frown deepened and lifted the curl of his lip until he looked like an animal baring its teeth. I half expected him to growl; and, involuntarily, I flinched.

He obviously read the fear in my reaction, because his sneer widened into a sharp grin. He looked no more pleasant for the change.

“As you wish,” he murmured. And miraculously, he spun around to leave, stomping through the pine needles piled upon the ground. But before he crossed into the tree line, he stopped and turned around to face me. He folded his arms over his chest, the wicked grin still plastered on his face.

“I won’t follow you again, Amelia. There’s no point, really.” Eli lowered his head to stare up at me, his eyes hooding over. “But you’ll come find me soon enough, I can promise you that. You have no idea what we are—what you are. But I do. So I’ll simply leave you with a warning. A little taste of the place where you truly belong. The place where you’ll eventually be trapped, now that you’re awake, if you don’t seek my help.”

As Eli uttered the last few words, I felt a sudden chill, sharper and more piercing than any I’d felt before. Unlike the wind announcing Eli’s arrival, this cold wasn’t directed or brief. It was all around me, as if the temperature on the riverbank had instantly dropped at least thirty degrees. I gasped from the shock of it, and my breath puffed out visibly in front of me.

I was so transfixed by the chill that I almost didn’t notice when my surroundings began to change, too. Before I understood what was happening, the riverbank darkened. Within seconds it appeared as though the sun had disappeared entirely, taking with it all the light and color.

At first I thought the bank had plunged into total darkness, but that wasn’t right at all. Everything around me had become a cold, deep gray everywhere I looked.

I stared back at Eli, who seemed perfectly at ease in this new environment, his arms still folded casually across his chest. In the charcoal darkness, his pale skin looked brighter, even more unnatural.

“What …? Where …?”

My whispers couldn’t shape themselves into real questions. In response, Eli chuckled darkly but didn’t answer.

He stared intently at me for a moment longer and then his eyes began to dart to my right and left, as if seeking something beside me. Without thinking, I turned to catch a glimpse of whatever seemed to have distracted him.

That’s when I saw them: the clusters of strange, black shapes moving along my peripheral vision. Like enormous moths, or shadows, twisting and flitting just outside my line of sight. I whipped my head from one side to the other, trying to get a solid look at them. But each time I turned my head, the shifting black shapes would move with me and out of sight.

I whirled around completely, turning my back to Eli and facing the river. And in that moment, I forgot all about the shapes still dancing at the edge of my vision.

Only minutes ago a normal river had drifted behind me, greenish and brown in the late-summer sun. Now, even in the gray darkness of this place, I could see a dramatic change had overtaken its waters.

Something floated in this version of the river, but certainly nothing as benign as water. Between the banks of the new river, a thick liquid moved past me. It looked like tar, so inky and black that I could barely see the signs of movement along its surface.

It did move, though, drifting sluggishly toward High Bridge. Slowly, I turned my head toward the bridge; but before I could take in its new form, I found my attention riveted to what lay beneath it—to the place where the dark river seemed to lead.

There, beneath what may or may not have been High Bridge, an enormous blackness gaped. If it were possible, this expanse was even darker than the gray riverbank, darker than the river itself. The top of the expanse brushed against the underside of the bridge, and the bottom of it pawed at the water and the nearby shoreline. Peering into the darkness, I couldn’t see an end to it; I couldn’t see one speck of light in all that black.

It was the darkest point in an already dark world.

It almost seemed to pulse beneath the bridge as if it were some living, breathing beast waiting for something. For me maybe.

I managed, with great difficulty, to pull my eyes away from the chasm beneath the bridge and stare down in horror at my feet. My toes were inching, of their own will, toward the river—drawn by some unseen force to the water. With no small amount of effort, I yanked my feet away from the river’s edge.

I whirled back around to Eli, truly scared now. More scared than I’d ever been before.

“Where am I?” I finally managed to ask.

“You really want to know?” he whispered, his eyes glowing with what could only be malicious delight. I nodded mechanically.

In reply Eli rolled his head around, gesturing to our bleak surroundings. “This is part of the hereafter, Amelia. This is where dead spirits are supposed to go. While you were lost, I kept you safe from this place. But now, only one thing can keep you from ending up here forever.”

I raised one eyebrow. I had a feeling I knew what that “one thing” was. He confirmed my suspicions as he went on.

“Without me, Amelia,” Eli insisted, “you’ll be trapped. Without me, you’ll spend eternity here, unable to move between worlds at will. So now you see why I know, beyond any doubt, that you’ll seek me out again. All you have to do is call for me on High Bridge … and you will, soon.”

Despite the terror crawling over every inch of my body, I rankled at Eli’s words. At his implication that I needed him, that I couldn’t avoid this foul place without him. Even now I had enough sense to suspect his motives, and to remind myself that this dead young man hardly resembled my concept of a guardian angel.

I straightened my back, as much as I could, and met his gaze squarely.

“We’ll see, Eli,” I murmured. “We’ll see.”

Now it was Eli’s turn to raise an eyebrow. Obviously, he hadn’t expected this small display of courage. Instead of reprimanding me, however, he gave a final, amused nod and spun around once more to disappear into what used to be the woods.

If sharp, cold winds announced Eli’s arrival, then the opposite evidenced his departure. For a long second it felt as though a vacuum had sucked away everything, including the cold wind. I didn’t feel anything—no chill, no gale, not even myself. I’d never felt so numb in my entire existence. I choked, clutching my hands to my throat.

Then, almost as quickly as it began, it was over.

The soft greens of the riverbank shimmered and reappeared around me, and the late-summer air swam gently back into my lungs. Gasping, I collapsed onto my hands and knees on the grass.

Chapter
SIX

That night I didn’t mark the passage of time with uncertain pacing as I had the day before. Instead, I marked the time in absolute stillness, crouched on the riverbank, my eyes never moving from the spot in the woods where Eli had disappeared. I remained motionless as dawn broke over the tops of the trees. I kept my hands pressed hard into the grass, ready at any moment to sprint away if I felt another gust of that cold wind.

Finally, reluctantly, I stirred. Inch by inch I raised myself out of my uneasy stance, never taking my eyes from the trees in front of me. I spared a glance upward, trying to gauge how long I’d crouched against the unknown. I blinked at the light in surprise.

Although thick gray clouds covered most of the sky, I could see the occasional ray of sunshine break through, halfway between the east and west horizons. It had to be nearly midday.

While I waited, almost an entire day had passed without Eli’s return. Without a return of the dark, terrible world he’d shown me.

Before me the woods remained just that: normal, living woods, with normal, living trees. I spared one glance over my shoulder. The river, once again a murky green, flowed rapidly toward High Bridge, beneath which lay nothing but the river itself.

I willed my body to relax and then stretched each limb in turn. The effort was needless, since my dead muscles hardly had any reason to cramp, even when held in one position for many hours. Still, the gesture seemed appropriate. I wanted to feel my new resolve in my body as well as in my mind—my resolve to never allow Eli to control me.

This resolve felt important—essential, even—because I suspected I would meet him again. Though Eli promised he would stay away for a while, he’d also said that there were many things about him and our kind that I didn’t know or understand, things he would inevitably tell me. His words certainly had the ring of threat to them, especially when delivered in the awful place he’d shown me.

Yet, although ignorant of my ghostly nature, I was no longer ignorant of some things. I didn’t doubt that the next time the wind cut across my skin I would know Eli was there. He couldn’t take me back to that dark place without me first knowing he was present. There was some comfort in this knowledge.

I couldn’t promise myself I wouldn’t be waiting, watching, dreading. But I refused to stay by this river anymore. Because I didn’t want to let fog, or fear, keep imprisoning me.

And because it was almost noon, judging by the position of the sun.

Yesterday I’d decided not to meet Joshua again. I’d had every intention of hiding, and letting the confusion take me back. After Eli’s sudden appearance, however, I had no intention of ever going back into the fog. I intended to stay as awake and alive as possible.

And Joshua made me feel very much alive. He was the reason behind all of this change, this newness. The reason I’d woken up from the fog.

I couldn’t explain it, any more than I could explain why I’d wandered lost after death, or why I didn’t now. But the new desires that had filled me after Joshua’s accident hadn’t changed. They’d grown stronger, more acute. Even more than the first moment I saw him, I wanted to be near him. I wanted to feel him, maybe, just once more. Anything, even the sight of him running away from me when he learned the truth, would be worth the risk.

Now I sensed a new purpose to this day. I stared at the river and its bank one more time, drinking in the image of the green water and the summer-yellowed grass. This was the scene of so many of my changes: life to death … and maybe back to a sort of life again? Maybe. It was worth trying to find out.

“See ya,” I said aloud to the water.

And I began to run, bare feet flying across mud and grass, then pavement, leaving the river and High Bridge Road far behind me.

I reached the park with only a little time to spare. A clock sitting atop a large wooden platform outside the park entrance read 11:50.

I slowed my pace until I was almost strolling up the cedar-lined road that led to the picnic area. Although I’d run for miles, I wasn’t winded or even ruffled. Still, I began to fidget, smoothing invisible wrinkles from the skirt of my dress and running my hands through the thick waves in my hair. I felt … jittery. I guess a case of nerves could survive even death.

I nearly turned back, my previous resolve shrinking. My future hinged on Joshua and the outcome of our conversation. I felt this in my core, and I suddenly couldn’t fathom how I’d decided to face him with such bravado.

But my feet were traitors. Or more loyal, depending on one’s perspective. They kept marching me down the road, through a parking lot and a thin grove of pines, past a cluster of empty benches, and to the only occupied one.

Joshua sat, not on the bench but on the concrete table to which the bench was attached. He stared to his left, into the woods surrounding the picnic clearing. His profile—square jaw, high cheekbones, and full lips—made me shiver as a wave of desire and fear washed over me. I watched his black eyebrows pull together while he continued to study the forest. Perhaps he was thinking I had, in fact, stood him up.

“Hey, Joshua.”

Although I’d all but whispered, his head jerked toward me. Then a huge, radiant smile spread across his face. He jumped off the table and strode toward me, one arm lifted as if he intended to touch me.

Instinctively, I took a quick step back.

He stopped and frowned.

“Uh … sorry. Too enthusiastic?”

God, no. I just wasn’t ready for this to end before it starts.

“No,” I said aloud. “Just … unexpected.”

He laughed. “Sorry. I probably looked like a golden retriever or something. Big, dumb dog. But this was a little unexpected too, you know?”

“How so?”

“You showed up. Unexpectedly.” He half smiled, and the ghost of a dimple tugged at his cheek.

I found myself smiling back a little too. “I aim to please.”

“Then mission accomplished.”

“Oh.”

Brilliant, Amelia, I screamed in my head. Death had obviously not improved my vocabulary. Joshua’s half smile crept a little farther upward, possibly a sign of his amusement at the flustered look on my face.

Unfortunately, our banter wasn’t going to last forever. He swept one hand back to the table like a maître d’. “A quiet park bench, as promised?”

I sighed. No putting this off any longer, so it seemed. “Yeah, I guess it’s time.”

Joshua’s eyebrows knit together as I strode past him to the bench.

“Look,” he said, “I’m not going to conduct the Spanish Inquisition or anything.”

“I know,” I said flatly.

I sat down, feeling the pressure of the bench but not really the bench itself, and folded my hands in my lap. Joshua turned toward me but made no move to sit. I stared down at my lap and tried to ready myself for the inevitable ending. But there was something I needed to know first.

“Before we get into explanations, can I ask you a question?”

“Anything.”

I looked up to see him shove his hands into the pockets of his jeans and tilt his head to one side. Judging by his stance, he was probably more than a little bewildered by my behavior, so I asked my question carefully.

“Did you … intentionally drive off the bridge?”

“Ha.” He barked out a sort of laugh. “Not exactly.”

It was odd, but I thought he sounded almost embarrassed. I too tilted my head and raised one eyebrow, encouraging him to continue. He laughed again, a little sheepishly, and a flattering blush spread across his cheekbones.

“The only thing I did intentionally was take a stupid shortcut.”

I kept my eyebrow raised, so Joshua continued.

“I was following a bunch of my friends to a party. For some crazy reason I decided to take a shortcut across High Bridge Road by myself. I have no idea why I did. My family practically forbids me to drive over the bridge since it’s such a death trap. Anyway, right before I crossed on to High Bridge, I thought I saw something in the river. I was distracted; and when I looked back at the road, I saw something dart out at me—a deer or a bobcat, maybe; it looked so black, I couldn’t be sure. I swerved to miss it and then my car spun out across the bridge. I must have hit my head on the steering wheel, because I really don’t remember any part of the crash after that. Thank God I’d rolled down the windows. I guess that’s how I got out of the car before I sank with it.”

“And your friends got there so fast because …?”

He gave an embarrassed shrug. “Because I … um … had the beer in my car.”

As he finished, I exhaled slowly. I was grateful that at least one of my theories behind our interaction was wrong: suicide wasn’t our commonality; it was only our mutual deaths, however brief his had been.

“Would it be weird, Joshua, if I said I’m glad?”

“Why, because I like beer?”

I smiled slightly. “No, because you didn’t mean to drive off the bridge.”

He laughed. “Then that’s not weird at all. I wouldn’t exactly choose High Bridge for my exit scene, you know?”

I gasped.

Seeing my strange reaction, he spoke quickly, almost apologetically. “Sorry. I’m … Look, I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m not trying to upset you or anything. I guess … I mean … you really don’t have to do this. To tell me anything, that is.”

“But I do,” I said, unable to keep the misery out of my voice. “I don’t really think I have a choice, if I ever want to talk to you again. If you’ll even want to talk to me, afterward.”

“Why wouldn’t I want to talk to you?”

His gentle tone, and the implication in his words, made me meet his gaze. With his strange blue eyes locked onto mine, I felt the little ache ignite again in my chest.

“You won’t want to talk to me because I’m going to tell you the truth.”

“And the truth will make me … what? Decide to shun you?” He grinned and raised one eyebrow, obviously skeptical.

“Something like that,” I murmured.

“I find that hard to believe,” he said as he momentarily broke our eye contact to walk over to the bench and finally sit beside me.

“Actually, you’re probably going to find what I’m about to tell you hard to believe. But it’s the truth.”

He clasped his hands and leaned closer to me, placing his elbows on his knees before raising his eyes back to mine.

“Good. I want to hear the truth, Amelia.”

Inexplicably, my breath quickened. A pulse, one I knew I didn’t have, began to race through my arms and along my neck. I could swear I felt heat from the nearness of his body—heat that threatened to turn into a blush on my unblushable cheeks. The kind of heat that could make me do or say just about anything. Words started to fall from my mouth almost before I thought of them.

“You said you saw me under the water, right?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re the only person who saw me at all?”

“Yes.” He kept his voice patient, calm. My voice, however, trembled as I continued.

“Well, I think you saw me because … well, because you were dead.”

He frowned again. “I know I was dead, at least for a few seconds. But I’m not sure I’m following you.”

“You couldn’t see me at first, right? Not before you … died.”

The more I spoke, the less I could breathe. Joshua seemed to be struggling too with where I was heading. He responded slowly, methodically, as if he needed to hold tightly to reason in this conversation.

“Amelia, I couldn’t see you because I was unconscious before my heart stopped.”

“No. Well, you were unconscious. But that’s not the only reason you couldn’t see me. Even if you were conscious, you still wouldn’t have been able to see me. Not yet anyway.”

“Huh?” His frown deepened, and he leaned away from me.

Suddenly, I couldn’t stop the flow of my words. It was like pulling a piece of thick tape from my mouth. I wanted to rip it off, tear through my explanation, so I could breathe again.

“I have a theory, sort of. I can’t be sure, but I think I can’t be seen unless someone is, well, like me. That’s why the people on the shore couldn’t see me, and that’s why Eli can see me. Because he’s like me.”

“Who’s Eli?”

I was in such a hurry to get the truth out that I’d lost control of the things tumbling from my mouth. “Sorry,” I moaned. I dropped my head into my hands and squeezed my eyes tightly shut. “I’m not making any sense, am I?”

Joshua’s response surprised me. He didn’t sound frustrated, or even confused. Instead, his voice was hushed, intense.

“Amelia, I’m trying very hard to understand this. I know something … strange has happened. Is happening. I’ll believe your explanation. Just go slow, okay?”

My eyes flew open and met his. His eyes were lovely, and serious; they reminded me of the night sky. I tried to shake the distraction of them from my head so I could focus on this horrible conversation.

“Joshua, I have no idea how to say this.”

“It’s okay. It’ll be okay.”

I turned away from him, staring at but not really seeing the patch of red dirt in front of us. When I spoke again, I did so slowly. Painfully.

“I think you saw me, and you can still see me, because we have some sort of—I don’t know—magical or spiritual connection. You’re like me. Or you were, at least for a moment.”

Joshua’s eyes narrowed. “And by ‘like you’ you mean …?”

“That you died.”

The word “died” hung heavy in the air between us, like an ax waiting to drop.

Joshua’s forehead wrinkled as he tried to make sense out of my words, tried to follow the convoluted path I’d laid. He may not have connected all of the pieces yet, but he would. As each second passed, I could see it happening, piece by piece. He would rip off the bandage at any moment, would either call me a lunatic or—worse—believe me.

“Okay,” he started haltingly. “You and I have both died? Me in the river, and you sometime in the past?”

“Yes. In the same river, actually.”

“Wow.” He blinked in surprise but then composed himself again. “So you’re saying this ‘connection’ is the reason I was the only one who could see you? Some sort of magic, or something?” He said the last words uncertainly, as though he were trying out a strange new language.

“I think so.” I bent my head down toward my lap again.

“And the connection exists because you died?” he asked.

I only nodded.

“And you came back to life, like me?”

A heartbeat or two passed, and then—

“No, Joshua. Not that part.”

For a while there was only silence. Then I heard him suck in a sharp breath. Here it was—the moment. The finale. I finished it off with nothing but a whisper.

“You see, Joshua—I never did come back to life.”

At the worst possible moment, I had one of those new, unpredictable sensations. I could suddenly feel the warm breeze against the skin of my legs and arms. The air felt charged, electric, like the gray sky would tear open and let thunder and lightning and all hell break loose around us. Goose bumps rose on my arms. Real goose bumps, like the ones Eli had inspired.

I couldn’t look up at Joshua’s face, but I could hear him stammering, making incredulous little noises. Then he became very quiet and still. This stillness lasted for possibly a full minute before he spoke with an unnatural calm.

“Amelia, are you trying to tell me you’re …?”

“Dead.” I spoke immediately. It felt wrong to delay the inevitable any longer.

“Dead.” He repeated the word without any inflection.

Another heartbeat passed and then, unexpectedly, Joshua leaped off of the bench. He spun around to face me. I stared up at him, undoubtedly wild-eyed and frantic. His face, however, was expressionless. He wore a sort of mask—hiding terror, anger, disbelief, hatred? I had no idea.

I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t stand the frozen look on his face, the look I’d put there with the truth. He thought I was crazy, or he knew I was dead. Whichever conclusion he’d made, I would certainly lose him, however little I’d had him.

In this moment I felt impossibly and utterly alone. Alone for eternity probably, and now painfully aware of what I would be missing.

“I’m sorry,” I moaned—apologizing to him, to myself, to who knows who—and clasped a hand over my mouth.

I was so lost in sorrow for myself, I almost didn’t notice it: something on my cheek. Something warm and wet, trailing its way to the corner of my lips. Without taking my eyes from his empty face, I touched one finger to the edge of my eye. I pressed the fingertip to my lips. It tasted salty.

A tear. My dead eyes had shed a tear.

Something about that single tear must have stirred Joshua, because his frozen expression suddenly melted. His eyes and mouth softened.

“Amelia.” His voice was rough, and it broke. My name had never sounded more beautiful.

Joshua reached out to me, moving his hand as if to cup it around my cheek. Without giving a thought to anything but the ache that raged inside me, I leaned into his gesture.

Nothing could have prepared us for the moment when his skin once again touched mine.

Chapter
SEVEN

I shouldn’t have been surprised. My world had changed the first time he laid his hand upon my cheek—there was no reason why it shouldn’t change when he did it again.

Yet when his hand cupped my face for the second time, we both gasped and jerked away, stunned. My fingers involuntarily flew up to the burning spot on my cheek, and likewise he grabbed his right hand with his left. Our actions may have looked protective, even defensive, to an outside observer. For me, however, they were anything but.

The moment his skin brushed mine, a current shot through my entire body, from my scalp to the tips of my fingers. The current made the ache in my chest, and the tingles that raced along my spine each time he looked at me, seem like low-burning cinders. My heart, my brain, my skin—all of it was momentarily engulfed in flame, a flame lit only by the spark on my cheek.

I’d never felt anything so exhilarating. Not in death … not even in life. I knew it, deep within my core.

Joshua stared at me, rubbing his hand. He continued to breathe unevenly, as though he’d just run a long distance. Then, still gasping, he smiled. Hugely.

“What,” he managed to choke out, “was that?”

“I have no idea.” And I began to laugh. “Want to do it again?”

“Hell, yes,” he growled, and lurched forward to grab my hand from my lap.

As it had been with my cheek, we didn’t make perfect contact. Not exactly. I couldn’t feel the texture of his skin or the force of his fingers gripping mine. I felt the old, familiar pressure that always came when I tried to touch something from the living world. But I didn’t feel numb; the fiery shock came again, just as strong and fantastic as before, and there was nothing numb about it.

We simultaneously pulled back our hands, gasping again.

“What … what does that feel like to you?” I finally stuttered.

“Like fire. In the best possible way. You?”

“The same. Good.” I shrugged, almost sheepishly. “Very good.”

“I’m pretty out of breath,” he confessed with a grin.

“Me too.” I laughed. “Which is saying something for someone who doesn’t really need to breathe.”

He stopped smiling and cocked his head a little to the side. I immediately regretted my words. Stupidly, I’d jerked us out of the moment and back to the topic at hand. I shook my head, furious with myself.

Might as well quit playing around and get it over with, I thought bitterly. I took a deep breath to steady myself and cut right to the chase.

“So, Joshua, here’s the part where you run screaming into the night, right?” I paused to stare around at the clearing, lit up by the overcast daytime sky. “Metaphorically, that is.”

“Amelia, do you see me running?”

I leaned back, startled. “Well … no.”

“And why would I run?”

“Because any sane person would think I’m either crazy … or dead.”

“I don’t think you’re crazy.” He kept his voice even, and quiet.

“Huh. Um. So.” I couldn’t get my brain to form a logical sentence.

“So,” he went on to finish my incoherent thoughts, “the way I see it, process of elimination leaves only one conclusion.”

I kept my lips shut tight and studied his face. His midnight blue–colored eyes were wide and a little stunned. He looked as surprised as I felt by this turn in the conversation. Yet he sounded completely serious, maybe even … accepting? I shook my head, bewildered.

“You believe me?”

“I guess so.”

“You believe I’m … dead? A ghost?”

Joshua blew out a long breath and ran his hand through his black hair.

“Yeah, I kind of think I have to,” he said with a shrug. “I mean, I don’t have an explanation for the river. How you were underwater with me, but you weren’t drowning. How you were on the shore—looking pretty damn dry, by the way—but no one saw you. And how it feels when I touch you. I mean, unless you are alive. And you have gills, and you’re invisible. And you’re electrified.”

I shrugged back. “I don’t know. Maybe I am.”

He smiled—an unbelievably casual gesture, considering the topic. “You mean you don’t know if electrification is a common trait for ghosts?”

I stared at him, openmouthed. Was he joking about me being dead? “Um … no, Joshua, I have no idea what is or isn’t a common trait for ghosts. This is my first … ah …”

“Haunting?” he offered.

I snorted. “Yes, this is my first haunting.”

“Then I’m flattered.”

“Joshua,” I said, rubbing my forehead, “you’re taking this awfully well.”

He sighed, still smiling, and walked over to sit beside me again on the bench. Tingles, like little licks of the flame I’d just experienced, raced along the side of my body closest to him.

“You know, I’ve heard ghost stories all my life. Especially ones about the bridge, from my grandma. I’ve never believed any of them, of course. But like I said before, I kind of have to now, don’t I? Because otherwise I’m crazy, and I’m talking to a beautiful, electrified, imaginary girl.”

“I swear I’m not imaginary.” An uncontrollable grin spread across my face. “I would know if I was imaginary, right?”

He laughed, rubbed his palm down the length of his thigh, and then raised his hand up toward heaven as if to ask the sky that same question. “Who knows? Maybe we’re both crazy. But I’d like to think I’m not just talking to myself on a park bench.”

“Well, you probably look like you are, you know.”

“Huh.” He frowned. “I hadn’t really thought of that.” He glanced around the clearing, looking relieved at the emptiness of our surroundings. “We’re going to have to be kind of careful about that, aren’t we?”

“We are?” I sort of croaked the question. “We’re planning on future conversations … and in public?”

“Of course.” He shook his head impatiently and then abruptly switched gears. “So, am I really the only person who can see you?”

“The only living person,” I qualified.

“What about other dead people?”

His question, and the fact that I had absolutely no idea what rules governed this situation, gave me a disconcerting jolt. Because I knew of only one other soul who could possibly know the answer—Eli. Eli, who could clearly see me, and who I could now see, too. Eli might be able to tell me every “how” and “why” about what was happening between Joshua and me. But I mentally shook my head firmly against the idea of contacting him. I made an internal vow never to fulfill Eli’s prophecy that I would seek him out voluntarily. Nor would I let Joshua know about Eli if I could help it.

“I’m not so sure about that one,” I answered cautiously. “I haven’t had a lot of experience with that.”

“Hmm.” Joshua pondered my response briefly. I expected some kind of follow-up question, one that would certainly be harder to answer; but he asked me something entirely different.

“Just out of curiosity—why did you ask me what you look like? When we were on the bridge yesterday.”

I wasn’t prepared for that question, either. I covered my mouth with one hand. “God, Joshua, do I really have to answer this one?” My words came out muffled, and dripping with embarrassment. But he just stared at me expectantly, so I sighed and dropped my hand. “I guess it’s because I have no idea what I look like.”

He blinked. “Seriously?”

“Um, yeah.”

“No reflection?”

“No, not that I’ve ever seen. I mean, I can see some of myself without a mirror.” I gestured down at my clothes and then up at my hair. “I just can’t remember what my face looks like. I think I sort of … forgot.”

“Wow,” he breathed.

“I know.” I sighed again. “Incredibly embarrassing, right?”

Joshua didn’t answer me. Instead, he sat in complete, motionless silence, thinking who knows what. I was too mortified to speak, and he was staring at me in an intent way that, of course, unnerved me further.

Finally, he broke the silence. “I wasn’t lying yesterday when I said you’re beautiful.”

Wow.

“Oh,” I said aloud, and suddenly found something very interesting to study on the filmy, tulle overlay of my skirt. I spared a quick glance up at him and found him grinning at me.

“Should I go on?” he asked.

I could swear I heard an almost playful tone in his question. I shrugged as casually as possible, considering I simultaneously wanted to jump up and down while giggling and disappear into a hole in the earth.

“Your hair, it’s dark brown and wavy,” he said nonchalantly, as if he were cataloging the inventory of a store. “You’re pale, but you’ve got some freckles on your nose. Your eyes are really green, like the color of the leaves. And your mouth … well, your mouth is … pretty.”

If I could have blushed, I would have.

“Oh,” I repeated. One syllable seemed to be all I could muster right now. Joshua studied my face and, possibly seeing my discomfort, grinned.

“Now, your dress makes an interesting statement,” he teased.

I sniffed, trying not to feel wounded. “So, let me get this straight: I have a pretty mouth and an ugly dress? I’ll tell you what—if you can find me the ghosts of someone’s tank top and cutoffs, I’ll get right into them, I swear.”

Joshua grinned wider and shook his head. “No, the dress isn’t ugly.” He gave my figure a quick scan of appraisal and then added, “Far from it, actually.”

“Oh,” I said again. My eyes dropped right back down to my dress. Once more I wished it covered a bit more of my skin. I wondered what kind of girl I’d been to pick out a showy outfit like this: someone bold and confident; someone flashy and mean?

Joshua, however, obviously wasn’t as bothered by my clothing as I was. He chuckled quietly and leaned back against the table with his arms folded across his chest. We sat that way for a while, him in a casually amused pose and me with my eyes glued once more to my skirt. The issue of whether or not I wore a sexy dress was the least of our worries, and I knew it.

Eventually, Joshua leaned forward again.

“So what else should I know about you?”

I couldn’t seem to pull my eyes away from my skirt. “Well, how about this: I can’t feel anything I touch. Except you, apparently.”

“What? You can’t feel anything?”

“Nope. Not this bench, those trees—nothing. I can’t even open doors.”

“But what about people? I mean, you and I obviously—”

“I know,” I interrupted. “I have no idea how to explain what just happened between us. You’re the first person I’ve ever tried to touch, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to feel anyone else. Not like … well, you and me, anyway.”

“Any guesses as to why that is?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s like what I said earlier, about you being able to see me. Since you were dead for a little while, maybe you can see ghosts and you can sort of touch them. And maybe a connection like that can wake up a ghost’s senses, too. At least a little.”

“Maybe,” he mused. After a few seconds he added, “That’s kind of a sad statement on the afterlife, though, isn’t it? That you can’t feel anything unless someone else dies, too?”

I nodded vigorously, still staring at my dress. Once again Joshua didn’t respond but instead fell into a thoughtful silence. Eventually, I peeked up at him, just in time to see what I thought might be a rare dark look pass over his face. It stung me, that look—as if Joshua might have finally reached the crucial moment when he realized how crazy all of this really was. But instead, he just shook his head and gave me a sympathetic smile.

“You know, Amelia, being dead must really … suck.”

I barked out a surprised laugh. “Yes, Joshua. It does, in fact, suck.”

We chuckled together. In our laughs, I could hear the strange mix of relief and tension. Then Joshua furrowed his eyebrows and rubbed his hands together.

“So ….”

He dragged the word out awkwardly. He sounded cautious now, maybe even afraid to continue. From the tone of his voice, it seemed as though he wanted to ask me something but wasn’t sure how to go about it. I met his eyes and nodded in encouragement.

“Whatever you want to say, Joshua, just say it.”

He cleared his throat and then blurted out the question. “How long have you been dead?”

I frowned, trying to form an explanation that wasn’t scary. “I’m not sure about that one, either. A while, I think. There was a lot of aimless wandering for an awfully long time. I’ve found it pretty hard to keep track. I’d have to guess it’s been … years? At the very least.”

Letting out a low whistle, Joshua muttered the word “years” under his breath.

“At the very least,” I repeated.

“And you really can’t remember anything?” He sounded skeptical again.

“Nope. Well, nothing but my name.”

“Not where you grew up? Not who you parents were?”

“No.”

My voice cracked a little with that answer. I hadn’t thought about that until now—the fact that I’d probably had a family, once. A family I’d loved, or one I didn’t even want to remember? Maybe, like the information on my tombstone, the details of my former home life were better left a mystery?

Luckily, Joshua didn’t seem to notice anything unusual in my response, because his questions kept coming. And soon they drew me out of my dark thoughts with surprising ease.

We went on like that for a while, him as interviewer and me as interviewee. Some of his questions were serious and sad (did I remember my childhood home), and some were pleasantly inane (did I ever own a pet iguana, because his sister did, for about two weeks before their parents made her get rid of it). My response to every question was inevitably negative, mostly because I didn’t remember the answer.

But strangely, each question made me less depressed about my lack of memory. I began to feel as if I said the word “no,” not because I’d lived the sad life of the waking dead, but as part of some verbal game I was playing with him; as if I would only provide him a “yes” when he asked the right question.

With each question my smile began to grow. Before long Joshua’s face reflected mine, as if my enthusiasm for this game was infectious.

“Do you remember which flavor ice cream you liked best?”

“No.” I laughed. “I don’t remember if I even liked ice cream.”

He prepped for his next question by frowning and resting his chin on one fist for dramatic effect. “Do you remember your school mascot?”

“Nope. I don’t remember school at all. So there is something positive about being dead, right?”

He started to chuckle, then abruptly jerked upright as though he’d been pinched. Checking his watch, he swore under his breath. He jumped off the park bench and began to run toward the parking lot. If I weren’t so confused by his sudden behavior, I might have laughed when he skidded to a stop and spun around to face me again, kicking up a dramatic cloud of red dirt.

“Come on,” he yelled, and turned to run back to his father’s car. Without thinking, I obeyed the order and ran after him.

As he fumbled to unlock the driver’s side door, I cleared my throat.

“Um, Joshua? What’s wrong?”

“We’re going to be late.”

“For what?”

He ignored my question. “Lunch is over in about ten minutes.”

“And?” I asked, growing a little frustrated with the mystery.

“And we’re going to have to break about forty-seven traffic laws to get there on time.”

“To get where?” I threw my hands in the air, completely baffled.

“Class.”

The word was muffled as he ducked into the driver’s seat. Within seconds he threw open the passenger side door in front of me and leaned out.

“Come on,” he repeated.

“Come … to school? With you?”

“Of course.”

The idea made me almost rock back on my heels in shock. I wanted to argue the logic of this with him, especially the possibility of going anywhere in public together. But the urgency in his expression told me he wouldn’t be open to debate. So I too spun around rapidly—facing him, then the familiar safety of the woods, then him again.

“No time to think, Amelia. Just get in.”

“But,” I protested weakly, “I don’t even remember how to ride in a car!”

He grinned and patted the seat.

“It’s like riding a bike, I promise.”

“I don’t remember how to do that, either,” I grumbled, but I slipped into the passenger seat and let him lean over to pull the door shut beside me.

Chapter
EIGHT

Death may have stolen my old memories of riding in a car, but it certainly couldn’t take away my new ones. The farther Joshua drove, the more my initial fear of the ride, and the events to follow it, began to melt away.

As Joshua’s borrowed car flew along the steep, curved roads outside the park, I shifted forward in my seat until I’d nearly pressed myself against the dashboard. I watched the dense green woods rush by us in a panorama outside the windshield.

Although I was unable to experience the physical sensation of sitting in the car, I didn’t feel the least bit sad about this. I felt untethered, and impossibly fast—as though I were flying. I gripped the edge of the seat beneath me, and, incredibly, the sensation of its rough leather scraped against my fingertips.

“Hey, Amelia?”

Joshua’s worried voice broke into my thoughts, and the feel of the leather instantly disappeared.

“Yeah?” However much I enjoyed looking at him, I could barely tear my eyes away from the road long enough to give him a sidelong glance.

“I’m not trying to tell you what to do or anything, but would you please scoot back? The way you’re sitting, you’re putting a lot of faith in my driving.”

I laughed. “Well, it’s not like I can fly through your windshield.”

From my peripheral vision, I saw him frown deeply. The image of his car floating to the bottom of the river flashed into my mind. I shook my head at my own stupidity.

“Sorry,” I muttered. “Bad joke.”

“It’s okay,” he answered with a faint smile. “But … all the same, you’re making me nervous.”

“Sorry,” I repeated, and I slid back into the seat.

I kept my eyes glued to the blurred scenery outside the windows. Still, I itched to lean forward again, so I grabbed the seat to hold myself in place and tried in vain to revive the sensation of leather against my skin.

Eventually, the woods gave way to a small town. The road wound through a sort of main street dotted with small buildings and scattered pines. A painted wooden sign along the roadside welcomed us to Wilburton, Oklahoma.

The town reminded me of a vaguely familiar photograph, one that I’d seen a long time ago but couldn’t place now. Had I passed through this particular town in my death? I’d never really taken much note of the places where I’d wandered. I couldn’t be sure, and the uncertain familiarity made me squirm in my seat.

Too soon, Joshua slowed to a few miles per hour. Next he pulled onto a side road, one lined more heavily with pines. When the trees thinned, a set of low buildings appeared. As Joshua pulled into a parking lot, I could see a few students milling around or making their way into the corridors between the buildings.

“Made it.” Joshua sighed in relief. He parked the car, then unbuckled his seat belt and reached into the backseat to scavenge for his schoolbag.

I remained focused on the redbrick buildings in front of us. I took in the sight of the flat white roofs, the dark purple benches on the lawn, the faded metal signs that proclaimed GO DIGGERS! in block letters. Something about the buildings itched at me—something I couldn’t put my finger on ….

“Good ole Wilburton High School. Shall we?”

The nearness of Joshua’s voice made me jump in my seat. He stood beside me but outside of the car, with one hand holding the frame of the passenger side door and the other gripping the bag that hung from his right shoulder. In my concentration, I hadn’t even noticed him leave the car or open my door.

“Um ….”

I began to twist the fabric of my dress, suddenly nervous again. Before Joshua, impending contact with the living world would have saddened me. Now Joshua’s awareness of me (and honestly, Joshua himself) had made the depression slink back to a remote part of my brain.

Yet the sight of those buildings, and the creeping sensation they gave me, made me a little scared. And more than a little fused to my seat.

“Move it, Amelia. You’re making me look crazy, standing by an empty door.” Joshua’s words may have seemed harsh, but his voice was playful. Although my indecision was certainly going to make him late for class, he simply smiled and held out one hand for me.

It seemed as though my bravery could stretch itself out a little farther, because I grabbed his hand and stepped out of the car. Immediately, a fiery shock jolted up my arm.

“Oh!” I cried out, and dropped his hand. As he leaned across me to close the passenger side door, he managed to gasp and laugh at the same time.

“More of that later.” He chuckled. “Now for school. Just follow me.”

He actually winked and then strode quickly past me. A smile—formed half from embarrassment, half from excitement—crept onto my face, and I followed behind him toward one of the smaller buildings. As we walked, he spoke through clenched teeth without looking back at me. I assume he did so to keep from appearing to everyone else as if he were talking to himself.

“You all right back there?”

“Yeah, I think so,” I said, mirroring his volume even though I didn’t need to. “This place just looks so … familiar. I feel as if I remember this school; but I don’t know why, or from when.”

“Huh. That could be … interesting.” He was silent for a moment and then, in an unsure tone, he whispered, “Will you be okay with this? I mean, I sort of forced you into it, didn’t I?”

He sounded so genuinely worried, I had to stifle a laugh. Apparently, he hadn’t thought to ask me what I wanted until the last possible second.

Aloud I said, “I’ll probably be all right.”

As I stared at his back, broad and strong beneath his light gray shirt, I impulsively blurted out my next thought.

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter where we go, because I just want to be wherever you are.”

Upon hearing my words, Joshua froze with one hand on the door he was just about to open. Looking at his back, I bit my lower lip in frustration. Was I really such a moron that I’d make a proclamation like that without being able to see his response?

I could see Joshua’s hand flex against the doorknob, so I readied myself for the worst: he would tell me my very presence here was a risk, just as I suspected; he would scold me for touching him in public and would then suggest that I wait outside for him … or go away completely.

But, of course, I misread him again. Instead of fleeing from me, Joshua reached one hand behind him and, still facing forward, squeezed my hand. Then he jerked the door open wide and stepped into a classroom just as a bell rang out across the lawn behind us. I saw him clench and unclench the hand that had touched me, possibly in response to the same fire sizzling in my fingers. I took a deep breath and slipped into the classroom before he pulled the door shut behind us.

I guess I wasn’t prepared for the change in scenery, because I began to blink furiously against the sudden dimness of the room. To be fair, I didn’t have much afterlife experience with poorly lit high school classrooms, and I absently wondered if my pupils still expanded in the dark.

Joshua’s loud cough pulled me out of this reverie, fast.

The cough was obviously a warning, because an elderly woman stood right in front of me, her face mere inches from mine. Her yellowed face matched her wispy hair as well as the yellowed whites of her eyes.

Which were looking directly into mine.

Frantic, I turned back to Joshua, who had frozen in front of the first row of desks. I whipped my head back to the woman, tensing every muscle. Was she another once-dead human who could now see me, like Joshua could? Or another malevolent ghost, like Eli?

A second look into her eyes told me all I needed to know. The eyes didn’t focus fully on mine but instead gazed past me and at Joshua. She squinted, her vision possibly obscured by my form but not enough so as to make me visible to her. The woman looked through me like one looks through a wisp of smoke: distracted by it, without really being fully aware of or concerned by it. When she spoke, she confirmed my assumptions.

“Mr. Mayhew, has your brush with death given you permission to waltz in whenever you please?”

“No, ma’am, Ms. Wolters. I thought I made the bell?”

She frowned, allowing deep lines to pull her mouth into a droopy sort of scowl.

“The bell signifies the start of class, not the time for your entrance. Now take your seat.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he mumbled. Ducking his head, Joshua moved quickly down the aisle and slid behind an empty desk—his, I presumed.

A burly, red-headed boy, sitting at the desk next to Joshua’s, clapped him on the back and whispered, “Should have skipped sixth period, too, dude.” Joshua just nodded tensely.

Without another glance at me—or through me, really—Ms. Wolters circled behind her own desk. I caught Joshua’s gaze and ran a hand across my forehead, mouthing, Whew. He gave me the faintest smile of relief and then began to pull books from his bag.

In that moment I realized I was standing in front of a room full of living people. I suddenly recalled the stereotypical adolescent nightmare: standing naked in front of a classroom of your peers. I certainly wasn’t naked, and these living beings weren’t exactly my peers; but I still felt horribly exposed. I had the unpleasant sensation that the students were all staring right at me even though most of them just looked bored as they watched their teacher start to write on the chalkboard behind me.

Only then did I realize I hadn’t been around this many members of the living world, and all in one place, since my death. So many breathing, blushing, heartbeating people made me nervous. Made me curl protectively into myself.

I glanced up at Joshua. He too was staring around the classroom with a look of wonder. After he analyzed each classmate, he turned his eyes back to me. Wow, he mouthed. I frowned at him, confused. Ever so slightly, he rolled his head in a circle, gesturing to the entire classroom, then nodding emphatically back at me.

I understood. He was coming to the conclusion that he really was the only person who could see me. In the park, he’d listened to me and believed me … in theory. Here, the theory had been put to the test. A test that proved I was invisible—a ghost.

I nodded in confirmation. To underscore his sudden realization, I spoke aloud, “Weird, huh?”

No one but Joshua looked up at me. Wow, he mouthed again, and grinned.

That grin spoke in full paragraphs, telling me exactly what Joshua thought about his new friend’s state of being. The grin set off the warm little ache in my chest, a welcome sensation in the face of my insecurity; the grin was all the reassurance I needed.

Braver, I smiled back. I put one hand in front of my waist and bowed to my bored, unaware audience, then clapped loudly as if to thank them for their kind attention to my performance. Still, no one looked at me.

A brief memory entered my mind: that of my own voice, screaming at unseeing strangers, just after my death. Something about that remembered anguish, in comparison to this moment, made me inexplicably light-headed and almost giddy. I began to pace back and forth in front of the classroom, folding my arms behind me like a general.

“You’re probably wondering why I called you all here today,” I intoned in my deepest boardroom voice.

Joshua snorted and shook his head. “Weirdo,” he said aloud.

“What was that, Mr. Mayhew?”

Ms. Wolters’s shrill voice cut across the room as she spun away from the chalkboard. Joshua coughed and hacked, trying desperately to cover his error.

Unfortunately, some of his classmates, including the big, red-headed boy next to him, mistook Joshua’s actions as the intentional mocking of their teacher. They began to laugh, joining in the supposed fun. Ms. Wolters, believing herself to be at the receiving end of some unheard joke, stood as straight as the piece of chalk she now gripped. Her glare looked no less than murderous.

“Mr. Mayhew, since you seem to have such a keen grasp on this material, please come to the board and tell us what the order is for this differential equation.” She practically spat out the words.

Joshua shot me a panicked look. It was painfully clear from his face that differential equations weren’t exactly his specialty.

“Oh, God,” I moaned. “I’m so sorry. I’m a moron.”

He shook his head slightly, trying to tell me no despite the fact that I’d obviously gotten him into trouble. He slid out of his seat and walked sluggishly to the chalkboard, hardly looking at Ms. Wolters as he took the chalk from her thin hand.

I hurried to his side, fluttering my hands uselessly. I stared up at the complex math problem in front of him, only to see it was a tangled mess of numbers and letters and symbols. Oh no, I thought as I struggled to keep my eyes in focus while staring at the equation. Just looking at all the d’s and 3’s and x’s and y’s, I felt my breath start to mirror Joshua’s in rapidity.

He stared at the equation on the board too, his face a total blank. He seemed pretty smart … but maybe not this smart. Not without some warning. Not in the face of this monster problem.

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