Ashes to Ashes (22 page)

“Hey, Fisher!” Austin shouts. “We're about to bake, man.”

He puts down the bowl and moves to the sliding glass door next to the kitchen, opening it a crack. Then he starts chuckling and comes back inside.

“Fisher's already wasted,” he says.

Carson balls her hands into fists and marches outside. I'm right behind her.

“Nicholas Fisher!” she shouts, and it's her no-nonsense voice—the one that could snap me to attention almost as quickly as one of my father's military-style commands. Nick's condition has obviously served to sober her up.

“Hey, Cars,” Nick slurs. “Come have a drink with us.” He has his arm around Gina O'Neill, which makes me stop for a moment, frozen in the doorway. But he's drunk.
He's just being friendly.
Nick holds out a red plastic cup, his hand wobbling back and forth.

“You must be out of your mind,” she says, walking closer to him.

“Aw, don't be pissy just because that little séance of yours didn't work,” he says.

Carson rolls her eyes. Then she leans back, like a wave has hit her. “You reek! How much have you had?”

Nick looks up at the sky like the answer to her question is out there in the darkness. “Let's see,” he says, letting go of Gina as he counts on his fingers. “I think I had three beers at home and then something in the car. . . . And I'm pretty sure this is my third round of jungle juice so . . . seven?”

He lets out a loud, sloppy laugh and starts to reel forward. As Gina steps away, Carson moves in and holds him up, draping his arm around her shoulder.

I cringe, hating to see Nick like this.

“Good Lord, you're
trashed
!” Carson is staring at Nick angrily, and her fish-tail braids are loose with undone pieces now. “What is the matter with you?”

Nick lets out a burp in Carson's face, and she fans her hand in front of her nose.

“Gross,” she says. “Do you think Callie would want to see you like this?”

I see Gina flinch.
Good
. Part of me is happy that Carson mentioned me, that I'm still
there
with them somehow, even if it's just in their memories. But another part of me is just plain worried. I mean, we all started drinking last year, but just for fun, just to get a little buzzed. Nick is drinking alone now, I know, and getting completely plastered at this party. Everyone else seems to think that's fine, and I feel a rush of affection for Carson, who knows this is not okay, that this isn't Nick.

“Wake up!” she shouts, slapping Nick on the arm as his eyes droop closed.

He opens his eyes wide and says, “I'd give anything if you'd just
shut up
.” Then his head tips forward and his body follows—I try to reach out, to summon enough energy to catch him, but he falls right through my arms, crashing to the deck as he blacks out.

Twenty-One

“JESUS!”
Carson shout-whispers. “You are a
mess
.”

She struggles to get him to his feet, and I move in, trying to help her support his weight. I can't hold him up, but I do manage to make contact with his arm enough so that she can hoist him onto her shoulder again.

Nick mumbles for her to leave him alone, but Carson has a single-minded fire in her now—I've seen it before, like after Mama died and I wouldn't come out of my house for days. She marched over to our place one Saturday afternoon with a bottle of soap bubbles and filled my room with the transparent, glossy globes. Then she said, “This is more fun outside,” and I followed her into the yard and sat in the sun for the first time in a week. We were six. She doesn't take “leave me alone” to heart.

They leave Gina on the porch as Carson leads Nick through the house and past the kitchen, where Austin and his friends give him a thumbs-up. He opens his eyes long enough to acknowledge it, then slumps back over Carson, who holds his weight expertly despite his wobbly legs.

When she finally gets him past the girls on the stairs and up into the peach room, she dumps him on the bed and closes the door behind them.

I sit down by Nick's side while Carson goes into the bathroom and turns on the water.

Leaning down, I whisper in his ear. “It's going to be okay.” I feel so helpless—I'm not a part of his life anymore in any tangible way, but I want him to feel that I'm here. . . .

Carson comes out of the bathroom, and I step back as she presses a wet cloth to Nick's forehead.

The anger is gone from her face; there's just sadness now.

“I get it, Nick,” Carson says. “Summer's ending. School starts soon. Callie won't be there with us. It totally sucks. But you can't be doing this.”

Summer's almost over? Already? And they're still floundering because I'm not mastering this haunting thing. Guilt and remorse swamp me. The time I wasted with Reena—I could have been helping them.

“I don't care about school, Carson,” Nick says. “I'm just tired of thinking about her, of people telling me how sorry they are. And the whispers that it was my fault.”

“Don't listen to the whispers, Nick. The accident wasn't your fault,” she says softly, kindly. And for a moment, it's like she's the ghost, trying to make him realize that she's here for him.

His eyelashes flutter open and he stares up at her.

“Yes, it was.”

There's so much despair in his voice that it makes me ache inside. I sit down on the floor next to the bed, close to them, and I wish I could reach out to him.

“It was her choice to drive so fast, her choice to answer the phone when she was driving. She knew better,” Carson says.

For all her belief in the supernatural, Carson is practical. And she's right.

“You don't know, Cars,” he says. “I was going to tell her that night, and . . .”

He falls silent, and Carson reaches up to stroke the side of his face.

“No,” she says softly. “Shhh. . . . It wasn't your fault.”

I look up at my best friend, so caring. Her dark brown eyes are focused on Nick, and I'm so grateful to her for doing what I haven't been able to—for bringing him out of his grief.

The way I felt with my father, that peaceful feeling—I want it now. I realize that this is the perfect moment for it, while they're here together, alone.

I close my eyes and let myself remember moments with each of them, with the three of us, and I find it easier to steer clear of the details of the memory and instead dive into the emotions that these moments stir. I fill myself with them, let those intangible and unconscious sensations take over my being and slink into the room so that all three of us—I hope—can feel them together.

There's a promising silence in the room, and I open my eyes—Carson and Nick are still. I can't help but give them one extra push, so I send a thought their way:
I'm with you
.

“She's with us.” Both Carson and Nick murmur together, and they look at each other for a moment. I feel the energy connecting all three of us, almost as if it's a real thread that ties us to one another.

This is the true connection, the one I need.

“Thank you, Thatcher,” I whisper.

And just as I say it, a loud crackle echoes from within my body, and I feel a lightning bolt strike through me. I close my eyes at the surge, and then it's over. When I open them again, Carson's eyes are sparkling with gold. Her face blurs momentarily, almost like I made my own vision go fuzzy, and I see a flash of familiar rosebud lips. I shake my head to clear my sight, and when I look again, it's Carson, just Carson. But her expression has changed. Her mouth is curled into a small smile.

“Nick,” she says. Her voice is almost a purr. It doesn't sound like Carson at all.

He's lying back now, his head on the soft down pillow with the ruffled peach sham. “Callie's here. You felt it, too, didn't you? She's here. I have to tell her.”

“Tell her what?”

He releases a broken sob. “I was going to break up with her.”

I stagger back as though he's hit me with those words. Break up with me?

“If I'd told her the night before, like I'd planned, she wouldn't have been coming to see me. I called to tell her—” Another sob.

Pain is ripping through me. Is this what those texts were about? What Nick should have told me before the accident? But who is H? Does it really matter anymore? Everything I thought I had with Nick was a lie.

Carson looks in my direction, like she can truly see me. Her lips curve up in triumph.

“Well, then . . .” She straddles Nick and presses her lips to his. Her hair falls off her neck and I think I see a dark spot there, but I can't be sure. For a second my brain can't process what I'm seeing.

Carson is kissing Nick.

It's another blow. Was she the reason he wanted to break up with me? Then why didn't she know? I can't make sense of any of this; the devastation of their betrayal is fogging my mind.

I jump to my feet, my mouth open wide like the breath has been sucked out of my body.
What's happening? What's happening? What's happening?
My mind is racing and they are
still kissing.

I try to collect myself to form enough energy to
get her off him
.

Think, Callie, think.

I focus all my emotions on Nick's mind, trying to make him recognize my presence. I close my eyes and picture the day he and I drove out to the Isle of Palms together. We crossed over the bridge and onto the island, where Nick took me out to the beach and we walked for miles. It wasn't a hand-holding-at-sunset thing, it was us being funny, doing handstands, pushing each other into the water, looking for sea glass. I try to call up every detail I can remember. We finished the night by laying a blanket down in the sand and watching for shooting stars, where we kissed until I thought I couldn't breathe without his lips on mine. I'm remembering, I'm focusing. . . .

And suddenly I hear Nick say my name.

“Callie.”

I open my eyes as he pushes Carson away. He jumps off the bed and backs away from her. I see Carson's body jolt, as if that same electrical charge is passing through her, and then she starts coughing. Her face looks stunned, disbelieving, as her hand flies up to her mouth.

“What are you doing?” asks Nick.

I look around the room, needing to reaffirm for them that I'm here, that the presence they felt was real. I spot a small porcelain statue of a Dalmatian on the bureau and swat at it with a palm filled with anger. It teeters, then drops to the floor with a crash.

Nick and Carson both jump, startled.

“What just happened?” she says. Then she looks at his horrified face and asks again, more urgently, “Nick! What just happened?”

He looks away from the fallen dog statue with fear in his eyes.

“You kissed me,” he says.

“No,” she says, pressing her fingers to her lips as if she can deny it. “No . . . I . . .”

“You did,” he says. “And then I saw her . . . our day at Isle of Palms . . . I saw her.”

“You're drunk,” Carson says, glancing at the broken pieces of porcelain. She sinks down on the bed, holding her stomach like she's in pain. “You're confused. . . . I didn't . . .”

“Callie,” Nick says again, like he's calling to me. “I'm sorry I didn't tell you the truth before. I just didn't want to hurt you.”

It hurts just as much now. I know it shouldn't, but it does. How long did he feel that way? How much of our relationship was just me hanging on?

I can tell by his face that he is in a full panic. He stumbles past Carson, tearing through the door and down the stairs. I should let him go. I want to wallow in my misery.

But he's not acting like the Nick I know. There's a carelessness in him. And I know how much he's had to drink. I rush after him.

His eyes are wide open and glazed over, and he seems like he doesn't even hear people shouting for him to stop.

“Hey, Fisher! I got brownies for you . . . ,” Austin calls from the kitchen.

Nick doesn't slow down for a moment, and I race alongside him, small pings of energy pricking me as I crash through anyone in my way.

He pushes by a crowd near the front door and out into the driveway, knocking into a group of freshman girls who spill their bright red drinks and then burst into laughter. Nick doesn't stop.

The driveway is long and curving, but Nick finds his way down the dark pavement, his steps falling at a rapid pace. I glide beside him, unconcerned with the physical world, just wanting to stay near him, glad that my ghostly self has the grace to do that. He fumbles with his keys at the door to his car, and he looks back up at the big house like it might be chasing him. I glance at the mansion in the moonlight, too, and I hear rooms echo with drunk laughter. When I turn back to Nick, he's got his keys in the lock.

“Don't drive, Nick,” I plead. “Please . . . don't drive.”

But again, I'm useless. I'm not here. All I can do are party tricks like breaking a porcelain dog. I can't stop Nick from doing something incredibly stupid.

In spite of what he said, in spite of everything, I still care about him. Maybe I'm in denial, can't truly face it, but I don't want him hurt.

He gets into his car, and I hurry to join him, passing through the door as if
it's
the thing that isn't here, instead of me. As I hover in the passenger seat, he guns the engine and peels off the McCanns' lawn.

Nick drives dangerously fast, ignoring the stop sign at the end of the street and blasting his horn at a car up ahead of him. I have to get him to calm down, to pull over.

I look out the windshield at the dark highway speeding by us, and I can't help but flash back to the truck that came out of nowhere on the night I died.

“Nick, please,” I say, knowing that he can't hear me but hoping that somehow he
can
, just like I think Carson heard me, deep down, during the séance. “Please slow down. Nick, I still love you. Please, please slow down.”

I'm repeating it over and over, like a whispered prayer.

Nick is driving like he's possessed. We turn out onto the old rural route, and the speedometer goes up to ninety as his jaw hardens. It's almost like he
wants
to punish himself.

How can this be happening?
After all of the connecting, the haunting, the real moments between us . . . he's still so unhinged. This entire time guilt has been gnawing at him, a deeper guilt than I realized. He wanted to talk the night he came to my room, but I wanted him to hold me. And he did what I wanted.

Now he feels responsible for my death, for not being honest with me, for harboring a secret. His unwillingness to hurt me, in the end, hurt me beyond his wildest expectations.

Why was he going to break up with me? What did I do wrong? I push back the pain, the anger, the betrayal. I have to help him, to save him.

As the car pushes past ninety-five miles per hour, I see the blind recklessness in Nick's profile, the intensity on his face. His foot is still pressed on the gas pedal. I know this moment—I used to live in it myself.

I got into his thoughts once tonight. I have to try again. I close my eyes and feel the speed of the car, but I try to block it out. I fill myself with internal emotions, not the fear and desperation that surround me in the car, but the peace and pure happiness I felt with him when we were alive. I dig deep into myself, into my
soul
. And then I call out to him.

“Nick,” I say.

He turns around and smiles at me. “Callie, what are you doing outside?”

And it's like we've spun on a rotating stage set . . . the scene changes and we're outside in a lush, green garden. I'm with him—I must be inside a daydream, or a memory he's having. I have to remember that this isn't real—that we're in a car, and he's in danger. I need to save his life. But I'm so thrilled that he sees me! He hears me! I rush into his arms, hugging his body close to mine.

And though I half expect my arms to pass right through, I am suddenly enveloped by him. His soft T-shirt, his strong arms, his
smell
. He's kissing the top of my head and laughing at my ardor.

“Whoa,” he says softly. “Why so intense?”

His smile is easy, like the smiles we shared . . . before.

“I love you,” I say. “I will always, always love you.”

“Callie, I know,” he says.

The air is soft and inviting, like Charleston on the very best days of spring. Not hot yet, but past winter's chill. It's when the flowers bloom and everything feels new. It's perfect daydream weather, and of course it would be what Nick's subconscious chooses. His warm brown eyes are so alert, so
aware
of me that I want to cry with joy.