Hereafter (21 page)

Unfortunately, I realized only too late that I shouldn’t have turned. In doing so, I brought another headstone into my line of sight: the one right next to mine.

The early-morning sun had crested the horizon, and it now threw its soft pink rays from behind the neighboring headstone. The rays were almost strong enough to shadow the headstone and obscure its letters. Almost, but not quite.

On a tall stone, only slightly fancier than mine, the following letters glared out at me:

TODD ALLEN ASHLEY
JUNE 5, 1960—MARCH 29, 2006
WE’LL MEET AGAIN

The breath simply whooshed out of my lungs. As I sat there trying to reclaim it—hands pressed to the ground, eyes fixated on my father’s epitaph—the faint tunes of a song echoed in my ears. I closed my eyes and imagined the scene that had always seemed to go along with it.

My father and mother, on one of their happier days. One of those days when money worries or job insecurities didn’t bother them as much, and they each remembered the other’s presence. On those days my father would barge into our tiny kitchen and scoop my mother into his arms. It wouldn’t matter if she was covered in flour from making our dinner or suds from the dishes. She would wrap her arms around his neck and lay her head upon his shoulder while he crooned an old tune to her, one that promised they’d meet again, sometime, someplace.

The song was so loud in my head, I didn’t hear Eli walk up behind me.

“You don’t have to be sad about your death anymore, Amelia.” Eli’s voice cut off the song just at its crescendo. “I’m here to share it with you,” he added, placing one hand upon my shoulder.

I brushed Eli’s hand away, perhaps with unnecessary force. “I’m not sad about my death, Eli. I’m sad about his.” I pointed to my father’s grave, my finger jutting out in a rigid accusation, as if to blame the grave itself for my misery.

“Oh. And who is this?”

“My father,” I whispered.

“This stone?” Eli leaned over me to read the stone. “Todd Ashley? This is your father?”

“Y-yes.”

The word broke apart as I spoke it. I pressed one hand to my lips in an effort to hold back the torrent, but it was too late. My enormous, gasping sobs ripped through the dawn air, wrenching out of me not only my breath but also a great flood of tears.

I sank, then, at the foot of my father’s grave. I left my hands on the grass and lay my head upon them. I let my tears fall from my face, onto my hands and then onto the ground.

“You’re . . . crying,” Eli breathed in wonder.

“Yes,” I moaned, but then barked out a bizarre little laugh. I pushed myself back up into a seated position, wiping ineffectually at my cheeks and my chin. “I’ve been known to do that from time to time.”

Eli grabbed my waist, and, before I realized what was happening, he pulled me to my feet and whirled me around to face him.

“You’ll never have to cry again. Not while you’re with me.”

His fingers dug into the fabric of my dress. With one huge breath—for courage, perhaps—he wrenched me to him and pressed his lips to mine.

His mouth muffled my cry of protest. I shoved hard against his chest, but my struggles only made him pull me tighter.

As the kiss continued, I cried out again, but not in protest. This time, I did so in fear.

Because, while Eli kept his mouth crushed to mine, I felt a piercing sensation there, like something had ripped the delicate skin of my lower lip apart. The corners of my eyes prickled from the pain.

When Eli loosened his grip in an attempt to cup my cheek, I was finally able to break free. As I pushed myself out of his arms, I had to retreat several steps back onto my own grave. Even without the pressure of Eli’s mouth to mine, my bottom lip still throbbed painfully, rhythmically. My tongue darted to the tender spot on my lips and, inexplicably, I tasted copper.

“What did you just do to me?” I gasped, bringing my fingers to my lips but not yet touching them.

Eli had the decency, at least, to look confused. “I’m pretty sure I kissed you, Amelia.”

I dragged the back of my hand across my mouth and then looked down at it. There, smeared across the skin of my hand, was a streak of something bright red.

Blood.

“Y-your teeth,” I stuttered. “I think they cut me. I . . . I’m
bleeding
.”

Eli shook his head, uncomprehending. “No. No, that’s not possible.”

“Oh, it isn’t?” I said, wiping again at my mouth where I could still feel a hot swell of blood. “Then what’s this on my lips?”

“I don’t know. But whatever it is, you’re wrong,” Eli protested. “I wouldn’t hurt you, Amelia. Not like that. Besides, I couldn’t if I tried—we’re both dead.”

“It doesn’t matter.” My voice rose to a near shout. “You won’t be kissing me again anyway.”

“Oh, I think I will, Amelia. We’re fated.”

“Quit saying that,” I hissed.

“I’ll say whatever I want to you. You’re fated to serve me, remember?”

I laughed and shook my head. “Oh, I remember, Eli. And thanks for reminding me: I should have known better than to trust you, even for a second.”

Eli’s mouth twisted as if he’d bitten into something sour. “And who do you trust, Amelia Ashley? That
boy
? That living boy?”

I thrust back my shoulders. “That’s none of your business, Eli Rowland.”

His scowl deepened into a disdainful smile. “Exactly what do you hope to do with him? Live a long and happy life?”

“I’ll do whatever I want with him,” I shouted, but Eli merely laughed at me. The cruel sound crawled over my skin.

“You’re missing one very important detail, Amelia,” he said. “You can’t share your future with that boy, because there is no future for you. He’ll age, but you’ll stay the same, forever, dead—unchanging. Futureless.”

“I don’t have to stay here and listen to this,” I spat. “And I’m not going to.”

I spun on my heels to leave, to go anywhere but here, and fast. Before I could run away, though, Eli grabbed one of my wrists and whirled me back around to face him.

Immediately, I became aware of a rough burning upon my wrist at the place where Eli’s fingers gripped me. I looked down at my arm and gasped. Just beneath Eli’s fingers, pale pink streaks appeared on my skin: abrasions, caused by his too-tight grip.

As Eli had said, it wasn’t possible. Yet as I struggled, the marks beneath his fingers grew brighter, more irritated.

“Eli, my arm!” I looked back up at him in panic. Eli, however, didn’t seem to hear me. His eyes, bright and frenzied, bored into mine. I tried in vain to yank my wrist from his grip while I clawed at his fingers with my free hand.

“Stop it!” I shrieked. “You’re hurting me!”

Eli ignored my demand and tugged me closer.

“But maybe I’m forgetting something too, Amelia. After all, isn’t your death one of the reasons you came to see me? You
did
want to know about your death, didn’t you?” That malicious smile changed into something darker, something wilder. “Well,
honey
, let me fulfill your wish.”

“No! Let me go,” I cried out just as I lost the tug-of-war with my arm. Eli finally pulled me to him, his face only a few inches from mine.

“Too late, Amelia. Too late.”

“Please,” I gasped. I couldn’t quite catch my breath, and the bones in my wrist strained under his grip.

“Don’t beg. It’s unbecoming,” Eli whispered. Then he jerked me even closer to him, pressing his body to mine. “Now, I’m going to tell you something very important and then I’ve got to get to my second appointment today. I don’t have much time, so listen carefully: you didn’t fall off that bridge.”

“No,” I moaned. “I fell. I know I fell. I didn’t jump.”

“Shut up,” Eli commanded. “You didn’t fall. And you didn’t jump, either.”

“W-what?” I shook my head, unable to think clearly, unable to understand.

Eli leaned in until his cold lips brushed my earlobe. Softly, almost too softly for me to hear, he whispered, “You were pushed.”

Without warning, Eli let go of my arm.

I hadn’t stopped struggling and so I flew backward from the momentum. I fell toward the ground, staring wildly up at Eli’s twisted face.

The last thing I heard, before my vision went black, was the loud crack of my head against my own tombstone.

Chapter
Twenty-three

I
t was the same as always.

I opened my eyes to the terrible, familiar water. It churned and frothed around me, whether from the river’s current or my struggles, I couldn’t be sure. The water obscured my vision, battered against my weakening limbs, and pried at my lips, trying to open them and inundate my lungs.

My lungs ached for air, and my arms ached from flailing. Black spots—the by-products of a lack of oxygen—began to dance across my eyes.

Another nightmare. I was in another nightmare.

The rational part of my brain recognized this fact. It spoke softly, quietly telling the rest of my brain that this horror would end soon, that I always awoke from this wretched scene even if I did so as a dead girl. I knew this much: if I stopped struggling, the nightmare would eventually end and I would wake up in the graveyard.

And after I woke up, I would be able to return to Joshua. The very thought of his name gave me hope. It gave me a reason to let go of the fight no matter how much it went against my somewhat ironic survival instinct.

So I stopped struggling. I let my arms and legs go slack. I let the current pull at them, let it catch them and drag them. I closed my eyes just so I wouldn’t have to watch this part of the nightmare happen, and I opened my mouth to breathe the inevitable air of the graveyard.

Yet water instead of air rushed into my open mouth. I choked on it, inadvertently allowing in more water. I opened my eyes, but I still saw the dark river around me, not the sunlit cemetery.

Something was going horribly wrong.

I’d never choked before. In no other nightmare had the water actually entered my lungs. I always woke up just before the point of death. Always.

But not now, it seemed.

My lungs screamed in my chest since the water burned them far worse than the lack of air had. My whole body moved in a frenzied response to the burning in my chest, arms flapping and legs scissoring beneath me.

I flailed, I flailed, and then—

Impossibly, I rose. Within seconds, my head emerged from the water.

I felt wind, and the heavy pelting of rain against my skin. The rain came from all directions, pouring down on me in a torrent and then splashing back off the river and into my face.

My body began to react again. I coughed twice and choked up some of the water from my lungs. My hands slapped weakly against the surface of the river, mostly ineffective in their battle to keep me afloat.

While I floundered, I felt the strangest sensation along my wrists, under my jaw, in my chest: a heavy thumping that reverberated throughout my body. Without being terribly cognizant of what I was doing, I clenched one hand to my heart.

Only then, with my hand pressed against my chest, did I realize what was happening: my heart was beating. That was a pulse, thumping at my wrists and under my jaw.

I was alive.

I opened my mouth to scream—from fear, from joy. And for help. If I was truly alive, I needed help, fast.

But another noise cut off my scream: laughter, loud and crazed, from somewhere high above me. Individual voices blended together in their frenzy, with only the occasionally distinct shriek.

Despite the uniformity of the laughing voices, they all sounded so familiar. Who were they? Where were they?

I squinted up through the rain. Far above me I could just make out the shape of High Bridge and the crowd of figures standing at its edge.

Don’t you remember this scene, Amelia? Isn’t everything awfully familiar?

The silky voice—a darker version of my own—whispered in my head. I frowned as I continued to cough and choke up more water. What was happening here?

I looked back up to the bridge and the figures on it.

“Help,” I pleaded. The word came out as a feeble moan, barely loud enough to reach the bridge.

At the sound of my voice, one of the figures moved away from the pack. Its head whipped away from the other figures, and it met my gaze. Even through the rain, I could see that the figure was a boy.

I may not have been able to make out his features. But I could, at that moment, have easily described his square jaw, his perfectly straight nose, and his short blond crew cut.

Because I
knew
the boy now staring down at me from High Bridge.

I’d only known him for a short time, really, before my death. Only for my senior year, the one I’d practically forced my mother into letting me attend at Wilburton High School. The boy now watching me would have been in my graduating class, if I’d had the chance to graduate.

I remembered him. I remembered everything about Doug Davidson.

Doug, the most popular boy at school. The one with the most friends, the fastest car, and the richest parents. The one who had befriended me the minute I stepped into Wilburton High. The one who had . . . had . . .

I struggled with the memory, trying to grasp at it, when another figure joined him at the edge of the bridge and flung its arm around Doug’s neck. When it leaned forward, I could see its face.

It was Serena Taylor.

Serena had been my best friend since childhood. The girl I’d met during endless hours of homeschooled soccer, forced on us by our parents in an attempt to make us socialize. The girl who’d taught me how to apply lipstick, sneak sips from the bottles in my dad’s liquor cabinet, and charm my dad into letting me go to public high school shortly after she’d entered it. The girl who was as blond and as beautiful as Doug and who, once I’d introduced her to him, had tried various schemes to seduce him, including forcing him to help her organize a party.

The one they’d thrown together for my eighteenth birthday.

The day on which I’d died.

My head jerked up to Doug and Serena again. They were both bent over the railing of the bridge, their faces more visible now. Even from this far away and through the rain, I could tell something was wrong with them. Their nearly identical blue eyes looked too dark, too unfocused.

Inexplicably, I started to shake. Staring up at their familiar faces—faces that shouldn’t still look eighteen, should they?—I felt dizzy.

At that moment Serena cried out to me. Her shrill voice pierced the night air, sounding slurry and drunk and completely out of control.

“Amelia! Amelia. Happy, happy birthday, baby!”

She reached an arm out to me and, with an absurdly wide smile, gave me a frantic wave.

Before I could answer her, or scream at her to help me, for God’s sake, I had a sudden, uncontrollable flash.

It happened much like the other flashes I’d been experiencing since I’d met Joshua—the sights and sounds of the past, the memories I’d forgotten since my death, came rushing back into my mind.

Without warning, I was standing in front of my locker in the brightly lit hallway of Wilburton High School. Taped to the front of my locker was a small card decorated with cartoon balloons. I didn’t need to open it to know who had taped it there. Nor did I feel any real surprise when the card giver squealed out a greeting behind me.

“Happy birthday, birthday girl!”

Grinning widely, I spun around. “Serena, you’ve had about ninety tardies this semester. Don’t you think you should be in homeroom by now?”

She grinned back and then blew one blond strand out of her eye with a puff of breath. “Not on my bestie’s b-day.” She flopped against the bank of lockers, banging their doors with the paper bag in her hand.

“What’s with the bag?” I asked. “And the trench coat?”

With her free hand, Serena tugged at the belt of her khaki overcoat, and it fell open. Underneath, she wore a pink dress that narrowly towed the line between sexy and sleazy. Its tight bodice plunged just a little too low for my taste, and its hemline crept just a little too high.

“Hello, hot stuff,” I crowed.

“Glad you approve.” She tossed the bag at me, and I caught it in midair. “Here’s yours for tonight. Hope you like strapless.”

“Serena, I can’t—”

“Yes, you can,” she growled with mock ferocity.

“Okay, okay.” I laughed. “But what do you mean, ‘tonight’?”

“You didn’t think you’d get out of one of my famous parties, did you? Especially for your eighteenth birthday. It’s, like, mandatory.”

I groaned, more out of concession than protest. “
Fine
. When and where?”

She flashed me a wicked grin—one that, for some strange reason, made me uncomfortable.

“Not telling you, Amelia baby. I’m just picking you up at eight and escorting you to the best party of the year. After I talk your mom into a very irresponsible curfew, of course.”

“You’re going to start another one of our epic fights if you do.”

Serena, however, just shrugged, unconcerned about my family drama.

I laughed again, but more shakily this time. “Really, Serena. I need to know where the party’s going to be.”

She shook her head and winked. “Nope. Now, shut up so I can go find Doug and see if he approves of the dress too.”

Suddenly, the flash skipped me forward several hours. Images blurred all around me until my vision cleared and I found myself standing in a large crowd.

A
huge
crowd, actually. Tons of people surrounded me, smiling and laughing and converging around what looked like a small keg of beer. Some of them were my friends, from homeschooled extracurriculars as well as from Wilburton High. Most of the partygoers, however, were total strangers.

“Serena,” I said through clenched teeth. “Who are all these people?”

Serena bounced next to me, hyperactive and probably a little tipsy. She handed me her cup, and I took a nervous swig from it.

“Friends,” Serena giggled. “Or, like, all of Wilburton High. So . . . potential friends?”

“Is this Doug’s doing?” I asked, handing her back the cup and then smoothing imaginary wrinkles from my white dress.

Serena’s choice for my birthday outfit hadn’t really surprised me. The dress was absolutely gorgeous—strapless and tight on top, with layers of delicate tulle below—but also totally inappropriate. I flushed with embarrassment as I stared down at it. It probably made me look like I was on my way to the prom.

A thick arm slung across my shoulder, making me shriek in surprise.

“Of course it is,” Doug said, pulling me closer to him. He took a sideways peek at me. “Nice dress, by the way.”

I shrugged out from under his arm. “You know you like Serena’s better.”

“Possibly,” he mused, and then pushed past me toward Serena. Within seconds the two of them had linked arms and disappeared into the crowd, leaving me alone, in a beautiful but embarrassing dress, at my own birthday party. I peered into the crowd, searching for my friends without success.

A loud boom distracted me from my search, and I looked up. Above me, the night sky appeared dark and blank, but I knew better; thick gray clouds had covered the sky all day, threatening storms. Now lightning sliced across the black, glinting harshly off the metal girders of High Bridge.

I hated this place, I really did. It was too rickety and too old, and it had seen far too many car accidents and suicides for my taste. But I had a good idea why Serena had chosen this bridge for my party: its bad reputation had left it pretty abandoned as a roadway, making it the perfect spot for wild parties. In fact, I may have been the only person in Wilburton who
wasn’t
inclined to booze it up on High Bridge. Tonight was no exception.

Thinking like this, however, hardly improved my mood. So I glanced at the faces around me, trying to find someone to talk to.

Everyone, however, ignored me completely. Well, all but one person ignored me. A boy, far into the crowd and only partly visible, caught my eye. He looked startled for a second, as if something about me surprised him, but then he smiled and gave me a slight nod. The gesture should have made me happy, but it actually unnerved me. I’m not really sure why since the boy was so attractive: oddly luminous skin beneath his long blond hair; bright blue eyes; and a black shirt, open provocatively over his bare chest to reveal a cluster of necklaces. But something about his smile seemed more like a smirk.

I leaned over to a girl who looked vaguely familiar and shouted above the noise. “Hey, you see Mr. Rock Star over there? What’s his story?”

“Who?” she yelled.

When I turned back to point him out, I could no longer see him in the sea of faces. Maybe he’d moved?

I frowned and began to shove through the crowd, suddenly and inexplicably intent on finding him. The crowd swayed and surged around me, sometimes blocking my way and sometimes pushing me forward. I studied each partyer but had about as much luck finding Mr. Rock Star as I’d had with Doug and Serena. As I elbowed my way across the bridge, raindrops began to fall, slowly at first and then gaining in speed.

“Perfect,” I muttered, wiping at a fat droplet from the corner of my right eye. No matter how furiously I wiped, though, the droplet wouldn’t go away. In irritation, I swung my head violently to the right.

That’s when I saw them. They must have hung at the edge of my peripheral vision, almost but not quite out of sight: black shapes wafting through the crowd, circling around people’s heads. The inky, insubstantial things moved like liquid, undulating and swirling. Yet they looked dense, almost like clouds, or . . .

“Smoke!” I screamed, pressing against a particularly out-of-control boy.

I kept screaming the word and shoving against people, but the crowd responded to my screams with nothing but shrieked laughter and unfocused stares, as if they couldn’t see me, much less the strange shapes moving above their heads.

I started to panic. My adrenaline surged, and I tried to elbow my way through the thick mass of unresponsive bodies.

Suddenly, my arms broke through the crowd. My hands flailed in the air for a moment until they caught something solid: the cold, wet smoothness of metal. I grasped it tightly and used it to pull myself free from the wall of bodies.

I looked down and saw my hands clutched to the edge of the metal guardrail of the road, a flimsy one meant to keep cars from plummeting off the bridge and into the river below.