Hereafter

Pills

Darcy wasn’t home. I’d gone back to the house, ready to explain, but she wasn’t there. And my dad was tapping away at his laptop, as always. Even with the sun shining brightly through the windows, the place felt desolate, and I spent the entire morning on edge, waiting to hear the door open downstairs. Anticipating the confrontation. But Darcy had never returned. Which meant she was seriously pissed.

She still wasn’t home when I left for Krista’s. As I cut across the park, I twisted my hands together in front of me, trying to ignore my mounting fear of going to the mayor’s house. Instead, I focused on Tristan and what I was going to say to him to get him to believe me about the usherings.

I understand why you’re scared, but I can’t accept this, I thought. Aaron doesn’t belong in the Shadowlands.

I shook my head, laughing tersely at myself as I passed the fountain. I’d only said the exact same thing a million times yesterday. Why would his response be any different? Maybe…

I understand why you’re scared, but there clearly is something wrong around here, I thought. Don’t you want to help us figure out what it is?

I bit my lip. That might work better, keeping Aaron out of it.

I was just squaring my shoulders and starting to psych myself up for this whole walking-into-the-lion’s-den thing when I saw them. Pete and Cori, straddling their dirt bikes not ten feet away, glaring at me.

My steps automatically slowed as frustration burbled up inside me. What? I wanted to yell. What’s your problem with me?

But then Officer Dorn and Chief Grantz strolled over to join them. And then Yoga Woman from the park. And the grocer. And two other people I didn’t recognize. I stopped in my tracks, adrenaline and fear surging through me. All that was missing was Nadia and her piercing black eyes.

Dorn leaned toward Grantz’s ear, and they both fixed their angry gazes on me. The others seemed to shift as one, as if primed for an attack.

Tristan’s voice echoed in my mind: Once angry people get together and are out for blood, they’re not satisfied until they get it.

I ducked my head and kept walking, faster and faster and faster, until I reached a sprint at the top of the hill. I had to get to Krista, to my friends. It wasn’t until I saw the weather vane creaking overhead that I froze, a new wave of terror crashing over me.

How stupid an idea was this, going to the mayor’s house right now? All night I’d been waiting for the ambush. What if it was waiting behind Tristan’s front door?

Suddenly, Krista walked around the side of the house, her face creased with concern. She was wearing a lavender sundress and her hair was pulled back at the sides. There was a streak of flour on her cheek and when she saw me, her eyes brightened.

“There you are!” she said, reaching for one of my hands with both of hers. “I was just about to go down to your house to check on you.”

“Why?” I felt light-headed.

“You’re late,” she replied. “And Joaquin said something about keeping an eye on you. He seemed like he was worried.”

“Um…yeah. I guess I’m just a little freaked out about everything that’s been going on around here lately,” I said, glancing one last time over my shoulder. “Is Tristan inside?”

“No, he left a little while ago,” Krista replied. “Nadia came by, and I think they went out surfing or something.”

My stomach fell into my toes. “What?”

“Oh. Right. Sorry.” Krista made an apologetic face. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”

I tasted bile in the back of my throat. It wasn’t nothing. If the two of them were out somewhere alone together, Nadia was definitely trying to convince him of my guilt. Trying to make him believe he was just letting another girl pull the wool over his eyes. And considering that the last time I saw Tristan we’d yelled at each other, I couldn’t trust that he would take my side.

“Come on,” Krista said, tugging me toward the house.

We were just passing the dead garden in front of the porch when a shout sounded from inside, followed by a door slamming. A bevy of crows took off from the roof of the house, cawing angrily.

“Um, maybe we should just sit out here for a while,” Krista suggested, clutching my hand so hard it hurt.

“What about Bea and Lauren?” I asked, clutching her right back.

“They’ll live.”

We looked at each other and shared a strained laugh over her choice of words. Cautiously keeping an eye on the front door, Krista led me up the porch steps and over to a wicker bench facing the bluff and the wide-open ocean beyond. As soon as she sat down, Krista deflated, hunching back against the puffy cushions in a very un-Krista-like way.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“I’ve been thinking about what Joaquin said yesterday,” she told me, picking at a broken piece of wicker on the arm of the bench. “You know…why are we even here if everything can go so wrong?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

Krista sighed and crossed her slim arms over her stomach. “Do you ever miss it? Your life?”

My life. Considering everything that had gone on in my new life the last few days, I hadn’t had much time to think about my old one. And it was almost impossible to focus on it now, knowing that Tristan and Nadia were out there somewhere, talking.

But after a moment, I realized that unless I counted school, there wasn’t all that much to miss. I’d had friends, but no extremely close ones. I’d already been missing my mom for years, so that hadn’t changed, and Darcy and my dad were still with me. My mind flashed on an image of Christopher, but I could hardly remember what he looked like. When I thought of him, I felt a pleasant hum inside my chest, but nothing more.

“Not really,” I told her. She gave me this doe-eyed look that was sad, like she’d been expecting another answer. “But I guess I haven’t been here long enough to really miss it.”

“That’s true,” she said with another sigh.

I gazed at her petite frame. She seemed so fragile in that moment, so breakable. “Krista,” I started gently, “do you want to tell me…I mean, do you want to talk about how you…”

“Died?” she asked, her voice breaking. “I killed myself.”

“Just like Joaquin,” I said.

She laughed harshly. “Not exactly. I didn’t mean to do it.”

“What?” I gasped, startled.

Krista turned her hands over and over in her lap. “I just…my boyfriend, Andreas…he broke up with me, and I only took the pills because I figured I’d pass out and then he’d find me. And when he found me he would realize how much he loved me. It was a whole Romeo and Juliet thing. We were supposed to go to prom together, and I had a dress, and I just wanted him to want to take me. But instead, I ended up here. It was all supposed to be perfect, and I ended up here. Without him.”

She pressed her face against my shoulder, dissolving into tears. I wrapped one arm around her and let her cry, thinking how awful it must have been for her, knowing she could’ve just gone to prom with someone else and gotten on with her life. If only she hadn’t taken too many pills.

It was kind of how I’d felt about taking the shortcut through the woods that day. If only I’d gotten a ride, if only I’d taken the long way around, Mr. Nell would never have had the opportunity to attack me. My sister, my father, and I would all be alive back in Princeton. Back in “the other world.” I wouldn’t have to worry about the angry mob or the mayor or the Shadowlands or Oblivion or where Tristan was right now and what I would say to him when I had the chance.

Maybe I did miss my life.

“I’m sorry,” she said, sniffling. “I’m really sorry. I’ve just been thinking about this a lot lately, with the one-year anniversary coming up and everything…but for some reason it just feels worse today.”

“It’s okay, Krista,” I told her, rubbing her back. “Hey, what was your selfless act?” I asked, hoping that might cheer her up.

“Oh. That.” She laughed and looked down at her fingers in her lap. “It was so lame. Not like saving a life or ridding the world of an evil maniac, like some people.”

I smirked. “Tell me.”

“I saved a doll.”

“What?”

She rolled her eyes slightly, but smiled. “I’d been here for three days and I was down at the beach with a couple other people who moved on ages ago, and there was this family there. A mom, a dad, and two little kids. I found out later they died in a car accident.”

“Wow,” I said, the wind knocked out of me.

“Anyway, the little girl left her favorite doll near the shoreline and it got swept out to sea,” Krista continued. “She completely lost it, crying, screaming, and her dad was basically like, ‘Too bad. You have to learn to take care of your things.’ I mean, the girl was, like, three years old.”

“Are you serious?” I asked.

“Yeah. Real nice,” Krista agreed. “All I could do was watch this soggy pink doll bobbing out on the ocean and the little girl crying, and it reminded me so much of me when I was little. I had this Raggedy Ann that I would take with me everywhere. By the time I gave it up in fourth grade it was falling apart and probably totally diseased.”

She smiled again, looking nostalgic. “So even though I was never a great swimmer, I dove into the ocean and swam out there and saved the doll for her. I thought I was gonna die by the time I got back to the beach. I was panting so hard I was seeing stars. But she got her doll back.”

“That’s awesome,” I said. “What did her dad do?”

“He basically grunted at me,” Krista replied. “But the little girl was so happy… They moved on that night.”

I swallowed hard, hoping that that family, even the grumpy dad, had made it into the Light. We both sighed at the same time, looking out at the sun glinting on the ocean.

“You know what this is, Krista?” I said finally. “It’s just a bad day.”

“What do you mean?” she asked. Her blue eyes were shot through with red.

“It’s something my mom used to say. One day everything can look okay, and the next day everything looks so grim, even though nothing has really changed,” I said. “On bad days you have to remember the okay days, and then you’ll know that things will be okay again, eventually.”

“But something has really changed,” Krista protested, sitting up straight, pulling away from me. The bench groaned as she shifted her weight. “I liked how I had this important job, ushering people to their eternal destiny. But if that’s getting all screwed up, then what else do I have? No one here even likes me.”

“That’s not true!” I replied emphatically. “Tristan loves you.”

“No, he doesn’t. He thinks I’m annoying,” Krista said, looking at her lap. Her pert nose was red, and a tear rolled slowly down her cheek. “Imagine how you’d feel being an only child for two hundred fifty years and then suddenly getting stuck with a sister.”

“Well, the girls adore you,” I said.

“Please,” she retorted, rolling her eyes.

“Um, two of them are inside right now, baking cupcakes for your anniversary party, while you’ve been MIA for at least fifteen minutes,” I reminded her. “If that’s not dedication, I don’t know what is.”

Krista bit her lip. “I bet Lauren is separating the sprinkles by color and driving Bea bonkers.”

“Probably.” I laughed. We both stared out over the ocean. “I think you just have to find your thing, your place, how you’re going to fit in for the long run,” I said, thinking of Tristan, of my odd new relationship with Joaquin, and of the very slowly blossoming friendship with Krista. “We all do. But it’s going to take time.”

“And we have nothing but that,” Krista muttered.

A soft knock sounded behind us, and I glanced back at the mayor’s office windows. Two clear blue eyes stared out at me through parted wooden slats. I caught my breath. The mayor held my gaze for a long, long moment before snapping the blinds shut.

I turned back to Krista, an awful feeling spreading through my gut that my time might be running out.