After Obsession (24 page)

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27
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AIMEE

Things slowly become a new kind of normal. The footsteps in our house go away, but occasionally I still smell vanilla. My dad doesn’t get cranky when Benji or I mention it. Instead he smiles, and sometimes he’ll even say, “It’s nice to know she’s still around.”

And it is.

My mom may not have succeeded in stopping the River Man, but she lost her life trying to keep her family safe. We think the painted rock and the ruined painting were done by her, not him; she was trying to warn us, to keep us safe still.

I used to be embarrassed by my mom, but now I know what she is—she’s a hero. I can only hope that I’ll use my gifts half as bravely as she did. I only hope that I can figure out exactly what my gifts can do. I will. I’m sure.

Sometimes I write her little notes and drop them into the river, which is sort of silly, I know. They say things like “I love you” or “Thank you” or “Look for Court’s dad.” They are small pieces of paper, and the tide takes them, wetting them and heavying them before they finally sink below the water. It might be silly, but I think she reads them.

The most recent one I sent was just this morning. Benji was off at swim practice with Gramps, and I walked down to the river with my dad. The water was smooth and beautiful. You couldn’t tell that people died in it. You couldn’t tell that something wicked lurked inside it. We took out the kayaks and when we were just about a quarter mile toward the bay, he said, “You seem stronger now, Aimee.”

“I think I’m liking who I am,” I said, and stopped paddling for a second, just letting the tide slowly take me. “It sounds cheesy and maybe egotistical, but I like the parts of me that are Mom, the weird healing-dreaming parts.”

“I like those parts, too,” he said.

And I know he wasn’t lying.

I put the big yellow paddle back into the water and we pushed toward Eagle Point. That’s where I dropped the last note. The river took it. Water pulled it away and under until it became just a speck of white paper, and then just a memory. Once it was gone, a seal head popped up and it reminded me of her—those huge eyes.

“What did it say?” my dad asked.

I swallowed. “It said, ‘Thank you for being my mom. I am so proud to be your daughter.’ ”

“She would be proud of you,” he said. His voice broke, and he obviously tried to save himself from being all emotional by splashing me with water. It tasted of ocean salt.

I splashed him back for a second, and then I couldn’t help it. I asked, “Are you? Are you proud of me?”

“I am, but it doesn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t?”

“No. What matters is that you’re proud of yourself.”

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Acknowledgments
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Carrie and Steve would like to thank Jeaniene Frost and Melissa Marr for introducing them, as well as Edward Necarsulmer IV at MacIntosh & Otis Literary Agency and Michelle Nagler and Margaret Miller at Bloomsbury for believing in this project.

From Carrie:

Thanks to Jackie Shriver, Karin Raymond, Chris LaSalle, Dave Lafleur, Dave Stoker, and Joe Tullgern for helping me make it through all the scary that happened before college. Thanks to my favorite knight, Edward Necarsulmer, Lori Bartlett, Marie Overlock, Alice Dow, Kelly R., Laura Hamor, Amilie Bacon, Jennifer Osborn, Jim Willis, Emily Ciciotte, Betty Morse, Lew Barnard, Melodye Shore, Deb Shapiro, Fans of Awesomeness, and Shaun Farrar for helping me make it through all the scariness of now.

From Steve:

Thanks to Gayleen Rabakukk and Paul White for keeping me going when writing was more frustration than fun. Thanks to Edward Necarsulmer for taking on Carrie’s friend. Thanks to Ms. Dragoun for not having me arrested when I wrote my first horror story in tenth grade, and to Dr. Gladys Lewis for showing me that literature is more than individual books. Thanks, also, to the students, staff, and my fellow faculty members at Western Heights High School. And in memory of Wilda Walker, who introduced me to creative writing and became a friend.

ALSO BY CARRIE JONES

Need

Captivate

Entice

Copyright © 2011 by Carrie Jones and Steven E. Wedel

First published in the United States of America in September 2011
by Bloomsbury Books for Young Readers
Electronic edition published in September 2011
www.bloomsburyteens.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Bloomsbury BFYR, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jones, Carrie.
After obsession / by Carrie Jones and Steven E. Wedel. — 1st U.S. ed.
p.      cm.

Summary: When Alan, a half-Navajo in touch with the spiritual mysticism of his ancestors, meets Aimee, a gifted psychic in his new high school, they realize they’ve had precognitive dreams of each other and that they must confront an evil spirit that has been responsible for mysterious deaths in the river of their small Maine town for hundreds of years and which is now haunting Alan’s cousin Courtney.

eISBN 9781599906829 (ebook)

[1. Demoniac possession—Fiction. 2. Supernatural—Fiction. 3. Psychic ability—Fiction. 4. Navajo Indians—Fiction. 5. Indians of North America—Fiction. 6. High schools—Fiction. 7. Schools—Fiction. 8. Maine—Fiction.] I. Wedel, Steven E. II. Title.

PZ7.J6817Aft 2011            [Fic]—dc22            2010050759