Chasing Before (15 page)

“What? That’s horrible.”

Neil bursts into laughter. “Can’t say I didn’t deserve it. I was kind of hysterical, and I punched him in the face. Surprised him so much that his nose actually bled.”

“Yeah, I can tell.” I touch each spot of blood on his shirt
with my finger, making them disappear as I do. “Why did you fight?”

“I plead the fifth.” His breezy tone of avoidance hints that Gracie was the topic. But I’ve had enough arguing for a while, so I don’t press him. In fact, maybe if I am supernice, it will make him comfortable and he’ll confide in me.

Several other doors open, and fellow students join us in the hall, making their way toward the stairs.

“No big deal.” I cram as much sunshine into the statement as I can. “Maybe I can pick up some useful tips from Furukama in my training today. Like how to turn into a statue.”

It wins me a half smile. “Ooh, then you can teach me.” I bet turning into a statue would be something Neil would be good at. He’s got the art of stonewalling down already.

We head out of the dorms and walk until we hit the avenue. “I’m supposed to find Gym Three. Do you have any idea where that is?” I ask.

“I have a map.” He pulls out a crinkled map from his back pocket and stretches the paper out by the edges until it is readable. “Gym Three is up here, near Assembly Hill, but across Eastern Avenue.”

Because I’m heading farther north than usual, we take a different route. I’m anxious about Neil and me going our separate ways today, because something terrible could happen while we’re apart. I try to cover it up with small talk.

“Have you ever tried to materialize food and then eat it?” I ask.

“No, have you?”

“We should. After class. It could be a fun experiment to see what happens. Maybe start with gazpacho. Then move on to escargot.”

“Snails? Gross!” Neil makes an exaggerated gagging sound.

“Have you ever had them?”

“No way.”

“They’re really good. I always ate them in Paris with my dad when we went.”

“Maybe I should be in charge of our menu. I could really go for a Fourth of July barbeque. Hamburgers. Hot dogs. Potato salad. Apple pie.”

I giggle. “That’s so American of you!”

Neil bristles. “You’re American.”

“Sure, but I went out and tasted the world.” I can’t help but let a note of pride slip in.

“Because you had the chance to,” he says matter-of-factly. “Not all of us did.”

I fall silent. I want to point out that we might have taken trips together and that we probably did. Our lost memories could reveal so much. But we’d only be rehashing the same argument. So instead I swear to myself that I’ll get the memories first, and then show him. He won’t be able to refuse them when they are right there in front of him.

“Have you seen this yet?” I point out the Forgetting Tree as we draw near.

Neil ducks his head. “Uh, yeah. I came here with Libby. Early this morning before the bells.”

“Breaking curfew twice in one night. Nice.” So he was hanging out with Libby this morning and didn’t even tell me. At least he has the decency to be embarrassed about it.

He stops in front of the tree and looks upward at its heavy branches. Thousands of paper scraps ripple in the breeze. “She brought me here, and I pinned up my paper. It’s the first big step in the detachment process. You should also do it.”

It’s a step I’m certainly not ready to take, and I’m annoyed that Neil’s so eager to prove that he is. “Where’s yours? I want to see it.”

Neil pulls me away from the tree. “Oh, it’s way up there. We’d have to materialize a ladder, and then you’d be late to class.” The only thing that stops me from asking what he wrote is the horrible thought that he wrote my name. That I’m the one he wants to get over.

As soon as his grip is loose enough, I slip out of his grasp and pick up my pace. “No, we certainly don’t want to be late,” I say under my breath. So much for my attempt at being supernice.

Neil matches me stride for stride, and we walk in silence.

When we reach Eastern Avenue, we face each other awkwardly. “Okay. See you later.” I step closer to Neil and hold out my arms. He gives me a quick hug, doing that annoying flutter pat thing that people do when they don’t really want to touch you, or when they hug a stranger. It totally freaks me out for a second, because I don’t ever want Neil to be a stranger.

Once he’s out of sight, I turn to head off to Furukama’s class and crash right into someone.

“Oh, sorry.” I back away, looking up. I’ve run into Libby. Maybe I’m not so sorry after all.

“It’s fine.” Libby tucks the red silk scarf at her throat into the open collar of her white button-down blouse. Her skirt and heels are red too, which must mean she’s firmly committed to rebuilding the healers now.

We size each other up for a moment. Finally she gives me a prim smile. “I assume Neil is doing well.”

“You should know.” I try not to let my irritation show. “You saw him this morning.”

“I’m surprised he told you about that,” Libby says innocently.

I don’t want her to think that Neil doesn’t confide in me, so I suck in a deep breath. “Of course he did.” Unfortunately, my voice cracks a bit, undermining my show of false confidence. “We tell each other everything.” A huge lie, but Libby doesn’t need to know that.

“I used to think Jeremy told me everything,” Libby says, and I groan inwardly. I don’t want to hear about her doomed relationship again, especially because it is clear Libby thinks she’s imparting some kind of lesson to me. “I wanted to forgive him for our murder and for us to stay together. We roomed together. We joined the healers together. We spent every moment together. I thought it would be enough. It wasn’t.” She pauses again and regards me expectantly, as though it’s my turn to deliver my line of a script.

I want to run in the other direction. Instead I settle for what I think she wants to hear. “What happened to him?”

“He became a spirit trapper. He lives in Area Three, and from what I hear, he’s always on assignment on Earth, rounding up the malevolent spirits that haunt humans.” There’s a deep well of regret in her words. She runs her hands over her skirt as if to smooth it, even though there’s not a wrinkle to be seen, and I notice her fingernails, jagged and chewed down to the quick. “But I can’t change the past. I chose to live forward, not backward.”

That’s easy for her to say. She still has all her memories. “Um, that’s great.”

“You should be in class,” Libby says abruptly. Girl talk is over. She has closed back up, returned to her unruffled, chipper default.

“On my way now.”

She nods at me absentmindedly and waves me across the avenue.

When I get to the building marked Gym Three, the door is ajar, kept open by a yellow rubber duck with an orange beak. The area out front is deserted, but voices buzz from within. I slip in and stifle a curse. There have to be more than five hundred applicants and trainees, and each and every one of them except me is wearing black.

seventeen

I DIDN’T EXPECT
THIS
MUCH competition. Perhaps I am overestimating my talents by even trying out. If I thought I could simply show up and they’d give me a place automatically, this full gym of gung ho applicants proves otherwise.

“Felicia! You made it.” Brady calls me over. He’s perched on a balance beam that’s shoved up against the wall. The samurai poser sits next to him, and when I approach, he scowls.

“Angel sympathizer,” he whispers roughly. “If it weren’t for you, that traitor would still be rotting away.”

“Stop picking on her, Wolf.” Brady bends and puts a hand on Wolf’s shoulder. Wolf shakes free indignantly, his eyes like twin puncture wounds. He stalks off.

This exchange makes me think a whole bunch of things at once. First, Julian isn’t in jail anymore, which is a great relief. Second, if he isn’t in jail, where is he? Third, Brady has got my back. Fourth, Wolf is about the most unlikely name I can think of for the samurai poser.

Before I can form any of these thoughts into words, Autumn enters the gym. She kicks the rubber duck outside, and the door slams shut.

At the front of the gym, she bows. “Seraphim reign supreme,” she says.

“Seraphim reign supreme,” the entire gym repeats. They know the drill.

“Who is here for the first time?” Autumn asks. I raise my hand, as does almost everyone else in the crowd. They seem to belong here more than I do. It’s not only their black outfits; it’s their fearless stances and fierce expressions. Any one of them could fit in with the military, whereas I’m sure I’d wash out in a second. “Okay. Listen up, newbies, because I’ll be blunt. Most of you won’t pass Furukama-Sensei’s test today, and you can go elsewhere tomorrow.” She snaps her fingers to materialize a bowl with slips of paper in it, and places it on a table. “Come up and take a number.”

My fellow newbies rush to grab a number, as if being first will better their chances. I’m the last to draw, and when I do, Autumn squints at me as if she wonders why I’m here. I end up drawing number 425, meaning I’ll be one of the last to take the test. At least this is the perfect opportunity to do some stealth investigation. Once I return to the back of the gym, I
close my eyes and focus on Julian’s brain waves so I can find out if what Wolf said was true, if Julian really is out of jail. After a few seconds I find him in the dorms, but his shape is still off, like last night. I hope that he’s not still in such an awful condition that he doesn’t know who I am. As much as I want to rush over and check on him, I have to take my test.

I roam over to Brady on the balance beam. “Hey, thanks for defending me.”

“Don’t sweat it.” He pats the beam. “Come on up.”

I accept his invitation, and as I settle in next to him, I scan the room. Most of the crowd watches Autumn, waiting for testing to start, while some stand or sit along the edges of the gym, joking with one another. The latter must be trainees who’ve already gone through testing. I lean back and dangle my legs.

“Are you here to help out with the testing?” I ask.

Brady plants his hands on the beam and stretches out his arms, lifting his body in the air. “Nah, I’m scoping out the competition.” He smacks back down on the wood surface and then blows into his cupped palms. “There’re only twelve spots open this rotation, and one of ’em’s mine.”

“You mean on Ascension Day?” a voice approaching us asks. It’s Moby. And he’s with Cash. I’m surprised to see Moby here after meeting him at the muse training. He seems surprised to see me too.

“That’s right,” Brady says. “At the end of each term Furukama-Sensei chooses the twelve best candidates to ascend to the seraphim guard when the portal opens for all the retirees.” Cash gives Brady a fist bump, which is a good
alternative to bowing. Moby follows suit. “The name Brady Sandoval is going to be on the list. Count on it.”

Cash flashes a smarmy grin. “Right after mine,” he boasts. The more I’m around him, the more he reminds me of a used-car salesman. “Have you met Moby yet? I ran into him at the career fair yesterday, and convinced him to take the test.”

Moby leans on the beam casually, and I admire the snake tattoo that wraps around his forearm. Brady appraises it too. “Nice ink. And what’s cool is that if you ever don’t want it anymore, you don’t have to laser it off. Dematerialization is all it takes.”

“What’s even cooler is this.” Moby twists his arm, and the tattoo morphs into an actual coiled snake, which promptly opens its fangs as if to strike, startling me and making me bang my elbow against the wall.

“Whoa, dude, put your snake away,” Brady jokes. “There are ladies present.”

Moby’s arm shimmers, and the snake recedes back into the tattoo. His theatrics have gained us a few curious onlookers among the newbies, including a petite Asian girl with dreadlocks who can’t take her eyes off Moby’s tattoo.

“So you love snakes, like, a lot, I guess,” she remarks. “I love them too.”

Moby crosses his arms and runs his hands from midbiceps, where the sleeves of his black T-shirt end, to wrists, elongating his shirt so it covers up his tattoo. “I used to love them, but now I can’t stand the little buggers. A snake is the reason I’m here.”

“Death by snake bite, huh?” Brady says sympathetically. “And yet you keep the tattoo. Respect.”

Everyone starts trading stories about how they died. Brady died of a brain tumor at a children’s hospital in Dallas. Snake lover, who introduces herself as Zhu Mao, cracked her head on the side of a heated pool in Aspen while diving, and drowned. A girl built like a weight lifter who says her name is Maria Lucia tells how she choked on a bagel in a deli in Boston. Then they all look expectantly at me.

“Um . . . I didn’t die.” I hug my arms tight around myself. “I mean, I guess I did at some point or otherwise I wouldn’t be here, but I don’t remember anything about it.”

A shadow crosses over Cash’s face and he frowns, like he’s trying to solve a difficult equation.

“Oh, so, like, you hit your head so hard you got postmortem amnesia,” Zhu Mao says, as if it is some kind of afterlife medical condition, easily cured with a trip to the healers. I wish it were that easy.

“No.” I jump down from the beam, irritated. “I’m saying someone wanted me to think I died in a car accident and then stole a bunch of my memories. Sometimes I think I’d do anything to get them back.”

“But who could do something like that?” Brady asks. “That sounds impossible.”

I’m about to answer, but the way they’re all looking at me like I’m crazy makes me pause. So far there is no evidence that this type of memory loss is widespread. I know of it happening only to Neil and me, and in our case it seems to be
related to my role in the Morati’s plans. And even though Brady and Cash are aware of the Morati because they are part of the security team, I’m sure they don’t know everything the Morati are capable of. Despite the bombings and the murders, Libby and Furukama, along with the rest of the career heads, have tried to keep everything as normal as possible. With the exception of the mandatory curfew and going door-to-door in the dorms questioning people, they’ve taken no public security measures that I’m aware of. It’d be wise to keep this to myself for now. I might have already said too much.