Chasing Before (17 page)

“No, I can’t go to Paris.” Neil walks from the kitchen into my tiny living room, and I follow him. He sits on the sofa and flips on the television to the news.

I stand between him and the screen, blocking his
view. “What do you mean you can’t go?”

Neil sighs and pushes the off button on the remote. “I have too much going on. I have work. Physical therapy. The play. Boy Scouts. Not to mention I can’t afford it.”

His money problems are my fault. Because if it weren’t for me, Neil’s parents would be paying for his college and he wouldn’t have to wait, wouldn’t have to work so many hours to save up for it. It makes me hyperaware of all that Neil has given up for me. “But I want you to come. There has to be some way.”

“I don’t want to live on ramen for the rest of my life just so we can splurge on
snails
one time.”

“If it weren’t for me, you could go.” I blurt it out before I can stop myself.

“If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t even have a reason to go.”

I curl up on the sofa next to him and let my fingers inch up his arm, across his shoulder, over his neck, and into his hair. He shivers. I dip my hand into the back of his shirt so I can trace circles into his back. He doesn’t say anything, but he must like it, because he closes his eyes and the muscles in his face relax.

I get onto my knees and lean over to kiss his eyelids, my lips whisper light on his skin. Then I kiss his temple, his cheekbone, his smooth jaw. Once I get to his mouth, the dizziness of being close to him takes over. I kiss him deeply, throwing my leg over him so that I’m straddling him and letting my hands explore his chest under his shirt.

But as is typical, when I unbutton his shirt and try to push
it off, Neil groans and breaks away. “You’re killing me, you know that?” He looks me in the eye, and his expression is so anguished, it makes me a little bit crazy.

“Just this once we can break the ‘all clothes stay on’ rule.” I lift up my tank, daring him to stop me. He doesn’t reply, so I take that as an invitation and whip my top off and resume kissing him before he can change his mind.

He’s careful at first and keeps his hands firmly on my lower back, but slowly he gets less cautious. When he touches the clasp of my bra, I want to scream at him to open it. But when he doesn’t, I reach my arms behind me to undo it myself.

“No, we can’t.” He catches me by the wrist. “It’s too much temptation.”

He tries to stand up, but I scoot even farther onto his lap until my knees are pressed into the sofa cushions behind him, pinning him in. “God, Neil, why can’t we live a little? Do you want to die a virgin saint or what?”

His eyes grow wide, a curious mix of fear and anger, like a feral animal that’s been shut in a cage. “Felicia,” he says with frightening calmness. “Please let me get up. And put your shirt back on.”

I slide off him and wrestle into my tank top while he buttons his shirt. “What’s wrong?”

He stands. “Maybe I shouldn’t keep coming here. You living alone . . . it’s making me weak. I don’t want us to do anything we’ll regret.”

“But I won’t regret anything I do with you.” I mean it. I
rearrange the throw pillow behind me on the sofa and cross my legs.

“That’s what you say now. But you don’t know.”

“Oh, I get it. This is about the pledge again,” I say, more bitterly than I intended to.

He sighs. “Look, I don’t want to fight about it. You know how I feel about this. We laid down the ground rules for a reason.” He walks to the door and picks up his keys from the shelf. “Anyway, I have to go. I have PT early and I should get some sleep.”

“Yeah, okay.” I don’t get up to kiss him good-bye.

As he opens the door, he turns like he wants to say something, but then shakes his head like it’s not worth it and slips out. And yet another evening ends in frustration.

I come to again on the hard carpet of my dorm. Judging by the dull ache in the back of my head, I must have fallen when I went into my memory. I moan and open my eyes. Neil looms over me, his eyes wide.

“Thank goodness you’re okay!” he exclaims. “I came in, and you were passed out on the floor.” He half turns. “She’s fine, Keegan. I’ll meet up with you again later,” he calls out the door.

My eyes shift up to the table that held the memory orb, but from this angle I can’t tell if anything’s been disturbed or if Neil has seen the note.

Paper crinkles, and my heart sinks. He’s holding the Morati’s note in his hand. “Oh, are you looking for this?”

nineteen

NEIL SHOVES THE PAPER into my face so I can clearly read my name and the memory number. “What does this mean?” he asks.

I’m not going to let Neil make me feel guilty for viewing something that belongs to me. “It’s a note that came with one of my stolen memories.” I hold out my arm so he can help me up.

He pulls me to my feet. “You mean a memory from after our car crash? Did you watch it?”

“I did.”

“But how?”

“There was an orb,” I say. “I came in, and it was sitting on that table. The package disintegrated as soon as I
touched it. But the memory is part of me now.”

He ponders this for a moment, sizing me up carefully. “If you have it, let me view it.”

“I thought you didn’t care about our lost memories.”

He rubs his collarbone and then the back of his neck. “What do you want me to say? That I do care?”

“It’s a start.” I cross my arms. I won’t make him grovel, but I am growing tired of his sanctimonious attitude and his cold shoulder.

“I care about them,” he admits, to my great satisfaction. “But we don’t know where this came from, or what it might cost.”

“I’ll pretend I heard only that first part.” I lift my palm in offering to let him have access.

He hesitates, but in the end the pull of curiosity is too strong even for him, and he relents, lining his hand up with mine. As I relive the memory again, sharing it with him, I’m almost embarrassed by the intimacy of the scene on the sofa and the way it ended with Neil pushing me away.

Neil must be too, because when we emerge from the memory, he’s blushing and fidgety. “That was . . . intense.” He seems about to ask me a question, but then something clicks. “That wasn’t Nate’s memory. It was really yours. But that means the only ones who would have access to your memories are the ones who stole them in the first place. The Morati.”

“I guess so, yeah.”

“This is so dangerous, Felicia.” He grabs my wrist. “If
the Morati are giving you these, they’re up to no good. I can’t believe you didn’t immediately go to Libby with this. What if they coated the orb with poison or something?”

“I’m fine,” I insist. He wants to go to Libby with everything. I’d be more inclined to take it to Autumn, if anyone.

“But still.” He lets go of me and rubs the back of his hand across his forehead. “If you get any more of these packages, you have to tell Libby. You can’t view these memories. It’s like . . . withholding evidence. Don’t you want to catch whoever killed Megan and Kiara? Whoever nearly killed me?”

“Of course I do!” But my joining the seraphim guard training is enough, isn’t it? Libby isn’t going to get anything from one of my memory globes.

“Good. Then you’ll give it to Libby if you get one again.”

More like, if I’m lucky enough to get another stolen memory, I’ll view it and tell him it was an accident. He’ll be as curious to share it next time. “I’m sorry,” I say instead. “I was so surprised to see it sitting there. I wasn’t thinking straight.”

He hugs me, which I guess means he bought my story. “I couldn’t take it if I lost you again.”

“Again? Did Nate show you a memory of us breaking up or something?”

“No. I meant being apart from you in Level Two.” He narrows his eyes. “Why? Did Nate show
you
another memory?”

Crap. How am I supposed to answer that? I materialize
my piano and sit down in front of it, letting my fingers run over the familiar keys. I play the first few measures of the
Prancing Goat
Symphony. I wonder if I ever did go to Paris to play it for an audience. Maybe I’ll use it for my muse audition.

When I don’t respond, Neil gets agitated and slides his arm under my hands so I can’t keep playing. “He did, didn’t he? Why are you keeping things from me?”

With a sigh I close the lid of the piano over the keys and I turn to face him. “You’re the one who won’t tell me about Gracie.”

“Don’t twist this around. What did Nate show you?”

I shrug. “It was a memory of the day you were discharged from the hospital. He told us that Gracie was planning to visit Ohio after being away for years.”

“Show me.”

With the desk, my father’s chair, the bed, the small ornate table from the Morati, and now the piano, the room is pretty full. But there’s still enough space along the wall for a two-seater sofa, so I materialize the one I saw in my apartment in the memory. Being able to materialize it proves without a shadow of a doubt that these memories are real, because I wouldn’t be able to if I had never touched it. I like how wide the cushions are. “I would if I could.” I sit down, crossing my legs under me.

He nods, slapping the top of my piano in frustration. He knows we don’t archive memories of our afterlife, just our lives on Earth; I couldn’t even show him a memory of
my viewing Nate’s memory. “What did he tell you about Gracie? I’m sure you asked him.” The way he says it is very accusatory, like wanting to know the truth is a cardinal sin.

“He said it was up to you to tell me. When you felt the time was right.”

“That’s all?”

“He also said he thinks you and I broke up back on Earth. But he didn’t know for sure.”

“Don’t believe a word he says.” Neil balls his hands into fists.

“Well, you can’t say we looked amazingly happy together in this last memory.” It definitely has some disturbing parallels to our current situation, with us fighting and Neil retreating.

Neil finally sits down next to me, and I adjust my position so that I’m facing him. “Every couple argues sometimes. That doesn’t mean we broke up. There might be one hundred happy memories to balance that out.”

“You’re right about that. We need context. That’s why I’ve been saying that we need to get the rest of our memories.” I can’t believe that we didn’t somehow solve our problems and stay together, and I want to know how we did it.

“No, that’s why we need to forget about whatever happened on Earth and focus on now.” He’s slipping into some serious self-righteousness again.

“If you’re so over everything, then why don’t you
practice what you preach? Why can’t you forgive Nate?”

“That’s different.”

“How?”

“Nate’s a jerk.”

I can’t help but laugh. “True. But he is your brother.”

“Stop trying to make this about me. We’re talking about you willfully putting all of Level Three in jeopardy so you can view some memories that don’t mean anything anymore anyway.”

“If the Morati took our memories, they must have had a reason. Maybe there’s a clue hidden in there. Something we can use to defeat them. What if
not
viewing them is what would put Level Three in jeopardy?”

“You’ll say anything to justify your actions, won’t you?” Neil asks, his eyes flashing. “But think about it. If the Morati give you memories, they won’t give you ones they don’t want you to view. Why would they?”

“Every memory is valuable,” I retort. “Every memory is a piece of the larger puzzle of my life. Of our lives. Why should I have to let them go?” This is starting to sound a lot like our last conversation.

“If you don’t, you won’t be accepted in the muse program one day.”

Of course he brings up the detachment test again. I just want the chance to experience the moments that I already did live, so that I can know my whole self. But I don’t need to rehash this with Neil, or have him trying to interfere with my plans anymore.

“How was the healer meeting with Libby?” I ask. Neil’s always so good at ending discussions by changing the subject, so I’ll steal a move out of his playbook.

He brightens. “Libby sent me to muse class after all, because she’s still preparing for students. Miss Claypool told us more about the Muse Collection Library.”

“Cool. Did she talk more about the memory extraction process for getting the memory editions that the students use to study? Maybe I can go to her for more insight on that.”

“I really don’t know what the point of that would be. Shouldn’t you be putting your energy toward something useful, like strengthening your skills in guard training?”

I hate the way we keep talking in circles. He won’t convince me I should give up my quest, and he’s never going to understand why it’s so important to me.

“Maybe we should agree to disagree on this one,” I suggest.

Neil takes my hands in his and looks at me seriously. “You need to really think about this. You have choices here. You can choose to let this make you crazy or you can choose to let it go and move on.”

I withdraw my hands. “I don’t think it’s that black and white. We are victims of a crime. I certainly didn’t choose to have my past stolen.”

Neil tries again. “But I told you before—it’s not your past that defines what kind of person you are now. It’s each and every choice you make. A good choice elevates you,
and a bad one brings you down. You can’t let this fruitless pursuit of your stolen memories get in the way of going forward.”