Dead River (17 page)

I move forward, into the room. “Justin,” I say to him.

But he won’t look at me. I’m standing where I can reach out and touch Angela, and all she does is continue to study and chew on her fingernails, as if I’m not even there. As if …

I look down at the blood seeping through my jacket, making it look sleek and black, like a seal’s skin. Then I stand between them. “Justin?”

Angela says, “Yeah. I think you need to.”

Need to what? I turn to her, I’m standing right in front of her, and her eyes are on me, but they’re not. They’re focused on what’s behind me. Justin. I move closer to her, wave my hand in her face. She doesn’t even blink. “Angela?”

Nothing.

Oh my God. I can’t breathe. I can’t even see, now, because the tears are falling freely and blurring my vision. I can’t wipe them away because my hands are crusted with dirt and blood.
I just stand there, moving from one to the other, hoping that one of them will say,
Oh, hey, there you are!
But Justin has his phone up to his ear and is staring at the ceiling. I can hear the phone ringing, and then a familiar voice says “Yep?” on the other end. There’s only one person I know who answers the phone like that.

“Mr. Levesque?” Justin says into the receiver.

My breath hitches.
Dad
.

The tears fall harder. If he were here, everything would be better. My heart twists with the thought of everything I’d done to get away from him. I was so, so stupid. How could I have wanted that? How could I have thought that would be better? I want him here. I want him to wrap his arms around me and tell me he loves me, that I’m his girl. Never in my life have I wanted that so much. I reach for the phone, crying, “Give that to me!” But even though Justin doesn’t move, just stands there with one hand holding the phone and the other hand pinching his other ear closed, I can’t touch him. Something is wrong. I touch, and yet I feel nothing. I reach for where the phone is, but my hands pass through it like it’s made of air. I cannot snatch it from him.

Justin says, “There’s a problem with Ki. She’s missing.”

I’m sobbing now. “No, I’m not. Justin. I’m
right here
.”

But it’s useless. I drop my head, letting the tears puddle on the floor, with my blood. So, so much blood. Don’t they notice that? Don’t they notice anything about me?

Justin looks at the ceiling and exhales deeply. “It’s my
fault,” he says to my father. “I was the one who convinced her to come up here.”

I can hear my father’s voice on the other end, an octave higher with worry. Though I can’t make out the words, I know what he says: “I’ll be right up. I’m coming. I’m leaving right now.”

Oh, Dad
, I think, as I stare at the growing puddle of blood at my feet,
I’m so sorry. But it’s too late
.

Chapter Nineteen

I
don’t know how much later, I find myself wandering the woods in the blackness. It’s dark, and yet I can see. I’m not cold or hot, I’m not anything. My feet don’t make a sound, and though there are brambles and roots popping out of the earth, my footing is sure, as if I’m walking a well-known path, and nothing touches me. My wound seeps blood endlessly, but it doesn’t hurt.

I don’t know how this happened. One moment I was talking to Jack, and … Oh, no, I was thinking of kissing him. I wanted to, so badly. Somehow, though I can’t feel anything else, I can still feel my face aflame with embarrassment.

Did
Jack
do this to me?

I think of his last words.
If you want to help us, you need to go across. Now
.

But going across would mean … No, it’s not possible.

Dead
. Am I dead? And now, obviously, I don’t want to go across. I can’t. And yet I don’t remember telling him that; I was too busy wishing for other things. But he was a vision.
Only a vision,
my
vision. How could something made of air kill a living being? Could he take a knife, the same knife he’d used to slash at Trey, and plunge it into my stomach? Of course, to other people, he may have been air, but to me, he was more than real. I can still taste his vile lips and feel the muscles of his body straining under his shirt. Maybe being real to me was all it took for him to have the power to claim my life.

Trey warned me to stay away from Jack. What did he say?
You love your life? You love your daddy? You want to get back home to him?

Oh God, yes. Yes, I’d give anything.

Trey. I snap back to the moment when he reached down and touched my ankle. The calming effect it had on me, the cozy, comfortable sensation that spread over my body as he massaged out all the pain, all the wrong, with his fingertip. And suddenly I am running. I stop clutching my stomach and dart among the trees, calling to him. “Trey!” My voice sounds different as it echoes among the tall pines, so that for a moment I’m not convinced it’s mine. It’s frantic, yes, but also deeper, more mature. And I don’t know where I’m going, and yet I know the path well. I know this place like a newborn baby knows its mother.

Trey is ahead of me on the path. His eyes are downcast, his hands in his pockets so that the blood from his wound is a crimson racing stripe on the side of his dirty jeans. He sighs as I approach. “I’ve failed, haven’t I?”

I reach down and lift up my shirt, exposing my belly. The
few places that are not stained the color of rust are a sick, marbled white. The wound itself is an ugly slit right beside my navel, bubbling thickly with black, like an oil spill. I whisper, desperate, “You can help me. You can heal it, right?”

“Aw, Kiandra.” He looks into my eyes, and I know the answer immediately. But that won’t do. That is not enough. He’s done miracles before and called them child’s play. There has to be something he can do.

“No. Don’t tell me that. You can do something! You have to!”

He reaches for my hand. Before, his body was so cold, and now his fingers are warm when they brush on my wrist. I want him to use them as he did before, to heal, so I take them in my bloody hand and guide them to my stomach. He lets me pull them only so far before he gently takes them away and shakes his head. “Kiandra. It won’t work.”

“But it has to. It
has
to,” I whimper. “I can’t be …” But I can’t say the word. My lips have forbidden its passage. “I’m only seventeen. I’m going to graduate this month. I’m going to USM. I got in, early acceptance …” I think of my dad, taking me out to Friendly’s for an ice cream sundae when I told him the news. He’d been beaming. The thought wracks my body with a torrent of sobs. “It’s not over for me.
Please
.”

He doesn’t say a word, but his face is somber, his eyes are glassy. Is he crying, too? And then I move beside him and see a ghastly sight, just off the path. A body, lying supine among the dead pine needles. A familiar powder-blue jacket, now ripped open, white batting spilling out. A spray of blond
hair, greenish in the moonlight and marred with bits of dead leaves and dirt. Eyes open, unblinking.
My
eyes. They’d stared back at me in the mirror every day of my life, and now they’re just glistening marbles, staring forever at the sky, at God. And then I see the blood. So much blood, everywhere.

I bring my hands to my mouth, thinking my breath will warm them, but there is no breath in me. My body is shaking and my knees weaken, like two branches ready to snap. Trey pulls me toward him, and it’s then I notice we’re on a small outcropping, directly over the river. He holds me in his arms, and the moonlight dancing on the ripples is just a sad reminder that things are changing, and will always change, whether I’m ready for them or not.

By morning, my tears have dried, leaving two tight, salty tracks on my cheeks. I sit up, hoping that I’m with Justin, that everything in the past day was just a horrible nightmare. But I’m on the riverbank, and the new sunlight is dappling the water, making its surface so bright that I have this inexplicable urge to jump in, to feel the waves washing over me. Strangely, the river is no longer menacing to me, and I no longer shiver when I look at it. I glance around, blinking. In the morning light, everything has a new, sharper edge to it, with the colors more vivid, the angles more defined. It’s as if in life I had a veil over my eyes, and suddenly I’m seeing everything clearly for the first time.

I rub my eyes and pull my jacket up over my belly. The wound looks fresh. It begins to bleed anew, flooding over the
waistband of my jeans. I slide my jacket back into place and the tears begin to fall again.

I’ve almost forgotten about Trey. When I turn around, I’m embarrassed to see that I must have fallen asleep in his arms and used his chest as a pillow, because there’s a spot of drool on his shirt. And here I thought dead people didn’t have to worry about things like that. He doesn’t notice, though. He’s wide awake and staring at me. “Feeling better?” he asks, his voice gentle.

His
wound, the knife slash on his forearm, isn’t bleeding. I point to mine. “Will this ever stop?”

He nods. “When you’re not thinking on it. Let it alone.”

“Are you kidding?” How am I supposed to forget about this massive, ugly thing in my middle? The blood is running down my thighs. My intestines could slip out at any moment.

When I look up, his wound has opened, and blood begins to bubble on the surface. He shakes his head. “I know. Easier said than done.”

I shiver in the morning air; my teeth are chattering in a steady drumbeat. I’m not cold; my hands are their normal color, not the deathly blue that they sometimes turn in freezing temperatures. Funny that my hands look more alive now. I think of the last sight I witnessed before Trey pulled me to him and I fell asleep in his arms. It was my body, lying off the path. Dead. I don’t want to see it. Don’t want to at all, yet still I find myself craning my neck, searching it out. Maybe if I don’t see it, this will all prove to be a horrible nightmare and I’ll be able to go home.

Trey puts a hand on my shoulder. “I moved it. Down near the river. Didn’t think you’d want to see it again.”

I sigh, grateful and sad all at once. “I should have listened to you. You knew he was going to try to hurt me. I just didn’t think …” I swipe uselessly at the tears. “Why? Because he hates my mother?”

He’s slowly stroking his thumb back and forth over my collarbone. “Don’t worry yourself over the whys. It’s done.”

Then I say, “Jack told me he killed you. Is that true?”

He looks surprised for a moment. “Wow. Guess lying never got him nowhere, so now he’s trying out telling the truth. Yeah. It’s true.”

“He’s a monster. First you, now me.” I shake my head. “He killed you because you turned him in, right? He’d killed someone else? A little girl?”

His face hardens. “Him? Nah. I don’t like talking about it. Happened a long time ago, so it don’t matter anyway. Let’s see.” Staring at my wound, he unbuttons and removes his shirt. His arms and chest are tan and muscled. I find myself blushing and looking away as he comes close to me and gently presses the shirt against my stomach. It doesn’t hurt, not at all. His hair flops in his face and when he leans down I can smell it. It’s like leaves and fresh wind and woods. And then I see that his shirt is sopping with my blood, and remember last night.

That horrible, horrible night. I don’t even hate Justin or Ange anymore; I don’t think I ever did. I just miss them. I miss those dull, sloppy kisses Justin used to give me. I miss
shopping with Ange. The only thing I ever wore bikinis for was sunbathing at the back of the house, but the last time we went out, I’d found a cute pink one. My first thought when I look at that wound is
I guess bikinis are out
. Then my mind travels over everything else that’s out, too. Kissing. Shopping. Sunbathing. Talking to Ange. Everything. I fold up into a ball and start to cry again.

I feel Trey’s arm around me. “Hey, hey, hey. Kiandra. It’s not all bad.”

“What’s good about it?” I sniff.

He straightens. “Well, for one, you get to spend time with me. That’s pretty … well, I’ll just go and say it. Great.” He smiles broadly.

My jaw just hangs open. It’s the first time he’s ever joked. Aren’t the dead supposed to be more … sullen? Hopeless?

“What?” he says, noticing my surprise. “You think dead people can’t have fun?”

It never did cross my mind. It doesn’t seem like they have an awful lot to celebrate. “Well, yeah. You’ve always been so—”

“Before, I was worried about saving your sorry backside. Don’t have to worry about that no more.” He shakes his head at me, and when I start to apologize, he says, “No point in fretting over it now. I’ll catch hell later.” I’m just starting to feel bad again when he says, “And you still got those powers of yours. You want to try them out?”

“Powers?” I study my hands. “Like what?”

He stands up. “Like a lot of things. Here.” He reaches down and molds a few wet black leaves together into a small mound. “Go ’head.”

I stare at him. “What do you want me to do?”

“Light it on fire.”

I let out a short laugh. “I can’t—” But before the words come out, sparks fly from the center of it and a fire consumes it, leaping into the air. I can’t even breathe. “I didn’t do that. Tell me I didn’t do that.”

He shrugs. “You didn’t do that.” Then he grins. “Okay, yeah, you did.”

I shake my head. “You’re not telling me that all I need to do is think of something and it will happen?” I ask, horrified. Because how often have I thought strange things, like wishing that it would be ninety degrees during the long Maine winter, or wanting the Academy Awards to be broadcast from my high school gymnasium?

“It’s a little more than that. You’ve got to want it.” He looks at the fire. “You got some power, girl. I wasn’t able to light fire for a couple of weeks, at least.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. And that’s a small thing. Just you wait. I’ll learn you. It’ll be fun.”

“Okay,” I say. Maybe it will be. It won’t be life, but it might be interesting.

He smiles. “So, you ready?”

“For what?”