Wraith (28 page)

I slid off the bed and down onto the floor beside
him. My arm overlapped visibly with his, but still, I couldn't feel a thing.
"You'll be all right, Zane," I assured helplessly.

"I know I will," he responded confidently.
"You were right about me, you know that? I didn't give up."

My eyes widened. "You remember about
that?"

We had talked and laughed for hours last night—but
mainly about nonsense. We had steered clear of his unpleasant memories,
focusing only on the good times. That had left precious little to discuss of
the recent past.

He nodded. "I know how I died, Kali."

My heartbeat quickened. Just hearing those words on
his lips struck daggers through my gut.

You should never have died at all.

"How?" I murmured.

"When I turned eighteen," he began, not
looking at me, "I was released from the foster care system. Or at least, I
released myself. I called my father's lawyer in California, the executor of his
estate, and he wired me the money I was expecting—a decent lump sum my dad
wanted me to have as a birthday present. I bought a cheap used car and a tank
of gas, and I hit the road."

I swallowed. "Hit the road to where?"

Zane didn't answer for a moment. Even talking seemed
to be getting more difficult for him.

"I don't want you to think I was running away,
Kali," he said defensively. "That's never been me. I had nothing left
to run away
from
. My mother was dead. I'd been in three different foster
placements in less than a year; there were no bonds there. I'd been in four
different high schools in the last eighteen months and my transcripts were all
messed up; there was no way I was going to graduate on time. I didn't even have
any friends left."

"I don't believe that," I interrupted.
"You must have had friends—anyone who knew you would care about you!"

He smiled sadly. "I did have friends, Kali. At
my regular school. Good friends. But when my mother started using… well, you
can imagine. I didn't want anyone to know how bad things were. I was
embarrassed by what she'd become; and I was mad at myself for letting it
happen. So I pulled away from them. It wasn't difficult; I was working all the
time anyway. Then when we moved and I had to switch schools; they couldn't have
kept up with me if they'd tried. I didn't want to be found."

I fought hard to keep my voice steady. "So,
after your mother died… there was no one?"

He shook his head. "It was my fault, not
theirs. But no… at that point, there was no one." He stopped and looked at
me. "I was okay with that, though. I really was. I was depressed as hell
about my mother and the whole situation, but I never gave up on
me
. On
the life I still wanted to have. I just made plans. The whole time I was
waiting for my birthday to roll around, I sketched everything out. I was going
to start over… make a brand new life for myself."

The slightest splash of color flickered in his
cheeks. The sight of it warmed me.

"I wanted to drive across the country," he
continued, his voice stronger. "Solo trip, you know. Seeing what there is
to see. As many times as I'd flown to California to visit my dad, I'd never
once seen the country in between. I wanted so badly to have that freedom… to be
on my own… just driving wherever the road took me. I figured I would eventually
get to California and settle things with my father's lawyer—finances, plans for
college. And I wanted to go back to the place in Malibu where I took my first
surfing lesson. After that…"

He turned and smiled at me. "Before I started
college, I was determined to do something I'd wanted desperately to do ever
since I was nine years old. Can you guess?"

His smile was contagious, and my own grew broad. I
didn't have to guess; I knew. "You wanted to surf the North Shore."

His wispy eyes danced with light. "Oh,
yeah."

I chuckled, even as the irony of it all was so
tragic I could have cried. "Well," I said as brightly as I could
fake, "you got your last wish then, didn't you?"

His expression turned suddenly sober. "No,
actually I didn't. I'm pretty sure I never even got to California. The last
thing I remember is driving down an interstate at night and seeing a car with
no headlights right in front of me—going the wrong way."

"No!" The word escaped my lips before I
could sensor it; my body turned suddenly cold. "That can’t be right!"
I continued to blather. "You're here now; you
must
have made
it!"

I knew it was a stupid point to obsess on. Zane had
died at the age of eighteen, and nothing about that was just. He had lost
years. Decades. Did it really matter where he had spent his last few days?

Yet I couldn't stand the thought of it. Couldn't
stand that he had withstood so much, taken it all so well, turned his life
around—only to have it snuffed away on some stupid interstate by some idiot
drunk!

"It's so unfair!" I cried helplessly, my
own frustration and anger spilling over. "
Why
do people have to
drink and drive?!"

Zane looked at me fondly. Perhaps it did help, a
little, for him to see me express what were, almost certainly, some of his own
feelings.

"She wasn't drunk," he said quietly.
"She was just old."

I blinked at him. "How do you know?"

He took a breath. "I saw her face. Only for a
second, as I swerved to miss her, but she had the dome light on in her car. She
looked terrified."

I studied his face in amazement. There was no malice
there. No blame. Only regret.

"It was a split second, really," he
continued thoughtfully. "I don't know if I hit her or not. I don't
remember the actual crash. But I can see her face so clearly, Kali. I can't
imagine why she had the inside light on and her headlights off. She must have
had trouble with the controls; I don't know how she could see well enough to
get on the interstate in the first place."

He paused. I looked down; the arm that had been
overlapping with mine was no longer visible. His torso was a floating wisp. His
legs were gone. He seemed to be talking loud—but what I heard was faint as a
whisper.

"I hope I didn't hit her."

His face wavered into nothingness.

"Zane," I cried, "I can barely see
you!"

I saw an outline of his head as he turned his face
back to me. "I can't fight it anymore, Kali. I'm sorry."

I struggled to get closer to him, struggled to hear
the rest of his words. A wave of crippling heat welled up within me—tears that
wanted to fall, screams of frustration threatening to erupt—but I fought them
down. There would be time enough to fall apart… later.

"Don't apologize to me, Zane," I said
firmly. "I've loved every minute we've been together. And you
did
get to surf the North Shore; you did! You made it happen through sheer force of
will!"

I think he smiled then; but I wasn't sure. He was no
more than stray wisps of color.

"Remember what you promised me, Kali," I
heard faintly.

"I won't forget."

He was saying something else, but I couldn't hear it.
He was thanking me for something. Telling me…

I stopped my own breath. It made too much noise; I
needed to hear!

There was nothing. The sound had stopped.

I let out the breath with a cry. "Zane!"

I couldn't see him. I couldn't see anything.

I passed my hand over the place where he had been,
but felt only a bedspread and a carpet gritty with sand.

He was gone.

"Kali," my mother asked with concern,
pouring me a cup of orange juice. "Are you all right? You don't look like
you slept well."

I thought about answering her, but my jaw seemed too
heavy to move. It had been all I could do to force myself to get dressed; to
come out where people could see me.

I had sat on the floor forever after Zane left,
trying to find a way to make peace. Trying to reason out in my head somehow,
some way, an explanation that made me feel good about everything that had
happened—and the part that I had played in it. Some scenario whereby I had not
taken a strong, carefree surfer guy who spent all day every day in the sun,
doing what he loved to do, and convinced him to remember himself into weakness
and oblivion.

I couldn't think of a thing.

It would be different if he'd been happy to go. If
he'd felt some warmth in the pull that was calling him. That's what it was
supposed to be like, wasn't it?
Walking into the light
. But he had said
he felt nothing. Nothing… and nothingness.

I had yet to cry. I knew that I needed to. There
wasn't a doubt in my mind that if I didn't, and soon, something inside me was
going to explode. But somehow, as long as I was sitting on that floor where
Zane had last sat, I couldn't give up the idea that he could still see me. That
maybe some part of him was still there, watching. And I could not let him see
me cry.

I had tried to make him believe it was for the best.
I'd darn well better act like it.

"Kali?" My mother asked again.

"I'm okay, mom," I lied. "But I
didn't sleep well."

"Oh?" she pressed. "Why not?"

I had to get out. I had to get away—away from her,
away from everyone. I had to find a private place where I could cry and scream
my guts out. And I had to find it fast.

"Mom," I began, ignoring her question,
"do you think I could take the car out this morning? Just for a little
bit?"

She frowned. "I thought you said those kids
were leaving today."

Kids?
Oh right, the cover story. White lie
#746.

"I'm not going to see them," I said
earnestly, looking her in the eyes. "Actually, I just want to be alone for
a while. I thought I'd drive up to La'ie point—where Matt and I saw the
humpback."

My mother's brow continued to crease. "I'm not
sure that's such a good idea. Your father and I need the car at eleven thirty;
we've got a lunch date with a couple from the base."

"I'll have it back by then," I promised.
"I just need a little while. To clear my head."

My mother threw me a long, searching look. For one
horrible moment, I was sure she would say no. But she surprised me. "All
right, Kali," she agreed, sounding defeated.

"Thank you!" I said sincerely, jumping up
and hugging her around the shoulders. To make her happy, I downed the orange
juice, which promptly burned my gut like acid. I grabbed my bag from my room
and the keys from the counter and swept outside and down the stairs.

I didn't make it to La'ie Point. I couldn't find the
place. I drove around the town in a daze, pulling into random parking lots,
staring at the Mormon temple at the University, trying to remember where Matt
had gotten off the main road and how many turns he had made. I would like to
think that if I'd been in the proper frame of mind, I would eventually have
managed to find my way to the beach from the edge of an island. But I was not
in the proper frame of mind.

After way too much aimless wandering, I put some
very expensive gas in the tank and resolved to head home. My parents were going
out soon. I would fall apart then.

Impatient cars whizzed past me all along the
Kamehameha Highway. They didn't understand the burden I was plagued with—how
carefully I was obliged to creep on a highway clogged with restless shadows.
This morning I moved even slower than usual, looking at every shadow with the
vague, unspoken hope that it would suddenly sport blond curls and smile my way.

None of them did. The shadows just floated about
their business, taunting me with their self-absorption, their complete and
utter apathy toward me and anything else that was alive.

They were everywhere. And none of them was Zane.

I had driven past Turtle Bay and was nearing home
when I realized I couldn't make it any farther. My body was cold; my head was
hot, and the emotions bottled up inside me could be contained no longer. I
turned off the road by a sign for a convalescent home, pulled partway down the
drive and off into the grass, and killed the engine.

Then I exploded. Wracking sobs shook my body; hot
tears coursed down my cheeks like lava spilling from a volcano. I wasn't just
sad. I was angry. Angry at everything that had happened to make Zane's life so
wretched, but more angry that his life had been cut so cruelly short. Could he
not have lived another year? Another three weeks? Could he not, just once, have
ripped a set at Sunset Beach?

A part of me tried to see the bright side. Perhaps
Zane's unwillingness to accept death was a gift in itself. His body might have
been lost to him, but his spirit had traveled to Oahu anyway—out of sheer,
blind determination. He had had fun for a while, but it could not last forever.

I should be grateful for the time he did have,
shouldn't I?

Perhaps I should. But I was not. Because it still
wasn't fair. Any of it.

I knew that many people died too young. But I had
always believed that they went to a better place. If only Zane had actually
seen
a light. If only he had felt the presence of his mother, or his father, calling
him on… welcoming him.

He said he felt
nothing
.

The convulsive sobs continued, even as my tears
slowed from dehydration. I could not seem to stop. I did not feel any better.

I wasn't sure I ever would.

"You there! Missy! What the devil do you think
you're doing, driving all over my hibiscus!"

My head lifted. The voice screaming at me belonged
to a haggard old man who was waving his arms frantically outside my car window.

I brushed a hand ineffectually over my cheeks, sat
up, and rolled the window down. I started to apologize, but couldn't get a word
out.