For This Life Only

by Stacey Kade

  “What is going on?” my mom demanded, rushing around the island to stand next to me.

  “Would you like to explain to me where you were during service tonight?” he asked in a too calm voice that was somehow more frightening than when he’d grabbed me a moment ago.

  Crap.

  Instinctively, I looked to my mother for help, but she was staring wide-eyed at my dad, like she’d never seen him before. “He was sitting with Leah, Micah. I don’t think that’s cause for this.”

  “Is that right? Because Leah told me she saw you go across the street,” he said.

  My mom sucked in a breath. “Across the street” was code for Psychic Mary’s.

  “You’re lucky it was Leah,” he said, jabbing a finger in my direction. “She stopped me after service and told me in confidence. If she’d told her father instead, do you have any idea how much trouble that would have caused?”

  I grimaced. Mr. Hauer was definitely the most conservative of the church council members, and he was the president. My dad would never have heard the end of it.

  But why was it always about everyone else? It wasn’t that my dad didn’t want me over there, though I was sure he didn’t, or even that he believed all the stupid whispered rumors about “consorting with dark forces” or whatever.

  It was about Mr. Hauer and the church. As always. It didn’t matter if we were struggling or falling apart or pushed to desperate measures. Appearances were all that mattered.

  My temper flickered to life and, for the first time in months, caught hold. “Yeah, because that’s the worst part about all of this, what everyone at church will think.”

  “Jacob—” my mom tried.

  “It’s not a big deal,” I argued. “Thera and I are in the same class at school.”

  “And you felt the need to go over there in the middle of service because . . . ?” my dad pressed.

  “Thera’s not the devil incarnate, no matter what Mr. Hauer might say,” I said, avoiding the question. “She and her mom . . . they’re just people.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” my dad said. “At a minimum, they’re criminals and con artists, and by going there, you’re undermining my authority. I’m trying to convince the council and the congregation to push against the city and commit millions of dollars for this expansion based on my vision and my leadership, and my kid is across the street, chatting up the enemy.”

  The enemy?

  “After a loss, I think it’s normal to look at the world a little differently,” my mom offered tentatively, making eye contact with me for the first time and giving me an understanding nod. “And the desire to reach out to a school friend, as odd as she may be, or maybe the temptation to seek confirmation from a source that might be outside the accepted norm, is—”

  “Carrie, this isn’t about grief,” my dad said with an irritated edge.

  My mom recoiled at the rebuke.

  Seeing them like this made my stomach knot up with tension. They’d argued before, but this was different. It felt more personal somehow.

  “This is more of that . . . I don’t even know what to call it,” he said. “Acting out? Like the drinking and the lying?”

  And getting your brother killed. He didn’t say it aloud, but he didn’t have to.

  He is never going to forgive me. That thought rang in my head with stark clarity, like a bell that wouldn’t stop reverberating.

  “Micah, I think you’re overreacting to—” my mom began.

  “Don’t.” His hand shot up. “Stop defending him. You always defend him and that’s how we ended up in this mess. You being too soft.”

  Mom reeled as if he’d slapped her. “I’m too . . . ,” she gasped.

  “There’s nothing to defend. He knows better,” my dad said.

  “And you expect too much,” she shot back.

  “A little cooperation?” my dad snapped. “How is that too much?”

  Mom laughed, a horrible grating noise. “A little cooperation? Try total and uncompromising obedience. No mistakes allowed!” She swiped at her face, and I realized she was crying.

  This was it, my family imploding in the middle of the kitchen, while grilled cheeses burned on the stove top.

  “You’re a fine one to lecture him about putting his needs first,” she continued. “God forbid that the church ever take second place to us. To your children.”

  Dad pointed at her. “Oh, no. You knew exactly what you were getting into when we got married.”

  “Your commitment to the church, to God? Yes. I know all about that. But that doesn’t undo your commitment to us. You made promises to me, too.”

  I don’t know what scared me more: what my mom had just said or the fact that she’d said it so quietly.

  Dad stared at her, his mouth thin and his breathing so harsh I could hear it.

  “This church,” he said after a long moment, “is also our family. If I fail and Riverwoods folds because of dwindling membership, there will be serious repercussions. Thirty-seven people work for the church in some capacity. This church is also what pays to keep the roof over your heads, food in your mouths, and college a possibility without a baseball scholarship.”

  That felt like a pointed finger jabbing into an open wound. I flinched.

  “I’m the one responsible. I’m the one who is carrying the burden,” he continued.

  “Good to know that’s how you see us,” my mom said.

  Oh. Shit.

  Dad drew himself up to his full height, and I swear, I could see his nostrils flaring. “Carrie. You have no right to—”

  “STOP!” The high-pitched shriek startled all of us.

  My sister stood at the entrance to the kitchen, her small body shaking. She had Patsie in a stranglehold. “You’re messing everything up! I put the cap back on the toothpaste every day. I make my bed.” She sounded on the verge of hysterics. Her fingers plucked at the matted fur of Patsie’s ear, removing tufts, and she didn’t seem to realize it.

  “Sarah.” Frowning in concern, my dad took a couple of steps toward her.

  “You have to stop yelling. You have to be good,” she said in a trembling voice. “God killed Eli because I was bad, but I’ve done everything else I was supposed to!”

  Oh, God. I looked over my shoulder to my parents for help, but my mom had her hand clamped over her mouth, tears running down her cheeks, and my dad seemed stunned.

  He gathered himself enough to try again, bending down to Sarah’s level. “Honey, come here and tell me—”

  She bolted past him and tackled me around the knees.

  I stumbled back under the force of her weight. “Sares.” I tried to bend down to pick her up, but she locked her arms around my casted leg.

  “I’m sorry. I said I was sorry, over and over again.” She sobbed against my leg, her tears dampening my khakis and generally making me feel like the worst person alive. I touched the top of her head, which was overly warm and damp with sweat.

  “Sarah, you didn’t make anything bad happen to Eli,” my dad said firmly.

  The rest of his sentence—Jace did—hung unspoken in the air.

  “What would ever make you think that, sweetie?” my mom asked.

  “The last night,” she said, barely able to catch her breath. “He was upset because I didn’t put the cap on the toothpaste.”

  “I remember,” I said quietly. I used to get in trouble with him for not turning the shampoo bottle upside down so it would be ready to squeeze. Weird how that had been absolutely infuriating at the time and now seemed kind of funny.

  “It was just because I forgot. But he made me mad. So when he left the bathroom, I did something bad,” she said, her voice muffled against my knee.

  “What did you do?” I asked, mystified. What action could she have possibly taken that she’d feel responsible for Eli’s death?

  “I put his toothbrush back in the holder, but upside down, so it would be in the yucky water.”

  In spite of everything, the urge
to laugh bubbled up.

  “But God was watching, and he made Eli die to punish me. So I’d be sorry for being bad.” She fell into silence, and any impulse I’d had to laugh dried up instantly. Her obsession with death had grown to the point where she seemed to be conflating God and Santa Claus into a single terrifying, all-seeing, punishing entity. I could kind of see it. She’d gone to bed that night before anything had happened. When she’d woken up in the morning, expecting to hear Eli spluttering in outrage, she’d been greeted instead by news of the accident from Delores, who’d been called in the middle of the night to watch her while my parents were at the hospital.

  “You have to stop being mad,” Sarah said, lifting her head to speak to my parents. “Or maybe God will kill Jace too to make you sorry.” She sounded so solemn, so convinced of this inevitability, that it sent a chill through me.

  My mouth worked, but words didn’t come out at first. “Is that why you’ve been avoiding everyone?” I managed. “So you wouldn’t mess up?”

  She nodded, her cheek rubbing against the top of my cast. It couldn’t be comfortable, but she wasn’t letting go.

  I looked helplessly at my parents. My mom was sobbing softly, her shoulders shaking. My dad’s face was stony and unreadable, but tears were gathering at the corners of his eyes.

  He moved closer and bent down next to her, rubbing her back but making no attempt to pull her away. “Sarah, that’s not how it works. God loves you. Elijah just went home.” His voice broke, and he paused to collect himself. “God loves you. He wouldn’t punish you like that. He doesn’t punish anyone like that.”

  Sarah twisted around to look up at me, seeking confirmation.

  I wanted to nod or say yes, but I couldn’t make myself do it.

  She gripped my leg tighter.

  My dad glared at me. “I’ll talk to God,” he said to Sarah in a gentle voice, but that glare told me that our discussion about my defection to the daughter of the dark wasn’t closed. “You know I’ve got a direct line to his ear. How about that?”

  She turned her head toward him cautiously, sniffling. Then she nodded, and when he held out his hands, she lurched into them, crying again like her heart was breaking.

  And it probably was. She blamed herself, and knowing how blame worked, hearing the words “it’s not your fault” wouldn’t come close to touching the guilt.

  I watched them go, my dad carrying her up the stairs and patting her back, humming a song so quietly I had to strain my ears to recognize it. “Jesus Loves Me.”

  Before the church grew so much and my mom quit working, she’d have to leave at night sometimes, to meet clients to go over paperwork or whatever, and if one of us had a nightmare, it was my dad who came in, bringing in the requisite glass of water or turning on the hallway light to prove that the shadow was only a shadow. He’d pat our backs like that and hum until we fell asleep again.

  My vision blurred with tears.

  My mom sighed and moved around me to follow them.

  “Mom,” I said. “I’m—”

  “Not now, Jacob,” she said, without looking back as she climbed the stairs.

  The smoke alarm sounded a few seconds later, high and shrill, making me jump.

  I moved to the stove to turn the burner off and then opened a window over the sink to let fresh air in.

  Once the ringing stopped, I could hear the soft sound of voices upstairs. The three of them together, and me down here.

  That’s when I realized that even if missing Eli did get easier someday, even if the sharp edges softened with time as Thera had said they would, it wouldn’t fix this. My family was broken, irretrievably. And even if my parents managed to hold it together for Sarah, I didn’t fit in anymore.

  I wasn’t just missing the other half of myself.

  I was alone.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  * * *

  THE WORDS IN FRONT of me on the page of Gatsby kept blurring. The Exempt study hall room was beyond warm again this morning, and my eyes were tired and dried out, like marbles rolled in sand.

  The harsh but muffled voices of my parents fighting in their bedroom had continued late into the night. Then, once I’d finally fallen asleep, I’d promptly been sucked into an endless nightmare: I was stuck in a huge house with long, dark corridors of closed doors. And Eli was waiting for me, calling for me, but I couldn’t find him, no matter how many doors I opened. The rooms were always empty.

  I’d woken up this morning with my head throbbing and my shoulder muscles aching from the tension of my dream search.

  My head, resting in my hand, slipped toward the desk, and it felt like too much effort to lift it. Maybe if I blinked really slowly this would work like a bunch of short naps.

  “Jace.”

  I jerked, and looked up to see Mr. Sloane holding out a bright green hall pass. He frowned at me. “The library found the reference materials you were looking for, apparently.” He glanced at the pass again. “Research for Gatsby?”

  When I squinted at the pass Mr. Sloane was holding up, I was pretty sure the authorizing initials in the bottom corner were a large but messily scrawled TC.

  Thera.

  I’d been planning to find her today, to apologize again for kissing her. Even if I couldn’t go over to her house anymore, I didn’t want to lose the one person I could talk to because of a dumbass move on my part.

  But maybe it wasn’t so bad, not if she was sending passes to me in study hall to get me out.

  • • •

  It took me a minute to spot Thera across the library. She was on the far side of the oversized main desk, half hidden behind a computer monitor and talking to a senior I vaguely recognized, mainly from her hair. It was bright green and stuck out like a wing on one side and was shaved on the other.

  Thera nodded in greeting as I approached the desk.

  The senior turned and scowled at me, and the piercings in her eyebrows and the crease of her chin made her that much more imposing. “Get out of here, asshole.”

  I stopped.

  “He’s okay, Di,” Thera said.

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  Di nodded, but the dyed side of hair didn’t move. “I’ll see you at lunch, T.” Then she pushed back from the desk and walked away, taking deliberate care to jar my arm as she passed.

  “She’s friendly,” I said to Thera once Di was gone.

  “Don’t take it personally,” Thera said with a small smile. “She’s not a big fan of the jocks at this school.”

  Is that what I was? Maybe once. But now?

  “I wasn’t sure you’d come.” Thera’s gaze flicked from my face to a point over my left shoulder.

  “I wasn’t sure you’d want me to,” I said. “I thought maybe you might be mad after yesterday. I’m sorry if I—”

  “Oh. No.” Blushing, she dismissed my words with a wave, and then busied herself shuffling through a stack of papers on the desk. “I have something for you here somewhere.” A page slid free and floated to the ground by my feet.

  I bent down and scooped it up.

  “ ‘Fighting Eminent Domain Abuse: What You Need to Know to Save Your Property,’ ” I said, reading the headline on the printout. “What’s this?”

  She studied me for a long second. “It’s nothing,” she said finally. “Not for you. Just a project I’m working on.” She yanked the paper from my hand and stuffed it into an already messy stack. The top sheet was a printout of a search for local lawyers specializing in eminent domain, whatever that was, and beneath that, the edge of another article stuck out: GOVERNMENT SEIZURE OF PRIVATE PROPERTY: A SHORT HISTORY. Thera took her projects seriously, apparently. It all sounded boring to me.

  “Here,” she said, sliding a manila folder across to me. “This is for you.”

  “Gatsby” was scrawled across the front. “Really?” I asked.

  She rolled her eyes at me. “Just open it, okay?”

  I flipped it open. The
first page was formatted text in tight paragraphs with a heading: NEAR DEATH, EXPLAINED. A few pages after that, TIME AND THE NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE.

  The words made my skin prickle with unease. I looked up at her in question.

  “It’s some personal testimonies, a few articles and book excerpts, and summaries of a couple scientific studies I found online. Not many of those, though, because apparently it’s a controversial area.” Thera shrugged. “And some Wiki shit because that’s practically unavoidable.”

  I waited.

  She sighed. “Basically, it works out to this: only, like, ten to twenty percent of people who die and come back report any of the traditional ‘symptoms’ of an NDE.”

  I frowned. “ND what?”

  “Near-death experience,” she elaborated. “Didn’t you do any research?”

  No. Because I’d done my best to avoid even thinking about it.

  “The bright light, chorus of angels, seeing dead family mem—” She winced, catching herself, and then continued. “The things you were expecting? They don’t happen to everyone. No one knows why. There’s a doctor who thinks it’s got something to do with quantum physics, and your energy transitioning to a different state.” Her voice warmed with excitement now that she was talking science again.

  “Other people think it’s because they were already in the process of coming back. Or maybe they don’t remember what they saw,” she said. “No one really knows for sure. There’s a theory that near-death experiences aren’t real, that they’re the result of oxygen deprivation in the brain, but there’s this neurologist who says that can’t be it because the part of the brain that processes images and memories would already have shut down. . . .” She stopped herself, visibly reining in her enthusiasm, though seeing her that way—her cheeks flushed, her hands gesturing rapidly—only made me like her more. I knew that feeling of loving something so much, you wanted every word to convince others to join you.

  “All I’m saying is you should check it out.” Thera gestured toward the folder. “Just because you didn’t see what you were expecting doesn’t mean that there’s nothing to see or that you saw nothing.”

  How many hours must she have spent gathering this information? And obviously not only printing it out but also reading it and trying to make sense of it for me?