Hereafter s-2

by Kate Brian

  “Why not? Maybe it got bent in one of the storms,” Fisher suggested, pushing the coin into his back pocket and reaching for his smoothie. “There’ve been a lot of them lately. Maybe it just keeps pointing south because it’s off-kilter.”

  “We should keep an eye on it,” I said, hope springing up inside my chest again. “If it never points north, we’ll know something’s up. I mean, it’s not like every single person coming through here right now is inherently evil.” I paused and looked around at them. “Right?”

  “Right,” Joaquin said.

  “No way,” Fisher put in.

  I spun the saltshaker between my thumb and forefinger, hesitant to make my next suggestion. “What if we stop ushering souls?”

  For a second, Krista, Joaquin, and Fisher just sat there, looking at one another.

  “We can’t do that,” Krista said finally. “If we do, then the fog will roll in and never roll out again.”

  “Plus, it’d get pretty crowded around here,” Fisher added, sipping at his smoothie.

  “What’s a little overcrowding compared with sending a bunch of good people to the Shadowlands for all eternity?” I said harshly.

  Ursula placed two plates heaping with food in front of Joaquin. Steam rose from the omelet plate as if the eggs had just been removed from the pan, and the smell of the fried onions and spicy peppers filled my nostrils, making my empty stomach growl. As Ursula turned away from the table, she let out a huge sneeze.

  The shop fell silent. Krista tensed up next to me. I looked over at Joaquin. His face had gone ashen.

  “Bless you,” one of the visitors called out.

  Joaquin got up and put his hands on Ursula’s shoulders. “Are you…what are you—?”

  Then Ursula burst into tears and fled the restaurant. Some of the diners exchanged baffled looks. Krista and Fisher stared at each other as if they’d just seen a news report of a terrorist attack.

  “What just happened?” I asked, flattening my palms against the edge of the table.

  “Ursula sneezed,” Krista whispered, looking up at Joaquin warily.

  “So?” I asked as the conversations around us started up again.

  Joaquin turned and pressed his hands into the side of my bench, leaning all his body weight into it. “So Lifers don’t get sick, remember?” he said through his teeth. “We can get hurt by, like, falling off a bike and scraping our knees—”

  “Has to look authentic for the visitors,” Fisher interjected.

  “But we don’t cough, we don’t sneeze, we don’t even hiccup,” Joaquin finished.

  “Maybe it was just a random itch,” I suggested.

  Fisher shook his head. “Doesn’t happen.”

  I shakily folded my napkin in my lap. Another facet of Juniper Landing life gone awry. Another hitch in the system that was supposedly hitch-free.

  “Do you think that she’s really…sick?” I asked quietly, looking up at Joaquin. “I mean, do you think that’s why she wanted the tea?”

  Realization swept over Joaquin’s face. “That’s why she’s been so weird. She didn’t want to tell me.”

  “Poor woman’s probably terrified,” Fisher put in.

  Joaquin laced his hands behind his head, his elbows out like wings, and took a deep breath. “I’m going after her.”

  Fisher looked toward the door, and his face dropped. He rose slowly from his seat. “You guys, the fog.”

  I turned around in my seat, pushing myself up on my knees. Sure enough, the fog had slipped into town lightning fast, blotting out the park and the library and all the buildings on the other side. The room grew hushed as everyone stopped to watch.

  Joaquin walked toward the door. The rest of us followed. Some visitors eyed us curiously as Joaquin shoved open the door, making the bells ring, and stepped out into the mist. Krista, Fisher, and I joined him one by one, huddled close together under the general store’s striped awning. The fog was so thick it instantly wet my skin and hair and clogged my lungs.

  “What do we do?” Krista asked.

  “We wait,” Joaquin replied.

  He stepped to the edge of the sidewalk and looked to the left, in roughly the direction of Tristan’s house. My breathing was shallow as I silently recited the entire periodic table. Then I counted to one hundred, then counted again. And again. Fisher tapped his fists against one of the pillars holding up the awning while Krista paced behind us. After what seemed like an eternity, the gray cloud all around us began to thin.

  “This is it,” Joaquin said, staring at the retreating wisps of fog. “If the weather vane turns south, there’s definitely something wrong with it. There can’t have been four evil souls in a row. There’s no way.”

  “If it turns south I’ll climb up there myself and fix it,” Fisher said grimly.

  The last fingers of fog pulled across the park, leaving behind their wet trails and a clear blue sky. Atop Tristan’s house, the weather vane turned slowly. And turned. And turned. The wind was blowing in from the east, whipping the flags on the flagpoles all along Main Street toward the west, but the weather vane paid it no mind. It took one last turn, and stopped, pointing due north.

  “Okay, so that’s good,” Krista said.

  “No, it’s not,” Joaquin snapped. “If the problem isn’t the weather vane, if it’s not telling us people are going south when they’re not, then that means Jennifer and Aaron and Grant all ended up in the Shadowlands when they shouldn’t have.”

  Krista turned pink around her ears. “Oh.”

  “What the hell is going on around here, J.?” Fisher asked, squaring his broad shoulders. He looked like he was ready to beat the crap out of someone and was just waiting for an opponent to show himself.

  “That’s it,” Joaquin said. “I’m calling a meeting. Tell everyone we’re getting together at the Swan at midnight. I want to know if this has happened to anyone else and how many times. If we get enough people together, the mayor will have to listen to us. In the meantime, I’m gonna go check on Ursula.”

  “Good luck, man,” Fisher said, clasping Joaquin’s hand. “I’ll hit the beach. Pete and them are probably down there.”

  “No,” Joaquin said, glancing over at me. “Don’t bother with them.”

  “Why not?” Fisher asked, drawing his head back.

  “They’re not… They don’t want to hear it,” Joaquin said. “But get Bea, Lauren, and Kevin.”

  Fisher screwed up his face in confusion, and he knocked his fists together. “Um…okay,” he said dubiously, as Joaquin jogged away. He looked over at me and Krista, as if waiting for an explanation. I just lifted my shoulders. “All right, then. Kevin’s probably sleeping one off at the cove, so I’ll go there.”

  “I’ll find Lauren and Bea. Wanna come with me?” Krista offered.

  “What about Tristan?” I asked.

  “I’ll tell him when I get home,” she said with a shrug. “Unless you want to go do it.”

  I glanced over my shoulder at the huge blue mansion on the bluff, where Tristan, who didn’t believe in me, lived under the same roof with the woman who could send me straight to Oblivion. My throat was suddenly dry.

  “Actually, I think I’ll go home and check on my family,” I said.

  “Okay, well, then, I’ll see you later?” Krista asked hopefully.

  I blinked, confusion written all over my face.

  “We’re baking cupcakes?” she reminded me, knitting and unknitting her fingers. “For the party? Two o’clock.”

  “Right. Right. Sorry,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

  “I’ll walk with you,” Fisher offered, putting his large hand on the small of my back. “I’m going that way anyway.”

  “Okay.”

  We left Krista, turning north up Main Street and headed for Freesia Lane. We’d only taken two steps when I saw something out of the corner of my eye—something that stopped my blood cold. Darcy.

  She was standing near the fountain at the center of the park in
her favorite sundress, glaring at me. Me and Fisher. The boy she was falling for had just put his arm around me.

  “Darcy!” I called. But she just turned on her heel and disappeared over the crest of the hill.

  Pills

  Darcy wasn’t home. I’d gone back to the house, ready to explain, but she wasn’t there. And my dad was tapping away at his laptop, as always. Even with the sun shining brightly through the windows, the place felt desolate, and I spent the entire morning on edge, waiting to hear the door open downstairs. Anticipating the confrontation. But Darcy had never returned. Which meant she was seriously pissed.

  She still wasn’t home when I left for Krista’s. As I cut across the park, I twisted my hands together in front of me, trying to ignore my mounting fear of going to the mayor’s house. Instead, I focused on Tristan and what I was going to say to him to get him to believe me about the usherings.

  I understand why you’re scared, but I can’t accept this, I thought. Aaron doesn’t belong in the Shadowlands.

  I shook my head, laughing tersely at myself as I passed the fountain. I’d only said the exact same thing a million times yesterday. Why would his response be any different? Maybe…

  I understand why you’re scared, but there clearly is something wrong around here, I thought. Don’t you want to help us figure out what it is?

  I bit my lip. That might work better, keeping Aaron out of it.

  I was just squaring my shoulders and starting to psych myself up for this whole walking-into-the-lion’s-den thing when I saw them. Pete and Cori, straddling their dirt bikes not ten feet away, glaring at me.

  My steps automatically slowed as frustration burbled up inside me. What? I wanted to yell. What’s your problem with me?

  But then Officer Dorn and Chief Grantz strolled over to join them. And then Yoga Woman from the park. And the grocer. And two other people I didn’t recognize. I stopped in my tracks, adrenaline and fear surging through me. All that was missing was Nadia and her piercing black eyes.

  Dorn leaned toward Grantz’s ear, and they both fixed their angry gazes on me. The others seemed to shift as one, as if primed for an attack.

  Tristan’s voice echoed in my mind: Once angry people get together and are out for blood, they’re not satisfied until they get it.

  I ducked my head and kept walking, faster and faster and faster, until I reached a sprint at the top of the hill. I had to get to Krista, to my friends. It wasn’t until I saw the weather vane creaking overhead that I froze, a new wave of terror crashing over me.

  How stupid an idea was this, going to the mayor’s house right now? All night I’d been waiting for the ambush. What if it was waiting behind Tristan’s front door?

  Suddenly, Krista walked around the side of the house, her face creased with concern. She was wearing a lavender sundress and her hair was pulled back at the sides. There was a streak of flour on her cheek and when she saw me, her eyes brightened.

  “There you are!” she said, reaching for one of my hands with both of hers. “I was just about to go down to your house to check on you.”

  “Why?” I felt light-headed.

  “You’re late,” she replied. “And Joaquin said something about keeping an eye on you. He seemed like he was worried.”

  “Um…yeah. I guess I’m just a little freaked out about everything that’s been going on around here lately,” I said, glancing one last time over my shoulder. “Is Tristan inside?”

  “No, he left a little while ago,” Krista replied. “Nadia came by, and I think they went out surfing or something.”

  My stomach fell into my toes. “What?”

  “Oh. Right. Sorry.” Krista made an apologetic face. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”

  I tasted bile in the back of my throat. It wasn’t nothing. If the two of them were out somewhere alone together, Nadia was definitely trying to convince him of my guilt. Trying to make him believe he was just letting another girl pull the wool over his eyes. And considering that the last time I saw Tristan we’d yelled at each other, I couldn’t trust that he would take my side.

  “Come on,” Krista said, tugging me toward the house.

  We were just passing the dead garden in front of the porch when a shout sounded from inside, followed by a door slamming. A bevy of crows took off from the roof of the house, cawing angrily.

  “Um, maybe we should just sit out here for a while,” Krista suggested, clutching my hand so hard it hurt.

  “What about Bea and Lauren?” I asked, clutching her right back.

  “They’ll live.”

  We looked at each other and shared a strained laugh over her choice of words. Cautiously keeping an eye on the front door, Krista led me up the porch steps and over to a wicker bench facing the bluff and the wide-open ocean beyond. As soon as she sat down, Krista deflated, hunching back against the puffy cushions in a very un-Krista-like way.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “I’ve been thinking about what Joaquin said yesterday,” she told me, picking at a broken piece of wicker on the arm of the bench. “You know…why are we even here if everything can go so wrong?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  Krista sighed and crossed her slim arms over her stomach. “Do you ever miss it? Your life?”

  My life. Considering everything that had gone on in my new life the last few days, I hadn’t had much time to think about my old one. And it was almost impossible to focus on it now, knowing that Tristan and Nadia were out there somewhere, talking.

  But after a moment, I realized that unless I counted school, there wasn’t all that much to miss. I’d had friends, but no extremely close ones. I’d already been missing my mom for years, so that hadn’t changed, and Darcy and my dad were still with me. My mind flashed on an image of Christopher, but I could hardly remember what he looked like. When I thought of him, I felt a pleasant hum inside my chest, but nothing more.

  “Not really,” I told her. She gave me this doe-eyed look that was sad, like she’d been expecting another answer. “But I guess I haven’t been here long enough to really miss it.”

  “That’s true,” she said with another sigh.

  I gazed at her petite frame. She seemed so fragile in that moment, so breakable. “Krista,” I started gently, “do you want to tell me…I mean, do you want to talk about how you…”

  “Died?” she asked, her voice breaking. “I killed myself.”

  “Just like Joaquin,” I said.

  She laughed harshly. “Not exactly. I didn’t mean to do it.”

  “What?” I gasped, startled.

  Krista turned her hands over and over in her lap. “I just…my boyfriend, Andreas…he broke up with me, and I only took the pills because I figured I’d pass out and then he’d find me. And when he found me he would realize how much he loved me. It was a whole Romeo and Juliet thing. We were supposed to go to prom together, and I had a dress, and I just wanted him to want to take me. But instead, I ended up here. It was all supposed to be perfect, and I ended up here. Without him.”

  She pressed her face against my shoulder, dissolving into tears. I wrapped one arm around her and let her cry, thinking how awful it must have been for her, knowing she could’ve just gone to prom with someone else and gotten on with her life. If only she hadn’t taken too many pills.

  It was kind of how I’d felt about taking the shortcut through the woods that day. If only I’d gotten a ride, if only I’d taken the long way around, Mr. Nell would never have had the opportunity to attack me. My sister, my father, and I would all be alive back in Princeton. Back in “the other world.” I wouldn’t have to worry about the angry mob or the mayor or the Shadowlands or Oblivion or where Tristan was right now and what I would say to him when I had the chance.

  Maybe I did miss my life.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, sniffling. “I’m really sorry. I’ve just been thinking about this a lot lately, with the one-year anniversary coming up and everything…but for some reason it
just feels worse today.”

  “It’s okay, Krista,” I told her, rubbing her back. “Hey, what was your selfless act?” I asked, hoping that might cheer her up.

  “Oh. That.” She laughed and looked down at her fingers in her lap. “It was so lame. Not like saving a life or ridding the world of an evil maniac, like some people.”

  I smirked. “Tell me.”

  “I saved a doll.”

  “What?”

  She rolled her eyes slightly, but smiled. “I’d been here for three days and I was down at the beach with a couple other people who moved on ages ago, and there was this family there. A mom, a dad, and two little kids. I found out later they died in a car accident.”

  “Wow,” I said, the wind knocked out of me.

  “Anyway, the little girl left her favorite doll near the shoreline and it got swept out to sea,” Krista continued. “She completely lost it, crying, screaming, and her dad was basically like, ‘Too bad. You have to learn to take care of your things.’ I mean, the girl was, like, three years old.”

  “Are you serious?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Real nice,” Krista agreed. “All I could do was watch this soggy pink doll bobbing out on the ocean and the little girl crying, and it reminded me so much of me when I was little. I had this Raggedy Ann that I would take with me everywhere. By the time I gave it up in fourth grade it was falling apart and probably totally diseased.”

  She smiled again, looking nostalgic. “So even though I was never a great swimmer, I dove into the ocean and swam out there and saved the doll for her. I thought I was gonna die by the time I got back to the beach. I was panting so hard I was seeing stars. But she got her doll back.”

  “That’s awesome,” I said. “What did her dad do?”

  “He basically grunted at me,” Krista replied. “But the little girl was so happy… They moved on that night.”

  I swallowed hard, hoping that that family, even the grumpy dad, had made it into the Light. We both sighed at the same time, looking out at the sun glinting on the ocean.

  “You know what this is, Krista?” I said finally. “It’s just a bad day.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked. Her blue eyes were shot through with red.