Dust to Dust

by Melissa Walker

  I stand up quickly and my empty orange juice glass falls to the ground and shatters.

  We both stare at the shards of glass that glitter across the wide wooden planks of her porch, and I take a deep breath in. “This isn’t a movie, Cars. This is my life, okay?”

  She’s quiet for a minute, and then her eyes leave the mess and meet my gaze.

  “You haven’t seen him since you woke up . . . ,” she says, the notion dawning on her as she gapes at me.

  I can’t keep a flash of pain from working its way across my face.

  “Only in a dream,” I say. “I think.”

  “You’ve got to try to reach him again! Oh, Callie, if you help him haunt his sister it would be the ultimate act of love.”

  “I said stop!” I whisper harshly as I step away from the table, piling our plates and taking them inside so Carson won’t be able to keep talking and try to convince me otherwise.

  “Hi, Mrs. Jenkins.” I smile brightly as I walk into the kitchen. I don’t want her to know I’m upset.

  “Callie, let me have those,” says Carson’s mom, taking the plates from my hands.

  “I broke a glass out there; sorry.” I walk to the pantry, where I know they keep the broom and the dustpan. When I turn back around to head outside, Carson is standing in front of me. She grabs the broom.

  “If you love him,” she whispers, so low that her mom won’t hear, “you’ll want to help him. You’ll want to help his sister.”

  She places two small cloudy white crystals on the counter. “Here,” she says. “Use these.”

  “What are they?”

  “Selenite crystals—they’re good for connecting with spirits, and for dream recall.”

  “This kind of thing doesn’t work,” I tell her. “It’s just silly kids’ stuff.”

  “Like the sage you wouldn’t let me burn in your car that might have saved you from your accident?”

  “Bad luck wasn’t what made that truck hit me. I was on my phone. I was going ninety miles per hour.”

  “Still,” she says, picking up the selenite and pressing it into my hand. “Just keep it with you. It might help—you never know.”

  I pocket the rocks so she’ll stop talking.

  “And one more thing.” Carson puts her phone faceup on the counter and walks back outside.

  I sigh and look at the screen, where Carson has found a listing for Wendy Larson. She’s a junior at USC-Beaufort. She lives just over an hour away.

  Nine

  THE NEXT DAY IS the first day of school. At the last minute, I pick up the selenite crystals from where I left them on my nightstand. I don’t know why I’m holding on to them—maybe because Carson has been more on point than I used to give her credit for, maybe because I’m a little afraid of facing the new year. For whatever reason, they’re in my pocket.

  I never noticed that my school has this smell to it. Not good, not awful, just . . . schooly. And the way people’s feet fall on the linoleum, it makes a soft pattering noise, especially when there are dozens of us here all at once. The lights make everyone look slightly peaked, like they’ve just gotten over the flu, but at least we’re on even ground in that respect.

  And the energy at school—the energy. Last year I barely noticed anything beyond my own routine. But today I can almost feel the excitement, angst, nervousness, confidence, fear, hope . . . it’s like the hallways are pulsing with emotion.

  Nick is waiting by my locker with a single daisy. I smile and stick it behind my ear.

  “Thanks,” I say sincerely, trying to ignore the sadness that rises in my chest.

  “Nervous?”

  “No, why?”

  “I don’t know, coming back to school after a pretty traumatic summer . . . it could make even the steel-nerved Callie McPhee a little shaky.” He grins his nice-guy grin, and I try to meet it with one of my own, but it feels so fake.

  “I’m good,” I tell him.

  When Nick texted me last night to see if I wanted him to come over, I told him no. He didn’t ask why; he just didn’t come. I haven’t seen him since the night we went to the movies. And in his absence, I’ve been closing my eyes before sleep and thinking about Thatcher. I’ve thought about the way we were in the Prism—how at first he kept his distance both physically and emotionally. He withdrew whenever I got close to him, but as we spent more time together, as we talked, it was like we were being drawn together by a force that neither one of us could understand.

  Now he’s telling me to turn away from the past, to forget him. And I wonder if he’ll ever truly acknowledge what I think we both felt, for a moment, in the Prism.

  When I think that, I feel a warm wave of air wrap around me, and I know that he’s here. Not like he was the other night in my room, not up close, but nearby.

  Thatcher.

  I wish there was some way that I could acknowledge that he’s here. Actually, I wish he really were here. Walking the halls with his friends, living the life that he never really got a chance to live. I feel an intense shot of guilt when I think about how much I have ahead of me, all the things I have to look forward to now that I’m back in my own skin again. This is what the poltergeists were fighting so hard to get—the feeling of being here and whole—and while Thatcher might be too noble to admit it, he has to miss some of this, doesn’t he?

  “Shall we?” Nick says, offering to walk me to my homeroom by taking my hand in his. And then I feel a cold breeze, though no windows are open here, and I know that he’s gone. Thatcher left. Was it because Nick held my hand? I tell myself that Thatcher wouldn’t be that petty. He has other people to watch over, other spirits to teach.

  But as I suspected, there have to be things that he misses and wishes he could do.

  Things that he’s jealous of.

  “Hey, Callie,” says a girl I don’t recognize, bringing me back to the present.

  “Hey,” I say back with a smile that I hope looks genuine. And then I notice that all up and down the hall there are people trying to catch my eye, say hi, smile. I guess I don’t blame them—I’m the girl who was almost dead and then came back to life. I’d stare at me, too.

  I take a deep breath in, remembering that when I was in the Prism and trying to connect with people on Earth, I would have done anything to be seen. And now I’m here, I’m alive, I’m walking through my high school hallway.

  This is my second chance, like Thatcher said. And everyone around me knows it.

  Pressure much?

  As we walk by the main office, I feel a particularly intense gaze and I lock eyes with a slight boy with black hair and dark-framed glasses. His hands are folded across his chest, and while people swirl around him, making their way to class, he’s staring at me full on, like I’m a specimen in a lab.

  I look away quickly, glad to be turning a corner. I’m no more than a few doors down from homeroom when I feel Nick let go of my hand sort of abruptly. He says, “See you at lunch,” and waves quickly before heading off down the hall, not giving me a chance to look him in the eye.

  When I see Holly Whitman standing just a couple feet away from me, watching him walk away, it’s pretty clear why.

  The first day of school is always a throwaway work-wise, and today my mind wanders even more than usual. I can’t possibly be expected to live this life of Advanced Algebra problems and World History reading. Not after what I’ve seen and felt, both in the Prism and since I’ve been back here. I have to fight the urge to look inward to the space where I can feel Thatcher’s presence, and it’s a struggle to stay in this world, mentally speaking.

  My mind keeps drifting to Wendy Larson. Carson found her. How would Thatcher feel if I went to see her?

  Carson meets me by my locker before lunch. As we walk to the cafeteria together, I see her wave across the hallway, and when I follow her eyes, there’s the boy again—the one with thick-rimmed glasses and dark hair—grinning back at her.

  “Who’s that?” I ask her.

  “Just a
new guy,” she says, without meeting my eyes. “He’s an underclassman.”

  “Oh.” I’m about to ask his name, but Carson barrels ahead.

  “Have you decided what to do about Nick?” she asks.

  “What do you mean? Did he say something to you?”

  “No, but we have English together, and he just looked . . . unhappy.”

  “I know . . . things are pretty weird between us right now.”

  I want to tell her about what happened with Holly earlier, but I’m afraid that what Carson said about me not wanting to let go of Thatcher is also true about Nick—what if in my heart I want to hold on to both of them, so I won’t have to choose between this life and the life I know is waiting for me once I truly am ready to leave this one? I can’t imagine I’d be that selfish, but . . .

  “At some point, you’ll need to explain things to him,” Carson says gently.

  “Explain what?” I ask, lowering my voice to a whisper. “That I was in a world full of ghosts and I was trying to haunt him and I saw him self-destructing? That I know he was planning to break up with me?”

  “He was?” asks Carson, looking surprised. “Why didn’t you tell me that?”

  “Sorry,” I tell her. “I’m just starting to get things clear in my head, what I saw while I was . . . Anyway, that was his plan. Before the accident, I mean. I heard him talking about it. . . .” I pause, trying to remember what he’d said that night. When someone bumps into me from behind, I get self-conscious about people listening to us and we start walking again.

  “Do you think he’s still planning to—”

  “I don’t know.” We step out of the main building and into the sunlight. The humid air hits my face and I take in a breath of the sweet honeysuckle vines growing along the brick wall as I finger the amber pendant around my neck. The one that Nick gave to me as a gift that meant he understood how much I missed my mom. It meant that he understood me.

  “You love someone else, though. Maybe it’s for the best.”

  “Yeah, but how is loving someone I can’t ever be with for the best?”

  “That’s not what I mean,” Carson says. “Maybe you need to let go of that someone else before you can love Nick—or anyone—again.”

  I give Carson side eyes. “This is not school-appropriate conversation.”

  She smiles. “I just think there’s a clear path here,” she says, pulling her phone out of her pocket.

  She clicks to find Wendy’s address again and makes me look at the screen.

  I shake my head, nervous and wondering if Thatcher is aware that we’ve found Wendy.

  Is that why he disappeared this morning? Because he knew what Carson had been bugging me to do?

  “This doesn’t feel right to me; I’m sorry, Cars.”

  We’re about to walk into the cafeteria, but she pulls me to the side of the doors and around the corner toward the faculty parking lot. Then she gives me a Carson speech, complete with gestures and pacing and voice inflections that make her case:

  “Okay, Thatcher isn’t, like, constantly with you, declaring his love, so he obviously wants you to move on, as anyone who truly loved you would, because you have a chance to live a life—an alive life—again. But he’s stuck in this in-between world where he can’t merge with the beating heart of the universe or whatever because his little sister hasn’t gotten over his death. And we have her address right here, plus all these updates for her about him and how he’s okay and how it’ll make him happy if she can move on. PS, it’ll make her happy, too, because she won’t be wallowing in grief. And it’ll make your life easier because lover boy will have a happy ending.”

  “But—”

  “I know it’s not a Disney ending,” says Carson, running over my protestation. “You and he won’t get to walk into the sunset. But that’s not possible in any world, so we have to go for second best here, right?”

  I want to be as excited as she is; I do. It’s all so black-and-white in Carson’s mind, and she makes it sound easy. She believes in the good, all the beautiful things about haunting and the Prism and Solus—and I love that she appreciates that side. But there are things she doesn’t know—about the energy pull I felt, about the possessions that happened when I was still in the Prism, about the poltergeists and what they were capable of.

  Just then, Nick peeks his head around the corner.

  “Are we going to lunch?” he asks with a grin.

  “Yes!” I say, glad to be able to exit this discussion.

  We round the corner and I notice Holly waiting by the entrance for us. She’s always been a peripheral member of our group of friends, but for some reason, I never noticed the longing in her eyes when she looked at Nick, which is hard to miss right now. Maybe it was never there before I had my accident, or maybe it was and I was just blind to it. I look at Nick and see his face light up for her. He tries to hide it by focusing on me again, but I saw it. He really does like her. When we sit down at our regular table she’s far enough away that I can ignore her, but I watch her stealing more lingering glances at Nick.

  It’s really strange and awkward, being here and knowing something was happening between them, something that I apparently interrupted when I recovered. I feel sort of invisible and lost, and suddenly I realize this is what it must be like for Thatcher when he’s hovering over me and watching me with Nick.

  Thankfully, some of Nick’s soccer teammates are sitting at the other end of our table, being loud and carrying on. It’s a nice distraction to have. I haven’t felt the need to say hi to them since I sat down, because they’re so preoccupied with each other, but then Eli Winston says my name, and my ears prick up.

  “Callie hasn’t heard about it!”

  “Yeah, but the rest of us have heard it a hundred times,” says Hunter Black, whose blond hair is shaved into a fauxhawk this year for some reason. I wonder briefly if it was a soccer team dare.

  “Hey, Callie!” Eli calls to me, and I meet his dark-brown eyes. “Want me to tell you about my incredible train dodge?”

  I have the urge to tell him I already know about his “dodge,” and that I saved his ass, in fact.

  But instead I say, “Sure, Eli.”

  It’s hard to listen as Eli recounts the hours after Tim McCann’s summer party, when he was down by Lyndon’s Crossing, drinking with a bunch of people. What he remembers is that he stood on the tracks and jumped out of the way of the train just in time—“literally, like, a split second before the train hit me,” he says. “Not even a split, like half a split second.”

  But here’s what I remember:

  I was hiding across the way while the poltergeists—Leo and Reena, and their friends Norris and Delia—gathered around the Living, waiting for a chance to mess with them. When Eli stepped on the tracks, Leo shadowed him, moving slowly into his body and pulling energy from me against my will until possession was achieved. Eli couldn’t move—Leo stood his ground, having fully taken over Eli’s body. And the train might have hit him—hit them—if I hadn’t come out of my hiding spot and rushed at Eli with the speed of a bullet from a gun and thrown him to safety, forcing Leo out of his body.

  No one here knows that version of the story, and I have to fight off chills when I think of it as Eli tells his own tall tale. Thatcher says I’m not in danger and that being fully alive makes me safe from the poltergeists.

  But what if Leo, Reena, and the others are stronger than he realizes? The more I think about what they could do with my energy, the more I worry about what they might do to access it again, even though my being out of the Prism would make it really difficult. What if they find a way to possess Eli again? What if they’re able to get inside Carson’s head?

  I force myself to smile and nod as Eli winds up the story. “Impressive,” I say.

  One thing’s for sure: Having been possessed by Leo hasn’t changed Eli one bit. He’s still a bragging fool.

  By the time I’m sitting in last period, I cannot possibly listen to an
other “introduction to my class” speech. I’m considering using my “sick” status to leave early, but I decide to save that card because the afternoon is almost done. I tune in and out as Mr. Hawes, who’s been a physics teacher for close to one hundred years as far as I can tell, is talking about mathematical models and abstractions, but when he says we’re going to study “high energy theory,” I perk up. If I’m getting more nervous thinking about the poltergeists, maybe I should try to figure out if I still have high levels of energy—some way to protect myself, and my friends, in case Reena and Leo ever come back.

  I frown at my brand-new physics textbook and let my eyes go fuzzy at the glowing purple fiber-optic-looking image on the cover. If there’s one thing Thatcher would not approve of, it would be me trying to tap into the abilities I had in the Prism now that I’m back in my regular life. I can almost hear him inside my mind. Callie, I want you to live now, as normally as you can.

  I shake my head. That’s impossible.

  As Mr. Hawes continues to talk, I turn my focus inward, almost like I’m meditating or something, trying to call on enough energy to make something in this room move.

  Ping. I feel someone tap the back of my head with a pencil.

  “Ouch!” When I turn around, Morgan Jackson points her eraser toward Mr. Hawes, who’s looking at me expectantly.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, biting my lip to look contrite. “I must have zoned out.”

  “I was just saying that we might benefit from having you in our class, Callie,” says Mr. Hawes. “After your experience this summer, you must know more about energy at rest than most of us.”

  I nod dumbly, still unsure what the context of this attention is and embarrassed that the class may have seen me trying to call on energy—so weird. My nod seems to satisfy Mr. Hawes, though, and he returns to the board to write down the page numbers we are supposed to read tonight in our gigantic book.

  Mercifully, the bell rings a minute later. I walk out into the hall and head toward my locker to meet my best friend, feeling uneasy. I see a display across the way from my classroom, a glass case filled with sports trophies from years past and ribbons from state math tournaments. In the center is a photo of a girl from my class, Ella Hartley. She died last spring. . . .