Yes, I hear you, I thought, unable to move my lips.
“Oh, Allie, I’m so sorry. Sorry for walking into your life. Sorry for hurting you…sorry for leaving you. Please wake up, Allie. Please,” Ethan pleaded.
Ethan was here? What was he doing in my afterlife?
“I think she’ll be fine. Lucky you found her,” a female voice soothed him. “I should call her mother.”
My mother? I’m not dead?
I finally recognized the voice. It belonged to Mrs. Bently, the school nurse. I heard the crinkle of the paper that covered the bed in the nurse’s office. But how could I be in the nurse’s office? What had happened to Becca? The blood?
My eyes flashed open and then closed, reacting to the bright lights above my head. “Mrs. Bently?” I called out, my voice a raspy whisper. I had to stop her from trying to contact my mother. If she dialed the emergency numbers, she would eventually talk to someone from the diner. They would tell her that they hadn’t seen my mom in ages.
“Allie,” Ethan said, his voice filled with relief. He leaned toward me, his face only inches from mine. I had to focus.
“Please,” I begged, “don’t let her call my mom.”
His eyebrows knitted together as his dark eyes studied me for a moment.
“Please,” I repeated.
“Stay here. I’ll be right back.” He stood up and quickly walked out of the room, shutting the door behind him.
I carefully sat up on the blue cot, the paper underneath me crackling with every move. There was no pain, only confusion.
The door opened and Mrs. Bently rushed in, Ethan behind her. “You gave us quite a scare,” she said. “You’re lucky Ethan decided to take a walk around the school before lunch.”
Ethan…his name explained everything. I eyed him suspiciously, but he ignored me and focused on the nurse.
She looked at my white, bloodstained shirt. “But we still haven’t figured out where all the blood came from. You don’t even have a scratch on you. When Ethan carried you in here, he said he found you unconscious behind the school.”
“I…I fell down in gym. That’s the last thing I remember.” I’d lied, but only partially. “Can I go home now?”
“Are you sure you feel well enough to drive? I could call your—”
“No!” I nearly shouted at her. “I’m fine. I feel great, really.” I hopped off the bed to prove it to her, but I ended up falling against Ethan. He held his arms out to steady me.
“Allie, I don’t think—”
Ethan broke in. “I’ll take her home.” He looked at me and smiled.
Nurse Bently sighed, her expression unsure. “I guess. But as long as you make sure she gets home.”
“Promise,” he said, wrapping his arm around my waist and towing me toward the door.
“What happened? How did you find me? Why am I not feeling any pain?” I bombarded him with questions as we walked down the hallway. I tottered, then grabbed him by the waist to balance myself. He had a lot of explaining to do. And this time he wouldn’t be able to weasel his way out of it.
“Later,” he whispered.
“Later?” I repeated, confused.
“At least wait until we get to my car. Erica’s coming.”
Just as he said her name, she flew around the corner. “Allie, Omigod! Are you okay?”
How did he know Erica had been around the corner?
“I’m okay,” I answered, still holding onto Ethan’s hips, afraid that if I let him go I would fall to the floor.
“Your shirt—how did you get blood all over your shirt?”
“I don’t know. Aren’t you supposed to be at lunch?” I asked, trying to distract her.
“I was,” she said, shaking her head. “Then Marie told me what happened. About Aaron hitting you with the ball. I got worried and came to find you. Aaron told Ben it was a complete accident. He said he was aiming for someone next to you. Aaron said you got pretty messed up. He feels really bad about what happened.”
Yeah, okay. Tell me another one, I thought.
“And where did you come from?” She narrowed her eyes at Ethan. “You’ve been gone for a week. Everyone thought you’d dropped out or something.”
“I had the flu,” he explained. “But we have to go. I told the nurse I would make sure Allie made it home.” He pulled me away from Erica and headed to the exit.
“Okay, fine,” she mumbled as Ethan pushed open the doors.
He didn’t say a word, just helped me through the parking lot and into his car. The silence was driving me crazy. I wanted to know what he was thinking. And what he was feeling. But even after he shut my door, his expression remained unreadable.
When he slid into the black leather seat, I remembered the book. “Wait,” I said as he started the car. “I have to get something out of my car.”
“Already done,” he said, shifting into reverse and glancing into the mirror to make sure nobody was behind him.
How did he know what I had to get? I knew he knew I was staring at him, waiting for an explanation. But he concentrated on the pavement in front of him instead.
“What is it, Ethan?” My voice broke the unbearable silence.
“I’m just angry,” he answered slowly.
“Angry? Angry at what? Me?” I couldn’t think of why he would be angry at me. What had I done?
“No, Allie. I’m furious at myself.” His voice remained controlled as he looked over at me then back toward the road. “I thought I’d almost lost you back there. Thought that I’d been too late.”
“But that’s not your fault.” I shook my head. “It’s mine.”
“You don’t understand, do you?” His words were rushed. “I’ve waited my entire life for someone like you. To feel the way I feel about you. Only to know that we’re not supposed to be together. I’ve hurt you so much by walking into your life and then pushing you away. But I can’t stay away. I can’t. And knowing how much my words hurt you the other night, I came into school this morning to try to make everything right, only to find Becca hovering over your body while you lay lifeless in a pool of blood.” He inhaled deeply through his nose as he closed his eyes and shook his head. “If I had been too late—”
“You weren’t too late,” I whispered. “You saved me from Becca, like you saved me at the theater…and in the woods.” I watched him carefully. He’d saved me, and he’d healed me. “I know what you did. But I don’t know how.”
He opened his eyes and his face became unreadable again.
I decided to jump-start the conversation. “It wasn’t until I discovered the book. That’s the reason why I came over your house last night. I’d noticed the picture of you in this book we found at Fort Delaware. A book printed during the Civil War. Deep inside, I knew it was you. That’s when the pieces started coming together…your conversation with Kiera about immortals and mortals, how you knew I was in danger, how you healed me. But I didn’t want to believe it. Stuff like that just doesn’t exist.”
He cracked a smile. “Allie, you’re rambling again.”
“I know—but it’s all so confusing.” I threw my hands up in the air, frustrated. “I don’t know what to think.”
“I have a lot of explaining to do,” he confessed as he looked out the windshield.
“Yes, you do,” I agreed, still flustered. “Let’s start with what you are.”
Ethan drew in a deep breath and held it in his cheeks. Then he released it. “I’m immortal, Allie—I’m an Asterian. From a place called Asteria.”
My eyes widened. “Asteria? Like, a different planet?”
He continued to stare at the road, but gave a little laugh. “No. Not a different planet. It’s a different dimension. A world that runs parallel to this one. The people there have way more energy than you could ever imagine. That’s what keeps them young—keeps them from dying. In your dimension, we’d be considered immortal.”
The truth stunned me, even though I already knew in my gut what he was.
I just couldn’t believe it. “And your sister?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady.
“Kiera’s not really my sister. But, yeah, she’s an Asterian, too.”
I didn’t know what to ask him next. Even though I had so many unanswered questions, I was speechless. My silence must have worried him.
“I wasn’t always like this,” he said, tossing me a glance before putting his attention back on the road. “I was born in this dimension. Lived my life here, without knowing anything about the Asterians. Would never have known, either, but then I was captured by the Union army near Gettysburg in the summer of 1863. They threw me in Fort Delaware. After only a few months there, I knew I had to escape. Diseases were spreading through the prison. My friends, other soldiers, and even generals would go to sleep at night, but they wouldn’t wake up in the morning.”
He gripped the steering wheel tightly, the trauma from his past twisting through his features.
Part of me wanted to reach out to him. Hold him. Tell him it was okay. But the other part—the part of me that was too stunned to move—wanted to hear the entire story, scared that if I reached out to him it would distract him and he’d stop.
“I was freaking terrified,” he continued, his voice hard. “So when the Union army was busy doing drills or cracking jokes at one another, I planned my escape. I started building a raft, using the branches and sticks that fell from the trees in the woods. I tied them together with strips of dried hide. It was the only way I could get across the river.”
All I could do was shake my head in disbelief. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe his story, it was because I couldn’t believe that people could be so cruel as to watch others die and not do anything about it.
He stopped at a red light. “Are you okay?” he asked, turning his gaze to me.
I nodded. “But couldn’t they let the prisoners go?”
“Allie, this was a different time.” He flashed me a weak smile. “Everyone was fighting for what they believed in. Whether right or wrong—we were considered an enemy.”
“Yeah, I know,” I whispered. “It’s just sad.” I looked out at the cars crossing the intersection, then back to Ethan. He turned his eyes back to the road and accelerated as the light changed to green.
“When the boat was finished, I waited until dark one night,” he said, continuing. “Then I slipped out of the barracks and into the woods. It was so cold my body shook as I ran through the maze of trees. But I fought the spasms and eventually made it to the raft. I pushed it out into the freezing water—it was like stepping into a bucket of ice—and jumped on, then used my hands to paddle the boat across the river. I was halfway across when it flipped over. I fell into the water.”
Ethan closed his eyes briefly and shook his head. Then he reopened his eyes. “The last thing I remember about that night was not being able to move. I couldn’t swim. I couldn’t yell for help. All I did was sink.” His jaw tightened. The energy in the car became heavy.
This time I didn’t hesitate to reach out to him. I placed my hand on his arm, letting him know that I was there for him.
My touch seemed to relax him, and he started talking again. “I opened my eyes to a world sort of like this one. The only difference was that it was pure, clean. There were no signs of war, no screaming or yelling, only trees. Trees greener than I’d ever seen. Then a woman popped her face over mine,”—Ethan finally smiled—“and introduced herself. Her name was Azzera. She said she’d been visiting my dimension—whatever that meant—and she’d been at the banks, watching me as I tried to escape. And she said she was sorry for having to leave me, but she had to go. She said she had to explain everything to some guy named Marcus before he saw me. I was confused.”
I rubbed my hand across his arm, knowing that waking up in a different world with different people must’ve been pretty scary. I would have freaked out.
“When she returned, she said she was in trouble with this guy Marcus for saving me, but not as much as she thought she would be in. She explained that my body had washed up on shore and that I’d basically died. Azzera said the only way she could save me was to use her power to bring me back, which gave me a life of eternity. She took me to meet Marcus, and I started living in Asteria after that. As an Asterian.”
I was fixated on the whole immortality part of his story. “You healed me…why didn’t I become immortal?” I asked.
“Because it only takes a small portion of my power to heal injuries,” he explained. “If I had been too late, and you had already,”—he had trouble saying the word—“died, I would have been forced to use a lot of my energy to bring you back to life.”
“So you can bring people back from the dead?”
“No, no.” He stifled a laugh. “I can only bring them back right after their heart stops beating, kind of like a defibrillator. But using my energy in that way will turn a human into an immortal.”
“And that wouldn’t be a good thing?” I asked.
His face contorted. “No,” he said. “We’re not supposed to make mortals immortal. We’re not really even supposed to consort with mortals. Asterians come over to hang out in the mortal world all the time, like it’s a vacation spot. But now, we’re not even supposed to be here. I’m supposed to be in Asteria. All immortals have been called back. None are supposed to be in the mortal realm.”
“Why are you here, then? In Delaware, pretending to be a high school student?”
He sighed. “I’ve always missed being human, so I’d come here every once in a while. It was allowed until, well, recently. Then, when we all got called back to Asteria, I didn’t want to go. So I decided to stay and make a life for myself, starting with pretending to be a typical teen. That’s how I met you.”
“Will you leave me again?” I whispered, removing my hand from his arm and placing it in my lap.
“That’s the problem. I can’t leave you. I can’t be away from you.”
“So, what? You’re saying you want to be my boyfriend…or should I say ‘my immortal?’” I laughed bitterly at the thought.
“Something like that,” he said, turning into my driveway and parking the car.
I had other questions I wanted to ask him, but as I glanced at my front door, I noticed a slip of paper taped to it. “Oh, no,” I cried.
“What’s wrong?”
Ignoring his question, I pushed open the door, leapt out of the car, and raced to my house. It was a letter from the sheriff, stating that we were being evicted. Apparently my mom had been served papers, but still hadn’t made the rent. I stood there staring, wondering what I was going to do.
“Where’s your mom?” Ethan asked from behind me.
“She’s gone. She left me two weeks ago,” I answered, my voice sounding dead as hopelessness kicked in.
“You lied to me.” It wasn’t a question. It was an accusation.
I snapped my head around, frustration building as the anger at my mother consumed me. “Well, you lied to me, too!”
“Yes, I did. And I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry, Ethan. It’s just that I have no idea what to do anymore—”
“You’re moving in with me,” he insisted.
“I can’t.” I shook my head.
“You are.”
“Fine.” It was useless to argue. I’d never realized that there was someone just as stubborn as I was out in the world. Even if he wasn’t actually from my world.
Chapter 10
Ethan watched me race around my house, scooping up anything of importance. I was in too much of a hurry and too aggravated to ask him any more questions.
After I exchanged my bloodstained tee for a pink tank top and finished packing my clothes, I swiped a picture of Skippy and Mom off the mantel. “I’m ready,” I informed him.
“Who’s that?” he asked, taking my duffel bag from my hand and looking at the picture.
“My mom and my dog.”
“You resemble your mother…except for your eyes.”
> “Don’t say that.” I shook my head. “My mother and I have nothing in common.”
“Where did she go?”
I shrugged. “No clue. She’s left before, but she always came back within a few days. I knew she wasn’t coming back this time because she took Skippy with her. But I don’t care. All I ever did was take care of her. I don’t need her anyway.”
“She’s still your mother, Allie.” He reached up to touch my cheek. “Everyone needs their mother.”
“Hardly.” I turned away from him and stuffed the picture in my book bag as sadness rushed in my heart. “Are you ready to go, or what?” I reached down, picked my bag up off the floor, and slid my arms through the straps.
“Yeah, come on,” he said, turning to the door.
I didn’t speak the entire way there. I watched the trees whiz by my window in a blur, their leaves and grayish-brown trunks blending together, and thought about how my life would turn out. The guy I loved was an immortal, I had no family to run to if he ever decided to leave me—which I knew without a doubt would happen once I grew all old and wrinkly—and my best friend was miles away. I wanted to call Jeremy more than anything, but I had no way to explain any of this to him. Not that I could tell him anyway, because it wasn’t my secret to tell.
We reached Ethan’s house just before twilight. The orange glow of the sun was barely visible behind the tops of the trees. I stepped out of Ethan’s car, took in the large, weathered house in front of me, and sighed.
“Are you all right?” he asked, popping the trunk and pulling my bags out of his car.
“Yeah. I’m just thinking about my future,” I whispered, looking to him.
“Don’t you know you’re not supposed to worry about the future?” He cracked a smile as he watched me softly. “All you need to do is think about the present. Life always has a way of working itself out.”
Hah. Easy for Mr. Immortality to say. He had forever to work out his problems.
Ethan wrapped his arm around me and pulled me inside. My eyes widened as I walked into his house. I guess I’d been so preoccupied with my questions, with kissing him, and with his rejection on Saturday night that I hadn’t really had time to appreciate the awesomeness of his home.
Other Side Of Forever (Other Side Of Forever Series Book 1) Page 9
