“I loved that,” she whispered. “Did you?”
Andy’s eyes said it all. He hadn’t loved it. My heart leapt up—until I realized how stupid it was for me to be happy about the current turn of events. I decided I wanted him to fall for her, and I wanted him to do it now. They had to lock lips, passionately. There might not be another chance. I had to think of something, and quick. The only way to get Andy to feel like he did when he kissed me while he was kissing Dani was for me to be Dani, or at least inside her. I hoped I could pull it off.
I took flight and swirled around Dani, causing her skin to pebble with goose bumps. I moved faster and faster until she drew in a gasping, frightened breath. It was all I needed, the slightest opening of fear, and—pouncing like a cat—I leapt into her.
She was a jumble of giddy joy mixed with terrifying negative thoughts, images of Andy pushing her away. She had a joyful inner aura about her and I saw childhood memories, happy times with parents and siblings who loved her. She also had a wonderful, earnest, honest yearning for Andy. So did I. I heard myself say, “Let’s go outside and look at the stars.”
As I rose, I looked in the mirror. I was in Dani’s body but I was looking at me, at myself—the eyes were unmistakable. The feeling was incredible. I was corporeal again!
Being outside at night was something Andy and I used to love to do—just lay on our backs in the grass and gaze into the starry sky, holding hands in between kisses, not having to say a whole lot. Who needed to yammer when you could listen to the whispers of the universe?
When we stepped out the back door and onto the deck, Andy looked up at the sky.
“I bet we have the best view in the whole universe,” I said.
He looked sharply at me. This is something he always said when we went star gazing. He nodded and smiled at me. At Dani.
I was in no hurry. Andy was tapping his fingers on the wooden railing. He was deep in thought. I knew he was thinking about me.
“Dani, uh … listen … my life … it’s just…”
I had to make my move. I couldn’t let him start blurting out how much he loved me and missed me. It would ruin everything for Dani. So I wrapped my wrists around his neck, like I always had, and moved my lips closer and closer. I could feel the breath leaving him as he relished the anticipation.
“I … I…” he muttered.
“Shhhh…”
Our lips met. So softly. So perfectly. Then our tongues explored and a hunger rose in both of us as I pressed my body against his. If I could have bottled that moment and kept it, just stayed like that for eternity, I would have. It felt so good to be alive again! This was it. This was the second chance I’d been dreaming of every hour of every day for the last week.
And then everything changed abruptly.
“What are you doing here?” I said. I was frowning. At Cole.
He was at the far end of the deck, watching. Andy was taken aback.
“What? I’m … kissing you, obviously.” He was confused.
“I know, and I’m kissing you. Do you … like it?”
In answer, he kissed me again and the sky exploded. I was sure I’d gone through the process and ascended into my afterlife. That’s how glorious the feeling was that pulsed through every cell in my—or rather, Dani’s—body.
Cole then did something weird. He used his telekinesis to freeze the scene. Andy was as rigid as a sculpture. I could move, and I walked Dani’s body over to confront Cole.
“What are you doing here?” I asked again.
“You’ve gone inside her,” he said.
“Yes.”
“And something’s different.”
“I know.”
He was right. I was. And there was no turmoil. I wasn’t battling anyone. Unlike everyone else I’d entered, Dani was placid, accepting, even welcoming, or so my mind was telling me.
“You did it to kiss him one last time, didn’t you?”
“I had to. She was totally dying; she was going to ruin everything.”
Cole made a face. He wasn’t buying it
“And it so happens that I couldn’t help it,” I said.
Cole’s eyes bored into me, seeking the truth.
“Is that what was happening, or what you were hoping was happening?”
“I … I don’t know for sure. But Cole, I love this.”
“Of course you do.”
I did. The feeling of being human again, of being alive, being able to touch and smell and kiss—it was heaven on earth. Things we take for granted meant everything to me right now. Every single breath I took in Dani’s body was like a precious gift.
“Cole, let us be. Let me play this out, please?”
Cole nodded, the pain in his eyes as obvious as if he’d had a sign on his head that said But I love you, too!
“How long have you been in?”
“I don’t know. Feels like a long time.”
“And she’s not rejecting you, not trying to cast you out?”
“No. Not yet.”
“Do the right thing, Echo. It’s your choice.”
KARMA
The word choice hit me hard. It was rapidly occurring to me that I could choose. I could choose to stay. I could stay alive in Dani’s body. I could make Andy love me—I was halfway there already—and I could start over. This truly was the universe giving me a second chance! Cole released his freeze hold on Andy, who turned to me and reached out.
“This is so weird,” he said. “It’s like I had some nerve thing, I guess. I couldn’t move. And I thought I heard you talking.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “Everything’s okay.”
He shook his head and looked at me with those beautiful eyes and said, “Yeah, I know. Everything’s perfect.”
And then he pulled me to him again. My toes curled inside my shoes. This was it; this was my new life.
“I … can’t believe this is happening,” said Andy.
“I know. Me, too.”
I felt a thousand pinpricks all over my body. Then an image of Dani as a little girl flashed through our brain—it was ours now; we were sharing it—and I drew back. Her dad had just won her a huge pink teddy bear at a carnival and she was on cloud nine. More images appeared—and then quickly faded, images from Dani’s young life. It was as if they were being erased. Me being in her was causing this. Every action has its consequences. Dani’s consciousness, her being, was fading because I was taking over. My thinking changed. The reality of what I was contemplating hit me hard.
I thought about how Dougie was tormented, how he’d smacked his kid brother and made him cry. It was a stupid thing to do, and he’d been trying to take it back ever since. But you can’t take the wrongs back. They follow you to your grave … and beyond. I couldn’t take someone else’s life, even if it meant I could be reborn myself. I realized that in the short term I would be riding on a cloud of bliss, loving and being loved by Andy, my dream of all dreams. But in the long term, Dani’s demise would come to haunt me, my own bad behavior stalking me like a shadow, always there, always reminding me of the selfish choice I’d made.
I’d wanted Andy back so bad and this was my chance. But I couldn’t do it. Even though it was a dream come true, even though it was the one thing in the world I wanted more than anything, I couldn’t stay human. Because I would be stealing a life, a life yet to be lived. Dani had committed no crime other than poor fashion choices. She didn’t deserve to have her existence snuffed out. I had to do what Cole said. I had to do the right thing. And the right thing was to stick with my original plan, get her and Andy on the track to love, and then withdraw and accept whatever fate awaited me.
In my journey as a ghost, I’d learned a lot about myself. I hadn’t been as good and giving and pure as I’d imagined myself. I’d made tons of mistakes and hurt people in the process.
I’d sometimes been manipulative and selfish, convinced that the ends justified the means. Now I knew that the means were everything. It wasn’t what you
got in your life that mattered; it was how you lived it.
Maybe next time—if there was a next time—I could do better. I wanted better karma when I was reborn. I hoped this would help my cause.
I grabbed Andy and kissed him one last time. He moaned. I pulled away. And then I called him his pet name, the name that only I knew.
“Wolfie…”
He was rapt.
“What the … Echo?”
“Echo’s … gone.”
“Is she?”
I couldn’t help it. I kissed him again and moved my tongue in a dance so familiar that he had to know it was me. We’d done it a thousand times.
“Jesus Christ,” he said, pulling away.
I hugged him, putting my face on his shoulder so he couldn’t see my tears.
“Oh, baby. Promise me something.”
“What?” he croaked.
“Promise that you’ll love me forever and ever—will you do that?”
“I promise. I swear. I’ll never stop loving you. Never.”
I wiped the tears from my eyes and looked at him. I was looking at him with Dani’s eyes now.
“You are some kind of kisser,” Dani said as I started to pull away.
Andy was shaken and looked like he might fall over. I held on to him until the last possible second.
He leaned on the railing for support. And then, in a sudden, swift movement, I wrenched myself free from Dani’s body. She was on her own now. Andy was blinking as he stared at her.
“I’m … so confused.”
“Um … me, too.”
She was trembling.
“But it’s going to be okay, isn’t it?” she said.
He looked deeply into her eyes. What he saw I can’t say, but with every passing second, his eyes began to sparkle a little more with joy and hope.
“Yeah. It’s going to be okay.”
I watched them go back inside. I looked up at the stars and felt Cole beside me.
“Congratulations. You just screwed up a once-in-an-after-lifetime opportunity. You could have stayed. And lived.”
“Taking someone else’s life isn’t living. It’s called murder.”
Cole smiled.
“Yeah. I guess we know all about that.”
I started to walk away across the deck. At first I didn’t look back at Andy. I wanted to imagine that he and Dani were back inside, holding hands, gazing into each other’s eyes. But I couldn’t help it and sneaked a look. They were. I would remember what I’d done forever. I felt light, knowing I wouldn’t be forever weighed down by the heavy shroud of regret. I would take this to my afterlife and I would be proud.
* * *
Cole walked with me. “Want to fly?”
“It feels good to walk. You go ahead.”
“Nah, I’ll walk with you. That is, if you don’t mind the company.”
I took him by the hand. We walked for what seemed like miles, doing nothing but breathing in the damp night air and listening to the sounds of life going on around us. We reached a small wooded area of towering pines and entered. I climbed the tallest one and stood on top, reaching down and pulling Cole up next to me.
He knew me well enough to know he didn’t have to say anything and he seemed happy enough just to be holding my hand. The moon’s glow made everything look like it had been brushed over with a silver glaze.
“Cole?”
“I’m right here.”
“Do you think you could do me a favor before I … you know, go?”
He smiled warmly.
“You know I’m going to say yes. What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to kiss me, just like you did the first time.”
He gulped. I mean, actually gulped, like a nervous little boy. I didn’t let up. I wanted what I wanted.
“Do you think you can do that?”
“Um … sure. You know … okay…”
He was working up the nerve to do it when I held his face and looked him in the eye.
“Not right now.”
“Oh. Um … then when?”
“When the time is right. You’ll know.”
I put my head on his shoulder and we watched the moon.
STAY
Six days and six nights passed. The moon stayed true in the sky as I wondered what fate awaited me. The truth was, I didn’t want to go anywhere; I was attached to Cole and growing more so every day. We talked about each other’s “alive” lives and I learned he wasn’t very good at sports, and that this caused aggravation for his father while his mother was secretly pleased that he preferred drawing and writing songs to clashing with his peers on the gridiron or hardwood floors in the gym. I hadn’t known he liked to draw and I found out in a way that made my stomach tingle. On night seven of watching the moon on the Middle House roof, he had something with him, and after some coaxing on my part, he showed me that all along he’d been making sketches of me.
The drawings were really good. I was apparently some sort of goddess in his eyes, because the girl in the sketches was more than pretty—she was beautiful, with eyes alight and a face with smooth but strong features. The fact that he was obviously embellishing meant that in his eyes I was gorgeous, and that made me want him all the more.
I could’ve stayed up here forever with him just staring at the moon. But the moon clouded over and the skies became angry, releasing claps of thunder and spitting cracks of lightning. And then the rain came down. It was light at first but swiftly evolved into a downpour driven by raging winds. Cole wanted to go inside but something was pulling me into the night and I grabbed his hand. We flew hard and fast into the dark sky, the pounding rain whooshing through our phantom bodies. It didn’t take long before I sensed that the others were behind us.
“What’s up?” asked Darby.
“Just going for a little rain dance?” said Lucy.
She shook her body, clearly hating the rain, but she was there with us, compelled, just like Cameron and Dougie and Zipperhead, to accompany us, their sixth senses telling them that this was no ordinary night.
“Easy to wipe out when it’s wet,” said Zipperhead.
“Yeah, you could get killed,” said Dougie.
We were laughing when the rain eased up and then stopped, and we landed in one of Seattle’s many wooded refuges, Seward Park. Lucy shook from head to toe. We all looked up at the sky. There was a break in the clouds and a diffuse moonbeam was breaking through and finding us, exactly where we stood.
Well, what did I need? God on a megaphone, yelling, “Hey, this is it—this is your time, kiddo”?
No, I understood that the universe was talking, had lured me here—lured us all here—for a reason. We knew we’d been summoned here to send me off but no one wanted to say it. I’d grown close to all of them, this band of freaks and misfits, and it wasn’t going to be easy leaving them behind.
“Um…” said Zipperhead.
He was on the verge of blurting something out.
“Yeah, you know, Echo…” Cameron muttered.
Darby’s hands were on her hips and she was trying to defy destiny and looking formidable.
“Maybe this isn’t it,” she said.
Her voice dropped off into the night as the moonbeam grew brighter and now was quite irritatingly appearing to single me out.
“Okay, I don’t need a chorus of angels. I get the point,” I said to the sky.
A light breeze was stirring, coming from the north, and another, stronger one was churning in from the mountains in the east. The effect was that my hair was dancing around my head in a swirl as the moonbeam glowed brighter.
“Looks like this is it,” said Zipperhead.
“Thank you, Mister Obvious,” said Dougie. “Anybody else hot?”
They all rolled their eyes at him. No one was hot. It was a cool, wet, windy night. But that was Dougie.
“Listen … Echo…”
I moved to Dougie and gave him a hug. He was, as usual, cold as a block of ice. But I
kept the hug going for a few more seconds, and he actually warmed up, feeling almost … human. I pulled away and we smiled at each other.
“Thanks, Dougie. You know I couldn’t have done it without you.”
He started pacing and patting his arms. Now he was cold, his breath coming out in little bursts of fog.
“That’s not true,” he said. “You’re the one who kept putting it all together.”
“Yeah, you’re a natural-born detective,” said Zipperhead.
“And a leader,” Cole added.
“I’m … I’m no leader,” I said.
But their eyes told me differently. Their eyes told me that all along they’d been following my lead, backing me up as I’d plunged headlong through my journey.
“We all know what we know,” said Darby. “I bet if you’d stuck around, you would have helped me find the subhuman dipshit who shot me in the face.”
“Darby, I want to help you—you know that.”
Now it was my voice that was trailing off into the night. Darby wiped her cheek. Damned if she hadn’t shed some tears. This was harder than I’d thought it would be. Once upon a time, I was psyched to rise up into the great beyond to join the Afters, to take my place in line in the cosmic evolution. But now … I was plagued with doubts and fears. What if being an After meant being nobody, nothing? What if instead of meeting up with all those who’d gone before me, I landed on some deserted planet devoid of anything? I had no way of knowing what was going to happen, and I was apprehensive. I looked at Cole. He was staring at the ground. He licked his lips.
I felt someone tugging at me. It was Zipperhead.
“Gonna miss you, newbie,” he said.
I gave him a hug.
“Gonna miss you, too. And don’t you worry—you’re going to find the sucker who shoved you and make them pay.”
He smiled weakly, trying to be nice. He didn’t believe a word I had to say.
“Thanks for helping me believe about … you know…” he said quietly.
“Dog, you are never going to get laid,” said Dougie. He laughed—until I shot him a harsh look, and then he tried to cover it with a cough. I looked straight into Zipperhead’s eyes.
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