The Untimely Deaths of Alex Wayfare

by M. G. Buehrlen

  Prove I’m not crazy.

  Blue lets my hair fall, and he traces a finger down my jaw. Lifts my chin. I close my eyes while he takes in what I look like as Alex Wayfare.

  “Your perception filter is blurry,” he says. “You’re not letting me see the real you.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m not used to holding one form very long,” I say, lying, my eyes still closed. Because this is the one form I can hold as long as I want. But I don’t want him to know my true face. Not yet.

  And I realize now it’s not just about my insecurity, whether or not he’ll like what he sees. It’s what Micki said about Gesh’s Subs in Chicago. I couldn’t risk letting them go. They saw your face.

  If Blue is working for Gesh then I shouldn’t let him see me. I shouldn’t give away all the tiny details that make me Alex. My gray eyes, my freckles, my round nose. I shouldn’t give Gesh any way to track me in Base Life.

  Find my family.

  I need to be cautious, at least until I can prove Blue is innocent.

  Again.

  As if to tell me he doesn’t care what I look like, what form I’m in, he pulls my arms up and wraps them around his neck. His hands slide around my waist, and then we’re swaying, our bodies fitted together, dancing beneath the starry soulmarks, my head on his chest.

  He smells so good, like he did in Chicago. And with my eyes closed, I can almost pretend we’re back there, when he teased me all night long, until finally, finally, he kissed me.

  I want to make the most of my time with him, even if it isn’t real. Even if it’s only our perception of each other, how we smell, how we look, how we taste.

  I slide my fingers into his hair at the base of his neck. I tuck my nose beneath his jaw and kiss him there, where his stubble fades to smooth skin.

  His heart beats quicker.

  Mine does too.

  His nose touches mine. I can feel his breath on my mouth. “Can I kiss you now, Sousa?”

  I don’t answer. I kiss him first.

  We sink to the bridge, wrapping ourselves around each other. He kisses me faster, hungrier, like I might descend back to Base Life at any moment and leave him behind. And even though this is only my perception of his fingers on my skin, my memory of his touch and not the real thing, I’ll take it.

  Because it’s all I’ve got.

  The energy we produce pulls the Black inward, and the soulmarks close in until there are stars above us, and stars below, and we’re swimming in them, floating in them, becoming tangled up in their light and each other and the Black all at the same time.

  The Pattern

  “How much time do you think we have left?” Blue kisses my fingertips, one, two, three.

  We’re lying on the bridge, staring up into the Black, his arm around me, my head resting on his chest. “Not long. I can feel the pull growing stronger.”

  The Black never lets you hang around for long. It kicks you out, return to sender. You have to be strong enough to resist it, like Porter. And I’m not. Neither is Blue. If we were, we could stay here forever. Stealing a kiss whenever we want one.

  “I’ve always wondered,” Blue says. “How did Dante know about the castle in Limbo? He describes a dark valley, too, like this one.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think he was a Descender. I think there are many who’ve come before us, who’ve entered Limbo, but weren’t sure what they were seeing, or how to use it. I think he thought it was all a dream. But it’s real. And he could’ve changed the past with one slip into the wrong soulmark.”

  It’s a scary thought, random people accessing Limbo. If only Gesh had written a poem about his discovery and left it well enough alone, like Dante. But then again, I wouldn’t have been created. I wouldn’t have met Blue.

  “I want to be your partner again,” Blue says, pulling me from my thoughts. “I want to help you when you travel, be your backup, like when we worked together at AIDA. When we were Tre and Ivy.”

  I snuggle against his side, tighter. “I would love that, but I may not be traveling anymore.”

  I don’t see how I can keep going, even if I want to. My team doesn’t trust Blue, and I don’t trust my team. Plus, it’s not safe anymore, not when Gesh is so close, and Audrey is so far away.

  Blue sits up, surprised, and I do too. “You can’t stop traveling,” he says. “It’s the only way I exist.”

  I touch his cheek with my fingertips. “Don’t be silly. You exist. And we’ll find each other in Base Life. We will.”

  “What if we don’t?”

  I open my mouth to argue, but he keeps going.

  “It feels like I’m only alive when you pull me back in time. When I’m not with you, everything goes dark. My memory gets put on hold until I see you again, then it starts back up, like the winding of a clock.” Blue grips my hand in his. “I don’t want you to leave again. Please don’t send me back into the dark.”

  “I don’t want to leave either. But the only way we can be together, for real, is if I find you in Base Life. You have to help me find you.”

  He frowns, the familiar, teasing light in his eyes long gone. Now they’re dull and faded. “What if I don’t exist in Base Life? What if I’m dead? What if I was never reincarnated with you?”

  My stomach clenches at the thought. “Not possible. You said so yourself. Our souls are linked. We descend together. We die together. We’re born together.”

  “Anything’s possible. We’re reincarnated time travelers, Sousa. There was a time in your life when you thought that was impossible, yet here we are.”

  “If you were dead, how could you travel back in time with me? Your soul would’ve gone to Afterlife. You wouldn’t be here now.”

  He’s silent for a while, frowning. He’s so beautiful. Even when he’s sad, he’s beautiful. “Maybe I’m wandering around Limbo, a lost soul, and Christ hasn’t come to rescue me. Maybe my soulmarks are playing tricks. Maybe there was a glitch during our reincarnation. I don’t know. All I know for certain is that I can’t remember one single thing. Maybe I never will.”

  The hurt in his voice makes me ache. I’m unable to respond, because now there are more unwelcome seeds of doubt, and I don’t know how to organize them into coherent thoughts.

  He lies back down, holding my hand to his chest, and I lie down too. Nestle against him. “I’m a ghost.” He speaks the words to the dark sky. To the stardust. “That’s all I am. A ghost, wandering through time, haunting you.”

  “That’s not true. You’re alive. You’re real. I’ll prove it when I find you.”

  He kisses the top of my head, sadly, like he doesn’t believe me. “We’re running out of time.”

  “Here? In Limbo?”

  “In Base Life.”

  I sit up again. “What do you mean?”

  He furrows his brow at me. “We only have a few months before we’re reincarnated again. I don’t know if we’ll find each other before then.”

  I shake my head. “I’m not planning on dying anytime soon.”

  “It’s not up to you. It’s just how it is.” When he sees that I don’t understand, he sits up too, holding my hand tightly. “You haven’t done the math? Our past lives. The years we can travel to. They don’t add up. There should be sixty, seventy, eighty years between each rebirth. But there isn’t.”

  I think about each of my missions. 1876. 1927. 1961. I quickly figure out the years between each one. I was seventeen years old in all of them. Which means I was born in 1859. 1910. 1944.

  “There are fifty-one years between my first two missions. And thirty-four between the last two. Those aren’t the greatest lifespans, but they’re something. And people live longer now. We’ll have a long life, Blue. Long enough to find each other.”

  He shakes his head. “There are missions between those. There’s one in 1944. Another in 1978. There’s a pattern, going all the way back to the beginning. You haven’t noticed it?”

  Now that he mentions it, there is one soul
mark, one time period, that gives me pause. When I was trying to find a specific soulmark in my garden, I tested out several to figure out how Porter had them organized. I descended there for only a few seconds, but it was the forties, I was sure of it. I hadn’t thought a thing about it back then. I’d been too focused on getting to Blue. Finding the soulmark that would bring me directly to him, the one where we were in the same place at the same time. AIDA Headquarters in our most recent past life.

  I was sitting in a chair, listening to a radio show. I remember hearing something about Hitler. The clothing I was wearing. The room I was in. It was the forties. I knew it at the time, but I haven’t thought about it since.

  “OK, so there were a few lives where we didn’t live that long. There’s no proof this one will be the same.”

  “Alex.” The look in his eyes, the despair in his voice, the fact that he calls me Alex instead of Sousa, it all makes my stomach sink. “We weren’t created to live long lives. We were created to have as many lives as possible, so we could be placed in as many time periods as possible. Fifty-seven points in time are better than three or four. Don’t you see?”

  I shake my head, not because I don’t understand, but because it can’t be true. And I don’t want him to say the words, to make them real.

  But he does.

  “You and I, we’ve never seen our eighteenth birthday. We always die before, and we’ll die this time just the same.” He pulls me close. “I’m sorry. I thought you knew.”

  I exhale, letting out a huge breath, letting all the little truths I’ve clung to escape along with my blindness. And just like that breath, the Black exhales too, and we fade away, back to the stark, brilliant light of our realities.

  Chapter 10

  Countless Autumns

  The moment I land, sitting on Audrey’s hospital bed, I pull my glasses off and hug her, my face buried in her neck. She holds me tightly, with so much love I can’t bear it. It feels good to hold someone in the flesh, feel their real warmth, their real heart beating, not just the perception of it.

  “It’s going to be all right,” Audrey says. “I promise.” She rubs my back as my sobs come in waves. Her thin, fragile arms wrapped around me, and the fact that she feels like she has to comfort me, make me cry all the harder. I vowed to never let her see me come undone, but I was stronger back then. Before I knew about the expiration dates, hers and mine. Before I knew my parents would lose not one, but two of their daughters by the end of the year.

  How are they going to survive that? How could anyone?

  I’m infinitely connected to Blue. I know I’ll see him again. There’s no question. So as much as I want to find him, right now it pales in comparison to the need to spend every moment I can with my family before it’s too late. Before I’m reborn, before I forget all about them, and my body becomes nothing more than a vessel to the past.

  A mission. A paycheck for Levi and Micki.

  If I’m honest with myself, I’ve never been a Wayfare at all. It’s all been a lie. A disguise. A hideout. Me? I’m a Descender. Alex is the body I’m wearing for the moment, a body I might return to from the future someday. I might look upon my family’s faces and no longer know them, no longer know what it’s like to have this warm feeling in my heart for them.

  I am not a Wayfare.

  I am a number.

  Nummer Fire.

  Micki was right. I am only a tool. A weapon. Blue and I, our lives don’t matter because we’ll get another one. On and on until the end of time. I’ll get another autumn. And another. And another.

  But there are no autumns for Audrey. No more sitting on the front porch swing, handing out candy for Halloween, breathing in woodsmoke from the chimney, listening to leaves rustle like paper. Out of everyone, Audrey’s the one who deserves more time. Her life matters—has always mattered—more than mine.

  Why was I the one chosen for rebirth, when she would’ve benefited more? The world, the past, would’ve been better in her hands, not mine. She’s optimistic in the face of death, telling me it’s going to be all right, that she’s prepared. When I look at my future, I see doom and gloom, I see darkness, but Audrey sees light.

  In the midst of winter she gathers spring blooms.

  And I love her for it. I love her more than anyone. She makes me better. Stronger. Before I met Porter, she helped me have purpose. She was the one who listened when I spoke about my visions. I told her they were nightmares. She was the one who held me close when I was scared, when I didn’t know what was happening to me. When I thought I was going crazy.

  Now I see things clearer. I should’ve been the one doing that for her. Making her better. Giving her strength. Giving her purpose. Maybe I didn’t think I could. Maybe being a kid was my excuse. Maybe I relied too much on Mom to find a cure, when all along I could’ve been doing the same thing.

  I’ve had countless autumns. Isn’t it time I gave some back?

  Warrior Cells

  I wake to a gentle shake of my shoulder. When I open my eyes, Mom is sitting beside Audrey’s bed.

  She’s smiling. “I’ve been here for a while, watching you sleep. Reminds me of years ago, when you were both little nuggets.” She smooths hair from my forehead. Her hands are cool, her fingers long and slender. Her glasses hang from a chain around her neck and rest against her white button-down shirt.

  “What time is it?” I ask, sitting up slowly so I don’t wake Audrey. It’s still dark out.

  “After midnight.”

  I rub my eyes. “Working late again?”

  “Story of my life.” Her eyes are tired, shadowed with dark circles. I don’t think she’s slept at all since Audrey was admitted. She’s either been at work or here, rarely at home for the past two weeks.

  “Hungry?” she says. “There’s a twenty-four-hour Chinese place across the street. Fantastic dumplings.”

  I nod, and we slip out silently.

  The restaurant is empty except for a waitress who seats us in a booth by the front windows. I can hear cooks in the back washing dishes and shouting over various kitchen noises. Mom orders tea and dumplings. She smiles warmly at our waitress, her hands folded in front of her. Light from red lanterns hanging above us mingles with her smooth chestnut hair, pulling out the red hues. Gentle music weaves between us from speakers in the ceiling, plinking strings and deep flutes and light wooden percussion. Mom looks at home in the lantern light, and I wonder how many times she’s eaten here, alone or with her team, after long nights in DC, working at the AIDA West lab.

  While we wait for our tea she glances around with a satisfied expression, like she’s had many good memories here. I love seeing her out in the wild. Seeing another side of her, spending time with her.

  After some time, she says, “It’s been a while since we did something like this, hasn’t it? Gone somewhere fun, just the two of us.”

  I shrug a little, because I don’t want her to think it’s a big deal.

  She places her elbows on the table, her chin on her hands. “It’s like I blinked and you were grown. I swear just yesterday you were tugging at my skirt, begging me to watch you do a cartwheel.”

  The waitress brings our tea, and Mom pours the deep amber liquid into two cups without handles, like tiny bowls. We cradle the cups in our palms and savor the warmth. Snow falls outside the windows, lightly blanketing the street, the lamps, the cars parked along the curb.

  She watches me drink my tea, her head tilted to the left. “Now look at you. Almost a senior. Going off to visit cities on your own. Navigating life, shouldering all this on your own. I’ve been so wrapped up in my grief, my work. I haven’t been there to help you through these past few years. And now you’re grown. Ready to leave the nest, and I feel like I missed it. I should’ve done more things like this. I should’ve been there more.”

  “That would’ve meant taking time away from Audrey. That’s the last thing I wanted you to do.”

  “But I’ve taken you for granted.” She reaches ou
t and tucks a loose strand of my hair behind my ear. “Always, in the back of my mind, I told myself I’d have more time. Time to spend with you after my work for Audrey was done. You weren’t the sick one, so I pushed you to the back burner. I made you wait. And that wasn’t fair.”

  How can she say that? It’s never been about being fair to me. Fair doesn’t factor in when your sister has cancer. It’s like a universal law.

  “I never felt like I was on the back burner. All my life you’ve been caring for others. I don’t remember when it was just you, Dad, and me. Audrey’s always been there, and you’ve been taking care of her. Then came Claire. Then Audrey got sick. Then Gran and Pops moved in. You had to ration your time. It’s how it’s always been, and I’m fine with it.”

  She shakes her head. “I should’ve done more mom things for you. I never volunteered at your classroom parties, never drove you to soccer practice, never welcomed you home after school.”

  I let out a laugh. “I never played soccer.”

  She laughs too, although her eyes are glistening with tears. “Well, maybe you would have if I were there to drive you.”

  There are a lot of things that might be different, had we made other choices. Maybe I’ve been too hard on myself, thinking it was all my fault, this Variant timeline, these circumstances. I’ve shouldered them all. But all of us make choices that change the course of time, tiny choices, every moment of every day. We all shape the future; whether we like it or not, we all create ripples that affect everyone else. Maybe my choices are part of a collective web. Maybe everyone feels like it’s their fault. Maybe it’s just part of being human.

  Mom refills her tea and cups her little bowl with both hands. “You know, when I was pregnant with you, I used to lie in bed and dream about what kind of mother I’d be. I’d picture scenarios and how they might play out, how I’d discipline, how I’d provide for you, how I’d teach you things. I never pictured that I’d become this. The kind of mom who works all the time, rarely home, isn’t plugged in with her kids. I was going to be like Gran, like the mom she was to me. She was always there. I never had to worry because she had my back. Twenty-four-seven, I could count on her. That’s who I wanted to be.”