by Abby Wilder
"No."
Ruben stared at the steering wheel. "You don't see her hands?" he asked. "They're no longer covered in blood, mine are."
"Ruben please," I urged.
The engine revved loudly. "Last chance," he yelled above the roar.
I shook my head. "I thought you wanted to confess," I said, desperately clutching at any line of reasoning I could. "I'll go with you. We'll confess together, you and me. Together. Brothers. Twins."
Ruben planted his foot down on the accelerator and the car lurched into motion, straight towards the cliff. The gravel spat behind the tyres and the acceleration threw me back against my seat. "It's okay," Ruben yelled, as the edge of the cliff neared closer. "Think of it as a baptism. We will come up clean."
"Ruben, stop!" I yelled. I reached across and wrenched the wheel to the side, steering our path away from the barrier arms that protected the cliffs.
Ruben jerked it back. "It's the only way to make her stop."
The car swerved towards the edge as we fought over the wheel. But it was too late. I couldn't stop him.
Time stood still as we lurched through the barrier and sailed through the air, weightless and airborne. Ruben smiled even as my hands were fighting for the steering wheel which no longer controlled the car. We jerked forward. My head smashed into the dash. The car plunged into the water. It poured through the cracks and soaked my feet. Ruben sat calmly as it rose to our knees.
"We've got to get out." I reached across and fumbled with his seatbelt, but Ruben covered my hand and shook his head.
"You're bleeding," he said.
"Ruben!" I shouted, mindlessly wiping the blood away from my head while winding down the window to ready my escape. "We've got to get out, now! Roll down your window!" I ordered.
The water reached the open windows and began to flood the car, but I still couldn't get his seatbelt to unhook. He sat still and silent as the water level rose. He watched me struggle. We locked eyes as the water passed our chins, our mouths, our noses, and my vision of Ruben blurred as we plunged underwater. Still, I struggled. I wrestled with the belt that had him trapped until I was able to free him, but he wouldn't move. He sat with little pockets of air trapped under his nose and eyelashes and stared at me blankly. I clambered out the window and rose to the surface, gulping in air before diving back down into the murky depths. By this time, the car was resting on the bottom of the lake. My lungs screamed, but I forced my way down further and further until I could reach him through the window. His eyes were open and his body bobbed in the water, his head bumping against the roof of the car. I grabbed a fistful of his shirt and yanked him out the window. He got caught halfway and I had to let go and swim to the surface for another gasp of air. The rain belted down as I gulped another breath and dove back under the water. Ruben's hand stretched towards me, his eyes finally flashing panic as I fought my way down to him. He knew what he had done, but it was too late. The panic left his eyes to be replaced with a dull, blank stare. Eventually, I pulled his body to the surface and fought my way to the shore, dragging him behind me. I beat on his chest and breathed air into his lungs, but it was too late.
Ruben was dead.
Chapter Forty Five
Lennon
We didn't speak as we walked along the shoreline. The moon was high in the sky and the lake was calm, reflecting its image back like a mirror. Our footsteps crunched on the stones. He led me to the carnival which sat forgotten, unloved and forlorn in the darkness, having closed its gates to the public when the sun went down.
"Judah and I worked here one summer," Ruben said, sitting down on one of the horses on the merry-go-round. It was Pegasus, frozen in flight, trapped to forever turn in endless circles. "It was when we were fifteen and I used to operate this merry-go-round. At the time I thought I was wasting my life, sitting here, pulling levers while everyone else got to enjoy the rides. The song drove me insane." He chuckled and patted the horse next to his. I sat down and held onto the brittle leather bridle. "I was a terrible brother," he said. "I lied to save my own name instead of clearing his. I stole the girl he loved. I did everything thinking only of me and never of anyone else. I was afraid of how people saw me and then I was cursed with a life where no one could."
"Except me," I said.
Ruben reached over and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. "Except you, Ringo," he echoed. He pulled his hand away and swallowed deeply. "I know," he said.
My heart beat a little faster. "You know, what?" I asked.
"It's me," he said. "I'm the one who is making you sick, aren't I?"
I let my eyes drop.
"I knew it the moment your Grams reacted to me the way she did." He paused and a morepork flew down from a tree and nestled on a nearby spoke of the Ferris wheel. The small, dark owl looked at us, unblinking, and let out its mournful call.
"What are we going to do?" he whispered.
He waited for me to reply but I couldn't think of what to say. With him sitting here in front of me, he wasn't the monster Grams made him out to be. He was just a boy with dark hair, sad eyes, and freckles on his cheek. And I was just a girl who felt for the first time in her life, someone actually saw her.
"I don't think I've got the strength to quit you." Ruben stood from his horse and moved to cup my face in his hands, but I shied away from him.
He swallowed painfully and took a step back. "You're afraid of me."
I shook my head, but it was a lie. The fear was there, nestled down deep, even though I tried to deny it.
"I never meant to hurt her," Ruben said, pleading. "She took me by surprise." He covered the scratches on his cheek. "I just reacted. I never meant to hurt your Grams." He stepped forward and took my face in his again, forcing me to look at him. "You have to do it," he said. "You have to be the strong one, because I'm not. You are my everything. You are my world." He kissed me slowly, yet urgently, and I felt myself weaken. "But I am only a part of yours," he said. "I am already dead, Lennon, and you have your whole life to live. You don't need me, but I don't have the strength to leave you. In fact, simply saying this to you now is almost hurting me more than I can bear. So listen to me, Lennon. Listen to what I am saying because I won't be able to say it again. Whatever your Grams has told you to do, you must do it, okay?"
When tears formed in my eyes, he shook my head gently between his hands, and that's when I knew he had overheard our conversation. He knew what I had to do and he was giving me permission.
"Promise me, Lennon. Promise me you will do whatever it takes, and you'll do it soon, because tomorrow, when I've been without you for a few hours and remember what it is like to be alone, I will not be able to stop myself from coming to you. I won't be able to stop. I will take everything from you, because that is who I am. I was like it in life and I am like it in death. I did it to Judah and now I'm doing it to you, just like she did it to me."
Chapter Forty Six
Ruben - the previous year
They say that invisibility is a super power, and maybe it is. But only when it's a choice.
I thought it would be like a baptism. I would plunge into the water and come up clean, rid of her. It worked, just not in the way I hoped. Looking back now, I can't see how I expected any other outcome, but back then, with my mind addled by lack of sleep and tormented by Lana's ghost, it made sense.
At first, I didn't notice that she wasn't there. I was too busy yelling at Judah, prying the ambulance officers' fingers off the gurney, and retching on the side of the road. It took me hours before I realised she was gone. Her hand didn't crawl along the grass beside me. Her eyes didn't haunt me. But it was hardly a comfort.
I didn't want to believe it. It didn't seem real. I thought I was stuck in a nightmare and tried desperately to wake myself. But as the endless hours passed, the truth became harder to deny. Even with her gone, I couldn't find peace in sleep, and the days and nights blurred together in a constant grey monotony.
Each night, I watched my mum come i
nto my bedroom, eyes glazed with drunkenness, and fall asleep on my bed, tears soaking my pillow.
She and Dad were never the same. They slept in separate rooms and barely spoke to each other. He came home one night before Mum had retreated to my room, and I witnessed an exchange between them. I got to see them in a light they had never shown while I was alive. Dad walked in and saw Mum on the couch, blankly staring at the TV, wine glass resting lopsidedly in her hand. He sighed heavily and picked up the jacket he had only just slung over the back of a chair.
"Where are you going?" Mum asked when her eyes focussed on him.
"Away," was all he said.
"You've only just got home. You're never home anymore." There were tears in Mum's eyes. She held out her hand. "Come to bed with me."
Dad had begun to walk out but he looked back. "Not tonight."
Mum stood and drained the last splashes of wine from her glass. "Not tonight," she mimicked. "Not any night. Not since that night."
The colour flared up Dad's neck. "And what would you know?" he hissed cruelly. "You're usually passed out on his bed, too drunk to know what I do."
Mum blinked through her tears then lifted the bottle of wine from the floor and downed the remainder of its contents hungrily and defiantly, straight from the bottle. "I know enough," she said. Then she tightened her dressing gown around her waist and stumbled towards the stairs. "I miss him," she said wearily over her shoulder, but without looking at him. "I miss them both."
Dad sighed. "It didn't just happen to you." And he slammed the door.
I followed him, although I already knew where he was going. His office held the one thing his home didn't; warmth, and the seductive arms of his secretary. I guess I was more like Dad than I cared to admit.
But it was Judah who made me face the truth, even if he didn't know it. Judah never showed emotion. Judah never cried. He sat through my funeral with the same expression as he wore through the police interviews. They wanted to blame him. They tried their hardest to lock him away for my death, but they weren't able to. The truth wasn't on their side. But Judah did nothing to help himself. He stared at them blankly and refused to answer their questions. He spent all his time in his room, headphones on and talking to people who never knew what he was accused of, or working on that car, painstakingly resurrecting it back to life. He never said a word to defend himself, not even to our parents, though I begged him. What was the benefit of speech if no one could hear?
But the night I finally admitted to myself that there was no escape from this world, was the night Judah took a bottle from Dad's liquor cabinet and stumbled to the abandoned house, swinging the bourbon to his lips and devouring it with large gulps. He never went into the house. Instead, he built a fire on the shore of the lake and crouched beside it, staring into the flames.
When he began to yell, I yelled back. We argued. Only, he never heard me. Judah shouted at the sky. He cursed at the lake. And he let his tears fall onto the stones.
I began to worry when the ranting and raving stopped and he started to methodically remove his clothes until he was standing in nothing but his boxer shorts. He didn't say a word as he walked into the lake, his steps steady and sure, denying the alcohol he had just consumed. When the water reached his waist, I ran in after him and begged him to stop. But his reality pushed my phantom being aside. But he didn't do what I thought. He kept walking until the water lapped his chin, and then he sunk below and screamed until there was no breath left. Somehow, that action made me admit the truth.
I became an observer of Cara more so than I had ever been in life. She attended school but she didn't learn. She talked to her father but she never heard what he said. She mourned Lana and she mourned me, but she never spoke about us to anyone. And I watched, unable to interfere, as her hatred for Judah grew. What was the purpose of a body if you couldn't be seen?
When I couldn't stand by and watch the people I loved fall apart any longer, I tried to leave. I walked out of Puruwai only to hit an invisible barrier. I tried to lose myself in TV shows and books, but I could only turn on screens I had used before, and they only played shows I had already seen. And the books that I hadn't read while I was alive were too heavy to lift. My life was made only from my memories. For everything else, I was merely a spectator.
I left the comfort of my family home and found that my former teammate, Stuart, loved to binge watch TV shows. He would spend hours each night watching episode after episode of his latest obsession and eating potato chips. For weeks, I flopped down on the couch beside him, lost myself in a world which seemed more real than mine, and tried to ignore the crumbs that fell each time he lifted a handful to his mouth.
I memorised the entire biblical story of Ruben and Judah and wondered at my parents' choice in choosing their names. Was Ruben the hero for suggesting they throw their brother into a pit, rather than kill him? Or was Judah the real hero for selling his brother to the traders and, therefore, saving his life? Maybe Ruben was just afraid of what his father would think, and Judah was only after the money. Maybe neither were good and neither were bad. Maybe they were both heroes. Maybe they were both villains.
I played the soundtrack of the Phantom of the Opera on repeat until I knew every word and wished I had someone to share them with.
I walked around town and tried to visit old friends. Once, I even went to Sienna Deacon's house and was surprised when I couldn't open the door. I had been to the house before. The door wasn't locked, and I couldn't figure out why I couldn't open it, until I realised I only ever came in through Sienna's window.
As the months slipped by, I became desperate for human contact. But the more I tried to interact with the world, the more shunned I felt. I would live with people, sometimes for weeks at a time. It was probably more accurately called stalking.
I came to know the daily routine of Sergeant Dickson. I knew how many cups of coffee he consumed and how many Dickson-holes he ate. Seven and nine. I knew that Mr Watson returned home from school each day, logged onto the same website and paid money to the same lady. I knew that Inspector Anderson left town as soon as she couldn't make the charges against Judah stick, and that Alex blamed himself in part for Lana's death, even though all he did was kiss her.
It was torture. I was losing my mind. If I thought being haunted by Lana was bad, it was nothing compare to this.
I began to shut myself off to the world and live in the messed up recesses of my mind. Words can't express the loneliness of being surrounded by people who don't see you. So I stopped seeing them. I think that is why I never noticed her approach. I was too busy feeling the coldness of my own gravestone.
When she spoke, even though she looked right at me, I still doubted that she was actually speaking to me. I was so sure she wouldn't hear my reply, yet so hopeful that she would. There was only one thing to say. "Blue."
She repeated the word, and that was when I knew. She saw me. For the first time in months, someone saw me.
And with that one word, I knew I never wanted to be unseen again.
I knew I could never be without her.
Chapter Forty Seven
Lennon
He knew why I asked him, but he came anyway. He knew when I arrived in Judah's Fairlane. He knew when I parked opposite the white cross attached to the barrier that shielded the road from the cliff over the lake. But he never said a word. And he didn't try to stop it.
The engine purred, the vibrations travelling up through the floor and trembling through my fingers wrapped around the steering wheel. There was still a part of me that wanted to refuse to believe. I needed to hear it from him. Maybe, somehow, it would make it better, make it easier. "What was it like?" I asked, needing to know if it had been the same for him as it was for us.
He shook his head, knowing exactly what I was asking. "I can't," he whispered. Then he shook his head again, as though it would somehow give him the strength he needed. "It was different. It was torment," he said. He twisted in his seat to face m
e, scooting over the space between us and taking my chin between his fingers. "It's not like that between you and me. Please tell me it isn't. Tell me that you will remember more than just the end."
I closed my eyes and rested in his touch. When I opened them again, the sun's rays danced on the water. "Ethereal?" I offered, wanting to take our thoughts away from why we were there, even if it was only for a moment.
He smiled, a dimple sinking into his cheek, and rested his head back on the seat, turning so he could still look at me. "Forever blue," he said.
"Forever blue," I echoed. We sat in silence but I couldn't meet his eye. Conflicting thoughts battled in my head, some of fear, most of sadness. The memories of our time together were tainted by the last few hours when I couldn't look at him without pain in my chest, but I didn't want our last memories together to be like that. "Kiss me?" I said, more of a breath than words.
He slid over and leaned across the seat until we were almost touching. "Always," he said. And then our lips met, and exhilaration and fear pounded through me as desperation. I wrapped my fingers in his hair and pulled as though we could somehow be closer than we already were, like it was the last kiss we would ever share.
Ruben pulled back, closing his eyes and drawing in a deep breath as though the movement had hurt. His chest started to heave and his nostrils flared in and out with each breath. "Do it," he said shakily. He stared over the lake, focussing on the rippling rays of the sun. "Please, just do it."
I never thought it would end like this. I never thought it would end at all. But not all stories get a happy ending.
As I tore myself away and the car lunged forward, I ignored his pleading eyes and the terror that had settled within. It only took a few seconds, but it seemed like an eternity. The tyres chewed the gravel and savagely spat it out behind us. The barrier did nothing to stop the car and we sailed over the edge. He reached over and took my hand in his, just as the force of hitting the water smashed my head into the steering wheel. I wound down my window, not daring to look at him.
