“Thatcher.” Reena looks up at my ceiling where the glow-in-the-dark stars that are in my real room are also placed. “How do you like him so far?”
“He’s . . .” I wonder how much to tell her, and how much she knows. I want to say that he’s mysterious, he’s hurting, he’s hiding something. But I can’t help but feel that revealing any of that would be a betrayal of him. “He’s a little evasive about my questions.”
“Does he say things like ‘There’s an order to things’ and ‘You have to be patient’?” she asks, her intonation dropping to imitate Thatcher perfectly.
“Yes!” I sit down on the bed and draw my legs up beneath me. “So far it’s all about being with everyone, but not really interacting.”
“He hasn’t let you make any real connections yet?” she asks.
I shake my head no. “Leo was there the other night—he did something amazing with the radio, but Thatcher told me that wasn’t what we’re supposed to do.” I feel a twinge of guilt for being so dismissive of Thatcher. I know he’s trying to help, but his process just isn’t working for me. It’s boring and slow.
“Shocker,” Reena says, stretching out on the window seat and leaning against the wall. Her muscular legs stretch out all the way, but they don’t reach the end of the seat—she’s petite like Carson. “He’s totally no fun. You want to be able to show your friends you’re there, right?”
“Right.”
“Yeah, I mean, let’s get some candles floating around the room!”
I stare at her.
“I’m joking,” she says, breaking into a laugh. “But seriously, the letting-them-know-you’re-there thing? I can help with that.”
“That’d be great.” I smile at her. It’s nice to have Reena here. She’s funny and straightforward and willing to help. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course,” she says.
“When you hang out with your family now, is it really hard?”
Her smile doesn’t fade. “I’m done with my haunting.” Then she turns away from me and looks out the window into the gray mist.
I stare at the back of her neck. I shouldn’t be able to see anything, but there’s a quarter-sized black spot with jagged edges. Her green moon is gone, like Leo’s was—it’s just a dark, messy circle.
“So everyone in your family has moved on from your death?” I ask, eager to find out more. “But you haven’t merged with Solus. . . .”
Reena smiles at me. “You’re piecing it all together even though Thatcher hasn’t told you anything. I like that. You’re smart.”
“Thanks.”
“And you’re right,” she says. “I haven’t merged. I never will, actually. I can stay in the Prism, and on Earth, forever.”
Forever. I remember her saying there were ways to have more time on Earth. But forever? “How?”
Reena’s smile fades. “It’s complicated. But it’s not impossible. And whatever you do, don’t talk to Thatcher about it. He’s all about merging—graduating to Solus. Shouldn’t death free us from having to do things we don’t want to do?”
When I search her face, I can tell that she’s conflicted. She’s pretending to be happy, but I saw it—I saw the sadness.
Reena brightens again quickly. “It’s wonderful to be able to see the people you love living their lives—now I never have to leave them.”
I look over at my photographs and wonder if they’re all I have left of the people I love now. Just images, observations, never a real connection. Even if I help them heal, they’ll never really know I was there. They’ll just move on . . . without me. I feel a tear trickle down my cheek and I avert my face, wiping it away so Reena won’t see.
But she’s staring at me intently.
“Do you like the water?” she asks, and I’m grateful that she’s not calling attention to my emotional moment.
“Of course,” I say.
Reena grins. “Wanna take a walk?”
I glance at the door, hesitating for just a second. Then I say, “Let’s go.”
Reena creates a portal and we step out into a beach scene—with waves and sailboats and seagulls. The sun is low in the sky, casting an orange-pink glow as it sets, and the sand at my feet is soft and loose, with dozens of footprints. A small dock is about thirty feet out, and two kids are doing fancy jumps and dives off the edge. I spot the remnants of a sand castle at the water’s edge.
“Are we at—”
“Folly Beach,” says Reena, finishing my sentence.
“Nice.”
The flat white sand stretches for a few miles, and the pier is in the distance. Walking by, a man with the green moon tattoo—in a near-full phase—nods his head at us. He’s strolling next to a woman without the mark, without the glow, and she almost disappears beside the radiance of his glistening figure. I can tell that he’s older by his salt-and-pepper hair, but his face is fresh and dewy, shining like that of a guy in a shaving ad after he splashes water on his face. Then a girl on my left catches my eye—she’s stretched out in the sand, almost like she’s taking in the sun. She has a drizzle of freckles on her creamy skin, visible through her cloaklike shimmer, and it looks like her red hair has a neon light underneath it. Sitting up, she watches as the guy who was next to her stands and walks into the water—he’s got a great body and a cute face, but there’s no light around him. He’s alive, I think. The girl looks up at us, though, and her green eyes are calm and serene, like she’s in a trance.
As Reena and I stroll, a sense of serenity begins to steal over me, and I start to relax. The gurgle of the water lapping softly on the sand, the happy shrieks of kids as they jump off the dock, the soft strains of music from car stereos in the parking lot behind us—it all feels so . . . normal.
“Did you come here a lot when you were alive?” I ask, and I realize I’m getting used to saying things like that.
“Yeah.” Reena stares into the fading sun. “There are always good bonfires—”
“At the pit by the east entrance,” I interrupt.
“Right!” she says, laughing.
“I forgot you were a local.”
She nods. “All the ghosts you see are—or at least they died around Charleston. The Prism is divided up by location of death.”
“Oh,” I say, thinking about the stretch of highway where I met my fate.
“For me it was the upper Wando River,” she says.
“Oh, no.” Sympathy swamps me. “You drowned.”
She bobs her head, and her eyes get a faraway look in them, like she’s remembering the terror of not being able to find air.
“I was in a car accident,” I say, trying to distract her with my own story. I don’t want her to get upset. “I was on Route Fifty-two, heading to my boyfriend’s house. He called my cell and I answered. I’m not even sure how it happened. It was so fast . . . and then I was in the Prism; it was all over.”
“Sometimes knowing what happened can be good,” says Reena.
“Closure,” I say.
Reena nods solemnly. “Sorry to bring up something so grim.”
“It’s okay.” But I brush away the mental image of my crumpled car. I don’t want to dwell on that right now.
“Want to check out the pit?” she asks. “See if there’s anything going on tonight?”
“Sure.” I know that part of me is pretending that I’m just here with my friend, heading to a bonfire. It’s a relief to pretend, just for a moment.
“Where’s Leo tonight?” I ask as we walk.
“Doing his own thing.”
“Oh.” I’m still unclear on how I feel about Leo—he seemed like kind of a bully in the barn, but then he tried to help me let Carson know that I was there.