He lets out a low whistle.
We turn back around and keep walking. “How did it make you feel?” he asks.
“Invincible.”
“Alive,” he says.
“Yes.”
“Were you bored, too?” he asks. “Is that why you did it?”
“Not bored.” I think about it for a minute, searching for the right word so he’ll understand. “Empty.”
“Empty?”
I rub my thumbs over the tips of my fingers, trying to generate sensation, but it’s so faint. I wonder how much longer before I won’t be able to feel them at all. It almost feels like I’m fading into nothingness. “I think so. After Mama died, it felt like I wasn’t allowed to feel sad. I pushed that deep down.”
“But you still wanted to feel something,” says Thatcher.
I fold my arms across my chest protectively, but I nod.
“So you chased the thrill,” he says.
I nod again. “Uh-huh.”
“I understand,” he says. “I really do.”
“But you did it because you were bored,” I point out.
“Well . . . partly.” Then he smiles like he’s remembering something nice. “Wendy used to wait up for me no matter how late it was when I got home. I’d see the crack of light from under her bedroom door—she’d turn it off as soon as she heard me in the bathroom getting ready for bed. I don’t think she could sleep unless she knew I was home safe.”
“She sounds sweet.” I wonder what it’s like to have a sibling. I always wanted one, but now that I’m dead, maybe it would just feel like an extra sadness.
“She was. She is, I guess. She always acted like a little adult. I think it’s because she had a rare form of leukemia when she was four years old, and she spent a lot of time in the hospital.”
“How awful. I know how hard it is when someone you love is sick. It sucks for everyone.”
“That pretty much describes it, yeah. For a while, it’s your entire focus. It consumes your life. The good news is that she recovered fully, but she kept this sense of purpose with her, this reverence for life.” We slow down a bit. “At least, she did until I died.”
“And then . . .”
Thatcher looks down at the ground and keeps walking. “And then something in her eyes went dark. I was gone—I was trying to haunt her, and my parents . . . but I couldn’t reach her. I never did.”
“Never?” I ask.
His face darkens. “Well . . . once,” he says. “But it wasn’t the right moment—”
He stops talking and I see his face shift, like he’s closing off a memory before he continues. “I tried. I tried it all, just like you’re doing. But that surface connection—the kind that comes off to them like tricks and ghost stories—it doesn’t work. It can make things worse.”
“Worse?”
But he doesn’t explain. “She’s the reason that I’m a Guide,” he says. “Until she moves on and accepts my death, I can’t merge.”
“Oh.” I lower my gaze to the ground, focusing on the ramifications of everything he’s shared. That he shared at all. It creates this strong connection between us that I had thought was impossible. I knew someone hadn’t gotten over Thatcher’s death. But hearing the specifics, knowing about Wendy and his relationship with her, is devastating. All this time, I had deemed him a creature incapable of emotion.
But now I understand that he is—or at least he was—able to love deeply.
Lifting my gaze to his, I’m struck by the raw emotions swirling in the depths of his blue eyes: pain, turmoil, sadness.
“You’re not an echo either,” I assure him.
“I wish I were.”
“No,” I say, my voice so low it’s almost a whisper. “Don’t wish for that.”
Instinctively, because I can’t help myself, I reach for his face. When my fingers graze his jaw, a charged current runs through my hand and into my stomach, and from there it blossoms out into my fingers and toes, making me tremble and buzz. I move his head to the side and look at his green moon tattoo.
“It’s almost full,” I say.
“It’s frozen. The moon cycles build to become full at a merging, but mine will stay that way until Wendy accepts my death.”
“And when that happens, you’ll be gone?” I ask, suddenly not wanting to lose him, now that we’re becoming closer.
“If that happens,” he says. “Then I’ll go, yes.”
I move my hand away from his face and drop it back to my side, but Thatcher catches my fingers in midair and the pleasure washes through me in rolling waves, like the ocean constantly lapping at the shore. I’m beginning to understand why touch is discouraged. It’s so much more than physical. It’s like completion.
“It’s been years,” he says, still holding on to me. “I’ve said good-bye to lots of ghosts—it’s been cathartic to help them. But with you . . .”
When he pauses, our faces are just inches apart. If we were alive, I’d be able to feel his breath on my cheeks. As it is, my heart speeds up at his nearness—and although I know it must be a phantom feeling, it doesn’t seem like the memory of my heart in this moment—it feels like it’s really there, beating bloody red liquid life through my body. I feel drawn to Thatcher, like there’s a magnet between us, an energy field that needs to connect—mine with his.
Suddenly a Frisbee flies past us, through us, and a dog races after it, deftly dodging the area where we stand even though I know it can’t see us.
The action interrupts the pull I felt, and one face flashes through my mind: Nick.
I stumble backward. “I’m sorry,” I say, shaking my head. “Can we just go back? I want to go back now.”
Thatcher’s face hardens as he steps away from me. “Of course.”
He puts his hands in his pockets and shrugs his shoulders, and I can tell he’s closing up to me again, like a shop putting down its blinds and locking the door.
Twelve
I’M STILL A LITTLE DAZED when Thatcher delivers me to my prism. When he orders me not to let anyone in, I promise I won’t. I don’t want him hanging around any longer than necessary.
I lie on my bed and stare at my ceiling. If it were dark in here, would I see the glow of the stars on my ceiling in my real room? It’s a silly thing to focus on, but I’m trying really hard not to think about how close I came to kissing Thatcher, to just rising up on my toes and pressing my mouth to his. What does an after-death kiss feel like?
I love Nick, so what is this attraction that’s drawing me to Thatcher? Is it because he’s my all-knowing, all-powerful Guide? No, it’s deeper than that. It’s this connection, this loneliness in his soul that I want to befriend, this ache in mine that he soothes. It’s this satisfaction that I feel when I calm the storm in his eyes. It’s the strength in him tempered with compassion.
I can’t imagine the sadness that would engulf me if he left the Prism before I did. What must it be like for him, knowing that each bit of progress I make is carrying me away from him? He said he’s had lots of good-byes but I’m different. Will he grieve when I go? Will I miss him the way that I miss Nick?
It seems inconceivable, and my yearning to be with Nick suddenly overwhelms me. I miss him so much, but it’s the Nick before I died who I long for. The Nick I’ve seen lately scares me—and saddens me. It’s like he’s pushing me away, pushing me toward Thatcher, even though he doesn’t know Thatcher exists.
All these thoughts cause guilt to ratchet through me. I’m being unfair to Nick. He’s grieving. I need to see him—alone. Those texts, the empty bottle . . . I’m worried about the downward spiral he’s in. Something’s not right. I know he believes it’s his fault that I died, but I sense that something more is eating at him. I’m not sure that I want Thatcher to be around when I find out what it is.