I feel Trey’s arm around me. “Hey, hey, hey. Kiandra. It’s not all bad.”
“What’s good about it?” I sniff.
He straightens. “Well, for one, you get to spend time with me. That’s pretty … well, I’ll just go and say it. Great.” He smiles broadly.
My jaw just hangs open. It’s the first time he’s ever joked. Aren’t the dead supposed to be more … sullen? Hopeless?
“What?” he says, noticing my surprise. “You think dead people can’t have fun?”
It never did cross my mind. It doesn’t seem like they have an awful lot to celebrate. “Well, yeah. You’ve always been so—”
“Before, I was worried about saving your sorry backside. Don’t have to worry about that no more.” He shakes his head at me, and when I start to apologize, he says, “No point in fretting over it now. I’ll catch hell later.” I’m just starting to feel bad again when he says, “And you still got those powers of yours. You want to try them out?”
“Powers?” I study my hands. “Like what?”
He stands up. “Like a lot of things. Here.” He reaches down and molds a few wet black leaves together into a small mound. “Go ’head.”
I stare at him. “What do you want me to do?”
“Light it on fire.”
I let out a short laugh. “I can’t—” But before the words come out, sparks fly from the center of it and a fire consumes it, leaping into the air. I can’t even breathe. “I didn’t do that. Tell me I didn’t do that.”
He shrugs. “You didn’t do that.” Then he grins. “Okay, yeah, you did.”
I shake my head. “You’re not telling me that all I need to do is think of something and it will happen?” I ask, horrified. Because how often have I thought strange things, like wishing that it would be ninety degrees during the long Maine winter, or wanting the Academy Awards to be broadcast from my high school gymnasium?
“It’s a little more than that. You’ve got to want it.” He looks at the fire. “You got some power, girl. I wasn’t able to light fire for a couple of weeks, at least.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. And that’s a small thing. Just you wait. I’ll learn you. It’ll be fun.”
“Okay,” I say. Maybe it will be. It won’t be life, but it might be interesting.
He smiles. “So, you ready?”
“For what?”
“Don’t tell me you don’t already know the third good thing about being here?” he asks, raising his eyebrows. “I’ll take you across now.”
I gasp. “What? Now? You mean …”
“Sure. You want to see your momma, don’t you?” He studies me, then asks, “What’s got you in a tizzy?”
“I’m fine,” I say, but even as I do my teeth clack together. He tilts his head to one side and his expression says, Level with me. “It’s—it’s just that I’m cold.”
I know he’s the type to remove his shirt and give it to me to keep me warm, but he’s already given me his shirt, for the wound. I expect that he’ll wrap an arm around me, but he doesn’t. He lowers his head and says, “Quit playing. The dead don’t feel warm or cold.”
“Oh,” I mutter. But they can obviously feel other things. Fear. Indecision. Regret. Hate. “I just … My mom left me when I was seven. She just left. For ten years, I’ve been without her. And I’ve … I’ve come to …” The words “hate her” are on my lips, but they won’t come out. “I just don’t understand why.”
He stands there, nodding as if I make perfect sense, which makes me feel a little better.
“Her powers are dying? Is she … sick?” I ask.
He crosses his arms in front of him. “Who told you that? Let me guess. No, she’s just as strong as she has ever been. Once again, you go and do something I tell you not to. I told you not to listen to him.” He looks down the path, toward the river. “Look, I been kind of lax in my duties. I got to be going.”
He starts walking down the narrow path toward the Outfitters. I tremble as he leaves. I don’t want to see Jack again. But at the same time, I do. Definitely, I can still feel indecision and fear. “Where are you going?”
He turns and smiles, and like he’s reading my mind, says, “There ain’t nothing more Jack wants to do to you now.”
“Oh.” But that isn’t enough. I’m ashamed of how I acted around him. My behavior with Jack is inexplicable. The force pulling me to him was so strong, and I’m so afraid that even after the horrible things he’s done to me, I’ll still somehow be drawn to him. But I can’t tell Trey that. It doesn’t make any sense, even to me.
“You can still come with me,” he says.
I stand, brush the pine needles from my backside, and follow him. As I walk, I marvel at how I can almost see every individual grain of dirt on the ground, at how I can almost hear every insect marching along its path. Now that the sun has risen, everything takes on a warm orange hue, and the entire sky is a shade of lavender I’ve seen only in small streaks during the most colorful of sunsets. The river, once black, now looks clear and inviting, like the Caribbean Sea. “Everything looks so … alive,” I whisper. I guess compared to me, anything is.
He turns back. “You’re different. So you see things different.”
“I feel strange. I used to be so afraid of the river. Now I want to … I don’t know. Dive in.”
He grabs a stick and starts swishing it through the brush as we walk. “Told you. You’re different. In death, you become what you most wanted to be in life.”
I wrinkle my nose. “Like what?”
He shrugs. “You figure it out. Don’t you know what you wanted to be?”
I think. Shake my head. Before I know it, we’re at the pier near the Outfitters. There’s a different boat there, one I’ve never seen. It’s just a primitive raft, kind of like something out of Tom Sawyer. A line of people, waiting patiently, stretches up the hill. It’s a motley crew, some young, some old. They’re not dressed in wet suits. One man is wearing a Speedo. A little girl is standing there, naked, sucking her thumb and crying quietly. The strangest thing is how eerily silent everything is, though there are so many people there. Most of them look a little dazed. Trey runs his hands through his hair and whistles. “Sheesh,” he mutters. “I’m gonna catch hell, that’s for sure.”
“What—” I begin, but I know. I know who these people are.
Trey walks to the front of the line and cups his hands around his mouth. “Proceed in an orderly fashion,” he calls.
The line moves. Most people put their heads down and walk, ever so slowly, onto the raft. I swallow as I look at the little girl. I don’t care if these people cannot feel cold. I pull off my jacket and hurry to wrap it around her. I notice that it’s no longer sopping with blood, which is good, but the second I notice that, I can feel the wound open up in my stomach with a sickening pop, like a hungry mouth. The little girl is so tiny and thin. When I stand next to her, she eagerly takes my hand and presses herself against my leg.
The raft fills with people. We all press together. The girl looks up to me gratefully, her dark blue eyes rimmed with tears. I didn’t mean to go across yet, but I can’t leave her. I hear Trey’s voice telling people, “Step to the back of the raft. Room enough for everyone. That’s right. No pushing.” People crowd against us and we’re forced to the very end of the raft, and by the time I turn around, I can no longer see him.