A confused man, maybe in his twenties, is standing next to me. He’s wearing swim trunks. He smells like alcohol and keeps wiping blood away from his eye because there’s a wound so big, it looks like half of his head has caved in. I wonder if he knows it. I shield the little girl’s eyes from the sight of him when he says, “Where am I? Where are we going?” But nobody answers. Everyone else, like me, seems to know already. Drops of blood slip from his chin, turning pink when they hit the clear water. Even that is beautiful.
We set off. I expect the river to carry us downstream, as it did when Hugo tried to take me across in the kayak. But it’s like we’re crossing a calm, glassy lake. The boat does not pitch and toss. We simply glide, as if we’re skating across a frozen pond. There is a slight breeze, and from the middle of the river, I see that the sun is bright over the tall pines. This is not what I expected at all. When I look back to the east bank, I notice that the line that looked a hundred people long is now gone. Somehow, we all fit on this small raft. At first I think that’s impossible, but in a world where nothing is as I expected, maybe it is possible. Maybe many things that are impossible in life are possible here.
The raft comes to a slow, easy stop at the west bank, and people begin to disembark. I wait patiently with the little girl, who is now smiling at me shyly. “Are you an angel?” she asks.
“No,” I say, smiling at her.
She says, “Mommy told me the angels would meet me when she put me under the water.”
I put my hand to my mouth to hide my shock. Instantly the tears start to come. I miss my dad and my friends so much. I miss my bedroom. I will never see it again. I will never see any of them again.
“I want to go home,” the girl whispers, and I hug her close, because I do, too. This new world is at once beautiful and terrifying.
When the rest of the people have left the raft, I see them climbing up a path through the forest in a single, orderly line. Trey is standing at the pier. At first he’s happy to see me. “Hey, thought you were staying behind,” he says, but then he sees that I’ve been crying. My face is probably all red, like it usually gets when I cry. Or maybe it isn’t. Maybe being dead makes that different, too. He doesn’t bother to ask me what’s wrong. I guess it’s pretty obvious.
I squint to see across the river. I can just make out a few people, dressed in black wet suits, setting up over there for the new day’s rafting trip. Jealousy tightens my chest. I never thought I’d be jealous of people going rafting, but right now, I’d give anything to be one of them. I’d give anything to be at the beginning of this weekend. Or even better, at the beginning of this week. I’d tell Justin I had a change of heart and now I really wanted to go to prom, and he’d take me, because that’s the kind of guy he is. And Angela would understand, because that’s the kind of girl she is. They love me. When I think about how wonderful they are, how alike they are, more tears fall, so many I know it would be useless to wipe them away with the back of my hand.
Trey leans down and starts to play got-your-nose with the little girl. She giggles. I think of my mom. “My mom used to play that with me,” I say.
He nods. “Learned it from her. Good way to get the young ones to calm down.”
And calm the little girl is. She’s clinging to him now. He must like my mother. Respect her. Why else would he talk about her, learn things from her? I’m not sure if that makes me like him more, or less.
The little girl climbs up on his back, wrapping her pudgy fingers around his neck. I whisper, “Her mom murdered her.”
His face is somber, but he nods like it’s nothing unexpected. I guess he’s heard a lot of horror stories in his job. He looks at his palms quickly, then wipes them on his jeans, but not before I see that the scabs there have opened. He leaves ruddy marks on his thighs, but his jeans are dirty anyway, so it’s hardly noticeable. He catches me watching and says, “All in a day’s work.”
“I thought you said my mother was supposed to lead people across.”
“Normally she would, but she’s conserving her powers. She needs them all. ’Cause of what I told you.”
“And you don’t have … powers that can do it for you?”
“Nah. The Mistress of the Waters might, but not me. I’m just a son of an oilman from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Ain’t royalty or nothing, like you.”
I snort. “I’m not royalty. My dad clips coupons.” He doesn’t say anything, so I say, “Tulsa? Is that where you’re from?”
“Moved out there when I was six. Born in New York. My daddy was a big-time executive at the Buick Motor Company. You ever hear of them?” I nod. “Well, when I was six he moved us out to Tulsa to start his oil business, and it did pretty well. Guess he was a millionaire. Can you imagine that? Me, a millionaire? We had two cars, believe it or not. We was wealthy. I was on my way to Harvard that fall.”
I stare at him. “Harvard?”
He nods. “It’s a university in Boston. You know it? It’s still there?”
“Um, yeah. I just didn’t … I mean …” I blush because there’s no tactful way to say what I’m thinking, that he was uneducated and poor. “So, what happened?”
He looks at me like I have three heads. “I died was what. My dad lost everything in the crash. House was too crowded, so after I graduated I got out and hopped myself a train up north. Ended up on the Bel Del, working odd jobs so I could get up to college. That’s where I met up with Jack.” He bows his head, almost shameful. “You know how that all turned out.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Hey, it’s probably a good thing I didn’t go to Harvard. I’d probably end up living in a house like them friends of yours. One that makes your meals for you and wipes your mouth with a napkin afterward.” He points across the river and laughs. Then he puts his chin to his chest. “Do worry about my momma, though. My body was never found. Not that they looked much.”
“But you said you became a legend in twelve counties. About the boy who couldn’t swim?”
“Where I died, yeah. Not where my momma lived. There were a couple of witnesses, but none of them helped me. All too afraid. They all came up with the rhyme to protect Jack, make it look like an accident. My momma’s the worrying kind. Probably spent her whole life wondering what happened to me. I wrote her letters sometimes, when I was alive. But I never saw her again.”
I think about my father. The thought sends a stab of pain through my chest. I’m never going to see him again.
The little girl on his back has fallen asleep, and she looks like an angel herself with her eyelids fluttering and her cheeks rosy. I look around as we walk past the cemetery I’d spotted a day ago. It’s an old one. Most of the headstones are crumbling and faded, but I can make out some of the years. Most are from the 1700s. The green of the trees frames all the gray stone, making the place look more romantic than frightening. Trey pays no attention to it, just follows this worn stone staircase up a hill, into a line of trees. “Where are we going?”
He stops. “That’s right. You didn’t want to see your momma yet. She’s up at the top of the hill. She likes to greet newcomers. You want to wait here while I bring her up?” He motions toward the little girl.
I look up the pathway, which ends in pine trees the color of new grass, and at the lavender sky. “Does she know about me?”
He nods.
I bite my lip. “She doesn’t want to see me. She was trying to push me away.”
“No, she was trying to protect you, kid. She’ll want to see you. Trust me. Mommas worry.”
He’s staring at me with eyes so intensely blue, almost the exact color the river is now, I wonder if that’s me perceiving things differently or if that’s the way they’ve always been. Before, they’d been so dark, troubled. I look down and realize he has his hand out for me to take. I wrap my fingers around his, expecting to feel the sores I’d seen before, but, strangely, his fingers are soft, maybe even softer than mine.