I looked into Fisher’s eyes, and he shot back a questioning glance of concern. I saw his hand move to his bracelet, and he turned it around and around. He could tell something had spooked me, and he was worried about me. I would have loved to talk to him just then—to talk to any other Lifer and find out what they thought. But I couldn’t exactly ask Fisher up to my room with Darcy standing right there.
“I just have a headache,” I told her, staring at the floor. “I’m gonna go lie down.”
She started to say something else, but her words were drowned out by my heavy footsteps as I raced up the stairs. By the time I got to the third floor, the tears had started to fall. I threw myself onto my bed, pressed my fists to my temples, and tried to breathe.
“It’s okay,” I told myself aloud. “It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay.”
But I was lying to myself, which just made the frustration burn hotter beneath my skin. Aaron was suffering. Right now, at this very moment, he was suffering in the Shadowlands. What if souls were tortured there? Or what if it was one, big, yawning nothing—a vast empty plane of loneliness? Was he in pain? Was he scared? Was he wondering why I did this to him?
Of course he was. He had to be blaming me, because I was the last person he had spoken to, the last person he had touched, the one who’d sent him off to eternal damnation with a tearful smile and a wave.
I rolled over onto my side, clutched my pillow to me, and cried. My stupid imagination went wild, conjuring images of fire and demons, Grim Reapers and cold graves, whispery taunting voices and empty eye sockets and yawning dead mouths—slime, muck, and tears. I pressed my eyes closed and tried not to see it, but I couldn’t. As bad as my theories were, I would never know exactly what was happening to Aaron, and that was the worst part of all. The not knowing.
“No.”
I sat up in bed, pulling the pillow onto my lap, and gritted my teeth together. There had to be a way to reverse this. It was a mistake, and it needed to be rectified. I was not going to let Aaron suffer forever, thinking I had sentenced him to a fate worse than death. I was going to make this right.
Guilt
I woke the next morning with tears streaming down my face, my nose clogged, and the sound of Aaron’s screams—which had plagued my dreams all night long—echoing in my ears. Gasping for breath, I pressed my hand to my forehead. My heart skipped a beat, and I whipped around to look at my nightstand. No coin. Thank god. I couldn’t handle ushering anyone else today.
A glance at the clock told me it was already past ten. It took me a good minute to remember it was Wednesday; I was supposed to be at Krista’s house right now.
I whipped the covers off, changed quickly into a T-shirt and sweats, and wove a new braid into my hair. Then I jammed my worn Princeton baseball cap over my dirty hair, and headed out.
I crept downstairs as quietly as possible. Behind his closed door, my dad tapped away at his keyboard. I tiptoed over to the open door of my sister’s room. She was lying on her back on her bed, reading a magazine. I slipped past as silently as possible. I couldn’t handle her questioning where I was going again; I had no idea what kind of excuse I could give this time.
Outside, the sun warmed my shoulders as I speed-walked across town, my eyes trained on the ground. If Nadia or Dorn or Pete was skulking about, watching me, I didn’t want to know. I just wanted to get to Krista’s as quickly as possible and find out if anyone had a clue about what had happened last night. As I climbed the path to the bluff, the big blue mansion seemed to loom threateningly overhead, and there was the weather vane, still pointing stubbornly, heartbreakingly south.
Somehow, knocking felt pointless. I gripped the cold gold doorknob with a trembling hand and pushed open the door. The first thing I heard were angry voices shouting behind the closed door of the mayor’s office. I froze in my tracks.
“I’m telling you, they’re all clean!” the mayor snapped, sounding frustrated.
“But that’s just not possible,” a male voice answered. “Have you checked the—”
“Yes! Of course I have! Do you take me for some kind of imbecile?”
“Hi, Rory!” Krista said loudly.
I jumped. Krista stood at the top of the stairs in a blue-and-white-striped sundress, her blond hair down around her shoulders. The moment she spoke, the shouting stopped. I stared at the office door, waiting for the mayor to come out, but nothing happened.
I wondered what she would do if I simply knocked on her door and told her what had happened with Aaron. Wouldn’t she want to know if someone had been ushered to the wrong place? Wasn’t that the sort of thing one was supposed to bring to the attention of those in charge?
“Come on up!” Krista said. “We’re just working on some garlands and stuff.”
I hesitated, staring at the mayor’s door.
“Rory?” Krista said.
“Coming!” I replied reluctantly, following her up the creaky stairs. Krista’s room was huge and pink, with dark wood accents and a stone fireplace on one wall. There were floral throw rugs everywhere, and Lauren sat on the edge of the biggest one, stringing beads onto thick white yarn. Krista sat down across from her and carefully pushed a needle and thread through the back of a small cloth flower. Bea was sacked out on the queen-size canopy bed, flipping through magazines. Strewn all over the hardwood floor were hundreds of the flowers, cases of colorful glass beads the size of Ping-Pong balls, and bags full of large white and pink feathers.
“You can help Lauren with the garland,” Krista suggested as I hovered in the doorway.
“Garland. Sure.”
“The pattern is pink-pink-yellow-pink-pink-white,” Lauren instructed me, pointing at one of the boxes of beads as I sat down next to her. “Because we have more pink than any other color.”
I glanced up at Bea, who laughed. “She’s anal-retentive,” she explained.
“All righty, then,” I said. I pulled the box of beads toward me, grabbed a spool of the heavy-duty string, and got to work, wondering if I could broach the subject of Aaron’s ushering.
“Where did all this come from?” Joaquin asked, suddenly appearing in the doorway.
“Would you believe it was all in the relic room?” Krista asked. There was a lightness about her this morning. The wispy, light fabric of her dress made her tan skin glow, and she hadn’t stopped smiling since I arrived. She suddenly tossed her head as if something funny or pleasing had just occurred to her, but she didn’t share.
I wished I were in her mood, wherever it had come from. “What’s the relic room?” I asked.
“It’s this big bedroom downstairs that Tristan converted into a storage closet,” Bea said, idly flipping a page. “It’s where we put all the visitors’ stuff once they move on.”
“And we kind of go shopping in there whenever we need anything,” Lauren added.
I gulped, feeling suddenly hot around the collar of my T-shirt. I knew the room they were talking about. I’d stumbled in there accidentally the previous week and seen the guitar strap that had belonged to the musician from the park, hanging from a shelf. I wondered if all of Olive’s and Aaron’s stuff was down there now—her guitar and his windsurfing gear, her flowy sweaters and his preppy jeans—just waiting to be picked over and claimed.
“You’re kidding,” Joaquin said. “When did we have Barbie’s circus come through here?”
Bea snorted. Joaquin glanced at my blank face. “At least someone around here thinks I’m funny.”
“Pink-pink-white-pink-pink-yellow,” Lauren muttered under her breath as she strung each bead.
Joaquin reached for a bag of feathers and tore it open. It exploded all over everything.