“Joaquin! I’m trying to concentrate!” Lauren chided him, dusting a pink feather off her leg. A white one fell directly on top of my head, the end hanging down to touch my nose. I blew it off, annoyed. I couldn’t believe I was there doing this while Aaron was trapped in the Shadowlands.
“Sorry,” Joaquin shot back. He looked Krista up and down as she pushed a needle and thread through the center of one of the flowers. “What’re you doing?”
“Making flower leis!” she replied happily.
“And you?” he asked Bea.
“Resting my arms after carrying all that crap up here,” she said, not looking up from her magazine. “And I just learned how to do the perfect cat-eye with gray shadow and black eyeliner,” she added in a wry tone. I doubted she’d ever worn eye makeup in her life.
“So then I guess I should—”
“Have you guys ever sent a soul over the bridge and then found out they ended up in the wrong place?” I blurted.
Bea stopped page-flicking. Lauren stopped muttering. Joaquin stared.
“Are you kidding? Never,” Krista said, her knee bouncing as she tied off the end of the thread on the lei she’d just finished. I wasn’t sure whether to feel relieved at that answer or more confused. When no one else chimed in, she looked around at the group. “But then, I haven’t been here that long. Why?”
Everyone else was still gazing at me, and I started to feel exactly how I didn’t want to feel—stupid. Joaquin’s attention was somehow more intense than the others’, his brown eyes sharp, like my question hadn’t just startled him, but scared him.
“Yeah, why?” Lauren asked.
“No reason,” I said, lifting a shoulder. My fingers trembled as I reached for the next bead. “Just trying to learn the trade.”
“It happens,” Bea said finally, sitting up. “It sucks, but it happens.”
“Usually it’s someone you think is supposed to go to the Light who ends up in the Shadowlands,” Lauren said. The tiny pink end of her tongue stuck out as she started to concentrate again. My stomach clenched.
“Really?” I said.
“Some people are just very good at hiding their true natures,” Joaquin confirmed, gathering up the fallen feathers around him and shoving them back into what was left of the plastic bag. He did it more vehemently than necessary, and his fist suddenly tore another hole in the back of the bag, rendering it useless. He tossed the whole thing aside, making an even bigger mess. Lauren sighed, but Joaquin didn’t seem to notice. “But the really bad ones are pretty obvious. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone I was convinced was bad end up in the Light. Only the other way around.”
“Oh,” I said. “That’s…interesting.”
So maybe Tristan was right. Maybe Aaron had me totally fooled. But I just couldn’t wrap my brain around that.
Suddenly, Lauren’s posture slumped. “Rory! It’s pink-pink-yellow-pink-pink-white! Not white-white-yellow-pink-pink-white!”
I looked down at my garland and saw that I had, in fact, strung the last few beads incorrectly.
“That’s okay. They don’t all have to be perfect,” Krista said, patting my knee.
“Yes, they do!” Lauren protested.
“No, they don’t. It’ll be eclectic!” Krista replied.
“Eclectic is for amateurs,” Lauren muttered. She grabbed the garland out of my lap and yanked. “I’ll start it over.”
Krista and I exchanged a look, and I almost laughed. Almost.
“Ooooh-kay,” Joaquin said, standing. “This whole decorating-committee thing is a little too intense for me, so I’m just gonna—”
“No! You just got here,” Krista whined, getting up.
But Joaquin was already halfway out the door. The second his foot hit the hallway, he stopped, startled. “Oh. Hey, man.”
“Hey,” Tristan said.
Tristan stepped around the corner, his ears red. At the sight of him, all the intense feelings surrounding our kiss came rushing back, prickling my skin, and making me blush, but they were quickly crowded out by the memory of him shouting at me. He’d obviously been hovering outside the door, and I wondered if he’d heard our conversation about the bridge.
“Are you gonna help?” Krista asked him hopefully. “Because if you want, you and Joaquin could go check on the tent and make sure all the pieces are there. I know it’s a little girlie in here, so—”
“Actually I stopped by to remind you,” Tristan said, pressing his palms together, “there’s someplace you’re supposed to be.”
Krista’s eyes widened, and she covered her mouth with one hand. “Crap! I’m supposed to be clearing out Aaron’s stuff.”
My skin tingled. Tristan glanced at me apologetically. It was clear he hadn’t wanted that said out loud.
“Sorry.” Krista dropped her lei on the pile of finished versions next to her bed. “I’ll go now. Guess the party’s over, people.”
“Yes!” Bea cheered under her breath, flinging the magazine toward a pile on Krista’s nightstand. It slid right off the top and fluttered to the floor, where it landed with a thwap. Bea made no move to pick it up. Lauren, meanwhile, had put my beads aside and started organizing Joaquin’s feather mess.
“I’ll do it,” I volunteered.
“What?” Tristan said.
“Really?” Krista asked.
“Yeah, I want to.” I wanted to find out if there was some clue as to why Aaron had ended up where he did. Maybe if I had proof that the coin had made the right decision, I would somehow start feeling better about all this. “I’m supposed to be learning how to do these things, right?”
“That’d be awesome, Rory,” Krista said, looking down at her project. “I have so much to do. Including baking cupcakes. Actually, can you come help with those tomorrow? At two,” she asked brightly, gazing at me with wide blue eyes.
“Sure, no problem,” I answered distractedly as I stepped over the box of beads I’d been working on and navigated my way around the piles of flowers and feather bags. As I was heading out the door, Krista grabbed Bea.
“You can take her place at the beading station,” she suggested happily.
Bea groaned. “You’ll pay for this, Miller!”
“Sorry!” I called over my shoulder.
“I’ll go with you,” Tristan offered.
“You don’t have to,” I said tersely.
His face fell. “Do you even know where he was staying?”
I narrowed my eyes, thinking back. “He mentioned a room, but…no. He always came to my place.” Was that some kind of clue? Had he been hiding something from me?
“I can take her,” Joaquin offered.
We both tensed. For a second, I’d forgotten he was even there.
“That’s okay. I got it,” Tristan said, angling around my side as if to block Joaquin out.
We walked down the stairs together, conspicuously not touching. Near the bottom step, I glanced back up and caught Joaquin lingering at the top, watching us with a brooding expression.
Tristan held the front door open for me, and as we passed through, I saw that the door to the mayor’s office was slightly ajar. A second later, it banged shut.
“Did you see that?” I whispered.
“See what?” he asked, closing the front door behind us.
My reply caught in my throat. The fog was creeping in slowly from all sides, rolling over the grass and crowding out the flower beds at the foot of the stairs. Just like that, the mayor was forgotten.
“Someone else is being ushered,” I said flatly.
“Looks that way,” Tristan said.
I bit my tongue to keep from saying what I wanted to:
I hope they end up in the right place.
Perspective
I stood in the doorway of Aaron’s room, a small, square chamber at a one-storied bayside motel called, in a very dead-on way, the Bayside Motel. Tristan hovered a few feet behind me, keeping a respectful distance while the fog continued to thicken around us. I waited for some sort of epiphany to strike me—a deep thought to occur that would put everything in perspective—but all I could think was this: Aaron was a minimalist.