Dust to Dust (9 page)

“Wendy . . . Wendy Larson.”

“If Wendy accepted Thatcher's death, then he'd be able to . . . what was it called?”

“Merging.”

“Right. So if his sister got over his death, then he could merge into the Heaven place?”

“Solus.” I pronounce it like
solace
.

“Solus,” Carson echoes. “He could go there if Wendy moved on?”

“I think so.” Carson's interest in this is starting to make me nervous.

“Why don't we help then?”

“Carson . . . no.”

“Why not? If we can talk to her and tell her that Thatcher needs her to
get over it
—I mean we'll say it more nicely than that—she'll understand! She'll let go of him, and he can merge with Solus!”

Her face is shining—she's so excited to find that there's some truth to an afterlife, something she's always suspected existed. But I can't let her meddle—not with Thatcher.

“We can't,” I say to her. “It's none of our business.”

She looks at me sideways. “You don't want him to merge.”

What?
“Shut up. Of course I do!”

Her eyes light up with knowing. “You don't want him to leave you. You're in love with him,” she says. “That's why you aren't crazy mad about Nick and Holly, why your head is always somewhere else. You're thinking of him. Maybe even talking to him! Oh my gosh, were you talking to him in your dreams last night? This is incredible. When you first met him, was it like you'd known him for a thousand years?”

Carson's smile is huge—it's like we're discussing a new crush. But that's not what this is. And I don't appreciate it.

“Stop mocking me.”

“It
was
insta-love!” she says, missing my tone and clapping her hands together. “I guess that happens when you're in some crazy world.
I want to visit the Prism!
”

I stand up quickly and my empty orange juice glass falls to the ground and shatters.

We both stare at the shards of glass that glitter across the wide wooden planks of her porch, and I take a deep breath in. “This isn't a movie, Cars. This is my life, okay?”

She's quiet for a minute, and then her eyes leave the mess and meet my gaze.

“You haven't seen him since you woke up . . . ,” she says, the notion dawning on her as she gapes at me.

I can't keep a flash of pain from working its way across my face.

“Only in a dream,” I say. “I think.”

“You've got to try to reach him again! Oh, Callie, if you help him haunt his sister it would be the ultimate act of love.”

“I said stop!” I whisper harshly as I step away from the table,
piling our plates and taking them inside so Carson won't be able to keep talking and try to convince me otherwise.

“Hi, Mrs. Jenkins.” I smile brightly as I walk into the kitchen. I don't want her to know I'm upset.

“Callie, let me have those,” says Carson's mom, taking the plates from my hands.

“I broke a glass out there; sorry.” I walk to the pantry, where I know they keep the broom and the dustpan. When I turn back around to head outside, Carson is standing in front of me. She grabs the broom.

“If you love him,” she whispers, so low that her mom won't hear, “you'll want to help him. You'll want to help his sister.”

She places two small cloudy white crystals on the counter. “Here,” she says. “Use these.”

“What are they?”

“Selenite crystals—they're good for connecting with spirits, and for dream recall.”

“This kind of thing doesn't work,” I tell her. “It's just silly kids' stuff.”

“Like the sage you wouldn't let me burn in your car that might have saved you from your accident?”

“Bad luck wasn't what made that truck hit me. I was on my phone. I was going ninety miles per hour.”

“Still,” she says, picking up the selenite and pressing it into my hand. “Just keep it with you. It might help—you never know.”

I pocket the rocks so she'll stop talking.

“And one more thing.” Carson puts her phone faceup on the counter and walks back outside.

I sigh and look at the screen, where Carson has found a listing for Wendy Larson. She's a junior at USC-Beaufort. She lives just over an hour away.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

THE NEXT DAY IS the first day of school. At the last minute, I pick up the selenite crystals from where I left them on my nightstand. I don't know why I'm holding on to them—maybe because Carson has been more on point than I used to give her credit for, maybe because I'm a little afraid of facing the new year. For whatever reason, they're in my pocket.

I never noticed that my school has this
smell
to it. Not good, not awful, just . . . schooly. And the way people's feet fall on the linoleum, it makes a soft pattering noise, especially when there are dozens of us here all at once. The lights make everyone look slightly peaked, like they've just gotten over the flu, but at least we're on even ground in that respect.

And the energy at school—the
energy.
Last year I barely noticed anything beyond my own routine. But today I can almost feel the
excitement, angst, nervousness, confidence, fear, hope . . . it's like the hallways are pulsing with emotion.

Nick is waiting by my locker with a single daisy. I smile and stick it behind my ear.

“Thanks,” I say sincerely, trying to ignore the sadness that rises in my chest.

“Nervous?”

“No, why?”

“I don't know, coming back to school after a pretty traumatic summer . . . it could make even the steel-nerved Callie McPhee a little shaky.” He grins his nice-guy grin, and I try to meet it with one of my own, but it feels so fake.

“I'm good,” I tell him.

When Nick texted me last night to see if I wanted him to come over, I told him no. He didn't ask why; he just didn't come. I haven't seen him since the night we went to the movies. And in his absence, I've been closing my eyes before sleep and thinking about Thatcher. I've thought about the way we were in the Prism—how at first he kept his distance both physically and emotionally. He withdrew whenever I got close to him, but as we spent more time together, as we talked, it was like we were being drawn together by a force that neither one of us could understand.

Now he's telling me to turn away from the past, to forget him. And I wonder if he'll ever truly acknowledge what I think we both felt, for a moment, in the Prism.

The moment I think that, I feel a warm wave of air wrap around me, and I know that he's here. Not like he was the other
night in my room, not up close, but nearby.

Thatcher
.

I wish there was some way that I could acknowledge that he's here. Actually, I wish he really
were
here. Walking the halls with his friends, living the life that he never really got a chance to live. I feel an intense shot of guilt when I think about how much I have ahead of me, all the things I have to look forward to now that I'm back in my own skin again. This is what the poltergeists were fighting so hard to get—the feeling of being here and whole—and while Thatcher might be too noble to admit it, he has to miss some of this, doesn't he?

“Shall we?” Nick says, offering to walk me to my homeroom by taking my hand in his. And then I feel a cold breeze, though no windows are open here, and I know that he's gone. Thatcher left. Was it because Nick held my hand? I tell myself that Thatcher wouldn't be that petty. He has other people to watch over, other spirits to teach.

But as I suspected, there have to be things that he misses and wishes he could do.

Things that he's jealous of.

“Hey, Callie,” says a girl I don't recognize, bringing me back to the present.

“Hey,” I say back with a smile that I hope looks genuine. And then I notice that all up and down the hall there are people trying to catch my eye, say hi, smile. I guess I don't blame them—I'm the girl who was almost dead and then came back to life. I'd stare at me, too.

I take a deep breath in, remembering that when I was in the Prism and trying to connect with people on Earth, I would have done
anything
to be seen. And now I'm here, I'm alive, I'm walking through my high school hallway.

This is my second chance, like Thatcher said. And everyone around me knows it.

Pressure much?

As we walk by the main office, I feel a particularly intense gaze and I lock eyes with a slight boy with black hair and dark-framed glasses. His hands are folded across his chest, and while people swirl around him, making their way to class, he's staring at me full on, like I'm a specimen in a lab.

I look away quickly, glad to be turning a corner. I'm no more than a few doors down from homeroom when I feel Nick let go of my hand sort of abruptly. He says, “See you at lunch,” and waves quickly before heading off down the hall, not giving me a chance to look him in the eye.

When I see Holly Whitman standing just a couple feet away from me, watching him walk away, it's pretty clear why.

The first day of school is always a throwaway work-wise, and today my mind wanders even more than usual. I can't possibly be expected to live this life of Advanced Algebra problems and World History reading. Not after what I've seen and felt, both in the Prism and since I've been back here. I have to fight the urge to look inward to the space where I can feel Thatcher's presence, and
it's a struggle to stay in this world, mentally speaking.

My mind keeps drifting to Wendy Larson. Carson found her. How would Thatcher feel if I went to see her?

Carson meets me by my locker before lunch. As we walk to the cafeteria together, I see her wave across the hallway, and when I follow her eyes, there's the boy again—the one with thick-rimmed glasses and dark hair—grinning back at her.

“Who's that?” I ask her.

“Just a new guy,” she says, without meeting my eyes. “He's an underclassman.”

“Oh.” I'm about to ask his name, but Carson barrels ahead.

“Have you decided what to do about Nick?” she asks.

“What do you mean? Did he say something to you?”

“No, but we have English together, and he just looked . . . unhappy.”

“I know . . . things are pretty weird between us right now.”

I want to tell her about what happened with Holly earlier, but I'm afraid that what Carson said about me not wanting to let go of Thatcher is also true about Nick—what if in my heart I want to hold on to both of them, so I won't have to choose between this life and the life I know is waiting for me once I truly am ready to leave this one? I can't imagine I'd be that selfish, but . . .

“At some point, you'll need to explain things to him,” Carson says gently.

“Explain what?” I ask, lowering my voice to a whisper. “That I was in a world full of ghosts and I was trying to haunt him and I
saw him self-destructing? That I know he was planning to break up with me?”

“He was?” asks Carson, looking surprised. “Why didn't you tell me that?”

“Sorry,” I tell her. “I'm just starting to get things clear in my head, what I saw while I was . . . Anyway, that was his plan. Before the accident, I mean. I heard him talking about it. . . .” I pause, trying to remember what he'd said that night. When someone bumps into me from behind, I get self-conscious about people listening to us and we start walking again.

“Do you think he's still planning to—”

“I don't know.” We step out of the main building and into the sunlight. The humid air hits my face and I take in a breath of the sweet honeysuckle vines growing along the brick wall as I finger the amber pendant around my neck. The one that Nick gave to me as a gift that meant he understood how much I missed my mom. It meant that he understood
me
.

“You love someone else, though. Maybe it's for the best.”

“Yeah, but how is loving someone I can't ever be with for the best?”

“That's not what I mean,” Carson says. “Maybe you need to let go of that someone else before you can love Nick—or anyone—again.”

I give Carson side eyes. “This is not school-appropriate conversation.”

She smiles. “I just think there's a clear path here,” she says, pulling her phone out of her pocket.

She clicks to find Wendy's address again and makes me look at the screen.

I shake my head, nervous and wondering if Thatcher is aware that we've found Wendy.

Is that why he disappeared this morning? Because he knew what Carson had been bugging me to do?

“This doesn't feel right to me; I'm sorry, Cars.”

We're about to walk into the cafeteria, but she pulls me to the side of the doors and around the corner toward the faculty parking lot. Then she gives me a Carson speech, complete with gestures and pacing and voice inflections that make her case:

“Okay, Thatcher isn't, like, constantly with you, declaring his love, so he obviously wants you to move on, as anyone who truly loved you would, because you have a chance to live a life—an
alive
life—again. But he's stuck in this in-between world where he can't merge with the beating heart of the universe or whatever because his little sister hasn't gotten over his death. And we have her address right here, plus all these updates for her about him and how he's okay and how it'll make him happy if she can move on. PS, it'll make her happy, too, because she won't be wallowing in grief.
And
it'll make your life easier because lover boy will have a happy ending.”

“But—”

“I know it's not a Disney ending,” says Carson, running over my protestation. “You and he won't get to walk into the sunset. But that's not possible in any world, so we have to go for second best here, right?”