The Everafter Read online

  thighs.

  "I don't see—" I start to say, but Gabe is gently turning

  --:

  I have only experienced it one other time on my journeys

  back to haunt my own life. It was during that slumber party

  where a ghostly Tammy was hanging out.

  My ghost and Gabriel's made some kind of spiritual

  contact, just as Tammy and I did at the slumber party. And

  the tragedy is that I didn't realize it at the time, while the

  ghostly me was reliving those moments in the car.

  And I can't go back.

  Neither can he.

  We both found our keys.

  A profound sense of loss is oddly accented by the presence

  of Gabe's companionship.

  But I don't want his company now. Not like this. Not in

  death. Not as a ghost.

  I want him to be alive.

  I shouldn't be surprised to discover that Gabe is dead,

  too. I've sensed all along that he belonged here with me in

  Is. But somehow I've always imagined he was back on Earth,

  still living the life I knew him in.

  I can't help grieving that I'll never return to that moment

  in the car . . . that moment when he First kissed me . . . that

  moment where I slid so gently from insecurity at being with

  him to the greatest sense of togetherness I'd ever had.

  But I'm glad I can't, too. Those other moments that I've

  been re-returning to seem to fade a bit every time I go to

  them. It's kind of like watching the same movie over and

  me over so I am lying across his lap. He's brushing my hair

  away from my face, bending over me, kissing me again. I

  turn my face into his hand and kiss his palm, feeling against

  my lips the lines tracking across his hand. I wonder if my

  name is etched somewhere on his lifeline.

  I turn my head back to make eye contact with Gabe.

  He's smiling. He helps me sit back up. "No keys?" he asks.

  "Not under there," I say. "At least, not the ones we're

  looking for right now."

  We look some more for his keys, and he finally locates

  them on the ground just outside his open door. He holds

  both sets of keys up to show me that we've succeeded in our

  quest to find them.

  "Ready to see the river?" Gabe asks, dropping my keys

  into my—

  •

  Back in Is I feel startled—and stalked.

  By death.

  Gabriel is dead.

  Like me.

  That moment when Gabriel lost his keys . . . at the time,

  I thought the affinity we felt came from finding we'd had

  the same experience losing our keys.

  But that wasn't the only experience we were sharing.

  The tugging, binding, magnetizing pull of that moment...

  9J

  over. You keep trying to capture what you felt when you

  first saw it, but the feelings just aren't ever as . . . magical.

  I can't bear to have that happen to this experience with

  Gabe.

  Not being able to reexperience my first kiss is, in a way,

  heartbreaking, but to have never experienced that kiss at

  all . . . that would be self-breaking. I wouldn't even be me

  without that exact moment.

  •i 99

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  the underwear

  age If

  Even though it's dark out, I feel completely exposed as I

  drop my underpants onto the ground. The water will be

  cold, but I don't care. At least when I'm in that pool I'll feel

  more covered up than I do standing here naked. Why was

  I stupid enough to play Truth or Dare in the first place?

  1 was sure that if I chose "truth," Tammy was going to—

  horror of horrors—ask me if I had a crush on Gabe . . . and

  he was sitting right across from me. He and Roger had been

  biking down the road in front of Tammy's. They normally

  don't spend any time with us, but tonight they stopped. And

  1H3

  First, Roger Myers appears over the top of the fence,

  then Gabe follows. More giggling on the other side. I'm

  about to scream in outrage, but Sandra smacks me on the

  head. Sob! C'mon.'' She pushes off farther into the deep

  end to hide beneath the shadows of the diving board. I don't

  waste any time in following her.

  Roger says, "We're just checking to make sure you're

  really skinny-dipping."

  "Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod," is the only

  thing coming out of my mouth.

  "There's no way we're letting you check that out." Sandra

  obviously has more presence of mind than I do.

  Roger laughs. "No choice. We'll just grab these"—he

  bends over and scoops up the pile of our clothing—"and

  check to make sure it's all there."

  Carrying our clothes, he runs toward the fence. He throws

  them over (or tries to; Sandra's bra gets stuck on the top of the

  fence), then scrambles up after them. He rescues Sandra's bra

  and tosses it on the other side of the fence, then jumps down

  after it. Gabe shoots over the fence right after him.

  "Oh. My. God." At least I've managed to change the

  tempo of mv speech even if I haven't managed to find any

  new words.

  "It's all here," Tammy announces, barely loud enough

  for us to hear. She doesn't want to get caught, either.

  Roger's face reappears at the top of the fence. The

  in,'

  pretty soon they were just hanging with us. Maybe they

  were bored, nothing else to do on a warm Saturday evening

  two weeks before the end of the school year.

  But choosing "dare" was a mistake—definitely a mistake,

  I realize now, as I slip into the water as quickly and

  quietly as I can. It's freezing, totally freezing.

  "I hey better not be watching," Sandra says.

  Just exactly what I'm thinking.

  "And you owe me for this," she adds.

  No doubt about that. Not many friends would be willing

  to put themselves through this agony just so their BF

  wouldn't have to do it alone. I still can't quite fathom that

  Tammy has done this to me. "I dare you to go skinnydipping

  in the neighbor's pool," she said at 10:15, just ten

  minutes ago. Hard to believe my whole life has changed in

  that time: I have become a girl who trespasses—naked—

  into someone else's pool.

  Can I get arrested for this?

  I think I'd rather not know.

  We hear muffled laughter on the other side of the fence.

  Everyone is checking to make sure we're actually in the

  pool.

  Humiliating. 1 hank God the pool lights are off. Thank

  God no one seems to be home.

  The fence rattles.

  "Ohmygod," Sandra breathes. "Someone's coming over."

  101

  muffled giggling from below him is making me feel crazy.

  He tosses down our clothes. They rain into a scattered mess

  in the dirt; then Roger disappears again, and within seconds

  we can hear pounding feet receding into the distance

  as a giggling herd stampedes its way back to Tammy's.

  Quiet hangs heavy in the air again. The only sounds we

  hear are the whorls our limbs ma
ke in the water.

  "Time to get out," Sandra announces. We stumble over

  to our clothes. No towels, of course. Not one of the amenities

  offered to trespassers. The clothes stick to us as we try

  to put them back on.

  "I can't find my underwear," I tell Sandra.

  "Forget 'em," she says. "Let's just get out of here." Her

  long curly hair has already soaked the top half of her shirt. I

  can't help being satisfied with the messy look of it. Sandra's

  always dressed a bit too neatly. All her clothes—picked out

  by Mrs. Simpson, of course—are too well coordinated. Her

  socks, her hair clips, her shoes, everything all goes together.

  She sometimes looks like a present that's been professionally

  wrapped by someone who doesn't care at all about the

  gift inside the box. But as she stands here now, in a wrinkled

  and wet shirt, she seems more like the person I really know

  she is. "Hurry up," she prods me.

  "I can't just forget about my underwear," I protest.

  "Sure you can," she insists. She grabs my arm and pulls

  me to the fence.

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  The note comes back to me folded a few extra times.

  Thank God. That must mean Sandra had an aspirin.

  My head is pounding.

  Throbbing. In time to Ms. Winters's voice. Chemistry

  class. Just where a girl with a headache and major problems

  doesn't want to be.

  I unfold the note carefully, and a yellow and red Tylenol

  Geltab rests on top of Sandra's writing. Right underneath

  my plea tor an aspirin, she's written:

  At least Winters is off on one of her tangents. You

  won't have to know any of this stuff for c test. That must

  help with your headache.

  I write back:

  It would if she hadn't decided to get distracted by

  something so scientific and complicated. Every once in a

  while I actually try to get all this stuff to make sense. I

  liked it better the time we all managed to get her talking

  about her crazy brother for the entire hour. Whose

  idea was it to get her going on this quantum mechanics

  thing?

  I pass the note back one seat to Sandra. We don't dare

  talk. We don't want to interrupt her in any way, or she'll

  remember that she's supposed to be teaching us about covalent

  bonds . . . that she's somehow gotten away from what

  she wrote in her lesson plans for today. Quantum mechanics

  isn't nearly as thrilling as some of the personal stories

  she tells us when her mind starts wandering, but it still

  means that in twenty minutes she'll redize we don't have

  any of the information we need to do our homework and—

  awesome—she won't give us any.

  While I'm waiting for the note to come back, I contemplate

  trying to dry-swallow this Tylenol. I was hoping for

  an aspirin. I hey're smaller. This rubbery thing is likely to

  get stuck in my throat.

  My day totally sucks.

  The note comes back:

  10S

  Ub . . . that would be your boyfriend who started

  asking her bow the rules of particle physics influenced the

  bonding of molecules. He was trying to get her off track,

  wasn't he?

  I take my time writing a response. .Ms. Winters looks

  like she'll be going on and on for quite a while.

  Probably. Are yon following this whole thing she's

  trying to tell us about how subatomic particles can be both

  waves and particles at the same time? Those splatter pictures

  she's drawing make my head feel like it's going to

  explode. I want to throw a whole bottle of Tylenol through

  one of those slits and see if we get a particle or wave pattern,

  you know? And okay, so maybe it's amazing that

  something can be two things at once, and that observing

  tbem influences which of the two they are, but I'd rather

  set up a study to see how observation of that Web page

  influences Dana.

  I pass the note back to Sandra. Ms. Winters has moved

  on to talking about how everything in the universe is connected

  in ways that can't always be seen or understood.

  This has something to do with photons behaving like both

  particles and waves. She calls this the particle-wave duality

  and wants to impress on us its importance: that at the

  subatomic level no time has to pass for one particle to know

  about and be affected by what's happening to another. At

  the smallest levels of the universe, rules of cause and effect

  ID!.

  become blurred because particles can communicate with

  one another simultaneously.

  This is enough to make mv brain explode, so instead

  of trying to make sense of it, I begin wondering what kind

  of interaction two subatomic particles would want to have,

  anyway. Might make an interesting short story for English

  class. Maybe I can give it a bit of an Edgar Allan Poe

  flair. One particle nukes another and then tries to hide

  its energy under a floorboard—or maybe in a wormhole.

  Thus, the second particle can never be observed again and

  have imposed upon it human expectations about whether it

  is a wave or particle . . . and therefore it can be neither particle

  nor wave . . . or maybe it would still then be both . ..

  but the universe's communication about the nuking event is

  simultaneous, so does that mean that the universe (and the

  humans trying to watch this event) have already taken into

  account—at the very moment it's happening—the event

  itself? Now, that would seem to take all the suspense out of

  the story. I mean, that's sort of like everything is predetermined,

  right?

  Ohmygod. I can't escape subatomic thoughts. I'm definitely

  losing it. If I don't stop, my head isn't just going to

  explode, it's going to create nuclear fallout.

  Thankfully, the note comes back.

  You dont need to set up a study to find that out.

  She had a screaming and crying fit in the bathroom and

  10:

  everyone's talking about it.

  Yeah. Everyone.

  Except—apparently—me, since I've missed out on all

  the good gossip. That's what I get for hanging with Gabriel

  between classes.

  Someone anonymously published on the Web a list of

  spiteful awards for Overton High School girls. Things like

  Most Emo, Aberzombie of the Year, and Biggest Babble

  Moron. Dana won in the Best-Looking Bitch category. I

  can't help feeling satisfaction that someone else has finally

  discovered the perfect adjective for Dana—even thouqh I

  know that makes me a terrible person. Whoever published

  those awards really shouldn't have done it. That was way out

  of line. The author is entitled to his or her opinions (especially

  when they're so close to the truth), but putting that

  out there on the internet? Way unethical.

  Still...

  Missed all that. Details please.

  A few minutes later, the note returns.

  She was all crying in
the bathroom because who would

  do something that terrible to her? She's never meant to

  hurt anyone, etc. Guess she was some bizarre combination

  of totally hurt and so angry she wanted to kill someone.

  Lacey was in the bathroom at the time, and it was enough

  to even make her feel sorry for Dana. Maybe this will be

  a turning point for her, and she'll start being nicer. Did

  you hear that Mr. Patterson already got the website taken

  downs'

  Is Gabe really worth this? First he earns me Dana's

  eternal enmity . . . then he keeps me from hearing all the

  good gossip when she's finally managing to get what she

  deserves.

  I pass the note back:

  How'd he manage to do that? I thought be didn't even

  know who did it.

  It returns:

  He called the people v.'ho host the Web page, and they

  agreed to take it off. Ob, and he's found out who did it.

  Lucky it wasn't you.

  What the . . . ? What do you mean?

  Dana was telling everyone that you were the one who

  must have made the page.

  Me?! Oh, crap. The bells rings. I've got to take that Tylenol.

  Where is it?!

  ID!

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  f e l i c i t y ' s shoe

  o$e 8

  "Rrrglighgh.'" Cozy's claw slices across my wrist.

  "Ouch!" I yell.

  Perhaps the hat isn't such a good idea. Even as I think it,

  I continue trying to tie the ribbon beneath Cozy's chin.

  "If you'd just hold still," I say through gritted teeth, "I'd

  have you all dressed."

  Felicity, my American Girl doll, lies on the bed next to

  me, naked except for her tights. It seems impossible to get

  the tights on Cozy, so I haven't even tried, but Felicity's

  blue and white summer outfit looks very cute on the cat. An

  mi

  American Girl pet: perfect. Just what I've always wanted—

  well, at least ever since the idea occurred to me ten minutes

  ago. I don't understand why the cat won't cooperate with me.

  She struggles against me and uses her paw to try to push the

  beautiful straw hat off her head. The shoe I've worked so

  hard to put on her back paw goes flying through the air as

  she keeps struggling.

  "Stop it," I tell her.

  She caterwauls in response—loud enough for Kristen

  to hear. Now she's pounding on my door. "Maddy, what are

  you doing to that cat?" she demands. "Let me in."

  Mom should know better than to leave Kristen as my

  babysitter. We fight all the time when she's babysitting for