“No!” I wailed. “He’s a good person. You should have felt the regret and sorrow coming off of him tonight when he talked about his father. There’s no way he could have ever done anything awful enough in his life to warrant being sent to the Shadowlands.”
“I’m sorry, Rory, but this happens sometimes,” Tristan said calmly, soothingly. He ran a hand over my hair, then rested it comfortingly on my shoulder. “We think we know these people, but—”
“But nothing!” I shouted, flinging his hand off me and pushing away from the wall. “We have to help him. We have to get him out of there. We have to—”
“No!” he spat.
I stopped short, surprised at being shouted at. Tristan looked away, but I wasn’t sure whether he was ashamed at having barked in my face or taking a breath because he was so angry.
“We can’t,” he said more calmly.
“What do you mean, we can’t? There’s been a mistake. There must be something we can—”
“No one ever comes back from the Shadowlands,” Tristan said ominously. “Or the Light. Once it’s done, it’s done.”
My eyes brimmed. “But Aaron’s—”
“Even if we could get him out of there, we wouldn’t,” Tristan interjected, his jaw clenched. “The coins are never wrong.”
I pressed my hands into my forehead, unable to comprehend, unable to accept what he was saying. I had brought Aaron up there and told him he was going somewhere to be happy and at peace. I had sent him on his way with that trusting smile on his face. He’d told me I was a good friend. He’d thanked me for all I’d done. And I’d sent him straight to hell.
“No, Tristan. No!” I cried, backing away from him. “This can’t be right. We have to do something. We have to!”
“There’s nothing we can do, Rory,” Tristan said grimly, looking past me at the weather vane. “If Aaron went to the Shadowlands, then that’s where he was supposed to go.”
It’s happening. It’s finally, finally happening. It had to be this way, of course. He had to go. A person in my position needs a few sacrificial lambs. And isn’t it always more powerful when that lamb is special? When it’s cared for? When it will be missed?
Rory thought he was headed to the Light, whatever that means. I imagine it’s different for everyone, whatever a person’s version of heaven would be. If what you loved in life more than anything was your family, you’d spend forever in some great, big resort, surrounded by them, having huge dinners every night filled with conversation and laughter. If all you cared about was sports, you’d spend eternity attending Super Bowl games and World Series finals and Olympic events, and whomever you’re rooting for would always win.
When I picture the Shadowlands, however, there is nothing. Nothing but blackness. You’d feel alone and scared and sad and lost forever, always wondering why you’ve been abandoned, always searching for some speck of light you’ll never find. In the Shadowlands, you’d be cold. Not just in-need-of-a-blanket cold, but truly and utterly, painful-to-the-bone cold. The kind of cold no one on earth has ever felt. The kind of cold that breeds despair and desperation.
Not that I’ll ever know for sure. Because I have found a way out of Juniper Landing, out of my own personal hell. And now that it’s started, it’s just a matter of time before I am free.
Wrong. Everything was wrong. I had just started to believe in this place, started to believe what Tristan had said about us playing an important role, somehow helping maintain balance. I’d begun to believe in our purpose. But if Aaron could be relegated to the Shadowlands, then the balance was seriously off.
I plodded around the corner onto Magnolia Lane, then hid in the shadows cast by a huge peach tree, waiting to make sure the house was silent. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, afraid that I might break down and say things I shouldn’t, or start crying with no good explanation and never stop. When I finally entered the house, I opened the door slowly, to keep it from creaking, then held the knob so the catch wouldn’t click. When I let it go ever so carefully, the bolt silently slid into place. I was sure I was home free. Until I turned around and found Darcy standing at the bottom of the stairs with Fisher.
“Sneaking around?” she quipped.
“God! You scared me,” I said, my eyes darting between the two of them. Her hair was disheveled, and his T-shirt was on inside out.
“Sorry,” she said.
I started past them up the stairs, which forced Fisher to stumble down the last two steps to the floor.
“Rory, wait,” Darcy said. “Are you all right?”
I paused, wishing I could tell her everything—wishing I could tell her anything—but I couldn’t. I couldn’t even whitewash it and tell her I was sad because Aaron had left the island, because she wouldn’t remember that Aaron had ever existed. This was what our relationship was going to be like now. Me keeping secrets and trying to keep track of what she could and couldn’t remember.
Unless she became a Lifer. Please let her do something selfless and earn the damned bracelet she wants so badly so I won’t have to deal with all this alone.
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.
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 k
eyboard. 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.
“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.