Hereafter

  “Not now, man,” Joaquin replied. He walked right over to the mayor’s office and rapped loudly on the door.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Tristan demanded, following him.

  “Reporting a problem to the mayor,” Joaquin replied.

  Tristan got between him and the door, pushing him backward. “You can’t just storm in here like that.”

  “Get off of me!” Joaquin yelled, windmilling his arms to throw Tristan off.

  “This is my house!” Tristan yelled.

  Joaquin laughed in a sarcastic way. “Don’t even start with that shit, Tristan.”

  “What shit?” Tristan countered, shoving Joaquin in the chest. “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean.” Joaquin shoved back.

  Tristan’s nostrils flared.

  “Rory, do something,” Krista pleaded, hugging her arms to her chest.

  “Guys! Cut it out!” I shouted, trying to get between them. “We didn’t come over here to fight.”

  “Well, then get him out of here,” Tristan spat. “The mayor’s gonna kill us. You know she hates it when we—”

  The door behind him suddenly flew open, and the mayor stepped out. My heart seized up at the sight of her. She wore a crisp blue pantsuit, a light pink shirt, and a politician’s smile. Her blond hair was pulled back so tightly from her face it made her skin appear stretched. She seemed taller somehow. Broader. More intimidating.

  This woman could send me to Oblivion. She could send all of us there if she felt like it.

  Tristan slid out of the way, taking position behind Joaquin like he was getting ready either to back him up or throw him out. The mayor started to close the door, but not before I saw that someone was sitting in the chair across from her desk, tucking two black Converse sneakers out of sight just before she banged it shut.

  “Can I help you, Mr. Marquez?” the mayor asked, clasping her hands together in a patient way. When her eyes flicked to me, I felt a chill in my bones.

  “Yeah. There’s something going on around here, and I think you should know about it,” Joaquin said, his chest heaving. “Something aside from the obvious.”

  Tristan shot me a betrayed sort of look, as if asking whether this was about what he thought it was about.

  “All right, then,” she asked. “What is it?”

  “Nothing,” Tristan said, trying to drag Joaquin away. “It’s nothing.”

  A tiny crack snaked through my heart. He really didn’t believe in me. In Aaron. He truly thought the coin was in the right. He was embarrassed that Joaquin and I were wasting his “mother’s” time.

  “It’s not nothing,” Joaquin said, staring the mayor in the eye with impressively unyielding determination. “I just sent a girl to the Shadowlands, someone who didn’t belong there, and Rory did the same last night. The weather vane has been pointing south a lot more often than it ever has before. All these people can’t belong in the Shadowlands.”

  The mayor glanced at me over Joaquin’s shoulder, then tilted her chin toward the floor and chuckled. My palms went slick.

  “Mr. Marquez, the coins are never wrong,” she said simply.

  My fingers curled like claws, red-hot adrenaline rushing through my veins.

  “They were this time,” I said, my pulse pounding in my ears.

  “Excuse me, but you don’t know anything about this,” she replied condescendingly. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you haven’t even done a solo ushering yet, have you?”

  She looked at Tristan. He shook his head, mute.

  “But I do know that Aaron was a good soul,” I protested, my voice quaking. “I felt it. Doesn’t that mean anything?”

  The mayor’s blue eyes crackled with anger.

  “It means you’re still new here,” she said sharply. “And you have no clue what you’re doing.”

  “Now, wait a minute,” Tristan said, squaring off next to Joaquin.

  “Maybe the weather vane’s wrong,” Krista piped up suddenly, her voice reed thin. My heart swelled both with gratitude toward Krista and with hope. The weather vane being wrong would mean that Jennifer and Aaron had actually gone to the Light and the vane had simply indicated the opposite.

  Another chuckle from the mayor. “Sweetie, the weather vane is never wrong.”

  “Well, it is now,” I said, stepping toward her as calmly as I could. “Please, if we could just talk about this,” I implored. “Something is wrong. I know what I felt. I know that Aaron was a good person. If you’d just—”

  “Stop!” the mayor thundered. She stepped around Joaquin and Tristan like their wall of muscle was nothing more than a puddle on the floor and came to a stop right in front of me. Terror seized my gut, and I staggered back a step. “Do you even hear what you’re saying? Weren’t you some sort of scientific genius in your former life?”

  I said nothing. At that moment it was hard enough to breathe.

  “What do you think is more likely? That a system that has been in place without a single hitch since the dawn of time has suddenly gone haywire, or that you, someone who has existed in this realm for less than a gnat’s blink, has made an error in judgment?” Her lips curled into something that resembled a smile but felt more like a threat. “What do you say, Ms. Miller? What’s your hypothesis?”

  My whole body shook under her scrutiny as she looked me slowly up and down. I clamped my teeth together and held my tongue.

  “That’s what I thought,” she said smugly.

  “Look, we all know something’s off,” Joaquin said calmly, patiently. “Flowers and animals dying, leaves changing, hornet stings… Did you know Kevin found a nest of worms in his yard this morning? And there are spiders and flies and—”

  “I’m well aware of what’s going on, Mr. Marquez,” the mayor said tensely. “I don’t need you of all people coming in here to tell me.”

  “So you won’t even listen to what we have to say?” Joaquin asked. “You won’t even consider the possibility that people are being misplaced?”

  She lifted her head and looked at Joaquin and Tristan. “I think you’ve wasted enough of my time. I’d like you to leave now,” she said, striding back toward her office, back to whomever was waiting in that chair. She paused next to Tristan and looked down her nose at him. “All of you.”

  Next to me, Krista made a sound somewhere between a squeak and a squeal.

  “Let’s go,” Tristan said to the rest of us. He walked over to the door and held it open. Krista was the first one through, fluttering like a startled butterfly. Joaquin hesitated for just a moment but eventually tromped out.

  I was just passing by Tristan when the mayor’s voice stopped me.

  “Oh, and Ms. Miller?”

  I stopped and looked at her. In the shadows cast by the curtained window next to her, her face looked like a skull.

  “Don’t come back without an appointment.”

  Then she walked into her office and slammed the door.

  Outside, Joaquin flung Tristan’s arm off his and stormed to the edge of the bluff. In the distance, storm clouds gathered, lightning flashing deep within the dark gray cover. I took in a deep breath and tried to relax, but the mayor’s last words to me still rang in my ears. In two short days, I’d gone from being a “distinct pleasure” to being someone who needed an appointment. Someone who got the door slammed in her face. Was it just because I was siding with Joaquin, or was it something more?

  “What is the matter with you?” Tristan demanded, charging after Joaquin. A gust of wind blasted his hair back from his face as they neared the drop-off. “You know she hates it when we just barge in.”

  “Do you really think I give a shit?” Joaquin asked, whirling to face Tristan. “Something’s going on around here, Tristan. Something bigger than the random shriveled magnolia or the centipede you found at the gazebo. Don’t you feel it? Because I do. I can feel it in every inch of my body.”

  Tristan scoffed. “You’re so melodramatic.”

&
nbsp; Krista and I hovered a safe distance away as the boys faced off. I could feel the mayor watching us through her office windows, but I refused to turn. Krista, however, kept glancing furtively back at the house. Along the front of the porch, the garden that had once been bursting with daisies was now a square of dry brown thatch.

  “What if she never lets us back in?” she whispered, biting her bottom lip.

  “I’m sure she will. It’s your home,” I replied.

  “Yeah, but not really,” Krista said. “It’s not like she’s really my mother. And I’ve never seen her that angry before.”

  Krista toyed with her bracelet, looking at the ground.

  “We can’t keep letting this happen!” Joaquin shouted, the veins in his neck bulging. “You know the weather vane has been pointing south a lot more often than usual. If people are being sent to the wrong place, then what’s the point of all this? What’s the point of our existence?”

  Another cold wind whooshed in off the ocean, leaving me momentarily breathless. The clouds were moving in at a fast clip; they were an ominous shade of steel gray. Krista took a few steps back toward the porch and away from the drop-off.

  “People aren’t getting sent to the wrong place,” Tristan replied stubbornly. “The system works, Joaquin. It’s always worked.”

  “Always?” Joaquin asked, raising his eyebrows.

  Something passed between them. Some unspoken communication. Tristan stood, stock-still and silent, as if weighing his response. I smoothed my braid. Was Joaquin talking about Jessica, or was there something else going on?

  “You’ve been here longer than anyone, Tristan,” Joaquin said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “You know that things aren’t always what they seem. That the system can be circumvented.”

  “No,” Tristan said firmly. “Not like this. Nothing like this has ever happened before. It can’t happen, J. It’s just…it’s not possible.”

  They stared each other down, the wind blowing the sleeves of their shirts tight against their arms, until Joaquin finally chuckled and backed off.

  “Screw this; I’m outta here,” he said, storming past me.

  Krista looked away as he went by.

  “So you’re really not gonna help us?” I asked Tristan, my voice nearly drowned out by the swirling of the wind.

  He turned his palms out, his eyes determined but still full of sorrow. “There’s nothing to help with. This place isn’t broken, Rory. It can’t be broken.”

  I pressed my lips together, hesitating. “But…Jessica broke it, didn’t she?”

  An angry shadow crossed his face. “That was different,” he said fiercely. “She willingly ignored a rule, but once she did that, the mechanics worked as they were supposed to. The people who had been compromised went to the Shadowlands, as they were supposed to. You’re trying to say that the coins can be altered, that the final decision can be wrong. That can’t be.”

  “But I know Aaron didn’t belong in the Shadowlands. I know it.” I looked down at my sneakers, gripping my fingertips until they hurt. It was nothing compared with the pain inside my chest. “What if we could bring them back?”

  “We can’t,” Tristan said, pushing his sleeves down.

  “But what if we could? What if there was a way to—”

  “It wouldn’t matter anyway,” Krista interrupted. “If Tristan’s so sure they are where they’re supposed to be, then we shouldn’t bring them back.”

  “Exactly,” Tristan said, his face like stone.

  “But they’re not where they’re supposed to be!” I wailed.

  “We can’t keep having the same conversation, Rory,” Tristan said firmly. “Trust me. Nothing’s broken, and no one is coming back.”

  Suddenly, my whole body felt hollow. There would be no getting through to him, no making him understand how awful, how wrong, how desperate I felt. Something or someone had sent Aaron to the Shadowlands when he belonged in the Light. And nothing Tristan said was going to change my mind about that. He was right about only one thing: we couldn’t keep having this conversation.

  “Rory,” Tristan said, taking an imploring step forward.

  I instinctively backed away. “I have to go,” I said, my heart breaking along with my voice.

  “But you don’t understand—”

  “I have to go.”

  I turned and jogged after Joaquin, the wind making me tear up. As I came around the corner of the house, my foot caught on a rock and I stumbled. From the corner of my eye, I saw a pair of dark eyes staring at me through the office window, and the second I did, the blinds snapped shut.

  I shoved myself up to my feet and ran. “Joaquin!” I shouted.

  He was crossing the patio out back, headed for the woods on the southwest corner of the island.

  “Joaquin, stop!” I shouted again as the clouds moved in to block out the sun.

  Joaquin finally paused near the tree line, but he didn’t turn around. A rumble of thunder sounded nearby as I jogged to catch up with him, shoving my knotted hair away from my face. One huge drop of rain plopped onto my cheek.

  I blew out a breath, choked with anger, confusion, and despair. “What are we going to do?” I asked, my hands on my hips.

  “I don’t know,” he replied simply.

  “Why won’t he listen to us?” I asked.

  Joaquin sighed. “You’ve gotta understand.… If Tristan admits that something is wrong, if he even starts to think about it, then he’ll have to question everything. It’s like we’re asking him to give up on his whole belief system. Without this place…without the whole ‘balance of good and evil’ thing, he has nothing.”

  He’d have me, I thought as the rain started to come harder.

  “Well, why didn’t he tell me that?”

  Joaquin looked me in the eye. “Maybe you should ask him.”

  I pushed my hair away from my face. It didn’t escape me that even though Joaquin was pissed off, he was managing to see Tristan’s side of things. “You guys are really good friends, huh?”

  Joaquin smirked. “When we’re not fighting, yeah. Tristan’s like a brother.”

  Just like Darcy and me. The two of us could fight like crazy people, but in the end we’d always be there for each other. And I suddenly understood why Krista had been so eager to be my friend since I’d arrived in town. As the newest girls here, we had a lot in common. She was probably dying for a best friend, a sister figure. But I already had a sister. A sister I intended to keep with me forever, if I could only figure out how.

  “We have to do something,” I said. “With or without Tristan. We have to—”

  “Look, you should get inside,” Joaquin said, glancing toward town. “I have someplace I have to be right now. We’ll figure this out in the morning.”

  As he started to move away from me, the sky opened up, rain flattening the grass all around us and soaking my clothes right through. The leaves on the trees turned upside down, and some of the smaller ones bowed toward the ground. I started to shiver.

  “We can’t wait until the morning,” I protested, hugging myself against the sudden chill. “What if someone else gets taken tonight? What if they get sent to the wrong place?”

  “That’s not going to happen,” Joaquin replied, shaking his head. Water dripped from his eyelashes and chin. “No one ever gets taken in a storm.”

  I laughed sarcastically. “Oh, and there’s no chance that rule is going to be broken?”

  Joaquin gave me a hard look. “I’m sorry, Rory, but there’s something I have to take care of. You’re just gonna have to trust me. I’ll be at your place first thing in the morning.”

  Then he turned and slipped into the woods, disappearing between two huge trees. I just stood there, soaked and baffled, my teeth chattering, waiting for the punch line. He had something to take care of in the middle of the woods, right now, when two seconds ago he’d been about ready to throw down with Tristan?

  Shaking from head to toe, I turne
d to look back at the mayor’s house. I’d never seen it from this angle before, and for the first time, I noticed the large garage facing the driveway. The door was open, and sitting inside, safe from the rain and wind, was a sleek silver convertible. The very same car I’d seen idling near the cliff the other night.

  The mayor had met with Dorn. Dorn, who was watching me just like Nadia was. A chill went down my spine, and as I turned to go, I saw Tristan standing on the porch under the cover of its wide roof, staring out at me.

  You’ve been here longer than anyone, Joaquin had said. And Tristan hadn’t argued. Was that really true? How long was “longer than anyone”? And was it even possible that one person had been sent to Juniper Landing alone, with no one there to guide him?

  Slowly, I headed back toward town. Joaquin didn’t want to deal with this tonight? Fine. As of that moment, I had my own mission to carry out.

  Navigating the descent to the cove that night in the pouring rain and pitch dark was terrifying. The wind was so fierce it drove the rain sideways, each droplet a sharp dart against my skin. Halfway down the rocky decline, my foot slipped on the rocks, and as my arms flung out to grasp at the nothingness, I was sure I was about to fall to my death. Then my back hit a jagged point and I remembered: I couldn’t die. But I could feel excruciating pain.

  I scrambled to my knees and checked the pocket of my rain jacket to make sure my flashlight hadn’t tumbled out. Shakily, I pushed myself to my feet and took baby steps all the way to the bottom of the hill. When I could finally see the sand, I unclenched my jaw and jumped the last few feet. The ground squished beneath the soles of my sneakers, bubbling up around the rubber treads with the consistency of oatmeal.

  I could just make out the shadowy humps of the tents in the distance. Not surprisingly, they were dark and still. I flicked on my flashlight and ran it along the rock wall to my left, inching forward until I finally found the opening of the cave. It looked smaller somehow, as I stood there in front of it alone. Threatening. For one brief moment I thought I saw something flicker deep inside, and I almost turned around and ran.