“I know it’s overwhelming,” Tristan said softly. “And I know you’re worried about your family, but look around. We’re your family, too, now, Rory. This is your new home.”
My heart thumped painfully. Kevin rubbed his nose with the back of his index finger. Bea gazed at me unwaveringly. Krista beamed, like I was her new baby sister. Pete tapped his toe, glancing over his shoulder. Joaquin shot me a small smirk, Lauren teetering and hiccuping at his side. Fisher smiled at me, like we were sharing a private joke. Nadia and Cori stood arm in arm, an alliance of two, while Nadia scowled openly.
I tried to believe what Tristan was saying—that these people could be my family—but my heart closed in on itself. I hadn’t shared Christmases and birthdays and Thanksgivings with them. They’d never seen me win a science fair or run a race. They hadn’t been there when I contracted the chicken pox at age six or when I broke my arm on the tire swing at my grandma’s or when they lowered my mother’s casket into the ground.
I knew who my true family was. But you still have them, I reminded myself. You still have Dad and Darcy. At least for now, and hopefully for always.
“If it means anything,” Tristan said finally, “I think you’re ready.”
“We all do,” Joaquin added loudly.
I looked at Nadia, who stared past me at Tristan, smoldering. It was obvious she didn’t want me here. We might have been “family,” but it was pretty clear we were never going to be friends. But I wasn’t about to let her and her blatant feelings for Tristan stop me from accepting my new mission—or from being with Tristan.
“I’m ready,” I said, my gaze locked on Nadia. “I’m beyond ready.”
Her eyes narrowed at me for a brief second before she looked away.
“Yay!” Krista cheered. She produced some kind of string and held it out to me. It was a woven leather bracelet. I reached out my left arm and let her tie it to my wrist. The leather was hard, its pungent, tangy scent emanating from my arm. When I moved, it slid halfway to my elbow, then back down again. It was nothing like Tristan’s, which was so worn the color had faded to a light tan, and so fitted it never moved from his wrist.
Joaquin let out a whoop, and everyone started applauding. The sound filled the cave, and the crowd collapsed toward me, hugging me like I was the long-lost kid sister they never knew they had. Krista threw her arms around me so tightly I thought she’d never let go, and Fisher put his massive hand on my head to ruffle my hair. As I turned into Bea’s arms, I saw Nadia hovering near the edge of the cave, and a chill went right through me. She shot me a sharp, slit-eyed scowl before turning her back on the rest of us and disappearing into the night.
She’s feeling it now. What it’s like to be accepted. What it’s like to be part of a group. I’ll bet she didn’t have a lot of friends in the other world. She was too serious for that. Too focused. But here, things can be different. There will be no graduation, no Ivy League to strive for, no stellar career out there waiting to be achieved. Here, she can relax. She can have fun. She can take risks and be wild and maybe even fall in love.
She’s starting to feel it.
I did, too, once upon a time. But I’ve been here long enough to know that this fairy tale doesn’t last. The euphoria ends. That’s why I’ve written a new happily ever after, off this make-believe island. The world is changing, and my new adventure is about to start.…
I woke up early the next morning, the bright sun shining through the window behind my bed, and blinked in confusion. I didn’t even remember dozing off. I’d been so wired after partying at the cove with my new “family” that I’d felt like I would never fall asleep. But as I stretched my arms over my head, I was oddly energized, and when my stiff new leather bracelet slipped toward my elbow, I knew exactly why.
Tristan had invited me to spend the day with him, learning everything I needed to know to be a Lifer. A whole day alone with Tristan. I tossed the covers off and yanked on the first clothes I saw—a T-shirt from the desk chair and jeans from the floor—then tore down the stairs, smiling at the now familiar sound of my dad pounding away on his keyboard inside his room. I was just headed out the front door when I heard the floor creak behind me.
“Where’re you going?” Darcy asked.
I hesitated for a split second before turning to face her. She was already showered and dressed, uncharacteristically early for her. I saw the hopeful curiosity written all over her face and knew she wanted to get out of the house, but I also knew she couldn’t come with me. Not on this particular errand.
“Um…for a run?” I said, guilt oozing out of my pores.
She narrowed her eyes. “In jeans?”
I looked down. Damn. One of the very few times in my life I was not sporting running shorts or sweats and she had to call me on it.
“A walk, I meant.”
“I’ll come with you,” she said, grabbing her sunglasses off the front table next to the framed photograph of our family—me, my sister, my mom, my dad—the only one we still had of the four of us.
I bit my bottom lip. “Actually, I’m going to hang out with Tristan,” I finally admitted, my face pulsating with heat.
Darcy’s eyes widened; then she gave me a knowing smile. “I see. Have fun,” she said meaningfully.
“Uh, thanks!” I said awkwardly. “We’ll hang out later!”
Outside, the warmth enveloped me and I took a deep breath of the sweetly scented air as I sped up the hill toward town. On my way across the park, I saw Officer Dorn and his boss, Chief Grantz, standing close together, staring down at the paved sidewalk. A small white bird lay dead at their feet, half a dozen fat flies buzzing around it. I wrinkled my nose, and suddenly, both of the officers looked up at me, an accusatory gleam in their eyes. But for what? A dead bird?
Just then, Nadia rode across the street on a dirt bike and skidded to a stop right next to them. They shared a few words, and her eyes snapped up to glare at me, too. I shivered in the warm sunlight, then quickly turned my back on them and started walking again. As I started up the hill to the bluff, it took every ounce of self-control within me to keep from looking back. After what felt like an eternity, I knocked on Tristan’s front door.
Krista answered, wearing her blue-and-white gingham general store uniform. “Hi, Rory!”
I smiled, Krista’s ever-upbeat attitude instantly squelching what was left of my uneasiness.
“Hey!” I said. “Going to work?”
“Yeah. I was just heading out,” she said, slipping past me onto the porch. “Listen, I wanted to ask you…I’m having this big party on Friday night, and I was wondering if you’d want to be on the planning committee.”
I blinked. “The planning committee?”
She smiled and blushed, smoothing her bangs off her forehead with her fingertip. “Yeah. It’s my one-year anniversary on the island,” she explained, tilting her head and biting her bottom lip. “It’s kind of a big deal, so the other girls are helping me plan it.”
I fiddled with the end of my braid. Party planning was definitely not my thing. But she looked so hopeful.
“Sure,” I said. “When do you need me?”
Krista squealed and grabbed me into a hug. “That’s great! We’re meeting here, Wednesday morning, at ten sharp.”
“Okay. I’ll be here.”
“Cool. If you’re looking for Tristan, he’s up in his room. Just go upstairs. It’s the second door on the left,” she said as she jogged down the porch stairs.
“Thanks,” I called after her.
She lifted a hand and hustled around the corner, out of sight.
I took a deep breath and walked inside, closing the door behind me. The foyer was huge and silent, lit dimly in the morning sun. The floors were a dark, polished wood, and matching wainscoting reached halfway up the walls. The decor was impeccable but impersonal: the nap of a deep red Turkish rug was all swept in one direction, as if recently vacuumed. One perfect orchid in a gold vase sat atop a gleaming hall table. The
walls were a warm, creamy white, bare of any photographs or portraits, aside from a landscape painting of Juniper Landing’s town hall.
A tall, banistered staircase stood to my right, but before I could move, a floorboard creaked somewhere nearby. I saw a shadow under the edge of a door on the far side of the foyer. It hovered there, as if listening.
For a long moment, I just stood there, vacillating somewhere between an instinct to run and my yearning to see Tristan. Finally, the footsteps receded and a door slammed shut at the back of the house. Unfrozen, I took the stairs to the second floor two at a time, looking into each doorway until I saw Tristan. He was standing with his back to me at a drawing table, which was set up to face a bay window overlooking the ocean, and he was holding something in his hands. Suddenly he tossed the heavy item into the bottom drawer of a storage cabinet under the desk, locked the drawer, pocketed the key, then turned around before I could come up with a good excuse for my hovering there.
“Hey!” he said, his eyes lighting up at the sight of me.
My heart warmed and I instantly relaxed. “Hi.”
He was wearing an aqua T-shirt that made his eyes stand out, even from across the room. There was something about seeing him there, in his own space, that made him seem vulnerable. He glanced around at the messy bedspread, the open trunk at the foot of the bed—filled with sneakers and flip-flops and what appeared to be a pair of fuzzy bear slippers—and the nautical-themed mirror with a crack in the right-hand corner.
“Um, welcome to my room,” he said. Then he scratched the back of his neck, smiling sheepishly, and quickly whacked the trunk closed.
“Thanks,” I said. “Krista let me in.”
“So, are you ready for your tour?” he asked.
“That’s why I’m here,” I said, smiling.
“I’m glad you’re still excited about all this,” Tristan replied, picking at the carved edge of his bed’s footboard. “Especially after last night. Sometimes when the first ushering doesn’t go smoothly, new Lifers have a tendency to…”
“Freak out?” I supplied.
“To put it mildly,” he replied with a chuckle. “I should’ve known you’d be different.” He held my gaze for a long moment, so long I started to blush.
“So, where’re we going?” I asked finally.
“Follow me,” he said, heading for the door. He paused and looked back over his shoulder with a heart-stopping grin. “You’re gonna love this.”
“I knew it!” I shoved Tristan with both hands. “I knew someone was watching me that day!”
Through the gleaming window I had a perfect view of the room across the street—the room Olive had occupied in the Freesia Lane boarding house last week when she was here. I’d gone looking for her there when she stood me up for breakfast, and I could have sworn someone was spying on me from this very room.
“Yeah, that was Lauren,” Tristan said, holding the blue brocade curtain back. “She told me later that she was sure you’d spotted her over here. She had such a panic attack about it that Krista let her reorganize her closet to calm her down.”
“That’s calming?” I raised an eyebrow at Tristan.
He threw up his hands. “It is for Lauren.”
“I saw the blinds move, but I didn’t see who was behind them.” It was weird, staring out that window, imagining my own curious face peering in from the other side.
“With practice, you get really good at not being seen,” Tristan told me. His words hung in the air for a long moment, and I had a feeling he was thinking the same thing I was. He hadn’t done such a great job of not being seen by me.
Tristan cleared his throat. “So, what do you think of the behind-the-scenes tour so far?”
I chewed on my bottom lip and glanced around the room. The wood floors were old and creaky, and the fraying lawn furniture haphazardly placed around the room left something to be desired. It had been like this in every “lookout” Tristan had taken me to—the library attic, which afforded a perfect 360-degree view of the town from its windowed rotunda, the widow’s walk above the surf shop overlooking the ferry dock. Even the upstairs apartment at the Crab Shack had offered nothing more than a vinyl couch and a cracked cooler. Whatever Lifer life was like, it wasn’t glam.
“Don’t you guys ever want to, you know, get comfortable?” I asked.
Tristan laughed and leaned against the window, the sun illuminating his handsome face and highlighting the lines of his chest. I blushed and glanced away, focusing on the sidewalk outside. Fisher and Kevin walked by, in the midst of an intense conversation, and Fisher checked over his shoulder three times in the space of five seconds. Then they disappeared from view. I stepped closer to the window next to Tristan, to see if anyone was following them, but the street was empty.
“We’re never in one place for very long, I guess,” Tristan said. “But if you want to make any changes anywhere, feel free. You’re one of us now.”
He gave me this look that sent a warm glow through my chest, like he was glad, relieved, even, to finally be able to say that.
“Noted,” I said, my heart rate skipping all over the place. “So, what’s next?”
Tristan hesitated. He shifted almost imperceptibly from one foot to the other. “Well, there is one more place you should see.”
It was clear that whatever it was, he didn’t exactly want to show it to me. Intrigued, I followed him down the stairs and out into the bright sunlight. It didn’t take long for me to figure out where he was taking me, and my pulse started to thrum as we stopped outside the gray house across the street from my own. Tristan had told me that his grandmother lived out there and that she liked to watch the world go by. That was how he’d explained away the moving curtains, my constant feeling of being watched, and the fact that he always seemed to be hanging out there. I glanced over my shoulder at Darcy’s window, hoping she wasn’t looking out. The house stared back at me, its two upper windows and double front door forming an accusatory face.
“You okay?” Tristan asked.
“Yep,” I replied curtly.
“All right, then.”
We strode up the steps and Tristan shoved the door. It let out a loud, painful squeal as it swung open. It wasn’t until I stepped inside the cool, shadowy, empty house that I realized I’d actually imagined what it might be like inside. In my mind’s eye I’d seen antique chairs set up around an ancient card table. I’d imagined lace doilies placed over the backs of upholstered sofas, a faded chintz rug, a fireplace decorated with knickknacks and framed portraits of grandchildren. Instead, what greeted me was a whole lot of nothing. The walls were gray and bare, the fireplace boarded up, and the only furniture on the first floor was a plain white desk, set up right in the center of the living room.
“Let’s go up,” Tristan said quietly.
I held on to the worn banister as I followed him up the stairs to the room that faced Darcy’s. Here we found three white wicker chairs with faded and stained cushions, all of them facing the windows. I pushed a curtain aside and looked out. Darcy lay back on her four-poster bed, holding a magazine at arm’s length up over her face. The view was so perfect I could see her blink.
“Wow,” I said. “This is just—”
“Creepy?” Tristan supplied.
“Yeah,” I said, turning away from the window.
“Maybe we should—”
Instead of finishing his sentence, he undid the faded tieback on the first curtain, and the fabric fell across the window, blocking the view of my house. Then he did the same with the other two windows, tossing the tiebacks onto the floor and casting us in relative darkness.
“I’m sorry,” Tristan said finally. “It’s just…it’s what we do.”
I tried to think back to all the times I’d been on the front porch or in Darcy’s room. Tried to remember what he and his friends might have seen.
“What’s the point?” I asked finally.
He seemed startled. “What do you mean?”
&
nbsp; “I mean what’s the point?” I asked, extending my hand toward the covered windows. “What’s the point of all the watching?”
“Oh.” He chuckled, as if relieved. He gently rested his hands on the back of one of the wicker chairs. “We have to keep an eye on the visitors. We have to interact with them, because we’re integral in sending them where they need to go.”
A cold gush of fear crashed over me. “Wait a minute. You said you don’t decide where people end up.”
“We don’t,” Tristan replied.
“So what does that mean?” I asked. “How are you integral?”
He chewed on his bottom lip and looked up at the plaster ceiling, crisscrossed with cracks. “It’s a little hard to explain, but basically, everything we see, everything we hear…it all goes into the ultimate decision.”
“Do you have to write a report or something?” I asked, resting my hands on the chair across from his.
“No. Nothing like that,” Tristan said with a short laugh. “The information we gather, it just goes where it needs to be.”
“So what you’re saying is, you’re telepathic,” I said.
He shrugged, tilting his head to one side. “Kind of. We all are.”
“And you send telepathic messages to who? God?” I asked, almost laughing at the absurdity of the concept. Fortunately, though, I managed to hold my tongue. I didn’t want to offend him.
“I don’t actually know,” Tristan said. “I’ve tried never to ask that question.”
“How could you never ask that question?” I blurted out, my grip tightening on the back of the chair. “That’s the single most important question there is! Why are we here? Why are we doing all this? If I’m going to be someone’s eyes and ears, I’d kind of like to know who that someone is.”
“I don’t ask that question, Rory, because I’ll never get an answer,” Tristan said, his voice reaching a point very close to anger, a point I’d never seen him approach before.
I looked down at the floor, my face burning. “Oh.”