The Afterlife of Holly Chase

  “Good.”

  I smiled. “Good.”

  He raised his arm, and a cab pulled right up to the curb. He took out his wallet and handed me a twenty. “Is this enough to get you there? Near the Flatiron, right?”

  “It’s enough. You’re always such a gentleman,” I teased.

  “Even when I don’t really want to be.” He kissed my cheek, and I slid into the back of the cab. “See you around.”

  “Later,” I said.

  He closed the door, and the cab took off down Fifth Avenue.

  “Flatiron?” the cab driver asked.

  “No.” I gave him my real address. I pivoted around in my seat to look out the back window and watch Ethan, who was still standing outside of Saint Thomas Church. Watching me, too.

  I felt so close to him then, a connection that I was sure was not just based on attraction or circumstance, not the accumulation of a bunch of fake stories I’d told him. Something we could build on. Something that would last.

  I waved to him. Then he was out of sight.

  I went home to pick up the Hoodie. Then I took the subway to Ro’s aunt’s place. Ro wasn’t home yet, so I waited. I don’t why. I guess seeing her had just jolted me, and I was overtaken by the urge to talk to her. The way we used to talk. While I was standing there across the street from her house, I imagined what it would be like if I were alive. If Ro and I were still friends. “There’s a guy,” I’d say to her, and she’d grin and say, “Oh, a guy, I see. What’s his name?” and I’d say, “Ethan. And I like him, Ro. I really do.” And maybe we’d jump around and squeal the way we used to do when we were, like, thirteen. Or maybe we’d be grown-ups and Ro would simply say, “I’m happy for you, Holly. You deserve someone in your life after all you’ve been through.”

  After what felt like forever, Ro came home. I smiled when I saw her. She was smiling, too, smiling up at this new guy—Jamie, she called him. They walked up to the fence together and stopped.

  “I had such a great time tonight,” Jamie said. Again with the holding hands.

  “Me too,” she said.

  “I like you, Ro,” he said. “I know we haven’t been seeing each other that long, and I probably should play it cool and see where it goes, but . . . I can’t be cool. I l—I like you so much it’s hard to think around you.”

  Of course Jamie would have to be crazy or stupid or both not to like Ro.

  It started to snow again. First it came down lightly, and then more heavily, in big, wet flakes, almost sleeting. Ro didn’t even seem to mind. She just looked up and held her hands out, and then looked over at Jamie and laughed.

  “Nice weather we’re having,” he observed. “So very romantic.”

  Ro took his hand. “I like you, too,” she said. She’d hesitated before she’d said it back to him, but she still said it. She obviously meant it. “I more than like you. Will you . . . will you come inside for a minute?”

  “Uh . . . sure,” he said.

  “I want you to meet my aunt,” she explained. “I mean, she’s important to me. She’s my family here. And I would really like you to meet her.”

  “I’d love to meet your aunt. My parents live in Jersey, but I’d really like to take you to meet them, too. If that’s okay.”

  She kissed him. She put her arms around his neck and lifted her face up to his, and in the middle of the kiss, she smiled, like she was just so happy to be with him. He smiled back, and reached to cup her face, his palm against her cheek, and he kissed her again. The snow drifted down around them, but they kept kissing. Again and again.

  At some point during all of this I started crying. The tears and melted snow mixed together on my face. Ro loved this guy, was what I knew she was really saying. I just stood there cold and shivering, watching them be so happy. And I was not happy for her. I knew it was stupid. I had Ethan. If I wanted to I could kiss him in the snow, and it would look the same. Probably better.

  But it had suddenly occurred to me what Ro would really say if I could tell her about Ethan. She’d say, “But he doesn’t even really know who you are, does he? How can you build on that?”

  And I’d say, “Maybe if I just wait until after Christmas. Maybe then, when the company’s not watching him, when it won’t get in the way of things, I can tell him the truth.”

  “And then what?” the Ro in my head asked me. “You’ll tell him that you’re actually dead, but you like him so much that you couldn’t help yourself? You’ll tell him, and he won’t care? And he’ll take that year off before college, but then he’ll go to college, and he’ll grow up, and you’ll just be here, resetting every day, sneaking out to be with him?”

  I didn’t have the answers.

  I had to get away from Ro. I couldn’t stand to watch her another minute.

  I took a deep, shaky breath. “Bye, Ro,” I whispered. I knew she couldn’t hear me, but the words weren’t for her, anyway. I wiped my face on the sleeve of my Hoodie and turned away, walking off through the snow toward where I could catch the subway home.

  TWENTY-ONE

  MY DOOR BUZZED. IT WAS Monday afternoon—I’d spent the last four days in bed, basically, feeling sorry for myself. I’d even called in sick to work, which I’d never done before, but I figured I had some sick days saved up after almost six years of slogging away at Project Scrooge. I deserved some time off.

  The door buzzed again. I pulled the covers over my head and tried to ignore it, but it kept buzzing, like an angry persistent bee swirling around my head. It wouldn’t go away.

  “All right,” I muttered, and rolled out of bed. I stalked across my apartment and pressed the intercom. “WHAT?”

  “Oh, hi, Holly,” came a squeaky voice. “It’s Stephanie.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I brought you turkey soup. I had so much leftover turkey.”

  That actually sounded pretty good. So I let her in.

  “Oh, you look awful,” she commented when I opened the door. She was wearing a yellow plaid shirt and capris, like a sunbeam determined to pierce the dimness of my world. She bustled into my kitchen and spooned some of the soup—which smelled delicious, by the way—into a bowl. I sat down at my little table and ate it slowly, while she perched on the chair across from me and watched the soup go from the bowl to my mouth like my life depended on it.

  “I’m so sorry you’re sick,” she said. “I didn’t know you could get sick when you’re dead.”

  “Well, I’m not actually dead, am I?” I said. Slurp.

  “The office wasn’t the same without you today. Boz is all freaked out, because we only have a few weeks left until Christmas. He says we’re going to have to work overtime if we’re going to be ready.”

  I couldn’t imagine how Boz was taking me not coming in to work, even if it was just one day. Or maybe the problem was that I could imagine it. And yet I couldn’t bring myself to care.

  “We always have to work overtime. That’s the company norm,” I said. Slurp, slurp. Already I was almost finished with my soup. I wondered if she’d brought dessert.

  “So how are you?” she asked. “Do you think you’ll come in tomorrow?”

  She looked genuinely worried.

  “Probably,” I muttered. My pity party about Ro couldn’t last forever. “Anything exciting happen while I was gone?”

  She brightened. “The fire alarm went off in the middle of the day, which has apparently never happened before at the company, and there was this mad scramble for everyone to cover up all the . . . otherworldly stuff before the firemen came in and were like, What the—? And then we all had to stand out on the street for a half hour waiting for permission to go back in, and Boz was pacing back and forth like a crazy person, worried that they’d see something they shouldn’t, and then he was saying something about a ‘forget serum’ that we haven’t had to use in years, and anyway, it was all very stressful. And then, when the firemen said everything was okay, it turned out the fire alarm had been caused by Marty making toa
st with the equipment in the Transport Room.”

  “Whoa.”

  She looked at me like, I know, right?

  “And what did Boz do?” I asked, aghast. The last thing I needed at this late stage in the game was having to find myself a new tech guy. Plus, even though he annoyed the crap out of me, I was kind of fond of Marty.

  “Boz said, ‘I’m very disappointed in you, young man.’ And that Marty owed the whole company a big apology. So at the next meeting in the Go Room, Marty stood up in front of everybody and said he was sorry.”

  “Oh. Is that all?” That was a bit anticlimactic, but at least I hadn’t lost Marty.

  “And the vending machines started carrying dried apricots, because someone in records complained about there not being enough healthy choices.”

  Ladies and gentlemen, my super-exciting work life. Fire drills and apricots.

  “Oh, and I almost forgot,” added Steph. “We’ve had a breakthrough. We figured out who Ethan’s Belle is. Dave figured it out, actually. Her name is Victoria.”

  I choked on my turkey soup. Stephanie patted me on the back while I coughed and coughed.

  “How does Dave know her name is Victoria?” I wheezed when I could speak again.

  “It was on the audio feed. Ethan said it on the phone with his mom. He told her he had a girlfriend, and her name was Victoria Scott. Dave’s been going crazy trying to figure out who she is. There’s no official record of a Victoria Scott living in New York City who’s, like, younger than seventy. Dave’s been spending all his time scouring social media profiles and stuff, but he hasn’t turned up anything that works. Ethan told his mom that he met this girl in the club, by the pool, he said, so Dave’s petitioning to start monitoring the gym areas now.”

  I reacted to this news in three ways. First: Oh crap. I was possibly about to be found out. Second: Aw, he told his mom about me. That must mean something. And third: Oh CRAP! Because now of course the company would send me off to sift through Ethan’s brain looking for Tori.

  Stephanie was staring at me like she’d been expecting an even bigger reaction. “So, it’s good news, right?” she said. “There’s a Belle after all. We just had to have faith it was all going to work out. So when you come back to work, we’ll sift around looking for this Victoria Scott.”

  I was officially screwed.

  I felt sick. “Thanks so much for the soup,” I croaked. “That was so thoughtful of you. You’re always so thoughtful.”

  “Whatever I can do to help,” she said.

  I nodded and tried to walk her back to the door. “Well. I’m sure you can’t stay long—I mean, you probably have plans tonight, so thanks again—”

  “I don’t have plans,” she said. “I don’t have any homework that’s pressing, and I already finished my psychology paper that’s due next week, and Grant and his buddies are all on World of Warcraft tonight, so I thought maybe you could use some company.”

  She pulled a DVD out of her bag. A movie. “This one’s my favorite. It’s about robots.”

  You’ll never guess who the director was.

  “I don’t have a TV,” I said, although now I was kind of bummed about it. I needed to be alone—to think, to try to work my way out of this current nightmare at Project Scrooge—but I also kind of wanted to hang out. Pretend my biggest problem was a head cold. Besides, I hadn’t seen that particular movie of my dad’s in forever.

  “We can watch it on my laptop,” she said, pulling that out of her bag, too.

  And so it happened that Stephanie and I spent the afternoon curled up on my ratty plaid sofa watching movies—not just one but two, although only the first one was my dad’s. In between movies we talked a little. I told her about growing up in California (although I didn’t mention that my dad was Gideon Chase because I wouldn’t have been able to stand that many wows), and she told me about growing up in Connecticut with her dad.

  “We never had much money,” she explained. “My dad tried his best, but he could never seem to get on top of things. Still, we had a lot of love to go around. It was a good childhood.”

  She was like the opposite of me in so many ways.

  “How’s it going with Grant?” I asked later, because this seemed like a safe topic of conversation.

  She grinned. “Great. So great.”

  My phone buzzed—a text. From Ethan. It read, Hey, you up? Want to meet at the lion?

  My scalp prickled thinking that Dave might read these texts. That he was hunting for Victoria Scott, and Victoria Scott was me, and if he found out, I’d be in a world of trouble so deep even the Marleys would probably feel sorry for me.

  I can’t tonight, I replied. There was no way I could see Ethan now. Not if they knew about Victoria.

  And just like that, it felt like it was over. No more Ethan. Deep down I’d always known it was going to happen. My time with Ethan was running out.

  “Hey, are you okay?” Stephanie asked, sitting up.

  “I’m fine,” I muttered, wiping at my eyes. “It’s just a lot of pressure this year.”

  “You’re Victoria Scott, aren’t you?” she said softly.

  Silence. I didn’t know what to say. I just stared at her.

  “I thought it was too big a coincidence,” she went on after a few long seconds. “You tell me that you want to hang out with Ethan in real life, and now he suddenly has a girlfriend. It’s you, right? I know it’s you.”

  I sighed. “Have you told Boz?”

  She looked offended. “No! Of course not! I promised that I’d keep your secret.” She took a deep breath. “I just didn’t think it was going to be this big of a secret. This is kind of a big secret, Holly.”

  “Yeah. I know.” I slumped into the couch.

  “I know you were trying to help him, but . . .” She bit her lip. “His girlfriend, Holly? Are you crazy?”

  “It just happened,” I said quickly. I was going to have to come up with an explanation, and it was going to have to be good. “I know it’s . . . unorthodox, but this relationship I’ve been developing with Ethan, I really do think it’s helping him. Since we’ve been together, he’s been . . . nicer. Better. He’s amazing, actually, he’s so . . . not like a Scrooge at all. You know, he told me that he’s actually become friends with Daniel Denton. He likes the kid now. He likes the Cratchit already. That’s good. That’s progress, right?”

  “Right,” she agreed hesitantly. “But what about the Belle? How can you be the Belle, Holly?”

  “I’m not the Belle. I can’t be.”

  “Well, the Belle always breaks up with the Scrooge, doesn’t she? You could break up with him. But . . .”

  I was shaking my head wildly. “No, I can’t . . .”

  “. . . what would you do on Christmas Eve? You can’t bring him back to revisit memories of you, Holly. He’d recognize you, and everyone would know.”

  Everyone would know.

  “I’m not the Belle,” I said faintly. “I can’t be the Belle.” Was I? For a moment I was utterly confused. I couldn’t be the Belle. I couldn’t go to Ethan now and play that part the way it always went for every Scrooge, where the Belle accuses the Scrooge of changing and being obsessed with money and says she can’t be with him anymore. Because that wasn’t the way it was between Ethan and me.

  “So what are we going to do?” Stephanie asked.

  “We need another Belle,” I whispered. “Someone else.”

  Stephanie frowned, which made the little bumps pop out on her forehead. “There’s no time for Ethan to fall in love with anybody now. Although I still think Ethan’s too young for someone—anyone—to be the love of his life.”

  A brilliant idea was starting to take shape in my brain. “We don’t need the love of his life. We need a breakup scene.”

  I jumped up from the couch. “Come on,” I said, grabbing my Hoodie off the back of the door. “Get your coat.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To the office. There’s something I need
to look into. Right now.”

  “Okay, people! Let’s go over this one more time.”

  One week until Christmas. Boz, as was his usual style for the last official Project Scrooge meeting of the year, was acting like he’d had ten cups of break-room coffee. He was practically bouncing off the walls of Conference Room A.

  “Here’s the lineup,” he said. “Marley—or, in this case, Ethan Winters the first—is our opener, of course. He warns Ethan that he’s about to receive a visit from three spirits when the bell tolls . . . when?”

  “One,” everybody around the table said at the same time.

  “Only there’s no real bell, you understand. It’s a metaphorical bell. But we do need Mr. Winters Senior in costume, in the Transport Room, no later than eleven thirty. Are we clear?”

  Yes, yes, we were clear. It wasn’t like we’d never done this before.

  “The Marley wears a costume?” whispered Stephanie from her place next to me.

  Well, one of us had never done this before.

  “Sort of. You’ll see.” I was saying you’ll see to Stephanie a lot these days.

  “Then we move into Act One,” Boz continued. “Havisham. She goes in on her own, introduces herself to our Scrooge, and then moves him through the Portal and into the Time Tunnel.”

  “Wait, the Time Tunnel?” Steph’s eyes were huge behind her glasses. “We have a Time Tunnel? How come nobody told me about this?”

  “How else did you think we were going to move through time?” I asked.

  “I thought we were going to re-create it somehow.”

  “Well, that wouldn’t be any fun. No, we actually go back in time, although we stay in another dimension—one that lies right on top of our own—so the Scrooge can’t, like, intervene and change the course of history. Look, but don’t touch, that’s the rule.”

  “How does that even work?”

  I shrugged. “Something about wormholes and interdimensional planes. I don’t do the science. I just play the part. If you want to know how it works, you’ll have to ask Grant. And then have a degree in quantum mechanics.”

  “Ahem.” Boz cleared his throat loudly. “Havisham.”