Hereafter

  The little, well-tended patch of earth I now faced proved this last assumption wrong. And despite that fact—despite the obvious love that went into the grave’s care—its very appearance broke my heart into a million pieces.

  Behind me, a concrete slab lay flush to the ground. Concrete, I suppose, because my parents couldn’t have afforded much else. Someone had carefully cleared away the grass from the concrete slab and wiped it clean of dead leaves. A ceramic pot filled with silk daisies sat at the base of the stone.

  Simple block letters were imprinted on the stone’s surface. Apart from the epitaph, the letters read much like my senior yearbook inscription:

  AMELIA ELIZABETH ASHLEY

  APRIL 30, 1981—April 30, 1999

  BELOVED DAUGHTER FOREVER

  Seeing those words, all I could imagine was my father’s face as he chose that concrete stone at the funeral parlor and my mother’s hands as they gathered up those daisies in the fabric store.

  My dead and unbeating heart could still ache with grief, so it seemed. Fiercely so. I wiped at the one tear that had coursed its way down my cheek and turned back around to stare up at Eli. Even his unpleasant face would be better to look at than the last gifts my parents had left me.

  Meeting my eyes, Eli nodded grimly. “So, now you see why I know your last name, Amelia Ashley.”

  “How did you find this?” I asked.

  “I was here myself only a month ago, wandering a bit and thinking. When, lo and behold, who did I see appear out of thin air? My little Amelia, choking and gasping right on top of that grave. You must have materialized here without meaning to. By doing so you solved a great mystery: where does Amelia go when she disappears? After answering that riddle for me, you ran away, not seeing or sensing me.”

  I nodded absently, processing this information. So, Eli had watched me wake up from a nightmare. That explained how he knew about “my” graveyard and how he’d discovered my last name. Yet, another question remained.

  “Why were you here in the first place, Eli?”

  Eli frowned heavily. “It may surprise you to know, Amelia, that I find this place as distasteful as you do. But, just like you, I return to it occasionally, for reasons even I don’t fully understand.”

  My eyebrows knit together in an unspoken question. In answer, Eli held out his hand.

  “Come on. I’ll show you.”

  I stared warily at his outstretched hand. Eli sighed impatiently and waggled his fingers at me.

  “It’s not a snake, Amelia. It won’t hurt you.”

  “No, but you might.”

  Eli sighed again and pulled back his hand. “Fine. Would you at least follow me, then?”

  I thought about the request for a moment, then rose to my feet, trying to repress the thought that I currently stood on my own grave. And that I actually walked across my own grave as I followed Eli deeper into the cemetery.

  Eli strode slowly through the grass for a while until he came to a weathered headstone. He stopped at the foot of the grave and, expressionless, stared at it.

  “This,” he said, gesturing to the stone. “This is why I come here.”

  The writing on the marker was plain and nondescript, perhaps intentionally so. It merely read:

  ELI ROWLAND

  1956—JULY 11, 1975

  CLIMBING THE STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN

  “Yikes,” I murmured.

  Eli snorted in agreement. “My band mates obviously couldn’t remember my birthday. I don’t even think they contacted my family about my death. But the Led Zeppelin inscription’s a nice touch, isn’t it?”

  “Heartfelt.” I turned back to him. “So . . . this means we’re buried in the same cemetery?”

  He nodded, and then the tiniest smile crept over his features. When he spoke again, his tone had lost some of its bitter edge. “More proof that we’re fated to be together, don’t you think?”

  “If that were the case, Eli, I’d have a whole graveyard full of choices, wouldn’t I?”

  Eli chuckled darkly but then turned his eyes back to his headstone without further comment. He didn’t even watch me when I walked away from him.

  I picked my way through the weeds, back to the relatively manicured area in which my own concrete slab lay. Once there, I knelt at the foot of my grave and pressed my hands to the low grass. It seemed firm enough beneath my hands. This plot of earth was no dream, no nightmare.

  I had an instant, sickening thought: what lay in the grave now, just six feet below my fingertips? I didn’t know, but I could guess. An unbidden picture flashed into my mind, and I gagged. I turned my face to my shoulder so I wouldn’t have to stare at this suddenly repulsive stretch of grass.

  Unfortunately, I realized only too late that I shouldn’t have turned. In doing so, I brought another headstone into my line of sight: the one right next to mine.

  The early-morning sun had crested the horizon, and it now threw its soft pink rays from behind the neighboring headstone. The rays were almost strong enough to shadow the headstone and obscure its letters. Almost, but not quite.

  On a tall stone, only slightly fancier than mine, the following letters glared out at me:

  TODD ALLEN ASHLEY

  JUNE 5, 1960—MARCH 29, 2006

  WE’LL MEET AGAIN

  The breath simply whooshed out of my lungs. As I sat there trying to reclaim it—hands pressed to the ground, eyes fixated on my father’s epitaph—the faint tunes of a song echoed in my ears. I closed my eyes and imagined the scene that had always seemed to go along with it.

  My father and mother, on one of their happier days. One of those days when money worries or job insecurities didn’t bother them as much, and they each remembered the other’s presence. On those days my father would barge into our tiny kitchen and scoop my mother into his arms. It wouldn’t matter if she was covered in flour from making our dinner or suds from the dishes. She would wrap her arms around his neck and lay her head upon his shoulder while he crooned an old tune to her, one that promised they’d meet again, sometime, someplace.

  The song was so loud in my head, I didn’t hear Eli walk up behind me.

  “You don’t have to be sad about your death anymore, Amelia.” Eli’s voice cut off the song just at its crescendo. “I’m here to share it with you,” he added, placing one hand upon my shoulder.

  I brushed Eli’s hand away, perhaps with unnecessary force. “I’m not sad about my death, Eli. I’m sad about his.” I pointed to my father’s grave, my finger jutting out in a rigid accusation, as if to blame the grave itself for my misery.

  “Oh. And who is this?”

  “My father,” I whispered.

  “This stone?” Eli leaned over me to read the stone. “Todd Ashley? This is your father?”

  “Y-yes.”

  The word broke apart as I spoke it. I pressed one hand to my lips in an effort to hold back the torrent, but it was too late. My enormous, gasping sobs ripped through the dawn air, wrenching out of me not only my breath but also a great flood of tears.

  I sank, then, at the foot of my father’s grave. I left my hands on the grass and lay my head upon them. I let my tears fall from my face, onto my hands and then onto the ground.

  “You’re . . . crying,” Eli breathed in wonder.

  “Yes,” I moaned, but then barked out a bizarre little laugh. I pushed myself back up into a seated position, wiping ineffectually at my cheeks and my chin. “I’ve been known to do that from time to time.”

  Eli grabbed my waist, and, before I realized what was happening, he pulled me to my feet and whirled me around to face him.

  “You’ll never have to cry again. Not while you’re with me.”

  His fingers dug into the fabric of my dress. With one huge breath—for courage, perhaps—he wrenched me to him and pressed his lips to mine.

  His mouth muffled my cry of protest. I shoved hard against his chest, but my struggles only made him pull me tighter.

  As the kiss continued, I cried out
again, but not in protest. This time, I did so in fear.

  Because, while Eli kept his mouth crushed to mine, I felt a piercing sensation there, like something had ripped the delicate skin of my lower lip apart. The corners of my eyes prickled from the pain.

  When Eli loosened his grip in an attempt to cup my cheek, I was finally able to break free. As I pushed myself out of his arms, I had to retreat several steps back onto my own grave. Even without the pressure of Eli’s mouth to mine, my bottom lip still throbbed painfully, rhythmically. My tongue darted to the tender spot on my lips and, inexplicably, I tasted copper.

  “What did you just do to me?” I gasped, bringing my fingers to my lips but not yet touching them.

  Eli had the decency, at least, to look confused. “I’m pretty sure I kissed you, Amelia.”

  I dragged the back of my hand across my mouth and then looked down at it. There, smeared across the skin of my hand, was a streak of something bright red.

  Blood.

  “Y-your teeth,” I stuttered. “I think they cut me. I . . . I’m bleeding.”

  Eli shook his head, uncomprehending. “No. No, that’s not possible.”

  “Oh, it isn’t?” I said, wiping again at my mouth where I could still feel a hot swell of blood. “Then what’s this on my lips?”

  “I don’t know. But whatever it is, you’re wrong,” Eli protested. “I wouldn’t hurt you, Amelia. Not like that. Besides, I couldn’t if I tried—we’re both dead.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” My voice rose to a near shout. “You won’t be kissing me again anyway.”

  “Oh, I think I will, Amelia. We’re fated.”

  “Quit saying that,” I hissed.

  “I’ll say whatever I want to you. You’re fated to serve me, remember?”

  I laughed and shook my head. “Oh, I remember, Eli. And thanks for reminding me: I should have known better than to trust you, even for a second.”

  Eli’s mouth twisted as if he’d bitten into something sour. “And who do you trust, Amelia Ashley? That boy? That living boy?”

  I thrust back my shoulders. “That’s none of your business, Eli Rowland.”

  His scowl deepened into a disdainful smile. “Exactly what do you hope to do with him? Live a long and happy life?”

  “I’ll do whatever I want with him,” I shouted, but Eli merely laughed at me. The cruel sound crawled over my skin.

  “You’re missing one very important detail, Amelia,” he said. “You can’t share your future with that boy, because there is no future for you. He’ll age, but you’ll stay the same, forever, dead—unchanging. Futureless.”

  “I don’t have to stay here and listen to this,” I spat. “And I’m not going to.”

  I spun on my heels to leave, to go anywhere but here, and fast. Before I could run away, though, Eli grabbed one of my wrists and whirled me back around to face him.

  Immediately, I became aware of a rough burning upon my wrist at the place where Eli’s fingers gripped me. I looked down at my arm and gasped. Just beneath Eli’s fingers, pale pink streaks appeared on my skin: abrasions, caused by his too-tight grip.

  As Eli had said, it wasn’t possible. Yet as I struggled, the marks beneath his fingers grew brighter, more irritated.

  “Eli, my arm!” I looked back up at him in panic. Eli, however, didn’t seem to hear me. His eyes, bright and frenzied, bored into mine. I tried in vain to yank my wrist from his grip while I clawed at his fingers with my free hand.

  “Stop it!” I shrieked. “You’re hurting me!”

  Eli ignored my demand and tugged me closer.

  “But maybe I’m forgetting something too, Amelia. After all, isn’t your death one of the reasons you came to see me? You did want to know about your death, didn’t you?” That malicious smile changed into something darker, something wilder. “Well, honey, let me fulfill your wish.”

  “No! Let me go,” I cried out just as I lost the tug-of-war with my arm. Eli finally pulled me to him, his face only a few inches from mine.

  “Too late, Amelia. Too late.”

  “Please,” I gasped. I couldn’t quite catch my breath, and the bones in my wrist strained under his grip.

  “Don’t beg. It’s unbecoming,” Eli whispered. Then he jerked me even closer to him, pressing his body to mine. “Now, I’m going to tell you something very important and then I’ve got to get to my second appointment today. I don’t have much time, so listen carefully: you didn’t fall off that bridge.”

  “No,” I moaned. “I fell. I know I fell. I didn’t jump.”

  “Shut up,” Eli commanded. “You didn’t fall. And you didn’t jump, either.”

  “W-what?” I shook my head, unable to think clearly, unable to understand.

  Eli leaned in until his cold lips brushed my earlobe. Softly, almost too softly for me to hear, he whispered, “You were pushed.”

  Without warning, Eli let go of my arm.

  I hadn’t stopped struggling and so I flew backward from the momentum. I fell toward the ground, staring wildly up at Eli’s twisted face.

  The last thing I heard, before my vision went black, was the loud crack of my head against my own tombstone.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  .....................................................................

  Chapter

  Twenty-Three

  It was the same as always.

  I opened my eyes to the terrible, familiar water. It churned and frothed around me, whether from the river’s current or my struggles, I couldn’t be sure. The water obscured my vision, battered against my weakening limbs, and pried at my lips, trying to open them and inundate my lungs.

  My lungs ached for air, and my arms ached from flailing. Black spots—the by-products of a lack of oxygen—began to dance across my eyes.

  Another nightmare. I was in another nightmare.

  The rational part of my brain recognized this fact. It spoke softly, quietly telling the rest of my brain that this horror would end soon, that I always awoke from this wretched scene even if I did so as a dead girl. I knew this much: if I stopped struggling, the nightmare would eventually end and I would wake up in the graveyard.

  And after I woke up, I would be able to return to Joshua. The very thought of his name gave me hope. It gave me a reason to let go of the fight no matter how much it went against my somewhat ironic survival instinct.

  So I stopped struggling. I let my arms and legs go slack. I let the current pull at them, let it catch them and drag them. I closed my eyes just so I wouldn’t have to watch this part of the nightmare happen, and I opened my mouth to breathe the inevitable air of the graveyard.

  Yet water instead of air rushed into my open mouth. I choked on it, inadvertently allowing in more water. I opened my eyes, but I still saw the dark river around me, not the sunlit cemetery.

  Something was going horribly wrong.

  I’d never choked before. In no other nightmare had the water actually entered my lungs. I always woke up just before the point of death. Always.

  But not now, it seemed.

  My lungs screamed in my chest since the water burned them far worse than the lack of air had. My whole body moved in a frenzied response to the burning in my chest, arms flapping and legs scissoring beneath me.

  I flailed, I flailed, and then—

  Impossibly, I rose. Within seconds, my head emerged from the water.

  I felt wind, and the heavy pelting of rain against my skin. The rain came from all directions, pouring down on me in a torrent and then splashing back off the river and into my face.

  My body began to react again. I coughed twice and choked up some of the water from my lungs. My hands slapped weakly against the surface of the river, mostly ineffective in their battle to keep me afloat.

  While I floundered, I felt the strangest sensation along my wrists, under my jaw, in my chest: a heavy thumping that reverberated throughout my body. Without being terrib
ly cognizant of what I was doing, I clenched one hand to my heart.

  Only then, with my hand pressed against my chest, did I realize what was happening: my heart was beating. That was a pulse, thumping at my wrists and under my jaw.

  I was alive.

  I opened my mouth to scream—from fear, from joy. And for help. If I was truly alive, I needed help, fast.

  But another noise cut off my scream: laughter, loud and crazed, from somewhere high above me. Individual voices blended together in their frenzy, with only the occasionally distinct shriek.

  Despite the uniformity of the laughing voices, they all sounded so familiar. Who were they? Where were they?

  I squinted up through the rain. Far above me I could just make out the shape of High Bridge and the crowd of figures standing at its edge.

  Don’t you remember this scene, Amelia? Isn’t everything awfully familiar?

  The silky voice—a darker version of my own—whispered in my head. I frowned as I continued to cough and choke up more water. What was happening here?

  I looked back up to the bridge and the figures on it.

  “Help,” I pleaded. The word came out as a feeble moan, barely loud enough to reach the bridge.

  At the sound of my voice, one of the figures moved away from the pack. Its head whipped away from the other figures, and it met my gaze. Even through the rain, I could see that the figure was a boy.

  I may not have been able to make out his features. But I could, at that moment, have easily described his square jaw, his perfectly straight nose, and his short blond crew cut.

  Because I knew the boy now staring down at me from High Bridge.

  I’d only known him for a short time, really, before my death. Only for my senior year, the one I’d practically forced my mother into letting me attend at Wilburton High School. The boy now watching me would have been in my graduating class, if I’d had the chance to graduate.

  I remembered him. I remembered everything about Doug Davidson.

  Doug, the most popular boy at school. The one with the most friends, the fastest car, and the richest parents. The one who had befriended me the minute I stepped into Wilburton High. The one who had . . . had . . .