“What?”
“It’s just that I have to prep for the competition and all this spirit stuff is becoming a distraction. And with my head the way it is, I need to be able to focus. It’s hard for me to do that with you around.”
I feel as if I’ve been smacked in the face by a colossal wave. I sit up in bed and turn toward the slatted closet doors as if I can look through them and through the walls and houses beyond until I see Frankie. I want to see his face. I hate having these kinds of conversations on the phone.
“Okay,” I reply, shoving my words past the painful lump in my throat. “I guess we’ll talk next week. Good luck.”
“Belinda?”
I hang up quickly and pull my blanket over my face to soak up the tears. My bedroom door opens and my mom walks in wearing a huge grin and holding out a small white paper bag in front of her. When she sees my face her grin disappears.
“What’s wrong?” she asks as she takes a seat at the foot of my bed and sets down the white Trixie’s bag.
I’m immediately reminded of my first date with Conor and how Mara swooped in to save the day multiple times that night. She never does that when I’m with Frankie.
“Nothing. I’m just stressed out about finals,” I say as I try to forget Frankie’s words.
“Do you really think I’m going to believe that?” my mom replies as she reaches up to wipe my cheek.
I whip my head back so she can’t touch me. “Please, Mom. I don’t want to have a mother-daughter talk right now.”
She purses her lips at me as she hands me the Trixie’s bag. “I got you your favorite to thank you for helping me with Frankie.”
“Oh, please, you didn’t need my help. You were just trying to get me closer to Frankie. I’m not stupid.”
“Watch your tone, Belinda.”
“You’re the one who came in my room.”
“What happened? Did Conor find out about Frankie?”
“There’s nothing to find out. Frankie doesn’t even want to see me.”
The tears are falling so quickly I can’t wipe them away fast enough. My salty tears soak through my blanket and mingle with the fresh smell of fabric softener. I breathe the muddled scent and it reminds me of the beach.
Frankie doesn’t want to see me until after the competition. Does that mean he doesn’t even want me to watch him compete? My stomach clenches painfully as my mom wraps her arms around me. I want to push her away, but for some reason I think of my dad and I go limp as a ribbon in her arms.
My dad always said that crying was our way of getting rid of the bad feelings. He said every teardrop represented one bad thought and that I should always cry when I feel like crying because otherwise those bad thoughts clog up your insides and pretty soon you can’t feel anything—no bad feelings or good feelings. He even had a catchphrase for the times he would catch me trying to hold in my tears: Don’t muck about. Let it out.
That’s exactly what I do. I let it out all over my mother’s shoulder for a good ten minutes until my insides feel raw with exhaustion.
As soon as my mom goes downstairs, I call Conor again.
Chapter 45
As Belinda gets ready for her date with Conor, I can’t help but feel excited about the fact that Belinda and Conor will have a whole week to bond without any confusion or interference from Frankie. This is my chance.
The sun is a bloody orange orb suspended in the western sky as I follow Belinda outside. She slinks into the passenger seat of Conor’s car and the longing to feel the warm sunlight pouring over my skin is overwhelming. As he closes the passenger door and rounds the car to get inside, I can sense the tension between them. I flutter into the backseat to watch.
“So where are you taking me?” Belinda asks, her voice a bit smaller than usual; a silent apology for not saying I love you.
“I told you it was a surprise,” Conor responds. Though he seems a bit peeved, I know Darius is not possessing him. Darius doesn’t know how to drive so letting Conor drive while under his influence would be a death sentence.
Conor heads toward the hills, passing his posh neighborhood until he turns right, away from the ocean, onto a small highway that appears abandoned. The road narrows as the overgrown trees and brush press inward. Belinda’s breathing has quickened. She’s nervous, but she doesn’t speak. Conor’s stereo whispers a soft ballad at a nearly inaudible volume; an eerie soundtrack for an equally eerie road.
I don’t think Conor is the type of person to go ballistic on someone for refusing to say I love you in return, but you can never be sure. Belinda doesn’t know that I’m here to protect her if anything happens. I can feel the fear humming inside her like an electrical current.
“So… can we talk about what happened the other night,” Belinda finally speaks up.
Conor keeps his eyes on the road, which is becoming bumpier and darker the deeper he travels into the hills. After a brief silence, his face softens. “You don’t have to explain anything to me,” he says. “I know it’s kind of soon to be saying… stuff like that. Not that I didn’t mean it, but I’ll understand if you’re not there yet.”
Belinda’s chest deflates as she exhales a heavy sigh followed by a long silence. “Are we almost there?”
“Almost.”
Conor takes two more turns down narrow roads that slice through the hills and twist along the hillsides. Then the road opens up onto a flat, dusty dirt lot surrounded on all sides by giant evergreen trees. He parks the car and they sit in silence for a moment as Belinda glances around trying to figure out where they are.
“Come on. We don’t have much time,” Conor says, nodding toward the dirt lot behind them. “I’m going to show you something you’ve never seen.”
That is exactly what I want to hear. Conor is not giving up.
Chapter 46
Listen
I step out of the car and follow Conor across the lot toward a line of enormous frothy green trees. Besides the sound of dirt crunching beneath our feet, the hills are strangely silent. As we near the tree line, the sound and the scent hit me: the sweet briny scent and distant cymbal crashes of ocean waves.
Conor grabs my hand as we hike through a wooded area. I focus my gaze at the floor littered with dried pine needles and twigs so I don’t step on anything sharp with my flimsy flip-flops. The wooded area opens onto a tiny clearing at the edge of a cliff. The dry grass covering the cliff is lofty and warm on my feet as it pokes into my sandals.
“What do you think?” Conor asks, giving my hand a gentle squeeze.
The orange sun paints the sky the most brilliant shade of magenta I’ve ever seen. It dazzles on the surface of the ocean; tiny waves explode in sparks of light that dance in my vision. He pulls me toward the edge of the cliff and I hesitate for a moment.
“Are you afraid of heights?”
“No,” I say quickly, though I’ve never really been high enough to know the answer to this question.
He tugs my hand again and I follow closely behind him as we approach the ledge. We’re just three feet from the edge when I feel something pulling me backward.
“That’s close enough,” I say.
Conor’s eyes crinkle as he casts his boyish grin at me. “Aw… come on. You’re going to miss the best part. I promise I won’t let you fall.” He pulls me toward him so our bodies are touching. He gazes down at me and the sunlight flickers like flames in his eyes. “Just a few more steps. I won’t let go.”
I take a deep breath, attempting to breathe in some of his courage and I allow him to guide me closer to edge of the cliff. We tread slowly, his right arm hooked into my left. His left hand holds my left hand and I’m aware of how I must look like a child who’s just learning to walk. We reach the edge where my toes are less than a foot from a sharp drop, at least a hundred feet down to the place where the rocks stir the ocean into a furious, foamy brine.
In the center of the violent water is a tide pool as big as a backyard swimming pool. The water in the natural pool is so
clean you can see the green algae covering the rocks beneath the calm, glassy surface.
“My dad used to bring me and my sister here, camping, when we were little,” Conor says as he stares at the sunset with a strange intensity. “We would camp up here at night then we would spend the whole day swimming in that pool, catching crabs and poking sea anemones.”
Conor has only spoken of his sister once before today. She’s seven years older than he is, but she moved away right after high school—just like Conor’s planning to. He’s never said it, but I get the feeling his relationship is even more strained with his father than his mother.
The sun drops lower on the horizon and we watch in silence as it makes its final descent. His heartbeat pulses in my hand and I realize that, after what he said to me the other night, I’m not just holding his hand; I’m holding a piece of his heart.
A blinding green light flashes across the ocean and sky for less than a second before the sun disappears over the edge of the Earth.
“Want to go for a swim?” I ask him and I can see my question has interrupted his reminiscent thoughts.
“Only if you promise you won’t let go of my hand. The water’s scary at night.”
“Not as scary as this cliff.”
He smiles as he steps back from the ledge and pulls me into the safety of his arms. I wrap my arms around his waist and tuck my face into the crook of his neck as I breathe his scent. He kisses my forehead and nods toward the trees.
The drive down to the beach is surprisingly short and cuts through a tiny residential street with one small apartment complex and three modern houses, all preceded by lush green lawns.
“People actually live out here,” I remark.
“It’s peaceful out here.”
At the end of the residential street the road drops steeply toward a small paved parking lot. A sign planted in a grassy mound near the entrance to the lot reads: LOOKOUT BEACH – Closed from DARK to 8 AM.
“Don’t worry. No one comes out here,” Conor says as he pulls into the lot and parks neatly between the painted lines of the parking space although there’s only one other car here. I guess some rules must be obeyed.
As we walk away from the car, he hits the button on the remote for his car alarm and the headlights flash.
“I thought no one comes out here,” I tease him.
“I need that car if I plan to see Payne Bay in my rearview mirror in nine days.”
This comment shouldn’t knock the breath out of me, but it does. I chuckle at the comment, probably a little to late, to hide the contradicting emotions I’m feeling.
Part of me wants Conor to leave behind his full scholarship and transfer to UC Santa Barbara. It’s not as if UCSB doesn’t have an art program. However, another part of me knows that once Conor is gone, my head and heart will be clear to make a decision about Frankie. Away from my mother’s scrutiny and pressure, I can finally decide if I love Frankie or if I’m in love with him.
How do you ever get over the first person who touches you the way Frankie touched me? The first person to complete me the way Frankie completed me?
One sunset at a time, I suppose.
Only a small section of aqua-blue sky touches the horizon where the sun made its exit a few moments ago. The blue fades gently into a deep black splattered with pulsing specks of white. The stars are brighter out here, so far from the gray veil of city smog. We cross a small beach until we come upon the violent waves crashing against the rocks surrounding the tide pool.
“How are we going to get past that?” I say, and I realize I could be talking about anything: his moving away, my inability to say I love you, the fact that we’re both occasionally possessed by spirits, my confused feelings about Frankie.
“We wait for a break between waves then we make a run for it.” He grabs my hand and I realize as risky as make a run for it sounds, I’m willing to take that risk with him.
I chicken out the first time Conor tugs my hand toward the rocks. Once more, the waves roll back toward the horizon and this time we make a run for it. We clamber over the rocks, laughing hysterically as the next wave barrels toward us. Then it happens again.
The split-second flash of silver light in Conor’s eyes. At first, I think it must be the moonlight. Then his face goes out of focus as Mara enters me.
Chapter 47
Connecticut, 1707
The blackness is solid as ice. I can’t move. I can’t see my own body. I don’t have a body. I’m a splintered fragment of the darkness again. I am nowhere and everywhere.
The darkness fractures and a sliver of gray light appears on my left. But the light is not shining toward me. The light is out there just beyond my reach. Another crack on my right and I can see through to the other side. Shadows writhing. The darkness shatters completely and I’m surrounded by light and shadow, no shapes, just blurred movement, whirling around me at a thousand miles an hour. Then it stops.
The light is everywhere and I’m kicking. I want out.
A shadow materializes above me, a vaguely human form, dark and billowing like black smoke. It slithers around me, slinking over me, whispering in my ear, taunting me with words I can’t understand. Soon, it’s joined by another and another. I’m surrounded by shadow spirits. They pull me in all directions without touching.
I close my eyes and wait for deliverance. This is the in-between—just a way station on the path to my sentencing. My mind is flooded with every fear and every despairing thought I’ve ever had. Reno’s murder and Tuket’s laughing face play on a loop. When that memory stops, it is replaced by the memory of Samuel’s lips on his mistress’s mouth.
I want it to stop, but I know it won’t. I’ve been here before. This is what the shadow spirits do. They fill you with so much agonizing despair, eventually you begin to believe the despair, the hopelessness, is real.
There is only way to fight it off until I’m delivered to the ECHOES.
Chapter 48
The wave hurtles toward Conor and me, but neither of us moves. Rather, toward Mara and Darius. I throw up my arms and the wave splits, crashing on either side of the rock we’re standing on.
Conor grins at the explosive force of the water. “Impressive!” he shouts to be heard over the violent orchestra of the ocean.
“Disappear, Darius!” I shout. “Go back to your hole!”
And he does disappear, taking Conor with him.
Mara forces me to sit quietly on a concrete parking bumper by Conor’s car while she combs the beach searching for him. I hug my knees to my chest with my left arm and run my fingers over the gritty asphalt with my other hand. If I had never called Conor… if Frankie had never upset me to the point where I felt I needed to call Conor, none of this would have happened.
I want to call Frankie and cry and scream at him, but none of it would make any sense because this isn’t his fault. I basically invited Mara into my life and my body. This is my fault for thinking that love was as easy as sticking two people together and saying the right words in the right seductive tone.
It’s this desperation, this need to put what happened with Frankie behind me. It has driven almost everything I’ve done for more than two months. I stopped going to his competitions, stopped spending the night at his house, stopped asking about SurfRiders, stopped trying to get to know him better. I wasn’t pushing him away. I was dividing our friendship into zones: safe and dangerous. School was safe, the beach was dangerous; the café was safe, his bedroom was dangerous. So much work when you’ve known someone as long as I’ve known Frankie. When everywhere you turn you’re confronted by memories of the time before everything changed. I just needed a break, not a breakup.
I want to call the police, but what would I tell them. My boyfriend was abducted by a carrier spirit. I’d probably be accused of murdering him while in my clearly delusional state. It’s not as if the police have a better chance of finding Conor than Mara. She knows this Darius person better than anyone. Apparently, this guy is will
ing to do just about anything to keep her from getting her body back, including ruining my life.
I don’t feel the tears until the first drop splatters onto the top of my foot. I rub my cheeks against my shoulders to wipe the tears away and Mara appears in front of me—without Conor.
“Where is he?” I whisper.
Mara’s expression is grave and, for a split second, I imagine Conor’s body tossed against the rocks by the ferocious waves, bloody and broken and dead.
“He’s gone,” Mara replies. “Darius may have taken him into the spirit realm.”
“What does that mean? Is he dead?”
“No. It’s not death, but it’s not much better. He’ll be haunted by every painful, desperate thought he’s ever had until Darius releases him.”
I press the heels of my hands in my eyelids as I try to breathe. “You did this,” I whisper. “You brought him here. You have to bring Conor back.”
“It’s not that simple. It’s easy to get lost in the realm. The shadow spirits have—”
“Just bring him back and leave!” I yell, and the jagged cliffs repeat my cries back to me.
I look up and Mara is stunned into silence. I stand from the parking bumper and march toward the parking lot entrance. I have no way to get home and I can’t call my mom because she’ll start asking questions. I guess I should feel glad that it’s only eight o’clock. The hike through the dark, winding roads of these hills should take no more than three hours—assuming I can find my way back.
“You can follow me out of here,” Mara says as she appears next to me next on the street.
“Go away,” I say as I pull out my cell-phone and dial the only number I can safely dial right now.
“Belinda,” Frankie answers on the first ring.