The last minute, p.21
The Last Minute, page 21
“Didn’t sound like it. They seemed as surprised as we did.”
“He wouldn’t have told them,” I said. “He won’t talk to anyone.”
“Why not? What the hell happened?”
There was no way I could tell her. Besides the fact that Kemp might not have wanted me to, there was also the fact that I had no idea if Rissa would even believe me. And there was always the risk that the story could make its way out of our little group and go flying around the school at the speed of gossip. So I just shrugged.
“He’s messed up,” I said. “You did try to warn me.”
“Yeah, but . . . I thought . . .” She shook her head. “He didn’t seem messed up the last time I saw him.”
“He hid it well.”
“I’ll say.” She reached out and patted Eunice’s hand. The girl looked absolutely devastated; I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d started crying right then and there. “Forget about him,” Rissa said. “There are plenty of other guys. You don’t need to waste your daydreams on one of the messed-up ones.”
“I liked him,” Eunice said, her voice a whisper of quiet misery. Her words cut to my core, because I understood exactly what she meant. It wasn’t her crush. It was her genuine affection for the guy we’d come to know. At least, the guy we thought we’d come to know.
“Yeah, well,” Rissa said, “I liked Hunter for most of grade five. Look at how that turned out.”
“How did it turn out?” I asked with a frown. She turned to me and raised her eyebrows.
“How do you think? Are we a couple?”
I sighed. “Let’s talk about something else.”
“Nope.” She shook her head, sending her ponytail of blond curls swaying. “When you go through a breakup with a guy like that, you need to talk about it with your friends.”
“Why?”
“So you don’t convince yourself that you made a mistake and go running back to him.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “Rissa, he broke up with me. Not the other way around.”
“All the more reason to convince you that you don’t need him. He obviously doesn’t need you, so . . .”
I wasn’t so sure about that. Something was still going on with Austin, and Kemp was connected. As long as that scenario was still happening, I was stuck in the middle of it. It wasn’t over, no matter how much I might’ve wanted it to be.
I hadn’t realized how much I’d taken Kemp’s presence for granted until it wasn’t there anymore. It wasn’t just that I had to walk home from school every day in the freezing-cold air that sank into my bones and left me shivering for a good hour afterward. It wasn’t just that I had nobody to pair up with in PE or whisper with in Art. I felt like I’d lost my best friend, a feeling that wasn’t entirely unfamiliar. Having to go through it for the second time in less than a year was almost more than I could bear.
I began hanging out with Rissa and Eunice more, but conversation would inevitably turn to boys—and to Kemp in particular—and neither of them seemed to take the hint that I didn’t want to talk about him at all. Whenever they’d start up, I’d shut down, becoming really quiet and focusing on the task at hand. We sent in our applications for university, worked on our homework, and talked about the dresses we were going to wear to grad, even though that was still months away. I tried to go along with it—not least because I loved the idea of being able to go all out with my dress—but in the back of my mind was a niggling sadness. If Austin hadn’t ruined everything, I would’ve gone to the banquet with Kemp. He might not have actually graduated with us, but he still could’ve joined the celebrations. One afternoon, as I was imagining what he would’ve looked like in a tux, I let out a huge sigh that made both Rissa and Eunice stop talking and turn in my direction. I had to make up some excuse about how I was fretting over my wire-sculpture rock. They looked at me like I was nuts.
I had just been letting Austin sleep, choosing to let that be the extent of our relationship. But one evening about a week into March, he didn’t leave me with much of a choice. He popped into existence right in the middle of our kitchen. I fumbled and dropped the bag of microwave popcorn, and it landed with a soft rustle on the floor.
“You okay?” Dad asked, not even bothering to glance up from his laptop. He had it set up on the island and was bent over in a familiar posture, peering at the screen as he checked his e-mail.
“Yeah,” I said, shooting a dirty look at Austin as I bent to pick up the bag. “It’s hot. That’s all.”
“What is?” Austin asked.
I waved him away, not willing to risk saying anything with Dad standing right there. Of course, Austin didn’t know that. For all he knew, we were alone.
“I forgot, Dad,” I said. “I have to finish something for French class.”
He finally glanced up. “Zut, alors!”
“Yeah. Whatever.”
“You don’t want to watch the next movie in our triple feature?”
“I do . . . but I can’t. Maybe another time. You and Mom go ahead.” I set the bag on the counter and sighed quietly as I made my way to the stairs. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Austin following, sort of gliding along, even though his legs were moving as if he were actually walking. He disappeared as I started to climb the stairs, only to reappear at my side once I’d shut the door to my room.
“Was your dad there?”
“Yes, my dad was there,” I said. “You can’t just pop in like that.”
He nodded, seeming to dismiss my annoyance. “Maybe I won’t have to. I think I know how we can finish this up. But I’ll need your help.”
I gave him a skeptical look as I padded over to my bed and sat down, cross-legged, on top of the bedspread. “You’re sure?”
“No. But it’s worth a try.” He peered at me for a moment, then sort of leaned down. To my surprise, he looked like he was feeling for the bed. His movements were awkward as he arranged his body in a mirror image of my own. I stared at him, wide-eyed.
“You’re sitting on my bed.”
“Am I? Cool. I didn’t know if that would work. I’m still getting used to—”
“Austin, how do we do this? And what, exactly, do we need to do?”
He nodded once, sighed, and placed his hands on his bent knees. “Kemp needs to tell someone.”
“Tell them what?”
“I can’t tell you that. If I try . . .” He silently smacked the side of his head and rolled his eyes.
“Yeah. Okay. You get dizzy and disappear. So how am I supposed to get him to tell me something if I don’t know what that something is?”
“I think you’ll know it when you hear it.”
I sighed. “Austin, I’m not going to be able to get him to do anything. He won’t even talk to me anymore. All this shit has really messed with his head. He broke up with me on Christmas Day, he’s smoking weed again, and he dropped out of school.”
“He what?” His voice got really loud for a moment, and I was afraid my parents would be able to hear him. “That little shit. How are Mom and Dad taking this?”
“I don’t know. Your mom’s probably worried.”
“Why hasn’t Dad kicked his ass?”
“Kind of hard to do when he’s not living in the same house.”
He blinked. “What?”
“Um . . . they’re divorced. Doesn’t that usually mean living apart?”
“Divorced?” he repeated. The colour seemed to drain from his face.
“What kind of ghost are you? I thought you were supposed to be able to see what’s going on.”
“I can’t,” he said, his voice miserable. “Whatever this place is . . . wherever I am . . . I can’t see anything. Except you.”
“You still can’t see Kemp?” I asked. He shook his head. “Then how did you touch him to make that connection?”
“It looked like you were holding his hand. I just kind of guessed where he was.”
I lifted my glasses onto my forehead so I could rub at my eyes. “So you don’t actually know what’s been going on with him. You haven’t seen it.”
“No. Like I said, I can only see you. So you’re important, Ivy. You have to be.”
“Okay.” Settling my glasses back on my face, I leaned forward and stared into his eyes. “What, exactly, do we need to do?”
“I think I need to show you something. Like I did before.”
“No.” I shook my head. “No way. I’m screwed up enough. I don’t want to add PTSD to the list of things I need to deal with.”
“What I have to show you isn’t like that.”
“Does someone die?”
“Yes, but—”
“Nope. Not doing it. You’ll have to figure out another way.”
“There is no other way!” he shouted, slapping his hands on his knees. That should’ve made a sound, but it didn’t. “Do you think I haven’t thought about this? Don’t you think I would’ve found another way if there was one? I don’t want to hurt you, and I don’t want to hurt him. That’s the whole point,” he said, then reached up to grab his head with both hands. “No, damn it. Not yet. I didn’t tell her.”
“Who are you talking to?”
He took a deep breath and slowly let go of his head. “Nobody,” he said, the word coming out hesitantly, as if he were afraid he wasn’t allowed to speak. “Myself, I guess. Or whatever’s controlling . . . this.”
“If I let you show me whatever it is you need to show me, will you go away?”
“I hope so.”
I sighed and leaned forward so he was within touching distance. “Fine. Do it.”
He shook his head. “No. I think . . . he needs to be here, too.”
I threw up my hands. “Austin, I already told you. We broke up. He won’t even speak to me. How am I supposed to get close enough to him for you to—”
“You don’t need to be that close to each other,” he said. “We just need to go down to the creek.”
“Why?”
“What’s the date?”
“Um . . .” Leaning over toward the nightstand, I checked my phone. “March ninth.”
He raised his eyebrows. I raised mine right back.
“What?” I asked.
“What happened on March ninth?”
“I don’t know. Someone celebrated St. Patrick’s Day eight days early?”
He gave me a withering look, just as the answer came to me.
“That was when you drowned in the creek.” I let out a puff of disbelief. “How could I forget?”
“It didn’t have anything to do with you.”
“Yeah, but . . .”
“I need you to get him down to the creek, Ivy. Once I show you, maybe he’ll—” He stopped talking and gritted his teeth. “Maybe he’ll be able to tell you . . . what he needs to tell you.”
“Why would getting to the creek help?” I asked, watching the tension in his jaw release a little. Whatever he was fighting, it seemed to be taking a lot out of him.
“Because that’s where it started.”
“I thought it started with the car accident.”
He shook his head with a frown. “Okay . . . then that’s where it got locked into this weird limbo thing I’ve got going on.”
“What the hell happened down there?” I whispered. But he just shook his head in silence. “Austin, I don’t know how to convince him to come. He won’t answer my texts.”
“So call him.”
“It’ll just go to voicemail.”
“Let it. Leave a message. Tell him . . .”
“He’s not going to come.”
“Imply you’re suicidal.”
“Why? Because my boyfriend broke up with me?”
“Why not?”
I shook my head. “He’s never going to believe that. I haven’t been moping around. Nobody—especially not him—is going to think I’m that depressed.”
“You can’t always tell just by looking at a person.” He leaned forward, his dark blue eyes with their little rings of gold seeming to bore into me. “If he loves you, he’ll come.”
I snorted. “He doesn’t love me. He’s made that pretty clear. Besides, you just told me you couldn’t see anything other than me. How do you know what he’s feeling?”
His expression darkened. “He’d be an idiot to not love you,” he said. “You got dragged into this mess because of him, but you never held that against him. You accepted all this weird shit and tried to support him.” He tilted his head with the tiniest of smiles. “And you still love him, even after all of that, don’t you?”
I shrugged and looked away.
“Like I said. He’d be an idiot to not love you.” He leaned forward, so I turned back to face him. “Just call him. Please. Get him to come. Let’s deal with this, put it behind us, and move on.”
“If I do,” I said slowly, “will you do something for me?”
“If I can.”
“Will you deliver a message to my sister?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know if I can, Ivy. I can’t force the living to see me.”
“She’s not living,” I said.
“Oh.” He reached out, as if to put his hand on mine, then thought better of it. “I’m sorry.”
“Thanks.”
“No, I’m really sorry. I don’t know if I can. There’s nobody else here. At least . . . not as far as I can tell. I’m trapped. And I don’t think I’m going to be able to get free until we deal with this shit with Kemp.” He chewed on his lip for a moment before finally taking a deep breath. “But, I promise, if I ever get unstuck, I’ll try to find her. What did you want to say?”
What didn’t I want to say? For a moment, I wished I could switch places with Austin. Then I could’ve been that much closer to Jade, that much closer to telling her myself. But . . . I’d be dead. And despite what Austin wanted me to tell Kemp, that wasn’t something I was aiming for.
“I need to think about it,” I said.
He nodded. “Okay. Just don’t leave it too late. I don’t know what’s going to happen once we’ve . . .”
“Yeah. I know.” With a sigh, I reached over and plucked my phone from the nightstand. It was just after eleven. “How am I supposed to do this?”
“Just pretend.”
Frowning, I dialed Kemp’s number. “You should’ve picked one of the drama students,” I muttered. “He’s never going to believe me.” I listened to the phone ring and expected the familiar voicemail prompt, but, to my surprise, I heard his actual voice.
“Yeah?”
“Kemp?” My voice shook, even though I didn’t mean for it to. Austin nodded encouragingly. “I . . . Can you come over?”
“Why?” he asked, sounding suspicious.
“I . . .” Letting out my best fake sob, I began to rock back and forth, hoping it would help get me into character.
“Ivy? What’s wrong?”
“You!” I said. “You’re what’s wrong. How could you do that to me? Were you just using me for sex? Is that it?”
Austin raised his eyebrows and gave me a thumbs-up. He didn’t seem to realize how close to the truth my words were. It wasn’t too hard to pretend to be upset. Because I was.
“No. Never. Ivy, I—”
“I can’t take it. First Jade left me, and then you. It’s too much. The people I love keep leaving me, and I—” Breaking off with a sob, I pressed my finger over the microphone so I could talk to Austin. “I don’t want him driving if he’s impaired,” I whispered. “What if he—”
“Where are you?” Kemp asked. His voice sounded a little breathless. I pulled my finger away from the phone and sniffed dramatically.
“At home.” Austin shook his head frantically at me. “Out back,” I added quickly. “By the creek.”
“Shit, Ivy.” There was a crash, and then a couple of muffled thumps. “Go inside. I’ll be right—”
“I can’t!” I wailed. “I’m not doing this anymore. I have nothing to live for. Jade’s gone, and now you’re gone, and there’s nothing. There’s nothing.” It felt like I was laying it on a little bit thick, but I could hear Kemp’s frantic breathing on the other end of the line. “Don’t come,” I said. “Don’t come if you’ve been smoking. If something happened to you, I—”
“I haven’t had anything since yesterday. Don’t—”
“I have to go,” I said. “I have to go. Jade’s waiting. I can’t—I can’t make her wait any longer.” My hand shook as I pulled the phone away from my ear and ended the call. Austin began to clap his hands, a weird silent motion that I understood nevertheless. “This is messed up,” I said. “He’s going to hate me when he finds out I lied.” Slapping the phone down on the nightstand, I sucked in a gasp as a new thought occurred to me, and I whipped my head toward him. “What if he calls my parents?”
“Does he have their numbers?”
“I don’t think so. But what if he rings the doorbell?”
“You think he’s going to waste time doing that?” He let out an appreciative chuckle. “He thinks you’re about to throw yourself into a swollen creek. Believe me, he’s going to come straight here, then out back. He knows the way.”
“If he crashes his car and dies because he was so frantic to get here, I’ll never forgive you.”
“I’ll never forgive myself.” He awkwardly unfolded himself from the bed and stood up, which looked like some weird anti-gravity manoeuvre an astronaut might do. Then he started gliding toward the door. “Better bundle up. If this March is anything like my last, it’ll be fucking freezing down there.”
Before I got dressed for the cold, I ran downstairs to the living room where my parents were snuggled together on the couch, having just started their movie. Mom glanced up with a smile, her hand rummaging in the popcorn bag.
“Decided to join us after all?”
I shook my head and grasped the handle on the sliding barn door, an architectural feature that we’d always left open until now. “Mind if I close this? I can hear the movie all the way up in my room.”
“Oh. I’m sorry, Ivy. We can turn it down.”
I shook my head and started to tug on the door. “No. Leave it loud. Get the full cinema experience.”
Dad chuckled as I pulled the door all the way across the opening. I raced back upstairs, grabbed a scarf and hat, then went back down for my coat and boots, which were in the foyer. I carried the latter to the back door, waiting to slip them on until I was standing on the mat. Then, with a glance toward the closed barn door—through which I could hear the sound of loud, muffled voices—I quickly disarmed the alarm and slipped outside.
“He wouldn’t have told them,” I said. “He won’t talk to anyone.”
“Why not? What the hell happened?”
There was no way I could tell her. Besides the fact that Kemp might not have wanted me to, there was also the fact that I had no idea if Rissa would even believe me. And there was always the risk that the story could make its way out of our little group and go flying around the school at the speed of gossip. So I just shrugged.
“He’s messed up,” I said. “You did try to warn me.”
“Yeah, but . . . I thought . . .” She shook her head. “He didn’t seem messed up the last time I saw him.”
“He hid it well.”
“I’ll say.” She reached out and patted Eunice’s hand. The girl looked absolutely devastated; I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d started crying right then and there. “Forget about him,” Rissa said. “There are plenty of other guys. You don’t need to waste your daydreams on one of the messed-up ones.”
“I liked him,” Eunice said, her voice a whisper of quiet misery. Her words cut to my core, because I understood exactly what she meant. It wasn’t her crush. It was her genuine affection for the guy we’d come to know. At least, the guy we thought we’d come to know.
“Yeah, well,” Rissa said, “I liked Hunter for most of grade five. Look at how that turned out.”
“How did it turn out?” I asked with a frown. She turned to me and raised her eyebrows.
“How do you think? Are we a couple?”
I sighed. “Let’s talk about something else.”
“Nope.” She shook her head, sending her ponytail of blond curls swaying. “When you go through a breakup with a guy like that, you need to talk about it with your friends.”
“Why?”
“So you don’t convince yourself that you made a mistake and go running back to him.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “Rissa, he broke up with me. Not the other way around.”
“All the more reason to convince you that you don’t need him. He obviously doesn’t need you, so . . .”
I wasn’t so sure about that. Something was still going on with Austin, and Kemp was connected. As long as that scenario was still happening, I was stuck in the middle of it. It wasn’t over, no matter how much I might’ve wanted it to be.
I hadn’t realized how much I’d taken Kemp’s presence for granted until it wasn’t there anymore. It wasn’t just that I had to walk home from school every day in the freezing-cold air that sank into my bones and left me shivering for a good hour afterward. It wasn’t just that I had nobody to pair up with in PE or whisper with in Art. I felt like I’d lost my best friend, a feeling that wasn’t entirely unfamiliar. Having to go through it for the second time in less than a year was almost more than I could bear.
I began hanging out with Rissa and Eunice more, but conversation would inevitably turn to boys—and to Kemp in particular—and neither of them seemed to take the hint that I didn’t want to talk about him at all. Whenever they’d start up, I’d shut down, becoming really quiet and focusing on the task at hand. We sent in our applications for university, worked on our homework, and talked about the dresses we were going to wear to grad, even though that was still months away. I tried to go along with it—not least because I loved the idea of being able to go all out with my dress—but in the back of my mind was a niggling sadness. If Austin hadn’t ruined everything, I would’ve gone to the banquet with Kemp. He might not have actually graduated with us, but he still could’ve joined the celebrations. One afternoon, as I was imagining what he would’ve looked like in a tux, I let out a huge sigh that made both Rissa and Eunice stop talking and turn in my direction. I had to make up some excuse about how I was fretting over my wire-sculpture rock. They looked at me like I was nuts.
I had just been letting Austin sleep, choosing to let that be the extent of our relationship. But one evening about a week into March, he didn’t leave me with much of a choice. He popped into existence right in the middle of our kitchen. I fumbled and dropped the bag of microwave popcorn, and it landed with a soft rustle on the floor.
“You okay?” Dad asked, not even bothering to glance up from his laptop. He had it set up on the island and was bent over in a familiar posture, peering at the screen as he checked his e-mail.
“Yeah,” I said, shooting a dirty look at Austin as I bent to pick up the bag. “It’s hot. That’s all.”
“What is?” Austin asked.
I waved him away, not willing to risk saying anything with Dad standing right there. Of course, Austin didn’t know that. For all he knew, we were alone.
“I forgot, Dad,” I said. “I have to finish something for French class.”
He finally glanced up. “Zut, alors!”
“Yeah. Whatever.”
“You don’t want to watch the next movie in our triple feature?”
“I do . . . but I can’t. Maybe another time. You and Mom go ahead.” I set the bag on the counter and sighed quietly as I made my way to the stairs. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Austin following, sort of gliding along, even though his legs were moving as if he were actually walking. He disappeared as I started to climb the stairs, only to reappear at my side once I’d shut the door to my room.
“Was your dad there?”
“Yes, my dad was there,” I said. “You can’t just pop in like that.”
He nodded, seeming to dismiss my annoyance. “Maybe I won’t have to. I think I know how we can finish this up. But I’ll need your help.”
I gave him a skeptical look as I padded over to my bed and sat down, cross-legged, on top of the bedspread. “You’re sure?”
“No. But it’s worth a try.” He peered at me for a moment, then sort of leaned down. To my surprise, he looked like he was feeling for the bed. His movements were awkward as he arranged his body in a mirror image of my own. I stared at him, wide-eyed.
“You’re sitting on my bed.”
“Am I? Cool. I didn’t know if that would work. I’m still getting used to—”
“Austin, how do we do this? And what, exactly, do we need to do?”
He nodded once, sighed, and placed his hands on his bent knees. “Kemp needs to tell someone.”
“Tell them what?”
“I can’t tell you that. If I try . . .” He silently smacked the side of his head and rolled his eyes.
“Yeah. Okay. You get dizzy and disappear. So how am I supposed to get him to tell me something if I don’t know what that something is?”
“I think you’ll know it when you hear it.”
I sighed. “Austin, I’m not going to be able to get him to do anything. He won’t even talk to me anymore. All this shit has really messed with his head. He broke up with me on Christmas Day, he’s smoking weed again, and he dropped out of school.”
“He what?” His voice got really loud for a moment, and I was afraid my parents would be able to hear him. “That little shit. How are Mom and Dad taking this?”
“I don’t know. Your mom’s probably worried.”
“Why hasn’t Dad kicked his ass?”
“Kind of hard to do when he’s not living in the same house.”
He blinked. “What?”
“Um . . . they’re divorced. Doesn’t that usually mean living apart?”
“Divorced?” he repeated. The colour seemed to drain from his face.
“What kind of ghost are you? I thought you were supposed to be able to see what’s going on.”
“I can’t,” he said, his voice miserable. “Whatever this place is . . . wherever I am . . . I can’t see anything. Except you.”
“You still can’t see Kemp?” I asked. He shook his head. “Then how did you touch him to make that connection?”
“It looked like you were holding his hand. I just kind of guessed where he was.”
I lifted my glasses onto my forehead so I could rub at my eyes. “So you don’t actually know what’s been going on with him. You haven’t seen it.”
“No. Like I said, I can only see you. So you’re important, Ivy. You have to be.”
“Okay.” Settling my glasses back on my face, I leaned forward and stared into his eyes. “What, exactly, do we need to do?”
“I think I need to show you something. Like I did before.”
“No.” I shook my head. “No way. I’m screwed up enough. I don’t want to add PTSD to the list of things I need to deal with.”
“What I have to show you isn’t like that.”
“Does someone die?”
“Yes, but—”
“Nope. Not doing it. You’ll have to figure out another way.”
“There is no other way!” he shouted, slapping his hands on his knees. That should’ve made a sound, but it didn’t. “Do you think I haven’t thought about this? Don’t you think I would’ve found another way if there was one? I don’t want to hurt you, and I don’t want to hurt him. That’s the whole point,” he said, then reached up to grab his head with both hands. “No, damn it. Not yet. I didn’t tell her.”
“Who are you talking to?”
He took a deep breath and slowly let go of his head. “Nobody,” he said, the word coming out hesitantly, as if he were afraid he wasn’t allowed to speak. “Myself, I guess. Or whatever’s controlling . . . this.”
“If I let you show me whatever it is you need to show me, will you go away?”
“I hope so.”
I sighed and leaned forward so he was within touching distance. “Fine. Do it.”
He shook his head. “No. I think . . . he needs to be here, too.”
I threw up my hands. “Austin, I already told you. We broke up. He won’t even speak to me. How am I supposed to get close enough to him for you to—”
“You don’t need to be that close to each other,” he said. “We just need to go down to the creek.”
“Why?”
“What’s the date?”
“Um . . .” Leaning over toward the nightstand, I checked my phone. “March ninth.”
He raised his eyebrows. I raised mine right back.
“What?” I asked.
“What happened on March ninth?”
“I don’t know. Someone celebrated St. Patrick’s Day eight days early?”
He gave me a withering look, just as the answer came to me.
“That was when you drowned in the creek.” I let out a puff of disbelief. “How could I forget?”
“It didn’t have anything to do with you.”
“Yeah, but . . .”
“I need you to get him down to the creek, Ivy. Once I show you, maybe he’ll—” He stopped talking and gritted his teeth. “Maybe he’ll be able to tell you . . . what he needs to tell you.”
“Why would getting to the creek help?” I asked, watching the tension in his jaw release a little. Whatever he was fighting, it seemed to be taking a lot out of him.
“Because that’s where it started.”
“I thought it started with the car accident.”
He shook his head with a frown. “Okay . . . then that’s where it got locked into this weird limbo thing I’ve got going on.”
“What the hell happened down there?” I whispered. But he just shook his head in silence. “Austin, I don’t know how to convince him to come. He won’t answer my texts.”
“So call him.”
“It’ll just go to voicemail.”
“Let it. Leave a message. Tell him . . .”
“He’s not going to come.”
“Imply you’re suicidal.”
“Why? Because my boyfriend broke up with me?”
“Why not?”
I shook my head. “He’s never going to believe that. I haven’t been moping around. Nobody—especially not him—is going to think I’m that depressed.”
“You can’t always tell just by looking at a person.” He leaned forward, his dark blue eyes with their little rings of gold seeming to bore into me. “If he loves you, he’ll come.”
I snorted. “He doesn’t love me. He’s made that pretty clear. Besides, you just told me you couldn’t see anything other than me. How do you know what he’s feeling?”
His expression darkened. “He’d be an idiot to not love you,” he said. “You got dragged into this mess because of him, but you never held that against him. You accepted all this weird shit and tried to support him.” He tilted his head with the tiniest of smiles. “And you still love him, even after all of that, don’t you?”
I shrugged and looked away.
“Like I said. He’d be an idiot to not love you.” He leaned forward, so I turned back to face him. “Just call him. Please. Get him to come. Let’s deal with this, put it behind us, and move on.”
“If I do,” I said slowly, “will you do something for me?”
“If I can.”
“Will you deliver a message to my sister?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know if I can, Ivy. I can’t force the living to see me.”
“She’s not living,” I said.
“Oh.” He reached out, as if to put his hand on mine, then thought better of it. “I’m sorry.”
“Thanks.”
“No, I’m really sorry. I don’t know if I can. There’s nobody else here. At least . . . not as far as I can tell. I’m trapped. And I don’t think I’m going to be able to get free until we deal with this shit with Kemp.” He chewed on his lip for a moment before finally taking a deep breath. “But, I promise, if I ever get unstuck, I’ll try to find her. What did you want to say?”
What didn’t I want to say? For a moment, I wished I could switch places with Austin. Then I could’ve been that much closer to Jade, that much closer to telling her myself. But . . . I’d be dead. And despite what Austin wanted me to tell Kemp, that wasn’t something I was aiming for.
“I need to think about it,” I said.
He nodded. “Okay. Just don’t leave it too late. I don’t know what’s going to happen once we’ve . . .”
“Yeah. I know.” With a sigh, I reached over and plucked my phone from the nightstand. It was just after eleven. “How am I supposed to do this?”
“Just pretend.”
Frowning, I dialed Kemp’s number. “You should’ve picked one of the drama students,” I muttered. “He’s never going to believe me.” I listened to the phone ring and expected the familiar voicemail prompt, but, to my surprise, I heard his actual voice.
“Yeah?”
“Kemp?” My voice shook, even though I didn’t mean for it to. Austin nodded encouragingly. “I . . . Can you come over?”
“Why?” he asked, sounding suspicious.
“I . . .” Letting out my best fake sob, I began to rock back and forth, hoping it would help get me into character.
“Ivy? What’s wrong?”
“You!” I said. “You’re what’s wrong. How could you do that to me? Were you just using me for sex? Is that it?”
Austin raised his eyebrows and gave me a thumbs-up. He didn’t seem to realize how close to the truth my words were. It wasn’t too hard to pretend to be upset. Because I was.
“No. Never. Ivy, I—”
“I can’t take it. First Jade left me, and then you. It’s too much. The people I love keep leaving me, and I—” Breaking off with a sob, I pressed my finger over the microphone so I could talk to Austin. “I don’t want him driving if he’s impaired,” I whispered. “What if he—”
“Where are you?” Kemp asked. His voice sounded a little breathless. I pulled my finger away from the phone and sniffed dramatically.
“At home.” Austin shook his head frantically at me. “Out back,” I added quickly. “By the creek.”
“Shit, Ivy.” There was a crash, and then a couple of muffled thumps. “Go inside. I’ll be right—”
“I can’t!” I wailed. “I’m not doing this anymore. I have nothing to live for. Jade’s gone, and now you’re gone, and there’s nothing. There’s nothing.” It felt like I was laying it on a little bit thick, but I could hear Kemp’s frantic breathing on the other end of the line. “Don’t come,” I said. “Don’t come if you’ve been smoking. If something happened to you, I—”
“I haven’t had anything since yesterday. Don’t—”
“I have to go,” I said. “I have to go. Jade’s waiting. I can’t—I can’t make her wait any longer.” My hand shook as I pulled the phone away from my ear and ended the call. Austin began to clap his hands, a weird silent motion that I understood nevertheless. “This is messed up,” I said. “He’s going to hate me when he finds out I lied.” Slapping the phone down on the nightstand, I sucked in a gasp as a new thought occurred to me, and I whipped my head toward him. “What if he calls my parents?”
“Does he have their numbers?”
“I don’t think so. But what if he rings the doorbell?”
“You think he’s going to waste time doing that?” He let out an appreciative chuckle. “He thinks you’re about to throw yourself into a swollen creek. Believe me, he’s going to come straight here, then out back. He knows the way.”
“If he crashes his car and dies because he was so frantic to get here, I’ll never forgive you.”
“I’ll never forgive myself.” He awkwardly unfolded himself from the bed and stood up, which looked like some weird anti-gravity manoeuvre an astronaut might do. Then he started gliding toward the door. “Better bundle up. If this March is anything like my last, it’ll be fucking freezing down there.”
Before I got dressed for the cold, I ran downstairs to the living room where my parents were snuggled together on the couch, having just started their movie. Mom glanced up with a smile, her hand rummaging in the popcorn bag.
“Decided to join us after all?”
I shook my head and grasped the handle on the sliding barn door, an architectural feature that we’d always left open until now. “Mind if I close this? I can hear the movie all the way up in my room.”
“Oh. I’m sorry, Ivy. We can turn it down.”
I shook my head and started to tug on the door. “No. Leave it loud. Get the full cinema experience.”
Dad chuckled as I pulled the door all the way across the opening. I raced back upstairs, grabbed a scarf and hat, then went back down for my coat and boots, which were in the foyer. I carried the latter to the back door, waiting to slip them on until I was standing on the mat. Then, with a glance toward the closed barn door—through which I could hear the sound of loud, muffled voices—I quickly disarmed the alarm and slipped outside.
