But he won’t look at me. I’m standing where I can reach out and touch Angela, and all she does is continue to study and chew on her fingernails, as if I’m not even there. As if …

I look down at the blood seeping through my jacket, making it look sleek and black, like a seal’s skin. Then I stand between them. “Justin?”

Angela says, “Yeah. I think you need to.”

Need to what? I turn to her, I’m standing right in front of her, and her eyes are on me, but they’re not. They’re focused on what’s behind me. Justin. I move closer to her, wave my hand in her face. She doesn’t even blink. “Angela?”

Nothing.

Oh my God. I can’t breathe. I can’t even see, now, because the tears are falling freely and blurring my vision. I can’t wipe them away because my hands are crusted with dirt and blood. I just stand there, moving from one to the other, hoping that one of them will say, Oh, hey, there you are! But Justin has his phone up to his ear and is staring at the ceiling. I can hear the phone ringing, and then a familiar voice says “Yep?” on the other end. There’s only one person I know who answers the phone like that.

“Mr. Levesque?” Justin says into the receiver.

My breath hitches. Dad.

The tears fall harder. If he were here, everything would be better. My heart twists with the thought of everything I’d done to get away from him. I was so, so stupid. How could I have wanted that? How could I have thought that would be better? I want him here. I want him to wrap his arms around me and tell me he loves me, that I’m his girl. Never in my life have I wanted that so much. I reach for the phone, crying, “Give that to me!” But even though Justin doesn’t move, just stands there with one hand holding the phone and the other hand pinching his other ear closed, I can’t touch him. Something is wrong. I touch, and yet I feel nothing. I reach for where the phone is, but my hands pass through it like it’s made of air. I cannot snatch it from him.

Justin says, “There’s a problem with Ki. She’s missing.”

I’m sobbing now. “No, I’m not. Justin. I’m right here.”

But it’s useless. I drop my head, letting the tears puddle on the floor, with my blood. So, so much blood. Don’t they notice that? Don’t they notice anything about me?

Justin looks at the ceiling and exhales deeply. “It’s my fault,” he says to my father. “I was the one who convinced her to come up here.”

I can hear my father’s voice on the other end, an octave higher with worry. Though I can’t make out the words, I know what he says: “I’ll be right up. I’m coming. I’m leaving right now.”

Oh, Dad, I think, as I stare at the growing puddle of blood at my feet, I’m so sorry. But it’s too late.

Chapter Nineteen

I don’t know how much later, I find myself wandering the woods in the blackness. It’s dark, and yet I can see. I’m not cold or hot, I’m not anything. My feet don’t make a sound, and though there are brambles and roots popping out of the earth, my footing is sure, as if I’m walking a well-known path, and nothing touches me. My wound seeps blood endlessly, but it doesn’t hurt.

I don’t know how this happened. One moment I was talking to Jack, and … Oh, no, I was thinking of kissing him. I wanted to, so badly. Somehow, though I can’t feel anything else, I can still feel my face aflame with embarrassment.

Did Jack do this to me?

I think of his last words. If you want to help us, you need to go across. Now.

But going across would mean … No, it’s not possible.

Dead. Am I dead? And now, obviously, I don’t want to go across. I can’t. And yet I don’t remember telling him that; I was too busy wishing for other things. But he was a vision. Only a vision, my vision. How could something made of air kill a living being? Could he take a knife, the same knife he’d used to slash at Trey, and plunge it into my stomach? Of course, to other people, he may have been air, but to me, he was more than real. I can still taste his vile lips and feel the muscles of his body straining under his shirt. Maybe being real to me was all it took for him to have the power to claim my life.

Trey warned me to stay away from Jack. What did he say? You love your life? You love your daddy? You want to get back home to him?

Oh God, yes. Yes, I’d give anything.

Trey. I snap back to the moment when he reached down and touched my ankle. The calming effect it had on me, the cozy, comfortable sensation that spread over my body as he massaged out all the pain, all the wrong, with his fingertip. And suddenly I am running. I stop clutching my stomach and dart among the trees, calling to him. “Trey!” My voice sounds different as it echoes among the tall pines, so that for a moment I’m not convinced it’s mine. It’s frantic, yes, but also deeper, more mature. And I don’t know where I’m going, and yet I know the path well. I know this place like a newborn baby knows its mother.

Trey is ahead of me on the path. His eyes are downcast, his hands in his pockets so that the blood from his wound is a crimson racing stripe on the side of his dirty jeans. He sighs as I approach. “I’ve failed, haven’t I?”

I reach down and lift up my shirt, exposing my belly. The few places that are not stained the color of rust are a sick, marbled white. The wound itself is an ugly slit right beside my navel, bubbling thickly with black, like an oil spill. I whisper, desperate, “You can help me. You can heal it, right?”

“Aw, Kiandra.” He looks into my eyes, and I know the answer immediately. But that won’t do. That is not enough. He’s done miracles before and called them child’s play. There has to be something he can do.

“No. Don’t tell me that. You can do something! You have to!”

He reaches for my hand. Before, his body was so cold, and now his fingers are warm when they brush on my wrist. I want him to use them as he did before, to heal, so I take them in my bloody hand and guide them to my stomach. He lets me pull them only so far before he gently takes them away and shakes his head. “Kiandra. It won’t work.”

“But it has to. It has to,” I whimper. “I can’t be …” But I can’t say the word. My lips have forbidden its passage. “I’m only seventeen. I’m going to graduate this month. I’m going to USM. I got in, early acceptance …” I think of my dad, taking me out to Friendly’s for an ice cream sundae when I told him the news. He’d been beaming. The thought wracks my body with a torrent of sobs. “It’s not over for me. Please.”

He doesn’t say a word, but his face is somber, his eyes are glassy. Is he crying, too? And then I move beside him and see a ghastly sight, just off the path. A body, lying supine among the dead pine needles. A familiar powder-blue jacket, now ripped open, white batting spilling out. A spray of blond hair, greenish in the moonlight and marred with bits of dead leaves and dirt. Eyes open, unblinking. My eyes. They’d stared back at me in the mirror every day of my life, and now they’re just glistening marbles, staring forever at the sky, at God. And then I see the blood. So much blood, everywhere.

I bring my hands to my mouth, thinking my breath will warm them, but there is no breath in me. My body is shaking and my knees weaken, like two branches ready to snap. Trey pulls me toward him, and it’s then I notice we’re on a small outcropping, directly over the river. He holds me in his arms, and the moonlight dancing on the ripples is just a sad reminder that things are changing, and will always change, whether I’m ready for them or not.

By morning, my tears have dried, leaving two tight, salty tracks on my cheeks. I sit up, hoping that I’m with Justin, that everything in the past day was just a horrible nightmare. But I’m on the riverbank, and the new sunlight is dappling the water, making its surface so bright that I have this inexplicable urge to jump in, to feel the waves washing over me. Strangely, the river is no longer menacing to me, and I no longer shiver when I look at it. I glance around, blinking. In the morning light, everything has a new, sharper edge to it, with the colors more vivid, the angles more defined. It’s as if in life I had a veil over my eyes, and suddenly I’m seeing everything clearly for the first time.