“You can still come with me,” he says.

I stand, brush the pine needles from my backside, and follow him. As I walk, I marvel at how I can almost see every individual grain of dirt on the ground, at how I can almost hear every insect marching along its path. Now that the sun has risen, everything takes on a warm orange hue, and the entire sky is a shade of lavender I’ve seen only in small streaks during the most colorful of sunsets. The river, once black, now looks clear and inviting, like the Caribbean Sea. “Everything looks so … alive,” I whisper. I guess compared to me, anything is.

He turns back. “You’re different. So you see things different.”

“I feel strange. I used to be so afraid of the river. Now I want to … I don’t know. Dive in.”

He grabs a stick and starts swishing it through the brush as we walk. “Told you. You’re different. In death, you become what you most wanted to be in life.”

I wrinkle my nose. “Like what?”

He shrugs. “You figure it out. Don’t you know what you wanted to be?”

I think. Shake my head. Before I know it, we’re at the pier near the Outfitters. There’s a different boat there, one I’ve never seen. It’s just a primitive raft, kind of like something out of Tom Sawyer. A line of people, waiting patiently, stretches up the hill. It’s a motley crew, some young, some old. They’re not dressed in wet suits. One man is wearing a Speedo. A little girl is standing there, naked, sucking her thumb and crying quietly. The strangest thing is how eerily silent everything is, though there are so many people there. Most of them look a little dazed. Trey runs his hands through his hair and whistles. “Sheesh,” he mutters. “I’m gonna catch hell, that’s for sure.”

“What—” I begin, but I know. I know who these people are.

Trey walks to the front of the line and cups his hands around his mouth. “Proceed in an orderly fashion,” he calls.

The line moves. Most people put their heads down and walk, ever so slowly, onto the raft. I swallow as I look at the little girl. I don’t care if these people cannot feel cold. I pull off my jacket and hurry to wrap it around her. I notice that it’s no longer sopping with blood, which is good, but the second I notice that, I can feel the wound open up in my stomach with a sickening pop, like a hungry mouth. The little girl is so tiny and thin. When I stand next to her, she eagerly takes my hand and presses herself against my leg.

The raft fills with people. We all press together. The girl looks up to me gratefully, her dark blue eyes rimmed with tears. I didn’t mean to go across yet, but I can’t leave her. I hear Trey’s voice telling people, “Step to the back of the raft. Room enough for everyone. That’s right. No pushing.” People crowd against us and we’re forced to the very end of the raft, and by the time I turn around, I can no longer see him.

A confused man, maybe in his twenties, is standing next to me. He’s wearing swim trunks. He smells like alcohol and keeps wiping blood away from his eye because there’s a wound so big, it looks like half of his head has caved in. I wonder if he knows it. I shield the little girl’s eyes from the sight of him when he says, “Where am I? Where are we going?” But nobody answers. Everyone else, like me, seems to know already. Drops of blood slip from his chin, turning pink when they hit the clear water. Even that is beautiful.

We set off. I expect the river to carry us downstream, as it did when Hugo tried to take me across in the kayak. But it’s like we’re crossing a calm, glassy lake. The boat does not pitch and toss. We simply glide, as if we’re skating across a frozen pond. There is a slight breeze, and from the middle of the river, I see that the sun is bright over the tall pines. This is not what I expected at all. When I look back to the east bank, I notice that the line that looked a hundred people long is now gone. Somehow, we all fit on this small raft. At first I think that’s impossible, but in a world where nothing is as I expected, maybe it is possible. Maybe many things that are impossible in life are possible here.

The raft comes to a slow, easy stop at the west bank, and people begin to disembark. I wait patiently with the little girl, who is now smiling at me shyly. “Are you an angel?” she asks.

“No,” I say, smiling at her.

She says, “Mommy told me the angels would meet me when she put me under the water.”

I put my hand to my mouth to hide my shock. Instantly the tears start to come. I miss my dad and my friends so much. I miss my bedroom. I will never see it again. I will never see any of them again.

“I want to go home,” the girl whispers, and I hug her close, because I do, too. This new world is at once beautiful and terrifying.

When the rest of the people have left the raft, I see them climbing up a path through the forest in a single, orderly line. Trey is standing at the pier. At first he’s happy to see me. “Hey, thought you were staying behind,” he says, but then he sees that I’ve been crying. My face is probably all red, like it usually gets when I cry. Or maybe it isn’t. Maybe being dead makes that different, too. He doesn’t bother to ask me what’s wrong. I guess it’s pretty obvious.

I squint to see across the river. I can just make out a few people, dressed in black wet suits, setting up over there for the new day’s rafting trip. Jealousy tightens my chest. I never thought I’d be jealous of people going rafting, but right now, I’d give anything to be one of them. I’d give anything to be at the beginning of this weekend. Or even better, at the beginning of this week. I’d tell Justin I had a change of heart and now I really wanted to go to prom, and he’d take me, because that’s the kind of guy he is. And Angela would understand, because that’s the kind of girl she is. They love me. When I think about how wonderful they are, how alike they are, more tears fall, so many I know it would be useless to wipe them away with the back of my hand.

Trey leans down and starts to play got-your-nose with the little girl. She giggles. I think of my mom. “My mom used to play that with me,” I say.

He nods. “Learned it from her. Good way to get the young ones to calm down.”

And calm the little girl is. She’s clinging to him now. He must like my mother. Respect her. Why else would he talk about her, learn things from her? I’m not sure if that makes me like him more, or less.

The little girl climbs up on his back, wrapping her pudgy fingers around his neck. I whisper, “Her mom murdered her.”

His face is somber, but he nods like it’s nothing unexpected. I guess he’s heard a lot of horror stories in his job. He looks at his palms quickly, then wipes them on his jeans, but not before I see that the scabs there have opened. He leaves ruddy marks on his thighs, but his jeans are dirty anyway, so it’s hardly noticeable. He catches me watching and says, “All in a day’s work.”

“I thought you said my mother was supposed to lead people across.”

“Normally she would, but she’s conserving her powers. She needs them all. ’Cause of what I told you.”

“And you don’t have … powers that can do it for you?”

“Nah. The Mistress of the Waters might, but not me. I’m just a son of an oilman from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Ain’t royalty or nothing, like you.”

I snort. “I’m not royalty. My dad clips coupons.” He doesn’t say anything, so I say, “Tulsa? Is that where you’re from?”

“Moved out there when I was six. Born in New York. My daddy was a big-time executive at the Buick Motor Company. You ever hear of them?” I nod. “Well, when I was six he moved us out to Tulsa to start his oil business, and it did pretty well. Guess he was a millionaire. Can you imagine that? Me, a millionaire? We had two cars, believe it or not. We was wealthy. I was on my way to Harvard that fall.”

I stare at him. “Harvard?”