Part 16 (2/2)

I shrugged. ”Who needs a car in New York?”

”So you're really going, then?”

I took her other hand. ”I'll fly home every few months. If I don't, Quinn might start thinking he's an only child.”

At the mention of Quinn's name she began to tremble. ”Quinn . . . is he-”

”Out.” I said. Simple as that. No explanation needed.

”Good.” She reached into her pocket and handed me her phone. ”Call your mom. Just to be sure.”

I dialed Mom's cell phone, and she picked up on the first ring.

”Hi, Mom.”

”Oh, thank G.o.d. I tried the house. No one was home. Where are you?”

”Out with Maggie and Russ. I couldn't sleep.”

She went on to tell me how comas are such strange things. One minute you're dead to the world, and the next you're sitting up in a hospital bed playing Scrabble with your future stepfather. Apparently Quinn had woken up a short time ago and immediately asked for ice cream, knowing that kids in hospitals got whatever they wanted.

”The MRI showed a small fatty tumor in his brain,” Mom said, her voice trembling. ”They say it's benign and totally harmless, but I just don't know, Blake. ...”

”I'm sure they're right,” I said before she could break down in tears. ”For all we know, it's been there all his life.” If it was, it would go a long way toward explaining his early autism. And a whole lot of other things, for that matter.

”Do you want to talk to him?”

I could hear Quinn in the background trying to convince Carl that LedZep was a legitimate Scrabble word. No doubt the Z was on a triple letter score, and Quinn wouldn't back down for the world. King Tut still moved for no man.

”That's okay,” I said. ”Just tell him ...” I smiled. ”Tell him not to ride the hospital bed up and down too fast. He'll get whiplash.”

”Very funny.”

I told her that I'd see her at the hospital soon, but I left out the part about how I'd be coming in an ambulance.

There was one more person I needed to see. I found Russ sitting on a boulder, looking out over the quarry. I stood at the edge next to him. I couldn't say cliffs and ledges didn't still bother me, but I could stand at one now and not freak out. There was nothing down in the quarry now, not even morning mist.

”You have to take an ambulance back,” I told Russ. ”If you're a good boy, they might even let you ride up front.”

He nodded, making it clear that he would come when he was good and ready. He wouldn't look at me. I had no idea what to say to him, so I just kicked a stone over the edge. We both waited until we heard it hit bottom.

”Listen, I forgive you, okay?”

He laughed bitterly at that. ”Of course you do. You'd even forgive Ca.s.sandra if she gave you puppy-dog eyes.”

Finally he looked at me. I'm still not sure what I saw in him. Some anger? A hint of the same kind of guilt I had held on to for so many years? Or maybe a lingering memory of the Ferris wheel. He never did tell me what that ride had done to him, and now I suspected he never would. We'd all learned things about ourselves tonight, and I didn't think Russ was too comfortable with what he'd discovered. I could tell he'd been damaged. Not on the outside, but deeper down, where it really mattered. I didn't know if it was the kind of damage he'd ever recover from.

”So. Is there something going on between you and Maggie?” he asked.

”I don't know. Maybe.”

He hardened his jaw, looked down at his hand, and clenched his fist until his knuckles were white-although I don't think he knew what he wanted to punch. He held his fist tight for a few seconds, then let it go, shaking out his hand. He returned his gaze to the canyon.

”Don't expect me to write to you at Columbia,” he said. But somehow I expect he will.

When I returned to my accordion of a Volvo, two of the paramedics were staring at the smashed front end. I figured they were just marveling at how we could just walk away from a crash like that, but that wasn't it at all.

”Ever see anything like that?” one asked the other.

The other tilted his head to the side and squinted his eyes. As I got closer I could see it too. It was in the crumple pattern of the hood. The way the metal had bent and the way the light hit it, you could swear there was a face in the folds of the metal. Cheekbones, eye sockets, a nose and mouth.

”Optical illusion,” said the second paramedic. ”A trick of the light, like that face on Mars.”

Maybe so. Except that this face was Ca.s.sandra's.

I stared into the shadows of her eyes in the crumpled hood, and her gaze held me there for a long time. I didn't know what I was searching for. I didn't know why I couldn't look away. I knew I had to leave because the ambulance was waiting. My life was waiting. But I kept looking at those eyes in the strange wrinkle of steel until a cloud covered the sun, and her face was gone.

Are you dead, Ca.s.sandra, or just sleeping? Should I mourn for you or curse you for the things you've done? I suspect she'll always be there, somewhere in the scenery, but I can't let that stop me from living.

”Anything you need from the car?” a fireman asked as a tow truck pulled up.

”No, nothing. Nothing at all.”

As I headed toward the ambulance with Maggie and Russ, I thought about tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. I thought about leaving for school, and I felt those familiar b.u.t.terflies fill my stomach. But they're no longer a source of discomfort.

In fact, I think I kind of like the feeling.

The limbo-land Everlost is at war. On one side stands Mary, self-proclaimed queen of lost souls, determined to retain her iron grip on Everlost's children. On the other is Nick, the Chocolate Ogre, determined to set the souls of Everlost free.

Everlost will never be the same.

Check out the beginning of the second book in the Skinjacker trilogy Fresh Havoc There were rumors.

Of terrible things, of wonderful things, of events too immense to keep to oneself, and so they were quietly shared from soul to soul, one Afterlight to another, until every Afterlight in Everlost had heard them.

There was the rumor of a beautiful sky witch, who soared across the heavens in a great silver balloon. And there were whispers of a terrible ogre made entirely of chocolate, who lured unsuspecting souls with that rich promising smell, only to cast them down a bottomless pit from which there was no return.

In a world where memories bleach clean from the fabric of time, rumors become more important than that which is actually known. They are the life's blood of the bloodless world that lies between life and death.

On a day much like any other in Everlost, one boy was about to find out if those rumors were true.

His name is unimportant-so unimportant that he himself had forgotten it-and less important still, because in a brief time he will be gone forever.

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