Hereafter. Tara Hudson

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СКАЧАТЬ stared down at his canvas sneakers, frowning and digging the toe of one shoe into the grass. He shoved his hands back into his pockets and rolled his shoulders forward, a reflexive gesture that made him look boyish and sweet. After a few more silent moments, he looked back up at me.

      “You know, we have a lot to talk about.” His eyes, serious and urgent, met mine. My little ache curled out even farther in my chest as he continued. “I would have come and found you sooner, but they wouldn’t let me out of the hospital. Apparently my heart may have … Well, I may have … died, a little. In the water.”

      He tilted his head to one side, clearly gauging my reaction. I shivered, but I didn’t look away. I probably didn’t look too surprised by his choice of words, either. After all, I was there when it happened. My face obviously answered some unasked question of his, because he nodded again.

      “So,” he went on, “after I got out of the hospital, I started asking around about you. But nobody saw you that night. Not my family, not my friends, not even the paramedics. Not only did nobody see you on the shore, but nobody saw you in the water with me. Which I find weird. Because you were in the water with me, weren’t you?”

      I bit my lower lip and nodded slightly.

      “I knew I didn’t imagine you. Well, maybe when I was, you know, dead.” He said the word as if he was afraid of it. “But not after. Not when I swam to the surface or when I made it out of the water.”

      Still biting my lip, I shook my head. No. You didn’t imagine me. You saw me.

      “I practically had to steal my dad’s car to get out of the house today, and I came right here—to the scene of the crime. And here you are.”

      “Yes,” I whispered, totally lost for a clever response. “Here I am.”

      “So,” he whispered back, “we have a lot to talk about.”

      “You already said that.”

      He laughed, and the sound surprised us both. Then he nodded decisively.

      “Well, here’s how I see it, Amelia. We don’t have to talk now. I have to get the car back to my dad soon anyway, since I’ve spent the whole morning stalking you. Besides, this doesn’t seem like a conversation you want to have, especially in this place. Can’t say that I blame you.” He glanced quickly at the hole in the railing, shuddered, and then looked back into my eyes. “So, tomorrow I’m going to be at Robber’s Cave Park. Do you know where that is?”

      Stunningly, impossibly, I nodded yes.

      I knew the park. I suddenly knew it as well as I knew my first name, and I knew the direction of the park from where I stood now. I knew it from memory, a genuine one that hadn’t flashed into and out of my mind but just … was.

      What was this boy doing to me?

      “Okay, good. I’m going to sit at the emptiest park bench I can find. I’m going to be there at noon, because, unfortunately, I’m healthy enough to go back to school tomorrow. I think I can talk my parents into letting me skip fifth period—play the sympathy card with them—but noon’s the earliest I can get there. So I’m going to go to the park. And I’m going to wait for you.”

      “And if I don’t show?”

      He shrugged. “I’ll respect your privacy. Or I’ll pursue you all over the earth like I’ve been trying to do since they let me out of the hospital. Probably the latter.”

      I should have been afraid. I should have run away again, hid until the years passed and Joshua became an old man and the fog wrapped around my dead brain again.

      Instead, I smiled.

      He gave me a slight nod, grinned, and walked past me back to his car.

      “Till tomorrow,” he called out with one small, backward glance.

      I watched him walk away, once more unsure of everything. But when he opened his car door, my incapacitating ache curled again. My impulses, it seemed, were still doing unfamiliar things to me, because the ache seemed to have incapacitated everything but my big mouth.

      “Joshua?” I called out, a slight hitch in my voice.

      “Yeah?” He spun around immediately. I could swear he looked expectant, maybe even eager.

      “What do I look like to you?”

      He tilted his head to the side, frowning.

      “What do I look like to you?” I repeated urgently, afraid that if I didn’t talk fast enough, I would have time to realize how absolutely, mind-bogglingly stupid I sounded.

      Joshua smiled. He answered me, so quietly I almost couldn’t hear him.

      “Beautiful. Too beautiful for people not to have noticed you the other night.”

      “Oh.” The little sound was all I could manage.

      He stood up straight then and cleared his throat. “So … um … I’m going to leave before I say anything else that makes me sound like an idiot. Tomorrow?”

      I nodded, stunned. “Tomorrow.”

      Joshua, too, nodded. Then he got into his car and reversed it back off the bridge, giving wide berth to the gap in the railing. With one quick, final spin, the car pulled away, disappearing from sight around a curve.

      Chapter

       FIVE

      Hours can pass like years when you wait impatiently for something, especially something you crave and dread in equal measure.

      What I craved, in a manner so intensely I nearly ached from it, was to see Joshua’s face and to hear his voice. Wandering and dreaming of him, I’d never imagined Joshua would be able to see me and talk to me again, much less that he would want to. I hadn’t anticipated how much I would want it too. How much my longing to be seen, and specifically by him, would intensify each time I was.

      But seeing him again meant telling him the truth.

      Sitting on the riverbank after Joshua left, I felt certain I wouldn’t be able to lie to him the next day. Not if my completely ridiculous behavior on the bridge proved any indication of my ability to deceive him. If I saw him in the park, and we spoke, I would undoubtedly tell him everything: what I’d seen under the water, and what I really was. Which, in turn, would undoubtedly drive him away from me.

      So even if I went to the park, I probably wouldn’t see him again afterward. Presuming this, I had to ask myself what would hurt worse: the numb loneliness of invisibility or the aching loneliness of an outright rejection from the living world? I knew the awful boundaries and depths of the former, but I had no idea how excruciating the latter could, and likely would, be.

      Following this line of reasoning, СКАЧАТЬ