Beyond the Rising Tide (2 page)

It’s raining where I stand in front of Avery’s house, but my clothes and hair are dry. If I could feel the air, it would be heavy and humid. If I could inhale, I would smell soil and damp foliage, like the vineyard in Marquette when the black earth soaked up the rain and the leaves were beaded with dew. Summer scents I always took for granted when I was alive.

I shouldn’t enter her house. There are all kinds of rules and boundaries when it comes to people’s sanctuaries. But tonight, the need to be near her is stronger than ever. I’ve been in the rain far too long, and she’s my only pavilion. If I can glimpse her face, maybe I can forget about the woman who died tonight. My hands are heavy with unused power, and my heart is a dead weight in my chest.

I don’t bother with the front door. Doors are for people who can open them, for hands that have substance and can grasp a doorknob. So I walk through the wall next to the front door. It pulls on me a bit, like walking through a turnstile in a subway station. And then I’m in her living room.

The house is dark save for one rectangle of light falling from a doorway in the hall. I drift down the hallway, passing an empty bedroom and then an office lit by the glow of a computer monitor. Her mom is asleep in front of the computer, half sitting, half sprawled across the desk.

At the end of the hall, I find Avery’s room. Strewn on her floor are her Converse All-Stars, clothes, and a marine science book, open with the spine up. Her laptop balances precariously on the edge of the bed, ready to be accidentally kicked off.

Her blankets are in disarray, a sea of restless waves. She’s curled beneath them like a crumpled paper boat, all folds and sharp edges. Her hair is splayed around her head, pale gold in the night-light blooming behind her bed.

Even without crossing the threshold, the heaviness inside me lifts a bit. I don’t know why, but when Avery’s near, I’m more at ease. Maybe because she’s the last person I came in contact with before my death. Maybe because I know she thinks about me when few others in this world do. She cares about me, and she doesn’t even know my name.

Her alarm clock reads two thirty in the morning, so I flinch when she sits up and flings a spiral notebook at the wall. She heaves a discouraged sigh, then falls back into bed, curling on her side. I hesitate for a minute in her doorway, wondering what’s up. Wishing I could just ask. Maybe her ex-boyfriend is being a jerk again. Or maybe she’s upset about her parents’ split, or her mom’s ups and downs.

She starts crying, so I toss the rules aside and come in, circling her bed so I can see her face. Her eyes are shining with tears, and she’s got one hand wrapped around her forearm, her nails digging into her skin. It drives me crazy when she does that. I want to wrench her hand away and smooth out the moon-shaped marks her nails have made. I try. But she sifts through my hand like fine sand.

As I pass my hand through her arm, I taste her pain. Not the reasons behind it, just the feeling. Like sinking. Drowning. A feeling I’m all too familiar with. It makes me want to go to her ex-boyfriend’s house and yank him out of bed and slam him against the wall for breaking her heart. But I’ve already tried that a few times since he broke up with her, and a punch isn’t very satisfying when it doesn’t connect with anything.

“Breathe,” I whisper, even though she can’t hear me. “Breathe, Avery.” After a long minute, she draws in a shuddery breath. But then she digs her nails deeper as more tears spill from under her wet lashes.

If I weren’t already dead, the sight of her crying like this would kill me. So I look away, to the notebook she tossed on the floor. It has her curvy handwriting on it:

Him

1. Scar on back.

2.

Below that, a mass of scribbles. Not doodle-scribbles. Frustrated, ripping-the-paper-with-your-pen scribbles.

The list is about
me
. It’s all she remembers about me. My scar. And then it dawns on me that tonight, she’s crying over me. Hurting because of
me
. Digging her nails into her arm because of her grief over me.

The weight of her sorrow presses me down, down, until I’m kneeling beside her. I have the ability to save lives. But in this moment, I feel utterly powerless.

If I could only talk to her. If I just had the power to show myself like some others do, I could convince her that she doesn’t need to grieve over me. That I don’t regret saving her life, even though it meant sacrificing my own.

As I listen to her cry herself to sleep, an idea surfaces in my mind. The same one that’s been bobbing up and down for the past several weeks. I don’t have to feel so helpless. I learned as a kid that the only way to escape helplessness was to take things into my own hands. If I want Avery to be happy again, maybe it’s time for me to take her healing into my own hands. I don’t have to remain unseen to her. Not when there’s a way to gain a temporary body. It’s risky, and it would involve dishonesty and thievery. It would require me to be the despicable person I left behind a long time ago. I’m not even sure I could pull it off. But I’ve been watching Avery’s life unravel since I saved it last winter, and it’s only a matter of time before the threads holding her together fray and snap completely.

ou need to chill out,” Paige says. She has her bare feet up on the dashboard of my ’96 Cherokee, and she’s brushing on some last-minute toenail polish on our way to the beach. It’s dark out, so she has the vanity mirror open and the dim light makes her plum polish look black.

“You know the sand is just going to stick to that, right?”

She twists the cap back on the bottle of Berry Naughty and cranks on the floor heater, sticking her toes beneath the vent. “Don’t change the subject. I mean, I know you’re still like, shaken up or whatever from what happened. I would be too. But you can do this. For Tyler. You can show him you’re still the same girl he fell in love with.”

My hands tighten on the steering wheel. “I
am
the same girl.”

“You know what I mean. You’re the same, but you’re not. You’re like, Boring Avery. Not Fun, Live-by-the-Seat-of-Your-Pants Avery. That’s why he broke up with you, right? Because he doesn’t like Boring Avery.”

Right. He doesn’t like Boring Avery. Crying-Under-a-Blanket-in-Your-Room Avery. Grieving Avery
weighs him down
too much. The words sting just as much when I think them as when he said them to my face. But I don’t want to talk about it, so I smile and say, “There’s more than one definition of
fun
.”

“So your new definition is working sixty hours a week and holing up at your mom’s on the weekends?”

“I don’t work sixty hours.”

She rolls her eyes. “You’re at the chocolate shop when I come in for my shift. You’re there when I leave. You’re there when I come in later for free chocolate. You’re there—”

“Okay, fine. I work a lot. But what do you expect when my dad owns the business?”

“I expect your dad to comply with child labor laws so his workaholic daughter will get out and enjoy her summer break. I mean, I could understand if you lived in Barstow. But,
hello
, you live in the sweetest little beach town in California.”

Beads of sweat are gathering on my forehead, so I reach over and shut off the heater, then roll down the window. The briny Pacific air rushes in, and I sense a charge in the atmosphere—most likely an impending sequel to last night’s rainstorm. The June Gloom has been extra gloomy this year, and I wish it would pass already. “He doesn’t force me to work.”

She levels a look at me that punctuates my own words. “My point exactly. So tonight, you’re going to have fun. You’re going to chill out and dance around the bonfire like the kickin’ teenage girl that you are. And you’re going to get in the water.”

I feel the blood drain from my hands. “I’m going to the beach. That’s a big enough step for tonight. Tyler will see that I’m making an effort.”

“At least get your feet wet. Come on,” she begs in her whiniest voice. It’s the same voice that convinced me to come tonight, and the same voice that persuaded me to dye my hair pink when we were thirteen.

We’re nearing the beach at Port San Luis, so I shift into a lower gear. “I’m not making any promises.”

“I’ll be there with you. I won’t leave your side, okay?” She wrangles her long dark hair into a ponytail. “Actually … that depends on Dillan. He’s been doing the hot-cold thing again lately. If he’s cold tonight, I won’t leave your side. But if he’s hot …”

“I don’t need a babysitter,” I snap. The nearness of the ocean has my nerves on end like porcupine quills, and my words come out sharper than I intend.

“Well, if you decide you need one,” she says, a glint of humor in her brown eyes, “I charge only ten dollars per hour. Twelve if you want me to put you to bed.”

This pulls a smile from me, but as we approach the beach and I see the bonfire blazing, my stomach clenches again. We bounce into a bumpy parking lot across the street, and I look in the rearview mirror for one last appraisal. After work I stopped at home to change into a tank top and shorts, but with Paige texting me every five seconds to urge me out the door, I didn’t bother much with my hair. It’s still in a long braid down my back, so I undo it and shake it out with my fingers.

“You look great!” Paige says impatiently, already halfway out of the Cherokee. “Let’s go!”

I can’t pick out Tyler from the crowd surrounding the fire, but I know he’s down there. According to Paige, he’s the one who planned this whole thing. I wasn’t going to come, but Paige spent all day convincing me that if I did, it would put me on the path to winning Tyler back.

The night is warm, and the ocean breeze feels good on my skin. We follow a sandy trail down to the beach, and the anticipation of talking to Tyler sends my stomach all aflutter. I see him almost daily since he works at the surf shop down the street from Dad’s chocolate shop, but it’s been weeks since we’ve had a real conversation.

Dillan comes up and plants a kiss behind Paige’s ear, and she gives me a secret smile and mouths, “Hot,” as she slips her hand into his. I scan the crowd for Tyler but don’t see him.

“He went for a night swim,” Dillan says, looking at me as Paige twirls one of his dreads around her finger.

I search the dark waves for Tyler, and finally my eyes fall on a figure standing waist-deep in the water—along with a second, more petite figure. I recognize her instantly as the tourist Tyler gave surfing lessons to earlier today. At least she’s wised up and put on a wetsuit. I wrap my arms around my waist, trying to squeeze out the jealousy.

Paige nudges me. “Go out there! If you want him, fight for him!”

“But I—”

Paige grabs my elbow and looks me in the face, her big brown eyes offering the steadiness I lack. “You can do it. Just … focus on him, not the water. And besides, the surf is totally mild tonight. Nothing is going to happen.”

Everyone thinks it’s fear that keeps me from the water. But that’s not it at all. I’ve never been afraid of the water, and I’m not now. My reasons for avoiding the ocean don’t make sense to anyone but me, so I don’t even attempt an explanation. I swallow and give Paige a weak nod, trying to muster up courage.

Fight for him
, I repeat her words in my mind.
Fight.

Dillan leads Paige to the fire, and I kick off my Converse and approach the water as a whirlpool of apprehension churns in my belly. The surf reaches for me and laps at my toes, and I jump back as the chill of the water sends my heart racing and floods my mind with unwanted memories. It takes all my strength to force them out.

Tyler’s back is turned so he doesn’t see me. It’s Tourist Girl who alerts him to my presence, tugging his arm and pointing me out. He twists around, and when he sees me, his mouth falls open. It’s hard to tell with the fire casting sporadic shadows across his face, but I swear he looks guilty. The girl grabs his arm and pulls him into an oncoming wave. As the wave slams into them, he laughs and she squeals.

All I can think is how
I
should be the one with him in the water. I should be the one in his arms. After spending countless days last summer in the ocean together, surfing and swimming and free-diving, how can he so easily forget that
I’m
the one who belongs there with him?