Pieces of Hope (26 page)

Before
going on, I took a deep breath, monitoring his progress. He seemed to take this
news well enough, though his expression told me nothing.

“Honestly,
I didn’t know we were both in the accident until the other day. At least I
think it was just the other day. It’s difficult to tell. Time sort of flies
here.”

His
mouth hadn’t moved, but I thought I heard him thinking, “Lucky you.”
 

I
dropped my head. “Daniel looks terrible, doesn’t he?”

“He’s in
bad shape,” Ethan admitted, not bothering to elaborate on the details. And he
seemed to have something else on his mind. “Have you seen him . . . since?”

It took
a moment to realize what he was implying.

“Like
this?” I blurted. “No, of course not.” It disturbed me that he would ask such a
thing. Did Ethan really suppose that I was travelling back and forth between
the two of them, having the time of my life while he waited for my return? What
kind of girl did he take me for?

But then
I took one look at him and all my exasperation faded. It was too easy to forget
what he dealt with every day—wondering whether I was going to wake up, or be
lost to him forever. I was being stupidly selfish these days. I wasn’t like
that before the accident, was I?

I
reached for his right hand, flipped it over the way he often did mine, and
looked at the lines etched there. Shortly after Grandpa George’s death, Gigi
had taken up, of all things, palm reading, and she’d taught me a little. I
traced the line closest to this thumb; it made a wide arc, indicating an
outgoing personality. There was a major split at the top of it. That break had
nothing to do with the longevity of one’s life, but rather, it signaled an upheaval
of some sort. With relief, I saw that it eventually repaired itself as it continued
down his palm. Whatever it was—and I hoped it had nothing to do with earlier
lifetimes, tragedies, or me—he was going to get past it.

“What’s
the verdict?” Ethan’s voice was light, but I saw the tension as I lifted my
eyes to his. “Am I going to live a long and happy life?”

“If I
have anything to do with it, there are no other options.” I kissed his palm the
way he had kissed mine so many times. Then I gathered my courage. “Ethan, I do
have to find Daniel—to help him, I mean.” I waited for his expression to
change, but there was no indication that he’d even heard me. “
Creesie
believes he’s lost at one of the other Stations.
It’s hard to believe, but they’re like cities in our world, you know, too many
to count, and anyway”—I rambled on, my tongue seeming to have a will of its
own—“I only agreed to go with her because
Creesie
says that Daniel needs my help . . .”

Or had
it went some other way? Had I simply told
Creesie
that I was going to help Daniel—no matter what—and she’d agreed because no
wasn’t an option. I couldn’t recall how it went exactly. It tasted like a lie
on my tongue.
  

“I’ve
got a bad feeling, Hope.” He twisted his face away from me. “I can’t put my finger
on it, but there’s something about that guy that I don’t like.” He looked back
at me, his voice insistent, “And it’s not because he’s your ex-boyfriend.”

He
didn’t sound very certain about that. In fact, he sounded very jealous.

“It’s
not? You’re sure?” I asked.

“It may
be a little of that,” he admitted, “but there’s something else, too.”

“You’ve
got nothing to worry about. I’m not going to run off with Daniel.” Of this, I
was certain. He nodded, but I thought he’d wanted to argue his point, instead.

For what
felt like a long while, we floated around the pond in awkward silence. It was
Ethan who finally broke the silence. “I have a question, but if it’s too
painful, let’s just skip it. Agreed?”

From the
crook of his shoulder, I felt my head nod. But I secretly hoped the subject had
nothing to do with Daniel. Or hospitals. Or delayed promises . . .

Warmth
filled me from head to toe, like I’d just downed a cup of hot chocolate on a
bitterly cold day when Ethan said, “Why don’t you tell me about your mother?”

I looked
up, grateful for the change of subject. He gave me a half-smile and that was
all I needed. I babbled about Sunday mornings. About how, even after I had moved
in with Claire, I’d find myself back at Vivienne’s kitchen table, the two of us
eating our weight in cake, and talking about anything that came to mind . . .
my plans for college, the new buds in her garden, the town’s newest gossip,
Brody’s last stupid joke, you name it . . .

“My
mother used to tell me we were very much alike,” I gushed. “I even look like
her. Did you know that?”

He shook
his head. “You must have loved her a lot,” he said quietly.

“I did.”
I corrected myself. “I mean, I do. It’s pretty amazing. I hadn’t been able to
think about her. Not like this, anyway, until I came here. It hurt too much.”

“And
it’s easier now?”

“My
mom’s death was . . .” I couldn’t find the right way to explain it. “It was
like I’d been shoved through a giant shredding machine and pieces of me were
everywhere. But here, I feel whole again. But it’s more than that, though. Sometimes
I get a feeling that’s so intense that I’ll suddenly turn, expecting to see her
standing behind me, and I’m surprised every time when she isn’t there.”
 

“You
feel her around you?” Somehow he made me sound so normal.

“Every
single second.”
  

Ethan
shifted. “I’ve never mentioned it to anyone, but Poppy told me during the last
summer I visited that he would watch over me after he died. He was getting
older, a little up in years, I guess, and thinking about his mortality. I told
him he was going to be with us a long time, and to stop talking like that, but then
a few weeks later he died in his sleep.”

I knew
where he was going with this. “And you feel him around you?”
 

“All the
time,” he said wistfully. “There’ve been moments when all I wanted was one last
conversation with him, one last time to hear him laugh.” Ethan slid down into
the boat so that his eyes were level with mine. “Hope, I want you to know I
understand . . . more than you can imagine, how much you miss your mother. But
at the same time, I don’t think we’re supposed to be with them before it’s
our
time.”

His eyes
bore into mine, softly inviting me in. So many of the things I tried not to
think about came gurgling up, like tiny air bubbles trying to surface. If I
went back to my body, how would I endure the agony of my mother’s death? If I
stayed here, how would I survive without Ethan? And then there was the nagging
question of Daniel. Why was I so concerned about Daniel?

“How do
you know it isn’t my time?” I was surprised at how calm I sounded.
   

“I’ve
only just found you, remember? It can’t possibly be your time.”
 

We
talked until the sun set, until the last of our day flickered in the waning
light, until Ethan awoke. But this time he knew what was coming. He gave me a
heartbreaking kiss before he left, his parting words echoing sweetly in my ears
as if he were calling to me from some distant mountaintop.
“Is
tú
mo
ghrá
. . .
”

14
The Others

Charlotte and
Rin
were pacing outside the Station, seemingly awaiting my arrival, but I didn’t
think much of it. In my delirious state of mind, a house could have landed on
my head, and I might not have thought much of that, either. Neither of them was
smiling, and although this didn’t fully register, some part of me did find it
odd.

I nearly tripped over my feet as I
ran to them.

“He loves me! HE LOVES ME!” I repeated
loud enough for everyone to hear.

Charlotte’s solemn expression broke into a
grin. “We know, Hope. We’ve known it for a long time.”

“I knew it! I knew you were there!”
I breathed in an excited voice. Waiting in line behind a group of Turkish
students, I babbled, “Just like at the falls, I saw you . . .
 
well, I saw your shadows. It was strange the
way you hopped, but I guess that’s how—”

Rin
turned
anxiously to me. “Did you say you saw a shadow?”

I nodded warily. Something in the
way she’d asked it gave me cause for alarm.

“And it . . . hopped?” Charlotte asked, equally
concerned.

I nodded again. Now I knew it
wasn’t worry but fear on both their faces.

“This isn’t good. Not good at all.”
Rin
nervously tapped her finger on her teeth, as if
this mundane gesture helped her to think. With a terse nod, she communicated
something to Charlotte
without saying it aloud. Suddenly, each of them took hold of an arm, dragging
me to the front of the line, rudely cutting in front of a dozen at least a
dozen teenagers who seemed unconcerned about the intrusion, or our growing
level of anxiety.
  

“What’s going on?” Alarms were
sounding in my head. “You’re scaring the life out of me!”
 

Charlotte was fighting to keep the hysteria
out of her voice. “That’s because
we’re
scared. Don’t worry, though! We’re going to fix it!”

“Fix it? Fix what?” And then I
heard what she wasn’t saying, and shouted, “Wait! Scared? What could possibly
scare the two of you? You’re already dead!”

They didn’t answer, nor would they
look at me. Instead, they jostled me between them as we entered the revolving
door, then waited shortly for it to turn. In my throbbing head, I was running
through all sorts of scenarios, but nothing was making any sense.

Then something tumbled together in
my thoughts.

“Does this have something to do
with that shadow I saw?” My heart thudded to a stop. I shrieked, “Is it Ethan? Has
something happened to Ethan?”

Rin
and
Charlotte whisked me through the Station, past the ever-present throng, in the
direction of the flat-nosed bus. Just ahead, I saw
Creesie
,
Gus, Mac, and Cat looking worriedly in my direction. I could feel their anxiety
clear across the room.

Creesie
and Gus, seated at one of the double-sided benches, were only twenty feet from
the crush of travelers coming and going, directly adjacent to the wall of glass;
Mac and Cat huddled over them. As we crushed over, they immediately
straightened up and tried to look normal. The entirety of their panic punched
me square in the stomach.
   

“You told them already?” I nearly
bit
Rin
and Charlotte’s
heads off. I glared at the rest of them. “Somebody tell me what’s happening!”
Several eyebrows shot up at once, but no one uttered a sound. “And don’t
almost
answer me!” I focused hard on
Creesie
as I said this, but the full-on view of her round,
angelic eyes made me backpedal so I glowered at the others instead. “Somebody
start talking!”
  

Everyone looked blankly at
Creesie
.

“NOW!” I insisted, my heart
thumping somewhere in my stomach.

Without further delay,
Creesie
replied calmly, “It’s Daniel. The shadow is
Daniel.”
 

“Oh!” The word came out in a rush
of air. I tapped my chest a few times. “That’s not so bad. I thought something
had happened to Ethan. You gave me quite a—”

“It’s certainly not good news.”
Creesie
was wringing her hands, still unable to look at me.
“We have to travel. And quickly.” She offered no explanation. “We need to help
him immediately. Things have taken a very bad turn . . . ” Her voice faded.

“Is he dying? But I thought you
said—”

“I didn’t know all the
circumstances until a moment ago.”

“What kind of circumstances? You
said Daniel was lost. You said we would help him when it was time. You said—”
     

“I said Daniel was in a very dark
place. I didn’t know how dark.”
Creesie
looked up at
me then, her face so full of torment that I flinched reflexively.

Through her mind, I could see him
then. The image was dark and blurry, and for some strange reason it caused my
limbs to feel heavy, but it was definitely Daniel—crouched in a corner,
terrified and enraged. As I looked on, something eerie happened. As though the
two of us had switched identities, I found myself staring out of Daniel’s
frightened eyes, cowering as he was beneath what appeared to be a broken bench.

It took me a moment to realize that
the fluorescent lights flickering overhead had caused the unnerving buzzing in
my ears. The intermittent light made it nearly impossible to see, but Daniel
seemed to be in a cavernous room closely resembling our Station—yet completely
unlike it at the same time. Here, strange forms moved about, faster than even
my new eyes could take in. Though they resembled people, they didn’t seem as
solid as I was accustomed to seeing, nor did they move like everyone at our
Station. These bodies moved more like black smoke caught in a strong vacuum.
Adding to my apprehension, the longer I watched them, the more cruelly my
insides knotted. At once, I doubled over, the disturbing connection suddenly broken.
     

“What’s wrong with him?” I cried. I
yanked myself up and my mind out of reach of the images lingering in
Creesie’s
head. “What’s happening to Daniel?”

I now saw that the six of them had
gathered around me in a semicircle. Charlotte
stretched a tiny arm about my waist and gave me a sad little smile. Everyone
watched for the next several seconds as
Creesie’s
expression altered from anguish to relief, as if she’d just extricated herself
from a horrific car crash.