Dead River

Chapter Nineteen



I don’t know how much later, I find myself wandering the woods in the blackness. It’s dark, and yet I can see. I’m not cold or hot, I’m not anything. My feet don’t make a sound, and though there are brambles and roots popping out of the earth, my footing is sure, as if I’m walking a well-known path, and nothing touches me. My wound seeps blood endlessly, but it doesn’t hurt.

I don’t know how this happened. One moment I was talking to Jack, and … Oh, no, I was thinking of kissing him. I wanted to, so badly. Somehow, though I can’t feel anything else, I can still feel my face aflame with embarrassment.

Did Jack do this to me?

I think of his last words. If you want to help us, you need to go across. Now.

But going across would mean … No, it’s not possible.

Dead. Am I dead? And now, obviously, I don’t want to go across. I can’t. And yet I don’t remember telling him that; I was too busy wishing for other things. But he was a vision. Only a vision, my vision. How could something made of air kill a living being? Could he take a knife, the same knife he’d used to slash at Trey, and plunge it into my stomach? Of course, to other people, he may have been air, but to me, he was more than real. I can still taste his vile lips and feel the muscles of his body straining under his shirt. Maybe being real to me was all it took for him to have the power to claim my life.

Trey warned me to stay away from Jack. What did he say? You love your life? You love your daddy? You want to get back home to him?

Oh God, yes. Yes, I’d give anything.

Trey. I snap back to the moment when he reached down and touched my ankle. The calming effect it had on me, the cozy, comfortable sensation that spread over my body as he massaged out all the pain, all the wrong, with his fingertip. And suddenly I am running. I stop clutching my stomach and dart among the trees, calling to him. “Trey!” My voice sounds different as it echoes among the tall pines, so that for a moment I’m not convinced it’s mine. It’s frantic, yes, but also deeper, more mature. And I don’t know where I’m going, and yet I know the path well. I know this place like a newborn baby knows its mother.

Trey is ahead of me on the path. His eyes are downcast, his hands in his pockets so that the blood from his wound is a crimson racing stripe on the side of his dirty jeans. He sighs as I approach. “I’ve failed, haven’t I?”

I reach down and lift up my shirt, exposing my belly. The few places that are not stained the color of rust are a sick, marbled white. The wound itself is an ugly slit right beside my navel, bubbling thickly with black, like an oil spill. I whisper, desperate, “You can help me. You can heal it, right?”

“Aw, Kiandra.” He looks into my eyes, and I know the answer immediately. But that won’t do. That is not enough. He’s done miracles before and called them child’s play. There has to be something he can do.

“No. Don’t tell me that. You can do something! You have to!”

He reaches for my hand. Before, his body was so cold, and now his fingers are warm when they brush on my wrist. I want him to use them as he did before, to heal, so I take them in my bloody hand and guide them to my stomach. He lets me pull them only so far before he gently takes them away and shakes his head. “Kiandra. It won’t work.”

“But it has to. It has to,” I whimper. “I can’t be …” But I can’t say the word. My lips have forbidden its passage. “I’m only seventeen. I’m going to graduate this month. I’m going to USM. I got in, early acceptance …” I think of my dad, taking me out to Friendly’s for an ice cream sundae when I told him the news. He’d been beaming. The thought wracks my body with a torrent of sobs. “It’s not over for me. Please.”

He doesn’t say a word, but his face is somber, his eyes are glassy. Is he crying, too? And then I move beside him and see a ghastly sight, just off the path. A body, lying supine among the dead pine needles. A familiar powder-blue jacket, now ripped open, white batting spilling out. A spray of blond hair, greenish in the moonlight and marred with bits of dead leaves and dirt. Eyes open, unblinking. My eyes. They’d stared back at me in the mirror every day of my life, and now they’re just glistening marbles, staring forever at the sky, at God. And then I see the blood. So much blood, everywhere.

I bring my hands to my mouth, thinking my breath will warm them, but there is no breath in me. My body is shaking and my knees weaken, like two branches ready to snap. Trey pulls me toward him, and it’s then I notice we’re on a small outcropping, directly over the river. He holds me in his arms, and the moonlight dancing on the ripples is just a sad reminder that things are changing, and will always change, whether I’m ready for them or not.


By morning, my tears have dried, leaving two tight, salty tracks on my cheeks. I sit up, hoping that I’m with Justin, that everything in the past day was just a horrible nightmare. But I’m on the riverbank, and the new sunlight is dappling the water, making its surface so bright that I have this inexplicable urge to jump in, to feel the waves washing over me. Strangely, the river is no longer menacing to me, and I no longer shiver when I look at it. I glance around, blinking. In the morning light, everything has a new, sharper edge to it, with the colors more vivid, the angles more defined. It’s as if in life I had a veil over my eyes, and suddenly I’m seeing everything clearly for the first time.

I rub my eyes and pull my jacket up over my belly. The wound looks fresh. It begins to bleed anew, flooding over the waistband of my jeans. I slide my jacket back into place and the tears begin to fall again.

I’ve almost forgotten about Trey. When I turn around, I’m embarrassed to see that I must have fallen asleep in his arms and used his chest as a pillow, because there’s a spot of drool on his shirt. And here I thought dead people didn’t have to worry about things like that. He doesn’t notice, though. He’s wide awake and staring at me. “Feeling better?” he asks, his voice gentle.

His wound, the knife slash on his forearm, isn’t bleeding. I point to mine. “Will this ever stop?”

He nods. “When you’re not thinking on it. Let it alone.”

“Are you kidding?” How am I supposed to forget about this massive, ugly thing in my middle? The blood is running down my thighs. My intestines could slip out at any moment.

When I look up, his wound has opened, and blood begins to bubble on the surface. He shakes his head. “I know. Easier said than done.”

I shiver in the morning air; my teeth are chattering in a steady drumbeat. I’m not cold; my hands are their normal color, not the deathly blue that they sometimes turn in freezing temperatures. Funny that my hands look more alive now. I think of the last sight I witnessed before Trey pulled me to him and I fell asleep in his arms. It was my body, lying off the path. Dead. I don’t want to see it. Don’t want to at all, yet still I find myself craning my neck, searching it out. Maybe if I don’t see it, this will all prove to be a horrible nightmare and I’ll be able to go home.

Trey puts a hand on my shoulder. “I moved it. Down near the river. Didn’t think you’d want to see it again.”

I sigh, grateful and sad all at once. “I should have listened to you. You knew he was going to try to hurt me. I just didn’t think …” I swipe uselessly at the tears. “Why? Because he hates my mother?”

He’s slowly stroking his thumb back and forth over my collarbone. “Don’t worry yourself over the whys. It’s done.”

Then I say, “Jack told me he killed you. Is that true?”

He looks surprised for a moment. “Wow. Guess lying never got him nowhere, so now he’s trying out telling the truth. Yeah. It’s true.”

“He’s a monster. First you, now me.” I shake my head. “He killed you because you turned him in, right? He’d killed someone else? A little girl?”

His face hardens. “Him? Nah. I don’t like talking about it. Happened a long time ago, so it don’t matter anyway. Let’s see.” Staring at my wound, he unbuttons and removes his shirt. His arms and chest are tan and muscled. I find myself blushing and looking away as he comes close to me and gently presses the shirt against my stomach. It doesn’t hurt, not at all. His hair flops in his face and when he leans down I can smell it. It’s like leaves and fresh wind and woods. And then I see that his shirt is sopping with my blood, and remember last night.

That horrible, horrible night. I don’t even hate Justin or Ange anymore; I don’t think I ever did. I just miss them. I miss those dull, sloppy kisses Justin used to give me. I miss shopping with Ange. The only thing I ever wore bikinis for was sunbathing at the back of the house, but the last time we went out, I’d found a cute pink one. My first thought when I look at that wound is I guess bikinis are out. Then my mind travels over everything else that’s out, too. Kissing. Shopping. Sunbathing. Talking to Ange. Everything. I fold up into a ball and start to cry again.

I feel Trey’s arm around me. “Hey, hey, hey. Kiandra. It’s not all bad.”

“What’s good about it?” I sniff.

He straightens. “Well, for one, you get to spend time with me. That’s pretty … well, I’ll just go and say it. Great.” He smiles broadly.

My jaw just hangs open. It’s the first time he’s ever joked. Aren’t the dead supposed to be more … sullen? Hopeless?

“What?” he says, noticing my surprise. “You think dead people can’t have fun?”

It never did cross my mind. It doesn’t seem like they have an awful lot to celebrate. “Well, yeah. You’ve always been so—”

“Before, I was worried about saving your sorry backside. Don’t have to worry about that no more.” He shakes his head at me, and when I start to apologize, he says, “No point in fretting over it now. I’ll catch hell later.” I’m just starting to feel bad again when he says, “And you still got those powers of yours. You want to try them out?”

“Powers?” I study my hands. “Like what?”

He stands up. “Like a lot of things. Here.” He reaches down and molds a few wet black leaves together into a small mound. “Go ’head.”

I stare at him. “What do you want me to do?”

“Light it on fire.”

I let out a short laugh. “I can’t—” But before the words come out, sparks fly from the center of it and a fire consumes it, leaping into the air. I can’t even breathe. “I didn’t do that. Tell me I didn’t do that.”

He shrugs. “You didn’t do that.” Then he grins. “Okay, yeah, you did.”

I shake my head. “You’re not telling me that all I need to do is think of something and it will happen?” I ask, horrified. Because how often have I thought strange things, like wishing that it would be ninety degrees during the long Maine winter, or wanting the Academy Awards to be broadcast from my high school gymnasium?

“It’s a little more than that. You’ve got to want it.” He looks at the fire. “You got some power, girl. I wasn’t able to light fire for a couple of weeks, at least.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. And that’s a small thing. Just you wait. I’ll learn you. It’ll be fun.”

“Okay,” I say. Maybe it will be. It won’t be life, but it might be interesting.

He smiles. “So, you ready?”

“For what?”

“Don’t tell me you don’t already know the third good thing about being here?” he asks, raising his eyebrows. “I’ll take you across now.”

I gasp. “What? Now? You mean …”

“Sure. You want to see your momma, don’t you?” He studies me, then asks, “What’s got you in a tizzy?”

“I’m fine,” I say, but even as I do my teeth clack together. He tilts his head to one side and his expression says, Level with me. “It’s—it’s just that I’m cold.”

I know he’s the type to remove his shirt and give it to me to keep me warm, but he’s already given me his shirt, for the wound. I expect that he’ll wrap an arm around me, but he doesn’t. He lowers his head and says, “Quit playing. The dead don’t feel warm or cold.”

“Oh,” I mutter. But they can obviously feel other things. Fear. Indecision. Regret. Hate. “I just … My mom left me when I was seven. She just left. For ten years, I’ve been without her. And I’ve … I’ve come to …” The words “hate her” are on my lips, but they won’t come out. “I just don’t understand why.”

He stands there, nodding as if I make perfect sense, which makes me feel a little better.

“Her powers are dying? Is she … sick?” I ask.

He crosses his arms in front of him. “Who told you that? Let me guess. No, she’s just as strong as she has ever been. Once again, you go and do something I tell you not to. I told you not to listen to him.” He looks down the path, toward the river. “Look, I been kind of lax in my duties. I got to be going.”

He starts walking down the narrow path toward the Outfitters. I tremble as he leaves. I don’t want to see Jack again. But at the same time, I do. Definitely, I can still feel indecision and fear. “Where are you going?”

He turns and smiles, and like he’s reading my mind, says, “There ain’t nothing more Jack wants to do to you now.”

“Oh.” But that isn’t enough. I’m ashamed of how I acted around him. My behavior with Jack is inexplicable. The force pulling me to him was so strong, and I’m so afraid that even after the horrible things he’s done to me, I’ll still somehow be drawn to him. But I can’t tell Trey that. It doesn’t make any sense, even to me.

“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?”

He nods. “It’s a university in Boston. You know it? It’s still there?”

“Um, yeah. I just didn’t … I mean …” I blush because there’s no tactful way to say what I’m thinking, that he was uneducated and poor. “So, what happened?”

He looks at me like I have three heads. “I died was what. My dad lost everything in the crash. House was too crowded, so after I graduated I got out and hopped myself a train up north. Ended up on the Bel Del, working odd jobs so I could get up to college. That’s where I met up with Jack.” He bows his head, almost shameful. “You know how that all turned out.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Hey, it’s probably a good thing I didn’t go to Harvard. I’d probably end up living in a house like them friends of yours. One that makes your meals for you and wipes your mouth with a napkin afterward.” He points across the river and laughs. Then he puts his chin to his chest. “Do worry about my momma, though. My body was never found. Not that they looked much.”

“But you said you became a legend in twelve counties. About the boy who couldn’t swim?”

“Where I died, yeah. Not where my momma lived. There were a couple of witnesses, but none of them helped me. All too afraid. They all came up with the rhyme to protect Jack, make it look like an accident. My momma’s the worrying kind. Probably spent her whole life wondering what happened to me. I wrote her letters sometimes, when I was alive. But I never saw her again.”

I think about my father. The thought sends a stab of pain through my chest. I’m never going to see him again.

The little girl on his back has fallen asleep, and she looks like an angel herself with her eyelids fluttering and her cheeks rosy. I look around as we walk past the cemetery I’d spotted a day ago. It’s an old one. Most of the headstones are crumbling and faded, but I can make out some of the years. Most are from the 1700s. The green of the trees frames all the gray stone, making the place look more romantic than frightening. Trey pays no attention to it, just follows this worn stone staircase up a hill, into a line of trees. “Where are we going?”

He stops. “That’s right. You didn’t want to see your momma yet. She’s up at the top of the hill. She likes to greet newcomers. You want to wait here while I bring her up?” He motions toward the little girl.

I look up the pathway, which ends in pine trees the color of new grass, and at the lavender sky. “Does she know about me?”

He nods.

I bite my lip. “She doesn’t want to see me. She was trying to push me away.”

“No, she was trying to protect you, kid. She’ll want to see you. Trust me. Mommas worry.”

He’s staring at me with eyes so intensely blue, almost the exact color the river is now, I wonder if that’s me perceiving things differently or if that’s the way they’ve always been. Before, they’d been so dark, troubled. I look down and realize he has his hand out for me to take. I wrap my fingers around his, expecting to feel the sores I’d seen before, but, strangely, his fingers are soft, maybe even softer than mine.

When we begin to walk again, he mutters under his breath, “You, she’ll want to see. Me, she’ll want to kill. Guess I’m in luck it’s too late for that.”

“I’m sorry,” I say again. “I’ll tell her it’s my fault. You did everything you could. I’m just a stubborn pain in the ass.”

“You said it,” he mutters, turning away, but even though his head is down and his hair is in his face, I see the hint of a smile.

“Hey! I think I liked you better when you were all doom and gloom,” I say, punching his arm.

“ ’Cause I was easier to ignore?” he asks, and by then we’ve reached the landing at the top of the hill. Though we’ve climbed pretty far, I’m not out of breath. Maybe because I don’t need to breathe? I try holding my breath to see, but my cheeks bulge like a chipmunk’s, right when Trey turns around to look at me. He laughs. “Are you holding your breath?”

“Um, I—”

“Don’t bother. Every dead person’s tried it out one time or another. But even ghosts need air.”

I feel myself blushing. “But what will happen to me if I don’t breathe? I can’t die.”

“Nah, but you’ll lose your shine.”

“Shine?”

“We all have a light when we come here. We call it our shine. See yours?” He points to my hand. With his bluish, dead fingers next to mine, the difference is striking. My skin is glowing white, not unlike the surface of the moon. His is more bluish. Some of the people who were milling about when we arrived looked almost watery, blurry. Blinking did no good. Their bodies were tinged with dark blue. Even in sun, they were in shadow. “When you pass on, you don’t lose your life all at once. Sure, you lose your body, but your life is still there. Shine’s your human life. The longer you’re here, in our world, the more shine you lose. The more you fade, the more your powers fade.”

I study Trey. Compared to the new souls who’ve just traversed the river, he is faded, bluish.

“Other things affect your shine. Your body being laid to rest is one of them. And, of course, you got to want to move on,” he says. “Some people keep their shine.”

In answer to my questioning look, he says, “Some people don’t want to go. Either they want to be alive or they want something else they could only get in life, and it eats away at them. They become evil spirits. Fiends.”

“Fiends?” I murmur, thinking of Jack, of how brightly he shone, how intensely hard it was to even look at him. But Trey had shone brightly, too. “What do they do that’s so evil?”

He opens his mouth to speak, but stops when he reaches the top of the hill. I come up behind him, and I can see stone walls, crumbling as much as the headstones on the riverbank. It’s a small house, or what remains of it. There is no roof, but the branches of old trees with fresh new leaves hang over it like a canopy. Ivy crawls up the black stones, almost completely claiming them. Here, the only sound is the twittering of birds. The line of people winds up ahead, but it’s perfectly silent; every one of them looks around, awestruck. It’s so peaceful and lush and green. I think I could fall asleep on this carpet of soft spring grass and never wake up.

I forget what we’re talking about when I see her. She is a small woman, as unremarkable in appearance now as she was in life. And yet I can’t take my eyes off her. The world slows and silences. She smiles and welcomes each person with a hug. Her hair and face are fair, and despite the limited sunlight leaking through the leaves above, something about her glitters like gold. She moves like a leaf on the wind, so gracefully, and those she smiles at seem to be affected by her, as immediately they begin to smile, too. She’s wearing an ordinary white baseball shirt with red sleeves, with a giant P on it, for the Phillies. I know it because she’d worn it all the time. She’d gotten it at my first—and last—baseball game at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. Somehow I’d expected her to be wearing a long, regal robe, or a crown, or something. But no, it’s just her, just my mom, looking exactly the same. The same as the day she died.

Suddenly I’m back in my bedroom, lying flat on my back in bed, with the summer heat pressing down on me and the iridescent ripples on the walls. My parents were weirdly absent from my life that summer, talking in hushed whispers about “adult things” they said I didn’t need to know about, so Lannie became my best and only friend. One day I’d been playing with Lannie all afternoon, and Lannie had been playing her usual games, pretending to be hanging by the neck from trees, making herself invisible when we played hide-and-seek. It put me in a foul mood, and I just wanted to get away from her. So I was alone in my bedroom with a pillow over my head to keep the visions away when my mother walked in. My mother tried to take the pillow off my head but I yelled at her. She told me she had something to say, something important, but I screamed at her to leave me alone.

I thought she’d fight it, tell me to behave or something, but she just did as I told her to. She put her cold, clammy hand on my bare knee and whispered an “I love you,” then walked out of my room. There wasn’t anything different about that, she was constantly saying she loved me, so much that I forgot what it meant. A minute later I heard the screen door slam and feet swishing on the grass. I scrambled to look out my window. In that red-and-white baseball shirt, she was walking toward the river. The way she moved should have made me nervous; she walked very deliberately, not like she was just going for a stroll. And she wouldn’t ever leave me alone in the house, not even for a minute, to go get the mail. But I was so angry, partly at Lannie and partly at myself for not having made any real friends, that I turned away and shoved the pillow over my head and held it there until the sirens screamed me back into reality.

I ran downstairs. I can still remember the look on my father’s face when he came home from work and the police told him that several people had seen his wife walk into the river. Some had dove in to rescue her, but she’d never been found. His body kind of crumpled and he grabbed my shoulder so tight that pain rocketed down my arm. “I didn’t think she’d go so soon,” he sobbed. I’d found those words strange at first, but the more I thought about it, the more I knew what he meant. Maybe it was how sad my mother always seemed. She always smiled at me, but it was as if she worked to achieve that smile. Whenever she thought she was alone, I’d catch her frowning, her brow furrowed as if the weight of everything was on her shoulders. Deep down, I guess we both always knew she’d leave us.

I’m so engrossed in the memory, I don’t see anything else around me, only her form, coming nearer. When she is close to me, she puts a hand on my cheek. Her hand is cold and clammy, as I remember it. “Kiandra,” she says. “How I’ve missed you.” She pulls me into a hug. Her smell is the same, sweet and clean.

There are so many questions I want to ask, but for now I just allow her arms to swallow me up and I press my cheek against her shoulder so hard that it hurts. “Mom,” I say. It comes out hoarse and watery, and I realize I’m crying.

It’s only then I see Trey standing beside me, fidgeting nervously. When I pull back, my mother’s giving him a look I often had directed at me whenever I did something wrong. Quickly I say, “It’s not Trey’s fault. He wanted me to leave but I’m too stubborn.”

She contemplates this for a moment. “That is true,” she says with a hint of a smile.

I frown. I don’t like her professing to know me. She left me. When I was seven, I wanted her so much, ached for her. The pain from those days was so bad, I can still feel it, but it’s an old wound. It’s been a long time since I’ve wanted her. Now, standing in front of her, hugging her, it’s like being presented to someone only slightly more familiar than a stranger. All I know is that I don’t want those wounds to be reopened. I don’t want to get so close that I ache and ache and nothing can fill that hole.

Trey speaks up. “I thought I’d show her around.”

I’m relieved by the suggestion, but my mother shakes her head. “I need to talk to my daughter in private.”

The thought makes my stomach tighten. Trey is already turning back down the path when my mother tells him to wait a moment. She takes him aside and says, “I have a job for you. On the east side,” then whispers something into his ear. He listens intently, gives me a nervous glance, and then heads out. I’m amazed. Here, she is a leader. At home, I was the only person she was in charge of, and she was gentle, quiet, even when I misbehaved. She certainly never ordered me around. It just seems so unlike her. I refuse to be impressed. Before I can stop my gaping, she turns her eyes toward my face. She motions for me to follow her, but it’s like my feet have rooted in the ground. I don’t want to go. I need to get away. Just be alone. To sort out this whirlwind of emotions inside me. She gives me a look as if to say What are you waiting for?

But I can’t. I can’t bring myself to move. This is my mother. The mother I lost so many years ago. Standing in front of me.

“I, um, have to use the bathroom,” I manage.

Her face breaks into a small smile before melting into a frown. She shakes her head. “Kiandra …”

I can tell by her expression that I’ve flubbed, that obviously dead people don’t need to do such things. Heat rises in my face. I peel my feet from the ground and trail behind her into the woods. As we walk she says, “How is your father?” as if he’s some acquaintance and not the man she was married to for ten years.

“Fine,” I say, forcing the word out of my throat.

“I miss him,” she says softly. Then she stops and looks at me. “I missed you. You’ve grown up so well. You’re beautiful.”

“And you missed it all,” I mutter.

She nods. “I know. I feel bad about that. But obviously your father didn’t do such a bad—”

“No. He didn’t. You’re right.” I don’t mean to snap, but my words come out that way. Once again I feel like I’m seven years old, back in that house on the river, having a tantrum.

She stares at me. “You’re angry.”

With her eyes boring into me, I get a familiar feeling. I feel the waterworks starting. I’m going to cry again. Whenever she would look at me that way, for breaking a vase in the living room, for hiding my new dress when I ripped it, or whatever, I would always stare into those eyes and cave. I’d run into her arms and beg her for forgiveness, beg her to love me again. But not now. Now I’m beyond that. I don’t need her approval anymore. And I’m not going to cry for her. “Wouldn’t you be?”

She sucks in her bottom lip. “Your father didn’t tell you anything.”

“No,” I say, looking away and hardening myself. “And after a while I stopped asking. I know why he wouldn’t. Suicide isn’t something you discuss with a seven-year-old.”

“I’ll never forgive myself for not saying goodbye to you properly. It was just … too hard. I wanted to. But I knew if you cried and begged me to stay, I wouldn’t be able to go through with it. And I needed to.” She stares hard at me. “I needed to. For you.”

I squint at her. “For me? That’s stupid.”

“I know it might have been cruel to leave. But it would have been even crueler if I’d stayed.” She sighs. “I had a brain stem glioma. Do you know what that is?”

Now we’re alone among the tall pines. The wind rustles through them but makes no sound, so I swear I can hear my heart beating. “Brain stem? You mean …”

“A tumor. In my brain. A very serious one. The prognosis was bad, and some days the pain was unbearable. I talked it over with your father. If I was going to die, I wanted to have some control over it. So that was what I planned. I meant to say goodbye. Really, I did.”

I swallow. “Why didn’t Dad tell me?”

“Did you ask him?”

“I didn’t think I had to! I thought I knew what happened. I thought you …” I know I didn’t think anything at the time. I thought my mom had gone away, and my father wouldn’t say more than that. Over time, though, I put the pieces together, and it formed a picture that could mean only one thing. Suicide. And it was suicide. She didn’t have to do it. She could have had more time with me, and she chose something else. Even a day more, an hour, a minute—all that precious time we could have had together was thrown away. I stand there on the path, shaking. “You should have stayed with us.”

“And have you see me so weak? So sick? I wasn’t your mother anymore. I couldn’t care for you. I was helpless.”

“I wouldn’t have cared! I just wanted you. Sick or healthy. I didn’t care!” I shout.

“You wouldn’t have had me either way. The doctors gave me three months to live. I was beyond chemotherapy. It was too late.”

“But even a few more days,” I protest, but it comes out soft because suddenly I feel very weak.

“You’re tired,” she says. “You need rest.”

I remember how she used to usher me up to my bedroom every time I acted out of line, saying, “You’re tired and need to rest.” No, she just wants to be done with me. I bet ghosts don’t even need to rest, just like they don’t need to use the bathroom. The thought makes me more bitter than ever. “I’m fine. I wish you would have stayed.”

She is silent for a moment. “And I wish you had stayed alive. You should have left when Trey told you. But we all can’t have what we want, now, can we?” She sounds like she did whenever I told her I wanted dessert, never mean, just sweetly condescending. In my mind’s eye, I’m in the kitchen, reaching for a bag of cookies in the pantry. She slams the door and smiles at me. We all can’t have what we want, now, can we?

I feel a new wash of tears fall over my cheeks. It was futile to think I could harden myself against her. She is my mother. I was deluding myself when I said I didn’t care. She is my sun. Even if she hated me, that fact would never change.

“You don’t even want me here now. You sent Trey to make sure I stayed away, because you didn’t want me with you.”

She puts her hands on my shoulders. “Listen to me, Kiandra. I want you. It hurts me terribly not to be with you, but it made me happy to know that you were having a life. More than anything, I wanted you to live. To be happy and live.” She enunciates the last word as if teaching it to me for the first time. “You were happy there, without me, weren’t you?”

I wipe the tears from my cheeks and look out toward the east bank. I think of Justin, and my father. I wonder if Dad has made it up to the river yet. I wonder how I’ll look when they find my body. How they’ll react. The thought of my father seeing me that way twists my heart. I’m his everything. That’s what he said to me, about a thousand times, on that ride up from New Jersey. He kept chewing on the inside of his cheek and looking over at me with crazed eyes. You’re my everything. I won’t let anything happen to you. I nod.

She smiles a little. “You had a boyfriend, didn’t you? What is his name?”

I nod again, less forcefully this time. I’m not really sure what we were, as of last night. I guess we were still boyfriend and girlfriend. “Justin,” I say, but I’m back to thinking about my dad. You’re my everything. More tears slide over my cheeks. “But I can’t stop thinking about Dad. This will kill him.”

“Yes. I know it will.” She bows her head for a moment, then moves closer to me, and I think she’s going to hug me again. Instead, she leans in close to my ear. I feel the familiar sweep of her lips on my cheek. It sends the world reeling for me, but not as much as her next words. Very quietly, she says, “And that is why I am going to send you back.”

It takes a moment to register. I search for another meaning, but can’t think of one. “What … You don’t mean that …”

“Oh, Kiandra. It’s not that I don’t want you.”

“No, it’s not that. It’s …” Maybe this is a misunderstanding. She didn’t see the wound in my body. She didn’t see how much blood I lost. There’s no way I could go back to living. That’s not possible. I’ve heard of people who die for a few minutes and come back to life, but I’ve been dead for hours. “What are you talking about?”

“You will have this power, too. Many of our ancestors do. We are the only ones.”

I shake my head. “Are you talking about … making me alive again?”

She doesn’t have to say a word. Her expression speaks volumes.

I stop breathing. “But how? That can’t be done.”

She crosses her arms. “It can be. But if I do this for you, you must leave here and never come back. Not until you are one hundred years old. Preferably later. And please realize it’s not because I don’t want to see you again. I will see you again.”

“It’s impossible,” I whisper.

She puts a hand on mine. Her eyes glint with pride. “I assure you, I can do it. As long as certain conditions are met. I would prove it to you now, but I need to ensure a little something before I can start. Trey is working on that. Now I have some duties to attend to. Do not stray too far.”

She brushes my wrist with her thumb and turns to walk back to the crumbling stone house. I’m just standing there, numb, in disbelief. The sun is hot on my face, and it’s then I realize that we’ve climbed through the woods, and I’m standing on a peak overlooking the river. The wind blows hard and cold against my skin. Down below, yellow rafts dot the river, returning from the day’s white-water expedition. I can see across to the east bank. Trey is there somewhere, performing some task for my mother, in order to send me back. Send me back. To the living. How is that possible? If it is, why can’t she send herself back? Why didn’t she kill me herself to spend just a few more days with me, if she knew she could send me back? I turn to ask her the hundreds of questions percolating in my mind, but she has already disappeared among the trees.