Chapter
42
“YOU OKAY?”
I can’t answer. I feel that I’ll explode if I so much as breathe. Isabel’s sorrow is physically painful for me. It’s like the needles of a cactus, carving every inch of my skin.
At the first boom of thunder, I open my eyes. The rain falls timidly upon us. I look at Mina, but she nods and gently smiles. “Go on, it’s okay. Just don’t overdo it, yeah?”
So I laugh until I cry. The rain absorbs my tears and sends them back down, plastering my hair to my face. I close my eyes but lift my chin up to the sky. It feels so much different from anything when I was alive. This world cries with me, for me, for everyone I loved.
I feel so sorry for myself I can hardly bear the weight of it. I feel sorry for Kendra and Isabel, for my father, and for Jesse, Lynette, Cornell and Arshan. I feel sorry for Mina most of all. Where was the light taking us before we ended up here? To me, the light felt like obliteration, but Mina said she heard her mother. Now I beg the light to come back. To tell me the secrets of this world and the next, to guide me and teach me. It will take away the pain of dying and the pain of remembering. I wait for it, for the white light that erases everything in its path as effortlessly as water carves stone.
But it doesn’t come.
The rain eases and I can hear myself breathing. The sun breaks through the clouds as I let out a shuddery sigh.
I’m alone on the dock.
I blink in the sunshine. Then I hear a voice skim across the lake like water spiders.
“I’m listening to my father, Sam. He’s continuing the story.”
Silence.
The sun, the gently drifting clouds, the barely lapping water. And silence. Funny how silence can be the loudest sound.
Without Mina’s presence, I study the landscape with a new intensity. Time to experiment. I put out my palm and a beetle scurries across it. I close my eyes and open them to a mosquito buzzing in front of my nose. I chuckle and jump to my feet on the dock. With my arms spread wide, I twirl in a slow circle. A fish jumps out of the lake, is snared in an eagle’s talons, and dropped through a cloud of bees into grizzly bear’s mouth. The bear looks at me and then ambles off on the plain of grass, making me smile like a new mother at her firstborn.
Wildflowers spring up, the dock is freshly painted, flipflops and a magazine flutter in the breeze. An idea forms in my head, clear as koi swimming to the surface.
It’s up to me.
This is my job.
I won’t tell Mina until I figure it out. But there is a way back. There is a way to bring us both back, and I’m going to find it.
“Samantha, are you coming or not?”
“I’m coming.”
The Summer We Came to Life
Deborah Cloyed's books
- As the Pig Turns
- Before the Scarlet Dawn
- Between the Land and the Sea
- Breaking the Rules
- Escape Theory
- Fairy Godmothers, Inc
- Father Gaetano's Puppet Catechism
- Follow the Money
- In the Air (The City Book 1)
- In the Shadow of Sadd
- In the Stillness
- Keeping the Castle
- Let the Devil Sleep
- My Brother's Keeper
- Over the Darkened Landscape
- Paris The Novel
- Sparks the Matchmaker
- Taking the Highway
- Taming the Wind
- Tethered (Novella)
- The Adjustment
- The Amish Midwife
- The Angel Esmeralda
- The Antagonist
- The Anti-Prom
- The Apple Orchard
- The Astrologer
- The Avery Shaw Experiment
- The Awakening Aidan
- The B Girls
- The Back Road
- The Ballad of Frankie Silver
- The Ballad of Tom Dooley
- The Barbarian Nurseries A Novel
- The Barbed Crown
- The Battered Heiress Blues
- The Beginning of After
- The Beloved Stranger
- The Betrayal of Maggie Blair
- The Better Mother
- The Big Bang
- The Bird House A Novel
- The Blessed
- The Blood That Bonds
- The Blossom Sisters
- The Body at the Tower
- The Body in the Gazebo
- The Body in the Piazza
- The Bone Bed
- The Book of Madness and Cures
- The Boy from Reactor 4
- The Boy in the Suitcase
- The Boyfriend Thief
- The Bull Slayer
- The Buzzard Table
- The Caregiver
- The Caspian Gates
- The Casual Vacancy
- The Cold Nowhere
- The Color of Hope
- The Crown A Novel
- The Dangerous Edge of Things
- The Dangers of Proximal Alphabets
- The Dante Conspiracy
- The Dark Road A Novel
- The Deposit Slip
- The Devil's Waters
- The Diamond Chariot
- The Duchess of Drury Lane
- The Emerald Key
- The Estian Alliance
- The Extinct
- The Falcons of Fire and Ice
- The Fall - By Chana Keefer
- The Fall - By Claire McGowan
- The Famous and the Dead
- The Fear Index
- The Flaming Motel
- The Folded Earth
- The Forrests
- The Exceptions
- The Gallows Curse
- The Game (Tom Wood)
- The Gap Year
- The Garden of Burning Sand
- The Gentlemen's Hour (Boone Daniels #2)
- The Getaway
- The Gift of Illusion
- The Girl in the Blue Beret
- The Girl in the Steel Corset
- The Golden Egg
- The Good Life
- The Green Ticket
- The Healing
- The Heart's Frontier
- The Heiress of Winterwood
- The Heresy of Dr Dee
- The Heritage Paper
- The Hindenburg Murders
- The History of History