Pete was still on his feet. High up above me was his talking head. Above that were the mounds of gravel, like mountains of glittering black-eyed coal. And above them the real mountains, the Catskills, unreadable and flickering in the night like static on a busted TV.
This place had been a construction site. People had planned to build something here, in this patch of gravel where I was sitting; blueprints made and rooms measured, roads mapped out. I felt it around me in the night, what could have been. The walls and floors and windows taking shape, the roof closing in, the automatic doors automatically closing.
Maybe this was meant to be a superstore, a Target. Or a hotel, a Radisson.
In some other time line, the one where London kept to her coffin, this place existed. If I concentrated on it, I could feel the crush of feet on me, the people in that other reality walking on this spot where I now sat, never guessing how close they’d come to being nothing. A woman digging her heels into my liver. Kids skating the asphalt, landing tricks off the curbs. A man wheeling his suitcase over my ribs. Their missed lives thrown in the incinerator so I could have mine.
Pete leaned down closer to me. He was going to say something, but I couldn’t concentrate on what.
In the distance, laughter. In the distance, music. In the distance, fire and light and everything I’d left behind when I took off for Pennsylvania. I could go toward the light and the laughter and the music—I could find Ruby, and I’d be fine. But if I turned around and saw London still there, what then?
Maybe she was about to disintegrate. Maybe I’d count to ten and look over at the fire and witness the air cyclone her to mist. I’d blink and see tree trunks straight through the solid space that had been her bones.
Because girls can’t come back to life. Not here and not anywhere. Any second now we’d see—
Pete was a breath away from me now, his clammy hand grabbing on to my knee. He gave an awkward shake to my knee and said, “Seriously, kid, you all right?”
“You’re asking for it, Pete,” said a voice. A girl’s voice. As she stepped toward us, the light from the fire made more stripes blaze up all over her skin. “You know that’s Ruby’s sister, right?” London said. Then she added, “So how’s it going, Chloe?”
I didn’t answer. When a dead girl says your name it’s shocking. A brick thrown at you, a brick through your bedroom window.
The light was behind her, hiding her face. “You need some help getting up?” she asked. She put an arm out, dangling one of her two hands before my face. The hand was so close, I could see all five fingernails. Even in the dark I could see them.
She locked her eyes on mine. (The whites of her eyes staring up at the half moon.)
She cracked a smile. (Her lips drained of color.)
I looked away. “Don’t touch me,” I heard myself say. “I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine,” she said.
And you don’t look dead, I didn’t say.
“Just let her help you,” Pete said. So he could see and hear her, too.
The hand was still there, the fingers waggling. Her nails were painted a few different colors. Three were black, as they would be if left to rot in the ground. But three were magenta. Others were yellow. It was all so random.
I grabbed the hand. Her warm, living hand. It grabbed mine back. As it did a hiss of vapor didn’t pass through my flesh to reveal I’d grabbed on to nothing; I didn’t fall facefirst into gravel and lie there spitting up rocks. I was definitely touching something. And this something used its weight to get me up.